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September 23, 1880 on a farm near Gallatin, Tennessee, USA
David Lang had just returned from Nashville that morning. He had brought his two children, George & Sarah a toy of a wooden wagon pulled by wooden horses. He and his wife talked to the children, then David set off across a pasture, scorched brown from a hot summer and no rain. No trees or bushes marked the place. His family watched him enter the field and hike across it.
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| David's old homestead |
At that moment, Judge August Peck and David’s brother-in-law were riding in a rig to the farmhouse. The judge was about to hail David when the man vanished. He had stood in the open field, a plain of short grass with no rocks or fences.
If, as they thought in the medieval days, he stood on the edge of the earth, he had somehow fallen off.
“Mrs. Lang and the 2 men went to the spot where David had disappeared, thinking he might have fallen into a crack in the earth but they found no such crack. Mrs. Lang became hysterical and was led, screaming, into the house. The town’s alarm bell knelled, which brought the neighbors to the open field. Soon scores of people were searching the area and nearby land, but to no avail.
A surveyor and geologist who later examined the field found limestone bedrock just a few feet underground. There was no fracture in the bedrock.
For a month the search went on. Curiosity seekers came to gawk. All the Lang servants except the cook quit in fear.
A year later, the grass where Lang had disappeared had grown high and thick in a circle 20’ in diameter. Not one of the farm animals would graze there, and it seemed free of insects. It was as though an ominous presence hovered over that piece of ground.”
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| Empty field where David stood |
In August 1881, the two children approached the green circle of high grass. “The daughter called out, ‘Father, are you anywhere around?’ There was no answer but she repeated the question 4 times. They were about to walk away when they heard a faint cry for help, a cry that came out of nowhere. Quickly the children ran and got their mother who returned with them to the spot and called as they had done. Her husband answered. For several days, the family returned, and each day when they called, the answering voice became fainter, until finally there was no response at all.”
So, what had happened to David Lang?
Since the UFO sighting in the 1940’s, one would think he’d been snatched by alien beings, but that doesn’t answer the question of his voice drifting to them over a year later. He could have slipped into another dimension like an episode of Twilight Zone back in the 1950’s or early 60’s where a little girl fell out of bed. Her father had to get her through a strange dimensional entry in the wall. Or, as a time slip author/reader would say, he could have found a time portal and slipped into another time.
Whatever happened to him, David Lang never returned to his time, his dimension, or his farm.
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Many thanks to:
The People’s Almanac by David Wallechinsky & Irving Wallace, Doubleday & Co., Inc., Garden City, NY, 1975.
