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.

These are heartbreaking, particularly children who come hone from school and parent has home or parents moved house!
It is tempting sometimes to just vanish snd start afresh re-invented but I can’t imagine these days you could vanish with cctv/bank accounts/identity checks for housing and banks etc.
Interesting about the person who was in prison! Maybe that’s the explanation for some of them.

• @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?
*
Do you mean the young lad from near Brighton? Owen?
If so, no he hasn't been found sadly.

Friend at school. Mum took him to the local playground and put him onto a swing, gave him a few pushes and just vanished. He was just left there in the playground :(

His mother never reappeared. He went to live with his grandma, and I remember my mum telling me that we should be very proud of our headmaster who was a QC, and fought tooth and nail for him to be allowed to live with his grandma and not be put into the system (no dad). He stayed at our school and I went through secondary with him as well. He turned out ok.

I remember my mum telling me that we should be very proud of our headmaster who was a QC

A headmaster who was also a barrister? Was this a very exclusive school or have I misread- that’s some career change!

Maybe a former QC turned headmaster? More likely the switch happened in that direction. Quite a lot of people retrain to become teachers after pursuing another career first.

My maternal great grandmother upped sticks with the kids and her bit in the side.

The family were in Yugoslavia, and during the war, my great grandmother Ewa disappeared for a while - she arrived at her ‘husbands’ parents house (my g g grandparents) and left my grandmother and her brother, saying she was going to work as a maid living in. Shortly afterwards my grandmother and her brother were put in a camp in preparation for transporting to Russia, but my great grandfather Stefan got them released. He went back to the farm he was working on, leaving the kids with his parents again.
My great grandmother Ewa reappeared, told my grandmother and her brother they were going to meet their Dad and be a family again, but instead dragged them across Europe with her new man Piotr. They eventually immigrated to Australia as WW2 refugees and my grandmother and her brother never saw or heard of their Dad again. They were told various stories eg he’d be shipped off himself, he had been shot (he had been previously in front of the children by Germans), he was dead etc
The official story was great grandmother Ewa was working as a maid and fell in love with the family’s son Piotr, but it was frowned upon, so they decided to leave together but she wouldn’t abandon her children. The less pleasant version is that Piotr was a minor war criminal (we hope minor!), my great grandmother Ewa was a ‘lady of negotiable affections’, and a couple with two kids makes a better, less suspicious cover story. Their ID documents were forged with new names and dates (I’ve seen what the German archives have, but have the correct legal civil documents too) They had planned to go to Canada, but failed the interviews, and then Piotr disappeared for almost two years while they were still refugees... rumour was Piotr was either serving time or that he traded information and testified in exchange for entry into Australia. Their files at the Australian archives are heavily redacted which suggests he has something to hide that the government were willing to suppress. Anyway, four months after he rejoined Ewa, my grandmother and her brother, they were on their way to Australia.
I didn’t meet Piotr as he died a few years before I was born, but no one has nice things to say about him. My great grandmother Ewa died 15 years ago, and she was an interesting character - larger than life but a very keen appreciation of getting the best out of life and anyone, so a bit of scheming wouldn’t be a stretch.
I found out my great grandfather Stefan had stayed in the village with his parents, then remarried when they died. He never had any more children, and died in the late 80s. My great uncle had wanted me to search once his mother died, but my grandmother wouldn’t let me, I think she was still worried about the files and the false documents. Her stepfather had really impressed on her that they could get deported, put back in camps etc, and it left her afraid her whole life. When she passed, I started searching and was able to find out my great grandfather’s Stefan’s fate shortly before my great uncle died last year. I hope he went with peace.

@justilou1 that's absolutely heartbreaking, your poor aunt, may she rest in peace. Is that grandmother your mother or father's mother? How was their relationship?

My real mum (I refuse to use the word step) taught me I wasn't stupid or ugly. She encouraged listened, gave love unconditionally, brought my little sis into the family and we're tight.

I want that in lights. I'm so glad your stepmother was there for you. They don't get a good press, very often.
I'm going to stop reading this thread now. I keep crying.

Yes, this is literally what my dad's mum did. My dad has 4 siblings, they got back from school one day, my dad was 8, and she had just gone. Never contacted them again. There's rumour in the family that she's still alive. Just went and started another family somewhere else. I can't understand how people can do it.

qc’s are senior barristers though, recognised for excellency and need 10-15 years barrister experience to even apply. So most applicants are in their 40’s at the earliest. Only 10% of barristers take silk and they command the best cases and top fees.

Would be unusual to get that far along in your career and jack it in to retrain as a teacher, and presumably you’d need to start as a class teacher and work your way up etc.

Same as it’s pretty unusual for consultant surgeons to retrain as teachers.

Interesting

My elderly next door neighbour went out for a walk and was never seen again. We live by the sea so there were theories that he'd ended up in the water, either accidentally or deliberately.

A lady in our town just disappeared one day. There were alleged sightings of her all over the place, but no trace of her ever found. She hadn't accessed bank accounts or anything. Her daughter works with me now and has never given up hope even though it's nearly 20 years now.

I think this sort of thing might be less likely nowadays due to CCTV etc

My biological Grandad sort of did it
My Grandma was in a relationship but he was captured and ended up in. Japanese POW camp , presumed dead. My Grandma then had a fling with an older man who was a bus driver. She found herself pg and told him. He then disappeared leaving a letter saying he was joining the Navy. A friend of his contacted her a few months later to say his ship had gone down and he was dead.
My “Grandad” returned from the POW camp to find his fiancée had a 3 year old but they still got married and went on to have more children, although things weren’t always easy for my Mum
When both my Grandparents died my Mum did my research and found that her father wasn’t dead but had fled to Wales and later married and had more children (who he then left as well)
He sounds like a real Prince!

There is a woman in my village, who's husband was a seafarer, & left to deliver a boat to Mexico, he was never heard of again, the boat was found abandoned at sea.
He was a professional sailor, but it is thought he had a series of "affairs"whist on his trips. it was also possible he was drug trafficking
So he either took off with another woman, was killed & thrown overboard by pirates/drug traffickers, or was arrested for his drug related business & is rotting in a Mexican gaol somewhere. either way, his wife & son, who was about 10 yrs old at the time, haven't heard from him for over 30 years.

A second cousin walked out on his wife and 2 year old twins. I can't remember the exact circumstances but it was something similar to going to the shops and then never reappearing.
His parents and wife spent years not knowing whether he was alive or dead. They thought he might have drowned himself in the sea as he had suffered from serious depression from the time the babies were born.
He sent them a message 10 years later saying he was alive and had a new life but wanted nothing to do with any of them and said the reason he ended up depressed and had to flee was because his father had been too harsh with him throughout his childhood and as an adult and he couldn't cope.

I knew a guy whose mam sent him to the shop for milk when he was 18 and he just got on a random train to the other side of the country, started a new life and didnt contact them for 2 years... I wonder how long she sat waiting for him to come back with the milk?

He was an ass though so totally in character.

I'm so sorry to everyone who has been affected by this. I'm surprised to see that it's not nearly as unusual as I thought it was. The repercussions for those left behind are terrible.

@NotGoodEnuff I was an only child at that point. My df had a full on responsible job and was devastated by my mother's leaving. We lived in a small town and everybody knew about it. He was mortified and (as he told me many years later) suicidal. But, with help from friends, he managed, and he and I were very close until he died in 2015.

My mother resurfaced about 6 years later with a 5 and a half year old son. Not my dad's. We didn't have much of a relationship after that - more her choice than mine. She died last year and I didn't go to her funeral

yes, but on the other end.
it turned out the dad of my friend has lead a double life for a while and then just walked out on the first family without looking back.

the first family tracked him down after a few years.
him being married twice caused all sorts of grief for my friend wrt birth certificates and passports and pension, marriage rights for the second family.

@PatchworkElmer

It takes my breath away how many stories like this there are 😔

Me too and I wonder if the reason we often instinctly don't talk about these things is because we don't want to give other people ideas 👀

My uncle dropped off his nephew at school and then vanished. It's never spoken about but we think he ran into issues with loan sharks or drugs. A cousin of his spotted him working in a club once. He was/is a strange man.

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.

My grandfather up and left my grandmother with 2 boys under 3 and pregnant with a third.
Wrote to grandmother about 10 years later, asking her to leave the boys with her parents, and join him in Broken Hill (back of beyond and way away from home). She said no. She was caring for her mother with dementia are well as her boys.
When Dad was in his 40’s he tracked his father down to Port Lincoln, where grandfather was a farmer. We made a surprise visit, I was about 6 and I remember puppies.
Christmas Day that year, police knock at the door to inform Dad of grandfather’s death. Grandfather had sold the farm and written a new will leaving everything to his sons, but had not had it witnessed, so everything went to his estranged second wife.
Apparently, grandfather had been diagnosed with lung cancer, and decided he was going to live with us. Dad had no idea and we were already tightly squeezed into our council home, where he was going to fit, I have no idea.
So 1 letter and 1 visit in 40 plus years, and grandfather decided he was moving in with us. Go figure.

A friends mum left when we were little just didn'tcollect them from school, my mum was friends with her and was totally shocked. She did resurface shortly after a few months I think by secretly contacting her daughter to try and get her things. Turned out she had left her 7 10 and 13 to old to go live with a man with a 1 3 and 5 year old and was being their mum.

Their dad found out before she could get her things told her where to go and she melted away again never to be heard from again.

A woman I once worked with told me that as a child during the war they were staying at a hotel having been evacuated. She woke in the morning to find the family gone apart from her. A couple of years later her mother picked her up with a new bloke and did exactly the same thing again to her , took her siblings and not her.
I also remember some years ago about a couple who had been for a walk along the prom , their son had gone into the public loos . They waited and waited and they never saw him come out . Probably thirty years ago. About a month ago in the news it reported they were digging up the parents' garden .

My mother did it to her family when I was 14. Myself and my two brothers were told we were moving to an Asian city as my father had got a job there...we arrived in said city only to find out that we were actually coming to the UK.

My mother had no contact with any of her family until nearly a decade later, and that was only because my younger brother got drunk on his 18th birthday and rang my grandmother and gave her our UK address. My mother was absolutely livid...

There was no good reason she did it, my father was estranged from his family and convinced my mother that hers was 'interfering' because they wanted to spend time with us. It was only when I became an adult myself and saw how much interaction friends/partners had with their families that I realised what my mother's family were asking for was actually on the low level of contact.

I've been NC with my father for 31 years and LC with my mother for 20. She ended up back in our home country after my father left her for another woman when I was 21, somewhat made it up with her family but she was still cut out of all her relatives wills (which pisses her off).

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