Amanda Johnson 
People go missing all the time. Kids are snatched from playgrounds, women are abducted from the mall, men go out for cigarettes and never return.
Sometimes, people vanish without a trace. It seems impossible, but it does happen. Sometimes the reasons are certainly nefarious, such as human trafficking, or other criminal reasons. Sometimes people just want out. They leave behind their old life to start fresh, abandoning everyone who loves them. Then, there are those who we have no answers for.
There are some who are never found. It’s maddening and so sad for the family of the missing.
It also happens in the celebrity world. For as far back as any of us can remember, celebrities and common folk alike have disappeared. Actors, artists, or people famous for any number of things have just seemingly ceased to exist. Sometimes they become famous because of their disappearance.
These are some of those stories. Some from long ago, others more recent, but all baffling. Where are these missing men and women?
1. Solomon Northup
Twelve Years a Slave is the story of the life of Solomon Northup. The film was critically acclaimed and won the Oscar for best picture.
Solomon was held captive, and enslaved for a dozen years back in the 1840s and early 1850s. He was an accomplished violinist, and a farmer in New York State before he was kidnapped, on the premise he was being hired as a traveling musician. He was freed when a Canadian man helped notify New York officials about one of their own that had been sold into slavery.
He became a staunch supporter of the abolitionist movement, travelling the country lecturing about his experiences as a slave.
In 1857, he was due to give a lecture in Canada, but he never showed up. It is unknown what happened to him. One theory is that he was recaptured and sold back into slavery, but some say he would have been too old by then to garner a good price.
2. D.B. Cooper
The story of D.B. Cooper is one where the disappearance was the source of the fame. He committed the most perfect crime of all time. Since it happened, in 1971, there have been leads, but they never led to the elusive skyjacker.
He bought a ticket to fly from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington, one way. About half an hour after departure, he spoke to one of the flight attendants and informed them that he had a bomb. He asked for $200,000 in cash, and a number of parachutes.
They landed the airplane, and traded the money for the other passengers. Cooper then demanded the pilot fly to Mexico. He shared his ransom with the airline staff. He then proceeded to secure the cash to his person, gathered up his parachutes, and jumped out of the plane.
Nobody has even seen him or heard from him since. The FBI stopped actively pursuing the case in 2016.
3. Amelia Earhart
Nearly everyone knows the amazing tale of Amelia Earhart. She was an amazing woman, way ahead of her time. A definite role model for little girls everywhere as far as her accomplishments and dreams in life.
She was the first female pilot to fly alone, and she had a successful flight across the Pacific! What an amazing feat! She wanted to be the first woman to fly around the entire globe. She took off for that very purpose with Fred Noonan, her navigator. They went missing on July 2, 1937. The search was intense, but not one trace of the plane or people were found.
The consensus is that the plane ran out of gas and plummeted into the water of the Pacific, but no wreckage has been discovered.
Over the years, different theories have been explored, the most recent, in 2012, attempting to prove a landing on Nikumaoro, and island in the pacific. This couldn’t be proven.
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