Great Disappearances

[Scorpio]

This is also a fitting mystery. So would the missing crews (but not the ships themselves) of the "Mary Celeste" and the "Carroll Deeming".

I believe that the ' Mary Celeste mystery ' has been solved to a satisfying degree. The Mary Celeste was found with its hatch open, its crew missing, its lifeboat missing, and the hauser snapped. Its not so inexplicable when you consider its cargo( industrial Alcohol) and its primitive form of containment ( wooden barrells in a poorly ventillated hold ).
A crewman smells alcohol.
A leak is suspected, and an imminent fire risk is prioritised.
Crew launch lifeboat with crew aboard to wait untill fire hazard has passed and the hold ventillated ( the Captains family was aboard, so he may have been overly zealous).
Before the crew can return, the hauser snaps.
A tragedy but not a mystery.

[Mayerling]

One or two other disappearances that so far as I'm aware have never been resolved:

- Disappearance of Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt in 1967
- Disappearance of yachtsman Don Crowhurst 1968-69
- The 'original and genuine' Rudolf Hess if the man who died in Spandau Prison in 1987 was, as many claim, an imposter planted by the British.

Graham

Hi Graham,

Holt appears to have drowned swimming near the Great Barrier Reef, but his body was never recovered.

Crowhurst's yacht was recovered with his journals - a book was based on them - and he was faking record speeds to win a "'round the world" race by yacht. It appears he was affected by prolonged isolation in the shipping lanes, and lost his mind. Most believe he committed suicide.

The Hess "mystery" seems quite spurious. Most likely it was the same man. I tend to find that it is one of these "what are they hiding" stories where the people who bring them up having private political agendas - here a suggestion that Churchill and his staff were trying to make a separate peace in 1941, found it impossible, and killed the real Hess, and that this was continually covered up until the "fake Hess" was about to be released in the late 1980s. Of course this overlooks how Goering, Von Ribbentrop, Kaltenbruner, Frick, Frank, etc. would have accepted the fake Hess at Nuremburg without revealing their discovery to the world (and the Russians would not have hesitated to accept such a discovery being revealed in 1946). Moreover why would anyone care about a fake Hess in 1987 and it's political ramifications regarding Churchill's actions in 1941, when Churchill was dead since 1965? In his own lifetime actions of Churchill's own making (the planning for Gallipoli, for example) hurt his reputation. This was supposed to? My guess is the "fake Hess" revelation is a neo-Nazi concoction: "How can you believe what they say we did with the concentration camps if this is what they did in 1941 to the Fuhrer's troubled deputy on a peace mission?" Of course we are to forget Hitler condemned Hess as soon as he learned what he did. Ironically the real beneficiary of the peace mission was Hess - he was not on hand when the "final solution" and most of the war crimes occurred - it saved him at Nuremburg.

Getting back to Holt, there was another mysterious disappearance in Australian political history in the 1920s. One of the opponents of Thomas Ley, the notorious politician, businessman, and murderer, vanished while on board a ship going to some meeting. Several of Ley's political/economic enemies died under mysterious circumstances before the New South Wales' Minister (for Justice, of all things!) left for England, where he eventually was sent to Broadmoor for his share in a murder he ordered in 1946.

Jeff

[PaulB]

A fascinating disappearance is that of Paula Welden. A bit like Dorothy Arnold and Judge Crater.

[Harry D]

There was an extraordinary case back in the 1912, about a young boy called Bobby Dunbar who went missing on a fishing trip with his father. Some months later an itinerant worker called William Walters was seen travelling with a boy matching Bobby's description. Bobby's family were adamant it was their son, while Walters insisted that the child was son of a woman the next town over, Julia Anderson, who'd given him custody of the boy.

Long story short, the Dunbar family filed a kidnapping charge against Walters which ruled in favour of the Dunbars and returned the boy to his family. However, it was only in 2004, through DNA testing, that one of Bobby Dunbar's descendants proved that the boy raised as "Bobby Dunbar" was not the same boy who went missing in 1912! The grief-stricken family had convinced themselves that Julia Anderson's son was their own, whilst Anderson herself had been deprived of her own flesh and blood, and the fate of the real Bobby Dunbar remains a mystery to this day. A truly tragic tale all round.

[Graham]

One or two other disappearances that so far as I'm aware have never been resolved:

- Disappearance of Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt in 1967
- Disappearance of yachtsman Don Crowhurst 1968-69
- The 'original and genuine' Rudolf Hess if the man who died in Spandau Prison in 1987 was, as many claim, an imposter planted by the British.

Graham

[Mayerling]

Hello again, Jeff.

I wouldn't mind taking a look, if you have the link?

I don't have the link anymore, but look up the websites for the "Maine" on the internet.

Jeff

[Harry D]

Hi Harry,

There was one curiosity I have seen on the internet in the last decade that if true is a photograph of a disaster with a mystery to it. There was a site concerning the battleship "Maine" and it's destruction. There was a fuzzy but viewable photo of the Maine burning with it's wreckage settling into Havana harbor. If genuine it is a unique photo.

Jeff

Hello again, Jeff.

I wouldn't mind taking a look, if you have the link?

[Mayerling]

[QUOTE=Harry D;316310]


Thanks, Jeff. Some interesting cases there which I haven't heard about before. Just goes to show that even back then people couldn't resist documenting a good disaster.



Hi Harry,

There was one curiosity I have seen on the internet in the last decade that if true is a photograph of a disaster with a mystery to it. There was a site concerning the battleship "Maine" and it's destruction. There was a fuzzy but viewable photo of the Maine burning with it's wreckage settling into Havana harbor. If genuine it is a unique photo.

Jeff

[Harry D]

Just speculation, but I wonder if he was losing hope of being rescued, and wanted his parents to have a last picture?

I don't know, Ginger, do you think a young kid's mentality would work like that? Maybe he was taking the photo to leave a clue of his current whereabouts, in case the camera was lost, or he purposely left it there for them to find?

Not quite the same thing but it reminds me of how the experts on Mount Everest show more interest in finding Andrew Irvine's camera (hopefully with the film in it still developable) rather than his body. They did find Mallory's body over a decade ago, but the camera might settle the issue of whether George Mallory did indeed reach the summit in 1924.

As for missing camera film that is subsequently found - best example are the pictures of Saloman Andree and his two companions in the 1897 balloon flight from Spitsbergen to the Arctic circle (the intention was to get to the North Pole). Despite some messages the balloon and it's three aeronauts "disappeared", and their remains were not found until 1933 on White Island in the north of the Soviet Union/Russia. The film was found in the camera, and some of the pictures (including one of the crashed balloon) were developed.

If you really want to consider a long shot (at this point - 99 years) read A.A. and Mary Hoehling's book "The Last Voyage of the Lusitania" (1958), where they mention some movie cameraman on the sinking liner was taking film of the panic-stricken passengers and the sinking deck, insisting these were "the greatest pictures ever!" Naturally he did not survive, and the camera and it's contents never turned up (would it have survived under water? I doubt it!).

Thanks, Jeff. Some interesting cases there which I haven't heard about before. Just goes to show that even back then people couldn't resist documenting a good disaster.

Of course if it was a good old Box Brownie they were pretty easy to take an accidental photo with.

I did consider an accidental photo. According to those who've seen it, though, Jared was holding the camera away from himself at arm's length as if posing for a picture. Really bummed that I can't find it to judge for myself.

[GUT]

On the subject of aliens a few posts back, a 19th century observer told people that this strange being appeared to him 'wearing a frockcoat'. Nice to know that creatures from other galaxies keep up with the fashions on earth!

What just because they are aliens they should be bogans.

[Rosella]

On the subject of aliens a few posts back, a 19th century observer told people that this strange being appeared to him 'wearing a frockcoat'. Nice to know that creatures from other galaxies keep up with the fashions on earth!

[GUT]

Indeed, Paul, although I'd argue he was scared rather than bored, being left alone in the middle of the wilderness, like that. I'm betting that wasn't Scout Law! It's amazing that they were able to retrieve his camera so soon into the search but haven't been able to find any trace of Jared since.

Also, what was the deal with the "selfie"? They weren't exactly the rage back in 1991, so why did he decide to photograph himself? Apparently it was taken at nighttime when Jared was separated from the troop. From what I've read the photo itself is quite haunting but for the life of me I cannot find it online.

Of course if it was a good old Box Brownie they were pretty easy to take an accidental photo with.

[Mayerling]

Indeed, Paul, although I'd argue he was scared rather than bored, being left alone in the middle of the wilderness, like that. I'm betting that wasn't Scout Law! It's amazing that they were able to retrieve his camera so soon into the search but haven't been able to find any trace of Jared since.

Also, what was the deal with the "selfie"? They weren't exactly the rage back in 1991, so why did he decide to photograph himself? Apparently it was taken at nighttime when Jared was separated from the troop. From what I've read the photo itself is quite haunting but for the life of me I cannot find it online.

Not quite the same thing but it reminds me of how the experts on Mount Everest show more interest in finding Andrew Irvine's camera (hopefully with the film in it still developable) rather than his body. They did find Mallory's body over a decade ago, but the camera might settle the issue of whether George Mallory did indeed reach the summit in 1924.

As for missing camera film that is subsequently found - best example are the pictures of Saloman Andree and his two companions in the 1897 balloon flight from Spitsbergen to the Arctic circle (the intention was to get to the North Pole). Despite some messages the balloon and it's three aeronauts "disappeared", and their remains were not found until 1933 on White Island in the north of the Soviet Union/Russia. The film was found in the camera, and some of the pictures (including one of the crashed balloon) were developed.

If you really want to consider a long shot (at this point - 99 years) read A.A. and Mary Hoehling's book "The Last Voyage of the Lusitania" (1958), where they mention some movie cameraman on the sinking liner was taking film of the panic-stricken passengers and the sinking deck, insisting these were "the greatest pictures ever!" Naturally he did not survive, and the camera and it's contents never turned up (would it have survived under water? I doubt it!).

Jeff

[Ginger]

Also, what was the deal with the "selfie"? They weren't exactly the rage back in 1991, so why did he decide to photograph himself?

Just speculation, but I wonder if he was losing hope of being rescued, and wanted his parents to have a last picture?

[Ginger]

Another spooky case from Ohio is that of Melvin Horst. He was four years old, and had been playing with some friends in a vacant lot near his house, just after Christmas of 1928. He left them to go home for dinner, and never arrived. The toy he'd had with him while playing with his friends was found in the front yard of his house (some sources say on the front porch), so whatever happened to him happened when he was just a few steps from safety.

The case generated an unusual amount of attention, and resulted in a dramatic sequence of accusations, arrests, an overturned conviction, and much ensuing drama.

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/h/horst_melvin.html