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People Who Just Disappear (Go Missing)

catseye said:
You've only got to read a few posts on Mumsnet to see the reality of people walking out on partners or families, never to be in touch again. Nothing mysterious about it, just an end-of-tether circumstance, and you don't have to move very far before social circles are completely separate too. A minor name change for social media purposes, and you have, in effect, vanished. Look at all the mothers trying to get CSM out of absent fathers (and sometimes the other way around) to see how easy it is for someone to 'disappear' if they want to.
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You are right it's quite easy just to disappear from your family, but it's not easy to disappear from society, here in the UK you have NI numbers (unless you work cash in hand) then you have your NHS number etc, it can be done with help from the authorities i.e witness protection etc but it's not easy
 
Robbrent said:
You are right it's quite easy just to disappear from your family, but it's not easy to disappear from society, here in the UK you have NI numbers (unless you work cash in hand) then you have your NHS number etc, it can be done with help from the authorities i.e witness protection etc but it's not easy
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This is true, but how many people who are reported 'missing' are never looked for by the authorities, because they know that the person is still alive - they can see activity on their bank account or NI number. It is often just family members who lose people - and that can have links to abusive behaviour and the voluntary disappearance of people who don't want to be found. Families and partners don't have access to bank details or NI activity and therefore may believe that someone has vanished, when they've just moved a long way away and don't want to tell anyone.
 
Ultimately, cutting yourself off from your family is not illegal.
Unless there's a suspicion of a criminal act - from either the 'missing' person or anyone who 'made' them 'missing' then no law has been broken. The authorities can recommend the 'missing' to reconnect but it's a tricky situation.
What if the missing person left an abusive relationship? "My daughter/slave has gone missing - I want the authorities to trace her!"

If someone goes missing then there's no drive to trace them unless there's a strong suspicion of criminality.

I could pack up a rucksack, shave my face and head, pack my pockets with cash and scoot out of my home. The morality or emotional consequences aren't illegal. The authorities cannot intervene unless a crime has been committed.
 
SimonBurchell said:
Or unless the person who disappeared is judged to have impaired capacity... i.e. not capable of looking after themselves.
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As a side issue to this (and still compatible with the thread) I was having a discussion with someone the other day about how so many people with dementia 'wander off'. I was talking to Elderly John - who, despite being in his 80s, seems to have little to no idea of how dementia manifests; he seriously seems to think it's just 'being a bit forgetful' and we got onto the topic of a few 'Disappeared People' documentaries that I've seen recently. One where a gentleman went into a shop, leaving his wife who suffered from dementia, waiting outside. She started walking, and apparently covered a fair few miles before she collapsed and died of exhaustion. Another was a lady who got off a bus at the wrong stop (no previous signs of dementia or confusion) and walked several miles in the opposite direction, despite knowing the area really well. She also was sadly found dead.

Does anyone know what it is that triggers this desire to walk and just keep walking? My experience of dementia in my mother was that she became very afraid of the outdoors and not knowing where she was, and wouldn't willingly have gone off anywhere. But then she was quite disabled by a bad hip, and could possibly have walked away in the midst of confusion. So, why is the 'walking' reflex seemingly so easily triggered?
 
catseye said:
As a side issue to this (and still compatible with the thread) I was having a discussion with someone the other day about how so many people with dementia 'wander off'. I was talking to Elderly John - who, despite being in his 80s, seems to have little to no idea of how dementia manifests; he seriously seems to think it's just 'being a bit forgetful' and we got onto the topic of a few 'Disappeared People' documentaries that I've seen recently. One where a gentleman went into a shop, leaving his wife who suffered from dementia, waiting outside. She started walking, and apparently covered a fair few miles before she collapsed and died of exhaustion. Another was a lady who got off a bus at the wrong stop (no previous signs of dementia or confusion) and walked several miles in the opposite direction, despite knowing the area really well. She also was sadly found dead.

Does anyone know what it is that triggers this desire to walk and just keep walking? My experience of dementia in my mother was that she became very afraid of the outdoors and not knowing where she was, and wouldn't willingly have gone off anywhere. But then she was quite disabled by a bad hip, and could possibly have walked away in the midst of confusion. So, why is the 'walking' reflex seemingly so easily triggered?
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They're looking for something. Whatever it is, like a long-dead family member or the house they lived in 70 years ago, can't be found so they keep going in the expectation that it will.
 
I called on my next door neighbour just as he'd sat down to watch a film and I ended up watching it as well. 2012 Ice Age.

It's about Iceland blowing up in one big massive volcanic eruption which send an equally massive glacier racing towards New York at 200mph.

It's crap, shite, and impossible with worse than awful acting with completely naff special effects, terrible screen play and a scrip that would make a Janet and John kiddies book seem rivetingly exciting. In fact it was so bad it became enjoyable watching.

If I was asked to give it a rating out of 10, giving it a zero would still be too higher a rating. It was worse than zero.

I'm sure it was a piss take of The Day After Tomorrow.
 
kesavaross said:
I called on my next door neighbour just as he'd sat down to watch a film and I ended up watching it as well. 2012 Ice Age.

It's about Iceland blowing up in one big massive volcanic eruption which send an equally massive glacier racing towards New York at 200mph.

It's crap, shite, and impossible with worse than awful acting with completely naff special effects, terrible screen play and a scrip that would make a Janet and John kiddies book seem rivetingly exciting. In fact it was so bad it became enjoyable watching.

If I was asked to give it a rating out of 10, giving it a zero would still be too higher a rating. It was worse than zero.

I'm sure it was a piss take of The Day After Tomorrow.
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Arghhhhhh.... I posted this on the wrong thread. Someone, mods, please, please, remove it to the right thread.

I thought I'd posted it here:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/films-you-dont-want-to-watch.70841/

I don't know how to move it. Help!!!
 
Last night I listened to the Dark Histories podcast about the truly weird case of James Eugene Harrison.
In 1958 he drove off on a business trip and disappeared. His car was later found abandoned, with copious amounts of blood on the front seats.
A killer, under investigation for two other murders, confessed to having killed Harrison and apparently knew details about his car and its contents that the police had not released to the public. Harrison's widow had to come to terms with the loss of her husband and started putting his affairs in order. 110 days later though, an unharmed Harrison turned up, in a confused state and claiming amnesia. The mystery has never been solved.
Listen to the podcast and draw your own conclusion.

https://www.darkhistories.com/james-eugene-harrison-the-murder-that-never-was/
 
kesavaross said:
I called on my next door neighbour just as he'd sat down to watch a film and I ended up watching it as well. 2012 Ice Age.

It's about Iceland blowing up in one big massive volcanic eruption which send an equally massive glacier racing towards New York at 200mph.

It's crap, shite, and impossible with worse than awful acting with completely naff special effects, terrible screen play and a scrip that would make a Janet and John kiddies book seem rivetingly exciting. In fact it was so bad it became enjoyable watching.

If I was asked to give it a rating out of 10, giving it a zero would still be too higher a rating. It was worse than zero.

I'm sure it was a piss take of The Day After Tomorrow.
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I want to watch it now. :nods:

I like natural disaster fillums, having been subjected to them in the '70s.
 
SimonBurchell said:
Or unless the person who disappeared is judged to have impaired capacity... i.e. not capable of looking after themselves.
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My nan - who'd lived with us for decades - had been going 'odd' for a while according to my mum. One morning, the police dropped her off wrapped in a blanket - she was barefoot and wearing only her nightie.
She'd walked about two miles, down to Woolwich market to collect fruit 'n' vegetables fallen off the stalls ... as she'd done when a child. She'd managed to tell the police where she lived and couldn't see that anything was wrong. :(
She died about a year after, before my parents could get her into care.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
Last night I listened to the Dark Histories podcast about the truly weird case of James Eugene Harrison.
In 1958 he drove off on a business trip and disappeared. His car was later found abandoned, with copious amounts of blood on the front seats.
A killer, under investigation for two other murders, confessed to having killed Harrison and apparently knew details about his car and its contents that the police had not released to the public. Harrison's widow had to come to terms with the loss of her husband and started putting his affairs in order. 110 days later though, an unharmed Harrison turned up, in a confused state and claiming amnesia. The mystery has never been solved.
Listen to the podcast and draw your own conclusion.

https://www.darkhistories.com/james-eugene-harrison-the-murder-that-never-was/
Click to expand...

An interesting rale.
 
I may have posted this somewhere before but I read that somewhere in Europe (Germany?) there was an institution that housed people with dementia who put a bus stop in their grounds. There were no buses but many residents who "wandered off" were collected there in the evening as they were waiting for a bus with an expected visitor or waiting for a bus to go to somewhere. Initially it sounded cruel, but it meant they had freedom to go off on their own seeking someone or waiting for someone without becoming lost and endangering themselves.
 
I read of something similar. Can't recall the Scandinavian country but there was a fake railway station built, complete with shops, in order to gently 'collect' those patients who'd wandered. The way this was described made it clear that this was all facilitated in a spirit of kindness.
 
Agreed! We used to help the relevant people get their coats on, check money for tickets etc, then have a ten minute walk around the rather pleasant grounds. Then another couple of staff would be by the gate to welcome them back and take them back into their house, asking about how they were and what they had been doing. Once back there would be much welcoming and tea and cake all round.

A nice way to spend an hour all in.
 
With all the talk of dementia and how sometimes people wander off and sadly come to an unfortunate end, I wondered whether anyone has ever come across Transient Global Amnesia? Note this is a completely different condition to a TIA or 'mini stroke'.

I'd never heard of it until my friend's mother had an attack of this out of the blue. For those unaware, it's a sudden, short term loss of memory which can be extremely disorientating for the affected individual. Generally considered to be unrelated to any serious, long term medical conditions, it can occur once without any further incidences. I've not looked into it much and I've not heard of any deaths connected to it, but I have wondered whether, if striking at the wrong moment (say someone hiking alone) it could lead to some disastrous and odd decision making, potentially leading to injury and/or death. After all, if a body were to be found I don't think there would be any way to determine whether this were a factor post mortem.
 
Tunn11 said:
I may have posted this somewhere before but I read that somewhere in Europe (Germany?) there was an institution that housed people with dementia who put a bus stop in their grounds. There were no buses but many residents who "wandered off" were collected there in the evening as they were waiting for a bus with an expected visitor or waiting for a bus to go to somewhere. Initially it sounded cruel, but it meant they had freedom to go off on their own seeking someone or waiting for someone without becoming lost and endangering themselves.
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I remember the story, it was in Sweden
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-10-fake-bus-calms-swedish-dementia.html
 
There is fascinating news about Jan Marsalek, of Wirecard infamy:

This is 5 months old, but still interesting:

"Soon after payment-processing giant Wirecard reported in June 2020 that nearly $2 billion had gone missing from its balance sheet, its chief operating officer Jan Marsalek boarded a private jet out of Austria. After a landing in Belarus, he was whisked by car to Moscow, where he got a Russian passport under an assumed name.

Western intelligence and security officials now say they have reached the unsettling conclusion that Marsalek had likely been a Russian agent for nearly a decade."

..."Wirecard got its start processing payments for pornography websites on its way to becoming an Internet finance behemoth. During its heyday, the company claimed to process $140 billion of transactions a year on behalf of a quarter million businesses, making it a rival of Square and PayPal Holdings. It was briefly valued at more than any German bank."

..."British prosecutors say that from 2020 to 2023, Marsalek ran a ring of five U.K. based Bulgarians who are alleged to have spied for Russia, directing them to gather information on people with the aim of helping the Kremlin abduct them. Officials say Marsalek was used by Russian intelligence services as a middleman to put distance between them and the spy network as it targeted individuals across Europe."

..."While running Wirecard, Marsalek helped the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, and the SVR, its main overseas spying organization, pay intelligence officers and informants and funnel money into conflict zones in the Middle East and Africa, according to the officials.

At the same time, these Western officials suspect Marsalek was gathering information on other customers of Munich-based Wirecard, most notably Germany’s main BND intelligence agency and the Federal Criminal Office, the country’s equivalent of the FBI, and handing it over to Moscow."

..."Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, as well as the country’s equivalent of the FBI, the BKA, told parliament during a public inquiry that ran from September 2020 to June 2021 that they had used Wirecard credit cards and bank accounts for their agents abroad as well as for paying informants at home and abroad. Senior German intelligence officials confirmed this to The Wall Street Journal. "

..."Marsalek ordered Wirecard Bank employees to breach data-protection and other rules to compile data about clients, according to testimony by former executives to German prosecutors. Several intelligence officials said it could have provided information about intelligence agents’ work. Wirecard’s former chief product officer, Susane Steidl, said Marsalek had overruled objections to collecting customer data and told her in 2019 he needed the data for the BND—something the agency categorically denies."


This is recent and even more fascinating, but unfortunately still only in German. Maybe you can turn the translation on?
At least watch the fake Russian priest!


 
Cloudbusting said:
With all the talk of dementia and how sometimes people wander off and sadly come to an unfortunate end, I wondered whether anyone has ever come across Transient Global Amnesia? Note this is a completely different condition to a TIA or 'mini stroke'.

I'd never heard of it until my friend's mother had an attack of this out of the blue. For those unaware, it's a sudden, short term loss of memory which can be extremely disorientating for the affected individual. Generally considered to be unrelated to any serious, long term medical conditions, it can occur once without any further incidences. I've not looked into it much and I've not heard of any deaths connected to it, but I have wondered whether, if striking at the wrong moment (say someone hiking alone) it could lead to some disastrous and odd decision making, potentially leading to injury and/or death. After all, if a body were to be found I don't think there would be any way to determine whether this were a factor post mortem.
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We've had discussion of this.

Techy and I went to the Lapis conference in 2019 where Dr Rob Gandy gave a talk that mentioned transient global amnesia, from which he once suffered briefly.

Memories are made of .....?

Rob Gandy will explore three areas of forteana that relate to memories.

The first will be the ‘Mandela Effect’, which is a phenomenon where a large number of people have a false memory about an event or fact.

He will then look at how transient global amnesia could account for some ‘missing time’ experiences, which those involved subsequently attribute to UFOs.

Finally he will talk about ‘Cellular Memory’ and give examples of some of the strange changes that have happened to people who have received donor organs.

Hopefully Rob’s presentation will be unforgettable!
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https://www.lapisparanormal.com/lapis-conference-2019
 
I think TGA may well be to blame in a lot of cases of missing people, particularly when they are reported as behaving 'slightly oddly' by the last people to see them. That and sudden psychosis in younger people.

A lot of us seem blissfully unaware of how even previously reliable brains can suddenly 'trip out'. Just the other day I found myself staring at my mug cupboard, completely incapable of remembering what I kept in it. I had to open it to check.*

*Before anyone starts muttering about 'poor Catseye, clearly on the blink, don't expect we'll hear much from her again...' I should point out that I've been a bit poorly lately and it's rather scrambled my thinking processes.*

*Not with anything other than just a particularly enduring head cold which has prevented me from sleeping and is being an utter bastard to shift.
 
catseye said:
A lot of us seem blissfully unaware of how even previously reliable brains can suddenly 'trip out'. Just the other day I found myself staring at my mug cupboard, completely incapable of remembering what I kept in it. I had to open it to check.*
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A while back I was sat in the living room going through in my mind, all the lamp shades we have in the house that I walk past/under a million times a day.
I could recall one or two and definitely the glass one at the bottom of the stairs, to which MrsF then informed me we got rid of about ten years ago.

Frank Skinner (comedian) said he was lying in bed one night wondering if he'd shut the garden gate.
Then he thought, do I even have a garden gate? (because he could visualise one).

Got up in the morning- no gate.
 
catseye said:
I think TGA may well be to blame in a lot of cases of missing people, particularly when they are reported as behaving 'slightly oddly' by the last people to see them. That and sudden psychosis in younger people.

A lot of us seem blissfully unaware of how even previously reliable brains can suddenly 'trip out'. Just the other day I found myself staring at my mug cupboard, completely incapable of remembering what I kept in it. I had to open it to check.*

*Before anyone starts muttering about 'poor Catseye, clearly on the blink, don't expect we'll hear much from her again...' I should point out that I've been a bit poorly lately and it's rather scrambled my thinking processes.*

*Not with anything other than just a particularly enduring head cold which has prevented me from sleeping and is being an utter bastard to shift.
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:group:
 
catseye said:
I think TGA may well be to blame in a lot of cases of missing people, particularly when they are reported as behaving 'slightly oddly' by the last people to see them. That and sudden psychosis in younger people.

A lot of us seem blissfully unaware of how even previously reliable brains can suddenly 'trip out'. Just the other day I found myself staring at my mug cupboard, completely incapable of remembering what I kept in it. I had to open it to check.*

*Before anyone starts muttering about 'poor Catseye, clearly on the blink, don't expect we'll hear much from her again...' I should point out that I've been a bit poorly lately and it's rather scrambled my thinking processes.*

*Not with anything other than just a particularly enduring head cold which has prevented me from sleeping and is being an utter bastard to shift.
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How many people who go out to work or who go out shopping, etc, can remember shutting the front door?

I went on a train journey recently and although I remember the start and finish I could hardly remember anything of the actual 2 hour train ride.
 
kesavaross said:
How many people who go out to work or who go out shopping, etc, can remember shutting the front door?

I went on a train journey recently and although I remember the start and finish I could hardly remember anything of the actual 2 hour train ride.
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When I was a kid, my Mum used to ask me what I'd had for lunch at school. Often, I couldn't remember.
I mean, why would I commit that information to long-term memory storage?
 
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