Whether due to crime, natural disaster or something more outlandish, history is filled with missing people (and places) whose absence leaves unanswered questions. Let's take a look at...
- The Missing Crew of the MV Joyita
- The Man Out of Time
- The Towns That Never Were
 |
| The MV Joyita disappeared after leaving Samoa, reappearing crewless one month later... (Holgi) |
The Missing Crew of the MV Joyita
The Mary Celeste isn't the only ghost ship to have been discovered unmanned and adrift.
The 69ft luxury yacht MV Joyita was originally built for Roland West (a director and member of the Hollywood elite) in 1931. Her expensive pedigree didn't stop her being drafted during WWII, when she was requisitioned by the navy and used as a patrol boat. Surprisingly, the expensive yacht turned out to be a highly durable craft that performed well under military handling.
After the war she passed through a number of owners... only to disappear 1955 during an island hop in the South Pacific, while under the stewardship of captain Thomas Miller. One month later, the Joyita was spotted by a merchant vessel named the Tuvalu... drifting with no sign of the 25 crew and passengers.
The Joyita was not in a great state upon rediscovery. She was partially submerged and listing to port, but kept afloat by her cork-lined hull... but curiously (and despite damage to structures on the upper deck) her hull was intact. Adding to the mystery was an open doctor's bag with bloody bandages, a (faulty) radio tuned to the international distress frequency and the conspicuous absence of the life-rafts, firearms and ship's log. The bilge pumps were also disassembled and the engine room was partially flooded.
Though something clearly went wrong on the Joyita, the exact details remain unknown. Various theories have been put forward, with the most likely being the crew abandoning ship in the face of some sort of nautical peril... but Captain Miller would have been well aware of how durable the Joyvita was - it would have been an odd choice to risk the rafts rather than stay on the well-stocked and comparatively safe (even if disabled) ship. One darker theory suggests a mutiny or piracy, pointing towards the bloody bandages and missing weapons - but the ship didn't have any obvious bullet holes or battle damage.
One of the few things known for sure is that the ship sorely needed maintenance - an inquiry into the disaster highlighted a leaking corroded cooling pipe as a possible culprit for flooding the ship, with blocked bilge pumps preventing the removal of water. Despite the mystery, the MV Joyita put to sea once again in 1956, only to be abandoned after running aground in 1957. Perhaps the ship is just cursed!
 |
| Could Sergei Ponomarenko really have been pulled through time by a UFO? (NadinNandin) |
The Man Out of Time
In 2006 Sergei Ponomarenko was stopped by police in Kyiv for his strange behavior. When challenged, the apparently 25-year-old produced a national ID card from the Soviet Union... and claimed that he had only just encountered a UFO with his girlfriend... in 1958. Not only did he match the picture in the ID, Ponomarenko was wearing old-fashioned clothing and carrying an old-fashioned camera.
The police (understandably) dropped him off at a psychiatric clinic, whose staff decided to develop Ponomarenko's film - after all, it was in good condition and might be useful in convincing the would-be time-traveler that he was under a delusion. Imagine their surprise when the photos showed Ponomarenko, a woman who matched the description of his girlfriend and a UFO. To round off the mystery, Ponomarenko seemingly vanished after only a short stay in the clinic.
Investigators were able to determine that a man named Sergei Ponomarenko vanished in 1958. Authorities were even able to track down his girlfriend... and she did indeed resemble an older version of the woman in the photos. Even stranger, she had a photo of Ponomarenko purporting to taken in 2050 Kyiv.
Though Ponomarenko's story has a lot more to back it up than that of the average alien abductee, amateur researchers have uncovered a few wrinkles. For example, not only is it still possible to buy film for cameras, plenty of old cameras and clothing still exist. Another is that the "2050" photograph appears to have undergone manipulation... and that the background may even include the Empire State building, a structure notably absent from Kyiv. There's also the fact some of the "evidence" appears to be lifted from a pseudoscientific Ukrainian TV show named Aliens!
 |
| The village of Werner was submerged thanks to a dam, but did other towns like "Doveland" ever really exist? (agkrolak) |
The Towns That Never Were
There's something weird about the town of Doveland, Wisconsin...namely, the fact that it doesn't exist. This hasn't stopped people claiming they (or their friend, or a relative) have been there in the past - even though no official documents or maps reference the place.
Strangely, this isn't the only urban legend of a vanished town in America - Langville in Montana is another example of the phenomena. Theories abound regarding the "missing" towns - could they have been swallowed by sinkholes or destroyed by earthquakes? If so, why are there no records of their existence? Could they have been "vanished" by a military experiment gone wrong? Surely there would be roads leading to nowhere, or perhaps some telltale chemical or radiological emissions for investigators to uncover...
Perhaps the best explanation we have is that these towns never truly existed. The human mind is a fragile thing and researchers have found that a false memory is easy to induce. Urban legends (passed on in person or, in the modern era, through internet forums) could build seemingly genuine recollections of these fictional places.
To be fair to those wanting to believe these places once existed, there are settlements that have been obliterated in the past. The logging village of Werner, Wisconsin was submerged beneath Castle Rock Lake when the Wisconsin River was dammed!
Thanks for reading - click here for some incredibly eerie (but natural) places, or try...