NY- September 16, 2008 , age 23
First Disappearance:
September, always September, it turns out. Hannah was about to begin teaching school in Harlem the day before she disappeared. She left her apartment for a run. She took nothing with her. She started her run around Chelsea Pier, where she had been previously to attend a 911 memorial with Japanese lanterns. She had also danced at an Obon festival with the same kind of lights which represented departed souls. She said that there was something soothing about the water. It was a full moon. Was she drawn, almost hypnotically, to the softness of the alluring scene?
During the three weeks she was missing she logged into her facebook account from an Apple Store but left right away. Someone recognized her once and asked her if she was Hannah Upp. She vehemently denied that she was. She had been spotted at gyms, apparently to shower, and at a Starbucks. Where she had been in between, no one knew. Finally she was found off of Staten Island, face down in the water by fishermen who thought she was dead. Apparently she had jumped into a kayak and paddled, then swam to a nearby island where she slept or passed out, leaving her with a severe sunburn on one side of her body. Who knows how long she lay there or how she got into the water before she was spotted.
She was given extensive physical and psychological testing after the episode and no head injury was found to explain the events. She had been given the Myers Briggs personality test at one point in her life and was found to be an Extrovert, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving personality. The latter three dimensions of her personality speak to how deeply she may have felt things and why, perhaps, she would need to push down some intense feelings, or “run away from them”.
The conclusion of her psychological exam was that she had experienced Dissociative Fugue. In layman’s terms this is a disorder in which a person suddenly has amnesia for facts about themselves and their history. It can last for hours, up to years and can reverse just as suddenly. In therapy (including hypnotherapy) she was not found to have experienced any severe trauma. This was confirmed by Hannah and her family. So what caused the fugue episodes?
Missing Again
Maryland- September 2013, 5 years later.
Second Disappearance:
We know less about the details of the subsequent disappearances, but some similarities were unmistakable. Again a new school year was starting and she was set to teach at a Montessori school. Again, she left her wallet and phone at home and was apparently drawn to water. This time she went to a creek. She was texting and after a while looked down at what she was doing and didn’t remember texting.
She “lost track of time,” perhaps the beginning of losing track of herself. She had been missing for 2 days this time when she was found laying in a creek near some roots. She “woke up” and called her mom. She said that she felt embarrassed and guilty even though she didn’t do anything to cause these episodes. Imagine her anguish, causing all this worry to her friends and family a second time without understanding what was happening to her.
She moved a year later, perhaps to give herself a fresh start.
Missing For Good
Virgin Islands- September 2017, 4 years later, 32 years old.
Third Disappearance:
The calamity of the hurricane in the Virgin Islands in 2017 would have shaken anybody, and it certainly did Hannah. And came at her vulnerable time, September, the start of school. With the school building, like everything else, in shambles, life would be up in the air for all those kids, all those teachers.
Hannah disappeared, and her close friend, Maggie, thought, well it won’t be hard to find her.
“However, Maggie was in for a big surprise. She had no idea Upp had been previously diagnosed with dissociative fugue…a rare condition in which patients “lose access to their autobiographical memory and personal identity, ”
(They also often) adopt a new identity (and) suddenly embark on a long journey. The state is typically triggered by trauma, a natural disaster or “by an unbearable internal conflict.”
Stephanie Nolasco, 5/16/2019, FoxNews.com
After hurricane Irma, when others were leaving the islands, Hannah told friends she wanted to stay and try to get the Montessori school up and running. She wanted to give the kids some consistency especially after the trauma of the overwhelming storm. Her friends said she seemed happy…but “trance-like.”
Note those words: “trance-like.”
In the aftermath of the storm, she had texted friends around the world to let them know she was safe but at the same time she didn’t seem to recognize anything around her. It was as if this was a new, unfamiliar place, not her home. Still she was happy.
One day she went to the water. Again, she left everything in her car including her folded clothing, and again she was last known to be at the sea; Sapphire Beach. Was there a hidden trauma, hidden even to her, that involved water in September? Was she trying to escape that memory?
That was the last time anyone heard from her.