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The Last Summer Before She Disappeared

The last summer anyone remembers clearly was not about mystery or fear.
It was about a young mother trying to hold her life together, one tired morning at a time.

On most days, before any talk of “higher consciousness” or “cosmic truth,” Ma’Kayla was just another woman in a quiet corner of Missouri, rushing to make it to work, packing a small bag for her daughter, and answering her mother’s texts with half-asleep emojis. She clocked in, clocked out, picked up her little girl, and came home to a rented place that wasn’t perfect, but it was theirs for that moment in time. There were bills on the table, laundry on the couch, and cartoons humming softly in the background while dinner simmered on the stove.

Nothing about that picture said “she’s going to vanish.”

From the outside, she looked like so many young mothers across America: tired but hopeful, a little overwhelmed, always trying to do just a bit better than the month before. Her daughter, little Malaiyah, was the bright center of every story, the reason behind every late shift and every dollar stretched past the breaking point. If someone asked her what she was working for, the answer was simple: “for my baby.”

Yet, beneath that everyday rhythm, something else had started to grow—a quiet hunger that no paycheck, no small rented house, no quick weekend rest could fully satisfy. It didn’t show up all at once. It crept in slowly, like a draft under an old door.

It began with videos.

At first, they were the kind of motivational things anyone might scroll past late at night. A stranger’s voice on a screen talking about healing, about waking up, about how the world you see is not the real world at all. Phrases like “higher self,” “cosmic intelligence,” and “true light” floated through the speakers while the rest of the house slept. It felt harmless—hopeful, even. For a young woman who worked hard and still felt like she was always one step behind, those words sounded like a door opening.

“You are not just a single mother struggling to pay bills,” the voices would say.
“You are a goddess. You are part of something bigger.”

Some nights, she replayed those lines more than once.

Over time, the videos changed. The messages were no longer just about thinking positive or loving yourself. They became stricter, sharper. The speaker stopped sounding like a friendly coach and more like a leader with a mission. He talked about the system, about how ordinary life was a trap, about how families, jobs, schools, and even churches were part of a cage that kept people asleep. He didn’t just offer comfort; he offered a way out.

For someone who had already felt boxed in, the idea of a way out was powerful.

Slowly, common sense began to loosen around the edges. The long days at work, the pressure of rent, the feeling that everyone expected something from her—all of it started to seem like evidence that the “system” really was against her. Each time she felt disrespected by a manager, each time a bill arrived late, each time she felt misunderstood by someone in her own family, it pushed her a little closer to the idea that this leader online might be right.

He said there were chosen ones.
He said not everyone would understand.
He said that when you start to rise, your old life will try to pull you back down.

For a while, no one noticed the difference.

To her family, she was still the same girl who posted pictures of her daughter, shared birthday photos, and occasionally sent funny messages about something that happened at work. Friends saw a young mother trying to improve herself, reading more, listening to “spiritual” talks, and talking about wanting peace. In a world where everyone was chasing something—money, status, followers—chasing “inner peace” sounded almost noble.

The first real sign that something had shifted was subtle.
She became harder to reach.

At the beginning, she answered texts with shorter replies. “Busy.” “Tired.” “I’ll call later.” Then “later” turned into days. Phone calls went unanswered, then returned with a quick apology and a promise that she was just overwhelmed. Her mother and relatives chalked it up to stress. She was young, she was carrying a lot, and sometimes people just needed to pull back for a bit.

But there was another part of her life now.
A part the family couldn’t see.

She had begun connecting with others who followed the same online leader. Some lived in different cities, some in different states. They called each other “brother” and “sister.” They spoke in terms that didn’t quite match ordinary conversation. They talked about “frequency,” about “vibrating higher,” about shedding their old names, their old habits, and their old ties.

When she felt small or judged in her everyday world, she felt big in this new one.
When she felt like no one listened at home or at work, these strangers online called her “goddess.”

In that space, the tired young mother was recast as a powerful spiritual being waking up to her true purpose.

Then the talk turned practical.

It wasn’t just about watching videos anymore. It was about living differently.
The leader spoke about stepping away from “low vibrational” environments—jobs, relationships, even entire cities. He suggested that those who were truly ready might need to leave where they were and come live “in alignment” with others who shared the same vision. He started hinting that the clock was ticking, that the world was on the edge of a shift, and only a few would be prepared.

For strangers on the internet, this might have sounded extreme.
For someone who was slowly losing faith in her day-to-day life, it sounded like a lifeline.

As the months went on, something in her face changed in the photos she posted.
She still smiled, still held her daughter close, but there was a distant look in her eyes, like her mind was somewhere else. There were more quotes, more cryptic captions, more references to “waking up.” Her family noticed, but they didn’t panic. People go through phases, they told themselves. It will pass.

Except this phase didn’t pass.
It deepened.

The first concrete decision came with a simple sentence:

“I think I’m going to move.”

At first, it sounded almost reasonable. People moved for new jobs, for better neighborhoods, for a fresh start. But the more she explained, the less it sounded like an ordinary move. She talked about living “in community” with others who understood her path. She said she was tired of wasting rent on a place that didn’t feed her soul. She said she wanted her daughter to grow up around “higher minds.”

When the family asked basic questions—Where will you live? Who are these people? How long have you known them?—the answers were vague. She mentioned first names that weren’t real names, online handles, and phrases like “they’re my soul tribe.” Every practical question was met with a spiritual answer.

Her mother, like so many mothers would, tried to balance worry with respect.
She didn’t want to push too hard. She didn’t want to drive her daughter further away.
So she did what parents often do: she trusted that the girl she had raised still had enough sense to keep herself and her baby safe.

Meanwhile, another shift was happening quietly in the background: work.

The job that once felt like a necessary burden began to feel like a chain.
She started talking about how her workplace was “toxic,” how it drained her energy, how she couldn’t “vibrate higher” while stuck under fluorescent lights doing tasks that meant nothing to her soul. The leader’s words echoed in her mind: “You cannot rise while tied to the systems that profit off your sleep.”

Then, one day, she did what so many in her online circle celebrated as a leap of faith.

She quit.

To her coworkers, it was sudden. To her online “family,” it was proof she was serious about her path. To her real family, it was terrifying.

In private, her mother asked gentle questions:
“How will you pay your bills?”
“What about health insurance for the baby?”
“Are you sure this is the right time?”

Her answer was calm, almost eerily so.
“Everything will work out. I’m being guided. You’ll see.”

She said it with the conviction of someone who had given her trust to something invisible, and now needed the rest of the world to believe with her—or at least step aside.

In the weeks that followed, little cracks began to show in the life she had built. The rent didn’t pay itself. The fridge didn’t fill on its own. Whatever savings she had were not endless. To make up the difference, she leaned even harder into her new belief that the old rules no longer applied to her. Maybe she skipped some payments. Maybe she let things slide, telling herself that money was an illusion, that the “3D world” couldn’t hold her forever.

From the outside, it might have looked irresponsible.
From the inside, in her new world of language and light and prophecy, it felt like shedding a skin.

There were other followers too—other men and women who had quit jobs, sold possessions, or walked away from long-standing lives because they believed they were heading toward something better, purer, more real than pay stubs and leases. They encouraged each other, cheerfully labeling worried family members as “asleep,” “programmed,” or “attached to the matrix.”

Each message of concern from home became proof, in that new worldview, that she was doing something right.

Then came the house.

It wasn’t a fancy place, just another rental in a neighborhood where kids rode bikes past cracked sidewalks and neighbors nodded to each other over mailboxes. But to the group, it was more than a building. It was a “portal,” a “base,” a place to gather and prepare. They moved in with a kind of rough hope, carrying not just bags and boxes but their shared belief that they were on the edge of a transformation no one else could see.

To the neighbors, it started as a curiosity. A few new faces. Cars they didn’t recognize. People coming and going at odd hours. That happens everywhere. People move in, move out. Life rolls on. But after a while, it was hard not to notice that this wasn’t just a bunch of roommates splitting rent.

They spent long hours outside, not gardening, not barbecuing, just… sitting.
They sat in the yard with their faces lifted to the sky, eyes closed, palms open.
They stood barefoot on the grass long after the sun had become too harsh for comfort.

Children’s laughter mixed with murmured words that didn’t sound like ordinary conversation. There were no loud parties, no blasting music, no shouting arguments. Instead, there were low, repetitive chants. There were phrases about the sun, about light, about destiny. And sometimes, there were shovels.

The first time someone saw them digging, it might have been dismissed as yard work. Maybe they were planting something. Maybe they were fixing something underground. But the holes didn’t look like garden beds. They appeared in odd spots—here, then there—some shallow, some deeper, scattered like small questions across the property.

Neighbors mentioned it in passing to one another.
“Did you see what they were doing in the yard?”
“I think they’re into some kind of spiritual thing.”
“Well, at least they’re not causing trouble.”

Inside that house, the language was different.

They weren’t just roommates. They were “chosen.”
They weren’t just outdoors. They were “charging in the sun.”
They weren’t just digging holes. They were “preparing the ground.”

For a time, this strange arrangement held. They shared food, shared space, and shared a belief that they were separate from the world just beyond the property line. And in the middle of all of this was a young mother and her little girl, living between two realities: the bright, simple innocence of a child’s world and the complicated weight of adult choices.

On some days, it still looked normal.
There were snacks and cartoons and small shoes by the door.
There was a mother brushing her child’s hair, wiping sleepy eyes, and kissing a forehead before bedtime.

On other days, the shadows of this new life grew longer.

She spoke less and less with her family. Calls became rare. Messages turned into one-way lines: “We’re fine. Don’t worry. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.” When family tried to visit or suggest she take a step back, she brushed them off with practiced phrases: “You don’t understand yet.”
“You’re still asleep.”
“This is bigger than you think.”

In that language, worry became judgment.
Concern became interference.
Love began to sound like an obstacle.

For her mother, every missed call started to land heavier. Every holiday that passed without a proper visit cut a little deeper. She tried not to jump to the worst conclusions; people change, children grow up and make choices parents don’t understand. But something about the silence felt wrong—not loud and angry, but cold and distant, like a door closing slowly with no one on the other side.

Then, gradually, the hints of ordinary chaos in her daughter’s life began to vanish from view. No more stories about work. No more complaints about traffic. No more little frustrations about grocery prices or schedules. When she did speak, it was about “alignment,” “energy,” “mission.” It was as if the everyday world had been pushed away, leaving only the narrow beam of this new spiritual focus.

By the time the leaves began to change, the gap between who she used to be and who she had become was wide enough for everyone around her to feel—even if they couldn’t put it into words. The young woman who once shared photos of cookouts, family gatherings, and silly moments with her daughter now seemed to live in another dimension, even while her body was still physically present on the same earth.

No one knew it then, but the last ordinary summer was already over.

The next chapter in her story would not be about late bills or changing jobs or small arguments with loved ones. It would be about disappearance. It would be about a mother and her child stepping out of sight, leaving behind a trail of questions that still have no answers.

But before that final vanishing act, there was one more quiet slide away from the life she had known—a choice that would break the last fragile thread tying her to her old world: the decision to stop paying for the place she called home, to abandon the routines that kept her grounded, and to follow a path where the only map was the voice of a stranger who promised enlightenment.

That was when the ordinary world—her family, her neighbors, her community—began to feel her slipping through their fingers.

They just didn’t realize how far she would go.

 

Ma’Kayla and little Malaiyah did not vanish in a single dramatic moment. Their disappearance was the result of a slow, painful unraveling that only looked sudden when everyone turned around and realized they were gone.​

The Day the Door Closed

By late spring of 2023, the gap between Ma’Kayla and her family had widened into something that felt like a wall.​
Messages were shorter, calls came less often, and when they did connect, the conversations were tight and careful, as if every word might start an argument she didn’t want to have.​

Her mother, Cartisha, tried to be patient. She knew her daughter was under pressure—raising a little girl largely on her own, dealing with postpartum feelings that she never fully put into words, and wrestling with the quiet weight that can press down on a young woman trying to do everything right.​
Still, something about this distance felt different. It wasn’t just a bad mood or a rough month. It felt like losing reception on a call that had always been clear.​

One day in early 2023, the phone rang—not from her daughter, but from her daughter’s boss.
He sounded concerned. He said that Ma’Kayla had quit her corporate job without warning.​
For a mother who knew exactly how much those paychecks mattered, the words hit like a drop in the stomach. When she confronted her daughter, the answer came smoothly: she was going to start her own business, find a better way, step into something “aligned” with who she really was.​

On the surface, it sounded ambitious.
Underneath, it sounded like the echo of all those online teachings she had been drinking in for months.

A Mother at the Door

As the weeks passed, unease hardened into alarm. Calls went unanswered. Messages sat on “seen” but not replied. Holidays approached and passed with no proper visit home. Finally, like any mother whose instincts would not let her rest, Cartisha decided to stop asking questions through a phone and go see her daughter in person.​

She drove to the rental house in Berkeley, the one her daughter now shared with the people from her “spiritual community.”​
The neighborhood was ordinary, the kind of American suburb where kids ride bikes along the curb and the rumble of planes from the nearby airport fades into background noise.​
Nothing about the street suggested that something was very wrong in one of those homes.

But when she reached the door, it wasn’t her daughter who greeted her.

A stranger answered.
He wasn’t smiling.
He had a gun, visible enough that there was no mistaking it.​

He didn’t give a normal name.
He called himself “I am that I am.”​
To a mother who came there simply to check on her child and grandchild, it was like stepping into a different universe.

She asked to see her daughter.
She asked to see her granddaughter.
Instead of being welcomed into the home where her own flesh and blood lived, she was told to leave.​

That moment burned itself into her memory. It was not a loud confrontation. It was worse than that: a calm, cold rejection, carried by a stranger standing between her and the people she loved.​
She left because she had to—because the situation at that door told her that pushing harder right then might only make things more dangerous.

But she left with a new feeling: this was no longer just a “phase.”
Her daughter was not just “into spiritual videos.”
She was entangled in something bigger, something that now had men with guns and names that sounded like declarations.

The House Goes Silent

Not long after that visit, the house changed from strange to silent.

The neighbors had gotten used to the odd routines: long hours meditating in the yard, faces tilted to the sky, sometimes with no clothes on, embracing the sun as if it were a holy presence.​
They had noticed the unusual digging—holes scattered in the yard for no obvious reason, never quite explained.​
They heard bits of talk about “ascension,” about “the end,” about preparing for something no one else could see.​

Then, one day, the activity simply stopped.

No more chanting in the yard.
No more cars in the driveway.
No more figures moving around inside at odd hours.

When police were eventually called and entered the house, what they found only deepened the mystery.
The place was empty of people—but not empty of them.​

Inside, the IDs of all four adults were left behind.​
Driver’s licenses. Documents. Pieces of paper that tie a person to a legal identity in the world.
For investigators, this was a chilling detail. People who planned to start new lives usually took their identification. People who intended to return usually left their lives in a way that could be picked up again.

This group had done neither. They had walked away from the house, but in doing so, they had also walked away from their official selves.

On social media, their last posts told their own quiet story.
Words about the end.
Warnings about an approaching rapture and ascension.​
For some, those phrases might be symbolic or poetic. For a group already cutting ties with jobs, families, and ordinary routines, it sounded more like a farewell.

By the time the house became a police scene, the young mother and her little girl were already gone.

The Last Known Steps

In August 2023, a few final glimpses of the missing six appeared—not in person, but in grainy footage.​​

Surveillance cameras in Florissant, a suburb not far from Berkeley, captured the group together at a store.​​
There they were: four adults, two small children, moving through a public space like any other shoppers, but carrying with them a secret that no one around them could see.

Later, they were recorded at a Quality Inn hotel in the same area.​
A simple roadside hotel, the kind countless families and travelers pass through without a second thought. For them, it became the last confirmed place where anyone can say, with evidence, that they stood on solid ground.

And then—nothing.

No more camera footage.
No more card swipes that investigators could trace.
No more phone pings that would narrow down a location.​

Since that August, there have been no confirmed sightings of Ma’Kayla, Malaiyah, or the other members of the group.​
No phone calls home.
No texts saying “we’re okay.”
No messages, not even angry ones, to push family away.

Just silence.

For those who loved them, that silence is the loudest sound in the world.

The Search That Never Ends

On paper, the case is clear enough: six people tied to an online spiritual group vanish after leaving a rental home in Missouri, last seen at a hotel and a local store.​
But in the hearts of their families, especially the mothers whose children and grandchildren disappeared, nothing about it feels “clear.”

Police in the St. Louis area and beyond have spent more than a year trying to follow every thread.​
They have checked records, searched the state, monitored the online spaces connected to the group they followed, and looked for any sign that the missing six have built a new life somewhere off the grid.​

Some investigators believe it is possible that the adults chose to disappear, convinced by their beliefs that they needed to break from the world completely.​
Others worry that the situation may have turned dangerous, especially with two small children involved and with their identification left behind.​
Without proof of one outcome or the other, they are forced to live in the hardest space of all: not knowing.

For families, that uncertainty is a kind of slow grief.
They wake up every day wondering if their loved ones are alive, if they are safe, if they are being hurt, or if they are somewhere convinced that they no longer need the people who raised them.

Every holiday becomes a reminder.
Every birthday that passes without a call feels like a small fracture in the calendar.

For her mother, the memories of those missed signs replay in her mind.
The mentions of feeling overwhelmed.
The late-night talks about needing a break.
The slow withdrawal from family gatherings.​
Now, from the distance of time, they all look like warning flags—but at the time, they were just scattered moments in a life that seemed like it would go on.

The Shadow of an Online Prophet

At the center of this story, standing just out of reach, is the man whose voice filled so many screens.

The group that pulled in these six missing people is known as the University of Cosmic Intelligence, led by an online figure whose teachings blend spiritual language with conspiracy, promises of awakening, and calls to reject the ordinary structures of life.​
He has a serious criminal record and is serving a prison sentence; from behind bars, he still delivers livestreamed lectures that reach thousands.​

Authorities in Missouri say that the missing adults were followers of his content.​
They shared his videos.
They referenced his words.
Their behavior mirrored patterns often linked to his followers: changing their names to reflect “gods” and “goddesses,” quitting jobs, cutting off family, and disappearing from the grid.​

The leader has denied any responsibility for their disappearance.​
From his perspective, he simply shares ideas; what people do with them is their choice.

But for families like Ma’Kayla’s, that distinction does not bring comfort.
They see the before and after with painful clarity: a daughter present in everyday life, then drawn step by step into a world that told her everyone else was asleep and she alone was waking up.​

Experts who study such groups say that the internet has made it easier than ever for charismatic figures to find vulnerable people—especially those who are isolated, overwhelmed, or searching for meaning after major life changes, like becoming a new parent.​
The language is often gentle at first, full of healing and empowerment, only later asking for more radical shifts in loyalty, lifestyle, and identity.

For someone struggling in silence, that kind of message can feel like a hand reaching out in the dark.
But sometimes, that hand leads them away from every other hand that ever held them.

A Family Waiting in the Dark

Today, more than two years after the last confirmed sighting of Ma’Kayla and her little girl, the case remains open.​
Their names are still listed as missing. Their faces still appear on posters and websites that track those who have vanished. Their story is now scheduled to be told on a national stage in the United States on a program dedicated to missing persons, a sign that their case has begun to reach households far beyond Missouri.​​

For her mother, each new article, each TV segment, each online post is a bittersweet lifeline.
On one hand, it means people have not forgotten.
On the other, it is a reminder that she still has no answers.

She looks back on the girl she raised—the one who excelled in school, who was independent, who loved deeply—and tries to reconcile that memory with the young woman standing in a yard, eyes closed to the sky, listening to a man she had never met in person tell her that her true home was somewhere far beyond the life she knew.​

She also looks back on that last visit to the house.
The stranger at the door.
The gun.
The refusal to let her see her granddaughter.​
There is no way for a mother to carry that memory without it cutting into her, day after day.

Still, she holds on to hope—because hope is the only thing that lets her wake up and move forward.

Maybe her daughter is alive somewhere, convinced she is on a sacred path.
Maybe one day she will realize that no path of light asks you to erase the people who love you.
Maybe someone, somewhere, has seen them and just hasn’t connected the dots yet.

That is why the family and police ask, again and again, that anyone who knows anything—no matter how small it may seem—comes forward.​
In a story like this, a single memory, a passing sighting, a hotel clerk’s recollection, or an old neighbor’s detail could be the thread that finally leads back to a door that can open instead of close.

Until that day comes, the image remains the same:
A young mother, drawn toward a voice that promised her the universe,
And a little girl whose small hand was in hers, walking with her into the unknown.