The Why Files: Operation Podcast - 636: Vanished: Three Disappearances Nobody Can Explain

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

Gather round for three missing persons cases that investigators, search teams, and forensic experts have never been able to explain.A medical student disappeared from a packed bar in Columbus, Ohio ��� a building covered in cameras, with one way in and one way out. Police confirmed he never left. The footage proves he entered.A family of three vanished from the Oklahoma mountains, leaving behind their dog, their cash, and a piece of security footage that still disturbs everyone who watches it.A nineteen-year-old called his father from the side of a dark road in Minnesota. They stayed on the phone for forty-seven minutes. Then one word — and the line went dead.No bodies recovered in two cases. No suspects charged in any of them. Three families left with open case files and no explanation that holds together.

Gather around. This happened in Columbus, Ohio, on April 1st, 2006. Brian Schaefer walked into a bar at 1.15 of the morning with two friends. One way in, one way out. The building was covered in cameras. Every exit monitored, every door, all watched, all recorded. Brian was a 27-year-old medical student. The plan was med school, then residency, the Marrier's girlfriend, Alexis. But that plan would never happen. In a building covered by security cameras, surrounded by 200 witnesses in a room with one way in and one way out, Brian Schaefer vanished. Two weeks earlier, Brian's mother died. Renee Schaefer lost her battle with a rare cancer that destroys bone marrow. She was Brian's anchor, the one who pushed him through undergraduate studies

in microbiology, the one who celebrated when he got into Ohio State's medical program. She died in March. Brian was at her bedside holding her hand when she passed. Two weeks later, he carried it everywhere. Friends said he handled it well, kept his grades up, he attended every lecture, but those closest to him noticed the exhaustion, the way he'd stare off during conversations, the forced smile when people asked him how he was doing. The night of March 31st, Brian had dinner with his father Randy, just the two of them. Brian looked drained, dark circles under his eyes. Randy thought his son shouldn't go out that night, thought he should rest, but he didn't say it. He would regret that silence for the rest of his life.

After dinner, Brian called Alexis Wagoner, his girlfriend of two years, also a medical student. She got home to Toledo to visit her parents. Brian asked Alexis if they were still on for Miami. She said she couldn't wait. Brian was excited, three days on South Beach, and Brian planned to surprise her with a proposal. The ring was already picked out. He said he'd see her Monday. Then he called Clint Florence, his roommate, his closest friend.

Time to celebrate the start of spring break. They started at the ugly tuna around nine, a bar on the second floor of the gateway building near Ohio State University. They had around, they went bar hopping through the arena district and shore north. One shot at each stop, nothing excessive, just two friends blowing off steam after a brutal semester and the worst month of Brian's life. Around midnight, they ran into Meredith Reed, a friend of Clint's. She offered to drive them to their next stop. Brian said, back to the tuna. The last place Brian Schaefer would ever be seen alive.

The last place he would ever be seen at all. The security camera captured them at 1.15 a.m. Three friends riding the escalator to the second floor. Brian looked relaxed, happy even. The ugly tuna occupied the entire second floor. Exposed brick, industrial lighting, the bar along one wall, tables everywhere, a stage in the corner. The place was packed with college students celebrating spring break, loud music, and louder conversations. Brian moved through the crowd.

Buying drinks, talking to people. Witnesses later said he was more outgoing than usual, more social, like he was working hard to have a good time. Around 140 a.m., Brian and Clint stepped out to the balcony area overlooking the atrium. The camera caught them there. Brian leaning against the railing, Clint beside him. They talked for a few minutes. But at some point during that conversation, they got into an argument.

The camera saw it all. They went back inside. 15 minutes later, Brian was outside again, alone. The camera recorded his final moments. He stood near the entrance talking to two young women, blonde early 20s. The conversation lasted about two minutes. Brian smiled, the women laughed. Nothing seemed wrong.

Those two women were never identified. Not Ohio State students, not locals anyone recognized. They appeared on no other camera in the building or surrounding area that night. 19 years later, nobody knows who they were. Brian said goodbye and the camera showed him turning, walking back toward the bar entrance, moving off screen. That was the last time anyone saw Brian Schaefer. At closing time, Clint and Meredith searched the entire bar.

Bathrooms, backroom, storage areas? They asked the staff. Nobody had seen him leave. 200 people came down the escalator as the bar closed. Brian wasn't among them. Clint called his cell phone. It went straight to voicemail. They waited outside until sunrise.

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Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. And that's why I love it. Police reviewed every second of security footage, every camera, every angle. The lead detective tracked every person who entered the bar that night, then tracked them leaving. Everyone was accounted for. Everyone except Brian. The detective told reporters,

I can say with 100% certainty that Brian Schaefer did not leave via the escalator. The surface elevator required a key card, only employees had access. Staff were on camera using it all night. None matched Brian's description. But the back exit was more complicated than it first appeared. A service door, not far from where Brian was last seen, opened to a first floor hallway that was connected to an active construction area with its own exterior exit.

Officers said navigating it would be nearly a possible drunk, but the cameras covering that route weren't fixed. One pan back and forth on a cycle. The other was manually operated. There were gaps. Not many, but enough that a person could slip through unseen. That was the only crack. in a sealed box, and nobody can prove Brian went through it. No witnesses saw anyone use the exit.

Nobody saw anyone at the construction site, but the gap existed. In a case that seems impossible, every detail matters. Police check cameras at three other nearby bars. None of them saw Brian either. Wherever he went after walking off camera at the tuna, no other camera spotted him. K-9 units tracked Brian sent from the street to the escalator, up to the bar entrance. Then the dogs circle the same spot near the door and sat down. The trail stopped, as if Brian was there one minute, then gone the next. Police organized search parties, volunteers comb the campus, construction sites, abandoned buildings. They searched the Alentangie River, which runs through Columbus near the campus. They even convinced the city to let them search the sewer system, dumpsters, every alley within

miles. Brian's apartment was only six blocks from the bar. His car was parked outside. Nothing inside was disturbed, clothes in his closet, books on his desk. Whatever Brian was planning, he was planning on coming home. His phone went directly to voicemail. There was no GPS in 2006, so no way to track it. He had his wallet with him, but he didn't use his credit cards. He didn't touch his bank account, no activity on anything. Monday morning, Alexis's engagement ring still sat in his apartment. She waited at the airport, but Brian never showed, and the flight to Miami left with Adam. Everyone who saw Brian that night was asked to take a polygraph. His father Randy took one and passed.

Meredith Reed took one. Passed. Bar staff. Other friends. All agreed. All passed. All except Clint Florence. Clint was the only person to spend the entire evening with Brian, the last friend to see him alive.

The one who admitted they argued on the balcony, but wouldn't say why. When police asked him to take a lie detector test, he refused. Then he hired an attorney. Later, he was subpoenaed to appear before. for a grand jury. He refused to answer questions there, too. Refusing a polygraph is legally smart. Defense attorneys tell clients to refuse them because the machines are unreliable. Clint's refusal doesn't make him guilty, but in a case with zero leads and zero evidence, it's the one thread that won't stop pulling. Meanwhile, the search spiraled outward.

A psychic told Randy Schaefer that Brian's body was in water near a bridge pier. So Randy and Derek, Brian's younger brother, bought waiters. They spent their weekends. They spent their weekends. in the Alantanji River, searching under bridges. Randy had just buried his wife, and now he was standing knee-deep in freezing water, searching for the body of his son. Brian had a pearl jam tattoo on his arm. When the band played Cincinnati later that year,

Eddie Vedder stopped between songs and asked 15,000 people for information about Brian Schaefer, the lead singer of one of the biggest rock bands in the world, standing on stage, personally asking for help finding a missing fan. He had a girlfriend Alexis who loved him, they were planning on getting married. He was going to med school and he had a great dad and Randy. He had one of our shows a number of years ago, maybe seven years ago. And the website, I think, has tried to keep the issue to the forefront and keep reminding people to be on the lookout.

He had a 6-2 dancing guy, he had a pro-gem 10-2 with his right over. The fans like to keep the issue afloat, but to know what they also. We just want to, we were taking a second back there trying to figure out what to play. And we just want to send this one out to him and let him know where he is, we're still thinking about. Nobody had anything. 15,000 people in a stadium and not one useful lead. Then in September, something happened. Alexis had been calling Brian's phone every night before bed.

Every single night since April. The same thing every time. Straight to voicemail. Straight to voicemail. But then one night, five months after Brian disappeared, his phone rang. You ever have one of those moments

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Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals for. faster. Join rocketmoney.com slash the Wifiles. That's rocketmoney.com slash the Wi-Files. RocketMoney.com slash the Y-Files. For the first time in months, Brian Schaefer's cell phone rang, but nobody answered. Singular Brian's wireless provider said it was probably just a glitch. But a ping from the phone was detected at a cell tower in Hilliard, Ohio, 14 miles northwest of Columbus. Something activated that phone. The lead was never explained. The phone went silent again. It never pinged another tower. Some investigators looked at the so-called smiley-face killer theory. Some believed the serial killer was targeting drunk college-aged men in the Midwest and dumping

their bodies in rivers. Young men fitting Brian's profile had turned up dead in waterways across several states. Police looked into it. The FBI looked into it. Both rejected any connection. If the smiley-faced killer was real and most law enforcement said he isn't, Brian would be the only victim whose body was never found. A possible sightings were reported in Michigan, in Texas, in Sweden. A man matching Brian's description was seen at a bar in the Caribbean. Another was spotted at a bus station in the southwest. Police investigated every single one.

Sent officers, compared photos, checked records, nothing panned out. Randy Schaefer drove to Columbus every weekend for two years, walked the streets around the gateway building, handed out flyers, searched the river, hired investigators, spent everything he had. In 2008, two years after Brian vanished, Randy was killed in a freak accident when a branch broke from a tree and fell on him. Derek Schaefer, Brian's younger brother, inherited everything alone. The search, the questions, the weight of a family that stopped existing one member at a time, a mother, a brother, a father. Three people gone in two years.

Derek kept searching. He still does. Shortly after Randy's death, Clint Florence's attorney sent a letter to a private investigator, in the case. In it, he wrote, If Ryan is alive, which is what I'm led to believe after speaking with the detective involved, that it is Brian and not Clint, who is causing his family pain and hardship. The detective on the case believed Brian was alive. In 2020, the Ohio Attorney General's office digitally aged Brian's photo to show what he might look

like in his mid-40s. Dateline covered the case. America's Most Wanted covered it. The internet never let it go. There's a subreddit dedicated to finding it. him. And every year on April 1st, people share his photo and ask the same question. Where is Brian Schaefer? He would be 46 years old today. 19 years have passed. His phone has never pinged another tower. His credit cards have never been used. His social security number has never appeared in any database.

No hospital records. No police reports. No death certificate. His body has never been found. The ugly tuna closed years ago. The building still stands on North High Street. The cameras are gone now. New businesses occupy the space, but the escalator still runs. But somewhere in those final seconds, in a narrow window between camera angles, between one frame and the next, a 27-year-old medical student vanished. The footage is still there, archived in police evidence, frame by frame, second by second. Cameras proved that Brian Schaefer entered that building. They also proved that somehow he never left. Gather round. This happened.

In October 2009, Hunters found an abandoned pickup truck on a dirt road deep in the San Boy Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma. The engine was cold. The doors were unlocked. Inside, a small terrier named Macy was pressed against the seat. She was barely alive. She was trapped in the cab for days with no food, no water, and no one coming back for her. They also found two cell phones, two wallets, and a GPS unit. There were coats and jackets inside, even though the nights were dropping into the 40s.

and sitting in plain sight, $32,000 in cash. There are no footprints leading away from the vehicle, no blood, no sign of a struggle. The truck was owned by Bobby Jameson. He drove to the mountains with his wife, Sherilyn, and their six-year-old daughter, Madison. For what reason the police never figured it out? The only thing we know for sure is that Jameson family is gone. Bobby and Sherilyn Jameson lived in Euphala, a quiet town on the shore of Lake Euphala in southeastern Oklahoma. Bobby was 44, a bad car accident years earlier, and left him with chronic back pain.

He lived on a disability settlement. Sherilyn was 40. She suffered from bipolar disorder for years. They fought. They struggled. But they had their daughter Madison and made a plan to get out. In the fall of 2009, the Jamison's found a 40-acre plot of land near the town of Red Oak, about 30 miles from home. It was deep in the Sanboy Range, remote and wooded, the kind of place where you could disappear from the world.

They wanted a fresh start to leave Eufaula and everything in it behind. On October 8th, they loaded up the truck and drove out to see the property. Madison rode in the back seat with their dog Macy. This was the last day anyone saw them alive. The truck was found a few days later by hunters who reported it to the Latimer County Sheriff. When deputies arrived, the first thing they noticed was the dog. Macy was dehydrated and weak, but alive. The second thing they noticed was the money, about $32,000.

and cash sitting in plain sight. Nobody touched it. The family's belongings also told a strange story. Their IDs were still in the truck. So were their phones. Their coats were still in the truck. And October nights in the San Boy Range got cold. Wherever the Jamison's went after they parked, they went without identification, communication, money, or the right clothes for the weather. They took nothing. One detail the sheriff noticed from security camera footage. At one point, Sherilyn placed a brown briefcase in the truck. That briefcase was never recovered. Neither was the 22-caliber handgun that she stashed in it.

The cash, all $32,000 of it, sat untouched when the truck was found. The Jamiesons weren't wealthy. They weren't known for carrying cash. The disability settlement may explain where the cash came from, but it doesn't explain why they brought every dollar they had to look at a piece of land in the mountains. But the security cameras at their house recorded something that investigators have never been able to explain.

The footage is time-stamped the morning they left. It shows Bobby and Sherilyn making trip after trip between the house and the truck, back and forth, loading boxes, carrying bags. They don't speak to each other. They don't look at each other. Between trips, they stop, stand completely still, and stare at nothing. Not at the ground, not at the sky, just somewhere in the middle distance. Then, after a few seconds, they start.

start moving again. Same pace, same silence, like robots or zombies. The sheriff who reviewed the tape said they looked like they were in a trance, not arguing, not rushing, not behaving like a normal couple packing for a day trip, just silent mechanical repetition, like two people running on a program, like two people without free will. The Jamesons were already in trouble long before they disappeared, and every layer the investigators pulled back revealed something darker. Bobby was locked in a bitter legal battle with his own father, Bob Dean Jameson. In 2008, Bobby had filed a protective order, claiming his father had tried to run him over with a car. Bobby's petition described his father as a very dangerous man.

He accused him of being involved with meth and other criminal activity. He said his father threatened to kill him, his wife, and daughter. Then there were the spirits. Bobby and Cheryl Lynn had both visited their pastor separately. they told him the same thing. Something was living inside their house. Spirits. Entities they could see, but couldn't make leave.

Bobby told the pastor he'd gone out and bought a copy of the Satanic Bible. Not to worship anything, he said, but to find instructions for driving the spirits out of the house. He asked if he knew where to buy special bullets that could shoot the entities off the roof. The pastor didn't know what to say to that. Nobody did. A handyman who'd been staying with the family in the week,

before they disappeared, had connections to white supremacist groups. After the Jamestins vanished, investigators took a hard look at him. They interviewed him multiple times. They couldn't tie him to the disappearance. On the property was a large metal storage container the family planned to move into while building on the new land. Cheryl Lynn had spray-painted messages across its sides. One line said,

Witches don't like it when their cats are killed. The neighbors didn't know what to make of it. Neither did the police. Inside the abandoned truck was a little. an 11-page letter from Sherylent to Bobby, handwritten, and full of rage. She called him a hermit. She said she resented him. She said she didn't need him.

Friends who read it later said it wasn't a goodbye note. It was angry and raw. The kind of thing you write at 3 in the morning when you've had enough. And then there was the last photo. It was on Bobby's phone, taken the day they vanished. The image shows 6-year-old Madison standing alone in the woods, not smiling, not crying, just standing perfectly. still among the trees, looking directly into the camera with a blank hollow expression,

like she was waiting for something to happen. Nobody knows who took that picture. It was on Bobby's phone, but he wasn't in it. Neither was Cheryl Lynn. Madison is alone. Trees behind her, dirt under her feet, and whoever was holding that phone was the last person to see that little girl alive. Search teams covered hundreds of acres.

Dogs track scent trails that went nowhere. Helicopters flew grid patterns over. the mountains. Volunteers walked shoulder to shoulder through dense brush, and still they found nothing. In four years passed. In November 2013, two deer hunters were scattered a remote part of Ladera County, dense oak forest, rocky terrain, less than three miles from where the truck was abandoned in 2009. One of them stopped walking. Something pale on the ground caught his eye. Half hidden in the underbrush were bones, scattered across the forest floor by four years of storms and animals. Two adults, one child. In July 2014, the Oklahoma Medical Examiner confirmed what

everyone already knew, but no one wanted to hear. Bobby Jameson, Sherilyn Jameson, Madison Jameson. The official cause of death was undetermined. And that word undetermined is rare. Medical examiners almost always find something, a fracture, a puncture, toxicology, something. But the Jamesons gave them nothing. No bullet damage to any of the bones. no knife marks, no damage to the hyoid bone, which means they weren't strangled. Four years of Oklahoma heat, cold, rain, and wildlife destroyed the evidence of whatever killed them. The case became national news.

Hundreds of tips came in over the years, and none of them led anywhere. Every theory fell apart. Meth. Police searched the house and found nothing. No drugs, no paraphernalia, no evidence of dealing or using. Murder suicide. But Sherilyn's gun was missing. and the bodies were three miles of rough terrain from the truck.

Now, Bobby's father, he had an alibi and died two months after the family vanished. The handyman with white supremacist ties was a person of interest for a while, but nothing connected him to the disappearance. Sherilyn's mother believed that the family was pulled into a cult, and she never changed her story. The sheriff who worked the case said one thing stayed with him above everything else, not the money, not the letter, not the photo of Madison in the woods. It was the footage.

Bobby and Sherilyn moving through their house like they were sleepwalking, loading that truck in total silence, stopping to stare at nothing, then starting again, over and over and over. He said he watched it more than a hundred times, and every time it looked less like a family packing for a trip and more like robots running a program. The $32,000 is still in an evidence locker. The briefcase has never been found.

Sherilyn's gun has never been found. And nobody's ever explained what made Bobby and Cheryl Lynn load that truck like zombies on the last morning of their lives. And most likely, nobody ever will. Gather around. This happened. Marshall, Minnesota, May 14, 2008, 154 a.m. Brandon Swanson called his parents from the side of a dark road. He was 19 years old, last day of college. His car was in a ditch.

He just needed to ride. His father, Brian, drove out looking for him. They stayed on the phone for 47 minutes. Brandon saw lights in the distance. He started walking toward what he thought was town. Then on the phone with his father, he said, Oh, shit. Then the line went dead, and Brandon vanished.

Brandon told his parents he crashed near Lind, a small town about seven miles from Marshall. That's where his father searched, up and down those roads, looking for a gray Chevy Lumina in a ditch, looking for a son walking along the road. But he found nothing. At 6.30 a.m.,

the Swanson's reported Brandon, missing. The officer wasn't concerned. Young guy, last day of school, been out drinking, probably sleeping it off somewhere. One cop told Annette Swanson that her son had a right to be missing. She didn't accept that. She pushed. She demanded they'd check the cell records. Well, the records told a different story. Brandon's last call didn't ping a tower near Lind. It pinged near Porter, 25 miles in the opposite direction. Brandon was completely wrong about where he was. He thought he was seven miles from home, he was 30 miles away, on a gravel road in the middle of farmland, surrounded by fields and darkness, no streetlights, no houses, nothing but flat ground and sky

in every direction. Yellow Medicine County sits in southwestern Minnesota, it's prairie land, the kind of place where you can see headlights from 10 miles away on a clear night. And in May, the corn hasn't come up yet. The fields are bare dirt and stubble. There's nothing to hide behind. There's nothing to fall into. There's nothing that should be. swallow a person whole. Police found his car that afternoon, stuck up on an incline near a bridge on a county road. Doors open, keys gone. Brandon had taken them with him when he started walking. The nearest town was Porter, population 178, but Brandon never made it. Now think about that. Brandon grew up in Marshall. He'd driven these roads his whole life, and somehow after his car went into the

ditch, he was convinced he was near Linde, a town he knew. He recognized nothing around him because there was nothing to recognize, just gravel and darkness and the flat line of the horizon. And here's where it's strange. The lights Brandon saw in the distance, the one he walked towards, were probably a red beacon on a grain elevator in ton, a single light on top of a tall metal structure visible for miles across the flat prairie. Now from that distance through the darkness, it looked like a town. It looked like safety. It wasn't. Between Brandon and that light was three miles of open farmland, the Yellow Medicine River, and nothing else. No roads leading where he was going, no buildings, just black earth under a pitch-black sky.

Brandon walked into the night, phone pressed to his ear, convinced he was heading towards civilization. He was heading into miles of empty fields. Then he cursed into his phone, then the line went dead. Searches started at first light. Helicopters overhead, officers walking the roads in ditches, volunteers comb the fields. They brought and dogs trained to track human scent across miles of open ground, canine units with hundreds of successful tracks between them. Dogs that had found bodies buried under six feet of soil. The dogs picked up Brandon's trail near his car and followed it. West, northwest along field roads, three miles through darkness, past barbed wire fences and drainage dishes. Then to an abandoned

farm, buildings dark, doors hanging open, no one living there for years. Then the trail turned south and followed the Yellow Medicine River, a shallow waterway that cuts through the farmland, muddy banks, thick brush on both sides, and Brandon had mentioned hearing water during his call. He mentioned passing fences. He told his father, the ground was getting uneven and harder to walk on. The details matched perfectly. The handlers expected the trail to end at the river's edge, confirming Brandon fell in and drowned. But the dogs didn't stop. They waded across the Yellow Medicine River, way steep in places. The current strong enough to push against their

legs. The dogs picked up the scent on the opposite bank. Brandon had crossed the river in the dark. He didn't fall in. He didn't drown. He made it to the other side and kept walking. The dogs kept going north along a gravel road until they hit the Yellow Medicine County line.

Then the trail ended. Not at the river, not at a body. It stopped in the middle of nowhere. Open farmland, no structures, no landmarks. As if Brandon had been lifted off the face of the earth. Now, searches continued for years. Every spring after snowmelt, when the frozen ground thawed and the rivers dropped low enough to wade.

Every fall after harvest, when the fields were cut and you can see the ground for miles. Volunteers walked in lines across the prairie. They covered 122 square miles. They walked every inch of the river. They drained ponds. They searched abandoned farm buildings one by one. Barnes with collapsed roofs. Root cellars filled with standing water, grain bins that hadn't been opened in decades.

Nothing. No body, no clothes, no phone, no keys. Not a single thread. Brandon Swanson walked into the darkness that night and disappeared. The official story is Brandon drowned in the Yellow Medicine River. Walking in the dark, disoriented, he stumbled into the water, and that's the simplest explanation. But the evidence doesn't support it. The bloodhounds tracked his scent across the river, not into it.

If Brandon had drowned, the trail would have ended at the water's edge, but it didn't. The dogs picked up his scent on the opposite bank and kept following it north. His father talked to him for 47 minutes. Brian Swanson says his son didn't sound drunk or confused. He sounded like himself, frustrated about the car and eager to get home, but coherent. He was navigating by landmarks. He was making decisions, not stumbling blind through the night. And then there's the final words.

Oh, shit. Now listen to what that phrase is and what it isn't. It wasn't a scream. It wasn't a cry for help. It was surprise. The kind of thing you say when you see something unexpected. Brandon saw something in the darkness. He reacted, then he was gone.

Fowl play has never been ruled out. The area is remote. Miles of empty farmland, isolated roads, abandoned properties. Someone could have been out there. Could have seen his headlights from the road, watched him crash, and followed him into the fields on foot. At 2.30 in the morning in that kind of darkness, you wouldn't see them coming. You wouldn't hear them over the wind. But there's no evidence of that.

No witnesses. No suspects. No motive. No DNA. No tire tracks. No sign of a struggle. Just a trail that ends in the middle of nowhere. Brandon's parents never moved. They kept their porch light on every single night for years. Annette left his bedroom exactly the way it was. Bed unmade, clothes on the floor, textbooks stacked on the desk. she said she wanted it ready for when he finally came home.

Brian Swanson replayed that phone call in his head a thousand times. 47 minutes of his son's voice. The last 47 minutes, anyone heard Brandon alive. He told reporters, the hardest part wasn't the silence after the swear. It was the 47 minutes before it, the normalcy, the casual frustration of a kid whose car slid off a road, father and son talking like it was any other night, like everything was going to be fine.

The Swanson's lobby the Minnesota government. They testified they pushed. In 2009, Minnesota passed Brandon's law. Police now have to investigate missing adults immediately. No more waiting periods. No more right to be missing. Every state should have that law, but most don't. Brandon's case was reclassified from missing person to endangered missing person,

then to suspected homicide. But no arrest has ever been made. No person of interest has never been named. The case file remains open with the link to. County Sheriff's Office. The Yellow Medicine River still runs through that farmland. The grain elevator in Taunton still has its red light. The gravel roads are still empty at night. And if you drive County Road 10 past Porter at 2 a.m., you'll see exactly what Brandon saw. Darkness so complete, it swallows your headlights 30 feet ahead. And somewhere out there,

in the space between Porter and nowhere, is the answer to what Brandon Swanson saw in the last moment of his phone call, a surprise swear, and then silence. He's been out there almost 18 years, and he's still out there, and his family is still waiting. Thank you so much for hanging out today. My name is A.J., this is The Wi-Files, and that was a campfire story. No debunking, no analysis, just a creepy story to scare you and the kids. And that one is true and unsolved. Now, if you had fun, I'd appreciate it if you can like, subscribe, comment, and share.

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I got through them as fast as I could. And that's going to do it. Until next time, be safe. Be kind. And know that you are appreciated. Scenario 51 A secret code inside the Bible said I would I love my UFOs and paranormal fun

As well as music So I'm singing the like I should Now the conspiracy seasons And it never ends No, it never ends I got stuck inside males home with MKL truck Being only two of a way Or were the shadow people

Then I'm told Name was cold City under Stations, planet's Earth And what the dark watchers Founders found