Paper Trails of the Missing

Some disappearances don’t make headlines. They don’t trigger manhunts or documentaries or late-night specials. They leave behind paperwork.

This unsettling true-crime–inspired collection tells the stories of people who vanished not through mystery alone, but through systems that noticed them briefly, and then moved on. Each story is narrated in first person by the last professional who officially interacted with the missing: a legal aid volunteer filing a restraining order, a tow-yard manager rotating an unclaimed car, an intake nurse waiting for a patient who never arrived, an elections clerk quietly canceling a voter, an insurance adjuster denying a claim for lack of proof of death.

Drawn from patterns found in real public records, court filings, intake logs, registries, and administrative notes. Names get stamped. Files get closed. Statuses expire. And the human being at the center fades into categories like inactive, unlocated, released, or denied.

Written in a stark, intimate, first-person voice, this collection exposes a chilling truth: the modern world doesn’t require answers to move on, only documentation. When the paper trail ends, so does accountability.

This is true crime without detectives. Closure without resolution. A record of what happens when the system notices, but only briefly.