Replay: Isaac Seidel Part 2 - The Last Ride
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There's a whole thing that makes it so hard for a lot of us because Isaac is so about adventure.

You don't know what to think because, I mean, if Isaac was going to decide one day, like, I'm going to go to Africa, I'm going to build a mud hut, and I'm going to live in that mud hut for five months, and then I'll be back, that's what he was going to do, and he was going to get there one way or another. And Isaac was also one of those guys, say you were going to go part ways for a short amount of time, like, he would always come through and you would always see him on the other side. And I'm still waiting to see him on the other side.

Yesterday, we brought you the first installment of Isaac Seidel's story. You learned a lot about Isaac's life and the events that occurred in the lead-up to his disappearance.

You also learned that Isaac disappeared along with his bike, phone, and backpack. Everything else was left behind at his home. Isaac hadn't told anyone that he planned to go anywhere. In fact, it appeared that Isaac had gone about his regular Sunday routine. He had chicken out thawing in the sink, which is something he would do on Sunday to prep his meals for the week. It looked like he had gone for a bike ride with the plans to return before dinner. But something happened to Isaac Seidel.

And whatever happened to him remains a mystery nearly nine months later. I'm Marisa, and from Wondery, this is episode 349 of The Vanished, part two of Isaac Seidel's story.

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In mid-May of this year, I took a ride out to Blaine, Pennsylvania, to check out the area for myself. As I made my way into the town of Blaine, I could see why Isaac loved this area and chose to purchase a farm in the town where he grew up. As you spot the town in the distance, you can see farms all around across the valley, with mountains along each side of you.

Blaine is a quaint little town. We drove through and made our way over to Isaac's farm, crossing over a covered bridge along the way. We saw Sherman's Creek to the right as we drove down Isaac's road, and then we came upon White Pine Ridge Ecosphere. That's the name Isaac picked for his farm. Today, Isaac's farm is overgrown, as he's been absent for nearly nine months, and he lived alone, so there's no one there to tend the farm for him.

I could see all of the things that people had told us about Isaac reflected in what was left behind there at the farm. His handmade bee boxes were still up along the hill behind his farmhouse. I could see clearly the life Isaac was building here, his dream. I could now visualize all these little stories that people had told us about Isaac, like this memory that Josh shared.

In 2017, Isaac was raising pigs at the time. So these were like a black variety of pigs. They're supposed to be like non-aggressive. They weren't like the pink typical farm pigs. They almost looked like a boar, like a big fat boar, but they were pretty docile. There's a stream across the road from Isaac's house and he lived out in the country. And I'd come over and there's pigs would be out running in the stream. And it's like, are you going to get your pigs? And he'd be like, no, they'll come back. Like he didn't care. And it wasn't fazed by anything.

Isaac had goals and dreams for himself. He worked toward those goals and had achieved many, like paying off his farm so that he could quit his government job to focus on farming. There was one aspect of Isaac's dream that he struggled with, and that was finding someone to settle down with. And he did find someone and fell in love, but that relationship crumbled shortly before he went missing.

So when Isaac Seidel disappeared, his ex-girlfriend and her sister were the ones who called law enforcement to ask them to conduct a welfare check. And then a missing persons report was filed after they found no trace of Isaac at his farm or with any family members that state police contacted. Looking over Isaac's home, his family was desperate to find any little clue that could tell them something.

What had he taken with him? What had he left behind? And what was the importance of those things? Isaac's sister Megan told us about the scene at her brother's house. Him just disappearing is strange. So his cell phone, it hasn't pinged since the 12th, the last day that anybody saw him. And we can't locate the phone, no. So he left his wallet, his ID, his cards. He didn't take any of that. It's all in his house.

We looked through, we don't know all the clothes he had, but it seemed like maybe there's some socks and underwear missing. We don't really know. And then I had just given him for his birthday, like a dry bag that you take canoeing and stuff like that. I had just given him one and that's, we couldn't find that anywhere. And like a backpack that he normally takes that one, that's gone also. So that's what kind of made us think, oh, he died.

He went out for a ride or he went out for a trip, something like that. But here's the other thing about Isaac. He is

Do you know Marie Kondo? The whole cleaning your house makes you happy. So he was like very into that. And his house was very sparse. He didn't keep anything that he didn't need. So it would not surprise me at all if I gave him the dry bag on his birthday and he went and returned it or gave it away or threw it away.

because he didn't need it, you know, or didn't want it. So we don't know for sure if he had these things and took them or he just got rid of them. He's very independent. You know, like I said, he lives by himself, so we don't know exactly what's going on, you know, in his house all the time. It's a logical conclusion to think that I had just given him this bag and, you know, his normal backpack is not there. So it's a logical conclusion to think, yes, he would take it with him wherever he went. And the bike is also missing. So

So it all kind of added up to a logical way of thinking. So his car was left at his house. It just seemed very normal. Like his lunchbox was there from, I think, the Friday before. He didn't clean it out. It was just sitting there. The keys were there. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary about his car or his motorcycle. Everything was there. In his house, everything seemed normal. They do a lot of canning, preserving foods.

And he had just did a batch of, I think, tomato sauce. And so all these jars were sitting on his floor there waiting to be taken down to like his storage area for all his food. So he had literally just done that. I said before that he doesn't normally mow his grass. He doesn't have like a big yard, but he had just started to mow around his fruit trees and stuff like that. And back this sort of farm road kind of going back his property, he had started

started mowing that he had borrowed the tractor from my parents to mow back this road and he had just bought more gas to do more mowing and so the tractor and the full can of gas was sitting right there so it seemed like he was just in the middle of things and then just literally vanished nothing seemed out of place about his house except that he wasn't in it

In part one, Megan talked about how she organized search parties to scour all of the roads nearby and also a large state forest that's not far from Isaac's home, a place that he was known to frequent. They were looking for a possible accident. Then they thought to check the Appalachian Trail because Isaac enjoyed going there, too. Isaac's Aunt Carol told us about searching the trail.

We had gone to different parts of the Appalachian Trail and were looking for him, putting up posters. We got these posters made and we thought, oh, could he have fallen off his bike? Could somebody had run him off the road? And we looked everywhere around here and drove and drove. And then if somebody would see somebody on a bike, they'd let Megan know or contact me and I'd take off on my car to go see where this person was.

to see if it was him. Because we thought, well, maybe he's in hiding and doesn't want to be seen. We've done everything we can. We've contacted the Appalachian Trail group because we said, if he goes on the Appalachian Trail, somebody would surely see him. Well, then we did get a picture of somebody on a bike because the guy said,

It was strange to see someone on the Appalachian Trail with a bicycle. Well, they sent us a picture, but it was his rear view of this person with his backpack on their back. You couldn't see the face of the person. He just snapped a picture because he thought it was odd, but he didn't get his face. Megan continued chasing down leads that were coming from the trail, which is very busy with hikers during the time of year that Isaac disappeared.

He was also very interested in the Appalachian Trail. So we thought one of the possibilities was he'd just go on the trail. So people told us, you know, they saw somebody in a shelter on the Appalachian Trail. So he would go at night, two hours to the shelter on the Appalachian Trail. And of course, you know, you get there and this person is not there and it wasn't Isaac anyway. And so we started calling people along the Appalachian Trail, you know, posting it in hostels along the trail and

We can continue to post things on Facebook. And yeah, that's what it's been since, just hoping and praying that somebody would see him. Frustrations continued to mount as none of these leads were panning out. They decided it was time to go back to the beginning and compare what everyone knew. What had Isaac mentioned to those he had spoken to? Could there be a clue in there somewhere?

It's believed Isaac disappeared on the evening of Sunday, September 12th. On that day, he had visited his parents, and he did one thing that in hindsight seems very odd. One of the things that's weird is that he had this cat that somebody had given him this cat because they didn't want it. So he kind of took the cat. He's not really a cat person. He didn't, I don't think he was really...

so interested in the cat to begin with. But anyway, the last day anybody saw him, he brought the cat to my parents' house and said like, here, can you please take this cat? And I said, okay, fine. And they didn't really think anything of it because he didn't really show a lot of interest in the cat to begin with. So that's the only thing that, you know, looking back, obviously it's like, well, duh, why would he get rid of the cat now out of the blue? He'd only had it for maybe a year, maybe a year at the most.

When Isaac's mom told her sister Carol about the cat, Carol immediately thought that this was a major red flag. Brenda told me that and I said, Brenda, don't you think that was a red flag that he gave you his cat? Because he liked this cat. And she said, oh, he just said he was tired of it in the house and he didn't want the cat anymore. She said, we didn't think anything of it. And I said, well, I guess you weren't. But to me, that was a red flag.

The reason that this is such a red flag is that giving away pets is a suicide warning sign. But everyone seems to have mixed feelings about this. Some think that Isaac just wasn't a cat person and never really bonded with the animal. While others wonder if he gave the cat away to his parents because he was making plans to end his life.

At the time of Isaac's disappearance, he had one pig at his farm. That pig was left behind. And everyone wonders why he would leave the pig behind at his farm if he was planning to end his life or disappear. Why wouldn't he give the pig to his parents, too? Josh is the person who had given Isaac that cat, and he's not sure what to make of this himself. He had a dog.

His dog fell ill sometime last year, and we actually gave him a cat to adopt, but he actually did pretty good with that cat. But the ironic thing was he literally took that cat to go live with his parents at his parents' farm, which is, I would say, less than three miles away. But he took this cat to go live with his parents.

The weekend he disappeared, like before he disappeared. So kind of seems sort of premeditated, but maybe not because his sister made the comment that he hated cleaning this cat's litter box because I can tell you from experience, it was a pretty messy cat.

Even more confounding than giving the cat away but leaving the pig behind, Isaac's family noticed that all of his books were missing from his home. Isaac loved learning and spent a great deal of his free time reading books. One day, Isaac's father was looking around the farm when he discovered what Isaac had done with his books.

He had burnt all his books prior to leaving. All the books that he had read over the years and all his books that he had, he took all this stuff out and burnt them out behind the house. I'm not sure what the significance was of that, but his dad didn't realize that he had done this until they were looking around the house and they saw this burn pile. And so they just kind of took a stick and moved it and you could tell it was books. Well, then they saw that all his books were missing in the house.

And they were burnt. So we don't know exactly the timeframe between him leaving and the books disappearing or when they burnt them.

But I don't think they realized it till after he had left that he had burned all these books. So it could have been that weekend before he left that he had burnt them. Well, it had to have been a short period of time before he took off. So whether he was preparing to do this, we don't know. What would be the significance of burning your books?

Was he upset over the breakup of the relationship because they just seemed to have their interests were so alike? I don't know. It's just odd for somebody that really cherished those books and bought these books on how to do things that he would burn them.

Isaac burning his books shocked his family, and they still struggled to understand why he would do that. If he was planning to end his life, why not just give the books away or donate them? And there was another odd thing that Isaac had said to his parents when he was visiting them. Before Isaac and Emily broke up, they had been working together to build a canoe. The canoe was over at Isaac's parents' house. Carol told us what Isaac said about the canoe.

This ex-girlfriend, they were building a canoe together. Well, apparently he walked out to the barn or whatever, because it was at my sister's house that they were building this canoe and it was gorgeous. And he said, just burn it.

In that moment, Isaac's mom and dad thought he was just upset about the breakup and that the canoe was a reminder of Emily. They had no idea that they would never see Isaac again. But adding all of these things up, giving the cat away, burning books, and saying to just burn the canoe, concerns grew that Isaac possibly had gone out for a bike ride on the day he disappeared with the intent to self-harm. The days and weeks continued to tick by with no word from Isaac and no new clues surfacing.

Dan told us about a special event that he, Isaac, and another friend held each fall. It was set to take place in 2021, a month after Isaac disappeared. When Isaac didn't show up, Dan knew this was extremely serious. Isaac and myself and Paul, we actually went together, bought an apple cider press to make real apple cider. So we bought apples and we pressed the apples

We went together, you know, and went found this copper kettle out and

Facebook marketplace, bought the kettle, took it somewhere and had it fixed because it needed repaired. And then we brought it back and we cleaned it up. And then in the fall would have been three years ago, we got this press and we got the kettle and we made apple butter. So we bought all this stuff and it was like the three of us did it as a friendship thing, but something to preserve the apple butter flavor.

We went to an orchard. Actually, the first year we went to an orchard, we bought the apples, processed the apples. So you took the apples and run them through the press and made cider. And then we took the cider and you put it in the kettle and you cook it down. So this is like a two-day operation. And it was like, we were all like really excited about doing this. Then you add apples to it as you process it. And the next day you build a fire and you cook it all day long. And then we jarred it. We made 150 pints of

of apple butter. So this wasn't a little operation. This was like kind of a big thing, you know, a full kettle. So that was the first year we did it at my house. The second year we did it at Isaac's house. So we invited everybody, you know, all your friends, neighbors, his family, we all came to Isaac's house. We did, made the apple butter at his house that year. And then last year,

We went to the other friends, which would have been Paul's house. And we went to make the apple butter at Paul's. And that was in October. And that was like a couple of weeks after Isaac was missing. And we just realized that, you know, if Isaac's going to make anything, Isaac would show up for making apple butter more than Christmas. Christmas or Thanksgiving were different.

He didn't see the reason why people needed to buy people gifts and waste all their money on presents at Christmastime. So when Isaac didn't show up at Paul's in Duncannon for the Apple Butter Festival, that was kind of one of those times that was kind of sad, disheartening, worrying. Like, that's something that Isaac would not have missed or would not have wanted to miss.

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Isaac's mom Brenda had scheduled to do an interview with us about Isaac's life and disappearance in January of 2022. Brenda had been battling cancer for many years before her son disappeared. And tragically, Brenda passed away on January 19th, 2022, just days before we were scheduled to speak with her. Dan told us that he had kept in touch with Brenda on a weekly basis before she passed away.

I talked to his mother twice a week, and then it was once a week until she had passed. You know, I talked to her every week. I was like, okay, I'm the guy at work that's calling you to see if there's any news about Isaac. Have we heard or hear anything? No, nothing. First thing I would call her, she'd say nothing. Absolutely nothing. Super nice lady. One of the nicest ladies I've ever met by far.

And Isaac was a spitting image of her. He's one of the nicest guys I've ever met. He told me his mom got, she got skin cancer. They sent her to the hospital. They determined that it was skin cancer. They removed some of it and apparently they missed some of it. So then she had to go back and have surgery again. Then later, would have been probably another year later maybe, she got breast cancer and

And then I remember when he was at work, he told, he, you know, one day he pulled me to the side and he was crying and tears in his eyes. And he told me that they gave us mother six months to a year to live. And that was probably three years ago. So at that point, she far exceeded her, what the doctors had told her she was going to live or what he had told me that she was going to live.

And I asked him, you know, how's your mom doing? You know, when he, after he had left work, you know, so he had been left the depot and didn't no longer work at the Navy depot for probably two years prior to now. And then he'd say, well, she don't tell us because I don't think she wants us to worry. And they would never really pride. I know she's still going to the doctor and stuff, but I don't know. If he went away, would he come back and say, hey,

How's mom doing? Or come check back in on his mother. Isaac wasn't a cruel, mean type person either. You know, he was very loving and compassionate, I think. We don't know how much Brenda's cancer diagnosis had impacted Isaac, but his friends had seen him get emotional at times while discussing his mother. Josh told us about his discussions with Isaac about his mom.

I had known while I still worked with Isaac that his mom had cancer and he more or less made it sound like it was a terminal kind of cancer. Isaac came back again after he had quit his job with me to do another roof for me, this time on my garage. We took a short pause on the roof just to take a break and said, Isaac, how's your mom doing? And

He got kind of still and quiet. I remember looking into his eyes and tears were streaming down his face, but his face showed absolutely no emotion. His eyes were definitely crying, but he just had, his face didn't twist. His eyebrows didn't make any change. He kept eye contact and

I think eventually it broke the eye contact, but I mean, I think there's a part of Isaac that didn't want to see his mom suffer. And I can't help, I'm sorry, but I can't help but think that

that there might be a part of Isaac that he didn't want to witness that. And I kind of wonder, because Isaac, I told you earlier, he didn't reveal a lot of his inner feelings. And this is a true example, his mom. I mean, he...

We'd keep it kind of vague. Other times I would ask. He did tell me that the doctors found some kind of medication. Apparently this medication was able to stop the cancer from spreading. And the last few times I had asked about his mother up until his disappearance, it seemed like that status had not changed. I think maybe he knew that

some dark chapter was coming about. His mom passed away in January and I couldn't help but think that like Isaac knew that this day was coming and a part of me got angry that he left and I felt some anger or resentment towards Isaac that his mom had passed and he wasn't here and

I think it's extremely sad and tragic that she had to pass not knowing. For Isaac's family, it's been a really difficult nine months. First, Isaac disappeared and they haven't been able to find a single trace of him. Then they lost Brenda, too. Carol told us that although Brenda had cancer for many years, her death was still somewhat sudden and unexpected.

She told me, she said, this cancer is going to get me. She said, it's going to get me. I said, well, don't give up the fight. She said, I'm not. I'm not. My husband and I were in Iowa with our grandkids. And even when I'm out there, I call Brenda. We talk. It doesn't matter where I am. We talked all the time. And so I went to call her. Nobody answered the phone at the house.

And I thought, that's really odd. So I called again. Well, then Dan answered. And I said, Dan, what's Brenda doing? He said, she's in the hospital. So I called her cell phone. Well, she didn't say too much. She said, oh, they're filling me full of fluids and, you know, doing this. It's my lover and da, da, da, da, da. Well, then I talked to Megan. And Megan said, you know, she's coming home with hospice.

I said, no, I didn't know that. Here I am in Iowa. Well, then we got COVID in Iowa. So we were not fit to drive. My next oldest sister would go up to Brenda's in the evenings or during the day when she, on days she didn't work, she would go up and Brenda kept telling her, Carol better get home. Well, Polly told me this. We had talked on the phone and she said, Brenda kept saying, you better get home. You better get home. We got home.

the day before she passed away and I think she waited for me to come home because as soon as I got home, I went up and she tried to get up. She couldn't move. Megan was so upset. She moved. They bought a house down here in Pennsylvania now, not far from where she grew up and from the farm. And she said she had hoped that she'd have the summer with her mom.

Well, unfortunately, she didn't get to fulfill that. Brenda was 58. Yeah, Brenda knows now where he is. She knows where he is now. I kept saying, give me a sign, Brenda, give me a sign. Well, it was really strange because the one, it was just a few days after she had passed. I have this stained glass heart that hangs on my dining room window. And it just started shaking one day. Never shook before.

There was no earthquake. There was no shaking. And I said, what are you trying to tell me, Brenda? Today, Isaac is still missing. And his loved ones feel as though they know no more than they knew the day that the state police came knocking at their door. No significant clues have come in, just unsubstantiated sightings. They thought that as the seasons changed, the leaves would fall, the brush would die back, and maybe Isaac or his bike would be found. But it didn't happen.

Winter passed, the snow melted in the spring, and still nothing. We are now moving into the summer months, and they are hoping that maybe a hiker will spot something.

But all they have to go on right now are theories. Despite the fact that they have done so many searches along roadways, there's still a possibility that Isaac went for a bike ride that day and was in an accident. It could have been an accident that no one witnessed or an accident involving a vehicle. Isaac's boss, Tim, explained that an accident has been the one theory that has made the most sense to him.

The vehicle that was missing from his house was his bicycle. And I guess the thought is maybe he went for a bike ride around dinnertime. Like maybe he set the chicken out, went for a bike ride around dinnertime and then didn't come back.

I don't know. That's where it gets a little bit fuzzy for me. Your mind can go all sorts of ways with it. Was there an accident with the bicycle? From what I've heard, they canvassed the roads around his house really well. So that doesn't seem really plausible.

Just knowing him, you know, you never know, certainly mentally, what's going on with folks. But knowing him, even for the short time he did, anything just that would be related to like running, intentionally disappearing, doesn't seem really plausible in my mind.

It almost seems like it would have had to have been something accidental related to him and his bike. He seemed like a capable guy. He was very fit. So I guess if he wanted to disappear, he could have. He was a very outdoorsy type person. Other people told us that Isaac was the type of person who could have decided to just disappear and go off the grid. This is something that they could see him doing. And he had the knowledge to pull it off. Here's Dan.

If anybody could survive off the grid, Isaac is the guy to do it. I would bet all the money in the world Isaac could survive. Isaac is the type of person that could leave and go somewhere and people, he could make friends somewhere. He could work at a farm for two days and move on and take the cash that they gave him and just keep going. And he's a guy that could survive anywhere, I think.

There's always that doubt, you know, I mean, where is he? You know, did he go off the grid and go away? Did he harm himself? Honestly, Isaac could still be out there. I mean, he can still be out there who knows where. Josh echoed these same sentiments about Isaac. He was adventurous, and he too could see Isaac leaving on some grand adventure to help him get over his recent breakup. So Isaac is a really unpredictable kind of guy because, you know,

He's so spontaneous. And I knew that there was a problem with the girlfriend. And I know in the past, Isaac would deal with life situations by, you know, going on an adventure. And he would just basically do something, some sort of a change in his life to make it positive, you know, like, especially when it comes with variety. That was the spice of his life and pass that on to me also.

We all thought he went on an adventure, you know, because his bicycle supposedly was the only thing missing. And his snack drawer was supposedly raided. And Isaac always had a snack drawer every time he went over there. I mean, we have a discount grocery store that Thomas should run over here. And he'd always have that filled with like discount chocolate and everything. And so it sounded like he was maybe going to go on an overnight trip. And then there were some reports where people thought maybe they saw him walking along the road and

I found out a couple weeks later that his mom had gone over there and found what looked like chicken thawing in the sink. And if Isaac thought, well, I'm going to go out for a bike ride. And, you know, the idea might strike Isaac that, well, I'm just going to keep going like Forrest Gump it, you know, and.

The idea of the chicken, he wouldn't care about that. A little rotten chicken two weeks later, sure it'll stink, but he wouldn't care about cleaning that up. I'm telling you, I ain't kidding, but Isaac could take a $10 bill and he could stretch that bill to the length that you or I could stretch a $100 bill. He could do it.

He was very thrifty, but he was also happy when he was thrifty. It was a fun challenge. It was just something that he, he enjoyed doing. Like, I don't know how else to explain it. He had like a, a huge zest for life and he wanted to get the most out of it. But I don't know. A part of me wonders too, like, but,

Let's entertain the idea that was Isaac depressed was one of his coping mechanisms to look at as much zest as he could get out of life. And that's why he had such a reverence for it. I don't know. He's also the kind of guy that would just get on his bike and go because there's a ski resort probably about an hour from my house driving distance.

And he lives like right over the mountain from me, but it still takes 40 minutes to get there because of the roads. But he pedaled his bicycle the whole way to this place called Ski Round Top. I think it was a bluegrass concert and he was definitely into live bluegrass. Him and I both enjoyed that. But he pedaled his bike 50 some miles, I think, one way and camped up there. He probably like slept beside a tree or something.

He pedaled his bike the whole way back on Sunday and went to work and told none of us. And we didn't find out about it until like a long time afterwards. But he just was all for doing neat things to get as much as he could out of life. Carol told us that one of Isaac's uncles had lived this way for part of his life. And she knows that Isaac would know how to live off the land, too.

Somebody said to me, Isaac was so smart. He was very outside conscious. He would know what mushrooms to eat, what he could eat off the land. He was so intelligent that way because he studied it. His uncle, his one uncle lived out in the wild and studied owls. Now his uncle had passed away several years ago, but his uncle just would go out in the woods. That was his job to study owls.

And he stayed out there for weeks at a time and knew what to live with and how to live off the land. And Isaac was the same way. He could have survived out there for a long time. He knows how to make a fire from whatever. And he would have picked up an odd job if he needed to, to be able to get the supplies he would have needed.

I mean, he was an avid biker. He had this mountain bike and oh my gosh, the miles, he could go 100 miles in a day. Nothing for him to travel 100 miles in a day. To be able to bike like he biked and did stuff like he did, he was amazing. Just amazing. And that's what's so sad to lose someone with so much talent and maybe had plans to just go for a ride and come home.

I said, it could be that the further he got, the more upset he got. And then when he was gone for so long, I said, he may have been embarrassed to come home. It may have felt like, well, now I can't go back. What will people think of me? Especially if he found out that all the searches were going on. Could he have felt that, oh my gosh, I'm going to feel like a fool if I go back there now. So maybe did that change his mind?

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Everyone hopes that Isaac is out there alive somewhere on an adventure, living whatever dream he wanted during this phase in his life.

However, they're deeply concerned and realistic about the possibility of self-harm. Megan told us that her brother seemed like he was from a different time, and she could see that he struggled to find others with similar interests. This was something that contributed to his troubles finding someone to settle down with. She worries that the breakup was the final straw for Isaac. Isaac was friends with Emily's twin sister before he dated Emily.

And he had texted her sister the night he disappeared. While we don't know exactly what was said, Megan told us that Isaac had said something to Emily's sister that made her concerned. So when she tried to reach him on Monday and the days that followed, she was worried enough to go to the police when she was getting no response back from Isaac. Apparently he mentioned it to her.

But he didn't say anything to us and she didn't tell us and nobody told us. And we spoke to, you know, his friends, his job, everybody. Everybody says that seems very strange. That doesn't seem like Isaac at all. So and it's kind of hard. I know it's probably like this with every case, but it's hard for us to believe.

For Isaac's friends, they never had any knowledge that Isaac was suicidal, and we don't know with any amount of certainty that he was. But they find it upsetting that he never reached out for support. Dan has been thinking back to all of the conversations that they had over the years, trying to spot any clue or hint. You know, Isaac and I talked, and he believed in reincarnation. He told me that one day the state would get his farm back.

To me, those were kind of indications that I didn't think he was at a point in his life where suicide would have been a option. I didn't think that's, I think, I hated to think of that life would be that bad. I tried to remember years and years ago, and this would have been many years ago, he made the comment that if he ever died,

If something like that ever happened, that nobody would ever find him. So that just kind of sticks in my brain. And I'm trying to remember, because it's like some of those things you just say in passing. It wasn't one of those things that like jumped out at you at that time and made you think, oh, you know, it was just kind of like something like he said to me.

that the state's going to get his farm. He didn't like the idea that people were greedy and one day he would have his farm. And if he was going to give it to somebody, who would he give it to to inherit? Because he didn't have any children. And that's what makes me worried that could he have harmed himself? I don't know. But Isaac's the type of person that if he decided that he was going to do that, I don't think that he would go to probably the extreme measure of

Someone maybe never finding him. Honestly, we live in the country. You could easily make yourself disappear. Me and my wife have run over and over and over in our minds. She got along with him really well too. And just, we didn't think that he was in a mind frame where he would want to hurt himself. He was sad that his girl that he was broke up with, but...

Not like Mopi said. He was sad it didn't work out and he was hoping for the best, but it wasn't like he pondered on it then either. To us, I didn't see that, but you know, I don't know where he was at.

Josh also worries that Isaac may have decided to end his life. But he also goes over what he knows about Isaac and some of the things that Isaac was doing that seemed to be red flags. Josh said that some of those things are things that Isaac always did, like getting rid of things he no longer had a use for. Isaac was a minimalist and lived that way for many years. It seemed premeditated. The fact that he went missing and he just took this cat to go live. I mean, his parents have a farm.

But the fact that he took the cat to live over there the weekend he went missing, that just seems so premeditated. At first, I was like, oh, well, if he's going to be gone for a couple weeks, well, of course. You don't want a cat to fend for itself. I mean, I thought it was odd. And I looked into that a few months ago, suicide warning symptoms, because that definitely crosses my mind or crossed my mind that that was a possibility. But

Isaac was also very minimalist. He kind of got to a point in the last five years before his disappearance that if he didn't have a use for something, he would either sell it or just give it to somebody. He had a barn I mentioned earlier that we all helped him tear down. I mean, everything that was inside there, he either sold it or gave it away.

And he lives in an older house, and I think it's from the 1800s, and there is another half of it added on in the 20th century. But Isaac tore half of his house down because I believe he told me that he thought it would save him money on his taxes.

But also, I think he felt he didn't need all that space. So he moved his stove. He used a wood-burning cook stove to cook with. He didn't have a microwave. He didn't have an electric cooktop or none of that. I mean, he lived very primitively, and he wanted to have a very simple, minimal life. And this is also going to sound weird, but one time I came over to his house, and I went upstairs to use his bathroom.

And I walked past what I had thought was his bedroom. He just doesn't sleep on a bed anymore. And I didn't ask him about it because I respect him so much. I'm not going to question why you live your life the way you do. Totally respect that. But he did say, hey, I'm sleeping up here now. And he goes, I just, mattresses make my back hurt. And I think the price of mattresses are so expensive. And I'm just like, okay, man, well, whatever.

When Isaac got an idea in his head, come hell or high water, you were not changing his mind and he was going to do it until he saw it through. And that was with anything. And Dan told me at one time, and this is going back a few years, but Isaac made a comment to Dan one time. And I didn't know this, like I say, until a few months ago, but he told Dan one time, you know, if, if I wanted to disappear, uh,

No one would ever find me if I wanted to disappear, he basically said. And I just, I don't know what could have went through his head, but I just don't know. Carol told us that Isaac was very private about his personal relationships and feelings. After he went missing, her sister Brenda had a chance to read letters that Isaac had written to Emily, describing his feelings for her. Carol can't help but wonder if Isaac was struggling much more than anyone knew.

So, and he wasn't one to open up, but he did send, I didn't get to read them myself, but Brenda read these letters. Apparently he wrote these very in-depth letters to Emily. Brenda said, I mean, he just laid all his emotions out on the table in these letters. And so, I mean, just trying to, I guess, explain that, you know, his feelings for her, it just, I think it just broke his heart. Okay.

And he couldn't deal with it anymore. And he wasn't one to talk about his feelings. If he was that emotionally broken down that he couldn't come to anybody, get help or support. Because if you didn't know he was going through anything other than this breakup, you didn't realize that he was having that much emotional problems. It's just so sad.

Megan moved from New York back to Pennsylvania after Isaac went missing. She was hoping to have more time with her mother, and she has been able to be on the ground searching for Isaac whenever a tip comes in or a sighting. She too thinks about the different theories, and none of them seem to completely add up.

To me, I still think it's the same possibilities we had from the beginning. I can still see, and I don't know if this is a naive say, but my family still thinks the same thing. It's very possible that he decided to go travel around and work for money as he goes and kind of meet people as he goes. Like this could totally be him and I could totally see that happening. It's still weird to us that he wouldn't tell anybody because that's not like him. But for him to go travel around...

It's normal. Like he's done that before where he told us he did like a cross country trip driving. Like I said, he went to work on the Red Cross, like he's traveled. You know, it's not weird if he were to do that. It's just weird that he didn't tell anybody. So that's totally a possibility. Another possibility still is that he had an accident somewhere. I think still a huge possibility that we just haven't found him yet. And obviously, I guess him harming himself is a possibility, but it's also like, where is he?

Where? Where? So as far as I know, there's no like he didn't have fights with anybody. There's no there's nobody that that we know that would want to harm him.

Josh has spoken to Emily about Isaac's disappearance, and she told him about something she noticed was missing from Isaac's farm. It was a greenhouse that Isaac had built, and everyone felt that it was very important to him. Had Isaac taken that down before he disappeared? If he did, what did that mean? Why would he do that?

about a month after this happened, I reached out to Emily and I'm like, hey, you know, I saw you on that hike with Isaac and Isaac's face was just beaming, totally beaming. Like, I've never seen him so happy when I ran into them, but I'm like, hey, I'm Josh, you know, and she's like, yeah, I remember you and so we talked a little bit and I guess

I guess she had a couple of Isaac's articles that she wanted to return. So she met with his mother at his place. She noticed that his greenhouse was no longer standing, like there was no trace of it. And to give you a little background story on his greenhouse, he basically had this little shack thing built with like recycled house windows. He had a little stove in there.

And that's basically where he planted his seeds and got all his flowers started. And to me, that was like something very symbolic to him because it embodied his entire devotion to life, nurturing, growing, planting, all of that wrapped up in one.

And Emily told me that when she went over there to meet with his mom, Brenda, the greenhouse was just totally not even there. And to me, that is just devastating because it's such a symbolic thing. And I know...

I know when Isaac got fed up with an idea, like he would try doing different funny things. Like if he say he was going to build a canoe and it wasn't going quite the way he wanted it to, like out of a log, like we're talking primitive, he's liable just to cut it up and burn it and be like, whatever, on to the next thing. So it's possible that he decided that it was time for another greenhouse with the very end of the season and winter was coming. I don't know, but that just strikes me as,

honestly kind of devastating because

I mean, my wife and I went over when we took him to the cat. I mean, heck, he was giving us plants, you know, to take home with us. He was all about that thing. That was his consistent hobby and skill. Like, if you take all the things that are important to a person, I would say that would be to his core. And to hear that he tore his greenhouse down, like, it almost, to me, was like a total sign of giving up, if that makes sense.

The Pennsylvania State Police have been investigating leads in Isaac's case, but everyone told us that they have not done much. Isaac was a grown man who could disappear if he wanted to. There has never been any evidence to suggest foul play or that a crime occurred. Because there's no hard evidence for leads, I don't know that they really have taken the investigation seriously.

And if there are any evidence that sensitive to being eroded, you know, like being outside or whatever, like at this point, what else can you find? And I don't know anything about the police investigation because I have never talked to the police.

I know Emily has because she's told me, and I know that Megan, I believe, has. I'm sure that, you know, it's an ongoing investigation, and they're not going to just reveal general information. But I kind of get the feeling that it's not being taken as seriously as it could be. Carol told us that the police did search Isaac's property for signs of foul play, but still nothing.

I mean, they did go out and investigate around the property. The investigators did just to make sure they didn't see any signs of any foul play or anything else, and they did not see anything. And my brother-in-law walked his property as much as he could, and nothing was found. So then my sister and her husband, of course, took the pig to their house, but it was just strange how he had just left. So we

We don't know if he left just to take a ride and come home or if he was distraught and just took off and didn't care about anything else. Megan listens to the podcast, and she told us that she has heard other families discuss how they were told that their missing loved one had the right to disappear and not much investigative work was done. She was still shocked when she heard investigators say the same about her brother.

But they said in the beginning, he's a grown man and it's not illegal to go missing is what they say. And I've heard that on other episodes also of your podcast. Like apparently this is what they say when adults go missing, but he's never gone missing before. So it seems very strange.

It is very hard. You never think it's going to happen to you. You never think that you're going to be in the situation. It's almost like you're screaming and nobody's hearing because you don't know who to tell. You don't know who to, who can you, who can you alert? We've contacted police, like news, we've contacted, you know, nobody listens because there's so many missing people.

It seems like a hope or a dream to think that Isaac may still be out there alive today and is just on some kind of adventure. Would he really put everyone through months of worry and not return when his mom passed away? Everyone just wants to find Isaac. Josh told us about a time that he was on a work trip and he thought just maybe he had seen Isaac. So my job requires me to travel from time to time. And most recently I was in Seattle, Washington.

And I was there for two weeks in the month of March, and I was with a coworker, and we were driving through downtown Seattle, and we wanted to go and see the Pop Culture Museum. And so we're on our way to this parking garage, which is very near there. It's a very busy city life.

We're driving down the street. We're kind of crawling through. And I happen to look over at this restaurant and there's seating where there's like booths or, you know, like a bar seat, like at the window, but it was kind of like facing the street.

I've seen this young man sitting there with his elbows flat on the table and a cell phone in his hand, like he was scrolling Facebook or something. And he looked remarkably like Isaac, the hair. But the only thing that made me think there's no way it's Isaac is because number one, he's scrolling through a cell phone. Like that's not Isaac, you know? Now the last five years, uh,

He kept a cell phone with him and it was like a track. It was like a burner phone. He had a landline for the longest time, but he wanted to save money and having a track phone was the cheaper option. So he would take it with him. Sometimes you would take, he wouldn't take him with other times. And this guy, he looked like he had slightly smaller and slightly younger features than Isaac.

And the thing that just blows my mind is that he was wearing a red shirt and on the back of his shirt, I think it was in white letters. It said volunteer across the shoulder blades, like the whole way across. One time after Isaac had left the job with me, with the government, I said, Hey, how's it going? And he sent me a selfie of himself down in Louisiana, helping some, uh,

I don't remember if there was a storm down there or what there was, but he was there doing like an outreach mission. And like, he had me a picture of like his ID card. And I'm like, what are you doing down there? You know, I was like, did you move down there? What's going on? And he's like, Nope, just volunteering. And, but I told this to his sister, Megan, they reached out to the red cross and stuff. And like, you know, they, they claim he hasn't been in contact with them. So I don't know. It was just very odd because, uh,

I should have stopped because my coworker was driving at the time I seen this guy and I'd feel like so much better if I could have just got out, walked up to the window and be like, okay, that's definitely not Isaac. But the whole thing with him wearing like a volunteer shirt, that's just weird.

So I was so moved and compelled by this after I came back home that I shared Megan's post on Facebook with missing people of Washington state. But that hasn't generated anything yet. So what happened to Isaac Seidel back on September 12th, 2021?

Was he just going about his normal Sunday routine, prepping to make dinner, when he decided to go out for a bike ride and a freak accident occurred and no one has found him? Did Isaac take off on some sort of adventure, possibly to help him cope with his feelings after the breakup with Emily? Or did Isaac decide to end his own life and no one has found him? We don't have the answers to these questions, but his loved ones are hoping to spread awareness that he is missing.

They want anyone hiking in this area to keep an eye out for the missing bicycle or any other clue. It feels like they're looking for a needle in a haystack, since the area is so rural, and much of the mountains are densely wooded. But just maybe if the public is more aware, someone will find something, or someone will come forward who may have seen something.

If you have any information about the disappearance of Isaac Seidel, please contact the Pennsylvania State Police at 717-567-3110. Missing along with Isaac is his dark green Cannondale bicycle.

Megan has started a social media page for Isaac to help spread awareness. You can follow her page over on Facebook at Find Isaac Seidel. There will be a link in the show notes. If you or a loved one is considering self-harm, please call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. They're available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can reach them at 1-800-273-8255. I guess it's the not know and it's so...

hurtful. I don't know, hurtful, just sad. The last day we were together and we were painting, which would have been a couple days before he came up missing, him and my wife

carry this conversation on about people feeling sad for him, you know? I feel sad for you. And he would be like, I don't want people to feel sad for me. You don't need to feel anything for me. I can do it myself, you know? And she was like, yeah, that just don't sound right to me either, you know? And we got into that philosophical, in-depth discussion like that, you know? I mean, that was the kind of thing, that was the way Isaac was. That was what, or is, that's

It was always fun whenever he talked because you could talk about things like that and you would really dig deep into things. He was not a dummy. No way was he a dummy. He was a very intelligent guy.

I mean, from the day he disappeared, it's like we just have been, you just can't imagine what the family has gone through. And the friends, it's not just the immediate family, all of the friends, the neighbors, you know, everybody, they constantly say, have you got any word on anything? And, and

And we did some additional searches, but, you know, we kind of felt that he wasn't in this area that he just took off. I started getting dreams about Isaac a lot. And the first dream I had, I drove over to his house and he was out in the yard. It was dusk and there was a floodlight shine on him. He was like shelling walnuts or he was like dressing an animal or something like that. But I walked up to him like, Isaac, where the heck you been, man? And

spot on the back of his head that like the flesh was like gone like rotted and then that was all I remember from that and then I had a dream that I was like on some kind of amusement park ride like a train like a miniature train

And when the ride got to its end, Isaac was standing there, like, looking at me like he was waiting for me, like, and he was very clean looking. And I ran up to him and I hugged him. And as soon as I did that, my dream was over. I've had a lot of dreams of being close with him.

That brings us to the end of episode 349. I'd like to thank everyone who spoke with us for this story. If you have a missing loved one that you'd like to have featured on the show, there's a case submission form at thevanishedpodcast.com. If you'd like to join in on the discussion, there's a page and discussion group on Facebook. I'm on Twitter at The Vanished Pod and also on Instagram.

If you enjoy this show, subscribe now and leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening right now. Do you want to help support the show? There are a couple things that you can do. One way to help The Vanished is by supporting our sponsors. You can find links and promo codes in the episode notes. Another way to support the show is by contributing on Patreon, where you can get early and ad-free episodes. Be sure to tune in next week. We'll be bringing you a story from Wisconsin. Thanks for listening.

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Hello, ladies and germs, boys and girls. The Grinch is back again to ruin your Christmas season with Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast. After last year, he's learned a thing or two about hosting, and he's ready to rant against Christmas cheer and roast his celebrity guests like chestnuts on an open fire.

You can listen with the whole family as guest stars like Jon Hamm, Brittany Broski, and Danny DeVito try to persuade the mean old Grinch that there's a lot to love about the insufferable holiday season. But that's not all. Somebody stole all the children of Whoville's letters to Santa, and everybody thinks the Grinch is responsible. It's a real Whoville whodunit. Can Cindy Lou and Max help clear the Grinch's name? Grab your hot cocoa and cozy slippers to find out.

Follow Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Unlock weekly Christmas mystery bonus content and listen to every episode ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.