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.

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 at the beginning of lockdown? If I remember rightly the working theory is he fell/jumped off a cliff into the sea, as belongings were found near there and there is no other proof of life.

I've often thought about doing this, to be honest.
I don't know anyone who has, though.

I know of someone whose mum went missing about 20 years ago (pre internet). For weeks there was a major search and it appeared in newspapers etc.

Then the mum got in touch with the police and explained she had left a letter for her husband explaining she was leaving him and what arrangements she would make for her sons. He had seen this and read it but couldn’t accept the reality of it, and simply told people she had vanished.

Tragic for all concerned.

[quote AIMD]@Lucieintheskye
Did you ever find out why he went without telling anyone?[/quote]
He just said he wanted a new start and he was worried he'd be convinced to stay if he told anyone. His mother and sister thought he was dead for around 15 years and lots of family members died without knowing he was alive. He didn't want any contact and only liaised with the PI. We only heard when he died because he'd had it arranged to be printed in the local paper. It was all very odd behaviour and not like him at all so we do wonder if there's more to it.

A few months after my friends dad died, another family came forward. It turned out that since my friend had been a small child, his dad had another family with a lady who had originally been his secretary and who he had an affair with and two kids who were now adults.

He had gone between the two families by saying he was off on business trips. This worked for him for many years.

When he'd gone into hospital with a terminal illness he had told the other family he was on an extended trip. They didn't know he was dying. And then suddenly on their side the contact stopped entirely and money stopped going into the family account.

So my friend, on top of losing his dad, suddenly had a grown up half sister and brother turn up and so many questions about who his dad had really been. And that poor family who didn't even know their dad was dying, weren't acknowledged in the will, missed the funeral, and didn't get to say goodbye.

So many of the stories on here are absolutely heartbreaking.

AzPie - I wouldn't be surprised if your GM was totally physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted, having so many young children, and being abandoned twice by men. We forget how difficult it was for women to access help then - and even families often took the attitude of "She's made her bed- she can lie on it."

None of us will ever know the truth of what goes on in someone's mind when they are in utter despair, but the pain it leaves behind, especially for abandoned children, is dreadful.

There's a great film with Gemma Arteton that explores a mother's motivations to leave her family. Really recommend it.

I wonder how psychologists would explain this. What type of personality does it. In some cases we can assume it is caused be domestic violence or other abuse. Other times could be severe depression. But the decision to not go back, or get in touch is baffling. Perhaps they convince themselves that the ones they left behind are better off without them.

This is strange, I looked at your title OP and thought that I didn't have a story to tell, but that I would have a peruse as the few stories I have read about over the years have sounded very sad, but also fascinating. It wasn't until I read of other peoples stories, that I realised that something similar happened to my paternal grandmother. I think that it didn't click straight away as I never knew the details behind it.
It must have been sometime in the 10 years following the 2nd World War, my Uncle, my Dad's brother, just disappeared. Unfortunately I don't have any details as it was before I was born, and neither my Grandmother, nor my Father wanted to talk about it, so I instinctively as a child, didn't ask - I wish I had now, but my Dad died nearly 7 years ago (3 days away from his 90th birthday) so I have no-one left that I can ask. All I know is that my Grandmother asked the Salvation Army to look for him, I don't know if they couldn't find him, or they did, but he didn't want my Nanny to know. My Dad hated him, but again I don't know if that was because of his brother abandoning his Mum, or if it went deeper than that. On the few occasions that I tried talking to my Dad about it he said that he didn't want to know what had happened to him, but just after my Dad died one of the ancestry sites offered a free 4 week subscription, and I thought, why not. I found my Uncle under the Death Certificates, he died in the early 1990's, so about 15 years after his mother died, he would have been about 75 years old. I left it there, so I don't know whether I have any cousins or not.

This made me think of the Joan Risch case that was never solved. Left her kids at a neighbours house and was never seen again, the house was covered in blood and eyewitnesses say she might have been seen walking along the side of a main road. No one stopped to help and no body was ever found. She had also borrowed a lot of books on disappearance from the library. I think she may have had a botched abortion, but no idea what happened after, or how a seriously unwell woman who had lost that much blood might have walked far enough so that her body was never found.

@bluebluezoo

That was Owen Harding from Saltdean. I know at Christmas he still hadn't been found.

They think he might have fallen/jumped off the cliff and his body was washed out to sea, but there's no proof of what happened to him. Awful for his family, his mum and little sister particularly.

@handonfoot

Pre kids I could NEVER understand how's mother could leave her own children. But then I had children...and I had quite bad PND. There has been SEVERAL times I have gone to walk out the door with the mindset of never coming back and that they would be better without me. It's a hard mindset to shift and now I can totally see why/how this happens unfortunately.

Same

My mum's old friend took the children to church one Sunday, and came back to find her husband packed and gone and a letter on the mantlepiece saying he wouldn't be back. DM had never particularly like him, but said this was low, even for him. Her friend was devastated and had three kids to bring up alone.
I think one of the kids somehow or other tracked him down and heard, many years later, that he had died. She went to the funeral, only to discover he had a "new" wife and more children who had no idea of the existence of his first family.

My mums best friend at university. She married somewhat in haste as she was as strict Catholic and it was the only way her and fiancé could start their sex life. They had two small kids, he said one day he was going for cigarettes and never came back. She raised the kids alone and they turned out well.

I had a relative (not close) who left the family home without a word when the youngest child turned 18. Disappeared totally,. It was discovered about a year later that he had been conducting an affair and was living in a different town with the new woman. In his case the reason for leaving silently was pure cowardice, since money wasn't involved as the kids were adult.

Not disappeared completely. As a teen, I was surprised when a friend didn’t turn up at a weekend event. It turns out, that mum had picked them her and her sister from school, then moved across the country to a new area (and new man?). So they didn’t disappear as such, but started a completely new life elsewhere.

@SchadenfreudePersonified

So many of the stories on here are absolutely heartbreaking.

AzPie - I wouldn't be surprised if your GM was totally physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted, having so many young children, and being abandoned twice by men. We forget how difficult it was for women to access help then - and even families often took the attitude of "She's made her bed- she can lie on it."

None of us will ever know the truth of what goes on in someone's mind when they are in utter despair, but the pain it leaves behind, especially for abandoned children, is dreadful.

I think that's why my mum and most of her siblings forgave and re-built their relationship with my GM as they realised she must have been struggling so much. GM had several siblings and as far as I know, none of them offered to help her, so I do think they all had the attitude of you've made your bed you can lie in it.

Same with great GM, I think she would visit now and again but had the attitude of they are your kids you look after them..until she had the choice of looking after them or all of them going into care when GM disappeared. I don't think she was very helpful when the men up and left, my mum has mentioned that her GM was of the firm belief that my GM was to blame for them leaving (and with GF that it was her fault he was a drinker). Again from bits and pieces, my mum has said my great GM was (to her anyway) firm but fair, not loving but not cruel. It does paint a picture of the sheer desperation GM must have felt after being abandoned again soon after having another baby.

DF did, because of data protection, you can't do too much to find adults if they disappear though without good reason. I tracked him down with help when DM died as he had to sign some papers, he said he went not because of disliking his family but because he felt trapped. DH and I are the only ones back in contact with him, he is elderly now and we try and visit each year, we visit while staying on holiday nearby, lockdowns permitting as he lives 400 mile away.

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.

Oh, I had a great-uncle who used to 'disappear', too, but he always came back. The family said he 'went walkabout' (we're white-British, northwest, working class.... but we used that term) and it was assumed he was with Travellers. Someone recently suggested the family might have been covering his spells in prison...

My husband's grandfather (before his birth - this was in the 60s) leaving a pregnant wife and a toddler daughter.

Went to the shop for a packet of fags

@JovialNickname

Me. I did and am still officially a missing person.

The police are aware I am alive and safe, and have relayed that to relatives with a message they're not to look for me.

(I won't be responding to any questions about the situation.)

Surely once the police are aware you are fine you are no longer still offically missing

@Blackcountrychik

The story of Natalie Putt , the 17 year old girl who left her 11 week old baby and popped to the shop for cigarettes in 1993 and never came back , she’s suspected to be dead ,

I went to school with Natalie. She wouldn't have left her son willingly.

Yes, MIL. Her Father was in the first windrush generation and came over after the war. He met my husband’s grandma not long after and she soon fell pregnant.

Her parents washed their hands of her (very strict Catholic and Northern family) and they got married. A week after their tenth child was born he went to work and never came back, DH’s uncles (age 11, 10 and 6) were sent to every door of their dad’s friend trying to track him down. One of them eventually fessed up he’d gone back to Jamaica, chucked them a ten bob and that was the last they heard until the millennium when they found out he’d come back about 10 years after leaving.

MIL’s mum went begging to her parents and had to endure being disgraced by the entire town of not only being a single mother but the single mother to the only biracial children where they lived. She had to leave her babe in arms with a neighbour and went out working all hours at all manner of awful jobs and barely scraping enough to feed and clothe them. They were destitute and MIL said it was hell growing up but they’re stronger for it.

Her mum died in the late 90’s surrounded by her children and grandchildren whilst her dad died alone despite having fathered twenty kids (that we know of) because he did this multiple times. Once before emigrating to his childhood sweetheart, once to his wife here, once to another woman who he brought back over and their three sons and to another couple here and there.

MIL met him when she was in her late thirties with a couple of her sisters for an explanation and I shit you not his wording was ‘if I was supposed to stay in one place I would have been born a tree’. He was utterly remorseless and could not understand why they didn’t want anything to do with him.