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?

I think if it's her home, it's right she should continue living there but I would ask him if he's considered allowing money for maintenance of the house as it will be difficult for you to afford for a while. It's possible that he simply hasn't thought it through.

My daughter's dad, my ex, he was very unreliable with contact so I didn't pay much notice when he stopped calling to talk to her, then the hospital called me (I was still his next of kin in his hospital records) and asked me why he hadn't attended his appointment that day. I told them I'm not his next of kin any more and couldn't help them and I didn't think to call his parents or anything because missing appointments wasn't unusual for him.

About a month and a half later I got a call from his brother, his parents were concerned because they couldn't get hold of him (again, not unusual for him, but it must have been longer than usual, or they just got the gut feeling something was wrong) so called the police who went to his flat and found his body. The post-mortem put his day of death as the day the hospital called me, asking where he was but I don't know if they actually figured out that was the day of his death or if they put it because the last known contact with him had been the day before or something. He had been dead so long they couldn't even figure out the exact cause of death, just put natural causes on his death certificate.

An old work colleague. He went missing after we worked together, I had moved city but we kept in touch. He sent me a message on my birthday and that was the last day he was seen. He got on a bus & there was no trace after that.

His body was found months later, he had travelled back to where he was from & hung himself in the woods :(

I have no idea why. He suffered from a pretty relentless medical condition so I’m not sure if it was linked to that.

I keep in touch with his sister and his nephew who he adored, it’s been over 10yrs now.

Yes I know someone who went missing over 20 years ago. She disappeared on a night out with friends. She was never found and sadly her remains were discovered several years later. It was determined she had been murdered but the killer has never been found. Very sad.

My best friend from school - at least she didn’t go missing as such but suddenly and completely cut ties with everyone when we were in our early 20s. I used to exchange Christmas cards with her parents who had been very good to me when we were teens, and the first couple of years I sent a card to their house. She’s not on any social media as far as I can see, and I tried a couple of ways to reach out to her over the years (once via her Dad and once through her brother). She just doesn’t want contact, which is sad for me but fair enough.

Fairly recently a mutual friend found her work profile complete with photo. It has her email address on it, but I am going to respect her decision and stay away. This is the first trace of her we’ve seen in 20 years, so I’m just happy that she is alive and seemingly well. We were very close for years, and I do miss her.

My dad. About 20 years ago. He's definitely still alive but I don't know anyone who has seen him for years.

@Meidid glad you're safe and well. Did you have to create a new identity / documents?

@Meidid good for you, that takes balls! Huge respect because it’s not an easy thing to do and maintain.

If you really want to stop them putting out appeals, missing persons can pass on a message and will keep it confidential and won’t pass on any details, other than to say you are safe and well. Missing persons also won’t take your address (unless you provide it voluntarily) to reassure you.

Some bizarre, sad and fascinating stories here. I will never look at a missing poster in the same way again, I'll always be wondering if that person doesn't wish to be found x

@Notoironing

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

This too. No one to this day knows where he went or what happened to him.

It was emotionally and financially hard on the young family. The children he left are now in their 80's and still understandably upset by the loss of their father. They didn't get closure.

It's possible that a lot of men returning after the war weren't ever again in a good place mentally.

A friend of mine went missing when we were (young) teenagers. This was before mobile phones existed…

She did turn up, months later - had run off with a bloke 20 years older and came back with HIV. She was pretty messed up.

Apparently I did, for a few weeks.

I went hiking in my early twenties. No mobile phones at the time, and apparently my postcards too longer than me to get home.

My family still moan about it.

Oldest sister disappeared leaving her husband and baby.

I found her about 30 years later. When she left, she truly didn't want to be found. She'd left an abusive situation.

Found the abandoned child all grown of course 5 years after. She had been adopted by a nice family and was married and had a good life.

@dworky

I think if it's her home, it's right she should continue living there but I would ask him if he's considered allowing money for maintenance of the house as it will be difficult for you to afford for a while. It's possible that he simply hasn't thought it through.

Wrong thread you want the will thread

My best friend's father walked out when we were in our 20s. A few years ago I did some digging in the internet and found him. My friend and her mother and sibling managed to see him a couple of times before he died

@NancyDrooo there’s so much personal information on some of these that it’s a wonder these people haven’t been identified. The man with the Belle compact mirror that’s got to mean something to someone

Yes, the son of a relation of dh, who vanished on his travels in SE Asia. He was of a mixed race type which meant he looked more like a local, and for that reason (the parents were told) there wouldn’t have been much trouble taken over IDing a random body (if it was ever found) with no ID on it, and certainly no local report of a missing person.

Dh was working on and off in the area at the time, so was asked to try to help. The person’s credit cards etc. had not been used for months once investigations were started.

This was ages ago now - there was never any news and his parents died without ever finding out what happened to him, let alone having a body to bury. Dreadfully sad.

OTOH I heard of an Irish family whose son had apparently vanished for over a year while on his travels in Europe. No emails, no phone calls, nothing.
He eventually turned up again, perfectly fine, no idea that his family had all been beside themselves with worry. No wonder they felt like killing him!

Ruth Wilson was my primary school teacher’s daughter. She was my teacher for four years. I often think of Ruth and her reasons because her mum was very strict and mentioned a few things like not allowing any tv in the house and other odd rules (that seemed very harsh to pre teen me). I’m convinced she ran away to freedom.

Someone I worked with. He was a sweet quiet arty guy. Went on holiday alone work realised he’d not come back/contacted family etc. He lived alone so no family realised.
Turned out he’d not caught the flight home or checked into his last hotel/out of the prev one
He was found at the bottom of a cliff a few weeks later - believed to have been taking photos

Was so sad because he would wander the whole
Building as part of his role so just seemed so tragic that he knew so many and died alone
It was around xmas too

Just sad.
We’ve had a few sudden deaths and a manslaughter (big company) but his was super sad as he was missinf for a while before he was missed

My Dad has mentioned (in passing and very vague on the details) two members of the family who have gone missing for a period of time and then reappeared.

A cousin of mine went missing for a number of weeks or months when a teenager in the 70s-80s. She reappeared, but no-one knows where she went or what happened apart from my Nan (my Dad's Mam) apparently and both refused to speak of it to anyone.

My Nan's sister also went missing for a number of years in the 50s-60s before reappearing. According to my Dad, her and her husband ran a pub or a two in London, crossed paths with some dodgy types, and had to go into hiding. Apparently she just turned up one day on the doorstep as if nothing had happened.

My mother sorry I lost my words before posting grrr

[quote kagerou]@Meidid glad you're safe and well. Did you have to create a new identity / documents?[/quote]
I do have a new name. I also got a new NI number at that time, I definitely couldn't have done that now.

I couldn't have achieved it the way I did nowadays. I was very fortunate that I left in the time period I did. I have also had to make some choices to do things that aren't really legal, such as not declaring previous names on things that require it.

Unfortunately I can't do anything official with my new name, I can't run the risk of any kind of background checks. It's fine though, I never went abroad or voted or drove before I left so it's normal for me. I also wouldn't get anyone in my life now to countersign anything either just in case they get into trouble.

I have things such as bills with my new name on, bank account (which I wouldn't have been able to do if I had left now as they are much more strict these days) so I can prove my name and address for some purposes. It was relatively easy at that point, once I got one thing with my new name on it everything else sort of fell into place.

It all sounds very drastic now I'm writing it down but I've just adapted to it, it's totally normal. I get the bus or train, holiday in the UK, I save for things because I can't risk getting credit. My life is infinitely better than it was.

@FAQs I have thought about it many times over the years but ultimately I think it would stir up interest again and things have died down a lot. I've seen online that some think I am dead, and I think that's probably a good thing. It was a lifetime ago now, when social media started up it was terrifying because dozens of people were looking for me, but its tailed off a lot in more recent years and I think that's the best thing for us all.

Its been really sad reading some of the posts on here of people left wondering and knowing that I have caused that in the lives of people I cared about. It does make me question my choices a bit, I will reevaluate the situation when some people die and after I tell my dc. I cant imagine how I will get in contact and tell anyone though, they have been supporting those who abused me so it would turn lives upside down. Maybe for their sakes its better to let sleeping dogs lie.

50 odd years ago I worked with a man who disappeared frequently so could not be relied on though would turn up again eventually.. Then he disappeared and did not return. His body was found up a mountain I think. Turned out he had been living a double life, with different name, job etc. It was in the press at the time, but I don’t remember more.

A friend of a friend went missing after a party and was found 2 weeks later in a canal- tragically he'd been seen acting erratically before hand- possibly drugs. Second was a friend who didn't turn up at work. Took a while to realise he was missing- he had flown abroad and taken his life. All very well planned. So very, very sad.

My XP. He went to the shop when DS was about 6 months old and never came home. I spent 6 weeks nearly hysterical about what had happened to him as I couldn’t find anything, I tried hospitals, police, everything I could think of. I then got a message from his parents to tell me that he was OK but had decided that family life wasn’t for him so wouldn’t be coming back and I wasn’t to contact him. They collected his things about a month later.

For years I wondered what had happened and how his parents figured in it. We weren’t close as they lived a long way away, but they seemed happy enough about us and DS. I know the police contacted them early on and they said they hadn’t seen or heard from him, plus they were technically his next of kin. They were certainly in touch with me during the “missing” period and seemed worried sick. Anyway, about 2 years ago (ie 15 years later) he turned up wanting to see DS. Turned out they knew everything from the start and helped him plan his exit in such a way that I couldn’t come after him for maintenance etc. To this day, I cannot believe that three of them were willing to do that to DS.

The bizarre thing is that when XP reappeared, he assumed that DS and I would be be delighted to see him and he and DS would effortlessly fall into wonderful father son relationship. Unsurprisingly this hasn’t quite panned out. DS has seen him twice and now refuses to see him or have anything to do with him again. XP posts all sorts of things about parental alienation on social media and is involved in a number of campaigns to change the law and penalise resident parents. My contempt for him is bottomless.