Vanish and Hide in Plain Sight

There are innumerable reasons why one would suddenly want to drop out of society, vanish completely and never be found and hide in plain sight ranging from justifiable reasons such as hiding from an abusive husband, to unjustifiable ones such as evading debts. Although movies and fiction have popularised and to some degree, romanticized stories of people who have disappeared completely, simply dropping out of sight is a complicated affair that one needs to plan fastidiously for. The planning and execution of staging your complete disappearance and eventual “rebirth”, has to effectively run its course through four stages: affirming your purpose, destroying your history, scrambling your trail, and then resurfacing.

Affirming Your Purpose

Things have gotten to the point where you are desperate, you are convinced after lots of thought that dropping off of the face of the earth is the only thing that will save your life or you from harm. You might have an abusive ex husband after you, or it might be gang members or criminals out to hurt you. You are convinced you are in danger. You need to understand who and what you are running from and why you need, above all else, to not put your self at risk. You are sure that your running will not jeopardize your loved ones, or harm anyone else. You know that whoever is pursuing you, could possibly not give up for a long time, and it might involve some “lost time” in your life. You know and are absolutely sure what the score is and have little to loose. You are ready to pay the price and take the risk. You are convinced that this is your only shot at a new life.

Destroying Your History

Bill collectors, repossession people, private investigators and the like have many channels for finding people. Talking to ex lovers/partners, ex employers, visiting the usual places you visit: the gym, library etc. This is a human-to-human trail of information that makes up your “history”. You have to sever these sorts of ties and activities.

Then, there is the paper trail. From your credit cards, they know what type of movies you watch, what type/size of clothing you wear, the food you eat, the clubs you frequent, the music you listen to, your medical prescriptions purchased, etc. Then there are phone bills, cable bills and other bills with your personal information on these records: phone numbers, addresses, birthdates, etc. Part of destroying a paper trail is completely physically destroying any bills, phone numbers, PC hardrives, writings, photographs, yearbooks and anything like this from your apartment or home. It is especially important to destroy photographs of yourself, as sometimes the newest ones around the homes of recently disappeared people are the ones posted in the media. Take all of your old clothes and put them in the nearest Goodwill donation box. Also you will want to get rid of anything traceable on the Internet such as Facebook, MySpace or other social media profiles that you might have.

Scrambling Your Trail

This is the next logical step after destroying as much of your physical history as possible, as this is the spot where you vanish into many different directions as possible. The best bet is for you to make it look like you went to the place you had most talked about visiting, and going to the one place as far away from that as can be, that you never told a soul about. Do not call anyone you know. Buy a new set of clothes in a style that you wouldn’t normally wear: if you are a blue collar type, wear business clothes, if you are always in jeans, wear dress pants. It is best to break all habits you have, like for eg, if you smoke try to quit this, or change your brand. Changing hair color and facial hair is an obvious thing to do, and change your glasses for contacts, or if you don’t wear glasses, wear sunglasses. Changing your walk, or even body shape by loosing weight etc, is also a good tactic. Learn a new accent, and be aware of every one of your little mannerisms that might tip off your pursuer(s) who will likely be assumed to be desperate. You could take your ATM cards and mail them to very trusted people to make withdrawals on your behalf in cities around the country to run them around in circles. Say, if you had this done in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle, Portland, Tacoma etc., while all the while you were in the Florida Keys, they would be sure you are on the other side of the continent. Using so-called “mail drops” or mail forwarding services are invaluable as well, as long as you pay cash for these and any other services.

Resurfacing

After the trail has ran cold, and you are ready to assume a new name, new appearance, new habits, lifestyle, etc., the hiding in plain sight begins at a point where you will be a new you - “reborn”. The most complex aspect of this is acquiring the documentation for this, which is beyond the scope of this article, but suffice to say, can be done in stages when you are feeling safer and have a clearer mind. The whole purpose of disappearing and dropping out of sight is to protect you from clear and imminent danger and to give you some breathing space so that you can gain some options and increased perspective, not to mention, buy some time.

suggested reading