According to statistics, about two million people disappear on Earth every year. The overwhelming majority of these disappearances are due to completely natural reasons: murders, accidents, natural disasters. Sometimes people are "lost" of their own accord. However, some of the disappearances do not fit into the natural framework, and such situations, according to the same statistics, are increasing every year
People dissolve into thin air …
On July 30, 1889, the English newspaper Daily Cronicle reported the supernatural disappearance of 48-year-old Robert MacMillan, one of the owners of the famous Macmillan publishing house. On July 13, he climbed to the summit of Mount Olympus in Greece. Dozens of eyewitnesses confirm that he was standing on the top, waving his hand, and suddenly disappeared. Despite a thorough search, neither Robert himself nor his body was found.
German researcher Sabine Baring-Gould writes in her book Historical Oddities, how in 1899 a certain Mr. Bathhurst, leaving a beer cellar, went to the stagecoach. “He was passing the horses when he suddenly disappeared into thin air, as witnessed by his two friends, who came out with him from the cellar, the coachman and the passengers of the stagecoach. Nobody ever saw him again."
In 1867, a similar thing happened in France. A certain Lucien Busier came to the doctor, undressed and lay down on the couch. The doctor turned away for a moment for the instrument, and when he looked at the patient again, he was not on the couch. Things were left in place.
A real epidemic of sudden disappearances broke out in the late 1940s in the northeastern United States. In the newspapers of the state of Vermont every now and then there were articles about the mysterious disappearances in homes and on the streets, and often - in front of eyewitnesses. Several dozen people were missing. So, in the cabin of a passenger bus in the presence of 14 witnesses, a soldier who was dozing in his seat by the window fell through the ground.
Extinguished lighthouse
The sudden disappearances seem to include the mysterious disappearance of three lighthouse keepers on Flannan Isle. On December 15, 1900, the captains of ships sailing the waters of the North Sea began to report to the coastal authorities that the lighthouse on Flannan was not working. The ship "Hesperus" was sent to the island, on which was Joseph Moore - the chief keeper of lighthouses in the area. Moore knew all of the lighthouse attendants well - Thomas Marshall, Donald Macartur and James Ducat. They were experienced caretakers, carried out their duties conscientiously and did not panic in critical situations. Plus, Moore had seen them three months ago, and all three were in perfect health.
When the Hesperus approached the island where only these three people lived, the team found that no one was in a hurry to meet them. Signal lights
did not burn. Moore, suspecting something was wrong, went ashore first and walked to the white-painted caretaker's house. There was no one there. Moreover, all things were in their places, even the wicks of the lamps were cleaned and cut; there was oil in the cups - at sunset they were going to fill the lamps …
Storm that was not
Moore found the logbook and was surprised to read the last entry made on December 15th. The caretaker described a stormy storm at sea. It looked incredible, because that night the weather around the island was wonderful, the sea was calm. But it was then that the first signal came in that the lighthouse lights were off!
Searches were immediately organized throughout the island, but the caretakers were not found. Could not find a reasonable explanation for their disappearance.
The next day, the Hesperus set off on the return journey, while Moore remained on the island as a temporary lighthouse keeper. He never stopped pondering over the mysterious story. Maybe during the storm, which was written in the logbook, Marshal, MacArthur and Dukat came close to the sea and were washed away? It doesn't look like it, because the caretakers were well aware of the danger associated with the raging elements. Then perhaps one of them went mad, killed the other two and threw their bodies off the cliff before throwing himself into the depths of the sea? It is also incredible: all three were reliable, healthy people … And what is this strange storm described on the night of December 15?
In January 1901, Moore's voluntary imprisonment on the island came to an end, and his. were replaced by new caretakers sent there. After returning to England, Moore told his friends that there was a depressing atmosphere on the island, and that something was constantly pressing on him. Sometimes it seemed to Moore that, trying to find the missing comrades or discover the secret of their disappearance, he heard the wind carrying the voices of Marshal, MacArthur and Dukat, crying for help.
House of Ghosts
The following mysterious story, although it does little to explain the phenomenon of sudden disappearances, is able to provide some food for thought.
In the middle of the 19th century, on an uncrowded road in the vicinity of the town of Bune Villa (Connecticut, USA) there was an empty house, which was notorious among local residents. They called it "the house of ghosts" and tried not to approach it. The fact is that the owner of the house with his whole family disappeared one night without a trace, leaving all household utensils, clothes, provisions, horses in the stable, cows in the field. Everything remained, except for the inhabitants of the house: a man, a woman, three girls, a boy and a baby.
It happened one day that National Guard Colonel Jack McCardle and Judge Myron Way had to travel from Buneville to Manchester. A thunderstorm struck them just when they were at the "house of ghosts." The travelers went inside and immediately found themselves in absolute darkness and silence. Through the windows and cracks, neither the glint of lightning nor the terrible thunder of a thunderstorm penetrated.
“When I had recovered a little from the startling effect of going from rumbling to silence,” McArdle wrote in his article in The Advocate on August 6, 1876, “my first impulse was to reopen the door, which I was still unconsciously holding on to. I pushed the door, and then, to my amazement, it turned out that it did not lead to the porch, but to some room!.."
The door to another dimension
“The room was filled with a faint greenish light,” the colonel continues, “the source of which I could not identify. There were eight or ten bodies inside the blank stone sack. They were all spread out on the floor, except for one belonging to a young woman. She was sitting with her back against the wall. Another older woman was hugging a baby. A teenage boy lay face down at the feet of a bearded man. The bodies were in various stages of decomposition.
As I stood stunned by this sight, Judge Wei, pushing me aside, resolutely walked into the room. “For God's sake,” I shouted, “don't go there! Let's get out of this awful place as soon as possible!"
But Wei ignored my request. He sat down next to one of the corpses and, to get a better look, lifted its blackened head. At that moment, my breath caught. Feeling that I was falling, I grabbed the doorknob and, falling back, involuntarily slammed the door.
I don't remember anything else. Six weeks later, I woke up at a hotel in Manchester. It turned out that the judge and I went to look for, but they found only me in an abandoned house. The judge has not been seen since that night."
It is difficult to imagine a more mysterious story … Here, perhaps, only one assumption suggests itself: the room into which McArdle and Wei fell was in another dimension. When the night travelers entered the house, an unusual darkness and silence surrounded them. Those who have traveled to other dimensions often describe these places in a similar way, namely, as strangely quiet, lifeless. So it is possible that Judge Wei was the victim of a time-space trap, which had already taken several people by that time.
Igor V0L03NEV
Secrets of the twentieth century