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Missing Person Hannah Upp May Not Know She is Missing

The teacher experiences episodes of disassociative fugue and has gone missing twice in the past.

Megan Ashley
8 min readJul 22, 2021
Hannah Upp (image courtesy of “Find Hannah Upp” Facebook group)

September 2017 had been a vicious hurricane season for the Caribbean. The island of St. Thomas in the United States Virgin Islands was battered from hurricane Irma when word got out that there would be a second hurricane approaching. With days to prepare, residents of the small island began to either evacuate the island or bunkered down.

One of the residents who chose to stay was thirty-two-year-old Hannah Upp. Hannah taught at the island’s Montessori school and was described as vibrant, energetic, fearless, and adventurous. But the stress from the hurricanes seemed to be taking a toll. While she was preparing her classroom for the second storm, her coworkers noticed she was off. Her positive, bubbly demeanor was muted. She was described as acting complacent and quiet. Though at the time, those around her assumed it was just stress about the storm.

On September 14, Hannah’s roommate saw her get up and leave the house around 8 AM. Though it was earlier than she usually left the house, her roommate assumed she was going into work early to help out the school. This would end up being the last confirmed sighting of Hannah.

The following day, Hannah missed a meeting at the school, and her coworker and best friend, Maggie Guzman, thought this was highly unusual. She tried to call her but no answer and had stopped by Hannah’s house and noticed her car wasn’t in the driveway. Her concern grew, and Maggie started contacting Hannah’s friends and family. One of Hannah’s friends cryptically told her to “look by water.”

St. Thomas (Photo by Kellie Klumb on Unsplash)

Maggie started a search party and had asked people to start looking in Hannah’s favorite spots. One beach, in particular, Sapphire Beach, was Hannah’s favorite place to swim. The beach was a disaster. Hurricane Irma had turned the pristine beach into a wrecking yard of debris. The beach was deserted, but there, in the parking lot, was Hannah’s car. Inside the vehicle were her purse, passport, ID, and…

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Megan Ashley
Megan Ashley

Written by Megan Ashley

She/Her, content creator, writer, true crime, and history enthusiast https://linktr.ee/truecrimemysteries

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