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.

There was a doctor where I once worked who just vanished. He left his coat and briefcase behind in his office.

He was missing for 6 months (although there were alleged sightings of him in London and Devon).

His body was found in the lake district and he'd died by suicide within hours of his disappearance.

When I was at primary school (convent) one of the young nuns went out to the shops to buy something for her mother and never came back. Her handbag was found on the beach the next day but nothing else. I often wonder what happened to her.

Does anyone know anyone that actually did this and started a new life as in they know them now and not then rather than they knew of someone that did it or it happened to? How is that person now?

@MartiniDry

My late friend, 'Susy', had bought a new hospitality business in the Home Counties with her husband. They had three young children and to the many members of the public who knew them they were happy and doing well. They'd put everything into the venture, sold their home and her DH's original business, and lived "above the shop".

Six months after taking it on her DH literally went out saying he was going to buy a loaf of bread. That was on new year's morning.

He didn't return. It became obvious that this was no accident when Susy discovered that he'd left with all the takings from the Christmas and New Year holidays. She was devastated and effectively penniless.

By the evening Susy had pulled some strings with friends in the Police and found that her DH had a tenancy on the south coast and was resident there with an affair partner.

Susy went to the bank manager the following day and begged him to have faith in her, or she would lose not just the business but also the family home above it. Thank god the bank were supportive, and over the years she made a tremendous success of it despite all odds.

She was a wonderful, strong woman who only realised that strength when her back was against the wall. She passed away far too young. I think of her often and miss her greatly.

Out of interest, rather than outing, did ‘Susy’ used to affectionately call people “Duckling”? As I may have also known (and liked her very much) her in the first half of the 90s. 💕

@OhCaptain and @SleepingStandingUp thank you for your kind responses

@Handsoffstrikesagain and @MiJulee you are right in that it does come off as extremely selfish. However, I’ll try to answer your questions too.

1. He isn’t on my radar. He was around a month old when I left, I hadn’t intended to leave but I am sure it wasn’t a complete surprise to them. His grandparents had known me my whole life and I had a tendency to run away when I don’t feel like I’m in control. On top of that, he didn’t have a name yet, a custom in our culture not just a cruel thing. Therefore he is nothing but baby G to me, nothing more, nothing less.
2. My son is 2, he doesn’t know yet but he will know. He’ll also learn about my addiction and about my depression. If he ever asks I’ll tell him all about my hectic life as a child.
3. His grandparents have the address and phone number of my uncle, who I grew up with, and he has met my son multiple times. However, I do not wish to hear about those meetings or see pictures. But if he would want to meet me, or talk, or had questions I would do what he wanted.

@EveryoneRevealsThemselves

My ex husband is technically missing at the moment. He ran his business and accommodation into the ground- ripped up and sold everything he could (literally pulled up flooring and ripped cables out. He then just disappeared. He was an abusive bastard with a nasty drink and drug problem. Both I and his family want nothing to do with him. It probably makes me an awful person, but i kind of hope that at some point we’ll find out he’s in prison or dead, because then we can truly close that part of our lives. we all live in fear of him turning up on a doorstep still.

That doesn’t make you an awful person - everyone needs closure. for you/

I think this might have been me at one point in my life. At seven years old my parents up and left a small area where their family had lived for many generations. As far as I know they told no one and I thought we had gone on a surprise holiday.
It’s weird the things that stick in your mind. My best friend at school had let me have a little red rubber ball to look after the day before. I remember being upset a week later because I lost it and thought she’d be mad at me. It was one of my older brothers who at that point said we were never going back. I never saw her again, never got to say goodbye and the life I’d always known was gone forever.
It was probably ten years before my parents went back to the area for a visit. I’ve no idea why they did it. They’re both dead now. I don’t even know for certain if any adults around them knew they were leaving but I didn’t. I feel like the ripples of this event are felt in every aspect of my life even forty years later.
So many of these stories are heartbreaking.
I’ve just remembered another one. My BIL’s mum and dad disappeared from his life. They divorced (I’ve no idea if there was any abuse) and neither of them wanted the children so they were taken into a children’s home. He never saw either of them until well into adulthood.
Years later he found his mum and discovered she’d remarried and had four more children and raised them as an apparently loving mother. He says that her (in his mind) simply replacing them was harder on him than being put into the children’s home because he had always imagined she was incapable of taking care of him. His father led a nomadic lifestyle and seemed to have MH issues.

It seems my grandfather was one of these people. My father always said that he had been quite guarded about his early life, and it was assumed by my father and his mum that GF had fallen out with his birth family, and joined the armed forces as an escape. (GF died when my father was a boy, and DF was away at school from age 5, so he didn't actually have that many conversations with him).
My father is now dead, but it seems from more recently released records (census, military etc) that at the end the first world war my GF was a widower with two daughters (aged about 10 and 8), and was assisted by the military (through forces pension and I think specific post-war one-off payment) to move to Australia to begin a new life with them.
I have no idea what happened to the girls, but 10 years later, he was back in Britain, then met/married my father's mother and had my father.
I don't think my father ever knew about these girls, because he certainly didn't have any notion that his father had been in Australia. Their forenames weren't listed in the documents I read, so I couldn't begin to trace them.

Yes a family member did this said to wife one night he was going out to buy cigarettes and never came home.
Their youngest child had recently been in a serious accident that was his fault. It was assumed he had committed suicide eventually his wife attempted to have him declared dead only to find out that all along his mother knew he was alive.
The accident he caused although life changing was forgivable but his children could never get over the abandonment and the concealing he was even alive.

Yes, a friend’s uncle (by marriage) went to work one morning and never came home. Presumably he didn’t actually go to work.

About 20 years later it materialised (not sure how) that he had moved to France that same day, and had been in loads of hidden debt. He apparently lived alone there and still does. No explanation, no note, nothing. Just vanished.

My biological grandmother walked away from her 4 young children. Grandad was away in the war, she shacked up with OM. Got found out, dc all evacuated. She and the OM then disappeared. Without a backward glance to the children.

Grandad was eventually demobbed and was able to get custody of all 4 dc. Divorce went through so I suspect he must have known her whereabouts at that point.

I discovered many years later that she stayed with the OM and had a new family with him. Stayed together but never married. Apparently told her new dc and gdc a very different story to what we were told.

We will never know the full facts of what happened but I do know one thing for sure. My DM had no contact with her BM after her toddler years. Nothing.

@notacooldad

I know you said not foul play and I don't think my examples are but I know two people, one was a close friend who said they were just nipping out to shop and then committed suicide. One was on the day of his sisters wedding and he was in an apparently happy mood and popped out for fags. his body wasn't found until the following year. The other guy ( in a different country) said he just needed something and his car was found in the woods a week later and is body a few days after that. Again out friend was happy and joking around with cousins and then poof!! Gone! I know it's not the same as the other stories but they had plans and then dissapeared from everyone's life.

This is actually very common.

When someone has made the definite decision to take their own life, the cloud of depression often lifts from them; they've made a definite decision, know what they are going to do and when, and the mental/emotional pain they are living will be gone from them - they can become euphoric - very happy, very jokey, full of fun - and this is why it often hits the family so hard "But he seemed so full of life etc". It's very common too, for them to pay all debts if they can, and return anything they've borrowed off anyone. An attempt to go with no loose ends, I think.

@Linning Both really sad connected stories.

I hope you have a happier family now

I'm in this situation now, nearly 2 years ago my estranged husband left and hasn't been seen since. He had a drug addiction and we'd split when our children were 6 months and 2 after I found out, tried to help but he put our children in danger. I couldn't let him stay after that. Was text book addiction in a way, lost his job,his car, friends, family, in trouble with the police etc. Took the police months and months to find him back in 2019 and because of GDPR they couldn't tell me anything just he was safe. He hasn't been in contact with any of his family since his mother and I had a row woth him over refusing to see or support the kids and get a drug test. He told us he planned to leave overseas which he couldn'thave done as he was on probation and hadn'tseen the kids for month. He stormed out just after my birthday and that was it. He isn't from the UK and the country he is from kicked off a search too, interpol were involved (he was on probation in the UK, I'm assuming that was why but still to this day do not know the full facts or what he was involved in) and we found out through the consulate in that country about 6 months later that they'd found him overseas. He'd used a fake passport to leave here and enter there illegally. Will be 4 years this April since we split and I have to wait until next year to divorce him. Our children are 4 and 6 and happy, healthy little girls but they have real anxiety about me leaving and follow me around the house sometimes needing that reassurance. He's missing out on wonderful experiences but they're luckily missing out on living with an aggressive drug addict who got in with truly dodgy people. He did some terrible, terrible things. It's such a waste as he was a fantastic father and just such an unlikely person to end up like this. It changed my personality but now I think it was for the better - I'm strong and still a happy go lucky person in spite of him. I have a good job and my two lovely children. There have been a few days in the past couple of months where I've realised a whole day has gone past and for once I've not thought of him or worried about him so I have hope it will get easier every month. It is selfish to those left behind but I imagine they aren't thinking in the same way we are and are in completely different places in their head. It's impossible to know.

My father never picked me up from school one day in 1986 when I was 8, and we didn't hear from him again, aside from one letter postmarked from a southern border state about four days later (this was in the US) to say he was sorry. He owned a construction company and took off with about $40k in cash, which was the float they kept in a safe on site used to pay day laborers. The police got involved and everyone was convinced it was foul play until the letter came through. I guess he's long dead by now.

@Handsoffstrikesagain I don’t believe it will cause him damage as I grew up without my parents and never felt abandoned by them. I am messed up but I have inherited mental problems and I was sexually abused at school. In fact him living with them without me is much better for him he’s there with the loveliest most caring people in the world, to the point that I can say without hesitating that if I would call them now they would welcome me back, as they did a thousand times when I was younger. Don’t forget a lot of kids are adopted without feeling abandoned, had he lived with me he would have been taken away by social services and I wouldn’t have gotten to where I am today.

@Nopreservatives

This has made me think of the boy who it was believed may have set off to walk to his gf's. Was he found?

The one last year? That's near me and no he's not been found.

My friend was 12. He came home from school one day and his mum was gone. She left him with his stepfather, who had no idea she was leaving. His biological dad was also estranged by that time. About 10 years ago my friend made the national headlines. And his mum popped up, gushing about what a great guy he was, not letting on that she hadn't seen him in 30 years. I think she may have made some money from the tabloids too. She never let on that she had abandoned him as a child.
My friend cannot form intimate attachments. He's nearly 50 and has never had a proper girlfriend, although in he would have loved to settle down and have a family. He's very well liked by everyone he meets but he's got a deep fear of abandonment and lives quite a transient life, never really putting down roots. It's such a shame, as he's a really decent person.
I remember wanting to run away when my daughter was a baby, and can understand how distorted your thinking can become in the baby years, especially with PND and sleep deprivation. But I can never understand how this woman could walk out on her 12 year old son without a backward glance.

I heard of that a long time ago. A head master of a large American school in Middle East had his wife walk out of a hotel they were staying at in Oxford St, London and he never saw or found out anything about her again.

@bluebluezoo
@MGMidget
@Newname12

Re: The headmaster/QC thing. He was probably late-fifties/early sixties, so i suppose it is more likely that he had been a QC first then retrained, but perhaps he still knew the channels to go through and had contacts I guess. I would have been around seven when it happened, and i clearly remember that lots of parents were very proud of how hard he fought on this boy's behalf.

My friends mum left when she was 6 months old. She was brought up by her paternal grandma and dad.
About 30 years later she was on holiday with her husband and met a couple who by coincidence lived in the same town where my friends mum grew up.
They suggested that she may find her if she put an advertisement in their local newspaper, which she did later and amazingly she replied!
They chatted on the phone and arranged to me up, but on the actual day her mum changed her mind as her family knew nothing about the baby she left 30 years earlier, (basically she couldn’t cope with motherhood as she was quite young)
Her mum sent her a photo of herself and wished my friend well but they never spoke again. I think it brought closure for my friend but she regretted not meeting her half siblings.