A staggering 600,000 people go missing every year in the US. And while the vast majority of them turn up again within the same year, far too many do not. That doesn’t necessarily mean those people are never seen again, but with each passing year, the likelihood decreases. Which is what makes it so remarkable when a person who, by all accounts, should never have been seen again makes a reappearance. And while that, in and of itself, is remarkable, sometimes the way it happens is far more bizarre than you could imagine. Let’s look at ten of the most incredible times the missing reappeared. 

10. One of John Wayne Gacy’s Supposed Victims Turned Up Alive 34 Years Later

John Wayne Gacy was one of America’s most infamous serial killers. He murdered at least 33 young men and boys and likely more back in the 1970s. As you can imagine, that led to a lot of ruined and devastated families. And though he was finally caught, the fact that the number of his victims was never accurately pinned down meant that anyone else in the right age range who went missing at that time in that area could have just as easily fallen prey to him. There was no way to tell, and the remains of several unidentified victims were found.

In 1977, 19-year-old Harold Wayne Lovell left his Chicago home one day and was never seen again. His family believe he had fallen victim to Gacy once his crimes came to light. There were unidentified remains of eight victims related to Gacy’s crimes. Lovell’s family was assisting law enforcement to see if they could match DNA with some of the victims and finally determine Harold’s fate. Instead, they discovered that he’d been arrested on marijuana charges in Florida a few years earlier.

For 34 years, Harold had been living his life and had just never informed his family. He left home willingly and never looked back. His reason? He said he “never felt wanted” there, so he went somewhere else. He did, however, reconnect with his siblings after they discovered he was still alive. 

9. Woman Missing for 11 Years Was Next Door

When someone goes missing, a good way to start a search is to establish a sort of perimeter. If the person was last seen in one spot, you can guess that they could have traveled maybe ten miles away, and now you have a circle with a ten mile radius in which to search. As time passes, you can expand outward. 

None of this happened when an 18-year-old woman named Sajitha left her parent’s house in Kerala, India. They say police searched high and low for her but apparently not close. She had gone across the street. 

Turns out Sajitha was in love with her neighbor Rahman. Being of different religions, they feared their relationship wouldn’t be accepted, so she secretly lived with him for 11 years without anyone, even his parents, who lived in the same house, knowing. They were only discovered when they moved to a new town and didn’t tell anyone, so Rahman was considered a missing person and tracked down as well.  

8. A Tortoise Was Found in a House After 30 Years

Okay, so this one isn’t a missing person so much as a missing pet, but it’s pretty dramatic nonetheless. Manuela the tortoise went missing in 1982. The Brazilian family was unable to find the creature and assumed the worst as one does. And then, in a baffling twist, the tortoise showed up again in the house’s attic. And sure, that’s amazing, but it was 2013 when they found it again. 

Manuela had vanished when the house was being renovated, so there was a lot of clutter. The grandfather was a bit of a hoarder and had jammed the house with old junk. That’s what kept the tortoise hidden. The family suspects she was surviving on termites.

7. Lawrence Joseph Bader Vanished for 8 Years, Then Was Found with a New Name

Soap operas are infamous for stories of amnesiacs and you’ll see it on film every now and again, too. Someone gets in an accident, forgets who they are, starts a whole new life. Does that ever really happen? Lawrence Joseph Bader claims it did. 

Bader had gone fishing on Lake Erie in 1957, despite being warned by the man renting the boat and the Coast Guard that a storm was coming. His boat was found, but he was not. He left behind a wife and four kids.  But in 1965, his niece ran into him at a sporting goods convention halfway across the country in Chicago. 

Bader had become Fritz Johnson. He had become a radio personality and then a local TV star known for his big personality. His backstory? A former Navy man, discharged for having a bad back. 

Fingerprints confirmed Johnson was Bader, but he claimed to have no memory of that life. Lawyers would later argue a tumor, which had cost him his eye, was responsible. He died a year later when his cancer returned.

6. Teruo Nakamura Fought WWII for 30 Extra Years

Here’s a question you may never have pondered before. If you were fighting a war in a remote location and the war ended, how would you know? Presumably you’d get the call on a phone or radio, right? What if you didn’t have those things? That’s sort of what happened to Teruo Nakamura. 

Nakamura had been stationed on an Indonesian island in 1944. He was presumed dead after a battle, but he had escaped to the jungle with some other soldiers. They’d been told to keep on fighting. So he did. 

Leaflets dropped on the island in 1945 that the war was over were dismissed as propaganda. Years went by, and Nakamura and his few fellow soldiers stayed hidden. They watched aircraft evolve and assumed it was the results of an arm race. 

By 1956 he was alone, growing sweet potatoes and harvesting bananas. In 1974, he was spotted by some locals who reported him to Indonesian authorities. They began making arrangements to send him home and also give him 30 years of back pay, which amounted to $227.59.

5. Singer Shelagh McDonald Disappeared for 30 Years After an Acid Trip

Scottish folk singer Shelagh McDonald disappeared in 1971, just when her music career was really taking off. Thirty-four years later some of her music was re-released and so she decided to turn up and explain her disappearance.

Turns out McDonald had gotten super high on LSD. How high? Disappear for over 30 years high. Apparently she tripped out for a solid 18 months at her parents’ house. She had no contact info for friends, so she didn’t contact them. But she did meet a man and fall in love. They lived in a tent together for 6 years at one point and were quite happy. 

4. Lucy Ann Johnson Disappeared for 52 Years 

Try to imagine being a kid and one day your mom just never comes home.The police even dig up your yard looking for her body, but nothing turned up. Then, 52 years later, you get a call from a woman who saw your mom’s picture in a missing person ad and says that’s her mom, too.

This is the story of Lucy Ann Johnson. Linda Evans was seven when her mother went missing from Surrey, British Columbia. She turned up in the Yukon with a whole new family. Her husband, Evans’ father, had been abusive and a cheater and so one day she walked out. She tried to take the kids, but he refused and so she left, never to come back. The man himself didn’t report his wife missing for about four years.

3. A 5-Year-Old Boy From India Used Google Earth to Find Home Decades Later

The story of Saroo Brierley is hard to believe but has been well documented and as amazing as it is nightmarish, especially if you’re a parent. When Saroo was five, he was taking a train with his nine-year-old brother. The boys lived with their siblings and mother in a small town in India. Their father had left them and Saroo’s older brother Guddu was trying to help his mother by scavenging and stealing what he could. One day, he brought Saroo with him.

The plan was to look for lost change on a train. But the brothers got separated, and Saroo fell asleep on the train. When he awoke, he was alone with no idea where he was. At five, and from rural India, he also didn’t know the name of his town, or his family surname. 

He ended up in Calcutta, unable to find anyone who spoke the same language as him. Eventually, he ended up in a juvenile center where he was adopted by the Brierleys, a kind couple from Australia.

In 2009, Saroo had grown into a happy and popular teen. He was still curious about his past, and Google Earth was able to provide answers. Though he didn’t know place names, he recognized landmarks and used them to hunt down his hometown. He even made use of that old math question about a train leaving a station traveling at a certain speed for a certain number of hours to narrow his search area, since that’s exactly what happened to him. His search took years.

Having been gone for about 25 years, Saroo finally found his hometown of Khandwa and returned in 2012. There, he reunited with his mother, sister and one of his brothers and learned Guddu had died shortly after his disappearance.  

2. Carlina White Was Missing for 23 Years

It was the summer of 1987 when Carlina White disappeared. At 19 days old, someone took her from the hospital where she’d been born and it would be a stunning 23 years before she was heard from again. 

Carlina’s mother got a message in 2010 from a woman named Nejdra Nance that came with baby pictures. They were pictures of Nance herself. She had been on a missing person’s website and seen pictures of Carlina, the 19-day-old baby. She noticed they looked a lot like her own baby pictures. 

Police DNA tested both Nance and Carlina White’s parents and confirmed that Nance was, in fact, Carlina. 

She had been abducted by a woman named Anne Pettway. Carlina said she was always a little suspicious since she looked nothing like Pettway and the woman was unable to provide a birth certificate a few years earlier when she needed one. Later, she confessed to not being her birth mother but insisted her real parents abandoned her. 

Despite being a kidnapper, White admitted of her fake mother that, although strict, she was a good mother. Her friends, she said, always thought she was cool.

Her suspicions prompted her to look into missing person’s cases, which is how she ended up discovering her own disappearance. She was reunited with her birth parents in 2011.

1. Julian Hernandez Found Out He Was Kidnapped When He Tried to Go to College

Solving your own missing person’s case is not unprecedented, as we’ve seen, but having no idea anyone was looking for you and stumbling upon it as a result of doing routine paperwork may be. That’s how things worked out for 18-year-old Julian Hernandez.

Hernandez was applying to go to college and ran into a strange problem when trying to fill out his application. He found out his social security number was wrong. As in, it didn’t belong to him. So he got the help of a school guidance counselor and together they discovered Hernandez’s picture on a database of missing children. He’d disappeared 13 years earlier when he was just five-years-old. 

Because it was his father that had taken him, Hernandez had no idea that anything was wrong. He was told his mother had abandoned him, which was not the case. And despite how it sounds, Hernandez was a vocal supporter of his father during the ensuing trial, saying his father had been a good dad and made sure he got good grades, noting that punishing him for taking him from his mother was essentially doing the same thing to him all over again. He was given four years in prison.

The People’s Republic of China has become an authoritarian superpower that uses its technological superiority to crush dissent. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), fearful of an uprising of its own citizenry, has managed to achieve obedience through social engineering. From 2014 onwards, the Party began introducing a complex Social Credit system that ranks people based upon their everyday behaviors. From late bill payments to simple traffic violations, the most minor of transgressions can see a person’s social score tank. Once this score falls below a certain threshold, the wrongdoer is then denied access to basic services such as public transportation.

The Chinese are micromanaged using an arsenal of cameras, spies, and algorithms. CCTV cameras use facial recognition technology to automatically detect jaywalkers and slap them with fines. Government apps allow snitches to report social deviants to the authorities. And an army of internet censors monitor social networks for posts critical of the communist regime.

President Xi Jinping, who recently abolished term limits to become president for life, has purged the Party of his political enemies. The career politician has built a cult of personality, both within and outside of the CCP. Those who resist the whims of “Papa Xi” run the risk of spending time in the re-education camps. To live in China is to never know whether you are doing something wrong. Laws are in a constant state of flux. Objects, words, and ideas are banned on a dime. And people start to disappear from public life.

Top 10 Ways China Is Turning Into An Episode Of Black Mirror

10 Ghosts & Time Travel

 

In recent times, state-controlled regulators have taken a somewhat robust approach to protecting the CCP. The Party fears anything that could undermine its own position of strength and authority, including religious iconography or material of a supernatural nature. It is for this reason that films featuring depictions of “terror, ghosts and the supernatural” are banned. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Crimson Peak, and Ghostbusters (2016) have all fallen foul of the country’s anti-ghost rules.

Sony Pictures pulled out all the stops to get Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters remake into Chinese theaters. Pre-empting trouble, Sony changed the name of the Chinese version of the film from “Ghost Catcher Dare Die Team” to “Super Power Dare Die Team.” The studio’s efforts to appease the censors – including the removal of entire scenes – ended in the film getting banned anyway.

Back in 2011, China memory-holed time travel movies and TV shows, just in time for the 90th anniversary of the CCP’s founding. “Producers and writers are treating serious history in a frivolous way, which should by no means be encouraged anymore,” argued the state’s media regulator. In reality, the Party did not want filmmakers challenging its own version of historical events.^[1]

9 Strange Company Names

 

In 2017, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce announced that it would no longer tolerate company names deemed strange, offensive, or excessively long. Newly registered businesses would also no longer be able to adopt “politically insensitive” names. For example, all references to the Falun Gong – a religious group that has undergone intense persecution at the hands of the communist state – are strictly forbidden.

A condom maker, “There is a Group of Young People With Dreams, Who Believe They Can Create Wonders of Life Under Uncle Niu’s Leadership Internet Technology,” was one of the first companies forced to shorten its name. Businesses that feature broken Chinese, or “Chinglish,” are similarly banned.

Following the government crackdown, social media users started drawing attention to businesses with unusual names. It was speculated that “Hangzhou No Trouble Looking For Trouble Internet Technology” and “Beijing Afraid of Wife Technology” would soon disappear.^[2]

8 Harrison Ford

Today, Hollywood’s global box office success is closely linked to China – and given that China has a population of over one billion people, it’s not hard to see why. This is something movie producers know all too well, most of whom refrain from making movies that might offend Chinese sensibilities. MGM’s remake of Red Dawn, for example, was originally set to show China invading the United States. When China got wind of the project, the studio spent millions in post-production costs to make North Korea the bad guys instead.

Likewise, actors with controversial political opinions face the wrath of the CCP. Harrison Ford is currently banned from entering China because of his advocacy for Tibetan independence. In 1951, China invaded and annexed Tibet, before forcing its leader, the Dalai Lama, to sign away his homeland’s sovereignty. Tibet remains a sensitive issue to this day, with Chinese officials accusing Tibet’s exiled government of stirring civil unrest.

Harrison Ford’s political views were heavily influenced by his ex-wife, Melissa Mathison. The late screenwriter worked on the 1997 Disney film Kundun. The film, which follows the monastic upbringing of the 14th Dalai Lama, was badly received in China. Both Mathison and the film’s director, Martin Scorsese, were soon banned from entering the country. Disney quickly backtracked and apologized for insulting its “friends,” after the communist dictatorship started banning its products.^[3]

7 Open Taxi Windows, Pigeons & Ping Pong Balls

In 2012, pictures started circulating of Chinese taxi cabs with missing window handles. The CCP had instructed taxi firms to remove the handles in the run-up to the country’s 18th National Congress in Beijing. Customers were also forced to sign written agreements which forbade them from opening taxi windows or doors at “important venues.” The move was designed to prevent public dissent during congress. Taxi drivers were also warned to be on the lookout for balloons and ping pong balls tagged with anti-CCP messages. But there was more.

Deadly weapons, including kitchen knives and pencil sharpeners, were banned from stores citywide. Pigeon owners were told they could no longer let their winged companions fly free for fear they could be used to spread seditious leaflets. For the same reason, citizens were forced to show the authorities identification before buying remote-controlled planes.^[4]

6 A Plague Simulation Game

 

At the height of the coronavirus outbreak, a mobile game called Plague Inc became a smash hit in both China and the United States. First released back in 2012, Ndemic Creation’s game tasks players with spreading a deadly pathogen around the world. This objective is achieved by tweaking the properties of the disease to increase its infectivity and lethality.

The game’s success soon caught the attention of Chinese censors, who ordered its removal from the country’s biggest digital distribution platforms, including Steam and the China App Store. After eight years of availability, the Cyberspace Administration of China suddenly argued that the game contained “content that is illegal in China.” Although no further explanation was given, the ban came in the wake of a government clampdown on information related to the covid outbreak. The CCP has been accused of underreporting the number of covid-related deaths during the early phase of the pandemic. It has spent the last year stalling an international investigation into the origins of the virus. And Citizen journalists have faced arrest after accusing the CCP of orchestrating a cover-up.

In light of the covid crisis, the game’s creators have now released a new mode for the game, which involves trying to resolve a viral pandemic – not create one. The team has also donated over $250,000 to fund vaccine research efforts.^[5]

Top 10 Things Hollywood Does To Kowtow To The Chinese

5 South Park

Everybody knows that Winnie the Pooh is now banned in China. It all began in 2013, after a photo of President Xi Jinping and Barack Obama started doing the rounds on Chinese social media. Memesters began comparing Jinping’s portly stature to that of A.A. Milne’s honey-obsessed bear, Winnie the Pooh. Naturally, the censors got to work and expunged all traces of the character from the Chinese internet. Images of Pooh were scrubbed from Weibo (the Chinese version of Twitter), and Christopher Robin was denied its theatrical release.

Cue the creators of South Park, who recently took the opportunity to mock the Middle Kingdom’s autocratic leadership. During an episode called “Band in China,” one of South Park’s characters is detained for attempting to sell marijuana in China. He is then sent to one of the country’s “re-education” camps, where he meets his fellow inmates Pooh and Piglet. “Some people said Pooh looked like the Chinese president,” explains Piglet. “So we’re illegal in China now.”

In 2019, all episodes of South Park were removed from video streaming sites in China. Discussions about South Park were banned on Chinese social media, and search engines no longer generate new results for the show. The show’s creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, took to Twitter to issue a mock apology: “Like the NBA, we welcome the Chinese censors into our homes and into our hearts. We too love money more than freedom and democracy. Xi doesn’t look just like Winnie the Pooh at all… Long live the Great Communist Party of China!”^[6]

4 Christmas Gatherings

 

Christmas in China is a highly commercialized affair. Department stores often use the holiday to hold promotional events, Christmas decorations adorn market stalls, and e-cards are sent over WeChat. A more unusual tradition involves giving Peace Apples, which are thought to bring peace and goodwill to those who eat them. But the holiday has been stripped of its religious affiliations in recent years. This is by design.

Only a handful of religions are officially sanctioned in China, most of which are kept on a tight leash. The state has rewritten religious texts, imprisoned religious leaders on trumped up charges of inciting subversion, and demolished places of worship. The Chinese Communist Party, in emulating Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, seeks to create an entirely atheist state in which citizens worship only its communist leaders.

So it should come as no surprise that the CCP has sought to regulate Christmas. In 2018, the education bureau instructed schools to avoid celebrating Western holidays. Teachers were warned not to put up Christmas decorations, attend Christmas parties, or exchange Peace Apples. A number of cities have also banned stores from selling Christmas products and decorations.

Churches that fail to register with the state are routinely punished. In many regions, Christians are not allowed to attend Christmas gatherings, forcing the practice underground. The police, at the behest of the State Administration of Religious Affairs, have been tasked with shutting down Christmas services. In 2019, one church-goer in Nanyang City explained the lengths his congregation must go to evade the authorities: “We hold Christmas in small [household] gatherings, meeting early and in secret.”^[7]

3 Images of Umbrellas and Jasmine

 

China does not like symbols of resistance. It has already banned any discussion surrounding the Tiananmen Square Incident of 1989, even going so far as to remove the date of the massacre from online search results. To achieve this, China employs millions of censors to purge the internet of sensitive information.

As part of the nation’s “Great Firewall,” details relating to the Jasmine Revolution are also heavily censored. The Jasmine Revolution of 2011 saw the people of Tunisia overthrow their corrupt government. In response, pro-democracy activists in China organized their own protests across a dozen cities. The CCP responded with brutality, beating and arresting protesters. All references to the Jasmine Revolution, including images of the flower itself, were blocked from the Chinese internet. Songs about jasmine suddenly disappeared from streaming sites. The cops banned the sale of jasmine flowers at local stalls in Beijing, tanking market prices. And the China International Jasmine Cultural Festival was canceled that year.

Similar censorship measures were deployed against images of the humble umbrella – a symbol of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement. In 2014, President Xi Jinping visited Macau in South China, just west of Hong Kong. Journalists attending the event were told that umbrellas were strictly off-limits and were given raincoats instead. “They said you couldn’t open umbrellas at the airport because it would affect the flights,” said one bewildered attendee.^[8]

2 Wordplay

 

Much to the disgust of the CCP, Chinese citizens are using wordplay to get around internet censorship measures. The word for “Grass Mud Horse” (Caonima), which sounds similar to “f**k your mother” (cao ni ma) in Mandarin, has become a slogan of resistance to internet censorship. The Grass Mud Horse – a mythical species of alpaca – quickly spread across the Chinese internet like wildfire. Alpaca-themed memes, blog posts, music videos, stuffed toys, and clothing lines started to take root. It wasn’t long before Grass Mud Horse Day took off, sharing its date with the CCP’s own Party Day.

The story of the fabled creature came from a satirical encyclopedic entry on Baidu Baike in 2009. It is said the Grass Mud Horse lives in the “Male Gebi” desert (readers can look that one up for themselves). One day, an army of river crabs showed up and attacked the Grass Mud Horse. In Chinese, the word for river crab (hexie) sounds like “harmony.” Censored internet posts are often described as being “harmonized” – a sly reference to the CCP’s repeated calls for a harmonious society. Baidu’s tale has a happy ending, and the river crabs are defeated in battle.

In the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television blacklisted content that could trigger social unrest. The Great Firewall started cleansing the internet of anti-censorship puns and memes, including references to Mud Horses and river crabs. Officially, the Party claims the ban is designed to protect the sanctity of Chinese culture and language.^[9]

1 Erotic Banana Eating

 

While the production and distribution of pornography is already illegal in China, carrying a potential life sentence, the Red Dragon recently went a step further. In 2016, China’s Ministry of Culture condemned live-streaming services for their role in spreading pornographic and violent broadcasts. It also discovered that nearly four-fifths of stream watchers are male, many of whom view female entertainers. Regulation soon followed. Streamers were banned from wearing miniskirts, stockings, and suspenders. According to state broadcaster CCTV, erotic banana eating was also outlawed. The ministry believes that these streams represent a danger to the nation’s “social morality.”

China now requires all major streaming companies to monitor their broadcasts around the clock. Anyone hosting a live-streaming session must register their real name with the government and undergo facial recognition scans (likewise for fans donating money). The regulator says streams must “actively spread positive energy [and] demonstrate truth, goodness and beauty.”^[10]

Top 10 Disgusting Foods The Chinese Eat

There are over 10,000 hostage situations in America every year. Many of them are resolved peacefully but thousands are not. It’s obviously a serious and potentially deadly issue that can play out in so many unpredictable ways it’s hard for anyone to know how to proceed.

While movies and TV shows can make everything look simple, the truth can be anything but. And some hostage situations have gone so far off the rails that no one ever could have guessed how they were going to play out.

10. A Man Took a Radio Station Manager Hostage and Demanded a Kermit the Frog Song

Hostage taking often comes as a result of desperation or cruelty, depending on the situation. Sometimes it’s used as a tactic to try to achieve a goal. Maybe a bank robber will take a hostage to try to ensure their own safety so they can get away. For one man in New Zealand, the purpose of taking the manager of a radio station hostage was about as murky as reasons could get. He wanted to hear the Muppets sing The Rainbow Connection, and he wanted to hear it for 12 hours.

The 21-year-old man was not identified in the media, but he entered a New Zealand radio station claiming to have a bomb. As he barricaded himself inside with his hostage and police cordoned off the neighborhood, the man wanted the world to know how he felt and ordered the song played on repeat.

The whole event was cut short when police were able to take him into custody and we may never know why he felt Kermit’s song from The Muppet Movie expressed his true feelings. The bomb he claimed to have turned out to be a fake. 

9. Notorious Criminal Charles Bronson Let a Hostage Go For Farting

To many people in North America, Charles Bronson was an action star who achieved most of his fame through the Death Wish film series. There is, however, another Charles Bronson out there that people in the UK are more familiar with. This Charles Bronson was an infamous criminal known for being especially violent and brutal. He became almost a folk hero and even had a movie made about him that stars Tom Hardy. 

Bronson was initially incarcerated for armed robbery, however he spent decades in prison because of his violent nature when he was behind bars. There, he would attack other inmates and take hostages on more than one occasion. His motives are usually hard to understand, seeing as once he took hostages and demanded an inflatable doll, helicopter, and a cup of tea to release the person.

Arguably the most bizarre incident involving Bronson and his hostage taking was when he took a librarian hostage and then released the man because he farted in front of him, which Bronson found disgusting.

8. Kenneth Lamar Noid Took 2 Domino’s Employees Hostage Because of Noid Commercials

The story of the Noid, the weird claymation mascot of Domino’s Pizza back in the ’90s, sounds pretty goofy until you get the full, tragic story as it related to one man who had some unfortunate mental health issues.

If you don’t remember the Noid, he was a strange sort of rabbit eared character who really wanted to ruin your pizza experience. So to “avoid the Noid,” as they said, you had to order Domino’s? Unfortunately, a man named Kenneth Lamar Noid became convinced that Domino’s was targeting him specifically with their ads.

Kenneth was so upset by commercials featuring the Noid character that he eventually went to Domino’s location and took two employees hostage at gunpoint, trying to convince the company to stop specifically targeting him in their commercials which is something he felt was happening.

The employees managed to escape because Noid ordered a pizza and then sat down to eat it. He was taken into custody and it seems like the story should have ended there, but unfortunately Noid was plagued by the belief that these commercials were out to get him and eventually took his own life.

7. During a Deadly Hostage Crisis Reporters Asked Hostage Takers to Pose with Their Guns Against Hostage’s Heads

The relationship between the media and the news they report on has always been a strange one. In recent years, the line between the two getting blurred has become more and more of a concern to the point where sometimes you need to wonder if news is being reported or if it is being created. There are few cases where this was more of a serious issue than back in 1988 in West Germany.

Known as the Gladbeck Hostage Crisis, the incident started when two men robbed a bank in Gladbeck. The police response was bungled to say the least, and they ended up providing a getaway vehicle for the two men more than once. After nearly a day of holding employees at gunpoint, the two men took the car, two hostages, and the money they robbed from the bank and drove away. They even managed to stop to pick up the girlfriend of one of the two robbers.

They drove to another town and somehow hijacked a bus full of 30 people. The police detained the girlfriend, and in retaliation one of the bank robbers shot a 15-year-old hostage. They left with a bus full of hostages, transferred to a car and cut down to two hostages, and fled again. 

At their next stop the press swarmed their car. They were taking photos and asking questions while hostages in the car had guns on them. With cameras rolling, in footage you can still find today, one of the reporters notices that there’s a gun not being used and asks if it wouldn’t make for a better shot if the gunman picked it up and put it to the hostage’s head.

In the end, another of the hostages was still shot before police could bring the man into custody.

6. A Hostage Taker Stormed Discovery Channel Because He Hated Their Programming

If you spend any time on social media, then you know people on the internet have some seriously angry opinions about TV. you can get people arguing for hours, even days, over TV shows and movies. Many times these will escalate into violent and angry name calling as well.  People just take their entertainment way too seriously.

In 2010, this grew well out of control when one man broke into the Discovery Channel headquarters and took hostages because of how much he hated the shows the channel was airing. And sure, lots of people complain about reality tv, but most of those complaints don’t end in fatalities.

James J. Lee had a history of publicly causing trouble for Discovery. Two years prior he staged a protest against the shows Kate Plus 8 and 19 Kids and Counting. But in 2010 he crossed a line and took two employees and a security guard hostage for hours, demanding Kate Plus 8 be taken off TV. Part of his issue was the belief humans were destroying the planet and, since those shows promoted large families, they were doing more harm.

Lee was armed with a gun as well as several explosives that were designed to go off if he was shot by police. A robot had to be used to disarm some of the devices. 

5. John II of France was Taken Hostage, Released, Then Voluntarily Returned as a Hostage

Most people have some kind of individual sense of honor, to a greater or lesser degree, that determines how they’re going to act in any situation. Historically, codes like this were a little more important to a person and could have a greater influence on the actions they took in day-to-day life. Such was the case with King John II of France.

In 1355, England and France were at war. In 1356, England had overcome the French forces and King John was taken prisoner. By 1357, he was being held in London. It wouldn’t be until 1360 that he was finally ransomed and returned home. However, France did not have the money to pay the ransom so instead additional prisoners were taken. King John was exchanged for his own son, amongst others.

Maybe the story would have ended there, except John’s son managed to escape after he was taken into custody. For whatever reason, John felt this was a dishonorable move, since his son was meant as payment for himself, so he turned himself back over to the English once again. 

4. Muhammad Ali Negotiated the Release of 15 Hostages in Iraq

Every once in a while a professional athlete will offer up their opinion on something to do with politics or world events. Many times people will tell them to stick to what they’re good at, meant as an insult. But Muhammad Ali proved that professional athletes can make a big difference when he saved 15 hostages back in 1990.

The regime of Saddam Hussein took 15 Americans hostage after the Gulf War. Ali traveled to Iraq, amidst heavy criticism, to speak with Hussein in person. He was successful as well, and secured the release of the men. His efforts would later result in George Bush giving him the Medal of Freedom.  This was also not Ali’s first time dealing with hostage negotiations, as in the mid 80s he had gone to Beirut to negotiate for the release of four American hostages. 

3. A Woman Held Hostage by Her Boyfriend Used the Pizza Hut App To Get Help

Cheryl Treadway was taken hostage by her boyfriend in 2015, along with her children. In need of help and fearful for her safety and that of her kids. He confiscated her phone and held them all hostage with a large knife. At some point Treadway managed to convince her boyfriend that they needed to eat, and she could order pizza using the Pizza Hut app without having to talk to anyone. So he let her do it.

In the space where you’re allowed to leave a note in the ordering app she wrote “911 hostage help”. The order taker at Pizza Hut could see that something was wrong, and the police were called, saving Treadway and her children. 

2. Residents of Love Canal Took the EPA Hostage

You may have heard of the town of Love Canal, the infamous site of a toxic waste dump. Many of the local residents complained of severe, long-lasting health conditions as a result of this toxic waste that they didn’t know existed. The story of what happened has been considered the kicking off point for the modern environmental era. 

The issues suffered by these people were catastrophic. It wasn’t just getting sick; they were suffering chromosome damage. This was serious stuff. After it was discovered, several hundred families were compensated, their homes were purchased by the government, and they were able to relocate. But hundreds more were considered to be outside the danger zone, even though they were also suffering ill effects.

Because the government wasn’t listening to their concerns, they resorted to the extreme measure of kidnapping two EPA officials. Police arrived to discover hundreds of residents armed with 2x4s protecting their hostages. They explained that the men wouldn’t be treated poorly, but they were not going to be let go until the government listened. 

The hostage situation lasted 5 hours, but over 700 residents had their homes purchased by the government soon after, which is what they wanted.

1. A Hostage Taker’s Mom Showed Up and Beat Him

In a movie it’s always exciting when the hero shows up and gives the villain their comeuppance. Do we have heroes in real life to do this? Sometimes. In the case of Amos Atkinson, the hero was his mom.

After firing a shotgun at police, Atkinson took 30 hostages at a restaurant in an effort to force authorities to release his friend from custody. Police contacted his mother to act as a go-between to communicate with him. She showed up and started beating her son with a handbag. Humiliated and unable to proceed, Atkinson let the rest of the hostages go and was arrested.