She Disappeared

  

      I am currently working on a new book that I have tentatively titled, “She Disappeared.”  It is about the strange disappearances of people.  I have long been interested in this subject and just recently I had dinner with a dear where the question of what happened to these people came up.  First, we must acknowledge the reasonable and rational explanations.  People are taken for various reasons.  There is one story that I have in the book where it might be reasonable to think that the girl was abducted.  People do commit suicide or just run off to start over.  But these are not those stories.  These are stories where the people vanished for no reason and often within seconds of being seen. 

      So what does happen to people in that circumstance?  Are they abducted by aliens or slip in a time warp, or are they taken by an unknown predator for whatever reason?  It is hard to say but I wanted to look at a couple strange abductions.

      Those who have read my books will recognize the story of Oliver Lerch (Larch or Thomas have also been associated names for this story) who lived in the Black Forest of Pennsylvania near the turn of the twentieth century.  Supposedly, he was a young adult when he disappeared.  His parents were hosting a church Christmas party one night when his mother asked him to wade out and get more water from the pump in the yard.  Oliver gathered his buckets and bundled up.  He went out and a couple moments later his screams were heard inside.  His family and friends ran outdoors and saw a most incredible site.  Oliver was slowly floating up in the air as if lifted by an invisible force.  He struggled against whatever had him as he screamed for help.  It was a brightly lit night, so everyone could clearly see that there was no one and nothing that could be lifting him– but he was still rising.

      As his family and friends struggled to help him, Oliver rose into the darkness and disappeared.  He was never seen again.  *This same story has been transposed to West Bend Indiana.  I believe that most probably the story migrated with folks moving westward, and was just translated to the new location by a story teller.  However, there is little doubt that this story has been traveling along for quite a while.

      Or consider the case of a farm hand in Pennsylvania in the late 1800’s who set off to town to visit the general store one evening.  He chatted and waved to folks he knew along the way.  He stepped onto the little foot bridge and suddenly was gone.  The water was dragged.  Folks walked miles looking for his body in the subsequent days and still he was never found.  Imagine the surprise of his former employers had when five years later a letter came from Australia addressed to them.  The missive inside told a strange tale.  It was from the young man who had disappeared.  He stated that he had been found five years ago disoriented and without any memory.  He had no injuries and the date he gave for being found in Australia was the same day he had disappeared from Pennsylvania.  He had no memory of who he was or where he came from.  He had built a life in Australia and it was not until he had received a head injury recently that he remembered who he was or who he thought he was.  He gave details that assured the family that it was their former hired hand. 

      Now I can not see how his story was possible, although he always maintained that it was true.  He could not have traveled to Australia in one day at that time.  There was no known reason why he forgot his old life.  This also leaves us wondering how he had disappeared off that bridge and why he could never recall the exact mechanism used to transport him around the world. 

      Now if you think that these stories only happened long ago well wait until you read the book.  People are disappearing at an alarming rate in this country and in Pennsylvania in particular children disappear.  David Paulides, an expert on strange disappearances, stated in interviews that these disappearances come in clusters and he has marked them on a map.  The entire state of Pennsylvania is a cluster and the disappearances are disproportionately of children. 

      If you have any cases you’d like to recommend or if you would like to comment, please do so at pineycreekpress@yahoo.com with the header She Disappeared.  I would be most interested to hear from you about this strange topic.