Vasile Gorgos was 63 years old when he left his home in eastern Romania to go on a short business trip.
As a cattle farmer and trader, Vasile often made such excursions and, this time, had bought his train ticket in advance.
The difference here was that on this fateful day in 1991, he didn’t return home.
Knowing that he was due to come back the same day, his family immediately called the police who launched a search effort.
But after days turned into weeks, then months, then years, with neither sight or sign of Vasile, his loved ones were forced to assume the worst.
With no leads or traces to follow, they suspected foul play, but endless questions were left unanswered.
But then, on 29 August, 2021, three decades after Vasile’s disappearance, his family was faced with the ultimate plot twist.
A car stopped in front of their home – the same one they’d had for the past 30 years – and out stepped an old man, looking confused.
That man was none other than 93-year-old Vasile, wearing the same clothes he left in all those years ago. His pocket even contained the same train ticket he was due to travel with.
The car allegedly raced off before anyone had a chance to question the driver, but when asked where he’d been, a baffled Vasile replied that he’d been “at home”, Medium reports.
He subsequently underwent a thorough medical examination but doctors concluded that he was in remarkably good health.
Probably leading a double-life, he left 30 years ago to supposedly spend out the rest of his life with another partner and didn’t care to tell anybody, just disappeared. Something happened in the other life, maybe his other partner died before him, so then he figured he’d go back to the original life to close things out. Decides just to show back up and pull a Costanza, like nothing ever happened.
The article also posits prison as an explanation, which would explain the clothes.
If he was in prison, he’d have been easy enough to find and there would have been a court case, a pretty major one if the sentence was 30 years.