The Same Story, Different Towns

When I started investigating the disappearances in Hawkthorne, I assumed I was looking into a local mystery.

A tragic one, certainly.

But local.

I don't believe that anymore.

Over the last four months I've travelled across the UK following reports that, on paper, have nothing to do with one another. Different counties. Different police forces. Different victims.

Different stories.

At least that's what I thought.

My first stop was a village in Cumbria where a hiker disappeared during a routine walk through woodland in 2019. No witnesses. No body. No evidence of foul play.

The case remains unsolved.

A month later I found myself in a small Welsh community investigating the disappearance of a farmer whose vehicle was discovered abandoned near a forestry road. His keys remained in the ignition. His wallet was untouched.

He was never seen again.

In Norfolk I spoke with the sister of a missing teenager. She described her brother leaving the house one evening after claiming he had seen someone standing at the edge of the tree line behind their property.

He vanished before sunrise.

Different towns.

Different decades.

Different people.

Yet every time I sat down with relatives, examined local records, or interviewed residents, certain details emerged again and again.

Witnesses frequently describe unusual behaviour in the days before the disappearances and several people reported hearing voices calling their names when nobody was present. Others claimed to see figures standing among trees or in fields late at night almost calling out to them to investigate. Most dismiss these accounts afterwards. Those who don't tend to stop talking about them entirely like it's better to ignore what's happening right under their nose.

The strangest encounter i looked into happened in North Yorkshire. It was an elderly man that agreed to speak with me about a disappearance from the late 1970s. At first he seemed eager to share what he remembered almost relived that somebody was actually acknowledging him but then I showed him a sketch. Not a photograph.

Just a rough drawing based on descriptions gathered from multiple witnesses. But the very moment he saw it, he went silent. After nearly a minute he looked at me and asked a question I'll never forget.

"Where did you get that?"

When I explained that the drawing was assembled from witness statements collected across several counties, he became visibly uncomfortable.

His response was simple.

"I saw that thing when I was seventeen."

The interview ended shortly afterwards.

He refused further contact.

But since i started my investigations into these "missing" cases and posting them into this community i have received dozens of further reports from people describing remarkably similar experiences. Most are Impossible to verify. some are almost certainly misidentifications

But not all of them.

The more reports I collect, the harder it becomes to ignore the possibility that these cases share a common thread, not a person, not a criminal network but something older.

Something that appears in local folklore under different names depending on where you happen to be standing.

In Hawkthorne, some residents refer to it only as "the Borrowed One."

If you've experienced anything similar, or have information relating to unexplained disappearances anywhere in the UK, contact me through the submission page.

What I found in Hawkthorne may not be unique.

That possibility concerns me more than any answer I've uncovered so far.