 He was struck by a car in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and died on December 21, 1982.While at Springfield College, a student's question about the Lost Continent of Mu prompted a class project to investigate the lost continent of Atlantis, leading Hapgood to investigate possible ways that massive earth changes could occur and exposing him to the literature of Hugh Auchincloss Brown.In 1958, Hapgood published "The Earth's Shifting Crust".