Steve Stockton's STRANGE MYSTERIES Episode #17

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Hello, friends, welcome back. Come on in, pull up a chair,
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step away from the noise of the modern world, and
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let the shadows settle around here. Now, we live our
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lives under the comforting assumption that reality is a structured,
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predictable thing, that the rules of nature are absolute, and
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that the ground beneath our feet behaves exactly as it should.
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But every so often the fabric of our everyday lives
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develops a tear. A child walks out of a summer
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camp and encounters an image so surreal that defies logic.
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A quiet home in a modern city begins to bleed
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from its very walls. A writer pins a tragedy, only
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to step into the exact pages of his own manuscript.
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Now these aren't campfire ghost stories or fabrications born of
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urban legend. Oh No, these are documented historical fragments of
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high strangeness, moments where the ordinary world fractured, leaving behind
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a cold case that time has forgotten how it saw.
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In this episode, we're digging deep into another ten strange, creepy,
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and completely unsolved mysteries. So for yourself, a cup of
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something warm, keep your eyes on the tree line, and
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let's take a walk. And see now. On the morning
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of July sixteenth, nineteen fifty two, a ten year old
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girl named Constance Connie Christine Smith walked out the front
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gates of Camp Sloan in Salisbury, Connecticut, and vanished into
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thin air. For decades, the true crime community and online
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forums populated her story with bizarre cinematic fabrications, tales of
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mysterious black sedans, booky ventrilocus dummies, and other assorted creepy
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pasta soundy items. But when you strip away the internet myths,
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the cold heart historical reality of Connie Smith's case is
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far more terrifying. It's the story of extreme vulnerability, institutional oversight,
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miss connections, and a profoundly site impaired little girl wandering
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alone down a busy New England highway, utterly defenseless against
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an opportunistic predator. Now to understand the tragedy of the
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Connie Smith disappearance, you have to understand how how to
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place she was in the dense, claustrophobic woods of Connecticut.
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Connie was raised on her family sweeping ranch in Sundance, Wyoming.
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She was an imaginedive outdoors a child who loved horses,
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horseback riding and writing stories. She was the granddaughter of
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a prominent former governor Wyoming, meaning she came from a
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lineage of distinct political influence and considerable wealth. In that
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summer of nineteen fifty two, he was sent east to
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attend Camp Sloan, a prestigious YMCA operated summer camp nestled
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in Lytchville County, Connecticut. The camp operated under the strict,
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pious motto of others, the philosophical principle that campers must
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always put the needs of their peers before themselves. Now,
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for Connie, a sheltered girl from the wide open American West,
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the rigid social ecosystem of a New England preteen summer
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camp proved toxic. She was intensely homesick. Just a week
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prior to her disappearance. A group photograph of her tent
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mates captured a jarring visual. While the other girls grinned
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for the camera, Kawnie stood completely somber, her face an
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unsmiling mask of misery. Now, the events immediately preceding July
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sixteenth indicate that Connie had reached her psychological and physical
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breaking point. The camp environment had grown increasingly hostile. Rumors
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and subsequent police interviews suggested that Connie was the target
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of intense bulling by other girls in her tent, who
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may have harbored resentment towards this wealthy, the out of
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town child of privilege. On the evening of July fifteenth,
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Donnie suffered a fall down the wooden steps leading to
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her tent platform, severely bruising her hip. Later that night,
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during what camp officials euphemistically turned rough horseplay within the tent,
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Connie was kicked squarely in the face. The impact left
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her with a severe nose bleed and completely shattered her glasses.
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This single detail shifted Connie's status from a disgruntled runaway
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to an extraordinarily endangered child. You see, Connie was profoundly
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legally nearsighted. With out of prescription lenses, her vision blurred
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into a smear of indistinct shapes. She couldn't read a
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sign or a book unless it was held mere inches
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from her face. It was hard for her to see
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a distant landmark, let alone the license plate of an
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approaching vehicle. Now the next morning, July sixteenth, shortly before breakfast,
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Donnie suffered a second nosebleed when the breakfast bell rang.
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She told her tent mates she was skipping the meal
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to return the medical eyes back she'd been given for
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her hip to the camp dispenser. Instead, Connie left the
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ice pack behind in the tent, walked past the camp
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boundaries and stepped onto Indian Mountain Road. She was wearing
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a bright red windbreaker, a brown bandana halter top, navy
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blue sorts with plaid cuffs, and tan leather shoes tied neatly.
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In her light brown hair, was a red ribbon, and
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in her hand she carried a small zippered purse containing
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photographs of her friends from home. She didn't have a
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single penny on her now. As Connie walked away from
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Camp Sloan, she was a walking contradiction, a child trapped
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in a teenager's body. Only ten years old, Connie had
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experienced a sudden grossberd. She stood five feet tall, weighed
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eighty five pounds, and was deeply some tanned from her
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life in Wyoming. This biscal maturity probably proved to be
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her undoing, as most bull adults encountered her that morning
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and completely misjudged her age. The first missed opportunity occurred
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just outside the camp gates One of the camp caretakers
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drove past Connie as she walked down to Indian Mountain
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Road because of her height and physical structure. He later
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told state troopers he assumed she was an adult camp
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counselor out for a morning stroll and drove on without
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a second thought. So disoriented, functionally blind, and operating entirely
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on ra adrenaline, Donnie managed to navigate her way towards
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US Route forty four. She was trying to get to
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the neighboring town center of Lekewood. Investigators believed she was
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frantically seeking a public payphone to call her mother in Wyoming,
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and begged to be taken home, a coss she could
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never make from the camp's heavily monitored main office. Now
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along the road, Finnie knocked on the door of a
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private farmhouse. The homeowner, Alice wash opened the door to
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find a tall, young girl openly weeping. Tonnie desperately asked
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for directions to Lakewelle Town Center. Miss Wallas gave her
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the directions, but, assuming the tall girl as a teenager
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capable of managing her own affairs, she closed the door
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and watched her walk away. Missus Wallah would later tell
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investigators with the men's remorse that if she had known
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the crying girl as only a lost, division impaired ten
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year old child, she would have pulled her inside immediately. Now,
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Connie continued her march down the shoulder of Route forty four.
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To soothe her frayed nerves. She stopped along the grassy
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verges of the highway to pick wild daisies. Motus reported
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seeing the lone girl and the bright red Windbreaker clutching
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a small bunch of wildflowers, occasionally holding her thumb out
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to the passing traffic. In nineteen fifty two, hitchhiking was
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a common American practice, but a solo ten year old
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doing so on a major highway would have been a
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glaring red flag that went ignored. The final confirmed sighting
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of Connie Smith occurred at approximately eight forty five am
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at the intersection of Route forty four and Belgo Road.
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She was standing with the side the asphalt, flowers in hand,
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waiting for a ride. Then she completely vanished. Now because
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camp Slowan delayed reporting Cottie's absence to the police for
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nearly three hours, assuming she was merely hiding on the property,
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whoever picked Connie up at the intersection of Belgo Road,
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was given a massive, insurmountable head start when the cat
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and State police finally took charge. The investigation quickly became
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one of the largest and most desperate missing person searches
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into England history. Because of the Smith's family's wealth and
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political standing, immense resources were deployed. Donnie's father flew in
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from Wyoming, chartering private aircraft to fly low over the
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dense Litchfield County canopies, while spoders scanned the undergrowth with binoculars.
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National guardsmen and hundreds of volunteers formed human change throughout
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the wilderness. The police investigation was relentless and grim. Recognizing
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that Connie had no money and couldn't see where she
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was going, investigators treated the case as a probable abduction.
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State troopers set up blockades on Route forty four, and
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they launched an undercover surveillance operation on a nearby traveling
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Gypsy encounpment, Hiding in the woods for days to see
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if the child was being held hostage. Copstrove opened jeeps
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through the marshlands, hoping to catch the sin of a
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decaying body. They analyzed the scat of wild forest predators
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for human remains following a tip that she may have
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been buried under a fresh grave. Troopers even visited local cemeteries,
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plunging heavy steel rods deep into the fresh earth until
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they struck wooden caskets, but every lead evaporated. The local
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iron quarries filled with deep stagnant water were dragged by divers,
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no clothing, no purse, and no body was ever found.
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Now over the decades, multiple theories and false confessions clouded
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the case. Infamous Serra predators of the mid century were
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thoroughly interrogated. One convicted person named Edward Davies confessed to
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Connie's demise and said he buried her along the Naugatuck
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River while awaiting execution, but his confession was ultimately exposed
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as a cruel hoax designed to delay his death sentence.
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Another nomadic predator, William Henry Redman, was heavinly scrutinized due
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to his involvement in other missing cases, but he passed
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a polygraph test and could never be dependently linked to
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the area. So for a time investigators wondered if Connie
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had simply wandered into the woods suffered a concussion from
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her previous tent step fall and succumbed to amnesia or hypothermia. However,
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both her parents and seasoned woodsmen dismissed this. Connie was
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an expert outdoors person raised on a rugged western ranch.
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She knew how to survive in the wild. She would
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not have simply walked deep into the swamp and drowned
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without leaving a trace of a red windbreaker or her
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shoes behind. The overwhelming tragic consensus among investigators remains that
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Connie Smith stepped into the car of an opportunistic predator
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somewhere on Route forty four, distraughted, not able to see,
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Connie sadly probably walked straight into a trap. Now, the
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Connie Smith case remains Connecticut's oldest unsolved missing child mystery.
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It serves as a somber monument to a series of
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catastrophic human errors. The camp mates who pushed a vulnerable
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girl to her limit, the camp administration that covered up
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the severity of her injuries, and the well meeting adults
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on the road who saw its tall, weeping child but
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simply chose to look away. Now, on September eighth, nineteen
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eighty seven, a modest brick rental home located at eleven
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fourteen Fonteine Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia, became the epicenter of
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one of the most astonishingly bizarre and physically repellent anominies
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in the history of American true crime. For decades, the
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case of the Bleeding House of Atlanta as baffled classic
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crime historians, forensic teams, and paranormal researches alike. Unlike many
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domestic mysteries that deal with invisible whispers or missing objects,
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this case forces us witnesses and eventually the Atlanta Police Department,
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to confront a tangible, visceral horror pints of fresh, warm
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human blood inexplicably pumping out the structural marw of a
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quiet residential home. Now the inhabitants of eleven fourteen Fonteine
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Avenue were Minny Winston, aged seventy seven, and her husband,
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William Winston, aged seventy nine. They were respected light citizens
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who had rented the house for nearly twenty two years
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without a single strong occurrence. William was an active di
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alsin's patient, meaning the couple spent most of their time
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resting quietly at home. Returning to a strict, low stress routine. However,
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the calm of their life shattered around eleven fifty pm
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that evening. Then he stepped out of her evening bath
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and walked into the hallway, only to feel her barefoot
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sink into a wet, slick puddle on the annoian floor
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in the dim hallway light. She initially assumed the substance
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was rush colored water backing up from a damaged water heater,
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or maybe even an old pipe, but when she flipped
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on the overhead light, she realized she was staring into
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a deep crimson pool. Terrified, then he woke her sleeping husband.
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Together they turned on lights throughout the house, and the
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true nightmare scale of the situation began to unfold. Now
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the fluid wasn't just pooled in the hallway, It was
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actively materializing from the house itself and the kid A
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thick red substance was seeping upward from under the linoliument
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out from behind the refrigerator in the hallway. It oozed
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cleanly from beneath the baseboards. In the living room and den,
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Large heavy droplets were dripping directly down the plaster walls
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and collecting into sticky patches on the carpet. Understandably panicked
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and profoundly confused, the Winstons called their landlord, who in
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turn advised them to contact emergency services. When Atlanta Police
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Department detectives arrived at the scene in the early morning
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hours of September nine, they prepared themselves for a standard
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grizzly homicide scene. Instead, they found an elderly couple shivering
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on their porch and a house covered in a substance
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that smelled unmistakably of copper and copper oxide, the classic
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scent of fresh blood. So detectives systematically searched every inch
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of the home. They looked for signs of a forced entry,
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broken windows, or structural damage, but the home was locked tight.
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They checked the attic and searched the cross bay is
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underneath the floors. The sea off in intruder or animal
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had perhaps crawled into the joist and bled out, but
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the results of the physical search only deepened the impossibility.
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The cross faces directly beneath the kitchen and hallway floors
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were completely dry and empty. The ceilings above the dripping
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walls showed absolutely no signs of staining or water damage.
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There were no pass or travel footprints or trails leading
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to or from the house. The fluid seemed to be
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manifesting in isolated, localized bursts across multiple rooms simultaneously with
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no traceable origin. Realizing they were out of their depth,
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the police department scraped samples of the deep red crust
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off the walls and floorboards, had rushed them to the
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State Crime Lab for processing. Then, within days, State medical
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examiner doctor sail On Zaki released a bombshell forensic report
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that effectively eliminated any easy logical explanations. The State Crime
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Lab confirmed that the substance was not rusty water, animal blood, dye,
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or chemical compound. It was real, uncontaminated Type OH human blood.
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Now this revelation immediately turned the neighborhood upside down, transforming
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a bizarre property damage report into potential homicide investigation. However,
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the puzzle pieces refused to fit together. Investigators immediately tested
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the blood types of Many and William Winston, but both
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Many and William possessed Type AID blood. It was biologically
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impossible for the fluid coding their home to have originated
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from either of them, ruling out the theory that Williams
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diosis equipment had suffered a catastrophic failure or that many
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had experienced to medical emergency. Police spokesman Kurt Harrold Tolstone
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reporters quote, it's human blood type. Oh. We checked the
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cross faces, the walls, the plumbing. We don't know where
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it came from. We don't know how it got there,
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and we don't know who it belongs to. It's a
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complete anomaly. End quote. Now, with the police admitting that
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they were formally stumped, the public and local media began
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floating wild theories to explain the bleeding House of Atlanta.
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Each theory, upon closer examination, cracked under the weight of
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the physical evidence. First, there was the intruder slash homicide theory.
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This was the most logical police theory, that an injured
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criminal leading a street fight or a botched robbery had
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slipped into the house, hid in the walls or cross bass,
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and bled out. However, this theory falls on two fronts. First,
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the house was entirely locked from the inside and bloodhounds
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found no scent or trail leading away from Fonteine Avenue. Second,
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an injured human being most dynamically, they'd leave footprints, handprints
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on door knobs and continuous drops of blood along their
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path of motion. On Fontaine Avenue, the blood simply emerged
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static from the walls and floors in separate rooms with
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zero connective trails. Second theory a practical joke or hoax.
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Some skeptics suggested that the Winstons, or perhaps a relative
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seeking attention, had intentionally spattered the home with blood source
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from a butcher shop or medical fife facility, but this
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theory is debunked by the medical examiner's findings. The fluid
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was fresh, uncoagulated when discovered, and completely free of the
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anti coagulants typically found in stored medical blood bags. Furthermore,
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the Winstons were an elderly intensely private couple who found
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the sudden influx of news cameras and police cruisers deeply distressing.
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They completely refused to do talk shows or capitalize on
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the event, and eventually moved out of the home entirely
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to escape the trauma. Thirdly, the structural echo slash paranormal
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manifestation theory. For those of us who study high strangeness,
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the case mer is a phenomenon known as hematidrosis properties
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a rare type of haunt or poltrygeist activity, where biological
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fluids manifest without physical explanation. Paranormal researchers note that such
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intense physical phenomena are often linked to deep historical traumas
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buried in the soil or structure of a place. So,
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despite intense media coverage for a few brief weeks in
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the fall of nineteen eighty seven, the Atlanta Police Department
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eventually ran out of leeds with no missing person reports
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matching the unique circumstances, no body, and no suspects, The
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case of eleven to fourteen Fonteine Avenue Whitely stood into
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the cold case files, but it remains to this day.
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The blood never returned, and the house eventually fell silent.
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Many and William Winston took the secret of that terrifying
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samptimber Knight to their graves, leaving the world to wonder
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how a quiet brick home in the suburbs that suddenly,
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without warning, began to bleed now. The Silver Plume Double
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Mystery is a haunting real world literary puzzle that reads
300
00:18:41.000 --> 00:18:43.559
like a dark piece of fiction. It's a tale of
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two men separated by a matter of months, who became
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inextricably linked by an isolated mountain town, a shared fiscal space,
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and an eerie, self fulfilling propsy that seemed to leak
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out of the pages from an unfinished manuscript now nestled
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deep within a rugged canon along Clear Creek in the
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Rocky Mountains. Silver Plume, Colorado, is a historic silver mining
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town that looks largely as it did in the late
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nineteenth century. It's a place of dirt roads, weathered Victorian storefronts,
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and towering claustrophobic peaks that block out the afternoon sun. However,
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in the late nineteen eighties, this quiet community became the
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backdrop for a nesting doll of disappearances that still defies explanation.
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So the mystery began on September seventh, nineteen eighty seven.
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Tom Young was a well liked local resident of silver
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Plume who ran a successful bookkeeping business out of a small,
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rustic wooden storefront on the town's main street. He was
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known to be a quiet stable man, deeply attached to
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his two pet dogs. But on that crisp September morning,
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Tom closed up his shop, walked back to his apartment,
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and simply vanished. He didn't pack any bags. He didn't
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clear out his bank accounts, and crucially, he left his
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two beloved dogs locked inside his apartment without food or water,
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an act that everyone who knew him insisted he would
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never ever do willingly. So the local sheriff's department lount
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the search of the surrounding valleys, but silver Plume is
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ringed by incredibly unforgiving vertical terrain, filled with hundreds of
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crumbling abandoned silver mine shafts from the eighteen hundreds, without
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a clear trail or a vehicle left behind, the investigation
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quickly stalled. Tom Young had evaporated into the thin mountain air,
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leaving his storefront empty and silent. Then in May nineteen
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eighty eight, roughly eight months after Tom Young vanished, a
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forty nine year old man named Keith Reinhardt arrived in
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silver Plume. Keith was a sports columnist and features writer
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for the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago. He was experiencing
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a severe midlife transition, seeking complete change of scenery to
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clear his mind, connect with nature, and finally write the
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great American novel he had inside him that he had
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spent his entire life conceptualizing. So Silver Plume's isolated brooding
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atmosphere captivated him. Looking for his face to work, Keith
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walked down the main street and rented the exact same
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wooden store front to Tom Young had abandoned less than
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a year prior. Keith opened a small antique and second
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hand bookshop in the front to pay the rent. While
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setting up his writing desk in the back, Keith quickly
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became obsessed with the ghost of the man who had
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occupied the room before him. He talked to locals about Tom,
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trying to understand his habits, his personality, and why he
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might have just walked away. This fascination, though, soon led
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into his creative word Keith began writing a psychological mystery novel.
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The protagonist of the book was a fictionalized version of
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Tom Young named Guy Harrison. In Keith's manuscript, the main
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character grows suffocated by the monotony of modern life, walks
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into the rugged mountains overlooking a small mining town, and
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intentionally vanishes without a trace to start a new life
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under completely fresh identity. Now, Keith wrote furvishly, treating the
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story as an exploration of his own deep seated desires
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to escape his past. Then, on July thirty one, nineteen
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eighty eight, reality caught up with Keith's fiction in a jarring,
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brutal way. Two hikers trekking through a dense, soft trail
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forest on the slopes of Mount Pendleton, just a few
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miles outside of Silver Plume, stumbled upon a gruesome scene.
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It was the remains of Tom Yawn. It was ultimately
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ruled self harm, though many locals remained skeptical of bizarre
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logistics involved. So the discovery sent shockwaves through the tiny
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town that it hit Keith rine hard the hardest. The
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mystery that it consumed his imagination for months was suddenly
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laid bare as a grim, flesh and blood tragedy. The
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storefront he sat in every day was no longer a
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launch pad for a romantic mystery about a new beginning.
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It was now the former office of a deeply troubled
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man who had met a violent end on the mountain.
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Seven days later, on August seventh, nineteen eighty eight, Keith
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attended a somber gathering of townspeople who drank a toast
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to Tom Young's memory. Friends noted that Keith seemed quiet, introspective,
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and profoundly distracted. Later that afternoon, around four point thirty pm,
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Keith closed down the antique shop. He walked over to
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00:23:18.839 --> 00:23:22.480
a local cafe, chatted briefly with acquaintances, and dropped a
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casual remark that he was going to hike up toward
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00:23:24.759 --> 00:23:27.759
the summit of Pendleton Mountain against the late afternoon light
379
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and find inspiration to finish the final chapters of his book.
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He was wearing light casual clothes, running shoes, and carried
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no survival gear, water, or heavy outerwear. He promised he
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would be back in time to watch an evening football
383
00:23:41.839 --> 00:23:45.359
game with a friend. Then Keith walked out of the valley,
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headed toward the trailheads looming over the town, and he
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was never ever seen again. Now when Keith failed to
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00:23:53.480 --> 00:23:57.839
return by morning, an enormous search operation was mobilized. Because
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00:23:57.880 --> 00:24:00.880
of his status as a prominent Chicago journal the search
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00:24:00.960 --> 00:24:03.599
was far more extensive than the initial hunt for Tom Young.
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00:24:04.640 --> 00:24:08.200
Over one hundred ground searchers, tracking dogs, mountain rescue teams,
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00:24:08.200 --> 00:24:12.279
and military helicopters equipped with infrared sensors systematically combed the
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00:24:12.319 --> 00:24:16.279
jagged ridges of the Front Range. They found absolutely nothing,
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00:24:16.440 --> 00:24:19.400
no dropped items, no footprints in the alpine mud, and
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00:24:19.480 --> 00:24:23.000
no clothing fibers. Keith had simply vanished in the exact
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same wilderness that had claimed Tom Young, carrying out the
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00:24:26.160 --> 00:24:29.799
precise plotline of the novel he was currently writing, The
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00:24:29.880 --> 00:24:32.680
ultimate horror of the Silver Plume. Double mystery lies within
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00:24:32.720 --> 00:24:36.400
the text Keith left behind on his desk. When investigators
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00:24:36.440 --> 00:24:40.319
and family members reviewed as unfinished manuscript, they found passages
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00:24:40.359 --> 00:24:42.640
that read less like a novel and more like a
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00:24:42.680 --> 00:24:47.440
conscious blueprint for his own disappearance. In one particularly chilling excerpt,
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Keith had written, quote Guy Harrison hid his past well.
402
00:24:52.039 --> 00:24:54.000
He was a man who chose to walk into the white,
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unforgiving wilderness, leaving behind an empty room in a puzzle
404
00:24:57.480 --> 00:24:59.920
that would never be solved. He became part of them
405
00:25:00.079 --> 00:25:05.240
out a phantom whisper in the Pine Trees end quote. Now,
406
00:25:05.319 --> 00:25:08.079
the eerie symmetry of the case has fueled endless theories
407
00:25:08.119 --> 00:25:12.799
over the past several decades. First is the overwrought convergence theory.
408
00:25:13.319 --> 00:25:16.839
Skeptics and police investigators leaned toward the theory that Keith,
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00:25:17.359 --> 00:25:22.240
deeply depressed or suffering from severe psychological crisis, became so
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00:25:22.480 --> 00:25:25.440
completely enmeshed in Tom Young's story that he chose to
411
00:25:25.480 --> 00:25:29.559
replicate his ending intentionally walking into a remote, inaccessible area
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00:25:29.880 --> 00:25:32.799
where he knew his body would be nearly impossible to find.
413
00:25:33.720 --> 00:25:38.039
And then there's the misadventure anomaly theory. Others believe it
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00:25:38.079 --> 00:25:42.200
was a tragic, mundane accident, just a coincidence. The terrade
415
00:25:42.200 --> 00:25:46.119
around Silver Plume is notoriously treacherous, full of loose scree fields,
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00:25:46.480 --> 00:25:49.759
sudden weather drops, and hidden vertical mind shafts covered by
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00:25:49.839 --> 00:25:53.519
decaying timber boards. A lone hiker and running shoes could
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00:25:53.519 --> 00:25:56.200
easily slip fill hundreds of feet into an old shaft
419
00:25:56.480 --> 00:26:01.119
and be buried instantly. And the third theory, the perfect escape.
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00:26:01.640 --> 00:26:04.680
A smaller fringe group of theorists wonder if Keith actually
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00:26:04.759 --> 00:26:07.960
successfully pulled off the plot of his own book, using
422
00:26:08.000 --> 00:26:11.039
the sensational discovery of Tom Young's body as a perfect
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00:26:11.079 --> 00:26:13.960
smoke screen to walk away from his old life, changed,
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00:26:14.000 --> 00:26:18.519
his name had disappeared into the American West. Now thirty
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00:26:18.559 --> 00:26:21.920
eight years later, the mountains surrounding Silver Flumes still hold
426
00:26:21.920 --> 00:26:26.400
their secrets. The manuscript remains unfinished, the wooden storefront has
427
00:26:26.440 --> 00:26:30.319
changed hands many times, and Keith Reinhardt remains exactly what
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00:26:30.400 --> 00:26:39.160
he wrote about a permanent, unsolved phantom of the Colorado Wilderness. Now,
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00:26:39.319 --> 00:26:43.079
on January two, nineteen thirty five, a tall, well built
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00:26:43.079 --> 00:26:46.000
young man carrying no luggage walked into the Hotel President
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00:26:46.319 --> 00:26:49.680
in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. He stepped up to the
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00:26:49.680 --> 00:26:52.759
front desk and checked in under the name Roland t Owen.
433
00:26:53.200 --> 00:26:56.359
Requesting an interior room on an upper floor, he was
434
00:26:56.400 --> 00:27:00.440
assigned to room ten forty six. Now what file over
435
00:27:00.480 --> 00:27:04.359
the next three days inside that small hotel room remains
436
00:27:04.400 --> 00:27:08.240
one of the most chilling, convoluted, and deeply bizarre true
437
00:27:08.440 --> 00:27:11.839
locker room mysteries in American history. The demise of the
438
00:27:11.880 --> 00:27:15.519
man known as Roland t Owen exposed a dark, subterranean
439
00:27:15.559 --> 00:27:19.279
whirl full of secret identities, shadowy handlers, and a cold
440
00:27:19.279 --> 00:27:24.160
blooded execution that investigators could never fully untangle. Now. Almost
441
00:27:24.160 --> 00:27:28.680
immediately after checking in, Roland t Owen began exhibiting behavior
442
00:27:28.720 --> 00:27:32.720
that deeply unnerved the hotel staff. Mary Stoptic, a chamber
443
00:27:32.759 --> 00:27:35.720
made assigned to the tenth floor, entered room ten forty
444
00:27:35.759 --> 00:27:38.720
six on the afternoon of January two to clean. She
445
00:27:38.799 --> 00:27:41.720
found the room completely dark, with the heavy window shades
446
00:27:41.759 --> 00:27:45.279
tightly drawn. The only illumination came from a small dim
447
00:27:45.319 --> 00:27:48.559
desk lamp. Owen was sitting motiously in a chair in
448
00:27:48.599 --> 00:27:51.240
the corner of the room, staring blankly into the dark.
449
00:27:51.839 --> 00:27:56.640
He appeared intensely paranoid. Asoptic cleaned, Owen nervously muttered that
450
00:27:56.680 --> 00:27:59.160
a friend of his was joining him soon, and complained
451
00:27:59.200 --> 00:28:02.440
bitterly about the exorbitant prices of a neighboring hotel the
452
00:28:02.519 --> 00:28:06.920
meal box. Soptick returned later that day with clean towels.
453
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Owen was still in the dark, but this time he
454
00:28:09.559 --> 00:28:12.480
was lying fully dressed on top of his bed. On
455
00:28:12.519 --> 00:28:15.160
the desk, she noticed a handwritten note that read dawn,
456
00:28:15.559 --> 00:28:20.039
I will be back in fifteen minutes. Wait. The next morning,
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January three, Soptik returned to room ten forty six. The
458
00:28:24.240 --> 00:28:27.440
door was locked from the outside, which standard hotel policy
459
00:28:27.480 --> 00:28:31.000
dictated mint the room was currently empty. However, when she
460
00:28:31.079 --> 00:28:33.759
unlocked the door with her master key, she was started
461
00:28:33.759 --> 00:28:36.319
to find Owen sitting in the dark, exactly as he
462
00:28:36.319 --> 00:28:38.960
had been the day before. While she was in the
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room the telephone drag, Owen picked it up, listened for
464
00:28:42.400 --> 00:28:45.680
a moment, and whispered harshly into the receiver, no down,
465
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I don't want to eat. I'm not hungry. I just
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00:28:48.839 --> 00:28:54.079
had breakfast. No, I am not hungry now. The mystery deepened.
467
00:28:54.119 --> 00:28:57.799
On the evening of January three, a bellboy named Randolph
468
00:28:57.880 --> 00:29:00.640
Probes was dispatched to room ten forty six six to
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00:29:00.680 --> 00:29:02.920
bring up a pack of cigarettes that Owen had ordered.
470
00:29:03.680 --> 00:29:06.559
When Prost knocked, a deep, booming voice from inside the
471
00:29:06.599 --> 00:29:08.759
room told him to slide the cigarettes under the door.
472
00:29:09.440 --> 00:29:11.640
Propest explained that he couldn't do that and needed the
473
00:29:11.640 --> 00:29:14.880
door open. The lock clicked, and the door opened just
474
00:29:14.920 --> 00:29:18.680
an inch. The room inside was pitch black. Owen was
475
00:29:18.720 --> 00:29:21.680
not the one at the door. Instead, a completely different,
476
00:29:21.720 --> 00:29:24.759
shadowy man peered out through the crack, took the cigarettes
477
00:29:24.920 --> 00:29:27.839
and handed Propes to tip. Owen's voice could be heard
478
00:29:27.880 --> 00:29:30.880
from deeper than the darkness of the room, sounding dazed,
479
00:29:31.240 --> 00:29:34.519
murmuring that he didn't have any money. Later that night,
480
00:29:34.680 --> 00:29:38.559
a city elevator operator reported a highly unusual passenger, a
481
00:29:38.559 --> 00:29:41.240
well dressed but rough looking man who demanded to be
482
00:29:41.279 --> 00:29:44.640
taken to the tenth floor, asking repeatedly where a room
483
00:29:44.680 --> 00:29:47.960
ten forty six was. The elevator operator noted that the
484
00:29:48.000 --> 00:29:52.240
man seemed incredibly tense and aggressive. At around one am
485
00:29:52.359 --> 00:29:55.839
on January fourth, guests staying in adjacent rooms were awakened
486
00:29:55.880 --> 00:29:59.079
by a sound of loud, strained groans, heavy breathing, and
487
00:29:59.119 --> 00:30:02.279
distinct thudschoing through the walls from room ten forty six.
488
00:30:02.839 --> 00:30:06.000
Assuming it was a standard domestic dispute or a drunken row,
489
00:30:06.400 --> 00:30:09.480
no one called the front desk. It was a fatal mistake.
490
00:30:10.359 --> 00:30:13.839
At eight thirty am on January fourth, the hotel switchboard
491
00:30:13.839 --> 00:30:16.519
operator noticed that the telephone in room ten forty six
492
00:30:16.640 --> 00:30:19.839
was off the hook. A bellboy was sent up to investigate.
493
00:30:20.440 --> 00:30:22.519
He found the door locked from the outside, with a
494
00:30:22.559 --> 00:30:25.519
do not disturb sign hanging on the knob. When he
495
00:30:25.599 --> 00:30:28.440
knocked anyway, a muffled voice told him to go away.
496
00:30:29.160 --> 00:30:33.519
Assuming the guests was just intoxicated, the bellboy left. By
497
00:30:33.519 --> 00:30:36.799
eleven am, the phone line was still down. A hotel
498
00:30:36.920 --> 00:30:39.279
porter named Howard Lawson was sent up with a master
499
00:30:39.400 --> 00:30:42.160
key to fourth entry. When he unlocked the door and
500
00:30:42.160 --> 00:30:45.119
stepped inside, he was met with a scene of absolute
501
00:30:45.200 --> 00:30:48.319
stomach churning horror. The room was covered in a spray
502
00:30:48.359 --> 00:30:51.000
of blood. Rollin t owen was on his knees on
503
00:30:51.039 --> 00:30:53.759
the floor, four feet from the bed, his head cradled
504
00:30:53.759 --> 00:30:57.680
in his hands. He was completely without clothing, Thick, heavy
505
00:30:57.720 --> 00:31:00.920
cords were tied tightly around his neck, in his ankles,
506
00:31:01.160 --> 00:31:04.799
and he had been brutally systematically tortured. His skull was
507
00:31:04.839 --> 00:31:08.480
fractured from multiple heavy blows, his lungs were punctured, and
508
00:31:08.519 --> 00:31:11.839
he had been stabbed repeatedly in the chest. The stains
509
00:31:11.880 --> 00:31:14.079
on the walls and carpet had already begun to dry,
510
00:31:14.240 --> 00:31:17.640
indicated he had been lying in that state for hours. Remarkably,
511
00:31:17.680 --> 00:31:21.720
though Owen was still breathing. Detective doctor Thomas Sullivan rushed
512
00:31:21.720 --> 00:31:24.160
to the scene and knelt beside the dying man, trying
513
00:31:24.160 --> 00:31:26.920
to get a name before it was too late. Sulvan asked,
514
00:31:27.000 --> 00:31:31.240
who did this to you? Owen, fading fast, whispered nobody.
515
00:31:31.599 --> 00:31:35.000
I slipped and fell against the bathtub. Selvan pointed out
516
00:31:35.039 --> 00:31:38.039
the cords binding his wrists and neck. Who tied you up?
517
00:31:38.519 --> 00:31:43.200
Owen muttered nobody and drifted into a coma. He died
518
00:31:43.279 --> 00:31:47.240
later that night at the hospital. Now, when the police
519
00:31:47.279 --> 00:31:50.440
began processing the crime scene, the logistics of the case
520
00:31:50.519 --> 00:31:55.720
became completely impossible. Missing items. There was absolutely nothing left
521
00:31:55.720 --> 00:31:58.319
in the room, no clothes, no shoes, no luggage, and
522
00:31:58.359 --> 00:32:01.559
no weapons. Even the whole hotel, issued toilesand soap, and
523
00:32:01.640 --> 00:32:04.920
been stripped from the bathroom. The perpetrator had matched to
524
00:32:04.920 --> 00:32:07.640
smuggle a man's entire life out of a busy hotel
525
00:32:07.759 --> 00:32:11.200
in broad daylight, and there was a locked door. The
526
00:32:11.279 --> 00:32:13.440
door to room ten forty six was locked from the
527
00:32:13.480 --> 00:32:16.640
outside when the porter opened it. That meant the perpetrator
528
00:32:16.680 --> 00:32:19.400
had tortured Owen, found him, left him there, and then
529
00:32:19.440 --> 00:32:21.680
locked the door with a key from the hallway before
530
00:32:21.720 --> 00:32:25.920
disappearing down the elevator. The mystery exploded to when fingerprints
531
00:32:25.960 --> 00:32:29.720
revealed that Roland t Owen did not exist. The name
532
00:32:29.880 --> 00:32:32.640
was a total fantom. For months, the body lay at
533
00:32:32.640 --> 00:32:35.079
a local morgue as a John Doe destined for a
534
00:32:35.119 --> 00:32:39.400
pauper's grave. Then the case took a surreal turn. Just
535
00:32:39.480 --> 00:32:42.279
before the anonymous burial, the funeral home received a bizarre
536
00:32:42.359 --> 00:32:46.200
telephone call from an unidentified man. The caller demanded that
537
00:32:46.240 --> 00:32:49.279
the barrel be postponed, promising that funds would be mailed
538
00:32:49.279 --> 00:32:51.519
to give the young man a proper, high class funeral.
539
00:32:52.200 --> 00:32:55.400
A few days later, sure enough, an envelope arrived containing
540
00:32:55.480 --> 00:32:58.319
cash wrapped in a blank piece of paper. A beautiful
541
00:32:58.319 --> 00:33:01.400
flooral arrangement of thirteen Americas beauty Roses arrived at the
542
00:33:01.440 --> 00:33:07.319
cemetery with a cryptic card that read Love Forever Louise. Now.
543
00:33:07.480 --> 00:33:10.319
It wasn't until late nineteen thirty six, over a year
544
00:33:10.400 --> 00:33:13.880
after the murder, that a woman in Birmingham, Alabama, saw
545
00:33:13.880 --> 00:33:16.079
a photo of the deceased John Doe in a true
546
00:33:16.079 --> 00:33:19.400
crime magazine and screamed it was her missing seventeen year
547
00:33:19.440 --> 00:33:23.559
old son, Artemis Ogletree Artemis a left home in nineteen
548
00:33:23.599 --> 00:33:26.799
thirty four to hitch ike across the country. His mother
549
00:33:26.839 --> 00:33:30.240
had received several typewritten letters from him long after his demise,
550
00:33:30.559 --> 00:33:33.839
which investigators realized was a cruel smokescreen sent by the
551
00:33:33.839 --> 00:33:36.799
perpetrator to keep the family from looking for him. With
552
00:33:36.880 --> 00:33:40.200
his real identity finally established, the police were still left
553
00:33:40.200 --> 00:33:43.319
with a terrifying blank canvas. Why had a seventeen year
554
00:33:43.359 --> 00:33:46.519
old run away from Alabama checked into a luxury Kansas
555
00:33:46.519 --> 00:33:49.720
City hotel under a fake name? Who was Dawn the
556
00:33:49.759 --> 00:33:53.319
angry voice on the phone? Who was Purcell the cold
557
00:33:53.359 --> 00:33:56.799
man in the dark room? And who was Louise the
558
00:33:56.880 --> 00:34:00.240
phantom woman who sent the Roses to his grave? Now?
559
00:34:00.359 --> 00:34:03.480
One theory suggests Artemis had become entangled in a high
560
00:34:03.519 --> 00:34:07.400
level bootlegging or organized crime syndicate acting as a courier
561
00:34:07.519 --> 00:34:10.440
or perhaps was a witness, and then was brutally executed
562
00:34:10.480 --> 00:34:14.599
as an act of underworld discipline. Another darker French theory
563
00:34:14.880 --> 00:34:18.840
points to bizarre personal lover's quarrel involving an older, wealthy
564
00:34:18.880 --> 00:34:22.480
benefactor who kempt him isolated in the dark. Ninety one
565
00:34:22.559 --> 00:34:25.800
years later, though Room ten forty six has been remodeled,
566
00:34:26.119 --> 00:34:29.360
the hotel president has evolved, but the ghost of Artemis
567
00:34:29.440 --> 00:34:33.800
Ogletree remains trapped in the dark. It's entirely possible, though,
568
00:34:34.079 --> 00:34:36.440
that the identity of the monster who walked out into
569
00:34:36.440 --> 00:34:38.519
the hotel hallway and turned the key in the lock
570
00:34:38.840 --> 00:34:45.719
will never be known. Now, on a pitch black stretch
571
00:34:45.800 --> 00:34:48.880
of US Route fifty, coming through the dense, towering pine
572
00:34:48.920 --> 00:34:53.199
forests of California Sierra Nevada Mountains, a modern miracle and
573
00:34:53.360 --> 00:34:58.480
an inexplicable, terrifying anomaly occurred simultaneously. The case of Christine
574
00:34:58.519 --> 00:35:01.800
Skubisch and her three year old son Nick is well
575
00:35:01.840 --> 00:35:06.079
documented in the annals of California Highway History, but it
576
00:35:06.199 --> 00:35:09.239
remains one of the most chilling examples of a phenomenon
577
00:35:09.360 --> 00:35:13.039
that straddles the rageton border between life and death. It's
578
00:35:13.079 --> 00:35:16.719
a story where a tragic midnight car crash transformed into
579
00:35:16.719 --> 00:35:20.039
an agonizing five day race against time, guided toward its
580
00:35:20.079 --> 00:35:24.320
resolution by a phantom figure that multiple independent witnesses described
581
00:35:24.320 --> 00:35:29.000
in identical disturbing detail. Now the story begins in June
582
00:35:29.119 --> 00:35:32.960
nineteen ninety four, twenty three year old Christine's Kubich was
583
00:35:33.039 --> 00:35:37.280
embarking on a fresh start. A single mother deeply devoted
584
00:35:37.280 --> 00:35:40.280
to her three year old son, Nick. Christine had packed
585
00:35:40.360 --> 00:35:42.719
up a old, light colored Ford Taris and set out
586
00:35:42.760 --> 00:35:47.119
from the Sacramento area, heading eastbound toward Lake Tahoe. She
587
00:35:47.159 --> 00:35:49.679
had recently secured a new job and a new apartment,
588
00:35:50.320 --> 00:35:53.440
and this midnight drive up the steep, winding mountain passes
589
00:35:53.639 --> 00:35:56.159
was meant to be the final leg of an exhausting transition.
590
00:35:57.039 --> 00:36:00.280
Now Route fifty is a scenic multi lane highway by day,
591
00:36:00.800 --> 00:36:03.519
but as it descends into the high country toward places
592
00:36:03.599 --> 00:36:07.400
like Plasterville and Pollock Pines, it becomes a claustrophobic ribbon
593
00:36:07.400 --> 00:36:10.480
of bastphalt. The road is flanked on one side by
594
00:36:10.519 --> 00:36:13.159
sheer rock walls and on the other by steep, plunging
595
00:36:13.239 --> 00:36:16.880
ravines that drop hundreds of feet into dense, dark canopies
596
00:36:16.920 --> 00:36:20.119
of old growth timber. There are no street lights, so
597
00:36:20.320 --> 00:36:23.480
when night falls, the only visibility comes from a driver's
598
00:36:23.480 --> 00:36:26.920
own headlights reflecting off the reflective road markers and the
599
00:36:26.960 --> 00:36:32.199
eyes of nocturnal wildlife. So sometime after midnight on June sixth,
600
00:36:32.280 --> 00:36:35.599
nineteen ninety four, near an area known as Bullion Bend,
601
00:36:36.079 --> 00:36:40.199
extreme fatigue likely took its toll. Christine's vehicle drifted toward
602
00:36:40.239 --> 00:36:43.440
the right shoulder, clipped a barrier, and plunged down the
603
00:36:43.519 --> 00:36:47.079
edge of a steep, nearly vertical embankment, the car careening
604
00:36:47.159 --> 00:36:50.440
down the rough hillside, crashing violently through the thick brush
605
00:36:50.480 --> 00:36:53.320
and smashing into trees before coming to a dead stop,
606
00:36:53.559 --> 00:36:57.360
completely hidden from the view of the highway above. Sadly,
607
00:36:57.559 --> 00:37:01.079
Christine Scoobish passed away instantly from the case catastrophic impact,
608
00:37:01.679 --> 00:37:04.320
but her three year old son, Nick, who was trapped
609
00:37:04.360 --> 00:37:07.079
into his car seat, survived the crash, but was left
610
00:37:07.119 --> 00:37:10.960
trapped in total darkness miles from civilization, alone with the
611
00:37:10.960 --> 00:37:14.840
body of his mother. Now, when Christine failed to arrive
612
00:37:14.880 --> 00:37:19.320
at her destination, her family immediately reported her missing. Because
613
00:37:19.360 --> 00:37:21.440
she had been traveling a long stretch of highway with
614
00:37:21.519 --> 00:37:24.400
multiple routes, police could do little more than issue of
615
00:37:24.440 --> 00:37:29.079
standard missing person bullet into regional patrols. For days, the
616
00:37:29.119 --> 00:37:32.679
Mountains kept their secret. The car sat in the deep ravine,
617
00:37:33.000 --> 00:37:36.119
invisible to thousands of commuters driving past and fifty five
618
00:37:36.159 --> 00:37:40.880
miles per hour. Then the highest strangeness began. On the
619
00:37:40.920 --> 00:37:44.519
third and fourth nights following the disappearance, the Eldorado County
620
00:37:44.559 --> 00:37:48.320
Sheriff's Department began receiving a series of highly unusual, unsettling
621
00:37:48.360 --> 00:37:51.920
phone calls from long haul truckers and overnight motors traveling
622
00:37:52.000 --> 00:37:55.760
Route fifty near Billion Bin. The callers didn't report seeing
623
00:37:55.800 --> 00:37:59.079
a car wreck, oh no. Instead, they reported a deeply
624
00:37:59.119 --> 00:38:01.800
disturbing sight on the on the roadside in the dead
625
00:38:01.840 --> 00:38:05.119
of night, their headlights illuminated the figure of a young,
626
00:38:05.320 --> 00:38:09.079
pale woman standing completely motionless on the narrow gravel shoulder
627
00:38:09.079 --> 00:38:12.880
of the highway, staring blankly out into the dark. Crucially,
628
00:38:13.039 --> 00:38:16.840
every single caller reported an identical, chilling detail. The woman
629
00:38:17.079 --> 00:38:21.440
was entirely nude. Now One driver, a local resident named
630
00:38:21.440 --> 00:38:24.039
Deborah Hoyt, was so unnerved by the site that she
631
00:38:24.119 --> 00:38:27.079
nearly swerved off the road. She describes seeing a nude
632
00:38:27.119 --> 00:38:29.960
woman lying briefly on the shoulder before appearing to vanish
633
00:38:29.960 --> 00:38:33.239
into the shadows when her HighBeam sit the spot. The
634
00:38:33.239 --> 00:38:36.920
sheer repetition of these independent reports from drivers who had
635
00:38:36.920 --> 00:38:39.119
no connection to one another and no knowledge of the
636
00:38:39.119 --> 00:38:42.880
missing persons report finally forced authorities to pay close attention
637
00:38:42.960 --> 00:38:47.719
to that exact coordinate on the highway. Then, on June eleventh,
638
00:38:48.039 --> 00:38:50.840
five full days after the Ford tourists had plummeted off
639
00:38:50.840 --> 00:38:53.599
the road, a highway patrol officer decided to pull over
640
00:38:53.639 --> 00:38:56.159
at the specific location where the naked woman had been
641
00:38:56.159 --> 00:38:59.599
repeatedly spotted. Walking to the edge of the guard rail,
642
00:39:00.079 --> 00:39:02.559
the officer appeared down into the thick, tangled brush of
643
00:39:02.599 --> 00:39:06.239
the ravine, and there, hidden among broken tree branches and
644
00:39:06.239 --> 00:39:09.199
buried in the shadows forty feet below, was the glint
645
00:39:09.280 --> 00:39:12.639
of a metal roof. Search and rescue teams scrambled down
646
00:39:12.679 --> 00:39:16.000
the treach of the slope, bracing themselves for a recovery operation.
647
00:39:16.599 --> 00:39:19.719
When they reached the crushed vehicle, they found Christine Scubas
648
00:39:19.840 --> 00:39:23.280
in the driver's seat. Then a weak cry came from
649
00:39:23.280 --> 00:39:27.800
the back against all biological probability, three year old Nick
650
00:39:27.920 --> 00:39:31.159
was alive. He had spent five days inside the vehicle
651
00:39:31.199 --> 00:39:34.400
in sweltering daytime heat and freezing mountain knights, without a
652
00:39:34.440 --> 00:39:37.519
single drop of water or chrumb of food. He was
653
00:39:37.559 --> 00:39:41.599
severely dehydrated, hallucinating, and covered in insect bites, but he
654
00:39:41.719 --> 00:39:44.639
was conscious. He had survived by curling up into the
655
00:39:44.639 --> 00:39:47.159
ball beneath a blanket that had been thrown forward during
656
00:39:47.159 --> 00:39:50.599
the impact. Then, as metics rushed Nick to the hospital,
657
00:39:50.800 --> 00:39:54.039
investigators turned their attention to the physical evidence of the scene,
658
00:39:54.480 --> 00:39:58.000
and the case shifted from a miraculous rescue into profound
659
00:39:58.079 --> 00:40:02.920
paranormal paradogs Now, the initial police theory was that Christine
660
00:40:02.920 --> 00:40:05.599
had survived the crash, stripped off her clothes in a
661
00:40:05.639 --> 00:40:10.079
state of delivery more severe hypothermia, a known physiological phenomena
662
00:40:10.199 --> 00:40:13.880
called paradoxical undressing, climbed up the cliff to seek help,
663
00:40:14.199 --> 00:40:16.800
and then crawled back down to the car to perish.
664
00:40:17.519 --> 00:40:22.159
But the autopsy completely destroyed this timeline. The medical examiner
665
00:40:22.360 --> 00:40:25.440
confirmed that Christine Scubach had suffered a broken neck and
666
00:40:25.519 --> 00:40:29.679
massive internal trauma during the initial descent. She had perished
667
00:40:29.719 --> 00:40:32.960
within seconds of the car coming to a halt. Furthermore,
668
00:40:33.079 --> 00:40:35.239
when her body was recovered from the front seat, she
669
00:40:35.360 --> 00:40:38.639
was fully closed in her driving attire, tightly pinned against
670
00:40:38.639 --> 00:40:41.800
the steering wheel by the crushed dashboard. It would have
671
00:40:41.800 --> 00:40:44.599
been physically impossible for her to leave the vehicle, let
672
00:40:44.679 --> 00:40:46.719
Loane climb a forty foot cliff to stand on the
673
00:40:46.800 --> 00:40:50.840
highway shoulder. There was no physical way she could have
674
00:40:50.840 --> 00:40:53.679
gotten ow that car whe the responding officers noted during
675
00:40:53.679 --> 00:40:57.199
her retrospective look at the case. Yet multiple people swore
676
00:40:57.239 --> 00:40:59.679
they saw her up on that road. If they hadn't
677
00:40:59.719 --> 00:41:02.440
called it in that specific location, we never would have
678
00:41:02.480 --> 00:41:06.159
looked down that embankment in time to save the boy. Now,
679
00:41:06.239 --> 00:41:09.719
for researchers of the unexplained, the ghostly figure of Highway
680
00:41:09.800 --> 00:41:12.679
fifty is considered a text bookcase of a post mortem
681
00:41:12.719 --> 00:41:17.599
apparition driven by an intense emotional crisis. The bond between
682
00:41:17.639 --> 00:41:19.239
a mother and her child is one of the most
683
00:41:19.239 --> 00:41:23.480
powerful forces in human psychology, and traditional law suggests that
684
00:41:23.559 --> 00:41:26.679
this force can't occasionally leave a physical imprint on the
685
00:41:26.800 --> 00:41:31.480
environment when fractured by sudden tragedy. The prevailing theory among
686
00:41:31.519 --> 00:41:34.360
those who accept the paranormal elements of the case is
687
00:41:34.400 --> 00:41:38.280
that Christine's consciousness refused to cross over while her toddler
688
00:41:38.360 --> 00:41:41.599
was slowly perishing in the backseat of her car. Her
689
00:41:41.639 --> 00:41:45.039
spirit generated a visible energy signature on the road above,
690
00:41:45.360 --> 00:41:48.599
manifesting in a shocking, attention grabbing state of nudity to
691
00:41:48.679 --> 00:41:51.960
ensure that motors would notice her panic and alert the authorities.
692
00:41:53.159 --> 00:41:56.760
So next Scubash made a full fiscal recovery. Growing up
693
00:41:56.760 --> 00:41:59.559
with only fractured, dreamlike memories of his five days in
694
00:41:59.599 --> 00:42:03.239
the dark, he recalled angels and the comforting presence of
695
00:42:03.280 --> 00:42:07.039
his mother keeping him company through the long nights. Thirty
696
00:42:07.079 --> 00:42:10.119
two years later, the stretch of Highway fifty near Billion
697
00:42:10.159 --> 00:42:13.400
Bend remains a quiet, somber highway. The trees may have
698
00:42:13.440 --> 00:42:16.039
grown over the scar where the car went down, but
699
00:42:16.360 --> 00:42:18.519
the legend of the mother who refused to let the
700
00:42:18.559 --> 00:42:22.480
mountains hier Son remains a beautiful, terrifying testament to a
701
00:42:22.599 --> 00:42:29.639
vigil that wouldn't end until help arrived. Now. On the
702
00:42:29.719 --> 00:42:33.519
evening of November twenty sixth, nineteen seventy seven, millions of
703
00:42:33.559 --> 00:42:36.599
household across southern England were settled in from their television
704
00:42:36.639 --> 00:42:40.039
sets to watch the local tea time news broadcast from
705
00:42:40.079 --> 00:42:44.920
Southern television at exactly five ten PM, the familiar face
706
00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:48.760
of newsreader Andrew Gardner suddenly began to flicker and wobble
707
00:42:48.800 --> 00:42:52.559
on the screen. Now, the video feed remained largely intact,
708
00:42:52.920 --> 00:42:57.320
but the main audio track vanished entirely, replaced by a deep, metallic,
709
00:42:57.400 --> 00:43:00.440
thrumbing hum that vibrated through the speakers of thousands of
710
00:43:00.480 --> 00:43:05.559
television sets. And then, my friends came the voice. For
711
00:43:05.679 --> 00:43:10.119
nearly six minutes, a calm, deeply resonant, highly synthesized voice
712
00:43:10.119 --> 00:43:13.679
completely hijacked the main airwaves across the region. Now it
713
00:43:13.679 --> 00:43:16.639
didn't sound like an angry political manifesto or a chaotic
714
00:43:16.760 --> 00:43:21.159
radio Prankoh No, it was slow, rhythmic and chillingly authoritative.
715
00:43:21.880 --> 00:43:25.159
The speaker claimed to be an extraterrestrial entity, delivering a direct,
716
00:43:25.519 --> 00:43:28.960
urgent warning to the human race. Known to history as
717
00:43:28.960 --> 00:43:32.920
the Southern Television Broadcast Interruption, this event remains one of
718
00:43:32.920 --> 00:43:38.119
the most sophisticated, disturbing, and completely unresolved audio hijackings in
719
00:43:38.119 --> 00:43:43.639
television history. It triggered a massive government investigation panic thousands
720
00:43:43.679 --> 00:43:47.800
of viewers had exposed the fragile vulnerabilities of modern broadcasting
721
00:43:47.840 --> 00:43:51.719
at the time. Now, as viewers watched the silent video
722
00:43:51.719 --> 00:43:55.840
of Andrew Gardner reporting today's headlines. The strange mechanical voice
723
00:43:55.840 --> 00:44:00.440
delivered a complex, poetic, and ominous message. The entity identified
724
00:44:00.480 --> 00:44:04.920
itself as Brilliant, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command.
725
00:44:05.840 --> 00:44:09.960
The voice spoke without urgency, maintaining a hypnotic erie cadence
726
00:44:09.960 --> 00:44:13.639
that felt entirely unnatural to those listening in their living rooms.
727
00:44:14.119 --> 00:44:17.960
It said, this is the voice of Brilliant, a representative
728
00:44:18.000 --> 00:44:21.840
of the Ashtar Galactic Command, speaking to you. For many
729
00:44:21.920 --> 00:44:24.079
years you have seen us as lights in the skies.
730
00:44:24.719 --> 00:44:27.000
We speak to you now in peace and wisdom, as
731
00:44:27.000 --> 00:44:29.239
we've done to your brothers and sisters all over this
732
00:44:29.519 --> 00:44:34.000
your planet Earth. The transmission went on to warn humanity
733
00:44:34.000 --> 00:44:37.920
about a trajectory of violence, explicitly stating that all weapons
734
00:44:37.920 --> 00:44:40.840
of evil must be destroyed. It claimed that the Earth
735
00:44:40.920 --> 00:44:43.719
was moving into the new age of Aquarius, and that
736
00:44:43.840 --> 00:44:46.000
humans had to learn to live in peace to avoid
737
00:44:46.039 --> 00:44:50.599
global catastrophe. The voice concluded by telling viewers that teachers
738
00:44:50.599 --> 00:44:53.679
were living among them, and then gave a serene farewell,
739
00:44:54.320 --> 00:44:56.960
be at peace and made the sublime love and truth
740
00:44:56.960 --> 00:45:00.199
of the Cosmos guide you and as abruptly, as that it
741
00:45:00.199 --> 00:45:04.199
had arrived, the metallic drone faded away, the standard audio
742
00:45:04.239 --> 00:45:07.480
snapped back into place, and viewers were suddenly thrust back
743
00:45:07.480 --> 00:45:10.400
into the middle of a mundane sports report, leaving millions
744
00:45:10.480 --> 00:45:14.280
wondering if they had just experienced a collective hallucination now.
745
00:45:14.320 --> 00:45:18.679
The immediate reaction across Southern England was absolute chaos. The
746
00:45:18.719 --> 00:45:23.480
Independent Broadcasting Authority, or the IBA and southern television studios
747
00:45:23.760 --> 00:45:27.079
were instantly overwhelmed by thousands of panic phone calls from
748
00:45:27.119 --> 00:45:32.280
frightened citizens, weeping children, and deeply concerned military personnel. Some
749
00:45:32.480 --> 00:45:35.880
viewers even believed a literal alien invasion was imminent, while
750
00:45:35.960 --> 00:45:39.039
others feared that the Soviet Union had developed a psychological
751
00:45:39.079 --> 00:45:43.480
weapon capable of hijacking domestic communications to induce mass hysteria.
752
00:45:44.039 --> 00:45:47.719
The next morning, the British press exploded with sensational headlines.
753
00:45:48.320 --> 00:45:51.800
Newspapers demanded to know how an unauthorized entity could take
754
00:45:51.800 --> 00:45:56.039
control of a major television network, effectively blinding the authorities.
755
00:45:57.000 --> 00:46:00.440
The IBA immediately launched a high level technical investment. Mitigation
756
00:46:01.239 --> 00:46:04.000
engineers quickly determined that the breach had not occurred at
757
00:46:04.000 --> 00:46:08.480
the main television studios in Southampton, Instead, the hijackers had
758
00:46:08.519 --> 00:46:12.119
targeted critical vulnerability in the physical distribution network of the
759
00:46:12.119 --> 00:46:16.639
television signal itself. Now to understand how the interruption was executed,
760
00:46:16.880 --> 00:46:18.960
you have to look at the way television signals were
761
00:46:18.960 --> 00:46:23.440
transmitted in the late nineteen seventies. The Southern television broadcast
762
00:46:23.599 --> 00:46:26.719
was sent by a high powered main transmitter tower, but
763
00:46:26.960 --> 00:46:29.320
to reach the valleys and coastal towns of the region,
764
00:46:29.760 --> 00:46:33.800
that signal had to be picked up, amplified, and rebroadcast
765
00:46:33.880 --> 00:46:38.039
by a series of smaller relay stations. The primary target
766
00:46:38.039 --> 00:46:41.599
of the tack was the Hannington transmitting station in Hampshire.
767
00:46:42.280 --> 00:46:44.960
The Hannington relay works by grabbing the over the air
768
00:46:45.039 --> 00:46:47.920
signal from Rald's master tower on the Isle of Wight
769
00:46:48.280 --> 00:46:52.400
and passing it along to local homes. The unknown engineer
770
00:46:52.559 --> 00:46:56.000
or engineers behind the hijack set up a highly directional,
771
00:46:56.079 --> 00:46:59.880
incredibly powerful homemade FM transmitter on a high hill or
772
00:47:00.119 --> 00:47:03.440
maybe even inside a vehicle parked near the Hannington tower.
773
00:47:04.639 --> 00:47:08.599
When the five ten pm broadcast began, the hijackers activated
774
00:47:08.639 --> 00:47:14.079
their equipment, blasting an incredibly precise, high amplitude audio signal
775
00:47:14.119 --> 00:47:18.360
directly into the Hannington receiver antenna. Because their signal was
776
00:47:18.360 --> 00:47:21.480
physically closer and stronger than the official feed coming from
777
00:47:21.480 --> 00:47:24.960
the island Wight, the Hantington relay automatically locked onto the
778
00:47:25.039 --> 00:47:28.800
hijackers audio, overriding the real news track while keeping the
779
00:47:28.880 --> 00:47:34.199
video intact. Now, while the technical how was solved within days,
780
00:47:34.519 --> 00:47:37.199
the who and the why have remained an absolute void
781
00:47:37.239 --> 00:47:41.880
for nearly fifty years. The IBA publicly dismissed the incident
782
00:47:41.920 --> 00:47:45.199
as a clever hoax pulled off by exceptionally talented amateur
783
00:47:45.440 --> 00:47:50.679
or even rogue electronic students, but true industry professionals knew
784
00:47:50.719 --> 00:47:54.400
that the logistics required for this specific interruption pointed to
785
00:47:54.400 --> 00:47:57.960
an operation that was far from amateurist. To pull off
786
00:47:57.960 --> 00:48:02.119
this hijack in nineteen seventy seven, the Coulport needed one
787
00:48:02.599 --> 00:48:07.000
deep professional grade knowledge of the IBA specific frequencies, subcarries
788
00:48:07.039 --> 00:48:12.960
and relay mechanics. Two access to expensive, highly specialized broadcasting
789
00:48:13.000 --> 00:48:16.480
equipment that was tightly regulated by the government, and three
790
00:48:16.840 --> 00:48:20.119
the technical skill to create an advanced multi layered voice
791
00:48:20.159 --> 00:48:24.719
modulator that could synthesize speech into seamless rhythmic drone without
792
00:48:24.719 --> 00:48:29.280
breaking character. So the choice of the message itself remains
793
00:48:29.280 --> 00:48:32.559
a paradox If the event was a standard student prank,
794
00:48:32.920 --> 00:48:36.480
it likely would have included vulgarity, local inside jokes, or
795
00:48:36.599 --> 00:48:41.559
perhaps even political satire. Instead, the brilliant message was a
796
00:48:41.599 --> 00:48:46.519
deeply serious philosophical lecture on planetory, pacifism and esoteric New
797
00:48:46.519 --> 00:48:52.760
Age philosophy, delivered with chilling cold professionalism. Now, a massive
798
00:48:52.840 --> 00:48:58.400
dragnet was conducted by British intelligence and telecommunications authorities. They
799
00:48:58.440 --> 00:49:02.280
monitored the airways for week, tracing equipment sales and checking
800
00:49:02.360 --> 00:49:05.639
the albis of known amateur radio hobbyists and engineers who
801
00:49:05.639 --> 00:49:10.000
had recently been fired from telecom firms, and they found nothing.
802
00:49:10.800 --> 00:49:13.960
No Roague transmitter was ever recovered from the hillsides of Hampshire,
803
00:49:14.280 --> 00:49:17.039
no manifestos were sent to the press claiming credit for
804
00:49:17.079 --> 00:49:20.199
the stunt, and not a single person ever broke their
805
00:49:20.239 --> 00:49:24.599
silence to brag about pooling the British government. So the
806
00:49:24.639 --> 00:49:28.960
Southern Television broadcast interruption stands as a perfect digital ghost story.
807
00:49:29.719 --> 00:49:32.320
It was an event where an unknown shadow took control
808
00:49:32.400 --> 00:49:36.280
the modern world's most powerful medium, spoke directly to millions
809
00:49:36.280 --> 00:49:39.639
of people with absolute impunity, and then stepped back into
810
00:49:39.639 --> 00:49:43.840
the darkness without leaving a single footprint behind. So to
811
00:49:43.920 --> 00:49:47.039
this day, it remains a haunting reminder of how easily
812
00:49:47.079 --> 00:49:50.679
the walls of our secure, structured reality can be breached
813
00:49:50.719 --> 00:49:59.039
by voice calling out from the unknown. Now in the rugged,
814
00:49:59.159 --> 00:50:03.719
densely foresd in Boston Mountains of northwest Arkansas lies Devilsden
815
00:50:03.840 --> 00:50:08.360
State Park, a wilderness area renowned for its ancient sandstone caves,
816
00:50:08.599 --> 00:50:12.960
deep crevices, and stark isolated beauty. Now it's a terrain
817
00:50:13.480 --> 00:50:16.679
steeped in local folklore in history, but in April nineteen
818
00:50:16.719 --> 00:50:18.840
seventy five, it became the setting for one of the
819
00:50:18.880 --> 00:50:24.159
most thoroughly documented, terrifying and physically persistent anomalies in the
820
00:50:24.239 --> 00:50:28.760
history of high strangeness. The encounter involving Terry Lovelace, a
821
00:50:28.800 --> 00:50:31.599
young United States Air Force medic, and his close friend
822
00:50:31.639 --> 00:50:35.800
and fellow airman Tobias began as a routine wilderness camping trip.
823
00:50:36.679 --> 00:50:39.880
It ended with a violent fracture in their reality, a
824
00:50:39.920 --> 00:50:44.199
massive military cover up, a terrifying medical anomaly, and an
825
00:50:44.199 --> 00:50:47.559
absolute loss of time that would take decades to fully unravel.
826
00:50:48.679 --> 00:50:51.760
In the spring of nineteen seventy five, Terry Lovelace was
827
00:50:51.800 --> 00:50:55.119
a twenty year old active duty medic stationed at Whiteman
828
00:50:55.199 --> 00:50:58.719
Air Force Base in Missouri. Looking to escape the rigid
829
00:50:58.719 --> 00:51:01.760
monotony of military life for a weekend, Terry and his
830
00:51:01.760 --> 00:51:05.039
friends Obias, packed up a nineteen sixty eight Chevy Nova
831
00:51:05.119 --> 00:51:09.840
and drove south into Arkansas. Their destination the deepest most
832
00:51:09.880 --> 00:51:13.280
remote section of Devil's Den, far away from the established
833
00:51:13.320 --> 00:51:17.679
tourist trails and designated family campgrounds. Now, both men were
834
00:51:17.719 --> 00:51:22.480
highly trained, disciplined, and physically fit military personnel. They were
835
00:51:22.519 --> 00:51:25.440
not prone to flights to fancy or easily spoken by
836
00:51:25.480 --> 00:51:28.239
the natural rhythms of the wilderness. Oh no. They hiked
837
00:51:28.280 --> 00:51:30.960
miles into the back country, pitching their tent on a high,
838
00:51:31.039 --> 00:51:34.480
lonely plateau surrounded by a dense canopy of old growth
839
00:51:34.480 --> 00:51:37.559
oak and pine trees. The initial days of the trip
840
00:51:37.639 --> 00:51:42.079
were perfectly ordinary, but on their final night, the atmosphere
841
00:51:42.079 --> 00:51:46.320
of the forest underwent a sudden, unnatural transformation. Some time
842
00:51:46.400 --> 00:51:50.400
after midnight, the continuous wilderness course of crickets, circadas, and
843
00:51:50.480 --> 00:51:55.360
nocturnal birds abruptly ceased. A heavy, suffocating silence descended over
844
00:51:55.400 --> 00:51:59.320
the mountain, a classic precursor to a phenomenon frequently described
845
00:51:59.360 --> 00:52:03.000
by wilderness observers as the Odds effect, where the environment
846
00:52:03.039 --> 00:52:08.239
feels entirely stripped of its ambient acoustic properties. So stepping
847
00:52:08.239 --> 00:52:11.119
out of the tent to investigate the sudden stillness, Terry
848
00:52:11.159 --> 00:52:13.960
and Tobias looked up at the night sky. What they
849
00:52:14.000 --> 00:52:19.519
witnessed defied all conventional aviation lodging. Cruising silently just above
850
00:52:19.519 --> 00:52:23.280
the tree line, was an immense triangular structure. The object
851
00:52:23.320 --> 00:52:26.480
was completely black, locking out the very stars as it
852
00:52:26.559 --> 00:52:30.360
drifted with an unnatural gliding motion over the plateau. It
853
00:52:30.440 --> 00:52:33.360
possessed three dim lights at its points and a pulse
854
00:52:33.360 --> 00:52:36.480
and crimson glow in its center. The sheer scale of
855
00:52:36.519 --> 00:52:39.360
the craft was overwhelming. It was large enough to span
856
00:52:39.480 --> 00:52:43.119
the width of multiple football fields, yet it made absolutely
857
00:52:43.159 --> 00:52:46.440
no sound, no engine roar, no rushing wind, and no
858
00:52:46.519 --> 00:52:51.159
mechanical hume. As the two airmen on vacation stood frozen
859
00:52:51.199 --> 00:52:54.199
in shock, the colossal object came to a dead stop
860
00:52:54.239 --> 00:52:58.480
directly over their campsite. Then suddenly, a series of bright
861
00:52:58.559 --> 00:53:01.239
laser beams of blue and white light shot downward from
862
00:53:01.239 --> 00:53:04.119
the underbelly of the craft, illuminating the tent and the
863
00:53:04.159 --> 00:53:08.559
surrounding clearing. Terry recalled a sudden, intense sensation of heat
864
00:53:08.920 --> 00:53:13.320
and a feeling of profound inescapable physical paralysis. His last
865
00:53:13.320 --> 00:53:15.639
conscious memory of the night, it was the sight of
866
00:53:15.679 --> 00:53:18.760
Tobias screaming in terror, his hands clawing at the air
867
00:53:18.760 --> 00:53:22.559
as the blinding light enveloped them both. Then their universe
868
00:53:22.639 --> 00:53:28.000
went completely black. Now, when Terry and Tobias regained consciousness,
869
00:53:28.280 --> 00:53:31.199
it was the morning of the next day. The transition
870
00:53:31.320 --> 00:53:34.199
from the terrifying midnight encounter to the bright morning sun
871
00:53:34.559 --> 00:53:39.039
was instantaneous and highly jarring. They both woke up inside
872
00:53:39.039 --> 00:53:42.960
their zipped tent, but their physical condition was alarming. Both
873
00:53:43.000 --> 00:53:46.880
men were suffering from severe agonizing sunburns across their entire
874
00:53:46.920 --> 00:53:50.719
bodies despite having spent the night inside a heavy canvas shelter.
875
00:53:51.440 --> 00:53:57.280
They were profoundly dehydrated, disoriented, and nauseus. Looking around the campsite,
876
00:53:57.440 --> 00:54:00.880
the physical logic of the scene was completely broken. Their
877
00:54:00.880 --> 00:54:04.199
professional camping gear was scattered randomly across the clearing as
878
00:54:04.239 --> 00:54:07.880
if struck by a localized gale. The wilderness around him
879
00:54:07.880 --> 00:54:11.719
remained completely devoid of wildlife, and Tobias was in a
880
00:54:11.760 --> 00:54:16.159
state of acute psychological shock, weeping uncontrollably and refusing to
881
00:54:16.199 --> 00:54:20.320
speak about what had happened during the missing hours. Terrified
882
00:54:20.360 --> 00:54:23.519
and physically failing, the two men abandoned most of their gear,
883
00:54:23.960 --> 00:54:27.280
dragged themselves back to the Chevy Nova, and drove erradically
884
00:54:27.320 --> 00:54:31.119
back towards the military base. Upon their arrival, their severe
885
00:54:31.119 --> 00:54:35.000
physical trauma just couldn't be hidden. They were immediately admitted
886
00:54:35.000 --> 00:54:39.079
to the base hospital entreated for second degree burns. Now
887
00:54:39.119 --> 00:54:42.840
as active duty Air Force personnel with high level security clearances,
888
00:54:42.960 --> 00:54:46.559
their mysterious injuries immediately triggered an investigation by the Office
889
00:54:46.599 --> 00:54:51.320
of Special Investigations or OSI. Terry and Tobias were separated,
890
00:54:51.719 --> 00:54:56.360
placed into isolated interrogation rooms, and subjected to days of intense,
891
00:54:56.480 --> 00:55:01.239
aggressive questioning by playing close agents. The military investigators repreatedly
892
00:55:01.280 --> 00:55:03.280
tried to force Terry to admit that he had spent
893
00:55:03.320 --> 00:55:07.239
the weekend drinking heavily, using illicit substances, or that he
894
00:55:07.280 --> 00:55:12.360
had intentionally burned himself, but Terry held firm to the truth. Eventually,
895
00:55:12.480 --> 00:55:16.000
the tone of the interrogation shifted from skepticism to a cold,
896
00:55:16.039 --> 00:55:20.400
clinical intimidation. Agents explicitly told Terry that the incident at
897
00:55:20.400 --> 00:55:23.280
Devil's Den never occurred, and that speaking about it to
898
00:55:23.320 --> 00:55:26.760
the press, his family, or even Tobias would result in
899
00:55:26.800 --> 00:55:29.079
a court martial and a permanent stay in a federal
900
00:55:29.119 --> 00:55:34.159
military prison. Tobias was abruptly reassigned to a remote radar
901
00:55:34.199 --> 00:55:37.119
base in the Eleusioned Islands, and the two friends never
902
00:55:37.159 --> 00:55:40.800
spoke again. The military successfully buried the case, and for
903
00:55:40.920 --> 00:55:44.679
nearly forty years Terry attempted to block the terrifying memory
904
00:55:44.679 --> 00:55:48.639
out of his mind. Now, the final most objective layer
905
00:55:48.639 --> 00:55:51.480
of the Devil's Dead mystery didn't surface until twenty twelve,
906
00:55:51.760 --> 00:55:54.800
when Terry Lovelace, then a retired attorney and former Assistant
907
00:55:54.840 --> 00:55:58.119
Attorney General, visited a medical clinic for a routine X
908
00:55:58.199 --> 00:56:00.679
ray of his right leg keewed to crome knee pain.
909
00:56:01.480 --> 00:56:04.679
When the technician ran the scan, the screen revealed something
910
00:56:04.679 --> 00:56:07.079
that caused the medical staff to stop in their tracks.
911
00:56:07.639 --> 00:56:10.480
Embedded deep within the muscle tissue of Terry's leg, just
912
00:56:10.519 --> 00:56:15.119
above the knee, was a highly sophisticated, perfectly square microchip.
913
00:56:15.760 --> 00:56:18.199
The object was roughly the size of a postage stamp
914
00:56:18.519 --> 00:56:21.440
and was surrounded by a complex geometric pattern of tiny
915
00:56:21.519 --> 00:56:27.599
wirelike metallic filaments. The medical examiner was flabbergasted. There was
916
00:56:27.639 --> 00:56:30.559
absolutely no scar tissue on the surface of Terry's skin,
917
00:56:31.159 --> 00:56:33.840
indicating the object had not been inserted through a standard
918
00:56:33.880 --> 00:56:38.320
surgical incision or a puncture wound. Furthermore, Terry had no
919
00:56:38.440 --> 00:56:42.079
medical record of any surgeries on that leg. When Terry
920
00:56:42.079 --> 00:56:46.519
sought further testing, including an MRI, the clinic received an anonymous,
921
00:56:46.599 --> 00:56:51.239
highly authoritative communication advising them to cease further exploratory imaging
922
00:56:51.320 --> 00:56:54.800
of the leg due to national security protocols. Their words,
923
00:56:55.760 --> 00:56:58.360
the physical evidence of the encounter had traveled inside his
924
00:56:58.440 --> 00:57:02.599
body for nearly four decades, a silent electronic witness to
925
00:57:02.679 --> 00:57:07.280
the missing hours in the Arkansas Woods. Terry Lovelace eventually
926
00:57:07.280 --> 00:57:10.440
broke his silence in a best selling memoir detailing the
927
00:57:10.480 --> 00:57:13.639
lifelong psychological and physical toll of that single night in
928
00:57:13.679 --> 00:57:17.440
nineteen seventy five. The incident at Devil's Den stands as
929
00:57:17.440 --> 00:57:20.519
an exceptionally rare case where the standard narrative of a
930
00:57:20.559 --> 00:57:25.239
wilderness anomaly is back to official military medical records, documented
931
00:57:25.280 --> 00:57:31.400
state level investigations, and undeniable radiological evidence. So whether the
932
00:57:31.440 --> 00:57:34.440
massive triangular craft over the plateau was an acknowledged piece
933
00:57:34.480 --> 00:57:38.280
of experimental military technology tested on its own troops, or
934
00:57:38.400 --> 00:57:43.239
something genuinely beyond human comprehension. The mountains of northwest Arkansas
935
00:57:43.239 --> 00:57:46.880
continued to keep their secrets. The sandstone caves of Devil's
936
00:57:46.960 --> 00:57:49.760
Den remain quiet, But for those who know the story
937
00:57:49.800 --> 00:57:52.920
of Terry and Tobias, the deep woods hold a lingering,
938
00:57:53.159 --> 00:57:56.920
terrifying reminder that we are not always alone out there
939
00:57:56.920 --> 00:58:04.199
in the dark now. Sears Island is a massive, uninhabited,
940
00:58:04.280 --> 00:58:07.679
tractive land, connected to the coast of Searsport, Maine, by
941
00:58:07.719 --> 00:58:11.199
a narrow causeway. It's one of the largest undeveloped islands
942
00:58:11.199 --> 00:58:15.320
on the Eastern Seaboard. Ringed by rocky fog draped beaches,
943
00:58:15.320 --> 00:58:17.719
and choked by dense old growth pine forests and thick
944
00:58:17.760 --> 00:58:22.320
tangles of briars, it feels entirely decoupled from the modern world.
945
00:58:22.760 --> 00:58:26.960
While archaeological surveys of uneerited traces of prehistoric Native American
946
00:58:27.000 --> 00:58:30.519
camps and early colonial homesteads, the vast interior of the
947
00:58:30.599 --> 00:58:34.920
island is dominated by heavy, isolating silence. It was deep
948
00:58:34.920 --> 00:58:37.960
within this parmeval forest in the autumn of nineteen seventy
949
00:58:38.320 --> 00:58:41.280
that a local outdoorsman and hunter experienced an encounter that
950
00:58:41.320 --> 00:58:45.039
remains a cornerstone of coastal Maine folklore. This was sent
951
00:58:45.119 --> 00:58:48.840
to me by a resident of Maine. Known simply as
952
00:58:48.880 --> 00:58:52.199
the Honing of Sears Island, the event is a masterclass
953
00:58:52.239 --> 00:58:56.519
in psychological dread, a localized and omily that left no footprints,
954
00:58:56.880 --> 00:59:00.480
no easy rational answers, and a stark, unforgettable image of
955
00:59:00.559 --> 00:59:06.039
childhood innocence transformed into something deeply uncanny now. In late
956
00:59:06.119 --> 00:59:09.360
October nineteen seventy, a local hunter from Waldo County was
957
00:59:09.400 --> 00:59:13.159
tracking deer across the northern interior plateau of Sears Island.
958
00:59:13.960 --> 00:59:16.719
The hunting season was in full swing, but the island's
959
00:59:16.800 --> 00:59:19.519
rugged terrain meant a few people ventured far beyond the
960
00:59:19.519 --> 00:59:22.960
shoreline trails. The hundred pushed deep into a section of
961
00:59:22.960 --> 00:59:26.239
the woods that was completely devoid of footpaths, navigating through
962
00:59:26.239 --> 00:59:28.760
dense pockets of spruce and birchs where the canopy was
963
00:59:28.800 --> 00:59:32.480
thick enough to block out the low autumn sun. Pushing
964
00:59:32.519 --> 00:59:35.679
through a particularly stubborn thicket of deadwood, the hunter stepped
965
00:59:35.719 --> 00:59:39.360
into a small, naturally cleared glade. The forest floor here
966
00:59:39.519 --> 00:59:41.800
was carveded in a thick layer of damp moss and
967
00:59:41.880 --> 00:59:46.360
decomposing pine needles, there resting directly in the center of
968
00:59:46.400 --> 00:59:50.000
the isolated clearing, completely out of context and devoid of
969
00:59:50.079 --> 00:59:56.000
human explanation, set a pristine, old fashioned baby carriage. Now
970
00:59:56.039 --> 00:59:59.679
the carriage was a Victorian style pram featuring high iron
971
00:59:59.719 --> 01:00:03.199
whi phills, an ordinate black wicker body, had a collapseble
972
01:00:03.280 --> 01:00:06.679
leather hood that was pulled halfway back. It showed absolutely
973
01:00:06.719 --> 01:00:10.760
no signs of weathering, rust or forest debris, an impossibility
974
01:00:10.800 --> 01:00:13.280
given that the damp solid air climate of coastal Maine
975
01:00:13.320 --> 01:00:17.079
can corrode exposed metal within a matter of weeks. It
976
01:00:17.199 --> 01:00:19.679
sat level on the soft moss, looking as though it
977
01:00:19.679 --> 01:00:23.280
had been wheeled into the glade only moments before. Now,
978
01:00:23.400 --> 01:00:26.360
driven by a mixture of intense curiosity and an immediate
979
01:00:26.480 --> 01:00:30.320
creeping sense of dread, the hunter cautiously approached the carriage.
980
01:00:30.800 --> 01:00:34.239
The deep woods had gone completely silent. The oz factor,
981
01:00:35.159 --> 01:00:37.880
the ambient sounds of birds, and the distant crashing of
982
01:00:37.920 --> 01:00:41.239
the Atlantic surf against the island's rocky bluffs seemed to
983
01:00:41.239 --> 01:00:45.480
instantly evaporate. As he closed the distance. Peering over the
984
01:00:45.519 --> 01:00:48.440
high wicker edge of the prim the hunter faced himself
985
01:00:48.480 --> 01:00:52.159
for a grim discovery. Instead, he found himself staring down
986
01:00:52.199 --> 01:00:56.760
at a life sized, extraordinarily realistic porcelain doll. The doll
987
01:00:56.840 --> 01:01:00.000
was fashioned to look like an infant, possessing highly detailed
988
01:01:00.079 --> 01:01:04.599
painted features, rosy cheeks, and fine spun synthetic hair. It
989
01:01:04.679 --> 01:01:08.199
was dressed in meticulously clean antique infant clothing, a lace
990
01:01:08.320 --> 01:01:11.920
trimmed white gown, knitted booties, and a small bonnet. But
991
01:01:12.440 --> 01:01:15.760
the most unsettling detail was the doll's eyes. They were
992
01:01:15.800 --> 01:01:19.280
wide open, made of glassy, reflective blue material that seemed
993
01:01:19.280 --> 01:01:22.159
to catch the sparse beams of sunlight filtering through the trees.
994
01:01:23.079 --> 01:01:28.039
They stared straight up into the high canopy, unblinking and vacant. Now,
995
01:01:28.039 --> 01:01:30.840
the hunter reached out to touch the doll's clothing, noting
996
01:01:30.840 --> 01:01:33.280
that the fabric felt completely dry and free of dew,
997
01:01:33.719 --> 01:01:37.000
despite the dense morning fog that had blanketed the island
998
01:01:37.079 --> 01:01:41.960
hours earlier. The sheer impossibility of the scene, the pristine carriage,
999
01:01:41.960 --> 01:01:45.159
the flowless doll, the lack of any footprints or passing
1000
01:01:45.199 --> 01:01:49.519
the surrounding mud triggered a primal pantic. Unwilling to touch
1001
01:01:49.559 --> 01:01:54.199
the object further, the hunter carefully backed away, nimorized as landmarks,
1002
01:01:54.320 --> 01:01:58.440
and hiked rapidly out of the forest. Now, upon returning
1003
01:01:58.480 --> 01:02:01.000
to the mainlamb, the hunter recounted the story to a
1004
01:02:01.039 --> 01:02:05.519
close friend, a fellow woodsman, who expressed immediate skepticism. The
1005
01:02:05.599 --> 01:02:08.519
friend assumed the hundred stumbled upon a piece of forgotten trash,
1006
01:02:08.639 --> 01:02:12.000
or maybe an antique dumped by teenagers, maybe even an
1007
01:02:12.000 --> 01:02:14.960
eccentric art installation. There's a lot of artists in Maine.
1008
01:02:15.760 --> 01:02:17.840
But to prove the reality of what he had seen,
1009
01:02:18.119 --> 01:02:20.239
the hunter convinced his friend to return to the island
1010
01:02:20.239 --> 01:02:23.719
with him. Two days later, on the morning of November one,
1011
01:02:23.880 --> 01:02:27.119
nineteen seventy all saint today, the two men crossed the
1012
01:02:27.159 --> 01:02:30.440
causeway and re entered the dense Norgan woods of SyRS Island.
1013
01:02:31.199 --> 01:02:35.119
Navigating by distinct geographical markers a split glacial boulder, a
1014
01:02:35.119 --> 01:02:38.559
fallen suit or trunk, the hunter successfully guided his friend
1015
01:02:38.599 --> 01:02:42.199
back to the hidden glade. The Victorian baby carriage was
1016
01:02:42.199 --> 01:02:45.119
exactly where had been left, sitting still in the center
1017
01:02:45.159 --> 01:02:49.039
of the mossy clearing. The two men stepped forward together
1018
01:02:49.280 --> 01:02:53.280
and looked inside the carriage hood. The space was completely empty.
1019
01:02:53.800 --> 01:02:56.480
The porcelain doll, the lace gown, the knitted bonnet, and
1020
01:02:56.519 --> 01:03:01.000
the booties were all gone, but resting exactly where the
1021
01:03:01.039 --> 01:03:04.280
doll's head had been atop the small clean pillow inside
1022
01:03:04.320 --> 01:03:08.760
the carriage was a tiny hand carved wooden cross. Now
1023
01:03:08.800 --> 01:03:11.800
the cross was crude, fashioned from two small twigs of
1024
01:03:11.840 --> 01:03:14.559
fresh birch, bound together in the center with a piece
1025
01:03:14.599 --> 01:03:18.480
of dark weathered twine. The two men immediately surveyed the
1026
01:03:18.480 --> 01:03:21.440
ground around the carriage. The damp out of mud and
1027
01:03:21.519 --> 01:03:24.639
soft moss of the glade were highly impressible. A human
1028
01:03:24.639 --> 01:03:27.400
being walking into the clearing to retrieve the doll should
1029
01:03:27.440 --> 01:03:32.280
have left deep, distinct footprints, Yet the ground remained completely undisturbed.
1030
01:03:32.800 --> 01:03:35.440
There were no paths, no crush burns, no broken twigs,
1031
01:03:35.480 --> 01:03:39.800
and no footprints indicating entry or exit. Terrified by the
1032
01:03:39.840 --> 01:03:43.320
calculated eerie shift in the scene, both men fled the clearing.
1033
01:03:43.960 --> 01:03:47.039
They hurriedly reported the account of the local authorities, but
1034
01:03:47.280 --> 01:03:50.519
because exactly no crime had been committed and no missing
1035
01:03:50.559 --> 01:03:53.480
person's reports were associated with the island, the police declined
1036
01:03:53.519 --> 01:03:56.719
to dispatch officers into the interior wilderness to search for
1037
01:03:56.719 --> 01:04:01.079
a baby carriage. Now, over the last decades, the story
1038
01:04:01.079 --> 01:04:03.679
of the Seers Island carriage has been circulated through the
1039
01:04:03.760 --> 01:04:06.400
Mid Coast main region. Like I said, it was sent
1040
01:04:06.440 --> 01:04:09.079
to me by a family member of one of the men.
1041
01:04:10.239 --> 01:04:13.480
It's generated a variety of distinct theories then attempt to
1042
01:04:13.519 --> 01:04:17.639
reconcile the physical impossibility of the men now. The most
1043
01:04:17.719 --> 01:04:20.679
grounded theory suggests that the carriage was part of a private,
1044
01:04:21.000 --> 01:04:25.639
deeply personal memorial ritual. In New England history, grieving parents
1045
01:04:25.639 --> 01:04:28.639
who lost infants would occasionally create symbolic grave sites or
1046
01:04:28.679 --> 01:04:33.480
shrines and isolated natural settings that held personal significance. If
1047
01:04:33.480 --> 01:04:36.079
a resident had indeed smuggled a carriage onto the island
1048
01:04:36.079 --> 01:04:39.000
by a small boat, landing on a secluded beach and
1049
01:04:39.039 --> 01:04:41.719
carrying the components piece by piece into the woods, they
1050
01:04:41.719 --> 01:04:43.480
could have set it up as a hidden monument to
1051
01:04:43.519 --> 01:04:46.320
a lost child. The removal of the doll and the
1052
01:04:46.360 --> 01:04:49.000
placement of the cross may have been the final closing
1053
01:04:49.039 --> 01:04:53.360
act of their grieving process, or the second theory the
1054
01:04:53.480 --> 01:04:58.800
uncanny calling card. This darker, more psychological theory suggests that
1055
01:04:58.840 --> 01:05:02.480
the carriage was a highly liberate, manufactured hoax, designed by
1056
01:05:02.480 --> 01:05:05.159
someone who possessed an intimate knowledge of the island geography
1057
01:05:05.400 --> 01:05:08.840
and was probably against hunting. By planning an object that
1058
01:05:08.880 --> 01:05:11.800
triggers the immediate sense of the uncanny, the comfort had
1059
01:05:11.840 --> 01:05:15.440
created a self sustaining piece of folklore intentionally manipulating the
1060
01:05:15.519 --> 01:05:19.000
hunter's reality to leave a lingering, unresolved puzzle, and to
1061
01:05:19.000 --> 01:05:22.559
get the hunters all of the woods. Now Sears Island
1062
01:05:22.639 --> 01:05:26.639
remains an enigmatic presence on the main coast, though projects
1063
01:05:26.679 --> 01:05:28.880
have occasionally been proposed to have up the land into
1064
01:05:28.920 --> 01:05:33.800
commercial port, the vast interior forest remained largely untouched, protected
1065
01:05:33.800 --> 01:05:36.800
by conservation groups and the rugged nature of the terrain,
1066
01:05:38.079 --> 01:05:40.599
so the glade where the carriage sat has long since
1067
01:05:40.639 --> 01:05:43.079
been swallowed up by the relentless growth of the forest.
1068
01:05:43.639 --> 01:05:47.039
The weaker carriage has likely rotted away, the iron wheels
1069
01:05:47.039 --> 01:05:50.320
buried beneath decades of falling leaves and pine needles, But
1070
01:05:50.960 --> 01:05:53.559
with those who walked the Quiet Box routed paths of
1071
01:05:53.639 --> 01:05:56.519
the island, the story remains a haunting reminder of the
1072
01:05:56.559 --> 01:05:59.559
secrets hidden within the deep woods, a place where a
1073
01:05:59.599 --> 01:06:03.000
porcelain face once stared up at the trees, leaving behind
1074
01:06:03.039 --> 01:06:06.320
a simple wooden cross to mark the spot where innocence
1075
01:06:06.760 --> 01:06:14.800
vanished into the dark now. On October fourteenth, twenty thirteen,
1076
01:06:15.320 --> 01:06:18.159
a twelve year old boy named Landon Jones woke up
1077
01:06:18.159 --> 01:06:21.199
in his family home in Waterloo, Iowa, and realized that
1078
01:06:21.239 --> 01:06:25.039
his world had been completely altered overnight. He didn't feel sick,
1079
01:06:25.400 --> 01:06:29.000
he didn't feel full, and he didn't feel empty. Instead,
1080
01:06:29.480 --> 01:06:33.000
a fundamental biological drive that has governed human survival since
1081
01:06:33.039 --> 01:06:36.360
the dawn of time had simply vanished from his neural pathways.
1082
01:06:37.000 --> 01:06:42.400
Landon had entirely lost his appetite and his sense of thirst. Now,
1083
01:06:42.519 --> 01:06:44.519
the case of land and Jones stand as one of
1084
01:06:44.519 --> 01:06:47.920
the most terrifyingly unique and baffling medical anomalies of the
1085
01:06:47.960 --> 01:06:53.400
twenty first century. Unlike standard clinical puzzles involving eating disorders
1086
01:06:53.480 --> 01:06:58.199
or metabolic disruptions, Landon's condition behaves like a literal living curse.
1087
01:06:58.880 --> 01:07:00.679
It's the story of a boy who could look at
1088
01:07:00.679 --> 01:07:03.880
his favorite meal, chew it, and swallow it, but whose
1089
01:07:03.920 --> 01:07:07.119
brain completely lacked the ability to register the primal self
1090
01:07:07.119 --> 01:07:12.039
sustaining signals of hunger at thirst. Prior to October twenty thirteen,
1091
01:07:12.440 --> 01:07:15.159
Landon was a completely ordinary, active twelve year old boy
1092
01:07:15.239 --> 01:07:19.159
who loved playing outside, riding bicycles, running with his brother,
1093
01:07:19.440 --> 01:07:23.239
and eating typical Midwestern comfort foods. The day before the
1094
01:07:23.239 --> 01:07:26.719
anomaly manifested, however, he had been diagnosed with the minor
1095
01:07:26.719 --> 01:07:30.400
bacterial infection in his left lung, which doctors quickly treated.
1096
01:07:31.519 --> 01:07:34.119
When Landon woke up the following morning, he looked at
1097
01:07:34.119 --> 01:07:36.800
his mother, Debbie Jones, and told her that he had
1098
01:07:36.800 --> 01:07:40.679
no desire to eat breakfast. Now. Initially, his parents assumed
1099
01:07:40.679 --> 01:07:44.000
his lack of appetite was a standard, temporary byproduct of
1100
01:07:44.039 --> 01:07:47.719
the lung infection or the antibiotics, But as the days
1101
01:07:47.719 --> 01:07:52.760
turned into weeks, the appetite never returned. Now Landon wasn't
1102
01:07:52.760 --> 01:07:57.079
refusing food out of an emotional protest, bodied dysmorphia or nausea.
1103
01:07:57.280 --> 01:08:00.679
He simply felt a complete hollow neutral. He had no
1104
01:08:00.760 --> 01:08:04.559
internal barometer telling him when his body required fuel. Even
1105
01:08:04.599 --> 01:08:07.559
more alarming, his urge to drink liquids had suffered the
1106
01:08:07.599 --> 01:08:11.079
exact same quiet erasure. He could spend days without a
1107
01:08:11.119 --> 01:08:14.280
single drop of water, never once experiencing a dry throat
1108
01:08:14.360 --> 01:08:16.880
or the biological impulse to seek out a glass of water.
1109
01:08:18.319 --> 01:08:21.720
So within a few months, Landon's life devolved into a
1110
01:08:21.760 --> 01:08:26.000
medical emergency. Because he felt no internal push to consume anything,
1111
01:08:26.479 --> 01:08:29.359
he would completely forget that food existed unless it was
1112
01:08:29.399 --> 01:08:32.199
physically placed in front of him and he was explicitly
1113
01:08:32.359 --> 01:08:35.600
ordered to eat it. His weight began to plummet at
1114
01:08:35.640 --> 01:08:39.199
an alarming rate. Landon went from a healthy, robust one
1115
01:08:39.279 --> 01:08:42.119
hundred and four pounds down to a frail, hollow cheeked
1116
01:08:42.199 --> 01:08:45.760
sixty eight pounds. He became too weak to tend school
1117
01:08:45.840 --> 01:08:49.520
or even play outside. His skin turned pale, his ribs
1118
01:08:49.560 --> 01:08:53.079
began to protrude, and he spent his days lethargically resting
1119
01:08:53.119 --> 01:08:56.239
on the family couch, wasting away while surrounded by a
1120
01:08:56.239 --> 01:08:59.960
world filled with food. His parents, Michael and Debbie Jones,
1121
01:09:00.439 --> 01:09:03.279
were forced to transform their lives into a rigorous, mechanical
1122
01:09:03.319 --> 01:09:07.359
cycle of force nutrition. They had to set continuous alarms
1123
01:09:07.399 --> 01:09:10.000
on their phones reminding them the scent land and down
1124
01:09:10.079 --> 01:09:13.079
five times a day and supervise every single bite of
1125
01:09:13.079 --> 01:09:16.640
food and every sip of liquid that he took. It's
1126
01:09:16.680 --> 01:09:18.760
like his brain just forgot to tell him he needs
1127
01:09:18.800 --> 01:09:22.079
to live, his father, Michael told reporters during a frantic
1128
01:09:22.159 --> 01:09:26.000
national appeal for medical assistance, if we didn't force feed him,
1129
01:09:26.239 --> 01:09:28.760
he would literally sit there and starve while looking right
1130
01:09:28.800 --> 01:09:33.319
out a plate of food. So desperate for answers, the
1131
01:09:33.439 --> 01:09:36.279
Jones family embarked on an exhausting trek through the most
1132
01:09:36.319 --> 01:09:40.359
prestigious medical institutions in the United States. They took land
1133
01:09:40.359 --> 01:09:43.920
into local pediatric specialists in Iowa, then to the University
1134
01:09:43.920 --> 01:09:47.319
of Iowa Children's Hospital, and eventually to the world renowned
1135
01:09:47.359 --> 01:09:52.039
Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The medical community responded with
1136
01:09:52.079 --> 01:09:59.119
absolute fascination and complete helplessness. Teams of pediatricians, neurologists, gastrointrologists,
1137
01:09:59.119 --> 01:10:04.359
and psychiatrists subjected Land into an endless gauntlet of advanced diagnostics.
1138
01:10:04.840 --> 01:10:09.399
He had repeated MRI and CT scans. Doctors focused heavily
1139
01:10:09.439 --> 01:10:12.479
on the hypothalmus, a small pea sized region at the
1140
01:10:12.479 --> 01:10:14.720
base of the brain that acts as the control center
1141
01:10:14.760 --> 01:10:19.279
for hunger, thirst, body temperature, and sleep cycles. But every
1142
01:10:19.319 --> 01:10:23.399
single scan returned completely pristine, showing a flawless, healthy brain
1143
01:10:23.439 --> 01:10:27.399
structure with no tumors, lesions, or swelling. Then there were
1144
01:10:27.439 --> 01:10:31.840
spinal taps and blood panels. Laboratories analyzed of cerebral spinal
1145
01:10:31.840 --> 01:10:36.319
fluid and blood chemistry, looking for rare autoimmune conditions, heavy
1146
01:10:36.319 --> 01:10:40.960
metal poisoning, or even genetic mutations. However, all the results
1147
01:10:40.960 --> 01:10:44.399
were completely normal, and then there was a battery of
1148
01:10:44.399 --> 01:10:49.560
psychological evaluations. Clinicians thoroughly explored the possibility of a hidden
1149
01:10:49.600 --> 01:10:53.880
psychiatric trigger, such as a severe manifestation of anorexia, nerrosa,
1150
01:10:54.319 --> 01:10:58.640
or an obsessive compulsive avoidance, but Landing completely lacked the
1151
01:10:58.640 --> 01:11:03.039
physiological profiles associated with those disorders. He genuinely wanted to
1152
01:11:03.079 --> 01:11:06.079
gain weight and be healthy, but his brain simply would
1153
01:11:06.119 --> 01:11:11.000
not produce the physical sensation of hunger. Now, because every
1154
01:11:11.000 --> 01:11:14.840
physical test returned to blank canvas, medical specialists were forced
1155
01:11:14.880 --> 01:11:20.000
to lean into theoretical neuroscience to explain Landon's reality. The
1156
01:11:20.079 --> 01:11:22.800
leading theory among the male clinic team was that the
1157
01:11:22.800 --> 01:11:26.199
minor lung infection Landon suffered right before the onset had
1158
01:11:26.239 --> 01:11:32.119
triggered a highly localized, ultra rare autoimmune response. This theory
1159
01:11:32.359 --> 01:11:36.279
posted that Landin's immune system, while successfully fighting off the
1160
01:11:36.319 --> 01:11:39.920
bacteria in his lung, had accidentally produced antibodies that crossed
1161
01:11:39.960 --> 01:11:43.920
the blood brain barrier and targeted the specific microscopic receptors
1162
01:11:44.039 --> 01:11:48.359
in the hypothalmus responsible for seecting garret, the hunger hormone,
1163
01:11:48.600 --> 01:11:53.640
and responding to leptin. Essentially, his stomach could be completely
1164
01:11:53.680 --> 01:11:56.760
empty and his cells carrying out for hydration, but the
1165
01:11:56.840 --> 01:11:59.399
chemical messengers were arriving at a door that had been
1166
01:11:59.439 --> 01:12:02.680
permanently locked and boarded up. The hardware of his brain
1167
01:12:02.800 --> 01:12:06.520
was perfectly intact, but the software governing survival had been
1168
01:12:06.520 --> 01:12:11.039
permanently wiped. So Landon's case became a global medical mystery,
1169
01:12:11.439 --> 01:12:14.560
attracting the attention to the National Institute of Health the NIH,
1170
01:12:14.760 --> 01:12:20.000
which oversees the Undiagnosed Diseases program. Medical journals catalogs condition
1171
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as a potential, one of a kind instance of isolated
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01:12:22.920 --> 01:12:27.159
hypothemic dysfunction. But because there were no other known patients
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01:12:27.199 --> 01:12:30.800
on Earth sharing his exact symptoms without an accompanying brain tumor,
1174
01:12:31.199 --> 01:12:35.079
there was no established treatment protocol, no specialized medication, and
1175
01:12:35.159 --> 01:12:39.439
sadly no cure. Landon grew older under the heavy shadow
1176
01:12:39.439 --> 01:12:43.119
of his phantom condition. The simple, joyful human act of
1177
01:12:43.159 --> 01:12:47.880
sharing a meal became a clinical, chorylike task of counting calories,
1178
01:12:48.159 --> 01:12:51.680
measuring fluid ounces, and chewing mechanically without the reward of
1179
01:12:51.720 --> 01:12:56.960
satisfaction or relief. So the case of Landon Jones remains
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01:12:56.960 --> 01:13:02.159
a profoundly chilling modern mystery, exposes the terrifying, fragile nature
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01:13:02.159 --> 01:13:06.079
of the human machine, proving that our entire reality, even
1182
01:13:06.079 --> 01:13:09.920
our primal drive to survive, is completely dependent on tiny,
1183
01:13:10.039 --> 01:13:13.600
invisible chemical whispers traveling through the dark side of our brains,
1184
01:13:14.560 --> 01:13:18.199
and if those whispers suddenly stop, the entire structures of
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01:13:18.239 --> 01:13:21.279
our lives can dissolve in a single morning, leaving us
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01:13:21.279 --> 01:13:28.119
stranded in a body that has forgotten how to live. Well, friends,
1187
01:13:28.239 --> 01:13:31.039
there you have it. The world is indeed a vast,
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01:13:31.079 --> 01:13:34.399
beautiful place. What us the stories we explored this time
1189
01:13:34.479 --> 01:13:37.800
remind us there are corners of it that remain fiercely,
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01:13:38.000 --> 01:13:41.600
terrifyingly wild. Whether it's a phantom car idling on a
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01:13:41.640 --> 01:13:45.159
lonely New England highway, a portal of fire tearing open
1192
01:13:45.199 --> 01:13:49.439
a quiet Midwestern basement, or the silent chemical erasure of
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01:13:49.520 --> 01:13:52.880
the very instinct to survive. These anomalies are out there.
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01:13:53.600 --> 01:13:56.720
They sit just beyond the edge of our headlights, waiting
1195
01:13:56.720 --> 01:13:58.720
in the places where the forest grows thick and the
1196
01:13:58.760 --> 01:14:02.600
fog rolls. In. The cases we looked at tonight may
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01:14:02.600 --> 01:14:06.119
have gone cold in the official archives or have no explanation,
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01:14:06.720 --> 01:14:08.800
but as long as we keep speaking their names and
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01:14:08.840 --> 01:14:14.000
studying the circumstances, the vigil continues. So if you want
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01:14:14.039 --> 01:14:16.760
to keep exploring the deep woods, the forgotten history, and
1201
01:14:16.800 --> 01:14:19.600
the bizarre legends that linger in the dark, make sure
1202
01:14:19.600 --> 01:14:23.079
to subscribe to the channel hit that notification bell and
1203
01:14:23.159 --> 01:14:25.520
leave a comment with the mystery that hit you the
1204
01:14:25.560 --> 01:14:30.119
hardest tonight. Until next time, take care of yourselves, look
1205
01:14:30.119 --> 01:14:32.920
out for one another, and keep searching for the truth.
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01:14:33.720 --> 01:14:37.279
I'm Steve Stockton, thanks again for joining me. Tell your animals,
1207
01:14:37.279 --> 01:15:02.560
I said, Hi, bast