BookBrains Press - Exploring Unsolved Mysteries

  American Authors Gone Missing Exploring the Mysterious Disappearances of Literary Voices Ninth in our series "Missing American Authors" On a cold December evening in 1967, John Eric Lake walked into the labyrinth of Manhattan's subway system and disappeared forever. The 37-year-old sports editor of Newsweek magazine had just finished dinner with a friend in Midtown, declining her invitation to come upstairs and choosing instead to take the subway to his Greenwich Village apartment. He never arrived home, leaving behind a mystery that has haunted his family for decades. John Lake from a family photo album | Eric Lake released this photo into the public domain A Promising Career Cut Short John Lake's journey to Newsweek began at Syracuse University, where he met his future wife Alice Conlon while both studied journalism. After graduating in 1951, the couple married in Hawaii while John served in the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor (Ellsworth American 2011). Th...

  American Authors Gone Missing Exploring the Mysterious Disappearances of Literary Voices On the morning of September 9, 1961, David Kenyon Webster set sail from Santa Monica pier in his 11-foot sailing dinghy, the Tusitala —a name borrowed from the Tahitians' affectionate term for Robert Louis Stevenson, meaning "teller of tales." He had rigged bait, heavy line, and hook, planning an afternoon of shark fishing off the Southern California coast. By evening, when his wife Barbara arrived at the pier to help him beach the boat, Webster had not returned. He never would. The disappearance of David Kenyon Webster represents one of the most poignant losses in American literary history—a promising writer whose passion for the sea ultimately claimed him at age 39, leaving behind a grieving family and a literary legacy that would only be fully recognized decades after his death. Artistic Interpretation of David Kenyon Webster | BookBrains Press A Writer Forged by War ...

  American Authors Gone Missing Exploring the Mysterious Disappearances of Literary Voices On the morning of July 19, 1955, a highway patrol officer discovered a 1954 Plymouth Savoy abandoned on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge. The keys were still in the ignition, and the car belonged to a 41-year-old poet named Harry Weldon Kees (The Doe Network 2022). Nearly seventy years later, Kees remains one of American literature's most haunting mysteries—a talented artist who seemingly walked into the fog and never returned. Weldon Kees in May 1954 | Photograph by Bob Helm | Courtesy of James Reidel, the author of Vanished Act: The Life and Work of Weldon Kees The Last Day The final chapter of Weldon Kees's story began on Monday, July 18, 1955. That afternoon, he made two crucial phone calls to women who knew him well. The first was to Janet Richards, who was unfortunately rushing out to pick up her mother-in-law from the airport. "Things are pretty bad," ...

  American Authors Gone Missing Exploring the Mysterious Disappearances of Literary Voices At age twelve, Barbara Newhall Follett was hailed as a literary genius. By twenty-five, she had vanished without a trace, leaving behind one of the most haunting mysteries in American literary history. Barbara Newhall Follett. Photo courtesy of Stefan Cooke. Farksolia : Barbara Newhall Follett's Home on the Web A Child Prodigy Emerges Barbara's extraordinary story began in 1914 in Hanover, New Hampshire, where she was born to writers Helen and Wilson Follett. From an early age, Barbara displayed an almost supernatural connection to language and storytelling. At just four years old, she became fascinated by the rhythmic clacking of her father's typewriter—the "music of writing," as she called it (Morris 2019). In a scene that seems pulled from fiction itself, young Barbara crept into her father's study one night and carried the heavy typewriter back to her r...

American Authors Gone Missing Exploring the Mysterious Disappearances of Literary Voices In 1926, a book hit the shelves that would become one of the most authentic accounts of criminal life ever written. You Can't Win wasn't penned by a journalist or sociologist—it was the raw, unvarnished autobiography of Jack Black, a man who had spent over two decades as one of America's most accomplished criminals. But here's the mystery: after achieving literary success and apparent redemption, Jack Black simply vanished. What happened to the reformed burglar who captivated readers with his brutal honesty about life in the underworld? The Call (San Francisco). "Two Desperate Criminals Give Finn the Laugh." January 5, 1912: 1 | Public Domain From Altar Boy to America's Most Wanted Jack Black's story reads like a tragic American fable. Born around 1871-1875 (records vary), his descent into crime began with his mother's death when he was just ten year...