The Dyatlov Pass Incident, the Black
Dahlia murder, the real identity of the Zodiac Killer. The world is filled with
unsolved mysteries to keep us up at night, turning possibilities over in our heads. But
some of the most disturbing mysteries out there are the stories of ordinary
people vanishing into thin air. Maybe they went for a hike, or a bike
ride. Maybe they went on a cruise. Or perhaps they were simply spending a quiet
night alone at home. Whatever the reason, they disappeared and were never seen again.
We always assume it could never happen to us, but then again… didn't the missing people
likely assume the exact same thing? It's the stuff of nightmares, these unsolved
disappearances, and yet we just can't seem to look away. We theorize, we investigate, and
we compile lists into YouTube videos. Today, we're delving deep into some of the most
disturbing stories of people going missing. If you've ever been up late at night, perusing
lists of the most disturbing real images ever captured on film, chances are you've seen
a photograph of a young woman and a boy, bound and gagged with black tape over their
mouths, but you may not know the context. This haunting image has been connected to
the disappearance of a young woman named Tara Calico. It was the morning of September
20, 1988, and 19-year-old Tara Calico left her home in Valencia County, New Mexico, to go for
a bike ride. She took the same route every day along New Mexico State Road 47. Tara's mother,
Patty, sometimes rode with her, but after an incident with a car driving aggressively close
to her, Patty had been leaving Tara to take the ride by herself. She suggested that Tara bring
some mace with her for self-defense, but Tara didn't think she needed it. After all, she'd been
taking that same route for years with no issues. As she left, Tara joked to her mother that she
had better come out and look for her if she wasn't back by noon. After all, she had a tennis
date with her boyfriend at 12:30 and didn't want to miss it. It was only a joke, but when noon
rolled around, Tara was still not home. She had disappeared in broad daylight on the route
she had biked for years. Patty drove up and down the route that afternoon, searching for any sign
of the missing girl, but couldn't find a thing. She called the police, and a search party was put
together, but neither her bike nor Tara herself were found. A few witnesses remembered seeing
Tara, and a couple recalled a light-colored pickup truck driving down the road at the same
time, but no one saw any signs of foul play. The only signs that Tara had ever been there
at all were pieces of her broken walkman, along with a cassette tape,
found on the ground. At first, police suspected that the girl was a runaway.
But according to John Doel, Tara's stepfather, as well as Patty, Tara was a happy girl
with no reason to do something like that. The couple were heartbroken, waiting for
any evidence that might lead them to Tara. On June 15, 1989, nearly nine months after Tara
first vanished, an unlikely and disturbing clue surfaced. A Polaroid picture was found in a
convenience store parking lot in Port St. Joe, Florida, 1500 miles from where Tara
had been riding her bike. In the photo, a teenage girl and young boy were lying on sheets
and a pillow, bound and with duct tape over their mouths. The woman who found the picture called the
police and described a white Toyota van that had been parked in the spot before she arrived. Its
driver was a man in his thirties with a mustache. Police attempted to catch the vehicle
with a roadblock but could not find it or its driver. The photograph
quickly gained national prominence, and caught the attention of friends of
Patty, who believed it could be Tara. There was some debate as to whether or
not the girl in the photograph was Tara, but certain details led Patty to believe that
it was. The girl had a discolored streak on her thigh, just like a scar Tara had gotten in a
car accident. There was a V.C. Andrews paperback next to her, one of Tara's favorite writers.
Authorities weighed in next and were divided on the subject. The Los Alamos National
Laboratory did not believe it was Tara, while the FBI could not reach a definitive
conclusion. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard in the United Kingdom agreed that the girl in the
photo was Tara. No matter who the girl in the photo was, the picture had certainly been taken
recently, no later than May of that same year. Soon after, the young boy in the Polaroid was
identified as nine-year-old Michael Henley, whose family came forward. Michael disappeared
while on a hunting trip with his father in New Mexico in April 1988. Now, his family was
convinced their son was in this photo. However, in 1990, Michael's body was found
seven miles from the campsite where he disappeared. He had died from exposure
before the Polaroid had even been taken. To this day, Tara Calico's disappearance
remains unsolved. In 2008, the Valencia County Sheriff claimed to know what had
happened to Tara. He said that two men, teenagers at the time, were following Tara
on her bike when an accident occurred. In a panic, they disposed of her body and
covered it up. However, with no body, no arrest could be made. There has been
little to support these claims since 2008. Over the years, some additional Polaroid
photographs have appeared, which could have depicted Tara Calico. One, a blurry photo
of a girl's face with tape over the mouth, found near a construction site in Montecito,
California, and taken sometime after May 1989, compelled Patty. She believed this could be an
additional image of her daughter. The other, a picture of a woman sitting next to a man on an
Amtrak train, bound and with her eyes covered, was taken around February of 1990. Patty
did not believe this photo to be of Tara. More than thirty years after her disappearance,
Tara's case remains unsolved, with nothing to go on other than a smattering of uncertain
evidence and a haunting Polaroid picture. In June of 2023, however, there was a ray
of light through all these exceedingly dark clouds. The Valencia County Sheriff’s Office
announced they’d made a break in the case, with Sheriff Denise Vigil saying, “At this time,
law enforcement believes there is sufficient evidence to submit this investigation
to the district attorney's office for review of potential charges. Currently, the
identities and specifics of the persons of interest are sealed by the court and will
remain so until a court order otherwise.” We’re still waiting for updates on that one. When we think of disappearances, we tend to assume
that they occurred somewhere remote. The dense forests of a national park or a ship in the middle
of the ocean. But sometimes, someone can vanish from within the walls of a place that millions of
people consider holy, sacred, and presumably safe. Emanuela Orlandi, the fifteen-year-old daughter
of a Vatican official, left home to attend her flute lesson on June 22, 1983. She reached class
safely and called her sister after it ended, but she never made it back home. She
was declared missing the next day, and the search began for the girl
who had gone missing in the Vatican. On June 25, a tip was called in describing
a girl with a flute and wearing clothing matching Orlandi's at the time of her
disappearance. According to his story, she was in Rome, calling herself Barbarella,
and had run away from home to sell Avon. This was a dream that she had previously mentioned
to her sister. Another tip came in on June 28, in which a man told authorities he had met a girl
named Barbara, a runaway, who he had encountered at a bar near the music school where Orlandi's
flute lessons were given. However, she could not be tracked down, and the theories surrounding
the case began to get stranger and stranger. Other tips poured in, claiming that a Turkish
terrorist group called the Grey Wolves had kidnapped Orlandi as part of a conspiracy to hold
her hostage and exchange her for an assassin. But there were also theories involving the
Mafia presence in the surrounding area, as well as the Vatican itself. The
ex-girlfriend of Enrico De Pedis, leader of the Rome-based crime syndicate
Banda della Magliana, claimed that he had once confided in her about kidnapping Orlandi
with plans to hold her for ransom. However, there has never been concrete evidence
linking him to the disappearance. Another extremely upsetting theory comes from
Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican's chief exorcist. He claims that Orlandi was taken
as part of a plot by the Vatican, police, and local lawmakers to sexually traffic
young women. He said on the subject, "This was a crime with a sexual motive.
Parties were organized, with a Vatican gendarme acting as the ‘recruiter’ of the girls.
The network involved diplomatic personnel from a foreign embassy to the Holy See. I believe
Emanuela ended up as a victim of this circle.” None of these theories have been linked to
definitive proof. Since her disappearance, her family has been primarily focused on locating her
body so that they can have some sort of closure. In 2019, the Orlandi family's lawyer, Laura Sgro,
received a bizarre letter containing a photograph of a tomb beneath the Vatican and the ominous
instructions, "Look where the angel is pointing." This referred to the marble angel
placed there. The tomb was searched, but no human remains were found there.
In fact, the tomb was completely empty, according to Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti.
The Vatican's cooperation with this part of the investigation came as a surprise to Orlandi's
sister, Pietro. According to him, when he asked Pope Francis for help in 2013, the only response
he received was that his sister was "in heaven." The Orlandi family is determined to
continue the search as long as they can, until they can find answers about what
happened to Emanuela all those years ago. From holy places to cursed places, some locations
just seem to be a magnet for misfortune. Most of us have heard of the Bermuda Triangle, but
how about the Bennington Triangle? The term, coined in 1992 during a radio appearance
by New England Author Joseph A. Citro, refers to an area in southwestern Vermont in which
several people went missing between 1945 and 1950. The name refers to Bennington, Vermont, and
Bennington College and draws a deliberate parallel between the disappearances
there and the ships that vanished in the Bermuda Triangle. One of the most
infamous disappearances that occurred in the Bennington Triangle is that
of a young woman named Paula Welden. Paula Welden, 18 years old, was a sophomore at
Bennington College, where she lived an ordinary, quiet student life until one brisk winter day
on December 1, 1946. After working a double shift at her job in the university's
dining hall, she told her roommate, Elizabeth Johnson, that she wanted to go
out and take a hike on the Long Trail, a five-mile portion of a 272-mile trail, this
section of which runs up Glastenbury Mountain. It was about 2:45 PM, cold out and likely
to get colder as the sun set that evening, and Paula was dressed in blue jeans, a red parka
with a fur-lined hood, and a pair of Top-Sider sneakers. As she prepared to leave, Paula called
out to Johnson: "I'm all through with studies. I'm taking a long walk." Those would be the last
words Paula's roommate would ever hear her speak. Shortly after Paula left her room, she was spotted
by Danny Fager, the owner of a local gas station across the street from the college. Fifteen
minutes later, a local man named Louis Knapp saw a girl in a red parka hitchhiking along Route
67A near the college. Realizing she was likely a Bennington student in need of a ride, he stopped
to pick her up. Aside from the red coat and the girl's clumsiness- she tripped on her way into
his truck, and he advised her to be careful. She told him she was on her way to hike the Long
Trail, and so he dropped her off on Route 9, near the trail's entrance, before
pulling into his driveway at home. A few minutes after Knapp dropped Paula off,
his daughter went outside, but there was no sign of the hitchhiker. This struck her as odd
since the flat Route 9 allowed anyone to see a half-mile in either direction. But Knapp and his
daughter were not the last people to see Paula. Just before 4 PM, Paula encountered Ernest
Whitman, the owner of a nearby cabin in Bickford Hollow. She reportedly asked him how
far she could go on the trail. He replied, "It's four miles to the fork," before warning her
that she was dressed too lightly for the Winter weather. Whether she didn't hear him or simply
chose not to respond, Paula said nothing and continued along the trail. That was quite possibly
the last time anyone ever spoke to Paula Welden. As the afternoon turned to evening, and
evening turned to night, Paula's roommate Elizabeth began to wonder what was taking her
so long. She brushed off the worry at first, convincing herself that perhaps Paula was having
a late night studying somewhere else on campus. But when morning came, and Paula still wasn't
back, Elizabeth contacted the College President, Lewis Webster Jones. He phoned Paula's
parents and asked them a question that chilled them both to the bone: Had
Paula gone home for the weekend? She most certainly had not, and Paula's
mother fainted from the shock of the news that her daughter was missing. Paula's
father immediately left the Welden home in Connecticut and traveled to Bennington, where he
organized a search party that included students from Bennington and Williams College, as
well as local members of the community. College President Jones canceled classes to aid
in the search, sending groups of 20 along the Long Trail, where they dropped handfuls of confetti
to signal to other groups that a given area had already been checked. After a day of searching
and no new leads, Mr. Welden called in the New York and Connecticut State Police. At the time,
Vermont had no state police force but did have a State Investigator who offered a 5,000 dollar
reward for any information on Paula's whereabouts. As the investigation continued, several
potential leads surfaced, but they all brought more questions than answers. A waitress in
Fall River, Massachusetts, claimed to have served an upset young woman matching Paula's description.
She was accompanied by a man around 25 years old, who appeared drunk and angry. Mr. Welden
believed that a boyfriend of Paula's must have been responsible for her disappearance,
but no conclusive proof could be found. A year after the disappearance, a
woman named Mary Welden was spotted at a campground in South Carolina, but
after speaking with her on the phone, Mrs. Welden confirmed that she was not her
daughter. Nine years after Paula went missing, a lumberjack approached authorities, claiming
that he was in Bickford Hollow when Paula vanished and that he knew where her body
was buried. The man later admitted to lying. Then, in 1968, a body was finally
found, a skeleton buried near where Paula disappeared. However, an examination
of the remains determined that they were far too old to belong to Paula. To this
day, Paula Welden's disappearance has never been solved. But Paula was not the
only victim of the Bennington Triangle. In December 1949, 68-year-old James Tedford
vanished from a bus headed to Bennington. He briefly left the bus in Burlington,
where he chatted with an old friend, then returned to his journey.
When the bus reached Bennington, Tedford's belongings and bus schedule were
on it, but he was not. He was never found. In October 1950, 8-year-old Paul Jepson
was with his mother at the Bennington town dump when he walked away from their
truck. As soon as she noticed his absence, she called the police. Bloodhounds followed
the boy's scent to the highway before the trail suddenly went cold in the middle of the road
near Glastenbury Mountain. He was never found. Only a few weeks later, Freda Langer, age 53,
was camping with her family. She and a cousin went swimming in a stream when Langer left to
retrieve dry clothes from the campsite. However, she never reached the campsite. Unlike the
other "Bennington Triangle'' disappearances, Langer's body was found seven months later, her
cause of death ruled an accidental drowning. And in November 1950, 16-year-old Martha
Jeannette Jones was reported missing. She had been missing for a month, but her family
had assumed she was at seminary school, and her school assumed she was at home with her
family. Over the course of five years, six people vanished near Bennington or Glastenbury. Only one
of their bodies was ever found. The rest are still a mystery. People have blamed everything from
Bigfoot, to UFO's, to a serial killer, to simply the confusing nature of the Long Trail itself.
But it is unlikely we will ever know for sure. Cave diving is regarded as one of the most
dangerous underwater hobbies, and it stands to reason that it would come with its fair share
of casualties. But rarely do cave divers vanish into the depths without a trace. And yet, that is
exactly what happened to Ben McDaniel when he went diving in Vortex Spring Cave on Wednesday,
August 18, 2010. Vortex Spring contains the largest diving facility in the state of Florida,
where divers of all levels can dive in the upper areas of the water. However, more experienced
divers are inclined to explore the cave. Below the spring, there is a
9x12 feet opening to a cavern, which extends to a depth of 115 feet. There,
the entrance to the cave can be found, blocked by a steel rebar gate.
In order to enter this section, you must show your cave certification to the
dive shop, who will lend out a key to the gate. Ben did not have a cave diving certification;
the dive shop employees believed that Ben had been forcing the gate open for some time
and diving in the cave anyway. However, he had been doing so safely, and they were
inclined to allow him to continue. On the day of his disappearance, one of the dive shop
employees accompanied Ben down to the gate and opened it for him. He watched Ben proceed into
the cave and out of sight, never to be seen again. The dive shop employees left for
the night, and the next morning, Ben's truck was still in the parking lot. No one
really noticed it at the time, but by Friday, they noticed that the truck was still
there, and no one had seen Ben since Wednesday. They sensed that something
was very wrong and called the police. The police searched Ben's truck and
found his wallet, phone, and dive logs, which included a map of the areas of the
cave he had already explored. When the police went by Ben's family beach house, his
dog was inside and had not been fed for two days. This was more than enough evidence to
suggest that Ben had drowned inside the cave. As word of Ben's disappearance
spread through the community, cave divers volunteered to join in the
search and what they assumed would be the inevitable recovery of Ben's body. But the
case would prove to be far murkier than that. The divers searched the large tunnels
and small tunnels to no avail, then began to inspect smaller crevices and
fissures, assuming Ben had accidentally wedged himself into a crevice and
drowned. However, they found nothing. Well, not nothing. They did find some incredibly
confusing evidence in the form of Ben's air tanks, discovered in the outer cavern area and inside
of the cave. All three of the tanks discovered contained regular air. This was highly
unusual, as at least one of the tanks should have contained a different gas mixture
in order to prevent nitrogen narcosis. Because Ben had already investigated so much of
the cave, he should have already known better than to dive with tanks full of ordinary
air. In fact, he likely would not have survived his previous dives without the particular gas
mixture required for cave dives of that depth. After this discovery, with still no sign of
Ben's body, the search party reached out to legendary diver Edd Sorenson, a highly skilled
cave diver with a specialization in recovery. Edd made three drives, covering 1,700 feet
of the cave, at least 200 more feet than Ben had mapped. But in spite of his efforts
and his skills, he found nothing. There was nobody there. No more equipment. He even
searched for signs of increased fish activity, which could indicate the presence of decaying
organic matter, like a corpse, somewhere in the cave. But there was nothing. The lack of
evidence extended to the environment itself. There were no markings on the
walls or silt disturbances, which would be expected in the event that
Ben had squeezed into some of the tighter, more dangerous tunnels. Not only that,
but Ben was markedly larger than Edd in both height and weight. Edd suggested that
it was highly unlikely that Ben would have been able to make it further into the caves
than he had. It just didn't make any sense. Unwilling to accept this lack of closure, Ben's
parents financed a remotely operated underwater vehicle, which was used to search the cave. But
the vehicle was unable to progress any further than the human divers had. It was beginning to
look like Ben wasn't in the cave at all. But if he wasn't in the cave, then where did he go?
Police brought in the two divers who saw him the night of his disappearance and questioned
them, even giving them a lie detector test out of suspicions that he had drowned the
night before, and they had removed his body to avoid attracting attention. However, they
passed the test, and the theory was shelved. Some investigators suggested that Ben had
washed out through one of the spring's outlets, but police searched the swamps that the
spring flowed into and found nothing. They also searched other nearby bodies of
water, including Blue Creek, Sandy Creek, and the Choctawhatchee River, but again, nothing
was found. The waters were tested for bacteria, which would spike in the event of a decomposing
body, but no bacteria increases were detected. Another suggested theory was that Ben had
deliberately faked his own disappearance in search of a fresh start. He had experienced
financial hardship in the past in the form of significant debts. However, both his
parents and girlfriend disputed this, claiming that he had seemed
positive and optimistic of late. As years passed and no new evidence surfaced,
Ben's parents began to suspect foul play. They hired a private investigator, who looked
into the dive shop and its workers. The investigator found that the owner of the
shop was facing criminal charges for the assault and kidnapping of a temporary
employee who owed him money. However, by the time this was uncovered, the owner
had died after falling down a flight of stairs. If something did happen between him
and Ben, that story likely died with him. There is still no sign of Ben
McDaniel or any indication that there ever will be. Perhaps he is
somewhere in the cave, in a deep, dark crevice that no one has been able to
uncover yet. Perhaps he faked his death. Perhaps he was murdered in a debt collection
gone wrong. We will likely never know the truth. Diving deep beneath the surface
of the water can be dangerous, but even aboard the deck of a cruise
ship, disaster can still strike. At least, it did for Amy Lynn Bradley in 1998. On March
21 of that year, Amy Lynn, her brother Brad, and their parents Ron and Iva, boarded the
ship Rhapsody of the Seas in Puerto Rico. The ship would travel to Aruba, then on
to Curacao. On the night of March 23, Amy and her brother went dancing to a live
band in the ship's nightclub, before turning in for the night at around 1 AM. That was the last
time Brad ever saw his sister. At about 5:30 AM, Ron Bradley looked out at the balcony of the
family cabin and saw Amy there. He thought nothing of it, but when he looked back, she was
gone. Worried, he went to her room and found that she wasn't there. The family looked all
over the ship but could find no sign of Amy. The cruise ship crew refused to page Amy
Lynn until the ship was docked at port, afraid of upsetting other passengers. The crew
agreed to search common areas but refused to search staff or passenger cabins. Meanwhile,
the Bradley family was frantic. It was possible that Amy Lynn had fallen overboard and
drowned, but the family insisted this was unlikely. She was a trained lifeguard
and known for her strong swimming ability, and no one could find any signs of a body in the
water around the ship. Even more concerningly, a witness reported seeing Amy near the dance club
at around 6 AM with a man named Alister Douglas, who she had been seen dancing with at the
club the night before. He denied this. Though the case was far from closed, the
story did not end there. In August of 1998, five months after Amy Lynn's disappearance,
two Canadian tourists reported seeing a woman matching her description on the beach. The
woman even had the same tattoos. Then, in 1999, a Navy officer met a woman in a brothel in Curacao
who asked him for help, telling him that her name was Amy Lynn Bradley. He didn't report it
until he saw her face in People magazine. Six years later, a woman claimed to have met Amy
Lynn in a department store bathroom in Barbados, where she introduced herself as
"Amy from Virginia." In 2005, the Bradleys received an upsetting email
from an organization that looks for sex trafficking victims on pornographic
websites. The email contained a photo of a woman in her underwear, lying on
a bed. The woman appeared to be Amy. To this day, Amy's disappearance remains an
ongoing investigation, with the FBI offering an award of up to 25,000 dollars for any information
that might lead them to her whereabouts. The disappearances we've covered so far have
all been individuals who disappeared while on their own. However, solitude isn't always
a prerequisite for a missing persons case. In 2009, all three members of a
family disappeared from their home, with no suggestions of where they could have
gone. On October 8, 2009, Bobby Dale Jamison, his wife Sherilynn, and their six-year-old
daughter Madyson vanished from their home in Eufaula, Oklahoma. A few days later, the police
found their pickup truck in Latimer Counter, about an hour's drive from their house. In the
truck, the police found IDs, wallets, phones, Sherilynn's purse, their still-alive
family dog, and 32,000 dollars in cash. This was especially strange, given that Bobby
Dale and Sherilynn were both on disability at the time of their disappearance, and no one knew
where they could have gotten their hands on that much money or what they were intending to do with
it. More importantly, where had the family gone? There were no clear signs of them being forced
out of the car by someone else, but that didn't mean there was no foul play. A search party
began to search the woods around the area where the truck was found, but no signs of the family
turned up. The case went cold and remained that way until November 16, 2013. Four years after
the truck turned up, three miles from where it was found, some hunters discovered the partial
skeletal remains of two adults and one child. They were examined, and it was determined
that these skeletons belonged to the missing Jamison family. However, due to the
advanced state of decomposition, the cause of death was not identifiable.
The case was reopened, and even though the police now had bodies to fill in some of
the blanks, more questions kept popping up. They discovered security footage from
outside of the Jamison family home. In it, the couple was going back and forth between the
house and truck, packing their things. The police also discovered that, before their disappearance,
Bobby Dale had spoken to his pastor about a fear that the house was haunted. He described "two to
four ghosts" on the roof of the home. There were also rumors of a Satanic bible purchased by
Sherilynn and claims from Sherilynn's mother, Connie, that the Jamisons had become involved
with a cult. This particular theory has never had any evidence to back it up, but other
unsettling theories have surfaced over the years. Police discovered an eleven-page
letter from Sherilynn to Bobby, in which she was incredibly angry with him
over a variety of things. This letter caused them to float the theory that Bobby Dale
had driven the family out to the woods and killed his wife and daughter, then himself.
However, there was no proof for this theory, and it would not explain the presence of the
massive amount of cash found in the truck. Another theory involved Bobby Dale's
father, Bob Dean. Bobby Dale had filed an order of protection against his father,
citing threats of violence and even murder from him toward the family. However, Bob
Dean died two months after the Jamison family disappeared due to a long history of
health problems. Jack Jamison, his brother, insisted that Bob Dean had spent the time
leading up to the disappearance primarily in hospitals or rest homes and would not have
been able to play a part in it. In spite of the abundance of theories, there are still no
answers in the case of the Jamison family. Another disappearance involving multiple
victims is that of the infamous Fort Worth trio. 17-year-old Rachel Trlica, 14-year-old
Renee Wilson, and nine-year-old Julie Ann Mosley, were out doing some last-minute Christmas
shopping on December 23, 1974, at Seminary South Mall. At about noon, Rachel parked her
car near the Sears, in the east lot. Renee planned to be home by 4 for a Christmas party,
while Julie's mother was expecting her by 6. But when both of those times
passed, and the girls were not home, their parents became concerned. The
car was found still in the lot, locked, with newly purchased items in the backseat.
Police theorized that the girls had run away, but their families could think of no
reason why they would have done so. The following day, a letter arrived
at the home of Rachel and her husband, Tommy. The letter claimed to be from Rachel but
curiously was addressed to Thomas A. Trlica, rather than Tommy. Rachel never called
him Thomas. The stamp on the envelope had been canceled, and the ZIP code of the
cancellation was blurred. The letter read: “I know I’m going to catch it, but
we just had to get away. We’re going to Houston. See you in about a week. The
car is in Sear’s upper lot. Love Rachel.” The FBI analysis of the handwriting was
inconclusive, but Tommy insisted that Rachel did not write the letter. One
week later, the girls had not returned in spite of the letter's promise.
Six weeks after the disappearance, Julie's mother received a phone call from
an unidentified girl who called her "Mama." She believed this was her missing daughter. In
spite of decades of searching and false hope in the form of human remains later determined not to
belong to the trio, their fate is still unknown. The truth can be horrifying, but as we see time
and time again, the unknown is often even scarier. And to wrap up the proceedings, we have
a disturbing story of a disappearance that would forever change how we respond to
disappearances like this - The heartwrenching case of eight-year-old Cherrie Mahan,
who disappeared in 1985 after getting off the school bus, just fifty feet
from her rural Pennsylvania home. When Mahan disembarked from the bus
at 4:10 PM on February 22nd, 1985, she waved goodbye to her friends who were
being picked up by one of their mothers, and was last seen by a bystander heading back in
the direction of her home. The closest the police had to a lead on her possible kidnapper was an
old van with a mural of a skier on a snow-capped mountain painted on the side. Despite an extensive
search and an almost 40,000 dollar reward, Mahan was never found. She was declared legally dead in
1998, despite the police never discovering a body. What does the disappearance of Cherrie
Maham mark such a shift in missing people? Her photo was the first one to be featured
in a poster campaign featuring the words, “Have You Seen Me?” a new iconic and infamous
style of poster, especially for missing children. In 2011, Pennsylvania State
Police Officer Robert McGraw said, “I believe Cherrie was abducted
by someone she knows very well, and I believe this person had the ability to
basically lure Cherrie [into] their vehicle without her giving it a second thought prior
to her disappearance ... I can't imagine if that was my child. I can't imagine the pain
her mother must wake up with every day." And we know this is true. In 2019,
Cherrie’s mother, Janice McKinney, was quoted saying, “I just wish
someone would come forth and tell me what happened. That's all I pray
for, all the time, is just to know." This very lack of closure is why the pain and
fascination behind cases like these can endure, even decades after the victims
first vanish without a trace. Now check out “Employee Missing for 10 Years
Found Inside Supermarket.” Or watch this instead!
