How common is it for people to leave their lives behind?

Graces7 · 20-06-2018 09:55AM

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Moving to a very rural part of Ireland/one of the islands, just means that everyone in a 20 mile radius will have heard that you're moving in before you actually do, and have your backstory before you introduce yourself to anyone.

You do not know West Mayo. No one knows all that here. Sparse population with far better things to do with their time.

Not even everyone on the island knew; some i met thought I was a walker over for the day.

Graces7 · 20-06-2018 09:56AM

Call me Al wrote: »

I'm afraid moving to a wild Mayo island (not the one you're on admittedly but spitting distance away) doesn't make you immune from bumping into people who might know you (or of you) once there can be any sort of throughput of people or even just seasonal population influx.

Unless of course a person was making a conscious decision to go off the reservation or assuming a completely new identity.
It would be very hard to keep up such a pretence though without a significant amount of planning and or self-sacrifice.

Wrong!

RiderOnTheStorm · 20-06-2018 10:05AM

Read an article a while back, written by a private investigator, who said that it was very possible to disappear almost indefinitely. People would be found however, when they came back for funerals or weddings or some significant life event. People are creatures of habit. The longer they have been away the greater the draw is to be at the back of a crowd and just see a daughter or grandchild get married etc...

rainbowtrout · 20-06-2018 10:17AM

Graces7 wrote: »

You do not know West Mayo. No one knows all that here. Sparse population with far better things to do with their time.

Not even everyone on the island knew; some i met thought I was a walker over for the day.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember from previous posts of yours that you are from the UK. So it's a little different to move to an island off the coast of Mayo and posting that no one knows you, in comparison to an Irish person moving to the island, where an islander will make a connection to someone, somewhere in the country that knows them.

And if you are mistaken for a tourist, that's possibly because of your accent, but if an Irish person moved to the island, law of averages would dictate that they would run into someone from their home area over on a day trip at some stage.

Cleopatra_ · 20-06-2018 11:35AM

Disappear and start afresh in Ireland? Not possible, the place is a fcuking fishbowl.

PARlance · 20-06-2018 11:37AM

Cleopatra_ wrote: »

Disappear and start afresh in Ireland? Not possible, the place is a fcuking fishbowl.

Try Belmullet.

Thud · 20-06-2018 11:48AM

whisky_galore wrote: »

Anyone on witness protection or anyone released from prison after a 'controversial' crime I guess.

A guy from where i come from who killed his wife tried setting up somewhere else when he got out, was spotted in the new location within a few weeks

josip · 20-06-2018 12:07PM

PARlance wrote: »

Try Belmullet.

I think the opposite.

If you want to get lost in Ireland move to Dublin; people there don't need to have a 'handle' on you.

People in rural Ireland won't rest until they've established a connection, even if that connection is that Philly's niece who moved to Tipperary was working with a lad who said the newcomer was 4 classes ahead of him in primary school.

Call me Al · 20-06-2018 12:55PM

josip wrote: »

I think the opposite.

If you want to get lost in Ireland move to Dublin; people there don't need to have a 'handle' on you.

People in rural Ireland won't rest until they've established a connection, even if that connection is that Philly's niece who moved to Tipperary was working with a lad who said the newcomer was 4 classes ahead of him in primary school.

Coming from a community not a million miles away from Belmullet but now in a more urban setting this would be my experience of how things work.

Whilst you likely won't have less solitude and isolation in a city you can definitely have much more anonymity if you choose to it.

AllForIt · 20-06-2018 01:16PM

Im sure some ppl run away from their families hoping never to see them ever again. Just look at the kinds of ppl you see around everyday - who could blame

BoroMan32 · 20-06-2018 01:33PM

Within Ireland, very difficult I'd imagine. Unless of course family circumstances are fractured and nobody goes looking for you anyway.

There are some fascinating cases from the US and UK of people doing similar. There are some great online resources and groups (websleuths etc) who work to try 'solving' cases involving unidentified bodies going back decades. In many cases the missing people were never even reported as missing etc.

One of the supposed John Wayne Gacy victims turned up alive 33 years later, he'd simply parked his car at a train station, dropped the keys into a drain and set off to make a new life. http://www.thejournal.ie/two-of-us-serial-killers-victims-turn-up-alive-after-30-years-311490-Dec2011/

AntrimGlens · 20-06-2018 01:55PM

About four years ago a man left his house on a sunday morning on his bike and he has never been seen since. The bike was found against a wall opposite the entrance to an outfarm of ours three days later, about twenty miles from his home. This is the sea wall of the north channel with scotland directly opposite and not exactly somewhere you would go for a sunday morning dip.
The police searched the farm for days, opened up slurry tanks and all sorts, but yer man has never been seen or heard from since, he left a wife and family behind.
Often wonder about him when i'm turning in the entrance to that farm.

BrokenArrows · 20-06-2018 02:14PM

Even moving to large cities you cant escape bumping into people you know.

I live in london and have bumped into people i know in parts of the city that neither of us would have usually been.

Ive also seen on facebook loads of times where people have bumped into other people in random places in south america and other places around the world.

I think to escape these days you literally need to buy a house in a large plot of private land and never leave.

Hercule Poirot · 20-06-2018 02:16PM

Rural communities aren't the answer - I moved to a rural area many years ago and not long after we moved I discovered a girl who I worked with had a grandmother living up the road from me. Her grandmother, who I'd never met, was able to tell her where we moved from, that my missus was foreign (and knew her nationality) and where she worked now. The only thing she didn't know, weirdly, was our names...

Ubbquittious · 20-06-2018 02:17PM

silverharp wrote: »

There is something in the US called end of the liners or something similar, basically they head for places like Alaska ,find a cabin somewhere and cut off all contact with their old lives. In Ireland its probably called Leitrim

Did you watch Into the Wild?
Surely there aren't huge numbers of people doing that

I have a funny feeling that a lot of the people who moved to Australia during the recession didn't do so for economic reasons but in order to play the wild rover without their relatives and neighbours finding out what shenanigans they were up to.

shakeitoff · 20-06-2018 02:19PM

BrokenArrows wrote: »

Even moving to large cities you cant escape bumping into people you know.

I live in london and have bumped into people i know in parts of the city that neither of us would have usually been.

Ive also seen on facebook loads of times where people have bumped into other people in random places in south america and other places around the world.

I think to escape these days you literally need to buy a house in a large plot of private land and never leave.

In fairness Irish people tend to travel the same paths.

7 Seconds... · 20-06-2018 02:20PM

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Moving to a very rural part of Ireland/one of the islands, just means that everyone in a 20 mile radius will have heard that you're moving in before you actually do, and have your backstory before you introduce yourself to anyone.

The nice part of living in a small rural town, is that even when I don't know what I am doing, someone else always does.

Mutant z · 20-06-2018 02:26PM

Ireland is a small place its virtually impossible to go anywhere without bumping into someone you know you would need to be somewhere the size of Russia or China to truly escape from everything.

Sleepy · 20-06-2018 04:47PM

It'd be relatively easy to do in a country the size of the US and far from impossible to do in the UK though you'd need to be prepared to move somewhere out of the way where cash-in-hand jobs were a possibility.

It's a thought experiment I've loved for decades but have never quite figured out how to leave Ireland without leaving some kind of paper trail of a flight or ferry journey (while it'd be possible to do the larne/cairnryan or channel crossing in a kayak or similar, doing so undetected would be rather harder since they're busy shipping lanes).

rainbowtrout · 20-06-2018 04:50PM

Sleepy wrote: »

It'd be relatively easy to do in a country the size of the US and far from impossible to do in the UK though you'd need to be prepared to move somewhere out of the way where cash-in-hand jobs were a possibility.

It's a thought experiment I've loved for decades but have never quite figured out how to leave Ireland without leaving some kind of paper trail of a flight or ferry journey (while it'd be possible to do the larne/cairnryan or channel crossing in a kayak or similar, doing so undetected would be rather harder since they're busy shipping lanes).

I was only on the Larne - Cairnryan ferry this week and wasn't asked for ID. So in theory you could probably chance booking it under a different name and off you go.

Emme · 20-06-2018 04:50PM

silverharp wrote: »

There is something in the US called end of the liners or something similar, basically they head for places like Alaska ,find a cabin somewhere and cut off all contact with their old lives. In Ireland its probably called Leitrim

Athy is good for that sort of thing as well.

Sleepy · 20-06-2018 05:00PM

rainbowtrout wrote: »

I was only on the Larne - Cairnryan ferry this week and wasn't asked for ID. So in theory you could probably chance booking it under a different name and off you go.

Yeah, I've had similar experiences with Dun Laoghaire / Holyhead. I'd presume it's due to our travel agreements with the UK. I can't imagine the English / French border is as lax though and imho, to really suceed in something like this, you need to get to a land mass like Europe / the U.S.

Establishing a new identity in a foreign country seems the hardest part of this. Considering you need a PPSN / National Insurance number etc for even most shelf-stacking jobs in supermarkets, your financial prospects in a new life are extremely limited as you'll be stuck in cash-in-hand work for the rest of your natural life unless you could fraudulently obtain one and you'd have to abandon any academic / professional qualifications too...

21-06-2018 02:23PM

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/tourists-tipoff-sees-alleged-wife-killer-held-in-spanish-jail-25906078.html

Lady Spangles · 21-06-2018 02:29PM

Sleepy wrote: »

It'd be relatively easy to do in a country the size of the US and far from impossible to do in the UK though you'd need to be prepared to move somewhere out of the way where cash-in-hand jobs were a possibility.

It's a thought experiment I've loved for decades but have never quite figured out how to leave Ireland without leaving some kind of paper trail of a flight or ferry journey (while it'd be possible to do the larne/cairnryan or channel crossing in a kayak or similar, doing so undetected would be rather harder since they're busy shipping lanes).

If you take a new identity (for example Ghosting) and pay for a ticket with cash, surely that won't leave a paper trail? Then you just set up in the UK or Europe and you're good to go.

yourdeadwright · 21-06-2018 02:35PM

I know or knew 3 people who disappeared ,
One was a friend of mines dad ,said he was going milk in the 80's and never came back, Him self and the wife where having problems and he just up and left, They heard he's living in England,
Another lad I was in school with and knew to say hello to just disappeared, He only had his mam and she died and the house was left to her fella who he hated so he just took off, I think he last i heard he is in Asia but never told anyone where he was going and no one left really cared enough to find out,
The 3rd is women I meet on a train one day , she was from the states and found out her husband was cheating so up and left and moved to Ireland and never told him , She said he was a marine and it was just easier to disappear from his life than to break up with him , Now she could have been talking crap as I didn't know her just sat beside her on the train to Gaway from Dublin and got chatting, but she seemed like a normal person,

RhubarbCrumble · 21-06-2018 02:56PM

I grew up just outside a small (nosy) village and one of the neighbours went 'missing' when I was a small child. I don't remember him. He was about 17 and I was about 7 at the time. However according to his mother he was missing and they hadn't a clue what had happened and why he'd disappeared. Almost 20 years later (just in the last few years) his mother died. His father told people afterwards that mother and son had fallen out and he'd left. He'd never spoken to her again but for 20 years had sent his father a birthday card every year. So his parents knew he was alive and well (in the UK) but his mother basically told everyone he'd gone missing and led to to be a case of abduction/death.

weldoninhio · 21-06-2018 03:20PM

Lady Spangles wrote: »

While that's more than likely true, it's still strange that no cameras picked him up as he left the station and into the presumed stranger's car. That whole area is covered and would have been more so after the Underground attacks, a year or so before.

It took the cops weeks to even look for CCTV footage going by that story. Most shops would have wiped tapes after 2 weeks i'd say. Especially back then.

josip · 21-06-2018 03:29PM

RhubarbCrumble wrote: »

I grew up just outside a small (nosy) village and one of the neighbours went 'missing' when I was a small child. I don't remember him. He was about 17 and I was about 7 at the time. However according to his mother he was missing and they hadn't a clue what had happened and why he'd disappeared. Almost 20 years later (just in the last few years) his mother died. His father told people afterwards that mother and son had fallen out and he'd left. He'd never spoken to her again but for 20 years had sent his father a birthday card every year. So his parents knew he was alive and well (in the UK) but his mother basically told everyone he'd gone missing and led to to be a case of abduction/death.

Maybe I'm looking at it from the perspective of having grown up in a happy family, but I couldn't ever imagine doing something like that to my parents.
And if any of my kids ever did that, I'd be distraught.

RhubarbCrumble · 21-06-2018 03:42PM

josip wrote: »

Maybe I'm looking at it from the perspective of having grown up in a happy family, but I couldn't ever imagine doing something like that to my parents.
And if any of my kids ever did that, I'd be distraught.

I didn't grow up in a happy family, so I can see his point of view to be honest. I don't know exactly what happened between him and his mother, but when I was growing up nobody knew what was going on behind closed doors either. I'm sure if I had left suddenly at 17 my mother would have lied too (THAT is the part I find most unforgivable about that guys mother) because she's never acknowledged any of the abuse I went through growing up and is still lying and hiding things to this day.
If it had been me the neighbours would probably have believed her too, but nobody knows what really happens in families.

Not having a go at you or anything, just that a lot goes on behind closed doors that others don't see. Not everyone has a happy upbringing.

21-06-2018 04:43PM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Darwin_disappearance_case

I suppose it is possible, however, the world is a very small place today you will find a few threads on boards along the lines of....The op was traveling in outer Mongolia and was in a place that isn't even a dot on a map and they met another Irish person.

How common is it for people to leave their lives behind?

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