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People disappear. We know that, but largely unreported is the dark fact that missing persons investigators also go AWOL in suspicious circumstances. US and South American fortean researcher Scott Corrales tells the lost story. In 1995 alone, four million Americans vanished, according to the Tracers Company. Missing persons reports from different law enforcement agencies around the world added another two million souls to the list. The world's load was lightened by six million human beings in that year alone. Most of these appeared to be solidly respectable citizens with clear consciences. UFO-minded researchers have long been fascinated by the epidemic scale of such disappearances and sought to interpret it as due to an unknown phenomenon. Soon, they themselves were becoming part of the phenomenon.
Inevitably, when a UFO investigator disappears, it is seen as the action of sinister alien forces or sinister government silencers either way an obvious sign that they were 'close to the truth'. Despite the seeming outrageousness of such claims, it is no secret that many UFO researchers have either disappeared without a trace or else perished under mysterious circumstances. Undoubtedly, the most famous in the latter category is Morris K Jessup, an American astronomer who was interested ironically in the apparent disappearance of a number of lunar craters, strange falls and other possibly UFO-related Fortean events. Jessup's interest in the UFO phenomenon brought him into contact with the bizarre Carlos Allende, the enigmatic author of a series of mind-bending commentaries on several classic UFO-related cases including the 'Philadelphia Experiment' written from the viewpoint of a visiting alien who knew the 'truth' behind them. Prior to committing suicide in April 1959, Jessup had exhibited symptoms of nervousness and foreboding. After entrusting his research notes and a copy of his book The Case for UFOs (1955) to a friend, Jessup was found dead in his car from asphyxiation.