The vanishing car¶

The vanishing car incident is the night in the first days of November 1992 when the party's rental Plymouth Voyager rose straight up from the guest house parking spot at the Sherman Ranch and was later found miles away in Roosevelt, pancaked into the road.


Type	Anomalous event
Aliases	Vanishing car phenomenon; car abduction; the abducting force
Location	Departure: the ranch's guest house. Arrival: East Lagoon Street, Roosevelt
Cause	Not established; the party suspects the beam or a UFO
First appearance	Walkers 04

The disappearance¶

During the night of Walkers 04, the Voyager's alarm and lights go off with nothing visible nearby, and someone at the big house shouts something inaudible until the party silences the alarm. Later, back at the guest house, the van is gone. One set of tire tracks leads into the parking spot and none leave. Zack (as Huell) inspects the tracks and concludes that the car most likely went straight up, and that the ground where it sat is quite hot, around 200 degrees.

At the big house, a staff member plays the tape from the sky camera, in which the car shows as a slightly different grey patch next to the house. Asked about radar and electrical phenomena, Bigelow says that the radar showed nothing, but "some of the EM meters went nuts," with spikes matching both the pop at the substation and the earlier dusk event, when the van slid sideways, though the data is noisy (Walkers 04).

The wreck in Roosevelt¶

At about 10 a.m., Hertz pages Howard to say that the car is blocking East Lagoon Street in Roosevelt. Rita (as Howard) tells the others, "Anyway, our car's back. It got unabducted." In Roosevelt, the Voyager is pancaked about a foot thick and fused into the roadway, in a slight crater. Zack's Investigate a Mystery roll fails, but Dante (as Kurt) reasons that the flattening came from dropping the car. Five officers, some from outside agencies, strain with jacks and two-by-fours to pry it out of the road. The local officer first guesses that someone with a car crusher and a flatbed did it, and the Roosevelt police lend the party the old squad car Betsy as a replacement (Walkers 04). Items in the van, including a map in the glove compartment and Kurt's stilts, were lost with it.

Examination¶

In Walkers 05, the party examines the wreck in the Roosevelt police station garage. Dante (as Kurt) tests it with loose screws and finds the car is magnetic, though it was not when it was parked. A Roosevelt officer points out that the upholstery is slightly melted and that the car smells of coyote pee. Kurt's examination suggests that the damage came from the car hitting the ground at terminal velocity, moving sideways quite fast and skewed in the direction away from the ranch, and that it landed upside down (Walkers 05).

Rita (as Howard) reads the evidence as an abduction: "Car got abducted. They didn't want it, though." Dante (as Kurt) later tells Alberta Wilmarth that the car disappeared and reappeared, smashed, a county over (Walkers 05).

Theories¶

Abduction. Andrew believes a UFO lifted and dropped the car (Walkers 04, Walkers 05).
The junkyard. The Roosevelt police arrest the junkyard owner Yusuf Ansari, because "there's only so many places that can crush a car." Kurt urges the officer to match the physical evidence before trusting any confession (Walkers 05). In Walkers 06, Yusuf admits he did not do it.
The beam. At the end of Walkers 06, the party finds a switchable heat-and-magnet beam at the ranch fence whose arc points toward Roosevelt, and Kurt suggests this may be what happened to the car.

The cause is never confirmed. See also the Sherman Ranch phenomenon.

Trivia¶

The loss is part of a running gag about ruined rentals. In Walkers 04, Dante says, "And we are not being very good with rentals lately," and Ezra (as the Biz) notes that "one hundred percent of the cars I've driven in the state have been turned into pancakes."