You’re out shopping with your five-year-old brother.
It’s been a long day and he’s getting antsy.
Thankfully, he’s distracted with a little ball you got him from the vending machine.
He’s happily bouncing away, so you turn to the clothing rack and look at some shirts.
You find one in the right size, and turn around to take him to the cash register to pay.
But he’s not there.
You only turned your back for a second, but he’s disappeared without a trace.
Seconds feel like hours as you frantically scan the area.
Worst case scenarios run through your mind.
Then you see a little ball roll out from under a nearby clothes rack, followed by a little
hand reaching for it.
He was hiding, and all's right with the world - save the scolding he’s about to get!
It only takes seconds for someone to disappear, and most of the time there’s a simple explanation.
But that didn’t happen for the people in this video.
Some of them were young and anonymous.
Others were old and had powerful enemies.
One even disappeared twice.
But they all have one thing in common - they vanished, and were never seen again.
8.
Owen Parfitt
Owen Parfitt was a man who had lived an interesting life, or at least he believed that and would
be the first to tell you.
He claimed to be a pirate, a ladies’ man, and an adventurer.
But in the 1760s, he was an old man who could barely walk and lived with his sister in Shepton
Mallet.
This sleepy town in southwest England was the last place you would expect a mystery
to be found, but mystery found Owen Parfitt one stormy day.
Owen liked to spend his evenings sitting outside, but needed the help of his sister and neighbor
to get into his old chair on the front porch.
After securing him in his chair for the evening, his sister went inside.
The only people around were some farm workers down the road.
As the sky darkened, Owen’s sister came outside to bring him in away from the lightning.
But Owen wasn’t in his chair.
There had been no sign of a struggle outside, and Owen hadn’t made any noise.
But there was no sign, and a disabled man certainly couldn’t disappear on his own.
Owen’s sister approached the farm workers and neighbors to search the neighborhood,
but no trace of him was ever found.
Many rumors circulated around Shepton Mallet about where the old man had gone.
Some said he had been taken by the devil, to fulfill an old debt.
Others said some old pirate enemies had kidnapped him in revenge.
In 1813 a skeleton was found nearby, making many people sure the mystery would be solved.
But medical experts identified it as a woman’s skeleton, and Owen Parfitt’s last adventure
remains unsolved to this day.
7.
Barbara Newhall Follett
One of the most famous people to ever disappear without a trace, Barbara Newhall Follett became
a household name when most of us were still in middle school.
The author of the novel The House Without Windows, she burst onto the literary scene
at only twelve years old.
A home-schooled and reclusive young woman, she had a troubled home life and felt that
she had already reached her life’s peak by her teens.
When the Great Depression hit, she was forced to move to New York and work as a secretary.
There she met Nickerson Rogers, and was married by eighteen years old.
Their marriage soon hit rocky waters, as she believed her husband was cheating on her.
They fought, and on December 7th, 1939 she stormed out of their apartment with only thirty
dollars on her.
Rogers assumed she would be home shortly and waited for her, but he would be waiting a
very long time.
It was two weeks later when he finally reported Follett’s disappearance to police, and four
months before a missing persons notice was issued.
Because the bulletin used her married name, Follett’s disappearance didn’t attract
much attention.
Follett was never found, but her mother Helen never stopped searching.
As years went on, she became more suspicious of Rogers and accused him of being involved
in her daughter’s disappearance.
Although she demanded the police investigate Rogers, no evidence of foul play was ever
found.
Barbara Follett’s disappearance remains unsolved, and the girl who was thrust onto
the national stage early had managed to disappear into thin air.
6.
Keith Reinhard
Keith Reinhard was a sports reporter who was tired of the daily grind.
He had dreams of opening an antique shop, and decided to move to the quiet town of Silver
Plume, Colorado in 1988.
His old friend Ted Parker lived there, and he was looking forward to the proximity to
another man who loved the outdoors.
But tragedy and mystery would follow Reinhard and Parker as they settled into their new
life.
Reinhard opened his antique shop and hoped his wife would join him soon, but he soon
learned that his building had a dark secret.
The previous owner, Tom Young, had vanished a year earlier with his body found ten months
later along with his dog’s - both shot to death.
One day, not long after the gruesome discovery, Keith decided he would climb to the top of
nearby Pendleton Mountain, the site of the bodies.
He visited Ted, who assumed his friend would back out when he saw how hard the climb was.
But Keith Reinhard made his way up the mountain regardless - and never came down.
Those who saw him before he set out said he carried no supplies.
Helicopters searched the mountain for signs of him for days, but no sign of Keith Reinhard
was ever found.
A search of his business found that he had been collecting news reports of Tom Young’s
disappearance, and had been writing morbid poetry.
Some locals suspect it was a suicide.
Others say he planned his disappearance to escape debts and a failing business.
Others say that whoever killed Tom Young had claimed another victim - but Keith Reinhard
has never been found, dead or alive.
5.
Ray Gricar
Working in law enforcement will earn you powerful enemies, and one Pennsylvania district attorney
may have found that out the wrong way.
Ray Gricar was a veteran lawman, serving as Centre County District Attorney for twenty
years.
He was ready to retire in 2005, planning to step down after the end of his term.
But he never got to serve out that last turn, and instead became the subject of one of the
most mysterious disappearances of the 21st century.
On April 15th, 2005, Gricar called his girlfriend Patty Fornicola to let her know he was coming
home, only minutes away.
But he never returned home, and she soon called the police.
Even though he was only missing for hours, he was a prominent citizen, and the police
sprung into action.
The next morning, they found a disturbing sight in a local parking lot - his red Mini
Cooper, with no sign of Ray Gricar.
There were no signs of foul play, but if Gricar had left on his own, he had made sure he couldn’t
be found.
His cell phone was still in the car, but his computer, keys, and wallet had been taken.
There were no signs of foul play, and many suspected suicide.
Gricar’s older brother Roy had committed suicide in 1996, and the car was found in
a similar position to Roy’s on that fateful day.
His laptop was found at the bottom of the Susquehanna River months later, missing its
hard drive.
A damaged hard drive was found months later, but it was badly damaged and not giving up
its secret.
Gricar’s daughter petitioned the court to declare him dead six years later, and his
fate remains unsolved.
A man resembling him was arrested in Utah, but was eventually proven to not be Gricar.
Wherever Ray Gricar went, he took his secrets with him.
4.
The Mystery of the Bennington Triangle
Rural southwestern Vermont is one of the sleepiest locations in the United States, but in the
1940s, it became a place of terror.
The Bennington Triangle is an area of small towns surrounding Glastenbury Mountain, now
a popular hiking area.
It was 1945 when the disappearances started with 74-year-old Middie Rivers.
A local hunter, he was with a group of four on the mountain when he got separated from
the group.
Locals combed the area, but all they ever found was one of his rifle shells.
Rivers knew the area well and was an experienced survivalist, but he was never seen again.
He was followed just over a year later by college student Paula Jean Welden, a sophomore
at nearby Bennington College.
She went for a hike on the nearby trail, seen by many locals.
An old couple hiking reported seeing her on the trail ahead of them, but when they reached
her location she had vanished without a trace.
The FBI got involved in this case, and a reward was offered, but much like Rivers, she had
vanished into thin air.
It was three years later when the mystery of the Bennington Triangle struck again.
Elderly veteran James Tedford was riding a bus back to his home at the Bennington Soldiers’
Home, and was seen on the bus at the last stop before Bennington.
Somewhere between there and home, he vanished.
His luggage was still on the rack, his bus timetable was still on his seat, but James
Tedford had inexplicably vanished.
He was followed by eight-year-old Paul Jephson, who disappeared from his mother’s truck
while she got out to feed their pigs.
She was gone for an hour, and when she returned Paul was gone.
No evidence of him was ever found.
53-year-old Frieda Langer was the last to disappear, only a month after Paul, having
disappeared after returning to her campsite for a change of clothes.
Her body was eventually found almost a year later after an exhaustive search, the only
victim to be found, but no cause of death could be determined.
The Bennington Triangle had claimed its last victim, but its mysteries were never solved.
3.
Joseph Force Crater
A powerful judge facing a career-ending scandal may have met an enemy he couldn’t outrun
- or found an unconventional way out of his troubles.
Joseph Force Crater was already a household name in New York before his disappearance
in 1930, having risen to the rank of State Supreme Court Justice.
But he had a history of corruption, including a mysterious withdrawal that many suspect
was a payoff to the Tammany Hall political machine.
He used his position as a bankruptcy receiver to get a huge profit, leading many to accuse
him of money laundering.
Was this what led to his disappearance?
Crater and his wife Sheila were vacationing in Maine when he received a mysterious call
that led him to drive back to the city in a hurry.
He promised his wife that he would return by her birthday, but his behavior in New York
aroused suspicion.
He combed his courthouse files, he carried locked briefcases out of his office, and had
his file clerk cash two massive checks - almost $80,000 in today’s money.
Crater had dinner with friends that night, and planned to see a Broadway show.
But afterwards, accounts differ.
Some of his friends say he left in a Taxi.
Others say he walked down the street.
But no one thought anything of it until he didn’t return to Maine.
His wife frantically called his friends, but got no answer.
The police weren’t notified until almost a month after he disappeared, and the disappearance
of Judge Crater became national news.
The police interrogated many women in Atlantic City who Crater had been involved with, but
none knew where he had gone.
An investigation was inconclusive to declare Crater alive or dead.
Did an old enemy take revenge on Crater for his corruption?
Or did he escape and take on a new identity?
A possible break in the case came eighty-five years later, when a recently deceased woman
left notes claiming that Crater had been killed by a corrupt NYPD officer on the orders of
Murder Inc.
She gave directions to where he was buried in Coney Island, but no remains were found.
2.
Tara Calico
The disappearance of Tara Calico is one of the most haunting unexplained disappearances
- not because of what we don’t know, but because of what we do.
Only nineteen years old, Calico was fond of riding her bicycle along New Mexico State
Road 47.
She often rode with her mother Patty, but Patty stopped riding because she thought a
driver was stalking them.
Patty warned Tara to be careful, but Tara wasn’t worried.
On Tuesday, September 20th, 1988, Tara didn’t return from her ride.
Patty went out searching for her and contacted the police.
They found pieces of her Sony Walkman, and witnesses said that they saw her on her bike
ride closely followed by an unknown driver in a pickup truck.
A chilling break in the case came almost a year later, on June 15th 1989.
Across the country in Port St. Joe, Florida, a photograph was found in the parking lot
of a convenience store.
It showed a young woman, bound and gagged in the trunk of a car next to a young boy.
The woman who found the photo of the two kidnapping victims said she saw a windowless van driven
by a man with a moustache.
Police were unable to chase the van down.
Patty identified the woman in the picture as Tara based on a scar on her leg, and the
boy was initially identified as the missing Michael Henley.
But the New Mexico boy’s body was found a year later near where he disappeared, having
died from exposure after getting lost.
The boy in the picture has never been identified, and Tara Calico was never seen again.
Solomon Northup
One of the most famous missing person stories in history, Solomon Northup’s tale became
a best-selling memoir and an Oscar-winning biopic.
But what happened to him after remains a mystery.
Northup was a free-born black man living in New York in the early 1800s, but the southern
states didn’t care about that.
When Northup, a traveling musician, went to Washington DC to perform in 1841, he was drugged
and kidnapped.
He was sent to New Orleans, where he was sold as a slave.
For twelve years he was sent from one owner to another and treated brutally, until he
met a Canadian worker who heard his story and got him legal help in New York.
Upon his return to New York in 1853, he published his memoir, ``Twelve Years a Slave”.
But the years of hard labor and beatings had taken their toll on Northup, and he was reported
to be a drunken and depressed man.
Although he found a second career as a speaker on the brutality of slavery, he often faced
violent crowds opposed to his message.
By 1858, he had disappeared off the map and not even his wife or children knew where he
was.
Many speculated he had been killed by his enemies who wanted to silence him, or had
been kidnapped again and sold into slavery despite being an older man who would be of
little use on a farm.
A more optimistic rumor is that he couldn’t stand doing nothing while others were in slavery,
and he left to join the Underground Railroad.
Or maybe, while drinking to escape his horrible memories, he simply met his end by falling
into a nearby lake.
Solomon Northup’s words impacted the world long after he was gone, but the man disappeared
without a trace.
Ready to make the rest of your evening disappear mysteriously?
Why not watch some more videos like “These Missing People Were Mysteriously Found Alive”,
or this one.
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