In the winter of 1999, a man disappeared in rural areas. His tracks in the snow suddenly stopped, his dog behaved strangely and refused to leave the part of the road from which he had disappeared, and the day before all the dogs in the village barked at the same time.
Čechočovice is a small rural village in the Vysočina region of the Czech Republic with only 279 inhabitants. However, this small, unassuming village is said to be home to one of the strangest disappearances in Czech history.
Very little is known about 55-year-old Vladimír Bastl, other than the fact that he was born in 1943 or 1944 and worked as a handyman in the village of Krahulov. At 3 a.m. on January 14, 1999, Vladimír woke up and walked to Krahulov because he was working in the morning.
Since it was January, it had just started to snow, but that didn’t stop him from taking the same route to work as usual: walking along the Czech highway I/23 from Čechočovice to Krahulov.
Four witnesses would testify that they had seen Vladimír walking along the road shortly after he left the borders of the village.
One to two hours later, another worker noticed that Vladimír had yet to arrive at work, noting that the building he was supposed to be making repairs to was abandoned, with the lights off and no signs that Vladimír had ever shown up.
The worker called her boss, who went to Vladimír’s house and found his unfinished breakfast and an unfinished cup of coffee on his table. He released Vladimír’s dog in the hope that he could find him.
The dog led him along the road where Vladimír was walking, with his owner noticing the footprints in the snow before the prints stopped abruptly.
But once the dog got to the end of Vladimír’s footprints, it started acting strangely (cringing, growling, and barking) and refused to leave that part of the road. Finally, Vladimír’s owner had to pick up his dog and carry it back to the village.
Once the sun rose, the police were notified and an extensive search was launched to find Vladimír.
The residents of Čechočovice, Krahulov and Vladimír’s relatives, assisted by police, firefighters and the Czech army, searched the area and forests. The Steklý pond was also searched, but without results.
The search was called off, but in the spring, after the snow melted, search efforts resumed in an attempt to recover his body, but no trace of him was found either.
The official police position was that someone had hit Vladimír with their vehicle before frantically placing his body in their car and throwing him away somewhere. Critics of this theory believe that this is unlikely, as there are signs that something is wrong in the footprints or signs of blood on the road.
Today and even then, his case is viewed a little differently as the supernatural and a possible alien abduction are suspected. The main suspicions arise from all the peculiarities, such as the abrupt cessation of its tracks and tracks in the snow and the lack of signs of a vehicle collision at the scene.
But for ufologists and those who believe in the supernatural, the most fascinating oddities are the bizarre behavior of the animals in the village, such as the behavior of Vladimír’s dog when he reached the end of Vladimír’s footprints and his refusal to leave the area and three days after the disappearance his dog suddenly left without warning and seemingly for no reason.
It wasn’t just his dog. According to residents and first-hand accounts, every dog in the village simultaneously, wherever they were, started barking non-stop, which was very unusual, especially considering the ‘local conditions’.
The barking lasted for a very long time and the villagers described the sound as “different”. The barking would soon stop, but this all started shortly after Vladimír’s last reported sighting.
Another thing worth mentioning is that his family, especially his cousins and parents, believe in this way of thinking. They were deeply interested in both the UFO phenomenon and spiritualism, with Vladimír seemingly the only one in the family who had no interest in the subject.
This idea seemed mainstream at the time: a Czech newspaper published an article titled “Uneslo jej UFO,” which translated into English means, “He was abducted by a UFO.” Others who lean towards the supernatural aspect also speculate that he may have experienced a time shift or traveled to another dimension.
It is interesting that after so many years and efforts, the man’s body was never found.
Officially, his case is still considered open by the Czech police, but there have been no further updates in over twenty years.
