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People Who Just Disappear (Go Missing)

Neil Skinner, 72, is a hiker who went missing near Bridge of Orchy last year.

Phil Jones is the leader of a voluntary underwater search and recovery team, Beneath the Surface. His team spend most of their weekends helping families look for missing loved ones. They are currently looking into Skinner's disappearance with assistance of volunteers..

Safe BBC News link -
The strangers searching for missing hiker Neil Skinner

Phil contacted Neil's daughter, Kate Armitage, last year after hearing about the case and offered his assistance as there was a loch potentially involved.

"We didn't do any initial water searches at the time, the police search and rescue teams did that," he says. "But Neil's still missing a year later and I wanted to see if we could do anything extra to help the family anyway.
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Phil organised a social media page for volunteers to carry out a land search of the area where Neil was last seen. The page had more than 90 people involved, all eager to find Neil and solve the mystery of his disappearance.
Last weekend five of them made the journey to the remote location where he was last seen.
"Whether it's one or 100 people, folk came out and volunteered so I'm very grateful for that," Phil says.
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escargot said:
Neil Skinner, 72, is a hiker who went missing near Bridge of Orchy last year.

Phil Jones is the leader of a voluntary underwater search and recovery team, Beneath the Surface. His team spend most of their weekends helping families look for missing loved ones. They are currently looking into Skinner's disappearance with assistance of volunteers..

Safe BBC News link -
The strangers searching for missing hiker Neil Skinner
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Isn’t that the same area as the cyclist who was missing for ages eventually found in?
 
hunck said:
Isn’t that the same area as the cyclist who was missing for ages eventually found in?
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Yes, Tony Parsons disappeared somewhere between Bridge of Orchy and Tyndrum (the last sighting of him was at the Bridge of Orchy Hotel but he never appeared on roadside CCTV recordings in Tyndrum) and his body was eventually found buried on the Auch estate, halfway between the two villages.

IMG_7082.jpeg
 
I think there;s a thread for missing people whose bodies are found after a long period but I can't find it.

Police have confirmed human remains found in a field are of a miner who went missing 56 years ago.

The remains were found in farmland off Coxmoor Road in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, on 26 April. A murder inquiry was launched last month and police have now confirmed the deceased man is Alfred Swinscoe, a father-of-six and a miner. Officers believe he was killed and buried in land about four to six-foot deep.

Nottinghamshire Police said officers were contacted by Russell Lowbridge, who was four years old when his grandfather Mr Swinscoe went missing in "mysterious and unusual circumstances".

DNA tests were carried out on Mr Lowbridge and Mr Swinscoe's son, now in his 70s, and matched against the bones exhumed from the ground.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-65842590
 
Coroner 'at loss' to explain how mother and daughter died

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-65846025

Zarin Adatia, 84, and her daughter Tasneem, 48, were found in a council flat in East Finchley, last November by gas inspectors.

An inquest at North London Coroner's Court heard there was no suicide note or signs of forced entry.

The rent on the flat was being paid every month they were not seen.

A post-mortem examination found their cause of death to be unascertained while no toxicology report could be carried out due to the passage of time.

It heard that Tasneem suffered from diabetes and was her mother's carer.
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The Coroner said "When I read of your mother and how they were found I was left thinking about carbon monoxide, gas safety but there was no evidence of that being a contributory factor."
 
Erinaceus said:
The Coroner said "When I read of your mother and how they were found I was left thinking about carbon monoxide, gas safety but there was no evidence of that being a contributory factor."
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But there was no evidence of anything, due to the passage of time. So I'm not sure how they can write anything off.
 
Perhaps they were able to establish the boiler or whatever was in good order although it doesn't say why "Gas inspectors sent six letters, made three phone calls and knocked on the door three times between last September and the day they were found on 24 November".
"A red sticker warning people not to try to enter the property was on the door shortly before they were discovered" but we don't know who put it there or what it said.
 
Was the gas bill being payed? maybe the inspectors were there due
to non payment.
 
catseye said:
But there was no evidence of anything, due to the passage of time. So I'm not sure how they can write anything off.
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The purpose of a coroners inquest is to establish technical details around a death - in such circumstances 'no evidence of' is not the same as 'didn't happen'; if they can't find physical evidence of a particular thing then further exploration of that thing would be conjecture - and that's not really their job.

For instance, if you took the case of an alkaloid poisoning (at least back in the day - there may be more advanced tests now) - it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to find post-mortem evidence of such. In these circumstances a coroners inquest might find no evidence of alkaloid poisoning, while implicitly accepting that it could still be a possibility. If deemed that further inquiry was necessary, it would be up to the police and the courts to sort that out.

RaM said:
Was the gas bill being payed? maybe the inspectors were there due
to non payment.
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Even if the bills were being paid, being rented accommodation the boiler would need an annual gas safety check by law - which might explain the visit.

I have a vague memory that I've read that carbon monoxide is not particularly easy to detect in bodies that are a bit far gone, even in bodies less far gone than these would have been (I think I may also have read that CO is produced in decomposition - but may be totally misremembering that). I suspect one of the reasons for the 'no evidence of' reasoning was that all relevant appliances were tested after discovery and found to be in good order, and switched off - and any flues were checked.

One thing I wonder about these days is if the ubiquity of the direct debit is making such cases more common. After all, if the majority of your utilities and regular outgoings are paid by DD, then no-ones going to be noticing any non-payment until your bank account dries up - and if any relevant benefits, pensions etc are getting paid into that account, that could take quite a long time. And even then I reckon you'd still be looking at a few months before the admin kicked in.
 
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Spookdaddy said:
One thing I wonder about these days is if the ubiquity of the direct debit is making such cases more common. After all, if the majority of your utilities and regular outgoings are paid by DD, then no-ones going to be noticing any non-payment until your bank account dries up - and if any relevant benefits, pensions etc are getting paid into that account, that could take quite a long time. And even then I reckon you'd still be looking at a few months before the admin kicked in.
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Yes, see here;

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/dying-alone-loners-unnoticed-deaths.68339/
 
I'm still following the news about Jan Marsalek, the Wirecard fraud crook. Recently some new articles were published in Germany:

https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/wir...er-schatten-des-jan-marsalek-teil-2-li.359869

On June 16, 2020, the financial supervisory authority informed the public prosecutor's office that alleged bank documents concerning the existence of 1.9 billion euros in credit balances in escrow accounts in the Philippines had been falsified, after the special auditors from KPMG had already found fault with the fact that the existence of the credit balances and thus one third of the balance sheet total of Wirecard could not be proven. ... Prosecutors even waited to issue an international arrest warrant until Marsalek failed to show up for an appointment in Munich arranged with his lawyer, who assured that Marsalek wanted to "look for" the money in the Philippines. ... The Wirecard scandal and the figure of Jan Marsalek may appear to be a complicated criminal case. But at its core it is quite simple: The claim that the German security authorities did not even know who Marsalek was must be chalked up as a lie. And if security authorities lied to the investigative committee of the German Federal Parliament, there must be important reasons for this. One thing is certain: there is obviously no interest in Jan Marsalek returning to Germany and testifying. For he is guarding many dark secrets.

https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/wir...er-schatten-des-jan-marsalek-teil-1-li.359251

He is on Interpol's wanted list and was featured on " File XY... Unsolved" on the German TV channel ZDF. At Munich airport, his wanted poster was hanging right next to the passport control. Politicians and security authorities are performing the feat of feverishly searching for a man they definitely do not want back in Germany: Jan Marsalek, the former chief operating officer and Asia board member of payment services provider Wirecard AG, who left Germany unchallenged on June 19, 2020, in the wake of Wirecard's billion-dollar bankruptcy three years ago. ... That Marsalek and Wirecard had numerous connections to people in the intelligence world is documented. A few examples: ...
The German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) used credit cards from Wirecard. On one occasion, Marsalek requested all of Wirecard's customer data on the grounds that the BND wanted to use it. However, the BND denied that there had been any such request. ... The German government's former intelligence coordinator, Klaus-Dieter Fritsche (CSU), advised Wirecard and the former Austrian Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BVT) during the BVT scandal surrounding Russian influence on the Austrian intelligence service, with the approval of the Chancellor's Office. Two key figures in that scandal, Austrian agents Martin W. and Egisto O., were closely associated with Marsalek. W. even had an office in Marsalek's villa, and both were accused by prosecutors of helping Marsalek escape.

Then Donald Trump came to power. Jan Marsalek sought help from a former CIA official who was close to Trump. The investigations against Wirecard were dropped in an intensive dialogue with US authorities, and Wirecard was even awarded the prepaid card business of the USA's CitiGo a short time later, enabling the cards to be topped up with large sums of money. Prepaid cards are considered a central tool of organized crime for concealing money flows.

https://financefwd.com/de/drei-jahre-wirecard-de-masi/

https://www.t-online.de/finanzen/ne...tin-hat-die-bundesregierung-in-der-hand-.html

Two years ago, the Wirecard Group imploded. The former CEO is in custody, his board colleague is on the run. What did the current chancellor know? ... Ex-Asia board member Jan Marsalek was already on the run. Since then, he has been wanted internationally, is said to have good connections to Russia and is probably staying in the country. This means that one of the most important people for decoding the Wirecard scandal is probably in Putin's hands - and Putin will try to play this trump card, as experts suspect. Also with a view to the German government (see penultimate section).

As the newspaper "Bild" wrote at the beginning of April, Marsalek is said to have gone into hiding in Moscow and to have lived only a few kilometers away from the Kremlin - and possibly still lives there today. The Austrian is also said to be under the "care" of the Russian domestic intelligence service FSB. German authorities are said to have been aware of this since 2021. According to Bild, the FSB is said to have offered the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) a meeting and an interview with Marsalek.

The BND headquarters in Berlin had been informed of the offer, but did not respond to the request, according to the report. The Chancellor's Office was also said to have been informed about the explosive offer of talks.

"German security authorities let Marsalek walk out with the help of Austrian ex-agents, even though he publicly waved secret documents on the Skripal attack, for example." In fact, Marsalek's escape was probably meticulously prepared. According to a report in Der Spiegel, Marsalek is said to have made his way to Russia via Belarus on the very day of his release, June 18; while still a Wirecard board member, he boasted of his connections to intelligence agents.


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The disappearance of YouTube blogger Kenny Veach is about as Fortean as you can get.
Posting under his blogger handle of snakebitmgee, the Las Vegas based explorer would post about his rambles in the vicinity of Area 51.
He claimed to have discovered a cave, with an entrance resembling a capital letter M not far from Nellis Air Force base.

According to his blog "I always enter every cave I find, but as I began to enter this particular cave, my whole body began to vibrate. The closer I got to the cave entrance, the worse the vibrating became. Suddenly I became very scared and high-tailed it out of there. That was one of the strangest things that ever happened to me."

When he vanished in November 2014, the 47-year-old was believed to be on a return trip to the mysterious cave. When he failed to return, his girlfriend posted a missing person report.
His phone was found near a mine shaft but his body has never been recovered.

veach.png



https://www.ladbible.com/community/man-goes-missing-near-area-51-cave-056128-20230320
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
The disappearance of YouTube blogger Kenny Veach is about as Fortean as you can get...
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The story is a bit of a regular in podcasts that deal with mysterious disappearances and the like.

From what I recall, Veach liked to take risks, and liked to tell everyone that he liked to take risks.

At the point I learned that, it appeared to me that the chance that any actual mystery was involved seemed somewhat diminished.

Can't cheat the mountain, pilgrim.
 
Spookdaddy said:
The story is a bit of a regular in podcasts that deal with mysterious disappearances and the like.

From what I recall, Veach liked to take risks, and liked to tell everyone that he liked to take risks.

At the point I learned that, it appeared to me that the chance that any actual mystery was involved seemed somewhat diminished.

Can't cheat the mountain, pilgrim.
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I suspect the odds are that he fell down the mineshaft. Given that his phone was found nearby, I would expect at least some basic search of the shaft to have occurred though and the fact that no remains have been found some 9 years after the disappearance is a bit strange I suppose.
The claimed weird cave vibrations and the proximity to Area 51 spiced it all up with a Fortean flavour, which is why I thought it was worthy of a mention here.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
The disappearance of YouTube blogger Kenny Veach is about as Fortean as you can get.
Posting under his blogger handle of snakebitmgee, the Las Vegas based explorer would post about his rambles in the vicinity of Area 51.
He claimed to have discovered a cave, with an entrance resembling a capital letter M not far from Nellis Air Force base.

According to his blog "I always enter every cave I find, but as I began to enter this particular cave, my whole body began to vibrate. The closer I got to the cave entrance, the worse the vibrating became. Suddenly I became very scared and high-tailed it out of there. That was one of the strangest things that ever happened to me."

When he vanished in November 2014, the 47-year-old was believed to be on a return trip to the mysterious cave. When he failed to return, his girlfriend posted a missing person report.
His phone was found near a mine shaft but his body has never been recovered.

View attachment 67454


https://www.ladbible.com/community/man-goes-missing-near-area-51-cave-056128-20230320
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Kenny has been mentioned on'ere before.
As @catseye mentions, he seems to have fallen down a mine shaft. You'd think someone might've, y'know, had a look.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
I suspect the odds are that he fell down the mineshaft. Given that his phone was found nearby, I would expect at least some basic search of the shaft to have occurred though and the fact that no remains have been found some 9 years after the disappearance is a bit strange I suppose.
The claimed weird cave vibrations and the proximity to Area 51 spiced it all up with a Fortean flavour, which is why I thought it was worthy of a mention here.
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The vibrations thing reminded me of a friend who has epileptic fits and how she feels shortly before a fit overtakes her. I wondered if Kenny had ever been checked out for brain tumours or other problems which could have caused late-onset fits in certain circumstances, as this may have contributed to his disappearance.

Not finding remains, when they could be widely spread down a mineshaft wouldn't immediately make me think 'oh, yup, he's not down there.'
 
catseye said:
The vibrations thing reminded me of a friend who has epileptic fits and how she feels shortly before a fit overtakes her. I wondered if Kenny had ever been checked out for brain tumours or other problems which could have caused late-onset fits in certain circumstances, as this may have contributed to his disappearance.
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The epilepsy thing might be a factor in many phenomena. Visions, hearing voices, timeslips, apparent ESP, all sorts. We used to have threads on it.
I've been told off by disgruntled posters on'ere for mentioning this but it has to be said.

One of my jobs was caring for people with severe learning difficulties, many of whom had regular seizures, so I learned a lot about epilepsy.

It really is a fascinating subject. There's a spot of it in my own family; not surprisingly as epilepsy in various forms and with different levels of severity is not rare.
 
catseye said:
The vibrations thing reminded me of a friend who has epileptic fits and how she feels shortly before a fit overtakes her. I wondered if Kenny had ever been checked out for brain tumours or other problems which could have caused late-onset fits in certain circumstances, as this may have contributed to his disappearance.

Not finding remains, when they could be widely spread down a mineshaft wouldn't immediately make me think 'oh, yup, he's not down there.'
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I occasionally suffer from migraines; not so much these days since getting a new job; but I can tell when one is coming on because my eyes start to vibrate. They are very much anxiety and stress related. It's a very weird sensation as once it starts if I move my head, my vision starts to smear as well. I can well imagine someone believing the room was vibrating if this happened to them.
 
escargot said:
It really is a fascinating subject. There's a spot of it in my own family; not surprisingly as epilepsy in various forms and with different levels of severity is not rare.
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My oldest step-son has only recently been diagnosed with epilepsy (in hospital), after suddenly experiencing a massive seizure.
Once, with his new meds being 'in transit', he went to his local G.P. to ask for an emergency prescription. The doctor absolutely refused as he'd not been informed of the diagnosis and my step-son (looks young but is almost 30), the doctor assumed he was trying to get the drugs to sell! :mad:
 
Stormkhan said:
My oldest step-son has only recently been diagnosed with epilepsy (in hospital), after suddenly experiencing a massive seizure.
Once, with his new meds being 'in transit', he went to his local G.P. to ask for an emergency prescription. The doctor absolutely refused as he'd not been informed of the diagnosis and my step-son (looks young but is almost 30), the doctor assumed he was trying to get the drugs to sell! :mad:
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How frustrating. :(

This Is typical of epilepsy: it causes all sorts of unexpected trouble, as you've found.

Even diagnosis can be tricky. People might have just the one seizure in their whole lives but still have to live with an awareness of the condition, or they might have many tiny events that they have no idea are down to epilepsy.
I expect you've found all this out too.

As I've mentioned, a relation of mine seems to have undiagnosed epilepsy. Strobe lights or anything resembling them sets him off, including travelling on a train across a metal bridge with the sunlight flickering through the girders.

He was a railway guard and would shout 'Tickets PLEASE!' and pass out. :chuckle:
 
escargot said:
Kenny has been mentioned on'ere before.
As @catseye mentions, he seems to have fallen down a mine shaft. You'd think someone might've, y'know, had a look.
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There’s more on Kenny Veach on this thread:
https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...s-roads-bunkers-etc.1804/page-33#post-2272343

The mine shaft has been investigated by search & rescue - no human remains found. There’s also some videos by other hikers looking in the same area. It’s pretty remote & inhospitable.
 
hunck said:
There’s more on Kenny Veach on this thread:
https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...s-roads-bunkers-etc.1804/page-33#post-2272343

The mine shaft has been investigated by search & rescue - no human remains found. There’s also some videos by other hikers looking in the same area. It’s pretty remote & inhospitable.
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You would have thought they would have found him, although the body could have been removed by wild animals or washed deep into the mine by a flood?
 
Robbrent said:
You would have thought they would have found him, although the body could have been removed by wild animals or washed deep into the mine by a flood?
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If you have a look at the videos, the area is vast & mountainous in places. You could die there & never be found if that were your aim. It also looks dry as a bone most of the time - I think there’s very little rainfall.
 
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