Do you know anyone who did the "I'm just going to the shop to buy a paper" thing and who then disappeared forever?

[AliceAir]

Another thread on here reminded me of a girl I was in school with years ago. Her mother apparently popped to the shop to but some potatoes and never came home, and was never heard of again.

I'm not meaning people who have met with foul play but people who have decided to disappear and then done so.

Really @grisen ? Easy to leave your son? How?

My great aunt disappeared. She was suffering from clinical depression and the family have assumed, over the years, that she must have taken her own life. She has never been found, she left her handbag, bank cards and keys in her car which was found abandoned near a well known suicide spot.

@grisen do you not want to be involved in your son’s life?

@Thelnebriati

A female relative supposedly moved abroad and got a really good job, according to her husband. We were close, and I knew she was planning to divorce him after she found out something about him which she wouldn't talk about. She hasn't been heard from since.

Has her disappearance been investigated by the police @Thelnebriati - if people believed the husband and didn’t report it I would be very worried on her behalf.

@ElectricMistofelees I’ve been listening to the podcast you mentioned it’s heartbreaking particularly the one about Fatima Mohamed-Ali
My grandma grew up in Ireland with her 2 siblings and after her mother died her father met another woman and they married.Her new step mum was a evil woman who treated the children appallingly.Tragically her father passed away leaving the children with their step mum.When my grandma was old enough she arranged to move to England and start her nurse training living in nurses accommodation and fled Ireland overnight without telling anyone.Eventually her siblings fled to England and made new lives for themselves and my grandma met my grandad whilst do her training and they married and had 3 children (1 being my mum)

@grisen how do you feel about it now? Are you ever tempted to go back? Have you started another family? Sorry if I'm nosey jist find the subject intriguing but feel free to tell me to piss off!!

A friend's grandfather, when he was a child, went home from school one day to find that his entire family were gone and had moved house - purposely without him.

I realised that something similar had happened to my great grandma. During the first world war, she left the south coast and her two children (I assume they were in school at the time) and went to live in Manchester. This was all family knowledge. She then dissappears and is never heard of again.

Dad tracing our family tree, about 20 years ago, spent a lot of time researching her. She went missing during the Spanish Flu epidemic, we assume she was one of the many deaths due to it. BUT it turns out she had another child whilst there.

That child ended up in an orphanage up there. Dad tracked her down via the SA, and when they first met she asked him what happened to her mum, so she didnt have a clue either. She did remember someone coming into the orphanage when she was old enough to remember, saying yes thats her but left. She doesnt know who that was either.

The tragic side to this, is my grandmother, her sister, kept saying I was like the baby sister she never had, so we wondered what she had been told too, but she never said anything to dad, and was dead by the time we found her real sister.

Years ago, I belonged to the Wedding Guide UK website and a newly married poster on there reported that her DH had popped out one weekend, and just never came home. She was beside herself, obviously. Finally, he got in touch several months later and came home for a few days, but refused to explain where he'd been. Then, I think he upped and disappeared again? Last time I heard from her, her DH had been 'missing' for well over year and she was living in a hellish limbo.

Always wondered what happened to her in the end (think her NN was something like DuckyPuddle?). I hope there was a happy ending.

DH's DF went to the pub when DH was 5 and his sister was 18m old and disappeared without a trace. Turned out he'd run off with the pub landlady and they were found by the police a few months later living together in a new pub miles away after a missing person manhunt. DMIL hadn't seen it coming and lost everything in the following divorce. Nevertheless she did a great job raising her family alone. Last time DH saw his father was when he went to court as a teenager with MIL who was making a final attempt to get him to pay maintenance.

A lovely person I know came home from school to fund the family home empty.
Parents just upped and left.

Person was 16, and sibling close in age.

They never knew what happened to their parents, and decades later, there is no clue as to where they went.

Obviously I didn't press the person as to the why's and wherefores, as the 16 yr old is a middle aged adult now, with DC.

But that level of shock must make for serious insecurity .

How could parents walk out on two DC like that?

I've name-changed for this.

I have been for years considering disappearing. I was badly abused as a child by multiple perpetrators including my father but it was effectively covered up by the family which is many ways has caused more damage than the abuse itself. On the outside our family seems lovely, normal, middle class. My mother is a professional who actually works around child protection issues. But the truth is child abuse (sexual, physical and emotional) run down the familial generations as well as the silence and mental health issues surrounding it. I have a list of psychiatric diagnoses directly linked to the abuse but this is not acknowledge by my family. In fact they still go and visit one of my abusers. I cannot describe the level of betrayal I feel.

I have committed myself to various treatment for years and years now but the reality is I am having to face up to the fact that nothing has helped and in fact it has made things worse. I cannot trust anyone and feel only anxiety and shame around all people. I also have terrible problems with memory though am able to cover this up as I was taught to cover up so much it is just automatic now.

Intellectually I know I cannot run from my problems or, fundamentally, myself but contact with my seemingly normal family is so painful (and life without them so empty and lonely as I seem incapable of forming outside attachments) that I get an overriding need to run and run and run. I suppose it's the flight element in fight or flight.

I am a sensible person. I don't live a chaotic life. I have never been in debt. I am not selfish, in fact the pain I would cause my family (even though I feel I have been emotionally tortured by them over the years) stops me from carrying this out. Sometimes though, all treatments tried (and I have tried my very best since my late teens) I think well, lets just take all the money I've managed to save over the years, travel round, see the places I've always wanted to see, and then jump off a bridge to escape the mental torture I find myself experiencing daily.

I suppose I am saying that yes, some people who disappear are selfish but some are struggling with terrible unimaginable burdens and mental health problems. Families who seem so nice and normal can be covering up terrible truths. If I disappeared today I am sure there would be someone saying how terrible it is for my family and declaring me selfish but the truth is so much more complex.

@noirchatsdeux

The above was early/late 80s...very easy to disappear back then.

Yes....The person I described above...This would have been in the 1980's.

Lord Lucan was never founds was he?...

A school friend, mid-teens, was dropped off at his mate's house to hang out, and his mother never came to pick him up. She disappeared, at least for a while, I think there were MH issues. It badly affected the kid, although he was fortunate in that the family he'd been left with took him in and supported him through it and exams etc.

Another friend's husband, apparently happily married, was due to meet up with her and their DC, and simply didn't arrive. They panicked thinking something had happened to him. Some days later there was a message saying the marriage was over and he didn't want any contact with her or his DC. It later transpired he had a second family.

@WouldLikeToDisappear

That must be so painful.

Have you DC?

If you don't...Then maybe you ''Could'' travel.

But please, please don't leap off a bridge.

You are worth so much more.

It seems to be a trait in abusers to 'Minimise' their abuse....and it is sickening how they do this.

It feels like a double betrayal.

@WouldLikeToDisappear I am so sorry that happened to you, how terrible. My only advice would be do whatever is best for you going forward and do not consider the feelings of your family sending hugs

I dont know the details but my Nan did this. Had 2 young daughters, husband left for work, she took the girls to her Mother's and left. I don't know the reasons why. But she moved hundreds of miles away, had 1 more by another man and then 2 more by my Grandad. I dont know how long she disappeared for, but the 'new' siblings vaguely remember visiting family at the coast when they was young and later down the line realised the 'ladies' they saw there must have been their older half siblings. All very odd.

@oakleafy and @clpsmum thank you for your kind responses. No I don't have children as I know I couldn't give them what they need and would hate to damage them in any way. Sorry, I haven't posted such an emotive post before but this thread really raised some emotive issues.

to everyone who has been hurt by this issue, whatever side of it you are on

So, so many of these stories, it's dreadfully sad!

I've been thinking about it and think in general that one of 3 scenarios would be the reason:

1. the person has mental health problems and can't see any other way to deal with their situation
2. there's an affair/another family and they're too cowardly to deal with telling the first one
3. they're psychopaths and have no proper feelings towards other human beings, so don't actually care a button that they've caused all this trauma and pain. Given that there is a belief that about 10% of the population could be psychopaths, I think this is reasonable.

Of course there's the 4th scenario where the person has met with foul play or an accident, but I was more talking about those who are still alive but have no contact with their "left behind" family.

Currently I can't imagine doing that to my children - but there have been wild times when I've just had enough and thought "they probably wouldn't even miss me if I went, I'll just take my passport and leave" - but luckily those moments have never lasted long enough for me to actually DO it, and I'd probably have serious regrets and return anyway! Usually an hour away by myself has been enough to decompress (so far).

for all who have been affected by this sort of situation - just dreadful.

@WouldLikeToDisappear I wish I could give you a very big, very un-MN, hug.

@WouldLikeToDisappear - didn't see your post before I posted mine - I'm so sorry you've been through all that, it's unimaginable!

Perhaps if you were freed from the feelings around your family, you would be able to make connections with other people? I don't know, and I'm not suggesting you try it, just putting it out there.

@WouldLikeToDisappear

Given what you've said about your dreadful past, and the cover ups, and given you aren't responsible for the happiness of any children, then I don't think anyone would blame you for going no contact and never seeing them again. You deserve to find what happiness and peace you can and if you were able to cut free, you might be able to make a future.

Could you (and partner if you have one) make plans to move away post-Covid, build a new life, and then when ready to leave, send a message so your relatives know you're ok. You might be able to leave a message with the local police so that if you're reported missing they know not to come looking.

@grisen Shocked by a partner's death, with a newborn baby, possibly PND, I can fully imagine how someone might leave in these circumstances, and I'm sure it's much harder to ever go back.

When I had PTSD and depression, I just wanted to get on any long distance train I saw at the station, and get away. I'd be heading to work, see a train heading to the other end of the country, and it was incredibly hard to force myself not to jump on that train. Thankfully I didn't, but god, it was magnetic.

My SIL's Mother walked out on her "Philandering" husband and her two small daughters and disappeared without apparent trace. SIL was 18 months old and her Dsis was 5.
Both girls had a series of "Aunties" until Dad settled down with one particular lady who my SIL refers to as her "Mum" who stayed with Dad until both girls left home, then left Dad who had reverted to type!
SIL's sister tracked their birth Mum down some years ago but she wasn't interested in either of her daughters.
Sister took this very badly but SIL not at all as having her own Dc's felt that she was an awful person to abandon her dc's.
My SIL is a wonderful Mother a good, .kind and caring person, and perhaps this is down to the fact she was raised by someone who cared for her, her sister however has had a lot of problems with relatioships, both growing up and subsequently.

DH Mother walked out on 6 kids when he was 6, he met her just before she passed 20 years later, he says he felt nothing like she was a neighbour or family friend.
Then years later his dad went as well and he's never seen or heard from him 40 + years later ( presumed dead)
DH is remarkably balanced and we have a good life together, the rest of his siblings are no contact even with each other.