Vanishing refers to multiple occurrences where an entire town may have disappeared or large populations vanished seemingly without rational explanation.
The most famous case of this
Hamelin, Germany
The legend dates back to the Middle Ages. The earliest references describe a piper, dressed in multicoloured (“pied”) clothing, who was a rat catcher hired by the town to lure rats away with his magic pipe. When the citizens refused to pay for this service as promised, he retaliated by using his instrument’s magical power on their children, leading them away as he had the rats. This version of the story spread as folklore and has appeared in the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the Brothers Grimm, and Robert Browning, among others. The phrase “pied piper” has become a metaphor for a person who attracts a following through charisma or false promises.
The rats in the story were added much later. On the back of the last tattered page of a dusty chronicle called The Golden Chain, written in Latin in 1370 by the monk Heinrich of Herford, there is written in a different handwriting the following account:
Here follows a marvellous wonder, which transpired in the town of Hamelin in the diocese of Minden, in this Year of Our Lord, 1284, on the Feast of Saints John and Paul. A certain young man thirty years of age, handsome and well-dressed, so that all who saw him admired him because of his appearance, crossed the bridges and entered the town by the West Gate. He then began to play all through the town a silver pipe of the most magnificent sort. All the children who heard his pipe, in the number of 130, followed him to the East Gate and out of the town to the so-called execution place or Calvary. There they proceeded to vanish, so that no trace of them could be found. The mothers of the children ran from town to town, but they found nothing. It is written: A voice was heard from on high, and a mother was bewailing her son. And as one counts the years according to the Year of Our Lord or according to the first, second or third year of an anniversary, so do the people in Hamelin reckon the years after the departure and disappearance of their children. This report I found in an old book. And the mother of the Dean Johann von Lüde saw the children depart.
In the mid 14th Century, a monk from Minden, Heinrich von Herford, puts together a collection of holy legends called the “Catena Aurea”. It speaks of a “miracle” that took place in 1284 in Hamelin. A youth appeared and played on a strange silver flute. Every child that heard the flute, followed the stranger. They left Hamelin by the Eastern gate and disappeared at Kalvarien Hill. This is the oldest known account of this occurrence. Around this time a verse of rhyme is found in “zu Hameln im Kloster”. It tells about the children’s disappearance. It is written in red ink on the title page of a missal. It bewails “the 130 beloved Hamelner children” who were “eaten alive by Calvaria”. The original verses are probably the oldest written source of this legend. It has been missing for hundreds of years.
Anno millesimo ducentesimo octuagesimo quarto in die Johannis et Pauli perdiderunt Hamelenses centum et triginta pueros, qui intraverunt montem Calvariam. In the year one thousand two hundred and eighty-four, on the day of John and Paul, the Hamelin lost a hundred and thirty children who entered Calvary mount.
Jeremiah’s Lot, USA
In Vermont, there’s a town called Jeremiah’s Lot. One day in 1908, they were there and then one day a relative came over to look for someone that they hadn’t heard from in awhile; and all of the houses were empty. Some of the houses had dinner set on the table. Some of the stores still had money in them. It was covered in mold from the summer damp and it was starting to rot, but nobody had stolen it. The town was completely emptied out.”
Momson, USA
in Vermont called Momson. During the summer of 1923, Momson apparently just dried up and blew away, and all 312 residents went with it. The house and few small business buildings in the town’s center still stand, but since that summer fifty-two years ago, they have been uninhabited. In some cases the furnishings had been removed, but in most the houses were still furnished, as if in the middle of daily life some great wind had blown all the people away. In one house the table had been set for the evening meal, complete with a centerpiece of long-wilted flowers. In another the covers had been turned down neatly in an upstairs bedroom as if for sleep. In the local mercantile store, a rotted bolt of cotton cloth was found on the counter and a price of 50.00 in the cash drawer, untouched.
Old Hill, USA
another “abandoned town” in New Hampshire called Old Hill. It was abandoned after the state and federal governments bought out the residents to build the Franklin Falls Dam. Part of the old town can be visited when the flood gate is opened. All that is left old stone foundations and some metal detritus. They allegedly left the cemetery intact but moved the bodies further uphill where the new Hill is located.
Monson Center, USA
You may not find Monson Center on a New Hampshire map, but you might find something mysterious where it used to be. The former colonial settlement is tucked away on 269 acres in both Hollis and Milford with plenty of fall-friendly hiking trails. […]
The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests in Concord purchased the property in 1998 after it was threatened by a proposed 28-lot subdivision. More than two centuries earlier, the land was home to Monson Center, one of the first inland settlements in New Hampshire. Six families established the modest village in the 1730s in what was once a part of West Dunstable, Mass.
Just a few decades later in 1770, the village was abandoned for still unknown reasons. No records of the families’ decisions remain, but Carrie Deegan from the forests society said historians have speculated whether the move was due to political differences, Native American tribes, trouble surviving or something else.
“There’s a history shrouded in mystery,” said Carrie Deegan, volunteer and community engagement manager for the forests society. “The fact we don’t know what happened in the community entices people to come and explore.”
Bara-Hack, USA
While the name may be apocryphal, the village was settled in 1778 by Johnathan Randall Esq. and Obediah Higinbotham, two colonists of English ancestry. They and their families fled the Randall homestead and farm, situated on the coast of Cranston, Rhode Island, after the British advances of the Battle of Rhode Island of 1778 deemed it too dangerous for them to stay. They settled on land in Pomfret, Connecticut previously purchased by Randall in 1776, and there they built their homes, farms and livelihoods, including a water wheel-powered mill, a business which produced spinning wheels for the production of textiles, and a small burial ground that would be shared by individual members of both families. By 1890, everyone had disappeared.
Dogtown, USA
Once known as the Common Settlement, the area later known as Dogtown is divided between the city of Gloucester and the town of Rockport. Dogtown was first settled in 1693, and according to legend the name of the settlement came from dogs that women kept while their husbands were fighting in the American Revolution. The community grew to be 5 square miles, and was an ideal location as it provided protection from pirates, and enemy natives. By the early 1700s, the land was opened up to individual settlement as previously it had been used as common land for wood and pasturing cattle and sheep. It is estimated that at one point 60 to 80 homes stood in Dogtown at its peak population. In the mid-1700s as many as 100 families inhabited Dogtown which was stable until after the American Revolution. Some of its last occupants were suspected of practicing witchcraft. One such inhabitant named Thomazine “Tammy” Younger was described as “Queen of the Witches” by Thomas Dresser. She intimidated people passing through so much that they left her fish and corn to allow them through. Another reputed witch associated with Dogtown was a woman named Peg Wesson, but she in fact had lived in Gloucester. As the last inhabitants died, their pets became feral, possibly giving rise to the nickname “Dogtown.” By 1828 the village was all but abandoned. The last resident of Dogtown was a freedman named Cornelius “Black Neil” Finson, who was found in 1830 with his feet frozen living in a cellar-hole. He was removed and taken to a poor house in Gloucester. The last structure in Dogtown was razed in 1845, ending what had once been a thriving community.
Clear Water, USA
“My grandma came from a little town called Clear Water, that no longer exists. She said there were little communities like that all over but people had to find jobs during the depression, and would leave. They’d come back and find everyone gone. Just as you say, like they upped and walked out, leaving money and food and clothes behind”
Roanoke, USA
The Roanoke Colony was an attempt by Sir Walter Raleigh to found the first permanent English settlement in North America. The colony was founded in 1585, but when it was visited by a ship in 1590, the colonists had inexplicably disappeared. It has come to be known as the Lost Colony, and the fate of the 112 to 121 colonists remains unknown. ( https://news.artnet.com/art-world/archaeologists-mystery-lost-roanoke-lost-colony-1921594/amp-page )
Eldmire, UK
“A local farmer where I live once dug up the remains of a village decimated by the plague - it was called Eldmire. Not exactly the same, but it was so weird to me that a whole town was just gone and they only found the remains of the people who lived there by accident.”
Wharram Percy, UK
Wharram Percy is a deserted medieval village and former civil parish near Wharram-le-Street, now in the parish of Wharram, on the western edge of the chalk Wolds of North Yorkshire, England. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wharram_Percy