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

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Rational professionals I've met in my research—law enforcement and search-and-rescue personnel—tend to believe that our world is still a big, wild, and remote place, and logic and reason are at the core of missing persons cases. A very difficult puzzle laid out on a massive table, but there are rules and clues, and the puzzle can be solved. I agree with them most of the time. Two months before his disappearance, he started showing signs of mental illness. His family tried to help him and did everything we could, but American Systems in mental/medical health care, law enforcement, and even park protocol are not in place to help families. All of these systems caused a huge hindrance in getting Jacob help or finding Jacob. It was eye-opening for the family. Furthermore, you don't know for sure if a person is missing at all. While it's not likely, there's an outside chance they're alive and perhaps living in South America under a new identity (this happened recently, which I'll get to). A missing person is Schrödinger's cat.

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

Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls by Jessica McDiarmid It gets worse, as other conspiracy theorists have theorized that these people who seemingly vanished have entered a portal to another dimension or have been abducted by aliens.I love the amount of differing aspects Billman covers here, from family relationships and available resources to survival techniques and cadaver dog trainers! This book was brilliant reading. Incredibly interesting and so well researched. I enjoyed this book so much more than I thought I might. Billman looks at many different cases of missing persons and their varied outcomes, but follows mainly the case of young Jacob Grey who abandons his touring bicycle and then seemingly vanishes from the face of the earth. 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. 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.

THE COLD VANISH | Kirkus Reviews

One elderly woman, who had become a dear friend to Jacob, told him that she was happy she had the chance to meet him before she died. He was a compassionate, loving person with a heart of gold and Billman portrayed him as an unstable mess. The primary focus of this book is the story of Jacob Gray, who disappeared in Olympic National Park and the sheer determination of his father to find out what happened to his son.An insider’s account of the rampant misconduct within the Trump administration, including the tumult surrounding the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021.

The Cold Vanish by Jon Billman | Hachette UK

Searches are as unique as fingerprints.” Terrain, season, weather, circumstance of the disappearance, and physical / mental capabilities of the missing person all factor into a search plan.

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A compassionate, sympathetic, and haunting book sure to make you think twice before stepping out into the wilderness alone.

The Cold Vanish by Jon Billman | Hachette Book Group

Some people hardly attract any searchers at all. You can guess which type of missing person gets the most attention and which gets the least. It's the ususal BS of status and wealth. But, when search parties, helicopters, and endless attempts to locate the missing fail to find the person- one way or the other- the mystery is not so cut and dried. 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. In early April 2017, a young touring cyclist named Jacob Gray stepped off his bike and disappeared in the northern district of Olympic National Park in northwestern Washington. What ensued was a mystery that echoed other cases I'd researched. What was different for me is that Randy Gray, Jacob's father, allowed me unlimited access into the courageous search to find his son. The feature I wrote on Jacob Gray for Bicycling magazine was the catalyst for meeting Jacob's family, but it soon became apparent that their generosity, and the huge, strange purgatorial underworld of the vanished, deserved a book. 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.I saw the title and cover, then read the blurb, and my interest was peaked. I had to know what Jon Billman had to say in this true story of the missing across the country. He wouldn't tell me the place or even the year "for fear the Park Service will try to put the pieces together and ID them." I wonder how actual those park rangers might be—it's curious that park employees would say, let's go tell the bigfoot guy we have a missing persons problem, but it makes good lore. A year after living with us, he ended up getting an apartment, since he was doing well with his job and classes. He would visit us nearly everyday and oftentimes we, HIS FRIENDS, would pile into his small apartment to watch movies and play videogames. I have always been fascinated and just a tiny bit fearful of the American Wilderness; I think the sheer vastness of the spaces makes me think it would be so easy to disappear out there. And so enters Jon Billman.