The Vanishing of Doveland

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Plenty of towns have disappeared over the years.

In most cases, the explanations range from economic problems to government initiatives to resources drying up.

But what about the towns that truly and quite literally vanished without a trace?

It's not as rare a phenomenon as some people might think, and for thousands of people in the US state of Wisconsin, it's a perplexing reality.

Given the presence of so many vivid memories, how can we possibly explain the vanishing of Doveland?

As long as there have been maps, there have been whispered accounts of entire towns, villages, and settlements disappearing without explanation.

Sometimes, a name survives, a dot on the map that seems to correspond with nothing.

In other cases, these once fruitful communities exist only in the memories of a select few people.

This strange phenomenon can be found across cultures, across centuries, and now across the internet.

At the heart of each of these tales lies a chilling question.

How do you prove that something once existed when every bit of proof is gone?

The most famous example of a disappearing town is probably the lost colony of Roanoke.

In 1587, over 100 English settlers established a settlement on a small patch of land off the coast of present-day North Carolina.

Surviving records and ship manifests indicate that multiple resupply missions were sent there.

The colony had a large wooden fort and numerous homes, and by all accounts, things seemed to be going quite well.

But three years later, another resupply ship arrived to find everything gone.

The fort had been dismantled and the few homes that remained were now overgrown with weeds.

The only clue was a signpost with the word Croatoan carved into it and a tree bearing the first four letters of the same phrase, C-R-O-A.

Though people have agonised over the potential meaning of this word for centuries, it was perfectly clear at the time.

The Croatoan were a native tribe who lived on a neighbouring island of the same name.

But what was the meaning of the carvings?

Had the relationship between the two villages soured, resulting in a deadly attack?

Had the settlers encountered some sort of trouble and gone to live with the natives?

To this day, no definitive answer has been found.

There were no bodies, no signs of conflict, and many valuable provisions left behind.

This has led some historians to believe a plague may have struck the island.

But if that's the case, where are the dead?

And why would nobody think to write a letter detailing the event?

As puzzling as the mystery of the lost colony is, it is only the tip of the disappearing village iceberg.

There's also the puzzling tale of Hoa Verde, a small Brazilian town that reportedly emptied overnight in 1923 with no trace as to where the residents might have gone.

Or the strange story surrounding Lake Anjacuni in northern Canada.

In 1930, a trapper claimed to have stumbled upon a deserted Inuit village, where he reported that campfires were still smouldering and that meals had been left untouched.

Yet it was abundantly clear that the residents were not coming back.

Wherever they went, they had dug up a nearby graveyard so that they could take their long-dead relatives with them.

Unsettling as these cases may be, there remains some physical evidence of the abandoned community.

In other stories, towns and villages physically cease to be where they once stood.

Paranormal culture is rife with tales of travellers who visit unfamiliar, often rural towns.

Upon leaving they suddenly find that the road doesn't lead back to where they'd been.

Confused they stop at the nearest petrol station or hotel to ask about the discrepancy where they are calmly informed that there is no such place.

In all of these cases People will report talking to others, eating meals, interacting with staff, sometimes even spending the night, only to return later and find nothing there.

It has all the makings of a science fiction movie until one realizes that complete strangers often report having the exact same experience.

In some cases, the occurrences are years or even decades apart.

And then

there is Doveland.

First whispered about in obscure corners of the internet, the story of Doveland, Wisconsin began gaining traction in the late 2010s.

It started, some say, with a Google search.

Users reported typing Doveland into the search bar only for it to automatically suggest Doveland, Wisconsin.

That in itself wouldn't be strange, as Google often prioritises searches based on popularity.

The only problem was that there is no Doveland, Wisconsin.

Depending on the rarity of the phrase, it can take hundreds of thousands of searches to prompt Google's algorithm to autocorrect a search term.

So,

why would so many people be searching for a town that doesn't exist?

Technology experts will often point out that Google also factors website mentions and official data when determining keywords.

However, Dublin, Wisconsin does not appear on any map, and no online records of the town can be found.

Until the very conspiracy we're discussing started, there doesn't appear to be any reason for anyone to be looking for it at all.

But it turns out, there was indeed a reason.

All across the internet, Users began claiming that they had distinct memories of visiting or even growing up in Doveland.

The majority of these people described the small town in exactly the same way.

A sleepy Midwestern community home to friendly neighbours, local shops and summer fairs.

Some people even posted photos of old t-shirts and coffee mugs emblazoned with a town's name and crest.

Yet when pressed for details like street names, landmarks and the actual location, the users would find themselves unable to remember anything.

Meanwhile, internet sleuths were unable to find any corroborating evidence.

To skeptics, it was an open and shut case.

An internet-borne urban legend fueled by digital folklore and nostalgia.

But to believers, these people are focusing on the wrong part of the story.

Because the truly unsettling thing about Doveland isn't that no one can find it, it's that so many people remember it.

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The story goes like this.

In the heart of America's dairyland, somewhere between the thick forests and rolling countryside, there was once a town called Doveland.

To hundreds of very real people, many of whom have posted comments and photos on the internet over the past two decades, it was like any other small community in Wisconsin.

They describe it as the kind of place where everyone knew each other's names, where neighbors wave from their porches, and children chase fireflies until the late hours of the night.

Then,

Sometime in the 1990s, it vanished.

And nobody knows why.

It only takes a few minutes to confirm the fact that there are zero official records of a Doveland in the Wisconsin State Archives.

Even state employees haven't been able to conjure up any deeds, tax rolls, death certificates, or birth announcements related to the supposed town.

There are likewise no property maps or zoning changes.

No mentions in the newspapers.

Not a single piece of verifiable evidence.

But whilst there may have been a shortage of information about Doveland, there was no shortage of people looking for it.

Across various corners of the internet, from Reddit forums to paranormal message boards, people continued to trade stories of visiting or growing up in this sleepy Wisconsin town.

Many expressed frustration that something they considered to be such a formative part of their lives had somehow gotten lost.

Most of the former Dovelanders were now in their 60s or even 70s, and they reasoned that the omission must have been due to some sort of colossal filing error.

The town had been small after all.

Perhaps it had been absorbed by some suburb and the records had simply been lost.

Then,

things got a little bit more sinister.

Someone posted the following on a message board about the topic.

I just learned of all the noise surrounding Doveland, and I think I can add some insight.

Doveland was a small town in Wisconsin that housed a lot of military families.

My father lived there for a year or two and spoke of it occasionally.

The main thing I remember is that it had to do with Project Sanguine in the early 60s.

I don't think it was X-Files type stuff, but the town was destroyed after an incident.

I thought they were digging up a ton of land for something and they flooded the town or something.

But this is a rehashed second-hand memory from years ago.

Amidst hundreds of similar posts, this one caught online investigators' attention, and the reasons were obvious.

The user not only mentioned the military and a potential incident, but they actually identified a specific operation, Project Sanguine.

It doesn't take long to confirm that this was indeed a legitimate military endeavour.

Proposed by the US Navy during the Cold War, Project Sanguine aimed to create a vast underground communications network that could use ELF radio waves, an acronym for extremely low frequency, to communicate with nuclear submarines.

The original plan was ambitious to the point of being frightening.

It involved laying more than 6,000 miles of buried cable across nearly two-fifths of Wisconsin.

Estimates state the the final system would have required more than 100 underground power plants and consumed over 800 megawatts of power.

It sounds like a massive undertaking, and it would have been.

However, the full version was never built.

Instead, the government constructed a scaled-down equivalent, which it named Project ELF.

Its location?

The forests near Clam Lake, Wisconsin.

These facts seem to lend instant credence to the Dublin conspiracy.

The only problem was that Project ELF and Project Sanguine were hardly secrets.

Indeed, Project ELF worked.

It was fully operational from the 1980s up until 2004, using massive ground dipole antennas to send signals through bedrock to submarines thousands of miles away.

The same can be said for Project Sanguine.

It even has its own Wikipedia page complete with photos.

Despite feeling encouraged by these revelations, believers in the conspiracy still had to face the fact that there was nothing to connect the town to the project.

And now that they knew the Cold War-era US government might be involved, Wisconsinites began to develop theories as to why.

During the 1960s, the Cold War was in full swing.

Both the US and Soviet governments were spending billions of dollars a year developing new ways to attack, defend against and spy on one another.

And due to a pervasive fear of communist infiltration, secrecy was paramount.

Eventually, they decided that the best way to keep things away from prying eyes was to hide in plain sight.

They didn't just build projects, they built entire towns.

The first and most notable example of this was Los Alamos in New Mexico.

It was established in 1943 so that Robert Oppenheimer and his team of scientists could develop the first atomic bomb.

The town didn't exist on maps, and mail was addressed simply to P.O.

Box 1663, Santa Fe.

Nonetheless, researchers and their families lived there for years, so no doubt dozens, perhaps even hundreds of children, remember growing up there.

The only real difference between the theoretical Doveland and the the very real Los Alamos is that the latter is still around today.

This is far from the only example.

Mercury, Nevada was established as a support site for nuclear bomb testing.

At its height, it had thousands of residents complete with a hospital, church and bowling alley.

However, it was completely off limits to the general public.

If the United States government was trying to install a massive underground project in Wisconsin, it's not inconceivable that it might take the same approach.

Still,

if Doveland existed, where is it?

Perhaps it has something to do with the incident the user mentioned in their post.

In fact, it seems like more than one person remembers something unfortunate happening in the town.

Doveland was very real.

My father used to mention it occasionally before he passed, and the only reason I remember it is because I found it ironic that a town named Doveland was populated by almost exclusively military personnel and their families.

If I remember correctly, the town was built as a part of Project Sanguine in the mid to late 60s.

Maybe everyone left when the project was cancelled, but I thought something went very wrong.

You can only dig up that much turf for so long before you're bound to have problems.

This means that at least two posters claim that Doveland had a connection to Project Sanguine and have an impression that something terrible happened there.

If there was a massive digging project at the time, it's not impossible that something could have gone very, very wrong.

Digging too rapidly or too recklessly has been associated with things like landslides and ground collapses as well as flooding.

Coincidentally, the first commenter's memories back this up, as he clearly says he remembers them flooding the town or something.

Any of these events would not only explain why the town no longer exists, but, assuming people were killed or injured, why the government might want to erase Dovlin from the record books.

Again, there is precedent for this.

In 1958, A B-47 bomber suffered a mid-air collision with another jet off the Georgia coast.

As a result, it dropped a Mark 15 hydrogen bomb near Tybee Island.

Not only was the bomb never recovered, but the public wasn't informed of the details of the incident for decades.

There have also been several deaths attributed to testing for so-called black projects, such as the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes.

Most of these occurred at the highly secretive Area 51.

But when families had to be notified, the deaths were attributed to routine training accidents.

Even freedom of information requests would not suffice, as engineers and military personnel sign lifetime secrecy oaths that extended to their families.

If the government made a mistake and ended up burying, burning or flooding a town full of military personnel and their families, they would have no incentive to tell anyone.

They would also have the means and the motive to cover it up, especially if nature had already reclaimed the area and hidden much of the evidence.

But not everyone is convinced.

One internet user posted the following in response to the two Dublin Truthers.

As someone who has lived in various places in Wisconsin for over 30 years and has been in the Army, never once has any single person ever mentioned Dublin.

Of course, this is only one person's experience, and they do not speak for everyone.

After all, Wisconsin is bigger than England, and there are towns in England that the Bedtime Stories team has never heard of either, despite living here all our lives.

So, is the disappearance of Doveland just a case of digital age folklore?

The physical evidence is spotty.

A grainy photo from a diner, a newspaper clipping boasting a Doveland agency selling real estate, and some personal photos that may or may not be doctored.

But with so many Midwesterners matter-of-factly stating that they either visited or lived there, the Dublin mystery is just too big to ignore.

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What can we say when presented with a town that countless people seem to remember, yet nobody can prove existed?

That paradox has given rise to dozens of explanations, each trying to make sense of how an entire community could vanish, not just physically, but from official records as well.

One of the earliest ideas floated was that Doveland had fallen victim to a natural disaster of some kind.

Proponents of this theory believe that perhaps an earthquake opened a massive sinkhole beneath the town, swallowing it in a matter of seconds and erasing all traces of its existence.

At first, this might seem like a logical, if dramatic, interpretation, but it quickly falls apart under scrutiny.

Wisconsin isn't known for its seismic activity, and it lies well away from major fault lines.

Though tremors have affected the region, none have ever come close to the level of destruction this theory requires.

Plus, even if a sinkhole had occurred, it would have left a scar, something visible or measurable.

The same applies to any natural disaster because there would still be some form of record that the town existed.

If anything, its loss would be viewed as a historic tragedy.

To accept that Doveland existed, you have to believe that it was never a typical town.

This is what the two online commenters assert.

They remember it as a military town constructed around a specific, potentially secretive project, not unlike Los Alamos.

Their memory that something went wrong or that an incident occurred would most likely refer to the military making some sort of mistake.

As previously stated, Project ELF reportedly required immense movement of rock and earth.

Is it possible the military uncovered an underground lake or caused a rock slide that buried the town?

If so, that would explain why it no longer exists.

And thanks to Freedom of Information requests, we know that the Cold War-era US government was not keen to admit mistakes, even if they resulted in military or civilian deaths.

The flood theory seems the most likely.

Wisconsin is home to more than 15,000 lakes, many of which do not occur naturally.

Is Doveland sitting beneath a small body of water that Wisconsinites now write off as just another reservoir or flooded quarry?

Because it seems to fit all the facts, this theory feels highly plausible.

However, it's worth noting that even the most restricted military zones tend to leave evidence.

Think of the abandoned radar stations scattered across the Midwest or the silent missile silos still rusting in fields.

Places like Fort Tilden or the Titan complexes may be forgotten, but they're not invisible.

If Doveland had been part of a military operation, some hunter or hiker should have stumbled across a partially covered road or keep-out sign in the woods somewhere.

And so,

explanations inexorably drift into stranger territory.

Perhaps one of the most interesting theories surrounds the possibility that the military may have disturbed something when digging the deep shafts necessary to accommodate Project ELF.

Thanks to alleged whistleblowers such as the late Phil Schneider, it has long been suggested that there are in fact thousands of miles of tunnels running beneath the United States, and not all of them are man-made.

While some deep underground military bases, or dums, are more famous than others, such as the Cheyenne Mountain Complex or Raven Rock in Pennsylvania.

Many of them are highly secretive, entirely unknown to the general public.

In fact, there are theories to suggest that many of these bases are controlled and operated by extraterrestrial beings.

Schneider spoke extensively about a secretive underground war being waged between human beings and other intelligences.

Could the digging involved in Project TLF have stumbled across one of these sites and unleashed something onto the Duvelin population.

As far-fetched as it may seem, this would perfectly explain why the US government might want to erase all record of the town.

Elsewhere, some have proposed that Doveland still exists, just not in the way we understand.

The town, they say, may have shifted out of sync with our reality.

These are often referred to as interdimensional rifts or time slips.

They describe a fold in space where two dimensions cross and that according to some can swallow up people, vehicles and buildings.

So why not an entire town?

These phenomena are often used to explain many stories where people have vivid memories of visiting a place that later simply ceases to exist.

Of course, such theories are hard to prove or dismiss, even when they seem to fit the facts so neatly.

Some people attribute this to a phenomenon known as the Mandela effect, where large groups of people share vivid but false memories.

Named after the belief that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s despite living up until 2013, it is often described as either a convergence of two different timelines or a kind of psychological trick.

If the latter, it's noteworthy that the Mandela effect can be reinforced by repetition, suggestion and social feedback.

Essentially, the more a story is told, the more real it feels.

So people who grew up in rural Wisconsin in the 1960s and 70s might have legitimate images of growing up in a small town.

Only after being exposed to the Dublin mystery do they begin to ascribe those memories to that specific place.

For many people, this might be the strangest explanation of all.

The reason is that it shows the malleability of the human mind in a way that leaves many people wondering if any of their memories are truly what they seem.

For the more rational-minded, the most likely explanation is the simplest.

There never was a Doveland.

In recent years, researchers have noted that the town doesn't appear in any credible source prior to 2015.

That's a whole 20 years in which nobody seemed to be searching the internet for anything related to the subject.

It was only when it finally showed up on Reddit threads and paranormal discussion boards that other people began to jump on the I Remember bandwagon.

The world is filled with forgotten places, but Dovelin, Wisconsin stands apart.

Unlike other vanished towns, it leaves no ruins, no records, no agreed-upon history.

Yet people remember it, and many even say they lived there.

Was Dovelin destroyed, abandoned, erased, or was it never there at all?

Whatever the truth, the mystery of this small town refuses to disappear.

It's difficult to argue that Dovland's absence feels almost deliberate.

In the past, there have always been popular mysteries around disappearing communities,

but most people seem wholly unwilling to entertain the idea that there was once an idyllic small town in rural Wisconsin that, for some reason, is now just an obscure and fading memory.

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