The Disappearance of Lars Mittank
Lars Mittank was a 28-year-old German tourist who disappeared under deeply mysterious circumstances in Varna, Bulgaria, on July 8, 2014. He had traveled there on vacation with friends, and after a fight in a McDonald's a few days before his disappearance, he claimed men were following him and had developed a fear of flying that led him to stay behind when his friends flew home. He visited a doctor at Varna Airport and then, while waiting, ran from the medical room without explanation, vaulted a fence surrounding the airport, and sprinted into a nearby field. He was captured on CCTV during this flight. He has never been seen since.
The video of Mittank fleeing the airport went viral years after his disappearance when his mother shared it publicly in hopes of generating tips. The footage showed a man in evident extreme distress or paranoia, sprinting at full speed in what appeared to be mortal fear. He had left all his belongings, passport, and money at the airport. His behavior in the days leading up to his disappearance — sending panicked messages to his mother about men following him — was consistent with either a genuine threat or a serious psychological crisis.
The head injury Mittank had suffered in the McDonald's fight, combined with the possibility that he had been prescribed medication that could interact badly with alcohol or cause psychiatric side effects, led investigators to theorize he may have experienced a psychotic episode. Bulgarian police mounted searches of the area near the airport but found no trace of him. Multiple reported sightings in Bulgaria and elsewhere were investigated without result.
Lars Mittank would be in his late thirties today. His case remains officially open and unsolved in both Germany and Bulgaria. The footage of him fleeing the airport has been viewed tens of millions of times online and has become one of the most discussed disappearance videos on the internet, generating endless speculation about what — or who — he was running from, and where he went.