Into Thin Air: People Who Disappear

by Paul Begg

Genres: Nonfiction

184 pages, Hardcover

First published March 29, 1979

About the author

Paul Begg is acknowledged worldwide as one of the leading authorities on the Jack the Ripper mystery. He has worked in newspapers, television and publishing. He has written extensively on Jack the Ripper, including Jack the Ripper: The Uncensored Facts, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History and Jack the Ripper: The Facts. He is also the author of Into Thin Air, The Scotland Yard Files and Mary Celeste: The Greatest Mystery of the Sea. Paul was formerly the editor of the Ripperologist magazine and has appeared as an historical advisor on several television programmes.

Reviews

[Meaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Begg is better known to me from his Jack the Ripper writings. I'm glad to see he's turned his research talent and common sense to the topic of missing people. Though this book was written in the seventies, it's not terribly dated. There's a centerfold of pictures, some of them curiously irrelevant to the book. Begg mentions a few contemporary cases but mainly focuses on mysterious vanishings thought by some to be paranormal. He discusses the Bermuda Triangle, the disappearance of the captain and crew of the Mary Celeste , and the story about the guy who vanished crossing a field, among other cases. Begg is a very good debunker. Going back through the old records, he is able to prove that many of these wild stories about disappearances are replete with serious errors, if not made up entirely. (He's especially good at this in his Bermuda Triangle chapter.)

I wouldn't call this a true crime book, since most of the cases he discusses are not criminal in nature. But it would interest anyone interested in the paranormal (skeptic and believer alike) and, of course, anyone interested in missing persons.

[Tess Avelland · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an intelligent and measured approach to a collection of strange disappearances; the author did an excellent job of debunking some famous incidents whose inaccurate details have become accepted as truth, and even managed to do so without snottiness.

I respect his obvious interest in the events combined with his determination to approach them without agenda. He thoughtfully weighs possible theories, firmly dismisses the inaccurate and clearly explicable, yet retains respectful fascination for the still-mysterious.

The moment-to-moment account of the Star Tiger's disappearance near Bermuda was absolutely gripping, and the origins of some other famous "disappearance" stories were fascinating as well. Fans of Shirley Jackson will appreciate the description of the Bennington Triangle vanishings, which inspired at least two of her short stories, "The Missing Girl" and "Louisa, Please Come Home."

My only criticism is that the volume is such a slim one, with so few cases analyzed. Not only would I read virtually infinite volumes of this sort of writing if I could find it, but the book itself has an oddly truncated feel, as though it were originally planned as a much bigger book which never fully materialized for whatever reason. As another reviewer noted, the book puzzlingly features several photos of incidents which are never mentioned in the text itself. Did some of the book go missing?

This author was impartial enough that I never got a sense of whether he believed in the possibility of "the paranormal" or not -- and I liked that. If only I could find more writers like him on subjects like this.