Sometimes, Disappearing and Making a New Life Sounds Like a Great Idea...

Imagine you're being stalked by a psychotic killer. No-one believes your story of being hunted and  threatened. Disappearing seems like the only way you can escape, by becoming someone else and praying that the madman won’t find you.

For most of us, leaving our lives and starting over is an impossible daydream. There are lots of reasons why people do this – being really unhappy and seeing no way to correct things, being really bored and wanting to live a life with more excitement, having creditors constantly harassing you, family issues, and many more.

Having committed a crime – say you embezzled millions from your company and they're about to bring in the auditors – getting out of your life is one way to try and avoid prison. Don't bank on being successful, though!

Witness Protection is probably the best, because all the work of creating a new persona and a new life is done for you – although you still have to be careful not to give yourself away. And you've probably witnessed something traumatic before you're accepted into the program as a witness, so maybe it's not so much fun.

For Maggie Kendal, there was really no alternative but to disappear. She knew she was being stalked, but there's a twist – the psycho was killing people he thought had hurt Maggie in some way. He dreamed that one day he and she would be together, but in the meantime, he was 'protecting' her from people who he considered had done her harm. Being a little psychic didn't help Maggie at all – no-one believed that the murdered dead called to her, especially after they'd dug up dump sites she claimed the psychos victims were laid, and found nothing. Maggie had to flee to save the lives of other people she cared about.

But Maggie is a wealthy heiress with the means to move and keep moving, to pay for new identities and finally, to find peace in a small Ontario town. She purchased a community newspaper and resumed the work she loved as a journalist. But she knew that he would find her eventually and she'd have to stand and fight - or run again.

Disappearing is harder to do if you’re poor. You need money to travel, money to buy a new identity, money to live on and keep moving around until you feel your trail has gone cold. So you have to have a lead in time when you can quietly liquidate any assets you have before disappearing. Or, as some people have done, you simply get on a Greyhound bus and go, picking up odd jobs and hoping to one day feel safe enough to settle down in a new identity. You'll probably need several new identities as you go along in order to completely wipe out your trail.

You can check graveyards, find the name and birthdate of a child who was born around the time you were…and go and try your luck at getting documents in that child's name. Sure, you can say your paperwork was destroyed in a flood or hurricane, but most government offices have tightened up on this once tried and true method of getting a new identity.

You'll need to keep moving and changing your identity, losing yourself in cities in the beginning. You'll also need to keep a cash flow going, unless you've got a suitcase full of money from your previous life. Even the disappeared need to eat. That means working at low level jobs where pay is 'under the table' and there's no paper trail. Sure, you may be super well educated and have qualifications out the whazoo, but high powered jobs require documentation, and right now you're just concerned with not leaving a paper trail.

Later, like years later, you might feel safe enough – and savvy enough – to find a way to document your qualifications, perhaps by getting an expert forger to rework your certificates and degree information into your new name, not your old one. But remember, many institutions have become wary of hiring people who aren't who they say they are, and they will check with your previous employers or your alma mater, and then the doo-doo will hit the fan.

So, the grass may seem greener on the other side of the fence that's got you boxed in – but maybe it's all an illusion and home, sweet home, is the best place for you.

You can read about Maggie Kendall's journey to escape her psycho stalker and the courage it took for her to save the life of the man she loved and to make a new life for herself with him in Saving Maggie, to be released on November 7^th!

Saving Maggie