There are a lot of stories about how people suddenly disappear. Some of them have an obvious criminal connotation, while others force us to think about the fact that sometimes the disappearance of people can occur at the will of something incomprehensible and indefinable. Such is the case of the disappearance of a man named James Edward Tadford.
He was born in 1884 in Fletcher, Vermont. In this city he lived all his life.
By the time the United States entered World War II, James had a wife, Pearl, half his age. James was 56 years old, but he still went to military service, and when he returned, he did not find his wife.
The house they had rented before the war was abandoned, and no one in the neighborhood could tell where Pearl had gone.
The case of her loss might seem like one of many common in those days. Many women did not wait for their husbands. Pearl, who was significantly younger than her husband, had many reasons why she could go to another. After questioning people, Tadford learned that his wife was last seen on her way to a local store, intending to buy groceries.
After spending some time searching and achieving nothing, Tadford in 1947 decided to move to a veterans' shelter in Bennington. Two years later, in November 1949, he visited relatives and returned by bus.
After a few days, the relatives called the shelter, where they were told that James had not reached him. They began to find out what had happened. They managed to find out that he actually got on the bus. The weather was bad, it was snowing heavily and the bus moved slowly. The road passed near the Green Mountain National Forest, known for the fact that people disappeared in it. In addition to James, there were 14 more passengers in the cabin. They were all able to remember him as he had a distinctive beard and mustache.
Witnesses said that Tadford slept all the way and did not get off the bus. Those exiting at the penultimate stop saw James asleep. But when the bus reached the Bennington station, the old man was not in it. The bus did not make any additional stops. Tadford's luggage remained in the cabin.
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No one saw James again, and no body was found. In the forest the bus passed by, there is a mysterious place where more than forty people disappeared from 1920 to 1950. Most of them were women, their bodies were never found, so it was believed that there was a sexual crime at the hands of a serial killer. The disappearance of James Tadford remained unsolved.
GUSAKOVA IRINA YURIEVNA