Vanished

A few years ago in Minneapolis, a furious father stormed into a Target store, demanding answers. His teenage daughter had been receiving coupons from the store for cribs and diapers, and he was outraged. Was Target encouraging his high school daughter to get pregnant?

Target swiftly apologized, but just a few days later, the father called back. He had some surprising news: “A few things have been going on in my household that I was unaware of. My daughter is due in August. I owe you an apology.”

So, how did Target know before her own father? It turns out their internal algorithms had been tracking his daughter’s purchases. Recently, she’d started buying items like certain vitamin supplements and scent-free soaps and lotions—purchases that the system flagged as indicators of pregnancy. The coupons were sent accordingly, and they were right.

In today’s world, we’re tracked more than ever before. Our every move is followed digitally through 24/7 CCTV, browser cookies, trackable debit cards, cell phones with GPS, fingerprinting, and even DNA analysis. Yet, despite all this surveillance, more than 2,000 people disappear in the United States each year and are never found again, dead or alive.

Where do these missing people go? How do they disappear? What if you disappeared, and how would you even know if you already had?

In many cases, missing persons fall victim to unsolved or unknown crimes, suffer accidents, or take their own lives without their bodies being discovered. Others may simply escape their old lives, severing ties with friends, family, debts, and obligations to start anew, possibly under a different identity.

How long would it take for someone to notice if you disappeared? It depends on who you are, how you live, and how you vanished. In most places, after about five to seven years of no contact, you can be declared dead in absentia.

Consider the case of French astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil. In the 18th century, he left Paris to observe the transit of Venus from India, but a storm and the British occupation of Pondicherry forced him to spend the crucial day at sea, unable to take accurate measurements. Instead of returning home, he stayed abroad, building an observatory to wait for the next transit eight years later. When he finally returned to Paris 11 years after leaving, he found he had been declared dead. His wife had remarried, his family had plundered his belongings, and his position at the Royal Academy of Sciences had been given to someone else. He never did see the transit; on the day it occurred, the sky was overcast.

This example shows that even though we estimate the Earth’s population, individual accountability sometimes slips through the cracks. Take the case of Janet Veal, who passed away in her apartment in Hampshire, England. Large portions of her body were consumed by her pet cats before she was discovered weeks later. Or Joyce Carol Vincent, whose skeletal remains were found three years after her death, with her TV still on.

In the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, 168 victims were identified, but a mysterious 169th victim remains unknown. A severed left leg was found in the rubble, but it didn’t match any reported missing persons. DNA analysis showed it belonged to Lakesha Levy, who had already been buried with both her legs. They exhumed her body, swapped the legs, but because of embalming, the unknown leg’s DNA couldn’t be analyzed, leaving its owner a mystery.

It’s clear that people can disappear without a trace, and sometimes, they’re even declared dead or missing when they’re not. Premature obituaries are surprisingly common, especially for famous individuals. Media outlets keep draft obituaries on file, ready to publish at a moment’s notice. Sometimes, these drafts leak before the person has died, leading to awkward situations.

In 1888, when Alfred Nobel’s brother Ludvig passed away, newspapers mistakenly ran obituaries for Alfred. One French paper condemned him as “The merchant of death,” leading Nobel to rethink his legacy. In response, he left the majority of his fortune to establish the Nobel Prizes, a move that has forever associated his name with celebrating humanity’s achievements.

Marcus Garvey wasn’t so fortunate. After suffering a stroke, premature obituaries criticized him harshly, claiming he died broke and unpopular. The shock reportedly caused Garvey to suffer another stroke, which ultimately led to his death.

Then there’s the case of the Taylor University car accident in 2006. Five students died, and another was identified as the sole survivor, Laura Van Ryn. But as she recovered from her coma, she began to insist that her name was Whitney Cerak, the friend who had been declared dead. The truth was uncovered: Laura had been buried, and Whitney was alive, though the mix-up had already led to a funeral for the wrong girl.

These cases raise an unsettling question: What if you’re already missing and just don’t know it? Modern hospital practices make it unlikely for babies to be switched at birth, but it still happens. In 2001, a woman in the Canary Islands discovered she had a long-lost twin after a store employee mistook her for an old friend. The sister she grew up with turned out to be a biological stranger.

Then there’s the “missing missing”—people who are unreported as missing. These might be individuals living in a country illegally, estranged from family and friends, or children of homeless mothers. These people aren’t just missing; they’re missing without anyone knowing or caring enough to report it.

In the end, while it’s not illegal to disappear voluntarily, believing that no one would miss you is misguided. Statistics suggest otherwise. David Wong, in one of his most powerful articles, reminds us that there’s still so much information out there to be shared, learned, and discovered.