Man Found Himself on the Internet

Jeana (DP)

Former Member
Joined
Aug 15, 2003
Messages
26,900
Reaction score
148
Website
Visit site
Man Loses, Regains Self
Talk about finding yourself.

A 54-year-old Wisconsin man, missing for more than three months, logged on to the Internet and discovered his own identity.

Kevin Mura, of Crivitz, about 40 miles north of Green Bay near the Michigan border, disappeared Aug. 26 after dropping off relatives at Chicago's Midway International Airport (search).

He apparently abandoned his blue Dodge Caravan (search) in the airport's short-term parking lot, and, according to what his family can glean, then hitchhiked around the U.S., spending time in Arizona, Colorado and Florida.

All the while, he was, and remains, in a dissociative fugue, a psychiatric condition similar to amnesia in which an individual blocks out his own identity, usually as a reaction to stress.

"He does not know who he is," his wife of 28 years, Jan Mura, told the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

Having left his wallet at home in the rush to the airport, Mura had no clue to his true identity. But he did know he didn't know.


Finding himself in a small Iowa town, he sought the aid of a psychiatrist and a Roman Catholic priest.

Together, they went to the public library and decided to search the Internet for reports of missing persons.

"He knew he lived in a big city near water," one of his three sons, Chris Mura, told the Press-Gazette. "They thought it was Chicago."

Crivitz is neither big nor on the water, but Mura used to live in Green Bay, which fits the description.

Up popped a photo of a familiar-looking white-haired, white-bearded man.

On Dec. 9, the priest called the Mura family to let them know Kevin Mura had been found.

Another son, Ken Mura, said the family, having sought in vain for months, was overwhelmed.

"You go three and a half months, you figure you're never going to know," he told WBAY-TV of Green Bay, "then suddenly one day, boom, it's there."

The three brothers immediately went to Iowa to see their father, but were very disappointed that he still didn't recognize them.

"It keeps going," Ken Mura told WBAY. "Normally, amnesia, you get it and then you can remember from that point on, but that's not happening."

The fugue could last several more months, and once he snaps out of it, Mura will probably not be able to remember anything that happened during the dissociative state.

But he has retained much of the knowledge he'd picked up during his lifetime, including his woodworking skills.

"He kept looking at the hardwood floors in the church and saying they needed sanding and refinishing," Chris Mura told the Press-Gazette. "He doesn't know who he is, but he knows he knows how to sand floors. He doesn't know why he knows that, but he does."

— Thanks to Out There reader Sandy C.


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,142005,00.html
 

Members online

Online statistics

Members online
86
Guests online
741
Total visitors
827

Forum statistics

Threads
589,927
Messages
17,927,743
Members
228,002
Latest member
zipperoni
Back
Top