What happens when a world-famous mystery crime novelist goes missing, only to resurface roughly two weeks later claiming to not remember who she is, you might ask, and I’m glad you did because just such a harrowing adventure befell British author Agatha Chrisitie.
The year 1926 was a rough one for Christie.
In April, the British author experienced the death of her mother, Clara, from bronchitis and was subsequently hit with cleaning out her childhood home—a move that brought many tamped down emotions to the surface for Christie. Also, that terrible year, Christie learned her no good, cheating husband Archibald wanted a divorce so he could marry his much younger mistress, Nancy Neele, a woman he met while philandering about the golf course.
The night of Christie’s disappearance, December 3, 1926, started innocently enough, with no clues to the author’s upcoming 11-day disappearance [alleged] “scheme,” that would be complete with red herrings and even a séance held by none other than Sir Authur Connan Doyle, author of the famed mystery series featuring the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.
On the night of her disappearance, Chistie and her husband argued over a weekend dinner party she knew her husband was planning to attend with Neele. When he left anyway, Christie kissed her daughter goodnight, wrote a letter explaining that she was going to Yorkshire, left another letter for her husband, slid behind the wheel of her car, and headed out into the cold night, not to be seen or heard from for the next 11 days. Her car was later found by law enforcement, appearing crashed and abandoned in an area known as Newlands Corner, and half hidden by bushes near a chalk quarry. The headlights were still glowing, and the author had left a fur coat behind on the backseat.
Thinking the worst, the largest manhunt in British history until that point soon followed with over a 1,000 police officers, 15,000 civilian volunteers, and planes all assisting in the search. The quarry was investigated and a pond located on the site was dredged—but still no Christie.
Meanwhile, Doyle, obtained one of Christie’s gloves and took it to a spirit medium, hoping to learn his fellow authors’ location through other-worldly means. But if the spirits knew where Christie was, they weren’t talking.
Ultimately, Christie would be found checked in at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire, where she had registered under the last name of her husband’s mistress, Teresa Neele, on December 4.
According to reports, Christie said she was visiting from South Africa, ate in the hotel restaurant, danced with other guests, and even read newspapers featuring her own face on the front page. Witnesses said she appeared kind and polite, if a bit detached from her surroundings.
All the while the world was continuing to hold its collective breath, until December 14, a banjo player at the hotel happened to recognize Christie from the media coverage and contact the police. The following day, Christie’s husband came to the hotel to collect his wife. Witnesses said the author appeared confused when meeting with her husband, like she recognized him but did not know him. She claimed to have no memory of who she was or how she arrived at the hotel.
The official explanation was Christie had suffered a fugue state, a rare dissociative condition in which a person loses access to their own memory and may travel to unfamiliar locations or assume a new identity. Fugue states are believed to be triggered by overwhelming psychological stress.
Others believe the author simply plotted her own escape as a possible publicity stunt.
What do you think? Did the famed mystery novelist plot her own disappearance or are we all just one mental breakdown away from running off screaming into the woods ourselves?
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