Explorer Percy Fawcett vanished for good in 1925 while searching for a lost ancient city he named “Z,” but his aggrieved wife kept hanging on his every word.

Mrs. Fawcett (née Nina Agnes Paterson) seems to have fallen prey to some hucksters while in an understandably weakened state of mind, because she came to believe her missing husband was talking to her telepathically through several mediums. It’s also possible her beliefs were influenced by a close friendship with Sir Arthur Conan Dole and Lady Doyle, two devotees of such hokum. Regardless of how the situation came to be, the “intel” convinced her to refuse widowhood, convinced the family would soon be reunited. A February 12, 1928 article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle recalls the strange footnote.