The hunting trip to Lake George Wild Forest

Tom lived in the city of Troy in New York state and was out that Sunday with six friends and family members who were hunting near Lily Pond in an area of state land that is part of the Lake George Wild Forest. The older members of the group, four of them, were watchers (in a static position sat on a log or similar comfortable spot) and were in a near-vertical line, whilst the younger hunters used the path around the lake to drive the deer to the watchers as part of the drive.

Since the mid-1880s, Brant Lake has been a popular fishing and hunting area among wealthy visitors, including Theodore Roosevelt. Brant Lake Camp was incorporated by R.B. Gerstenzang, J.E. Eberly, and John F. Malloy in 1917. After 55 years of hunting with longtime friends, also senior men, at the Messick's hunting camp in Hague, they decided to try this area for the first time. 

Tom was supposed to stay in one spot as group members walked through the woods to push deer toward him, but when they arrived at where he was supposed to be, he was gone, without a trace of him or his belongings. No sign of any deer was found that day. He wore duck boots, camouflage pants and coat, gloves, and a red-and-black check hat he'd worn for many years. He carried a rifle and walkie-talkie.

Who was Tom Messick?

Tom served in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division. He was 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighed approximately 160 pounds. He was an experienced hunter and woodsman and taught hunter and survival training for many years. He had a history of heart problems and lost an eye in an accident with an explosive device in his early 20s, so he had poor vision and limited hearing, as well as 159 stitches in his hand. He had also just gotten over a case of shingles and nearly decided not to go on the annual hunting trip. 

The Tom Messick disappearance and the search

He was last seen at 10 am, and when Messick did not show up at the agreed-upon time, his friends called Forest Rangers, and they searched from 4.30 pm. It got dark around 7 pm, and at that point, half the group stayed, fired their rifles, and honked the car horns to attract Tom to the area. The remaining men left the scene and reported him missing to family and the authorities. The day after Tom had disappeared on November 16, the search started with 13 trained SAR professionals from the park service. It was well organized from the start.

A huge search over several weeks involving more than 300 professionals and volunteers on some days, assisted by dogs, divers, and several helicopters, found no clues, including no sign of his rifle or walkie-talkie. More than four square miles were searched, with a larger area being searched by air with the aid of a helicopter from the State Police Aviation Unit. 

Search for tom messick

More than 15 agencies were involved, including DEC forest rangers, DEC police K-9 unit, DEC police officers, the FBI Quick Response Team, a State Police Special Operations Response Team, the Warren County Sheriff’s Office tactical team and volunteers from the New York State Federation of Search and Rescue Teams.

The weather was poor, with heavy rain, but sniffer dogs were deployed before the worst of the rain arrived. Searchers walked through the woods, including swamps, no matter how thick they were, and checked nearby roads, but there was absolutely nothing. Areas were tied off with string to box off specific areas, allowing a detailed search of every grid zone. It was described as a spider’s web of string in the forest.

Lost in the woods

Given his age, searchers were baffled as he could not have gotten far from his original location, and some said it was weird that there were no sounds of wildlife whilst the SAR teams were in operation, almost like something had silenced the woods. The search area had many caves, crevices, and other hazards. Could he have somehow fallen into one of these? For a man of his age, was he mobile enough? Why were there no clues on the ground despite the methodical grid search?

Foul Play

Surprisingly, the FBI arrived on the fourth day, November 19th. This was unusual as the FBI never usually gets involved in these types of missing person cases unless they fall under federal jurisdiction, e.g., they happened on federal land, or it was believed a kidnapping was involved. Tom’s wife Beverly said, "The FBI told me something isn't right with his case, but they don't know what. They won't share any theories if they have them. The FBI said until they make a discovery, they're never going to know." But subsequently, investigators said there have been no indications of foul play. David Winchell, a spokesman for the DEC, said rangers continued to search the area on a “limited continuous” basis since a wide-scale ground search ended in January 2016. That means rangers check the area periodically for evidence or clues.

Abduction

Beverley said, "He'd been in the woods since he was a boy and if he got lost, he would have cut a piece of his jacket and tied it to a tree and done the other things he learned.  His wife said her greatest fear was that he was the victim of foul play. The only thing I can think of is that maybe someone came by in a quad, hurt him, got scared and drove him out of there. I keep praying they'll find him so we have some closure. I keep worrying that I didn't tell him I loved him the last day I saw him alive."

Events after the disappearance

In the summer of 2018, State Police used sniffer dogs trained to detect cadavers to go through portions of the woods and fields near where Messick disappeared. State Police Investigator Jon Deyette said no clues were found, but the police investigation was ongoing.

In the 2019 movie Missing 411 Hunted, featuring David Paulides, one of the participants in the hunting group was interviewed:

“I heard a strange noise in the woods, but I don't know what it was..Just a different noise from what I usually hear, you know?

“Like what?”

“It'd be hard to explain because...But it was different. Something different that I never heard before in the woods. I just can't say what it was, you know?”

“How long in duration was it? Was it two or three seconds?”

“No, it's just... Whatever it is, you know?”

“How far away was it?”

“I'd say it was probably 150 yards, something like that.”

“Was it toward Tom, or away from Tom?”

“This was up towards the hill. The top of the hill. Yeah.”

“Did you tell the cops this?”

“Yeah, I told them that. But they just passed it off, you know?”

Tom’s disappearance is yet another bizarre case. Tom just vanished off the face of the planet. He was elderly, but an experienced backwoodsman. A tough guy, an ex-paratrooper, and not one to wander off into the woods when on a hunt. He had a rifle and walkie-talkie, and no sign of them had been found despite a massive search of the area, including all the inaccessible parts, including water and caves. It was so big a search that locals thought someone high profile or famous, like a politician, was involved. Sniffer dogs nor FLIR-equipped helicopters were able to find any trace. Was he snatched from Lake George Wild Forest by a serial killer or something else?  Or did he just choose to disappear suffering from dementia or a terminal disease? 

The investigation into Messick's disappearance is still classified as an active missing person case by the authorities. 

Source: https://www.strangeoutdoors.com/mysterious-stories-blog/tom-messick

Timeline of events:

4-10-1952 (12pm - lunchtime - Wednesday)

• Edna, Allen, Keith, and his two older brothers were visiting Edna’s parents in Ritter, OR around Easter. The property they were visiting was a cattle ranch - and the surrounding area could be considered “cattle land.” Edna described the conditions that day as cold with patches of snow on the ground.

• Keith and his older brothers had gone to the barn to see a new calf. When Edna called the boys back to the house for lunch - the two older brothers came back but not Keith.

• When his brothers were asked what happened to Keith they said, “Oh, he went around the barn.” So Edna and the brothers headed back to the barn to look for Keith.

• When they got to the barn Keith was gone - with no trace of where he went.

4-10-1952 (Afternoon)

• Realizing Keith was gone - a search started within hours. Edna noted that it wasn’t organized like modern SAR teams but the initial people searching knew what they were doing. They started a line of people spread out within speaking distance and started searching.

• At the peak of the search - it was estimated that over 200 people were in the field searching for Keith. The search continued through the night and into the morning.

4-10-1952 (Evening to night)

• At some point in the search - around 3 miles from where Keith was last seen - searchers found footprints that walked through a herd of cattle. Outside of these tracks, no other clues were found on Keith’s disappearance

4-11-1952 (7 AM)

• Around 7AM on the next day - a searcher found Keith alive in Skull Canyon roughly 12 miles from where he was last seen, face down in the snow with his hat and coat beside him. His body was stiff from the cold and he couldn’t move. His face had also been scratched pretty bad according to his mother. His clothing was also ripped up from possibly trying to get through barbed wire fencing. He was flown to a nearby hospital via private plane and eventually made a full recovery.

Key takeaways from the case

- It was lunchtime (12 PM) when he had disappeared. And it was about 7 AM the next morning whenhe was found. He would have to have gone 8 to 12 miles in 19 hours.

- His clothing was ripped and his face had scratches all over it - what could have caused this? At thetime, law enforcement suspected a barbed wire fence caused this but in interviews Keith mentions acat scratched him... Could he have had an encounter with a cougar? This is one of those cases that really makes you pause. How could a 2 year old travel that far, in sub freezing temps, overnight? What happened to his face and clothes? My leading theory is he had some encounter with a cat overnight and the only reason searchers found him alive was the searchers kept pushing the cat further through the night. 

In the news

Keith Parkins, Ritter, OR Mysterious Disappearance, Found 19 Hours Later: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/23801043/keith-parkins-ritter-ormysterious/

Baffling Disappearances: https://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2014/03/10

The Missing 411: Some Strange Cases of People Spontaneously Vanishing in the Woods: https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/11/the-missing-411-some-strange-cases-of-people-spontaneously-vanishing-in-the-woods/

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/LocationsUnknown/comments/g5tfil/the_strange_case_of_keith_parkins_in_ritter_oregon/

Indeed, as we will examine shortly, several people over the years who have been involved in the search for some of these mysteriously vanished people suggest some organizations within the power structure of the United States know a lot more about these strange occurrences than they publicly let on.

And what’s more, this could be happening worldwide in much the same way. Only further research and pulling together of missing persons reports, from as far back as record go as well as ones from our contemporary era will reveal if there are such missing persons conspiracies taking place worldwide, to what extent the number of these missing people cases actually are, and above all, why are they happening?

Perhaps what is also fascinating about these cases is the multiple directions they could truly go in? For example, are we looking at cases of a wild animal or a Bigfoot creature attacking unsuspecting victims? Might there be a more rational but darker explanation revolving around secret government experiments? Might these cases even be ones of alien abduction? Or examples of portals and other dimensions to unknown destinations, themselves active for unknown reasons? All sound rather outlandish, no doubt. However, the Missing 411 conspiracy is very real and remains without a satisfactory explanation.

These Disappearances Really Are Happening All The Time!

We have, perhaps inadvertently looked at some of these cases before. For example, we have examined the mysteries of the Bennington Triangle and the numerous disappearances there, some of which date back to the 1800s. We have also examined the equally bizarre Michigan Triangle.

Furthermore, when we looked at the mysteries of the American backroads, several strange and bizarre incidents came to light in the Great Smokey Mountain range along the North Carolina and Tennessee border.

We have even looked previously at the case of mass disappearances throughout history. While it is pure speculation, might some of those vanishings of entire groups of people, sometimes entire settlements, have a connection to the equally perplexing disappearances that have permeated the history of the United States since the records of the settlers began and most likely for many years before.

In short, a great many, if not all of the cases in those “cluster spots” of vanishing people are very likely all connected, both to each other and to some of the cases we will examine here. 

Where Do We Start?

It is truly difficult to know where to start an examination of a conspiracy of such magnitude – especially given the relative speaking, brief space available to us here. Before we examine some of the specific cases in detail, however, we will highlight, as per Paulides research, some equally bizarre patterns and coincidences that weave their way through these accounts – accounts which would otherwise be largely forgotten or, at best, remembered as isolated “one-off” incidents.

What’s more, as we have examined before and will undoubtedly do again, many of the areas with high disappearance rates also often have other higher-than-usual levels of activity, ranging from Bigfoot sightings to reports of UFOs and alien abduction. It could well be, then, that the locations might be key to solving these mysterious disappearances. And quite possibly help shed light on a whole host of other equally intriguing and unusual phenomena.

Truly Bizarre Circumstances To Examine

As we will examine in more detail, there are some truly bizarre circumstances and details that arise in many of the cases of the Missing 411. Perhaps one of the most intriguing being such connections to the number of people who have gone missing while picking berries.

Not only that but sheepherders and farmers are also highly represented in terms of people who have vanished. Sheepherders, in particular, spend an enormous amount of time in complete isolation from another human contact. And all the while, due to the presence of their flock, there is a constant threat of predators.

Quite possibly one of the most mysterious groups of people, though, are farmers and, indeed the farms and surrounding land upon which many people have simply vanished into thin air. And while some of these farmers have ultimately been discovered (dead in most cases, unfortunately) as Paulides writes it is his belief that “the stories behind how they died may tell us valuable information about the ones that were never found”.

Indeed, we should note how remarkable it is that Paulides has managed to not only highlight such an anomaly but to bring such reports together. After all, given the largely isolated locations of their residence, such disappearances often only come to light in small circulating newspapers (or in our contemporary era websites with smaller audiences). They rarely, as Paulides states, “make the national news”.

Weather, Locations, Distractions, And “Something Looking At” Them!

Perhaps one of the truly bizarre circumstances often surrounding these strange disappearances is the sudden change in weather that would occur in the immediate aftermath. This was most often a sudden heavy downpour or thunderstorm. Whatever the reason for this (and coincidence surely can’t stand alone in so many cases), this sudden deterioration in weather conditions makes the subsequent searches increasingly difficult, if not impossible.

We have to ask who or what is behind such circumstances. We have written before, for example, of cloud seeding and weather control. If there is a conspiracy surrounding the Missing 411 in terms of secret government involvement, would this apparent turn in the weather be a clue to such involvement?

Even the locations are often very similar in their remoteness such as woodlands and national parks. Even more, the number of witnesses who claim that they witnessed “something looking at them” or a strange figure “hiding behind a tree”. Does this, then, suggest some type of Bigfoot-type creature, one with enhanced intelligence, is attacking citizens of the United States?

Or what about the notion of a portal or rip in space-time itself? There are several cases of people who disappeared staring at something strange or of having their attention captivated by something truly bizarre. In short, it would appear the answers and revelations of the Missing 411 is unlikely to be found in what is perceived as a “rational” explanation.

Ominous Conspiracy Connections To The FBI

A great many of the disappearances over the years have involved FBI involvement. And while this would make sense in terms of trying to locate an often young and vulnerable child or young adult, many people who have had direct involvement in some of these cases have stated their belief of an alternative motive for their involvement, and of knowing something that the general bulk of the public doesn’t.

Such statements and assertions are hard to prove, given that they are often based on the instincts and feelings of those involved. However, we should also not discount such experience without at least considering the idea that such instincts may be closer to the truth of the matter than many would perhaps like.

We have touched on one of these examples previously when we examined the case of Dennis Martin who vanished in the Great Smokey Mountain range in June 1969 while walking with his parents and siblings in the region. One of the rangers, Dwight McCarter, would comment on how a special forces unit would arrive “heavily armed” and appearing as they though they were expecting to encounter something truly monstrous.

McCarter would indicate to Paulides that the unit “knew something everyone else didn’t”. Even more bizarre, on this occasion at least, the FBI investigator in charge of the case would commit suicide under suspicious circumstances.

The “Ominous” Color Red

One other point of interest to note here is how often the color red and the fact that many of those who disappeared wearing an item of red clothing at the time. This was the case with Dennis Martin, who was sporting a bright red top on the day he vanished. Many victims of the Bennington Triangle were also known to have been wearing red clothing at the time they disappeared.

We have examined how the color red, particularly in ancient times was associated with death. Many Native American tribes of the United States state that the color red is an ominous one and sure to bring bad luck. Why this is important, and if indeed it even is so, remains a mystery. However, it is surely worth noting on the clipboard of our minds.

While we have examined several of these bizarre details above, there appears no clear path to discovering what lays at the heart of these strange disappearances. The only certainty is that they are happening. They are real. And they are, for the most part, completely unexplained. 

More Examples Of Disappearances From The Michigan Triangle

With all of that said, then, we should look at some of the most mysterious and perplexing of these strange and bizarre disappearances. We will start with several truly bizarre cases from the Michigan Triangle area, and more specifically, that of Joe Clewley who would vanish as recently as the summer of 2008.

What is perhaps interesting to note here, especially given the fact we know many rivers, streams, and other bodies of water are often involved in these bizarre disappearances, is that the one common factor that connects each of these Michigan disappearances is the Tahquamenon River, which runs close and between all three of the last-known locations of these cases from the early-2000s.

73-year-old Joe Clewley had spent almost his entire life in Michigan save for a brief period where he served in Guam as a member of the United States Navy. Following his military service, he established a successful company (Industrial Control Design) using his skills as an engineer.

In his later years, along with his wife Loraine, the Clewleys would spend the winter months in Panama City in Florida. However, during the summer, they would migrate north to the Higgins Lake area of Michigan and to a cabin they owned along the Tahquamenon River. It was a destination that Joe felt truly at home at and would often spend weeks on end there with Loraine, who didn’t share her husband’s love of the cabin, would visit only at the weekends.

On the 13th of July 2008, Joe would drive with the family dog, Chip, to the Tahqua Trail in the Tahquamenon Falls State Park. Wherever Joe went, Chip would follow, and this day appeared no different. Joe called Loraine at 9 am as he did every morning, and after briefly chatting promised to call her at 9 pm that evening, as he did every night. Needless to say, that evening call on this July night didn’t come.

The Last Known Moments Of Joe And Chip

Joe, with the ever-loyal Chip, set out toward the cabin which was approximately a mile away. After speaking with his wife from the cabin as per their usual practice, it would appear that both Joe and Chip made the return journey with no problems. However, at some point after arriving at the van it appears something happened. And more importantly, both Joe and Chip appear to simply vanish.

The keys to the vehicle were found inside and the door left unlocked. This is something that Joe’s family would state he simply wouldn’t have done. It was the opinion of his son, Joe Jr., that his father was “pulled away by something” shortly after arriving back at the truck.

After raising the alert that he was missing, a search quickly went ahead for Joe Clewley. It would quickly become the biggest such operation in Michigan’s history. Even after official search teams suspended the search after only four days – during which time over 10,000 acres were searched – volunteer units would continue to search for the missing Michigan resident for weeks after.

Even more bizarre, when the family of Joe Clewley returned to the cabin on 1st August, they were stunned to find the loyal Chip sitting on the front doorstep. Aside from an obvious loss of weight, he was perfectly healthy. And certainly didn’t appear to have been living “in the wild” for several weeks.

Whatever happened to Joe, however, remains a complete mystery. As is why the search was called off after only four days. Was this another example that the authorities “knew more than everyone else” as we examined above?

Only several weeks after the disappearance of John Clewley, 35-year-old Derrick Henegan would disappear in nearby Newberry. On the afternoon of 4th August 2008, at around 4:30 pm, he would leave his friend’s home and head into the woods in order to meet his girlfriend as they had arranged earlier that day.

They had arranged to meet at a deer hunting blind. However, when Henegan didn’t arrive his girlfriend raised the alarm that something wasn’t right. Not only did Henegan have two children with his ex-wife who he called without fail every night, his current girlfriend was also five months pregnant. For him to disappear was so out of character for him it was beyond unusual.

Perhaps worth noting is the notion that the family of Derrick Henegan believes his disappearance is connected to criminal activity of which their son is a victim. The authorities, however, officially class it as a standard missing persons case meaning it is unlikely any further investigation will go ahead.

Also worth noting, as Paulides points out, is this area of Michigan is almost entirely surrounded by dense forests and large bodies of water and has a population somewhere around 2,500. That two people should completely disappear in such similar circumstances is a little strange, even for the most skeptical of people.

Even more suspicious, only four years earlier in practically the same location (only 15 miles from Henegan’s disappearance), another Michigan resident simply vanished without a trace.

Initially, they would manage to track his snowshoes for several miles. However, it soon made a turn into a “very tangled and densely wooded swamp area”. Certainly not the type of terrain an experienced outdoor person would enter onto knowingly or willingly.

Interestingly, this is another detail that comes up repeatedly in many cases were despite a very defined pathway or track being present, the respective person who vanishes often seems to wander into terrain almost impossible to negotiate. Unless, of course, such people are taken into these inhospitable regions against their will.

The searches for Hallaxs would continue for several weeks, including areas that he was known to visit or stay regularly. He even had caches of supplies in various places in the wilderness in case he became trapped due to any number of reasons. When one of these caches was discovered with many of the supplies “thrown around and displaced” it was a rather ominous sign. As was the spent slug from a gun – especially as Chris, for all of his outdoor passion, didn’t to the best of his family and friends’ knowledge carry any type of firearms.

Ultimately, no sign of Chris Hallaxs has ever been discovered. Despite the wilderness of the region, that a person could simply vanish in spite of the intense search efforts which took place is highly unlikely.

Sheepherders And Farmer Disappearances

As we mentioned above, some of the strangest circumstances and connections come from the disappearances of sheepherders and farmers, both of which live most of their lives in relative isolation and in drastically rural areas with little or no other human contact other than their immediate families (or in the case of sheepherders, literally no other contact for long periods at a time).

From these strange disappearances, it perhaps shouldn’t surprise us too much, then, that some of the most bizarre tales in a plethora of bizarre tales come from these very specific groups of people. While the particular connections and why they appear are not known, like the berry picking connection that we will examine shortly, it is its apparent randomness that makes it so crucial to understand.

One of the strangest cases involving a disappearing sheepherder is that of Dewey Cook, who vanished while scouting an area for the flock in Bitter Creek around ten miles from the Wyoming-Colorado border on the afternoon of 2nd March 1942.

A search of the region would take place almost immediately and go on for around a week. However, despite this, and the utilization of aircraft over the area, no sign of Cook was ever found. That was until two years later, that is, when a group of the man’s friends organized another search of the area. They would discover skeletal remains that were eventually identified as those of Dewey Cook. What is strange, however, is these remains were discovered in a part of the area that had been searched extensively several times.

What’s more, for such a sensational find as it undoubtedly was, there is very little if any press information is available on the details that might have led to Cook’s death. It would appear as though his body simply arrived at its destination two years after vanishing at almost the same spot.

What is truly strange, however, according to the report of the find in the Walla Walla Union newspaper were that “Davis’ clothes were in a pile near the body”. The report, however, didn’t speculate on why this might have been the case. Or whether Davis removed the clothes himself (which does sometimes happen in extreme cases of hypothermia), or whether he was forcibly stripped of the garments.

Perhaps bizarrely, only two weeks before the last known sighting of Davis, slightly to the south of the state of Washington in Coconino County in Arizona on the 12th August, another sheepherder, Jerry Garcia, would also vanish without a trace. What’s more, Garcia has never been found.

The entire scene seemed to be one of a rushed and forced exit. Even his revolver that he kept with him under his bedroll remained in its place. Whatever the reason for his exit, Greg Lewellen left in a hurry. Perhaps rather strangely, though, there was no blood or tissue or any other sign of physical assault anywhere near the area. If a struggle had ensued with a human attacked or abductor this would seemingly not be the case (unless he was taken completely by surprise). Furthermore, because of this lack of blood, an attack from a wild animal can almost certainly be ruled out.

On the other hand, also because of this lack of physical evidence of an attack of any kind, the official investigation states that the sheepherder left of his own accord. A notion that Paulides asserts is “very doubtful”. The only other reasonable explanation was that he was abducted. The scene very much appears as though he has been simply erased from existence. Incidentally, three days after the discovery of his disappearance, the two dogs returned to camp.

The search would continue for several weeks until a grim discovery brought the operation to a halt on 31st August. After pulling the cover from an abandoned well, searchers discovered the dead body of the farmer. Despite some decomposition, Pitsenbarger’s body was relatively undamaged. The only notable exception was “slight discoloration on the right eye”. Interestingly, and whether something of consequence, the farmer’s straw hat that he was wearing on the day of his disappearance was nowhere to be found. Perhaps suspiciously, no autopsy would take place with the coroner simply signing the death certificate as death by drowning.

A little over a year later on the 17th October 1932 in Palermo, New York, farmer Clarence Clark – a similar age to Pitsenbarger at 62 – would disappear from the farm he ran with his wife and his elderly father. After checking the livestock on the day in question, Clark would venture out to the swamps around their property. He wouldn’t return so prompting a search. Despite over 100 searchers, no sign of the farmer surfaced. As a side note, if there is an intelligence behind these disappearances, is it a coincidence that two men of a similar age in a similar profession simply vanish around a year apart?

Perhaps one of the more recent disappearances took place on 21st June 2009 in Cordell, Oklahoma. On the day in question, Anthony Holland would disappear in very similar circumstances. He would return home after a day away and then head straight out in order to check on stables and livestock around the ranch. He would take his truck to perform the check as the ranch itself was spread out over 80 acres.

However, while his truck was found a short time later – with the keys and the farmer’s wallet inside – there was no sign whatsoever of Holland. Furthermore, not only was there no sign of Holland, but tracker dogs would fail to even pick up a scent of the missing man. Also, like Illinois, Oklahoma, and more specifically the border it shares with Arkansas is another part of the North American continent that has more than its fair share of disappearances.

Without a doubt, one of the most bizarre connections of these equally bizarre disappearances is the amount of “berry pickers” who have seemingly vanished without a trace. There is little else to connect these particular disappearances, other than the location and jobs of those who vanished. And while it might be a coincidence within a coincidence, the fact that so many people with the same job should go missing at the location of their employment is strange at the very least.

Before we examine some of the Missing 411 cases in a little more detail, perhaps it is worth reminding ourselves of an apparent alien encounter in Luumaki in Finland. We have examined the case previously but is worth including here due to the seemingly random connection of it taking place while a family was picking blueberries one afternoon in August 1965.

The family had separated out in their location in order to pick as many berries as possible. As the father lifted his head briefly from the task, he would suddenly notice “a strange bubbling noise” which was followed by the sudden appearance of a three-foot-high “man-like” figure in front of him. As the father looked at this strange figure, he could see it was “decisively strong” with red-orange skin and skintight green overalls. It would suddenly charge toward the witness before itself vanishing into thin air when it was but several feet away.

Whether there is a connection to this account or not remains open to debate. However, we should also note that many people who have vanished only to suddenly reappear often speak of “strange figures” watching them from the woods or the bushes, often disappearing or running away in an effort to get the person to follow them.

They would conduct extensive searches with over 250 individuals making up the Search and Rescue teams. These searches would continue non-stop for several days, with low-flying aircraft brought in to search the woodland and surrounding mountains from above. A week later, “boot and heel prints” were discovered in the general area the boy had gone missing, as well as “footprints in the vicinity”. However, thorough searches of the “wheat fields and undergrowth for miles around” had revealed absolutely nothing. After three months of relentless searching, which involved almost 2,000 people making it the largest such operation in the area at the time, searchers had found no sign whatsoever of the missing toddler.

The fact that Eddie was discovered so far from his last known location, over tough and mountainous terrain no less, is suspicious to some researchers. Not least, as Paulides points out, such a notion would involve the 2-year-old traveling uphill which goes against all of the general statistics of search-and-rescue teams that “children walk downhill when lost”.

Incidentally, the area where Eddie vanished is surrounded by three lakes, on each side of which are hills and mountainous terrain. Given the number of conspiracies generally speaking that surround such terrain, the fact that such a disappearance should take place should perhaps alert us to such locations being key in our attempts to unlocking the reasons and particulars behind these strange disappearances.

Several local tribes would offer the help of “trackers” in an effort to locate the young boy. They would state they had reports of “someone living on berries and sleeping in the woods”. One tracker would even state that this mystery person, whoever it was, ran away upon seeing them. Even stranger, many farmers in the region would state they would “often find their cows milked almost dry” some mornings. Whether it was indeed Simon who had suddenly taken to “living off the land” and intentionally avoiding anyone from the local population, he or his body remains missing.

This would mean the young boy had traveled, on foot and likely in darkness, over the 1400-foot mountain, unaided and alone. What’s more, he would have had to have done so in less than a 24-hour period. Perhaps even more bizarre, he was virtually unharmed aside from several scratches on his face. There has never been any satisfactory explanation as to what happened to Gary Bailey, how he got to the other side of the mountain, or why he did so.

The two women looked around and could not see the young boy anywhere. They would alert authorities but despite over “50 men on horseback” searching for him, he was never discovered. What is distinctive about this case is the short screams that came from Wesley. If someone or something attacked him, what shortened the screams. Was it his own fear, or did something or someone has the presence of mind to stifle such sound that might give away their location?

Over four decades later, on 26th October 1973 near Tacoma Washington, 2-year-oldJimmy Duffy would disappear in remarkably similar circumstances. The Duffy family had pulled up in their camper truck and were merely yards away from it when they heard their young son suddenly scream. They would return to find Jimmy gone while his younger sister slept soundly. Despite hundreds of searchers assisting in the search for the young boy, he has never been found.

Another of the Missing 411 cluster spots identified by Paulides is located in the regions along the Oklahoma-Arkansas border, with strange, unsolved disappearances dating back to the mid-1930s. What’s more, it appears that many of the missing people were young children throughout much of the twentieth century.

However, around the Millennium in 1999, the age of those who disappear suddenly begins to steadily rise. Whether there is a reason for this and if it is of any importance is open to debate. It is, though, another of those anomalies that Paulides has managed to isolate and call our attention to.

Charles told the neighbor, Mrs. Loy, that he “wanted his father” but neither she nor anyone else who spoke to him later could find out just what happened. Or how he had managed to cover such distance during the harsh winter weather of December in the woodlands of Oklahoma-Arkansas border.

After receiving treatment at a nearby military hospital and of being reunited with his parents, Charles would sleep for a considerable amount of time in the days following the incident. One of the doctors who treated the young boy would state that “it was nothing less than a miracle” that the boy had not succumbed to the harsh and brutal elements.

Around two years later in the late summer of 1937, the disappearance and ultimate discovery of 4-year-old Florence Jackson would unfold. And it remains one of the most bizarre and outlandish accounts on record. The disappearance occurred in Oak Grove in Arkansas after Mr. and Mrs. Jackson had traveled with Florence from their home in Chelsea in Oklahoma to visit the young girl’s grandparents on the 6th September. During the stay, Florence would walk to see an abandoned mill with her grandfather. While they did so, her grandmother and her parents were near their car several yards away.

Because of this, when Florence suddenly changed her mind stating she wanted to go back to the car, her grandfather allowed her to do so. However, when he himself returned to the vehicle and discovered the young girl was nowhere to be seen, the family would raise the alarm. Over the next four days, hundreds of volunteers would search along the state border. However, and as we have examined previously with other cases, a sudden heavy rainstorm severely affected the search efforts. By the fourth day, however, according to newspaper reports, “shoes and stockings of the little girl were discovered” by searchers. However, there was no sign whatsoever of Florence. Shortly after this discovery, though, a sighting of the young girl would surface. And the circumstances surrounding her sudden discovery were almost stranger than those around which she vanished.

Upon examination at a nearby hospital aside from scratched over almost her entire body, she was otherwise completely healthy. She would speak more of her experiences in the woods. She claimed that she had hidden in the forests when “two strange men” were nearby. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t give any further details on these strange individuals.

Just what happened to Florence Jackson remains a mystery. It sounds as though it was some kind of abduction encounter. But who might have carried out such an abduction, seemingly otherwise inflicting no physical harm on her is even more of a mystery? And given the amount of time that has passed since it is unlikely this encounter will clear any further.

He would never see his son again. When he went to the camper to visit his son the following day, he found his overnight bag open with his shoes on top of it. There was also a photograph of his two daughters. Two days later, Cook’s father would return with his own father. This time, they would discover an even more ominous and chilling scene. Around 200 yards from the camper they would find Ernest’s sleeping bag. Furthermore, they would see a strange “barefoot track and another boot track”. Just who was with Ernest Cook and what kind of pressure did they apply to him to make him leave. Ernest Cook has never been seen since in what is arguably one of the strangest cases of all the Missing 411 accounts. It appears as though he was getting ready to go to bed and something truly bizarre took place.

One of the more recent disappearances is that of Christopher Jones from Holland, Arkansas on the 5th April 2006. What is perhaps interesting right off the bat is the location of Jones’s residence – or more to the point, the fact that a creek runs along the back of his home. What is also interesting is that at the time of his disappearance, he had just returned from the hospital after battling a case of gout. Consequently, he was using crutches for both legs just to move around his small trailer home.

So, when friends called to see Chris on the morning in question, they were at a loss as to both why his front door was unlocked (although closed) and why he was nowhere in sight. What made the situation even more bizarre was that his vehicle was still parked outside, and nothing was stolen or even disturbed. It literally appeared as though he had just vanished.

Despite an intense search for Jones, including specialist ground and air units, no sign of the 37-year-old has ever surfaced. Even when his daughter tragically died in an auto accident his failure to appear at her funeral convinced all that knew him that he was either dead or somewhere where he was simply not aware of her death.

The disappearance remains unexplained a decade and a half later.

Perhaps a case that features several aspects of many of the cases we have examined above took place in Canada in the Manitoba province on the 5th September 1935with the disappearance of 5-year-old Jack Pike. The Pike family had planned to enjoy the day picking blueberries and for the first few minutes after parking up in St. Norbert everything went as planned. Then, his mother heard a chilling sound. She would tell the Leader Post newspaper that:

He screamed as if he were terrified. The scream seemed to be choked off in the middle!

Although both of his parents would run in the direction of the scream there was no sign at all of their young son. Remember, this is an interesting point, and several other cases, including two that we have examined above, featured similar details of a short or cut-off scream. Once more, if there was some kind of attacker or abductor, a wild animal can be safely ruled out as it simply wouldn’t have the presence of mind and perception to quieten its victim.

What then, or who could move so quickly, without being seen or even leaving any sign of its presence? Certainly not anything human we wouldn’t think.

Incidentally, and in an even further strange development, after four days of searching the Trappist Monks Monastery side of the Red River, with thousands of searchers and no sign whatsoever of the young boy, he was suddenly discovered on the other side of the water under a bush. Although he was unconscious, he was still alive.

In a cruel twist, however, despite waking at one stage after receiving medical attention at a nearby hospital, Jack Pike would pass away. Just how he had managed to cross the waters remains a mystery.https://www.youtube.com/embed/oEoW12BInDA?feature=oembed

The truth is, we could continue to examine and recall each one of the remaining cases – and there are literally hundreds – but aside from patterns that emerge (and will continue to do so) we are still no closer as a collective to discovering just what is causing these disappearances, and how we can protect ourselves from suffering a similar fate.

As well as the connections to rivers, lakes, and other bodies of water, the experiences of accounts in the woods are of particular interest. And might offer some hint of what might be behind such bizarre experiences.

Where are these people going? Are they being kidnapped? Are these missing people part of the seemingly outlandish but sickly conspiracy revolved around breeding programs of the elite to maintain their own youth, and just for general slavery purposes? Several researchers have spoken of their belief of such programs existing. Perhaps not least the controversial author, David Icke, who, albeit indirectly, connects such disappearances and underground programs with aspects of the reptilian conspiracy.

Or might these bizarre experiences share a connection with cases of alleged alien abduction? There are many similarities. Perhaps not least the sudden reappearance of many of the victims. If there is some common ground between apparent cases of alien abduction and these truly bizarre missing persons cases then it would force us to reexamine both subjects entirely.

Maybe another possibility is the brief opening of some kind of portal that unintentionally snatches the unaware person catapulting them to a destination truly unknown. While this notion is one we could perhaps base an entire case study on in its own right, we should perhaps remind ourselves that scientists today are beginning to speak increasingly openly about the existence of other dimensions all around us.https://www.youtube.com/embed/8wjizbKkNrk?feature=oembed

With all of the above in mind, it is perhaps not a surprise that there are mysteries about mysteries and an ever-growing mountain of questions, all seemingly impossible to answer and all appear to lead to even more questions of the same complexity. Are these disappearances simply cases of misadventure? Even the most skeptical of minds would surely struggle hanging their hats on such a notion. The fact is, in the vast majority of these cases, there is something truly extraordinary taking place. And what’s more, our inability to decipher and understand these strange occurrences are costing people their lives.

Whether it is some strange phenomena that we don’t understand – a portal or interdimensional gateway, for example – or whether it is a dark, sickly conspiracy involving the higher echelons of the “elite”, we should all think twice about where we are at any given moment, who knows it, and above all, remain alert as to what is going on around us at all times, no matter how strange, trivial, or indeed unbelievable. It goes without saying that we recommend you read David Paulides work in full. And, all of us who have a passion for conspiracy and of getting to the truth of any given situation might begin to look at other regions of the world – in Europe, South America, and basically every continent on the planet – and begin to compile similar data in an effort to find just what is happening all around us and right under our collective noses. Check out the video below. It is one of the many interviews and discussions that can be found online concerning this morbidly fascinating subject.https://www.youtube.com/embed/S5_FfMAxvvY?feature=oembed

Disclaimer

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By publishing these accounts, UFO Insight does not take responsibility for the integrity of them.  You should read this article with an open mind and come to a conclusion yourself.

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Source: https://www.ufoinsight.com/the-missing-411-conspiracies-a-case-study/

Just as mysterious as people who have vanished without a trace are those who seem to have almost vanished, that is to say, confronted by enigmatic forces that seem to have wanted to “take” them. This is a theme that seems to come up time and time again especially in relation to cases of people vanishing in the wilds, most notably in cases covered by researcher David Paulides in his Missing 411 series of books, which deal with very odd disappearances in forests that often have a somewhat surreal or even supernatural feel to them. There is no real way to know what has happened to these people, but in the cases of those who have returned from the experience to tell the tale we can glean some possible clues. I have covered this here recently with seemingly paranormal forces luring people to their near doom, but other cases are a bit different in that it seems that something has been, in a sense, hunting them. Here we will look at some more cases of the almost vanished that suggest that there are dark entities out in the wilds of our world looking for victims and perhaps making people vanish without a trace.

One interesting feature of some reports of being stalked through the forest is that on many occasions the predatory presence is felt and heard more than seen. Strange sounds and an inexplicable, thick blanket of ill-defined fear and dread are common, as is conversely the sudden absence of sound, and also often the feeling of being watched.

One report that illustrates this is one from the Missing 411 Reddit forum by a poster called “savedavidbowie.” She says that happened at a place called Stone Mountain State Park, in the U.S. state of North Carolina, not far from where she lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and that she is an avid, seasoned hiker and outdoorsman. She says that she has had two experiences of being stalked by a seemingly malicious presence in the park, the first of which she says:

This happened last year while hiking with my boyfriend and our dog. We had see a couple of the waterfalls that day and were going to hike to to the lower falls. There had been very heavy rain for a few days and I knew this trails has several creek crossings. I decided I didn’t want to get wet and told my bf to go on without me and I would wait. The falls were only another 1/2 mile or so ahead. Bf and dog go on across the creek and disappear out of my line of sight. As soon as I couldn’t see them anymore I was suddenly aware of how quiet the woods were. No birds chirping or squirrels rustling leaves. I don’t usually get spooked but all of a sudden I had this overwhelming sense of dread. I felt as if something was watching me and I could shake the feeling. I had an urge to run after my bf and started the creek crossing when I saw him come dashing back towards me. He too had an overwhelming sense of dread and didn’t get 10 min down the trail before he turned and ran back to me. He said he couldn’t shake the feeling something was going to attack me. This was around 11am on a summer day so not very likely a big cat or bear would be out at this time.

This sense of overwhelming fear and the abrupt silence of the forest is very common in these types of reports, and is often observed by more than one witness. In her second account we have the same unshakeable fear from nowhere, as well as anomalous noises from the trees. She says of this occasion:

This incident was very scary because I was alone with my dog. We were hiking the same section of Stone Mountain but a different trail called wolf rock. On the way up I had seen many trees that were scorched but could have been due to lightening. ( I have pics of the trees, just assumed it was lightening burns). Started getting an ominous feeling so started picking up my pace to head back. When I was about a mile from my car I heard what can only be described as a super sonic boom. It shook the ground and rattled the trees. It spooked me and my dog so bad we ran most of the way back to the car. Tried later describing the sound to my bf to no avail since I never heard anything like it. Not gun fire, not a plane, not a rock slide which I’ve all heard before. But while reading another person’s story on this sub it sparked my memory. They described the sound they heard as a giant sledge hammer hitting a tin wall. That’s the beat way I can describe the noise I heard. That metallic bang reverberating through the woods. Very unsettling.

What could be behind this noise? This metallic noise sometimes pops up in reports like this, and another is a noise that sounds like someone or something knocking a club against a tree, a sort of wood-knocking sound that is usually perceived as very unsettling. 

We can see this in a report from the same forum from a poster called “nahatokyo,” who had her experience in the sprawling Algonquin Provincial Park, in Ontario, Canada. On this day she was out canoeing with two friends in the park at a place called Rock Lake, and they decided to camp out on shore. It was a very windy evening, but she says she was alarmed when at some point in the middle of the night the roaring, whipping wind just suddenly stopped, as if it had been simply turned off. It wasn’t a slow decrease of wind; it was just there one moment and gone the next, and there were also no sounds of insects anymore, just total silence. She was already alarmed by this, but it was made worse when she could feel an incredible sense of danger and palpable dread all around her. Her friends were still asleep, and she says of the feeling she had:

I wanted to wake my friends but I thought they would think I was just over worried. The silence was overbearing and I began to feel the most intense sense of dread I’ve ever had seemingly for no reason. I then heard what sounded like loud knocks on trees in the distance? I don’t know what that could’ve been but it was making me feel worse. The wind eventually came back after about 20 minutes and I tried to get more sleep. I was nearly dozed off when I heard a sound in my head sort of like when you get hurt in video games. Like a high-pitched frequency that got higher in frequency as it went on. I had an intense feeling of dread in this moment and I stayed up to sunrise and couldn’t sleep. I didn’t even mention it to me friends because they were asleep and would probably just shrug it off.

The next day she stayed silent about her weird experience the night before, but it was still very much weighing on her mind when they pushed out to do some more canoeing on the lake. They pushed out towards a place called Rose Island, and it was here where a variety of strange sounds would come from the surrounding wilderness, as if something was out there with them that didn’t want them there. She says:

Later we canoed to a place in rock lake called rose island. On this island as we collected wood for our fire, I began to hear a variety of weird sounds. The weirdest was a knocking sound which consisted of five very low frequency knocks which sped up like this “. . …” I could not think of an animal that would make this sound. I have heard woodpeckers and they are much higher pitched. We then heard what sounded like wood banging on trees but from different directions and from different directions as well. Later we were hiking and I saw a black mass in the forest which looked like a black bear. We ran away and decided to leave camp and come home because we both had a feeling of complete dread after seeing it.

In this report one wonders if the black object they saw had anything to do with the report and if so, just how did it connect? Along with the wood-knocking, it almost seems as if they might have been terrorized by a Bigfoot, as wood-knocking is a supposed behavior they use to intimidate and possibly communicate with each other. Is that what was going on here? It certainly seems that whatever it was meant them harm. 

Another strange wood-knocking type case comes from a poster calling himself “peckarino romano,” who says that at the time he was in Federal law enforcement and on this occasion, he was out camping with his friend out in the Chiracachua National Monument area of southeastern Arizona. As they were hiking, he says that the weather got unseasonably foggy and gloomy all of the sudden, and that was when a bizarre series of events would play out, starting with in this case rock-knocking. The witness says:

Shortly after the fog came in, the last part of the bad weather change, we heard a strange set of three knocking noises from behind a hanging rock at the top of the gorge we were in at that point. It sounded vaguely like a heavy tool being slammed against the rock in the cadence of two knocks a quarter second apart, a short second delay, then a third knock. This three knock sequence repeated several times from that location. We stopped as soon as we heard it, and we were immediately made uneasy for some reason. After several set of knocks, it stopped and we started moving about 50 yards when we heard the same several set of knocks from the opposite side of the gorge, then again from a third position that was once again above us on the rim of the gorge near some large monolithic rocks.  

We then had a very uneasy and frightened feeling. My friend told me something to the effect of ‘hurry up and let’s get out of here, I don’t like this’ and we started moving out of there at a constant jog. for the next five minutes we heard a few more sets of knocks from the three different locations. I felt very much in danger for my life for some reason. At one point we stopped at an outcropping on the rim of the gorge we both had our hands on our holsters and did a quick look at the ridge above us, we had instinctively grabbed cover before doing so, that shows just how disturbed we were.  

When we made it to the trail crossroads at the end of the loop near the visitor center, we had lost the feeling of dread about a half a mile back. We went to the visitor center and asked the ranger there if there were any crews working in the area or any groups of people doing something that sounded like the knocking we described. She said that it sounded like we heard woodpeckers, I played my roommate a clip of a woodpecker native in the area via youtube on my phone and the sound was vaguely similar but the tapping of the woodpecker was much faster and it wasn’t quite as deep toned. He said “well that does sound like it, we probably just heard that and got freaked out” and I didn’t agree, but I felt as if it would be embarrassing to admit I still felt something very weird actually happened so I feigned agreement. We then drove home.

The two later decided that what they had heard was not, in fact, woodpeckers, and we are left to wonder just what was out there stalking them. What was banging on those rocks and why? Was this a possible Bigfoot about to attack? 

Another unseen stalker was reported by poster “hanny242,” who was at Big Bend National Park, in southern Texas at the time of her experience. She had gone out camping in the area with a friend and her husband, and describes the landscape as flat, desolate, and remote, and the two thought it would be fun to take a night hike out to the nearest trail. Since it was a bright, moonlit evening through flat terrain, they thought it would be easy, but the witness says as a precaution she had set out some rock piles earlier on to help them find their way. After dinner, they headed out at around 10 PM, but they were all in for a terrifying experience. The witness explains:

The first 10 minutes were pretty uneventful, we were all in good spirits. Suddenly we hear a scuttling noise from about 50 feet away behind us. Having been used to animal noises at night, we wrote it off as a critter. A few minutes later we heard the same noise a bit closer and sounding like a bigger animal. There are black bears here, but we weren’t in the area they’re normally sighted. Like I said the landscape was wide open and we didn’t see anything with our flashlights.

We were a bit uneasy, but willing to go on. The rock piles had been doing a good job of leading in the right direction. All at once I stopped, feeling absolute terror. It’s an indescribable feeling, I see many others in the sub reference. I knew we were in danger, I just didn’t know why. I looked to my friend and my husband who both looked as terrified as I felt. There was no sound, no wind, then in an instant, the most inhuman scream erupted, seemingly, all around us. We all froze for what felt like minutes, but I’m sure it was just seconds. I don’t remember making the decision to run back, but the next thing I remember we were all running. We had made it pretty far out, even though I thought I was running in the direction of our camp, I remember scanning for the rock piles I had made but not being able to find any and almost turning back thinking we were headed in the wrong direction, but had this instinct no to. We made to a rather large rock I knew was on the route back to the campsite, I also remembered putting a rock pile beside the rock. I went to check if it was there to make sure we were headed back to our campsite. The rocks were still there, but they had been knocked over.

This set off all the alarms, and I told my friend and my husband that we had to get back to the camp as soon as possible. We made it back a few minutes later, by the time we got back I was entirely freaked out, and didn’t want to stay. I think my husband was as well, but my friend convinced us that it was just wildlife. So we stayed in the tent that night. I don’t know if it was connected, but there was scuttling and footsteps around the tent all night. Either way, I did not sleep. We did not do any more primitive hiking that trip and opted instead for a campsite in one of the community camps. I’ve never felt that feeling before or since, and I’ve been in the woods at night plenty of times. The next day I went out to check if all the rock piles had been knocked down, they had. I don’t think an animal would deliberately go around knocking over the markers. That’s what really makes me think, it was sentient. I don’t know what it was, but I don’t want to know and I’m glad we made it out.

What was out there with them, toying with them and possibly hunting them down? Again, was this a possible Bigfoot? There is no way to know, but in some very odd reports the origin of the strange sounds and inexplicable fear is indeed seen, and it doesn’t seem to be a Bigfoot at all. 

Such reports really run the range of the weird, and first off, we have a report from Reddit user “Throwaway84648” on the Humanoid Encounters forum, who says that on this evening he had headed out to a wooded area in Wisconsin to go to a party some friends were holding out there. Along the way they got a little lost, but were able to get directions by cell phone and continued making their way through the dark trees, finding the way by the beam of their flashlight. They still seemed lost, inexplicably going around in circles and passing the same clearing several times, and the witness claims that some very high strangeness would soon come for them, saying:

I joke that she better not get me killed and as we nervously laugh we hear a “nya nya nya” sound coming from behind us followed by what sounded like a cross between like a whistle of an old train and somebody blowing (it sounds stupid but almost like the whistle of Thomas the train) and we turn around thinking “what the fuck was that” and shine our flashlights on a deer standing up on its hind legs with one arm against the tree looking at us. I know this sounds stupid but just the way that it was watching us and standing there was the most unsettling thing ive seen in my life. My friend then takes off running and I’m still just standing there looking at it trying to make heads or tails of it before I start running too after Gina trying not to be left alone with this thing. Luckily for me Gina runs into a tree and I catch up with her and start yelling at her about leaving me alone when we hear another whistling sound out to the left of us and turn our flashlights to see another deer looking at us but this one is walking toward us on its hind legs but not like a person like a dog. It gets close but walks behind a tree with only it’s head and neck poking out, watching us. 

I have never been so scared in my life and started to cry and started to yell at Gina telling her to call the cops (like that would have done any good). At this point I honestly thought I was going to die I was just so scared and we heard another whistle sound somewhere else in the woods behind us. We heard a rustling sound in the woods and were sure that this was is and we were going to die but instead out walked a giant and I mean giant (like newfoundland size but with short hair like a lab) black dog. The dog then walked right up to us looked at us and then looked out at the deer behind the tree which then started to make a “nya nya” sound like we heard earlier but the dog just stood there looking at it not growling or barking or anything just staring. The deer then started to make a coughing sound but the dog just stared at it without making a noise before turning around and just ignoring it and walking over to us and started barking and baying. A minute later a professor who I’d taken a class with sophomore year burst through the brush and started yelling at “Baron” (his dog who had apparently run away into the woods). He was really confused to see us but saw that we were crying and offered to take us back to his house and drive us back to campus. I haven’t slept since last night and have been all over the Internet trying to make sense of what I saw. I fully intend to spoil Baron rotten for saving my life.

What in the world was this thing? The witness explains that she felt that it was about to pounce on them, and what would have happened then? Would these two teenagers become another missing person statistic? Who knows? 

Just as bizarre is a report from poster “Ky-ja-ky,” who was out camping at Red River Gorge, Kentucky with her husband and a friend at the time. They had been there many times before, and on this evening, they did something they often enjoyed while there, which was making their way to the top of a high trail to go stargazing. They had been up this trail countless times before and knew it very well, but this evening was to be a bit more unusual. They made it to the top and lay down to do their stargazing, but almost immediately they began hearing strange noises around them, of which the witness says:

We lay down and try to stargaze but the clouds are even thicker now. It was miserably hot. We could hear voices at times and my husband kept checking for people we heard. He never saw anyone. We saw a light flash. Never saw anyone attached to it. And then we heard a bird call? But it wasn’t like a real bird noise at all. It sounded like a person making bird calls. Like rhythmic and not really natural? I was convinced we weren’t alone and hadn’t been alone but also I am the most easily spooked. I asked to leave as soon as they were ready to and they were ready right then and there. And that scared me, that they were just as afraid as me at this point. 

We began going down the way we came and it felt like it was taking so long. We were going steady and quick and it was downhill but we were not making any ground it seemed. It’s hard to explain but it was so weird that at one point I even said it out loud. I said, “this feels much longer.” And they agreed with me. I kept looking behind me with the flashlight. And my husband kept looking out to the sides and my friend kept hers mostly forward.

As they made their way down that trail, they could hear all sorts of unidentifiable noises from the dark, and the husband would say that he kept catching what looked like “eyes” in the beam of the flashlight. There were also what sounded somewhat like footsteps out in the dark, and they were sure they were being followed by someone or something. They things got even scarier. The witness explains of what happened next:

And my husband just stops walking altogether and says, “what’s that,” but the question is more of like an alert and I move my hand lamp in that direction and don’t see anything at first. Then both of his lights catch a shape, and then my head lamp catches it and I move my hand lamp to center and catch it while my friend simultaneously finds it in her lights as well. All six lights shine onto and kind of reflect off of a light grey creature. It is bent in a crouching position kneeling on its right leg and starts turning towards us. It starts to slowly stand and mind is racing still. It looks human but it is too big. People mistake human shapes for what’s actually bears in the woods often but this is skinny. It is thin and big and almost white it’s so light grey and its skin resembles dolphin skin. 

There’s a shine to it and our lights get reflected a little when they’re on it. It gradually comes to a full standing position in front of us. Its head is long and its eyes are in a human position on the face in front and not on the side like animals but I could not see any other facial features. Just big almost empty holes or pits that were its eyes. It looked directly at us and our lights. The way it stood was intimidating, almost like when a snake raises up and flex their necks all crazy to show prey that they’re stronger and smarter. It was like it was stepping up to a fight. From crouching then turning then standing front on in front of us, the arms hung down low and the hands seemed long too. Its hands had to be by its knees? I’d guess it stood 9 feet or so and not that far in front of us. No hair at all and its head was large as well. I couldn’t process what I saw and was frozen. 

Then I just feel my husband hitting me on the back and yelling, “run run run.” I start to understand we have to get away from this thing and it pivots and runs to the right. Going backwards on the trail so it could get around the barrier and onto the trail behind us. We take off running the rest of the way down the trail. Knowing that this thing just took off much faster than us and after it had crossed from behind the barrier it would be gaining on us quick. We didn’t talk at all, because when we tried it felt almost like we would get caught. We keep running as we can but some areas are so steep. It never felt like we were out of sight from this creature. As we made it to the trail beginning with the gravel, we could hear something to the side crashing down through the forest. We ran until we got to the car and then we drove as fast as we could and as soon as we got to the main road the any cleared up, and the Stars were out. When that thing looked at us I knew it was smarter and faster than us. I knew that if we hadn’t have seen it that it could have easily taken one of us and gotten away. I think the only reason it hesitated was because so many of us saw it at once and we stayed together.

This is a truly harrowing report that seems really hard to classify. What could this creature could have been? Whatever it was, it certainly seemed to be out to get them, and they are probably very lucky they escaped. 

Equally hard to classify is an account from Missing 411 commenter “Dreamland Orchad” who says she grew up in East Tennessee and at the time of her experience was on a trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park with a group of friends. They were out kinging up a ridge when she would encounter something that is really quite difficult to categorize, but which was definitely malevolent. The witness says of her truly outlandish experience:

We were hiking to see Little Duck Hawk Ridge and it’s Eye of the Needle to the Northeast, and that’s when I saw what I call the “transparent mind control demon.” On the hike I was walking with these two girls (I thought I was a ladies man) and in the back because I was “so cool.” The way up nothing really happened except I kept seeing something out of the corner of my eye, but of course nothing was there when I looked. We ate lunch at Little Duck Ridge and I couldn’t eat from the sense of dread. On the way back down that’s when it really started happening, the girls kept talking and I kept trying to catch this “thing” out of the corner of my eye. The dread keep building up as this thing kept popping up in the corner of my eye. “Then that’s when I saw this freaking thing. It was a “transparent entity” and “a big humanoid shape,” but then it flashed behind a tree. My heart rate sped up so fast my ears started ringing, and that’s when I kept seeing it flashing behind all these different trees, (I say flashing because it was running at superhuman speeds) and when I stopped watching it flash around, I noticed everyone was almost out of sight around the corner.  

I started panicking the ringing got “really loud” and I got confused. I started mumbling to myself and thinking to run back up the mountain, but deep down inside I knew the other way was a right way to go. I started jogging the wrong way and laughing to myself in a demonic sound, the whole time I felt fear building up and I was so confused not knowing what was going on. I was laughing and jogging the wrong way, but not able to control my body, it was so weird and scary. Then my two lovely girlfriends I guess noticed I was gone and came back for me. They said I turned around and didn’t look like me, that I had black eyes. They said they had to yell at me like five times what was wrong with me, I was so scared I just said “let’s run.

Was something trying to possess this young woman? What would have happened to her if her friends had to arrived? It is hard to know just how much truth any of these accounts we have looked at here even holds, but every one of them is very spooky, to say the least. What are we to make of the strange sounds or complete silence, the feelings of being watched, the sudden onset of dread or outright panic, and in some cases even bizarre, almost demonic entities? There are many more accounts such as these featuring many of the same details, so what are we dealing with? Is there something beyond our understanding out in the wild places of our world stalking and hunting us? If so what are these entities and what do they want? There is no way for us to really know, but it does open up strange new possibilities for why some people walk into the woods to never return.

Source: https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2020/05/almost-vanished-stalked-and-hunted-by-sinister-forest-entities/

The forests and woodlands of our world have always held an allure for us, and have been the wellspring of countless legends and myths over the centuries. Here within these darkened stands of trees it often seem to be a world beyond us, which we are just scratching at the surface of with our senses. There is a sense that something lies beyond it all, thrumming in the background past our understanding, and that looking out at these vistas we are on the cusp of understanding something that dangles past the periphery. 

On some occasions it seems as if some people have made a rather strange connection with the wilds, phasing through this tenuous unseen veil into some place beyond what we normally see, and often coming back with some very bizarre stories to tell. Here we will look at instances of people seemingly travelling through worlds within the forest, whisked off to another realm to come back with odd tales of missing time, portals, alien landscapes, and other weirdness.

Our first report is from a Reddit poster called “RavenMysteries1331,” who claims that her and her husband came to what can only be described as some sort of portal out in the woods. The location is unspecified, but she says that they were out camping at a place called “Deep Creek Campgrounds,” where there is a dim tunnel through a hill that is supposedly haunted. Thinking it might be kind of cool to go check it out, they made their way to the tunnel one evening, not really taking it seriously and as they went in it was all just a bit of a spooky good time. Things got unusual when they began walking through the murk and just didn’t seem to be able to reach the end. It was taking an inordinate amount of time to make progress through the darkness, a 10-minute walk turning into 30 with no end in sight. Then things would get very bizarre, and the witness describes what happened next:

We're not really panicking but were still not out of this damned tunnel. We’re filming and realizing the time stamp on the camera keep changing, the phone is fairly useless but keeps showing weird times, notifications etc. Finally, we reach the end and I decide there’s no way I’m going back through. Here’s our second mistake. There’s a trail going across the tunnel. My husband wants to go back through then meet us while I and our daughter go over the top to wait. At the top the trail ends, which is unusual but not a big deal as I can see the trail we came up and my husband will be coming up shortly. I take pictures, full panoramas, everything. Never out of sight of the trail. Husband shows up and we start looking around for the next trail or any trail, never going more than 150 feet in any direction solo while one of us stands near the trail.

We decide we can’t find it, well head back down the trail. The trail that is now not where it was. But that’s okay because I took pictures of some unusual trees and things so ill use them as a marker. I open the pictures, all of them are time stamped wrong, the images are different. The entire skyline 100 feet away, mountains etc, is completely different. And now we start to get worried. We look for nearly three hours, how to get down, how to find the trail back, nothing. Finally, we realize were fairly screwed and start planning what we’re going to do. At which point the glitchy phone gets a phone call and we realize it works. We call 911 who puts us through to a Ranger Rescue team. They find us maybe an hour later, mere feet from a trail, and .1 entire miles from the tunnel… At this point we go on our merry way and decide we will never hike again. Which we probably will because well, why not?

What happened here? Did these people get pulled into sort of a parallel dimension, perhaps one that planned to keep them?

Similarly we have to story of “LeoLeonidas21,” on the Missing 411 forum, who says by his own admission that he was “Missing 411’d” in the woods of North Carolina, in the United states. At the time he was in the mountains doing fieldwork for a geology assignment at college, looking at rock formations and taking samples. He was with a group of 30 others, and they decided to take a hike down a well-defined trail that started off the Blue Ridge Parkway, and would take them on a 45-minute hike up to a summit. They made it to the top without incident, but on the way back something very strange would happen to the witness. At one point he stopped to tie his boot, and told the others he was with to continue on, that he would catch up to them shortly. Yet, what would normally be a mundane activity would turn into a journey into bizarreness. He explains of what happened:

The point where I stopped to tie my boot was at the bottom of a switchback that ran about 20 feet, vertically, up the slope, getting narrower as you approached the top of that section of the trail; I was facing the direction the group was heading, and had direct visibility for about 200 feet, while the trail behind me was just off to the right of my vision, about 5 feet up the slope — I had stopped right at the corner of the last turn coming down, and stepped to the inside of the turn to keep the trail clear for the people I could see coming up the trail (the direction of my group) and down the trail (the direction we were headed).

When I knelt down, I told the guys I was with that I’d catch up after tying my boot. The people coming up the slope were about 200 feet ahead of me, walking in my direction but still coming around the turn at the end of the straightaway. Up the hill and off to my side (but technically behind me on the trail), about 10 linear feet away, was another 2 or 3 people coming down the trail as well — about 2 turns up the switchback. I did my business and then stood up — I am going to make a note here and emphasize it, I DID NOT CHANGE THE DIRECTION I WAS FACING AT ANY POINT UNTIL I STOOD UP.

When I stood up, I noticed a couple of things: the very obvious trail was gone and replaced with grass, fallen branches, and brush, and more eerily: there were no people ahead of me or beside me, there was no switchback going uphill (it was all vaguely level though uneven), and there was no. sound. No birds, no wind, no squirrels, no forest noises. This was very odd, but I, at first, chalked it up to possibly turning when I stood up without realizing it. And then it happened: the sensation. That I was being watched. That something was coming towards me. I started panicking and looking around more fervently to get my bearings, but nothing looked familiar. The feeling of being watched grew into a feeling that whatever was watching me wished to cause me harm and was radiating extreme feelings of hate, violence, and general evil towards me. And the sensation that it was approaching grew, as if it had gone from creeping along, to slowly walking, to full on running at me. Not knowing what else to do, I took off at the fastest sprint my terrified body could muster in the direction, all while racking my brain to figure out what had happened.

Eventually, I busted out of the treeline and onto the trail right in the middle of my group of classmates. Of particular note was that they were now within 30 feet of the trail head, and you could clearly see the highway and the parking lot on the opposite side of it. Like I said, this was another 20 to 25 minutes down the trail from where I stopped to tie my shoes, but the whole experience seemed to take no more than five minutes in total. Everyone asked what happened, and I merely stated that I lost the trail after tripping and thought I was lost. I didn’t know how else to explain or describe what happened, and I still don’t know what it was. To this day, I won’t go into the woods by myself — not even past the treeline on my parents’ land, despite being in view of the house and the neighbor’s houses.

The sensation of missing time features in a good many such reports, as if these people have entered a zone where time passes at a different rate than the one they have left, or perhaps they have lost some memory of what they have been through. In our next account Missing 411 commenter “spiral venom” says he was in Rocky Mountain National Park, in the United States. On this occasion he was hiking along a trail called Tonahutu Creek alone when he noticed that the forest around him had gone completely silent, with all sounds and even smells gone, and as he tried to figure this all out, he claims a strange fog began to roll in. After this, things would turn into a bizarre series of strange events and time loss, of which he says:

I was walking South East when suddenly the area went completely silent. No wind, no animals, not even the smell of the outdoors. It’s like I walked into a bubble where nothing existed, or where everything was muted. I took out my phone to check the time, and it was just after 3:45. Though it seemed there was a weird fog around me. I kept walking. The silence still there, the odd feeling, too.

I walked for another good 10-15 minutes when I turned my attention to the sky. The clouds seemed to be moving rapidly, as if a storm was coming. The forecast did not call for any rain, or snow that day – it was odd to see low hanging clouds that were moving so rapidly – almost as if I was viewing a time lapse video. I heard a rumble that came from the ground, it was emanating from what I assume was deep below, a large crack that sounded like thunder ended the rumble. The clouds stopped moving quickly but had a very light pink/purple tinge to them. At this point I was speed walking, trying to get out. My fight or flight response seemed to kick in and my adrenaline was pumping. The odd feeling in my gut turned to complete terror, yet there was nothing around me that would evoke such feeling. No wildlife, no bears, no mountain lions.

Another crack and a flash of light later everything seemed to be completely normal. Wind returned, the birds that filled the air with sound was now replaced with the sound of crickets. The only strange thing now was the time, it was 6:30PM. I was already on my way back to the truck before this all happened, but it should not have taken me that long to get back to the trailhead. It only seemed like 15 minutes had passed, and yet more than 4 hours had elapsed. I have no recollection of what happened in that time, besides what I have written here today. I have only told a few people this. Some said I was abducted, others said I entered a time slip.

What happened here? It is interesting to note the loss of time, coupled with the sudden and complete silence, which is also a hallmark of these kinds of cases. Are these people somehow wandering through a portal of some sort?

Next we have poster “projectpittsburg,” who was camping in Allegheny National Forest, Pennsylvania, when he had his brush with the weird. He says that as he was hiking he passed a couple go the other way with their dog, which seems normal enough, but would soon prove to be anything but. He explains:

My feet were still facing the direction I was walking and as they passed by me with the dog I was looking over my shoulder to say goodbye (NEVER MOVED THE DIRECTION OF MY FEET). Then once I turned forward, the trail had turned perpendicular on me and was completely clear of bushes. It was a wide open, very straight stretch of nothing but grass and small rocks. I was confused by the fact that it seemed like I was in another part of the Forest. I pulled out my map and compass and the compass was telling me that I wasn’t facing the direction of the trail. And by the looks of the terrain it wasn’t even on the map. It was like I was in a whole other part of the Forest I was not familiar with!

I was VERY confused at this point and just started walking forward off the straight path into the tree line. Once I got off, I walked through a small area of trees, I was probably walking for 30-45 seconds and not one time did I hear a single noise beside the noises of my own footsteps. This was very strange. After the 45 seconds I was met by a group of 4 people that were talking and cooking. Now I definitely should have heard them talking and laughing like I had heard the other two hikers with the dog I had just previously met which is why I was concerned. At this point my experience was over. Now the whole eerie feeling lasted about 30-45 seconds, but a whole hour had passed and the campers told me I could set up camp with them and hangout with them for the night since it was getting too late.

Very strange, indeed.

In another case of what seems to have been a trip into some pocket dimension we have poster “Winzron” and his childhood experience. At the time he lived with a foster family on a wooded property, with a clear trail that he and his foster brother often hiked together. They knew the area very well, and on this day they went for a walk along it on a bright summer’s day. Little did they know that they were headed for a trip to the land of the weird. He says of the trail and his unsettling experience:

To clarify a bit while walking on the trail you could clear as day see the lake and huge clearing/camping area where people would park their campers, I would say a mile away at the most. My brother and I frequented the trail alot because we liked catching bugs/frogs and the sort. There was one day it was bright sunny in middle of July; this is in the Midwest U.S so muggy and hot. Me and him are walking the trail and I hear what started out be a faint clicking sound. To this day I have yet to hear a sound like it. It progressively got louder to the point that you would have to be deaf to not hear it, the weird part was my brother did not hear a thing. It started to startle me on how loud it was. My brother decided to start carving into tree (which he did frequently), but I urged him that we should leave because I was scared.

Once he started something, he had to finish it, so I had to wait for him to finish so I stepped no more that 15-20 paces from him and my foot felt like it fell through something so I stumbled a bit looking down. When I looked up nothing looked familiar and it seemed like I was dropped in the middle of a forest with no end to it. It was really cold and absolutely no sound. My brother was nowhere to be found and I felt extremely terrified so I took off yelling a screaming. I ran for a good distance and I had the same sensation where I felt like I missed a step and stumbled forward. When I looked up everything was normal and could hear my family calling my name. When I approached them, they looked frantic and said they had been looking for me for a couple of hrs. No one ever believed me.

Oddly, the witness says that he had a smell of burning rubber that seemed to follow him around and could not be washed off for several days after this. How do we explain the strange details on these cases, such as the sudden silence, the missing time, and most obviously the completely altered landscapes these people often find themselves in? It almost seems as if they might be stepping through some veil between this reality and another, perhaps lingering in some limbo realm between the two, and it is enough to make one wonder what would have happened if they had stepped all the way through. Would they have vanished off the face of the earth or simply come back with an even weirder story to tell? Such accounts hint at mysteries lurking out in the wild places of our world, past the periphery of civilization and away from our city lights, where nature goes about its business and perhaps things beyond nature do as well. Perhaps when we enter these wilderness realms we enter a place where anything can possibly happen, and where realities converge. Perhaps the old legends of the forests have some basis to them after all, and just maybe there are things here we were not meant to fully understand.

Source: https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2020/05/bizarre-and-eerie-cases-of-lost-time-and-dimensional-rifts-in-the-forest/

Within the world of mysterious disappearances and vanishings, some of the most peculiar have happened in the wilderness areas of our world. Among the strangest of these are the cases compiled by researcher and author David Paulides, in his Missing 411 series of books, featuring all manner of bizarre clues and odd details that at times seem to point at something almost supernatural at work behind the scenes. Since most of the people who have gone missing have never returned alive, we are mostly left to speculate, but on certain occasions there are those accounts in which someone seems to have been on the brink of becoming one of the victims, yet somehow escaping the clutches of these forces to return to tell the tale. Here we will look at a selection of some accounts from these “almost vanished,” which seem to point at something rather insidious permeating the wild places out there, to pull people in to never come back.

Among these tales of the almost vanished, almost “taken,” whatever you want to call them, there are quite a few cases in which it seems that the very woods have called out to these people to draw them in, quite possibly with the intention of never returning them.

There are numerous examples of this on the Missing 411 Reddit forums, and one of these comes from a poster called “MagnificCone,” who says that this happened when he was a young Boy Scout camping in the rugged wilderness at a place called Mt. Washington, in the United States. At the time he was part of a group of others, and they were in the process of hiking up one of the mountain’s winding trails when the two group members he was with decided to stop and take a break. However, he felt a strange, overwhelming urge to keep going, often accompanied by a sense of blurred or lost time. The witness in this case says:

Once my group and I got above tree line and by several boulders my two friends decided to slow down and drink water. I don’t know why but I was overcome by an urge that pulled me to keep moving. Eventually I got lost. My perception of time vanished. It felt like a dream because I kept changing locations but I couldn’t remember walking there and I never questioned it. Somehow, I got to a cliff and suddenly I was by a huge pile of rocks. I began feeling sick and dizzy. I took off my gray and olive windbreaker to reveal my neon scout shirt and I folded my windbreaker into a pillow and I laid down. Suddenly a man, dressed in black tights with a Red Cross, (I think he worked there idk) ran towards me and told me that I looked dehydrated and that there was a weather station I could eat at. I put on my jacket after getting cold and headed up to the weather station. I met up with my troop there and they were worried and informed me that I was missing for almost an hour. When we made it back down, I fell asleep in the car and was drained.

What was going on here?

We also have the case of poster “cacophonica,” who says this happened when he was living in a rural railroad town in the southwest corner of Missouri, in the U.S., which was surrounded by hills, woods, and ravines. One summer day, he went out for a walk in the woods near his home along with his dog, a pit-bull named Fatty, and as they made their way through a creek bed the dog began whining and cowering for no discernible reason. Thinking that there was a wild animal out there, the witness stopped to listen, only to find the woods eerily devoid of any sounds at all, no wind or birds or anything at all, which was very weird because even on a calm day the forest would usually be teeming with sounds and life. He stood there for a few minutes in that spooky silence, the only sound his whining dog, which was also odd in that the animal was usually fearless and afraid of nothing, and then he then felt a creeping sensation that gave him the distinct impression that he was being watched, an ominous feeling he could not shake. Yet, although every fiber of his being told him to get out of there, he instead felt a strange urge to keep going deeper into the trees, and he explains the series of bizarre events that would follow next:

All signs pointed to leaving, right? But no, another weird thing happened. Call it being an edgy teenager or anything else, but I felt this strange pull into the woods. There was no sound but I felt like something was calling me, luring me deeper into the woods. It was the creepiest thing I had ever felt in my life, but I was so curious. I wanted to know what the hell wanted me to wander further ahead. I walked forward, aware that my dog had firmly planted himself at the fallen trees. He was shaking all over and yelped at me as I walked away, but he didn’t come with me. He also didn’t leave, which I believe potentially saved my ass that day. I left Fatty behind and eventually got to the part of the creek that I had never been to. It was a clearing with a ring of trees surrounding it, with the creek stretching far ahead and going around an unseen corner. The sun hadn’t moved and it was still silent.

I stood in place for a minute and considered turning around. The clearing was creepy and felt…devoid of everything. I can’t explain it well enough. I felt like if I walked around that corner, which was just about 100 feet away, that something terrible would happen. It felt like something was just waiting for me to walk into it, unsuspecting. I brushed it off as paranoia. I had plenty of sunlight left, and I could explore alone for once. Besides, if something was drawing me further in, I might find something amazing. I took a couple more steps, and suddenly I heard my dog yelping frantically behind me. Startled, I turned around quickly, my dog looking like a little white speck far back into the trees. He was pacing back and forth at his spot and barking like it would kill him if he didn’t take off running. He kept lunging forward, but wouldn’t move any distance forward. I finally realized that something was very wrong. I turned around again to look back at the clearing. It was pitch black outside. I shit you not. Seconds ago the sun wasn’t even close to going down below the horizon, and now the stars were out. No sun. No light. I stared hard at the trees around the corner, seeing nothing but elongated shadows. I heard a twig snap. All of a sudden my ears started to ring, and panic flooded my entire body. I whipped around and shot back towards the fallen trees, sprinting towards my dog. He was snarling and barking like mad, and when I ducked under the trees both of us sprinted back towards the house.

The entire time I felt like I had death on my heels, and Fatty never once ran ahead of me, staying right at my side the entire way back. When I made it home I checked the clock. During a walk that usually took ten minutes, I had been gone three hours. I’d left my house at 7:30 and arrived home at 10:30. My parents were due home in an hour. The next day I walked only partway back, to where I could see the clearing. The very farthest I could have walked was about 2 miles, and it took three hours. I don’t know what wanted me in the woods that day. I didn’t see what it was and it said nothing to me, but I ignored every natural instinct I had to run until it was almost too late. My dog being there may have been the reason I didn’t wander deep into the woods of Missouri and succumb to someone or something in the dark.

What was after him out in those woods, drawing him in for unknown reasons? Was he perhaps in danger of becoming another person who vanished without a trace?

From another witness called “OoklaTheMok” comes an experience that allegedly happened on a camping trip with a youth group in the state of New Hampshire. At the end of the 2-day trip, he took a hike by himself down the hill to an area with a makeshift archery range in order to tear it down. He made a pile of garbage and equipment to bring back to camp and was about to head back when he says that all sounds in the forest just suddenly ceased, as if a curtain of silence had just fallen down around him. He then says that he could sense a sort of humming sensation, and that is when things would unfold into a terrifying experience. The witness says:

For some inexplicable reason, I snapped my head to the right to view the tree line, and noticed there was an area with ‘thinner’ brush like an opening, and I started walking towards it, like I was being drawn. As I cleared the tree line and stepped into the woods proper, I could feel the ‘pull’ to go deeper into the woods become much stronger. Looking ahead, the woods were in deep shadow, with a strange group of four trees about 75 feet away lit by a shaft of light beaming at an angle from above. The light wasn’t the normal afternoon yellow sunlight, but a very strange golden color. The light hit the trees in a way that the bases of the trees were glowing in a beckoning way. With the rest of the woods in shadow, and the trees lit up, it created a weird tunnel vision. 

The compulsion to go investigate the four trees was now almost overwhelming. The thought of “Come See! Come Quickly! Come Right now!” was insistent. My head was pounding, like a headache without the pain. As I was about to take another step forward, another -separate- ‘feeling’ from the depths of my being started screaming at me to STOP IMMEDIATELY. I instantly, viscerally knew that, despite how enticing this call was, if I proceeded forward towards those trees I would be lost to the world. That specific impression…”lost to the world”, scared me deeply. The feeling of “This is *Not Right!*” & “Danger!” were palpable to me. This somehow overrode the compulsion. I quickly looked backwards to the opening, and I could see the bows sitting on the ground, and I think seeing a bit of reality helped me break the hold of ‘the call’. I suddenly felt a hollow pit in my stomach and I started tracing a path slowly backwards towards the opening. I kept my eyes on those trees like I was facing down a predator. I didn’t want to turn my back on them. I couldn’t turn my back on them.

Making it back and stepping through the opening to the archery range, my head almost instantly cleared. I could again hear noises from the camp and feel the wind. I looked at where I had just stepped from, and it now felt ‘normal’. I immediately grabbed the first load of equipment and headed back to camp. For some reason, I didn’t tell anyone at camp what I experienced. On my subsequent trip to get the last load of equipment, absolutely everything was normal, but I stayed the hell away from that opening. What stands out to me is the “lost to the world” impression. It was so clear and ominous and final. I can’t express how truly drawn I was to go deeper into those woods; the feeling to give myself over to it (whatever ‘it’ was)…I do know that something not good would have happened if I hadn’t heeded that warning. I know that my experience was very real and very scary. I am also convinced that I wouldn’t have come out if I had kept going that day.

In another case, poster “bellebina143” describes how she was 11 years old when she had her own such brush with the unexplained. She says that she and her family would go out camping in the woods of New Hampshire in their camping trailer every summer, and it was during one of these excursions that something very odd would happen, indeed. She says that one time during one of these camping trips her aunt woke her up and asked if she remembered what had happened the previous evening, to which she replied that no, she did not. It was then that the aunt, father and mother would tell her of what had transpired, which was creepy to say the least, and of which the witness says:

My aunt was a bit shaky as she asked “do you remember what happened last night”? I shook my head “no” and listened as my aunt told about me the extremely strange night, which I did not recall whatsoever. My aunt explained that at about 2 am she woke up to the door of the camper being wide open. She quickly checked the bunks and noticed that I was nowhere to be found. She woke up my mom and dad and then my mom and dad got flashlights and started frantically searching for me outside around the immediate area. My aunt stayed behind, because there were still 4 kids sleeping in the camper. After a scary 10-minute search, my dad spotted me. I had walked out of the camper and into the trees about 30 feet away. It was far enough that I could not be seen unless he walked into the trees a bit I was just standing out there in the dark, with my eyes completely open, but not responding to him at all. I had no shoes, no flashlight and was wearing just shorts and a tee shirt.  

He said that he grabbed my hand and started walking me back to the camp. He remembers asking me “what’s going on? Why in the world would you go out on your own like that”. Then, I finally spoke up saying “I need to wait here dad! Let’s just stay here”. My mom remembers that I then started crying as she and my dad led me back to the camper. Whenever I think back to this story, I get a sick/strange feeling. Thank God my aunt woke up when she did! It’s important to note, that I’ve never been know to sleepwalk before or after that night. It was an isolated incident, which could have had a very different ending had I not been so lucky. My mom was so upset that she decided to get rid of the trailer and we didn’t do much camping after that night.

Was this something calling her into the woods to be spirited away or something else? Who knows?

Similarly, we have the tale of a poster called “Superpeytonm022,” who says he lives in a house nestled right up against a large expanse of woods in the U.S. state of Kentucky and describes himself as an avid hiker and outdoorsman. When he had his strange experience, he was around 15 years old, and was out exploring with his two dogs, Max and Bo. He says of his surreal experience:

I was hiking a trail that runs up beyond my aunt’s house—one that I’d hiked day in and day out—just out and about, enjoying the woods. I remember looking up the mountain, which I’d never hiked to the top of before, and feeling this strange call. It wasn’t really a voice, but it was an urge I couldn’t ignore. Keep in mind that I’m a very timid person, and hiking unfamiliar trails on my own freaks me out to this day. But that day, all my fear had dissipated. All thought left my head. I just climbed, higher and higher. My dogs followed me. I don’t even know how to describe the feeling that came over me, but I remember just staring down at my feet and feeling at peace as I climbed. There was a moment when I paused to look out at the houses below—I’d never been that high up, remember—and I felt amazed. I took a picture on my phone, and then I looked around me for my dogs. Bo had already run off, and Max was following. I called out to them frantically to stop, but they didn’t listen. They disappeared. At this point, looking down the mountainside, I was very afraid. Then I looked back uphill and it came over me again.  

I kept hiking. I kept telling myself I’d go just a little bit farther, see just a little bit more. I remember looking down at my feet, just like before, and listening to the silence of the woods around me, and feeling at peace. It felt so easy to just keep going deeper, and so difficult to turn around. Bo felt the call, too, because even after I did break out of it and turn around (only after stumbling on a root), and then called back to her, she wouldn’t stop. I had to catch up with her and physically turn her around and pet her before she’d come with me. I couldn’t stop. Eventually, I heard my walkie-talkie crackle. Everything was distorted, and I couldn’t make any of the words out. I assume now that I was just out of range for it to pick up, but back then, it freaked me out. Whatever had come over me lost its hold on my mind. My dogs were still gone. Panicked, I began running downhill. It’s a wonder I didn’t get hurt. As I neared the wide section of the spring, near the bottom, my walkie-talkie picked back up, and I heard my dogs running downhill behind me. I got home, and mostly forgot about it. I just told myself I had almost been lost and to be more careful. I don’t know what’s out there, but I know this: the woods call to us all.

In some cases the lure that draws these people in is something other than a voice or feeling, but some sort of entity, and this can be seen in a bizarre report from poster “supremesymbiote,” whose story revolves around her mother, who grew up in an extremely rural area near Yrybucuá, Paraguay. One day the mother was out playing as a child along with her grandmother when it seems that she was pulled into the nearby forest by powers beyond our understanding. The poster says of what happened:

The area where my mom grew up is especially rural in the countryside where most of the poor people were. Her house was across from very thick woods that stretched for miles. One afternoon, before it got dark, my grandma and mom were outside. My mom was about 7 at the time when she spotted what she described as a beautiful little white baby chick. She’s always loved animals and enjoyed catching them, so she wanted to catch it. It kept running away from her, even though it seemed like she was just about to catch it multiple times.  

After what seemed like she was running in a circle for minutes, my grandma came out of nowhere and yanked my moms hair. My mom said at that moment she was broken from a trance, that the sun had already set, and she was actually very deep in the woods. My grandma smacked her really hard on the head and told her that el pombero almost succeeded at taking her. My mom tried to explain to my grandma about the pretty little chick but of course it was nowhere to be found. My grandma said my mom seemed to be playing normally and then all of a sudden just started fast walking towards the woods. My grandma thankfully ran after her and was able to catch up to her. I always think about what would’ve happened had my grandma not been there to stop it. I’m glad she was there.

Spooky to say the least, and gives the feeling that this might have been some sort of forest spirit drawing the girl in for inscrutable purposes.

Curiously we have another account from Nicaragua that also seems to involve some sort of impish forest entities. Poster “monki85” claims that when she was just 6 years old she was staying with her grandmother on a huge plantation surrounded by thick rain forest. On one bright, clear day she was out along a trail with her parents walking from their jeep back to the plantation and she says of what happened next:

I remember playing with one of my favorite toys, it was the green ranger that you could push a button and his head would switch from his normal head to his helmet. Anyways I was playing with it as we walked along the trail, we then arrive to a small stream, my parents are easily able to jump over it and keep walking, they look behind them and I can see them watch me try to make the jump smiling at me. I do make the jump but drop my toy in the process and it gets picked up by the stream so I immediately start following after it, I can hear my parents yelling for me but I’m too focused on catching my toy.  

This next bit I still remember vividly to this day. All of a sudden I’m like in a field, with very tall grass. It’s surrounded by trees. The one thing I notice is that it’s eerily quiet. I have to reiterate that this is a Central American Forrest, it is never quiet. There are always hundreds of birds, monkeys and other small animals everywhere. At the time I didn’t think anything of it. Then I hear something weird, like chirping? And I see small tiny orbs in the tall grass, I’m not afraid of them. More like intrigued? They’re amongst the grass like the way you would see an animals eyes, but they’re weightless and floating. I start walking towards them but then I get scared and run away towards the forest. I remember getting sleepy as I fell against a tea trunk.

According to the witness, she then actually went missing for a full two days as her family frantically searched for her. It was thought that she had been kidnapped, since her father was rather rich, but there was never a ransom given. A massive search was launched for her, involving the police, military, “about a thousand people total combing the jungle, dogs, helicopters, the works,” but no trace of her was found. Although she doesn’t remember anything of what happened during those two days, she does recall how she suddenly woke to find herself on a bus by herself, and she explains:

I was missing for two days and the next thing I remember is waking up in the back of a bus, the bus driver waking me up and asking if I was OK. I immediately start crying and asking for my mom, my mom had me memorize our home number so they call and I get picked up. Police investigate thinking it may have been a kidnapping attempt, they think once they found out who was kidnapped they put me in the bus. I tell them my story and a few of them think duendes took me. Duendes is something a lot of the people in Nicaragua believe in, especially people out in the fields, it’s less believed in the major cities. They’re basically described like small people who kidnap children, kill livestock or ruin crops. Basically mischievous little things. A telltale sign of them being present is seeing small floating lights in trees or amongst tall grass, people say it’s their lanterns that they carry.

What are we looking at with cases such as this, and the many more like them, and what relation does this have to the whole missing persons phenomenon as a whole? The wilderness can be a perilous place, and it is understandable that some people might go missing, but when looking at reports such as these, one gets the feeling that there could be other factors at work other than the treacherous terrain, animals, getting lost, and the elements. Is there something perhaps drawing people in to these dim wildernesses to step off the face of the earth, in a way taking them off to places unknown? If so, what are they and why do they do this? For the time being, it seems to be a mystery that only the unseen forces thrumming through the trees know the answer to, and in the case of mysterious vanishings in the wilderness we are left to wonder if there is perhaps more to it than we can even imagine.

Source: https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2020/05/the-almost-vanished-lured-into-the-woods-by-strange-forces/

There was a family gathering at a relative’s home in the woods of the Catskills. The adults were mainly inside while the children were playing outdoors. While the others did whatever they were doing, Jill, a little girl of 5, became fascinated with the butterflies and no one noticed her chasing after them into the woods. Ultimately, the adults checked back in to find that she was lost. Many people searched many hours in vain and dusk was coming, bringing a great deal of despair with it. Then, suddenly, a be-smudged Jill came running happily out of the woods unharmed. What had happened?

Once Jill had followed the butterflies for awhile, she lost them and realized that she was lost herself. She tried to find her way back to her aunt’s house, but only got deeper into the forest. She thought she heard someone calling for her, but it was too far away, and she couldn’t get a direction on it. Finally she came into a small clearing. Feeling very tired, she took a candy bar from her pocket, sat on an old dead tree and ate a little. She felt lonely and started to cry.

She looked up and saw standing at the edge of her clearing two small living « dolls » with silvery hair to their shoulders. They were dressed in shiny green clothes and had caps. She offered them some of her candy bar, but they didn’t respond. Beginning to cry then she asked them if they knew the way to her aunt’s house.

They nodded and motioned for her to follow. As dusk came on and the forest darkened, the little « dolls » became accompanied by small balls of blinking colored light, which illuminated the way. They all seemed to be going faster and faster as they went, and Jill was surprised at how fast she was moving .The « dolls » then abruptly stopped and pointed to the aunt’s house. Jill happily turned to thank them, but they were gone. And she ran to her parents.

Source: http://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/2011_11_01_archive.html

“He made a comment about having a friend while he was in the woods — his friend was a bear,” Maj. David McFadyen of the Craven County Sheriff’s Office told CNN. According to reports, the boy survived two nights in 20 degree weather with heavy winds and pouring rain, making it more believable he received protection of some sort. Psychologists plan to conduct further interviews with Hathaway, but are giving him time to recover from the traumatic experience.

Though the boy’s story may be hard to believe, it’s almost impossible to disprove. And there are certainly plenty of stories of animals coming to the rescue of humans in dire situations. Online, people in the more conspiracy-minded forums proposed the possibility that Hathaway’s mysterious savior may have been Bigfoot or the strange Missing 411 phenomenon researched and written about by David Paulides.

Paulides has devoted his career to researching hundreds of strange disappearances throughout the U.S. after a park ranger told him thousands of odd and unexplained disappearances have occurred in the National Park Service’s history. Could this have been one such case that fortunately turned out to have a happy ending? There are others who have speculated that the bear Hathaway referred to may have been a benevolent spirit that helped him find shelter and keep him safe during his harrowing time alone. Until the boy is a little older, we may never know whether he was saved by his guardian angel or a real life Baloo. In either case, the story is pretty miraculous.

Source: https://www.gaia.com/article/boy-lost-in-woods-for-2-days-tells-mom-he-hung-out-with-a-bear

I’m new to Missing411, David Paulides and all of this stuff. My sister introduced me to it all about 4 days ago and after a few days of mulling it over, I’m going to post what is easily the weirdest shit to have ever happened to me. FWIW, I’m not an outdoorsy person at all. I jut happened to grow up near a national forest on the edge of NC/TN. I generally didn’t, and still don’t, hang outside much but I married a man who loves it so I’ve been roped into braving the wilderness a few times.

Anyway, this happened about 2 years ago in the summer, shortly after the 4th of July at Clingman’s dome. You guys can google it, but it is the highest peak in the Great Smokies NP. My husband had been hounding for everyone to go there, myself and two sons age 6 and 8 at the time. We were not going to stay overnight, just go to check out the summit viewing deck. Again, google it if needed. Now for those who have never been there, the viewing deck has two, maybe more ways you can get to it. The most common way and the way we took was to drive in, park, then take the about a mile hike to the deck. It is super easy, and also super busy depending on the time of year and it is also paved.

We go, get up there and take some really amazing photos and hang out for a little bit. Now here is where, in hindsight, things started to get weird. My youngest child has epilepsy and a migraine disorder, has been seizure free for 2.5 years and headaches controlled by medication. As we are going back, he started to complain that he feels really hot and his head hurts. On the dome it is cold because of the high altitude. We were all needing long sleeves and it felt more like November instead of summer. I tell my husband and other child I’m going to carry him the rest of the way and me being the out of shape person I am, would meet them at the car if I got behind or had to take it slow, which I was sure I would from carrying 50 pounds of child. I didn’t want to ruin their fun day and figured I would sit in the car with the AC blowing on little one and give him some migraine rescue meds, and that while we rested my husband and son could finish exploring. I made a halfass joke about sending the rangers in to find us if I didn’t make it back to the car shortly after they did because I’m in shit shape and may need to be golf-carted out. They went ahead but were still in sight, maybe a few hundred feet, I’m not too sure. At this point, maybe it was a lull in the visitor levels, but there was no other people I could see in front of us or coming down behind us.

My little one starts to cry, and say his both his ears and head hurt now too, and was covering his ears. At this point the weight of him was breaking my arms off so I put him down and told him we were going to sit down and rest for a few minutes. We walked off the paved trail and sat down at the edge of the treeline/grassline and I told him to close his eyes and just relax and lay down on the cool grass beside me, we were almost to the car, etc. I get my phone out to text my husband that we are resting, and I noticed it was silent because my text clicks sounded so loud. 

No wind, not a fucking thing. It was like someone pressed pause on the area, or that the forest was holding its breath would be another way to describe it. My mother is a paranoid wackjob about tornadoes (she grew up in Illinois so rightly so) and spent years pounding it into my head as a child that there is a ‘calm before the storm’ thing that happens and to take cover because it WILL be a tornado touching down despite that never happening here. So that was my first thought, holy shit, a tornado is about to happen because everything just went dead. My kid is now curled up beside me whimpering that he is scared, his ears hurt, make it stop, and wants to go home. I swear to you it felt like his little voice was the voice of a God, that is how silent the place was. By now the hair on my neck is standing up and it is just a general sick feeling I’m getting thinking a tornado is about to begin and suck us up. I actually started to feel afraid to look around me and focused on my kid and calming him down. At this point the area had this ominous, heavy feeling. I can’t explain that one either, almost like I was afraid to look because I wouldn’t like what I would see, like when you’re a kid and you are afraid to look under your bed at night or something. I know it sounds insane.

So we had been there for about 10 minutes or so when I got myself semi together and had a really strong, almost primal urge to get the hell out and down the trail. I picked up my still crying kid and literally ran the rest of the way. When we got there my husband and other child were nowhere to be found. He had the keys so we had to wait, at this point it was only our car and two others still there. I assumed those two were on another, less easy trail so I let little one sit on the hood and prepared for the wait. At this point I was still feeling leftover heebie jeebies from the creepy quiet where we rested off the trail but my kid was no longer complaining about his ears or his head. A few seconds later my oldest son comes racing down from the SAME FUCKING TRAIL we just came from with a look of sheer panic on his face before he turns his head and starts screaming that he found mom and brother. He was followed by my husband not even a minute later. My other son had been visibly crying and my husband immediately started screaming at us about where the hell we have been and if we are OK. I asked him what his issue was, and told him that I sent him a text saying we were resting for a little while off the edge of the trail.

Now here is what made my blood run cold. He told me they had been looking for us for over 3 hours. I called him a liar, and that it probably just felt like hours. I said we were resting for about 10 minutes, but after checking my phone, his phone and even the clock in the car, it turned out that we really had be gone for about three and a half hours. Besides this, my husband and other child said they had went up and down the paved trail to the viewing deck three or four times while calling mine and my little son’s name. This would have been impossible to miss because sound carries to an extreme level in that area, you could yell and it be heard a mile away. I promptly turned and asked my little son if he still needed his migraine medicine and he said the noise making his head hurt was gone and he was fine now. My husband asked him what noise and he said it sounded like a big bumble bee inside his head. We hauled out of there as fast as we could, all the while with my explaining every detail to my husband, who basically told me to shut up til we get home and could talk away from the kids. Needless to say, we haven’t been back to that area again and my husband is no longer a fan of the woods like he used to be either.

EDIT: I forgot to add this last part. It might be related, it might not. I feel it is, husband thinks it is just a random thing. My son’s migraines and seizure activity on his EEGs stopped after this. It was like his brain had been re-set. I should have mentioned that but it was an after the fact thing, he had a follow up about 1.5-2mo after that incident. Before this, he had a history of seizures under control, adult level migraines as well as constant abnormal EEGs since just before his 2nd birthday. He hasn’t had even a mild headache since. He has been deemed ‘in remission’ from his neurologist because his brain waves have remained pristine. My husband thinks I’m just drawing from coincidence on that one but I don’t feel it is.

The following account was submitted to us anonymously and describes an encounter with a giant ape-like creature (possibly a notorious bigfoot) in the woods of Quebec. The story is claimed to be true, with the author stating that their life was forever changed by their traumatic experience.

We live in the Quebec province of Canada, in a small village of roughly 2,000 inhabitants. My grandfather had land in a remote area of the region, and part of it extended to the shoreline of a lake called Lac des Iles. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of visiting there. During summer, we would drive up to my grandfather’s prized location on his land. It was a quiet lake shore, made out of big rocks. We would go there almost every day that the weather permitted, even though it was a 45 minute drive each way. We would bring coolers full of food and beverages and we would spend the day there, jumping from the highest rock (which was 5 meters tall) into the deep, dark waters. It was always so refreshing and we had a lot of happy memories there.

On my grandpa’s land, there was also an old house that we would sometimes spend the night in. It was an old building with an old shed, and when it was cold at night we would warm the place with a fire. We would start in an old iron stove that people used before the invention of electric stoves.

I was always fascinated by the stars there. At night, my father and I would share this passion, looking at them together. The sky was magnificent due to the lack of light pollution so far in the wilderness. We would spend hours watching the stars and I would listen to my father explaining everything he knew about the cosmos (which was quite an extensive knowledge for someone who does not study in this field). I remember listening to him and asking a lot of questions. Sometimes we would fall asleep on our sleeping bags next to the fire, my young mind blown away by all the mysteries of the universe.

My father was a game warden. He roamed the forests all year, watching for poachers, doing check-ups on important wildlife hot spots, giving out tickets to hunters and fishermen who didn’t respect the quotas. Because of this, thanks to my dad, I was always very comfortable in nature. He taught me everything he knew. I could identify an extensive array of trees, animals, fish and plants. My father taught me to respect nature and its inhabitants, as well as how to survive in the wild and all those things. Those memories are also very precious to my heart.

One night, when I was 16, my dad and I were staying at the house for the night with one of his cousins. We planned to go fishing at dawn. I loved fishing and it is he only thing that would get me to wake up at 4 a.m.!

It was about midnight and my dad asked me to make sure the fire we started in the firepit outside was out, telling me to pour water on the embers if needed. I went outside and the embers were glowing, so I went to the water pump and started pumping water in the bucket. It was a partially cloudy night, with an almost full moon. While pumping I heard rustling in the woods behind me.

At night in the woods a raccoon roaming around the camp can make a lot of noise. I was not scared as I had plenty of experience with wildlife. I knew it could have been anything, from a squirrel to a bear, and that in the eventuality of a bear (there was a large population of black bears in the area), the best thing was to remain calm. My dad always told me that your worst enemy while being lost or stranded in the woods at night was not wolves, bears or even the weather… it was panic. Panicking will make you do dangerous things and will cloud your judgment; remaining calm was vital in the wilderness. Besides, I knew my dad was a shout away with a firearm if needed.

I turned to try and see what was making the sound. The woodline was around forty feet from where I was standing. Just for a second, I saw a big shadow. The clouds opened at that instant and I could see the outline of something big. It was BIG, big. I was used to seeing bears, and a bear would have looked small next to it. I realized that I was looking around the height of what a bear would be up on their hind legs. But what I was seeing was taller still – it was a massive animal. I looked up and what I saw froze the blood in my veins. Time stopped.

I tried listening for telltales sounds, but all I could hear was my own blood rushing to my ears. I was dumbfounded and paralyzed. I tried looking over to the house for reassurance, but I could not move a muscle. I don’t know how long we stood there, just looking at each other. It felt like an hour, but it was probably no more than a couple seconds.

The moment broke when I heard my father’s voice calling my name. All at the same time I heard my name, a horrible smell hit my nostrils and that seemed to snap me out of my paralyzed state. I dropped the bucket I was holding in my hand and the thing turned its head around towards the direction of the house. That move brought its head into the moonlight. I could now see it had a flat face with almost no hair on it. The color of its skin was hard to make out, but it was dark. There was no snout – it was flat. A big, flat forehead with a big, flat nose. A wide mouth with almost nonexistent lips. And the eyes. The eyes… They were round and big. It looked like a gorilla and a human face mixed together.

After turning to the house, the creature turned its face towards me and its upper lips went up like an animal baring their teeth in a snarl. I could see large teeth. I then heard a deep, loud, but low growl. I could feel it as much as I could hear it. It felt like a vibration going through my entire body, like a sound wave so strong it makes your flesh vibrate. That woke my body up. I had never felt such terror in my entire life, before or since. It was a primal fear. I’m not sure how to explain it, but it felt like every cell in my body was screaming at me to move. “MOVE. RUN. DO NOT LOOK BACK.”

I ran. I ran so fast that I was inside the house before I even realized I was moving. I never screamed. I couldn’t. No sound could be made. It’s like my vocal cords were frozen. My father saw that I was in a state of shock and asked me what happened, repetitively, as I didn’t and couldn’t answer. I was crying silently, my breath ragged as I trembled like a leaf. My father and his cousin then grabbed their guns and made a move to go outside, but I hysterically screamed at them to stay inside. My father looked at me with worry in his eyes, but stayed inside. After a while, I calmed down enough to be able to tell what I saw.

My father told me I had seen a bear and that my imagination got the best of me. I wanted to believe him very much, but I knew that what I had seen was no bear. It was way too big and the silhouette was very different. It had a roundish head, with a slight conic top and apparently very little to no neck, and no ears. Its fur was longer, its shoulders wider and its height taller. It was no bear. Its eyes had an orangish glow to them. Every bear I have ever seen at night has a more greenish color to them. The smell was also overwhelming. And that feeling of dread – that primal fear and deep urge to run away… I had always been curious about fauna and liked to observe all animals in the wild. But I did not feel that on that night. All I felt instead was pure terror.

I started sobbing like a five-year-old. My father rocked me in his arms, singing me the lullaby he sang for me every night when I was younger. I fell asleep in front of the fire as the dawn came. We did not go fishing that morning. I slept for part of the morning and when I woke up the truck was all packed up. My father’s cousin went in the woods around the house to try and see any sign of animal activity but found nothing, except for broken branches in the dense, wet forest.

On the route home we talked about it more. My father was trying to convince me that what I think I saw didn’t exist. He said that if such a creature was around the forests there, he would have seen it, or at least seen signs of it, in his twenty years as a game warden. After all, if he had seen the elusive mountain lion with his own eyes multiple times, he would have surely seen, or at least caught a glimpse of, such an enormous animal.

He put a smile on his face, saying again that I had misidentified a bear, repeating that my imagination had played tricks, but you could see that he was disturbed. Maybe it was disturbing to see his child in such a condition. Maybe what I said made him think. I refused to go to the lake for at least a year. Then, I agreed to go swimming there, but we never slept there again, and I always made a fuss to never stay past dusk.

I have hunted for information about what I saw ever since. I am not sure if what I saw was a bigfoot or maybe a giant ape-like creature… but one thing I am sure of is that this was no bear. I am thirty-two now and I still dream about what I saw when I was sixteen from time to time. Now, every time I am in a forested area, I have that gut instinct to turn around and get out. I live in a big city now, and I will never go back to those woods ever again.

Source: https://www.paranormalscholar.com/witness-testimony-i-will-never-go-back-to-those-woods-ever-again/

Southern Alberta woman  to use power of heart and mind to find missing 5-year-old

LETHBRIDGE -- A woman training in healing touch therapy says she tapped into the power of heart and mind to connect with a missing five-year-old child on Saturday and claims she lead searchers to where he was found.

The boy went missing just before 2 p.m. on April 10 while camping with family in the Oldman River Valley south of Picture Butte, Alta.

Carley Caruso said her mother sent her a text around 8 p.m. to tell her that her father and other family members had gone to the area to help search for the child.

Caruso, who grew up in Picture Butte — about 200 kilometres south of Calgary — said that’s when she decided to get grounded and see if she could tap into the boy's energy, using healing touch therapy techniques.

Caruso says healing touch is an energy therapy in which practitioners consciously use their hands in a heart-centered and intentional way to support and facilitate physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health.

After working for five years as an environmental scientist, Caruso says she was forced to change careers due to health issues and started training in healing touch in 2019.

Once she was grounded and centered, Caruso says she was able to connect with the child’s energy.

“I started shivering, and my teeth started chattering and I just felt chilled to the bone,” she said.

As an empath, Caruso says she is sometimes able to feel her client’s situation in very physical ways.

The claims and techniques have not been independently or scientifically verified.

Caruso says she was also getting visualizations of shrubbery, the river, and the edge of the riverbend. When she told her mother what she was seeing, her mother said she needed to call her father, Rick, who was searching the area with other members of the family.

Caruso says she had no idea where they were, but her intuition told her they needed to go west, as far as they could go.

“She told us exactly where he was,” said Rick, who had hunted in the area and immediately knew the area she was describing.

By this time, the official search had been called off.

Rick, his brother David, son Anthony and Anthony’s wife Mindy made their way along the riverbank in the growing darkness, until they came to a steep slope, and couldn’t go any further.

That’s when they heard the child calling.

Rick said it took another 15 minutes to reach the boy.

“He was in a place where nobody could have found him,” said Rick.

“We couldn’t get there, I don’t know how he got there.”

The Oldman River Valley in southern Alberta.

Rick said they had to skirt a steep, 50-meter high slope that goes straight up from the river. When he slid down the other side, Rick began flashing his light.

“And he comes walking right up to me,” said Rick, who admits he lost his composure at that point.

“I said, 'Hi, are you OK? Are you cold?”

Rick said the boy responded, “a little, but I’m really hungry.”

The boy told his rescuers he wanted a hot dog.

They carried the little boy back up the slope and called people to let them know he had been found.

They didn’t have a chance to call Carley back, until 10:30 p.m.

“Mindy called me crying, my dad was crying. Everybody was kind of losing their minds,” said Caruso.

“Crying buckets,” said Rick, who admitted he was the skeptical one when it all began.

“This sounds really weird, because it is weird, but it’s exactly what happened.”

According to Caruso, she has had other experiences with healing touch energy work but says it’s hard to explain because it goes beyond what you can see.

“When you are connected and intuition is flowing, it’s like a deep part of you knows the truth and you follow it," she said.

In this case, she says they were all connected and in tune with each other, which allowed for a positive outcome and a remarkable rescue.

Austin was found about 2.5 kilometers from where his family was camping.

According to RCMP, the boy was taken to hospital as a precaution due to his lengthy exposure outdoors. The child’s family has declined to do an interview, indicating they wished to say thank you privately.

About 100 people had been involved in the initial search, including members of the Picture Butte Volunteer Fire Department.

THE Flannan Isles Lighthouse Mystery

In December 1900 three lighthouse-keepers, Thomas Marshall, James Ducat and Donald McArthur, on the lonely outcrop of the Flannan Isles, approx 20 miles from the Outer Hebrides, western Scotland, disappeared without trace. No solution to their disappearance has ever been found, and for over a 100 years now this case has been of endless fascination to those of us who love unsolved mysteries. The riddle of the Flannan Isles has inspired stories, poems, songs, even an opera. Endless speculations about their fate have been imaginative in the extreme. Something about the mystery of these 3 men, isolated at the edge of the world, surrounded by the hostile Atlantic Ocean, gets under our skin.

The Flannan Isles (also known as the Seven Hunters) are named after a 7th century Irish priest called St Flannan. Apart from the 70 years when the lighthouse was manned, the windswept islands have always largely been uninhabited. The only other structure on the islands, apart from the lighthouse, is a tiny ruined chapel, dedicated to St Flannan. The islands were always viewed with great superstition by the Hebrideans, and although they used the islands to graze sheep, believed it was unlucky to spend a night there. They observed such practices as removing your hat and upper clothing, and turning in a sunwise direction, when arriving there.

The lighthouse was constructed in the 1890s on the island known as Eilean Mor (Big Isle). It took 4 years, and building work was continually hampered by the difficulties of safely landing supplies on the island, and the tempestuousness of the wild Atlantic Ocean. The lighthouse first went into operation on 7 December 1899. It had no wireless communication, and its only communication with the outside world was a series of semaphore-style balls on posts, which could be seen by the Hebrides on a good day.

The mystery begins on the night of 15 December 1900, when a squall broke out in the vicinity of the islands. The crew of a passing ship, the Fairwind, were angry and disturbed that no guiding light from the newly-built Flannan Isles lighthouse appeared to be in operation. Likewise the steamer Archtor (or Archer as I’ve also seen it recorded), when it docked at Oban, reported that the light was not operating. Nothing appears to have been done about it. Perhaps the authorities felt that it was best to wait a few days, as the relief ship, the Hesperus, was due to sail out to the islands on the 20th December.

Bad weather delayed the sailing though, and the Hesperus didn’t set out until dawn on Boxing Day, carrying fresh supplies for the lighthouse, and Joseph Moore, who was due to relieve one of the other keepers on watch duty. Moore was anxious about the mystery of the dead light. He knew that it was virtually unheard of for lighthouse-keepers to allow a light to go out like that. It was said that during the short voyage to the islands he was restless, filled with foreboding, pacing the deck and refusing any breakfast.

Things were eerie on the lighthouse island from the moment they arrived. There was no welcoming committee from the three men, (who would normally have been outside to greet them), no provisions boxes had been put out to be re-stocked, and the flag wasn’t up on the flagstaff. The Hesperus moored in silence, and Joseph Moore headed for the lighthouse, calling out as he headed towards it.

Inside the lighthouse nothing looked out of order. The lamps were trimmed, the beds were tumbled, as if they men had just got up, the washing-up done, cold ashes in the grate. Other reports have it that a chair was overturned in the kitchen, (although some observers believe this was a later, journalistic, embellishment), and the clocks had all stopped. What is agreed is that two sets of outdoor gear were missing, and only one set of oilskins remained. Which meant one of the men had gone out without his protective weather gear on. Something that would have been virtually unheard of. Not only was this wholly impractical, but for all 3 men to leave the light unattended at once went against the rules laid down by the Northern Lighthouse Board. The only set of outdoor clothing which remained belonged to Donald McArthur.

So much myth and folklore has grown up over the Flannan Isles mystery, that some have reported that when Joseph Moore first opened the main door, three strange birds flew out, and, as the lighthouse tower was searched,odd strands of seaweed were found on the stairs, and in the little cubby-hole where the lighthouse logbook was kept.

A comprehensive search was also made of the island itself. At the west landing stage they found extraordinary damage. Iron railings were bent out of shape, and the iron railway by the path was completely wrenched out of the concrete. The conclusion was that the damage had been caused during a terrible storm.

Captain Garvie sent a telegram to the Northern Lighthouse Board, saying that “a dreadful accident” had happened at Flannan. He concluded the “poor fellows must have blown over the cliffs or drowned trying to rescue a crane or something like that”.

When the logbook was perused, it made for disturbing reading. Keeper Thomas Marshall recorded as follows:

“December 12. Gale north by northwest. Sea lashed to fury. Never seen such a storm. Waves very high. Tearing at lighthouse. Everything shipshape. James Ducat irritable”.

Later that day: “Storm still raging, wind steady. Stormbound. Cannot go out. Ship passing sounding foghorn. Could see lights of cabins. Ducat quiet. Donald McArthur crying”.

“December 13. Storm continued through night. Wind shifted west by north. Ducat quiet. McArthur praying”. Later: “Noon, grey daylight. Me, Ducat and McArthur prayed”.

On 14 December there was no entry in the log.

The final entry was made on a slate, which (under normal circumstances) would have been transferred to the logbook proper later on:

“December 15. 1pm. Storm ended, sea calm. God is over all”.

It was on the evening of the 15th that it was observed that the light hadn’t been lit. So the men must have disappeared sometime in the few hours between the last log entry and night-fall, which at that time of year, and in that area would have occurred at around 4 PM.

There is much controversy over the log entries. Most particularly, the highly emotive quality of the entries. This was an official log-book, the entries would ordinarily have been the bare bones of the daily running of the light. It wasn’t a private diary, there for the men to record their feelings. Take the entry where Marshall records “James Ducat irritable”. It has been pointed out that Ducat was Marshall’s superior. This would be akin to someone writing on the office messageboard that the boss was in a bad mood. If the men had lived, The Northern Lighthouse Board would have asked Marshall to explain why he had made such a personal entry. Also Ducat was reputed to have normally been a very good-natured man. Such irritability would have been out-of-character (although I have to say that even the most good-natured of men might have suffered irritability in those trying circumstances).

The “McArthur crying” entry is also extraordinary. It makes McArthur sound like a snivelling boy, when by all accounts he was a tough old sea-dog, of many years experience. On the mainland he was known as a bit of a brawler. He must have endured his fair share of violent storms over the years, so why did this one reduce him to a pulp?

The final entry also aroused some surprise. Superintendent Muirhead, who was part of the official investigation into the disapperances, knew all the men personally, and said he had never thought of any of them as particularly God-fearing, or prone to prayer.

Writer Mike Dash has suggested that the logbook entries may in fact have been a hoax, that they were written afte the 15th December. It’s unlikely we’ll ever know the truth to that, but if the entries were faked, then WHY?? After I first blogged about this case, I was contacted by Mike Dash, who said that the log-book entries had been invented by an American pulp fiction magazine, who had invented that angle to jazz the story up for their readers. Some things never change I guess.

The Northern Lighthouse Board carried out an official investigation into the disappearances, and concluded that it was most likely that the men had been swept away by a freak wave as they were trying to secure things on the west landing area. That two of the men had got into trouble, and that McArthur had dashed outside in his shirt-sleeves to help them.

There have of course been much more dramatic explanations for the mystery, such as sea monsters and aliens. It has even been speculated that a long-boat full of ghosts were seen heading to the islands on the night the light went dark. Some have said that the long-boat full of ghosts may in fact have been the three lighthouse-keepers rowing furiously away.

I’ll close with the words of Superintendent Muirhead, who, in his official report of 8 January 1901, said “I visited them as lately as 7th December and have the melancholy recollection that I was the last person to shake hands with them and bid them adieu”.

Source: https://sjhstrangetales.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/the-flannan-isles-lighthouse-mystery/ 

Other than for its relative isolation, the lighthouse would be relatively unremarkable, were it not for the events which took place just over a year after it was commissioned.

Discovery

Flannan Isles Lighthouse

The first hint of anything untoward on the Flannan Isles came on 15 December 1900. The steamer Archtor on passage from Philadelphia to Leithpassed the islands in poor weather and noted that the light was not operational. This was reported on arrival at Oban, although no immediate action seems to have been taken. The island lighthouse was manned by a three-man team (Thomas Marshall, James Ducat, and Donald MacArthur), with a rotating fourth man spending time on shore. The relief vessel, the lighthouse tender Hesperus, was unable to set out on a routine visit fromLewis planned for 20 December due to adverse weather and did not arrive until noon on Boxing Day (26 December). On arrival, the crew and relief keeper found that the flagstaff was bare of its flag, none of the usual provision boxes had been left on the landing stage for re-stocking, and more ominously, none of the lighthouse keepers were there to welcome them ashore. Jim Harvie, captain of the Hesperus, gave a strident blast on his whistle and set off a distress flare, but no reply was forthcoming.

A boat was launched and Joseph Moore, the relief keeper, was put ashore alone. He found the entrance gate to the compound and main door both closed, the beds unmade, and the clock stopped. Returning to the landing stage with this grim news, he then went back up to the lighthouse with theHesperus's second-mate and a seaman. A further search revealed that the lamps were cleaned and refilled. A set of oilskins was found, suggesting that one of the keepers had left the lighthouse without them, which was surprising considering the severity of the weather on the date of the last entry in the lighthouse log. The only sign of anything amiss in the lighthouse was an overturned chair by the kitchen table. Of the keepers there was no sign, neither inside the lighthouse nor anywhere on the island.

Moore and three volunteer seamen were left to attend the light and theHesperus returned to the shore station at Breasclete. Captain Harvie sent a telegram to the Northern Lighthouse Board dated 26 December 1900, stating:

A dreadful accident has happened at the Flannans. The three keepers, Ducat, Marshall and the Occasional have disappeared from the Island... The clocks were stopped and other signs indicated that the accident must have happened about a week ago. Poor fellows they must have been blown over the cliffs or drowned trying to secure a crane or something like that.

The men remaining on the island scoured every corner for clues as to the fate of the keepers. At the east landing everything was intact, but the west landing provided considerable evidence of damage caused by recent storms. A box at 33 metres (108 ft) above sea level had been broken and its contents strewn about; iron railings were bent over, the iron railway by the path was wrenched out of its concrete, and a rock weighing more than a ton had been displaced above that. On top of the cliff at more than 60 metres (200 ft) above sea level, turf had been ripped away as far as 10 metres (33 ft) from the cliff edge. The missing keepers had kept their log until 9 a.m. on 15 December, however, and their entries made it clear that the damage had occurred before the disappearance of the writers.

Speculations and misconceptions

No bodies were ever found and the loneliness of the rocky islets may have lent itself to feverish imaginings. Theories abounded and resulted in "fascinated national speculation". Some were simply elaborations on the truth. For example, the events were commemorated in Wilfrid Wilson Gibson's 1912 ballad Flannan Isle. The poem refers erroneously to an uneaten meal laid out on the table, indicating that the keepers had been suddenly disturbed.

Yet, as we crowded through the door,

We only saw a table spread

For dinner, meat, and cheese and bread;

But, all untouch'd; and no-one there,

As though, when they sat down to eat,

Ere they could even taste,

Alarm had come, and they in haste

Had risen and left the bread and meat,

For at the table head a chair

Lay tumbled on the floor.[1]

^ Quotation from Nicholson (1995) p. 178.

However, Nicholson (1995) makes it clear that this does not square with Moore's recorded observations of the scene, which state that: "The kitchen utensils were all very clean, which is a sign that it must be after dinner some time they left."

Other less plausible rumours ensued—that one keeper had murdered the other two and then thrown himself into the sea in a fit of remorse (which is likely not the case, simply because the keepers only had to work together for short amounts of time, and none of the men reported any psychotic behavior); that a sea serpent (or giant seabird) had carried the men away; that they had been abducted by foreign spies; or that they had met their fate through the malevolent presence of a boat filled with ghosts—and the baleful influence of the "Phantom of the Seven Hunters" was widely suspected locally.

Northern Lighthouse Board investigation

Northern Lighthouse Board Ensign

On 29 December 1900, Robert Muirhead, a Northern Lighthouse Board (NLB) superintendent, arrived to conduct the official investigation into the incident.

The explanation offered by Muirhead is more prosaic than the fanciful rumours suggested. He examined the clothing left behind in the lighthouse and concluded that James Ducat and Thomas Marshall had gone down to the western landing stage, and that Donald MacArthur (the 'Occasional') had left the lighthouse during heavy rain in his shirt sleeves. He noted that whoever left the light last and unattended was in breach of NLB rules. He also noted that some of the damage to the west landing was “difficult to believe unless actually seen”.

From evidence which I was able to procure I was satisfied that the men had been on duty up till dinner time on Saturday the 15th of December, that they had gone down to secure a box in which the mooring ropes, landing ropes etc. were kept, and which was secured in a crevice in the rock about 110 ft (34 m) above sea level, and that an extra large sea had rushed up the face of the rock, had gone above them, and coming down with immense force, had swept them completely away.

Whether this explanation brought any comfort to the families of the lost keepers is unknown. The deaths of Thomas Marshall, James Ducat (who left a widow and four children), and Donald MacArthur (who left a widow and two children) cast a shadow over the lighthouse service for many years.

Later theories and interpretations

The westernmost of the Flannan Isles: Eilean a' Ghobha and Roareim with Brona Cleit in the distance

Nicholson (1995) offers an alternative idea for the demise of the keepers. The coastline of Eilean Mòr is deeply indented with narrow gullies calledgeos. The west landing, which is situated in such a geo, terminates in a cave. In high seas or storms, water would rush into the cave and then explode out again with considerable force. Nicholson speculates that McArthur may have seen a series of large waves approaching the island, and knowing the likely danger to his colleagues, ran down to warn them, only to suffer the same fate as well. This theory has the advantages of explaining the over-turned chair, and the set of oilskins remaining indoors,although perhaps, not the closed door and gate.

Haswell-Smith (2004) attributes the origins of the theory to Walter Aldebert, a keeper on the Flannans from 1953 to 1957. Aldebert believed one man may have been washed into the sea, that his companion rushed back to the light for help but that both would-be rescuers also were washed away by a second freak wave.

The event remains a popular issue of contention among those who are interested in paranormal activity. Inevitably perhaps, modern imaginations speculate about abduction by aliens. A fictional use of this idea is the basis for the Doctor Who serial Horror of Fang Rock. The mystery also was the inspiration for the composer Peter Maxwell Davies's modernchamber opera The Lighthouse (1979). The British rock group Genesiswrote and recorded "The Mystery of Flannan Isle Lighthouse" in 1968 while working on their first album, but it was not released until 1998 in Genesis Archive 1967-75. Angela J. Elliott wrote a novel which was published in 2005 about the disappearance of the lighthouse keepers, it was entitledSome Strange Scent of Death after a line from Gibson's poem. The "haunted" islands and the lighthouse also feature heavily as a hideout for a villain in British author Manda Benson's novel, Pilgrennon's Beacon. In 2008, the New Zealand band Beltane wrote a song about the lighthouse and its mysterious disappearances on the album ...Through Darker Seasons.

My grandfather had been in ww2 and told us about when himself and a few other soldiers had been separated from his unit and we’re trying to get to Normandy, they had gone through a clearing in a wooded area but had to drop when they heard something approaching. They were on their bellies in low grass when they saw 20 or 30 German soldiers running across the clearing clearly in a state of panic, then they just froze in mid step. He said they resembled statues and that some weren’t even touching the ground, and that there was no noise whatsoever, even the birds had gone silent. 

After a few seconds came a loud noise like metal scraping on concrete and the frozen soldiers started to become blurry to the point at which they vanished without a trace. This had been reported by all of the soldiers that were present and all were called to the war office London after their return to the UK where they were pressed on what they saw over the period of a few days, and we’re taken back to the same spot in France shortly after the war had ended. Surprisingly when they got their, there were other men sharing the same accommodation who reported similar occurrences in the exact same area. They were all taken to the woods and had to describe where and how the events took place. 

My grandad had said that the entire area was guarded heavily and that part of the ground was heavily excavated. The strangest thing of all the other he said, was that there were hundreds of dogs in the area, just milling around for no apparent reason. They returned to the UK with a gag order ordering them never to speak about any of this. He went back to the same spot in france before he died in 1985 and said that the area had been covered with unmarked warehouses and was guarded by an unusually professional security company. He reckoned they were military. I’ve tried to find out more about this but can’t find any records of it, but I do remember one of the guys who he was with the day, he used to come and visit sometimes and referred to the place as "the splintered woods"

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Missing411/comments/k5odlu/tom_messick_weird_sound_possibly_related_to/

https://www.youtube.com/user/canammissingproject/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=1