Four friends’ trip to a mysterious abandoned town with a ended with a disappearance that remains unsolved to this day.
La Mussara, in the , was abandoned in the 1960s. Over the years, a few adventurers have dared to visit the eerie hamlet – especially around Hallowe’en, which is a three-day celebration in Spain. But one visitor never returned.
Podcaster Mr Ballen explains how a 36-year-old man named Enrique Martinez was picking mushrooms in the area on the afternoon of October 16th 1991. As the day wore on Enrique, along with his wife Anna and their two friends Jorge and Sophia, found themselves close to the abandoned settlement and decided to explore.
READ MORE:
READ MORE:
The eerie mists that the area is known for had already begin to close in, Mr Ballen says, when Jorge led them to a rock known as La Piedra del six. There is a legend that jumping over this stone in the village can transport a person to another dimension.
“Jorge placed his hand on the top of this strange rock,” Mr Ballen says, “and looking very very satisfied with himself he would tell his friends this is the Sixth Stone and people say it contains dark powers. The Sixth Stone was actually one of the oldest things in all of Mussara.
“Back in the day Muslim armies used to march through Mussara which actually got its name from this – Mussara means the place to march and so these armies would pass through Mussara making their way to the valley down below they would always stop at the Sixth Stone because they believed it had magical powers that could help them defeat their enemies in their upcoming battles.”
READ MORE:
Jorge encouraged his friends to put their hands on the “supernatural” stone as well, and reluctantly they agreed – except for Sophia who wanted nothing to do with the apparently mystical rock. With the fog thickening around them, the friends believed they could hear frogs in the nearby lake croaking louder and louder.
But suddenly, Enrique’s attention was captured by another unnerving event: “There was lots of fog blocking the church, and for a second the fog parted and Enrique got a full shot of one of the windows of this abandoned church.
“In the window was a dark figure are just standing there staring at Enrique and his friends. Enrique sees this thing in the window and in a second it was gone and then the fog rolled back in and covered up the window and Enrique couldn't see anything anymore and so Enrique just stood there in stunned silence having no idea if what he just saw had really just happened or if it was in his imagination.”
None of the other people in the group had seen the strange apparition, and Enrique tried to put it out of his mind. But, with the fog closing in, they continued to explore the strange abandoned town.
With visibility getting worse and worse, they found themselves in the graveyard, and Anna accidentally blundered into a gravestone – knocking it over and breaking it. As if that wasn’t enough of a bad omen, the already dense fog began to thicken to the point that the flu were losing sight of each other, and Anna realise she hadn’t seen her husband in a little while.
“Sophia was holding tighter and tighter onto Jorge's arm, and Jorge – who had been joking about how this place was evil was also now starting to feel a little bit spooked about what was going on.
So they began walking a little bit faster in the direction of Anna's voice, and as Sophia and Jorge got closer and closer to Anna the sound of the frogs in that pond began to get louder and louder and louder until Jorge and Sophia could barely hear Anna over the sound of these frogs."
READ MORE:
But then the sound of the frogs suddenly stopped – and all Sophia and Jorge could hear now was the sound of Anna crying.
“Jorge and Sophia could not actually see Anna because of the fog but they walked in the direction of her voice, and they ultimately found Anna crouched down with her back to them right in the spot where Enrique had previously been standing, staring at that church window.”
All Anna could say to them, through her tears, was “He’s gone.”
With dense fog, and failing light, Anna Sophia and Jorge were unable to conduct a very thorough search of La Mussara, but they alerted the authorities and the next day, police combed the area.
“Enrique was never found,” Mr Ballen says. “his, wife his friends, the authorities… they still have no idea what happened to him.”
