The Vanished: A Teenager on Hawaii’s Stairway to Heaven and a Woman Who Packed Toothpaste but Left No Trace
The Vanished: A Teenager on Hawaii’s Stairway to Heaven and a Woman Who Packed Toothpaste but Left No Trace
Disappearance is a word that chills precisely because it lacks closure. A death can be mourned, a crime can be punished, but a disappearance is a wound left open. Families wait. Communities speculate. Strangers weave theories in the absence of fact. Two cases, oceans apart, illustrate the haunting uncertainty of vanishing without explanation: the 2015 disappearance of
Part One: Dylan’s Ascent
In February 2015, 18-year-old Dylan Puah traveled to Waianae, Hawaii, to visit his grandmother, Martha Bear. By all accounts, Dylan was like many teenagers—spirited, adventurous, eager to prove himself. During the visit, he mentioned plans to go hiking. Specifically, he told his grandmother that he intended to climb the
The very name invites drama. Built during World War II as a naval access route, the Haiku Stairs consist of nearly
For Dylan, the climb may have felt like a rite of passage. But he never came back.
The Vanishing
When Dylan failed to return, alarm spread quickly. Searches were mounted across the treacherous ridges of the mountain. Rescue teams, used to retrieving stranded hikers from the Haiku Stairs, combed the terrain. But there was no sign—no clothing, no body, no phone ping.
Theories proliferated. Some suggested Dylan fell into one of the hidden gullies, his remains obscured by foliage. Others speculated he bypassed the stairs entirely and became lost in adjoining trails. The more hopeful clung to the idea that he had turned back and gone elsewhere. But as days stretched into weeks, hope thinned.
To this day, Dylan Puah’s fate is unknown. His disappearance became a cautionary tale for thrill-seekers in Hawaii, a reminder that the island’s beauty hides risks as sharp as its cliffs.
Stairway to Danger
The Haiku Stairs themselves are notorious. Slippery with rain, rusting in places, the narrow staircases cling to sheer drops. Rescue operations are frequent, draining local resources. After Dylan’s disappearance, pressure mounted to dismantle the stairs altogether. In 2021, Honolulu officials approved their removal, citing cost and safety.
For Dylan’s family, the removal offers little solace. The stairs may vanish, but their unanswered questions remain. What exactly happened on that day in 2015? Did Dylan slip, or did something else occur? With no evidence, the truth is suspended in the same limbo as the stairs themselves—dangerous, alluring, forbidden.
Part Two: Moira’s Ghost
If Dylan’s case is about the perils of youth and forbidden landscapes, Moira’s disappearance is about the contradictions of evidence and the ambiguity of intent.
Moira vanished in circumstances so baffling that police themselves could not settle on a theory. She was last seen after a minor car crash. Her vehicle contained personal items—
Yet Moira was gone.
Theories and Tensions
Police first floated the possibility that Moira had been
Others suggested legal trouble weighed on her. Moira had recent credit card fraud charges, raising the possibility that she feared arrest if caught intoxicated at the crash scene. According to this theory, she panicked, abandoned her car, and tried to vanish into Canada—perhaps hitchhiking, perhaps aided by strangers.
But speculation without sighting is thin gruel. Canada offered no confirmed reports of her arrival. Friends heard nothing. Social media accounts went silent. She had, as one officer grimly summarized, “disappeared into thin air.”
The Everyday Horror
Moira’s case unsettles because it subverts expectations. People disappear while hiking mountains, swimming oceans, or venturing into war zones. They are expected to vanish in extremis. But Moira was an ordinary woman, in an ordinary car, with ordinary items. Her disappearance makes the mundane feel unsafe. If someone like Moira can vanish after a fender bender, then perhaps anyone can.
For her family, every clue became a torment. The toothpaste was not just toothpaste—it was a sign she planned to live. The fraud charges were not just legal trouble—they were possible motive for flight. Each detail pointed in a different direction, leaving loved ones suspended between grief and doubt.
The Shared Pattern
Though Dylan and Moira’s cases differ, they share haunting similarities:
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Both involve risk-taking. Dylan knowingly climbed forbidden stairs. Moira may have fled legal consequences into dangerous uncertainty.
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Both leave contradictory evidence. Dylan’s plans were clear, but his disappearance leaves no trace. Moira’s belongings suggested life, but her absence suggested otherwise.
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Both deny closure. Families are left with questions, not answers.
And both feed into the true crime fascination: stories where the missing become symbols, their lives reduced to puzzles, their absence more famous than their presence.
Why Disappearances Haunt Us
Psychologists argue that disappearances haunt more than deaths because they deny resolution. The human mind craves narrative closure—beginning, middle, end. Disappearances offer only beginnings. The absence itself becomes the story, looping endlessly in speculation.
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Did Dylan fall, or did someone find him on the trail?
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Did Moira run, or was she taken?
Each theory comforts one moment and terrifies the next.
Society’s Role
These stories also highlight society’s uneven response to risk. Communities mourn Dylan, but debates about access to the Haiku Stairs rage louder than answers about his fate. Moira’s case was quickly framed in terms of her legal troubles, sometimes overshadowing the human tragedy. In both, the missing person risks being lost twice—once in reality, and again in the narrative that reduces them.
Conclusion: Lives Suspended
In Hawaii, the mountains still stand, their ridges cutting into the clouds, even as the Haiku Stairs rust toward dismantling. Somewhere within them lies the unanswered story of Dylan Puah, the teenager who sought adventure and never returned.
In another part of the world, a family still wonders about Moira, her toothpaste and teeth whitener silent testimony to plans interrupted. Did she choose to vanish, or did fate choose for her?
Disappearances like these do not end. They echo. They leave chairs empty at family gatherings, reminders in police archives, ghostly threads in online forums. They remind us that the world is not as safe or as knowable as we pretend.
And so we keep telling the stories—not to solve them, perhaps, but to honor the fact that they remain unsolved. Dylan and Moira are more than mysteries. They are people suspended between presence and absence, forever waiting at the edge of discovery.
