● Over half a million people go missing each year in the USA alone, although most
of those are by choice.
But what about the people who vanished into thin air?
What sinister fates have missing people suffered?
Here are the people who mysteriously disappeared.
15 - Percy Fawcett ● Percy Fawcett was an British officer and
explorer who went on an expedition to the Amazon, accompanied by his 22-year old son
and the son’s friend.
Fawcett had funding to find a mythical lost city he named Z, believed to be the remains
of an ancient civilisation.
But after a month of regular letters, nothing was heard from the group.
One theory goes that Fawcett actually intended to disappear and start a cult of the jungle
goddess. 14 - Cynthia Anderson
● Workers at a law office in Ohio arrived to work one day in 1981 to find everything
prepared and tidied by the secretary, Cynthia Anderson, as usual.
The mail was sorted and the radio was on, but there was no sign of Ms Anderson.
Her purse and keys were gone but her car remained parked outside.
On her desk was a book she’d been reading, open at a page where the heroine of the novel
gets abducted at knifepoint. 13 - Asha Degree
● Nine year old Asha Degree shared a bedroom with her younger brother in their house in
North Carolina.
But one morning in 2000, her parents found Asha’s bed empty.
When a police search began, two drivers nearby reported seeing a girl walking by the side
of a highway in the rain.
One said she ran into the woods when he slowed his car.
Later on, her bag was found several miles from her home, but there have been no further
leads since.
12 - Frederick Valentich ● While flying in a Cessna light aircraft,
trainee pilot Frederick Valentich lost contact with Australian air traffic control.
Radio transmissions sent from the twenty-year-old’s flight said his plane was being approached
by an aircraft, which began to move around him.
He reported engine trouble before he was asked to identify the object, to which his final
response was “It isn’t an aircraft”.
However it should be said that Valentich was known to be a UFO enthusiast.
11 - The Panchen Lama ● The Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader
of Tibetan Buddhism, loved and respected worldwide.
For 500 years, each Dalai Lama is chosen as a reincarnation of the previous, and the person
who does the choosing is called the Panchen Lama.
In 1995, the newly appointed Panchen Lama disappeared three days after he was chosen
for the role.
In his place, China appointed its own Panchen Lama, never telling the people of Tibet what
happened to the original.
10 - Michael Negrete ● UCLA student Michael Negrete was up all
night playing a computer game online at his college dorm near Sunset Boulevard.
He logged off at 4am in the morning, and when his roommate woke at 9am, Michael had vanished.
Not only did he leave behind most of his possessions, including his wallet, but some reports suggest
he even left shoes behind.
Detectives are still baffled as to where he could have gone to.
9 - Mr Howe ● 18th century estate owner Mr Howe lived
in central London with his wife.
One day, Mr Howe left the house telling his wife he had business to conduct at the Tower.
Later that day he sent her a note, telling her he had to urgently go to Holland for a
few weeks.
She saw him again seventeen years later.
He had been living one block away the whole time, and when reunited with his wife, lived
happily ever after with her, explaining nothing.
8 - Louis Le Prince ● Frenchman Louis Le Prince went down in
history for shooting the first ever motion picture.
But equally remarkable is his disappearance in 1890, shortly before he was due to showcase
his camera in America.
Prince boarded a train in Dijon, waving goodbye to his brother, but when the train arrived
in Paris, Prince was not on board, his body and luggage were never found.
Some suspect foul play from rival movie camera inventor Thomas Edison.
7 - Zebb Quinn ● One evening in 2000, eighteen-year-old
Zeb Quinn had finished his shift at Walmart.
He had plans with a coworker, but when he received a message on his pager and he suddenly
drove off in his car.
Four days later, Quinn’s car was found opposite his mother’s workplace, with lipstick drawn
over it and a live puppy inside.
Strangely, the coworker was sentenced for the unrelated murder of two people in 2017,
making him the prime suspect.
The puppy was adopted by a detective.
6 - Agatha Christie ● Agatha Christie, who is the best-selling
novelist of all time has intrigued readers for a century with her murder mysteries, but
in 1926, Christie became the subject of intrigue herself when she disappeared.
After an argument with her husband, her car was found on a cliff top.
All of England, including the author of Sherlock Holmes, began a huge search, but in the end
Christie turned up ten days later at a hotel, with no memory of what had happened.
5 - Emanuela Orlandi ● The Vatican City is a country with only
800 people.
15 year old Emanuela Orlandi was one of those people in 1983, having a father who worked
at the Vatican bank.
On June 22nd, she told her sister and friends at school in Rome that she had a job offer
from the Avon cosmetics company, but after class that day, she was never seen again.
Numerous theories abound, from Turkish terrorists to twisted Vatican sex parties.
4 - Lord Lucan ● In 1974, nanny and housekeeper Sandra
Rivett was found bludgeoned to death by a lead pipe in the house of her employer, Richard
Bingham, an aristocrat known as Lord Lucan.
That night, Lucan fled London and headed for the coast.
His abandoned car was eventually found on the South Coast of England.
Many assumed the famed gentleman had thrown himself from the white cliffs, but since that
day people worldwide have reported seeing the disgraced earl, from Colombia to India.
3 - Jean Spangler ● Jean Spangler was trying to make it as
a movie star in 1940s Hollywood, but in 1949 she disappeared while driving across town
to collect child support from her ex-husband and then to act in a night shoot, for a movie
that may not have existed.
The only evidence found was her purse which contained a note addressed to someone named
Kirk.
Media speculation was so heated, that star actor Kirk Douglas had to publicly state that
he wasn’t involved.
2 - Bobby Dunbar ● On a summer’s day in 1912, the Dunbar
family lost sight of their son Bobby while on a fishing trip in Louisiana.
After an eight-month search, police found a child matching the description with a man
who called the child Bruce and said he was the son of Julia Anderson, a different woman.
Newspaper reports suggest that the child in question failed to recognise Julia when presented
to her, but also failed to recognise the original Dunbar family.
To this day it is unknown whose child that boy was.
1 - The Prime Minister of Australia ● If you’re the leader of a country, you’d
assume that there’s always someone who knows where you are and what you’re doing.
In 1967, Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt was out for a swim with friends when
he disappeared from sight.
Holt was supposedly a strong swimmer, but the beach may have had riptides, sharks or
deadly jellyfish.
His body was never recovered but it’s probably pretty safe to say he drowned, because of
all the water.