Any crime leaves traces - this truth has often come to the aid of investigators and criminologists. A person cannot just take and dissolve into thin air, and certainly this cannot happen to several people or even entire villages. Or maybe?.. Look for the strangest cases of mass disappearances of people in our material.
Eskimo village on Lake Angikuni
More than 80 years have passed, and scientists have not found an explanation for the mysterious disappearance of people in 1930 in Canada. Angikuni - not only the lake had such a name, but also the local fishing village located nearby. About 2000 Inuit lived in it, always gladly welcoming travelers.
This area was a tasty morsel for hunters and fishermen - fur animals were beaten in the vicinity, and hunters rarely left empty-handed. Although it was not easy to reach Angikuni, there were brave seekers, among whom was a Canadian hunter named Joe Labelle. He often visited those parts, and after the hunt he liked to stop in an Inuit village to rest and gain strength.
But on November 12, 1930, he failed to warm up by the hot hearth. It was cold that day, so Labelle was terribly cold and he was counting the minutes to the village. The igloo finally showed up, but Joe noticed that the surroundings were somehow suspiciously deserted and quiet. He shouted out a greeting, but no one answered him. Joe skied to the first house and entered. There was no one inside, although the situation indicated that the residents had left the dwelling as if a few minutes ago: the soup was gurgling in the pot, all the things were in their places.
Walking around the village, Joe did not find a soul. Despite the fact that all the warm clothes and weapons, foodstuffs remained in the igloo, and around the village the snow did not retain a single human trace, despite the calm weather. Frightened, the hunter in a hurry went to the nearest telegraph and reported the terrible loss to the Canadian police.
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A detachment arrived a few hours later. Several other hunters who happened to be nearby said that at night they saw a strange luminous object in the sky, and this seemed to them somehow connected with the mysterious disappearance of people.
But creepy details awaited the police and hunters ahead. First, the local cemetery turned out to be completely ruined: the graves were dug, and the corpses disappeared. Secondly, dead dogs were found near the village. The Eskimos, who consider dogs to be their breadwinners and great value, would never kill an entire flock in their lives, and certainly would not touch their dead.
Where did the 2 thousand Eskimos go, why they threw all their belongings, did not take any food or clothes, and remained a mystery.
Hoer Verde village
The disappearance of 600 people from a Brazilian village in 1923 is more like a horror movie than a real story. We should start with the fact that little was known about Hoer Verde before its disappearance: what did the locals do, how they lived … But the village existed, and people lived there.
The soldiers of the national army arrived in the village, which greeted them with silence and emptiness. Somewhere the radio was working, there were remnants of food on the tables, in some places the fire had not yet gone out. The worst thing is that the soldiers found the inscription on the blackboard: "There is no salvation." A recently firing gun was found nearby.
In fairness, it should be noted that the only information about the village of Hoer on the Internet is the history of this disappearance, so today it is rather difficult to verify the authenticity of this story.
The Cyclops ship
The Cyclops, an American vessel named after the one-eyed character in Greek myth, was built for the US Navy a few years before World War I. According to the classical canons of mysterious disappearances, the ship disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle, and neither the remains of the bodies nor the ship itself were found. 306 people were missing, including both a crew member and passengers.
On February 16, 1918, the ship left the port of Rio de Janeiro and headed towards the North Atlantic states. In addition to people, the ship transported 10 thousand tons of manganese ore. The ship made an unscheduled stop in the Barbados area due to overload (the capacity of the Cyclops was only 8 thousand tons), but did not send any alarm signals.
The ship never arrived at the port of destination. Many theories have been put forward, but none of them is able to explain exactly how the ship disappeared. It is noteworthy that during World War II, two Cyclops brothers - the ships Proteus and Nereus - also disappeared, carrying heavy metal ore similar to the one transported by the Cyclops. They disappeared in the same region of the Bermuda Triangle.
Flannan Islands lighthouse
The Flannan Islands are a small archipelago near Scotland. Today the islands are uninhabited - since the lighthouse began to work automatically, the profession of lighthouse keepers is a thing of the past. A 23-meter lighthouse rises above the islands, helping ships find their way through the turbulent darkness of the sea.
In 1925, it became one of the first lighthouses in Scotland equipped with a telegraph, but a quarter of a century earlier … At the beginning of the century, the lighthouse had to be constantly on duty three caretakers, another was at the coastal station. On each voyage to the islands, he replaced one of the caretakers and took his place. When the mysterious disappearance happened, the lighthouse was: second assistant caretaker James Ducat (James Ducat), first assistant Thomas Marshall (Thomas Marshall) and assistant Donald "Occasional" MacArthur (Donald "Occasional" McArthur). Three weeks before the incident, the head caretaker Joseph Moore left the lighthouse. According to him, everything was just as usual.
But on December 15, 1900, from the steamer "Arktor", which was sailing from Philadelphia to Lit, an alarm signal was received: the crew of the steamer complained that there was no signal from the lighthouse. Unfortunately, the authorities did not attach much importance to this, and the flight to the lighthouse, which was supposed to take place on December 20, was canceled due to bad weather conditions.
Only on December 26 did Joseph Moore and the team manage to reach the lighthouse. But no one met them except a bare flagpole. The lighthouse gates and all the doors were locked, the caretakers' beds were not made, and the clock had stopped. Surprisingly, the lamps of the lighthouse were perfectly polished, they had enough fuel, and the watchmen's waterproof raincoats hung from their hooks. The only thing strange about the lighthouse setting was the overturned kitchen table.
Upon arrival at the base, the captain of the ship reported: “A mysterious incident took place on the Flannan Islands. Three caretakers James Dukat, Thomas Marshall and Donald "Accidental" MacArthur disappeared from the island without a trace. The stopped clock and other facts indicate that this happened about a week ago. Poor guys! They must have been blown off the cliff or drowned while trying to fix a hoist or something."
The last entry in the observation log was made at 9:00 on December 15, 1900, but before that, on the night of December 14, the rangers recorded a strong storm, although none of the coastal stations in that area and none of the ships passing by in those days until On December 16, no storm was recorded.
Versions of events vary from mystical (aliens) to crime-tragic (one of the caretakers killed two others), but there is no reliable information about what happened in the distant Scottish islands.