Disappearances that never were
In Flipside 31 Rachel Ragg probes some of the weirdest disappearances in history. But sometimes the stories of mysterious vanishings she came across turned out to be just that – stories. Here’s some of the most popular non-disappearances.
 Anything involving the Bermuda Triangle
Although it’s said that countless people, ships and planes have mysteriously vanished in this area, the number of wrecks in this area is not extraordinary, just average for the global ocean. Moreover, there’s no scientific evidence of any unusual phenomena supposedly involved in the disappearances.
The Fifth Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment
Following fighting at Gallipoli in Turkey in 1915, the Fifth Battalion apparently disappeared off the battlefield into a loaf-shaped cloud. An early UFO abduction? Spoiling the story are the remains of bodies found just after the war. It was Turkish guns and artillery that did for the unfortunate soldiers, with their notorious prison camps claiming any survivors.
Picnic at Hanging Rock
The 1967 story about three girls and a teacher who vanish during a school picnic in the Australian Outback is precisely that: a story. People seem to assume it’s true because of the 1975 film version, marketed as ‘based on a true story’. The Blair Witch Project used the same trick a quarter of a century later, hopefully there aren’t too many people who think that movie is real.
The Stonehenge Disappearance
Hippies have been associated with Stonehenge for a long time. They rioted there during the 1980s, and from a previous decade comes a tale of a group of hippies who vanished dead away while camping between the stones. The story goes that in 1971 the hippies pitched tents at the very centre of the monument, taking cover from a gathering thunderstorm. Supposedly a farmer and policeman who just happened to be out on Salisbury Plain witnessed lightning bolts slash down upon the stones, then the entire monument glowed with an uncanny blue light. They ran to the site, expecting to see people injured by the lightning strikes, but hippies and tents alike had completely disappeared. The story is widespread, but the witnesses have since vanished to, and there is no evidence of missing persons reports or other paperwork – not even names.
An entire Eskimo village
The fur trapper walked into the lakeside village expecting a bustling community. But the paths and lanes were silent and empty – except for a blackened stew still cooking over a stove. Joe Labelle’s 1930 account of an 2000-strong Eskimo village that vanished without trace has attained urban legend status, despite having long since been exposed as a fraud.
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