The soldiers walked barely audibly on the ground, holding the arquebus at the ready. The billowing smoke of the fire, seen an hour ago, became a signal - they are calling for help. By the time the detachment arrived, it was already dark. Water squelching underfoot echoed like thunder in deadly silence. Entering the unlocked houses, the military saw lighted candles and freshly cooked food - it was obvious that the residents of the Roanoke village were about to have dinner. But supper did not take place.
116 people - men, women and children - disappeared as if they had never existed. Pets also disappeared with them: the military did not find a single chicken or dog. In search of an explanation for such a strange disappearance of the inhabitants of the village, the commander of the detachment reached the end of the ominous village and gave the command to stop. Raising their heads, the soldiers saw on a tree near the priest's house, in the bright reflections of the torch's flame, words carved into the bark - incomprehensible and therefore even more terrible …
- Soon the commander of the English detachment informed Governor John White of the news of the disappearance of the village. But the government official refused to believe it and ordered additional searches. In 1590, four search expeditions arrived on the North American island of Roanoke,”said James Hart, vice president of the Missing Colony Society, in an interview with the AIF. - The latter was led by Walter Reilif, Queen Elizabeth I's commissioner.
But no traces of the mysteriously disappeared settlement were ever found - no blood, no hair, no scraps of clothing, nothing. Attempts to find fresh graves in neighboring forests were also unsuccessful. Corpses and graves were also not found. A tribe of local Croatone Indians, who were on friendly terms with the colonists, were also searched. To no avail.
The settlement seemed to vanish into thin air. White sent a dispatch to the queen, stating that, apparently, the settlers were taken by the devil. Later, Rayleaf was already looking for the villagers on his own, having dug up almost all the land in the vicinity, but after 14 years he was forced to abandon the search. The disappearance of all the Roanoke colonists without a trace has become one of the most mysterious pages in the history of mankind.
Where did the people go?
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Now Roanoke is a popular tourist destination in North Carolina (USA), and the legend about the disappeared village allows to attract tourists here from all over the world. The theater is playing Paul Green's play The Lost Colony (by the way, always sold out), kiosks sell colorful Roanoke booklets for $ 20, there are many stalls with baseball caps on the streets asking: "Where did the people go?" Visiting the small island museum, you can see a few items of the disappeared village, mainly household utensils.
Roanoke is reflected in Stephen King's novel "The Storm of the Century": according to the plot, the inhabitants of the village disappeared, refusing to voluntarily give one of their children to the devil. There are always crowds of tourists near the famous tree with a carved inscription. Although, according to historical information, the words have changed here three times already. Walter Rayleaf reported that there was an inscription on the tree: "It does not look like …".
And in 1670 the nun Emily Wayne testifies that the words “Evil is inevitable” were carved there, now there is just the inscription “Cro” on the tree … It is rumored that the real inscription was almost completely destroyed: the commander of the expedition, Reilif, decided that the message was encrypted “one of the names of Satan. " Some researchers believe that the inscription was originally "Cro" - apparently, the colonists wanted to show that the Indians-Croatons living nearby had a hand in their disappearance, but Walter Rayleaf confused everything out of fear.
According to the Canadian professor Pierre Morenier, who researched the customs of the North American Indians, the local aborigines had a cult of the god Croaton (in which the tribe of Indians of the island neighboring Roanoke is named). The Indians believed that Croaton lived among them, although he was invisible and could inhabit any body. The natives brought food to God, laid it on the sacrificial altar and watched it slowly disappear into thin air.
This is probably a mass hallucination, although the beliefs of croatons are distinguished by many mystical phenomena. The name of the god Croaton is translated as "Reaper of Souls". They say that once a year a "helper" was sent to him, placed in a locked hut with an altar, and in the morning he was gone.
Colonists hypnotized by an Indian shaman?
There are many versions of the reasons for the disappearance of Roanoke. It is believed that the inhabitants fled, fleeing from an unknown disease, became victims of pirates who captured them, sailed to England on a schooner, but died during a storm, fell into "black holes". The most recent one says that an Indian shaman hypnotized the colonists, and under the influence of hypnosis they went to sea, where they drowned. It is not clear only why the Indians needed it?
Excavations are periodically conducted on the territory of the disappeared colony. But even National Geographic could not find any items that shed light on the mysterious event.
National Geographic press assistant Sarah Alison-Last, however, believes that evidence of the material culture and events of that time of the village should be preserved, and the existing versions are still easy to refute: pirates never sailed to this area, the colonists did not have flimsy schooners (in 1587 year they arrived on the island on three ships, which were in the port on the day of their disappearance). The Indians, too, could not take them by surprise: the settlers were well armed, so the sudden disappearance of the village continues to remain a mystery and haunt the minds of scientists and tourists.