Throughout history, some of the most famous people disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Some of them reappeared, while others’ vanishings remain a mystery to this day.
Here are some odd stories about some of the famous writers who have disappeared in the past.
1. Ambrose Bierce: The Cynical Wit Who Vanished in Mexico
Ambrose Bierce, who is best known for The Devil’s Dictionary and the scary short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” always wrote about death.
He left the United States in 1913, when he was 71 years old, and went to Mexico, where Pancho Villa’s revolution was going on. He wrote letters about what he did, but after late December of that year, no one ever heard from him again.
Some people suspect Villa’s men killed him, while others say he may have simply disappeared or decided to kill himself. His dark sense of humor and interest in death made his absence seem strangely fitting, as if he wrote his own last chapter.
2. Barbara Newhall Follett: The Prodigy Who Walked Into the Night
In the 1920s, Barbara Newhall Follett was a big deal in the literary world. She released The House Without Windows when she was only 12 years old. Critics called it “otherworldly.”
But her life as an adult was hard; she had difficulties with money, and her marriage fell apart. In 1939, when she was 25 years old, she left her house with $30 in her pocket and was never seen again.
Even when the police looked into it, they couldn’t find a body or any other evidence. Some people think she may have opted to leave her identity behind, while others are afraid of a terrible fate. Since then, her disappearance has become one of the most famous mysteries in literature.
3. Weldon Kees: The Poet With a Dark Streak
Weldon Kees was a poet and jazz fan from the middle of the century who had a sharp, caustic voice. People often compared him to T.S. Eliot.
His work showed how many people in America felt alone after the war. But his personal life was hard since he was depressed and drank too much. In July 1955, his automobile was found empty near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
Even though many thought he killed himself, no body was ever found. Some people think he planned his own disappearance and rushed away to Mexico to start over, while others think he jumped into the Bay and disappeared into the fog.
4. Richard Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan: The Aristocrat on the Run
Lord Lucan was mostly a British aristocrat, but his disappearance has made him a literary legend because he was connected to London’s cultural scene and loved mysteries.
In 1974, Lucan’s estranged wife was attacked but survived, and his children’s nanny was brutally murdered in his London house. Lucan ran away from the scene and was never seen again.
There have been reports of sightings all throughout the world, from Africa to South America, but no real proof has ever been found. Writers and biographers have theorized endlessly, turning his biography into a real-life whodunit.
5. Poe’s Last Days: The Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe
The death and disappearance of Edgar Allan Poe in 1849 is still one of the greatest mysteries in literature. Poe was found incoherent on the streets of Baltimore, wearing someone else’s clothes.
He was transported to a hospital, where he died four days later without being able to explain what had happened. There are a lot of theories about what happened, from alcohol poisoning and robbery to a terrible practice called “cooping,” in which men were kidnapped and forced to vote many times during elections.
His last words, “Lord, help my poor soul,” have only added to the creepy mystery surrounding his death.
6. Agatha Christie: The Queen of Mystery Becomes the Mystery
In December 1926, the well-known crime writer Agatha Christie disappeared without a trace. They located her automobile beside a chalk pit, with her coat and driver’s license inside.
Thousands of volunteers, including other authors like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, joined in on the search around the country. She was found eleven days later at a spa hotel, where she had signed in under the name of her husband’s lover.
Christie never talked about what happened in public, so biographers had to guess if it was a breakdown, a big protest against her husband’s infidelity, or just a way to get away from it all. Even now, readers can see the irony in the fact that the world’s most famous mystery writer became her own missing-person case.
7. Solomon Northup: The Author of Twelve Years a Slave
Twelve Years a Slave, a memoir by Solomon Northup, is one of the most important firsthand accounts of slavery in the United States. Northup was a free Black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery.
He was finally released and reunited with his family in 1853. He subsequently traveled about and talked about his experience, speaking out against slavery. But he suddenly disappeared in the late 1850s.
Some people suspect he might have been kidnapped again, while others think he led a quiet life under a different name. We still don’t know what happened to him, and his story, which was already strange, became even more unsettling with this open conclusion.
