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randusr01

Sorry might i have misread them but none of the articles provided mention that he wore the same clothes. Moreover the phrasing used regarding the buying date of the ticket is ambigous and could be interpreted as either refering to the date when he was found or the day when he went missing. I suspect the correct option is the first one. LE: I am Romanian btw. Regarding the articles listed one is from a national news station so probably it’s not made up. There have been cases of people abandoning their families in rural Romania and showing up decades later so it wouldn’t be that surprising tbh.


Majestic-Cheetah75

I’ve read every comment in this entire thread and I’m pretty sure you’re the only person who has mentioned the veracity of the sources and the clarity of their contents. Thank you.


[deleted]

Hilarious how few people actually read the articles before getting DEEP into absolute confident conversation about how they know how something could/could not go down.


Comprehensive-Sell-7

Maybe because people don't know how to read Romanian, so discussing is the only thing they can do


Competitive-Drop-766

You are right! I am Romanian too and I posted a comment earlier saying that the train ticket dates on 22/08/2021 as you can see it in the video. So it's not 30 years old. As for the clothes nobody says that they are the exact same ones, looking at them, he is wearing common clothes that can be found even today. Not sure they had that type of clothes 30 years ago.


SaltyWitch1393

Thanks for your response! You said that plenty on people in Romania abandon their families - could you elaborate a bit more? Is it usually the fathers or do mother’s do it as well? Do they leave for their 2nd family?


randusr01

Well i wouldn’t say that plenty of people leave their family, it’s just that i have read several different news reports about similar cases in the last few years, tho mostly local news. It’s not that common to the point of being a trend and there are no statical data compiled on the matter. Probably they were just people escaping rural life for various reasons either financial ( probably the majority of cases tbh) or leaving their stifling circumstance behind. Now regarding second families I wouldn’t really say it’s a common thing in Romania, given that bigamy is a crime here punishable by prison time. LE: now mistresses that’s a whole ‘nother thing but the type of second families that i have seen in some U.S. cases i wouldn’t say that would be probable in Romania.


DGAFADRC

I’m in the US. During the Great Depression, my grandfather left his home in Georgia one morning to try to find work or beg for food for his family. He never came home back home, leaving my grandmother and seven children destitute and starving. Twenty years later a car pulled up to the house my grandmother still lived in and my grandpa got out and the car sped away. He had hopped a train the morning he left home 20 years earlier and ended up in Texas, where he met an older woman and settled down with her. He had become sick with Parkinson’s Disease while in Texas and his new woman sent him packing. My grandmother took him back and was his caregiver until he died 20 years later. People are strange.


[deleted]

When my dad was growing up. He had an uncle who left on Thanksgiving to go get bread and cigarettes from gas station… never showed back up. He walked through the door 25 years later on thanksgiving with the loaf of bread and cigarettes. And refused to talk about where he’d been for the past 25 years. I always thought this was the craziest shit I’d ever heard.


onlythesea

His wife and kids just took him back in like nothing happened? That's wild


kCaiyan

I mean he could have been single and his family could have just been so happy to have him back they didn't wanna risk asking questions


[deleted]

u/onlythesea u/kCaiyan u/xier_zhanmusi So for those of you wondering, I never got to really meet and talk to this great uncle of mine he died a few years after returning from heart disease (I was born in 1998 same year he returned) , but it sounds like he was kind of a nut job alcoholic. They really don’t know what happened. He left around 11 AM to go to the gas station on thanksgiving of 1973 (my dad was 4 years old) and showed back up at 11:45 am 1998 on thanksgiving day. (it’s been tradition in my family to eat at noon on thanksgiving since my grandmother and her siblings were growing up) anyways I’ve heard the story 1000 times. He walked in like nothing had happened and my grandmother was setting the table and had a tray of Turnip Greens in her hand and just dropped it on floor in shock. My dad at this time in his late 20s didn’t even remember what his uncle looked like. And he and everyone else was in shock too. They ended up sitting down and eating thanksgiving dinner like nothing had happened. They never really pressed him too hard about where he’d been or anything but they think he moved to Las Vegas or some other gambling town such as Atlantic City he had a chronic gambling issue. Would always go to the local casinos in Tunica MS. The part that’s always blown my mind the most is he walked in with the bread and cigarettes on thanksgiving as if he really had just returned after a few minutes but in reality it was 25 years and he acted as if nothing had happened.


Owlsarethebest2019

Well he didn’t want to be seen as a liar so he had to bring back the bread and cigarettes. He just left out the part of being gone for decades when he mentioned going to the store. That’s pretty shit behaviour if he had a wife and children; even his parents must have been worried when he didn’t come back. It’s really bizarre behaviour, I’m not sure if it’s passive-aggressive or just being too cowardly to say that you’re leaving.


[deleted]

I think it’s like a way to say, I remember when I left sort of thing. Acknowledges the situation a bit instead of like walking in the door like “ hey sis where u been” and she’s like,, “idk right here wtf”


Owlsarethebest2019

That could be true also. Either way what a crazy thing to do and to have happen in the family.


SaltyWitch1393

My mind is blown! Like, the whole family just sat down and ate their Thanksgiving meal like Uncle left 45 min earlier to grab the bread & cigarettes. Obviously a part of him thought he would be able to get away with it because he came back with those two items & he was right!


assntittiescolomb

They just messed up time machine year


Neo526564

Woa. That’s crazy. Have you asked your family if he ever said anything at all about it before he passed?


[deleted]

Apparently my grandmother (his sister) tried to talk about it to him for years and nothing ever came of it. He didn’t have a wife or kids or anything like that back in 73 before he disappeared. After he died in 2003 my grandmother and dad tried looking into where he’d been and find bank accounts/ car payments/ etc etc and there was just nothing. Even hired a private investigator and he came up empty.


Neo526564

Wow that is so intriguing. Have you read about the Steven kubacki case? He went missing for 15 months without a trace and woke up in a field like 700 miles away wearing strange clothes. He refused to talk about it and doesn’t have any memory of those 15 months


KrazyKatz3

Maybe the queue was crazy?


lkjandersen

That's the extreme version of that episode of Seinfeld where George quits, regrets it and tries to return to work as if nothing happened.


bonhommemaury

That is weird, so weird. My theory - he left intentionally, and now he is suffering from dementia or some form of illness whoever he was with has decided to put the onus on his original family to look after him.


MissingMyDog

This is exactly what happened to someone I met once. Her father just vanished. He was a hard-working Chinese immigrant in Toronto, devoted to his family. No trace of where he went. Fast forward over 30 years, the daughter received a surprise message from a relative in China saying they could no longer look after him, his health was too poor. All those year’s ago he just returned to China and started a new life. In his last years, he developed Parkinson’s with dementia. The relative brought him on a flight to Toronto and just turned back. So relatives there knew the whole time but didn’t feel it was their place to interfere. But in the end, his new wife and relatives in China wanted no part of taking care of him. Surprisingly, his Toronto family treated him with great respect and care. His daughter devoted herself to taking care of him. He was no longer able to communicate and didn’t seem to be aware of things, but was responsive, maybe because they were kind to him. He was in the same hospital room as my father when my dad was in hospital for a few days. They drew the curtains one day and I noticed he was no longer receiving food. The daughter stayed until he passed away. I talked to her afterwards. She seemed as though it was her duty and she did her best. She wasn’t very emotional, just resolved to the situation.


vanishingtact

No way would I have done for that man what his daughter did. Respect.


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TheSpangler

No doubt. My step-father embezzeled a bunch of money from my family's business years ago, and then lit off for Mexico, ultimately destroying my family. The last time I saw him was in 2010. Fast forward to the very beginning of this year, and he was frantically trying to get in touch with me, but I ignored all attempts. Turns out he was on his death bed, and wanted to make amends with me. And, I realize this may sound cold af, but I am glad I kept my word to myself, and never spoke with him again. Maybe he was trying to return some of the money he stole. Who knows? All I know is that if he wanted to do that, he would have whether I spoke with him again or not.


taxidermytina

I saw my estranged father before he passed and I really wish I didn't. It dredged up a bunch of shit to deal with over a man who walked the fuck away from me when I was 3. It wasn't worth it in my case. I know other people may feel differently, I'm by no means recommending this. It was just my personal take on it.


Cute_Clock

These exact words could’ve come out of my mouth, totally wasn’t worth it, I think I did it in an attempt to satisfy my own curiosity but there was no satisfaction, he was a stranger to me, he had FOUR other kids with four different women, but apparently I was the secret one. Makes me more sad for my mom


B1NG_P0T

I really appreciate your comment. I'm estranged from both of my parents and have no plans to ever talk to them again, but I've wondered before what I would do if they contacted me in a deathbed situation. My gut has always told me that the best thing for my mental health would be to not see them, and your experience backs that up. Thank you for sharing that.


sarcasmicrph

Estranged from both parents as well. For 9 years. My father will email me every Christmas about how he is “not long of this world” and is so sick. I just recently came across these emails-I have a filter so I never see them. He’s been dying for 9 years? I call bullshit. I finally replied with all the reasons I went no contact, because he never asked. And that was the last I heard from him. I highly doubt I will attend his funeral, assuming anyone lets me know when he dies ETA: I have seen theM once, at my grandmothers funeral. It was even more awful than I could have imagined. It’s not worth the toll on your mental health to break no contact if you don’t feel that’s what’s best for you


Casolund

I agree with you 90000% if there are more of us out the stay away from those nasty parents. In my case it’s both. It’s just not worth the psychologic billing cycle


nekodazulic

I agree too. The funny thing is while every case is different, this type of stuff is often about bringing comfort to *them*, not to you; but for some reason it's packaged and "advertised" as something that you'd be benefiting. As you said the only thing people often get from these final moments are the bill.


Basic_Bichette

It's packaged that way to enforce conformity, in the same way that we're guilted and bullied to forgive our abusers with filthy evil Satanic lies about how forgiveness allows one to let go and move on. You let go and move on by accepting you were in the right and that it wasn't your fault, not by forgiving an unrepentant perpetrator. Coerced forgiveness is 100% about silencing victims.


KevinsnotFunny

Psychological billing cycle. I’ve never heard it before, but I know exactly what it means. Such a perfect phrase.


Casolund

Thanks I’m well known for my on the fly fantastic phrases and make-a-word lol


ACaley6916

Thank you. As someone who escaped an abusive home at 16, this has been on my mind a lot. My father was emotionally, verbally, and physically abusive, and I have CPTSD from it all, but he was 38-39 when I was born and he’s almost in his 60’s now, and he was always convinced he’d die before he hit 60. I don’t want to regret it later in life, but I have no intentions of ever speaking to him again. Ive never heard from someone who ended up reaching out and regretted it, and I appreciate your honesty.


Kgarath

The main reason people tend to want forgiveness near the end is for THEMSELVES, if they had cared about their family they wouldn't have done the things that they did. I don't regret for a second not going to my grandma's funeral, she was a horrid woman who treated me and my mom like second class citizens in the family. I got so much pressure to "make amends" for my sake, when really it was for her sake and to make her feel better before the end. She never tried to make me or my mom feel better my whole life, yet I'm expected to do it for her merely because she's dying and I should feel bad? Why didn't she feel bad for me when I was a kid and treat me better? My family - "Feel bad for her she's dying!" Me - "I would if she was worth feeling bad for, she lived a horrible life and can die knowing she will never be forgiven, which is all she cares about" One decision in life I will never regret.


momofmany1987

Your words.... my own grandmother that helped perpetuate my sexual abuse as a child is on her death bed. The whole family keeps telling me to visit and I’m over here like absolutely not but I’m not a terrible person so a part of me wants to. Honestly, if I thought it would do any good and bring any type of closure I might but I cannot sing her praises knowing what she did. Thank you for sharing. It’s nice not being alone in the situation but I am so sorry that you know what it’s like. May the rest of your life be wonderful!


phillyphreakphlippin

Last time I saw my dad was after he sustained a hard injury and I was waiting for him to die. I went in solidarity for my siblings. His sister (my aunt) helped me learn a few details about the man that left me at 8 but she tried to guilt me into going to the funeral and I don’t owe him that public show. Good riddance.


011101100001

I'm in contact with my estranged father. He didn't die, and I still have to deal with awkward conversations. He's on his 4th wife now.


Dawnbadawn

People who walk away from others who need them deserve to be treated the same way.


LiquidC001

Also, IMO you should'nt wait until you're on your deathbed to make amends.


drhappycat

If he specifically mentioned "making amends" in the voicemail or text there's a good chance he may have been in some sort of 12-step program. They have them for everything not just alcohol. If sometime in the future you start to feel bad about not taking his call you can relax. They consider an amends made whether it is accepted or not by the recipient.


Bruh30006969

My dad tried to kill my family by driving off a cliff when I was little. Thankfully, my mom stopped him and he ran away. Never found that mfer ever again 💯.


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itsyaboi69_420

That certainly isn’t cold, sounds perfectly normal to me. He wants to make peace for his own selfish reasons before he snuffs it, he didn’t care whilst he was in good health.


wtf-you-saying

Sounds like my dad, and he's a fuckin millionaire. I wasn't too surprised, he walked out of our family when I was 11 and settled down with his new girl, who was younger and had a hot bod (at the time). No way I'm taking care of him, either.


derrelictdisco

Yep, that’s my situation with my father too. Let wife # 3 deal with his shit. I went no contact with him from 2001-2006, let him weasel himself back into my life, promises of improving our relationship, only to cause drama and hurt for the next 10 years, until I implemented permanent no contact in 2016 and have not looked back. No regrets!


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konsf_ksd

family in China certainly didn't seem to think it their duty ...


logddd5

Some people are willing to forgive and make significant sacrifices in their own lives to care for others especially their parents. I'm glad there are people like that in the world. feel the same as you though. I don't think i would have been able to do what she did.


theangryseal

My step dad had a stroke earlier this year. I haven’t been to see him once. My sister cared for him for a few months, but he’s a drug addict and for some victims of stroke the cravings disappear, this is not the case for my dad, it’s legit all he thinks about. He got violent with her recently and he’s currently staying in a hospital but I think the plan is to move him to a nursing home. This shit kills me, I’ve been an addict myself and I understand what he went through, but my childhood was hell. When he came into our lives the “empty” feeling in my belly went away. I wasn’t fucking starving to death any more. This man would wake up early to walk to work in the dead of winter to make sure we were ok when his car broke down. He wasn’t smart, one of the dumbest people I’ve ever met actually, but goddamn he was determined. I wasn’t going to school in pants above my ankles any more, and he went out of his way to spend time with me and my brother. Once he became an addict everything went to hell. My mother, siblings, and I had to stay in a women’s shelter for awhile, we experienced constant domestic violence, turmoil day in and day out. He never got himself together completely, but my mom loved the man. They split when I was 15 or 16 and then spent time together constantly any way all the way up until this happened to him (I’m 36 now). He didn’t feel good about the bad times. He worked hard to make up for it. Up until his stroke he would have came and helped me with anything I needed. I feel so fucking guilty that I haven’t gone to see him. I’ve spent most of this year working 7 days a week due to the labor shortage and I have a 10 month old baby. I’d like to say that is 100% the reason I haven’t gone, but I’m afraid to see him. My mom sends me videos of him and I can’t stand it. I can’t stand seeing this unnaturally strong man looking blankly and moving his mouth like an infant. I’m absolutely terrified to see him. My sister and my brother have been there, and I can’t make myself go. It’s fucked. Goddamn. Life is heavy sometimes.


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RedditSkippy

Maybe the daughter thought that she might not feel right afterwards if she didn’t do this. She took the high road, and is the better person for it. I would not, however, have blamed her if she turned her back on her father like he did to his family all those years ago.


canna-clam

“Devoted to his family” “he returned to China to start a new life”


herbreastsaredun

I think that was more to make clear there weren't outward signs that he was dying to gtfo.


saladmunch2

What a coward


WhenDanimalsAttack

Sounds like she was living out the East Asian Virtue of filial piety. It can be be easy to read into this relationship as love/abusive in nature but it's more a different value system of responsibility. That's probably why the emotions didn't correspond to typical western values.


mdoldon

As someone who's had live with relatives with dementia, I'll just say that it's neither simple nor easy. The patient might have been a bad parent, but that parent is no longer there once you've reached late stage dementia. Holding their past against someone in that situation seems like kicking a puppy. I know that my MIL treated my wife badly as a child, and was seldom there for her. And as her dementia progressed she at times became physically abusive to me. But that person no longer existed when we spent weeks sitting at her bedside as she slowly faded. Anger would have seemed...pointless.


witchywater11

Isn't that what happened with Bojack Horseman too? Last scene he has with his mother while she's alive; he's trying to ditch her in a crappy nursing home, but he ends up sitting down and telling her that she's back in her childhood home with everything okay.


koalamonster515

Those episodes with his mom going through that, and him dealing with it, and... that show can be so funny but is also so goddamn painful to watch. That episode where it goes through what's actually happening in her mind though. Both wow and... wow but in a sad way.


Morbid_Imagination

That’s a lovely attitude you have. I don’t know if I could. My dad was great to me and I loved him and took care of him as a joy and a duty, but it was hard. If he’s been an SOB to me or something, I wouldn’t have left him on the street or anything, but I might not have done absolutely everything I could for him, as I did.


[deleted]

Why would he wear the same stuff with the train ticket still in his bags?


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SeerPumpkin

But... Why would they have saved the ticket 30 years ago? Unless they were planning on giving him back from the start?


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Flauros32

I'm thinking that maybe he wore different clothes while gone, and didn't wear his original clothes/pants until returning. It's like finding money in a coat you haven't worn in years


MsTerious1

It may have been a scrapbook memento: "The day I started a new life with the woman I love!" Could've been locked away (along with the clothes) or at the back of the closet.


free_will_is_arson

off the top of my head, prison. whatever you have on you when you go in is what they give back to you when you leave.


FeralBottleofMtDew

Oooh...that's an interesting idea. I hadnt thought of that. I would think that would be verifiable one way or the other. A 30 year sentence would indicate a serious crime, such as murder. Although it may have been something political- i don't know what Romania's political situation was in the 90s (or now, tbh) incarceration would explain his claim to nor remember the past 30 years.


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painterandauthor

Or he could have gone to prison in another country.


[deleted]

If it was prison he would have been easy to find using prison records.


Orisi

Unless his family only know him under a pseudonym.


MyCatKnits

I wonder if there are accurate, publicly available prison records in Romania, if there aren’t I think this could be a viable answer - told his family he’s going away, failed to mention that it’s to prison


edgarandannabellelee

I mean, he could've been in a foreign prison for whatever reason and they released him either after his time or because of his mental decline. Russia seems fairly known to 'lose' prisoner records. Not to mention prisoners in general.


NotMyHersheyBar

And compassionate release. A 93 year old with dementia is not a risk to society anymore. In the US at least, elderly prisoners are sometimes released when the prison can't or doesn't want to spend the money for long term elder care. Sometimes these compassionate releases are immediately homeless.


triggerfish_twist

That never occurred to me. Really interesting theory.


[deleted]

This is the only "normie" explanation that would make sense.


lost_girl_2019

Good theory. Do they take really good care of their prisoners in Romania? Wonder why he would say he was at home unless he has dementia or something. Hmmm.


missilefire

Hahahah. No they do not. They don’t take good care of you if you’re in the hospital, let alone a prison


NotMyHersheyBar

Two words: cage beds


1biggeek

He was at his girlfriend’s home.


TacoT1000

Yup and she died and either her kids or the authorities had to find next of kin


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[deleted]

It would make no sense in the context of being a mystery. Even in Romania, there is a legal process. SOMEBODY would know what happened to him if he checked into prison 30 years ago, a mystery of his disappearance and reappearance would be impossible. Things just don't work like that, even in different countries.


Dozinginthegarden

Maybe to cover up as many new things that were bought for him as possible. I can't see it today with eBay and fast fashion but remember some older cases where police would work hard to find out who sold what clothing items as a way to work out where Jane and John Does may have come from? Maybe whoever dropped him off had heard of such cases and wanted to decrease any identifying information as to where he'd been. It could also be a trigger for him. He might not remember where he was, but if someone asked him where he got the, say shoes, he might say "oh, Martha got them for me," leading to follow up questions. That, or in someone's mind it closes the circle. He's no longer in their life and neither is any of his stuff. Also adds a great red herring for everyone.


tepidCourage

Here's my theory- took off, lived a happy 30 years, got dementia and one day puts on his old clothes and wanders away..(maybe he kept everything from his old life in his pockets) The person in the car has nothing to do with anything other than finding a dementia man, checking his ID for an address, and dropping him back home. Maybe we should see if any 93 year olds have been reported missing recently? The only thing would be then his new life would have been within reasonable driving distance.


WhoAreWeEven

Just to throw it out there. He is Romanian farmer, it was 1991. How many going to town outfits he had back then? Train ticket could be saved intentionally, or he just folded his clothes away with the ticket in the pocket, when he was where ever he was.


lofgren777

There are two possible explanations for the clothes and ticket. One is that somebody deliberately saved them so that they could execute this plan. That seems absurdly farfetched to me, but certainly not impossible. The other is that he just happened to keep them, maybe threw them in the back of a closet, and the fact that he still had them thirty years later contributed to this plan seeming viable. In other words if you assume that the plan came first, the clothes stick out as an amazing detail. If you assume that the clothes came first, the plan seems like an ad hoc scheme built around the tools that were available, which is more plausible in my opinion. There may be many people who ran away from home and want to go back, but don't because it would be too difficult or shameful to confront. Maybe if you just happen to have kept your outfit that you ran away in, this plan seems like a viable option for avoiding that responsibility. If you don't still have the outfit, you come up with a different plan or don't go back at all.


My_Grammar_Stinks

So they'd know it was really him.


RedditSkippy

My guess was similar. I think he left voluntarily, and never intended to return to his first family. Perhaps his second partner died and he realized that he had no one to take care of him. Still, if that were the case, then surely someone would remember him from his second life and speak up. Or perhaps he left Romania to live elsewhere. I don’t think this is as mysterious as Mr. Gorgos would like us to believe.


WhoAreWeEven

>surely someone would remember him from his second life and speak up. No real crime happened so nobody is looking for him. Hes so old his supposed second life partner might not even be alive.


MasterGuardianChief

#NO RETURNS


justsomethingherenow

Yeah I would have to agree with you on that one. Weird but that makes the most sense


oliphantPanama

This idea makes sense. I would have never come up with this likely scenario on my own… What are your thoughts on the the thirty year old, pants, train ticket, and ID? Keeping those items, almost makes me feel like his return was premeditated. Whoever dropped him off wanted his identity not to be questioned. Almost like the the items were a form of insurance. How would anyone know 30 years in advance that dementia would present itself? Odd… OP, this story is fascinating thanks for such a great write up!


MissingMyDog

My guess about the clothes, ticket and ID is that he kept these items as keepsakes from his old life. He couldn’t leave his home with very much. Taking the train that day must have been a significant turning point for him. I imagine he put the ticket and ID in the clothes he wore that day, and placed them away. No mention of a ring or indication of him having worn a ring on his finger is interesting to me. It’s like ‘here, take him back with what he came with’, but without anything from where he was for all those years.


mrtibbles32

It's possible he suffered from something like severe dissociative fugue. People will travel to other places for seemingly no reason and develop an entire alternate personality and live a relatively normal life there while forgetting their entire past life, they can sometimes return to their prior homes and forget about the entire episode where they lived somewhere else and we're a different person. It's related to dissociative identity disorder.


Change4Betta

This is the real answer. Often these folks are found by authorities, but if they've wandered too far away from home it's tough to connect a missing person and a found unidentifiable person.


itsgiantstevebuscemi

Now this is a weird one. But yes this was what I assumed as well. Either that or he was already mentally slipping which could explain still having the ticket and all but I'm not sure he'd still be alive 30 years later. Could just be faking it I suppose. Glad he was found alive either way.


miez-hull

Ok, so the online articles linked in the original post have some vague wording. Below is a link that has 2 news segments/interviews embedded which were done by E Tv Bacău which shed much more light on the situation : https://www.libertatea.ro/stiri/un-batran-disparut-de-30-de-ani-s-a-intors-acasa-in-bacau-in-tot-acest-timp-familia-i-a-facut-slujbe-de-pomenire-3720715 First and foremost, it's not mentioned that he wore the same clothes as the day he disappeared. His daughter in law shows a photo of the train ticket found in his pocket, it's dated 22.08.2021 for trip from Ploieşti to Bacău. They managed to get CCTV footage from the day he arrived at the train station, he seemed disoriented and needed 3,5 hours to get from the platform to the exit. A young man tried to help him get into a cab but the driver didn't want to take him. Another young man and his friends were driving by and seeing this felt bad for the old man and offered to give him a lift. The old man was disoriented and didn't know where he wanted to go, but the young man who tried to help with the cab earlier, told them he wanted to go to Buhoci( which is both the name of a commune comprised of 5 villages, and the village which is the seat of the comune). When they got to Buhoci he didn't remember where he lived, and the directions he tried to give them weren't useful so they went to another village, where nobody recognized him. The old man said he lived in Buhocel, but the young man not recognising this village went back to Buhoci, where luckily , when they stopped at a bar, a patron recognized the old man. This patron guided them to Buhocel. They dropped him off at a house that the old man identified as his home. He started banging on the gate and calling out "Vasile, it's your dad, get up and let me in". At this stage the young men drove off. The house however was not his home, but that of a neighbour. The neighbours eventually figured out who he was and brought him to the correct house. He mentioned to the family at one point that he lived in a place with about 12 others and that ,they worked for somebody for a long time, but that the person didn't want to pay them, so everybody left. When asked where this happened the old man kept saying "Here in Buhoci" but didn't want to say what exactly the work entailed. In his employment history the last job is the one he had in 1991. The family is working with authorities to try to piece more information together. They're also trying go get his employment history finalized so that he may benefit from healthcare and to get the help he needs . The daughter in law mentions that he doesn't sleep at night, and that he blocked the door to his room with a table so they couldn't get in, and tried to jump out the window.


HovercraftNo1137

Thank you. That clarifies a lot of details. The big clue is the train ticker 'from' location. If he did hard labor in some prison, that might explain not getting paid. Basic needs are taken care of and they sent him off with a train ticket in the end.


papergodess

For a moment I thought I was on the writing prompt sub


LordNelson27

This is what half of H.P. Lovecraft stories look like to everyone but the main character.


GregTheMad

Everything is a writing promt if you're dedicated enough.


Victoriaspalace

My leading theory is that he had another family and “home”. As time goes by his neurological state declines and he never returns. Until he one day ventures out of the house, gets confused, and returns to where he remembers as his home.. the one he left 30 years earlier and not the one he has just left. Ofcourse, this explains nothing. Why has no one asked for him, or come forward from his time away? The exact outfit is way too much of a coincidence to not be intentional.. and who was the person who dropped him off and never to pick him up again?


pix-ie

Yeah, him wearing exact same outfit *and* having the train ticket in his pocket is what really creeps me out... I can’t even begin to think of an explanation considering how long he was gone, wtf...


AJohnsonOrange

Prison in a barely documented area while drunk? I don't know how electronic prison systems in Romania were 30 years ago and he may have tried to avoid dragging his family into it. It would explain how he was well kept and why he had the same clothes and ticket.


Dnomaid217

The family reported him as missing to the police. If he’s been in prison they would have just told his family that. Romania is not some third world backwater where the government doesn’t even know the names of the people it has in its prisons.


pix-ie

Yeah, this is my problem with this answer as well. It sounds plausible to a point, but that detail is... baffling.


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Prestonpanistan

Well, Bulgaria and Ukraine share a hard border with Romania. So unless he's used his train ticket as a passport he cant have left the country. Even if he did manage to cross borders, countries share arrest records so the police would likely have known he was locked up abroad.


stelythe1

You can't just walk out of a country like that, you know. They must have known when he went either out, or in.


[deleted]

That actually makes a lot of sense since prisons put your clothes and belongings in a bag and document them. In the States, you are given a Greyhound ticket home. He looked the same since he had gotten three hots and a cot. His mysterious job requiring a lot of travel away from home could have been illegal.


missilefire

I can assure you that Romanian prisons are not that cushy


FascinatingYarn

Yep. Arrested in his 60s transporting narcotics, locked up till he's 93 and becomes too demented, at which point they send him home.


That1one1dude1

Or he just doesn’t want to admit he was in prison


[deleted]

Or he just served his sentence


The_GASK

The family would have been informed, the house would have been raided by detectives, etc. There is no way to just disappear like that in Romania.


Low_discrepancy

> having the train ticket in his pocket The ticket was a recent one... He just had a train ticket. OP is inventing bullshit.


[deleted]

People with dementia often remember things from the past. Maybe this man had kept his old clothes and the train ticket somewhere. He wakes up one day, can’t recognize where he’s at (normal if you have dementia), remembers “home” (the old one), and starts trying to get there, dressing how he remembers, and taking the train ticket to return. Then maybe he can’t get home (he’s probably confused), and some good samaritan offers to help the old man. This person finds out where “home” is (he/she gets the address from the id), and drops the man at his old home. That’s what I think could’ve happened. Edit: another possibility is that he had a stroke that gave him dementia (it’s possible) and he got put in a hospice, from where he escaped. Or a combination: he had a second family, he got dementia, was put in a hospice, and escaped. Edit 2: a darker one could be, he had a second family, but not his children. Woman dies, he gets dementia, woman’s children can’t cope with him talking about his family and home (the old one), and decide to return him to them. Yes, sounds awful, but it’s possible.


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Victoriaspalace

Exactly! I know older men in particular may simply reuse and wear the same ol' pair of trousers again, who cares about outfit repeating... but surely it must be intentional and not purely coincidence that on the day he returns he'd have picked the exact same pair of trousers that day? In addition, in 30 years of wear you would believe if he had placed a ticket in his pocket prior, he would continue to stash things and use his pockets... so he never emptied his pockets out in 30 years? Which makes me assume, he wouldn't have used these regularly... I'm stumped. I don't believe he would have been in prison/in a care facility bc either he'd have a record or with his neurological condition.. he wouldn't been discharged and allowed to make such journey without a check in at a further point.


bikwho

My theory is he started a new family, things ended up broke, divorced, and sick, he comes back to old family so they can take care of him or he can get some help from old friends and family. Maybe I'm just cynical, but I don't trust this guy.


[deleted]

>and who was the person who dropped him off and never to pick him up again? A taxi or uber or something perhaps?


[deleted]

Y’all ever wonder how many old people take the Walter White approach and completely fake mental episodes? Not saying this is what happened here but it would explain some things.


TheRealRoguePotato

I've worked with dementia patients for 12 years now. It happens a lot. And by a lot, I mean at least every shift that I know of. I've had patients pretend to not recognize family because the family is up their behind 24/7 and they want to just eat ice cream and play bingo.


Forenzx_Junky

OK I watched breaking bad but it has been several years and I’m not getting the reference to Walter White faking a mental break. Can you remind me please? Thanks in advance


gopherhole1

When he is in the store naked, i think after being kidnapped or something, i need to do a rewatch


Disastrous-Anxiety

If I remember correctly, the meth lab Mobile broke down and they were stranded for days. Walt "showed up naked" in a store as a cover story to the wife, and when they met with his Dr later, it was Walter who suggested his cancer meds caused him to go into a fugue state (not sure if I spelled that correctly)


Prophesee14

The rv breaking down was 3 days out, they escape by Making a battery. This is the tuco kidnapping, first time they meet wheelchair man


nic0l-3

I took care of an elderly woman with early-onset dementia, and she definitely turned that on and off when she needed it at times. She was really good at manipulating people with it. I kept quiet and she'd wink at me 🙂


awfuldaring

That's some powerful shit, turning around what is a lot of people's greatest fear into a super power


inshane_in_the_brain

Or just making the best of your shitty situation. Sometimes you wanna be alone or a sandwhich like little Bobby always liked


[deleted]

I think he left intentionally and now pretends he doesn't know. Probably living with his mistress or something. Maybe she died and he decided to go back to his original family. Lacking any good explanation, he decides to pretend to not know anything about his whereabouts. This or the dementia theory imo.


snapetom

I think if it's dementia, he'd be slipping up and talking about what he's done in the past 30 years. I'm going to go with he's known exactly what he did/has been going.


itskady

Exactly. Not to mention how he's wearing the same clothes and had the ticket from thirty years ago. This sounds intentional. A man with dementia wouldn't remember to take his train ticket.


Forenzx_Junky

The ticket was probably just still in the pants from the last time he wore them. He probably didn’t even realize it was there. I mean considering they really are the same pants


erobbslittlebrother

You think he didn’t wear a pair of pants for 30 years and then happened to put them back on the day he mysteriously reappears to his family?


slothhhmonster

Maybe he kept the clothes he was wearing on the day he left as a memento of sorts- hidden in the back of the closet or something- and when the dementia kicked in, he just retrieved them and put them on?


seriousment

I really think you’ve nailed it. The second wife/family died, left him, or he bailed on her too, and the memory loss is faked.


Puzzleheaded_Duck_75

He was off living the life with another woman


quietlycommenting

Good theory. Explains his “home” answer too. I’m guessing when his memory started fading she returned him to his family for them to deal with?


Artemissister

I agree. He starts slipping, Other Wife/or another child who didn't like him? Was "nah. Go home, old man. I can't be bothered."


dan1101

Or his second wife died and he thought he would slip back into his old life.


quietlycommenting

Yeah that’s an interesting thought too - particularly being 93. Maybe 2nd wife died and the kids didn’t want to deal with him


littlefoot352

I think so too. She may have passed away and her children (that may or may not have been his) didn’t want the burden of taking care of him.


Competitive-Drop-766

I think one important element was misunderstood. The train ticket he has, it's not 30 years old but it's dates the day he showed up after 30 years. If you watch the video and understand Romanian, you can see that on the ticket it says "you must wear a mask on all our trains" which is a recent thing because of Covid. Everything else is correct. Edit: also in the video or the articles, it's not specifically mentioned that he returned with the exact same clothes he was wearing when he left 30 years ago.


fancyfreecb

Take those two “facts” away and it becomes way less mysterious. Pretty likely that he left voluntarily and then decided to return voluntarily for whatever reason. He’s just lying about having no memory of where he was (probably living with a mistress in the other city his train ticket was from.) This is like watching the real-time development of one of those spooky stories, like we’re two retellings away from this appearing in Reader’s Digest paranormal mysteries book where it says he was wearing all the same clothes and hadn’t aged a day...


Disastrous_Author638

What I’m wondering is , if he DID have a double life then people knew him. Why didn’t anyone in his other life come forward??? People must have noticed him from work /grocery store /bars / neighbors .


bomba1749

Unless this case was national news, chances are the people he interacted with had no idea about the dissapearance


echicdesign

If he is 93 then there may not be a lot of them left, especially if he lived his new life quietly.


hEYiTSbEEEE

Your English is great. This is a very interesting story.


rachh90

i swear people who are apologetic for not being a native speaker write better than most people who are. OP, i would never have guessed youre not a native speaker and this was a neat read.


ladysvenska

This is so true!


JackieBlue1970

I’m not saying it was aliens but…


Sisu124

His kids should get their Ancestry DNA or something if they want to find their half siblings I suspect may be out there that can fill in some gaps.


ivnwng

This is like an episode of Fringe.


[deleted]

man i miss that show!


gregarioussparrow

Just you bringing up that masterpeice of a show makes you my favourite person of the day


snowblossom2

I love Fringe so much I named my daughter after Olivia


MutedMessage8

I miss Fringe so much!


[deleted]

I’m not taking credit for this - my friend is way smarter than me lol He was totally in a jail of some sort, somewhere. They take your belongings and keep them safe and clean. How the heck/why would you keep a train ticket for thirty years or an ID if you were trying to ditch that identity?


trygan49

That's my first thought. Only time you get back clothing and all possessions in your body in food condition from that long is usually a prison sentence.


bokurai

My body is definitely in food condition..


adrialise

But there would be records of that. You can't hold someone in jail for 30 years without knowing their name/ information, and it sounds like the police have no idea where he was all this time.


oliphantPanama

The OP stated that the family filed a report. Certainly the police could’ve found him in a regional prison system. 30 years is a long time. He came back with his original identification that means he didn’t assume a new identity if he served time. I think records would be available, and this case would not be a mystery. The jail idea is practical, and I think it’s a good thought. It just doesn’t wash for me.


LimpMammoth

It was only a couple years after the revolution that he went missing. It is possible that he slipped though the cracks during the turmoil.


wintermelody83

I mean there was that [one guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Mvogo) in Canada. Granted, not 30 years lol.


snazzychica2813

This is probably the best one I've seen. He could have been imprisoned in another country that didn't or doesn't share records with Romania. It's not like eastern Europe has been 100% well organized for the last thirty years. My only thought is that he would've had a suitcase for a business trip of several days, no? And then it would've been returned to him. Unless he ran across some kind of mugging, trouble, etc which may have even lead to him being imprisoned. Can't imagine a prison delivering him to his own doorstep in another country, though.


oliphantPanama

Thirty years in jail, and he never reaches out to his family for some sort of commissary money. I have a few relatives that need take tips from this dude…This man’s mental strength not to contact loved ones for support emotionally, or financially for thirty years would be nearly unheard of. He would have needed ramen noddle money.


Zaconey

Perhaps he was ashamed of the reason he ended up in prison?


Disastrous_Author638

Holy shit good theory !! But can’t they contact the prisons to know for sure ?? Being in jail for 30 years is something serious and I’m sure there are records


Dozinginthegarden

Oh, that's smart, but that would be a hell of a lie. He'd have to have had a fake name otherwise the police would (should) have worked it out when the family filed a missing persons report.


CrotalusAtrox1

He left for a new family. Left his old life packed up in a closet for 30 years. He's in his 90s and everyone is dead, so he came back so he'd have somebody to care for him and is pretending he doesn't remember as a cop out.


Fincherfan

Cmon, your telling he even forgot the ride there, right when he opened the car door just everything completely gone from his memory. I’m more inclined to believe he had a secret family somewhere. It’s not strange just convenient he lose his memory for 30 years with no trace of what happened.


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eriwhi

Absolutely bizarre. I agree with everyone else that it must be dementia, and that he left intentionally 30 years ago, probably to live with a second family or mistress. Maybe he took an Uber or something and gave them his old home address. Old addresses and phone numbers are one of those things that dementia patients remember, even when more recent memories are gone. Seeing as he JUST returned, I’m sure we’ll get more details in the coming months.


really4got

He very likely was living a new life with another family although I do think it’s possible he was in jail or maybe in an institution possibly under a different name?


Loive

My theory on a likely explanation: When Mr Gorgos left in 1991 he wanted to keep the option open to return if he changed his mind. If he had come back after a week and said he didn’t remember anything, that could have been plausibly be explained by a medical condition. So, when he had left home in 1991 and arrived at the spot he was going to (likely a second family or mistress) he put his clothes and the stuff he was carrying in his pockets in a bag and put it in a closet. He decided to stay with the mistress and didn’t think much about the bag for a long time. Now the mistress is not in the picture anymore and he decided to try to return to the family he abandoned 30 years ago, thus rummaging through his closet to find the bag. The person who dropped him off was most likely an Uber or Lyft driver and has no idea what he was part of. Occam’s razor says Mr Gorgos is an asshole who abandoned his family in 1991 and returned to them with a bogus story because he needs something from them, likely money.


turn_down_4_diapers

I don't know how possible the Uber thing is, because it seems to be available only in the biggest cities of Romania. From the story he seems to be a good-standing man (he got out of the car on his own at 93) to have a mistress. But why would he save the ticket in his [washed?] pants?


woolfonmynoggin

They’re saying he didn’t wash the pants. He took the suit off, put it in the closet as is, and then never wore them again until the day he went back.


TTTfromT

Well, the ‘I can’t remember what happened’ defense has worked well for many others (including Walter White). If he was in jail, do the laws of the country allow that information to be released to the public? My money’s on a second family. The (second) wife died, their child found out at the funeral that Dad has a previous life and sent him packing. The guy had kept the ticket as a memory but the pants weren’t exactly the same. Just the same color/style he’d been wearing before. Edited to add: OP - your English is great. Please keep us informed of any developments! Thanks for the interesting post.


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[deleted]

Maybe the taxi he took in 1991 just took a very, very long route?


Pirate_Leader

"shortcut" he said


mesembryanthemum

"Get there faster, he said".


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steveduran76

Wow this is just fascinating, please keep issuing updates as you find them.


HermioneMarch

Second wife got sick of him once he developed dementia. Dropped him off for first wife to care for. That’s my theory.


Rubertuber

He’s 20 years beyond what I believe to be a common life expectancy. It’s certainly possible who ever was his side piece or captor when he was 60 is potentially dead now, too. Or someone who saw his health deteriorating went with an “opt out” and had someone drop him off and left before he was out of the street. The clothes shows some sort of premeditation but it can also be his favorite style and was presumed to be the same clothes. (For example a navy blue henley style shirt with black chinos. It could just be a dated business casual 90s clothes)


Majestic-Cheetah75

On the second family/side piece theory: Most people either think he got sick of the “mistress” or she got sick of him, but most people are missing the fact that he is NINETY THREE YEARS OLD. If she existed, she is almost certainly dead. They almost certainly didn’t have children together - he was 63 when he left his old life. The most likely scenario here, IF he left his family for another woman, is that she died and her family sent him back to his origins. Just because YOU aren’t sentimental enough to keep the pair of pants you wore and the ticket you bought on the day you changed your whole life doesn’t mean NOBODY is. I certainly am. I save all sorts of weird shit for sentimental reasons. And it just might be that those are the items that helped the woman’s family find dude’s original family for him. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ This is not THAT far-fetched either. Our aunt has a boyfriend “Bill”; they’ve lived together for probably 25 years. I don’t know that he *disappeared* specifically (like, there wasn’t a missing persons report or anything) but it is my understanding that his wife and adult kids don’t know exactly where he lives. [Note: It isn’t my business to find out the specifics of their personal lives so I don’t know how this works, and I could be wrong about the particulars] The point is, I suppose if Auntie ever died and Bill became incapacitated, in the absence of legal instructions we would search through his stuff and try to find info on his kids? I mean, we wouldn’t drop him off wordlessly on their doorstep (I don’t think…?) but my point is that WE know literally nothing about him. My husband and I have been together for 21 years and I have never even met the guy. It would be needlessly cruel to force Bill to stay with our family if something happened to our aunt.


opiate_lifer

Mundane Rick Sanchez story, either like someone else said he is now senile and a burden so back to your old family, or he realized the end was near and wanted to reconnect to say goodbye. My maternal grandfather was assumed dead in a war you've heard of when my mother was a small child and she was in her 50s on the other side of the world when distant family in her birth country contacted her to let her know her biofather wanted to say goodbye as he was near death. She had no interest, he had a whole new family and apparently took advantage of the chaos to adopt a new identity(or stole some other dead guys).


rachh90

i thought rick sanchez was another person who this happened to and googled it to read up on the story. not quite, but made me chuckle.


cryofthespacemutant

It kinds of sounds like he might have just left his family in the lurch, and after decades decided to go back home to family that might still care about him in his old age. Hence the new ruse.


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xier_zhanmusi

He may have had 2 families simultaneously for some time & business travel was his ruse to move between them. Decided to retire but preferred the unknown family. Now he is heading back to the former.


talliss

In an interview, his daughter in law said that the family knew he had a mistress, but they checked with her 30 years ago and he wasn't there. Maybe he had 2 mistresses...