The Sun above them was hot and bright when the three children wandered off to play in a nearby field.

They were siblings, one boy and two girls, the children of a local railroad guard in the city of Gloucester, England.

The field was one of their favorite places to go during the day, but they always returned home by dinnertime.

On this particular summer day in 1906, though, dinner arrived without the children.

Their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Vaughn, grew worried enough to call for the authorities to come help them.

Beginning that very night, a search party was formed to locate the missing children.

They finished their night of searching empty handed.

Not a single clue had been found that might hint at where the children had gone, or if they'd been taken by a malicious stranger.

But these were their children, and parents rarely give up hope so quickly. They searched the following day, and a third day as well.

After that, though, things were beginning to look bleak.

On the fourth day, a farmer was plowing a field close to the one the children had been playing in, when he noticed something in the ditch along the northeast side.

It was the forms of the missing children, laying peacefully in the dirt.

But they weren't dead. They were sleeping. After waking them up and taking them home, the children surprised everyone with a shocking story.

They had no memory of the past four days. Even 40 years later, the son was still unable to offer an answer to the riddle of their disappearance.

Things go missing. Whether it's a sock in the dryer, your car keys, or an entire person.

Every now and then, things just sort of slip through the cracks and vanish.

Thankfully, like the children in Gloucester, a lot of those missing things are eventually found.

But if we thumb through the pages of history, we'll come face to face with something worse. Something that tugs at our darkest fears, and leaves us feeling unsettled.

Sometimes people vanish, and they're never seen again.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is lore.

Let me just say right from the start, that history is so full of disappearances that I'm not going to come anywhere close to discussing all of them.

From the legendary 9th Roman Legion and the Roanoke colony, to the Mary Celeste and Amelia Earhart, the floor of history is so littered with disappearances that it's a miracle none of us trip and hurt ourselves.

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