This will probably (hopefully!) amount to nothing.
A friend has vanished. He’s a mid-40s guy, single, owns an apartment. Nobody has been able to contact him for a couple of weeks - his phone is turned off, and he doesn’t answer emails.
That would be fine - hey, maybe he went away for a couple of weeks without telling anybody - but it’s very out-of-character. He did mention with a very short email a few days in advance that he wouldn’t be making it to a social engagement, with no explanation at all, but nobody thought anything of it until his* father* started contacting his friends trying to track him down. This is a guy who’s pretty tight with his family.
I don’t think he’s had an accident or anything - he knew to let people know he’d be missing a weekly event (but didn’t follow up and say he’d miss the following weekly event - just didn’t turn up, and hasn’t been turning up to arranged events since - admittedly only over a period of a week or two, but he always tells people). But the prior warning suggests a degree of planning, so we’re not too worried that he’s been hit by a bus or fallen off a cliff or anything. And yeah, he’s a grown man and doesn’t have to report to us on his activities.
However:
[ul]
[li]His phone has been turned off for two weeks[/li][li]His father has reported him as a missing person to the police[/li][li]His father and the police went to his apartment and used his parents’ spare key - he hadn’t been there in a couple of weeks[/li][li]This really is out of character. Some people I wouldn’t think twice about this behaviour. With this guy, it just doesn’t fit.[/li][li]A couple of unusual email print-outs in his apartment show that he reserved rooms at a couple of local hotels for 2-3 days each. We’ve been to those hotels, and they have confirmed he isn’t a current guest. They won’t backcheck records for random enquiries, but I assume the police can get them to do that. We haven’t seen these printouts - just heard about them from his dad, and obviously the police are better at this than us.[/li][li]He came by a lot of money a few years back (not enough to become some kind of millionaire playboy, but enough that he doesn’t need to work as long as he lives frugally - which is what he chose to do. Yes, that’s mildly odd, but it’s OK.) Unfortunately, it means there isn’t a job he’s not turning up for or anything which would provide some indication as to the seriousness of the situation.[/li][li]There is a vague neighbour report which says they think “maybe” they saw him leave with a “big bag” or something. So it sounds like maybe he packed clothes and stuff to go away with. But it ain’t exactly firm information.[/li][/ul]
Of course, friends are throwing round various bizarre theories - some sane, some not so likely, but nobody knows. At this point, given the prior warning, plus the prior hotel bookings, we’re not assuming the worst. But we are worried - that maybe something has happened to make him freak out in some way. Heck, maybe it’ll all turn out to be nothing, but he’d have told someone what he was doing, surely?
Plus, I imagine the police aren’t treating it too seriously - he’s a grown man, after all. If a grown man wants to disappear, there’s no law against it.
I don’t even know why I’m posting this here. There’s no advice I’m seeking, particularly. I don’t imagine I can do anything that his family or the police cannot do. I’m not even really worried about his safety - it just doesn’t sound like harm has come to him. It’s just all so* odd*.
Maybe he’ll turn up in a couple of weeks and be surprised that everyone was so worried.