On February 7, 2018, a 49-year-old firefighter from Toronto, Canada named Konstantinos "Danny" Philippidis went on a ski trip to Mount Whiteface in Lake Placid, New York. He went to ski this mountain every year with his friends and was an experienced skier.
On that day, most of his friends skated only until 14.30, but Philippidis decided to stay for two hours, he liked it so much. Friends did not immediately miss him, but at some point they realized that the man should have returned, but he was nowhere to be found. And he could not go anywhere, his passport, spare skis, boots and a car were where he left them in the morning.
A massive search was organized, but it yielded nothing. It seemed that Philippidis had simply disappeared. No trace of it was found. The next search was even more massive, more than a hundred people took part in it, including professional search engines.
For six days, they combed the area up and down, using dogs, a helicopter, and several drones. Again, nothing. Even stranger was the fact that there were so many skiers riding in the hills that day, but no one could remember seeing this man.
Considering that Philippidis did not have any problems in real life and he could not escape somewhere secretly in such a strange way, leaving his wife and two of his children, the authorities were already ready to declare the man dead. The pier fell somewhere, covered with snow and froze to death.
The wife and children of the Canadian were already in mourning, but suddenly the wife of Philippidis received a phone call from some, as it seemed to her, stranger. Judging by the voice, the man was in a severe stress state and did not understand what was happening. He called himself her husband and used a code word that only Philippidis and his wife knew about. Then the woman realized that it was really her husband.
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The call was short and then dropped. The woman was able to learn from the telephone company that the call came from a location over 2,500 miles from their home in Sacramento, California. From the other end of the country. The call was traced to a car rental office at Sacramento Airport, after which the Sacramento County Sheriff was contacted.
The sheriff said that the police knew about this man and he was in their station. When found, he was completely disoriented and confused. He also obviously needed medical attention. He was asked various questions, but he was so shocked that he could hardly say anything. The police thought that perhaps he was the victim of a kidnapping, but he managed to escape.
How unnoticed to be from one end of the country to the other.
An interesting mention was that he was in skier's clothes, but they were all tattered. And he also had a big memory problem, he did not remember how he got to Sacramento, he remembered only a large truck. And as soon as he was in the city, he bought himself a smartphone and it was from it that he called his wife, and then for some reason went to the hairdresser, where he was cut.
The police, where the strange man was escorted, interrogated him, checked his medical record, but nothing could give an answer to what happened to him. He himself could neither describe the driver of that incomprehensible truck, nor name his brand. All his cards and money, which he had at the time of the ski trip, he had with him, so he was definitely not robbed.
Several injuries were found on his body, but none of them could cause such severe memory loss. Psychologically, he was in perfect order. He called himself a firefighter, talked about his work and described his family with love.
To this day, Philippidis cannot tell anything about what happened to him. Photos of him were shown on TV in order to find people who could see him at a time when he was nowhere to be found, but this did not yield results.
“We only have one point of reference - the side of road 86, which is his earliest memory in Sacramento,” says Major General John H. Tibbitts. “There are not many heavy vehicles on this highway and maybe some any independent truck driver. For now, this is a complete secret for us. He cannot describe the appearance of the truck driver or the truck itself. I can't say this is an unsolved case. It was a case of a missing person and we found him. And now he himself wants to find out where he was."
There is still a lot of unknown in this case besides how the firefighter ended up in Sacramento. What happened to him when he was skiing, why did he disappear, where he was for 6 days, that they were looking for him everywhere, why does he not remember a single moment of these 6 days.
Has he been kidnapped? If so, why did they take him across the country only to drop him off with the money and unharmed on the sidelines? And again, why doesn't he remember anything of this?
Researchers of anomalous phenomena have proposed several theories about this case. One is that the man was somehow teleported across the country by some outside force, and the memory of the truck was artificially implanted in him to try to fill in the gaps when the man wanted to understand what happened to him.
There are accounts of other alleged victims of teleportation, and they also mentioned experiences of wasted time, confusion and distorted memories.
Another theory is that the man was abducted by aliens, and that the "truck" was actually a spaceship.
The case of Philippidis remains a complete mystery by the end of May. The man himself, as the Times Union writes, has not yet come to work because of his experiences. He is provided with some kind of medical assistance, but this is not covered, referring to medical ethics.