The human body is a weird and wonderful thing. But when it comes to the brain, it’s mostly just weird. Go flicking through medical journals and you’ll discover that our minds are capable of deceiving us in the strangest possible ways. Sometimes, these horrific conditions can occur without warning.

10 Living Out The Plot Of Big

Remember that Tom Hanks film Big? It’s about a boy who wishes that he was a grown-up. Thanks to some vaguely explained magic, his wish is granted. He goes to sleep one evening and wakes up the next day in an adult body. Hilarity ensues.

If you’ve ever stopped to think about the plot, you’ve probably realized that Big is kind of terrifying. Being magically granted a mature body while still having a child’s brain would be the stuff of nightmares. We know this for a fact because it really happened to Naomi Jacobs in 2008.

At the time, Jacobs was 32 and dealing with the fallout from a decade of homelessness, bankruptcy, and drug abuse. One morning, she woke up to find that the previous 17 years had been wiped from her memory.

The last thing that she could recall happened when she was 15. She was climbing into the bunk bed that she shared with her sister and trying not to worry about her upcoming French exam.

From Naomi’s point of view, she’d fallen asleep as a teenager and awakened as an adult. To make matters worse, her adult mind had no recollection of 21st-century technology or even her 10-year-old child.

Interestingly, there was no physical reason for Jacobs to lose her memory. She was suffering from dissociative amnesia, meaning that the mind-wipe was caused by psychological factors. It’s believed that she was so stressed out and traumatized by her past (including sexual abuse as a child) that her brain just flipped a switch and wiped it all out.

9 Seeing An Extra Dimension

Stereoblindness is a condition that affects 5–10 percent of the global population. It affects your ability to see in 3-D, so the world appears to be completely flat.

Since the ability to see things in three dimensions is learned during a narrow window of brain development when we’re young, stereoblindness is usually a lifelong condition—unless you have an experience like Bruce Bridgeman did in 2012.

Bridgeman, 67, had never seen the world in three dimensions. One day, he went out to see Hugo, the Martin Scorsese family film. Unable to find a 2-D showing, he was forced to cough up the extra bucks for some 3-D glasses that he knew he wouldn’t be able to use. Nonetheless, he put them on, went into the cinema, and sat down. When the film started, Bridgeman could suddenly see in 3-D.

Imagine finding that your human eyes had magically been upgraded to those of a hawk or maybe a superhuman who can see heat or radio waves. That’s basically what happened to Bridgeman. After nearly seven decades of being stuck in a two-dimensional world, he could see in 3-D.

The effect continued after he left the movie. In the blink of an eye, his stereoblindness had vanished. Doctors now think that his brain had developed the synaptic pathways for doing so when he was young. For some reason, they hadn’t activated until he got a big jolt of 3-D cinema.

8 Being Forced To Make Continual Wisecracks

The term “continual wisecracks” brings to mind an image like Groucho Marx firing off witticisms like a caffeinated Oscar Wilde. But imagine if that was something over which you had no control. Imagine that you could no more stop dropping one-liners than you could stop breathing.

For sufferers of Witzelsucht, that’s not just a strange thought experiment. It’s their daily reality.

Perhaps the earliest case was recorded way back in 1929. German neurologist Otfrid Foerster was removing a brain tumor when the patient suddenly came to manic life on the operating table and began cracking pun after awful pun.

Since then, others who have suffered damage to their frontal lobes have been reported to display the same symptoms. The BBC recently reported on a man known only as Derek who had suffered two strokes five years apart.

Not long after the second stroke, Derek began cracking terrible jokes. He never stopped. Not only that, he couldn’t stop. Even while sleeping, he would laugh himself awake recounting awful puns. Needless to say, it drove his wife nuts.

Interestingly, people suffering from Witzelsucht are often incapable of understanding other people’s jokes. Although they may still laugh at slapstick, wordplay that isn’t their own leaves them utterly cold. It’s believed that this may have something to do with the way that damaged brains release dopamine, responding only to internal thoughts.

7 Having Your Head ‘Explode’

Have you ever been on the verge of dropping off when you suddenly heard someone say your name? According to Mind, a mental health charity, this is a common condition that affects many of us at one time or another. For some people, though, the experience goes beyond merely hearing a voice. They can feel like their heads are literally exploding.

Known aptly as “exploding head syndrome,” the condition can affect almost anyone and occur at any time. Some may only feel it once in their lives. Others can have their heads suddenly start “exploding” night after night—like their brains are the climax of a Fourth of July fireworks show.

It’s undoubtedly unpleasant. Some sufferers have described it as seeing a bright flash of light and then feeling like they were at the epicenter of an explosion. Others have said that it was like having a grenade detonate on their pillows.

The phenomenon is surprisingly common for those who are suffering from insomnia, jet lag, or all-nighters. One study estimated that 22 percent of students suffer from this condition.

Strangely, we’re not entirely sure what causes it. The best explanation is that there is a “bump” between our waking and sleeping states that causes a lot of neurons in the brain to misfire at once.

6 Having Someone Else’s Limb Appear On Your Body

Imagine that you wake up one morning to discover that a crazed surgeon has crept into your room during the night and performed a horrific operation on you. Instead of your left arm, you now have the left arm of the old woman living across the hall. Worse yet, she’s still in control of it.

No, this isn’t a pitch for a new horror film. It’s a rare condition known as somatoparaphrenia. It can occur at any time, usually following an injury to the right side of the brain. Those suffering from it become convinced that one of their limbs is not their own. They persist in this belief even when confronted with direct evidence to counter it.

While some with this condition just consider the limbs to be alien implants, others believe that they belong to specific people. One patient—whose somatoparaphrenia was caused by schizophrenia rather than injury—thought that his right arm belonged to a woman he knew named Maria.

For some, the experience of having an alien limb is so horrible that they go to great lengths to have it amputated.

5 Meeting Your Own Double

The idea of the doppelganger is so prevalent in storytelling that it has shown up in everything from the works of Dostoyevsky to The Simpsons. Usually, the story features a moment when other characters can’t tell who the “real” person is. But if you meet your doppelganger in real life, it could be much worse than that. Even you may no longer be able to tell which is the real you.

About 20 years ago, neuropsychologist Peter Brugger reported meeting a 21-year-old from Zurich who had met his own double. He had recently stopped taking anticonvulsant medication and had spent the morning drinking heavily. At some point, he felt dizzy and stood up—and that’s when things went insane.

The young man turned around and saw his own double lying on the bed. He started shouting at his new twin, only to suddenly find himself lying on his bed and looking up at the shouting face of his doppelganger.

Unable to figure out if the “real” him was the one lying on the bed or the one shouting, he had a breakdown and jumped from a fourth-story window. Miraculously, he survived the fall.

Such moments are extremely rare but not unheard of. The man from Zurich had a tumor in his left temporal lobe. Other reports of doppelgangers have come from other people suffering similar damage to that region.

4 Losing The Ability To Remember Anything

Are you one of those people who hates going to the dentist? Well, we’ve got a whole new reason for you to avoid the experience. At 1:40 PM on March 14, 2005, a soldier known only as William walked into his dentist’s office for root canal surgery. He never came out.

We don’t mean that the dentist killed him. Something much stranger happened. At the exact moment that the dentist gave him a local anesthetic, William completely lost the ability to form new memories. His mental clock stopped dead, frozen forever in the middle of his appointment.

Creepily, there’s absolutely no reason why this might have happened. When William was rushed to the hospital, it was assumed that he’d had a severe reaction to the anesthetic. But that wasn’t the case. There was nothing physically wrong with him. It was like his brain had just stopped functioning properly.

Fast-forward to today, and William has a memory of 90 minutes. Beyond that point, everything vanishes. As far as he’s aware, it’s always midafternoon on March 14, 2005, and he’s just awakened after a dental operation.

3 Losing The Ability To Understand Mirrors

As shown in the video above, one of cinema’s greatest gags came in the 1933 Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup. After Harpo breaks Groucho’s mirror, Harpo must pretend to be his brother’s reflection so that Groucho won’t realize what’s happened.

This being the Marx Brothers, there’s a surreal moment when Harpo—still pretending to be Groucho’s reflection—hands his brother a hat and Groucho takes it without thinking. It’s a hilarious scene in a hilarious movie. It’s also a perfect demonstration of mirror agnosia.

Mirror agnosia can occur due to right parietal lesions but is more commonly associated with dementia. Sufferers lose the ability to understand mirrors or reflections.

There are cases where doctors tested this with an apple. The patient would sit in front of a mirror. Then the doctor would stand behind the patient and hold up an apple so that the patient could only see the apple’s reflection in the mirror.

When told to get the apple, the patient would try to reach through the mirror. Even after being told what a mirror was, the patient continued to believe that the apple was in front of them rather than behind.

Freakily, it doesn’t seem that mirror agnosia can be cured. For example, if you lose your ability to understand reflections tomorrow from a brain injury, you’re unlikely to ever get it back.

2 Having Your Heart Go Crazy

Right now, your body is doing too many vital things to count. You’re breathing, you’re blinking, your heart is beating, your stomach is breaking down food, and you’re not thinking about any of it. It’s second nature to you, complete background noise.

So imagine what might happen if one of those little things suddenly changed. Imagine that your heart started beating in the wrong place. You’d suddenly start noticing it, right?

For a handful of people, that has actually happened. In 2014, the BBC reported on a man known as Carlos whose heart started beating in his stomach. It wasn’t his real heart. The man was old and had just been fitted with a pump in his abdomen to keep his heart ticking. But to Carlos, the pump felt like his real heart. And that had all sorts of weird implications.

The simplest was that Carlos began to lose all sense of his chest. With his heart seemingly migrating south, he started to feel like his chest was bigger than he remembered it and was taking up valuable body room.

Crazily, it also affected his mind. With his new mechanical heart, Carlos suddenly lost his ability to feel empathy toward people in pain. Other social skills disappeared, too, including his ability to read other people’s motives. Simply by tricking his body into thinking its heart had moved, it seemed like his whole mind had gone haywire.

1 Losing The Ability To Sleep

Some people like to boast about how little sleep they need. Sufferers of fatal familial insomnia (FFI) almost certainly hate them. An ultrarare condition that occurs when a specific genetic mutation activates, FFI causes the patient to completely lose the ability to sleep. In most cases, it never comes back.

The effects are horrifying. As the sleepless nights mount up, the patients start to slip into a permanent half-dream state. Although they’re awake, they start to act out the crazy half-dreams that form in their subconscious rather than engage with the world around them.

Patients have been known to walk around in a daze as they mime putting on clothes or combing their hair. As they slip further into that deadly twilight world, their ability to speak fades, followed by their ability to walk. After many months have passed, they simply close their eyes and drift off into that permanent state of sleep—death.

The good news is that only about 40 families worldwide have the genetic defect that triggers FFI. The better news is that even those with the defect often live long, happy lives and never suffer insomnia.

The bad news for those affected is that FFI can occur at any time without warning. One night, they’ll go to bed, close their eyes, and find that they can’t sleep. Drugs won’t help, hypnosis won’t help, and seeing the doctor won’t help. They’ll simply spend the next few months in mental anguish before dying a horrible death.

Good luck not thinking about that the next time you suffer a bout of insomnia.

It’s terribly unsettling when someone goes missing. Loved ones must deal with uncertainty and terror as they struggle to find out what happened. Police officers and detectives work around the clock to find answers. All the while, the missing person is just… gone. In the best case scenarios, that person is miraculously found and returned to their loved ones. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen.

When the missing person is well known, the emotional upheaval is magnified even further. In the case of pro athletes and amateur sports stars like the ones on this list, their disappearances brought shock to many. Fans who’d grown accustomed to watching them compete heroically were left without answers about their fates. Sadly, the star athletes on this list were never seen again after going missing. Loved ones may yet hold out hope, but answers haven’t come. What happened after their final known moments may never be revealed.

10 Bison Dele

Bison Dele was born Brian Williams but asked others to refer to his chosen name after reaching the NBA. His basketball career started slowly, but Dele persisted through the 1990s. While hopping from team to team, he won a championship with the Chicago Bulls in 1997. Two years later, the Detroit Pistons offered him a $35 million contract. It should have been the culmination of his long career as a journeyman, but he turned it down.

In fact, Dele walked away from the game altogether that year. He was seeking something else in life. So he bought a yacht and sailed halfway around the world. Dele was in the South Pacific Ocean in 2002 with his girlfriend, Serena Karlan, his older brother, Miles Dabord, and the captain Dele had hired named Bertrand Saldo.

Something horrible happened out in the deep ocean near Tahiti. Dele, Karlan, and Saldo disappeared. Months later, Dabord reappeared with the yacht, but there was no sign of the other three. Immediately, people wondered whether Dabord had killed the group. Journalists descended on Tahiti looking for clues. Reports suggested potential problems between the brothers, but nothing conclusive came out.

The FBI had little evidence to go on in the deep sea disappearance. As it turned out, they didn’t have much time to seek justice, either. Dabord died of an insulin overdose less than three months later. He took whatever knowledge anyone may have had with him in death. Dele, Karlan, and Saldo have never been seen again.^[1]

9 Mamie Konneh Lahun

Mamie Konneh Lahun was Sierra Leone’s best long-distance runner. In fact, as a 24-year-old in 2014, she was quickly developing into one of the world’s best marathoners. Her coronation came at the London Marathon that year when she finished 20th. The running world was ecstatic with the impressive finish for the young runner. Analysts believed Lahun had a bright future in the sport. But then, after the race, she just disappeared. Officials were flabbergasted. She had no money on her, no belongings, and no passport. She just had her running outfit on her back. But instead of celebrating what should have been a great marathon finish, she just vanished.

Initially, Sierra Leonean officials worried something awful had happened to her. London police investigated, but they never turned up anything. Sports directors began to wonder whether Lahun had absconded from the event to declare political asylum. If she did, she never came forward to make the immigration request. She was simply gone. Lahun’s loved ones received a shot of hope when a news report later suggested she had been found “safe and well.” However, those reports were later retracted. Investigators were back to square one, with no insight into her whereabouts.

Back in Sierra Leone, her friends were shocked at the situation—and sad about the end of her promising running career. “It’s tragic because her result was just so good,” Lahun’s manager told The Guardian. “She doesn’t know how good she is.” A fellow Sierra Leonean athlete agreed. “If she comes [home], it’s good for her career,” runner Idrissa Kargbo said after Lahun vanished. “If she doesn’t, her career is over. She will have to forget about running.” To this day, Lahun has never been found.^[2]

8 John Brisker

John Brisker was a formidable basketball player. The powerful forward starred for the Seattle SuperSonics in the 1970s. Fans loved his physical play. He was talented and volatile—a difficult court combo but a successful one. But after years of skirmishes with opponents, Brisker tired of basketball. In 1975, he left the NBA.

He soon became a father and was drawn to new business goals to support his family. In 1978, he opened an import-export business. The new venture meant he had to travel to Uganda. At the time, the African nation was ruled by dictator Idi Amin. Political dissidents were under fire. A violent and oppressive group was in charge. That year, while on a trip to the capital city of Kampala, Brisker spoke to his girlfriend by telephone. It was the last time anyone heard from him.

Soon, outlandish (and almost certainly false) tales of Brisker’s death spread. Some said he was killed by Amin’s supporters and served “banquet style” to the dictator. Another rumor alleged he was shot at a dinner party after dishonoring a local politician. One particularly crazy conspiracy claimed Brisker left Uganda for South America, where he died in the Jonestown Massacre. There was never evidence to support those theories, but Brisker’s disappearance was a mystery.

His family didn’t even know where he was. One brother thought he might have actually gone to Nigeria instead of Uganda. Mainstream news outlets got in on unfounded claims, too. In 1980, the Associated Press claimed he’d been shot. That report was never substantiated, either. In 1985, Brisker was declared legally dead. Today, no one knows what happened to the former NBA star.^[3]

7 Trevor Moore

Trevor Moore was one of the best young sailors in America when he disappeared on the open ocean. He had been a key part of the 2012 U.S. Olympic sailing team. In the skiff event that year, he placed 15th—an impressive showing at just 27 years old against high-level international competitors. His future in the sport looked very bright. After that early achievement, he began prepping wholeheartedly for the 2016 Olympic Games. Sadly, he never made it to the event.

On a calm day in June 2015, Moore took a boat out onto South Florida’s Biscayne Bay. It was an otherwise normal day. The weather was good. Moore knew the bay well. He’d been sailing in the area since he was just seven years old. But something happened in the water, and Moore vanished. The Coast Guard was called in and spent days searching for him. Sadly, they never found any sign of the sailor. Moore’s loved ones were heartbroken after they called off the search.

Immediately, loved ones began to wonder what had happened. The Olympian was just 30 years old, so an onboard medical emergency was unlikely. But still, nobody had any answers. The sailing star’s college coach told The Washington Post that something unexpected must have happened on the boat. “The more time you spend around the water, you learn to love and respect the powers of the ocean,” Scott Iklé told the newspaper. “I think for all of us, something happened, and we’ll never know what.”^[4]

6 Urgel Wintermute

Urgel “Slim” Wintermute was the most talented member of the University of Oregon’s juggernaut 1939 basketball team. The lanky, slim center was the star of the “Tall Firs.” The group was known by that name thanks to their impressive height and the fact that their home arena was in the tree-covered Pacific Northwest. Wintermute led them to glory in the NCAA Basketball Tournament that year too. Ducks coach Howard Hobson called him “the best center in the country” in 1939. “I’ve always said that he was the best defensive center I’ve ever coached,” Hobson added. “In fact, he’s the best collegiate defensive center I’ve ever seen.”

Slim’s pro career came long before the NBA was formed. So, sadly, he had limited opportunities after Oregon. He played a few years on a pro team in Detroit and later coached another one in Portland. But basketball soon faded from his life, and Wintermute’s on-court exploits became memories.

The tall star took a job at Boeing in the 1950s. For years, he peacefully worked and raised a family while remembering his glory days. But in 1977, he vanished. Slim had been in a boat on a local lake with a friend. His buddy went to take a nap, and when he woke up, the basketball legend was gone. Neither detectives nor family members believed the friend had anything to do with Slim’s disappearance. But they had no answers for why he’d gone missing.

The former Oregon star had suffered a heart attack seven years earlier, and cops wondered if he’d had another medical emergency and fallen overboard. But even after dredging the lake, Slim’s body was never found. To this day, no one knows what happened to the hoop legend.^[5]

5 3 Congolese Handball Players

The 2014 World Junior Handball Championships were supposed to be a wonderful event for athletes. Held in Zagreb, Croatia, the tournament featured hundreds of players from dozens of countries. Among the nations invited was the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The war-torn central African country sent a group of female handball stars to Croatia with high hopes. Sadly, during the tournament, three of their athletes vanished. According to local news reports, 18-year-old Laetitia Mumbala Mayunga, 19-year-old Julie Betu Mvita, and 20-year-old Mirnelle Kele Mazenga all absconded from the DRC’s team hotel.

At first, Croatian leaders expected them to turn up soon and claim asylum. Considering the DRC’s significant internal problems, it’s likely the political plea would have been granted. But when tournament directors went to the hotel to investigate, what they saw puzzled them. All three women had left behind their passports, which they would have needed to claim asylum. All of their personal belongings were in their hotel too. Cops initiated an investigation, but nothing came of it. Weeks went by, and the women weren’t found. They never turned up to claim asylum, either. After six weeks and no answers, police declared the young women had simply vanished into thin air.^[6]

4 Jim Robinson

During his boxing career, Muhammad Ali fought 50 different men in 61 fights. Many of those bouts were iconic, and Ali’s legend has withstood the test of time. Zealous fans have gone to great lengths to collect memorabilia from the boxer’s career. In 1999, one fanatic named Stephen Singer decided to take things a step further. He wanted the signatures of all 50 of Ali’s opponents.

So over the next four years, he went on an expedition for autographed memorabilia. He tracked down old boxers and bought photos and artifacts at auctions. By 2003, he had spent about $35,000. For the money, he’d been able to obtain the signatures of 49 of the men who fought Ali. The only one missing was a little-known boxer named Jim Robinson. And no matter what Singer did, he couldn’t find the former fighter.

Robinson faced Ali—then known as Cassius Clay—in the legend’s fourth fight in Miami in February 1961. Jim was a last-minute replacement for another fighter. Ali wasn’t a superstar yet, but his talent was undeniable. Robinson was overpowered and knocked out in the first round. While Ali’s career flourished, Jim languished in low-level Miami bouts. He ended up winning just 14 of 46 career fights. When his time in the spotlight ended, Jimmy vanished.

“He was a man of limited skills and education, and when his boxing career was over, he just kind of disappeared into the sunset,” Singer told ESPN during his search. “He was like hundreds of fighters who look to boxing for the American dream, and when they fall, there’s no net to catch them. There are lots of Jimmy Robinsons.” By the early 2000s, Singer was so confused by Robinson’s disappearance that he contacted journalist Wright Thompson. The sportswriter spent six years searching for Jimmy, but he came up empty. Nobody knows what happened to Robinson after his bout with Ali.^[7]

3 Angelo Cruz

Angelo Cruz was a New York City streetball legend. Growing up in the Bronx in the 1980s, Cruz made a name for himself on playground courts across the city. He was short, at just 5’7″, but he was lightning quick and blessed with great court vision. His rough-and-tumble street story resonated with Puerto Rican immigrants to the area. As he grew into a teenager, his basketball exploits became a source of local pride.

Cruz’s affiliated hoop career was varied. He played in high school games and tried to make a go of it in college, but nothing stuck. Too short for the NBA, he emigrated to Puerto Rico to pursue his basketball dreams. Everything came together on the island, and he became a superstar. He won two league championships on Puerto Rico’s pro circuit. He even represented the island at the 1988 Olympic Games. But time inevitably wore on.

By 1994, Cruz was retired from basketball and returned to New York City. He struggled with life after the game, though. Friends watched as he descended into drug use. He would go on benders and disappear for long periods of time. He always turned up, though. And while loved ones were worried about him, the ex-street ball legend acted as if nothing was the matter.

Then, in 1998, he disappeared again. This time, he never resurfaced. Family members held out hope that he would come back, but with each passing month, the likelihood diminished. Nobody has ever learned where Cruz ended up. By 2011, he was memorialized with a charity basketball game held in his honor.^[8]

2 The Cameroon Olympic Disappearance

The 2012 Olympic Games were London’s chance to show off its cosmopolitan beauty to the world. For some athletes who traveled thousands of miles, London also meant freedom. During the games, seven athletes from the African nation of Cameroon fled their team dwelling. Five of the central African sports stars were on the country’s boxing team. Soon after they left Cameroon’s quarters, they turned up at a London boxing gym. All five claimed political asylum and were quickly accepted into Britain.

Even though their Olympic careers ended early, they badly wanted a new start in a safe place. Other Cameroonians understood that drive. “The conditions in Cameroon are very difficult,” one of them told The Guardian at the time. “There are no opportunities here, and if you have the chance to go to the UK, it’s understandable that you would want to stay there.”

Sadly, two other athletes who disappeared from Cameroon’s contingent were never seen again. The two stars who went missing were later identified as women’s soccer goalie Drusille Ngako and men’s swimmer Paul Edingue Ekane. Their Olympic visas granted them access to the UK until November 2012. After that, they were required to apply for asylum if they wanted to stay. But according to the BBC, that never happened. In fact, neither Ngako nor Ekane ever turned up again. Now, a decade later, no one knows where the two athletes went after walking away from their Olympic dreams.^[9]

1 Rico Harris

Rico Harris had all the talent in the world as an amateur basketball player in Los Angeles. His storied high school career in the early 1990s became the stuff of legend. One former teammate praised him profusely, years later remembering Harris’s game-changing abilities. “He could do it all,” the teammate told Fox Sports. “He was Lamar Odom before Lamar Odom.”

During his amateur career, Harris’s name was on virtually every list of the best young basketball players on the west coast. But things weren’t as easy for Rico off the court. The volatile star wore out his welcome at several college stops. He lost scholarships and fell out of favor with coaches. As his NBA dreams faded before they ever began, Rico turned to other leagues. He tried his hand with the short-lived International Basketball League. In 2000, he signed on for “a brief stint” with the Harlem Globetrotters. Harris wasn’t a fit there, either, and the showy team jettisoned him.

Back on the streets of Los Angeles, Harris floundered. During an argument with another man, Harris was hit over the head with a baseball bat. He was just 24 years old, but the attack left him with a traumatic brain injury. Any hope for a basketball comeback was dashed. A decade later, Harris was trying to get on with his life. Then, in 2014, he landed a job interview in Washington.

On the drive from Los Angeles to Seattle after a brief visit with his mother, he was in constant communication with his girlfriend and mother. During one phone call with the former, he said he was going to stop and rest for a bit. Harris pulled off the highway to sleep. Nobody ever saw him again. His car was found hours later with a dead battery and no gas in the tank. There were no signs of foul play. An air and ground search of the area turned up nothing. Cops and family members were baffled, but they had no answers. Just as it had been with his untapped potential years before, Rico Harris had simply vanished.^[10]