The footage is just a few minutes long. A man walks calmly through an airport. Then, without warning, he bolts — out the doors, across a parking lot, over a fence, into a field. He left everything behind. He's never been seen again.
A First Trip Abroad
Lars Joachim Mittank was 28, working as a technician in Germany, when he traveled with five friends to Varna, Bulgaria, in late June 2014 — his first trip outside the country. The group stayed at Golden Sands, a popular Black Sea resort known for its beaches and nightlife. By his friends' accounts, the trip went smoothly for most of its length: swimming, football, clubbing, nothing out of the ordinary.
That changed on July 6, the day before the group was due to fly home. At a bar in town, Mittank — a supporter of Werder Bremen — got into a heated argument with a group of Bayern Munich fans over football. He left the bar separately from his friends that night. They didn't see him again until the next morning, when he turned up with an injured jaw and a ruptured eardrum, telling them he'd been attacked. Accounts differed on exactly who was responsible, with some friends believing it was the men from the bar, others unsure.
Because of his injuries, a doctor advised Mittank not to fly home with the rest of the group. He stayed behind, planning to follow once he'd recovered, and checked into a hotel near the airport.
Increasingly Strange, Increasingly Afraid
Once his friends left, Mittank's behavior shifted noticeably. Hotel security footage showed him pacing the lobby repeatedly, watching the windows, and at one point hiding inside the elevator. He left the hotel around midnight one night and didn't return for hours.
He called his mother, Sandra, multiple times over the following days, telling her he believed people were trying to rob or kill him. At one point he asked her, urgently, to cancel his credit cards, without explaining why. During some calls, he reportedly whispered, as though afraid of being overheard, describing the hotel as "strange" and saying he didn't feel safe.
The Last Few Minutes
On the morning of July 8, 2014, Mittank went to Varna Airport, hoping to finally fly home. Before boarding, he was required to see the airport's on-call physician, Dr. Kosta Kostov, to be cleared to fly given his recent injuries.
Kostov later described Mittank as nervous and erratic throughout the consultation, asking unusual, anxious questions about the medication he'd been prescribed. Kostov told him he was fine to travel. Mittank didn't leave the office — until a construction worker walked in. The airport was undergoing renovations at the time, and the unexpected presence of another person seems to have triggered something. According to Kostov, Mittank began to tremble, then shouted, "I don't want to die here! I have to get out of here!" before bolting from the office.
He left behind everything: his backpack, his wallet, his mobile phone, his passport. Airport security cameras captured him sprinting through the terminal and out the front doors. Outside, he was seen jumping a two-meter fence and running into a field beside the highway, disappearing into the surrounding sunflowers. That's the last confirmed sighting of Lars Mittank, captured on video that has since been viewed by millions of people online, making him, in the words of several outlets that have covered the case, one of the most-watched missing persons cases on the internet.
Theories, None of Them Confirmed
For years, theories about what happened to Mittank have circulated widely, none of them backed by solid evidence. One early theory suggested his erratic behavior was a side effect of the antibiotic Cefprozil, which has been linked in rare cases to psychiatric side effects including paranoia and hallucinations. Dr. Kostov himself debunked this directly, noting Mittank had never actually filled the prescription: "He didn't take those antibiotics. He didn't even fill out his prescription. So his behavior couldn't have been a result of that. I can't think of a single reason why he left my office in such a panic. I'm still confused."
Other theories have ranged from an undiagnosed psychotic episode, possibly triggered or worsened by the head injury he'd sustained days earlier, to far more speculative claims involving drug smuggling or trafficking — none of which have any supporting evidence. Mittank's mother has said he had no prior history of mental illness, though some doctors and family members have continued to debate whether an undiagnosed condition, combined with the stress of the injury and being alone in a foreign country, could explain his final, panicked actions.
A German truck driver once claimed to have given a man matching Mittank's description a ride from Dresden to Brandenburg sometime after his disappearance. The tip was investigated and led nowhere.
A Decade Without an Answer
Lars Mittank's case remains formally open in both Bulgaria and Germany, with no confirmed sightings, no remains, and no resolution of any kind more than a decade later. His mother, Sandra, has continued advocating publicly for his case over the years, traveling to Bulgaria multiple times and reaching out to media and online communities in hopes that someone, somewhere, might hold a piece of information that could finally explain what happened.
The case has become a fixture of online true crime discussion precisely because of how little it actually explains — a calm, ordinary man with no history of erratic behavior, captured on camera fleeing in genuine terror from something no one watching the footage can identify. Whatever Lars Mittank believed he was running from that morning, it remains, a decade on, entirely his own.
Sources
Disappearance of Lars Mittank — Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Lars_Mittank
Vanished on a lads' holiday: The disappearance of Lars Mittank — Crime+Investigation UK
https://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/articles/vanished-lads-holiday-disappearance-lars-mittank
The Disappearance Of Lars Mittank And The Haunting Video Behind It — All That's Interesting
https://allthatsinteresting.com/lars-mittank
The Disappearance of Lars Mittank in Varna Bulgaria — City Towner
https://citytowner.com/varna-bulgaria-lars-mittank/