The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America's Wildlands

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There are many holes, but they aren't worm holes. Karst formations have plenty of small sinkholes. Step into one and you can disappear forever. There are many thousands of prospecting holes over most of our national forests and ither public lands. Most of those were either never capped or done poorly. Again, its easy to disappear if you step into the wrong prospecting hole or even old unmarked mine shaft. Jacob answered, "My life of wandering has lasted a hundred and thirty years. Those years have been few and difficult, unlike the long years of my ancestors in their wanderings." These cases are most perplexing. Sure, one could logically presume that someone who disappeared in such an environment got lost, suffered from hypothermia, drowned, or met up with a mountain lion or bear. 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 2020

The Guardian Top 10 books about missing persons | Fiction | The Guardian

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.

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Pray your child never goes missing in the woods of the PNW because those yahoos will do yoga at the crime scene before hiking off to look for your missing child. What began to really annoy me was the mention of conspiracy theorists and Bigfoot researches- yes, you read that right. Granted the Bigfoot researchers know the woods very well, better than most, and help out in the search. However, I could not suspend my disbelief when these Bigfoot researchers suggest that Bigfoot is responsible for some of the people who seemingly ‘vanish’ in the wild. One such believer even suggested that Bigfoot might even shield and help young kids who have gone missing. Ridiculous.

Summary and reviews of The Cold Vanish by Jon Billman

Lastly and probably one of my biggest issues with this so I will bring it up again. Billman did not get permission by the people he included in the book. He used full names, locations, and personal anecdotes that they were not informed he would use. It’s even more upsetting as he would make up information about them too. The most simple request I would like to make is that if you MUST continue to print this book, just remove the names and locations. I’m sure everyone would be much more comfortable and wouldn’t care about the lies as much if their names weren’t connected to such misinformation. Billman should’ve just taken inspiration and write a FICTION book if he wanted to use Jacob’s story so badly. A compassionate, sympathetic, and haunting book sure to make you think twice before stepping out into the wilderness alone. Billman travels the country looking into unexplained disappearances, describing some cases that ultimately are resolved and some that are not.My intrigue only grew. I tend toward insomnia and the analog, and each night in bed I listen with earbuds to Coast to Coast AM on a tiny radio. The program, which explores all sorts of mysteries of the paranormal, airs from one to five a.m. in my time zone. It's syndicated on more than six hundred stations and boasts nearly three million listeners each week. Most of the time, the white noise talk of space aliens and ghosts lulls me to sleep, but not when my favorite guest, David Paulides, is at the mic. I eagerly dipped into the book because I thought this was going to be about the various serial killers who seem to emanate from the Land of Rain. Not that I thrill off reports of murder but because there always seems to be a new report of another vanishing. However, the book is mostly about the search for Jacob Gray, who vanished while on a bicycle trip in 2017 within Olympic National Park. The star of the book is Jacob’s father, Randy Gray, who refuses to give up in the search for his missing son. He travels all over several states in the hope his son travelled incognito and just wanted to be by himself. That’s another of the many reasons people vanish…the denial of civilization. It isn’t necessarily that a missing person is dead as it is so much that a missing person wants to go missing on purpose. It is clear that some of the missing, young men especially, have chosen, if not to disappear, then to find a form of spiritual development that requires that they absent themselves from the populated world for a time. Other people simply get turned around in the woods, or are ambushed by conditions they weren't prepared for, or are, possibly, the victims of foul play. The National Parks RVing Guide, aka the Essential RVing Guide To The National Parks, is the definitive guide for RVers seeking information on campgrounds in the National Park System where they can park their rigs. It's available for free for both iPhones and Android models.