Several witnesses in the Egg Harbor Township of New Jersey reported seeing a man leap from a plane at high altitude without a parachute into densely populated Atlantic City. As witnesses watched, thinking the man could possibly be parachuting, they saw him plummet further and further before disappearing entirely, clearly falling to what many think must have been his death. And yet despite the credible witnesses and the massive search, he seems to have completely vanished.
How do you lose a man falling from the sky in the middle of the day in Atlantic City? That’s exactly what authorities are asking as they suspend the search after several hours of scouring and interviewing witnesses. The search began on the ground with search parties fearing the worst and hoping for a miracle, and ended with a massive manhunt with helicopters scouring from the skies and turning up nothing. Whoever it was that fell from the sky simply disappeared.
It’s almost like he got up and walked away. It’s not unheard of for people to fall great distances and survive or even walk away relatively uninjured. In 2007, Alcides Moreno survived a 500 foot drop where he reached near terminal velocity of 124 miles per hour as he fell. As he impacted the pavement his arms and legs absorbed a considerable amount of the shock, and all of them were shattered instantly. But even at this lower height of 500 feet, Moreno would not have been in a condition to get up and disappear. There are always stories of children who somehow miraculously survive falls from high up. Part of this may have to do with both how they fall and their internal structure.
There are, in the end, several possibilities. It’s possible the witnesses could have been mistaken. Despite the fact that three witnesses claimed to have watched a man tilted and falling with the same control a human would and in the shape of a person, it’s still possible to misidentify something else falling from the unidentified plane. Since skydiving isn’t something that traditionally happens in the area, this is definitely a possibility.
The second scenario possible is that someone really did fall from a plane and even crashed into the ground, or navigated to a body of water. If this was the case, then it is possible the body could have fallen somewhere hidden. Maybe the body was discovered by people on the ground and taken for whatever reason.
Or perhaps there was something else about this figure falling from the sky – some technological or biological characteristic that allowed the figure to fall hundreds of feet without being injured or killed.
So why would someone jump out of a plane over such a populated area and simply not open their parachute? The strangest aspect of this story is that no one later reported anyone missing from their planes. It would certainly be noticed if a passenger or crew member were to open the door of any commercial or private aircraft and then proceeded to jump out. And yet no such reports were made.