Haunted Cosmos - Missing 411

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

What do robot grandmas and faeries have in common? Find out in today's episode.Love Haunted Cosmos? Get access to our exclusive show, The Dusty Tome, early ad-free access to main episodes, monthly AMA's, and livestreams with Ben and Brian by becoming a patron of the show: https://www.patreon.com/c/HauntedCosmosBuy the Haunted Cosmos book: https://www.newchristendompress.com/cosmos PS: It's also available as an audiobook!Want to keep nefarious fairy Bigfoots away and also avoid icky seed oils, preservatives, artificial colorants, and other nasties in your daily shower routine? Then check out the vast array of homemade soaps from our friends at Indigo Sundries Soap Co.! Go to indigosundriessoap.com to learn more—and as our gift to you, use code HAUNTEDCOSMOS for 10% off your whole order!This episode is sponsored by Squirrelly Joe's Coffee! Visit their website here to purchase your first bag!  Share Coffee. Serve Humbly. Live faithfully. This episode is also sponsored by Stonecrop Wealth Advisors! Go to this link to check out their special offers to Haunted Cosmos listeners today.This episode is also sponsored by Aaron D. Schneider. Visit his website here and support him!This episode is sponsored by New Dominion Design Co. Visit their website here and learn more!This episode is sponsored by Backwards Planning Financial. Visit Joe's website here or give him a call (615-767-2555).Finally, this episode is sponsored by Gray Toad Tallow. Visit their website here and use COSMOS15 at checkout for 15% off your order.Support the show

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So if you like the show, consider becoming a patron today to get access to all these benefits and more. And now on with the show. Something unknown is doing we don't know what. A quote by Arthur Eddington from 1930. It's not boastful to say that much of the world, the surface world at least, is genuinely well known to mankind. We've done a fair and fairly comprehensive job of mapping the coastlands of the continents,

of surveying even the most deserted areas of vastness, of finding resources like oil, natural gas, water, and precious minerals. We've dug very deep holes, though still none deep enough to breach the superficial layer of crust that covers the globe. We've learned much about the movement of the tectonic plates. Even knowing they're there is quite impressive, if you ask me. And we can build skyscrapers that hold up astonishingly well to these earthen shivers. We even have a good idea of what type of terrain is in any given place.

Of course, we aren't perfect in this regard, but it's still pretty good. And yet despite our genuine achievement and systematizing the world in which we live, our efforts have left much to be desired. Even if we leave alone the knowledge and intuition of the natural world that has been lost with the onslaught of the so-called age of information, we still have patches of ground in the world that have not felt the beneficent weight of man's footsteps. Think of it. We have summoned it all the highest peaks,

but have left countless paths untrod on our way up there. In a very natural, and I would say good urge to find and then conquer the most inhospitable places on earth, we have left far less fearful places completely alone. Take the Amazon rainforest. With all of our achievement and innovation, we're just now barely getting to the point where we can map the forest floor and see what lies underneath that dense and delicate blanket of green that hangs like a dicent sphere about 100 feet above it.

But even this isn't done by just going and having a walk around the place. We either don't have the manpower or the skill set to accomplish such a task, and I suspect it's a bit of both. So instead we shoot beams of infrared light down onto the forest from high up in the air and penetrate the green inferno from without. And what we found there is astonishing. Entire cities with massive buildings and temples and squares that were built in long ages past and have since been abandoned for centuries.

Somehow the ancients filled that land to the brim, while we can only look at it nervously from the fringes. Another example would be the Sahara Desert, a place most empty, endless oceans of slowly sifting sand waves covering an entire neighborhood of the world. One must wonder, has it always been this way? There's no shortage of places like this, places who shout the same message at us in harmony together. Tread here carefully, none before you have lasted long.

In the far north of Canada, a valley lies nestled and slipping between the mountains that tower above it. It is the Nahani Valley, named after the Nahani River which cuts through it towards the sea. It is one such place in the world that contains endless mystery since it contains little-known history. Man has seldom dwelt there. Today, with its UNESCO World Heritage Site and National Park status, it remains and may always be a sort of walled garden. But what little history we do glean from it serves to inspire great dread. and all who hear it. And it all starts with the name, Nahani.

What does Nahani mean? Well, while it has never been a welcoming place, a handful of intrepid tribes have called at home. The Denny tribe are an indigenous group who inhabit a wide swath of land in the north, straddling the boreal and Arctic regions. They have been a hardy folk for as long as they have been a folk at all. Long ago, their dwellings even extended into the cold but fertile Nahani Valley.

Despite the trials afforded them by the place, the Denny endured and eventually settled into a relatively stable existence there. Indeed, a number of them, taking after the hardiness of their forefathers, still live there today. But if the Denny have been the only permanent residence, why the name Nahani? Why not the Denny River and the Denny Valley? For centuries, the Denny people would pass down oral tradition that spoke of another tribe, mountain dwellers without honor or culture, savage men with a ravenous appetite to take what

was not theirs for sport and daily Raymond. The Denny people referred to this mysterious and unknown rival as the Naha. It is said today that after many generations of raiding the lowland Denny settlements on the riverbank, acting as villains to the families there, the Naha people inexplicably and swiftly disappeared. No word was given, no emissary sent pleading for aid, no sign was left to the Denny people that could inform them of the reason for the flight of the Naha. And after a a lengthy time of no trouble from their foes, the Denny men went to investigate the Nahas dwellings and found them empty, bereft of any sign of life at all. These oral legends descended like loose threads over the years as they were discredited by many, and yet some grain of truth

did seem to linger in their midst. Some remained insistent that the Naha tribe was real, and their mysterious disappearance was an albeit welcome but still unsettling omen. What could have driven them so suddenly and completely from their home in the mountains? What could have compelled them to so totally forsake their lucrative plunder of the weaker dine? Perhaps it is a question we'll never know the answer to. After all, people are lost all the time in the woods. In the later years of the 19th century, brave explorers and prospectors who were encouraged by the previous California gold rush journeyed far into the northern reaches of the North American continent and found great deposits of the same precious metal in the Klondike.

Thus began the Klondike gold rush, which coincided with the start of the 20th century. Down on their luck men, high dollar investors, and industry barons alike, flooded the golden fields of Yukon, thinking it to be a true paradise on earth that only lacked the gates of pearl and the endless songs of the heavenly choir. But as the popularity of the area increased rapidly, cunning men sought ever to find a shorter and less trafficked route to the plains of money and promise. In 1906, a pair of these hopeful miners, Willie and Frank McLeod decided to try such a route,

one whose reputation for danger was only matched by its reward for successful passengers through it. It was the path through Nahani. As the brothers waded through the bogs of wetland and hiked up and over exposed ridges in the wilderness, they eventually reached the section of Nahani they had been dreading most. pressed in on either side by sheer granite cliffs, and with only a narrow beach to hike upon, the 200-mile gorges, maleficent shadow stretched before them, beckoning them to enter.

The two had heard the Denny legends that spoke of a sleepless evil that dwelt in this gorge, and as they entered into its first few miles, and the gentle breeze grew to a steady and unceasing wail, they started to think that those stories might not be all nonsense after all. unease began building in the heart of each man. But the golden Klondike's call remained the stronger force, and the two pressed on until the wailing became a background noise and their spirits were calm again. One night, once the McLeod's were deep into the heart of the gorge,

they set up camp along the riverbank and sat beside the fire to make dinner before sleeping beneath the stars on the clear summer night. It is here where the record grows fuzzy, for you see the McLeod brothers were never heard from again. No news of their arrival to the night. to the Golden Hills ever reached their family or friends back south, and no settlement to the east or west ever had a wayfaring stranger entered its streets claiming to be one of the brothers. For two years, those closest to Willie and Frank waited with ever-waning hope to hear of the

brother's fortune. At the end of this period, it became clear to all that they were actually waiting to hear from some unlooked-for third party of how the two had met their untimely end. For long, still no news even of this grizzly sort came to the the family. Thus, a search party was assembled and sent by the McLeod family up the same route the brothers had followed with the goal of learning what had happened to their kin on the river. The search party eventually stumbled on what they thought to be an abandoned camp deep in the 200-mile gorges granite hallway. From afar, the party assumed it was any old temporary camp set up by some other brave explorer who had recently been in the area. But as they approached the scene, reality twisted

its knife. Before them lay the decomposing bodies of two men. They were wearing the McLeod Brothers clothes, were surrounded by the McLeod Brothers gear, and were still inside the McLeod Brothers' knapsacks. One of the men, the one closest to the fire, had apparently died in a last desperate attempt to fight. He was reaching for the old and rusted out rifle that still lay it aside. But there was a problem, one seed of doubt that tinged everyone to the core and caused them to question whether or not, this was actually the McLeod Brothers. The two bodies that lay before them were without heads. Both men had been cleanly decapitated by whoever or whatever had killed them. What's more, the heads were nowhere to be found. Thus it was that the 200-mile gorge took on a new moniker,

one whose endurance and resolve grew more grotesquely stubborn as the years wore on, the valley of headless men. The case of exactly what happened to the McLeod, has never been solved. Their lives just vanished without a trace of story that could guide us down the path of exactly how they left and what took them. In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in this case and the other mysterious cases of missing people in the cursed valley of headless men due to the work of a former police officer named David Politis. David, inspired in part by the McLeod Brothers story and the stories of other missing persons cases he worked on while on the force, compiled volumes of disappearances, that whether finally solved or not, contained elements that made them

especially strange. He called them missing 411 cases, 411 being the short code for information, and he found thousands of them. It left him and has left many others after him at their wits' end. It seems as though the quote from Arthur Eddington we began the show with is spot on. something out there is doing we don't know what to all sorts of people in all sorts of places. In order for a case to be categorized as missing 411, some parameters must be met. The chief one being, there can be no simple or rational explanation, which can adequately explain the nature of the case. These are the fringe, the weird, the puzzling problems that have left the most seasoned searchers

and investigators scratching their heads. These cases also have more specific markers, 12, to be exact. And while not every case contains all 12 markers, all of them do contains some. These markers or profile points include the following. The disappearance taking place in one of 52 geographical clusters in the U.S. and Canada. The person going missing in a national or state park or some other government-controlled area. The person following a path that includes dramatic elevation changes. some large body of water close by, the area being populated by berry bushes of different kinds,

boulder fields, mostly of granite, being a part of the person's journey somehow, amnesia or memory loss from the victim, missing clothing or equipment, the area surrounding the victim being swampy, the case sending any search dogs into wild confusion and contradictory paths, and finally, these disappearances consistently involve children. The stories found in these case files, painous and uncanny and sometimes gruesome picture of something, something that is still totally unknown to us.

What we know is that though people go missing in the woods all the time, true, not all disappearances are created equal. Sometimes the facts just don't add up, and our inability to find some lost wonderer doesn't make any sense. Join us in this episode as we explore some of the most enigmatic of these missing 411 cases, while we join with countless others in asking the question, what is really happening in the rugged wildernesses of the world? There seems to be a danger in the world that we have yet to find and name.

Let us give our attempt, however humble, of starting to fix that. In the winter season of 1974 to 1975, Crater Lake in Oregon experienced some of the most amazing snow it had seen in years, maybe decades. Five feet of soft and supple flakes like powdered sugar reached down even to some of the lowest trailheads on the mountain. Backcountry skiers flock to the area with great expectations of adventure

and what was shaping up to be the best snow any of them had ever skied in. These adventurous guys and gals would find, however, that the blessing of rich snow would also bring attendant curses with it. People in town started to talk about how the skiing really is great once you get where you're going,

but getting there is some of the toughest work anyone could dream of. After pasting their fur skins onto the bottom of their skis, this would allow them not to slip on the snow while using their skis as a kind of snowshoe to walk uphill. They would take their first steps in the powder, only to find that even with the increased surface area afforded them by the ski, they were still sinking up to their wastes. Best snow in a decade or no, the prettiest scenery any of the locals had ever seen in their lives or no. Winter in Crater Lake was still a merciless beast that demanded everyone's utmost respect. But it wasn't just skiers or locals that were attracted to this playground wonderland.

Outdoor enthusiasts from all over the country had caught wind of the epic conditions in Oregon and flocked to it in a steady stream for those dark months of the year. One of those out-of-staters was a 19-year-old wildlife photographer named Charles McCuller. McCuller was a resident of Virginia, far on the opposite coast from the light snow of the mountain west, but he was no slouch at all in the outdoors. For years, McCuller had been practicing the art of journeying far into the American wilderness, completely alone, in order to set up for a couple of days in one spot to wait for the perfect shot of some unsuspecting woodland creature he could capture in its normal order of life. He had successfully returned from dozens of these trips all over the map. In fact, he had done

enough trips in the crater lake area in prior years to feel quite comfortable going into the deep folds of wipe that blanketed the area in 1974. He figured those conditions would make everything quiet, as it would ward off the less experienced locals and visitors. And so young McCuller hitchhiked and bused toward his way across the state before arriving at a friend's house in Eugene, Oregon in late January of that year. From there, he hitched a ride with a park ranger to the North Road trailhead and embarked upon his solo journey into the bleached white forests atop Crater Lake. He was never seen alive again. About a year and six months later, two hikers from Texas were enjoying a fall day in the crisp and high mountain air

of Crater Lake. Unfortunately, whether distracted by the nice air they traveled so far to breathe or something else, the pair took a wrong turn and ended up wandering around in a small and seldom trod canyon far off trail. They weren't too concerned about their predicament, at least not for long. They consulted a map which showed them an easy path they could take back to the main trail. The detour would only cost them about half an hour if they went back now, so they decided to look around this surprisingly open and inviting piece of forest that had clearly not been seen by many people before them. As they walked around and soaked in the checkered shade and light

that poured through and around the blood-red autumn leaves overhead, one of them thought he noticed something that didn't quite fit out of the corner of his eye. He turned to study the anomaly and found a blue piece of nylon-fellow, fabric punching up from behind a stone. After going over to it, he was delighted to see that it was a backpack. Perhaps they were not the first ones here after all. They started to rummage through it only to find some weathered but not very old personal items inside, some car keys, some pieces of clothing and a couple of photos and snacks. Thinking they may have actually found something important to someone, they made their way back to the trail and turned the pack into the park rangers. The rangers

immediately wondered if it could have belonged to McCuller. See, after he had failed to return to his friend's house when he said he would, a search operation had been launched immediately. Helicopters were flown overhead where McCuller would have been, should have been. Snowmobiles were dispatched and probes were pushed into the ground anywhere at disturbance in the snow could be discerned. An army of mountain rescuers had sought diligently for McCuller and had come up with absolutely nothing. Eventually the search effort slowed to a halt. Snowmobiles were simply unable to go more than a few miles past the North Road trailhead where McCuller was last seen. And helicopters found no signs of life anywhere else in a local area.

The case was as cold as the mountain. But then those hikers found his backpack, and they found it in a most unusual place. When rangers arrived at the small canyon the hikers had stumbled into, they were shocked to find that it was fully 12 miles from the trailhead McCuller had been dropped off at. The snow was seven feet deep and soft, extremely, soft, and McCuller had not been wearing snow shoes. They couldn't even get skiers or snowmobiles up into that canyon during the search. It had been too deep and too dangerous. Everyone wondered how on earth the 19-year-old photographer, with minimal specialized gear, had managed to worm his way up

that canyon without dying from exposure long before. The Rangers continued to search the area with a finer-tooth comb than the Texans had and soon found more evidence of McCuller's presence not too far away from where his pack had been hiding. Pants were draped neatly over a log as if to dry out. The belt around them had been neatly unbuckled, and the pants themselves were unbuttoned and unzipped, as if McCuller had very purposefully removed them in the freezing temperatures. They couldn't find any camera equipment, boots, or coat,

and they still didn't have a body. But they had the pants, and they were confident the puzzle pieces would be clipped in a place soon enough. But then, one of the rangers looked into the pants. He looked in and reeled back at what he saw. What he saw were shin bones sitting in the bottom of the pants, broken off near the knees as if by some incredible crushing force. Beneath the shin bones were the bald-up socks McCuller had presumably been wearing.

Inside of those socks, investigators found the pummeled and powdered remains of McCuller's feet. Finally, some 10 feet away, the last piece of Charles McCuller was found in the dirt. The crown of human skull was seen sitting smooth and white on the cool wall. bar's sloping floor. It belonged to Charles. The dental records proved that. What had happened to this man? What force had driven him through snow so deep that skiers and snowmobiles were helpless to get by? What had ripped the rest of his body from his shins and feet? What or who had crushed his feet and stuffed their remains in his socks like macabre holiday stockings? What or who had sent his pants up so precisely? What had relieved the 19-year-old of his head so unsubed?

ceremoniously. Most pressing of all, where was the rest of him? Countless theories have been put forward in an attempt to explain the state of McCuller's remains. They all get close and maybe explain some of the different variables, but ultimately fall short of answering for everyone. His case remains unsolved to this day, and there's little hope of that ever-changing. But it turns out McCuller is just one among countless others to suffer similarly unanswerable fates. So we ask again, what untold horror is hiding in the unkempt alleyways of the world?

Welcome to Haunted Cosmos and welcome to the mystery of missing 411. We're glad that you're here. Welcome to Haunted Cosmos, everybody. We're super glad that you're here. Yes, we are. Glad to be back. Man, one of my favorite topics. Yeah.

Because I love the outdoors. Exactly. And I know you love the outdoors. I do love the outdoors. Fun fact. Okay. Last week for my son's birthday, I took him camping down in southern Utah in the desert.

And I was listening to a YouTube video by Windigoon, naturally on missing 401 right before we left. That was not the wisest decision that I did. Dude, don't do that. You got to give yourself a couple days of like buffer time of not listening to you. A couple years ago, I went on a solo backpacking trip because my kids were just too, they were still at that age.

where they were a little bit too young for real backpack. Yeah. More like they were car camp ready, but not a couple, even 20 pounds on the back ready to go. So I went up in the high Uintas up to like Wall Lake, Crater Lake kind of area, I think. Is this that story? This is my favorite story. Okay, it's awesome. And I had been listening to all sorts of this stuff, like missing 411,

documentaries about it, that kind of thing. So I'm traveling down the path. And it's like a couple mile hike in. this beautiful lake surrounded by cliffs. And it was like a Monday. So no one was there. It was just me. And I'm, of course, I've got my little companion, my glocky glock.

Yep. Strapped my backpack strap. And I'm constantly drawing on stuff. Dude, when you, when you call it a glocky glock, every Navy SEAL watching, and I know that there's hundreds of y'all watching, is like, dang, that guy is a real one. I'm an operator. So I'm walking down the trail. It's sound design the heck out of this, by the way.

Okay. This is just as important as a real story. Thank you. I love, I love your. So I'm walking down the trail, actually up the trail at this point. And constantly I'm thinking like I'm about to die. I get to the thing. I set up my camp, have a great time, do some fishing, do some, you know.

I even jumped in the water a little bit, which is dumb when you're by yourself in glacial waters that are like 40 degrees. What time are you? It was like getting to the end of the season. Oh, yeah, you're fine. So like early, late summer, early fall. right in that transition. It's still like pretty warm in the sun. It gets up to about 75 during the day at that altitude.

But it feels hot because the sun is so close to you. Yeah. And then it gets down to like 40s at night, maybe a little lower. So I'm, I'm setting up camp. Beautiful spot. Like there's these ledges, stair steps up where you can camp looking out over this lake.

It's beautiful. And there's one spot where there's like a perfect cliff down, diving cliff. You can fish off. It's like deep right away. Beautiful spot. Set up camp. almost see, I saw very few people.

Maybe like two people the whole time. That's awesome. Well, I go to sleep, obviously terrified, like, that I'm going to die. Right. Naturally. I'm not going to wake up. Either a serial killer, a big foot, a missing 411, or you roll off the ledge, a ferry. Into the lake and immediately drown.

I have been known to sleepwalk quite a bit. So this is really stupid. So you picked a wise spot. Yeah, like I've slept, I've sleep, slept walked? Slept, walked. I've slept walked. Yes. Out the front door.

at one point as a child. Anyway. Oh, that's right. Your parents had to put all these locks like on the outside. I would pee in everything. Like there was a key on the inside of the house. I would pee in everything.

Peen the fridge. Pee in the garbage. Like in my sleep. Don't remember it. He still does it. Actually. I don't do it. But so I finally fall asleep,

like sleep fitfully on night. I wake up in the morning. And I'm kind of rustling around in my sleeping bag. I'm like, oh, cool. I made it through. And all of a sudden I start hearing like a, shoot it.

Yep. Sound design. Skittering. I hear some skittering. I got a cliff on one side, cliff on the other side, a path down into the woods on the other. And I'm like,

this is it. This is how I die. I'm thinking like, Lord, take care of my kids. I don't have enough life insurance. Or any at that point, maybe.

Okay. I had some. But like half a million dollars life insurance isn't going to go far with six. or it was like five kids at that point. Maybe four. What year was that? This was like five,

five years ago. Okay, it was shaping up to get rough, quick in terms of inflation. Did you do bad. Yeah. $500,000 is like hardly enough to buy like a minivan now.

Yeah. And all of a sudden, I'm not kidding you. I felt something clamp onto my head. Because I'm in a mummy bag. Yeah. So just the crown of my head is kind of sticking out.

And I was like, I, and my gun is like a foot from me. Yeah. So I'm like, leaping out. I wish it was on camera so bad. I'm ready to fight to the death.

I am not going to go gentle into that good night. Good for you. Okay. Like, it is, no, I'm not doing it. This, it felt like a clawed hand kind of thing on my head. Yeah.

It was a chipmunk. A chipmunk. And people feed them in these camping spots. Oh, yeah. So they're all, they come up. They're like, you got a peanut for me. Yeah. I'm like, if you get out, I'll shoot you.

Did you shoot it? No. Did you try? No. Did you fire? No. I didn't even take, I didn't even touch my gun because I was like, it's a chipmunk. And I jumped on my head. I don't know if it knew I was a person or what or who was so tame.

Back in the day, we used to put a peanut on a piece of fishing line and we'd try to reel them in. Yeah. Because they would like get it and then they'd fight you to it was really funny. But yeah, so that's my, that's my almost missing. I almost went missing 411. That's like that chip, I thought it was a hand of a big foot tearing my head off. That's like that even Steven's special. where they were like stranded on some island or something.

You remember that? And they all had to split a peanut three ways. Oh, yeah. And they started fighting over the stubby little tail. And I forgot about that. Oh, dude. I almost got Robert Osmond or Albert Osmond. Albert Osmond.

Dude, you almost got, Hey, you almost got Eloise-Lenzyed. Yeah, we'll get to it. We'll get to it. Anyway, guys, well, wait, I love this story. Do you have a good story? Yeah. Dude, let's hear it.

It's not as good as that. It's not as good as that. Don't hold back. Brian, I got bad news. The other day, I was using one of the big box soap products to wash myself, and I got this weird urge to go buy a Stanley cup and fill it with iced coffee. And it started to feel a little cold in the house. I just wanted to wrap myself up in like a heavy wool blanket.

And then also, I started Googling ticket prices to Taylor Swift concerts. Ben, what are you doing? Don't you know that these big box soap companies just jam all their soaps full of hormone-disrupting chemicals? They're probably turning you into a girl. Well, I know that now, but what am I supposed to do about it? Ben, you ignorant normie, all you've needed to do is go to indigo sundry soap.com and support a great Christian family business that's making all sorts of soaps that are completely free of hormone disrupting chemicals and other nasties. Okay, I am literally going to indigo sundry soap.com right now. Tell me what to buy. Ben, what I would recommend doing is clicking on bundles and then selecting the best one for you.

You could get the men six-pack. You could get my favorite, the clay bundle. Ooh, I like the pipe and jug bundle. That seems cool. Or a men six pack, because that'll make me feel like I have something that I actually don't. So true, King. And you know what else I heard? Because they're such good friends of the show, Indigo Sundry's soap company is offering 10% off your order. If you just use all caps, discount code, Haunted Cosmos, no spaces.

Wait, Brian, you're going way too fast. I didn't get all that. Is that information in the show description? Ben, you ignorant normie, it's always in the show description. Okay, so I'm going to go to Indigo Sundry. Soap.com, I'm going to pick the men's six-pack bundle, and I'm going to use code Haunted Cosmos at checkout, all caps, no spaces. And if I forgot all that, it's in the description of the show. Of course, Ben. And if you just do that, then you will stop wanting to do all of those girly things, and maybe you'll, I don't know, maybe want to buy a classic car to restore or something dignified. We are living in the beginning of a new reformation. Christian content is being produced at a rapid rate. Art, businesses, publications, ministries, and a thousand other media. are acting as agents to get us out of our current anti-Christian world.

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So I was, I went on a solo, it wasn't even really a backpacking trip. It was like a super short hike into this little camp spot in Pisgah National Forest, which is in Rivard, North Carolina. And if anyone's ever been there, you know that it's like rainforest level canopy. It is so thick. Didn't one of our bigfoot stories happen in Pisga? Yeah. In a previous episode. I mean, there's so many Bigfoot stories.

I think one of them did, but go ahead. It's a beautiful place. Yeah. But it's such a thick canopy. And it's just in Appalachia. And so, you know, it just fuels. Oh, yeah. Appalachia is old.

It's a dark place. And so it's full of fairy spirits that have fallen. Anyway. So the Reform pub right now is like so mad at you. I don't care. For saying that. Do you think I care about the reforms? No, I'm just pointing it out.

So anyway, park the truck, hike in, set up my tent, and it was, and it was all going really well. And then immediate and unscheduled thunderstorm. Oh, no. It was brutal. It was like sheets of rain there. Oh, yeah. It was brutal. And so I was like, great.

That's fun. Like, my tent is not doing so good. I, like, threw the rainfly on as it was raining. So it was already full of water. It was just great. Be prepared. Yeah, exactly. I had the rainfly.

But he had the rain. There was no rain in the forecast for days. No. But everyone, that's such a rookie mistake because Appalachia, it rains every day in the sun. Yeah, you just have to be here. It's like a rain forest. So anyway, as I've said already. Hey, look, we've admitted it.

So, okay. All that to say. The rain stopped after like 10 minutes. I, and I was like, all right, whatever, I'm just going to go for a little hike. It'll be fun. Come back. Get the fire going. We'll have a good night.

I start hiking. And I kid you not. This had never happened to me before. And I grew up going backpacking constantly in this area. Yeah. Was super comfortable with it. Knew, you know, knew what I was doing. I got this feeling like I was about to get got.

Like I was about to die. Like in the pity or stuff. Yeah, just this like I was turning around. I was acting like Joseph Stalin, dude. I was so paranoid. What a deep cut. Yeah, he was paranoid. And I was like turning around constantly looking.

I thought I was hearing voices. it was really genuinely weird. And so, dude, I turned around and ran back to the tent, packed up, and went and slept in a Walmart parking lot. But did you tell everybody like, yeah, great camp? No. I told everyone exactly what happened. I said, guys, that was messed up.

I don't know what, at what. Because it was like that didn't, I wasn't like that. I was always fine in the woods, but, dude, that. You get comfortable in an area and you know the sounds like. And then when you don't feel comfortable, you actually kind of should pay attention because maybe something's up. Well, it's like when the, when I first started backpacking, because we would camp all the, I'm an Eagle Scout.

And our troop would go every month. Just got to throw that. Dude, I'm an Eagle Scout. So we can't. But our troop, it was a, it was a military-based troop. So we were hardcore. We would go every month of two-night outing. Yeah.

And it was winter, spring, summer, fall. So we'd snow. I mean, in the high you win, it's in the, in the winter, pulling sleds, that kind of thing. Did you ever snowshoe? Yeah, we'd snow shoe in with sleds on, on, I was going to say we were the dogs. Like it was awesome. But my dad was sitting on.

I literally pulled my dad one time several miles just because he was like, wanted to see if I could do it. But you kind of get used to the first couple nights, a deer walks through the camp. Yeah. You hear a squirrels in the brush sounds like a moose when you're, but you get used to it. And then you're like, oh, I know what that is.

But sometimes it happened. I mean, it's a, I've had the same thing. Yeah. All of a sudden, you're just like, every sense in your body for no discernible reason says, I am about to die. Like, something is wrong. I'm about to be eaten.

Yeah. By something. Or serial killed. Yeah. Which is my biggest fear, by the way. It's the people, by the way, like the stories on the, what's the Pacific Rim Trail and the, what's the really long one? The, uh, the Pacific Crests.

Yeah. And then there's another one that's, um, really long. Well, there's like Great Divide. Appalachian Trail. I mean, Pacific Rim is a movie. There's a, there's the, there's the white, the white trail around the, Grand Canyon? No, there's this really, it's like a thousand mile hike. I mean, you can do. Some of them are that. But anyway, there's all these stories of people, like, especially, first of all,

ladies, why are you out doing multi-day backpacking trips alone? I got news for you. If you want to find yourself, I can already tell you what you need to do. Get married and have babies. Someone else is going to find you and eat you. Okay. But you see these, you hear these stories from people who are like, I was out in the woods and then all of a sudden these group of people. Yeah, like feral people, like came out with robes on or like, great, you know what I'm saying? Dude, so there was a story actually, the Valley of Headless Men.

Yeah. That is just the first of, Oh, there's tons. Many. Are we gonna get in more of them or? No, no, no, no. But there are tons more. You can sign up for Patreon.

I talk, I do a deep dive episode on it on our dusty tone. But like the last story is this guy, he was looking for his friend who was lost. And the last night of the search, he got woken up in the middle of the night by somebody who looked humanoid, but was not human, telling him, like, don't keep searching. And he said, like, look down the valley.

He gets up and turns around and looks down the valley. And coming up, or these, like, giant humanoids with long white robes. Get out of there, dude. They're Lemurians. Here's what it is. They're Lemurians. So anyway, I started blasting. Like, you guys now know my strategy.

That's it. When I'm in the woods, like, someone on the trail comes up and they're like, hi, nice to see you. full magazine. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't matter. I am the reason for missing 411 because I'm just mad dumping people in the wood. I'm totally kidding.

We're kidding. We don't, we don't advocate murder. We don't do that. But you do hear, it's the people. We got to start getting into this, but I think one of the big factors in these missing 411,

obviously it's fairies, but besides fairies. Besides fairies, though. Is people. Yeah. Dude, there are some flipping evil. Okay. Sin makes you so warm. and evil, like serial killers.

We got to do our... Or even like, dude, seriously, like generational sin that leads to these feral people in the, in Appalachia, which they exist. Like they, we know they exist. Like that family in Canada that would kill people and feed them to their pigs. Yeah. Or the totally happened.

Sonny, something turny. It was like a Scottish story. There's this guy, man, I wish I could remember his name. Whatever. He, uh, you know, he and his wife went into the woods. They had a bunch of kids. Their kids had a bunch of kids together. Okay. And they were cannibals.

And they would like, this was back in middle ages. They would like take travelers and just kill them and eat them. It was like hills have eyes in Scotland, for real. Dang, dude. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Guys, a couple of housekeeping things. First of all, welcome this episode. Yeah. Glad you're here. Obviously, we're excited about this topic because I don't love a, like a mysterious, a spooky camping story. I love camping. Let me give you a guarantee right now. Just because I know how it is. I can't handle these kind of stories. I turn them off.

We're not going to include any stories in missing 401 where kids die. No. Not at all. Because I know they're out there. I know they exist. I cannot handle true crime stories like that, missing 4 and 1. I have two men, like I have all these people that I love, these little people. We're also not going to do.

We're not going to do any stories of where it's like women being abused. No, absolutely not. We're not doing any of that. No. None of that. Obviously, some of our stories include people dying, like what's his name, Charles? But if they're adults. But if they're adults, it's totally different.

It is, though. People get eaten by bears sometimes. So just know that our stories will include kids, but don't let it worry you. We're going to just ruin all of them right now by telling you they all make it. But it's not even the fact that like, do they make it or not, it's still like, how did they get there? Just wait. Just buckle up. Buckle up.

Other housekeeping. Yeah. Patreon. Yeah. We got a lot of, we have so many good reasons. First of all, if you just like what we do and you want us to keep doing it, against all the haterade,

against all the mermaid denying haterade, there's so many good reasons to sign up for Patreon. Against all the dusty tome every week. Ben's doing a 40, 45 minute dusty tom expanding on some of these stories that don't make the episodes. We'll say 30 to 45. They're really good. And that's like almost just a,

about every week of the year, except a few holiday weeks. We're dropping those for patrons. Every tier of Patreon gets that. All patrons get it. The top two tiers of patron are Sasquatch photographers and cryptid hunters. I always get those mixed up. They get early ad-free access to our main shows. So, you know, at least a few days early. This season, I'll admit, I've been a little bit stretched. Usually a week. And then... Yeah, usually a week, sometimes a little less. Next season, we're even going to try to get it get it earlier. Yeah. All patrons get ad-free access to the main episodes.

That's right. Once the main episode drops, our lowest-tier patron gets access to it, and it's ad-free, so that's great. And the other thing is, we got a conference coming up, guys. That's the Building Christian Burroughs Conference, Ogden, Utah, June 6th through the 8th.

So this will be the last episode we released before the conference. At that conference, Ben and I are going to be doing a live episode of Haunted Cosmos with live music being played underneath. It's going to be so much. fun. It's going to be amazing. And here's the thing. Some of you guys, you should come, first of all. You can get tickets in the description, newchristendompress.com slash conference. But there's two other ways that you can get in on this. One of them is you can buy a live stream ticket,

which is same link, new christenedpress.com slash conference. When you go to the tickets, there's a live feed that will have of the main sessions, including that Patreon episode. I think it's 30 bucks. It sounds right to me. I think it's 30 bucks. But here's the, here's the great deal. All of our Patreon channels at New Christen & Press, Haunted Cosmos included, we're going to just give all of our patrons access to that live stream link for the whole thing. So not just like the Haunted Cosmos one.

So sign up for Patreon, support the show, and you'll get a live stream ticket. Like, you could sign up for the $6, the $10 tier. Yep, $6 a month tier. And you'll still get the live stream ticket and you can... And then stick around. Yeah, yeah, and then stick around. Because I think that you'll like it.

We really try to provide value. But for this episode, specifically, we're going to do a giveaway. Yes. For the first 20 people that sign up for any level of our Patreon on the day that this episode drops, we are going to send them a shirt. A shirt that I think is either, you'll think one of two things. It's the most cringe thing you've ever seen, which is where I tend to.

My first reaction. Or that's a great shirt and I want it. Either way, whether for the memes or for the legitimate wearing, you're going to want it. Can I just say one thing? Yes. Neither of us requested this shirt to be made. No, we did not. Nor did I know it was being made.

I knew it was being made, but I wasn't like, you know, voting for it. Nor ever would I. But let's show it to them. Let's make sure I get in frame. It might not be here. Back it up so the light can catch. There we go. I don't know if it is.

If you can't see it, we will put a clip up or a little like a really poorly done graphic. Imagine this. It's Brian and I's face looking. off into the stars. Yeah, like an 80s band cover. We look like Simon and Garfunkel, and it says hominid cosmos. Haunted Cosmos at the bottom.

If you like it, great. If you don't like it, again, do it for the memes. Yeah, guys. But first 20 patrons that sign up, the day this episode drops, you are going to get a free shirt. Yeah, and you'll be able to pick your own size and everything like that.

That's right. Get it shipped right to your door. Now, with that, let's get, do we have any more housekeeping? I don't think we do. Here's the thing. One, one thing that I will say is that yet again, we come upon a danger in the world with missing 411. Just like with Mothman, just like with Bigfoot, which could, there could be some overlap.

But yet again, in all of our extensive research, we have not found a single incident of someone being missing 411 while using Indigo sundry soap. Yeah, that's a really good point. It's an important thing to touch on Brian. So use the discount code in the link 10% off. And thank you guys. I think we might have mentioned this, but great Christian company that we love to support. They have been able to go full time. Yeah, this is now their big thing. And frankly, a lot of it is thanks to our listeners. So thank you guys. And we're going to have subscriptions open for them soon. So anyway. So yeah, whether it's feral people, Bigfoot.

evil fairies and caves, hypothermia, or natural predators. They can't smell you. Indigo sundry soap will protect you, guaranteed from all of them. If you're using Cambrian blue clay soap, they just can't smell you. It's so true. The beef tallow? They can't smell you. They smell the beef, and they think, I don't want to mess with a cow.

I'm not going to mess with a cow. Get the horns. Mess with the bull. You get the horns. You come for the king. You best not miss. Let's talk about some of these stories, though. Yes.

Just in this natural transition we're doing now. Let's just talk about some of the big theories. Yeah. So obviously, everyone wants to figure out some solution that answers all of these strange stories. You know, you have natural things like the things I just mentioned. Predators. Exposure. Hypothermia can explain a lot of the missing clothes.

Sure. People taking them off. Why would someone take their clothes off in the cold? Well, hypothermia makes you think that you're really hot. So you start shedding layers. Right before you die. Right. It's paradoxical undressing is what they call.

call it. So there's things like that, but then there's also the more preternatural idea like maybe Bigfoot is to blame for some of these. Maybe the feral people are to blame for some of these. And I put those in the preternatural category because they're just that creepy and gross. And then genuinely, okay, because of the fact that almost all of these cases happen in some sort of government land, natural parks, state parks, wildlife management areas. Yeah. And we know that all of those lands are over America's cave systems, the fairies. What's the connection between the caves and the fairies? Because the caves go to fairyland.

I see. Brett, you got to keep up. I see. The caves go to fairyland. Hollow earth. I see. You are supposed to be a hollow earth enjoyer. Well, let me just say.

So don't be Scooby-Donning. Let me just say. First of all. First of all, guys, it's confirmed. See our publish works. But, you know, but legitimately people do, it sounds crazy, but people have like this whole, you can go as far down the conspiracy trail as you want and as far towards the natural explanation. And the reality is that a good chunk of these cases are going to be something natural. I'm just going to say this.

Animal predation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exposure. The woods are a big place. Right. I'm going to say this, though. The last story in today's show, or one of the last ones, I'm going to be vindicated. Okay. Well, you have all these stories where some of the things that make it tough is that you have cases where you'll have like a group hiking and someone in the middle of the group who's maybe 50 yards from someone else just vanishes. Just turns away.

In a well-known hiking trail. And then nothing is discovered. And five years later, they find like a tooth. Yep. And 200 yards from where they disappeared, where they had searched for weeks with hundreds of volunteers and professional rescuers. And just it's stuff like that. makes you go, look, I get natural things happen. I get animal predation. But animals typically don't, even like a big coyote or a big wolf for a bear, it's pretty difficult for that to happen

silently in a well-known, and you not find evidence of it immediately when you start flooding the area with searchers or blood or, you know, a body. I'm not making the claim. I'm not disagreeing with you, actually. I think the vast majority of these things are somehow natural. That's all I'm saying. And I totally agree with that. Yeah. The ones that aren't, though, and I think there are some that aren't, it does seem like there's a kind of lure. Again, I'm going to use that word from the last episode, where there's like this infrasound thing or there's some kind of lure that like tempts people away from the trail. Yeah.

And they do it so silently and nonchalantly as if it's like, yes, of course I would go over here. Or of course I would go way up this mountain. You know. There's no chalant. It's completely nonchalant. There was one story about three climbers on Mount Rainier, which I didn't include in this show. And they were all three very experienced climbers.

They were climbing up the oldest winter route of Mount Rainier, well trafficked. Yeah. They had done it many times before. Okay. And group of three, the first two guys get up to the next belay position. And they're kind of locking in, resting, you know, waiting for their buddy Eric to finish his climb and they're trying to pull in his slack. Well, they keep seeing the rope just not move. And the more they pull in the slack, the more it comes in with no resistance at all.

They finally pull it all the way up to them. And it's just got the figure eight knot with nothing with nothing on it. Wait, it wasn't cut? No, it wasn't cut. And it wasn't untied? It was, well, the figure eight for climbing, you do a double figure eight. Yeah. Yeah. So it was a single figure eight with all the slack out the end. He'd untied it. So it was untied. They freak out. They're like, what the heck? They think something's wrong. Yeah.

And they're on an ice cliff. Like, it's not, you know, a gentle slope. Exactly. They go searching. And then they get the park rangers involved for a near national park. They end up all they find in an ice cave, like 200 yards to the side of where they were climbing. What? Some of his gear and they never find his body.

How do you even get there? That's the thing is I'm like, you have to solo traverse. And you'd have to let out a lot of. slack to do that. Well, if he just unties. Yeah, like, I mean, if he had been on belay, he would have had to let out a ton of rope. So he goes off belay. Yeah. And the thing is, doing that on its own when you're on like that steep of a slope angle. You never do that. Is really hard and scary. Yeah. And they heard, he didn't say anything that, you know, they didn't hear anything. And so then he has to do a solo traverse, untethered, like free solo

across to this ice cave that he built. It wasn't a natural ice cave. Oh, it was like chiseled out? Yeah, yeah. And he goes in, sets up some of his gear, leaves, and they never find him. Okay. And that's where I'm like, what? Yes, obviously the cause of death is probably natural.

It's probably hypothermia or exposure. But why did he leave? That's the thing. That makes absolutely no sense. It always gets me. I'm like, the cause of death can be natural all day. But why do they get separated from the group? Why do they go off trail?

And then why are they found in places that like make no sense? sense. Are we going to do the one where the guy, you know, they find his stuff and like some food, like right over looking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not going to give anything away. He has asked me three different times, are we going to do this story? All of them have been yes, and they're in sequential order of the next ones that we're doing. We're so locked in. We are locked in. Me and Ben, that when he has a thought, I think a thought and I think, wow, I have this thought. And then I just realized, I'm tapping into his thought. And he's tapping into my thought. It's the bandist Moody. Dude, you think, I think we think.

Dude. All right. Let's get into the next story. But anyway, should we just move on? Yeah, we should move into the next story. Take Zinawit because, guys, we could go all. I mean, sincerely, we could go all day. We could do missing four and low for six hours. Dude, maybe we should do a part two. We got to do a part two in another episode. Yeah, we'll see.

It might be the next one. We just keep going. It might be the next one. It might be next season. It might be next season. You let us know in the comments. Yeah, what do you want one? There's no comments on most podcast platforms. If you're somewhere where there's comments. Also, for the people that aren't watching on YouTube, sorry about the whole shirt thing. I just now realize that you have no idea what was going on.

Sorry about that. If you listen this long, forgive us. Why are they doing? Are they dumb? Podcasts don't have video. Listen. We are dumb. Ours does.

We are dumb, but we're also looking at a camera. So we're dumb, but we love you. We're also. We're idiots, but we're your idiot. So we can get more than one camera angle. That's right. That's right. Dude, so true.

All right. I'm going to go to the story about Keith Parkins. Let's hear it. With nothing to show, except for a local news, mineral hot springs in lovely riverside mountain meadows nestled into clefts of grassy knolls high in the western air. Oh, and a national force close by too. Ritter, Oregon is a place that probably doesn't belong on the minds of anyone who doesn't live there. But something happened long ago that made that not the case. And while the few who live there might wish it could have

been something good and fun and exciting, like a military hero in some old war that the nation discovered to have been reared and ridder, people rarely see their full wishes come true in this world. In 1952, the Parkins family was settling into their quiet and self-sustained life in and ridder. They tilled the fields, sowed the seed, reaped the grain, and shuffled the livestock day in and day out, prayerfully hoping at all times for good things to come with their labors. Alan and Edna, the father and mother of the three Parkins boys, sought to do good by their people, and so took care to make regular trips to visit family across town, in between the backbreaking tasks demanding their attention on their own property.

On one such visit to Edna's parents' cattle ranch, they had gone to celebrate Easter. The three boys, two older brothers, and then the baby of the family, Keith, decided to take a walk down to the ranch's barn to play around outside of the house, but also a bit out of the cold and patchy snow on the ground. They went and played, and that was that. After a while, Edna called the boys back in, and they made the short walk back up to the house for lunch, or two of them did. the two older brothers walked in and greeted their mother warmly. She turned around to see them and immediately noticed how Keith was not with them. Of course, she asked where the two-year-old was, and his brothers said that they had left without him

because he had trotted around to the other side of the barn to play by himself just before their mother had called. Unsurprised at the lack of concern these small boys had for their even smaller brother. She had them take her with them back to the barn so they could find Keith, and they could all have a heart to heart about looking out for one another. Only when they got to the barn, Keith was nowhere to be found. It had been only a few minutes, but the lad was totally gone. Though the pasture land surrounding them on all sides was cut short for winter

and was free of trees for hundreds of yards, no movement could be seen anywhere. Little Keith Parkins had vanished into thin air. Edna was distraught and charged in a mad rush back to her parents' house to ask for help looking for her baby. Neighbors were called in from all over Ritter. A line of men was formed, each man within speaking distance to the one adjacent him, and a rudimentary search was sent out from the barn as quick as could be done.

Two hundred people had come to help, and help they did. The search went without pause all through that night and well into morning of the next day. Eventually, to the great relief of Edna and Allen, someone found little human footprints in the late winter mud, about three miles away from the barn. The footprints were followed closely as long as they could be, but they kept leading to nowhere, and nothing else was found that could point searchers to where the boy had gone off to. The family's hopes were being crushed once again.

Finally, at 7 a.m., after about 15 unbroken hours of searching, a searcher found the little Keith lying face down a full 12 miles away from where he had set off. His hat and coat lie in the snow beside him. The searcher ran to him but was crue. crushed to see that the boy was not responding to his calls. He turned him over and found him stiff as aboard from the cold, but, against all odds, he was alive. He was rushed home and was warmed, fed, and watered with the utmost care and tender affection by his mother. Soon she realized that her feeble efforts weren't enough. Keith was flown to a hospital and eventually made a full

recovery from his ordeal. His face had suffered serious scratching, and his clothes were torn as if they had been ripped by barbed wire. Keith didn't remember much, but he did say he could recall where the scratches on his face came from. He said a little cat had done it to him, that he had scared the creature and suffered the minor backlash of a startled tabby in the woods. Unless we lose sight of just how bizarre this story is, let us recap quickly. Keith Parkins, a two-year-old boy who was barely learning to speak, traveled 12 miles overnight, over rough terrain, and in freezing temperatures in under 19 hours, in all of it, without half of the clothes that would be necessary in the conditions.

This case has lingered for so long in the minds of so many, that a movement was put together to try and figure out how it could have been accomplished by the boy. Les Stroud, the well-known outdoor expert from the hit TV show Survivor Man, sought to follow the same path as Keith in the same amount of time. His route was formed based on Keith's starting point, end point, and interspersed tracks that they had followed between the two. But after 24 hours of full focus and effort from the full-grown man, Stroud had not come anywhere close to reaching the finish line. Now, this story is similar to another one about a young boy, again only two years old, who was faced with a trying ordeal that he somehow overcame. The only difference is that this one happened in the year of our Lord, 2000.

10. Rowan Griffin was with his family at his grandmother's house in Richmond, New Hampshire. Her house was situated in a wide piece of yard that lay just across the street from an expansive state of wildlife management area. With cousins and other extended family present, there was no shortage of other kids for Rowan to play with. So while the parents were all inside talking, they didn't think any of their children were in danger outside without them. Seeing as how there were at least 10 other kids at various ages out with them, they were at least 10 other kids at various ages out with them. Surely if something were to go wrong, one of them would holler. At around 3 p.m. that day, Rowan was seen chasing a cat, feral or domesticated, remains unknown, around his grandma's yard

and narrowly into some of the surrounding woods. The kids thought nothing of it. Later, though, when it was discovered that Rowan was missing, and nobody had any idea where he could be, people wondered whether or not the toddler may have chased the cat across the street and into the dense woods of the Wildlife Management area nearby. By 4 p.m., a professional search had begun, led by dogs and police crews, the area around the home was swept clear for hours with nothing to show for it. Finally, in the dead of night at 1.40 a.m., one of the searchers stumbled upon a little tennis shoe that belonged to Rowan. With this find, dozens of other family and friends flooded in on ATVs and side-by-sides to scour the nighttime woods for the boy.

A small team of five of these friends decided to act as a sort of splinter group and explore an area about three miles away, one they knew well from hunting and one they feared Rowan might be in. It was a swampy area on the opposite edge of the wildlife management area from Grandma's house that was especially perilous.

Bogs and quicksand and flash floods were a serious risk there, and so the family wanted to get ahead of Rowan if he was following some dangerous path to that place. Once they got there, they were astonished to hear the faint cries of a child. They began yelling Rowan's name in the dark of the early morning. They yelled and yelled, and finally, they heard Rowan yelling back. He had heard them and still had the strength to direct them to his voice.

Eleven hours after the search had begun and three miles away from where he had vanished, Rowan was found clinging to a tree in the midmost of a pond that sat in this swampy marsh. When they waded through the water and reached him, they found him understandably rattled. He was shaking and asking for his mother and apparently in shock. But the strangest part was he was completely dry. He had been clinging to a tree in the middle of a pond, but the two-year-old was completely dry. When asked what had driven him so far from home in such odd circumstances, Rowan remarked that the cows scared me.

The cows. Could cows scare a boy into such a superhuman flight? Maybe, but not in this case. Reports say that there were no cows anywhere near the immediate area. Are you flipping kidding me? Dude, here's what people don't appreciate. Both of these stories. Okay, dude, people, all right, everyone's like.

Like, maybe it's not a cow. Maybe it was a bear. You know, here's the deal. Let's hear it. What two-year-old do you know that can swim across a pond? Well, okay. No, no, no, no, no. My two-year-old Cyril is capable of feeds of superhuman.

Cyril, if you listen to this. He's not two years old. He's not two years. At two, you could have done this. No. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. No, I know a lot of two-year-old.

That's the thing. I am a two-year-old enjoyer. Two-year-olds are hilarious people. I love two-year-olds. They're so funny. They're so weird. They constantly follow you around asking you questions. They're the best people on Earth,

which is why I refuse to include stories where anything bad happens to them. And yet there's a reason we don't send them to the Olympics on the swimming team. They're not that coordinated. And it's because they're not that good at swimming. They're good at falling over, skinning their knee. They're super good at all those things.

They're good at... Also, like, have you ever been on a hike... Have you ever been on a hike? Yeah. Through Woods, with no trail, by the way, with a two-year-old. Okay, it's... You're just carrying that.

frankly, three miles and 11 hours, pretty good clip for that kid. That's actually unbelievable. And it's swimming through a pond, swamps. So how's dang dry? Okay, first of all, dude, he was wearing indigo- Unironically, he was wearing, unironically, like, I'm just going to say it. Okay, I'm just going to say it. Let the reformed pub be mad.

Something carried him to that island. Yes. There's, I mean, there's almost no doubt because it's not enough time in that condition for his clothes to dry. No. And for him to completely dry. Yeah. And there's just not another way that he could have got there unless he was carried over the water.

Yes. So something had to carry him keeping him above the water. I don't know how deep the pond was. Like it could have just been like... But a two-year-old, they're small people. Yeah, it could have been knee-high on me. Two feet deep is enough for it to be chest high on a two-year-old. 100%.

Dude, come on. So my point is, this is insane. He was carried there by something. People don't appreciate how weird this story is. So the most normal explanation, and I'm just... just saying, like, if you want to get away from all the weird stuff, a fairy, whatever. Right. Is a person doing it to it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the thing is, why? Why? Like, the only thing I could possibly think about is some dumb 12-year-old was playing a prank and, like, helped him. But the two-year-olds aren't good at subterfuge. He would have told him. Like, he would have been like, so true.

No, it was Jimmy. He carried me here. He told me not to tell. That's why people don't use two-year-olds as spies in espionage. It's a good point. You don't send two-year-olds. You don't parachute them behind enemy lines and say, come back and tell us what you found.

It's not because they don't lie. It's because they're not good at it. They would be like, I was sent here to spy on you. Do you have any crackers? Do you have any trash trucks around? Can I think? I love trash trucks. So a big foot carry in there.

Anyway, there's another theme. And then we'll talk about the first one. Cats. Cats are evil. They will lure you into swamps and try to kill you. I, for one, cats are eating. I love cats.

There's another theme here. Uncommon, rare Benjamin Garrett dub. Or I mean, L. You're right. No, not rare dub. Common dub. Common dub. No takes you backseys.

Common dub. This is one of the best episodes for banter we've ever had. Hey, hey. People love it or hate it. Dude, one of the other themes of this, that, what's this kid's name? He didn't have a name. No, yeah, he did. Or did he?

Are you talking about the one with Les Stroud? No, no. The one that we just, Rowan Griffin. Rowan. The one that we just talked about. Grandma's house? Not just for your fairy tales, okay? Let me tell you something.

We're going to talk about some more stories, many of which include trips to grandma's house. Are grandmother's fairies? Time will tell. Joel Webbon voice. Time will tell. You'd have to zoom in and be in an elaborate chair for no reason, totally unprovoked.

Are grandmother's evil fairies in the world? That's exactly what he sounds like. How many demons, ghosts, or vampires do you have in your investment portfolio? Well, if you've invested in the S&P 500, it's probably more than you think, since it's full of companies who actively support causes that go against your faith. Stonecrop Wealth Advisors is here to help. Stonecrop offers faith-based portfolios to help you direct your hard-earned investment dollars away from those kinds of companies and towards companies that are having a positive impact on society.

They also offer comprehensive financial planning to help give you, peace of mind about your future that these investment dollars support. Get the demons out of your portfolio and instead invest in God's kingdom while you grow your wealth. Contact Stonecrop Wealth Advisors today by visiting Stonecropadvisors.com slash haunted cosmos. That's stonecropperadvisors.com slash haunted cosmos or just click the link in the description below. Investment advisory services offered through StoneCrop Wealth Advisors LLC, a registered investment advisor with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. A boy finding monsters in shadowy ruins,

an exile searching the edges of civilization, a child who could change the fate of nations, disgraced dwarish soldiers fighting behind enemy lines. I'm Aaron D. Schneider, military and heroic fantasy author. You can find the stories I've described to so much more at my website, aaron D. Schneider.com.

If you're looking for stories that are beauty wrapped in barbed wire, worship amidst war, and jagged characters carving their way to the truth, and check out my books at aaron d schneider.com. Brian, you know how sometimes you wake up in the morning? Uh, yeah, hopefully everybody does that. Well, sure, maybe. But do you ever feel tired when you wake up?

Well, yeah, Ben, I used to all the time, but then I started drinking this new drink. It's actually called coffee, and it helps you wake up. No way. There's a drink that does that. Man, I should give it a shot. You definitely need to try this. And when you do, you should buy your coffee.

from Squirrely Joe's Coffee. They're a thoroughly Christian company who sends you a great coffee at an affordable price, plus they even donate some of their proceeds to Operation Underground Railroad helping the effort to end child trafficking. Okay, wait, I actually have heard of Squirrely Joe's Coffee,

and they are really great. They make it super easy to order exactly what you want if you go to www. that squirleyjoos.com. That's www. squirley joes.com and click shop coffee. And first-time buyers can sign up to receive 20% off of their first order. Just go to www.

www.squarely joes.com or use the link in the description below. Squirrely Joe's Coffee. Share coffee. Serve humbly. Live faithfully. No. But it is weird that a lot of times it happens like away from home. And, you know, it's kind of like a pseudo-home or home adjacent, but it's not home. It's not home. Maybe that's important. Maybe it's all coincidence. All right. Keith Parkins, dude. So the best explanation that anyone can come up with is Cougar. That it was a cougar that carried Keith Parkins, like kind of, you know how cougars will carry their young by the nape of the neck?

Yeah, that's what scratched him. And it's very, and it's like they're gentle. Yeah. That for some reason a cougar snatched him up thinking it was a baby cougar. Yeah, like scratched him. Yeah, carried him intermittently because he, you had footsteps throughout the journey for 12 miles and then just like set him down and I was like, oh, this isn't my kid. Oops.

Whoops. What a dumb cougar. Also, it's 12 miles as the crow flies. Oh, yeah, 12 miles. That's important. That's a really important point. A straight line on a map, which could not have been what he did. Right.

Less Stroud. Like, the footprints gave some idea of the wandering, but Les Stroud was probably even idealizing it and making it a shorter path and he still couldn't do it. It was most likely closer to 15 or 16 miles. If you've never seen less drought to, there's two categories that are Survivor shows. There's Bear Grills. And if you're watching Bear, I love you.

He's a beast. My guy, you are so cool. Way cool. You're awesome. I've read your autobiography. I have. You're probably like a Christian, I think. Like, love your kids, faithful to your wife.

He's got to being a vegan. And now he's like super into eating meat and roll. Good job, dude. Like, great. Don't take this as criticism. But there's Bear Grills over. on the one side, which is like, dramatized for TV. Bear Grills goes out in the wilderness.

First thing he does, he said, Now, if you want to survive, you're going to have to free solo this giant peripet, 200 feet off the ground for absolutely no reason. They said the word rem rocked, at least twice in every episode. Now you're going to want to make sure you don't get rim rocked, because that would be really disappointing. I might have to drink my own pee. But then the camera pans over and there's like holiday express.

And then on the other side of the spectrum, there's Les Stroud. And Les Stroud is like, I'm going to carry, I'm Canadian for unprovoked. I'm pretty sure. He's Canadian. He's like, which is one of the worst nationalities to be. One of the worst countries that you could be apart. Like just see Justin Trudeau. Yeah.

So then he gets like a, dude, someone commented they were so mad that we said rude things about Black Lives, about BLM. BLM. But they're all. evil. I was like, I don't want you to watch if you think BLM is great. Like, you are not smart enough to watch this show. BOM is, you can probably barely speak English. Okay. Anyway,

so there's Lestrad. He's like carrying 60 pounds of camera equipment actually surviving totally by himself. He's having to like set up a shot, walk away from it, and then go back and get his camera. There's always that weird like Bush music. And then he plays its harmonica like a Chad King.

Les, if you see this show, come on. Thanks, man. We'll make an episode where you just come on and talk about the Bigfoot thing you did. I miss the golden age of Survivor shows. Man versus Wild, Bear Grills. Great show. A great show. Survivor Man, dude, like, great show.

The Discovery Channel Monday night lineup. The Survivor Man. Unbeatable. The Survivor Man versus Wild Survivor Man reruns. Dude, it was amazing. It was amazing. The Survivor Man Bigfoot series, too. Oh, dude, so good.

But Les Stroud, I said all of that. Just to say that Les Stroud is a serious outdoorsman. Oh, yeah. Like, he is the kind of guy that if he can't do that trail, it's not impossible. That's not even like an average adult trying to do it. It just means that there's no way that the child walked that. Right. Which, again, Rowan and Keith, right, Keith?

Keith Parkins, yeah. You bring these two together. You have two stories here. Some mysterious force, either an animal behaving in ways that animals, like a cougar picking him up, putting him down. Right. Picking him back. Oh,

maybe it is my God. Well, picking him up again. Maybe it's the post-millennial hope being played out. Yeah. That, you know, the kid will be stepping over the Adder's den. Yeah.

Playing by the cobra hole. But, you know, also maybe not. But maybe not. Maybe it's some other weirdness that's going on. That's still a ways down the road. It's most likely a very, very far.

Yeah. So you just look at these stories and you say something did take this child and transport this child elsewhere. And the through line between both. between both of them. Because the easiest natural explanation is actually a person doing it. Yes. But in both cases, a two-year-old would not conceal that.

And here's the other thing. I know two-year-olds. And here's, in the Keith Parkins case, Les Stroud couldn't do it. How is some podant kidnapper who probably has a beer gut and egg on his vest? I'm saying it would have had to be like in a vehicle. There's no way. But then the footprints.

It would have tracks in front. And there, you have, how can you have footprints, but no, like, tracks from a side-by-side or an ATV. Look, it just doesn't make sense. That's why I love this topic. God, I love it so much. I actually don't have a theory. No. Like, I don't even, we can, we can, oh, it was fairies, was whatnot. It was, but we just don't know. That's, that is so wild to me. The thing is, is the reason that I, semi-jokingly say fairies, and I, I don't really get that vibe from either of these, except for maybe the, the tree and the pond thing. Yeah, true. But is because I'm like, yeah, but nothing else can do it either. Like, yeah.

Give me anything. A man, sure, maybe some of these. But again, it just goes back to this. Why did they leave in the first place? Oh, a kid is chasing a cat. I'm sorry. What kid is chasing a cat that diligently at two years old? They don't do anything diligently at two years old.

And the other thing. That's a mischief. And the other thing. This kid's playing at a barn. He suddenly gets a desire to walk 12 miles away. Get out of here. By the way, I mean, Ritter, Oregon. is in the mountains and it's not very well developed, even today.

Like, this is difficult terrain that we're talking about. Okay. Okay, we got to keep going to. I'm thinking changelings. I'm thinking that these are two, like, the fairies thought, I'm going to do a changeling thing with this. But for some reason, it failed. You know, the thing I like about that explanation is that it answers everything.

And because you've used the scientific method. Exactly. Hey, Sherlock Holmes said this. So did Captain, not Captain, but Spock, whatever his prefix was. Dr. Spock, I don't know. Once you've eliminated everything else, whatever remains, no matter how unreasonable, is the truth. Is the truth. Guys, let's just keep going.

I think we need to jump in. When I say guys, I mean, like you guys listening, because we're going to just keep going with Aaron Hedges now. Yeah, I'm going to start talking about Aaron Hedges. It's going to be great. And then eventually Brian's going to continue talking about Aaron Hedges. The thing is, you'll know that it is. me when I start talking. You can tell that I clearly am not comfortable in this chair.

Yeah, it's not that, guys, the sacrifices we make for you. Being seated in a slightly uncomfortable chair. We're like Les Trout. Okay, keep going. If you delete this, I walk. Us and Les Trout. Les Trout walked so we could run. And then we ran so that our kids could fly.

Okay. Imagine Honod and Cosmos. Conn Cosmos, 20-F. Horned Cosmores. Honey Cosmos, 2050 uses going to be lit because it's going to be like Ari and Abner Or Ambrose may have more Riz.

Abner will be like, and then the trash truck took the man. He's never going to learn how to talk better. I'm like just kidding. Okay. It is said that a long time ago, while the first European pioneers

were pushing the boundaries of their settlement in America further west, a caravan of wagons inched across the rugged landscape of Montana. A small group of intrepid and desperate families had to that point enjoyed the supple green hills and evergreen forests with the characteristically wide hallways of old pines. They pictured themselves riding the eastern plains of this massive oasis until the very end of their days, feasting on the rich bounty of crop and cattle that was sure to be found there. Then one morning, as they continued their march west, the leader of the train spotted a Daracian island of mountains, rising steeply out of the ground far ahead of them. still fuzzy in the morning haze.

Like some impulse of sound in a quiet mausoleum, the mountains sent an uncomfortable shiver of doubt through the whole party. Their journey was not bound to remain so easy and inviting for much longer. They waded through Big Timber Creek, the eastern boundary of this short and dramatic mountain chains foothills, and decided to try the southern route, a route that hugged the mighty Yellowstone River to go around them. That day went quite well,

Accepting the odd feeling of premonition that each man felt but that none spoke of, nothing went wrong. The sun was out, the wind was low, and the mountains were at least a marvel for the children to look at. So innocent. Grown-ups know better than to think of mountains as nothing more than interesting features in the ground. But as night fell, disaster fell alongside it. A small raiding party of Indians fell upon the caravan with aggression that felt personal to the pioneers. They pitied none and showed no mercy. From the mountains had come a storm of depravity that killed every man, woman, and child

with barbaric shouts that filled the clear night sky with a cancerous pollution. That's right, they killed them all. All save one. One of the women was able to break away from the circled wagons and flee in a mad frenzy into the very mountains that had dispensed her family's doom. She had just watched her husband and children die at the hands of an enemy she did not know existed. The moon lit her up in a crazed radiance, and drove her deep into the veins of the black cliffs and daunting peaks.

There she swore to haunt the tribe that had taken everything from her until the day she died. Thus, the Isle of Mountains sitting like a faraway sidecar from the Rockies, received its name. A moniker it proudly wears still today, the Crazy Woman Mountains, or, more commonly, the crazies. In September of 2014, Aaron Hedges, a local resident of Billings, Montana, went once more into the jagged canyons of the crazies with two of his hunting buddies. They were looking forward to this trip, make no mistake, but it wasn't really a novelty for them. As I said, they were locals. They did trips like this all the time. This was just another amazing weekend with friends in a landscape that, though treacherous and intimidating, was also extremely rewarding for them and as much as it could be,

comforting too. The trio trotted into the familiar canyon on their horses, who were also very used to being in this exact spot and on this exact route, and started passing here and there on switchbacks that took them up out of the canyon and over one of the saddles on the crazies. They then followed more switchbacks, backed down the other side, and breathed the sigh of excited serendipity

at once more being in this otherworldly bowl of turquoise lakes and lively forests, surrounded on all sides by high walls of granite. They knew the smells and sounds and sights that greeted them well. From the vantage point of the interpeak saddle, Aaron could even see some of the places where he had placed gear caches throughout the hidden valley.

A rock face here, a pond there. He had set up stashes all around these mountains and had filled them with gear just in case anything ever did go wrong. Fortunately, these caches would come in handy on this trip. He had secretly always wanted to actually need to use one. For during their second day hiking through the Hunter's Paradise, the pack mule the team was using got spooker, by something and kicked, sending Aaron's sleeping bag rolling down the mountainside and into a deep

cool whar that he wouldn't be able to climb into. So once the camp had been set up for that night and everyone was settling in, Aaron grabbed his GPS, a walkie-talkie, his gun and a bow, and started the short hike up their trails with nearest cash that he knew would contain an extra sleeping bag. It was only a few miles away, and despite his friends already knowing where it was, he linked their GPS with his so they could easily see where he was should he fail to return in a couple of hours. Everything should have gone just fine. But as you may expect by now, Aaron was never seen again. Thinking Aaron may have decided to spend the night at the cash instead of hiking back in the cold and dark, his friends didn't worry about his absence. Instead, they continued on

their routine for another two days. Remember, they knew Aaron. They knew his competency, and they knew his comfort level. His spending a couple nights alone in the crazies just because he wanted to was not unprecedented at all. But on the third day after he had left, they finally decided to consult the GPS that had been linked with Arons to check his location. They found to their horror that he was pinging miles away from where they expected him to be. Apparently he had left the cash far behind and had somehow crossed leagues of impossible terrain all alone and with hardly any gear. A bit frightened, they packed up camp and left the wilderness to go and alert Aaron's wife. who in turn alerted the authorities.

The search began immediately. Helicopters with thermal and infrared cameras were deployed over the area where the men had been, where the GPS had shown Aaron to be and everywhere in between, with wide boundaries on either side. Dog teams hiked through the rocks and deadfall for hours, leaving the trails and then joining them again to no avail.

Dozens of rangers and SAR professionals split into massive teams of human chains in order to walk through the area with a sharp eye peeled to the ground for any sign of the lost hunter. On the second day of the search, a small team stumbled upon a makeshift campfire. The strange thing about this recently used in rudimentary camp was that it was on the way to the day's search area. In other words, the camp was found in a spot that had already been searched the day before, so it was sincerely new having only been made the previous night. There, in addition to the fire, they found pieces of a backpack, an empty water bladder

that would have fit into set backpack, and a pair of hiking boots set up neatly side by side next to the ring of rocks so recently painted with smoke and charcoal. The boots belonged to Aaron. And that was all that would be found of Aaron for the next nine months. In June the next year, a hiker stumbled upon another backpack near the edge of the crazies. it was found a cell phone, a hunting vest, some clothes, a hunting license, and a bunch of granola bar wrappers. The phone and license confirmed the pack to be errands, but where was he? A short distance from the pack perched on a rock that lay at the top of a hill overlooking a grassy

field, the same hiker found a thermos and an opened energy drink can. The thermos, it was later confirmed, was errands. The strange thing is, this hill that overlooked the green field overlooked something else too, a main road, one of the few in the area. The road was about two miles from the rock on which the thermos and can were set. And the field itself wasn't some wild grass and flower mountain meadow, it was the field of a rancher whose ranch house sat just off the hill even closer to Aaron's position than the road, and yet still no Aaron. What would drive a man to see salvation and turn the other way after nine months alone in such a harsh environment? Well, perhaps nothing drove him to turn around.

For another year later, in August of 2016, a skeleton was found half buried, about a half mile down the hill in the direction of the house and road. It was, of course, Aaron. He was just a few hundred feet away from the ranch house, but that was still too far. Given just a skeleton, with most of the flesh, muscles, and organs decomposed, no cause of death could be determined. His bones, at least, were fine. Here's the thing.

Clearly, this man had suffered hypothermia. He took his boots off at the fire and then left him. Yeah. You know, something was driving him crazy. Hypothermia makes the most sense. And I don't know if this one is really like that mysterious. It's just weird. But it is weird.

And it's super eerie that he was about a hundred feet away from being saved. So weird. And he just collapsed and died. Yeah. But he had taken the time. Like, okay, he. had eaten. He had granola bar wrappers. And he had a thermos with like something warm in it and an energy drink that he had just

been consuming on the rock. So weird. So he was nourished enough like he'd been sitting up there apparently taking his time just and then just abandon his stuff, walked down the hill and died. It's just bizarre. Like that's that is one I remember every time I've heard that story I've thought, okay, I think I know like what happened kind of. Yeah. But none of the why makes sense. The other thing, too, is the friends found him and his GPS, which maybe he didn't have anymore. Yeah. But it had only been two days. His GPS was pinging really far away, like really far on the other side of the range.

They were like, how did he get over there so fast, A, and why? Yeah. Okay, so a search immediately starts. The next morning is when they find that campfire close to where his friends had been. Yeah. So how is his GPS pinging over there the day before? after only two days of being gone, and then how was he apparently back right next to where the searchers had been,

making a campfire and warming up his feet, and then just leaving. It's just like the... The chronology, the geography... It doesn't make any sense. It's not... Like, there is a reason why this is a very famous missing four in one case. And it's because none of it makes any sense at all.

Right. So even if you say, which, you know, is probably what happened, like, okay, he left his GPS at the cache and some animal came along and took it and ran with it and that's why it was so far away. Okay, but why did he leave the cash? That still doesn't explain why he left. He had everything he needed and he was a very experienced.

And he knew where other caches were. He could have just gone to others and been fine. Nobody that goes to this length of knowing an area and cashing gear and things like that with that much experience makes the decisions that this person made. Right. Under normal, like,

it's almost as if all of a sudden he lost his mind. Dude, the crazies. And here's the thing. I want to apologize to our listeners. After, at the beginning, I said, very earnestly, like, we're not going to have any stories

where anything happens to the kids, and then all of a sudden, Ben's reading in, like, then the Indians killed all of the kids. I was like waiting for them, I was waiting for them to fight off the Indians, my ancestors. I'm sorry.

And all of a sudden, no, everybody dies. But it wasn't a missing 4-1-1 thing. It was just... Yeah, that really makes the kids feel better. It's the Indian flint knives. I couldn't just lie and said, all of the men and women. That would sound weird.

I would have just said, if I were writing and knowing in the future that I was going to promise that, I would said everyone died. Yeah, but we still would have known. But you know what? We would have. I like it.

Here's the other thing. I don't like this. that they do. Also, Daracian? Hey, what does that mean? All you engineer or math majors out there? Yeah, they do. The direct delta function.

Every once in a while, I find a word in something Ben has written, and I go, surely this is an obscure Tolkien reference, like the Chrysogram peaks, but that's great. I'm there for that. Sounds good. But Daracian, it's like, then the hypotenuse trail. Now, dude, there's another one in here. Hey, Pythagorean. Hey, hillside.

Everyone opened their ears. Also, cool war. Cool War is a word. We've used that word twice now in this episode. People that climb, put it in... Hey, people that do calculus and people that climb, put it in the comments respectively. You know what the direct delta function is. Just because some small subset of the human population might potentially know a word.

If every writer thought like that, we wouldn't have good writings. Look, I'm not saying that I'm a great writer. But I'm saying if Milton was thinking, oh, I want some middle schooler to be able to easily read Paradise Lost in 50 years, Milton wasn't inventing neologisms based upon advanced calculus. Shakespeare was inventing words all the time. But not based on advanced calculus. But based on something he did? They were words that context clues could help you understand.

This one can help you understand it. Not that you need highly specific technical experience to understand. Okay, listen. This is all essential to the episode. Here's the deal. I'm right. We all agree. Okay, Ben's right. We all agree.

Let's take a vote. First of all, so this is crazy. This is another one where I'm like, I don't know what. I kind of think I know what happened. It's one of those where I'm totally comfortable saying, clearly his cause of death was totally natural. Yeah. But why did he do the things he did?

That's what makes literally no sense at all. Even if he got hurt by an animal or something, it still doesn't make sense. Yeah, I don't understand this one. And it's just, it's a mystifying. Missing for one more. I think, let me take a serious. There's another one here that.

I think this is a crazy story. Alois, Lindsay. And this is another one that's going to take us back to Appalachia. Yeah, and going crazy. Going crazy. Here we go. The Appalachian foothills are peppered with trails that fall all around the more gently sloping mountains of the East Coast. This network of trails like spider webs attract masses of people from all over the southeast and from all walks of life every single year.

Due to the nature of the climate in the southeast, they tend to be usable year-round. And so, though the traffic grows more thin in the winter, it is rare that you go on. any length of trip here without running into someone else. Yet the forest of Appalachia feels closed in, isolated, and lonely to the utmost, ancient. Sure, the nature of the terrain lends itself to these feelings, with an almost rainforest-level canopy of trees in the summer that gives the whole trail a sense of dark doom to the hypnotizing mirror house of bare and gray forest in the cold season. The trepidation that thousands of people experience in these woods each year is no surprise.

But it's also more than just the natural terrain. If you've spent any substantial time deep in the Appalachian wilderness, you know what we mean. One feels some long dormant scents flare up there. It is akin to the unstoppable and fearful urge to turn around a check who is following you when walking alone on a dark sidewalk in a rough part of town. Something just doesn't feel right. Locals know this feeling all too well and chalk it up to the old forest being home to some of the darkest shades of evil. the world has ever seen, the kind that lead people into obscene deeds of malice and vile will.

Nonetheless, people still go there all the time. In fact, they'd love to, and Ben would know he was raised in those woods. Why is that, I wonder? In 1989, a 22-year-old college graduate named Eloise Lindsay decided to take a solo trip into the foothills trail system of Table Rock State Park in South Carolina. She wanted space and quiet and time to clear her head and figure out what ought to be next for her in life. In her sense of independence, she failed to consider the role that dark providence might play in those dark woods. She began her trek well enough. This wasn't the first time she'd done this after all, and was soon carrying a lot of ground at a good clip. The monotony of the steps gave her space to think about life and think she did.

In fact, she thought so hard and focused so keenly on the things that she had left behind in the city. city that she failed to notice herself drifting further and further off the main trail. She only realized her mistake when it was too late. Eloise Lindsay was hopelessly lost in some of the strangest land in the world. As panic welled up in her gut, her heart began to race at a sprint. She spun around and round and looked, almost hyperventilating. She looked for some way back where she had come. In a rush of dread that overwhelmed her, the trees seemed to spin around in the opposite direction from her turning,

an evil carousel looking after her decay and degradation. It only took a few minutes for her to start running wildly through the woods, yelling for help and praying for some miraculous salvation for her trouble. No help came. Eventually, her adrenaline started to wear down. She grew tired of running and leaned against a tree for support while she caught her breath again. It was then that her plight went from worrisome to downright horrifying. She heard steps and other odd movement in the copse of trees close behind.

It was not the steps of an animal. She could tell it was bipedal, walking boldly like the steps of a man. Only when she jolted over to look in the direction of the sound, the steps abruptly stopped. Why would someone do this? Could they not hear her screaming for help just before? She kept staring into the dark pocket of cover and thought she could hear the faint hiss of a whisper. Another light step here, and a shuffle of the leaves there sent her reeling with fear. Was something stalking her?

What sort of person or people because of the whispering would be out so far in a place like this? She had heard of the Appalachian feral men before, but had never considered them to be real until that moment. She dove into the brush close by and prayed that they would pass her by. According to her, they did not. She heard the steps get closer as time went by. She heard the whispers taunt her like ghosts in some scared child's periphery. She began to run again, and she ran, and she ran. She ran for two weeks, resting in whatever decent hiding place she could find.

In that time, she saw the rescue helicopters above, diligently searching just for her, but she dared not try to build a signal fire or do anything loud to get their attention, lest her attackers find her scent again. She heard dogs howling in the evening, the dogs of the search parties. But they were, to her, the hounds of hell, hot on her heels for the feral men's gain. She kept running. Finally, two weeks to the day, she stumbled on to the day. to a road and was soon rescued by a passerby. She swore to authorities that she had been followed by

several threatening feral men for those weeks, but they could find no evidence to support her claim. They closed the case, saw Eloise nurse back to health, and moved on to the next gruesome job that met them in the dark and Gorgothian mountains of terror that is Appalachia. Little can be found about what happened to Lindsay after her rescue, but so far as we can see, she never changed her story. It's Gorgorothian, but Gorgorothian, whatever. I know you're talking about Gorgoroth. Dude, yeah.

The mountains of terror. It's just that the thing is, like, you're this deep in an episode. It's just rich. Sometimes you missed. That was a good reference. I'll give you that one. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, all right. Like the Daraquean is even better, though. Now, here's the thing. The, uh, this is another one of those where, okay, I can understand the freak out. Mm-hmm. Because, okay. But actually, what I can't understand is getting lost. People who have been in Appalachia know that the trail is not something that you just like stumble off of.

It's really thick. Because it's thick. Yeah. It's not like open pine forest. It's not like in the West, it's much easier to get off the trip. It's very thick. It's very jungly. There's a lot of underbrush and thickets.

It's hard to get through. Right. And so even that, I'm like, you must have been really focused on something else. but then to immediately decide that the solution was to turn tail and run in the opposite direction. Yeah. That is crazy to me. I believe her. I believe that she thought, whether it was real or not, I believe she thought that she was being chased.

And the thing is, we do know that the feral people exist. They've been found in Appalachia before. Yeah, Ben, Ben actually was rescued. I used to be one from a community of feral people. It's not true. My parents are wonderful people. Actually, they're very wonderful. That's not true.

But they were rescued. No, this is another one. It's just, so you hear this with kids hiding researchers and rescuers all the time. It's one of the things actually I remember in Cub Scouts, them telling us, like, you know, you brought to go in the woods. Hey, if you get lost, you might feel scared if you hear someone searching. Don't hide to make sure you yell loud. Because it's an instant kids have.

But adults, they don't do it without a reason. And she, the thing is, like, she saw the helicopter. she knew that the helicopters were searchers looking for her. The reason she didn't do anything is because she was scared that it would tell the feral people where she was. But then she heard the dogs. And the thing is, if you're out there and you saw all the helicopters, it would really take a lot of genuine fear to think that the dogs weren't search dogs, but were instead

the feral people's search dogs. Be so terrifying. Which even that, like, how would they, why would they even have those? So anyway, just another one of those really strange cases where, you know, It's almost like there's something in the woods that makes people crazy. That makes people crazy. Like lose their minds. Well, that's even like the story that I told from my own camping trip to North Carolina,

like that's what it felt like. When I left, I felt fine. And I actually thought, why did I leave? Yeah, that was not odd. Why don't I just go back? That was dumb. But I remember it how it felt. And I was like, no, that felt off.

Like, it was wrong. There's a really early astonishing legends episode where they interview this retired doctor who goes up hiking by himself all the time and camping. And he tells this story of hiking up off the highway in this canyon or whatever, he goes up the mountain. He goes into this valley. And it's just weird. Like he can't explain it, but everything goes wrong. He can't get a fire lit with like all the right supplies. He can't get to the creek to get water. There's like all of a sudden he just has this overwhelming feeling as the sun goes down. I'm not supposed to be here. and he starts like stumbling,

he drops his flat, it's like a movie, he drops his flashlight and it breaks. So he's stumbling down the mountain and he's like feeling these whispers and, you know, like something's right behind me and driving me out down this trail. And then he gets to his truck

and he like drives down the road a mile because he has to sleep somewhere and it's like the feeling's gone. He's totally fine. It's like that area of paralyization that, was it John Kiel in the Mothman thing? Yeah. The zone of fear.

Where he like, if he took one step forward, it was horrible dread. Yeah. One step back, he felt totally fine. This is akin to another story from the Valley of Headless Men, actually. A much, much more recent story where this team went up. They weren't prospecting for gold or anything. They were just travelers going through because it's a national park. Yeah.

But a woman got separated from the group and they searched for her for a while, quickly realized they weren't going to find her. And so they went back to town and hired actually one of the, the Denny ancestors, uh, trackers. Like the Denny tribesmen still do a lot of animal tracking. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they hired one of the Denny trackers to come out and try to help them find her. Yeah. Uh, for some reason instead of, oh, they didn't ask the Mounties, the Royal Canadian

Mounted Police because they're horrible at finding people in the woods and everyone knows this. Genuinely, that's like the reason why no one asked the-common Canadian L. Yeah. So they asked this Denny Tribesman to help him. He comes out and he's doing his thing. He's been out there for multiple days. And one night, he wakes up to, like, wild shrieking,

which, by the way, I'm already done. Wild shrieking in the night. Give me out of there. He gets out of his tent, and not to be crude or anything, but he looks across the Nahani River and sees a woman crawling on all fours, like, Ghalam, up this really steep rock face, totally, like, she has no clothes. Yeah.

And it's freezing cold. And she's, like, wailing while she's crawling while she's crawling. up the rock face. And he was like, a founder, but I am not, not going near that. So he, he like leaves. Did they get, did they rescue her? No. Yeah. But she was, I mean, she clearly had, like, lost her mind. It is, it is strange. Because a lot of, it, one of the only things that explains some of these events is, is the person who's lost. Losing their mind. Yeah. Like, full psychosis for, for almost no reason. And it really does make you want to, wonder if there's, that's why, again, like, the, you know, we have fun with the fairies thing.

But let's just say for a minute, you know, maybe there is some kind of spiritual presence in some woods, whether you want to call them fairies or something else, I really don't care. Demons, yeah. Yeah, demons. Well, demons. They would be demons. In the story of the man who is chained and he keeps breaking the chain, like what Jesus delivers him, it says the result of his deliverance was that he was clothed and in his right

mind. Yeah. He wasn't in his right mind during the, right. So again, we don't, we don't know, but it's, it just goes back to this idea of like, are there geographical areas where demonic activity is, they're haunted, is higher by demons. Like, it's not just a haunted house, but it's a haunted region, a haunted park or something. Or there's unclean spirits that are driving people insane. Because sometimes that really is just what it seems like. It's really strange, yeah. You know, it's, and they, and they die of natural causes, but that's only really the, the direct form of death. There's an indirect... And it's them doing stupid things that make no sense.

They make no sense. I can see somebody on like the actually guy. He's like, actually. The Honey Cosmos guys actually believe that demons are driving people crazy. They've never heard of a dying of exposure. And I'm like, no, no, no. They are dying of exposure. Some of these stories are genuinely weird. Yeah. And there's

we're not saying we know for sure because we obviously don't. But it's like there's just these elements that make you think something made this person completely insane. Right. There's something else there. It's not just the wind sounded weird howling through that. Like that doesn't drive people insane. It makes them feel weird maybe for a minute. But that's like you'd have to be microwave brain to think that that could be the cause of someone living for days in the Nhani Valley,

losing all their clothes, crawling on all fours like some sort of orc up a mountain and wailing the whole time. The wind just doesn't make you do that. I think with that. Yeah, Ben, take us into the the first closing story here. Yeah. Thank you guys for joining us for this episode. We look forward to seeing you in the next one. Let us know what you think. Yeah.

What do you think is causing this? What's your theory? Send us an email. Go on the haunted cosmos.com. Be sure to support me in the comments by telling Brian how wrong he is about calling mountains to Iraqian. And we'll see you guys next time. Look, don't fall into a coulouwer.

Amen. Amen. We'll see you guys next time. According to David Politis, something happened at a campsite nestled beneath Mount Shasta in 2010 that genuinely defies all explanation or rationale. I say, according to him, because he insisted that the victim's family asked for their names and details to remain anonymous throughout the entire interview and publishing process. So let me preface this by saying,

you be the judge. Could Politis be making this up, or could it be a real story? In 1899, a man named Frederick Spencer Oliver published a book called A Dweller on Two two planets. The book proposes an idea that had already grown somewhat popular among the alternate history enthusiasts of his day. The idea was that long ago, a continent of advanced people called Lemur and the dwellers, Lemurians, suddenly vanished from the earth after being eaten, much like its Atlantean cousin by the ever-hungry ocean. But somehow, some of these advanced and alien hybrid Lemurians escaped the ruin and settled in the caves and cold crags of Mount Shaston. According to him, the lost colony of demigods

dwelt in an intricate network of tunnels throughout the belly of the mountain, with a central underground capital city that bound them all together as kin. But come on, that's a little crazy, right? A lost civilization of advanced weirdos dwelling in the depths of one of our country's most popular mountains? Sounds like nonsense.

Again, you be the judge. Now, back in 2010, a family of four settled in for their first, first night camping on the mountain. The parents, fiddling around with the tent and food, had left their daughter by the fire to watch over their three-and-a-half-year-old toddler son. According to the girl, she looked away from her brother and the fire for just one single moment to get you a glimpse of something, we don't know what. And when she turned back, she was shocked to see her brother gone without a trace. There had not even been a sound. She ran over and

alerted her parents of what had happened, and it being night and them not being first, familiar with the area and the boy being three, mom immediately alerted park rangers while dad went ahead and started to look for his son. Rangers came and brought dogs with them. Dozens of men began their search for the poor toddler. After about six hours of searching at 12.30 a.m. in the morning, a dog was sniffing past a bush that sat next to a trail about three other searchers had already cleared when he began to indicate. Sure enough, the little boy was sitting behind the bush, hiding like his life depended on it from nothing. The family rejoiced at the close call being avoided, called the trip short, and went back home

at first light the next morning after a fretful night of sleep. Fast forward to a few months later, and this boy was playing at his grandma's house while his parents were away for something. The boy called his grandma Cappy, and while he absent-mindedly played with a train set, looked up at her and said, I like you more than the other Cappy. Grandmont asked him what he meant by this. Of course, she thought it was just the ramblings of a boy going on four years old that meant nothing, but she was wrong. He related in his nearly four-year-old way how he had been taken by something that looked like Cappy when he was sitting by the fire on Mount Shasta with his sister.

He said that this almost robotic Cappy had carried him far up the slopes and into a cave, where other immobile robot-type things were stuffed between bags and and guns and massive spiderwebs. The other capi told the boy first of all that he had nothing to fear, but also that he had come from the stars and had been placed in his mother's tummy, and that it, this other capi, needed to run some tests on him to see how he was doing. Once this was done, the uncanny capi, according to the boy, it carried him back down the mountain and set him behind a bush where he was to wait until he was found. Of course, this is all very creepy.

Or it would be if it wasn't coming from a four-year-old. He clearly had come up with this fantastic tale about his ordeal since he didn't really know how else to make sense of what had happened to him, right? Well, that is what his grandma thought too, but not for long. She remembered something that had happened to her recently, something that gave all of this a terrifying feel. She sensed some darkness hanging over them that they could not see. months before her grandson's own ordeal on the mountain,

she herself had been camping with a friend on Shasta. As the two sat at the fire, they started to notice what looked like red eyes peering at them from the tree line. They would shine their light in the direction of the eyes, thinking them some sort of woodland animal, but fearing they might belong to a larger predator. But every time they shone the light, the eyes would vanish into the brush.

Eventually, inexplicably, an overwhelming fatigue fell upon both friends. They lost interest in the eyes and decided to turn in for the night randomly, opting to let the fire die down on its own instead of dousing it. She didn't remember anything else from that night. What she did remember was waking up the next morning, not in her tent, but face down on the dirt floor of the campground right next to the fire. Her friend lay in the same position beside her. They were both groggy and foggy-headed and struggled to move once they had woken up.

Through the confusion and weighty fatigue, the grandma had felt two puncture marks while she rubbed the back of her neck from soreness. They seemed like the remains of a big spider bite. Her friend had the same marks as well. To that point, she had figured her and her friend to be the victim of just that, some semi-poisonous spider that had just so happened to bite them in the exact same spot at the exact same time. But then her grandson started talking about this alien doppelganger of hers, taking him into its cave on the mountain,

the same mountain where her strangeness had occurred, and telling him weird things about his origins and his mother and the stars above and what they housed. After that, she wasn't so sure it had just been a spider anymore. We'll conclude tonight's show with one final story, a quick one. It's the story of Casey Hathaway. In 2019, a three-year-old boy named Casey Hathaway went missing from his, you guessed it,

grandmother's yard in rural North Carolina. A search was commenced immediately, but despite immense quantities of searchers and the best technology the state could muster, to help the family, came up completely empty for two full days. Two days for a three-year-old might as well be two weeks for a normal man. The weather was cold. The land was rough and wildlife prowled the area all over, promising to offer an ever-increasing threat level to the child with each passing hour. The family prepared themselves for the worst. But miraculously, two days after he had gone missing, Casey Hathaway was found alive. In fact, he was more than just alive. He looked well. He was taken to be treated at the local hospital, but by all accounts, the boy had

maintained his textbook good health during his sojourn in the woods. Within minutes of being found, he was talking and laughing with everyone just like his usual self. He didn't seem worried at all. And then this is where it gets strange. See, given two days, one might expect. some kind of distance to have been covered by the boy, but one would be wrong. Casey was found, just barely a mile away from his grandma's house. He had clothes, ill-fit for the cold and wet weather, but they seemed to be in fairly good shape when he was found. And how had they not found him before then?

They had searched that close to the house countless times over those two days. How could they not see him? It was so close they almost had to cross that spot every time they began a new search anyways. Well, when asked how he had managed to stay in such good condition for the time he was away, young Casey told his family that God had sent him a bear to keep him company. The bear had been his friend. It had fed him and kept him dry. It had kept him company while he was away from the family. And the bear had even led him back closer to the home until he was finally found.

Three-year-olds taken by robotic grandmothers to experiment on them in a cave. Friendly bears deep in the woods feeding and caring for a child before, being returned. Sure, it could be nothing, but it could also be something. It leaves us asking the same question we began with. What else is out there that we don't know? What thing is hiding? Slipping in the shadows of America's wildernesses. And most importantly, should we be afraid? Want more hunted cosmos? Then make your way over to Patreon, where you can get early access to our content as well as exclusive content in regular dusty tomes and monthly. live streams with Brian and myself.

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