TOP 10 stories about missing people (12 photos)

I think you all know that thousands of people around the world go missing every year, and no one knows where to look for them. Today I invite you to read the TOP 10 stories about people who literally “disappeared into thin air.” Read on.

On February 9, 2004, a 21-year-old student at the University of Massachusetts emailed her employer and several teachers, saying that she was forced to leave the city due to the death of one of her close relatives.

That same night, Maura was involved in an accident, crashing her car into a tree near the town of Woodsville, New Hampshire, USA. By strange coincidence, two days before Murray's accident, another car accident occurred in the same place.

The driver of a passing bus suggested

Maura received help, but she refused. One way or another, having reached the phone, the bus driver called for help, but the police who arrived at the scene of the accident literally ten minutes later discovered that the girl had disappeared without a trace. There were no signs of a struggle at the scene, so the official version is that Maura left the scene voluntarily.

The next day, Maura's relatives in Oklahoma received a voicemail containing choked sobs. Although, according to eyewitnesses, Murray behaved quite strangely a few days before her mysterious disappearance, her family is confident that Maura could not have left the scene of the accident of her own free will without leaving any traces. For nine years now, no one has been able to find an adequate explanation for this incident.

Brian Shaffer

A 27-year-old Ohio State University medical student named Brian Shaffer went to have a few drinks at a bar called Ugly Tuna Saloona on the evening of April 1, 2006.

Between half past one and two o'clock in the morning, Brian inexplicably disappeared: according to eyewitnesses, the student was very drunk and talking on the phone with his girlfriend, and then he was noticed in the company of two other young women. After that, none of the bar visitors saw him.

The most curious thing is that many noticed how Shaffer entered the bar, but no one remembers how he left it - even the CCTV cameras did not record the young man’s departure, although they clearly show the student entering the pub.

Although Brian had told his mother three weeks earlier that he was planning to go on holiday with his girlfriend, friends and family were convinced that he could not have taken the trip so suddenly. One version says that Shaffer could have been kidnapped, but how the attacker managed to get him out of the establishment, bypassing video cameras and numerous witnesses, is a question that baffles investigators.

Jason Yolkowski

In the early morning of June 13, 2001, 19-year-old Jason Yolkowski went to work in the small town of Omaha, Nebraska, USA. He agreed with his friend that he would pick him up at a nearby school, but Jason never showed up there, and the last time he was seen by a neighbor was half an hour before the appointed meeting time: Jason, according to a valuable witness, was carrying trash cans into his garage.

From the recordings taken by investigators from school security cameras, it was clear that Jason was not really there, while friends and family could not name any reason that could cause the young man to hide.

In 2003, the young man’s parents, Jim and Kelly Jolkowski, founded Project Jason in memory of their son, a non-profit organization that searches for missing people, but the fate of Jason himself still remains a mystery.

Nicole Morin

Eight-year-old Nicole Morin disappeared on July 30, 1985 from a penthouse in Toronto, a city in the Canadian province of Ontario, where the girl lived with her mother.

That morning, Nicole and her friend were going to swim in the pool located in one of the parts of the huge building, and at half past ten the girl said goodbye to her mother and left the apartment, and 15 minutes later her friend knocked on the door to find out when Nicole would finally get ready.

After this incident, one of the largest police investigations in the history of Toronto was conducted, but no leads could be found that could lead to the girl’s trail.

The version of abduction was considered the most likely, but investigators did not find any evidence of this in the entire 20-story building of the residential complex, so the mystery of Nicole Morin’s disappearance has haunted local residents for almost three decades.

Brandon Swanson

19-year-old Brandon Swenson was driving his own car on May 14, 2008, to his hometown of Marshall, Minnesota. It so happened that his car flew off a rural road and ended up in a ditch. The young man called his parents and asked to pick him up from the scene of the accident, but relatives who arrived at the scene could not find him. After answering his father's call, Brandon said he was heading towards the nearby town of Linda, then cursed and lost contact.

Several attempts to reach the young man yielded absolutely nothing. Later, the police found Svenson's wrecked car, but neither his mobile phone nor the guy himself could be found. According to one version, he could have drowned in a nearby river, but careful combing of the riverbed did not help - the young man disappeared without a trace.

Louis Le Prince

French inventor Louis Le Prince is considered by many to be the true creator of cinema - it was he who invented a movie camera with a single lens, capable of capturing moving objects on film.

However, he is known not only for his merits in creating cinema - humanity is still haunted by his strange disappearance.

On September 16, 1890, Le Prince visited his brother in the French city of Dijon, and then went by rail to Paris, but when the train arrived in the capital, it turned out that Le Prince had inexplicably disappeared.

He was last seen boarding his carriage; the train made several stops along the way, but no one saw Louis get off. In addition, the inventor carried a lot of luggage with him, but numerous drawings and equipment also disappeared without a trace.

Thomas Edison

The investigators considered the suicide version to be untenable, since it is unlikely that Le Prince had any reason to take his own life: from Paris he intended to go to the United States, where he was supposed to obtain patents for his inventions. One of the popular versions says that Le Prince’s kidnapping was arranged by another famous inventor, Thomas Edison, in order to maintain his reputation as the “father of cinema,” but there is no convincing evidence of this.

Michael Negrete

On December 10, 1999, at four in the morning, 18-year-old UCLA freshman Michael Negrete turned off the computer on which he had been playing video games with friends all night long. At nine o'clock in the morning, his roommate noticed that Michael had left, leaving behind his keys and wallet - no one had ever seen him since.

The most interesting thing is that the student apparently left barefoot - his shoes were still in place. Police with dogs combed all the surrounding areas, but found no traces of the barefoot freshman. A survey of local residents showed that at 4:35 a.m. an unidentified passerby was seen near the scene of the incident, but whether it was Michael or a person somehow connected with his disappearance is still unknown.

Barbara Bolick

A 55-year-old resident of the town of Corvallis in Montana, USA, on July 18, 2007, went hiking in the rocky Bitterroot Range with her friend Jim Ramaker, who came to Barbara from California to stay and admire the local nature.

When the tourists were near Bear Creek, Jim stopped, looking at the wonderful scenic view. According to him, he lost sight of Barbara for no more than a minute, while she was approximately 6–9 m from the place from which he admired the landscape. When he looked back, he discovered that his elderly friend had disappeared into thin air. The large-scale search efforts that followed did not help find any traces of Barbara.

Of course, the first thing the police investigating the disappearance case carefully checked was all the testimony of Jim Ramaker, suspecting that he might be involved in her disappearance, but not the slightest evidence of abduction or murder was found. Moreover, if Jim had been guilty of anything, he would have tried to come up with a more convincing version for the investigation than an inexplicable disappearance out of the blue.

Michael Hearon

On August 23, 2008, Michael Hearon went to his farm in Happy Valley, Tennessee to mow the lawn. That morning, acquaintances noticed Michael leaving the farm on his ATV - that’s when the 51-year-old pensioner was last seen.

The next day, neighbors discovered Michael's truck and trailer on his property, with a lawn mower on it, although the grass on the lawn was untouched. When a day later all of Michael’s equipment was found in the same place abandoned on the side of the road, friends sounded the alarm. Keys, a wallet and a mobile phone were found inside the truck, but there was no trace of the man himself.

Three days later, the police discovered an ATV one and a half kilometers from the farm, which, according to friends of the missing man, belonged to him, but this discovery could not shed light on the strange incident. The American had no secret ill-wishers who could have had a hand in his disappearance, just as there was no reason to go on the run, so the disappearance of the farmer remains a mystery to this day.

April Fabb

One of the most mysterious disappearances in British history happened on April 8, 1969 in Norfolk. 13-year-old schoolgirl April Fabb from a small town called Matton went to visit her sister in the neighboring village of Roughton. The girl set off on a bicycle, and the last person to see her was a truck driver, who at 14:06 noticed a girl matching April's description on a country road.

Already at 14:12, her bicycle was found in the middle of a field several hundred meters from the place where the driver saw April, and no traces of the girl were found nearby.

The investigation considered kidnapping to be the main version, but it seemed incredible that an unknown criminal was able to quietly kidnap April in just six minutes, without leaving a single clue for the investigation.

The case of April Fabb's disappearance is reminiscent of the mysterious disappearance of a young girl named Genette Tate, which happened in 1978. At the time, the main suspect was considered serial killer and rapist Robert Black, but there is no evidence that Black was involved in April's disappearance, so we can only guess on this score.