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.

Not quite the same as popping to the shops but a friend's father disappeared a couple of years ago.
He and friends' mother live overseas. He had dementia and would go for a walk every day, following the same route
There had been no concerns with this routine. Everyone knew him in the neighborhood and would look out for him.
One day he went for his usual walk and just vanished.
He has never been found.

We have a local one that's never been resolved. Owner of a large family furniture store just disappeared in 2011. He cancelled a couple of things before disappearing, said he would see his brother soon and then never seen again and car never found.

My uncle left after my grandads funeral he came back seven years later no explanation then went again

My DH came home from school at 9 years old and his DM had gone. She left him and a younger brother. He said they thought she was dead until a letter arrived a week later saying she had moved over 250 miles away!
She sent birthday and Christmas cards for the first 2 years and then contact dwindled. Her sisters disowned her and it became a taboo subject.

35 years later DH half brothers tracked him down, they tried FB and then Ancestry website. They were wanting to tell him she was dying. By the time they made contact she had just died. DH went to her funeral and met several half siblings, all in their 30s.
I feel it gave him some closure, but very sad it was too late.

My father had a friend when he was a young man who disappeared in the late sixties. Dad felt that his friend had probably joined the merchant navy and maybe settles in a commonwealth country.

A man from my large office went out for cigarettes at lunchtime and never came back. He lived with his girlfriend and never went home.

Many years ago my colleague was professionally involved in a case where a 15 year old boy had gone home from school one day and his family had moved house without telling him. His family tried to take legal steps to prevent the disclosure of their new address!

@HiveQueen

Sorry you went through similar. Mine disappeared before I took my GCSEs and I remember speaking to him after I got my results, and he sounded so proud of me. We had no idea at that time, and I did fairly well. We found out the full truth a year or so later and, needless to say, my A Level results suffered a lot. My sixth form were very good about it and raised my grades and so on, but I was upset because I'd worked so hard up until then!

If it wasn't for my DM still suffering, I wouldn't give him a second thought, now.

@grassisjeweled

Jovial said she didn't want questions, please stop asking.

Wrong, Jovial said they won’t respond. That’s not the same as saying don’t ask. So stop policing people.

Two of our friends 'Bob and Tim,' were house sharing. When Tim got up one morning to go to work he assumed Bob had already left. It was only a day or so later when Bob's boss phoned to ask where he was that Tim realised he was actually missing and contacted the police. Sadly he had taken a flight and was found dead in the country he travelled to. He had taken his own life. It was meticulously planned. He had been struggling with his mental health and no on knee. Such a lovely man. So sad he felt he had no one when we all liked him so much. And he and 'Tim' had house shared on and off for years but he couldn't even talk to him.

Two stories

My mum’s friend, a widow, met a much younger man. They got married. She lost widow’s pension. She came home from work one day to find he had left and taken all his stuff with him. They didn’t meet again for a few years, by which time she was utterly broke and broken.

Second, my married friend’s widowed father completely disappeared one day. She heard nothing from him for about 10 years, then my OH spotted him in a town 400 miles away and told her. The Salvation Army finally tracked him down. He was bankrupt and ashamed to tell her. They reunited and have been ever since. Happy ending.

I have an uncle that disappeared for 10 years. He was living in a foreign country and just stopped contacting everyone so we all assumed he was dead. He eventually resurfaced with a weird story about being falsely accused of something and had to go into hiding. A Google search revealed he'd been to prison for downloading child sexual abuse images.

Most of the family have believed his false accusation claims. He's reinvented himself as a Muslim, very active in the church and has even remarried. I fucking hate him

I know someone who has 7 children..his wife left one day and never came back and now he and his then affair partner are bringing up the children. I guess it's obvious she at least partly left because of his affair but his youngest daughters are always asking about their mum..they're beautiful well behaved sweet children and I feel so badly for them.

I’ve been on the side of this as the ‘new family’. We weren’t a secret to them. Dad just walked away from them. I can see the damage it did to them and I think it’s horrible.

One day, another one of Dad’s children turned up on our doorstep. I didn’t even know this person existed (they were much older than me, I was a teen). I was so pissed off at the recklessness of it all. I just had to accept this person as my “new sibling” and I found it really fucking disgusting (on my Dad’s part). I am really against having a blended family now (as in, I would not want that for myself or my kids), however irrational that sounds. It was so messy and painful.

My eldest father disappeared. We were no longer together but one day he just disappeared. He surfaced again three years later but then kept up the disappearing acts. My child no longer has anything to do with him (child's choice).

My now ex-h became a missing person many years ago. He turned up eventually and needed psychiatric help. I’m not going into detail as it’s quite outing. But it was a very strange experience for both myself and the friend he had been with when he’d gone missing.

@Catwoman123

I know someone who has 7 children..his wife left one day and never came back and now he and his then affair partner are bringing up the children. I guess it's obvious she at least partly left because of his affair but his youngest daughters are always asking about their mum..they're beautiful well behaved sweet children and I feel so badly for them.

Are we sure she is alive? As in, maybe he disposed of her

[quote Raaaaaaarr]@JovialNickname I don't even know what to say....I really hope you didn't leave any kids behind.[/quote]
Well that’s really fucking helpful isn’t it

@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?

I think I know who you mean as this was a friend of a friend. Was it in the 80s oop north? I didn't know or meet him but had a friend when i was younger who played football with him and it shook me up a bit at the time. 4 or 5 years ago i was randomly reading about something else and his name came up in this big long thread about missing people they'd linked to a big paedophile ring in the 80s... maybe just a conspiracy theory but really upset me at the time reading

My relative suffered with depression on and off for years. At the time of their disappearance they were well. But they went out to the shop one day ( driving) and never returned. Their youngest child was three.
No trace of them or the car ever found snd they were legally declared dead a number of years later as they had left fairly significant assets and the siblings caused utter mayhem for the other parent of the children.
It’s almost a taboo subject. Both of their parents have since died heartbroken without knowing the truth.

@changingmine All ive heard is that she upped and left. Another person told me that apparently one of the girls saw her mum walking past her school one day but the teachers wouldn't let her go out of the classroom and she was hysterical and got sent home. I still see the mums sister around so surely if she was missing missing then there'd be a police enquiry?

This happened with my grandmother, my mum hasn't spoken about it much but from what I know of things she has said as well as bits from my aunts/uncles this is what happened;

GM married young, had a baby, then found out she was pregnant again when her firstborn was a few months old, she was so distraught she tried several things to try and miscarry (which she also did with each pregnancy). It didn't work and she had more children in quick succession, she ended up with 5 children under the age of 8. GF decided after the 5th baby he didn't want to be a husband/father anymore and just left.GM went straight into another relationship and had 2 more kids (less than 2 years apart), I don't know how soon after the youngest was born that the boyfriend left but he was never heard from again.

When the youngest was a few months old GM left the oldest of the 7 children in charge whilst she popped to the shop for a loaf of bread, she didn't come back. Great grandmother looked after them for a number of years, the 2 oldest children were the most affected by being abandoned not only by their dad but also by their mum, they ended up in care because great GM couldn't cope. When GM eventually got back in touch she had moved quite far away and wanted her kids back, so the youngest 5 went to live with her, the second oldest eventually moved to the area (when she was a young adult). The oldest child never forgave GM and they didn't speak, when GM was dying my mum and her siblings reached out but oldest sibling didn't want anything to do with any of them. The second oldest had a very strained relationship with GM but my mum and the rest seemed really close to her. When they talk about her there is nothing but love for her so I think they forgave her completely for what happened.

I didn't find out about any of this until after she died, it seemed so bizarre to me as my GM was a really caring GM who would do anything for her grandkids and great grandkids and was very hands on(I have many happy memories of sleepovers at her house and holidays/days out with her). I think she had some sort of breakdown, sorted herself out and then tried to make up for what she had done, unfortunately, the damage was done with the oldest 2 but particularly sad that the oldest sibling never spoke to her again and doesn't speak to any of their siblings (I'm sure there is probably more to it but I'll never know).

Yes - my dad.
I was 8 my sister was 10. Him and my mother were together for 14 years.
He got us as normal for work, stood at the window, waved bye and was never seen again. It's been 16 years now and we've never heard a word.

We know nothing 'happened' to him because the CSA found him and made him pay child support by attachment of earnings.

But he left for work on a normal day, no argument nothing just a normal day and never returned or ever got in contact. No birthday card no nothing it was simply like he walked off the face of the earth.

@Fudgsicles that must have been so hard for you growing up.

Just adding to my comment about my PND and wanting to leave. I never left, I had some therapy, a very supportive husband and I have worked through it. 99% of the time I am fine. It is there in the form of the 1% but I am ok with that and I can manage it, I love my children dearly (although I do find them hard work 😓) BUT nobody said it would be easy I suppose. But I would NEVER judge a mother for leaving her children now, in fact I just see it all as a last resort and cry for help.

I wonder and men and women have different triggers for leaving. I could never get why women would leave their children, but like pp have said, when I had my own, and they were v small and I wasworking full time etc, I did used to think about just upping and leaving and starting again by myself. I suddenly realised how so many women may have done just that, especially if in abusive or miserable marriages. And especially in times were divorce wasn't so easy.

I know someone who did that and went to Spain for a fortnight.