Case file · High strangeness
The disappearance of Owen Parfitt
In 1768 Owen Parfitt, an elderly, nearly paralysed former tailor, vanished from the chair outside his cottage in Shepton Mallet, Somerset, leaving his coat behind.
1768 CE · 51.19, -2.55 · status: unexplained
The account
His sister had left him for a few minutes. Searches found nothing, and the case was investigated and written up in the decades that followed.
The sceptical view
Kidnapping or a hidden death are possible; the case is one of Britain's oldest unsolved disappearances.
The researched reading
An old, poorly documented disappearance. Human removal or a hidden death is the likeliest reading, and later retellings have added to the mystery.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A known natural phenomenon | 30% | He may have managed to move further than expected and died out of sight, in a ditch or water during the storm that followed. Searches in 1768 were limited. |
| Undetermined | 30% | The share the reading had given to fabrication on doubt rather than evidence: the record does not settle it either way. |
| A cultural story | 25% | The written accounts date from decades later and grew in the telling, including tales of his past as a privateer, so details like the abandoned coat may have hardened over time. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 5% | A frail man who could barely walk is more likely to have been taken than to have wandered off. Removal by relatives or others, or a concealed death, best fits a sudden vanishing in daylight. Rumours of foul play circulated locally. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 4% | His sister’s brief absence and later memories may compress or distort the timeline. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 4% | The disappearance is unexplained, but every ordinary route remains open, so the case does not point beyond them. |
| Something in the surroundings | 2% | Not relevant beyond the weather already counted. |
Official position: Local inquiries at the time found nothing; no official finding.