A woman suffering from a rare form of amnesia -- the same disease that the fictional Jason Bourne suffered from in a series of blockbuster movies -- has disappeared, authorities said, and it's not the first time she's gone missing.
Hannah Upp, 28, was last seen just before 8 a.m. Tuesday near Kemp Mill Road and Glenallan Avenue.
Authorities say Upp suffers from a rare form of amnesia. She has previously disappeared for days without any recollection.
She was last seen Tuesday morning around the time she should have been reporting to work, when a coworker saw her walking several miles from the Montessori school where she is a teacher's assistant. She also lives on the grounds.
Upp's bag and personal belongings were later found on a footpath near Wheaton Plaza.
She was also reported missing in 2003 in New York City and was missing for weeks.
Then a 23-year-old Spanish teacher, Upp disappeared the day before school started while on a jog along Riverside Drive, The New York Times reported.
She was found nearly three weeks later, floating face down in the Hudson River by a Staten Island Ferry captain on Sept. 16.
The Times said Upp, wearing just running shorts and a sports bra, was barely visible to the captain. She gasped for breath as she was lifted out of the water by two deckhands. Upp was hospitalized at the time with hypothermia and dehydration, which is why police in Maryland say it is critical she is found soon.
While it's not known where Upp slept or ate during the time she was missing in New York, police were able to piece together some of the places she visited, which included the thoroughfare she was last seen on and an Apple store.
Upp, who was also a graduate student at Pace University back in 2008, even had a conversation with a fellow student. But when she was rescued, Upp had no recollection of the time she was missing.
"I went from going for a run to being in the ambulance," Upp told The Times in an interview several months later. "It was like 10 minutes had passed. But it was almost three weeks."
Upp reportedly suffers from dissociative fugue, a rare form of amnesia which causes her forget her identity.
Few psychiatrists ever see patients with Upp's condition, which is "characterized in part by sudden and unexpected travel combined with an inability to recall one’s past..."
Dissociative fugue is so uncommon that one of its most famous sufferers is fictional.
Jason Bourne, who is portrayed by actor Matt Damon, is a CIA assassin who experiences extreme memory loss. And like Bourne -- and perhaps Upp in this case -- sufferers only lose their identities, not the ability to perform everyday tasks.
"People have been known to not only travel across cities or countries, but also across continents," Dr. Philip Coons, who wrote a book about the disease, told The Times.
Police describe Upp as standing 5'7" tall, weighing 160 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a black shirt and brown pants and some of her belongings were found on a footpath near Wheaton Plaza.
If you have seen Hannah Emily Upp, call police at 240-773-5530.