The woman I talked to suggested I call the funeral home in Cameron. (If I understood her correctly, there\'s only one.) I don\'t have that number.

Googling Cameron Wisconsin funeral home turned up an address and phone number.

Now I'm wondering - since he was a Wisconsin resident, would the state office (Dept. of Health and Family Services) have to know? I mean, even if he died out of state, I would think they'd have to notify the proper authorities in his state of residence.

eta: OK, it seems I was wrong about this. They would only have records for deaths in Wisconsin.

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Mark Rausch Funeral Services

Just to note for the record that Cameron is a small, rural town - if one were hospitalized, it's very likely that it would be outside of the county, or even the state, given the proximity to Minnesota.

I called the funeral home; they're gonna call me back (only a receptionist there now).

Just to note for the record that Cameron is a small, rural town - if one were hospitalized, it's very likely that it would be outside of the county, or even the state, given the proximity to Minnesota.

I was thinking the same thing. But odds are he passed away either in Wisconsin or Minnesota.

OK, what would a private dick do? Besides say, "Hey, lay off the dick jokes!"

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Just to note for the record that Cameron is a small, rural town - if one were hospitalized, it\'s very likely that it would be outside of the county, or even the state, given the proximity to Minnesota.

Isn\'t it also likely that folks in the town might know if one of their own had passed? Hopefully, the funeral director will know something.

To follow up on that last post, something I've been stewing about a bit. [ETA - my last post. The rest is all x-posty goodness.]

There's some weirdness here, no doubt. And the "too good to be true" elements of Gus's story certainly add to that.

But I think - and especially thought last night when suddenly it looked like we were on the verge of hiring a PI, practically - that we're going just a little bit crazy here.

The non-googleable thing is unusual, and maybe troubling, but not, I think, totally implausible. The lack of a death announcement in a currently internet available souce - not really all that odd. The wiki editing - odd, sure, but I can speculate up a half dozen explanations all across the spectrum from "driven snow" to "plot for world domination". In fact, I'd say practically everything we've come up with is similar; you can take it in dozens of ways from dark plotting to social miscues.

Beyond that we have - what, exactly? We all have questions, certainly. But so far, for all the speculation and suspicion and feelings of betrayal - I don't see a lot of there there.

I'm not arguing one way or the other - I'm just saying that we're taking a lot of very flimsy info and working ourselves into a kind of nasty mental place with it. And besides the innate irresistability of the pile-on, I'm really not sure why.