I feel this book does quite a disservice to all the missing persons mentioned in this book, the conspiracy theories really detract from these persons mysterious fates and how the system as a whole fails them. 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. It boggles the mind how many people are reported missing on any given day. The stories behind each one is tragic and frustrating. 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.

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

Hachette Book Group is a leading book publisher based in New York and a division of Hachette Livre, the third-largest publisher in the world. Social Media 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. Billman looks at the possibility that some people don't want to be found, and disappear purposefully; maybe looking for something unattainable. I have to say, it seemed odd the amount of young white Christian men mentioned, who seemed to have a overt fascination with the bible, raptures, pilgrimage type scenarios. Indeed Billman describes the Jerusalem Syndrome. In with this he looks at the number of cults and sects, some of whom set themselves up along the Pacific Crest Trail and attempt to lure tired travellers in with the promise of energy giving chocolate or food.I've had a couple years to live with the figure, and today I'll argue that 1,600 is wildly conservative. I'm surprised Paulides hadn't coined a number much larger long ago; he'd have gotten away with it. Consider Oregon's national parks and national forests alone. Just since 1997, 190 men and 51 women have vanished. Then there's all the non-public wildlands in Oregon. There's Portland, a city with a bad homeless urban-wildland interface camping problem. More Oregonians go missing every week, and by the time you read this, the math—cloudy to begin with—will be off. 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. Searchers speak of "scenario"—why and how did the target come to be missing? It appears that Jacob—or someone—has been organizing gear. A tarp is partially spread out. But no logic points them in any one direction. Reading The Cold Vanish is a dive into an always intriguing and often strange world of searching for those who vanish and are often never found nor their disappearance explained. There is search-and-rescue, mostly volunteers, who offer expertise and often complex organization to systematically cover the ground or water where the vanishing occurred. Grid searches, highly trained dogs, aircraft, and considerable expense and bureaucracy are this world.

The Cold Vanish on Apple Books ‎The Cold Vanish on Apple Books

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. 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.As a search-and-rescue volunteer in Oregon and Washington specializing in mountain rescue, I was always called to search for, rescue, or retrieve lost, injured, or deceased hikers and climbers. Never did we get involved in a vanishing, though I was touched later by this phenomenon when one of my students inexplicably disappeared on Mount Baker in the North Cascades and was never found. Except in this instance, the cases were solved one way or the other. I found this book interesting because of the mystery and diversity of unexplained disappearances and the range of responses to them. I had no idea of the number and diversity of these cases. Billman is not a dispassionate student of unexplained vanishings, and he is drawn deeply into the case of Jacob Gray. These are the stories that defy conventional logic. The proverbial vanished without a trace incidences, which happen a lot ... This whole story is fiction and honestly it is wrong that he was so careless with his writing. As a journalist he should make sure he has his facts straight. If you’re not outdoorsy, be prepared to learn new vocabulary. You'll have to google definitions. The author wastes no time explaining what it means to grab the DEET and scramble up a scree.

The Cold Vanish by Jon Billman | Hachette UK

For readers of Jon Krakauer and Douglas Preston, the critically acclaimed author and journalist Jon Billman's fascinating, in-depth look at people who vanish in the wilderness without a trace and those eccentric, determined characters who try to find them.Though it's more probable than human abduction, it's less likely that the owner abandoned the bike to go on a trail hike—there isn't a trailhead in the immediate vicinity, he didn't secure his gear, and a hiker won't get very far before hitting snow.

Summary and reviews of The Cold Vanish by Jon Billman

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 ... When he learns Jacob is missing, Randy Gray, Jacob’s father, rushes north from Santa Cruz. He and other members of the family pester the Park Service to do a more thorough search, but when they do not, he begins a long personal effort to find his vanished son. He didn't start showing signs of mental illness until a couple months before his disappearance. It took everyone by surprise and as soon as we knew something was wrong, the entire family tried to intervene and get him help. But, getting help for someone you love is completely impossible in this country. Every single system (law enforcement, medical, state and federal parks) acts as an obstacle. Systems that should be set in place to help and search for the missing. We did everything in our power to help him and keep him safe and when he disappeared, we fought hard to get the park to allow a search. 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. Billman travels the country looking into unexplained disappearances, describing some cases that ultimately are resolved and some that are not.I am horrified and quite glad that I did not finish this book for it's really closer to something like speculative non-fiction than it is a non-fiction. 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. The critically acclaimed author and journalist Jon Billman's fascinating, in-depth look at people who vanish in the wilderness without a trace and those eccentric, determined characters who try to find them. About the Author 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.