Photos bring stories to life, and keep them hot as time cools interest. Social media provides the ideal platform to showcase these stories.
People are perennially obsessed with reading about other people. American sports writer Rick Reilly once said, “It’s people stories that make good reading.” Also, some stories have no closure, and keep haunting news rounds over the years. As American crime novelist Edna Buchanan described, “The past is an unsolved mystery and the truth a moving target.”
Stories of missing people are a source of eternal entertainment and curiosity to regular readers, a kind of escape from reality that effortlessly draw readers. And when such stories are enhanced by professionally shot stock photography, they provide classically enduring entertainment.
Since the advent of social media, stories of regular people have a visual medium to be showcased, and shared globally with an immediacy unavailable till then. The mystery of the “Most famous missing person on YouTube” is a story that has been kept alive for four years by social media. And people are still glued to news on this issue, whether print, electronic or digital.
Thousands of users of YouTube and Reddit have tried to solve the mystery of the young German tourist in Bulgaria, Lars Mittank, since the mysterious happening at Bulgaria’s Varna International Airport on July 8, 2014. They are still trying to understand what happened to the terrified young man who ran out of the airport and was never seen again.
Lars Mittank, was a 28-year old regular German youth who lived in Itzehoe, north Germany. As friends and community members said, he wore Adidas T-shirts and “scruffy sneakers” and was a football fan who rooted for his home team the “Green-Whites.” Employed at the Wilhelmshaven power station, he was good natured and had many friends, including a girlfriend. In 2014, together with five former school mates, Mittank arranged a week’s trip to Bulgaria. Following a short train ride from Itzehoe to Germany’s Hamburg, the six friends boarded a flight to Bulgaria and arrived at their destination on June 30, 2014 – a bunch of carefree youth excited to experience the Bulgarian seaside resort of Golden Sands, a relatively inexpensive holiday spot for Europeans.
The days amidst sun, sea and sand sped by uneventfully, until late night on July 6th, when Mittank got separated from his friends at a fast food place, and got entangled in a brawl with fans of a rival football team, Bayem Munich. The ensuing physical altercation left Mittank punched in the head, with a punctured eardrum and possible concussion. That night he never returned to the hotel, turning up the next morning with a story his friends did not believe. He had apparently been confronted by a group of men sent by the group he had an altercation with earlier. He said they attacked him physically. His friends ignored the story, but it was a mystery where he was all night. The unanswered questions keep nagging. Was he unconscious? What happened to him that night?
Mittank’s injuries in his eardrum disqualified him from flying on July 7th. His friends had wanted to stay back until he was well enough to travel, But Mittank would not hear of it. He insisted he was able to take care of himself until he was allowed to fly.
The friends, thus, parted ways on July 7th, leaving Mittank “relaxed” and “in a good mood.” Mittank refused surgery on this ear, but took a commonly used antibiotic prescribed by the doctor, and checked into a cheap hotel close to the airport.
Once in his room, he called his mother in Germany, whispering and sounding panicky, and urged her to cancel his bank cards. His mother, Sandra Mittank, later said her son told her he was being followed and he was searching for a place to hide, and then he hung up. Later in the night, he texted his mother about the antibiotics he was prescribed, which puzzled her. Subsequently, investigating Mittank’s disappearance, police checked the hotel security cameras, which showed Mittank pacing up and down the hotel foyer, looking out the window and hiding in the elevator. At one in the morning, he left the hotel, returned an hour later and went to his room. No one knows where he went or what happened. At dawn he called his mother to tell her the people chasing him were closing in on him. Later, she regretted not asking more questions, but she wanted to save his dying cell phone battery.
Mittank took a shared ride to the airport, and got off the taxi with his luggage like a regular tourist at the end of a vacation. He texted his mother he was at the airport and sauntered inside the terminal with his bags, looking for the airport doctor to get final approval to travel. Dr Kosta Kostov remembers Mittank as “nervous and erratic.” While Mittank was consulting the doctor, a construction worker in security-type uniform entered the room to speak with the doctor. Mittank trembled and cried, “I don’t want to die here. I have to get out of here,” and rushed out of the room, lea fo ving behind his luggage, also his wallet, cell phone and passport still in his backpack. Terrified, he rushed out of the airport terminal. Security cameras showed Mittank running as if fleeing for dear life. He was seen running out onto the car park and then jumped barriers to reach the forest beyond.
Lars Mittank was never seen again.
Four years after the event, the story is still doing the rounds, while people discuss dark conspiracy theories about what happened to Mittank in Bulgaria, a country infested with organized crime and human trafficking.
The eerie CCTV footage uploaded on YouTube, viewed by millions, has made Mittank the most famous missing person on YouTube, and social media users are still seeking to solve the mystery. As American author, Ray Bradbury said, “Mysteries abound where most we seek for answers.”