Thousands of people go missing every year, and the cases of these disappearances become truly discouraging when investigators have virtually nothing to work with - situations in which no one has seen anything, and there is no reasonable explanation. It's almost the same as if these people literally disappeared into thin air.
1. Maura Murray
On February 9, 2004, 21-year-old University of Massachusetts student Maura Murray emailed her faculty and employers that she was forced to leave following the death of a (fictitious) family member. She was involved in an accident that evening, crashing her car into a tree near Woodsville, New Hampshire. By a strange coincidence, a couple of days earlier, Maura also had an accident and crashed another car.
The driver of a bus passing by came up and asked Maura if she needed to call the police. The girl answered "no", but the driver still made a call as soon as he got to the nearest phone. When the police arrived ten minutes later, Maura was gone.
No signs of a struggle were found at the scene, so perhaps Maura asked someone to give her a lift. The next day, Maura's Oklahoma fiancé received a voicemail, presumably from her, but only heard sobs on the other end of the line. Although Maura has acted a little strange in the last days before her disappearance, her family does not believe that she disappeared of her own accord.
Nine years have passed, but it was not possible to find out what happened to the girl.
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2. Brandon Swenson
On the evening of May 14, 2008, as 19-year-old Brandon Swenson was driving back to his hometown of Marshall, Minnesota, on a rural gravel road, his car went into a ditch. Brandon called his parents and asked to come for him. They immediately went in search of the ny, but they could not find it. His father called him back, Brandon picked up the phone and said that he was trying to get to the nearest town of Lead. And in the middle of the conversation, Brandon suddenly cursed, and the connection was abruptly cut off.
Brandon's father tried to call back several times, but received no response and could not find his son. Police later found Brandon's car, but were unable to locate either the guy or his cell phone. According to one version, he could accidentally drown in a nearby river, but no traces of a body were found in it. No one knows what prompted Brandon to swear during the ringing, but it was the last thing they heard from him.
3. Louis Le Prince
Louis Le Prince is a famous French inventor who was the first to capture moving images on film. Oddly enough, the "father of cinema" is also remembered as the subject of one of the strangest disappearances in history. On September 16, 1890, Le Prince was staying with his brother in Dijon, and then went by train to Paris. When the train arrived at its destination, it turned out that Le Prince had disappeared.
Le Prince was last seen entering his carriage after checking his baggage. There were no traces of violence or anything suspicious during the trip, no one could remember seeing Le Prince outside his carriage. The windows were tightly closed, so jumping off the train would be rather difficult, but the version of suicide seemed unlikely at all, since Le Prince was going to go to America to get a patent for his new invention.
As a result of this disappearance, the patent for the kinetoscope (a device for demonstrating sequential photographs of movement) went to Thomas Edison. As for Le Prince, his fate is still a mystery.
4. Michael Negrete
At 4 a.m. on December 10, 1999, an 18-year-old UCLA freshman named Michael Negrete turned off his computer - all night long he played video games with friends. At nine in the morning, his roommate woke up and noticed that Michael was gone, but left all his belongings, including keys and wallet. He was never seen again.
The most curious thing about Michael's disappearance is that the guy even left his shoes. Investigators used search dogs to track Michael to a bus stop a couple of miles from the dorm, but how could he have gotten this far without his shoes? Only one person was seen not far from the scene at 4:35 am, but no one knows if he is connected with Michael's disappearance. There is no reason to believe that Michael disappeared of his own free will, but there has been no news of Michael's fate for more than ten years.
5. Barbara Bolick
On July 18, 2007, Barbara Bolick, a 55-year-old woman from Corvallis, Montana, went hiking with her friend Jim Ramaker from California. When Jim stopped to admire the scenery, Barbara was 6-9 meters behind him, but when he turned around less than a minute later, he found the woman had disappeared. The police joined the search, but the woman was never found.
At first glance, the story of Jim Ramaker sounds absolutely incredible. However, he cooperated with the authorities, and since there was no evidence of his involvement in Barbara's disappearance, he was no longer considered a suspect. The culprit would probably try to come up with a better story, and not claim that his victim just disappeared into thin air. Six years have passed, but traces of a violent death have not been found, as well as any hints of what could have happened to Barbara.
6. Michael Chiron
On August 23, 2008, 51-year-old Michael Chiron went to his Happy Valley, Tennessee farm to mow his lawn. That morning, neighbors saw Michael leave the farm in his ATV - and this was the last time they saw him.
The next day, Michael's friends visited the farm and saw his truck parked on the road. A trailer was attached to it, in which a lawn mower was found, but the grass on the lawn remained untouched. His friends returned the next day and were worried when they saw a truck parked in the same place, which still contained keys, mobile and wallet.
Three days after Michael's disappearance, investigators found the only clue: an all-terrain vehicle on a steep hill located one and a half kilometers from his house. However, it was not clear why he needed to go there. In addition, no traces of violence were found. Michael had no enemies or any other reason to hide, so his disappearance has become a truly incomprehensible mystery.
7. April Fabb
One of the most famous disappearances in British history occurred in Norfolk on April 8, 1969. A 13-year-old schoolgirl named April Fabb left the house and went to her sister in a nearby village. She rode her bike there and was last seen by a truck driver. At 14:06, he noticed a girl driving along a country road. And at 2:12 pm, her bike was found in the middle of a field a few hundred yards from where she was seen, but there was no sign of April.
Kidnapping seemed like the most likely scenario for April to disappear, but the attacker would only have six minutes to kidnap the girl and leave the crime scene without anyone noticing. April's extensive search yielded no clue.
This case has a lot to do with the disappearance of another young girl, Janet Tate in 1978, so Robert Black, the notorious child killer, was considered a possible suspect. However, there is no evidence to conclusively determine his involvement in April's disappearance, so this mystery also remains unsolved.
8. Brian Shaffer
The 27-year-old Ohio University medical student left the bar on the evening of April 1, 2006. Somewhere between 1:30 and 2:00, he mysteriously disappeared. He drank a lot that night and, after talking to his girlfriend on his cell phone, was last seen in the company of two young women. However, no one at the bar could remember if they saw him after that.
The hardest question in this story, which has remained unanswered, is how Brian got out of the bar. The CCTV footage clearly shows how he entered the bar, but none of the footage captured how he came out! Neither Brian's friends nor his family believe he went into hiding on purpose. Three weeks earlier, he had studied well and was planning to go on vacation with his girlfriend. But if Brian was kidnapped or the victim of another crime, how did the intruder get him out of the bar without being noticed by witnesses or CCTV cameras?
9. Jason Yolkowski
On the morning of June 13, 2001, 19-year-old Jason Yolkowski was called to work. He asked a friend to pick him up at a nearby high school, but he never showed up.
The last time Jason was seen by his neighbor, about half an hour before the appointment, when the guy was bringing trash cans into his garage. The high school security cameras show that he did not appear there. Jason had no personal problems or any other reason to disappear, and there is also no evidence that anything could have happened to him. His further fate remains a mystery twelve years later.
In 2003, Jim and Kelly Yolkowski immortalized their son's name by founding their project, a non-profit organization that has become one of the most famous foundations for families of missing persons.
10. Nicole Maureen
On July 30, 1985, eight-year-old Nicole Maureen left her mother's penthouse in Toronto. Nicole was going to swim in the pool that morning with her friend. She said goodbye to her mother and left the apartment, but 15 minutes later her friend came to find out why Nicole had not yet left.
Nicole's disappearance led to one of the largest police investigations in Toronto history, but no trace of the girl was found. The most plausible assumption was that someone could have abducted Nicole immediately after she left the apartment, but the building was twenty stories high, so it would be rather difficult to get her out of there unnoticed.
One of the tenants said that he saw Nicole approaching the elevator, but no one else saw or heard anything. Nearly thirty years later, authorities have never collected enough data to establish what happened to Nicole Maureen.