It is not uncommon for the media to tell us about missing people whose disappearance was so sudden and mysterious that the blood runs cold. Recently, one of the most mysterious and high-profile disappearances was the case of 18-year-old American Natalie Holloway, who in 2005 went with classmates to the island of Aruba to celebrate her graduation, but never returned. In the continuation of the article, you will find 10 blood-curdling stories about the sudden disappearance of travelers who never returned home.
1. John Reed
In 1980, 28-year-old John Reed left his hometown of Twin City in California and went to Brazil. He hoped to find the lost city of Akator, an ancient underground civilization that supposedly remained the secret of the Amazon jungle for thousands of years. Reed learned about the city from a book called The Akator Chronicle. The author of this book, Carl Brugger, wrote it after he learned about Akator from the Brazilian guide Tatunka Nara, who claimed that he was once the leader of the tribe that ruled the city 3,000 years ago. Tatunka lived in the village of Barcelos and owned a lucrative business organizing trips for tourists to the jungle to search for an Acator. Reed decided to accompany Tatunka on one of his expeditions. He left his belongings and the return flight ticket in his hotel room in Manaus, but never returned for them.
Eventually it was found out that Tatunka Nara is actually a German citizen named Gunther Hawk. Tatunka claimed that Reed ran away and hid in the jungle after they decided to return to Barcelos. However, Reed was not the only person who disappeared under suspicious circumstances in the company of Tatunka. In the 1980s, a Swiss man named Herbert Wanner and a Swedish woman named Kristin Heusr also mysteriously disappeared during the Tatunka expedition. Later, Wanner’s jawbone was found.
In addition, Carl Brugger, the author of the book that inspired John Reed, was shot dead on the streets of Rio in 1984. Authorities still believe Gunther Hawk was responsible for Brugger’s murder and the three disappearances, but there is insufficient evidence to charge him.
2. Judy Smith
In 1997, Judy Smith, a 50-year-old mother of two children from Newton, Massachusetts, married a lawyer and decided to go to Philadelphia to join her husband Jeffrey on his business trip. On April 10, Jeffrey went to conferences, and Judy decided to go sightseeing. Judy never returned to the hotel, and Jeffrey declared her missing. Five months later, she was found. On September 7, travelers found her partially buried remains in an isolated mountainous area. The strange thing about this story is that Judy’s remains were found more than 960 kilometers away, in North Carolina.
The exact cause of death could not be determined, but since Judy’s remains were found in a shallow grave, the authorities concluded that she was the victim of premeditated murder. Since she still had her wedding ring and $167, the robbery was hardly a reason. It was also strange that she carried her things in a red backpack, but a blue backpack was found on the spot. Even more bizarre is that Judy apparently went there voluntarily, as four witnesses reported seeing her in nearby Asheville.
Witnesses said Judy was in a great mood and mentioned in conversation that her husband was a lawyer. If the woman the witness was talking to was really Judy Smith, no one knows why she wanted to run away without telling her family. And if Judy made the decision to disappear on her own, how did she end up dead on a remote mountain buried in a grave?
3. Frank Lenz
A large number of people disappeared trying to fly around the world on their own. However, the disappearance of Frank Lenz during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe has a unique difference. The 25-year-old Lenz was a cyclist originally from Pennsylvania, who wanted to cycle around the world, and, according to his calculations, the trip was supposed to take two years. Lenz began his journey in Pittsburgh on May 25, 1892, and spent the next few months traveling through North America before sailing to Asia. By May 1894, Lenz had cycled through Tabriz, Iran, and his next destination was Erzurum, Turkey, 450 kilometers away. But Lenz did not come to Erzurum, and he was never seen again.
His family and friends decided to organize a search. Unfortunately, Lenz traveled to Turkey during the peak of the Armenian massacre of the mid-1890s. During this terrible time, the Ottoman Empire killed tens of thousands of Armenians, and perhaps Lenz became their accidental victim.
When another cyclist named William Sachtleben went to Erzurum to look for Lenz, he found out that Lenz may have passed through a small Turkish village in the Kurdistan region, where he unintentionally insulted a Kurdish chieftain. Thirsting for retribution, the chieftain ordered the bandits to kill Lenz and bury his body. The alleged killers were blamed for Lenz’s death, but most of them escaped or died before they could be imprisoned. The Turkish government eventually agreed to pay compensation to Lenz’s family, but his body was never found.
4. Leo Vidiker
Even though he was 86 years old, Leo Vidiker still led a very active lifestyle. Leo was married for 55 years, and both spouses belonged to a Christian organization called Maranatha Volunteers International. By 2001, the Videographers had organized 40 humanitarian trips. During their 41st trip, the couple left their home in North Dakota to accompany the organization to Hot Springs Tabacon, Costa Rica. On November 8, Leo sat down on a bench at the resort, while his wife briefly walked away. When Virginia returned half an hour later, her husband was gone.
There was a theory that Leo may have fallen asleep on the bench, and when he woke up, he forgot everything. Before he disappeared, witnesses saw Leo asking people if they knew where his wife was. He went to the gate of the resort hotel and asked the guards if he could get out, they opened the gate and watched him walk down the main road.
Already 15 minutes later, one of Leo’s friends was walking along the same road, but found no signs that he had passed through here. Since Leo wasn’t moving very fast and there weren’t many places he could go, the only logical explanation was that someone had kidnapped him. And even during the search operation, the police could not find a single trace of Leo Vidiker.
5. Karen Denise Wells
Karen Denise Wells was originally from Haskell, Oklahoma. She was 23 years old, and she was raising a child alone. As usual, she decided to leave the child with her parents to visit a friend named Melissa Shepard. Wells rented a car and drove to North Bergen, New Jersey. Wells was last seen on April 12, 1994, when she called a friend from a motel in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Shepard agreed to meet Wells at a motel and arrived later that night with two unidentified men. Wells did not return to the room again, but most of her belongings remained there.
Early the next morning, Wells’ rental car was found abandoned on a remote road 56 kilometers from the motel. The vehicle was without gasoline, and its doors were wide open. Evidence was found in the car that indicated that Karen was in that car until the last moment. The evidence included a small amount of marijuana, but Karen’s wallet and change purse were found in a nearby ditch. The strangest clue in the abandoned vehicle was the numbers on the speedometer, which did not match the distance from Haskell to Carlisle. In fact, 700 miles were unnecessary.
Before she arrived at the motel in the town of Carlisle, Wells was seen in two other cities that were completely out of her way. During her last phone conversation with Shepard, Wells mentioned that she had gotten lost several times before. However, so far no one can tell where Karen is.
6. Charles Horvath
In 1989, 20-year-old Charles Horvath decided to leave his native England and go to Canada to spend a few months hitchhiking around the country. By May 11, Charles arrived in the province of British Columbia and stopped at a camping site in Kelowna. He sent a fax to his mother, Denise Allan, saying that he would try to meet her in Hong Kong on his 21st birthday. However, this was the last message his mother received. Since Charles had been in contact up to this point, she began to worry. She decided to go to British Columbia on her own to find him. Denise discovered that Charles had left his tent and all his belongings at the camping site when he suddenly disappeared. After informing the police about the missing Charles, Denise returned to her hotel and found a note one evening: “I saw him on May 26th. We were celebrating and two people beat him up. It die. His body is in the lake behind the bridge.”
Divers searched this lake, but did not find Charles’ body. However, Denise soon received another note stating that they had searched the wrong side of the bridge. After a second search, the police did find the body. The victim was initially identified as Charles, but it turned out that it was a local resident who committed suicide. Denise did get confirmation that Charles was going to a late-night party before he disappeared. Nevertheless, his disappearance has remained a mystery for 25 years.
7. Ettore Majorana
Ettore Majorana was a well-known Italian theoretical physicist. In 1938, Majorana worked as a physics teacher at the University of Naples. On March 25, he wrote a strange note to the director of the university, saying that he had made an “inevitable” decision, and apologized for any “inconvenience” that might be caused by his disappearance. He also sent a message to his family asking them not to spend too much time mourning him. Marjorana withdrew a large amount of money from his bank account and boarded a boat to Palermo. After arriving at Palermo Majorana sent another message to the director, saying that he had reconsidered his decision to commit suicide and planned to return home. Marjorana was seen boarding a ship to Naples, but he mysteriously disappeared.
There were a huge number of theories about Marjorana’s disappearance: suicide, escape from the country to start a new life, and even possible cooperation with the Third Reich. This mystery remained unsolved until 2008, when a witness was found who claimed that he had met Marjorana in Caracas in 1955. This man allegedly lived in Argentina for many years, and a witness even provided a photo of him. After analyzing the person in the photo and comparing it with Marjorana’s photos, the investigators concluded that a large number of common features may indicate that they are the same person. The investigation into Ettore Majorana’s disappearance is still ongoing, but the full story of what happened remains a mystery.
8. Devin Williams
Devin Williams lived with his wife and three children in Lyon County, Kansas, and earned his living working as a trucker. In May 1995, Williams went on a routine work trip to deliver cargo to California. After completing the task, Williams took another shipment for delivery to Kansas City. On May 28, he was spotted speeding in a truck through the Tonto National Forest near Kingman, Arizona, driving dangerously close to the parking lots of some tourists and their vehicles. The truck eventually stopped in the middle of the woods, and witnesses saw Williams wandering around it. He looked disoriented, muttering incoherently, “I’m going to jail” and “they made me do it.” By the time police arrived, the truck was driverless, and Williams had disappeared.
The Tonto National Forest is located more than 80 kilometers from the interstate highway, along which Williams’ route used to go to Kansas, and there was no rational explanation for his strange behavior. He had never used drugs before and did not suffer from mental illness, although before leaving California, Williams called his doctor and said he had trouble sleeping. Williams’ disappearance was so strange that even UFO researchers began to think he had been abducted by aliens.
Finally, in May 1997, travelers discovered the skull of Devin Williams about half a mile from where he was last seen. However, it is not known what actually happened to him.
9. Virginia Carpenter
In 1946, the city of Texarkana became the birthplace of a terrible mystery when an unidentified man known as the Ghost Killer killed five people. A young girl named Virginia Carpenter knew the three victims and became the center to which all the leads led, just two years later. On June 1, 1948, 21-year-old Carpenter set off from Texarkana took a six-hour train ride to Denton, where she was registered at Texas State College for Women. After arriving that evening, Carpenter took a taxi from the train station to the college dorm. However, remembering that she had forgotten her bag, she returned to the station. When Carpenter found out that the luggage hadn’t arrived yet, she gave her ticket to the taxi driver, Jack Zachary, and paid him to pick up the luggage the next morning. Zachary drove Carpenter to the dorm, where, according to him, she went to talk to two young men in a convertible.
The next day, Zachary took Carpenter’s luggage and left it in front of the dorm, where it was unclaimed for two days. When the college staff and Carpenter’s family realized that none of them had heard from her for a long time, they reported her missing.
Who these two young men in the convertible were, they never found out. However, some suspicion fell on Zachary, who had a criminal record and was known for using violence against his family. Zachary’s wife initially told police that he returned home shortly after dropping Carpenter off, but years later she claimed her alibi was false—Zachary actually arrived home a few hours later. However, there was no evidence of Zachary’s involvement in Virginia Carpenter’s disappearance, and no trace of her was ever found.
10. Benjamin Bathurst
Benjamin Bathurst was an ambitious 25-year-old British ambassador. It was sent from London in Vienna in 1809 in the hope of improving British-Austrian relations. However, when the French armed forces invaded Vienna, Bathurst went back home. On November 25, he and his personal valet stopped in Perleberg, Germany, and checked into the White Swan Inn. Bathurst intended to continue the trip that evening, after his valet had changed the horses in their carriage. Finally, at about 21:00, Bathurst learned that the horses were ready. He left his room, apparently to head for the wagon, and disappeared.
Two days later, Bathurst’s coat was found in a building belonging to a man who worked at the White Swan Inn. The man’s mother claimed to have found the coat at the hotel and brought it home, but one witness claimed to have seen Bathurst walking towards the building the evening he disappeared. Bathurst’s trousers were soon found in a wooded area about five kilometers from the city. In his trousers was an unfinished letter to Bathurst’s wife, in which he expressed his fear that he would not return home to England.
There were rumors that French soldiers had kidnapped Bathurst, but the government denied the allegations. In 1862, a skeleton was found under a house that once belonged to an employee of the White Swan Inn. The remains could not be identified as Benjamin Bathurst, and therefore his disappearance has remained an unsolved mystery for more than 200 years.
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