Strange Disappearances There are all kinds of strange disappearances happening and many leave no explanation. Most of the time its people who disappear and sometimes they even disappear while people are looking at them. Admittedly, this doesn’t happen very much, but it has been recorded a few times. There are some places where people go missing more often than others and the state which has the most missing people is Alaska. It is also the biggest state, and one with the harshest conditions overall. There are so many mountains, valleys and crevices, it is practically impossible to find missing people. Out of every 100,000, over 163 people go missing. Some UFO investigators think it is easier for extraterrestrials to perform abductions because of the seclusion of the areas to be searched. Others are more down to earth and think it is just easier to get lost and many die trying to find their way back. There is another way of looking at this problem however. It is by the number of missing people on average, which produces different results. California has on average 2,133 missing people a year. It is true the state has a huge population. Alaska has a population of about 733,536 people while California has a population of about 39.5 million people. It only seems rational the bigger the population, the more people go missing. This is not always true. New York is number four in population, yet it is number 6 in missing people. Somehow Arizona is the state with the fourth most missing people averaging 915 per year out of a population of a little over 7 million people while New York has a population of over 19 million people but only 5.5 per hundred thousand go missing per year. I find this astounding. You would have to go to the 13 most populated state to find a state with a lesser amount of missing people by percentage. If we look at the numbers a different way, by amount, New York still has less than the top five states even though it is number 4 in population. What does disappear mean? Could it be some people moved away and this just was not registered? Maybe they died somewhere and are yet to be found? As some of the old movies showed, maybe they lost the memory of who they were? There could be so many reasons. The numbers of the lost people are probably far lower than they really are. I say this because to be lost, people have to know you were here in the first place and there could be many illegal aliens who get lost and no one ever knows about them. Take for example those sneaking into the country. Some of them may be hiding out and die from several different causes including disease or murder and no one ever finds out. I have a special case I have talked about before, but it is so fascinating I have to mention it again. A farmer in the late 1800s was walking across his field while his family watched him getting closer. They were sitting on the porch of the farm house and as they watched he literally disappeared before their eyes and they never saw him again. That isn’t the end of the story. In the middle of the 20th century a man appeared in the middle of traffic and was hit by a car and killed. He was wearing antique clothing and the money he had on him was no newer than the late 1800s. He was identified by the labels in his clothes and by other means at the farmer who disappeared almost 100 years ago. Sometimes when people disappear, they are victims of crimes. Recently body parts were found in a park on Long Island, New York. This was a heinous crime and seemed to be the work of a mad person. As bad as this was at least the parts were able to be identified and bring some sort of closure to the relatives. There are plenty of disappearances where it is obvious a crime was committed, but a body is never found. In 1961 a woman disappeared from her kitchen. Blood was found on the floor, but the woman was never found. Can you imagine what this family went through for years? Perhaps one of the most puzzling disappearances in modern times was the flight numbered as 370 from Malaysia Airlines. There were 239 people on board and the plane disappeared. Later a few pieces of debris were found, but never any bodies, or the reason for the plane crashing into the ocean. There have been all sorts of theories about this and one I heard had to do with one of the pilots committing suicide by crashing the plane, but this is just a guess. Unfortunately, there are quite a few cases of people who become missing after being on a cruise. There was one case I remember where a husband and wife took a cruise. The wife disappeared and the police suspected the husband threw her overboard. I don’t think they were able to prove anything. There are two cases which are the most famous missing persons cases in America. No there are actually three when I think about it. They are Jimmy Hoffa, Amelia Earhart and D.B. Cooper. Jimmy Hoffa was a union president who got on the wrong side of the mob. He was warned by them to carry their water but refused. In 1975 he disappeared and over the years various people have claimed to know where his body was. One legend states his body is buried under the old football Giants stadium. One thing the mob was famous for was getting rid of bodies by dumping them into acid vats, such as those in chrome plating factories. The police did a lot of digging in this case, literally. Amelia Earhart took off in a special plane with her navigator. She set many records for a female pilot. She was the first woman pilot to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1937 she decided to try and become the first woman pilot to fly around the world. She had a lot of confidence in her custom-built Lockheed Model 10-E Electra. She had a stop to make on an island on the way and it is thought she was never able to find it, ran out of fuel, and crashed into the ocean. She was never found, although from time to time it was thought evidence might have been found. D.B. Cooper was a low echelon crook who decided one day he could hijack a plane, and demand a ransom by claiming to have a bomb. He forced his plane to land after demanding $200,000 be waiting for him with parachutes. After the plane took off again, he jumped out, never to be seen again.
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