Where is Dr. Sleep?

[Quasar]

Seems that John W. Anderson, aka Dr. Sleep, vanished from the Internet and possibly from real life as well sometime around 2004. I never took note of it until recently. None of his pages have been updated since then, one of them having gone offline. CodeImp has tried to contact him IRL apparently and had no success.

How about we see if we can't find out what happened to him? I have a feeling it's probably not good.

In case you don't know who he was, he was a commercial game designer who has levels in The Ultimate Doom, DOOM II Master Levels, Unreal, Daikatana, and other games. He also remained involved with the Doom community up until his disappearance, writing a popular guide for using Doom Builder (which is why I assume CodeImp is looking for him). He was also known for some particularly strong political opinions which he detailed on his blog.

[Butts]

i wonder where he is. i thoroughly enjoyed his levels.

[myk]

Yeah, I had noticed that last year, and after a bit of searching didn't find anything newer by (or about) him.

[Shanoa]

I personally remember him for making the oh so useful guide on the Doom Builder...hope he's gonna resurface one day.

[Bank]

I would like to know about this, I have always enjoyed the good Doctor's work.

[Nightmare Doom]

Quasar said:

He was also known for some particularly strong political opinions which he detailed on his blog.

Maybe this could be a clue for what happened to him...maybe Government agents stormed in to his place and took him to one of their secret prisons somewhere...

[Quasar]

We found a newer phone number for him, but nobody has wanted to call it so far. I don't want to invade on the guy's privacy so I don't know how far this should be taken. If CodeImp still wants to contact him, I would give him the number though.

If he IS still around and has dropped offline intentionally, then I guess he just wants to be left alone for some reason.

[printz]

Quasar said:

If he IS still around and has dropped offline intentionally, then I guess he just wants to be left alone for some reason.

Still, I prefer if people spoke, THEN were left alone. Just to be sure.

[CodeImp]

Thanks for the phone number Quasar, nice find. Though, Manc has tried to call but it appears to be an invalid number. Too bad.

What is next? You mentioned snail mail. The only address I have of him is the one in his portfolio, which is with the first phone number we found and, when tested, was found disconnected. Not likely that he will get the snail mail, but worth a try. Perhaps whoever lives there now might know where he is and might forward the mail on to him?

[Captain Red]

Ahh geez. I remember the last time we had a thread like this :(

I hope this one has a better ending.

[deathbringer]

I remember one other time we had a thread like this and the missing person showed up and posted "heh" in the middle of it. I hope that will be the case again

[Doom_Dude]

I was also wondering where he went to. I hope he is just busy designing levels for some game developer.

[Jim Rainer]

I hate to be a pessimist here, but maybe he died.

[Quasar]

That was my first thought given the evidence at hand, but a search of the Social Security deaths index has given no results for a man matching his full name and birth date, let alone location during the possible time period. According to the government, he's still alive. Of course they have been known to be wrong on occasion. If I calculate correctly, he would be 61 years old now.

There are plenty of other scenarios I could think of but would rather not speculate upon given what little we know. If we cannot contact him, we may just have to assume he "passed on," be that dying or just quitting the Internet.

He did have a son, so I'm curious what's going on there. He never seems to mention a wife or marriage anywhere so I assume he is/was a single father.

[Carnevil]

Jim Rainer said:

I hate to be a pessimist here, but maybe he died.

I too hate to be a pessimist here, but wasn't that the case last time Quasar went looking for someone who had disappeared (didn't he make a similar thread about Assmaster)?

[Quasar]

In Assmaster's case he disappeared from IRC very abruptly while we were expecting him to do his radio show. So in that case we instantly knew something was wrong (or at least I did...).

In this case nobody really noticed the guy was missing until four years after the fact, which is kind of weird. I myself simply hadn't been paying attention. He exchanged some emails with me in April of 2004. The latest message/post/etc. I have found from him dates from August of the same year. My attention was drawn to his missing status when I read about CodeImp not being able to contact him. Upon investigating, I noticed there's been nary a word from him since that time.

I just feel, in this case, that as a semi-famous community member, having published levels in Doom itself, and a seemingly pretty cool guy, he deserves some looking into. In Assmaster's case, it was much more personal, since I considered him a friend.

[Grazza]

Quasar said:

If I calculate correctly, he would be 61 years old now.

Judging from the info here, 51.

[Snarboo]

Either way, I hope this turns out well.

[Creaphis]

People just drift away from these things. It's possible that a thread like this exists for my sake in a Runescape forum somewhere - but the mystery of my whereabouts shall remain forever unsolved.

[Quasar]

Grazza said:

Judging from the info here, 51.

Ahh yeah. I was getting some numbers switched in my head. John Romero says he thinks he might be incarcerated. He says he knows that he has been involved in certain questionable activitiessince the time that they worked together on Daikatana.

I can't find him in the Pennsylvania DOC inmate search, however, nor have I yet found any docket cases referring to him (these are rather difficult to search, however, due to the way they are indexed under multiple criteria - you'd need to be a lawyer to make efficient use of that I think).

Anyway if it is the case that he is in jail, it would explain things pretty well, and I'd say we should leave him alone until such time he reappears of his own power and will.

[Scuba Steve]

He has a son, probably my age, named Joshua.

[CodeImp]

What about sending him a snail mail?

[Prophettx]

I realise this is an old post,but...John (aka Dr. Sleep) is quite alive. I unfortunately prefer not to divulge much beyond that as I respect him and his reasons for privacy.

[40oz]

That's good to hear, prophettx. Thank you for the update.

 

I would assume he has very little interest in Doom at this point?

[geo]

We all need a dead man's switch. If we don't log in once a year a RIP Doommarine scrolls across the screen and everyone is notified that we have indeed perished.

[Memfis]

Who is Prophettx?

[ReX]

4 hours ago, Memfis said:

Who is Prophettx?

Someone who registered just to make one post. Heh.

[geo]

5 hours ago, Memfis said:

Who is Prophettx?

Someone that put Dr. Sleep to sleep permanently and knows he needs to cover his tracks because the Internet gets bored and goes digging for people that go missing.

[Tracer]

6 hours ago, Memfis said:

Who is Prophettx?

He is the prophet...he is Dr. Sleep!

 

AND THEN DR. SLEEP WAS A ZOMBIE.

[NeedHealth]

Edited August 9, 2017 by NeedHealth