Tag: mysterious disappearances

19 of the strangest unsolved mysteries of all time

On the first night of February 1959, nine ski-hikers died mysteriously in the mountains of what is now Russia. The night of the incident, the group had set up camp on a slope, enjoyed dinner, and prepared for sleep – but something went catastrophically wrong because the group never returned.

On February 26, searchers found the hikers’ abandoned tent, which had been ripped open from the inside. Surrounding the area were footprints left by the group, some wearing socks, some wearing a single shoe, some barefoot, all of which continued to the edge of a nearby wood. That’s where the first two bodies were found, shoeless and wearing only underwear.

The scene bore marks of death by hypothermia, but as medical examiners inventoried the bodies, as well as the other seven that were discovered over the months that followed, hypothermia no longer made sense. In fact, the evidence made no sense at all. One body had evidence of a blunt force trauma consistent with a brutal assault; another had third-degree burns; one had been vomiting blood; one was missing a tongue, and some of their clothing was found to be radioactive. Theories floated include KGB-interference, drug overdose, UFO, gravity anomalies, and the Russian version of the Yeti.

Recently, a documentary filmmaker presented a theory involving a terrifying but real phenomenon called “infrasound,” in which the wind interacts with the topography to create a barely audible hum that can nevertheless induce powerful feelings of nausea, panic, dread, chills, nervousness, raised heartbeat rate, and breathing difficulties. The only consensus remains that whatever happened involved an overwhelming and possibly “inhuman force.”

Keep reading

Dig for D.B. Cooper Clues Conducted in Washington State

A D.B. Cooper researcher who believes that evidence from the legendary skyjacking case might still be hidden somewhere in the wilderness of Washington state conducted a dig this past weekend in search of new clues to the nearly five-decade-old mystery. According to a local media report, crime historian Eric Ullis spent Saturday and Sunday scouring a patch of land on the shore of the Columbia River for materials that may have been left behind by the still-unidentified individual behind the infamous caper. Known as the Tena Bar, this particular spot has long intrigued Cooper researchers as it was where $6,000 from the 1971 heist was discovered by a young boy back in 1980.

At the time of the remarkable find, the FBI purportedly searched the Tena Bar location for any additional evidence from the case, but only recovered a few additional scraps of the ill-gotten loot. However, Ullis believes that their investigation into the location may have been too narrowly focused on the spot where the money was discovered, causing them to miss other nearby areas of interest. To that end, the crime historian suspects that Cooper not only buried some of the money at the Tena Bar, but also stashed his parachutes and the attache case that he carried aboard the plane that fateful day.

Keep reading

6 strange military disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle

The “Bermuda Triangle” is a geographical area between Miami, Florida, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the tiny island nation of Bermuda. Nearly everyone who goes to the Bahamas can tell you that it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll die a horrible death.

Natural explanations usually range from compass problems, to changes in the Gulf Stream, or violent weather, the presence of methane hydrates, and to a large coincidence of human error. That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a strange amount of disappearances that let the conspiracy theories gain some traction.

From 1946 to 1991, there have been over 100 disappearances. These are some of the military disappearances that have been lost in the Bermuda Triangle.

Keep reading

75 years later, Navy “Flight 19” remains a mystery

It’s an enduring mystery in U.S. military lore and now, seven and half decades old and no closer to being solved.

It was December 5, 1945, less than four months after VJ Day marked the formal end of World War II. Five Navy Avenger torpedo bombers took off from the Naval Air Station in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

The planes — collectively known as “Flight 19” — were scheduled to fly a three-hour exercise between Florida, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, and back in an area that’s come to be known as the Bermuda Triangle.

As the weather deteriorated, radio contact became intermittent, and the planes just disappeared.

All 14 airmen on the flight were lost, as were all 13 crew members sent out to look for them in a search plane.

Twenty-seven souls in all just vanished without a trace.

Keep reading

How 1,600 People Went Missing from Our Public Lands Without a Trace

I first stepped through the missing-­persons portal back in 1997, when researching updates on Amy Wroe Bechtel, a runner who’d vanished in the Wind River Range of Wyoming, where I lived.

My intrigue only grew. I tend toward insomnia and the analog, and each night in bed I listen with earbuds to Coast to Coast AM on a tiny radio. The program, which explores all sorts of mysteries of the paranormal, airs from 1 to 5 a.m. in my time zone. It’s syndicated on over 600 stations and boasts ­nearly three million listeners each week. Most of the time, the talk of space aliens and ghosts lulls me to sleep, but not when my favorite guest, David Paulides, is at the mic. 

Paulides, an ex-cop from San Jose, California, is the founder of the North America Bigfoot Search. His obsession shifted from Sasquatch to missing persons when, he says, he was visited at his motel near an unnamed national park by two out-of-­uniform rangers who claimed that something strange was going on with the number of people missing in America’s national parks. (He wouldn’t tell me the place or even the year, “for fear the Park Service will try to put the pieces together and ID them.”) So in 2011, Paulides launched the CanAm Missing Project, which catalogs cases of people who disappear—or are found—on wildlands across North America under what he calls mysterious circumstances. He has self-published six volumes in his popular Missing 411 series, most recently Missing 411 Hunters: Unexplained Disappearances. Paulides expects Missing 411: The Movie, a ­documentary codirected by his son, Ben, and featuring Survivorman Les Stroud, to be released this year.

Last May, I met him at a pizza joint in downtown ­Golden. The gym-fit Paulides, who moved from California to Colorado in part for the skiing, is right out of central casting for a detective film. 

“I don’t put any theories in the books—I just connect facts,” he told me. Under “unique factors of disappearances,” he lists such ­recurring characteristics as dogs unable to track scents, the time (late afternoon is a popular window to vanish), and that many victims are found with clothing and footwear removed. Bodies are also discovered in previously searched areas with odd fre­quency, ­sometimes right along the trail. Children—and remains—are occasionally found improbable ­distances from the point last seen, in improbable ­terrain. 

It’s tempting to dismiss Paulides as a crypto-kook—and some search and rescue professionals do—but his books are extensively researched. On a large map of North America on his office wall,

Paulides has identified 59 clusters of people missing on federal wildlands in the U.S. and southern Canada. To qualify as a cluster, there must be at least four cases; according to his pins, you want to watch your step in Yosemite, Crater Lake, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, and Rocky Mountain National Parks. But then, it would seem you want to watch your step everywhere in the wild. The map resembles a game of pin the tail on the donkey at an amphetamine-fueled birthday party. 

Paulides has spent hundreds of hours writing letters and Freedom of Information Act requests in an attempt to break through National Park Service red tape. He believes the Park Service in particular knows exactly how many people are missing but won’t release the information for fear that the sheer numbers—and the ways in which people went missing—would shock the public so badly that visitor numbers would go down. 

Keep reading

The Missing 411: Some Strange Cases of People Spontaneously Vanishing in the Woods

In the world of mysterious vanishings of people who have disappeared without a trace there is perhaps no more widely known set of tomes than The Missing 411 series of books, by retired law enforcement officer and dogged researcher of missing persons David Paulides. I have extensively covered such cases on many occasions here before, but there are so many it sometimes seems never-ending. Many of these odd vanishing have happened in wilderness areas or National Parks, and a common theme amongst them is the fact that many of these victims go missing within minutes, often right under the noses of those they are with, as if thy have just been erased from existence. Here we will look at such cases, of people who were simply there one minute and gone the next, going off into who knows where and into the realm of truly great mysteries.

Keep reading

The Mysterious Death of Iron Butterfly Bassist Philip Taylor Kramer

Kramer was due to pick up associate Greg Martini and Martini’s wife from the airport on Feb. 12, 1995 in L.A., and take them back to his home for a relaxing evening. But according to the Los Angeles Times, Kramer called home to make his wife aware that plans had changed, but that he would be there with a big surprise for her. He then called his old friend and band mate, Iron Butterfly drummer Ron Bushy. “He said, ‘Bush, it’s Taylor, I love you more than life itself,'” Bushy recalled in a news report, “Then he hung up.”

After that, another call was made to his wife telling her: “Whatever happens, I’ll always be with you.” Reports from his family say that Kramer had been working around the clock, and hadn’t slept for close to two weeks leading up to his disappearance. At 11:59AM, Kramer made a 911 call. “This is Philip Taylor Kramer. I am going to kill myself,” he reportedly told the operator, which was the last anybody had ever heard from him.

Police searches yielded nothing. For more thsn four years, it was as if Philip Taylor Kramer had simply vanished into thin air. “Something happened during that time – either in his head or at the terminal – that made him turn away,” said former L.A. police officer Chuck Carter, who worked on the case. “And I’ll tell you, I haven’t a clue. The guy didn’t have an enemy. The guy was a dedicated family man – I checked him out. Whatever happened in his head while at the airport, or whatever happened right in the airport, I’ve got a feeling we’ll learn from Kramer himself.”

Four years later, on May 29, 1999, Kramer’s 1993 Ford Aerostar van was spotted at the bottom of a Malibu ravine by hikers in a canyon about 1.5 miles east of the Pacific Coast Highway. His remains were found inside the vehicle, and later identified through dental records. Though his death was ultimately ruled a “probable suicide” by authorities, his family’s doubts as to the actual events have remained. “My brother would not have left his family,” Kramer’s sister said in an interview with VH-1. His widow told the L.A. Times that Kramer “would never, for any reason or under any circumstances, allow himself to completely abandon the family he loves more than life itself.”

Kramer had reportedly been working on a revolutionary method of transporting information and matter through space, and his father remained unconvinced his death was a suicide. “Taylor had told me a long time before, there was people giving him problems,” he said. “They wanted what he was doing, and several of them had threatened him. He told me ‘If I ever say I’m gonna kill myself, don’t you believe it. I’m gonna be needing help.'”

Keep reading

Body of KPMG executive, 55, is found in wooded area seven months after he mysteriously vanished following a workout at LA Fitness in Dallas and a stop to gas up his Porsche

The body of a 55-year-old KPMG executive has been found in woods in Texas, seven months after his disappearance. 

Alan White vanished on October 22 when he went to work out at LA Fitness in north Dallas. 

He was later seen on surveillance footage filling his Porsche Macan SUV with gas.   

Dallas Police found his car a week later but there was no sign of White. 

His body was found on Thursday less than a mile from where his car had been located in late October. 

Dallas police said that a survey crew working for Paul Quinn College found human remains in a wooded area to the northwest of the southeast Oak Cliff campus about 12:30pm on Thursday.   

The Dallas County Medical Examiner confirmed the identity on Friday. The cause of death is still undetermined, and it is unclear how long White’s remains had been there. 

Keep reading

Leaked Texts From Israeli Consulate Employee Show More Details In Gaetz-Levinson Funding Scheme

Three screenshots of texts between Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, and Jake Novak, media director of the Israeli consulate in New York City were shared with TAC. The messages were authenticated by one of the parties to them.

In the first screenshot, Novak messaged Adams last Saturday to tell him about the investigation into Gaetz. The New York Times story on the Gaetz investigation was not published until Tuesday.

In the second, Novak appears to represent himself as deeply involved in the efforts to free Bob Levinson from Iran, telling Adams “this is screwing up my efforts to free Bob Levinson.”

“Gaetz’s dad was secretly finding [sic] us,” he continues. “So I’m very much wanting this to be untrue. I’ve got a commando team leader friend of mine nervously waiting for the wire transfers to clear.”

In the third screenshot, Novak casts doubt on Gaetz’s claims that he is being extorted. “The real documents do not extort,” he writes, “And we only asked for $25 million as an estimate at first. We came way down.”

Keep reading

Matt Gaetz case gets more bizarre as extortion claim involves search for missing ex-FBI agent Robert Levinson

Details surrounding the claim by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., that he is the victim of an extortion plot involving allegations of a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old now portend to connect it to a search for an FBI agent who went missing in Iran 14 years ago.

According to documents obtained and reported by the Washington Examiner, Gaetz’s family was approached by former Air Force intelligence officer Bob Kent, who claimed that he had located former agent Robert Levinson, whose family presumed him to be dead. Kent reportedly sought a $25 million loan to fund an operation to rescue Levinson, and promised to help the congressman with legal woes in return.

“In exchange for the funds being arranged, and upon the release of Mr. Levinson, the team that delivers Mr. Levinson to the President of The United States shall strongly advocate that President Biden issue a Presidential Pardon, or instruct the Department of Justice to terminate any and all investigations involving Congressman Gaetz,” said the document Kent reportedly gave Gaetz’s father, which bore the heading “Project Homecoming.”

The document stated that Rep. Gaetz was “currently under investigation by the FBI for various public corruption and public integrity issues.” It goes on to allege that the FBI has learned of images of Gaetz in a “sexual orgy with underage prostitutes.”

The document reportedly calls for Gaetz’s father to place $25 million in a trust account of law firm Beggs & Land, bearing the name of Levinson family attorney anf former federal prosecutor David McGee.

Gaetz has denied any allegations of wrongdoing and claimed that he was the target of an extortion attempt folllowing a Tuesday New York Times report that said Gaetz is currently the subject of a federal sex trafficking investigation involving a then-17-year-old girl.

Keep reading