Into Thin Air: Fortean Disappearances That Have Kept Us Guessing

Recently on an episode of my weekly program, The Gralien Report, I discussed a bizarre story that has been kept in parts of my family for years and years. Sometime back during the early half of the last century, a distant cousin of mine named Claude was said to have vanished very mysteriously… and even more suddenly. He had literally been talking with his father, the story goes, through an open window near where Claude had been sitting on the porch outside. When his father went out only a few moments later to see Claude, his son was no longer sitting by the window, and for that matter, was no longer anywhere to be seen. This peculiar incident would also end up being the last time anybody would ever recall seeing Claude Calloway.

The disappearance alone was pretty strange indeed, but the really peculiar part had to do with what had transpired only a few days earlier. Claude had posed alongside a few others for a family photo, in which it is said Claude’s face was obscured, as though he hadn’t been present at all while the photo was taken. This all took place immediately prior to his disapearance, lending to the odd, unsettling nature of the circumstances. Had his inability to appear on film actually been some foreboding warning of things to come?

Having remembered this story from my youth, it had sparked an interest early on in odd disappearances, and even a casual search on the web will turn up a number of these sorts of reports of missing persons that will tend to incorporate some odd or supernatural element. Some of them are fairly run-of-the-mill, while others have outright given us the creeps, thanks to all the high-strangeness they incorporate. Unsettling as many of these vanishing acts may be upon careful review, we’ll examine a few of them here nonetheless… though you should be warned: you might want to notify relatives as to your whereabouts before taking this peculiar foray into the twilight world of Forteana…

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Vanished in Midair: The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich

On the evening of October 21, 1978, twenty-year-old Frederick Valentich had been flying a Cessna 182L across the Bass Strait on his way to King Island, Australia. There, the young pilot had planned to pick up some friends, and return to Moorabin Airport, but while making his flight that evening, Valentich found that this otherwise routine flight had suddenly become quite unusual; he was apparently no longer alone.

There in the sky, a large, greenish glob of light began to move in erratic patterns, speeding along beside and circling around his Cessna. Valentich, hoping to determine what kind of aircraft was interacting with him, contacted the air traffic control station in Melbourne, and began describing his encounter.”It seems to me that he’s playing some sort of game,” Valentich said. “He’s flying over me two, three times at speeds I could not identify.”

Before long, the engine on Valentich’s plane began to experience problems running. “What I’m doing right now is orbiting and the thing is just orbiting on top of me also. It’s got a green light and sort of metallic like, it’s all shiny on the outside.” Valentich had asked if air traffic control could confirm the presence of any military craft in the area, but there was no apparent confirmation of any such craft in the vicinity. Soon, the bizarre circling of the glowing green interceptor that haunted Valentich as he flew along had begun to be a bit concerning. The performance of his engine had worsened, and the craft now seemed to be approaching steadily, heading directly for him. What follows is a transcript of the last few minutes of correspondence between Frederick Valentich and air traffic control in Melbourne, after which all contact with Valentich was mysteriously lost:

FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, is the aircraft still with you?

DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet; it’s (open microphone for two seconds) now approaching from the south-west.

FS: Delta Sierra Juliet

19:11:50 DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet, the engine is rough-idling. I’ve got it set at twenty three twenty-four and the thing is (coughing).

FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, roger, what are your intentions?

DSJ: My intentions are – ah – to go to King Island – ah – Melbourne. That strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again (open microphone for two seconds). It is hovering and (open microphone for one second) it’s not an aircraft.

FS: Delta Sierra Juliet.

19:12:28 DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet. Melbourne (open microphone for seventeen seconds).

“It’s not an aircraft,” would be the final statement Valentich was ever heard saying; immediately following these words, a loud, metallic scraping noise was heard across the radio, and neither Valentich, nor his aircraft, were ever recovered. Both literally vanished in mid flight that October Evening as they passed over the Bass Strait. Had the young pilot been accosted by some unknown aerial phenomenon during that fateful evening flight, or were there other circumstances that may have contributed to his disappearance?

The Mystery of the Lost Regiment

Though the disappearance of Frederick Valentich is haunting (if not slightly terrifying), there may be even more puzzling circumstances that surround the disappearance of an entire battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment from Suvla Bay, Turkey during World War I, which was shared with me by Ken Hudnall, a veteran officer who began his own inquiry into strange disappearances following the Vietnam War.

According to the testimony of three soldiers with a New Zealand field company who claimed to have witnessed the disappearance, one afternoon in 1915 the members of the soon-to-be-lost regiment had been marching up a hillside in plain view, toward the crest of the slope where a low-hanging cloud had partially obstructed the landscape. As the soldiers passed through the cloud, they could no longer be seen; suddenly, and to the amazement of the New Zealanders nearby, the cloud lifted off the ground, and moved upward into the sky!

It was later assumed that the battalion had been captured during their stint in Turkey, and following the War the British government was said to have demanded their release. Of course, Turkey could account for the whereabouts of the so-called “lost regiment” no better than their countrymen could, and sparring the odd clues provided by the New Zealand field company that had watched them vanish, there were never any leads that surfaced as to where an entire battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment may have vanished to on that day in 1915.

Can disappearances of this sort be attributed to UFO phenomenon? Or, could there be something else at play? Admittedly, while elements of the “Lost Regiment” story above bear a certain flare that is similar to wartime fables and urban legends, the Valentich disappearance is very well documented, and by all accounts, seems to indicate a potentially dangerous interplay between the missing person in question, and what could only be described as a UFO that apparently took his life. Was the death the intentional result of some kind of attack, and in the event that the legend of the Lost Regiment were entirely true and factual, should it present cause for concern? Amazingly, there was one similar story detailed during World War II in which a pilot claimed to have witnessed an entire B-17 disappear after flying directly into a thick cloud in a similar manner. Years later, the witness wrote about the account in FATE Magazine, and even made it through as a caller on the late-night radio program Coast to Coast AM during a guest appearance with journalist Leslie Kean, author of UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record. What was the source behind the mystery of the “consuming clouds” or the two World Wars, and do they have any relevance to the odd circumstances surrounding Valentich’s disappearance?

Image by Per Ola Wiberg via Flickr.