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[Voiceover] Ryan: This week on Buzzfeed Unsolved, we investigate the mysterious and potentially supernatural disappearance of one Lorraine Denison.
Ryan: This one is certainly a spooky one, lots of weird details that make it compelling. And we’ll actually be visiting the house where she was last seen. Right here in LA actually.
Shane: Ooh, a little field trip!
Ryan: Yah.
Shane: I love field trips. You know, when I was in fifth grade, they took us on a field trip to-
Ryan: Okay okay, maybe we should stick to the case.
Shane: You don’t want to hear about my elementary school field trip?
Ryan: Frankly, I couldn’t give a shit.
Shane: Wow.
Shane: Are you scared? To visit the house, I mean?
Ryan: You know, the jury’s still out on that. It’s definitely a creepy case though.
Shane: Well I don’t even know why I’m asking, of course you’ll be scared.
Ryan: … anyways
[Voiceover] Ryan: On May 23rd, 2015, 31-year-old Lorraine Denison disappeared from her home in an affluent suburb of Los Angeles. She was never seen again. No direct evidence was found pointing to how, why, or where she went, but several sinister details of the case have made it infamous for its possible paranormal nature.
Shane: No.
Ryan: Of course
Shane: No- but I am interested to hear… about poor Lorraine
[Voiceover] Ryan: It was a sunny afternoon in spring. Lorraine, her husband Thomas, and their five-year-old daughter Penny were completing the finishing touches on their new home, which they had just started moving into days earlier. The couple were originally from London, and had moved to LA for Lorraine’s work as a professional architect.
Shane: (in terrible accent) Oh, they’re Englanders! By Jove!
Ryan: Is that… is that supposed to be your impression of a British person?
Shane: (still in accent) It shore is, mate!
Ryan: that’s terrible
Shane: What, you think you could do better?
Ryan: I didn’t say that
Shane: C’mon! Prove it! Do a better accent than me!
Ryan:
Ryan: (even worse) Evnin’ gov’na! Would’ya like to stroll down the lane and get some chips?
Ryan: *wheeze*
Shane: Alright, I’ll admit it. I’ve been defeated.
Ryan: I’m terribly sorry, to any British people watching this.
[Voiceover] Ryan: At about 1:00 in the afternoon, Thomas left to go and grab some lunch. He returned at around 1:30, and by that time Lorraine was already gone.
Shane: Hmm.
Ryan: What, you think he had something to do with it?
Shane: I mean, I haven’t heard all the details yet, but it seems like the obvious answer.
Ryan: Well, we’ll see.
Shane: Do we know where he went to get the lunch?
Ryan: Is that important to you?
Shane: It is. Really gives you a sense of someone, what they eat.
Ryan: What, like pineapple on pizza?
Shane: Exactly like pineapple on pizza!
Ryan: I guess you have a point. That’s exactly why I would never trust you.
Ryan: But to answer your question, I’m pretty sure it was a Chinese restaurant.
[Voiceover] Ryan: Thankfully, Penny had not disappeared along with her mother, and was found by Thomas unharmed, but alone in the house. There was no sign of a forced entry or struggle, nor were there any notes. The only thing missing from the home was her phone, even her purse had been left behind. It’s noteworthy to mention that the family also only had one car, which Thomas had been using, and records would later show that neither a taxi nor Uber was called to the address.
Shane: Could it have been a Lyft?
Ryan: When I say Uber, I obviously mean all those kinds of services.
Shane: Did they have any friends or acquaintances in the area, that could have taken her? Oh, or enemies! I guess enemies is what assuming here, usually, on this show.
Ryan: Yeah, well, we’ll get to that in the theories, but no, they didn’t really know anyone yet. They had just moved there.
[Voiceover] Ryan: When Lorraine didn’t respond to calls and finally didn’t return by nightfall, Thomas called the police and filed a missing person’s report. A thorough investigation followed, but ultimately, no promising leads were ever found, and within months the case went cold.
Shane: So what, was she just declared dead?
Ryan: Well, no. Remember that this happened in 2015, and it takes a while for stuff like that to become legally official.
Shane: Yeah, makes sense. Wait, the family doesn’t still live where we’re going, do they?
Ryan: Of course not! What, did you think we were just going to waltz up to their doorstep like “Hey Mr. Denison, can we please come in with our camera crew and explore the house where your wife disappeared? It’s for YouTube.”
Shane: I don’t know, maybe! You’ve been known to be bold at times.
Ryan: I guess I have. But no. Thomas and his daughter moved back to England in 2017.
[Voiceover] Ryan: This is where the seemingly “normal” aspects of the case end. Although it may seem like your average disappearance, it is some of the details of the case that make it particularly unsettling.
At 1:13 PM, shortly after Thomas left to get food, he received a call from Lorraine. Strangely, what she had called about was the layout of the house. She asked, of all things, about how many doors there were supposed to be.
Shane: Wait, wasn’t she an architect?
Ryan: Yah, and she was the one that actually designed the house!
Shane: No shit!
Ryan: Yah! You would think that of all people, she would know how many doors there were supposed to be.
[Voiceover] Ryan: According to Thomas, she sounded confused and agitated, even frightened, as she claimed that she saw, of all things, a door that hadn’t been there before.
Shane: I mean, that’s definitely a little weird, but it doesn’t seem like something worth frantically calling your husband over.
Ryan: Well apparently it was weird enough, because she was never seen again.
Shane: You know, I bet she was just high. I bet she was just tired from moving halfway across the world, popped a couple more pills than she should have, and started having some kooky hallucinations about magic doors.
Ryan: That doesn’t explain where she went, though.
[Voiceover] Ryan: At 1:19, Lorraine called Thomas again. Eerily, however, he couldn’t hear her, as there was only loud static on the other end of the phone. In the later investigations, police could not determine the location of her phone when the call was made. As said, when Thomas got home, Lorraine was gone, along with whatever door she had been talking about.
Shane: *whispers* It’s because there wasn’t one.
Ryan: Well wait till you hear this next part.
[Voiceover] Ryan: Perhaps the eeriest detail of all is the statement of Penny, the Denison’s daughter.
Shane: *laughing* They actually made this little girl make a police statement?
Ryan: Well, I’m sure what they mean is just her responses to whatever questions they might have asked her.
Shane: I’m just picturing one of those cold, damp interrogation rooms from like police movies, and some scruffy hardened detective slams his hands on the table like “WHERE IS MRS.DENISON!?” and meanwhile there’s just a four-year-old girl sitting across from him like “can… can I have a lolly?”
Ryan: *wheeze*
[Voiceover] Ryan: When asked if she had seen where her mother had gone, at first Penny wouldn’t answer. A few days later, however, Thomas found her drawing a mysterious figure, who frighteningly, Penny claimed was “the man from the door” who quote “took mommy”.
Ryan: We actually have a copy of the drawing right here
Ryan & Shane: *wheeze*
Shane: Okay, before you say anything I’m gonna stop you-
Ryan: Everyone, I think the case is closed. We’ve solved it. Shane, I’m sorry, but I’m gonna have to call the cops.
Shane: Oh, come on, it doesn’t look that much like me!
Ryan: I mean, the freakishly long limbs, the huge, spindly fingers. It’s really uncanny.
Shane: Well, I guess the chance that I put on a blond wig and kidnapped this woman is just as plausible as whatever it is you’re about to suggest.
Ryan: Shut up.
[Voiceover] Ryan: With that, let’s get into the theories.
The first, is that Lorraine Denison was kidnapped and murdered. As a prominent architect in her home country and one fairly well-known in the field abroad, it is possible that she could have been seen as a target for a kidnapping-for-ransom. Of course, the caveat to this is that a ransom request was never made. Perhaps something went wrong, and she was killed before the plan could be completed. Others speculate that Mrs. Denison was involved in white-collar criminal activities such as money laundering, and that her disappearance was orchestrated to keep her quiet.
Ryan: I’ll admit, that does seem pretty plausible to me. Maybe I just watch too much TV, but it does seem like there are probably a lot more people than we think that are involved in like, criminal underworlds. If it wasn’t for all the stuff about the door, I’d probably go with this one.
[Voiceover] Ryan: The second theory is that she was murdered by her husband Thomas. Although CCTV did corroborate his alibi between 1:00 and 1:30, the family did not have any close friends or acquaintances in the US, so there were no witnesses to confirm that Lorraine was even alive a full day before her disappearance. The last person outside her family to officially see her was the moving truck driver on the afternoon of May 21st. The speculation is that sometime between then and the night of the 23rd, Thomas killed Lorraine, disposed of her body, and then made up the details of the last day to cover his tracks. However, there was no clear motive for Thomas to do so, and of course, there was never any evidence found to incriminate him.
Shane: Do you think she might have just Gone-Girled it? Just been like, “You know what, fuck it. I don’t want this life, I hate this life, I’m just going to disappear, be a whole new person.”
Ryan: Well first of all, clearly you’ve never actually seen Gone Girl, and second of all, don’t you think she would have taken more than just her cellphone with her?
Shane: Yah, probably. But, you know, sometimes people just disappear. Remember our episode.. what was it called? That movie where all the people disappeared.
Ryan: Widows Weave?
Shane: Yah, that’s the one! Dozens of people, just poof! It happens!
Ryan: What do you mean “it happens”?! How can you possibly- you know what? No, I’m not having this argument with you again.
[Voiceover] Ryan: The last theory, and my personal take on the case-
Shane: Here we go.
Ryan:
Ryan: Are, are you done?
[Voiceover] Ryan: -is that the supernatural was involved. The frantic calls made by Lorraine about the mysterious door, and the apparent confirmation of it by her daughter, certainly seems to point to something inhuman.
Shane: So, what, you think she just, found the magic door to fairyland and went on through?
Ryan: Well, I was assuming something more sinister than that. All jokes aside, the thing in the little girl’s drawing is pretty creepy, especially since she said it “took mommy”
Shane: Yah, but, you know. Little kids make things like that up. You hear your mom yelling into her phone about a door and then she disappears. If you’re like five, you’re probably going to come up with something to rationalize that.
Ryan: I guess.
Shane: I’m just saying, I’m not going to count someone that probably still believes in the Easter Bunny as a reliable witness.
[Voiceover] Ryan: There are many more specific theories on what sort of entity might have taken her. Some believe it’s a ghost, potentially of someone who didn’t approve of the house that Lorraine had built on that land. Others think it was a demon, even going so far as to say that she might have sold her soul, and that dark forces came to collect. Of course, it may also be something entirely different altogether.
Shane: Well, obviously, there is nothing paranormal about this, let’s make that clear. But for arguments sake, she had built the house recently, so, even if a house could be haunted, one getting haunted that quickly? Slim chance.
Ryan: That’s why a lot of people think something followed her over, or that it just had nothing to do with the house itself at all. There are actually a surprising number of urban legends about mysterious doors or people disappearing into them.
Ryan: Hopefully, we’ll see for ourselves.