Do you know anyone who went missing?

[FuckThatBullshit]

Inspired by another poster and it's an internet rabbit hole I regularly go down because I find missing people stories fascinating and spooky and obviously very sad. Do you know anyone who just... vanished?

My grandfather left my grandmother and four children and never got back in touch.

@CoastalWave For all we know they might be the abusive ones. It's impossible to tell some people that you are safe without everyone hearing about it. She obviously needs to keep herself safe and so she can't tell anyone anything.

This thread is interesting

@marvellousmaple

The Daniel O'Keeffe story in Australia is so bloody sad. The looked for him for over 4 years and he never left the house.

I just read about that. I'm confused. If Daniel's family knew of this little area below the house, how come none of them thought to look in there for five years? Not casting aspersions, just genuinely trying to understand.

The gf of one of my friends walked out one morning never to return. It severely traumatised my friend. Years later my friend found out the gf was alive and well and living a new life elsewhere. My friend never found out why she left like that.

I know of two personally. The first was someone through work. He was so lovely and always happy. Had lots going for him. He disappeared after leaving the pub one night. He had been out with a large group all day, watching rugby. The weather was awful. He didn’t turn up for work on Monday and it seemed to take the police ages to get going on it. There were a few high profile (visible) suicides that weekend. In the end, about two years later his body was found in the riverbed during a search for another one. He was an only child. Nobody knew if it was suicide or if he had done something monumentally stupid and risky like climbing a bridge (not out of character when drunk).

The other was the older brother of a girl I knew at school. He moved to London and cut contact with his family after a falling out. They heard nothing for a few years until the police contacted them to say that his body had been recovered from theThames and had been there for a few years. Again, no answers.

Tina Satchwell just vanished into thin air. Bizarre and heartbreaking case.

Do you have a Mum/child/sister etc? Do you not ever considered contacting them just to let them know you're alive?

I didn't have children at that point, I was pretty young.

Only one member of my family would deserve to know I was OK, but I can't, it would put them in a terrible position, and compromise my life, and worse still, my children's lives.

I'm not really at peace with some of the choices I had to make, but there was no easy way. Its been a long time now, and I've had to come to terms with things as best as I could.

It makes it hard to get close to people now though. I cant tell anyone about the first couple of decades (or so) of my life.

Other things in my life have been impossible such as passport, marriage, driving licence, voting etc. One day though.

Yes, my son's friend. He has serious mental health problems and has been missing three times, each time for longer periods of time - two years last time. Sadly it's probably only a matter of time before he vanishes again

I never found out what happened to my best friend from school. We'd kept in touch by letter (this was the 70s) for about a decade until she suddenly stopped writing. I wrote to the last address I'd had for her family asking about her but never got a reply. With the advent of the internet I joined Friends Reunited and posted on the school's page for info about her but nobody knew anything and later searches on social media have also drawn a blank. Even after all these years I think about her often and wonder what could've happened.

My husband went missing for 5 days once. I know it's tiny compared to all these, and he came back home so quickly, but those 5 days were completely surreal. OK not quite as surreal as the 2 weeks running up to it. He was psychotic. Our relationship was never quite the same after that; how could it be. I'm still certain that on some level he was trying to leave me, but on another level he wanted to stay.

@Meidid I’m so sorry you went through this but at the same time it’s interesting to read. It’s really quite difficult to successfully go missing and create a new life in the UK (not sure if that’s where you are). Are you still officially missing with the police? And do you think there’ll ever come a time, maybe when your abusers pass away, that you’d let others know you’re ok?

All these stories are heartbreaking. @Meidid your story particularly so. There must be a way of being official (getting documents) without compromising your safety? Sorry if I’m being naive. Does your partner know?

@Squiff70 I don't understand either. They genuinely looked for him for years, particularly the siblings. Friends tried to help. There were facebook pages. The police checked the home, I assume more than once. It stuck with we because I don't understand it either.

He was missing. My Dad. I was 17 and living in my own place, he had stayed with me for the weekend and he left my house as he was going to a hospital appointment (Something very minor), after that he was going back to his own home. He never made it there.

I'm 40 now and a few months ago we were told his body had been found on the side of a road, He had been there for many years but not in sight of anyone, as in, Nobody would have seen his body from the road if they drove by. He was found in a very rural area. They can't tell us his cause of death.

[quote SecretKeeper1]@Meidid I’m so sorry you went through this but at the same time it’s interesting to read. It’s really quite difficult to successfully go missing and create a new life in the UK (not sure if that’s where you are). Are you still officially missing with the police? And do you think there’ll ever come a time, maybe when your abusers pass away, that you’d let others know you’re ok?[/quote]
Had it been now I couldn't have disappeared in the way I did.

There was a certain amount of what I did that is illegal, and I have been unable to do anything like get a DBS check or official documents.

If I were to ever get into trouble with the police I imagine it would all come out. I believe that I was reported as a missing person, I'm not sure what has happened with all that though.

I do check if they are still alive every now and then, but I don't know if I will contact anyone from my past again when they do go.

I'm not the same person, I have a different look, name etc and I imagine it would be quite painful for those who do miss me to know I was off having a good life while they wondered. For people to know that I was aware they were worried and missed me and didn't do anything about it would be really hurtful.

I cant imagine anything good coming from raking everything back up again, and I would have a lot of explaining to do in my life now too.

I guess I'll decide when the time comes, but I almost look back on that time as a film I once watched (I know that sounds daft) it doesn't feel real anymore.

@Ancientbride

All these stories are heartbreaking. *@Meidid* your story particularly so. There must be a way of being official (getting documents) without compromising your safety? Sorry if I’m being naive. Does your partner know?

I had a partner and we had children. The stumbling block was marriage, I couldn't, and I couldn't tell him why. It broke us in the end.

Without outing myself too much the way I went about disappearing made it impossible, if I were to try and get a passport or whatever now I would have to admit what I did and it would be a huge mess.

The only definite I have is that I will tell my children the truth when they are old enough and my abusers have died. I'm not looking forward to that conversation at all.

@Chilledchablis1

A man I used to work with went out for a sandwich one lunch and never returned . It was early 80s so pre SM etc . It was a complete mystery to his DW, DC etc. About 10 years later he turned in a hospital in a and was recognised by a nurse who had been friendly with his daughter at school.

What did he turn up in hospital in?

@Meidid I am glad that you are free now. I hope that you are able to enjoy your life to it's fullest but I get the impression that you can't travel, marry, drive etc due to a documents issue, I'm sorry if It causes you difficulties and I wish you well.

I disappeared when I was 6 but nobody noticed, it was weird because the school I went to never asked my "parent" and none of the neighbours questioned why my "parent" still lived in the same house in the same town without me, happily I don't think that could happen now.

A colleague. He just don’t turn up for work. Our manager called me to see if knew where he lived. I pointed out the apartment complex, they couldn’t find him. Randomly the weekend he went missing is bumped into him at a restaurant an hour from where we lived and he tried to knick my table, my mother was visiting me and told him off. Several years later after I and my manager had left the company he told me that the missing colleague had gone to prison, he’s been caught drink driving. He was an alcoholic and was given the job with us on the proviso he didn’t drink on the job. He’d managed quite well but towards the end of the project he’d be tipsy in the afternoons.

There were two arrests in the Andrew Gosden case earlier in the year. I’m not sure if anything came of them but it would seem to suggest that Andrew’s outcome was about the worse possible.

The Lars Mittank case just blows my mind. Nothing makes sense.

My DH. He left for work one day and just never came back. 7 weeks later his body was found

Someone I dated 25 years ago. He was always elusive, would never tell me what he did for a living. One day he just stopped returning my calls. I thought he just wasn't into me and let it go.

About 4 years later I got chatting to a woman in a nightclub. She mentioned where she lived - turned out she was the neighbour of my date at the same time I was with him. She told me he had gone missing, and had never been seen since. His family reported it, but he was never found, and everything in his house remained untouched. I had moved away and come back again during this time, so hadn't seen anything about his appearance on the local news.

I still Google his unusual name now and again, but as far as I can tell, his disappearance remains unresolved.

My lovely cousin left home at 21 when I was 10. He had gone travelling but no sign of him for ten years. I was heartbroken and I remember him later saying he had returned years earlier and would sit in a car outside his grans house who raised him wanting to go in but not feeling he could until he had made a success of his life. His childhood was full of trauma, he was raised by his gran as his, mum didn’t want him and dad in and out of mental hospitals. He was like a big brother to me and the joy I felt when he returned was amazing. He was shocked as I had turned into a woman but he still thought of me in primary school. I still remember my mum taking me to look at atlases in the library and us guessing what countries he would be in to try and comfort me when he left. Plus his old dog would walk himself on its own to our house to see me every Sunday as that’s when my cousin would come round. It was the seventies when dogs roamed alone. I never want my kids to feel they have to be a success for me to see them. I am crying thinking of him sat in the car screwing up courage to knock on the door. We are reconciled now as a family but was hard for the adults.

This is the UK missing persons website, as reported by police forces:

www.missingpeople.org.uk/appeal-search

This one lists unidentified bodies (warning, there are some post mortem photos but they’re flagged as sensitive before you click on them):

missingpersons.police.uk/en-gb/case-search

The only one that I am familiar with is one that is still quite high profile in ireland today. His name is Philip cairns and he went missing on his way back to school after lunch in 1986 I think. It still remains unsolved today but is brought up on news programs every so often. This was local to us. No body, no suspect and no answers for his poor family.