Most people who go missing turn up safe and well, within a few hours or days. Some, unfortunately, are found dead. When people do leave, the reason is often obvious, too—because they are running away from something (debt or the police, for example) or to something (a new partner or a fresh start).

It is very rare for people to disappear entirely completely and forever, but occasionally, even prominent figures seem to vanish without a trace for no reason at all. Here, we look at some very cold cases indeed.

10 John Lansing Jr.

In 1829, John Lansing Jr., former chief justice of the New York State Supreme Court, popped out to mail a letter and was never seen again. Lansing had had a glittering legal career. He was a member of the Congress of the Confederation in 1785 and was part of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Lansing was said to have suffered from a stammer, which hindered his political career, but he still managed to become the chancellor of New York in 1801. In 1800, Lansing presided over People v. Weeks, the first formally documented murder trial in American history.

On the night of his disappearance, December 12, 1829, John Lansing left his hotel in Manhattan to mail a letter via boat. It was the last anyone saw of him. A number of theories were proposed at the time of the disappearance: that he had tripped and fallen off the dock, that he was mugged and killed, and his body was hidden somewhere, or that he was murdered by political enemies. The last theory gained some weight when the grandson of the publisher Thurlow Weed maintained that his grandfather had evidence that Lansing was murdered by powerful political enemies, though he refused to name them.^[1]

It is unlikely that we will ever know the truth, and Lansing’s body has never been found. If it were to be found, there is an empty tomb in his hometown of Albany, New York, with Lansing’s name on it, just waiting for him to come home.

9 Solomon Northup

Solomon Northup, the author of the famous book Twelve Years a Slave, disappeared without trace in 1857. His book, made into an Oscar winning-film in 2013, recounts the true story of his kidnapping and subsequent sale into slavery. His treatment under the brutal Edwin Epps makes especially difficult reading. Northup’s book was an immediate success, selling 30,000 copies in the first two years.

After his escape, Northup was said to have worked on the Underground Railroad, aiding other slaves to escape, and spent much time unsuccessfully trying to bring a suit against his kidnappers. In Washington, DC, Northup was not allowed to testify in the case because he was black. He was later allowed to file the suit in New York, but after a number of delays, the case was dropped.

He embarked upon a speaking tour in Canada in 1857 and never returned home. He was never heard from again, though a letter written in 1863 claimed he was alive. A number of theories have been proposed as to what happened to him: that he became a spy for the Union Army and was captured and killed, that he was kidnapped and made a slave again, or that he had just wandered away and died where no one knew him and is buried in an unmarked grave somewhere.^[2]

Whatever happened to Solomon Northup, he made a contribution to the abolition of slavery and the conscience of the United States and the rest of the world that lived long after him.

8 James William Boyd

In 1865, Captain James William Boyd, an officer of the Confederacy, was released after having been captured by the Union. He was due to meet his son and travel to Mexico when he vanished without trace. Boyd’s disappearance is the subject of a conspiracy theory that he was killed after being mistaken for John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.^[3] Boyd was said to somewhat resemble Booth and shared the same initials, none of which seems to be hard evidence, and the theory has been proposed, discounted, ridiculed, and fictionalized by a whole host of historians and writers, most of whom relegate Captain Boyd to a subplot in someone else’s drama.

What is known is that Boyd was held as a prisoner of war by the Union until February 1865, when he was released so that he could return home to take care of his seven children, his wife having died while he was incarcerated. His son is said to have received a letter telling him to meet Boyd in Brownsville, Texas, but Boyd never showed up for the rendezvous, and no further word was ever received from him.

7 Charley Ross

Charley Ross was only four years old in 1874, when he and his older brother Walter were enticed into a horse-drawn carriage while they were playing in their garden in Philadelphia. Five-year-old Walter was able to get out further down the street, but Charley was driven away and was never seen again.

The kidnapping of Charley Ross is notable for two reasons. It was the first well-documented instance of a ransom note being sent in American history, and it also led to a change in the law. Until that time, kidnapping had been a misdemeanor offense. In 1875, in Pennsylvania, this was changed to a felony.

In all, 23 ransom letters were sent to the Ross family, demanding $20,000. The authorities were inexperienced at dealing with kidnapping, and the mayor’s office foolishly offered a reward of, coincidentally, $20,000 for his return. This unleashed an unending wave of sightings, tip-offs, and outright fabrications from people desperate to collect the reward and made the job of finding the boy that much harder. People claiming to be Charley turned up regularly at the Ross family home even years later.

When two men were shot by police officers in the process of committing a robbery, one of them, Joseph Douglas, confessed to the kidnapping. Both men died at the scene before they could say anything more. One of their associates was also tried and convicted of complicity in the kidnapping, but he never revealed the whereabouts of Charley or his remains.

In 2012, 22 of the ransom letters were found. The next year, they were auctioned, ironically, for $20,000.^[4]

6 William Cantelo

William Cantelo (possibly pictured above) was the inventor of an early form of machine gun. Cantelo kept a laboratory in the basement of the pub he ran in Southampton, England, and neighbors would often hear sounds like rapid gunfire coming from below. Sometime in the 1880s, Cantelo told his sons he was going on a business trip to try to sell his new invention and was never seen again.

It was first assumed that Cantelo had met with an accident on his travels, until his sons saw a newspaper photograph of another inventor named Hiram Maxim. Maxim is credited with creating the Maxim Gun, a type of machine gun. And he bore an uncanny resemblance to William Cantelo.

Cantelo’s sons certainly believed that Maxim was their father and hired a private investigator to establish the truth, without success. There is also some evidence that Maxim visited Southampton and may have met Cantelo, if, indeed, he wasn’t Cantelo. Whatever the truth, Hiram Maxim died an extremely rich man, while William Cantelo’s sons inherited a pub with bullet holes all over the basement.^[5]

5 Louis Le Prince

Louis Le Prince was a pioneer of the motion picture industry, along with the Lumiere Brothers and, of course, Thomas Edison. As a young man, Le Prince had frequented the studio of Jacques Daguerre (of Daguerreotype picture fame) and became fascinated with first images and then moving pictures, receiving a patent for his Le Prince Single-lens Cine Camera in 1888, ahead of Edison.^[6]

However, before Le Prince could get the recognition that he deserved, he disappeared suddenly and mysteriously in 1890 after boarding a train at Dijon, bound for Paris. There are a number of theories about what happened to Le Prince after he boarded the train, some of them mundane, others slightly more outlandish. It has been suggested that he killed himself because he was on the verge of bankruptcy or disappeared deliberately to avoid being exposed as homosexual. It has also been suggested that his brother murdered him in a row over his mother’s will. Le Prince’s widow even maintained that Thomas Edison ordered a hit on him in order to get him out of the way and prevent him from taking the credit for his invention.

Whatever you may choose to believe about his fate, what is certain is that Le Prince’s Cine Camera recorded the world’s first moving images with the Roundhay Garden Scene in 1888.

4 Flannan Isles Lighthouse Keepers

All three of the keepers of the Flannan Isles Lighthouse, located in Scotland’s Flannan Isles, were found to be missing on December 26, 1900, and were never seen again. It was against the regulations for all three keepers to leave their posts at any one time, particularly during a storm, when the lighthouse would have been a godsend to any ships caught in the rough seas. So why did they all leave their posts?

What is known is that when the relief keeper landed on the island, he found the lighthouse deserted. Further investigations showed that the men had certainly been working up until December 15, as their logs showed, and a vessel reported passing the lighthouse that night and noticing that the lamp was not lit, a fact not known at the time.

On inspection, the light was found to be in good working order.

We’ll probably never know what happened to them, although a number of theories have been put forward. One was that, after having previously been fined for not tying down equipment, the three keepers went together to ensure that everything was made safe ahead of the storm and were either swept off the rocks by a large wave or blown off the side of the cliff in a gale. Another theory suggested that two keepers had gone out to check ropes, and when they didn’t return, the third went out to find them, only to perish himself.^[7] In 1912, the English poet Wilfred Wilson Gibson published a poem, “Flannan Isle,” which suggested a much more mysterious end, dwelling on overturned chairs and untouched meals and supernatural misgivings, for which there was never any basis in fact.

3 Belle Gunness

Belle Gunness was a Norwegian-American serial killer who vanished from her farm in Indiana on April 28, 1908, after having killed as many as 40 people. By means which would today be called catfishing, Belle struck up pen-pal relationships with men who responded to her personal advertisements for investors looking for possible relationships. She corresponded with her victims for a number of months before convincing them to visit, bringing with them their life savings in cash while telling no one where they were going.

The ruse worked surprisingly well, and a number of men, most of them homesick for their native Norway, would turn up at her door with a $1,000 or more wrapped in paper parcels, after which they would never be seen in one piece again.^[8]

Belle was believed at one time to have died in a fire at her home, where the remains of three charred bodies, thought to be her children, and an equally burned female torso were found. Belle’s sometime boyfriend, Ray Lamphere, was arrested and questioned and charged with arson. However, when police began to excavate the farmhouse, they found a number of bodies, and body parts, that clearly had nothing to do with him.

It was later believed that the headless torso was not that of Gunness at all but rather her housekeeper, who had mysteriously disappeared. It is certainly true that Gunness had withdrawn large amounts of money from the bank immediately prior to the fire. Lamphere is said to have confessed before his death that he helped Gunness to set the fire and drove her to the train station to make good her escape. Despite numerous sightings in the years following, her whereabouts have never been determined.

2 Bobby Dunbar

Bobby Dunbar was only four years old in 1912, when he disappeared while on a family holiday in Louisiana.

Hundreds of volunteers joined in the search for Bobby, combing the riverbanks, slicing open the bellies of alligators, and even dynamiting the lake, thinking that the blast might dislodge the child’s corpse. Bobby appeared to have vanished into thin air until, eight months later, he was found alive and well in the care of William Cantwell Walters from Mississippi.

Walters was found guilty of kidnapping, despite his vehement protests that the child was, in fact, his nephew. The child was taken home to his mother, who is said to have exclaimed, “Thank God, it is my boy,” before fainting.

William Walters was convicted of child abduction and sentenced to life in prison, though he only served two years. However, in 2004, DNA tests proved that the boy (pictured above) who was “rescued” from Walters was not Bobby Dunbar and was in all probability the nephew that Walters had claimed.^[9] What happened to Bobby is unclear, but the most likely explanation is that he drowned in the river on the same day he disappeared.

1 Ambrose Small

Canadian millionaire and theater impresario Ambrose Small disappeared from his office at the Grand Opera House in Toronto, Ontario, on December 2, 1919, the same day that the sale of his theaters was due to go through. Small was certainly in a hurry for the transaction to be completed and was instrumental in moving the signing date up by two weeks.

However, although the sale netted Small over $1 million, he never withdrew a penny of the money, all of which was still in the bank when his disappearance was discovered. Nor was he reported missing by his wife, who assumed him to be “in the arms of a designing woman,” and it was only on January 3, a month later, that his disappearance was reported in the press.^[10]

A number of theories abounded at the time, including that he had been killed by his wife and burned in the furnace at the Grand Theatre or that the police had helped Small disappear.

Ward Hazell is a writer who travels, and an occasional travel writer.

In our modern age of satellite imagery and aircraft, it is incredibly easy to explore and map out new locations. In the past, though, the job fell to small expeditions of well-equipped people. Relying on nothing but their log, some rations, and a handful of mapping tools, these groups would often spend months, if not years, traversing new frontiers and recording what they found. These voyages were extremely perilous, and many ended in disaster.

A few, though, suffered an even stranger fate: They disappeared from the face of the Earth entirely. Some have since been discovered—often centuries later—but others remain missing. The mysterious disappearance of Percy Fawcett, for example, has led as many as 100 other explorers to their deaths and still hasn’t been solved.^[1] Here are ten expeditions that mysteriously disappeared.

10 Madoc

Several centuries before Columbus sailed to the Americas, a Welsh prince named Madoc departed Wales with ten ships and a dream of discovering a new land. Madoc was the son of King Owain Gwynedd, who had 18 other sons, some of them bastards. Madoc was one of the bastards. When King Owain died in 1169, a civil war broke out between the brothers over who should be the next king. Madoc, a peaceful man, assembled a party of other peace-lovers and set out to find new lands. According to the legend, he returned in 1171 with stories of his adventures and attracted more people to go with him on a second expedition, from which he never returned.^[2]

The story, which was first recorded in a Welsh manuscript in the 1500s, is shadowy on the details, but some people believe Madoc and his men landed in the vicinity of what is now Mobile, Alabama. In particular, stone forts along the Alabama River have drawn attention since they were built before Columbus’s arrival, but some Cherokee tribes say they were built by “White People.”

Some speculate that Madoc and his followers joined with and were assimilated by the Mandan Native Americans. Several rumors surround this myth, such as the alleged similarity between the Mandan language and Welsh. Governor John Sevier of Tennessee wrote a report in 1799 detailing the discovery of six skeletons encased in brass armor bearing the Welsh coat of arms, which may have been a hoax. If they were real, they would be the most solid evidence we have for the potential fate of Madoc’s expedition, which otherwise remains a mystery.

9 Vivaldi Expedition

It’s now a well-known fact that Columbus wasn’t searching for America when he left Spain; he was expecting to find Asia. And two centuries earlier, in 1291, that was also the goal of the Vivaldi expedition. Departing from Genoa, the two brothers, Vandino and Ugolino Vivaldi, and their followers hoped to reach India by navigating around the southern tip of Africa. They outfitted their expedition with enough food for ten years of travel, so they clearly expected to be gone for a long time. They passed through the Strait of Gibraltar in mid-1291 and were never seen again.^[3]

There were several attempts to discover the fate of the expedition, the first led by Lancelotto Malocello in 1312. He voyaged as far as the Canary Islands, where he built a fort and remained for over two decades without seeing any trace of the lost brothers. Sometime in the early 1300s, Ugolino’s son, Sorleone, went in search of his missing father and uncle. According to some sources, he may have made it as far as Mogadishu, but he, too, found no trace of them.

Another mention of the expedition appears in 1455, when the explorer Antoniotto Uso Di Mare said he’d met a descendant of a survivor who’d traveled with the brothers. According to him, the brothers had made it as far as Senegal, where they were captured and held captive for the rest of their lives.

8 Abubakari Expedition

The expedition of Abu Bakr II (also known as Mansa Qu), ruler of the Mali Empire, is surrounded by controversy. The best evidence we have for it comes from the Arab historian Shihab al-Umari, who met with Mansa Musa, Abu Bakr’s heir, in Cairo in the early 1300s.^[4]

According to Mansa Musa, his father refused to believe that there was no end to the ocean and outfitted an expedition of 200 ships full of sailors, food, and gold to find its edge. Only one ship returned. According to the ship’s captain, they saw a roaring waterfall in the middle of the ocean which seemed to be the edge. His ship was at the back of the fleet. The rest of the ships were sucked in, and he only escaped by rowing backward. The king refused to believe him and outfitted 3,000 ships to try again, this time traveling with them. He made Mansa Musa regent in his stead but never returned.

Several historians have suggested that Abu Bakr’s expedition reached the Americas, supported by a legend among the native Taino people of Hispaniola of black people who arrived before Columbus with weapons made of an alloy containing gold. Others have dismissed the claims, however, saying that no archaeological evidence of any such connection has ever been found. One thing is certain: Abu Bakr never returned to reclaim his kingdom.

7 Cabot’s Final Expedition

John Cabot is famous today for being the first European to discover North America since the Vikings. Cabot’s history-making voyage most likely landed in Bonavista, Newfoundland, in June 1497. In a manner which loosely resembles the Moon landing, the crew left the ship only briefly to plant the Papal banner and claim the land for England before returning to their ship and spending the next few days exploring the coast from the water. When they returned to England, Cabot was hailed as a hero and received £10 as a reward—the value of about two years’ wages for the average laborer—and a pension of £20 a year.^[5]

Despite his fame, the fate of John Cabot remains unknown to this day. We know from contemporary sources that Cabot outfitted a second expedition to the New World, this one made up of five ships. They left Bristol in May 1498 with a cargo mostly comprised of items to trade. The last mention of Cabot and his men came from the Spanish envoy in London two months later, who reported that the fleet was caught in a storm and that one ship had to stop in Ireland. The rest of the fleet went on.

He may have never returned, since no further records of John Cabot survive—not even to say that he was missing. Some speculate that he returned to England and lived there for some years afterward. Research into his final fate is ongoing, but the latter theory is at least supported by the fact that one of the men who was supposed to accompany him on his final voyage, Lancelot Thirkell, was living in London in 1501.

6 Franklin’s Lost Expedition

In 1845, the British explorer Sir John Franklin set off with a small team to navigate the last unmapped part of the Northwest Passage. Traveling on the HMS Erebus and the aptly named HMS Terror, they departed England in May. Their fates weren’t known until 2014.^[6]

The loss resulted in a flurry of activity in Britain from both the public and the government. The Admiralty organized three search teams in 1848, one by land and two by sea, but they were unsuccessful. Repeated attempts to find them would continue until the final search team was launched with public backing in 1857. (By this time, the government had declared the whole team deceased.) Through conversations with the local Inuits, some of whom had items which had belonged to the crew, they learned that the ships had become trapped in the ice. Franklin himself died in 1847. The remainder of the crew left the ships and, after wintering at King William Island, began a desperate hike back toward civilization on the Canadian mainland, a trek which resulted in the deaths of all involved. According to analysis of some of the bones, it seems the crew resorted to cannibalism.

The truth wasn’t known for sure, though, until Canadian researchers rediscovered the HMS Terror in 2014. The ship was in almost pristine condition—so great, in fact, that it would probably still float if the water was drained from it. The find suggests the ship was abandoned in an orderly manner. The crew most likely relocated to the HMS Erebus, where they made a futile attempt to sail out of the icy water before eventually being trapped again. After that, they were forced to continue on foot.

5 Eudoxus Of Cyzicus

The ancient world was more connected than we often realize. Even before the rise of the Roman Empire, the ancient Greeks were trading with India. While sailors from either country couldn’t make it the whole way, they often met in trade ports along the coast of Yemen, where the Greeks would trade for aromatics and other luxuries to bring back home.

In 118 BC, an Indian sailor was shipwrecked in the Red Sea and brought to the court of Ptolemy, the Greek ruler of Egypt. With the sailor’s help, a Greek explorer, Eudoxus of Cyzicus, made the first recorded voyage to sail directly from Egypt to India.^[7] He made the voyage again in 116 BC, this time navigating without Indian help. This was important in the history of trade across the Indian Ocean: Within a few decades, the sea trade between Greece and Rome and ancient India had increased markedly.

During this second voyage, he was blown off course and ended up sailing along the African coast. While there, he encountered a shipwreck which he concluded, based off native stories and the ship’s design, must have come from Spain. He thought it must have journeyed around the southern tip of Africa. Ever the adventurer, he decided to attempt the same journey. After he’d made his way overland to Spain, his first attempt failed after he ran into difficulties along the Morrocan coast and was forced to return. He tried again shortly after and never returned. It was the first recorded attempt to circumnavigate Africa, a feat that wouldn’t be attempted again for over 1,000 years.

4 Peter Tessem And Paul Knutsen

In 1919, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was venturing along the northern coast of Russia as part of an expedition when one of his crewmen, Peter Tessem, began suffering chronic headaches. As a result, he was left on Cape Chelyuskin with another explorer, Paul Knutsen, who’d traveled the area before.^[8] Roald was confident that they would make it to the nearby town of Dikson, which was just over a month’s journey away. Paul Knutsen knew the locations of supply caches that had been left in the area, so the two should have been in no danger.

By 1920, however, the two men still hadn’t arrived in Dikson. The Norwegian government organized a search party shortly after but found nothing. The Soviets launched their own search in 1921, which found a Norwegian sled and a letter written by the men stating they were in good health but otherwise found nothing.

By sheer chance, a Soviet research team found the scientific equipment and data that the men had been entrusted with in 1922. Some time later, they found the body of one of the men. While they couldn’t identify it, it was wearing a gold watch engraved with Tessem’s name. The body was found within sight of Dikson. They reburied it further up the slope. Today, the site is marked by a granite monument engraved with Tessem’s name.

3 The Corte-Real Brothers

Gaspar Corte-Real was part of a family of Portuguese explorers: His father had discovered what was most likely North America in 1473, and by the time Gaspar was old enough to sail, he joined his brothers and became an adventurer.

In 1500, the Portuguese king, Manuel, sent Gaspar on an expedition to find the Northwest Passage to Asia. North America was largely unknown territory at the time, and when Gaspar encountered Greenland, he mistook it for Asia.^[9] Without landing, he turned back and gathered a larger crew for the journey. This time, he brought with him two other ships and his older brother, Miguel. They made their way toward Greenland but, hampered by ice on the water, were forced to turn south, where they most likely landed in Newfoundland. They took 57 natives captive, planning to sell them as slaves. Gaspar sent Miguel back with two of the ships to take their captives back to Portugal, carrying on south alone. He never returned.

A year later, Miguel headed back to Newfoundland to find his brother, but he, too, disappeared. Because of their success, however, the Portuguese government became heavily interested in North America and funded several other expeditions to the seas around Newfoundland before they were eventually driven out by French and English settlers.

2 George Bass

George Bass was a surgeon and navigator who played an important role in the mapping of Australia’s coast. Traveling aboard the HMS Reliance between 1795 and 1798, he studied and made records of the plants and animals in Australia, confirmed the presence of coal in Sydney, and identified the strait between New South Wales and Tasmania, which was later named after him. His many achievements led to him being elected as a member of the Linnean Society of London in 1799, the oldest natural history society in the world.^[10]

Despite his scientific achievements, Bass eventually turned his hand to commercial shipping. In 1803, he was planning for an expedition to cross from Australia to South America. In his last surviving letters, he referred to a venture which he couldn’t name: It’s likely he was planning to engage in smuggling, since Britain and Spain (and Spanish South America by extension) were not on the best of terms at the time. He departed Australia in February 1803 and was never seen again. Speculation that he was captured by the Spanish authorities has been debunked because his name doesn’t appear in Spanish or Peruvian records, and when Spain released all its British prisoners some years later, he wasn’t among them. His fate is still unknown.

1 USS Sea Gull

In August 1839, the US Navy purchased a former New York pilot boat and renamed it the Sea Gull.^[11] Alongside the newly bought Flying Fish, it was to serve as part of the US Exploring Expedition’s mission to chart the Antarctic and Pacific. The plan suffered a severe setback, however, when they reached the southern tip of South America: Cape Horn. Faced with strong winds, choppy water, and snow, the expedition waited there for months before moving on in April 1840. The Flying Fish and Sea Gull were left behind to wait for the supply ship. Once they had the supplies, they would catch up to the rest of the fleet.

But the winds were still dangerously high. On the night of April 28, the winds were particularly dangerous, and the Flying Fish and her crew made their way back to port, where they waited out the storm that followed. They last saw the Sea Gull at midnight, but it never followed them back to port. It was never seen again. The USS Sea Gull remains on the US Naval Institute’s list of “Missing and Presumed Lost” vessels to this day.

“Learn to code,” shout simpletons at people whose industries are crumbling. Whether affecting coal miners or trendy Internet journalists, the march of progress can be a brutal one for those whose skills are about to become obsolete.

Still, we often forget about jobs that were once plentiful and provided a living for past generations. Here are the top 10 jobs that have been crushed under the boots of human progress.

10 Iconic Professions That Have Almost Vanished

10 Knocker Uppers

Usually, it takes a while for new, cutting-edge tech to filter into our lives and become ubiquitous. Some forms are created to replace older tech. But in many cases, new tech comes along that replaces a human-held role.

This was true in the case of the alarm clock. So, what came before? In the more industrialized parts of England, they relied on knocker uppers.^[1]

Factories and mines had a real interest in getting their workers on the lines as early as possible, often at 6:00 AM or earlier. The problem is that humans love to sleep, often quite late into the new day.

To remedy tardiness, these companies employed people to walk the narrow, terraced streets where their workers lived and brandish very long sticks (or peashooters) to tap on the bedroom windows of their workers—and wake them on time.

9 Rower Women

Getting from point A to point B is at the very core of how our species evolved from the animal kingdom to something quite apart. However, Mother Nature loves throwing obstacles in our way: mountains, chasms, occasionally magma, impenetrable woodlands or jungles, and, most commonly, water.

Until World War I, the Swedes used an ingenious way to quickly traverse the many waterways that blocked their access to the islands of the Stockholm archipelago—water taxis.

Not so obsolete, you may think. But this was solely a female profession, and they only used long-oar-propelled boats. (They were challenged by a group of unmarried women from Dalarna who used newfangled paddle-wheel boats).

The advent of the Steam Age and further innovations led to the decline and eventual end of the traditional role of rower women. It’s a shame, really, that we cannot see these ladies do their thing anymore. As Venezuelan General Francisco de Miranda said in 1787, “[They were] good women who row like devils!”^[2]

8 Computers

Too many people are enslaved by their tech. Apple, Google, social media, Microsoft—never in the whole history of mankind have we been so reliant on such a small number of companies. So, what if there was a true neo-Luddite revolt? What would take the place of all the ubiquitous devices on which we rely?

A lot of things we do on our devices would simply go away, replaced by older forms of entertainment, communication, and work. But what of the computing needed to manage the vast amounts of data processing and analysis required in all facets of human endeavor?

Well, our digital computers would be replaced by . . . human computers, a throwback to yesteryear when people did their own computing. In fact, NASA relied on human computers at one time.^[3]

7 Priest Hunters

This entry is very era-specific, thank goodness. Queen Mary I has a rightly “bloody” reputation, but that of her younger sister, Elizabeth I, is generally positive in the public consciousness.

Where Queen Mary burned Protestants at the stake, Elizabeth sought to right this injustice during her reign by placing a bounty on the heads of Catholic priests. She sent out men to hunt down the priests. Job done, peace restored!^[4]

This dangerous environment caused many priests to take daring, often desperate measures to evade capture. One such ploy was to build a “priest hole” in a friendly household where the priest could hide from the searching hunters. If a priest was discovered, he was flung into prison before being tortured and put to death.

Society will often create a “folk devil,” an individual or group who can be blamed for a population-level anxiety. In Elizabethan England, Jesuit priests held that dubious title.

6 Whipping Boys

Kids can be rude, cruel, and quite naughty. In the past, parents and guardians remedied their children’s bad behavior with a whipping. However, what if your son had stolen an apple from the pantry but was also the heir to the throne of your country?

You couldn’t beat a future king. Instead, you would use a whipping boy—a young lad to take all the corporal punishment that the devilish little prince deserved.

There is some debate as to whether such a role was a “real” job. However, given that a physician would often drink his lord’s pee to ascertain whether the nobleman was close to developing diabetes, we are willing to believe that such a ridiculous role existed.^[5]

10 Jobs From The Early 1900s That Totally Sucked

5 Sandal-Bearers

Sandal-bearers carried the sandals of their superiors in early cultures, such as ancient Egypt or feudal Japan. The sandal-bearer often washed the feet of his superior as well.

It wasn’t as bad a role as it sounds. In feudal Japan, sandal-bearers often rose to higher status from this seemingly low position. For example, Toyotomi Hideyoshi became Imperial Regent of Japan, having unified the islands through bloody conquest.^[6]

Sandal-bearers also held an important role in ancient Egypt. The exact nature of their status is shrouded in mystery. Was their depiction in reliefs and other art a tribute to their high status in society or merely a reflection of their masters’ power? We may never know.

4 Printer’s Devils

What do Walt Whitman, Thomas Jefferson, Ambrose Bierce, John Kellogg, Warren G. Harding, and Mark Twain have in common? Yes, they’re all dead. True, they’re all American. But they were all printer’s devils as boys, too. It was a common apprenticeship for young boys until the end of the 19th century.^[7]

There is no special or unique set of tasks for a printer’s devil. Like many apprentices, they were just errand boys who completed any menial task while observing their master’s work to learn the craft.

The disappearance of the role has more to do with the death of traditional printing and the decline in the apprentice model of career progression. However, we can all agree that there has never been a cooler job title in history.

3 Herb Strewers

Have you ever worried that the walkways in your palace smell bad? If so, you need an herb strewer!

London stank, and unfortunately for the royal family, their main residences have always been in this stanktropolis. Kings and queens tend not to enjoy the terrible smells emanating from open sewers and mountains of animal dung, so they came up with a specialized role to alleviate this malodorous situation.

A solely female role, the herb strewer would do just as described. She would scatter herbs and sweet-smelling petals throughout the royal household.^[8]

The herb strewer also played a prominent role in coronation ceremonies. She led the procession by spreading herbs and petals before the king- or queen-to-be made their way toward the throne. However, at the coronation of William IV in 1830, the role was cut due to budgetary concerns.

The last lady to strew herbs for the royal family was Anne Fellowes. If the position were ever restored, the first unmarried woman descended from Fellowes could lay claim to the title.^[8]

2 Mursmackas

This is yet another entry from Sweden, a nation that pioneered gender equality long before most other cultures. In this Scandinavian country, both sexes were allowed to be equally miserable!

A bricklayer’s job is hard enough without having to carry heavy pallets (or buckets) of mortar to the wall that they’re building. Why not get an unmarried mother who cannot find work anywhere else to do the job?

That’s exactly what the Swedes thought during the rapid growth of Stockholm, Gothenburg, and other cities from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries. However, as social changes and women’s liberation took place, women in Sweden had more choices as to where they could work.^[9]

1 Link-Boys

The children who held the candles or torches on dark streets in Victorian London were known as “link-boys.”^[10] This is the supposed derivation of the saying “can’t hold a candle to,” which is a way of expressing inferiority to another person or object.

Before London had streetlights every few yards on almost every roadway, a link-boy was paid by passing patrons to pick up a flaming link and lead the way to wherever the customers were going. To make a little extra money, link-boys sometimes worked for thieves and muggers. The boys were tasked with leading unwitting customers down dark alleys where they would be robbed.

10 Jobs We Already Lost To Technology

About The Author: CJ Phillips is a writer, storyteller, and actor living in rural West Wales. He is a little obsessed with lists.

People are reported missing all the time, leaving authorities and loved ones to piece together clues and come up with theories. Sometimes, there are logical explanations, But other times, there are no clear theories, and the mystery remains unsolved. Not all these disappearances were of the forever kind, but they definitely are all strange and thought-provoking.

This list explores ten published writers who went missing, leaving their readers and the public to wonder what exactly happened to cause their disappearance.

Related: 10 Mysterious People Who Inspired The Work Of Great Writers

10 Agatha Christie

The famous English mystery writer perplexed police, fans, and family members when she vanished in 1926 under mysterious circumstances. Christie left home in the evening and drove off without leaving any indication as to her destination. Police soon found her car abandoned with no clues about her whereabouts. As an already well-known author, her disappearance was highly publicized with a lot of energy put into her case. But, no new breaks happened in the case until 11 days later, when the author was spotted in a hotel using a fake name. When her husband came to get her, she had little memory of the previous week. Luckily her disappearance resulted in a reappearance.

The police and her husband theorized that she suffered amnesia from a car accident which accounted for her lost identity and memory. But people continued to speculate on the real reason. Suggestions ranged from a nervous breakdown brought on by the death of her mother and embarrassment of her husband’s affair to a cynical publicity stunt to promote the successful but still little-known author. Christie never publicly spoke or acknowledged her disappearance for the rest of her life. Fans and biographers continue to speculate about possibilities, leaving her disappearance an enduring mystery.^[1]

9 Barbara Newhall Follet

Follet, a child prodigy, published her first novel, The House without Windows, at only 12 years old to critics’ positive reviews. She was regularly featured in newspapers and media, showcasing her incredible talent at a young age. By age 14, she would release her second and final novel. After this early success, Follet would go through emotional challenges. Her father, a big supporter of her writing career, decided to leave Follet and her mother for a younger woman. Without much money or the encouragement of her father, Follet would go on to write two unpublished manuscripts before marrying Nickerson Rogers.

Without many prospects in her writing career, she took jobs as a secretary to make ends meet. By 1939, her marriage was in trouble. Later that year, following an argument with Nickerson, she left their home and never returned. Follet’s mother, Helen, continued to look into Follet’s disappearance, though no new leads have ever been made public. Follet has never been seen again and remains missing. Many theories revolve around the idea of foul play or suicide because of her marital issues. Since her body has never been found, neither theory has ever been proven correct.^[2]

8 Ambrose Bierce

Bierce had a prolific writing career spanning decades, earning him much respect in life and posthumously. His disappearance left behind many theories and mysteries about the man who shaped American literature with his short stories, journalism, poetry, and criticism.

Bierce was last seen in 1913 on his way to Mexico, presumably to cover the Mexican Revolution for a story. There are few known truths surrounding Bierce’s disappearance. The last known correspondence he had with a family member included a sense of impending mortality in which he referred to possibly getting killed by armies in Mexico. Scholars indicate this is the most plausible theory, given the danger he risked walking into a civil war (5). But no physical evidence or sighting confirmation has ever been given, leaving his disappearance a part of his final legacy.^[3]

7 Connie Converse

Though not a traditional author like others on this list, Connie Converse still put words to paper to share with the world. She was a songwriter who tried to start her music career in New York during the 1950s. She achieved little success in her lifetime, despite her pioneering work in the singer-songwriter genre. She dropped her music career after a decade, moving to Michigan to be near her family. In 1974, after feeling increasingly depressed over time, she left ominous notes to her family indicating that she intended to disappear and start a new life.

The last reported sighting claimed she simply packed up her car and drove away. Her family never found out what happened after she disappeared. There is the theory that she committed suicide because of her ongoing battle with depression. Another theory is that she really did start a new life somewhere. Though the end of her career and known life was tragic, her music experienced a revival in the 2000s with a reissued early album. Connie’s music, life, and disappearance have continued to influence other artists and songwriters to this day.^[4]

6 Weldon Kees

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Walden Kees was a poet and film critic who had published several collections of poetry, and his last book was published in 1954. A year after his final poetry publication, Kees vanished. Police found his abandoned car with the keys still in the ignition with no clues about what happened to the writer. He confided with various friends about suicidal thoughts or the possibility of starting a new life in Mexico before his disappearance. But there have been no confirmed clues or sightings, leaving police with no leads on the case.

Some of his work was published posthumously, and other authors continued to praise his work. Though he made a name for himself through his poetry while alive, his disappearance continues to fascinate new and old readers of his work.^[5]

5 Irmgard Keun

Before World War 2, the popular German novelist Keun wrote about subjects that the Nazi party denounced. Because of this opposition, Keun had to leave Germany. She lived abroad in France and the Netherlands until a newspaper published in 1940 reported that she had died.

But Keun was not actually dead and instead forged papers to return to Germany to see her parents. Her level of involvement in the publication of her fake death remains a mystery, as do much of the details of her assuming a new identity to return to Germany.

She lived basically unknown until she died, a big contrast to the fame she achieved early in her career. Because of her choice to remain publicly dead, much of the details about her disappearance and life after 1940 remain unclear.^[6]

4 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Antoine was known for his fiction and poetry and also as a military pilot. His adventurous aviation career would supply inspiration for his literary career. Sadly, his last novel, The Little Prince, would be published posthumously in his native France. In 1944, he set off on what would be his final mission heading over the coast of France. He never returned.

The most likely theory was that his plane was shot down by the enemy. However, no wreckage could be located to confirm this theory until 60 years later, when the plane was found off the southern coast of France. The exact circumstances leading to the crash can still not be determined.^[7]

3 Oscar Zeta Acosta

Acosta was a writer, attorney, and activist for the Chicano movement, which pushed back against the discrimination many Mexican-Americans faced in the 1960s and 1970s. He published two somewhat controversial novels in his lifetime. He was also well known for his friendship with fellow writer Hunter S. Thompson, even becoming immortalized as a character inspiration in Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. They remained friends until his disappearance in Mexico in 1974 (11).

Thompson continued to look into his death, even giving his own theories about what may have happened—but without any concrete answers. Many theories throughout the years about his disappearance have been given, including drugs and assassination for his political activism. However, none have ever been proven.^[8]

2 Solomon Northup

Northup was born in 1807 as a free man in New York. He is well known for his book Twelve Years a Slave, based on his experience of being kidnapped and sold into slavery. Northup was eventually legally freed and returned to his family in New York. With the help of people back home, he was able to prove his freedom.

Public speaking events and extensive activism made Northup a public figure in America during his life. However, even after all of this publicity, the circumstances of his later life and death remain unknown. It is suspected that he joined the Underground Railroad, where he helped enslaved people escape.^[9]

1 Edgar Allen Poe

The famous author’s last moments in 1854 are surrounded by mystery. A week before his death, Poe was supposed to leave Richmond for work in Philadelphia and then on to meet his aunt in New York before returning to Virginia. However, he never made it to either city. He was found semi-conscious in Baltimore, delirious and unable to account for his weeklong disappearance.

Many theories exist, including alcohol use, illness, and even foul play. However, all of these explanations are solely speculations, and his disappearance during this time has never been fully explained. Because of the dark subject matter of his writing career, the mystery of his disappearance and subsequent death has fascinated and baffled readers of the author, an apparent case of life imitating art.^[1]