Matt Mason/ Mr. Moose

Matt Mason/ Mr. Moose
I am your host for the evening.

The truth is out there... So bring it here!

Check out the welcome page for a better description, but basically I'm looking for answers. Answers to everything and anything and I want to share a few of my own thoughts and ideas with as many of you as I can.

There's nothing more thought provoking than the unsolved mysteries of unsolved mysteries... except maybe working out if that sentence makes any sense. But in any case I'm trying to get to the bottom of a few things and God knows I can't do it by myself. I lack the experience or to be honest the intelligence necessary to work out what most detectives and experts have struggled with for years, decades even in some cases centuries.

Someone out there must know something. Even if it's just a hypothesis that nobody else came up with.

But I also want to share with you some of my opinions in general. On this, that and a bit of the other. I want you in turn to share your opinions with me. There is plenty of food for thought here so bon appetite.


P.S. As I have mentioned above, the Welcome page is separate from this one and it will give you a bit more insight. This is just for starters.

The curious tale of Lars Mittank

What happened to Lars Mittank?

 

Who is Lars Mittank?

 
Lars Mittank was a 28 year old German man who went missing in July 2014 whilst on holiday with a couple of friends in Golden Sands, Bulgaria. Trouble started when he got into a fight with some rival football fans on the beach. Things got out of hand quickly and he ended up with a ruptured ear drum. His doctor even advised him not to fly back straight away as it would cause further damage. Instead he decided to wait a day or two longer before ending his trip by staying in one of the poorer areas and he told his friends that if they wanted to they could leave without him on the flight they had planned to take home.
 

Before this though, just after the fight had taken place, he and his friends went to a bar to settle down and get something to eat. But this is where things get strange! Whilst his friends went inside to order food, Lars stayed outside for some reason and wouldn't say why. When they came out a short while later he was nowhere to be seen. But this was not the point where he disappeared. He actually re emerged the next morning with a baffling story to tell. Allegedly he had been accosted by another group of men, Russian guys who were hired to beat him up. His friends did not believe him and there was no evidence to back up this claim.
 
His friends took him to see a doctor about his ear and he was prescribed antibiotics called Cefuroxime. This was before they took a flight home, the plan being that Lars would come home separately when he was safe to travel. But that night he became extremely anxious and scared in his hotel room. He panicked and contacted his mother saying that he didn't feel safe and there were four men following him everywhere. He asked her to cancel his credit card for some reason and asked if she knew anything about the pills he'd been given. 
 
When Lars was ready to leave at last he went to the airport. The last known surveillance footage of him here shows him enter the airport normally with his luggage at the ready. Moments later he ran out of the airport without it and witnesses said that once he got outside he climbed over a fence and ran out into the woods where he was never seen again. Check out the footage here. It is worth a mention that he freaked out just after seeing a construction worker. I'll mention this later.
 
There were reports of a truck driver who picked up a hitchhiker a year or two later matching Lars description. This is unconfirmed however. He is still missing and many theories have circulated as to what happened to him. I have one of my own too which I will share with you further down the page.
 
Where is he and what happened??????
 

 Theories

 
He was right: Was there really someone out to get him? He did get into a fight with someone and the fight was quite a bad one. We know that much is true. Perhaps he wasn't so paranoid after all. If people were looking for him and out to get him you can understand why he would be scared. This might help explain why he asked his mother to cancel his credit card. He was afraid it would be stolen if he was attacked. And he might have asked about the pills he was taking to make sure he would remain in a stable and focused frame of mind in case he needed to act quickly and defend himself again, not feeling confused or drowsy which would have meant letting his guard down.
   It's possible that people really were sent to attack him at one point but he ran from them rather than stay to fight them. Given that he had stood his ground before and was injured and he was also outnumbered, he could have panicked. But when his friends asked about it later he exaggerated the story saying that he fought with them so as to not lose face. This would make the tale unbelievable to them hence the suspicion.
 
But where this falls apart slightly is in the fact that he would have asked his friends to stay with him if knew by this point that he was in danger (safety in numbers). He could have just said, "Why go home yet? I can't fly home with my ear so lets make the holiday a little longer". He didn't even have to admit if he was scared. Of course it's also plausible that he was looking out for their safety too. And they may have had to leave due to work or other commitments back home. 
    But we also have to bare in mind the fact that if he had been accosted by a group of men outside a bar, the wisest thing to do would have been to go inside since they wouldn't have set on him in a public building.  
 
Paranoid schizophrenic: His sudden strange behaviour could be put down to mental illness. This would explain why he thought he was being followed and why he was so interested in the pills he had been given. People suffering from conditions like paranoid schizophrenia will quite often try to refuse medication because they don't trust anyone and think people are out to harm them in some way like by poisoning them. They think that they are being followed or that people are watching them all the time. Conditions like this usually start to set in with people in their mid to late twenties. It could have kicked in after the fight took place. Maybe this was the trigger that set everything in motion.
 
His family have said that prior to this Lars had no history of mental illness and there was none in his family. This doesn't mean he couldn't have had some kind of dormant mental illness though; it has to start somewhere.  
 
The medication is to blame: Could the antibiotics he was given have had side effects? Unlikely. The side effects for the pills are listed here and they don't seem in any way related to his actions and behaviour:
 
  • Nausea
  • Vomiting
  • Diarrhoea
  • Dizziness
  • Kidney problems
  • Diaper rash   
  • Yeast infection
  • Allergic reaction
  • Swelling of the face

In any case Lars was already acting strangely when he made up the story about people who were paid to attack him (if he did make this up). And this was before he was prescribed them.
 
Head injury/ concussion: We know that Lars had a head injury. Could this have caused a concussion of some sort or some kind of brain damage which made him behave this way? This is at least possible because this kind of thing has happened before. Often when people suffer from a head injury they will start acting out of the ordinary. Click here for more details.
 
Just because mental illness did not run in his family and Lars had not suffered from it before, doesn't mean to say that it could not have been caused by head trauma. Some people can experience the after effects for years or even all of their lives.  

The black market: Some have suggested that he was kidnapped and his organs harvested on the black market. While this is an urban legend, it happens to be a true one. This has happened to people before. But it doesn't add up with any part of this story. Nothing about what happened to Lars suggests that he was kidnapped. He ran away of his own accord in front of hundreds of witnesses and was seen doing so on cctv. And the fight he had was about football. This is where the trouble started in the first place.
 
A new theory: I thought of one possibility that I don't think anyone else has come up with so far. I could be wrong of course. And either way I am only mentioning this for the purpose of full disclosure. It may bring up a new theory with someone else and one step closer to the answers. It would be nice for his family to have closure.
 
What if Lars is or 'believes' he is on the run from the law? We know that he got into a serious fight. We don't know much about what happened to the people he was fighting with. How badly did they get hurt? Suppose he knocked one of them out, or hit them with something. Maybe in self defence he used a pair of keys between his fingers and scarred one of them or something along these lines. We don't know how far it went apart from knowing that he ended up with a ruptured ear drum. He might well have walked away thinking, "That went a little too far".
 
If this is the case, it might explain what really happened when he vanished for a while. Perhaps he contemplated disappearing for a while whilst things cooled off, then realized his friends would just come looking for him. Not to mention he had his family and his life back home to consider. Maybe he just walked around the block thinking things through. Then he made up a story to explain his disappearance and made sure it sounded like if he did find himself getting arrested he could justify his actions more, painting a picture of how his life was in danger and why he felt so threatened.
 
I'm not myself trying to paint a bad picture of him here, making out that he is some kind of thug or a liar; that would be uncalled for as we don't know enough about him and he isn't here to defend himself. As I said he might not actually have gotten into trouble with the law at all but he could have believed that this would be the case. People do sometimes do things they regret and fear the consequences of their actions. He got into a fight, then wished he hadn't. Many other people have been in this situation. Paranoia kicked in and before long he would be wondering if he should go to the authorities and explain what happened. But had he left it too late?
 
What about his credit card? Why did he want it cancelled? It could have actually been stolen at some point. And his interest in the antibiotics is when you think about it really not that unusual. Many people when given meds they aren't used to want to know more about them and will look them up for more details.
 
So what was the final tipping point in this scenario that made him run off? I think this was to do with the construction worker he sore. In Bulgaria, construction workers wear very similar jackets to most of the police officers. If he was at a heightened state of paranoia by this point, looking over his shoulder all the time and suddenly sore what he thought in the heat of the moment was someone there to arrest him, he might have panicked and run for his life.  
 
Bulgarian Police Officer
Bulgarian Construction Workers
 
Conclusion
 
Honestly I feel that the most plausible scenario at least out of the ones we have covered, is the head injury theory. I think that the injury he suffered explains his actions because this has happened to a number of people before. Not exactly in this way but in the sense that people are known to act strangely when suffering things like concussion. It could be possible that this caused the paranoia that made him think people were out to get him and maybe even think the police were after him. Sadly it does not explain where he is now. But hopefully we may one day find him, and just maybe he could still be alive.




Prove Me Wrong



Riddle Me This: ANSWER -  The answer to the last riddle is, the woman's husband was an actor who she sore die in a film at the cinema.

NEXT RIDDLE - Two men walk through a forest. The ground is covered with snow. They walk at the same pace and they both walk for five miles. It is the same forest at the same time, not two different forests at different times. After walking five miles, the first man says to the second, "It's amazing how much ground you can cover in such little time don't you agree?", and he points back behind him, but for some reason there is only one set of footprints in the snow. Neither man was carried by the other and both of the able bodied men walked normally in the snow. Also no one else was with them, the second man was not a ghost or an alter ego of the first man. Both men are real and corporeal.

I should also mention that people can't fly.

Why was there only one set of footprints when the first man pointed back at how far he had come?

 

 

 

7 comments:

  1. I just read about the case tonight and when taking all the facts into consideration, I came up with the same conclusion as you did. Logically to run from a place of possible safety makes no sense. Common sense dictates that if someone were in trouble they would run to a police officer in the airport. Since he did not do this at the airport and did not go to the police or call them for help ever, this is very telling. Perhaps he somehow became involved in something and found out that someone connected to law enforcement was corrupt. It would make sense for him in this case to not run to authorities in the airport for help. Getting rid of his credit card would also make sense as any purchases he made could be traced by police and they would find him. When the man in uniform came into the airport hospital he immediately thought they had found him, he may even have thought his luggage was bugged so left it in the airport and ran off without it. His strange actions make much more sense if coming from the perspective of he was afraid of the police.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I generally agree with your theory for two reasons, however I think head trauma/mental illness also played a role. I think you are focusing on the right question though, what was this unexplained altercation. There are many conflicting reports about what little information we have. This is the best description I could find, although who knows if it is in fact the most accurate, however the author had dates, place names and other key details so I am inclined to take it above less meticulous sources:

    On July 6th the trip was disturbed by an altercation between the group of German tourists and a group of locals when they had a dispute over football at a local bar named “the rock bar”.
    Although there was no violence inside the bar at the time Lars went missing later that night when he was waiting for his friends to purchase food from a nearby McDonald’s fast food restaurant on the way back to the hotel.
    They looked for him to no avail, and eventually decided to go back to the hotel expecting him to be there. Unfortunately he was not, but he returned the next morning claiming to have been accosted by a group of men that he believed were sent for him by the group they had an altercation with earlier in the night. He claimed that the group had hired a bunch ofeither locals or Russians to rough him up.
    Apparently his friends weren’t convinced by the story, but let it go.
    He had walked away from the beating with a ruptured ear drum and injured jaw.

    http://reallifeishorror.blogspot.com/2017/11/what-really-happened-to-lars-mittank.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. So from this we learn several things:
    1. It seems like the whole group got into some kind of altercation at the bar with locals, but it was just typical alpha-male bar stuff about football clubs, nothing physical.
    2. Lars separated from the group, I couldn't find any explanation as to why he did this, although you'd think his friends would know. This seems like rather unusual behavior for a German tourist abroad for the first time.
    3. They were all supposed to meet up at McDonalds to grab some food, I find this whole night out a little strange, because they were staying at an all inclusive resort. Why go out to eat and drink when food and booze are free at your hotel? But I guess they wanted to go see the town or something.
    4. Lars doesn't show up to the McDonalds, instead he shows up at the resort the next morning. This is when Lars tells his story of the four men who beat him up. He had some pretty obvious damage to his face, so he obviously had to have some kind of explanation for what happened. Nobody indicates that Lars said where this happened, it didn't happen at the McDonalds, this was just their meeting spot.
    5. The friends didn't buy his story. Lars' story seems fabricated to me as well. He had to explain his condition to his friends, and it seems like he latched on to that previous incident, maybe to distract them from the fact that he was gone all night, but certainly to explain his injuries.

    A last detail worth mentioning is that the construction worker which supposedly triggered his flight from the airport was wearing a uniform which, in my understanding looked like security clothing. This would further support the theory he was afraid of Bulgarian law enforcement for some reason.

    ReplyDelete
  4. So I think from all this we can conclude that during the time Lars separated from the group, something happened. This is where we get into speculation, but if I had to speculate.

    1. It seems like this was the one night of the vacation they went out on the town. They paid for an all-inclusive resort, but they wanted to go out at least one night to party.
    2. If any of these boys wanted to get involved with drugs or prostitution, it seems like that would be the time to do it. It seems bad to accuse someone of this behavior with no evidence, but it would at least explain why he separated, and why his friends would overlook such a strange explanation as to why.
    3. Again wild speculation, but perhaps Lars separated from the group, and tried to score some drugs or hook up with a girl, or maybe do some gambling. During that time some criminals, or corrupt police intimidated him and demanded money or they would get him arrested for whatever activity he was involved in, and roughed him up.
    4. We have to explain why Lars wasn't panicked yet. Maybe whoever did this didn't manage to intimidate him, they beat him up and threatened to get the authorities to harass him, but maybe he thought they were bluffing. Lars goes to the doctor, discovers he can't fly, but he's not panicked, he tells his friends to leave, gets a cheap motel.
    5. In this hotel, whether real or imagined, the people Lars thought weren't serious have managed to track him down, the reality of his situation sets in. This is when the phone calls to his mother get serious, this would also explain why Lars didn't seem to involve his mother up to now.
    6. Lars now sincerely believes these criminals are going to kill him (this may be a real or imagined threat). He flees the hotel and basically hides out until his flight to the airport. He takes a taxi there.
    7. Lars now feels safe from the men who are after him. His mother convinces him to get a medical check before the flight. However, someone who Lars thinks is a security official starts talking to the doctor in a language he doesn't understand. Now he thinks that the authorities are in fact involved, and they wont let him get on the plane.
    8. Lars believes the men are monitoring the airport, and security officials are looking for him. He runs out of the airport to get away from the cops, goes outside, and checks for the bad guys. He goes in a direction he thinks is clear and tries to disappear. His plan now (if he has one) is to hitch-hike out, because he thinks the buses and planes are off limits.
    9. From there, his disappearance can be explained either by him trying to stay off-grid in the park area while trying to hitch a ride and dying of exposure, or meeting with foul play either by the men who were after him, or someone else who took advantage of him in his vulnerable state (no phone, no money, no passport).

    Ultimately the one question I think we should have an answer to is: Why did he separate from his group in the first place? If we can figure out what he did during that time, I think that would be the key to the whole mystery. Either way, I think someone convinced him, as you said that the authorities were after him, but this didn't become a reality for him until later, thus explaining his rapid change in mental state during the final 2 days.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Because there isnt much to work with in this case , you have to focus on not whats happened but what hasnt. 1. Lars hasnt been found.2 lars hasnt contacted anyone since his dissapearance. 3 lars didnt have anything with him when he ran off. Taking these things into consideration leaves me with very few possibilities. The first one would be in my opinion is that Lars never left Bulgaria, the only explaination for Lars not surfacing would ether be he is locked up ( institution or foreign prison) , and or death. I truly believe in order for us to understand this mystery we should start to lean towards believing the theroy that People werw in fact after Lars. Without any possesions i dont believe he could have lasted very long outside of any city or town and therfore would have been spotted by now. To this day there hasnt been one credible sighting on Lars which leaves his last known location just over the outer fence of the airport, and then nothing. The theroy that has taken flight with most people is the fact he had a ruptured eardrum. Again i dont believe he acted out that way because of his injury. People do not act that frightened from a injursd eardrum. We may not know the whole story but i feel the answer lies within the evening Lars didnt come back to the hotel. Something isnt right about that story and i would bet everyone could understand this situation much clearer through the mouths of Lars friends.The other thing i noticed was most articles stating that Lars said "russians" were involved, which if you do some research you will find out quickly that Bulgaria is loaded with kgb and russian organized crime. In fact algoid amount of businesses areorussian owned and cater to russian affliates.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Interesting story. The word "sore" comes up a couple of times- should be "saw".

    ReplyDelete
  7. Very interesting. I think he got involved in some illegal activity. And he panicked and was killed, his body has never been found. Sad.

    ReplyDelete