By Staff People disappear day-after-day, all around the world. Fortunately, many will return. Tragically, many people are found as a dead body. Then, there are those that simply vanish.
On this website, we simply class a mysterious disappearance as any situation where a person goes missing, and their body is never found – meaning that what happened to them is a total mystery.
Therefore, this website is dedicated to cases that are left completely open, unlike some crimes where questions remain, but the body is found.
Example Case
An example case would be where a person vanishes without a trace. One day he leaves work, and is expected to return the next day, though they are nowhere to be seen that next morning.
After not being able to reach the person by phone, the employer also sees no online presence from them. They request a welfare check by the Police, who find the person’s house to be empty, with still no sign of the person.
Days pass, and there is no sign of the person. Appeals are made on TV, newspaper articles are written – though there is still no sign of the person.
Days become months, and months turn into years, and still there is no trace of the person. Eventually, they are declared legally dead.
This is the sort of case that we would profile on this website. There is simply no sign of the person, but several theories exist.
What we don’t consider as a disappearance
Some of the most intriguing events in history have involved disappearances, and subsequent unsolved crimes.
One of the most thought-provoking events took place in 1959 in what was then the Ural Mountains in the Soviet Union. The event came to be known as the Dyatlov Pass incident.
This incident involved nine Russian hikers. At some point during the night, the nine hikers all exited their tent, with the state of the campsite suggesting the hikers had fled quickly.
The hikers had departed the tent in clothing inappropriate for the conditions they were in – heavy snowfall and temperatures below freezing point.
The bodies of the nine hikers were found by investigators. After investigations, it was deemed that six of the nine hikers died from hypothermia. The other three had died due to “physical trauma”.
Two of the bodies were missing their eyes, another was missing a tongue, and many showed signs of being attacked.
An investigation concluded that a “compelling natural force” had caused their deaths – though this vague answer has led to a lot of speculation and theories.
In the modern day, the most widely-accepted belief is that an avalanche caused the nine to leave their tents, though some suggest there was something more at play – potentially an animal attack, extraterrestrial involvement, or a government conspiracy.
The incident has spawned books, websites, documentaries, films and all manner of online discussions and debates. It is an event that has confused many, and questions still remain. Ultimately though, the bodies were found,
So while we would love to write about events like this, if we didn’t have a set methodology for selecting the disappearances that we cover, there would be no way of deciding effectively what is and what isn’t a “mysterious disappearance”.
Summary
So this article has provided information on the circumstances and status of a disappearance that we would consider to be covered on this website.
As you will see, all of the disappearances listed on this website profile cases where a person has simply vanished, with no trace of their body ever found.
