A Frightening Occurrence

Twenty days after Hannah left for the walk, a captain of a Staten Island ferry discovered a body in the water near Robbins Reef on September 16, 2008. They thought the person was dead. When they picked up the body, it was Hannah and she was alive. She was taken to Richmond University Medical Center. The doctors concluded a strange thing about all that was going on with Hannah.

The Missing Pieces

Hannah asked the doctors, why she was all wet. When asked she told her mother’s number and her name and her address. Barbara was called and she reached the hospital, her father was in India, and her brother, a Navy officer posted in Japan. Hannah was pale and sunburned nor she had any memory of what she has been doing for the past 3 weeks.

Unaware

Hannah Upp was diagnosed with dehydration, hypothermia, and severe sunburn. Luckily her condition became better and when a friend came to visit her in the hospital. Hannah said that she wanted to get out of the hospital and start her class soon, she has no idea that the class already started 3 weeks back.

The Diagnosis

Doctors did many tests and finally concluded that Hannah was suffering from dissociative fugue, a very rare condition in which the patient loses all the autobiographical memories and one’s identity. It’s a rare form of amnesia that can even lead the person to get a new identity in worse scenarios. “I went from going for a run to being in the ambulance. It was like 10 minutes had passed. But it was almost three weeks,” told Hannah.

A Total Shock

The police showed Hannah the surveillance footage but she couldn’t remember any of it. She felt awkward after all that happened. At one point, after reading about herself in the articles she even wanted to change her name. Finally, she decided that she would face the disease rather than running away from it. 

A New Start

A year after her first disappearance in New York, she lived with her mother at a Quaker study and retreat center on the outskirts of Philadelphia known as Pendle Hill. She stayed there for 3 years and became a teaching assistant in Montessori schools, one of which was in Maryland.
In September 2013, the school year was about to begin and Barbara got a call from the police to inform her that Hannah’s cell phone, wallet, and purse were found on a wooden walkway in Kensington in Philadelphia.