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11th August 2024
04:55pm BST
A man who went missing for 30 years returned home one day wearing the same clothes he had left wearing decades before.
Vasile Gorgos, a cattle farmer and trader from a small village in eastern Romania, left his home one day in 1991 on a short business excursion.
He had bought a train ticket in advance, but when he didn't return home as scheduled, his family became concerned and reported him missing.
Local police launched a search effort, but as days, then weeks, then months went by, it became apparent that Vasile could not be found.
They suspected foul play, but year after year their endless questions remained unanswered.
Then, on 29 August, 2021 - three decades after Vasile went missing - a car pulled up outside the family home.
They quickly recognised the car as the one they had owned for the last 30 years. An old man emerged from the vehicle, looking lost and confused.
That man was none other than 93-year-old Vasile, wearing the same clothes he left in all those years ago. His pocket even contained the same train ticket he was due to travel with.
According to an article on Medium, the car allegedly raced off before anyone had a chance to question the driver.
What remained was Vasile, stood in the driveway.
The old man underwent a thorough medical examination where doctors concluded that he was in good health.
Remarkably, he could remember everything about his family, home and upbringing from before he went missing.
However, when it came to where he had been for the previous 30 years, Vasile's memory was blank.
He left his loved ones with arguably even more questions than before and, of course, once the story hit the headlines, numerous theories as to his whereabouts soon flooded social media.
One theory - put forward by the Gone, But Never Forgotten podcast - was that Vasile had simply decided to “ditch his life and his family”, possibly having taken a lover with whom he had run away.
In this case, it is possible that he “wanted to make amends with his former family before he passed away.”
Another theory is that he may have been dumped by the person he ran away with who, accepting that he was getting older and not wanting to take care of him, simply returned him to his family.
A third theory, which would explain how he retained his clothing, is that he had spent the past 30 years in jail but hadn’t wanted to admit this to his family.
There are, of course, countless outlandish and truly ridiculous theories circulating on the internet. Some are just too wild to even include here.
Ultimately, neither we, nor Vasile’s family, may ever learn the truth of what happened to him.
On the other hand, at least this is one missing person’s case that has a relatively happy ending.
