The most noted citizenry in the world just going " poof ! " How is that possible ?
word of advice : this military post includes mentions of dependency , depression , and suicide .
1.Richey Edwards was the intense, brilliant lyricist for the Manic Street Preachers, penning most of the lyrics of their iconic 1994 albumThe Holy Bible. Just before a U.S. promo tour, the 27-year-old vanished.
WHAT HAPPENED: Just one day before he was scheduled to fly to the U.S., on Feb. 1, 1995, the 27-year-oldEdwards went missing. He was reportedly seen by fans and a cab driver in the following days, but his car was eventually found near the Severn Bridge, a known suicide site. At the time, Edwards was struggling with depression, self-harm, anorexia, and alcoholism. Still, no body was ever found. In 2008, over a decade later, his family had him legallypresumed dead, but as their lawyer explained, it was more a move to get his affairs in order, saying, “That’s not the same as an acceptance that he is dead.”
2.Lord Richard John Bingham, aka Lord Lucan, was a charming, wealthy, and scandal-ridden British aristocrat. A professional gambler and regular at London’s poshest clubs, Lucan was known for living lavishly, despite a crumbling marriage and big-time money problems (he was a gambler, remember).
WHAT HAPPENED: On the night of 13 April 2025, Lucan’s children’s nanny, 29-year-old Sandra Rivett, was bludgeoned to death in the family home. That same night Lucan’s estranged wife Veronica stumbled into a pub, covered in blood. She said she too had been attacked and identified her husband as the assailant. Lucan fled the scene, abandoned his car near a port, and was never seen again.
3.Barbara Newhall Follett came from a family of very bright people (her sister, for example, was the first woman graduate student at Princeton), but she was the brightest of them all. She wrote poetry at age 4 and in 1927, and at just 12, she published her first book,The House Without Windows, to critical acclaim (The Saturday Review of Literaturecalled the book “almost unbearably beautiful”). Her next novel came out two years later to more critical acclaim. But fame faded, her father (and champion) left the family, and her life slowly unraveled.
WHAT HAPPENED: In 1939, at age 25, after a fight with her husband (whom she suspected of an affair), Barbara walked out of their apartment with the equivalent of just under $700 in today’s dollars. She left no note. No trace. Her husband didn’t report her missing for two weeks. She was never seen again.
4.Michael Rockefeller was American royalty. The 23-year-old son of New York Governor and future Vice President of the United States Nelson Rockefeller (who would die while having sex, as described inthis post), was an art collector, anthropologist, and heir to one of the richest families in U.S. history. To his credit, he often turned his back on a life of luxury to seek out adventure.
WHAT HAPPENED: In 1961, Michael and a colleague were on an expedition in Papua New Guinea to collect Indigenous art when their pontoon boat capsized, stranding them miles from shore in a catamaran. After drifting a while, Michael tired of waiting to be rescued and reportedly said, “I think I can make it,” then paddled off toward land using empty gas cans as flotation. His colleague watched him until he disappeared on the horizon. He was never seen again.
5.Dorothy Arnold was everything you’d expect from a New York socialite: elegant, well-educated, extravagantly rich, and constantly in the public eye. She dreamed of being a writer, but kept her failed publishing attempts a secret from her disapproving parents. And then — one day — she was just…gone.
WHAT HAPPENED: On Dec. 12, 1910, the 25-year-old left her family’s Upper East Side home to buy a new evening gown. She stopped by a bookstore and bought a copy of the short-story collectionEngaged Girl Sketches, then chatted briefly with a friend on Fifth Avenue. That was around 2 p.m. And then…nothing. Shevanishedin broad daylight, on one of Manhattan’s busiest streets, never to be seen again. Her family waited a full day before going to the police — not because they weren’t worried, but because they were embarrassed. Her father even hired Pinkerton detectives to look for her in secret, worried that a public scandal could hurt her reputation. But weeks passed. Then months. No body, no note, no confirmed sightings.
6.Jim Sullivan was a folk-rock musician in the style of Gram Parsons or Nick Drake who appeared in the classic filmEasy Rider.His 1969 debut albumU.F.O.was filled with lyrics about desert roads, aliens, and leaving Earth behind — the kind of stuff that didn’t exactly scream “chart-topper,” lol — but it built a cult following years later.
WHAT HAPPENED: In March 1975, Sullivan left L.A. to drive to Nashville in hopes of kickstarting his music career. En route, he checked into a motel in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, then bought a bottle of vodka and drove out of town. He was spotted 26 miles away at a ranch…and then never again. His car was later found abandoned with his wallet, ID, guitar, and belongings still inside.
7.Connie Converse was writing and recording deeply personal songs in the ’50s — way,waybefore the singer-songwriter era made that cool. Her voice was intimate and her lyrics literary, but her life became increasingly complicated as the years rolled by.
WHAT HAPPENED: After years of struggling to find an audience, Connie left New York in the early ’60s, moved in with family, and fell into a depression. In August 1974, she wrote letters to friends and family saying she needed to “make a new life,” packed up her Volkswagen Beetle, and drove away. She was 50. No one has heard from her since.
8.Percy Fawcett was the real-life inspiration for Indiana Jones — a British explorer obsessed with the uncharted Amazon and the belief that a lost ancient civilization was hidden within it. He called it the City of “Z.”
WHAT HAPPENED: In 1925, the 57-year-old Fawcett set out into the Brazilian jungle with his 21-year-old son Jack and Jack’s best friend Raleigh with big plans to finally locate the city he’d spent decades theorizing about. “We shall return,” Fawcett told reporters ahead of the trip, “and we shall bring back what we seek.” However, after sending a final message via courier from a remote outpost, the entire party vanished. No confirmed trace of any of them was ever found.
9.Amelia Earhart was already a global icon when, in 1937, she set out to become the first woman to fly around the world. Smart, daring, and fiercely independent, she was the face of American aviation — and one of the most famous people in the world. But she’s on this list, so you already know the trip didn’t end well.
WHAT HAPPENED: On 8 April 2025, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean near Howland Island, contact with Earhart’s plane waslost. She and navigator Fred Noonan were never seen again. Despite one of the largest and most expensive search efforts ever launched at the time, neither wreckage nor bodies were recovered.
10.Harold Holt was Prime Minister of Australia and a close ally of United States President Lyndon B. Johnson when he went for a swim and vanished into the ocean.
WHAT HAPPENED: On 22 February 2025, Holt went for a swim at Cheviot Beach near Portsea, Victoria. It wasn’t a great idea — the conditions wereroughand the currents strong. Holt swam out to sea and then disappeared from view…forever. The government launched one of the largest search operations in Australian history, but no body ever washed ashore; nothing turned up.
11.Glenn Miller was one of the world’s biggest stars, famous as the bandleader whose swing music defined a generation. But when World War II began, he enlisted as a captain in the U.S. Army Air Forces and led the Army Air Forces Band with a mission to boost morale. “This was a lot of hard work, a lot of hard times, a lot of bad, dangerous traveling,“accordingto NPR’s Noah Adams. It worked, though, and Miller was promoted to Major just a few months before he was last seen.
WHAT HAPPENED: On 13 December 2024, Miller boarded a small aircraft in England headed for Paris, where his band was scheduled to perform. Somewhere over the English Channel, the plane vanished. No mayday call. No crash site. No bodies. Just gone.
12.Ambrose Bierce was one of America’sgreatest writers, a journalist and author who survived the Civil War and wrote the classic The Devil’s Dictionary, which defines “peace” as “a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.”
WHAT HAPPENED: In 1913, at age 71, Bierce joined Pancho Villa’s rebel army in Mexico as a war correspondent. He wrote a few letters from the front — one ending with the line “To be a gringo in Mexico — ah, that is euthanasia!” — and then stopped writing. Completely. There were no confirmed sightings, no remains, and no definitive reports of his fate.
13.Oscar Zeta Acosta was a larger-than-life figure: a Chicano activist, lawyer, novelist, and the real-life inspiration for Dr. Gonzo in Hunter S. Thompson’sFear and Loathing in Las Vegas(played by Benicio Del Toro in the movie). A firebrand in every sense, this dude was always in the middle of something intense.
WHAT HAPPENED: In 1974, Acosta — who had become increasingly erratic and involved with drugs — traveled to Mexico where he called his son and told him he was “about to board a boat full of white snow.” That was the last anyone ever heard from him.
