Tag: mysterious disappearances

Romania’s Bermuda Triangle: The Creepy Hoia Forest

Outside of Romania, especially in the English-speaking world, Transylvania is a land associated with vampires, specifically Dracula. Inside Romania, where Vlad the Impaler is a national hero, his associations with the famed vampire are not as popular, though Transylvania is arguably still known for being home to one of the creepiest sites in the world. The Hoia Baciu forest, whether it is deserved or not, has earned the reputation of being the Bermuda Triangle of Romania.

Over time, the forest has gained a reputation for being haunted by unfriendly spirits, a site of UFO activity, and a place where cultists open portals to other dimensions.

The forest is said to have been named Hoia Baciu after a shepherd by the same name went missing there with 200 of his sheep. In the late 1960s, a biologist by the name of Alexandru Sift is said to have taken pictures of a disc or flying saucer hovering over the forest. In 1968, a military technician by the name of Emil Barnea is said to have taken a picture of a UFO. It is claimed that he had no reason to make the story up since he had nothing to gain because the communist government at the time considered belief in the paranormal to be a sign of insanity and a threat to the state.

Other strange stories have also been told about the forest. In one, a young girl disappeared for five years, only to re-appear again with no memory of where she had been. In another tale, over 60 visitors were seen trying to open a portal to another dimension. People also report seeing strange lights in the forest, hearing footsteps from unseen figures, capturing otherwise non-existent faces in photographs, and hearing unexplained laughter or female voices.

It is stories like these which have given it the distinction of being the “creepiest forest in the world.” Furthermore, people who have gone into the forest report being overcome by nausea, strange rashes, unexplained fatigue, and the feeling that they are being watched. Some people have also reported experiencing time lapses, with no recollection of what they did during the missing time.

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Incredible new theory on what happened to three men who escaped from Alcatraz in 1962 – as respected author reveals exactly what he thinks happened to them

An incredible new theory on what happened to the three men who managed to escape from Alcatraz in the 1960s has emerged. 

Brothers John and Clarence Anglin, alongside friend Frank Morris, tunneled out of their cell of the maximum security prison in June 1962 before disappearing into the waters of the San Francisco Bay and have never been found. 

And now writers Ken Widner and Mike Lynch share their fascinating theory. Their book, Alcatraz: The Last Escape, alleges the trio escaped the jail in a makeshift raft and used wires to hitch themselves to a passing boat.

From there, the fugitives met a second boat in the San Francisco Bay area, which took them to dry land. A private plane chartered from a small airport at neighboring Marin County flew the trio to Mexico to begin a new life, it is claimed. 

They later moved to Brazil, where at least two of the men are said to have survived until the 1990s.  

Federal investigations into the escape – which was immortalized in the 1979 film Escape From Alcatraz – concluded that the Anglin brothers and Morris must have drowned in the freezing, shark-infested bay. 

Widner Lynch, who have used family interviews, historical documents and photo evidence to approach their theory.

Widner, who also happens to be the nephew of the Anglin brothers, claims the trio made their way south and married locals, raising children of their own and tended to farms in the mountains of Brazil until at least the 1990s.

Hoping to correct the record about his uncles, Widner deep dived into their upbringing which stretched back to their formative years in Ruskin, Florida, with their parents who were seasonal farmworkers. 

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Mystery as male and female firefighter ex-high school sweethearts are found dead in car a week after vanishing

Two Georgia firefighters who were once high school sweethearts were mysteriously found dead in a car in Tennessee following a week-long search for the pair. 

Reagan Anderson and Chandler Kuhbander, both 24, vanished on June 24 from a Crunch gym parking lot, with authorities launching a multi-state search after the pair were believed to have left in Anderson’s car. 

On Sunday, their bodies were found over 450 miles away inside the vehicle, however law enforcement has not offered any details over their cause of death or the manner in which they were found. 

Kuhbander’s mother said they had dated for seven years in a ‘toxic’ relationship, and claimed that Anderson took their recent breakup badly and threatened to kill herself and was harassing her son. 

Kuhbander was last seen leaving a Crunch fitness in Savannah, Georgia, where his mother Jane said he was seen walking ‘out of the building, and he looks very comfortable, like he just had his workout.’ 

‘He doesn’t look rushed as he walks through the parking lot,’ she told WJCL. ‘After that, we don’t see him again.’ 

Kuhbander’s mother said she saw surveillance footage showing Anderson circling the gym’s parking lot several times while he was inside. 

Security footage showed him head towards his car, however Kuhbander’s mother said she believes he got into her Ford Focus ‘under duress.’ They claimed his car never left the parking garage and his family later went to retrieve it.  

It appears the couple began driving together, with Anderson last seen in surveillance footage at a gas station in South Carolina that day, at the same spot where Kuhbander’s phone last pinged off a cell tower. 

Officials have not said why the former couple were driving together or what their intended destination was. 

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British Couple Killed To Make Witchcraft Potions in South Africa

A suspect who confessed to the killing of a British couple and to selling their body parts for use in witchraft (muti) has been released by South African authorities.

Anthony and Gillian Dinnis, both in their 70s and originally from Kent, England, disappeared without a trace from their farm in KwaZulu-Natal’s Mooi River area on 30 August last year.

After their disappearance, their children began receiving strange text messages demanding money for their release.

The couple’s gardener soon became a suspect. He later admitted to being one of three men who kidnapped the couple, before killing and dismembering them. Their body parts were then sold, or planned to be sold, by the suspects.

Despite the confession, and being refused bail, the suspect was released on 13 June this year. The National Prosecuting Authority has said there is “insufficient evidence” to proceed with the prosecution.

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The girl who never came back: New York socialite who vanished in 1910 is America’s oldest missing persons case – here are the top theories about her disappearance

Dorothy Arnold was 25 when she disappeared from her Upper East Side mansion with today’s equivalent of $1,000 on an icy Monday morning in December 1910. 

The eldest daughter of perfume importer Francis R Arnold left her jewelry and passport at home and strolled towards Central Park, never to be seen again, according to The Charley Project which tracks missing persons cases. 

Her disappearance has stumped detectives for more than 100 years, making her case the oldest recorded missing persons case in American history and what the Times has called ‘one of New York’s greatest mysteries’. 

‘A hundred years later, I don’t expect any kind of resolution,’ Jane Vollmer, Dorothy’s great-niece told the National Geographic last month. 

Full name Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold, the socialite’s last words to her mother were ‘I’ll telephone you’ as she stepped out of their Manhattan mansion on East 79th Street. 

Arnold gave different accounts of her plans for the day to different people – telling one friend she was shopping with her mother, and her mother that she wanted to go by herself. 

She set off toward Fifth Avenue and stopped at the Park and Tilford’s candy store where she paid for some chocolates using her father’s credit card at 1.45pm. The clerk told investigators at the time that she had appeared to be in high spirits. 

Arnold went on to purchase a book at Brentano’s on 27th and Fifth, before bumping into a friend who she chatted with for a few minutes, telling them she was headed for Central Park. 

Her mother waited to meet her for lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel that day, but she never turned up. 

When she didn’t return home that night, the family grew concerned. Fearing bad publicity from contacting the police, they hired a private investigator.   

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German police discover Christian Brueckner emails linking him to Madeleine McCann – the first ever time investigators have found evidence connecting him to her case

German police have discovered an email account linking Christian Brueckner to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, investigators have claimed.

Titus Stampa, a senior detective, told a court in Germany that investigators had found emails on a Hotmail account used by Brueckner that linked him directly to the case.

The bombshell revelation is the first time an investigating official has alluded to evidence directly connecting Brueckner to the three-year-old’s disappearance from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal in 2007.

But Stampa said he was unable to share details of the evidence as it was ‘related to the killing’ of young Madeleine.

Brueckner, the prime suspect, is currently on trial in Germany for unrelated sex crimes. He denies involvement in Madeleine’s 2007 disappearance.

Speaking at the Braunschweig regional court in Germany, Stampa referred to the ‘murder’ email account allegedly possessed by Brueckner.

‘An external hard drive is also belonging to the killing case – and I am not allowed to talk about it.’ 

He declined to say whether emails recovered included photos or videos implicating the suspect, as reported by The Mirror.

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The mysterious disappearance of a Mexican ‘supermodel’ Gabriela Rico Jiménez who emerged screaming from glitzy hotel claiming the elite were ‘eating humans’ … and then vanished

The strange case of Gabriela Rico Jiménez, a Mexican woman who unleashed wild accusations about a host of powerful people before suddenly disappearing, is one mired in mystery.

The then-21-year-old vanished in 2009, after a video of her emotional outburst and subsequent arrest went viral. In the aftermath it was widely reported that she was a supermodel, but no evidence of this exists.

Her case has now resurfaced in a recent podcast by Mexico Unexplained, available now on Apple Podcasts, as speculation over her fate remains. 

The incident occurred outside a luxury hotel in the Mexican city of Monterrey Nuevo Leon, where people were said to be partying. From there, she emerged in a frantic state, wearing a ripped shirt bearing the words ‘yum yum.’ 

She quickly began hurling accusations at the royal family, Disney, and one of the richest and most powerful men in Mexico, almost immediately drawing a crowd. The woman accused them of living in a subterranean base and stealing children and eating human flesh. 

She was swiftly cuffed by cops, never to be seen by members of the public again. 

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It’s one of Australia’s most baffling cases – a mother, her daughter and friend who disappeared while under the spell of a cult leader. Now, a retired cop has lifted the lid on what he thinks REALLY happened

A retired policeman is on a mission to solve one of Australia’s most baffling missing persons cases, which began 17 years ago with the disappearance of an entire household who were members of a doomsday cult. 

Barry McIntosh, whose interest in the case is personal, served 35 years with Victoria Police and hopes to search a remote patch of Western Australian bushland with cadaver dogs.

Mr McIntosh is the uncle of Chantelle McDougall, who was last seen alive in July 2007 with her British-born partner Gary Felton, their six-year-old daughter Leela and friend Tony Popic.   

Ms McDougall, 27, had fallen under the spell of 45-year-old Felton, a self-styled spiritualist who had assumed the identity of an English workmate called Simon Kadwell.

At the time of their disappearance, Ms McDougall and Leela had been living with Felton in a rundown farmhouse at Nannup, about 280km south of Perth, with 42-year-old Mr Popic.

Mr McIntosh is convinced Felton was involved in the deaths of his niece, her daughter and Mr Popic and is determined to find their bodies.

‘[Felton] spoke of providing Chantelle and Leela with a drug that would provide a peaceful death and that Tony would bury them all,’ he says.

‘Tony would then walk into the bush to take his own life.’ 

The charismatic Felton – ‘Si’ to his acolytes – was the founder of Truth Fellowship and had 40 online followers of what has been described as an international doomsday cult.

Felton called his followers The Forecourt and spoke to them through a chatroom known as The Gateway where they would discuss teachings from his book, Servers of the Divine Plan.

That book warned about Earth’s pending doom but promised a new world of higher consciousness once a 75,000-year ‘cycle’ had run its course.

Neighbours at Nannup said ‘off the planet’ Felton was obsessed with electromagnetic fields and deeply paranoid.

Felton, who did not work and relied on the subservient Ms McDougall and Mr Popic for financial support, slept during the day and stayed up all night on his computer.  

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ARCHAEOLOGISTS UNEARTH NEW CLUES THAT COULD HELP SOLVE CENTURIES-OLD “LOST COLONY” MYSTERY

In 1587, John White and a group of approximately 115 English settlers landed on Roanoke Island off the coast of present-day North Carolina. The colony they sought to establish marked the second attempt to create a long-term presence in the New World under the direction of Sir Walter Raleigh, who instructed them to establish a city bearing his name in the vicinity of the Chesapeake Bay. However, much like the earlier failed effort under Governor Ralph Lane in 1585, White and his fellow colonists soon began to face challenges that included strained relations with the region’s Indigenous inhabitants.

With hopes of garnering additional support for the colony, White sailed back to England, leaving his daughter Eleanor Dare, her husband Ananias Dare, and their infant daughter Virginia—the first English child born in America—behind on Roanoke Island. By the time he returned in 1590, following delays imposed by the Anglo-Spanish War, White found the settlement had been deserted. The only potential clues regarding the whereabouts of the colonists had been an inscription of the word “CROATOAN” carved into a palisade, along with the letters “CRO” found carved into a nearby tree, seemingly in reference to a nearby island located 50 miles to the south.

For centuries, historians have attempted to resolve the mystery of Roanoke’s famous “Lost Colony.” Theories about the fate of the colonists range from their assimilation with local Indigenous tribes to their possible death resulting from attacks by them. Others have proposed that the colonists may have died in a failed attempt to return to England or even that their fate may have been linked to the arrival of the Spanish prior to White’s return in 1590.

For White, the inscriptions left at the deserted colony were clear evidence of the colonists’ relocation to Croatoan Island. An agreement had been made that in the event of their departure, they would leave behind a “secret token” indicating their whereabouts, or if they were imperiled, they would instead leave a cross pattée indicating such circumstances.

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Grieving daughters claim psychic medium led them to their missing mom’s body after police bungled the search… as eerie ‘paranormal’ details are revealed

Two grieving Louisiana sisters claim a psychic medium in Wisconsin revealed the location of their mother’s body after she vanished over a year ago. 

Ashley Deese, the daughter of Theresa Jones, 56, said police had been stumped over her mother’s disappearance, and criticized their investigation that was seemingly solved once medium Carolyn Clapper stepped in. 

Theresa went missing on February 2, 2023, and Ashley told KNOE that she spent hours searching for her mother alongside the Union Parish Sheriff’s Office’s K9 unit. 

Days later, Ashley and her sister Brittany reached out to Clapper in Wisconsin, who is well known among the psychic community over her claims of finding missing people. 

Ashley claimed she was able to provide eerily accurate details leading to the body, but remains unsatisfied as cops never spoke to the medium and ruled the death as an accidental drowning caused by methamphetamines. 

‘It’s been a year now since this has happened, and she has so much information pertaining to this case,’ she said. 

After contacting Clapper, Ashley said Clapper returned the request with a midnight phone call, and offered to offer her help pro-bono. 

Over a 45-minute conversation, Ashley claimed that the psychic gave her precise step-by-step instructions as to how to locate her mother’s body, which lay in a creek close to her home. 

It is unexplained how the police’s K9 unit and extensive searches did not find the body, which appeared to be only a short distance behind Theresa’s property around 200 yards into a wooded area. 

Describing what her ‘psychic visions’ apparently told her, Clapper said: ‘There would be a log, she kept showing me this pronounced log, a very big log in the woods.’

‘It wasn’t just little twigs and sticks, it was a log, a huge one,’ she continued.

‘You know you hit this log is basically what she said, you get to this log and my body will be there. There’s water, I saw a creek.’ 

Following the phone call, Ashley said she went out looking for her mother, and claimed the medium’s eerie accuracy even detailed the position of her mother’s body and its deteriorating condition. 

‘I immediately got ill, shaky, and sick, and started vomiting,’ Ashley added. 

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