- One of the scariest things
that can happen to a loved one is to find out that they've disappeared. But what's even scarier is to discover that someone has actually taken them. A staggering amount of
people go missing every year, taken and held captive
by a deranged individual. The following stories are
about to make you uneasy, because you will realize
that it could happen to you. Here are 10 missing people found
under creepy circumstances. Number 10 is Steven Stayner. During 1972, a seven-year-old
Californian boy named Steven Stayner was abducted. At the time, he was on
his way home after school. A predator named Kenneth
Parnell snatched young Steven before he could reach the
safety of his family home. He drove the boy 322
kilometers to a remote cabin where Parnell was living at the time. After harming Steven for eight years, in 1980, Parnell decided to
snatch another young boy. This time it was
five-year-old Timothy White. Steven was so horrified by this, not wanting such a young child
to go through what he had, he managed to escape Parnell's clutches, taking Timothy White with him. They managed to finally
reach a police station. Eight years after Steven Stayner had been abducted and presumed dead, he was finally reunited
with his family as a hero. Number nine is Timothy Carney. On September 20th, 2004, Timothy Carney was last
seen by his roommate in the apartment that they shared. After that, Timothy
disappeared without a trace. At first, police and other investigators suspected that foul
play was a possibility. His family were
understandably grief-stricken by Timothy's disappearance. However, in 2011, almost seven years to the
day since he had vanished, he was found alive and well. It appears that Timothy had joined a cult who had encouraged him to cut
all ties with his past life. Because of privacy laws,
the police were not allowed to make his whereabouts public, nor even let his family know exactly where he was
unless Timothy agreed. Unfortunately, he did not. All that they could say was
that they had found him, verified that he was alive, and the he was, physically
at least, still healthy. Number eight is Nguyen Thi Van. 16-year-old Nguyen Thi
Van lived in Vietnam. In 1992, she arrived home late one day. Her mother decided to punish
her and lock her outside. Angry, Nguyen did not wait around. She decided to go out with some friends and spend some time at a karaoke bar. At some point during the
night she encountered a woman who managed to trick
Nguyen and her friends into accompanying her
to a different location. There, the girls discovered
the horrible truth. The had, in fact, been abducted. Soon after, they discovered
that they were to become slaves. They were transported
against their will to China. There, the girls were forced to marry men aged between 70 and 80 years old. Nguyen lived in this state
of slavery for 21 years until she finally escaped and
made it back to her mother. Number seven is Gabriel Nagy. In January of 1987, Gabriel
Nagy vanished without a trace. He phoned his wife to let her know that he would be coming home for lunch, but he never appeared. His wife and two children
became anxious about his safety. The very next day, Gabriel's
car was found burnt on the side of a road
with no sign of a body. More than 20 years passed
before anyone found out what had happened to Gabriel. As it turns out, he had suffered a terrible head injury in a car crash and wandered away leaving
his memories behind. He had no knowledge of who he was until he was contacted by a police officer who believed him to be a missing person. Gabriel was eventually
reunited with his family, though many of his memories
remain to this day a blur. Number six is Shawn Hornbeck. Shawn Hornbeck disappeared
on October 6th, 2002. He had been riding his bike at the time, near his home in Richwoods, Missouri. He was abducted by a man
named Michael Devlin, who tied him up at his apartment and threatened Shawn that
if he tried to escape, or even tell anyone, Devlin
would harm Shawn's family. It wasn't until five years later that Shawn was finally found. The F.B.I. approached
Michael Devlin's apartment to serve an unrelated arrest warrant. However, when they saw
a white pickup truck outside the apartment building which matched a vehicle associated with another recent kidnapping, they broke in to his apartment. The agents and police
officers were shocked to find Shawn held prisoner there, along with Devlin's most recent hostage. The police soon learned that Devlin had passed Shawn off as his son. Number five are the
Ariel Castro kidnappings. Between 2002 and 2004, Ariel Castro kidnapped three young women and held them captive in
his Cleveland, Ohio, home. The three young women
were Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Georgina DeJesus. They lived as prisoners in
Castro's house until May of 2013. One of the women, Amanda Berry, managed to get to a bolted
door which led outside with her six-year-old daughter
who was also Castro's, though he had encouraged the child to call Amanda grandmother
instead of mother. When a neighbor heard Amanda
Berry's screams for help, he bashed a hole in the
door and Amanda fled. The police were then alerted to both Michelle and
Georgina's whereabouts where they were rescued. Ariel Castro was arrested and
sentenced to life in prison. He subsequently took his own life. Number four is Carlina White. Carlina White was a
23-year-old woman from Atlanta. She had a normal upbringing, but there was something about her family which seemed off to her. Something just didn't
add up about her birth. When Carlina was a teenager, she fell pregnant and asked her mother for her own birth
certificate for her records. When her mother couldn't produce one, she told Carlina that she had bought her from a drug addict when she was a baby. However, this still didn't ring true. After some research into missing children, Carlina realized that
she had been abducted. A DNA test confirmed that
she had been snatched from a hospital by her fake mother, who had dressed up as a nurse and walked out of the hospital with her. The kidnapper spent 12 years in prison, and Carlina was finally reunited with her biological family
23 years after being taken. Number three is Tanya Kach. Tanya Kach was born in
1981 in Pennsylvania. Just 15 years later, she was abducted and held
captive for 10 years. Tanya had been manipulated into thinking that she was running towards a new life. A security guard named Thomas
Hose had befriended her. He began an inappropriate
relationship with her, taking her out and encouraging
her to run away with him so that they could be together. In February of 1996, Thomas Hose used his age
and manipulative ways to finally get what he wanted. But it was far from
what Tanya had imagined. She was confined to a bedroom and had to use a bucket
to go to the toilet. Six years later, he had
brainwashed her enough that he would let her leave
the house occasionally. Back in the outside world, and realizing the
relationship was twisted, Tanya fled and finally put
Thomas Hose behind bars. Number two is Marina Chapman. In 1954, at the tender age
of just four years old, Marina Chapman was taken
from her Colombian village. No one is certain why
she was taken or by who. Not even Marina was sure, although she suspects that her kidnappers had intended to use her for ransom. But for some reason,
instead of killing her, Marina's kidnappers released
her into the jungle. Marina survived in the
jungle for the next 10 years until she was finally found by hunters. The only reason Marina survived
in such a harsh environment was that a troupe of capuchin
monkeys had adopted her. They taught her how to catch
animals with her hands. And after that, she was
able to feed herself. Her incredible story
remains a potent reminder that human beings are capable of surviving even in the most difficult circumstances. And number one is Elisabeth Fritzl. On August 28th, 1984, Austrian Josef Fritzl asked
his daughter Elisabeth to go down into the basement
to help him carry a door. The bitter irony is that
the door was the last piece of a prison room that Josef had built to keep the 18-year-old Elisabeth captive. For the next 24 years, Josef Fritzl had seven
children with his daughter. One died, and another three
were allowed to live upstairs in the house with Josef
and Elisabeth's mother, who was unaware of Josef's hidden room. Elisabeth's mother
believed her daughter had had the children and then abandoned them. Elisabeth kept three of her children in the dungeon her father had built. But in April of 2008,
Elisabeth was allowed to accompany one child to the hospital. The Fritzl's secret unraveled from there, and Elisabeth and her
children were finally freed from the brutality of her father.
