"Sherry Leighty":
It happened back in the fall of 1999. I was just a kid, living in a small, quiet town in Ohio. The kind of town where nothing ever really happened—where people left their doors unlocked, and neighbors stopped to chat on their front porches. The air was crisp that September, carrying the scent of fallen leaves and bonfires. The trees were turning shades of gold and red, painting the streets in warm colors. It should have been a peaceful time, just another autumn like the ones before. But everything changed when Sherry Leighty disappeared.
Sherry was 23, a mother of three, and one of the kindest people you’d ever meet. She had this warmth about her, a way of making you feel like you belonged, no matter who you were. She was always laughing, always smiling, and everyone in town seemed to know her. She wasn’t just someone you passed by—she was the kind of person who made an impression. You’d see her at the park with her kids, James, Travis, and Kieran, pushing them on the swings, laughing as they ran through the grass. Even if she was in a hurry, she always stopped to say hello.
That Saturday, September 26th, started like any other. I remember sitting at the kitchen table, eating breakfast, while my mom stood by the sink with a cup of coffee. She was staring out the window, lost in thought.
"I saw Sherry this morning," she said, almost absentmindedly. "She was taking the kids to soccer practice."
It wasn’t a remarkable statement at the time. Just another day, just another routine. But by nightfall, those words would take on a haunting weight.
That evening, the first murmurs of concern started spreading. People were calling her house, asking if anyone had seen her. A neighbor had gone over to check, and Mike, her husband, answered the door. His voice was shaky when he spoke, his face pale.
"I can't find her," he said to anyone who would listen. "She left to pick up some groceries, but she hasn’t come back. Her car’s still here."
At first, people tried to reassure him. Maybe she’d gotten caught up with something. Maybe she stopped by a friend’s house. But as the hours passed, the worry deepened. Sherry wasn’t the kind of person to just disappear. She wouldn’t have left her kids, wouldn’t have abandoned her car in the driveway. By the time night fell, the police had been called.
They searched everywhere—her usual routes, the grocery store, the park, anywhere she might have gone. They knocked on doors, asking if anyone had seen anything unusual. But there was nothing. No one had seen her leave, no one had seen anything strange. It was as if she had simply vanished.
Days passed, and the fear in town became something almost tangible. People started locking their doors at night. Parents kept a closer eye on their kids. The park, once filled with laughter, became eerily quiet. There were whispers—speculation, rumors. Some thought she might have run away, but those who knew her didn’t believe it. Others feared something far worse.
I remember walking to school that week, feeling an unease I’d never felt before. The world suddenly seemed different—less safe. The missing posters went up all over town. Her face stared back from telephone poles and store windows, smiling as if nothing had changed.
A couple of weeks after she disappeared, my friends and I were playing near the old creek. It was a place we always went, a quiet spot just outside of town where the water ran low and slow. We were skipping rocks when something caught my eye. Lying near the edge of the creek, half-buried in the dirt, was a small wallet.
I recognized it instantly.
"That’s Sherry’s," I whispered, my stomach twisting into knots.
Next to it, crumpled and damp, was a shopping list. A set of keys lay nearby, their metal glinting in the fading sunlight.
"Should we tell someone?" Tommy, my best friend, asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Yeah," I said, feeling an overwhelming sense of dread.
We ran all the way back to my house, our hearts pounding. My mom called the police, and within an hour, the area was swarming with officers. They combed through the creek, searching every inch of the ground. They brought dogs, flashlights, and search teams. But after hours of searching, they found nothing else—just those items, lying there like a silent scream.
Weeks turned into months, and the investigation slowed. Tips came in but led nowhere. They questioned everyone, but no one knew anything. The town started to move on, but there was always this shadow hanging over us. Every now and then, a rumor would start up again—someone claimed they had seen her, someone else swore they heard something suspicious. But nothing ever came of it.
As the years passed, Sherry became more of a ghost than a person. Her family never stopped looking, never stopped hoping. Her kids grew up with a hole in their lives where their mother should have been. Her parents aged with sorrow in their eyes. And Mike—he looked like a man forever waiting for something that would never come.
I remember seeing him at the local diner in early 2013. I had grown up by then, but I still thought about Sherry sometimes, still wondered what had happened to her. Mike sat alone in a booth, staring at the door. His coffee had gone cold.
"Every day, I think she might walk through that door," he said softly. "But she never does."
Then, in August 2012, something happened. Forensic technology had advanced in the years since Sherry’s disappearance, and the police decided to take another look at her case. They tested her personal items—the ones found near the creek—for any DNA evidence. What they found sent shockwaves through the town.
There was DNA on her belongings that didn’t belong to her. Someone else had been there. Someone had touched those items, left a trace of themselves behind. The police reopened the investigation, hoping this new lead would finally bring answers.
But the DNA didn’t match anyone in the system. It was a dead end.
The case slipped back into silence, but the questions never went away.
To this day, Sherry Leighty remains missing. Her children grew up without their mother, her family never got the answers they deserved, and those of us who were kids back then still carry the weight of that fall in 1999.
Some say they still see her sometimes—a glimpse of a familiar face in a crowd, a shadow moving just out of sight. Maybe it’s just our minds playing tricks, or maybe it’s something else.
Whatever happened to Sherry that day remains a mystery. A haunting, unanswered question that lingers in the cool autumn air, in the whispering leaves, in the quiet moments when the town remembers.
And so, we live with it. We wonder. We wait.
"Maura Murray":
I was living in a small town in New Hampshire, the kind of place where everyone at least thought they knew everyone else. You could walk down Main Street and recognize every face, exchange nods with people you’d grown up with, and hear the same names in conversation over and over. It was a quiet place, tucked into the heart of New England, where winters stretched long and thick blankets of snow covered the roads, muting sound and slowing life to a crawl.
It was the sort of town where nothing ever really happened—until it did.
My name’s Fred, and back in 2004, I worked as a bartender at The Rusty Anchor, a small, dimly lit dive bar near the edge of town. It wasn’t much—just a few creaky barstools, a jukebox that played mostly classic rock and country, and walls covered with old, faded photos of fishing trips and town events from decades past. The regulars would come in, sip their drinks, swap stories about the same old things—work, the weather, sports, and whatever local gossip was floating around. It was a place where people came to unwind, to escape the cold, or sometimes, just to be around other people.
February in New Hampshire is unforgiving. The roads are slick with ice, the air bites at your skin, and the sky always seems to carry the weight of an impending storm. That night, February 9, 2004, had that same feeling—the air thick with the promise of snow, a quiet kind of heaviness. I remember it well, because it was the night Maura Murray walked into my bar for the first and last time.
She wasn’t a regular, but I knew her face. A 21-year-old nursing student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Maura was originally from Hanson, Massachusetts, but she had connections to this area. Her father owned a condo in Bartlett, and she’d spent time up here before. People knew of her, even if they didn’t know her personally.
She came in alone, which already struck me as a little odd. Most college-aged kids didn’t come to The Rusty Anchor unless they were passing through, or maybe meeting up with someone older they knew from town. She walked up to the bar, pulled off her gloves, and rubbed her hands together like she was trying to shake off the cold.
"Hey, Fred," she said, offering a small, somewhat forced smile. "Can I get a Jack and Coke?"
I poured the drink, setting it in front of her. "Everything okay?" I asked, because something about her seemed... off. Her smile was there, but it didn’t reach her eyes. There was a nervous energy about her, like she was preoccupied or on edge.
She hesitated for just a second before nodding. "Yeah, just needed to get away for a bit. College life, you know."
I didn’t push. People came into bars for all kinds of reasons—some needed a break, others were running from something they didn’t want to name. We chatted for a bit, but it was all surface-level. The weather, school, small talk. She was polite, but distracted, as if her mind was somewhere else entirely.
She only stayed for about an hour. Around midnight, she slid off her barstool, pulling her jacket tight around her shoulders.
"Gotta be up early," she said, offering another one of those half-hearted smiles.
I watched as she walked out the door and disappeared into the cold night. The door swung shut behind her with a metallic clang that echoed in the near-empty bar.
That was the last time I saw her.
The next morning, February 10, I got a call from a buddy of mine at the police station. His voice was tight, serious in a way that immediately put me on edge.
"Fred, you remember that girl from last night? Maura Murray?"
"Yeah," I said, wiping my hands on a rag. "Why?"
"Her car’s been found. Abandoned."
A chill ran through me that had nothing to do with the weather. "Where?"
"Off Route 112. Near Haverhill. Front end’s banged up, airbags deployed, but she’s not there."
I felt a sinking feeling in my gut. Route 112 wasn’t the kind of place you just stopped. It was a rural, isolated stretch of road, surrounded by thick woods and steep embankments. Not the kind of place you’d expect a college student to be driving through late at night in the middle of winter.
Her black Saturn sedan was found slightly off the road, its nose pressed into a snowbank. The scene was eerie—like she had just stepped out and vanished into thin air. Inside the car, police found her personal belongings: some textbooks, a box of red wine, and a Coke bottle with what appeared to be red liquid inside. There were red stains on the car’s interior, but it was unclear whether it was wine or something else.
No sign of Maura. No footprints leading away in the fresh snow. No calls from her phone. Just... silence.
The town erupted with rumors. Some people said she had staged her own disappearance, that she wanted to start over somewhere new. Others whispered that something more sinister had happened, that someone had taken her. Police searched the area extensively, but they found nothing—no signs of a struggle, no definitive evidence of foul play. It was like she had simply disappeared.
In the weeks that followed, her father, Fred Murray, came into town. He looked exhausted, like a man who hadn’t slept in days. He stopped by The Rusty Anchor one night, hoping I might remember something—anything—that could help.
"Fred, if you remember anything else, anything at all..." His voice was raw, pleading.
I shook my head. "I wish I did, Mr. Murray. She was here, and then she was gone."
We talked about the theories, but none of them made sense. Maura had no known enemies. No reason to run. Yet, she had vanished.
By April, the search efforts had slowed, but the rumors hadn’t. Some believed she had hitched a ride, hoping to escape some unknown problem. Others feared she had met with foul play. There were even murmurs about a local man with no alibi, but nothing ever came of it.
Then there were the stranger details. A few witnesses had reported seeing a young woman walking along the road that night, but by the time anyone got there, she was gone. Some said they had seen a vehicle parked near the scene, but no one could say for sure if it was connected.
And then, there were the sightings. Over the years, people claimed to have seen her in different states, different towns. A blurry photo taken at a bus stop. A woman matching her description seen in Canada. But none of it ever led anywhere.
One night in 2007, a tourist sat at my bar, scrolling through an article on his phone. He looked up and shook his head.
"You ever hear about this case?" he asked. "Maura Murray? They say she just disappeared into thin air."
I nodded, exhaling slowly. "Yeah," I said, wiping down the counter. "One minute she was here, the next, gone without a trace."
The Rusty Anchor became something of a memorial, a place where people still whispered about her over their drinks. Every so often, someone would bring up a new theory, a new clue that led nowhere.
Life in our small town carried on, but the shadow of her disappearance remained. A reminder that even in a place where everyone thinks they know everyone… sometimes, people just disappear.
"Beaumont Children":
It was January 26th, 1966—Australia Day. A day of celebration, barbecues, and the blistering heat of an Australian summer. In Glenelg, a seaside suburb of Adelaide, families flocked to the beach to escape the relentless sun. The sand was scorching beneath bare feet, the air thick with the scent of salt, sunscreen, and sizzling meat from nearby picnics.
That was the day the Beaumont children vanished.
My name’s Janet, and I was Jane Beaumont’s friend. We were the same age—twelve—and often spent our afternoons together, talking about school, books, or whatever new adventure we could dream up. Jane was the responsible one, mature beyond her years. She had to be, with two younger siblings to look after: Arnna, who was ten and full of energy, and Grant, just four, with his bright, curious eyes always searching the world for the next exciting thing.
That morning was stiflingly hot. The kind of heat that made the pavement shimmer and turned every breath into an effort. The three of them had begged their mother, Nancy, to let them go to Glenelg Beach, as they had done many times before. It wasn’t far—only a short bus ride or a long walk away.
"Be back by noon," Nancy had said, pressing a total of $1.10 into Jane’s palm—enough for bus fare and a small treat. Jane nodded, always obedient. Then they were off, excitement in their steps as they disappeared down the road.
I watched them go, not knowing it would be the last time I’d ever see them.
The beach was alive that day. Children shrieked as they ran into the waves, seagulls swooped over abandoned lunches, and radios crackled with the latest hits. I spotted Jane, Arnna, and Grant a few times, playing near the shore. Jane kept a watchful eye on Grant, making sure he didn’t wander too far. Arnna, always the playful one, twirled through the shallows, splashing her little brother.
At around 10:30 AM, I heard Jane call out, "Come on, let’s get an ice cream."
The three of them made their way to the nearby kiosk. That was the last confirmed sighting of them alive.
Noon arrived.
Nancy expected to hear the front door creak open any minute, expected to see her children come bounding in, sand clinging to their legs, their hair stiff with salt. But the house remained silent.
By 12:15 PM, she was pacing, glancing out the window every few seconds.
By 1:00 PM, the anxiety had set in.
By 3:00 PM, she was calling neighbors, checking with friends.
"Have you seen Jane, Arnna, and Grant?"
No one had.
Nancy and her husband, Grant Sr., drove to the beach themselves, searching the shoreline, the streets, the places they knew their children loved. Their neatly folded towels still lay on the sand, untouched. But of Jane, Arnna, and Grant, there was no trace.
The police were called, and soon, the entire town was on edge.
"They wouldn’t just run away," Nancy insisted to the officers, her voice trembling. "Jane would never let anything happen to them."
Flyers went up. Witnesses were questioned.
One shopkeeper remembered seeing them around 10:45 AM, happily buying ice cream. Another said they had seen the children talking to a tall, blonde man. A friendly conversation, nothing alarming.
Yet by the time they were supposed to be home, they were nowhere to be found.
The theories came fast.
"Maybe they drowned," some suggested. But there were no bodies, no reports of struggling children in the water.
"Maybe they got lost." But Jane knew the area well; she would’ve found her way home.
Then, the whispers turned darker.
What if they had been taken?
Days passed. Then weeks. Then months. The case gripped the entire nation.
Every lead turned into a dead end. Some people claimed to have seen them in cars, being driven away. Others swore they had been spotted in different states, even different countries.
Each time, Nancy and Grant clung to hope. Each time, their hopes were shattered.
Years passed, but the pain never faded. Nancy never stopped looking. Their father, once a strong, steady man, became a ghost of himself, his eyes always scanning crowds for his lost children.
In 1996—thirty years later—a man came forward, claiming he knew what had happened. But he had no proof, only stories that led nowhere.
Now, decades later, the mystery remains.
I think about Jane often. About that day. About what might have happened.
Sometimes, I still hear her voice in my dreams, calling out, "Come on, let’s get an ice cream."
And then—silence.
The kind of silence that has lasted for nearly sixty years.