Millions of people disappear every year

Every year millions of people just disappear without a trace. Ive always wondered why not too many people are asking more questions about this. Where do they go? Sometimes their cars or planes (steve fossett) disappear with them. As if they never existed.

Disappearing people in the U.S.

In the U.S. alone there are reports of over 10,000,000 people going missing per year. Out of this figure 500,000 are never found. Some of these people are victims of crimes but some are just gone. Sometimes it is not one person that disappears but a group of people. A man and his wife were sleeping. in a motel on a trip across the country in 1959. When she woke up, he was no longer by her side and had vanished, never to be seen again. Everything of his was still there, including his clothes, money, luggage, car, etc. Now let me ask you this, who would run off naked? This is a strange story indeed. Another couple was driving across country and was never seen again and this was in 1970. Their car vanished also. Were they the victims of some modern day highway men who killed them and scrapped their auto?

It has been estimated that a small part of these disappearances are due to crime and kidnapping. But what about the rest? A few theories:

* Someone does a "time-slip" and enters a parallel universe or another dimension.

* "Rapture"

* A less known theory is that it is possible to enter other dimensions while dreaming in your sleep. The idea is that if you practice "lucid dreaming" (dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming) there is the danger of entering another world or time-line...by which your existence and also your body disappear in this world.

* "Spontaneous Human Combustion" (a process investigated by some parapsychologists whereby bodies suddenly burn to ashes)

* Abduction by aliens

* Mass kidnapping by clandestine operations

* Other not yet thought of explanations.


Do you know someone who has gone missing?

Or do you know someone who knows someone who has gone missing?

How do you explain all the people disappearing?

Anyone have any good links, statistics or books on this subject?

[edit on 6-4-2008 by Skyfloating]

Some cases are probably due to people simply "running away". Weather it is the tradional version with a child running away or a little more elaborate of a spouse running away. Some people get tired of their lot in life and want to start over somewhere new.

I would imagine a lot of cases are criminal as well. But there is also probably a more sinister, less PC explanation for others too.

You should change the title of the thread. it's kinda misleading. those people don't dissapear, they go missing. dissapearing into air would be something like out of the bermuda triangle and i don't see many people dissapearing before my eyes. Yes, many people go missing, but most of the time they are just teen runaways or old people with alzeihmers getting lost.

Whoa...."In the U.S. alone there are reports of over 10,000,000 people going missing per year"
10,000,000 ??? a year? Per this info, Census
there are U.S. 303,792,008, in thirty years those would be gone (not counting births to replace those missing, nor imigrants)
Honestly, don´t you think we would notice such a HUGE decline in population
Just seems high to me..
Edit for more info

"By the end of 2005, there were 109,531 active missing person records according to the US Department of Justice. Children under the age of 18 account for 58,081 (53.03%) of the records and 11,868 (10.84%) were for young adults between the ages of 18 and 20.[1]

During 2005, 834,536 entries were made into the National Crime Information Center's missing person file, which was an increase of 0.51% from the 830,325 entered in 2004. Missing Person records that were cleared or canceled during the same period totaled 844,838. The reasons for these removals include: a law enforcement agency located the subject, the individual returned home, or the record had to be removed by the entering agency due to a determination that the record is invalid"
From Wiki
Missing Person

As the below poster stated, even 500000 is high....




[edit on 6-4-2008 by NetStorm]

reply to post by NetStorm


The article also says that of those 10,000,000 roughly 500,000 remain missing. Meaning that most of them turn up eventually. 500,000 is still a large number though, don't get me wrong.

Please keep in mind that 500 000 remain unaccounted for...only in the U.S. Extrapolate that to a worldwide level and the thread title is appropriate.

reply to post by Skyfloating


People who are in a witness protection program can disappear for all intents and purposes.

Also, I have known a person who was in an abusive relationship and had children that were abused also. They disappeared, also, but on purpose to get a way from the abuser.

The reason I post this in "Paranormal" is because, apart from witness protection programs, abusive spouses and all...

...there are plenty of witness-reports out there of people just vanishing, never to be seen again.

In the above example I dont think the guy who disappeared from the Hotel room without clothes is explained by the census.

Paranormal possibilities can be factored in. Apart from that, conspiracy-factors, such as rumours of mass-child-abduction can be factored in as well.

To the point: Nowdays, in our surveillance-society its not that easy to just "go missing". This might happen ocassionally and with lots of backing from mafia-type identity-changers, but it would seem to be less and less possible because big brother knows and sees almost everything.

A dear friend of mine had a young brother along with the brothers friend dissapear in 1984. The car was found at the side of a remote road in southern California. Both doors of the car were open their belongings were still in the car but they were never seen again. I found this story of Fossitt having visited his wife after his disapperance.

www.godlikeproductions.com...

Originally posted by Witness2008
Both doors of the car were open their belongings were still in the car but they were never seen again.

Thanks for sharing that. With the "powers that be" acting like there is no unexplained phenomena going on, we have to rely on witness accounts of everyday people.


I dont know anybody personally who disappeared, but a police officer once told me that he´s seen a few apartments and houses of disappeared people during his career and that what always struck him is how those people who supposedly "fled" or "went hiding" left their valuables behind or had unfinished breakfast lying on the table.These are indicators of something different going on, I´d think.

Well skyfloating your thread will keep me busy today. Great subject. We live in such a flat world with so many flat explanations. There are numerous unexplained dissappearances throughout history, I leave another link that may provoke a few questions and maybe a bit of research.

en.wikipedia.org...

I remember reading an account of a dissapearance somewhere not too long ago. Went something like this:

A group of people, adults and children are walking througha field. One of them, a young man was a few steps ahead of everyone else but well within their sight.
All of a sudden, he's gone. The first thoughts of the people who were with him were that he fell down a well or pothole but none was found, and neither was he. I'll try and find out where I saw it.....

good topic op. I've always found the thought of people just vanishing a little frightening, when I was young I used to have nightmares that my family would just dissapear, and I would be left somewhere on my own.

Yes there are several cases of steaming coffee and lit cigs in ashtrays etc. Contract killers probably account for 50,000 per year. Both Mob and Uncle, but that leaves a lot left. Where do those go? OK lets say another 50K are unstable and wander off with amnesia, we still have 400K left to think about.... What is another 200K of those were scammers con artists and other bottom barrel trades.

What happenned to to the 200K left still missing?

reply to post by Skyfloating


When you had the conversation with this policeman, did he happen to mention where he thinks some of these people disppear to?

It would also be interesting to know if any of the missing ever showed up out of the blue years later. Did you happen to ask?

Wow..slipping through space time into another dimension. Let's take this one step farther. if people are disappearing to whatever space-time-dimension, then shouldn't at least some people be showing up with not past history in this universe? oh yes, john titor..well anybody else? Seems like we wouldn't know about them as they would probably end up in Psychiatric or military institutions.
So I wonder which has a greater probability of happening..Alien abduction or Slipping off into another dimension?

(OOOkay. I'll try this again.)

These first two articles are about a young man who went missing, never to be heard from again. I was just at a wedding a few weeks ago, at the restaurant where his empty car was found in the parking lot.

www.poughkeepsiejournal.com...

www.poughkeepsiejournal.com...

This one is a mystery that unfolded on 9/11/2001 but may not have anything to do with the attacks. I knew this family years ago.

query.nytimes.com...

This next one is often talked about whenever the serial killer is brought up. This guy kept the bodies of murdered prostitutes in his house, but I don't think he is actually responsible for this missing person. I also have intimate knowledge of this case as well.

www.poughkeepsiejournal.com...

This one I know little about.

scaryny.com...

Here is some more data on local missing persons cases.

ccadp.proboards40.com...

It seems to me that this region may have a higher than average level of this sort of activity. Or is this the norm?

[edit on 4/6/0808 by jackinthebox]

interesting thread...very interesting.

to combat the "running away" explanation, it's harder than one thinks to successfully not be found. it would take a lot of planning [to get a valid and genuine fake ID, to fabricate a fake life with past history included], and no one would have to be looking for you [just running away, not running from the law].

i knew a guy who "disappeared" from his university. he went missing around midnight and was last seen in shorts, t-shirt, and flip flops. he left his wallet, keys, clothes, pretty much everything. his mother freaked out and hired a private investigator to find him. they transmitted his name, ID, and appearance to local and state authorities to be on the look out. he disappeared on the east coast of the states. they found him two weeks later entering back into the states from canada on the west coast.

runaways will be found, because typically they have not planned things out as much as they should. they have no motivation to fake their identity or alter their appearance for they are not running from the law, just their dismal life. they are usually driven by emotion or madness, which means really means recklessness.

of course there will be exceptions as always.

500,000 is an insane amount of people to not be accounted for. i am theorizing that these people are mostly no-namers, people of little social status. though i find it as plausible that if a celebrity cannot be found and after so many months or whatever of coming up with nothing, they'll claim they have died and so a fake body with fake story to the public.

that could explain this phenomena, "the highest strangeness i've seen"
www.abovetopsecret.com...

thanks skyfloating for bringing this up...very interesting!

Originally posted by Skyfloating
In the U.S. alone there are reports of over 10,000,000 people going missing per year.

This can't possibly be right. Does over 3 percent of the US population dissapear every year? That would empty USA in 33 years. I would question this source

Originally posted by Neo Christian Mystic
This can't possibly be right. Does over 3 percent of the US population dissapear every year?

That would empty USA in 33 years. I would question this source

Thats what you get for only skimming over something and not reading it. It doesnt say that that many go permanently missing and we´ve already clarified in the thread that its 500 000, and that on a worldwide level this amounts to millions.

But no problem...Im guilty of skimming over many things at ATS too.

[edit on 6-4-2008 by Skyfloating]

When you had the conversation with this policeman, did he happen to mention where he thinks some of these people disppear to?

It would also be interesting to know if any of the missing ever showed up out of the blue years later. Did you happen to ask?

No, I just happened to tell the guy...an acquaintance of mine...my thoughts about "missing people" and how it often seems they were whisked away suddenly. Thats when he added his 2 cents.