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.

My great grandad changed his name like most people change their socks! 100 years ago it was much easier to steal / fake an identity! He was a merchant seaman and off all over. Then he just vanished, my great grandma managed to track him down (god knows how) and he had bigamously married a woman in Canada under one of his other names. I've recently found that it looks like there was a third woman in Liverpool and possibly a child.
He vanished from Canada and God knows where he ended up.

We don't even know his actual name because it's not what he claimed it was on his marriage certificate with my gg

My mum maintains gg knew nothing about any of it but clearly she knew enough to be able to check under other names so 🤷‍♀️

My Great Uncle did. Just went to the paper shop and never came back. He turned up a few years later and my Great Auntie had just had a baby by someone else. He forced her to give the baby up for adoption and they got back together. It was awful for all involved. There is a bit more to it but its such a specific story I dont want to go into it in more detail.

Not quite, but my dad left his first family and wife when my half-brothers were two and five. So he had form. He then dated my mother for five years, then she gave birth to me. They were together, but not quite living together. When I was two, he was supposed to help paint my mum's house at the weekend. He didn't show up. It was the 80s so we just had a landline phone. My mum was pissed off but he'd disappeared a few times before so wasn't especially worried, he was just a flaky, off-the-radar person. A few days later she saw his colleague in town and said 'where's G?' and his mate said '...you don't know? He flew to Canada!'

It was for another woman. He did come back, when my mum managed to get in touch with OW and tell her he'd left a two year old daughter behind! (no, he never painted the house and I only saw him at weekends after that).

@Dislocatedeyeballs

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?

I knew one, she was a very dear friend. She left home at fifteen when her mother died

I was 5, my brother was 3. My dad went to work and left us at home with our 'mother'. My dad came home from work and found us with the neighbour. I'm now 40 and I've seen her once since.

I discovered in my teens that I had 3 older brothers. She had done pretty much the same to them. Guess we all need a hobby

My Nan went for milk when my mum and her two siblings were young children and came back bearing gifts a year later.

She'd left them in Ireland with their dad and apparently went to London.

No one likes to talk about it, nan was a very troubled woman

Posted too soon.

Her mum had been ill for a long time and her father had already moved another woman in who wasn't a nice person from what I could gather.

My friend never got in touch with her father or brother.

After my friend died some years ago I tracked her brother down and wrote to him informing of her death. Luckily for me he had an uncommon surname. I gave my phone number and he rang me.

He came to her funeral and was able to achieve some kind of closure.

Yes, my friend's dad. He left one evening for a packet of cigarettes and was never seen or heard from again.

We were in our early teens, if that, at the time, now in our forties. I'm still in touch with him, his mum and sister.

There was never any indication of his existence...no body, no bank card, no trace him going overseas (he had family abroad and Interpol were involved).

Thankfully the effect on those he left behind seems to have been minimal. His wife eventually remarried very happily, and both my friend and his sister are happily married with six lovely kids between them.

A family relative walked out on his second wife and 3 daughters and simply vanished. He was a travelling salesman so had contacts all over the UK and it was easier to just vanish completely in the days before the internet. Private detectives were employed but no trace was found of him and his family never heard from him again. His family, and especially his youngest daughter, were heartbroken and always hoped he'd return. His 2nd wife had to have him declared dead in order to remarry years later.
i found out in the 1990s that he'd changed his surname at the end of WW2 to the unusual surname of the man he was living with (presumably so they could pretend they were brothers rather than partners at a time when it was still illegal to be gay).
According to a coroners report in a local paper he was found collapsed in the street and died not 5 miles away from where his youngest daughter was living after she married. So sad all round

Apparently it's quite a thing in Japan to just simply vanish (and probably start a new life elsewhere) I can understand the temptation sometimes.

Kind of. A relative’s boyfriend left one morning and none of us has heard from him since. No idea where he is. He was a part of the family and the younger kids missed him really badly. But she was financially abusing him and most of us were rooting for him. It was hard not knowing if he was ok and some of us still talk about him now and again but totally understand him wanting to disappear and start again.

Also -

My friend had a good life and died too soon in her fifties of the same thing that took her mother. She is much missed by her friends.

@HemlockStarglimmer It really sounds like you were a great friend. I'm sorry for your loss
Very sad stories on this thread.

My creepy uncle’s creepy son came home from work one day to find his wife and kids gone along with all the furniture. Given that my uncle (who lived in another country so I only had to meet him 4 times) kept trying to molest me as a child when we visited and his son (who I only met once as he lived thousands of kilometres away in the other direction) gave me the absolute creeps, I expect his wife had a strong reason for vanishing.

My GP went missing in 2011. Left a note saying he was going for a walk in 2011 and never came back . My DS went to school with his and his family were devastated.

Bluezoo I remember it well, as he lived very close to us.
It was at the beginning of lockdown and he told his DM he was going to watch the sunset, and has never been seen since
He was upset at not being able to travel up north to see his girlfriend.
His Mothers partner (a musician), has written a beautiful song called 'May You Find Your Way Home' dedicated to him.

JoeBlack066, I don't recall my friend ever calling anyone "duckling".
If it helps, her initials were SS and she had been a SN teacher prior to buying the hospitality premises.

I know a few of these:

One was a friend of my mum's, he was married and a pilot - went flying one day and never got where he was going. We live on a small island so after a search he was presumed to have crashed into the sea. Devastated wife, funeral etc. Then years and years later my mum was catching up with an old friend and said 'Oh, d'you remember X who crashed into the sea, so awful' and the friend revealed that he'd got a postcard about a year after the 'crash' from said pilot who had actually faked his death and buggered off happily to South America.

A couple of others have been tourists who've come to the island on holiday and mysteriously vanished with absolutely no trace and no evidence of anything untoward having happened. They're generally assumed to have done the same thing - faked a disappearance to start a new life.

Me. I went out to buy a jar of coffee and didn’t go home. It was the only way I could leave a unhappy marriage. People can judge so easily without knowing the Half of it, and it’s very hard to explain.

A relatives mother disappeared a few days before her daughters wedding, mid fifties and married 20 plus years and just left a note to say she was going on holiday to another country. Family went searching for her, employed private investigators, missing persons case at the police. Eventually the mother went to police station to ‘hand herself in’ as not missing with instructions that she doesn’t want to be found. Family had to accept it.

I often think of Sneha Anne Philip from 9/11, and wonder if she did disappear without a trace.

I often fantasise about it, just leaving and never returning, changing my name and making up a whole new identity. I’d never do it now I have DD and some amazing dogs, but when I was married I regularly daydreamed about it

'DF' went to work one day when I was 18 months old. Never saw him again.That was 1968.
My DHs father disappeared and years later they found out he went to Australia. We were contacted after he died by solicitors about his 'estate'. We had a camping holiday on it.

I wonder how people actually, practically do it these days. I understand years ago the infastructure probably made it easier to take on an assumed name and 'disappear' How is it possible these days?