Episode 34-Laureen Rahn

Spring 1980, Manchester, New Hampshire: Fourteen-year-old Laureen Rahn vanished from a third-floor apartment on Merrimack Street. When her mother returned after midnight, every hallway bulb on all three floors had been unscrewed, the front door was unlocked, and the back door stood open. A friend was asleep in Laureen’s bed. Laureen was gone—her new sneakers and clothes left behind.

This episode of The Midnight Mystery Archive reconstructs the last verified movements inside the apartment, the early investigation, and the details that continue to unsettle: a year of silent 3:45 a.m. phone calls, California long-distance calls billed to the home (two motels and a teen hotline), and unconfirmed sightings that led nowhere. We explore why police moved off the initial “runaway” label, how 1980-era phone tech could route distant calls to Judith Rahn’s bill, and why the unscrewed bulbs matter as more than a piece of lore.

Carefully separating proven facts from rumor, we also place the case in its neighborhood context—another disappearance six weeks later just blocks away (no proven connection)—and close with practical steps that could still help today. Forty-plus years on, the questions remain simple and unforgiving: who darkened the hall, who opened the doors, and who spoke through all that silence?

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