On the evening of May 3, 2007, three-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared from her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal.

Madeleine had been sleeping in the apartment with her younger twin siblings while her parents ate at a nearby restaurant with friends. When her mother returned to check on the children, Madeleine was gone.

What followed became one of the most recognizable missing-person cases in the world. Portuguese, British, and German authorities have all investigated the disappearance. Searches have continued, suspects and theories have come and gone, and almost every detail of that night has been pulled apart more than once. Still, Madeleine has never been found, and no one has been charged in connection with her disappearance.

Nearly two decades later, Madeleine’s face is still recognized around the world, but what happened after she vanished from Apartment 5A remains unknown.

This tarot reading isn’t meant to solve the case. I was interested in seeing what story the cards told, which details kept repeating, and where the spread pointed toward possibilities that may not have been fully explored.

If you’re interested in how disappearances and unanswered questions are explored through fiction, you may also enjoy my list of Gone Without a Trace: Missing Person Thriller Books.

About This Reading

This reading uses tarot as a reflective and symbolic tool. It is not evidence, and it cannot identify a guilty person or establish what happened as fact.

This is part of my ongoing subscriber series, where I share full tarot readings on unsolved mysteries, historical enigmas, and stories that refuse to stay buried. A new reading is published every Tuesday at 10:00 AM.

I went into this spread without trying to make the cards fit any one theory. Instead, I paid attention to the patterns that kept showing up—comfort, access, planning, movement, and details that seemed to connect in ways I wasn’t expecting.

What makes this reading especially unsettling is how certain images seem to follow us from one card to the next. The same details keep resurfacing, almost as if the spread is quietly leading us somewhere.

If you enjoy tarot readings that examine what may have been overlooked in an unsolved case, you may also want to read The Axeman of New Orleans Tarot Reading: The Letter, the Jazz, and the Unfinished Story. That reading raised its own questions about hidden identities, missed connections, and why the truth remained buried.

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