There have been many groups of people who have disappeared on their journey. Historians and scientists have tried over the years to find out why some of these people disappeared or how they were dealt with. Some of these events have become famous while others didn’t attract that much notoriety at the time. Then there are the events which are famous in one country, but not in another. People have been disappearing in mysterious ways ever since the beginning of time and probably plenty of them disappeared before the written word was invented, so there is no record of these people at all. In this country one of the most famous groups of people that disappeared was the colony of Roanoke. In 1587 a man named John White left the colony and sailed back to England. He had a hard time getting back, because England had gone to war with Spain and he couldn’t get a ship to take him back to the colony for quite some time. When he did get back the entire colony had disappeared without a trace, this included his wife, his daughter and his granddaughter, Virginia Dare who was the first English child born in the new world. Historians have been trying to figure out what happened ever since.

A Brazilian village named Hoer Verde had something very strange happen to it in 1923. First I want to tell you the population of this village was over six hundred people, this is important to know. All of these people disappeared and the village became deserted. Nobody knows what happened to them or where they went. The village was searched for clues and the only things which were found was a gun which seem to have been fired and a note with only four words on it which stated “there is no salvation”. Investigators in Brazil still want to know what happened to these people, but they have never been able to find out even after intense investigations.

One of the most mysterious stories takes place in Russia. It is a little different than the first two since it involves nine skiers who didn’t actually disappear, but were all killed mysteriously. In 1959 nine skiers were headed through the Ural Mountains. They were all from the Ural Polytechnic Institute. I don’t know if this had anything to do with their murders or not. They had established their camp on the slope of Kholat Syakhi. We know something happened that night because some of them actually tore their way out of their tents which were later found. They tried to flee the site even though some of them were still in their underwear. Soviet authorities determined six of the people died from overexposure, but the others showed signs of trauma. One victim had brain damage, but didn’t show any distress to the skull at all. One female member of the group had her tongue missing. The third one had a fractured skull. The Soviet investigators concluded an unknown compelling force had caused the deaths. This caused the Soviets to close the area to hikers for three years. To this day nobody knows exactly what happened, but there are many theories which range from a non-natural event to some kind of military intervention.

When I said people have been turning up missing since the beginning of time I wasn’t kidding. Take the case of the Roman Ninth Legion. The ninth Legion become the most feared military unit in the Roman Army in the second century A.D. it had been in existence since 65 B.C. It contains more than four thousand soldiers. The unit was sent to Scotland and was there for a couple of years before it disappeared without a trace. No records have ever been found which show the unit was ever transferred anywhere else. Some believe the Scots murdered the Ninth Legion, but there is absolutely no proof of this. No archaeological evidence has ever been found to support any of the common theories.

There are many stories about people disappearing off of ships. Some are noteworthy, because of the conditions the ships were left in. I am talking about ships where nothing was taken, but everybody disappeared. One of these ships was the Mary Celeste, a hundred foot long ship which had left New York. It had been discovered eight days later in December of 1872 floating four hundred miles east of the Azores by the British ship Dei Gratia. What made this such a strange find was the fact there was no one on the ship and yet nothing was missing and there was still a six month supply of food. There was a missing lifeboat however. At the time people thought it was a pirate attack, but that certainly wasn’t the case, because pirates would have taken things. In the ships hold were barrels of alcohol which no doubt had a value, but was still there. Many theories have been put forward, but the most famous theory is from the Smithsonian which concluded, without proof, the passengers and crew went into the lifeboat within sight of Santa Maria Island, but the boat capsized and they all drowned. The real question is why would a captain and his crew along with passengers leave a fully functional ship?

It was the year 1900. The Hesperus set sail for the island of Eilean Mor. The ship contained a replacement crew for the Flannan lighthouse. The Flannan lighthouse was located on an island which was off the coast of Scotland. A three-man crew was stationed in the lighthouse. Bad weather had delayed the replacement crew from reaching the lighthouse, but eventually they made it. When they got there they noticed that no preparations had been made for their arrival and that none of the lighthouse keepers came to the dock to welcome them. When the crew reached the lighthouse they were not able to find anybody, the three-man crew of the lighthouse had vanished without a trace. No one else lived on the island, but there was a chapel which had been built in the seventh century which did attract visitors. A legend had grown stating paranormal forces were at work on the island. One of the most famous theories is the three lighthouse keepers were swept into the ocean by a rogue wave, but there is absolutely no evidence of this.

Another famous case of a large group of people disappearing occurred in World War I. It is known as the lost battalion. The soldiers of E company all knew each other very well. The reason for this was they all belonged to the staff of the Royal Estate at Sandringham. Rank was determined by social standing. In the afternoon of August 12, 1915 they were in the middle of their first battle in the Dardanelles campaign. They charged the Turkish army, but then they all disappeared without a trace. They simply vanished and no one knew what happened to them, not even the enemy. The last time they were seen was when they were charging into a forest. Even King George V was not able to obtain any information about what happened. Every agency was contacted and the Turks checked all the concentration camps but to no avail. After the war had ended the War Graves Commission searched the battlefield, but none of them were ever found even in graves.