The mystery of these lost souls is compelling and often very strange indeed. You wouldn't think in this technological world that it would be possible to disappear without a trace, sometimes in plain sight but the in depth research Jon Billman undertook in this book shows that it happens more often than its comfortable to think about. He himself is deeply affected by these random tragedies and that comes across with every passing chapter. You know the drill. You pay the entrance fee, grab a map, register for any special permits. Nobody hands you a missing persons flyer for the elderly man who vanished off a heavily traveled trail yesterday. The park rangers don't ask you to look out for the twenty-something redhead who went for a run two weeks ago and never returned. That would be bad for tourism, of course. In this book, the author narrows the group of missing persons down to those who have vanished in wilderness areas- specifically national forest and parks. This "false" book claimed that Jacob had no friends and his mother was worried. He had friends. He had many friends in Washington. First off, he was close with his family in Washington. Every weekend we would go on a fun hiking adventure or he would take his youngest cousin camping. Nearly every night, we had movie nights or he would head over to his nonrelative best friend's place and play pool. Him and I would go out and grab frozen yogurt, watch sunsets, and talk about life. Whenever I was stressed about school, he immediately recognized my anxieties and would encourage me. I did the same for him. He was my best friend. About two years prior to his disappearance, Jacob moved to Washington to figure out life. He had graduated from high school. Mental illness played no role in his decision to move to Washington. He started college and a job. He was taking classes, getting amazing grades, and holding down a job. He was planning to transfer to University to pursue a degree in kinesiology. He wanted to be a physical therapist.

The Cold Vanish by Jon Billman | Waterstones

The Schrödinger’s cat experiment…I had never heard the entire experiment, but the fact that it is neither, dead or alive, or both, dead and alive, until you open the box. I imagine it is the same with a missing person. I cannot imagine how the not knowing could mess with someone’s mind. I received an advanced copy of this book from Net Galley and the publisher in return for an honest review. The release date for this book was 7 July 2020This book has a little bit of everything including true crime, unsolved mysteries, bigfoot theories, psychics, and cults. It is, in a lot of ways, one of the most “Santa Cruzian” books I’ve ever read. I also think, in Jacob’s case, it’s a strong advocate for mental health awareness and treatment. I was so sad and frustrated to read that his parents suspected that Jacob may have endured a schizophrenic break and never sought or encouraged professional help and instead thought it would be a good idea for him to commune with nature. Of course hindsight is 20/20, but I hope that for anyone who reads this, if you or someone you know is struggling with a major life event (in Jacob’s case, his parents’ divorce), please give therapy a try. I very much enjoyed parts of this book, primarily the smaller stories. I liked the bookend parts of Jacob and Randy’s story as well, although I found the middle parts in which Randy is wandering around looking at cult compounds to be both pointless and sad. Perfect for readers of Jon Krakauer and Douglas Preston, this "authentic and encyclopedic" book examines real-life cases of those who vanish in the wilderness without a trace (Roman Dial)—and those eccentric, determined characters who try to find them.

The Cold Vanish by Jon Billman | Hachette UK

Billman also covers the "abnormal" side of disappearances, including reported sightings of Bigfoot, strange lights in the sky, physical changes in atmospheric energy in certain remote mountain regions and hints at portals to other dimensions. People and young children seemingly vanish then reappear unhurt and thriving some time later literally metres from where they disappeared. Whilst some might scoff at these otherwordly suggestions, I suppose there are always things that science can't truly explain away. Jon Billman is a former wildland firefighter and high school teacher. He holds an MFA in Fiction from Eastern Washington University. He's the author of the story collection When We Were Wolves (Random House, 1999). Billman is a regular contributor to Outside and his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Esquire, the Paris Review, and Zoetrope: All-Story. He teaches fiction and journalism at Northern Michigan University in the Upper Peninsula, where he lives with his family in a log cabin along the Chocolay River.Unlike those books, each of which focuses on a single disappearance, The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America's Wildlands presents the stories of multiple individuals who vanished without a trace in wild areas across North America and a few other places on the globe, including Australia, Israel and Hawaii. It is nicely structured, with a narrative that weaves around the efforts of Randy Gray to locate his son Jacob, who disappeared in Olympic National Park in April 2017. Alternating chapters relate the stories of other missing persons and of the individuals who are committed to finding them.

The Cold Vanish — Kelly Book Stuff Review: The Cold Vanish — Kelly Book Stuff

Rangers perform what's called a "hasty search." Some search-and-rescue personnel hate the term hasty search, preferring to call it the Reflex Phase of a search. "Hasty" implies half-assed, a lazy afterthought. At any rate, rangers don't find anything other than the bike, trailer, and gear; they don't know anything more than anyone else about where the cyclist could be. This is becoming a head-scratcher even to trained rangers. For Randy, the search is about his son. When Jacob is found, the search will end. But some people make it their business to search for strangers. In teams or alone. Using science or pure physical endurance. With a reward or without. It’s just what they do, and the grim truth is they will never run out of cases. Their work days are a revolving door of the vanished. Some cases get resolved. Some don’t. They live with that. The Cold Vanish is an extremely well written and involving read about people who vanish into the wilderness and those who endlessly search for them. In our highly-urbanized and farmed world, it is startling to realize just how much true wilderness remains. Places that are nearly impossible to search thoroughly because of dense vegetation, weather conditions, steep terrain, crevasses, lakes, rivers and even wildlife. Where wandering even a short distance off a trail can result in a nightmare you might not survive (assuming you're not Jim Bridger or Jeremiah Johnson).But under the routine hustle and bustle, there’s another layer: the world of the missing, their loved ones, and the ones who search. And search. And search ...

The Cold Vanish (豆瓣) - 豆瓣读书 The Cold Vanish (豆瓣) - 豆瓣读书

Conclusions are few and far between. You'll know this going in. The questions, and the possibilities, are endless. A few things that really got me: The subject of missing persons is one that bothers me immensely. I can’t imagine someone in my life vanishing, being left in some tortuous limbo, not knowing what happened to them- knowing in some part your brain the truth of the situation, yet unable to give up hope- getting up every single day unable to fully move on with one’s life until the truth is finally known-either way. A missing person is a story that doesn’t end. We grapple to make sense, to decipher, to make meaning out of something so unfathomable. Jon Billman refers to the “purgatorial underworld of the vanished”, a description that makes great sense to me. The missing are caught in an in-between place, not here but not gone. Stories about missing persons respond to this cultural anxiety, their narratives plotting explanations or recovering and remembering the absent souls, refusing their oblivion. This book, without needing to put too fine a point on it, shows just how agonizing that limbo is. People in these situations will grab onto anything- and do mean- ANYTHING- that will give them some peace. People who, before their friend or loved one vanished, weren't given to fancy or conspiracies, will grasp at the ridiculous rather than face the truth.The author writes in an engaging journalistic style. He is an outdoor writer and his interest in what may seem to many an esoteric topic was piqued by an assignment for Outside magazine. He tells a good story, and his approach of diving deeply into the Jacob Gray case interspersed with accounts of others who disappeared in wild places works well. A compassionate, sympathetic, and haunting book sure to make you think twice before stepping out into the wilderness alone. I love the amount of differing aspects Billman covers here, from family relationships and available resources to survival techniques and cadaver dog trainers! I personally didn't enjoy the book when I was reading due to the frequent mentions of Big Foot, aliens, and alternate dimensions as explanations for these 'cold vanishes'. I thought it to be really quite ridiculous and disrespectful to include these as legitimate explanations. If this was my loved one featured in a book, I too would be very upset. The story of Randy’s search stretches through the book with Billman inserting stories of other vanishings between episodes of Randy’s efforts. He joins Randy to describe first-hand many of his searches.