This term applies to someone who is a regular and stalwart member of the community who suddenly disappears without trace.
Who reappears as suddenly as they disappeared.
Questions will be forever asked about what they got up to during the shadowy period of their absence but no answers will ever be given.
Denis Watts was a familiar and prominent face around Walford, East London.
One day he went out for a swim in the local canal and promptly disappeared without trace.
Nothing was heard from Den for years until he suddenly reappeared in Walford many years later as if nothing had ever happened.
On walking back into the local pub the local landlady Peggy was heard to exclaim, "ZOMG Den, you've only gone and done a javaboy".
Fogey/fogy /fougi/ sl. (early 18C+, orig. Scot) old-fashioned, stuck-in-the mud.
Person with old fashioned ideas which he is unwilling to change: Come to the disco and stop being such an old fogey!
You think me an old fogeyand an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I saw three generations since O’Connel’s time. I remember the famine. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before O’Connel did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things. (James Joyce, Ulysses. Penguin Books,1992. p. 38)