Episode 380 - The Mysterious Disappearance of Lars Mittank

Summary

Two Girls One Ghost — Episode 380: The Mysterious Disappearance of Lars Mittank (July 5, 2026)
Hosts: Corinne Vien & Sabrina Deana-Roga

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Episode Overview

In this gripping and mysterious episode of Two Girls One Ghost, Corinne and Sabrina dig into the baffling real-life disappearance of Lars Mittank, a German man who vanished from Varna Airport in Bulgaria in 2014. Fueled by viral video footage and a flurry of internet sleuthing, Lars’s case is one of the most confounding missing-person mysteries of our time. The ghostesses dissect the timeline, evidence, and numerous theories—from head trauma and drug interactions to darker possibilities like human trafficking—while adding their trademark humor and empathy. The episode also includes listener stories tying into the themes of paranoia, being watched, and encounters with the strange and unknown.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Warming Up: Paranormal "Dating Show" Game

• [01:48–06:38] Sabrina introduces a fun, hypothetical game: “What would you do?” scenarios with a paranormal twist.
  • Scenario 1: Driving at night, encountering a 10ft-tall inhuman creature on the road.
    • Corinne: “I would go faster and I would hit it…then…turn on Noah Kahan’s ‘Between Two Villages’ and sing it as loud as I could.” [03:22]
    • Sabrina: “My answer…not all that different. I too think I would step on the gas.” [04:01]
    • Joke about befriending the cryptid and bedazzling them in crop tops: “Give them a bedazzled crop top. It says slutty.” —Corinne [06:00]
  • Scenario 2: Buying haunted antiques that help around the house.
    • Corinne: “I like helping you too, and I hope you stay here forever. I love you.” [07:52]
    • Sabrina: “I would full-on set up a YouTube livestream and say, ‘Hey everyone, we’re gonna try to learn more about the ghosts attached to my brand new medicine cabinet…’” [09:06]
    • The hosts reflect on their non-confrontational approach to spirits, treating them with respect—even offering them downtime during investigations.

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Setting the Scene: Surveillance and "Impossible" Disappearances

• [13:08] Sabrina notes, “There are cameras everywhere…ATMs, traffic lights, doorbells…you’d think it’s impossible to just disappear.”
• Corinne brings up how digital footprints have solved cases: “People have been caught in their lies and convicted…because of Gmail.” [13:08]
• The point: With all this tech, Lars Mittank’s vanishing act in broad daylight seems almost supernatural.

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Deep Dive: The Lars Mittank Case

Who was Lars?

• [18:23–20:32] Lars Mittank, born 1986, Berlin. No history of mental illness, abuse, or running away. Family-oriented, worked in tech, devoted to his soccer team (Werder Bremen).

Timeline of Disappearance

• [June 2014]: Lars is persuaded by his mom to take a vacation with friends at Golden Sands, Bulgaria.
• [July 5, 2014]: Night out, Lars gets into a soccer-related argument, then is attacked by four men (possibly related/retribution or random). He suffers a ruptured eardrum.
• [July 6–7]: Told by a doctor not to fly, prescribes antibiotics (Cephazil 500mg). Friends want to stay; Lars insists they leave.
• [Night of July 7/8]: Checks into seedy “Hotel Color.” Front desk photocopies his credit card (odd). Calls mom at 11pm to block card due to fraud concern.
• [3am]: Panicked call—Lars claims, “Four men are following me and trying to kill me. I’m hiding on a steep hill…don’t call me because they will hear and find me.” [32:52]
• [Morning, July 8]: Texts mother, “What is Cephazil 500?” (potential concern about side effects/hallucinations).
• [8:30–9:00am]: CCTV footage: Lars appears normal entering the airport.
• [Shortly after]: Seeks medical clearance to fly; then, suddenly, CCTV shows him sprinting out of the airport, leaving all belongings behind, leaping a fence, and disappearing into a sunflower field—never seen again.

The “Eerie” Video Moment

• [38:37] Sabrina: “Lars sprints…full-on sprints out the way he came. He has no bags with him and it seems like he’s running away from something. It seems like a scared, ‘I need to get out of here.’”
• [39:18] Sabrina: “The final footage is extremely eerie because he appears fine entering…but something happened within a matter of 30 minutes…”

Family, Investigation, Global Attention

• [40:36]: Mother, Sandra, reports Lars missing immediately when he doesn’t arrive home. Bulgarian and German authorities are involved, but little progress is made; not all footage is public.
• [47:21]: Sandra continues to follow every tip; sometimes helps solve other missing-person cases in the process.

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Theories Explored

1. Head Injury/Psychosis
   • Is Lars reenacting his trauma due to brain injury?
   • [47:14] Sabrina: “Did the concussion cause lapses in memory and reality, like the Elisa Lam case?”
2. Human Trafficking
   • Bulgaria has trafficking risks, though typically for different demographics.
   • [46:57] Sabrina: “If he was taken in this way…it would make sense that he’s never seen on CCTV again.”
3. Drug-Related Psychosis
   • Combines with rare side effects of Cephazil.
   • Was Lars taking stimulants that, combined with the antibiotic, led to psychosis?
   • [48:36] Sabrina: “There’s two theories here. One, maybe he and his friends were doing a stimulant…That antibiotic could cause psychosis…”

Honorable mention: Conspiratorial angles (men in black, etc.), though not seriously entertained for this case.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Lars’s frantic call home:
  “He is panicked. He sounds scared. He is clearly outside. He tells his mother he doesn’t feel safe, that four men are following him and trying to kill him…He tells his mom not to call because he’s scared his phone will ring and give away his location.” —Sabrina [32:52]

• On the eerie last footage:
  “He jumps a fence into a field of sunflowers and is literally never seen again.” —Sabrina [15:12]

• On the age of surveillance and the mystery’s stubbornness:
  “With all of these technologies, you’d think it would be impossible to just disappear…Yet people still go missing.” —Sabrina [14:14]

• On dealing with the unknown:
  “I really hope that he’s alive. I hope that this is one of those cases where someone has a head injury…lives a different life…and then suddenly snaps back and recalls who they were.” —Corinne [51:23]

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Listener Story: Aliens & Men in Black

• [55:12–61:12] Corinne shares a listener’s story where her mother in rural Australia experiences a house-drenching spotlight, interpreted as a close encounter:
  “She stood at the edge of the room, frozen…Every window was equally drowning in this white light, like it was coming from everywhere, all at once. As quickly as it came, it left.” —[56:44]
• Later, the family encounters "men in black" questioning a child who saw a UFO, then warning the mother not to seek media attention:
  “She should not encourage her children to make up lies to get media attention. But my nan hadn’t told anyone…” [59:44]

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Important Timestamps

• 01:48–06:38 — Paranormal dating game scenarios
• 13:08 — Discussion of surveillance and vanishing impossibility
• 14:34–18:23 — Lars’s background and trip setup
• 23:27–40:36 — Detailed timelines, key events from quarrel to disappearance
• 38:37–39:18 — Description and analysis of final airport footage
• 45:37–49:50 — Theories: head injury, human trafficking, drug interaction
• 51:06 — Sandra’s continued efforts, impact on other missing cases
• 55:12–61:12 — Listener alien/Men in Black stories

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Tone & Style

• Authentic, candid, and sometimes witty—hosts oscillate between somber reflection and their trademark dark humor, especially in the opening segment and in discussing their approach to haunted objects and cryptids.
• Careful to flag speculation and sources (“this is rumor, not confirmed by police…”). Attentive to the emotional reality for Lars’s mother and friends.
• Includes playful, relatable tangents (fears of Australian spiders, cockroaches, etc.) and community engagement prompts (“Who would you rather drive with if you see a cryptid?”).

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Summary Takeaway

This episode offers a thorough, compassionate, and unsensationalized breakdown of the Lars Mittank disappearance, exploring all plausible theories and highlighting the tragedy and emotional toll on loved ones. The hosts interweave authentic fear, humor, and empathy, making the story both accessible and haunting. Engaging, well-researched, and never exploitative, the episode leaves listeners with more questions than answers—and a powerful sense of just how fragile, and mysterious, the line between ordinary life and the inexplicably vanished can be.

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If you have any information regarding the disappearance of Lars Mittank, see the show notes for contact details to submit a tip.

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Transcript

[Sabrina]

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[Corinne]

Hi. Hello. Is two girls, one ghost.

[Sabrina]

Two girls, one ghost. We are your ghostesses. That is Corinne.

[Corinne]

Hello.

[Sabrina]

I'm Sabrina.

[Corinne]

It's a chilly July day.

[Sabrina]

Pre recording. Because Mama over here.

[Corinne]

Yeah. What if the. So I haven't announced actually yet that I'm pregnant on our public podcast feed.

[Sabrina]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

What if I just wait till now? Guys, I'm pregnant and I probably already had the kid.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. I have a game for us to play.

[Corinne]

Oh, I like when you do this.

[Sabrina]

I was feeling a little frisky. Um, I came up with a game, and it's basically. You know those games where it's like a blind dating show and the person is asking the contestants questions, and then, like, based on the answers, they decide who they want to go on a date with? We're kind of going to play that in the sense of a paranormal spin.

[Corinne]

Oh, okay. Are there contestants? Like, are there multiple choices? Multiple.

[Sabrina]

You and I are the contestants.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

I'm going to present a scenario, and then each of us have to answer how we would act in that situation.

[Corinne]

And then. Oh, oh. Are you guys choosing to go on dates with us?

[Sabrina]

Are choosing who they'd rather be with?

[Corinne]

Oh, my gosh.

[Sabrina]

In that situation.

[Corinne]

All right, do we have answers or are we coming up with them ourselves?

[Sabrina]

You have to come up with how you. Okay.

[Corinne]

I wasn't sure if I had a scripted part.

[Sabrina]

No, this is. You have to be genuine.

[Corinne]

God.

[Sabrina]

True to Yourself, how would you react? Okay, so we have two scenarios. I'm going to go with one, and then we'll discuss our answers and then we'll do a second scenario. Scenario one. We're driving on a long road trip. It's getting dark, it's getting late, and suddenly the road starts to shift, becoming more and more windy. The trees are starting to feel like they're stretching like long, talony fingers down at us. And then we see it. Something terrifying, something inhuman standing on its hind leg, stretching about 10ft tall. Now, if you were driving, what would you do in this situation?

[Corinne]

It's in the middle of the road. It's in front of me. I would go faster and I would hit it. And then after I hit it, I would continue with my speed for a good 10 more minutes. Then I would turn on Noah Khan's Between Two Villages and I would sing it as loudly as I could. Okay. And then once I was like, out of that state, I'd call you.

[Sabrina]

We're in a car together.

[Corinne]

Oh, are you also singing with me then?

[Sabrina]

I'll be singing with Sabrina.

[Corinne]

Singing. You sing Hozier's part. Hozier. Hosier. Hosier.

[Sabrina]

I like that.

[Corinne]

That's what I like, genuinely think I would do. I think I would be in that moment, like, what the fuck? And I would run it over.

[Sabrina]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

And I wouldn't look back.

[Sabrina]

My answer is actually not all that different. So this is not gonna be easy for people to decide because I too think I would step on the gas.

[Corinne]

I wouldn't.

[Sabrina]

I would absolutely never stop.

[Corinne]

No.

[Sabrina]

Like, no.

[Corinne]

Oh, the time it takes to do like a U turn.

[Sabrina]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

A 12 point turn. If this is a.

[Sabrina]

That thing will be descended upon us in that time.

[Corinne]

There's no choice. You just must run it over.

[Sabrina]

I think I might try to swerve around it, but I'm. I'm high tailing it out.

[Corinne]

To swerve is. That's still a risk. It's like, I mean, they say, like, don't. Depending on your speed, don't try to swerve if a deer goes in front of you, because that can be more dangerous. Your car could flip. Then it's on the side of your car, broken window, slurping your brains.

[Sabrina]

You're really trying to say, corinne, choose me, choose me, love me. But yeah, I think my instinct would be like, get out of there. I don't think I would stop in 10 minutes.

[Corinne]

Well, I wasn't gonna stop. I would just slow my speed.

[Sabrina]

Oh, okay. Well, I think I'm Gonna put music on right away.

[Corinne]

Right away. What's your song choice?

[Sabrina]

My first thought was TikTok.

[Corinne]

Oh, my God, Kesha. See, I went with, like, a build. A song has good build, you know? Yeah, because you're, like, trying to understand what just happened to you. And then when it gets to the screaming part, like, the big, like, you can really let it all out.

[Sabrina]

I'll put on you got mud on your face, you big disgrace, and sing it at the creature that tried to

[Corinne]

stop us fat bottom girls. You make do her cry.

[Sabrina]

All right, well, maybe you don't want to choose.

[Corinne]

These are. Those are our authentic answers. But, like, I feel like what would be realistic? Like, no, no, I feel like that's realistic. Like, I love the version of it where we're just, like, the, like, dumb girls on the road trip, and we're like, get in, get in. And we're, like, singing our favorite songs, and the creature's just in the back,

[Sabrina]

and we're all like, it's like white chicks.

[Corinne]

We have a convertible. Even though it's like, T12 o' clock at night, the top is down.

[Sabrina]

That's the, like, romanticized. If we could befriend a cryptid version,

[Corinne]

we give them a bedazzled crop top. It says slutty.

[Sabrina]

It's just a bikini.

[Corinne]

Mine is brat.

[Sabrina]

Ugh. What's mine say, Bitch.

[Corinne]

Perfect.

[Sabrina]

So far from I wouldn't even wear a shirt that said perfect. Okay, so you can let us know in the comments who would you rather be driving based on our answers or let us know what you would do in that situation?

[Corinne]

Yeah, I feel like the choice. We're too similar here, so I feel like it's just both of us.

[Sabrina]

Okay, so would you rather Corinne and I driving or the cryptid coming into the car with us with bedazzled. Matching bedazzled. We're going on a bachelorette trip with the cryptid.

[Corinne]

Yes. Girls trip.

[Sabrina]

Or what would you do in this situation? Okay, second scenario. We love antiques. So much so that one day we're like, let's get out of the podcast studio and go antiquing. And we have such a fun day. We are looking at tons of antiques. By the end of the day, we each bought one new thing.

[Corinne]

Okay.

[Sabrina]

You bought this beautiful wooden bench.

[Corinne]

Oh, sounds about right.

[Sabrina]

Yes. I bought this old medicine cabinet that has, like, old bottles that used to carry the tinctures.

[Corinne]

Definitely sounds right. This is accurate grabs for both of us.

[Sabrina]

So now we both head home. We like our looking around our houses, find the Perfect spot for our new additions to the home. Find a place and everything's totally fine. The only thing that happens is, like, weirdly, we start to having these really, really vivid dreams. They're not bad, they're not necessarily good, but they're just super vivid. And you haven't had vivid dreams like this in a long time. And over time, you start to realize, like, really annoying little things that you had on your to do list start to resolve themselves. Like the leaking faucet in the bathroom for some reason stops leaking. And you're like, great, my to do list is shrinking. And then one night, you're drifting to sleep and you hear a voice, and it's a voice you've never heard before, and it says, I've been helping you. I like helping you. What do you do?

[Corinne]

I like helping you too, and I hope you stay here forever.

[Sabrina]

Okay.

[Corinne]

I love you.

[Sabrina]

Okay.

[Corinne]

I would be like, that's great. Like, this is so helpful. I can't believe that this is how you're choosing to spend your afterlife. And I respect it. I'm here for it. Let me know if there's something I can do to make your bench more comfortable.

[Sabrina]

Sit on it.

[Corinne]

Do you want a room?

[Sabrina]

Sit on my face.

[Corinne]

What color pillow do you want? Or sit on my face and be like, Sabrina.

[Sabrina]

Sabrina's all about, I'm the spirit in the situation, saying, sit on my face.

[Corinne]

I mean, I'd be stoked. I think, like, genuinely, like, knowing who I am. I would probably try to start communicating with the spirit, but not in a traditional way. Like, I think I'd be like, oh, well, you're so capable, Ben. And I let out like a little. I'll leave out like a pen and paper on the counter overnight. And like, we'll. We'll do pen pal back and forth.

[Sabrina]

I like that.

[Corinne]

I think that's what I would attempt to do.

[Sabrina]

All right. I tried to do, like, oh, we'd come up with very different answers, but we have very similar answers because I also would. It's a helpful ghost. That's true. But if it was a scary ghost pretending to be a helpful ghost,

[Corinne]

well, I guess I have to wait until it becomes unhelpful. If it's just helpful, I have no evidence to indicate that it wasn't. It's gonna go the other direction.

[Sabrina]

Here's what I would do. I would full on, set up a YouTube live stream and say, hey, everyone, we're gonna try to learn more about the ghosts attached to my brand new medicine cabinet and meet me in my

[Corinne]

basement while I try to summon the spirit. That is what you do.

[Sabrina]

That's what I will do. Yeah.

[Corinne]

So you're basically doing a seance, and I am giving an opportunity for a pen pal moment.

[Sabrina]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

Yours is more different forms of communication.

[Sabrina]

I'm publicly exposing my ghosts.

[Corinne]

Yeah, you're summoning, and I'm providing an outlet should they. Should they care for it.

[Sabrina]

You're letting them do it on their terms. And I'm like, dance, monkey, dance.

[Corinne]

I'm not trying to provoke a ghost that's already helping me, and I'm not

[Sabrina]

trying to provoke it. If you've seen me do any of my live streams or just any way we've approached the paranormal, we're very, like, show yourself. We're very. Zach Bagans. He's my role model. Wwzbd. What would Zach Baggins do? I have a bracelet customized with wwz.

[Corinne]

We don't do it like that.

[Sabrina]

No, we do not. We're very, like. If you would, like, don't worry if you don't.

[Corinne]

Totally fine.

[Sabrina]

If you want to go Bedrot, please. We.

[Corinne]

Literally every investigation. I mean, like, I know that we film them and so people see what we choose to show what we choose to show them. But, like, every single investigation we've done, there has definitely been, like, an hour or two carved out where we give

[Sabrina]

everyone a break and we eat snacks.

[Corinne]

We're like, well, let's just, like, we'll play a game. You guys can rest. You seem a little tired. If you want to come back, we'll come back on in, like, 75 minutes and see what's up. Like, we, like, genuinely build in, like, nap times.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. Everyone deserves a decompress.

[Corinne]

It works.

[Sabrina]

Whose house would you like to live in based on our responses and what would you do in that situation?

[Corinne]

We are very similar. I think it's because I'm trying to, like, choose, like, the reality.

[Sabrina]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

Of, like, what I was genuinely faced with.

[Sabrina]

Right.

[Corinne]

Cause sometimes I say what I would do, but now that I'm, like, living it every once in a while in this house, I'm like, well, now I know what I would actually do.

[Sabrina]

Okay. Well, the dramatic version that we wouldn't actually do in reality, but is based on stories we've heard. We call the Times and say, I've got a ghost. Send your reporters featured on Late night.

[Corinne]

Yeah, no, I might.

[Sabrina]

Jimmy Kimmel has us on me and my kids.

[Corinne]

I love some, like, inspo videos for the ghost about, like, you know, Swedish death cleaning and the month Long decluttering challenge. Like, what do you think they'd start stealing things and feel free to make a pile of things that you don't think I'm going to use.

[Sabrina]

Oh, I like that.

[Corinne]

Yeah, we can find people who would.

[Sabrina]

We love a helpful ghost, right? Yeah.

[Corinne]

Or like do you know who this belongs to or who it should belong to? Oh, wait, that would be cool.

[Sabrina]

See, I love to find origin stories and, and learn more about the spirit attached. Like, tell me your story.

[Corinne]

Yeah, I feel like the stuff that you own too, in terms of antiques are like, they can be deeply personal to somebody. So I feel like you have a better chance of finding the origin or like the background of it where it's like, you know, I went to Quechu, Vermont and picked out that crock.

[Sabrina]

Right.

[Corinne]

Who made the crock?

[Sabrina]

Right.

[Corinne]

Was this their only crock or is this one of 1700 crocs that that one person made?

[Sabrina]

You're more of like a furniture and like bigger items. Antiquer.

[Corinne]

Yeah. Yeah. Like something that everyone would still have in their home today. Yeah, I think you're more like personalized antiquities.

[Sabrina]

Like, like weird niche things.

[Corinne]

Specialty items.

[Sabrina]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

Conversation pieces like artwork drawn by someone or an electro at home.

[Sabrina]

Electroshock therapy system. Yeah, therapy actually is not in there. Electroshock system.

[Corinne]

Yes.

[Sabrina]

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that game. But the rest of today's episode is no game. It's very serious. In fact, it's also very, very strange and unusual. We live in a world. Before I tell you what we're talking about, even though it's in the title of the episode, we live in a world that is very much under surveillance. There are cameras everywhere, traffic lights, ATMs, like outside of businesses, ring doorbells. Our phones are tracking our locations and also like hearing us potentially.

[Corinne]

I have loved some of the cases where people are caught because their Gmail or their Google account that they're logged into on their phone is tracking them. And it's not something you'd normally think, you know, like you turn off your Find My Friends. You turn off like, but Gmail has your location. But like you have no idea some of the apps that are tracking you. And some people have been caught in their lies and convicted of their crimes because of Gmail.

[Sabrina]

Well, this time we're not talking about a crime being committed, but you would think with all of these technologies of the day and age, it would be impossible to just disappear. Yeah, right.

[Corinne]

Feels that way.

[Sabrina]

You'd have to slip past thousands of camera like, and it's one thing to like disappear for a day. But to then live disappeared and vanished, you have to slip past cameras every single day. You have to live without a phone.

[Corinne]

It's not even just like, even if you go into the woods, it's not just like a normal cctv. Like people put up trail cams all the time. You've no idea where people are, just randomly putting them up, how they're facing it. If there's a hiker that's like on the other side of the trail, up on a cliff that you can't even see and you're in their Snapchat now. Right.

[Sabrina]

Like you would think it's impossible.

[Corinne]

It feels that way.

[Sabrina]

And yet people still go missing. So today's case is one of the most mysterious disappearances. It has confounded so many people because this wasn't a man who just disappeared into a forest or out at sea in a place that like you could understand how someone goes disappearing. No, this is the story of a man who truly disappeared and vanished into thin air in broad daylight.

[Corinne]

I'm very excited for this. It's also not sad, not for the disappearance, because it is quite sad. But this is one of those cases where I have gone down YouTube and TikTok rabbit holes on it.

[Sabrina]

Oh, there are like Redditors whose entire lives are devoted to this case.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

This is the mysterious disappearance of Lars MetaTank. Back in 2014, 28 year old Lars Matank vanished and has never ever been seen again. And all that we have left to go off of is a very chilling video that shows the last time Lars was ever seen. As seen in the footage, Lars Mittank sprints through the Bulgaria airport and I mean full on sprints through the terminal, past confused travelers, past security, through an emergency exit, into the bright sunshiny day, and he continues to run. He jumps a fence into a field of sunflowers and is literally never seen again. And as of today, July 5th, when this episode airs, Lars Mentonk has been missing for nearly 12 years. In three days from now, it will be the 12 year anniversary of his disappearance. So today we are going to look at this heartbreaking story and break down the timeline of events. Look at the evidence or the lack thereof as well. It is less paranormal, but it is very mysterious because how does someone just vanish without a trace?

[Corinne]

Right.

[Sabrina]

As we dig into it, you'll see why this became such a viral missing person's case and why youtubers and Redditors alike have covered it over and over and why we are covering it today. There are a Lot of eerie elements, especially that video. It reminds me so much of Elisa Lam.

[Corinne]

But unfortunately, just like the bizarre behavior.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. Unlike Elisa, Lars still to this day has never been found. And his mother Sandra has never stopped looking. And I. Her part of the story is most heartbreaking to me.

[Corinne]

Well, it's just so upsetting. I'm sure you're gonna get there, but it's just upsetting because he made a phone call home. So it wasn't just like he didn't appear. And that's when the search started. Her panic was set in a day before. Before, like he fully disappears.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. Okay. So before we get into the story, me being me was like, I need to get some stats. Like, how common is it to actually vanish?

[Corinne]

I feel like super common because you were just talking about in. Well, just in our world because we're recording so much ahead of time. But like the Montauk Project, when you gave the stats on how many missing

[Sabrina]

children, that's the hard thing. So missing person reports back in the 1980s, when we were talking about the Montauk Project, it was like a million kids a year. But that's just reports. A lot of them end up being found.

[Corinne]

Right. Most of them are with another parent. Yeah.

[Sabrina]

And yes, millions of people are globally reported missing each year. But. But most are eventually found or accounted for in some way. And only a small fraction, even though unfortunately there's not an exact number. But only a small fraction of these reported missing people vanish altogether. There isn't like a singular global system that can record it. So I'm going to look specifically at. Because Lars Metank was a German man who disappeared from Bulgaria. I'm going to look at Germany and Bulgaria. So Germany actually has an unbelievable, kind of an amazing rate of closing missing persons cases. Nearly 97% of missing person cases in Germany are solved within a year. What are they doing?

[Corinne]

Can we copy?

[Sabrina]

Unfortunately, like, some people are found dead,

[Corinne]

but they're found 97% people are getting closure. People are getting to bury their loved ones. People are getting to at least know where they are to know what happened to them.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. But as we'll learn, Lars didn't disappear in Germany. He vanished in Bulgaria. And there aren't any official, at least reputable stats on missing person cases in Bulgaria specifically. But I did find that it's not known as a place where tourists go missing. But there is human trafficking, which we'll talk about in the theories when we get there.

[Corinne]

I mean, that unfortunately that exists everywhere. Everywhere.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. With this context, let us talk About Lars Mittank Lars was born on February 9, 1986 in Berlin, Germany. He grew up in Northern Germany. And from every account, like his friends and family, everyone has gone on to say this after the fact. Lars had a very normal, very stable childhood into adulthood. No history of abuse, no history of mental health, no history of running away. Truly nothing that stands out as pertinent to this case. By the time Lars was In his late 20s, he was living on his own, working for a technical company, which unfortunately his specific job isn't named outright. But he was doing well for himself. He worked during the days, he built a good group of friends, and he was a massive fan of this soccer team called Werder Bremen. And I might be saying that wrong, but it was a very important team to him and it will come back in the timeline of events. Despite living on his own, Lars regularly returned home to visit his mom and dad. Because one, he was close with his family. But then two, his dad in recent years had suffered from a stroke, leaving him pretty much in full care of his mother. And Lars was such a family man and loved his family so much that rather than like on the weekends going out with his friends, he'd often take that time to go home and help his mom out and spend time with his family. Seems like a great guy. So now in like June of 2014, a bunch of Lars friends had planned a trip to Golden Sands, Bulgaria and Lars wasn't going to go because again, he liked to spend his off time from work with his family, helping take care of his dad and spend time with his mom. But his mom was like, you deserve a vacation. She was encouraging.

[Corinne]

It's very hard to be a caretaker and especially probably for a young adult. Yeah, like for, I'm sure like his mom had a really hard time, but she didn't want to watch her son spend so much of these like pivotal years of his life feeling obligated to be home and do that. Yeah, it's tough.

[Sabrina]

So she encouraged him to enjoy his time.

[Corinne]

Yeah, go have fun with your friends. Yeah, you're here all the time.

[Sabrina]

So in late June 2014, 28 year old Lars bought his ticket to Golden Sands, Bulgaria.

[Corinne]

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[Sabrina]

and Golden Sands is beautiful. It's a Black Sea resort town just outside of Varna, Bulgaria and back in 2014. And I still think like today it's a very popular summer spot especially for young European Travelers. And when I was reading about it, it reminds me so much of Cabo for us in college. Easy to fly to.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

From la, you got the beaches, you got all inclusive hotels, all inclusive resorts.

[Corinne]

Really made the big difference.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. Golden Sands is very similar. Cheap flights, cheap hotels, all inclusive resorts, fun nightlife. Everything you could want for a nice summer vacation as a young adult. Exactly who Lars is. And now what follows is a timeline of events as we know them from a combination of police and friends and family. But it is also hard because there are so many people who have reported on this that I think details have gotten a little muddy. And I'll try to point them out as we go through that. Like, some are conjecture and it's like, was this made up and was this like a weird game of telephone? But I'll point out what has been verified by the friends and family versus what has been added in later. June 14, 2014. 28 year old Lars and his friends get on a plane and they arrive in Bulgaria and their trip goes as planned for a few very uneventful days. Most of the trip, like it's a fun, uneventful trip. One of the friends reported saying it was like any other trip. They spent their days at the beaches, they went to clubs, they played football like they were having a good trip. Lars's friends have, after the fact, noted that there was nothing unusual about Lars behavior. The only thing they could think of was that Lars wasn't eating a ton, but he was still eating. He was eating soups, salads and ordering a lot of fruit, which in the summer, like, that's what I want. I want refreshing fruit and salad. The light things. That's so hot.

[Corinne]

Well, and also I'll say like how much were they drinking? Because I feel like I am a very light eater when I'm drinking too. Yeah.

[Sabrina]

And also I think their first instinct after Lars went missing is to say there was nothing unusual about his behavior. But the only thing we could maybe think of is that he wasn't eating.

[Corinne]

His serving sizes were less than ours.

[Sabrina]

Right?

[Corinne]

Like, right, yeah.

[Sabrina]

So July 5, 2014. This is where people really start with the timeline. Lars and his friends went out drinking and partying. And again, some of the details are vague here, but the idea of the evening was this. Lars and his friends went out, they're having a great night, when one of or a mix of things happened. One version is that Lars got in a heated argument with some random guys at the bar that they called high school age about soccer. He was defending his Favorite team. Like I said, Werder Bremen and the other guys were defending another team and they were getting in a debate about it, like argument, which I understand. Drinking. You see a guy wearing the jersey, jersey for your rival. Like you guys get in a fight. There's one version where his friends were witness to this fight. There's another version where the friends were not witness to this fight. Either way, Lars and his friends leave the bar to go to McDonald's. But Lars somehow gets separated. Either he like chooses to leave, somehow he separates from them, splits off from the friends. Lars separates from his friends and suddenly a group of four Bulgarian men jump him, beating him and striking him, specifically in the left ear. When Lars finds his friends again, he tells them what just happened and that he was jumped. According to his friends, he didn't physically look like beat up and bloody, but he was complaining of like severe pain in his ear. Like if you're hit right in the like ear.

[Corinne]

Yeah, that's possible.

[Sabrina]

Head trauma could be a serious head injury. So some people say that the group of people he argued with were the same ones who beat him up. Others claim that those men hired another group of men to beat Lars up because I guess that was pretty common in Bulgaria. We don't know specifically who beat him up. It was a group of four men. According to Lars, he was attacked. And by the time he reunites with his friends, it's now the early morning hours of July 6th and he's experiencing a lot of pain. Lars is examined by a doctor and is given the diagnosis of a ruptured eardrum. And the doctor told Lars he might need surgery. Which Lars was like, okay, but I don't want to do that in Bulgaria. I want to go home to Germany to have this surgery.

[Corinne]

Right. But then can you fly with a ruptured eardrum?

[Sabrina]

So the doctor told him he could not. But I looked it up and apparently you can and it actually might make flying easier.

[Corinne]

Oh, also, I'm just thinking about like the train system in Europe is so great. Like how, how long of a train ride could it be?

[Sabrina]

Let's see.

[Corinne]

Because if he can't fly or like maybe shouldn't, could he take like a 12 hour train home or something?

[Sabrina]

No, it's like a two and a half hour flight. So a 21 hour drive or a 38 hour train ride with three changes according to a quick search. But these doctors testimonies are a little bit vague too because there's like, keep in mind these doctors are seeing multiple people a day.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

And they're not like, oh, this man is about to become a missing person. Let me make sure I remember every single detail about situations.

[Corinne]

Right. They can only go back on the notes that they had. And it's probably very like, came in diagnosed with ruptured eardrum, which also signifies

[Sabrina]

that there's nothing really unusual about Lars and his behavior. Behavior.

[Corinne]

Right.

[Sabrina]

In these moments, he's told that he has a ruptured eardrum and this doctor recommends that he doesn't fly. There's other reports that he also had an injured jaw. But the doctor gives Lars some antibiotics, ceftrazil, 500 milligrams. So the doctor tells him he's concerned there could be pressure related issues if he did fly. And so as the story goes, he was told not to fly, or Lars decided not to fly. The only issue is he and his friends were set to leave the next day, July 7th of 2014. So all of Lars friends concerned about him being good friends are like, don't worry, man. Brother. Well, we will wait with you. Like, it can't be. What? We'll wait like another day or two. Totally fine. We'll wait with you. But Lars is like, no, no, it's fine. You guys fly back. I guess he had insurance on his flight, but some of his friends didn't.

[Corinne]

Oh, see, that's so tough because, like, his friends are doing what you're supposed to do.

[Sabrina]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

Not leave your friend behind. But if, if your friend's like, I'm a fully capable adult, I would, I

[Sabrina]

would tell my friends to leave. Absolutely.

[Corinne]

I wouldn't leave you if we were

[Sabrina]

in like a fun resort town, like where I could. Yeah, you would.

[Corinne]

If you had.

[Sabrina]

And you had to go home to

[Corinne]

your kid if you had a head injury.

[Sabrina]

But he was acting normal.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

Like he gave no indication or reasoning for them to be really concerned.

[Corinne]

That's true. He went to the doctor, they just said you have a ruptured ear tract.

[Sabrina]

Yeah, exactly. So all of his friends, despite like trying to stay, finally agree, okay, they'll fly home. Lars has insisted he's fine. So on the morning of July 7, Lars friends fly back to Germany and Lars stays back in Golden Sands. And so now it's where the story gets a little vague and details are missing because there's no one around Lars to tell us what he's doing between the moments that has someone else involved. Lars is now stuck in Bulgaria with an ear injury. And since his trip was technically over, he had to check out of the hotel room with all of his Friends. He doesn't have a hotel room, so a cab driver takes him. He can't be picky. It's also like a beach town in the height of summer. He's like Slim Pickens a little bit. A cab driver takes him to a hotel called Hotel Color in Varna. And it's not the greatest of hotels. It's a little seedy. And I think you can, by the looks of it and by what happened, what Lars does say he felt that

[Corinne]

it's just so upsetting because, like, he already was attacked.

[Sabrina]

I know.

[Corinne]

So I'm upset that he was alone and is now put in a spot where it's like, who's to say he wouldn't get jumped again? Right.

[Sabrina]

But I think like when he was jumped, everyone was connecting it to that fight he had with the guys in the bar.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

Everyone was like, oh, it was a one time thing.

[Corinne]

Right.

[Sabrina]

But if someone hired people to beat him up or we'll get into more theories later if it was like drug related. Yeah, it's a little bit more suspicious. Okay. So I looked up the Hotel Color in varna. It has 3.7 stars out of five on Google. And it's a two star hotel, but rooms are really cheap. They're like $38 a night right now. So probably cheaper. Definitely cheaper. In 2014, his mom booked him another flight for the next day. So it was basically like, just give him an extra day, he'll be able to fly home. So this is July 7th. He's supposed to fly home on July 8th. So he just needs a hotel for one night. And I think this is close to the airport. Lars checks in and at the front desk, the front desk staff fully photocopy his credit card, which is a little odd. And even Lars felt weird about it.

[Corinne]

Yeah, definitely. Photocopy ID is normal, but your credit card. No.

[Sabrina]

Yeah, like you should be able to like charge the card and put it in the system. Yeah. And Lars himself felt like that was weird. On top of the place being a little bit shady, he felt that. We don't know what time Lars checked in. We also don't know what Lars did for the entire day of July 7th. But what we do know is that around 11pm Lars Mittank calls his mother Sandra and asks her to block his credit card because he was concerned the people at the front desk of the hotel who had copied it were going to use it for fraud.

[Corinne]

I understand that, but that's so scary because then who are you messing with? Like, he's still staying There.

[Sabrina]

Right. He also asks her to, like, charge and put money into his phone because he decided to travel without his smartphone and he was only with his, like, flip phone that you needed to pay for minutes. I don't know why he did that, but no one else seems like that. Maybe that was normal in 2014.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

I don't know. No one else seems to point it out in, like, in their chronicling of this disappearance. So Sandro does call the bank, but is also now concerned about Lars staying in a place like this. I mean, Lars himself is concerned. His mother is now concerned, naturally.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

Her fear only gets worse when her phone rings again. And this time it is 3am it is Lars, and he is panicked. He sounds scared. He is clearly outside. He tells his mother he doesn't feel safe, that four men are following him and trying to kill him. He tells her that he's hiding on a very steep hill and that, like, he's scared. It seems like a very, like, treacherous place that he's in. And he tells his mom not to call him back because he's scared that his phone will ring and give away his location. I have no. I can't even fathom what his mother was feeling or thinking in that moment and how terrified she was.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

And she's waiting to hear back from him to make sure he's safe. And I guess, like, 6aM she gets a text, no update regarding him being chased by men. She gets a text asking, what is Cephazil 500, which is the antibiotic that Lars had been given by the doctor, and it's an antibiotic that he was prescribed at the highest dosage, which is 500 milligrams. I looked it up. I think it's, like, two times a day. And according to everything I could find online, it is used to treat sinus infections, ear infections, bronchitis, skin infections. It's an antibiotic. It can be taken with or without food, but is better absorbed with food. And the side effects include nausea, diarrhea, abdominal pain, headache, dizziness, and fatigue. And there are very, very rare cases where most of them are in combination with something else causing these, that it causes confusion, agitation, anxiety, insomnia, disorientation, hallucinations, and seizures. But in combination with another psychoactive substance, especially stimulants or hallucinogens, it could cause psychosis.

[Corinne]

Hmm. So it almost seems like he. We have no idea, but, like, just speculating based on the amount of time and then his text to his mom, it almost seems like he realized that he might have been hallucinating that situation and is like, what are these? That I just took?

[Sabrina]

Yes, that's my interpretation of the. Of the strange events.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

And then when we get into theories, I have a. I have a theory, but yeah, it insinuates he was concerned about the side effects of the antibiotic he had taken. And so now it's the morning of July 8th. And aside from that vague text, Lars has not reached out to his mother, which is obviously concerning. There are reports online, but these are not confirmed by Sandra or police. So I am saying it as like, it's rumored that Lars did contact his mother again while he was on the way to the airport, saying that like he was concerned about other people following him.

[Corinne]

See, that's what I feel like I always heard.

[Sabrina]

So that's a big thing that's talked about, but it is not ever said by Sandra or police. So I don't know how true it is. And there is one part of that story, rumor that Lars asked his mother to send money to a Western Union. And this detail's important if it did happen, because neither Sandra or Lars had ever used Western Union, but apparently another German traveler had told Lars about it. And Lars was able to very coherently explain to his mother how to send money to it. But here's my thing that makes me feel like this isn't really true and didn't really happen because he's at the airport about to get on a flight to go home. So why would he need $500 to a Western Union?

[Corinne]

Right? Like just get on the plane.

[Sabrina]

Exactly.

[Corinne]

What year Was this again?

[Sabrina]

2014. So again, that specific phone call in the morning, it hasn't been confirmed that I could find online. What I found was that the last communication between Lars and his mother was. What is Cefozil 500? Okay, so the flight that Lars mom had booked for Lars was supposed to leave Bulgaria that morning. July 8, 2014. At 9:30am, Lars is seen on camera arriving at the varna Airport between 8:30 and 9:00am and we have a video. He seems very like, composed as you would a normal travel day. He's got a backpack and a duffel bag and he's walking, acting normally. Prior to his flight, Lars goes to the airport medical office just to double check with medical professionals that he's safe to fly. Some people say that he was told by the doctor to make sure and check in with medical staff at the airport before he got on the plane. Either way, he does this.

[Corinne]

He's following the rules. He's doing all the steps of what he was told to do.

[Sabrina]

And again, this is where details become vague because similar to the first doctor who saw Lars, this doctor doesn't know anything very strange, doesn't think, oh, this boy is about to disappear. And this doctor shared multiple versions of his interaction with Lars. He says that while Lars was in the room, an airport employee came in, or that Lars excused himself to go to the bathroom and never came back. So we literally have no idea what actually happened in the doctor's office or when he excused himself to go to the bathroom. All we know is that CCTV caught Lars walking into the airport with a duffel bag and a backpack, seemingly totally fine. And the next thing we have on CCTV is Lars sprinting full speed out of the airport without any of his belongings.

[Corinne]

This makes me wonder too, if, like, he was waiting to, like, take his bag, pill again at the airport or something right before he got on the flight, and then it absorbs in him and 30 minutes after he's starting to hallucinate again.

[Sabrina]

Or some people say, did the person who walked into the room, was that someone who beat him up or was he like, if. If it's like a person chasing him.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

We'll show the video in YouTube, but also we'll put it on our socials. But Lara sprints, like, full on sprints out the way he came. He has no bags with him and it seems like he's running away from something. It seems like a scared, like, I need to get out of here.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

He exits the building. And when he exits the building on the video, his, like, pace does slow. To me, it indicates him, like, trying to decide which way to go.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

And also he was just full on sprinting. Maybe he just needed a little bit of break. He goes one way, seems to slow again before taking off again, full sprint in another direction. And the CCTV footage sees Lars run through a parking lot to the very, very edge of it. And because it's so far away, like, they zoom in and circle him. But he hops over a fence and into what was a fully grown sunflower field. Lars Metank is never seen again. The final footage is extremely eerie because he appears fine entering the airport.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

But something happened within a matter of 30 minutes to cause him to sprint off like that. Yeah. Like, was it the medication? Did he take it right before getting to the airport or once he got there?

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

At 9:30am, his flight takes off without him and Sandra Metank, who's waiting for him to return home. When the flight lands and Lars is not on the plane. And she learns that he never got onto the plane. She immediately jumps into action and reports Lars is missing. And by the end of that day, on July 8, 2014, Lars Metonk is officially reported and filed as a missing person.

[Corinne]

Oh God, the horror.

[Sabrina]

Bulgarian authorities begin an investigation. They find all of his stuff left behind. His bag, his wallet, his phone, his passport, all left at the airport. They search the nearby fields, they search like the Sunflower Field. They do not find anything. German police also got involved, but unfortunately I wasn't around in 2014 and I couldn't find like newspapers and like, you know, videos from that time. Because when you search Lars Metonk, it's all Reddit and youtubers and like current people covering the story. And even the German documents that I found, like, fortunately the Google has translate, but it's very brief information. Apparently the Bulgarian officials didn't want to turn away tourists. So he didn't widely report this.

[Corinne]

Oh my God.

[Sabrina]

But I don't know if that's true. But either way, if that is true, I would understand why if people did see him, they wouldn't have reported it.

[Corinne]

Because if they didn't know, oh, that's so upsetting. Because it's like the opposite should be believed. Like, the more involved you are in trying to find someone and righting the wrong of what just happened, the more people might feel safe coming because they're like, okay, we'll be protected. This won't happen again. The community is so involved. Instead of just covering it up, like you could disappear. Vanish without a trace. Yeah, I don't know. And no one will do anything.

[Sabrina]

And I think like also what's sad about this is even though, yes, there's so much technology, there are cameras everywhere, the pure manpower you would need to search every single camera. And not every single camera is set up to the cloud for the government to just face search.

[Corinne]

And it's not like there were ring doorbells everywhere and stuff. Now when things happen, people are told like, hey, can everyone who has a camera set up, can you check and see if there was anything mysterious on this date around this time or whatever. But if people aren't being told, plus there's not as much technology as there is today. And even if he did have his phone on him, it was a flip

[Sabrina]

phone, but he didn't have his phone on him, right?

[Corinne]

Yeah, like there was nothing to track him.

[Sabrina]

Yeah, there was one report that said like Sandra was shown, like, because the clips that we see and is online. It's like edited together of like, the jump cuts of where he shows up on frame. But apparently Sandra Metank has said there was more footage that wasn't publicized. And in one of the angles, it looked like Lars checked his pockets as if he did have things on him. But maybe.

[Corinne]

Or like, maybe the panic of like, oh, shit, where's my phone? Oh, my God. Yeah.

[Sabrina]

Ugh.

[Corinne]

And also, I'm so curious about what happened in the in between too, because it's like, you know, they're looking at the footage. We only have the footage of him running and disappearing. But I want to see the footage starting 45 minutes before he got to the airport, all the way through two hours after he leaves. Like, who else is coming and going? Who's looking strange?

[Sabrina]

Or I wish there was footage inside the doctor's office, which obviously I know can't happen, but there could be.

[Corinne]

There should be a camera right outside of the door.

[Sabrina]

Like in the lobby. Yeah, I don't know. Unfortunately, despite a bunch of supposed sightings, which we'll get into a couple of those at the end, Lars Matonka is still missing. I have been putting off buying new glasses for so long because it just felt so complicated and overpriced. But then I found Warby Parker and look at my new glasses.

[Corinne]

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[Sabrina]

They're perfect. And I actually bought two pairs because they're so reasonably priced and they're prescription.

[Corinne]

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[Sabrina]

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[Corinne]

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[Sabrina]

They make it so easy.

[Corinne]

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[Sabrina]

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[Corinne]

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[Sabrina]

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[Corinne]

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[Sabrina]

I just put it on this morning. I literally put it in my bag and I'm going to carry it with me everywhere I go.

[Corinne]

Well, it's perfect because it's small. It's like a small brush, but big impact. And also it has a buildable tubing formula.

[Sabrina]

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[Corinne]

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[Sabrina]

Right now, Merit Beauty is offering our listeners their signature makeup bag with your first [e-mail] that's me, R I T beauty.com to get your free signature makeup bag with your first order. Merit beauty.com which brings us to the theories section. And I have like three main theories. My first is like a head injury. Second one is human trafficking. And the third one is drugs. We'll start with head injury.

[Corinne]

You say human trafficking, but, like, it always makes me think of that one horrific case of the guy who was kidnapped and then his, like, they used his spine and, like, corpse to make some sort of what it was like a cult ritual.

[Sabrina]

I feel like you were someone who should stop consuming true crime so much because.

[Corinne]

Well, I don't anymore.

[Sabrina]

This is from the way you hold on to like the most gruesome things and can't disassociate from them.

[Corinne]

It really does stick with me, but I can't. Okay, hold on. Kidnapping Mark Kilroy. Yeah, it was a human sacrifice case.

[Sabrina]

Jesus.

[Corinne]

In May of 1989.

[Sabrina]

So. Well, like, going off of that, we'll talk about the human trafficking theory or just like being, like, taken.

[Corinne]

It's possible.

[Sabrina]

And in Bulgaria and in many places in the world, human trafficking or just like people being taken in that way does happen. But in Bulgaria specifically, it's unfortunately mostly like Romani people, women who are sold into sex slavery and then men who are, like, forced into hard labor. And if he was taken in this way, it would make sense that he's not seen on any cctv, that he hasn't been seen again, because he would probably be forced, like, in an underground type of, like, life where, when he is transported places, he wouldn't be seen publicly.

[Corinne]

Right.

[Sabrina]

I hope that's not true. I mean, I hope. It's just so sad that he disappeared in anyway. But the other theory is that he had a head injury that caused some type of, like, psychosis or mental break, that he would have lapses in memory and understanding of what reality was, which

[Corinne]

is like the Elisa Lam case.

[Sabrina]

Yeah, but, yeah, I mean, hers was, like, mental illness, like, not taking her medication. But this is like. Yeah, a concussion.

[Corinne]

Right.

[Sabrina]

That and, like, something going on with

[Corinne]

the chemical makeup of the brain and reality not being reality being reality. Yeah.

[Sabrina]

And, like, if you think about the call he made to his mother at 3am on July, the early hours of July 8, he repeats very similar things to what happened to him right before he got the head injury, which is four men were chasing him, trying to hurt him. It mirrors very much the attack that caused the head injury.

[Corinne]

Right.

[Sabrina]

So was there some, like, forgetting of where he was, timeline not making sense in his brain?

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

And he, like, felt like he was back in that moment. The other theory. And I, like, do feel really sad. And there, again, I will. I will say very outright, there is zero testimony from any of the friends saying that this is true. Like, there's no record of them partaking in or taking any drugs during the trip. But would they admit it? I don't know. Because if you think after the fact,

[Corinne]

if your friend goes missing like this, I mean, you don't even have to say that you took it if you're like, oh, yeah, like, there was ecstasy, there's Molly, like, there was, like, you know, there was Ketamine. Like, you. You missed at least what was, like, around.

[Sabrina]

So there's two theories here. One, maybe him and his friends were doing, like, a stimulant, like Adderall, which maybe one of them was prescribed. They don't think of it as a pertinent detail because I looked up, in combination with stimulants, that antibiotic could cause psychosis.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

There's another theory that maybe Lars was doing drugs on his own, that he actually left his group of friends to

[Corinne]

go do a drug deal and that's

[Sabrina]

why he got beat up, and that's why he got beat Up. And he wouldn't tell his friends that, because if he was doing it secretly, why would he tell his friends?

[Corinne]

That just feels strange and out of character for someone who spent most of his weekends taking care of his father and visiting his father.

[Sabrina]

I completely agree, but it's, like, the one thing in my mind that, like, makes sense of, like, a combination of drugs causing something. And he was eating very light, which is also another cause of stimulants. You don't eat as much, they're there, partying, staying up really late hours. Again, conjecture. Totally. There's no evidence of it, but in, like, a scientific way, I'm. Like, it would make sense. But then why wouldn't he ever be seen again on CCTV footage? Unless, like, the psychosis was just permanent, which feels very, very. Head injury.

[Corinne]

Yeah. Unless he. Yeah. Found himself in, like, a waterway or.

[Sabrina]

Yeah, but then you would think train tracks or something.

[Corinne]

I know, but, like, we think that all the time.

[Sabrina]

I know.

[Corinne]

The amount of people who go missing hiking or.

[Sabrina]

Unfortunately, we don't have answers. It's very, very sad. And Lars, like we said, is still missing. And I think what makes this case so sensational and so, like, captures so many people's attention is that video footage.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

And just how does one man look like he's entering the airport, totally fine, all of a sudden, sprint off and is never seen again.

[Corinne]

Right. That's what's so bizarre.

[Sabrina]

One silver lining is that Sandra Metank has not given up hope. She is still, to this day, following up on literally every single lead that is submitted to the point where someone sent in, like, there's an unhoused man in this area of Germany who kind of looks like him. I unfortunately, like, no longer am there and I don't have a picture. She put this out to the public. Within two hours, she had, like, multiple people sending photos of this man and, like, speaking to this man to help figure it out for her.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

And there are so many missing person cases that Sandra has followed up, where people think it's Lars, and she ends up being able to reunite missing people with their loved ones.

[Corinne]

Oh, my gosh. Wow. That's amazing.

[Sabrina]

Some people don't want to be reunited. Some people prefer to stay, like, where they are. But the people who do want to be reunited, she's, like, solved missing person

[Corinne]

cases, which is so. That's so incredible.

[Sabrina]

Which I imagine probably so emotional for her.

[Corinne]

Yeah. And also proves how deep she's digging.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. Yeah. Dang.

[Corinne]

I really hope that he's alive. I hope that this Is one of those cases where someone has a head injury or there's mental illness that comes forward and they live a different life for a few years and then they suddenly snap back and recall who they were.

[Sabrina]

Because if he is still alive and doesn't have that, you would think he would have contacted his family.

[Corinne]

Right.

[Sabrina]

In 2019, there was a pretty convincing tip where a truck driver had dropped off a man. I think he didn't know the story of the story of Lars when he picked up the hitchhiker. He picked him up in Bresden and dropped him off in Brandenburg, Germany. And after the fact, learned about Lars submitted this tip, which has sent people, like, looking in Brandenburg, Germany, which would mean that he's back in Germany if that is Lars. But there's no update. That was 2019. He is still missing. There are photos in the YouTube video of what Lars looked like when he disappeared and what he could look like now. And it's basically just like, a lot more facial hair. But to end this episode, if you do have information on Lars's whereabouts, you can contact the detective agency, which will have the phone number and the information. There's an email as well and contact information for where you could, like, submit hints. They'll be on the screen here, but they'll also be in the show notes. Because someone must know something.

[Corinne]

Yeah. It's devastating.

[Sabrina]

It's so sad.

[Corinne]

It's like, how does someone go missing, just vanish? Like, if they're not truly just deceased somewhere, that someone hasn't stumbled upon the body yet. How are they missing? How is no one called in a tip? How is no one realized?

[Sabrina]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

It makes me wonder, like, how many times we've walked past someone who could be a missing person or someone who 100% isn't with who they should be. And we have no idea because we're not actively looking for it.

[Sabrina]

And if you look on the maps. So Varna Airport is. It's in the city. It's like, right outside the city. He jumps over a fence. There are, like, two roads kind of on either side. It's not like the. The woods are right there.

[Corinne]

Right? Huh. But then there's water.

[Sabrina]

But he would have had to cross, like, major roads to get to the water.

[Corinne]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sabrina]

Or go through cities to get to other places. So it does feel like, how does someone jump a fence in an. From an airport into a sunflower field that on the other side of the sunflower field is a major road and is never seen again?

[Corinne]

Yeah, I don't know. But this Stuff scares me so bad.

[Sabrina]

I know.

[Corinne]

Because it came out of nowhere.

[Sabrina]

Right.

[Corinne]

It's like, what would you do if that was your loved one? Like, it's like his mom is doing everything she possibly can and probably still feels so helpless because it's like, how has nothing come?

[Sabrina]

And also imagine being the friends feeling so guilty. Like.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

But I think as you can tell, this is like a very tragic story, but it is very confounding too. Like, how does someone disappear? Which is why it is become such a big story in the digital space and there are like entire Reddit threads of sleuths and mystery solvers who are. Who are digging into it. So if you want to go down

[Corinne]

a rabbit hole, because I feel like people on the Internet do find things and it's wild how many people, when pooling their resources, can truly solve things. Solve things or like just fresh eyes, notice something different that someone else didn't or make connections. Man, I hope, I hope that there's some justice sometime or like an answer sometime soon.

[Sabrina]

Yeah, me too.

[Corinne]

I can't even imagine being in that position.

[Sabrina]

No. And also for him, like if he is alive and he's like having some mental ailments, like how confusing and scary.

[Corinne]

Right.

[Sabrina]

Either way, him running, that's like the.

[Corinne]

It's so many people's attitudes towards unhoused people where it's just like someone could totally be going through something. Someone could be him and it's just

[Sabrina]

we should help them.

[Corinne]

Largely ignored.

[Sabrina]

Yes.

[Corinne]

Okay. Well, obviously it was kind of hard to find a story that was like somewhat related.

[Sabrina]

A missing person story.

[Corinne]

Yeah. So I. I didn't do a missing persons, but I found a Men in Black story which I thought was interesting because he was thinking that there were men chasing him.

[Sabrina]

So it's like, what if it was conspiracy? Something happened.

[Corinne]

Yeah. This is called My Mom Saw Aliens and the Men in Black.

[Sabrina]

Also, this is a refresher story after. Yeah, a really tragic, I know, sad story.

[Corinne]

I am a fairly new listener and whilst listening to multiple fabulous alien related episodes, I remembered some stories that my mom had told me and I thought that they are worth sending in. Okay, so the first story happened in the late 90s slash early 2000s. My mom is a carefree hippie living in this huge property in the middle of practically nowhere with some friends in New South Wales, Australia.

[Sabrina]

With friends? Like a little commune? Yes, the dream.

[Corinne]

She's home alone. Spent many nights by herself in this big house as her housemate worked nights. Anyway, there she is surrounded by trees and the Low hum of bugs. Outside of the sweltering heat of this Australian summer, no street lights, not a house or other person could be seen for miles. And we'll say miles, because kilometers doesn't always have the same ring to it.

[Sabrina]

I agree.

[Corinne]

She said she felt very uneasy, like she was being watched this night, but chalked it up to the same old paranoia she'd felt many times before. Just being alone in this big house at night, by herself. She was settling in for the night, stepping out of her bedroom and rounding the corner into the living room. And the entire room was suddenly bathed in bright white light.

[Sabrina]

What?

[Corinne]

She likened it to a spotlight, or like one of those torches that can illuminate a football field. And she told herself, do not step into that light. As if her intuition knew something that she didn't. She stood at the edge of the room, frozen in place, trying to find the source of this light. Was it someone outside? Had someone pulled into the driveway with LED headlights or something?

[Sabrina]

It's also wild how, like, it didn't go outside of that room or spill out. It was, like, contained.

[Corinne]

And it wasn't like there was any sound of, like, a car driving up or anything. Every window was equally drowning in this white light, like it was coming from everywhere, all at once. As quickly as it came, it left. She said it just vanished. No sound, no little gray men, no mystical gaps in memory. Just there and then gone. She's always said she felt deep in her soul that this had to be aliens. And if she had stepped into that light, things would have gone very differently for her that night.

[Sabrina]

We don't know if they didn't abduct her still and wipe her memory.

[Corinne]

Okay, so the second story is not only my mom's experience, but but one shared between my mom, my uncles, my auntie and my nan. And it involves the men in black.

[Sabrina]

Okay, so the aliens have already been following your family.

[Corinne]

When my mom was a kid, her household was hectic. Raised by a mother, my nan, who was extremely religious, had not a glimmer of imagination, and did not believe in any things that go bump in the night or aliens or faraway galaxies. Until one evening outside the chemist. Is that like the pharmacy?

[Sabrina]

Maybe.

[Corinne]

I'll read it verbatim. It says, outside the chemist. There they all were. My mom, my nan, my uncles, my auntie. All piled into their beat up old car. The sky was a culmination of oranges and pinks as the sun set over the trees. My nan was caught up talking to a friend of hers who then Saw another friend, and before you knew it, there was this group of three to five Italian ladies just chatting away in the last minutes of sunlight. My uncle, who was about 4 or 5 years old at the time, suddenly exclaims, look. What is that up in the sky? Everyone's attention turned up, and my mom describes it as a silver disc with red lights underneath it, standing out so plainly against the pink and orange sky. It didn't make noise, it didn't move. It just hung there, suspended in the air and then gone. It didn't zoom away, it didn't blast off. It just vanished completely. They all saw it. A few days later, while my nan was trying to wrangle four young kids, there was suddenly a knock at the door. Two men dressed in suits on her doorstep. Are you Maria? They asked. She replied, yes. We would like to speak with your son, Michael. Is he here? My nan ushers my uncle to the door. These men come in, they sit down, hand him a piece of paper and pencils and say, can you draw what you saw in the sky, Michael? My uncle, being four or five at the time, drew the UFO perfectly, but he added little aliens in the drawing because he was a kid.

[Sabrina]

Wait, that makes me think that Michael was, like, talking to friends about it at school. And it got back to, yeah, the

[Corinne]

men in black, they stood up, leaving the drawing on the table, and explained to my nan that she should not encourage her children to make up lies to get media attention. But my nan hadn't told anyone. My nan didn't contact any media outlets or news reporters about this. She didn't even know who these guys were. Anyway, that's all for my mom's two alien stories. I hope you enjoyed and I'll see you on the other side.

[Sabrina]

Mikaela, do you not read that as a threat? Like, basically, like, don't get media attention, basically, because they hadn't done it yet. And it was like, don't even think about doing that. That's how I interpret it.

[Corinne]

What did he see? Well, aliens.

[Sabrina]

An alien? Yeah, but it's like, what.

[Corinne]

What do the men in black care?

[Sabrina]

I think they probably wanted to see what he saw. Just to know, like, that's the thing

[Corinne]

with the men in black. Like, why does it matter? It's all. It's always them coming and saying, what did you see? Well, you take it up with the aliens yourself, buddy.

[Sabrina]

Well, we also don't know who they are, if they work for the government, or if they are aliens themselves.

[Corinne]

Yeah, but it's like, if we weren't Supposed to see it and you were the aliens then.

[Sabrina]

I know they're trying to cover their tracks. They're not perfect. They made mistakes.

[Corinne]

Everybody makes mistakes.

[Sabrina]

Everybody has those days. Apparently. It's the anniversary and there's gonna be like a big Hannah Montana thing this year.

[Corinne]

Miley confirmed it.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. That's why she. She's like. All I have to say is look at the hair.

[Corinne]

Look. Yeah. The bangs. Love her. She's got that Hannah Montana hair.

[Sabrina]

Love her. That is wild. And it. But to me, it proves that the first story which actually happened later in life chronologically is maybe connected.

[Corinne]

I feel like it is very common that if someone has an alien encounter at some point in their life, they're going to have another one. And I am jealous.

[Sabrina]

Who knows?

[Corinne]

This.

[Sabrina]

This is like. I feel like we're recording into the future. So maybe there's so much time between now that we're recording and the time that this comes out.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

What if I get invested during your maternity leave? I'm manifesting. That is what, three month vacation on

[Corinne]

three months on a spaceship.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. No one's responding to anything on social media. It's just no campfires, words.

[Corinne]

I wouldn't know that you had been disappeared for a while too, because I'd. I'll be in my maternity haze.

[Sabrina]

That's what I mean. Yeah, you'll be disconnected. People might start pinging you, being like, hey, have you heard from Sabrina? Sabrina's missing.

[Corinne]

Our manager is like, sabrina's not answering any of my texts. And then I'd be like, oh, yeah, there's something severely wrong.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. All right, well, we'll see. Oh, actually, one more question to end the episode on, because we started the. How would you handle this dating show? I have one more question because that story took place in Australia and that made me think of the massive spiders in Australia. What would you do if you were home and one of those spiders was inside? What would you do?

[Corinne]

Jump out the window?

[Sabrina]

Yeah, I would burn the house down.

[Corinne]

I wouldn't go back in. Or if the exterminator came in. The tough part is, what do you do if you're in a room, a room with no windows, or you're on the. Like, a room with no windows or no doors and the spider is above the door frame so you can't go towards it.

[Sabrina]

I would still. I would sprint out the door.

[Corinne]

I'd have to risk it, like, thinking you're gonna attack it and jumping down on you.

[Sabrina]

I feel like the chances of it actually jumping down on me Are lower. I mean, in a moment I honestly would have a full panic attack.

[Corinne]

Me too. I call 911.

[Sabrina]

Yeah, me too, actually. That's a good.

[Corinne]

Yep.

[Sabrina]

I go with Corinne on this one.

[Corinne]

Yeah. Emergency services. There is a giant poisonous human eating spider for me, trapping me in my room.

[Sabrina]

There was a cockroach in my apartment and I was by myself. It was 20 minutes of full on panic attack. But I also wanted to keep it in my eyesight because I didn't want it to. And it was like late at night.

[Corinne]

I didn't want it to disappear when they die.

[Sabrina]

Go into my mouth while I was sleeping.

[Corinne]

Yes. I, I was like, well, they come out at night. Really?

[Sabrina]

Right. I was like, like, who do? What do I do?

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

And then Leia kept trying to sniff it. So like, because Leia's my child, I ended up like basically smashing it with a shoe. But I screamed as I did it. But I think I, I would befriend a neighbor.

[Corinne]

Yeah. I had not full sized adult sized cockroaches, but in my be one of my Beacon Hill apartments when I lived in the city. I told you this, that like the, the apartment below me definitely had like some sort of cockroach problem.

[Sabrina]

But they would come up and that

[Corinne]

in the middle of the night the babies, baby cockroaches would come up through the pipes and come out of my bathroom sink.

[Sabrina]

Can we put like a content warning before we start talking about this?

[Corinne]

But I didn't know for a while what they were, so I was just taking. Yeah, I was just taking like tissue paper and like smashing them and like putting them down the toilet.

[Sabrina]

Yuck. Bugs are gross. But you all rock, so that's fun. Woo. Planet Earth, we love you all. If you want episodes one week early and ad free, please join us on Patreon. Despite Corinne going on maternity leave, there is nothing changing here at two Girls one Ghost. Episodes will be coming out regularly because we do a lot of pre work and record things way in advance.

[Corinne]

You won't know the difference.

[Sabrina]

And campfire stories will be going as as planned. We'll still have a book club. We'll probably just do one. In the midst of your maternity leave and yeah, business as usual. But Corinne just made a whole ass baby.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

So we got another creepy kid amongst us. Or almost.

[Corinne]

Cue all the hauntings triggering up again.

[Sabrina]

Absolutely.

[Corinne]

I'm sure I'll come back with more stories.

[Sabrina]

So yeah, we'll see you everywhere.

[Corinne]

And we will see you on the other side.

[Sabrina]

Very spooky. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now.

[Corinne]

I was looking for fun ways to

[Sabrina]

tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited

[Corinne]

Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back.

[Sabrina]

So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a [e-mail] switch upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow when network is busy. See terms.