Max Dickins' one-man play examines what happens to 'the left behind'

But for some there is no ending at all as the person remains missing.

Inspired by a real-life case, Max Dickins has created a one-man play, Man On The Moor, which looks at what happens to those left behind.

On December 12, 2015, the body of an elderly-looking man was discovered beside a path on Saddleworth Moor in the Peak District. He was lying on his back, arms placed across his chest like a mummy, facing perfectly straight downhill. He was carrying no form of identification: no phone, no wallet, no cards, no driving licence, and no keys.

The police's attempts to identify him drew a blank, and it became a nationwide story.

'It was one of those little stories you see on the BBC news website halfway down one of those bars on the right,' says Max, 'and it was before it had really blown up. I remember thinking what a bizarre story, and I was looking to make a new show at the time.

'With making a show it's not enough to just have an interesting story, it's got to be about more than something quirky, and the thing that really did it for me was that when the police went public with their appeal trying to identify the man on the moor '“ 40 different people came forward thinking he was their long-term missing person. How could we all look at this same photo and all see a different person?

'It opened up this world that I had no idea about called the left behind '“ people left behind by the long-term missing. And as I researched this, I realised it was a story that hadn't really been told, but the same phrase kept on coming up again and again, relating to their missing person, "It's all so out of character". Well actually, maybe there's no such thing as a character and you can never really know someone. This idea you can never really know someone and this person you sleep next to every night could be a total stranger. It's a terrifying thought, but it's a fascinating one.

'Even if we've not experienced  something like this, we've all experienced where we've not been properly understood. My ex-girlfriend used to say to me, I can read you like a book, and I used to think no you can't, not really. That for me was what was interesting - the possibility of knowing someone and predicting their behaviour, but actually who someone is, is just a hypothesis we make in our heads, ready to be disproved by the evidence.

'There's confirmation bias - we see things that confirm what we already think.'

In the course of his research Max spent the day with one of these left behind, and discovered that it's the absence of any sense of closure that is most damaging.