Unsolved Disappearances That Will Haunt You

Unsolved! It is a word that will inspire different reactions in different people. Some, who love a new mystery to dig into, might grow obsessed with each detail that does exist. Some, who prefer closure and riddles with solutions, will feel an itch in their brain every time they think of a scenario with no satisfactory conclusion. Others might tremble in fear (of experiencing such a tragedy) or sympathy (for those who have already been there).

Whatever the reaction, unsolved mysteries are an obsession for many people. But while unsolved murders are the obvious candidate for obsession and investigation, unsolved disappearances are perhaps even more mysterious and haunting. With a murder, the crime itself is clear: There is a body, and a murder has happened. But with disappearances, not even the crime itself is known. Was it a kidnapping? A murder? Was there even a crime at all? Did someone just run off? Were they under duress? Did they just want a new life? 

These are some of the strangest and most mysterious unsolved disappearances in history.

In December 1900, a ship landed at Eilean Mor, one of the seven islands of the Flannan Isles near Scotland, to drop off a lighthouse keeper and relieve one of the three currently stationed there. But ... there were no lighthouse keepers there to greet them. All three — Thomas Marshall, James Ducat, and Donald McArthur — were gone, and things at the lighthouse were ... not right. An untouched dinner was set on the table, and a nearby chair was overturned. The clocks were all stopped, and the lamps were prepared for lighting but were unlit. Two of the three men's coats were missing, and the doors and gate were tightly shut. Signs pointed to the men having been gone for about a week by the time their disappearance was discovered.

It was strictly against the rules for all three keepers to leave the lighthouse at the same time, and these were experienced men who wouldn't flout safety rules lightly. Investigators concluded they must have gone to secure a crane and been blown off a cliff or swept out to sea by an unexpected wave. And in fact, the final logs at the lighthouse did note storms so severe that the three seasoned mariners were crying and praying. On the other hand, there was no record anywhere else in the area of bad weather during this time period, and no bodies were ever found.

[Featured image by JJM via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 2.0]

Ambrose Bierce is probably the one person on this list more famous for what he did before he disappeared than for the disappearance itself. He was an author famous for his cynically satirical The Devil's Dictionary, which gives definitions such as "Politeness, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy," and supernatural stories such as "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "The Damned Thing." Alternatively, you might know him for writing the stories that inspired Season 1 of "True Detective."

When you combine his penchant for cynicism and the macabre with his history as a veteran of the Civil War, it may not entirely surprise you that he had what Time describes as a "morbid fascination with horror and death." This led to him making the pretty wild decision at age 71 to leave behind his life of boredom in the United States to witness Pancho Villa's Mexican revolution in 1913. He sent his cousin a super reassuring letter saying, "Good-bye — if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stars."

He was never heard from again once he set out for Mexico. Some believe he was killed in the siege of Ojinaga in 1914, while others believe it was all a ruse and he never went to Mexico at all, but ran off and died by suicide somewhere.

According to the St. Petersburg Times, Diane Augat disappeared in April 1998 in Pasco County, Florida, and was reported missing by her mother on Good Friday of that year. In the years before her disappearance, Augat had struggled with mental illness and addiction, and according to her mother, "was very trusting and liked men with money."

It's hard to say whether her issues or personal associations had something to do with her disappearance, but the things we do know are pretty disturbing. A few days after Augat went missing, she left a message on her mother's answering machine in which she can be heard saying, "Help, help!" followed by the sounds of a scuffle and someone saying, "Hey, gimme that" before hanging up. The caller ID simply said "Starlight" and when Augat's mother called the number back, there was no answer.

Two days after the phone call, the tip of Augat's middle finger was found on the side of the same highway she had last been seen walking down five days earlier. And then, a week after that, a bag of Augat's clothes were found neatly folded inside a bag that had been placed in a convenience store freezer. And according to the Charley Project, the day after the Times reported all that in 2000, another bag was found in another convenience store, this one a Ziploc bag full of makeup labeled "Diane."

The scary thing about most of these stories are the details we don't know. Who made that phone call? Where did the person run? Was there someone else in the house, or was this an accident or foul play? While there were cameras all over Columbus, Ohio's Ugly Tuna Saloona on April 1, 2006, that hasn't helped anyone discover the whereabouts of Brian Shaffer since he disappeared that day. In fact, the cameras show him going in the bar but never show him going out.

The recordings account for every other person in the bar, both entering and exiting. Shaffer is seen going in at 1:15 a.m., but he never comes out any of the exits. Searches through the bar, the adjacent alley, nearby trash cans, and the nearby river turned up nothing.

Despite a number of hoax tips, hope for Shaffer has been kept alive. His girlfriend would call his cell phone every night, and every night it would go straight to voicemail. One night about six months after his disappearance, however, it rang, pinging a cell tower just outside Columbus. This slim hope has been enough to keep his family and friends going, more than a decade later.

[Featured image by Carvalho.26 via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 4.0]

The disappearance of housewife Joan Risch from her home in Lincoln, Massachusetts, in 1961 is also unsolved and involves a not insignificant amount of blood, but there might be a chance it's not the result of a tragedy.

As reported by the Boston Globe, on the afternoon of October 24, 1961, Risch's 4-year-old daughter went to a neighbor and said, "Mommy is gone and the kitchen is covered with red paint." The paint was actually Risch's blood. Police also found the telephone ripped out of the wall and a bloody fingerprint that has never been identified. The blood trailed into the driveway, but no body or weapon was ever found.

Further investigation led the police to looking into Risch's borrowing history at the local library. It seems she had checked out and read a shocking 25 books that summer, most on a similar theme: unexplained disappearances. These books included one called "Into Thin Air" about a woman who went missing, leaving behind only blood smears and a towel. Could she have been researching before faking her own disappearance?

The chilling story of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 begins on March 8, 2014, when the aircraft took off from Kuala Lumpur headed for Beijing. Onboard were 239 souls, including passengers and crew, and everything seemed normal during take off just after midnight. However, things took a dark turn at 1:21 a.m.

It's unknown exactly what transpired in the cockpit, but the plane inexplicably stopped sending signals to the air traffic controllers and disappeared. The Malaysian military's radar tracked the plane flipping around to head southwest towards the deep of the Indian Ocean but eventually lost it. It still communicated a "keep-alive" signal for several hours after it left radar, but it never relayed a final location. It's thought that the plane made it roughly 400 miles before running out of fuel and crashing into the ocean, but that's far from definitive. Search crews combed the area, and within two years they had covered more than 45,000 square miles, but no significant trace of the plane has ever shown up.

The government's official report offered no concrete conclusions, and it's a complete mystery what happened to Flight 370 and the 239 people on board. Most people blame the pilot or his co-pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah and Fariq Abdul Hamid, respectively, but that's only speculation. Could the plane have been hijacked, or was there a mechanical failure? Did the 237 people outside of the cockpit even realize they were headed to their deaths? Sadly, the answers we'll likely never know.

Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan might just be the most famous unsolved disappearances in American lore. Earhart was a very important women in aviation history, known for her groundbreaking flights across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1937, Earhart and her navigator Noonan attempted to fly around the world, but tragedy befell them before they could complete the journey.

They began on May 20, 1937, in Oakland, and just over a month later all they had to do was cross the Pacific Ocean from southeast Asia back to California and they were finished. Earhart and Noonan departed from Papua New Guinea on July 2, aiming to land 2,500 miles away at Howland Island. However, when they were seemingly close, she cryptically radioed the Coast Guard that they were low on fuel and disoriented, and the world never heard from either her or Noonan again. The U.S. Navy immediately conducted a massive search effort, but even after looking more than ¼ of a million miles around Howland, they never found a trace (via The New York Times).

It's thought that the aviators could not locate Howland and circled until they ran out of fuel, finally crashing into the ocean. It's hard to imagine how they may have felt as the fuel gauge dwindled while they desperately scoured for any signs of the island, and it's heartbreaking to think about. Without bodies, we'll never know their ultimate fate, however gruesome it may have been.

For parents, few things are as gut-wrenching or terrifying as losing a child, but that's an unfortunate reality that Lauren Spierer's parents have been dealing with since 2011. At the time of her disappearance, Spierer was a student at the University of Indiana, but she had recently been in trouble with the law for public intoxication. On June 3, 2011, Spierer met some friends at a local bar — she had to use a fake ID due to being under 21 — where she drank enough to leave without either her shoes or phone, and she was reportedly falling down.

Eventually, she made it to the home of an acquaintance but left after he passed out. Her fate after leaving the apartment barefoot and phoneless is unknown, and some disturbing theories have arisen. Back at Spierer's residence, authorities found cocaine, leaving some to believe she was heinously kidnapped and killed as part of a drug debt to a local biker gang. There is also a theory that a released convict may have taken her as she walked intoxicated down the street and another saying she overdosed on ecstasy and alcohol and was callously tossed in the Ohio River.

For Spierer's parents, the worst part is not knowing what happened, or how she spent her potential final moments. In an effort to find their daughter, they hired private detectives and worked with the FBI cold case department, but they have still come up agonizingly empty-handed. 

For more than 65 years, the mystery of the ship the MV Joyita has confused and befuddled many. The Joyita set sail on October 3, 1955, heading out from Western Samoa to the Tokelau Islands. The ship had 25 people on board including crew, but when it was found a month later it was completely deserted. It was finally located nearly 600 miles in the wrong direction by a passing merchant vessel the "Tuvalu."

When the Tuvalu's crew boarded the Joyita they found the ship was empty of any life, as well as of lifeboats, rafts, food — except a refrigerator full of meat — ship logs, a sextant, radios, compasses, or really anything useful. It's unclear why the passengers left the ship, though it's potentially because of engine failure which would have left them drifting aimlessly at sea. Other theories include pirates, a collision with a larger boat, or being thrown overboard by an earthquake. One particularly disturbing one has the 25 passengers and crew deliberately sinking the boat in order to escape their old lives and begin new ones in another country.

The most logical speculation is that the engine was taking on water, leaving those onboard no chance but to abandon ship. They may have incorrectly thought that emergency help was on the way, opting to wait in the lifeboats and rafts for rescuers who would never come. No trace of the Joyita's passengers or crew have ever turned up, and their fate is still unknown.

A former track sensation at the University of Wyoming, Amy Wroe Bechtel has been missing since July 24, 1997. Just 24 years old at the time of her disappearance, Bechtel went running that afternoon in the Shoshone National Forest in central Wyoming. When she did not turn up after, authorities initially thought she may have become lost in the dense forest, which is populated by large animals, but things quickly turned more sinister.

Search-and-rescuers could not find a trace of Bechtel anywhere, and there were contradictory reports about her whereabouts prior to running. Authorities found her car near a trail, but couldn't even confirm whether or not she had been the one to actually drive it there. They soon suspected foul play was involved. Her husband refused to take a polygraph test, much to the ire of authorities and Bechtel's family, and his alibi could not be immediately confirmed by investigators. He was named a suspect by authorities, and her family became skeptical of his innocence.

The Bechtel family put up fliers with a reward going up to $100,000, but no one has ever been able to tell them what happened that day. The possibilities surrounding her vanishment are endless, and many of them are grim. If authorities are right and she was potentially kidnapped, there's no telling where she may be today decades later, or if she's even alive. Bechtel's family will likely never have full closure over their daughter's disappearance, and it's heartbreaking still today.

The dark story of Anthonette Cayedito's disappearance is as disturbing as it is chilling and tragic. Cayedito was just a 9-year-old girl when she disappeared without a trace on April 6, 1986, from her home in Gallup, New Mexico. Sometime very early in the morning, a stranger knocked on the door to their apartment. With her mother asleep, Cayedito decided to answer it herself, and it's thought that she was kidnapped when she did. 

As soon as she woke and discovered her daughter was missing, Cayedito's mother called the police and they started a manhunt to scour the area, but it was unsuccessful and the trail went cold. A year later, a young girl identifying herself as Cayedito called the local police department. They said they had been kidnapped and were still in the state, then abruptly hung up after being scolded by an angry male voice. But it's unclear how authentic the phone call really was. 

Even 30 years later, the case was still considered open and active by Gallup police, though no significant leads appear to have recently come out. In 2023, the FBI released an age-progressed photo of Cayedito hoping to find new leads (via Albuquerque Journal). Cayedito's disappearance is undoubtedly one of the most tragic and disconcerting in recent memory, and we can only hope she is ultimately okay.