The worst part is the mental torture, Patricia Joseph says. The “gut-wrenching” flashes of wondering what her mother’s last moments were. The infinite state of limbo.
Six years after her mother’s mysterious disappearance, Patricia still catches herself looking out for the distinctive orange-lined raincoat that Hyacinth Gage, 74, was wearing the day she vanished, in the hope it may hold a clue.
Tragically, Hyacinth is just one of an ever-increasing number of people on the tiny Caribbean island of Antigua to disappear without trace in what some have dubbed an epidemic, others a crisis. At least nine have vanished in the last two years alone.
That day back in May 2019 started out ordinarily enough. Hyacinth, described as sprightly and self-sufficient, had gone for a routine check-up at the public hospital, but failed to return. She has never been seen since.
It was to trigger an excruciating series of fruitless, island-wide searches and desperate appeals for help.
“We became detectives. My sister and I teamed up to look for leads. I went back to the hospital asking questions,” Patricia explains.
She was able to verify that while her mother had completed scheduled blood tests, she had not shown up for an electrocardiogram. Further investigations revealed she had apparently handed her handbag briefly to another patient to keep an eye on, but never returned. The bag was found by security staff the next day.
The family were also able to track down a motorist who said she had given Hyacinth a lift to a location a short distance from the hospital.
“The police got angry at us for investigating and told us to stop,” Patricia recalls. “Then they became annoyed at our constant questions, so eventually we had to back off and just pray.”
Anniversaries are particularly painful: 6 March would have been Hyacinth’s 80th birthday, a milestone for which the family had long planned a big celebration. Instead, Patricia took the day off work to spend in quiet reflection.
The number of people to vanish in Antigua appears to be disproportionately high compared with neighbouring islands, Patricia says, a notion supported by sources in several of the islands who spoke to the BBC.
In St Kitts, for example, which has a population of 48,000, official police stats provided show that of the total 54 people reported missing in 2023 and 2024, all but two are accounted for. The remaining two are believed to be Haitian migrants who have since left the country.
Antigua’s small size of just 108 sq miles, home to fewer than 100,000 people, makes the phenomenon particularly perplexing.
Speculation is rife. Theories range from the banal – a lack of will to investigate by an under-resourced and under-paid police force – to the sinister.