On this day:
VANISHING FROM A FIELD
On September 23, 1880, David Lang left his wife and children sitting on the front porch of their Tennessee farmhouse when he walked out into the field and vanished right in front of them. As an adult, Lang's daughter, Sarah, wrote about the incident, detailing how her mother had screamed and two other visitors had gone into disbelieving shock at the sight of the disappearance. A thorough search was con-ducted, but neither Lang nor any incriminating sinkholes or hidden caves were ever found.
In 1854, in Alabama, a similar incident involved a farmer, Orion Williamson, who went to bring in his horse from pasture. Before the eyes of his family and two neighbors who were out in their buggy, Williamson seemed to evaporate into the air. Neither fifty bloodhounds nor three hundred searchers moving hand to hand over the ground could find any trace of him. The next spring an odd circle appeared where the farmer had disappeared. Inside of it, grass would not grow, and insects would not go.
In 1885, farmer Isaac Martin of Virginia strolled into a field and likewise vanished. The New York Sun carried an article about the disappearance. It is unknown whether anyone saw him go. Dr. Maximilian Hern declared that the man had unknowingly walked into a "void spot of universal ether." Such spots exist only for brief seconds at a time and claim any material elements that enter into them.
Text from: Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible, and the Ignored by Juanita Rose Violins, published by Weiser Books, 2009
