Gone But Not Forgotten
Claire Cameron
You probably remember and sometimes reminisce about silly little sayings you and your friends would utter when you were out having fun. One I thought exceptionally witty came to mind recently. After listening to a buddy ramble on until it became annoying, another friend might say, “Why don’t you do that trick for us?”
The talkative kid would then ask, “What trick?”
In return we’d holler, “Open up your mouth and disappear!” Peals of laughter would follow until everyone except the recipient would be rolling in the grass snorting to the point of tears.
When this amusing memory came to my mind the other day, I suddenly thought about instances where people or objects actually did seem to disappear without reason, such as:
- Brenda Heist (2002): A mother from Pennsylvania disappeared without warning, abandoning her husband and two children. While many feared she was murdered—and she was eventually declared legally dead—Heist turned herself in to authorities in Key Largo, Florida, in 2013. She revealed that she had walked out on her life to live as a transient, often sleeping in tents and scavenging for food.
- Steven Kubacki (1978): A college student vanished during a solo cross-country skiing trip near Lake Michigan. His belongings and a one-way trail of footprints were found in the snow, leading authorities to assume he had fallen into the freezing water. Fifteen months later, he reappeared on his parents’ doorstep initially claiming he had no memory of the lost time. He later detailed his experience in a memoir.
- Elizabeth Smart (2002): One of the most prominent abduction cases in modern history occurred when a 14-year-old girl was taken from her bedroom in Salt Lake City, Utah. She was held captive and subjected to horrific abuse for nine years before she was recognized and rescued in 2003.
And then there are stories of the disappearances of ships carrying passengers and crew that were even more mysterious than those involving only humans.
The Merchant Royal, an English vessel that sank in 1641, off Land’s End in Cornwall, England, was a trade ship carrying a cargo of gold and silver believed to be worth millions in today’s money. Amateur treasure hunters and marine archeologists looked for it without success. A search operation by Odyssey Marine Exploration in 2007, uncovered a wreckage, but coins from the site suggested they’d discovered a Spanish frigate rather than the much-prized Merchant Royal. In 2019 the ship’s anchor was retrieved from the waters off Cornwall, but the ship itself has yet to be located.
The Mary Celeste is known as the greatest maritime mystery of all time. She didn’t disappear, but her crew and passengers did. She was declared a ‘ghost’ ship spotted by a Canadian brigantine on December 4, 1872, unmanned, sailing off the Azores in seaworthy condition. It was determined she’d already been sailing for a month with over six months of food and water still on board. Her cargo was virtually untouched. and the personal belongings of crew and passengers, including valuables, were still there. Theories suggest that the crew died after embarking in a lifeboat. They might have feared that the ship’s cargo was about to explode since they were transporting barrels of alcohol.
In 1942, U.S. Navy blimp L-8 returned from patrol without anyone aboard. The crew had vanished. The “ghost blimp” was found to be in total working order and none of the parachutes or life rafts had been taken. The fate of the crew remains a mystery.
Many believe that thousands, possibly tens of thousands of ships remain unaccounted for although technological advancements and archeological techniques have led to the discovery of several historically significant shipwrecks.
