I’ve often wondered about places and people that disappear under mysterious circumstances. Take the Roanoke colony, founded in 1587 on the coast of what was then Virginia and is now North Carolina.
The colony was settled by a hundred men and women, who intended to farm and to pay for supplies from home by selling wild sassafras, then used in England for medicinal purposes. The governor of the colony, John White, sailed back to England for supplies that would help the colonists live through the winter.
But he was detained in England by the war with Spain for more than three years. He was able to gain passage back to Roanoke on a private expedition that agreed to stop at the colony on the way back from the Caribbean. White landed on August 18, 1590, his granddaughter’s third birthday, but the settlement was deserted. Evenm his daughter and granddaughter were gone.
All the house and structures had been dismantled, there was no sign of a struggle, and no trace of the 90 men, 17 women, and 11 children. The only clue found in the deserted settlement was a word carved into a post of the fence around it: Croatan, the name of a local Indian tribe. White supposedly had instructed the colonist that if anything happened to them before he returned, a Maltese cross should be carved onto a nearby tree and it would indicate that their disappearance had been forced. Since there wasn’t any cross, so White assumed they had moved to Croatoan Island – now known as Hatteras Island.
Inclement weather prevented him for searching Hatteras for the missing colonists and he returned to England.
What actually happened to the lost colonists remains a mystery. One theory is that they assimilated into some friendly North American tribe. Another theory is that they were slaughter by the Spanish, who were colonizing Florida.
This kind of strange disappearance is a great what if premise for fiction. In fact, Dean Koontz, in his novel Phantoms, delves into it and Roanoke is mentioned. But what about people who suddenly vanish?
On September 23, 1880, David Lang, a farmer living near Gallatin, Tennessee, supposedly set off across a field and vanished in full sight of his wife. His disappearance was allegedly witnessed by two arriving visitors, who had waved to him as they passed him in their buggy. After Fate magazine wrote about the case in 1953, a search was conducted of the 1880 census records for Sumner County where the Langs had supposedly lived, but the name Lang wasn’t found.
In 1873, an English shoemaker named James Worson accepted a friend’s bet that he couldn’t run from their town of Leamington Spa to Coventry and back, a distance of about 16 miles. Worson set out with three friends following him in a cart. After a couple of miles, he stumbled, pitched forward – and vanished.
His three buddies knew what they’d seen and frantically searched the area. They couldn’t find him and eventually went to the police, but stuck to their version of the story – their friend had simply disappeared.
There are probably hundreds, maybe thousands of stories like these. Some may be explicable, but how many may be attributable to something else? To something science doesn’t understand yet?
Wow, talk about a synchro! For the past couple of days I’ve been thinking about UFOs and alien abductions (quite frequently since Aliens in the Backyard was published!), and I remembered the case about the guy who disappeared in plain sight while crossing the field. It’s in one of those ‘Mysteries of the Unknown’ type books in my personal library. The incident sprang to mind because it’s so obviously an extraterrestrial abduction. I’d actually planned to look up the account this weekend, and here it is on synchrosecrets! As I recall, the guy froze in terror and exclaimed something like: “Oh no, they’ve got me!” before vanishing through what appeared to be an invisible door suddenly closing (sort of like the imaging chamber portal in Quantum Leap). It’s such a fascinating account and I wish there was more information about it! But to actually witness a person vanishing in a flash like that would scare the living daylights out of me!
The guy who vanished in the field: I used that story for my novel Vanished. That’s how it started only in the present. My novel didn’t involve alien abductions, but that possibility certainly occurred to me with some of these disappearance stories.
Okay, I *definitely* have to check out Vanished now (even if the ETs aren’t involved)! Perfect title! 🙂
It’s really interesting to speculate about………..why not the possibility of slipping into another dimension?
The books written by author and ex-policemen, David Paulides, are fascinating. There are litterally THOUSANDS of people that disappear all over the world every year. The Missing 411 books are good to have on a bookshelf somewhere, just so you can check the areas that have clusters of disappearances before you go camping. The books are written mostly about all of the disappearances in state parks – which are not tracked by the park systems! You have to wonder — why? In an era when you can literally track anything through the Internet – the National Park System does not track disappearances in their parks. The information they use depends on the memory of their rangers. Like your post – some literally disappear within sight of family or friends. Almost as though they walk into another dimension.
Never heard of these books, but will def. check them out
I didn’t realize this about national parks!
unbelievable that these disappearances are not tracked! i’m so far behind on my stacks of to-be-read books – but have to add these missing 411s now! thanks so much for info nancy –
i love love love these kinds of stories! and i’ve always wondered of the colonists – a fascinating story – and for the structures to have all been dismantled – something that did not happen quickly, i would imagine – it seems only plausible that at some point in time at least one of the colonists might be “discovered” somewhere – might even have come forward and told their story – but nothing –
and then, the other stories you’ve added – more than intriguing – great post!!
These stories are what novels are made of – there could be a simple explanation, but there again strange forces could have been at work or even ….