The phenomenon of mysterious disappearances: where do thousands of people disappear every year?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

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.

Some of these people disappear forever, but more often the missing people are found - dead - a few weeks / months after their mysterious disappearance, and they are found in places that search teams combed dozens of times. The official cause of death is either unknown or absurd.

It must be admitted that in many cases, the reasons for the disappearance of people are quite trivial: from family and financial problems to serial killers. Mysterious are those cases when people disappear under very strange circumstances (they literally dissolve into thin air; and sometimes the nearby covert surveillance cameras either temporarily fail or "accidentally" look "the wrong way") and / or when their bodies are found in unusual places and in a strange state (without shoes or only in underwear, and an abnormally high concentration of alcohol is always found in the blood). It was these inexplicable cases of disappearances that became the subject of study by David Polides, which we will talk about later.

David Polides, a retired American police officer, retired in 2008 and devoted himself entirely to investigating the mysterious disappearances in the United States, Canada and Europe. He has written an entire series of books, Missing 411, in which he examines facts (and only facts) with detective thoroughness, refusing to make unfounded assumptions. Most of his books in this series are devoted to the mysterious disappearances of people in the national parks of the United States and Canada. In his latest book, he looks at the disappearances in cities across the United States and Canada. Let's look at the common signs inherent in these mysterious disappearances of people (missing both in national parks and in major cities):

An interesting fact is that the official authorities and the media seem to be trying to hide the scale and details of the disappearances. David Polides describes in his books how he repeatedly tried to take advantage of the freedom of information law and obtain lists of missing persons from the US National Park Service. Each time he was either demanded fabulous sums for these lists, or they said that such lists did not exist in nature! Quite suspicious is the fact that, despite the conflicting facts, the official version has always been "an accident" or "suicide". By the way, the official verdict in the case of Eliza Lam, who was found dead, was also: "an accident as a result of drowning"! Obviously, the authorities know a lot more than they admit. But what are they trying to hide from us? Maybe the nature of those entities that kidnap people and lead the puzzled detectives by the nose? Who plays cat and mouse with the human race?

• Many disappearances occurred near berry bushes and large granite blocks.
• The bodies of the missing were often found in water (in rivers, ponds, reservoirs, swamps and even dry streams), so the official conclusion about the cause of death often sounded like "drowning", despite the fact that many other facts speak against this.
• Complete absence of witnesses to the disappearance. The disappeared often simply disappeared into thin air a few meters from their parents / friends, but no one saw the very moment of disappearance.
• The missing were often found in hard-to-reach places very far from the place of disappearance. For example, the bodies of several children under the age of 5 were found on the slopes of high mountains, where even experienced climbers could not reach. Or remember the famous case of the disappearance of Eliza Lam: her body was found on the locked roof of the hotel (on which an alarm and several CCTV cameras were installed) in a closed (!) Water tank, which could only be reached with a ladder.
• The victims found frozen in the ice were in an upright position (!). Some victims had their head and shoulders above the surface of the ice.
• In most cases, many facts indicate that the victims were not in the water during the entire period of loss (this is often evidenced by an uncharacteristic (minimal) level of decomposition of the corpse), despite the fact that the bodies were found in the water. It also contradicts the official "drowning" conclusions.
• The presence of alcohol in the blood. It ranged from abnormally high to medium, but could not be explained either by the amount of alcohol consumed on the evening when the alcohol disappeared, or by the stage of decomposition of the body (during decomposition, a certain amount of alcohol is formed in the body).

• Based on an analysis of 1,200 cases in the US and Canada, David Polides identified 52 clusters of missing people, i.e. in certain places (mostly in national parks) people disappear much more often. Several of the largest clusters are found around the Great Lakes in the United States.

  

• Trained sniffer dogs suddenly lost their scent and were unable to take the trail of the missing people. On the day Eliza Lam disappeared, the police searched the hotel with search dogs to no avail, incl. and the roof where her body was later found.
• Memory loss. The survivors could not remember the details of their disappearance. They were often found unconscious or semi-conscious.
• Loss of sense of time. In most of the cases studied by David Polides, victims were unable to remember what they were doing at specific intervals.
• The intelligence level of the victims. In many cases, the missing were either students with high levels of intelligence (and a promising future) or student athletes. In other cases, the missing were, on the contrary, either seriously (mentally) sick children / students, or disabled people. Those. in both cases we are not dealing with ordinary average people.
• Many of the missing in the USA / Canada either had hereditary German roots (up to many generations in the past), or studied and spoke German fluently.
• Most of the bodies of the victims were found in places that were repeatedly and carefully combed by dozens of search engines (often with sniffer dogs).
• Loss of clothing and / or shoes. The victims were often found without shoes, pants, etc. under circumstances that could not explain this loss. There have also been cases in which the belts were unusually fastened to the pants. How and why victims lost their clothes (often in adverse weather conditions) remains a mystery.
• Lost in buildings. Several children disappeared from their homes with installed and operational alarms, which never went off at the moment of disappearance. Many young people disappeared into bars with CCTV cameras installed: the cameras showed them entering the bar, but the moment they left the bar was never recorded on camera, despite their serviceability and uninterrupted operation. In other cases, rotating CCTV cameras aimed at the banks of rivers / reservoirs recorded the victim, but a few moments later, with the next turn of the camera, the victims literally disappeared into thin air.
• Strange and short-term weather changes at the lost location. On the night of the loss, sudden downpours, storms or snowfalls were often observed. Many disappearances took place before the start of the terrible hurricanes. It's as if someone was trying to stop the search teams from finding the missing person.
• Most of the disappearances occurred during the night period, from midnight to dawn.
• Failure of mobile phones. Most of the mobile phones found were either broken or found with dead batteries. In some cases, the disappearance occurred right during the telephone conversation! The victims suddenly became nervous and talked about being followed. After that, their speech became incoherent and only the whistle of the wind was heard (as if someone suddenly lifted them into the air), after which the connection was cut off.
• Irrational behavior. When attending a party, young people often complained that they suddenly felt unwell or had to walk home, despite the distances sometimes several kilometers and the opportunity to use taxis / public transport. Parents / acquaintances of missing students also frequently reported strange, unexplainable behavior on the day of their disappearance. Remember also the story of the disappearance of Dyatlov's tour group in 1959 in the Urals: that evening they did not light a fire (and this at sub-zero temperatures!) And did not cook dinner, but instead devoted their evening to making a wall newspaper.
• Availability of certification documents. The disappeared, who were found in the rivers and whose bodies, which were in the water, judging by the stage of decomposition for several days, were supposed to swim with the current for several kilometers, almost always found identification documents, despite the fact that due to the strong current they did not have some parts of clothing and / or shoes. As if someone really wanted the found ones to be quickly identified!
• Some of the missing were found upstream of the place of their disappearance, which also contradicted the official version of the "drowning".
• In some cases, there was no blood in the bodies of the victims! Moreover, investigators have never been able to establish how the blood was removed from the body. Indeed, for the complete removal of blood from the body (if we are dealing with a maniac), special equipment is needed, which always leaves certain cuts on the body. Such cuts / needle marks have never been found. It should also be noted that David Polides investigated these cases as a private person (and not as a police officer), so all information in his books is based only on published facts or eyewitness accounts. At the same time, some of the details of the forensic examination were often not published at all (because the results might shock the public? Or maybe the lack of blood made the forensic examination itself impossible?), Suggesting that even more victims were found lacking blood. By the way, not a drop of blood was found in Eliza Lam's body either!
• Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) was found in the bodies of several victims. GHB is a natural hydroxy acid that plays an important role in the human central nervous system. GHB in high concentration can be used as an anesthetic and sedative (it is illegal in many countries), since it can paralyze a person's muscles without causing loss of consciousness. Those. if the victims were injected with a certain dose of GHB, after which they (still alive) were placed in the water, then they (fully aware of what was happening) would not be able to get out of the water and eventually drowned. The semi-conscious state and incoherent speech of the survivors also suggest the possible use of GHB.