There are many mysterious disappearances of people around the world, ranging from the simply incomprehensible to the truly bizarre. One of such cases came from the American state of Ohio, where a man entered a bar and … did not leave, disappearing irrevocably, as if disappearing into thin air. This mystery still remains unanswered.
It happened in 2006 with 27-year-old Brian Schaffer. He was a very pleasant young man, intelligent, handsome, and promising. He was in his 2nd year at Ohio State Medical University and in addition to his academic success, he had excellent relationships with other students. He was considered to be funny and very popular.
On a personal level, he had the sadness of his mother's sudden death from a rare type of bone cancer. However, according to his entourage, he bravely endured her loss and this did not prevent him from making plans for the future. In March, he planned to take a spring break and also travel to Miami with his girlfriend Alexis Wagoner. There were no dark clouds on the horizon.
During Spring Break Friday, March 31, 2006, Brian had a great time with his dad by having lunch with him, and in the evening he and his friend William Florence took a stroll to a student bar called Ugly Tuna Saloona, located on the University's South Campus.
Already at the bar, Brian called his friend Alexis, who was at that time in Toledo visiting relatives and chatted with her a little. Then he briefly left the bar in the neighboring Arena District, but returned after midnight. By that time, another friend of his, Meredith, had come to the bar.
Brian was having fun with friends at the bar, but at some point he was separated from them and they remembered about him only when everyone began to disperse. William Florence and Meredith began looking everywhere for Brian, but he was nowhere to be found. At two o'clock in the morning, the bar closed, visitors began to go outside and Brian's friends also went out and then waited for him at the entrance, thinking that if he was sitting somewhere in the corner, he would definitely come out now. But Brian didn't come out.
At that moment, their anxiety was not yet high enough. They decided that Brian had just gone home earlier on his own. However, Brian never came home that night, and when they started calling him on his mobile the next morning, no one answered and no mobile calls were heard either.
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However, even then, his friends were not alarmed. Only by Monday, when his friend Alexis arrived to go to Miami together, and Brian was never there, Alexis and his acquaintances realized that something had obviously happened to him and went to the police.
First, the police seized the CCTV footage of the Ugly Tuna Saloona bar and viewed it. And then the mystery of the guy's disappearance became even more frightening - at 1:55, that is, 5 minutes before the bar closed, Brian was not far from the entrance to the bar and was caught on camera, talking with two women.
A little later, at almost 2 o'clock, Brian staggered away towards the entrance to the bar and went inside, never to go outside again. Brian disappeared into thin air. He was not even on the camera at the emergency exit.
In the following days, the police identified all the people in the bar that night from the camera tapes and questioned them. They were all right, they did not disappear anywhere, only Brian disappeared.
All this was completely incomprehensible. The police calculated that even if he somehow escaped from the surveillance cameras and went out into the street, his friends, who were guarding him at the very entrance, would definitely see him.
Then the police watched the recordings from the CCTV cameras installed on the neighboring buildings. And they didn’t capture Brian Schaffer leaving the bar either.
After that, still grabbing at straws, the police searched all the surrounding areas with dogs, checked every dumpster, every bush in the alley, even climbed into the sewers. They only found out that Brian's car was parked in the place where he stopped before entering the bar.
Where could a healthy and strong man disappear without a trace? And for what reason? Someone suggested that maybe Brian disguised himself as a girl and walked past his friends unnoticed. But why did he have to do this, and when and how did he manage to do it, if he did not have any personal bags with things?
There was also a version that he was somehow stunned and secretly taken out. But again, surveillance cameras in the bar and other houses nearby did not capture anything unusual, no people with huge bags or packages.
The police interviewed all of Brian's friends and acquaintances, his family, his girlfriend, bar owners, bar staff. It got to the point that many of them were even forcibly forced to take a lie detector test. It's all in vain.
All this time, Brian's girlfriend, Alexis, called him on her mobile and no one answered every time. Brian's credit card was also not recorded anywhere, if it was stolen and someone decided to use it.
Strange rock following this mystical disappearance continued to haunt the Shaffer family. Two years after the death of Brian's mother and the disappearance of Brian himself, Brian's father, Randy Schaffer, died in a ridiculous accident. During a heavy rain and wind, a heavy branch fell from a tall tree as Randy passed and nailed him to death.
The newspaper then posted a strange note "In memory of the Pope, with love, Brian", but it was considered a hoax. In subsequent years, Brian was allegedly seen several times alive in the same area, but each time the search yielded nothing.
What happened to this man? Was this some very clever scheme to hide from everyone? How did no cameras catch Brian walking out of the pub? He was kidnapped by aliens? Did he hit a hole in space? This case has remained one of the strangest disappearances of people in recent years.
