It’s possibly a bit of an ask to cram this into the ‘academic mystery’ box as required by this month’s Tuesday Night Bloggers, but there’s too much of interest here not to look at. And the story does concern the seemingly-impossible disappearance of a group of children on their way home from school and so is probably just about allowable.
Nine young children in a station-wagon-acting-as-school-bus are being driven from their school to the nearby town where they live, a route which includes the ‘dugway’ road cut into the rock face between the two towns. The car is seen entering the dugway, the father of two of the children on board drives past it in the opposite direction and so is able to vouch for its presence…but it never emerges at the other side. A close inspection of the road reveals no evidence of the car having crashed through any barriers, the ice-covered lake below shows no breakages or disturbance to its surface, and the steepness of the rockface and density of the forestry thereon precludes any off-road antics even if the car was able to somehow pass through a safety barrier without leaving a mark.