30 Years Of Man's Life Disappear In Mysterious 'Kansas Rectangle'

I've been worried about Aunt Ruth living on the edge in Missouri all these years. The Onion reports why:

CHICAGO—The so-called "Kansas rectangle," a desolate and featureless region covering 82,277 square miles in America's mysterious Great Plains, has been a source of speculation among paranormal investigators for decades. Though the questions surrounding its existence have never been answered, one thing is certain: The life of former Chicagoan Kevin Corcoran suddenly vanished into the eerie region 30 years ago this week, never to return.

The last known communication from Corcoran was sent from somewhere within the Rectangle, and made reference to plans to marry a large blond woman and enroll in a local technical college. Records indicate the message was received from 37 degrees 42 minutes north latitude and 97 degrees 20 minutes west longitude—but when searchers attempted to investigate that location, they found nothing but a tiny town with zero signs of life.

As haunting as his story may be, Kevin Corcoran is only one of hundreds of people who, for unknown reasons, have had years or even decades of their lives utterly fade away in the mystifying region. Still, most cases lack any hard evidence: The few known photos from inside the Rectangle show only a flat, blank emptiness, stretching unremarkably to the horizon.

What happens in the lives of those who venture within remains a mystery.

Matthew Hume, a researcher at the University of Chicago who studies the Rectangle, said the bizarre phenomena associated with the region might never be fully understood.

"As best we can tell, those who go beyond the area's borders for too long are knocked off course by the low external pressure to succeed," Hume said. "But after that, it's as if they fall off the face of the earth. There are cases of an entire Greyhound bus full of people entering the Rectangle and vanishing into obscurity."

Experts estimate that several million tons of consumer goods disappear into the region per year. Yet, almost nothing, save for the odd Sunday morning church broadcast, is ever detected coming back out.

I'm one of the lucky ones. I've actually survived at least two brief journeys into the rectangle and was able to escape. I can certainly testify about the mind-numbing effects the drive on I-70 across the state can have. As we drove through, there was a mysterious siren's call -- tempting us to pull-off the safety of the Interstate to see a legendary 5-legged calf. Had we given in and stopped, we might never have been seen again.

Much of my family originally comes from Missouri. I am thankful my grandparents never decided to venture into the rectangle, choosing to move to Colorado and then on to Michigan instead.

I used to say that this was one of the riskiest things I've ever done. Now I realize that's just not true...