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Edward Lighthart: Missing Man With Amnesia
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by candice.tsuei | August 20, 2009 at 03:59 pm
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When Edward Lighthart walked out of the Seattle Discovery Park three weeks ago, he had no idea about who he was and where he came from. Fortunately, he has been identified by by friends and family who recognized him from his photograph published in The Seattle Times.
The blond-haired man with the walrus mustache wandered out of Seattle’s Discovery Park three weeks ago, with pressed khakis, an expensive dress shirt, a blue blazer and $600 hidden in his sock. He was uninjured — but said he was confused, lost and frightened.This much is clear: He is fluent in English, French and German. He possesses a professorial knowledge of European cultural history. He seems to have traveled the world. And he says he is a widower.
Thanks to the Internet - readers on SeattleTimes.com quickly helped to solve the mystery. One reader contacted The Seattle Times just hours after the newspaper posted Lighthart's picture in the newspaper and on its website. He said Lighthart used to teach at English in China and "had an incredible knowledge of European cultural history."
At 8:40 a.m. ET, "David Akast, Shanghai, China," left this comment on the Times' website: This is Edward Lightheart. He lived in Xi'an, China in 2005.
When Lighthart was presented picture his friends had emailed of him and other information on his past, he gradually learned that he had been identified and everything was "starting to click." Seattle police are now trying to locate Lighthart's family, friends, and colleagues, according to Tina Drain from Seattle Police Department missing person's office.
Before the newspaper’s readers solved the mystery, Lighthart told the Seattle Times, “One thing I’m afraid of if my memory comes back is, will I want it? I’m still not sure how well I’ll be able to handle it.” It’s a profound and terrifying question, and something in me wants to call it quintessentially modern, if not quintessentially human.
Little by little, Lighthart started to recall his past, including his educational background: University of Wisconsin in the early 1980s, University of Chicago, and Columbia University. He has also lived in Paris, Vienna, Sydney, Shanghai, and Bratislava, Slovakia.
Lighthart has been staying at Swedish Medical Center at Seattle for almost a month.
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at 13:21 on August 22nd, 2009
These cases were first noticed in 1880's France. The phenomenon spread to Germany, Italy, and Russia. Medical authorities lost interest and it dropped from notice twenty six years after the first cases were recorded. There are other disappearance stories in the news from time to time. Most of the missing are college students. Ron Tammen, Miami of Ohio, has been missing fifty years. Lynne Schulze vanished from Middlebury College in Vermont December 10, 1971. Remember Brian Shaffer, Maura Murray, Michael Negrete, Josh Guimond, or Justin Gains? They are the most recent still missing college students. VisionAndPsychosis.Net, a psychology project on the Internet, points to Subliminal Distraction exposure as a probable cause. The evidence of this is the very few students who recover or are found in altered mental states with amnesia of the details during their absence. Ahmad Arain, UCLA, got off a bus in Watts, walked to Mexico, and was gone six weeks. Matthew Wilson, Rice, was arrested in Berkeley eight months after he drove away from Houston. Both were computer science majors. Subliminal Distraction is explained in first semester college psychology under human physiology. Only visual SD was discovered as a problem when it caused mental breaks for office workers. The cubicle was designed to deal with the vision startle reflex to prevent that problem after 1968.