10 Bizarre Disappearances Connected To Strange Cloud-Like Mist

While many people disappear without a trace, with a variety of explanations offered as to why or how they did so, some bizarre vanishings have a common detail about them. They involve the sudden appearance of a mysterious, cloud-like mist or fog that disappears as soon as it arrives, taking those it engulfs with them.

Not all of these disappearances result in the those involved vanishing without trace and not being seen again, however. Some of these incidents appear to have acted as some kind of portal phenomenon, transporting their targets thousands of miles away in an instant. Here are ten of the most mysterious of such cases involving bizarre, cloudy mist.

10 Man Transported Thousands Of Miles
1959

Shortly after checking out of a roadside hotel in Bahia Blanca, Argentina, a businessman got into his car and prepared to continue his long journey home. Almost as soon as he positioned himself in his seat and ignited the engine, a strange, thick, white mist came out of nowhere and seemed to envelop his vehicle.

He couldn’t see anything out of the car windows other than the fog that pressed against them. He began to panic somewhat and believed he may have even passed out, as the next thing he knew, he was standing in a field near a lonely road in the middle of nowhere. His car was nowhere in sight, nor was the hotel he had just walked out of.

A heavy-duty truck making its way down the road brought him back to his senses a little, and he went to the roadside to hail it down. He asked the driver if he could take him to Bahia Blanca so that he could locate his car. The driver looked dumbfounded. He informed the businessman that Bahia Blanca was over 1,000 kilometers (600 mi) away. They were currently in the town of Salta. At this point, the businessman looked at his watch and saw that only minutes had passed.^[1]

The driver took the businessman to the nearest police station. Upon hearing his report, the police would contact their counterparts in Bahia Blanca. The officers there confirmed that the businessman had indeed stayed there. Even more spine-tingling, when a policeman went to match the businessman’s registration plate to his car, he found that the vehicle was indeed outside the hotel. What’s more, the engine was still running, and the keys were in the ignition.

9 Girl Travels Miles From Home
1968

Graciela del Lourdes Cimenez, age 11, was doing what she would normally do in the long summer days in August 1968: playing outside her home with friends in the small town of Cordoba, Argentina. She would later recall that a “strange white cloud” appeared out of nowhere and then moved toward where she stood.^[2]

She went to turn around and run to her home, but when she did so, she realized that she could no longer see her house. In fact, she could no longer see anything at all other than the bizarre white mist that now seemed to imprison her on all sides.

The next thing she knew, she was in a strange and busy square. She could see lots of other children, although none whom she recognized. Not knowing where she was, she went to the first house she came upon and knocked on the door. When she explained she was lost, the residents of the house were surprised, to say the least. They were in Plaza Espana, a city some distance from where the young girl lived.

8 Couple Unconscious For Two Days
1968

One evening in May 1968, several months before the strange incident of Graciela, Dr. Gerado Vidal was driving in the area of Chascomus, Argentina, with his wife when a strange cloud appeared to descend upon their vehicle.^[3]

In what seemed an instant, both Geraldo and his wife awoke in their now-stationary vehicle, and it was now daytime. Even more bizarre, they would soon discover that 48 hours had passed and that they were no longer in Argentina but on a quiet road in Mexico. They were 6,400 kilometers (4,000 mi) from their original location. Perhaps as a final twist, their car still had a full tank of gas.

No explanation was ever arrived at as to what happened to the husband and wife, but scorch marks on the car appeared to suggest exposure to heat for some time, leading some who have researched the case to suggest that they arrived in Mexico almost instantly after the fog ensnared them (as unlikely as that sounds), where they sat in the heat for the following two days until coming to. (Presumably, their windows were down.)

7 Pilot Vanishes In Misty Cloud
1914

Not all disappearances involving strange white mist result in those involved returning to tell their tales. One example would be Chilean Air Force pilot First Lieutenant Alejandro Bello Silva, who would vanish into a strange mist and never be heard from again in 1914.^[4]

The young but talented pilot was taking part in examination exercises when witnesses saw his plane enter a “strange cloud formation.” They expected his plane to emerge seconds later, but when a minute or two had passed, they grew immensely concerned. Despite an extensive search of the area, no sign of the plane or Silva himself was reported. It was as though he had entered the cloud and simply vanished into thin air.

The disappearance was huge news in Chile, and the search for his plane would periodically be taken up again by individuals. Interestingly, a saying in Chilean culture was derived from this episode to describe people who disappear on their way somewhere. They are said to be “more lost than Lieutenant Bello.”

6 Entire Regiment Disappears
1915

Around a year after the strange disappearance of Alejandro Bello Silva, in the mud, death, and horror of World War I’s trench warfare that gripped much of Europe in 1915, an entire regiment of the British Army seemingly disappeared completely and without a trace.^[5]

Later accounts would state that the regiment marched toward a strange brown cloud that hugged the ground in their path. They had been advancing on enemy fighters as part of the Gallipoli Campaign. The opposing side had been backed up by the advancing regiment against battle-induced fire in nearby woodland. They continued to progress.

Once the last man of the regiment had been swallowed by this cloud, it was said to have started fly away—against the wind. However, once it was gone, the expected sight of hundreds of British soldiers was not there. Instead, there was nothing but the ground. Hundreds of soldiers had seemingly vanished without a sound or a fight.

It was assumed that Turkish forces had captured the soldiers, something they always denied. In 1965, Frederick Reichardt would go on record telling what little we now know of the soldiers’ fate. Details such as the cloud flying against the wind were immediately picked up on by UFO researchers, and there is debate, in the UFO community at least, whether the incident may have been a mass abduction.

5 Fighter Pilot Disappears In Strange Cloud
1952

In an incident similar to that of Lieutenant Silva, Commander John Baldwin, an experienced fighter pilot, would fly into a strange cloud while patrolling the skies during the Korean War in March 1952.^[6]

An entire squadron would conduct an extensive search of the area for several hours, but there was no sign of any crash, nor were any distress signals picked up or emergency signals sent. Baldwin was flying an F-86 Sabre at the time of his (presumed) death.

Commander Baldwin is not alone when it comes to missing pilots during the Korean War. In reality, the aerial battles were between US and Soviet fighter jets and were the first of their kind to utilize such powerful fighter planes for one-to-one combat. Many of the pilots who were shot down would disappear and were presumed captured or killed. What makes Baldwin’s encounter different is the fact that there was no recovery of his plane, nor was he in battle at the time.

4 Family Drives Into Mist And Is Abducted
1974

In 1974, after arriving home in Essex from an evening with the wife’s parents, John and Susan Day, along with their three children, realized that their journey had taken over three hours longer than it should have.^[7] Even stranger, they had no memory of why the journey had taken so long. After the entire family began to experience intense nightmares and difficulty sleeping in general, John agreed to undergo hypnotic regression in an attempt to discover what happened that evening on their journey home.

According to the results of the session, John recalled that around 30 minutes into the journey, he had driven into a bizarre mist that had arrived from out of nowhere. An intense light shone in the distance in the fog. The light then hit the car and lifted it from the ground, taking it and its occupants aboard a strange craft, where Nordic-looking beings in tight-fitting attire performed various tests and procedures on them.

3 Tokyo Bank Manager Sees Car Vanish
1963

Perhaps one of the most bizarre stories of disappearances involving strange and cloudy mist is that of Mr. Kinoshita, manager (at the time) of Kashika branch of Fuji Bank in Tokyo.^[8] Early on the morning of November 19, 1963, he and two other passengers, a bank staff member and a potential client, were driving to the golf course.

Kinoshita had noticed a strange black car in front of them. He couldn’t tell why he had noticed it. There was nothing particularly strange about it, but he maintained it in his sight nonetheless. He could see clearly that an elderly gentleman sat in the back of the vehicle reading a newspaper.

Without warning, “a puff of something gaseous, like white smoke or vapour gushed from somewhere around the black car,” completely enveloping it. When the cloud-like fog lifted, the car in front of them was nowhere to be seen. Kinoshita would estimate that the whole episode, from the smoke appearing to it lifting and the car vanishing, took a matter of only seconds.

2 The Black Mist Of Casa Grande Mountain

According to locals, the roads and pathways around the base of Casa Grande Mountain in Arizona are subject to a strange black mist after dark.^[9] Legends state that if this black mist is allowed to engulf you, it will “plague you with uneasy feelings” or even transport you away to another dimension or time altogether.

Many of these legends are said to have their routes in the culture of the Hohokam Native American tribes, who once called the area home—until they disappeared themselves without any explanation around AD 1100. Many of their ruins still exist in the area, some of which remain a mystery as to their purpose even today. According to the legends, the black mist of Casa Grande Mountain contains the ancient, living essence of the desert and has a mind of its own and should be respected at all times.

1 The Vanishings At Mount Nyangani

Perhaps the fact that it is known locally as “The Mountain That Swallows People” tells you all you need to know about the mysterious Mount Nyangani within Nyanga National Park in Zimbabwe. The area has been the scene of numerous disappearances over the years, earning it quite a reputation.^[10]

An intriguing detail connected to these disappearances is the presence of thick, cloudy mist. Many legends connect this mist to the spirit world and hold that strange creatures inhabit the area.

Mainstream science tells us that this mist, almost eternally present on the caps of the park’s mountains, is nothing more than atmospheric and weather phenomena. However, even the weather is subject to folklore and legend, with many stating that the weather around the mountains has a mind of its own, sending strong gusts and thick fog at extremely inopportune times, confusing and disorientating hikers in the area—many of whom are never seen again.