♪♪ We're the only ones who can be strong, but we break on command cause we're in overlock just to be there with you.
From the spooky land, there's Leila Mask, you're listening Around the World, this is my ghouls and guys, it's Space Out Saturday. I'm your host and Space Out Radio's resident witch, Lynn Wallington, coming to you live from my broomstick.
So grab a seat, keep your arms and legs on the broom at all times.
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In case of emergency, as you know, there are no oxygen masks or flotation devices, so just hang on tight.
We welcome you to tonight's show on YouTube, Twitter, and Twitch. If you want to take a listen to the archives, they are free at youtube.com slash space.radio. Just do us the favor and hit that subscribe button.
You can also follow us on Twitter at space.radio and my personal handle, WitchyLynnie, witchy with a Y, Lynnie with an I-E. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram and space.radioshow and WitchyLynnie. And if you haven't had a chance to check it out, our new website is out at space.radio.com where we have a ton of features for you, including rocking out to Bumblefoot, reading up on the SOR Newswire, and check out the merch.
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It's amazing. Get your Chad Smith shirt.
We all want one. You know you do.
Bumblefoot is the official music of space.radio, rocking us in and out of every single show.
So go and get something.
Come on, guys. I want to see what you get.
And if you're in the mood for some paranormal stories combined with utter ridiculousness, you can also find me and my friend Caitlin on YouTube at Paranormal Spirits. We put the link in the description down below.
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And if you enjoy Emily's Drinking Game on that YouTube channel and want to play here tonight, please feel free to do so.
For those of you who aren't familiar, the game is simple.
Anytime I screw up a word or phrase, you get to take a drink.
There's always tons of them.
Enjoy. And you're welcome.
It's Saturday night, and here on Space.Saturday, that means it's cocktail time.
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And for tonight's witch's brew, I'm enjoying a dark and stormy.
Thought it was perfect for tonight.
So grab yourself a drink, sit back, and let's have a fun night together.
All right, kids.
Today, we get to talk with Nick Kyle. All of his life, Nick's been an avid hiker, camper, and outdoorsman.
Growing up, he heard a story every now and then of an individual disappearing without a trace in the mountains or forests, and was always intrigued by these tales.
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The phenomenon touched him personally in 2010. While attending Western Washington University, a fellow student disappeared and was later found deceased under some strange circumstances.
Afterward, he began taking a serious interest in the topic of missing people.
Presently, he runs the channel, The Missing Enigma on YouTube, where he strives to create videos backed by as much factual information as he can get his hands on.
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His goal is to provide viewers with the most accurate details available so that they can speculate and decide for themselves on the causes for many of these unexplained cases.
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And just a couple of reminders before we start.
If you guys have a question, please type it in all caps so that I can see it.
I'm sure you'll have plenty of them tonight.
And the Super Chat is open.
Super Chat is a great way to support SOR on a nightly basis, and we appreciate you.
For those who are new to our channel, this is a live show, so we'll be taking a five-minute break after the first hour.
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And welcome.
We're happy to have you here.
All right.
Let's get Nick in here.
Hi, Nick. How are you?
Good. How about yourself?
I'm doing well, thanks.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you so much.
Happy to be here.
Well, good.
So you get to talk all about missing persons, and that's exciting in a way.
I mean, not for them, certainly, but interesting is probably the better word to use, not exciting.
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Well, I think it's always a good thing when you can spend your time doing anything you're interested in and make a living out of it.
That is true.
That's true.
And your channel is awesome.
So I don't know if you guys haven't checked it out.
Definitely go check it out.
I put the link in the description.
But are all of the drawings that you have on your channel your own?
(00:05:05)
Yeah. My channel is a one-man show.
So I do all the editing, drawing, which takes up the gist of most of the time it takes to make a video.
I know a lot of people would probably like to see more content out of me.
Unfortunately, having to do the artwork slows that down a little bit.
But I'm getting better at it.
You know, if you look at some of my first videos, even I can tell that I've improved as an artist since I started the channel.
(00:05:39)
Oh, well put.
Yeah, you know, so double benefit there.
Yeah. No, you know, I'm just happy to be doing it.
I'm happy people responded well to it.
You know, I think whenever anyone creates a YouTube channel, you're really not sure how interested people are going to be.
And I'm certainly not the only one talking about missing people on YouTube. So I'm glad I was able to provide people with something a little different that they enjoy.
(00:06:06)
That's amazing.
How long have you been doing the YouTube channel for?
A little over a year.
You know, it started right when COVID started.
Ah. I started my other channel too.
You know, I think this is a more common story now.
You know, once that hit, you get more free time.
And then you start doing things that you maybe wanted to do for a while.
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And I always wanted to do a YouTube channel, but found a lot of excuses or reasons why I was too busy to start one.
So, you know, once COVID hit and I had all that free time, I just kind of figured, you know, what am I interested in?
(00:06:50)
What do I have knowledge about?
What are my skills?
You know, I've been an artist most of my life.
So I kind of just combined my interests and came out with the channel you have now, The Missing Enigma. That's awesome.
So now in your bio, it says that while you were at Western Washington University, is that right? The name of it?
That's right.
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So one of the students disappeared.
Tell me a little bit about that.
Well, I started there in 2009. And this happened in 2010. The student's name was Dwight Clark. I didn't know him personally or anything, but he went to Western and lived near me.
And he was a freshman there that year.
And I think he'd only been there a couple weeks.
And he was just doing what any other college kid would do.
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It was the weekend.
He was at a party.
He was drinking like any other college kid.
And, you know, around 2 a.m. he decides, I'm going to go home.
He's walking home alone.
And I know exactly where he disappeared.
I mean, or where he left from, I should say.
It was this house on Indian Street. I think they've changed the name since then for reasons.
(00:08:10)
But it's a straight shot to go back to his dorm from where his party was.
And he just, he vanished.
And I remember being there at this time, hearing about it, and everyone was just shocked by it.
You know, this would happen here.
You don't think it happens in your area until it does.
And no one could find him.
There was a massive search.
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It was just kind of the talk of the town for a long time.
And no one found anything until, I think it was about a week and a half later, they discovered his body next to Bellingham. Bellingham is like a large, it's a large bay called Bellingham Bay. And there was a Georgia Pacific plant right along the bay, and they had created a wastewater treatment lagoon.
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This area was completely fenced off.
It had two fences and they were covered in barbed wire.
Oh, wow.
He was found in that lagoon.
Not a place you'd want to go swimming either.
Again, it's a wastewater treatment facility.
So the water there is like dark and foamy and... Nasty. Not pleasant.
Some people might have... I know when it happened, people were kind of speculating, oh, maybe he was drunk and decided to veer off of his chosen path and go for like a midnight swim, even though the water is freezing cold.
(00:09:41)
I mean, Bellingham is North Washington. I never put a toe in Bellingham Bay the entire time I lived in Bellingham. Yeah. But they found him there.
And nobody knew how this could have happened.
You know, there was no clues except the police discovered that they caught him on some CCTV footage walking around in front of the Georgia Pacific plant.
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And I FOIA'd the police for those videos.
And you can kind of see him.
He's just kind of pacing back and forth.
And that's the last time he was ever picked up on video or anything.
So now was he inside or outside of the fence?
He was outside of the fence at that time.
Wow. And right around this time, a blank text message was sent from his phone.
(00:10:34)
Nobody knows why that was, but, you know, they pulled him out of there.
And, you know, they said the cause of death was accidental drowning, which everyone was a little suspicious of because no one knew really.
You just wonder about the events that led up to how he could have gotten in there.
And one thing that wasn't really talked about when this happened was that, and that I find really fascinating, is that 15 years prior to this incident, in 1995, there was another Western student.
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His name was Blair Granstrom. He was 20 years old, so he was a sophomore at Western. And he went missing in 1995. Same story. He was at a party. He was drinking.
It's 3 a.m. He decides to go home. Vanishes. Wow. Like over a week later, they find him.
And they find him in that exact same wastewater treatment facility, the Lagoon area.
Wow. And this was 15 years earlier.
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No one really talked about how this exact story had happened.
It was like history repeating itself.
And one of the strange things, though, is that with Blair's story, I was able to get a little more information, or at least there was in the papers.
And they said that when they did the autopsy and the medical examiner looked at him, that he didn't die from drowning, even though he was found in the Lagoon. Oh. Yeah, he did not have water in his lungs.
(00:12:16)
And they speculated, to the best of their ability, that he must have died from toxic fumes around the facility.
And, you know, it makes you wonder.
Yeah. They just weren't sure. That was like their best guess.
You know, there's no signs of trauma.
Just a college student walking home. He's a little intoxicated.
And all of a sudden, he winds up dead.
Across two barbed wire fences.
(00:12:45)
Yeah. In a place that you would not want to be.
True. You know, I had been a college student who was drunk, walking home from parties.
And I can guarantee you, I would not have been able to get over a fence with barbed wire, let alone two of them.
So that's interesting.
And it's like, why would you want to, you know?
Right, yeah. I mean, when you're drunk, maybe you do some stupid things.
(00:13:06)
But if I were me, I would have been hanging in front of it, like... And they'd find me there the next morning, like, somebody!
You know, and I've found, you know, a lot of the times I did stupid things in college, I was around other people.
(00:13:18)
Yeah. So a kid going home alone, he's not out there to impress anybody by looking at me do this or whatever.
And, you know, two students, 15 years apart, the exact same thing happened to them in this area.
And it just makes you wonder why, you know, because you're not getting any answers.
Yeah. He didn't die from drowning.
And they don't know what happened to him.
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And, you know, that's basically what you encounter with a lot of these stories, is that you get left with a lot of questions.
And I think that's why people enjoy them, because everyone likes a good mystery.
True. And we don't have any answers to a lot of these questions surrounding cases like this.
But these incidents in particular were what kind of... they really stuck with me.
(00:14:16)
I had an interest in missing people prior to this because my family, I was raised in a family that went camping a lot and was very outdoorsy.
And my parents, they probably don't even remember talking about it.
But I remember being little and hearing them talk about people vanishing in the woods.
Not exactly the best thing to be talking about when you got little kids in the car and you're going camping.
(00:14:40)
Yeah. But that just has always stuck with me as something I've remembered.
And I've just always been fascinated by it.
You know, like, why do people vanish?
And what's causing that to happen?
So that's just been why I've constantly been searching for answers.
And you don't often get any.
Yeah. But it doesn't stop me from trying.
And the more we collect cases like this, the more we can examine them and hopefully work closer to something that might be an answer.
(00:15:23)
Yeah, for sure.
So I've heard a lot about people talking about how so many people go missing in national parks.
Is that a thing?
I mean, I know people do go missing, but is there a large proportion of people that go missing in national parks?
Or have you looked into that at all?
Oh, yeah.
Well, it depends on what you mean by large proportion.
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Because if in comparison to the number of people that visit national parks every year, you're talking about a minuscule number.
One thing I hope doesn't happen is that when people hear these stories, that it scares them from visiting national parks.
Yeah. Because these cases make up the smallest fraction, you know.
And you got missing people in general make up a small fraction of those that visit national parks.
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But the strange cases that I tend to get into are an even smaller fraction of that.
You know, just because someone goes missing, it doesn't mean there's anything strange about it.
A lot of things can happen if you go hiking or climb a mountain or whatever you're doing.
So, yeah, I still go enjoy our national parks.
I've spent all of last summer.
Part of the reason I don't upload more in the summer is probably because I'm out there enjoying our national parks.
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As you should.
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Even though I make videos about how horrifying they can be.
A little bit of a paradox there.
Well, you know what? That's good for everybody else to know.
Like, all right, you're researching this, you know the details, but you're still going out.
So that's good.
You have confidence in our national parks.
Well, there's things you can do to be safe about it, too.
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I would say 99% of the people that go missing in national parks are alone when they vanish.
And I don't hike alone.
And I usually carry things that will help you when you're out there.
People have said it before, but you can carry bear spray if you're in an area with bears.
Our national parks allow you to carry a firearm out in the open.
(00:17:37)
Though, check with your local laws and don't just take my word for that.
Right, yeah, yeah.
You know, just make sure that you're ready for anything that can happen.
Be prepared with a backpack with water.
You know, there's so many things you can do to just... because a lot of these cases... I know there's a lot of people out there saying there's a lot of strange missing persons cases.
(00:18:02)
But I think a large number even of those could be... they probably have logical answers.
There's just so many things that can happen to you while you're out there.
And just because we don't have the answers to a case doesn't necessarily mean there's anything paranormal to it.
Yeah. Though, obviously, most people are very interested in the paranormal side of these cases.
And so am I. You know, when I hear a story about a missing person and there is seemingly something... some element of the story sounds remotely paranormal, that's what kind of perks my ears up.
(00:18:39)
And I want to know more about that.
And that's what I try and look into because it's always my goal to try and find good evidence for the paranormal.
Because, you know, if you watch the X-Files, you know, I'm like Mulder. I want to believe.
Yeah. You know, I want to believe along with evidence, hopefully.
Hang out with all of us. You'll get tons of evidence.
(00:19:03)
Yeah. Yeah, maybe. I'm glad I found this crew.
Yes. We'll get you aboard.
I love it.
I do have a quick question. Well, John has a quick question. John is actually part of the SOR team.
Hi, John. And also, thank you, Black Dragon and Dave Hurley for the super chats. You guys are awesome.
But John wants to know what the story is behind the cool art.
(00:19:25)
What the story is?
John is also an artist, I should tell you. John is the one who made the thumbnail that was... Oh, really?
Yes, inspired with your... Oh, awesome. I've noticed you guys have some very creative thumbnails.
Yeah, John does do thumbnails.
Well, I appreciate that. It was very cool to see myself on there.
(00:19:42)
I guess the story with the art is, like I was saying, when I created the channel, I wanted to combine my talents, so to speak, what I was good at.
And I've tried a lot of new things out with the art in the sense that I had never done digital drawing prior to making the channel.
I'd always been an oil painter or a pen and ink drawer.
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And it seemed like the most logical way to go to do a more digital style drawing.
I use a Gauman tablet and a stylus and I draw on Photoshop. So all those drawings you see are drawn in Photoshop. And it was kind of a way not just to make my channel a little different from other missing persons channels, but to... A lot of my videos are very information based.
(00:20:43)
I'm throwing a lot of information at you and I'm showing you a lot of sources.
I wanted to kind of break up that monotony so it didn't get too dry and throw some art in there for you to look at and to show you what's happening in these cases.
Because sometimes there's things that have been said to have occurred that are really quite interesting.
(00:21:06)
My most recent video was about bears that have taken children.
And some of the stories in there were a lot of fun to draw.
I get the most pleasure out of drawing unique things like that.
If it's a case about John Doe who just went missing and I just have to draw a picture of guys camping and then a search party.
And then that gets a little boring for me, just drawing people doing things.
(00:21:38)
I like to draw bears stealing children. That was a lot more fun.
Understandable. I would think so too.
That's kind of the story behind the drawing. It's just a way I thought would capture the attention of people.
And it's something that I enjoy doing even though it can take some time.
And it's something that I think works. People have been drawing pictures to support information and documentaries and what have you for a long time.
(00:22:14)
That's true. And it makes you different, which is great.
Sometimes I get the occasional YouTube comment saying that my channel is a lot like Bedtime Stories in terms of the drawings.
I don't know if anyone is familiar with that channel.
I haven't seen it yet.
Well, it's similar. They do horror stories and they drop pictures to go along with it.
And I get asked if I do the art for that channel a lot and I don't. I just do the art for my channel.
(00:22:45)
But I'm pretty sure they use Photoshop to draw their pictures too. So if anyone out there has been wondering that, there's your answer.
Behind the scenes info.
But they weren't a direct inspiration for what I do. It was kind of just coincidental that we both use pictures.
(00:23:04)
That's what I had a talent in. That's what I felt would go good with the videos I made.
That's awesome. So you've got a creative outlet along with just having fun doing your YouTube channel.
Yeah. It's good to have an excuse to do art because I was always a busy artist in high school and through college.
After that, there was a big drop off where I didn't do anything artistic wise.
(00:23:35)
And so I was happy to break that skill out again.
And now I get to do it for a living. I feel so lucky. I really owe it to the people that watch my channel.
I'm so grateful for the people that watch and enjoy those videos. It's just awesome.
Fantastic. Okay, so I want to hear the story about the bears.
But first, there was one that I watched the other day and I cannot for the life of me remember the guy's name.
(00:24:04)
But I'm sure you'll probably know who I'm talking about.
He was in a, I think it was a 5K in Alaska, the one that was like going up the mountain.
And he was the last one in line and he reached the top of the mountain and just disappeared somehow.
Oh man, his name is going to escape me too. Names and dates. I know exactly the case you're talking about.
(00:24:25)
That one I decided to do because it was on Alaska State Troopers. Oh, right. Yeah, that's right. I remember you said that.
I'll look it up when you tell them a little bit about the story.
Okay, I appreciate it.
No worries.
Yeah, he was an older fellow, but there's an Alaskan foot race that's quite popular.
But it's also known to be quite dangerous because it's a very steep uphill incline.
(00:24:49)
And then you run up and you run back down.
But there shouldn't be much room for people to go off trail because there's always a long line of people in this race going up and going back down.
And you should easily be able to follow.
He was older, though, and maybe not as fit as the rest, and he was lagging behind on that incident.
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Paul Michael LeMaitre?
Yeah, Paul Michael LeMaitre. Thank you.
And I remember they thought that the race officials thought that this race had already, everyone had already gone.
And there's a guy who's standing at the top of Race Point, which is kind of the top of the mountain where you turn back around and head back down.
And that official was ready to go back down. He didn't think there was anyone else left.
(00:25:35)
And then as he starts heading down, he sees Paul heading back up the mountain and he realizes there's still somebody left.
And I remember reading an interview with this man, and it's like one of his biggest regrets in his life that he didn't do more or say more or stick with the guy because he vanished after that.
(00:25:57)
And this guy just, you know, he asked the official, am I close to the top? And he was, he was right there.
And he should have been able to head back down. There shouldn't have been a problem.
And the official told the people down at the base of the mountain, there's going to be one more guy coming, but he never made it back around.
(00:26:14)
And that case just caught my attention because, like I said, I saw it on a TV show.
And then I kind of put it together that, you know, there's only been one guy that disappeared during this Alaskan race.
And so it had to have been him and the dates matched.
And so you get to kind of actually see the search for him and you get a look at the terrain that he disappeared on.
(00:26:39)
It's just very steep, rocky shale.
Yeah, the clips you showed look crazy.
And you'd think, I mean, he never left the mountain. People are pretty sure on that.
But you'd think they'd be able to find him if he was still up there.
Right. It doesn't make sense that he could have gotten so far away or off trail that he just completely vanished.
But he still hasn't been found to this day. And he's been the only casualty of that race.
(00:27:07)
So, yeah, that's an unfortunate... that was a very popular video, as it turns out. I was surprised by that one.
Yeah, it was interesting. Solar Warden has a question for you.
Nick, is it safe to assume your interest in the missing was also fueled by Mr. David... I can never pronounce his name correctly... Polides?
I've spoken about him in my videos before and people tell me I say his name wrong.
(00:27:34)
I was pretty sure I had it right. I call him David Polides. Yes, I always thought so.
People try to keep correcting me that it's Polides. Well, we'll go with David. Have you ever spoken with David?
No, I haven't. But is it safe to assume his... yeah, my interest was certainly fueled, at least in part, by his research.
You really can't deny that he's done a lot in terms of getting it out there in the public.
(00:28:09)
Yeah. And while my interest really began when I was a kid and then really got going after that incident in 2010, I really got more into it when I started hearing the stories that he was bringing up.
Sometimes the natural question that comes from that people like to ask me is, do I do my own research versus am I just taking his books and presenting what's in his books?
(00:28:39)
Right. And what's very important for me on my channel is that I don't use his books because I don't just want to parrot his research.
And I know he doesn't like that. I know that he has some problems with people that just kind of read out of his books on their channel.
(00:28:59)
I understand.
And don't credit him.
Yeah. And that's understandable. My goal has always been to delve into these cases on my own and see what I come up with.
And that's why when you watch my videos, you're often presented with a lot of different sources from newspapers to police reports.
I have to file a lot of FOIA requests and sometimes those take time to get back.
(00:29:22)
And that is another hindrance towards how many videos I can put out.
But yeah, I don't... what David Palaides has done, you can't take that away from him.
He will be forever known as someone who brought this into the public eye because not nearly as many people were talking about these cases until he started doing that.
And he's been doing it for almost 10 years now.
(00:29:54)
Yeah, definitely.
Lester has a question, too.
Have you ever studied disappearances on reservations?
Oh, interesting question.
No, but I'm aware of them.
I'm aware of the just large amount of Native American women that seem to be going missing in the Midwest. And from the limited research I have done, you know, a lot of people like to say that there's some sort of human trafficking aspect.
(00:30:28)
But ultimately, I don't because it's, especially on reservations, sometimes it's harder to get that information.
Yeah. They're not part of the federal government per se.
So you can't really FOIA the reservation for their police reports on anything.
Yeah. At least that's my understanding.
But it is something I've noticed.
It is very concerning because they don't get a lot of press.
You know, you look at missing people.
(00:31:02)
Gabby Petito, who went missing recently, it's been all over the news.
Yeah. One girl, and she got a lot of press.
Well, there's tons of these Native American women that go missing and you just don't hear about it because it's on the reservation and the media doesn't want to talk about it.
Wow. And that's really unfortunate.
Yeah. I'm aware of it, but it's hard to get all the information you need.
(00:31:28)
And like I said, my channel, it's really important to me to be able to present you with the most accurate facts I can so that you can make a determination yourself.
I try to not force my opinion into my videos too much because I want people to make their own determinations about this because I don't know.
I can give you my opinion, but I don't know.
(00:31:52)
And that's usually my answer to every case that ends in some sort of unexplained incident.
Yeah. Well, that's an honest answer.
Definitely. So is there one case in particular that you've worked on that really stands out to you that kind of made an impact on you?
Yeah. Yeah. There's a couple.
I guess the one I'm most proud of that you can actually go watch on my channel is Dennis Martin. And I know that kind of even just bringing up that case.
(00:32:31)
Yeah. I was hesitant to even do that case because it's been done a lot.
(00:32:39)
People have talked a lot about the Dennis Martin case.
And I thought, what could I possibly add to that conversation?
I thought I knew everything about it too.
And I thought, what could I add to that?
I would just be adding drawings so people could visually see what happened.
But I took the time to actually dig into that case.
And what I thought about it initially, my mind got completely changed.
(00:33:09)
I learned so many new things and figured out that the case, I feel like the case that people think they know, probably 90% or more.
I think they're missing a lot of information on that.
And I was really happy to kind of bring that out because there's a lot of important details that were not said.
I mean, I can go into that if you want.
(00:33:34)
But it's a pretty detailed case.
Yeah, let's hear it.
Have you heard it before, Lynn?
I haven't, so that's why I want you to go into it.
Well, I'm sure a lot of people probably have if they're interested.
But I'll quickly kind of cover the basics.
Dennis Martin, this is 1969 in the Great Smoky Mountains. He was six years old.
He went there with his dad, his grandfather and his older brother.
(00:34:02)
And the first night in the Smoky Mountains, they stayed at a place called the Russell Field Shelter where they ran into another family, a dad and his two sons about the same age.
They also happen to have the same last name, Martin. So you got two families named Martin. They're unrelated.
They kind of joined together.
They became friends.
And the next morning, they headed out together to a place called Spence Field. The reason that Dennis Martin and his family were doing this is it's kind of like a family tradition of sorts where they would meet other family members there.
(00:34:38)
And they'd been doing this for a long time.
But this year, when they went, the kids as a group decided it would be a fun idea to run into the woods and then leap out and scare the adults.
Give them a little jump scare.
Yep. And Dennis was wearing a red shirt that day.
And the other kids thought it would give away their position if he was to go with them.
(00:35:07)
So they all said, why don't you go this other direction and we'll go this way.
Yeah. So that, you know, and that was kind of the fatal mistake because the rest of the kids jumped up, scared the adults, and then they go, where's Dennis?
And they can't find him.
And Dennis's dad, Bill, he starts looking for his son, calling his name.
He can't find him.
(00:35:34)
He's running up and down the trails looking for him.
Dennis's grandfather, Clyde, he starts walking down the trail heading for the nearest ranger station because they realize pretty quick they're going to need help.
And he informs the ranger and ranger calls in help.
(00:35:54)
And people start coming in.
And during this time, bad weather hits the area.
So the search is just beginning and rainstorms hit.
And so a lot of vital clues can be lost when things like that happen.
Footprints sent for a dog.
What started next, though, was at the time, the biggest search in the history of the national park system.
People started flooding in.
(00:36:25)
And at some points there was up to 12 or 1400 searchers in the area.
Wow. Yeah. And they learned some lessons on this specific case because that was too many people and not enough of them were experienced.
And they started walking over potential evidence tracks.
There's just too many people to coordinate effectively.
Not enough experienced people and just too many volunteers.
During this time, and this is something that people like to bring up a lot, Green Berets showed up to assist in the search.
(00:37:04)
And before long, the FBI was called in, too.
And people get very troubled by that.
And admittedly, I was, too, you know, because you wonder, well, the FBI is there.
Something weird must have happened.
And Green Berets, usually people think Green Berets never participate in a search for a missing child.
Anyway, they spend a long time looking for Dennis and they don't find him.
(00:37:34)
That's kind of the long of the short of it.
I could go into so many details because the search effort was extensive.
If he was there, they would have found him.
You know, I have the report on this case.
It's got a hundred pages.
It's very detailed in the amount of time and manpower they put into it.
It was really insane.
They really tried to find him and they didn't. Coincidentally, about a month later, a report comes out in the newspapers that there was a man named Harold Key. And he was at Rowan's Creek, which is an area that's a few miles to the north and to the west of Spence Field. He was visiting the same day Dennis went missing.
(00:38:16)
And he was there with his family.
They were just in a different area of the park.
And him and his three children wanted to find a bear or a wild hog.
They wanted to see some wildlife.
And so they went to an area called Rowan's Creek and they went out into the woods.
Now, it gets a little interesting because the newspaper reports on this... I can give you the exact quote.
(00:38:43)
This is what Mr. Key said that he saw.
He said, my sons and I were walking up a creek bed on June 14th looking for bears.
We heard a terrible scream.
We walked about 200 yards and my son said they could see a bear.
But it wasn't a bear.
It was a man hiding in some bushes.
He was definitely avoiding us.
And obviously when that came out, Bill Martin, Dennis's father, was very interested in that.
(00:39:14)
Because he thought this may have something to do with Dennis. And park officials completely dismissed that idea.
(00:39:21)
It's about seven miles from Spence Field to Rowan's Creek. And they thought it would take too long for a man to pick a child up and carry him that distance.
And basically that was the end of that.
Bill Martin, though, was obsessed with that.
And he met with Mr. Key. Talked about the sighting.
But nothing really came of this case until about 2011 when David Plydey released his book, Missing 411. It was in the eastern United States. And he went out and did an interview with Bill Martin. And this was years later, obviously.
(00:40:06)
We're talking 1969 to 2011. And Bill Martin hadn't spoken about this case in a long time.
And most people who are familiar with Plydey's work probably have already heard about this.
But Bill Martin basically told him that they ran the distance from Spence Field to Rowan's Creek. And found out it was possible to get there in about an hour and a half.
Dennis went missing at 4.30. And Mr. Key's sighting was somewhere around 4.30 to 5.30. So it was a pretty tight time frame.
(00:40:45)
But they showed it was possible.
But more important than that, I think, that a lot of people get stuck on is that Bill Martin told David Plydey that Harold Key had told him that the man he saw in the woods was carrying something over his shoulder.
And I think a lot of people have taken that to mean he was probably carrying a child.
(00:41:10)
Probably Dennis. And an FBI agent involved in the case, whose name was Jim Reich, Bill Martin told David Plydey that this FBI agent eventually killed himself.
And he didn't say why, but it's kind of hinted at that maybe it had something to do with the case.
So that was a whole new puzzle piece that was thrown into the mix back in 2011 when that book came out.
(00:41:41)
Plydey also spoke with a ranger who was involved with the search, Dwight McCarter. And the most important thing McCarter told him was that there's wild men in the Great Smoky Mountains and that there are people that live off grid, that they wear the skins of dead animals.
And he told Plydey he only knew of one wild man and that he didn't live in the area, but that they did exist.
(00:42:12)
And I kind of... because a lot of people in this video and... I mean, a lot of people have speculated that some sort of cryptid, maybe Bigfoot or a wild man, had something to do with this case and basically abducting Dennis. And I can understand why they get there, because if you listen to the quote from Mr. Key, where he says, my son said they think they saw a bear.
(00:42:40)
I saw a man, you know, maybe they, you know, people's minds that might put together some amalgamation of the two, you know, a big hairy man.
But it's something that I've seen out there a lot that this is a Bigfoot case or it's a feral human wild man case.
(00:42:59)
And I believe that too, that I was on board with that.
I had heard all these same stories and I was like, that might make sense, you know, with the information we have.
Yeah. So when I started my video, making my video, I got the reports on the case from the Park Service and I started just going through them a little bit at a time.
(00:43:24)
And I started noticing, basically answers to a lot of questions that crop up around this case.
And I kind of list them out in my video. And these are the basic questions that people or the problems people have with this case.
It's that nobody knows who called the Green Berets in and why they were there.
The Green Berets were carrying weapons into the forest because they were hunting something.
(00:43:53)
The Green Berets acted completely alone and didn't communicate with other searchers.
The FBI hid vital information from Bill Martin. Harold Key and his family saw someone carrying something on their shoulder.
A Sasquatch abducted Dennis Martin. A feral human or wild man abducted Dennis Martin. FBI agent Jim Wright killed himself because this case or possibly other child disappearances he worked on.
Yeah. That was the list of questions I was looking at answering when I made that video.
(00:44:25)
Yeah. That was the list of questions that had basically been presented to me over and over again by people who either emailed me or commented on videos.
And I knew I could start providing answers for these questions in a video because when I started looking at the report, you know, I immediately found out why the Green Berets were there and who called them.
(00:44:48)
Ah. Yeah. They were training in the area.
There's an area called the Nantahala Gorge. It's just south of Spence Field. The Green Berets were training there.
And the Rangers called in a favor and they said, would your Green Berets mind coming up to help?
Right. And the Army gave permission.
Nice. And they sent 40 Green Berets. They could have had a whole 500 if the Park Service wanted them, but they just took 40 at the time.
(00:45:14)
Questions about the Green Berets carrying weapons into the forest because it was something I saw a lot.
People were saying, well, the Green Berets went into the forest with weapons.
Don't they always have weapons though?
Well, you know, maybe in certain situations, but people were suggesting it was because they were hunting Bigfoot or hunting wild men or feral humans and kind of taking them out.
(00:45:37)
Right. I would also suggest maybe just because there's bears in the forest, maybe they were armed.
Exactly. When I kind of heard this, I always pictured that maybe they were walking in there with like automatic weapons or something.
And I got a bunch of images because there's pictures that were taken of this search and you don't see a single automatic weapon.
It looks like they may have been carrying sidearms.
(00:46:02)
But that makes sense because like you said, there are bears in the area.
(00:46:06)
There's predators in the area and it would make sense to be armed.
But I didn't see any evidence of them going in there with fully kitted machine guns or anything.
Right. Yeah. And these were all things that I wasn't making this video to prove anything.
These were things that I learned myself that changed my mind about this case.
And people often say that the Green Berets acted alone. They didn't communicate with anybody.
(00:46:35)
They were there. It was very shadowy.
But in the parks report, yet again, I found that they had some communication with the Park Service and that they combined together to make an extraction plan if Dennis Martin was ever found.
They were going to be the ones to helicopter in and rappel down and rescue Dennis, dead or alive.
So they work together in some sense.
(00:46:59)
A lot of people talk about the FBI in this case and that's something I found out really is true.
The FBI hid vital information from Bill Martin. They were learning things about this case and they did not share it with him.
In the parks report, it discusses that this is kind of their standard procedure, though, that they don't share information as long as... I mean, even though it sounds very bad and people might think it's immoral, and I do too, they do that because it has to do with the integrity of the investigation.
(00:47:33)
They don't want to give out or show all their cards, even to the parents, because for a while, Bill Martin was considered a suspect in this case.
Oh, okay.
As the parents often are, unfortunately, when things like this happen, until they learn otherwise.
But there's certainly something weird with the FBI, because if you try and FOIA the FBI report on the Dennis Martin case, even to this day, and we're talking 40 years later now, they still send you an entirely redacted report, which is really odd.
(00:48:12)
Wow. Because I don't understand what there could be to hide anymore.
Right. Most people involved with this case are dead now.
Right. So it makes you think that they know something and they're hiding it.
Definitely Bigfoot. You know, I really believe that Bigfoot had something to do with this case. I thought this was like, you know, I thought we had him.
All right. Okay, we're going to touch on that later. I'm not going to let that one go.
(00:48:41)
But there's another researcher who looked into this case, and his name is Michael Bouchard. He came out with a book a couple years ago called Forever Searching Lost in the Smoky Mountains. And he's a former, I think he actually still is a current police officer in Connecticut, and a detective, and in his free time, he likes to write books about cold cases.
He came out with this book about Dennis Martin, and it is just the most detailed investigation I've ever seen on the case.
(00:49:17)
And, you know, I thought when I was researching this that I had, you know, maybe found some things other people hadn't and then I discovered his book and I was like, oh, this guy has found all this stuff out before I did.
(00:49:31)
And he just hasn't gotten much press about it.
Which is interesting because, you know, this case has become really popular in terms of missing persons cases and missing 411 cases. This is what a lot of people would consider to be a keystone case, you know, like a pretty big deal.
But the most important thing that Michael Bouchard did in his book was that he was able to find Harold Key, the man who saw perhaps Bigfoot or whatever it was in the woods.
(00:50:05)
And interview him in 2016. So he was actually able to get the full story.
And Mr. Key told him that he didn't see a Bigfoot or a wild man, that he saw what appeared to be a disheveled man, a sweaty guy who just came out of the bushes.
He was covered in leaves. And he stated that before he went into the woods that day, he walked by a white car and it was parked right on the road.
(00:50:32)
And as he went in, that's when he encountered the guy just rushing through the brush.
And he said the guy went to the road, got in the car and drove off at a high rate of speed.
And he said he looked to his wife during this time and he said, that guy's up to something.
And they continued on in the woods after that odd incident.
(00:50:53)
And he says he heard a scream and he said it sounded like a child screaming the word help.
And he couldn't tell where it was coming from. And so he couldn't go look.
But that's what he heard. And he told the FBI that. I think it was two days after the incident.
And he cleared some additional things up because in the original newspaper article, it says that the kids said they saw a bear.
(00:51:21)
And Michael Bouchard interviewed Harold Key's children and they told him that none of the kids actually saw anything.
That they were back on the trail playing and they were not really paying attention to what was going on.
And Harold Key was ahead of the rest of the family.
So he was the only witness to anybody in this case.
And, you know, when I heard about this, that was like groundbreaking to me because this is a case that I thought, you know, it was a Bigfoot case or a wild man case for a long time.
(00:51:53)
And to hear those new details, I was like, wow, I don't ever hear anybody talking about this.
Yeah. Why not? And I kept doing some digging when I was making my video.
And I actually found a newspaper article from 1969 that no one ever talks about if they've ever seen it, where it's an interview with Mr. Key. And he confirms that same story. He says, I saw a white car before going into the woods.
(00:52:26)
And then I saw a man in the woods and he got into the car and drove off.
(00:52:31)
So you have him telling the same story in 1969 and then again in 2016. And bringing this to the people that are interested in missing persons cases was something I just kind of felt like it needed to be done.
Yeah. Because, I mean, as much as I want to believe in anything, whether it be a cryptid or a pair of wild people, I can't do it at the expense of evidence to the contrary.
(00:53:07)
Right. And so learning these things completely changed my opinion about the case.
You know, we learned some other things, too, from Michael Bouchard. He interviewed the family of Jim Reich, the FBI agent, confirmed for everyone that he didn't kill himself because of this case.
He had some personal demons he was dealing with. Bouchard didn't reveal what those were in his book, but he just confirms that it was not a factor.
(00:53:38)
Obviously, the thing we get to is, well, if it wasn't, what did this man have to do with anything and where's Dennis Martin?
Yeah. And in my opinion, we only have... there's two real options. Either that man that Harold Key saw in Rowan's Creek has something to do with the incident and we're not sure what, or Dwight McCarter, who, again, was a ranger who did a lot of searching in this case.
(00:54:13)
Yeah. He has a theory that is also interesting and it doesn't get around enough. He's done a lot of interviews and podcasts and things like that over the years.
And recently he was on one and he was discussing this and he was discussing how he thought he smelled a dead body, basically, when he was searching back in 1969 along the West Prong Trail and that he wanted to go investigate it, but his superiors told him not to.
(00:54:48)
They told him the area had already been searched and there was nothing down there. And Dwight McCarter, in his interview, is very insistent that he knows what a dead body smells like. And he felt certain that the kid was down on, or Dennis was down on West Prong, which is a trail in the area.
And he was kind of a new ranger at the time, so he didn't have the confidence to challenge his superiors and they just didn't search that area.
(00:55:14)
Wow. And in 1985, McCarter says that an illegal ginseng harvester, because ginseng is in the Smoky Mountains, you're not supposed to harvest it, but people do illegally.
Who knew?
Right. And so this guy comes up to McCarter and tells him, in 1985, that back in the early 70s, he was picking ginseng in the area, in this area called Big Hollow, specifically, which is right next to West Prong, kind of right in the vicinity where McCarter says he smelled a body.
(00:55:50)
And he says he came upon skeletal remains buried in the ground and they were a child's remains.
Oh, man.
And he didn't take it to the police at the time because he was doing illegal ginseng harvesting, thought he would get in trouble for it.
(00:56:05)
Couldn't just, like, say, hey, I was going for a walk in the woods.
It's ridiculous, really. Yeah. And once McCarter heard this in 85, he got together a team and they went out there and tried to search the area. But you're talking 15 years later now.
And he said the ground was just covered in a layer. And if there was anything there, they weren't going to find it.
(00:56:24)
Yeah. It would have been... I don't know if they took cadaver dogs on that search, but it would have been... I mean, who knows, ultimately, the validity of that ginseng harvester story, but it's possible the case could have been solved by him if he had come forward earlier or if they had done a more thorough search.
Because as far as I'm aware, they haven't searched that area again since the mid 80s. Oh, wow.
(00:56:53)
Yeah. So in my opinion, in this case, it seems like Dennis Martin may have been abducted by someone.
Yeah. We don't know who exactly. It may have been that guy that Mr. Key saw. But on the other hand, you have this story of this Dwight McCarter's time. Maybe he got away and got lost and died from exposure.
You know, there's still a lot of unanswered questions, but all my research I did on this case, like I said, changed my mind completely.
(00:57:28)
Yeah. Because I started out as thinking, oh, there might be a cryptid involved in this case or a wild man. And I couldn't find any evidence for that. In the end, we take into account all the more modern information that's available out there.
Yeah. And I know I just talked your ear off about this.
No, that's amazing. It's interesting.
You know, it's a very complex case, as you can tell. And we're over 40 years and we're still learning stuff today.
(00:58:00)
Yeah. It seems like there was a lot of opportunities, kind of missed opportunities in the case, too. You know, where the ranger, I smelled this and the guy, the ginseng picker, the harvester, you know, saw the skeletal remains.
So all of these things that just kind of never looked... like even the... what was the name of the guy who saw the man in the bushes and run out?
(00:58:26)
Harold Key. So my first thought, because, you know, I have three kids. Mine are all older now. But like, if I heard a kid in the woods saying, help me, I'd go looking. Like, why wouldn't he go looking? That is weird to me.
Yeah, I can understand that. What he said was that he just couldn't tell where it was coming from. It sounded like it was a long ways off. And he was in the mountains and he just had no idea which direction to go.
(00:58:54)
Yeah. But he didn't notice anybody?
He did. He waited a day. And it started eating at him. And, you know, he heard about the Dennis Martin disappearance after a day too. So he knew a kid was missing. He added that up with the fact that he had heard a child screamed for help. And he went to the FBI. Now, when he does that, though, you actually get some more shady stuff from the FBI because they show up at his house. And they told him to not talk about the case.
(00:59:25)
Interesting. Yeah. And Harold Key told Bouchard too that he would get phone calls, like anonymous phone calls at his house from someone who would tell him, don't talk with anybody about this case. And when the case was closed, he said he got a final phone call that said the case is closed now. You don't have to talk about it ever again.
(00:59:47)
Wow. And Harold Key, when he had his interview with Bouchard said that he hadn't, you know, done an interview since 1969, because he was afraid for his family after getting these phone calls. And when he got interviewed by Bouchard in 2016, he was in his 90s. And, you know, he's still very sharp, according to Bouchard, but he said that he was so old now, there was no way they could hurt him.
(01:00:15)
And everyone in the case was dead, too.
All the FBI agents were dead that were involved.
Wow. And Harold Key passed away in 2019. So, you know, I think we were very lucky to get that interview.
Right. Because it clears up a lot of things. You know, originally, we just had this interview from 1969. Yeah. And then we had David Poliety's interview with Bill Martin in 2011. But the real important witness in this case was Harold Key. And no one had gone back to him and asked him, you know, what did you see?
(01:00:51)
Yeah. So, yeah.
Wow. All these years later, you know, and like I said, I'm proud of that video because that was able to hopefully bring something new to people. You know, this is, like I said, a big case.
And I was looking forward to seeing the reaction of people because sometimes when people believe in a case for so long, and then you kind of present evidence that's contradicting what they've known for a long time.
(01:01:24)
You get a little pushback, I've noticed.
Yeah, a little resistance.
Yeah. And that was interesting. But that's all right. I understand. You know, sometimes it's not easy to just change your thoughts about things, especially, you know, this case. This was a very popular case.
And, you know, but I think a lot of people enjoyed it. I hope they did. And, you know, if there's one video that I've done that I'm most proud of, it's probably that one. And just the going through the entire timeline of events, you know, it's over 40 minutes long, so it's not a short video.
(01:02:01)
But like I said, it's an important one, I think.
Yeah, sounds like it. Awesome. Okay, well, we're already done with the first hour, which is crazy.
Oh, my.
I know. So let's take a quick break. And then Big Willie has a question that I've been holding on to about what you think about the missing case of Stephen Kubacki. Is that how you pronounce his last name?
(01:02:23)
Yeah. So we will get into that when we come back.
Sounds great.
All right. We'll see you in five minutes.
Cool. All right.
All right.
See you in five minutes.
All right.
Welcome back to our number two of Spaced Out Saturday. I'm your host, Lynn Wallington. Thanks for being with us.
And don't forget, if you've missed portions of this show or others, you can check out our archives at YouTube.com slash Spaced Out Radio. Just do us the favor and hit that subscribe button.
(01:07:24)
And thank you for your generous super chats.
(01:07:26)
It's a great way to support SOR on a nightly basis.
And we appreciate you.
Our website is SpacedOutRadio.com, where we have a plethora of features for you, including rocking out to Bumblefoot. And don't forget to read up on Captain Shirk's SOR Newswire. All right, let's get back to Nick. Hey, there you are.
Okay. So, Big Willie's question.
What do you think of the missing case of Stephen Kubacki?
(01:07:53)
Is Kubacki?
I can never say a name right.
Stephen Kubacki. Kubacki. I'm familiar with it.
I haven't done a video on it, but I've been planning to.
I've done some preliminary research on it.
And, I mean, his basic story is a fairly well-known one.
Because he went missing, and he went missing for a long time.
And then he showed up again with amnesia.
(01:08:22)
And it's always been an interesting case to people.
I think the time when he went missing, it was in the winter.
And all they found of him were some tracks leading into nowhere, basically.
They just stopped.
And then he vanished for like a year or more.
Oh, wow.
And then he showed up again.
And some of the preliminary research I was doing, just to kind of check in on that case.
(01:08:49)
I noticed there's a website out there.
Stephen Kubacki, he's now a psychologist.
He's written some books.
He's written some interesting books about quantum mechanics.
Oh, sounds like my kind of guy.
Yeah, he's an interesting fellow.
Apparently, he doesn't respond to inquiries about what happened to him.
But there's this other guy, I forget his name, who's apparently a friend of Stephen, who claims he's writing a book about what happened to Stephen during the time he was gone.
(01:09:23)
What I got from the summation of what this man says about the incident, that it had something to do with just where Stephen was in his life at the time.
And this was in the 70s. There might have been a lot of hallucinogenic drugs involved.
Yeah. And that he might just have wanted to disappear and change something in his life, which is not something I had heard before.
(01:09:50)
And so my next step in kind of researching for this case was to contact the guy who says he's going to write this book and see what I can get out of him and see how reliable it is.
Because that's a case that a lot of people have been at least suggested to me.
It could be a UFO abduction type case, you know, a guy goes missing and shows up with amnesia.
(01:10:15)
Yeah. I could buy into that being a UFO thing.
You know, we need to look into paranormal explanations for things.
So it's interesting that this writer is coming out with this alternate explanation where maybe it was just a guy who wanted to disappear and change his life and was doing a lot of drugs at the time.
So, I mean, I still plan on looking into that.
(01:10:40)
And you can look forward to maybe seeing that in the video in the near future if I can get some good information on that.
(01:10:48)
But like I said, it's always my goal before I put a video out, I really want to make sure I got all the information I can out of a case and present it to the viewer so that they can make their own decisions about things.
Yeah. But that's what I know about it.
Interesting. Wow. Well, you have to let me know if you do that, because that sounds interesting.
(01:11:09)
Yeah. Wow. If you need any help on the UFO part, we're here.
Yeah. Glad to have a resource there.
Yeah. Oh, yes. I can definitely help you out with that stuff.
Well, I know I love UFOs, too. I mean, it's not part of my channel, but, you know, I've kept up to date with that kind of stuff forever.
Awesome. Any kind of paranormal thing, you know? I'm into that like anyone else is.
(01:11:38)
But, you know, my main interest is just in missing persons cases. That's just where my heart lies at the moment.
Yeah. Well, sometimes there's a little overlap, it seems. So you got a little bit of both.
I wouldn't doubt it.
Okay, so let's talk about what is like the weirdest case you've ever investigated that you were just like, really? Are there any of those?
(01:12:06)
Well, I guess it depends on how much evidence you want that supports that it happened.
Okay, well... Because I think that... That's good, too.
I think that, you know, I think anyone who's really into this genre would probably say that the most bizarre case is by far what I and probably a lot of other people call the robot grandma case.
What?
Yeah, but I mean, there's not a ton of tangible evidence to support it.
(01:12:47)
But I mean, I haven't talked about a long time. So just very briefly, it had to do with a child who went missing around Mount Shasta, in an area called McLeod and McLeod campground.
And a child did disappear. We don't know his name. We know what happened. And we know he was found by a team of searchers and a search dog. You can confirm all that with news reports.
(01:13:14)
Yeah. But that's all you get in the sense of like, what can I really show people? Because the real interesting part of that story comes later on, supposedly when he's at home, and he's visiting his grandma and he tells his grandma this story of what happened to him while he was missing.
And he tells his grandma that basically he was approached by what amounts to basically a clone of his grandma. He said, yeah, his grandma Cappy, he called her, you know, came up and took his hand and walked away with him and took him to a cave.
(01:13:56)
Yeah. Inside, the kid said there was a lot of old dusty guns and backpacks, and that there was other people in there, but they were staying still and they weren't moving and they had strange expressions on their face. And that... Not at all peculiar.
(01:14:16)
And that this person that looked like his grandma, he speaks sometimes of a strange light around her head.
(01:14:44)
And depending on where you read the story, you can get a kind of a couple different versions of the scenes where maybe he might have, or she might have told him, you're from outer space, and we implanted you into your mother. And then you were, you know, almost like the aliens, you know, just... It's an interesting case.
That's daily for us.
Yeah. And then, you know, the grandma takes him, takes him back and leaves him in a bush where he's found by the search dogs.
(01:14:55)
Interesting. But when I'm doing that case, the only thing I can really... I mean, I have a video on that case because it's fun to draw.
Yeah, I bet.
The only thing I can really show you that's tangible is that a child disappeared in the McLeod area at this exact time.
Yeah. As far as, you know, where this story comes from, I know David Polides talked and wrote about it, but this child's grandma, Cappy, posted this story on the website Above Top Secret. Ah!
(01:15:29)
And was taking questions about it right around the time that this happened.
Okay. You know, that website being what it is, that might raise a lot of red flags to people.
Yeah. You know, I don't know where to stand on that case necessarily in terms of believe it or not, but it's interesting.
Yeah. And I think regardless of anything else, it's something to kind of file away in the back of your mind because what if it is true?
(01:15:58)
You know, maybe there's some key element in there that could give you a clue to something else.
True. So, you know, I don't dismiss it outright.
Yeah. But, I mean, that's by far the strangest story that I've ever seen.
It's interesting.
Now, do we know how old the child was supposedly?
I think he was about four or five.
He was very young.
Really young.
(01:16:19)
Interesting. But, you know, what most people are probably curious about is what does he have to say now?
Because, gosh, by now I think he's definitely an adult.
Mm-hmm. Because this happened a while back.
And, you know, I have been partially tempted to see, you know, if I could get in touch with this grandma and maybe if she's willing to, like, talk about it or reveal her name because we don't know the name of the grandma other than Grandma Cappy. Okay. And we don't know the name of the child.
(01:16:51)
So, there's not a lot to go on, you know.
Right. I don't like to do a story about a John Doe because, you know, like I said, I like to, as much as I can, present people with facts.
Yeah. That I can, you know, physically show you in some way.
But that case kind of was too interesting to ignore.
(01:17:13)
Yeah, that's fascinating.
So, there's a couple of different things that kind of caught my attention.
So, Mount Shasta, as you probably know, is well known for UFO sightings.
Right. And the fact that a four-year-old would come back with a story that he's an alien that was implanted into his mother goes along with a lot of the hybrid breeding program stories that you hear.
(01:17:36)
Oh, really?
Yeah. So, I mean, it's not usually, like, the aliens coming and telling the kids this or whatever this person or clone was.
It's interesting that he knew she was a clone, though.
I guess maybe the light kind of gave it away, but, like, how would he know it's a clone?
Well, when he was talking to his grandma, he had got it into his head that it was a robot.
(01:17:59)
Okay. That's what he told his grandma.
This is, like, a robot version of you.
I don't know exactly.
It's hard to know what he meant by that.
Like, what kicked him off that this was a robot clone.
But the grandma in the case, too, had an interesting story herself.
Because during this time that her grandson went missing, she was camping in an area not too far away.
(01:18:23)
And she told a story of her and the man she was camping with.
He apparently passed out and fell on the ground.
And she had woken up with something on the back of her neck, like someone had poked her.
And, you know, some people have speculated maybe they took, like, a DNA sample from her.
Used it to create some sort of clone that was then involved in the child's disappearance.
(01:18:52)
But the grandma told her and her partner they had an incident while they were camping at the exact same time.
Where they were both unconscious and this strange thing happened.
That's fascinating.
You know, I do enjoy cases like that.
Because, you know, boy, if that is true, that's... It's crazy. It's awesome.
Luke99 had a question. Wasn't there something about the grandma asking him about using the bathroom?
(01:19:23)
There sure was, yeah.
She did ask him to defecate on a piece of sticky paper, is what he called it.
Okay. That is another odd thing.
Is this the clone grandma or the actual grandma?
It's the clone grandma.
Okay. In the cave.
She puts out a piece of sticky paper, that's what he called it, and asked him to defecate on it.
He didn't want to. He didn't. He refused.
(01:19:48)
He said that the robot grandma got a little angry at him after that happened.
That's also kind of weird.
You know, it's almost like, are they gathering a test sample of something?
Yeah, sounds like it.
Hey, there's a lot you can do from poop.
Yeah. Or go to the hospital.
Oh, yeah?
Yep. Very bizarre story.
Interesting. You know, but very interesting.
Yeah, that's fascinating.
(01:20:15)
Black Dragon has a question.
Has Nick ever tried to connect some of these cases with human trafficking?
(01:20:20)
You know, I haven't seen the connection in any of the cases I've researched.
But I'm open to it.
You know, if I come and see evidence that that might have been a possibility, I'm not going to hesitate to tell you.
I haven't seen that yet.
But, you know, compared to someone like David Pilates, I have a much smaller body of work.
I just, you know, I just try to be very thorough with the cases I do.
(01:20:54)
Because when I put a video out there, I don't want to have to come back and say, oh, I got this wrong.
Or I have to redo this.
I really want to put something out there that will stand the test of time.
Yeah. And, you know, I'm not perfect.
I've made a couple mistakes since I've made my channel.
And, you know, I learned a lot from them because the astute viewers that are on YouTube, if they see you did something wrong, they're happy to call you out on it.
(01:21:21)
Yeah. Boy, I've taken... I've gotten a lot of comments about some little factoids.
Yeah. But I appreciate it.
You know, I don't want to put misinformation out there.
I want to make the most accurate video I possibly can.
So I always appreciate anyone telling me if they think I did something wrong.
But, you know, I really... I try to be very thorough with every video I make.
(01:21:49)
Were there any cases that you have that, like, after you put the video out, you found there was, like, new information came out or anything of that nature?
Yes. Wait. No. Almost. There was, like, very, very close.
There was a video I did about Dale Staling, who disappeared in Mesa Verde National Park. And he disappeared off the trails there.
They never found him.
(01:22:21)
And then, like, right as I was about to put the video out in 2020, news hits that they found his body.
Oh, wow.
And this was years later.
And so I was... I just caught a lucky break on that one because I very nearly almost published something that would have, you know, the next day been inaccurate all of a sudden with me saying, oh, he was never found.
(01:22:45)
And then the next day he is found.
Oh, that was sick, yeah.
Luckily, I mean, I caught that one.
But that's one of the reasons, if you watch my channel, that I do very old cases a lot of times.
A lot of the bare cases in my recent video are, like, from the late 1800s. Oh, wow.
Yeah, I like to do old cases because new cases, stuff is happening all the time.
(01:23:09)
And I would hate to put out a video and then something comes out the next day or the next week that makes what I said inaccurate.
Yeah. And I just fed you some inaccurate information.
Yeah. So, because, you know, recently there was a woman who disappeared named Tata Murrell. And people were asking me to do a video about that and saying this was a strange case, you know, that worthy of a video.
(01:23:34)
And not that long ago, the last thing I read about it was that they had finally found her.
(01:23:39)
She was deceased and she had died in a rock slide.
Oh, wow.
Which is an accident.
Yeah. That happens.
And that can be the resolution to these things sometimes if you try and get a case too early.
So I try to do cases that have had time to settle a little bit so that, you know, they can withstand time.
Yeah. But they're finding people all the time.
(01:24:06)
I was reading the news the other day.
They found a missing hunter who disappeared, like, 53 years ago.
Oh, wow.
So, you know, there's no telling when someone can be found.
There's a lot of people out there that are still missing and have been missing for a long time.
Yeah. So crazy.
So, okay.
I have to have the story about the bears taking the kids.
(01:24:27)
Tell me about that.
Yeah. I like to do themed videos if I can.
You know, I like to pick kind of a theme or a subject.
And this has always interested me.
And I think it's connected to missing people because a lot of times you wonder about predators.
Yeah. What role do they play in people going missing?
And you often think, well, if someone got attacked by a wild animal, there's going to be something left to find.
(01:24:55)
And I did a deep dive into this bear thing.
And I found a lot of bear cases.
And there's a lot of them out there where they know a bear took a child and then they just never see the child again.
They don't find anything.
So that technically is a missing child that was taken by a bear.
Wow. And I found that it happens a lot when families went berry picking.
(01:25:20)
That's something that gets brought up to me a lot is berry pickers that go missing.
It makes sense to me that a bear would swipe someone who was picking berries because that's a food source for bears.
Right. Absolutely. That might be their area.
And they see a little child if it's not monitored.
There's so many stories.
I was kind of surprised.
A lot of them are old, obviously.
(01:25:45)
Late 1800s, early 1900s when a lot of the U.S. territory was still pretty wild of bears swiping children right out from underneath parents.
But the ones that were really focused on in the video were bears that they didn't act like bears.
And, you know, if you look at the comment section on that video, a lot of the conclusions people come to is that I'm not talking about bears.
(01:26:13)
These are either a Bigfoot or a lot of people suggested Dogman. Yeah. And I can understand why because a lot of these stories are unbelievable.
The two people probably are familiar with are the most famous, Katie Flynn and Ida Mae Curtis. Katie Flynn is an interesting story that I found a lot of new research on, at least to me.
She was three years old.
(01:26:40)
This is Wall Hollow, Michigan, 1868. So very old case.
(01:26:45)
Yeah. But it was a big deal.
This case has been reprinted in newspapers.
It was 90 years after it happened.
Wow. It kept getting printed over and over again because the story was just so incredible.
Katie Flynn lived at a lumber camp with her dad and mom.
One morning, Katie wants to go with her dad as he's off to work.
He's taking a horse.
(01:27:10)
She wants to go along.
He says, okay.
He lets her come on the horse.
They ride about 200 yards.
And then he sets her down and says, all right, you go back home now.
And he says as he's riding away, he sees Katie playing in the sand and just kind of assumes that she's going to make it home.
Later after work, he comes home and asks his wife, where's Katie?
(01:27:32)
Hasn't seen her.
He goes back to the point he last saw Katie playing in the sand.
He finds big bear tracks.
Okay. So this panics the family, obviously.
And they begin searching the woods.
They come across two other guys who are out looking for land to buy.
So it's kind of just a fortuitous event for them.
They pick up two searchers.
These guys were willing to help.
(01:27:57)
And so the group goes out looking for Katie. They're calling her name.
And then they get her to respond.
And they say, come out of the bushes.
Because they can't see her.
They just hear her.
And she says, the bear won't let me.
And so they, I'm sure that probably shocked them.
They start rushing through the bushes.
This is a very thickly wooded area.
(01:28:18)
And they come out into an area where there's a river.
And they hear a splash right as they get to the area.
And then they see Katie. And she is on a log that is protruding out into the river.
She's just standing there.
The splash came from the bear who jumped into the river and is now swimming to the other side.
So they get Katie back.
(01:28:39)
And she's completely unharmed, other than some scratches.
They say there was some light bark.
Or light bite indentations in her back where the bear may have been carrying her.
And it's really the story that she tells that's kind of interesting.
She says the bear would put her down and nuzzle up to her.
And then she would slap it.
And it would purr like a cat.
(01:29:03)
She says that at night, the bear wrapped its arms around her and kept her warm.
So, odd bear behavior.
And a lot of people that know this story might say, well, I don't know.
Wait a minute.
You left a lot out.
And that's simply because the story I just told was the original 1868 version.
There's at least four other versions of this story that came out at later dates.
(01:29:29)
From different eyewitnesses.
And they all added different things.
For example, a man named Henry Butler. He told a similar story.
(01:29:38)
But he said that after they got Katie back.
That this bear kept coming around the Flynn residence.
Looking for Katie. Trying to abduct her again.
And that the family had to hire this Native American man.
To stand outside with a gun.
And make sure the bear didn't get her.
And that he eventually was able to kill the bear.
Wow. The story people are most familiar with.
(01:30:00)
Came from a guy named W.E. Berry. And he told it to a paper.
Some 40 years after the incident.
W.E. Berry?
W.E. Berry. And. But his claims were.
They really added a lot of flavor.
To the story.
I guess.
He said the bear came along.
When Katie was playing in the sand.
And it held out its paw.
And then Katie took a hold of it.
(01:30:29)
And they walked off together.
Hand in hand.
And that when he had Katie. The bear would go out.
And it picked berries for her.
And came back with a paw.
Full of winter green berries.
Which the two ate.
And it made a bed of leaves for her.
And the two slept in it.
And. According to Berry. The reason that this bear.
Was doing this.
(01:30:55)
Perhaps. Was that Katie Flynn's dad.
Had been hunting bears in the area.
And he had killed a lot of them.
Including cubs.
And a lot of the superstitious lumberjacks.
In the area were saying.
That maybe this was some sort of retribution.
For what Henry Flynn. Had done to the bears in the area.
But. I go through each of the different stories.
That a witness tells.
(01:31:20)
And some of them tell.
More wild stories.
And some of them tell.
Ones that more match the 1868 version.
Which is a little more laid back.
But still incredible.
I mean any bear.
In my opinion that steals a child.
And keeps it alive for a day.
Takes care of it.
That's very unusual.
Bears don't usually take care of human children.
So that's a big one.
(01:31:46)
And a popular one.
Fascinating. And it's kind of.
Ida Mae Curtis' story.
Is very similar.
It happened almost 100 years later.
In 1955. She was.
Had a family that worked at a lumber camp too.
Much like Katie. This was the 4th of July. And. They were setting up for a party.
All the lumber workers were going to have a little.
4th of July get together.
(01:32:16)
And Ida Mae and her family were there.
Her mother left her.
In a tent that had been set up.
With her older brother.
And she left to go find the father.
And when she came back.
She says that she sees a bear.
Running away from the tent on three legs.
As though it's carrying something.
In its other arm.
And the grandfather.
Of the family.
(01:32:38)
Says he saw the same thing.
And that he chased this three-legged bear.
To the creek where he lost it.
A big search occurs.
They're looking for her.
(01:32:48)
And they find Ida Mae. 21 hours later.
She's in a shelter.
Made out of cedar branches.
And she's just sitting in it.
And the interesting part.
Is that it reports in the newspaper.
That she was dry.
Even though you have to cross a creek.
In order to get to this location.
And that she wasn't suffering.
From any kind of hypothermia.
Despite the fact that it was snowing.
(01:33:14)
During the time she was lost.
And the sheriff.
Who assisted in the search for this case.
Is quoted in a lot of newspapers.
Saying there was no bear.
The bear didn't abduct Ida Mae. And that he thought he convinced the family of this.
And the family wasn't going for it.
They said that Ida Mae kept saying the words bear.
And big bear.
After they got her back.
(01:33:40)
And so hard to know why the sheriff.
Was so opposed to the idea of a bear.
In this case.
Yeah, that's interesting.
But it seems like there's a lot of evidence.
To show there was a bear involved.
Because a lot of people saw it.
You have Ida Mae who saw it.
You have her brother.
Her mother and her grandfather.
Yeah. And the shelter she was in.
(01:34:07)
Was said to be made of branches.
That were too heavy for her to lift.
Yeah. And obviously you get into the discussion of.
Well, wait a minute.
What are bears capable of?
Are they capable of building the shelter?
What's going on there?
And that's a good question.
Yeah. I can see why people might want to say.
Well, maybe these people.
Or maybe these girls.
(01:34:33)
Were taken by a Sasquatch. Or something.
And the people.
The parents who saw the bear.
Didn't want to say anything.
Because who wants to say.
They saw a gorilla running around.
Right. The bear is a little more believable.
I don't know.
But there's a lot of these cases.
You know, those are the two famous ones.
And then.
You know, I did.
Like I said.
(01:35:00)
A lot of research into this.
And came across other interesting ones.
That just have odd bear behavior.
In 1906. You have.
The daughter of a man named T.W. Egan. Much like W.E. Barry. They don't like you to know their first names.
Right. And he was in Tumwater, Washington. This is 1906. This is a family of farmers.
And two parents.
Son and a daughter.
(01:35:33)
And they leave their daughter.
And their son at home.
Their daughter is 12. And while her parents are gone.
She's going out to a shed.
To get potatoes for dinner.
And she has no idea there is a bear in the area.
And it comes in.
And just scoops her up.
And she screams.
And as she screams.
Her little brother comes out of the house.
(01:35:56)
Just in time to see the bear walking.
Or running rather.
Upright on two legs.
Holding his sister.
In his four paws.
And this case struck me as odd.
(01:36:10)
Because I know there is videos out there.
Of bears.
On two legs.
Walking. Sometimes it's because they have injured paws.
But I've never even seen one run while doing that.
They're usually kind of attempting to walk.
Much less be carrying something in their arms.
Yeah. Interesting. So another really bizarre case there.
Yeah. This is another strange one.
Did she come back?
That little girl?
(01:36:39)
Oh, yes.
Let me finish that.
Leave you hanging there.
I know.
The little brother.
He went off to the neighbor's house to get help.
So they go back to the town.
And gather a bunch of searchers.
They gather a big search party.
And they all head for the Egan house.
By the time they get there.
The daughter is already back home.
And she says that about 200 yards.
(01:37:04)
Running with her.
The bear dropped her.
And then she was just able to walk back.
Not an eventful end to the story.
But like I said.
What really struck me about this one.
Was just the idea of a bear running on two legs.
Carrying a child.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Yeah. It was fun to draw a picture of.
Oh my gosh.
I can imagine.
(01:37:28)
I'm going to have to go watch and see.
It always happens with children too.
It's really interesting.
It's like these bears, if they are bears.
Have just a serious interest in kids.
In 1907. We got the child of James Ingram. And a lot of these cases.
The child isn't named.
That was a common thing.
Back in the late 1800's. Early 1900's. To not name the child in an article.
(01:37:57)
This happened in Afton, Virginia. 1907. Another farming family.
They had a newborn baby.
This couple.
And they had made plans.
For the evening.
The mother was going to take the baby.
And meet the father at the fence line of their property.
After he got off work.
Afterwards they were going to go visit a neighbor's house.
And have dinner or whatever.
So she goes out in the evening.
(01:38:21)
It's getting pretty dark.
She can't see well.
And she comes to the fence line.
She sees a figure on the other side.
And she assumes it's her husband.
So she hands the baby over.
To the figure.
Who takes it.
Turns around and walks off.
Without saying a word.
She gets frantic.
Starts screaming and yelling.
And the husband hears her.
Comes running up.
And the only evidence.
(01:38:50)
They find of the encounter.
Or what is described in the articles.
As being immense bear tracks.
Leading off into the mountains.
And when you think about this case.
Something weird happened.
Yeah. Even if you can only see the silhouette of something.
Usually a human being does not look like a bear.
Right. Let alone a little different.
Yeah. So. You know it's hard to know what to make of some of these cases.
(01:39:19)
Yeah. You got tracks.
And the child is missing.
And as far as I can tell.
(01:39:25)
They were never able to recover the child.
Wow. What an odd story.
Even if you're handing a kid over.
Wouldn't you feel like.
Oh wait.
What is this fur and these claws.
That's what I was making the point of in the video.
You know.
It's like.
Either the bear.
Even if it reached it's paws out to grab the child.
You think it would probably grab it with it's mouth.
(01:39:50)
Before anything else.
And you would know right away.
I'm not dealing with a human being.
I'm dealing with a bear.
Yeah. So. Yeah. It just doesn't make any sense.
I can understand why people in the comments in that video might suggest.
Like a Bigfoot would make more sense.
Right. Yeah. Because then I could see that's a little more human shaped for sure.
Right. You know.
(01:40:11)
If it's dark enough maybe you didn't notice.
Or maybe it just wasn't a particularly hairy one.
I don't know.
There's possibilities.
Right. You know.
So it's hard to know what to make of it.
But I'm open to anything on these.
Because I mean.
Whether you want to believe bears are capable of these odd.
You know.
Feats of agility or whatever.
You know.
I mean.
(01:40:36)
I don't know.
I don't know what's more believable.
That or a Bigfoot doing it.
Right. Betty Spaghetti says.
Maybe they were eating suspicious mushrooms in their yard.
That one doesn't make sense.
LOL. You know what.
I can get on board with that too.
Yeah. That's awesome.
Maybe the parents had some weird plan to try and get rid of their child.
But then again.
(01:40:58)
You're dealing with what they described as large tracks in the area.
Yeah. And a lot of people have made the point to me.
That bear tracks in some situations.
Can look a lot like Bigfoot tracks.
Which is interesting.
I have heard that actually.
Because. And that's one way that I've heard people.
Kind of debunking Bigfoot tracks.
Is that if.
That a bear can walk.
(01:41:21)
And then the second footprint goes down.
And then it makes a bigger track.
That's what I've heard too.
Yeah. It's interesting.
It makes you wonder.
Some of these stories.
I found.
If the previous ones.
Hadn't gone off the deep end.
I thought this one was really unusual.
It didn't have to do with a child getting taken.
It related to.
What bears are capable of.
(01:41:49)
I would say.
There's a man named Chester Ford. 1904. In Millville, New Jersey. Another farmer.
And he's riding into town.
In the evening on his horse.
And he sees an animal in the distance.
He can't tell what it is.
As he approaches it.
He realizes that it is a bear.
A large bear.
It is standing up on its haunches.
Its back legs.
And it is wielding a wooden club.
(01:42:17)
And brandishing it.
Yeah. And it growls at him.
And the horse gets spooked.
And then he can't control it anymore.
And it rides back home.
(01:42:29)
And he tells this story to the reporter.
The guy who wrote the article.
And he says.
He couldn't believe it at first.
Because bears were not known.
To be in the area anymore.
Much less wheeled clubs.
Yeah. And the article writer speculated.
That some years back.
There had been possible bear sightings.
In the area.
Of a bear that was stealing sheep.
And they had chased it.
(01:43:00)
Into an area called Blackwater Swamp. And so the reporter in this article.
Makes that connection.
Maybe these things are related.
And this is somehow the same bear.
But like I said.
Even though it is not.
A case of abduction.
What a strange thing.
I can't imagine that this.
Maybe I am wrong.
But what a strange thing to make up.
If you are a farmer.
(01:43:25)
And you want to go to a reporter.
And you tell a story.
Either way.
He probably got considered to be the town nut.
After that.
A bear brandished a club at you.
It is kind of weird.
Again. Why would they question that?
I am not sure a bear.
Could even hold a club.
Strange stories about bears.
Finding these things.
Has been interesting.
Sovereign Cosmic Wild Man. Wants to know if you think.
(01:43:58)
They are actually all bears.
Your personal opinion.
I don't know.
It is a good answer.
One thing I would say.
I am open to it.
Being something else.
100%. Obviously. I mean.
The people that saw this.
Say they saw bears.
These are things.
We think we know.
Bears can't do.
At that point.
All bets are off.
In a way.
Why is a bear.
(01:44:38)
Wielding a club.
Any more believable than a Sasquatch. We know a bear exists.
But still.
It is doing something.
It doesn't have thumbs.
How can it hold a club?
It would need opposable thumbs.
Presumably. I have never been.
I can't say.
I believe in Bigfoot. I am open to it.
One thing I come across a lot.
Going through all these old newspaper archives.
(01:45:10)
Is a lot of really old cases.
Where they talk about gorillas. In the U.S. Not even gorillas.
They call them wild men.
We are talking 1800s. Before Bigfoot and Sasquatch. Some people think Bigfoot started in the 70s. They have had sightings.
Really interesting sightings.
Going way back.
Reported in papers.
They didn't know what to call.
Whether you believe it or not.
These are interesting reports.
(01:45:48)
They are consistent.
They are all over the place.
That makes me wonder.
These are reports about bears.
I see reports about gorilla creatures.
In similar situations.
Which I have been thinking about doing a video about at some point.
That would be a fun thing to draw too.
Yeah, I think so.
For sure.
To me, those cases aren't about trying to convince anyone of anything.
(01:46:18)
I just like to say I am presenting you with these cases.
These reports that happened a long time ago.
That time basically has forgotten.
(01:46:26)
Make up your own mind.
What do you think?
Like I said, to anyone who thinks that Bigfoot is some modern day phenomenon, it's not.
People were seeing weird gorilla things hundreds of years ago.
Yeah. You take from it what you can.
I could see somebody calling a Bigfoot a bear because they don't want to say they saw a big gorilla.
Right, or if it was all hunched over.
(01:46:56)
Maybe it looked like a bear.
It's possible, certainly.
I haven't seen a Bigfoot and I haven't seen a bear doing any of these weird things either.
Me either, but a lot of the audience have seen Bigfoots. Oh, really?
That's awesome.
Bigfoots or Bigfeet? What is the plural?
I never know. Sasquatches?
Yeah, I go with the Sasquatches, personally.
Or is it just Sasquatch? Is that plural and singular at the same time?
(01:47:25)
You might be right. I think it might be.
Sasquatch. I don't know.
I need to become more educated on the topic.
Clearly, I do too.
At least neither one of us knows. That's good.
The other one is like... So, what is... Our viewers are going to your channel and they're checking you out.
What is the first video you recommend them watching? What's a good one to start with?
(01:47:52)
Well, it's hard for me to pick one.
You know, people... You can go with the most popular one, which you were recommending.
It was the Paul Michael LeMaitre one.
That one is done really well. There's one I did recently about hunters. And... You know, I'd say any of the ones that I've done in the past six months are all very great way to get started on the channel.
(01:48:26)
I got some things coming up I'm excited about too.
You know, a lot more... I'm going to try and add some actual filming of locations that I'm talking about. Oh, nice.
Like, this last summer, I spent a lot of time in Mount Rainier, National Park. It's one of my favorite places.
Yeah. And... there's a very interesting case there where I was on the trail, I walked the trail, I showed the spot where this person disappears. And that's going to be coming out real soon.
(01:49:05)
I'm looking forward to that. And that's a very interesting case. You know, I think you were asking me earlier, what are some cases that really have kind of stuck with me or get me thinking a lot. And that was one of them.
And I can't, you know, I don't know what it is about certain cases that really... I don't know, makes me become almost obsessed with them, because I really like to dig deep and find out what's going on.
(01:49:32)
One was the Dennis Martin case.
And this one is about a woman named Karen Sykes, who disappeared in 2014. I've actually heard of her.
You have? Yeah, I have.
Yeah, I became so interested in that case, because she disappeared on a trail called the Hawaii Lakes Trail in Mount Rainier. And she, even though she was 70 years old, and I know saying that people are going to say, oh, she's old.
(01:50:04)
Old people going missing.
(01:50:06)
But she was... There are plenty of fit 70-year-olds. Yeah. Very capable.
People describe her as having the energy of a 20-year-old. Yeah. And she... You know, some people say, oh, they wrote the book on this.
She wrote books on hiking, and some of the only books about hiking hidden trails in Washington. She knew Mount Rainier very well. That was her backyard.
(01:50:31)
And she had hiked on this specific trail before.
And the day she went missing, she went with her partner.
And they were heading north up the Y-High Trail. This is in June. And they hit snow.
And when they hit snow, her partner, a man named Bob, he stopped.
And he was tired and wanted to sit down and have lunch.
Karen, being the energetic person that she is, continued on to scout up ahead.
(01:51:01)
She said she'd be back shortly. And by the way, after hiking this trail, I can tell you, I understand why Bob was tired.
Because this trail is not really for the faint of heart. It's very uphill. There's a lot of switchbacks. The goal of this whole hike is usually to get to the Y-High Lakes, which are really beautiful lakes in a meadow.
But with this story, Karen never returns.
(01:51:26)
Bob doesn't know what to do.
He goes back to the trailhead.
He... One thing I learned when I FOIA'd this case is that he kind of just stood at the trailhead for a long time. And a sheriff drove by, asked him if he needed any help.
And he told them no.
And I thought that was interesting.
Because later on, he finally called to let people know that Karen was missing.
(01:51:59)
And they did a search for her.
Helicopters, over a hundred search personnel.
They did a lot of looking. And they were looking in this area where she disappeared. It was about, I think it was 4,500 feet of elevation.
They knew the location where they stopped.
And they couldn't find her.
And three days later, a helicopter spots Karen in this creek.
A creek called Boundary Creek. And this is way far away from the area where she disappeared.
(01:52:32)
And across a huge ridge that goes about 1,000 feet up.
And in order to get over it, you would need climbing gear.
So that one has always stuck with me. Because I wanted to know, well, how does someone disappear and then appear a mountain range away, almost?
I'm sorry. I think you're muted, Lynn. I am.
I'm so sorry. My dog was snoring on my lap.
(01:53:03)
Was she alive when they found her?
Nope. She was deceased.
She got spotted from a helicopter.
They just saw her lying partially in the creek.
And when I went there the first time, I wanted to hike the trail because I wanted to see the spot where she vanished.
So I went up to the elevation where I knew they had separated.
And I did some filming there. That area is so rugged.
(01:53:32)
You know, the idea of her going off trail doesn't make any sense because you're looking at just the steepest incline to your right and the steepest incline going down to your left.
(01:53:43)
And brush everywhere. There's just nowhere to go. And one of the interesting things is that in the Park Service report, it says that the first ranger on scene, when they were doing this investigation, he couldn't find evidence that Karen had been in that area at all. Which weirded me out because if there's snow on the ground, you would think there would be footprints. Which would be readily identifiable.
(01:54:16)
But this ranger says he couldn't find evidence that she had... So, what it kind of made me think was how trustworthy was this gentleman she was working with.
And, yeah... I went there a second time because after even investigating a little more and talking to some people close to the case, I wanted to see this boundary creek where she was found miles north and it intersects with the Owehi Trail. There's a bridge that crosses this creek.
(01:54:55)
And I went there to see if you can actually get up and around and go up there. And you can. And the area where they found her body, they found footsteps leading to the location she was found. And they also describe these drag marks in the snow.
But they don't speculate about what that could mean.
And so I've been working on this case a lot.
(01:55:23)
And I'm trying to figure out what it all means, I guess.
Do they know how she died?
Hypothermia. Oh, okay.
So no body marks or any evidence that the animal got her.
No evidence of anything like that.
They never found her backpack.
Which is interesting because that had survival gear in it.
That she would have easily been able to survive out there.
Yeah. And as far as I know, they've never found it.
(01:56:00)
So they found her without all of her equipment and supplies in this area that the park service people said was difficult, if not almost impossible to get to.
Interesting. So it's cases like these that just make me like... Yeah, that's crazy.
And so like... What's going on there?
So in order to get to the place where she was, she would have had to go up over the ridge, right? Not like she couldn't have fallen down and gone to it? Well, because if she went up and over, you would expect if she fell off it, you'd expect injuries, blunt injuries.
(01:56:31)
Yeah, and there wasn't anything... Now, if we have to talk about a more down-to-earth way she could have got to that location, I'm thinking she could have gone off-trail where... You know, Waihai intersects with Boundary Creek and followed it up there. But why do that?
Yeah. And that would completely... That would mean that the story that her partner told wasn't true.
Interesting. You know, I'm not a fan of accusing anybody of anything.
(01:57:01)
Right. When you read the police report on it, they were a little... Suspicious of him too?
Yeah, interesting.
But then again, we don't know because she was found in such an odd area.
(01:57:16)
Yeah, it's so strange.
So it's just... You have this information and it's really difficult to come to some sort of conclusion on it.
A lot of people have suggested to me that maybe this was like a portals situation where she peers a mountain range away.
Yeah. In the chat room suggested that too.
Well, I'm okay with thinking things like that.
I mean, when you're lacking any other explanation, I suppose that there's obviously the explanation that maybe she walked up Boundary Creek for reasons we don't know.
(01:57:56)
Right, yeah.
Interesting. But that's where you stop because you don't know anything more than that.
Well, I can see why you get into these stories.
Our time is up already!
Unbelievable. Thank you so much for sharing all of these amazing stories.
Everybody, please go check out Nick's channel, The Missing Enigma, on YouTube. Is there anywhere else that people can find you?
No, I'm a hermit.
(01:58:24)
I'm completely just on YouTube. I don't do the social media thing yet.
I started a TikTok a while back where you can find a couple of videos, but I haven't uploaded anymore in a long time.
But my main channel is YouTube. If you haven't checked it out, please do.
I really appreciate you letting me talk your ear off for two hours.
Oh, I loved it. It was great.
(01:58:49)
And we'll have to have you back on if you're up for it.
Anytime. Give me a ring.
Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much, Nick. You've been wonderful.
My pleasure.
All right. Have a good night. You too.
Thanks. All right.
Chad Smith, the candles for you. Oh, hold on. I'll give you a good view.
There you go. Candles for Chad Smith. All right, guys.
(01:59:11)
You have also been wonderful tonight. Thank you so much for all of the super chats. And let me get going on this.
I'm going to be blocking this out with virtual tech.
So come on, my little humans, and dance up the crowd with the stars.
A special thanks to everyone listening in at home, in your car, with your husband, or wherever you may be.
(01:59:38)
Thanks to everyone participating in our chat room on YouTube and here at Crazy Chat Radio. Your participant is copyrighted by Crazy Chat Radio and SDR Media Ventures Ltd. Thanks for sharing your evening with us.
And if I know the person you may have landed, remember there's always a new person on the next place.
Good night and go make some mistakes.
That's crazy.
Thank you.
(02:01:03)