Today we are talking about pseudocide and people who faked their deaths. Of course only the ones who returned (or were found) are included in this list, but who knows how many people supposedly dead have started a new life somewhere out there… A Schrodinger’s cat kind of situation. Last year a film brought to the news the subject, don’t click this link if you don’t want the film spoiled for you, but pseudocide has been always part of popular culture, even more since the 1995 success of Doug Richmond’s book How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found
“Simply drive your car into one of the poorer neighborhoods of a big city, park it on a residential street and leave the keys in the car and the doors unlocked. Before morning your car will probably have changed hands several times”
Kevin Evans made a super interesting analysis of the main points of the book. Toby Fehily even put the book to the test himself! Toby shaved his hair, tried to gain weight… Read his whole adventure, you won’t regret it, it also has a funny ending. James Altucher wrote a more philosophical review on the book, brilliant one. Also, the Amazon
There are rare cases of people who just want to see their loved ones reaction to their death, selfish to the extreme like “Lord” Timothy Dexter or Alison Matera, probably we can label Matera as a case of Munchausen by internet. Other pseudociders made a location famous like Boca do Inferno, a cliff just west of Lisbon, featuring a plaque with Aleister Crowley‘s fake suicide note. Pseudocide is an art that no one on this list really mastered:
AGATHA CHRISTIE
In 1926 our favorite mystery author took her car, a small suitcase and left home. Soon her car was found near a lake, inside the car she left her coat, the suitcase and her driver’s license. It was big news, everybody started looking for her: police, planes and thousands of volunteers, even the lake was dredged but no body was found. After 11 days missing she was found in a spa resort (under a fake name). She remembered nothing about her home escape. Emma McFarnon wrote about Agatha’s disappearance.
KEN KESEY
In 1965 Kesey, author of the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), asked some friends to leave his school bus near a cliff with a suicide note in it: “Ocean, ocean, I’ll beat you in the end. I’ll break you this time. I’ll go through with my heels at your hungry ribs“. He left to Mexico hiding in the back of a friend’s car. Nobody found him until he returned to the US 8 months later. He did it to scape jail time for possession of marijuana, but eventually went to jail for 5 months.
SAMUEL ISRAEL III
Samuel‘s car was found with his belongings abandoned on a New York bridge in 2008 with “Suicide is Painless” (title of the theme song from M*A*S*H) written in dust on the hood. He turned to authorities 2 years later. Wondering why? he told journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin he saw himself on TV and was struck by how many people he had truly hurt.
DIANNE CRAVEN
The most recent case on the list (2009). Dianne Craven wanted to break up with her lover, who was at the time living in Portugal. Craven was pregnant with his child and when he travelled to meet the baby she pretended to be her brother and texted him that she died from brain hemorrhage. She then left to Bali with her husband. A tabloid found out she was still using Facebook months after her death. Turned out that even the pregnancy was fake.
JOHN STONEHOUSE
Stonehouse left his clothes on a beach to make everyone believe he went for a swim and drowned, it was 1974. Then he moved to Australia with a fake name (JD Norman). He was caught there a month later after retrieving money under different names from different banks.
AIMEE SEMPLE MCPHERSON*
This famous preacher also went to the beach and disappeared. It was 1926, people thought she drowned in the sea. Her mother thought she was dead and paid no attention to some letters and calls demanding ransom. Some weeks later her mother received a call from her. Aimee returned and explained she was kidnapped at the beach but managed to escape. You are right, she was lying.
*We can’t be sure if she was faking her death got bored and faked a kidnapping, but it’s a great story anyway!
