There are certain places on earth where mysterious disappearances seem to occur more often than
they should.
These are some of the scariest places on earth and very often, the fate of those missing
people remains a mystery that will seemingly never be solved.
5.
Pecos, New Mexico
The village of Pecos in San Miguel County, New Mexico has some of the most beautiful
scenery in the state, but it has a sinister side as it is also known as an area where
people go missing and the local tribespeople consider it to be one of the scariest places
on earth.
Located just outside of Santa Fe, the village of Pecos lies between the Pecos Wilderness
area and the Santa Fe National forest.
This makes it a perfect spot for tourists to go hiking, fishing, camping and to experience
unspoiled wilderness.
61-year-old Melvin Nadel visited the Elk Mountain area, just north of Pecos on the 6th of September,
2006.
He was in exceptionally good shape for his age, as he was a gym owner and so, would have
had no problem traversing the rugged terrain in the area.
He was joined by his brother-in-law and his friend Joe Muniz and the three men arrived
via a logging road, next to which they decided to set up camp.
After discussing their plans for the hunt, Muniz and Mel’s brother-in-law followed
a trail into the woods while Mel built a hunting blind closer to their camp.
At around 7 am, the two men returned to the campsite, but saw that Mel was still not back.
They did a quick search, but found no sign of him.
His Jeep was still where he had parked it and they started to worry that he may have
gotten lost.
They called after him into the woods, but got no answer and when he had still not returned
a few hours later, they started to honk their vehicles’ horns and fired their weapons
into the air, but still got no response.
The following day, a search was launched, eventually becoming one of the largest in
New Mexico’s history.
Mel’s footprints were located, but they suddenly stopped about 100 yards from the
campsite, as if he had just vanished into thin air.
He was never found.
Another person to mysteriously disappear in the area was 71-year-old Emma Tresp from North
Little Rock, Arkansas.
She intended to join a retreat at a Monastery in Pecos, where she had been several times
before.
She had planned to arrive in the late afternoon of the 31st of August, 1998, but she never
did and 6 days later, her car was found by a hunter along a service road known as “The
Devil’s Road”.
She was reported missing on the 8th of September.
She was last seen on security footage filling her car up at a service station in Santa Rosa
on the 31st.
From there, she inexplicably ended up on the service road which leads only into the middle
of nowhere.
Her footprints circled the car, but never trailed away from it and just like in Mel’s
case; she seemed to have just been snatched from existence, never to be seen again.
4.
Superstition Mountains
The Superstition Mountains, located in Arizona, are rumored to be the possible location of
one of America’s most famous unsolved mysteries – The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, but since
local Native Americans believe the mountain to hold the entrance to the underworld, it
is also considered by many to be among the scariest places on earth.
The vanishing of James Kidd in December of 1949 is a strange one indeed, but his life
leading up to his disappearance is equally as bizarre.
Kidd lived such an obscure life that it may never have come to light that he was missing,
but the fact that he left behind a $500, 000 fortune shrouded his life in even more mystery.
He was known for his belief in the supernatural and had a particular interest in ghosts.
So much so that he left his entire fortune to whoever was able to prove that they exist.
He never owned a car or a driver’s license and had no military, social security, fingerprint
or police records.
In October of 1949, Kidd paid a man to drive him to his claim in the Superstition Wilderness
area and he took enough supplies with him to last for several weeks.
After being dropped off, Kidd asked the man to check in with him each month, which he
did, but the man noticed that Kidd looked worse every time he saw him.
When he returned in February of the next year, Kidd was in a terrible state and the man warned
him that he wouldn’t last much longer in the wilderness and asked him to move back
to town, but Kidd refused.
When he saw him again in March, Kidd was even worse off and again he pleaded with him to
leave, but he once again refused and was never seen again.
Kidd is only one of dozens of people who have gone missing in these mountains and many of
these cases have never been solved and likely never will be.
3.
Nevada Triangle
The Nevada Triangle is an area that lies between Las Vegas, Fresno and Reno, known for the
mysterious disappearances of multiple aircraft over the last 50 years.
The exact figure isn’t known, but many people believe that as many as 2,000 flights have
vanished in the 25, 000 square-mile area.
Some say that this figure is conservative and that many more planes just haven’t been
found yet.
One of the earliest incidents involved a B-52 bomber that disappeared over the Sierra-Nevada
Mountains in 1943.
The flight, piloted by 2nd Lieutenant Willis Turvey, was on a routine night training mission
that took off from Fresno and was headed for Bakersfield and Tucson before being scheduled
to return.
A search mission was launched the following day with nine B-24 bombers scouring the area,
but this resulted in the disappearance of yet another of the planes.
The wreckage would not be found for another 12 years when Huntington Lake was drained
for repairs to the dam.
Another strange case is that of Charles Ogle, a developer and builder from the San Francisco
Bay Area.
On the 12th of August, 1964, Ogle departed from Oakland International Airport in a Cessna
210A.
He had no flight plan and did not inform the tower before taking off towards either Reno
or Las Vegas and he would never be seen or heard from again.
In 2007, a massive search for another plane, that of adventurer Steve Fossett, resulted
in the discovery of another eight planes that had crashed in the Triangle, one of which
was believed to belong to Ogle, though this has not been confirmed.
Only one of the eight other planes was ever partially identified and the remaining seven,
as well as the fate of Charles Ogle, remains a mystery.
2.
The Devil’s Sea
The Devil’s Sea extends from Japan to the islands of Bonin and includes a large portion
of the Philippine Sea.
It is known as one of the most dangerous places on earth to sail through as many ships have
disappeared in the area, along with their crews.
Reports go back as far as 1274 and 1281 when Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan,
attempted to make inroads into Japan.
On both occasions, however, he failed as his ships vanished along with around 40, 000 of
his soldiers.
It is said that they were struck by typhoons on both occasions, causing the Japanese to
believe that they were being protected by an unseen force.
During the 1940s and 50s, more fishing vessels and at least 5 military ships went missing
in the Devil’s Sea.
The Japanese government sent a research ship called Kaio Maru No.5 to investigate and attempt
to locate some of the lost vessels, but it met the same fate, disappearing without a
trace.
The Kaio Maru’s wreck would be found some time later, but the crew has never been found
and they remain missing to this day.
Following this incident, the Japanese government declared the area as too dangerous for the
transportation of goods and for marine voyaging.
This also resulted in any additional investigations into the disappearances to be abandoned and
we will likely never learn the reality behind these mysterious disappearances.
1.
Michigan Triangle
The Michigan Triangle is an area that extends from Ludington and Benton Harbor in Michigan
to Wisconsin where people go missing along with the vessels that they sail in.
The first reported case is that of the Rosabelle, a small two-masted schooner that was used
to bring wood and supplies to High Island for The House of David, a millenarian sect
based in Benton Harbor.
On the 30th of October, 1921, the Rosabelle was loaded with lumber and set sail from High
Island to Benton Harbor when it was supposedly caught in gale-force winds and capsized.
The vessel would eventually be found 42 miles from Milwaukee, but no trace of the crew was
ever found.
Then, in 1937, the O.S.
McFarland, captained by George R. Donner, was sailing to Port Washington after picking
up 9,800 tons of coal in Eerie, Pennsylvania . Donner instructed his first mate to wake
him as they neared the port and the man attempted to do so, but got no answer when he knocked.
The crew eventually had no choice but to break the cabin door down, fearing that something
may have happened to their captain, but once they did so, they were shocked to find the
cabin empty with no sign of Donner.
He was never seen or heard from again.
In November of 1940, a massive blizzard hit the area, resulting in the wreckage of not
only two fishing tug boats, but also three massive freighters off the coast of Pentwater,
Michigan, all on the same day.
The wreckages of the three freighters were eventually found, but the fate of the two
tug boats, as well as that of their crews, remain unknown as they still remain missing.
On the 23rd of June, 1950, Northwest Airlines Flight 2501 took off from New York City to
Seattle with 58 passengers on board.
As he flew over the Michigan Triangle, Captain Robert Lind radioed the tower and requested
permission to descend to 2,500 feet as they were approaching a severe electrical storm
and high winds.
Permission was denied and the plane was forced to continue on its trajectory before completely
disappearing from radar.
No further transmissions were received from Lind or any of his crew and the plane never
arrived at its destination.
A search was launched in which the entirety of Lake Michigan was dragged, but no sign
of the plane’s wreckage was found.
Since then, a yearly search has been undertaken, funded by nautical thriller author Clive Cussler,
but despite this, no sign of the plane has ever been found and its whereabouts remain
an unsolved mystery.
Many theories, similar to those concerning the Bermuda Triangle, have been posited to
attempt to explain the mysterious disappearances in the Michigan Triangle.
Some people believe that UFOs are responsible; others think that strange portals have transported
the missing people to another time and some theorize that other paranormal phenomena are
responsible.
However, in 2007, Mark Holley, a professor of archeology, along with a colleague, Brian
Abbott, conducted a search using sonar around the Triangle area in an attempt to find some
of the missing ships.
What they found instead was a line of stones, arranged in a similar way to those at Stonehenge
in about 40 feet of water.
Divers were sent to photograph the strange discovery and they found a prehistoric carving
of a Mastodon dating to around 12, 000 years ago.
The location remains secret and no explanation has been given for the stones’ presence.