310: Something In The Wilderness - Ch 2: Missing People & Strange Phenomena

[00:00:04] Tonight, I'll once again be focusing on strange phenomena that people are encountering in the wilderness. But before I begin, I'd like to thank all of my amazing listeners around the world. I appreciate all of you for your continued support.

[00:00:23] And now, let's begin part two of Something in the Wilderness. Welcome once again. I'm your host, Nic Ryan. In our last episode, I left you with an experience from a poster on Reddit who had a shared encounter with an unknown creature in Kentucky's Red River Gorge.

[00:00:57] The witness described seeing something that many people would probably classify as a Bigfoot. But in my opinion, not all of the details point toward a typical Bigfoot sighting. She described the creature as being tall and thin, and having skin that resembled a dolphin's.

[00:01:13] She also described the eyes as being more like empty pits. These details make me think that this may have been some type of pale crawler. But unfortunately, we'll never know. The next case I'd like to present to you is equally as hard to classify, if not more so.

[00:01:31] It's an account from the Missing411 subreddit, where a poster known as Dreamland Orchard says that he grew up in East Tennessee. At the time of his experience, he was on a trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park with a group of friends.

[00:01:45] They were out hiking up a ridge when he would encounter something that is hard to explain, but seemed to have malevolent intent. This report originated on Reddit, but was brought to light in an article on Mysterious Universe.

[00:01:59] And as always, I urge you to visit the reference section of the show notes in order to give these sources the much due credit that they deserve. The witness had this to say about his experience.

[00:02:13] We were hiking to Little Duck Hawk Ridge and its Eye of the Needle to the northeast. And that's when I saw what I call the transparent mind control demon. On the hike, I was walking with these two girls, and I was in the back.

[00:02:28] On the way up, nothing really happened, except I kept seeing something out of the corner of my eye, but of course nothing was there whenever I looked. We ate lunch at Little Duck Ridge, but I couldn't eat from the sense of dread.

[00:02:41] On the way back down is when it really started happening. The girls kept talking and I kept trying to catch this thing out of the corner of my eye. The dread kept building up as this thing kept popping up in the corner of my eye.

[00:02:54] And that's when I saw this freaking thing. It was a transparent entity, and a big humanoid shape, but then it flashed behind a tree. My heart rate sped up so fast that my ears started ringing, and that's when I kept seeing it flashing behind all these different trees.

[00:03:11] I say flashing because it was running at superhuman speeds, and when I stopped watching it flash around I noticed that everyone was almost out of sight, and around the corner. I started panicking. The ringing got louder, and I got confused.

[00:03:26] I started mumbling to myself and thinking that I wanted to run back up the mountain, but deep down inside I knew that the other way was the right way to go. I started jogging the wrong way, and laughing to myself in a demonic sound.

[00:03:40] The whole time I felt fear building up, and I was so confused, not knowing what was going on. I was laughing and jogging the wrong way, but not able to control my body. It was so weird, and scary.

[00:03:55] Then my two girlfriends noticed that I was gone, and they came back for me. They said that when I turned around it didn't look like me, and that I had black eyes.

[00:04:05] They said that they had to yell at me like five times, asking what was wrong with me. But I was so scared that I just said, Let's run. This next case is one that I may have mentioned before, but I thought that it was worth repeating,

[00:04:21] as it has to do with a hiker that gets separated from his hiking group, and experiences a very confusing phenomenon. It doesn't involve any strange creatures, but it does seem to correspond with other

[00:04:32] reports that I've come across where the witness feels compelled to leave the safety of their peers, and eventually becomes confused, and sometimes even lost. There are numerous examples of this on the missing411 reddit forums, and this report

[00:04:47] comes from a poster called Magnificone, who says this happened when he was a young boy scout camping in the rugged wilderness on Mount Washington. At the time, he was part of a group that were in the process of hiking up one of the mountain's

[00:05:00] winding trails, when the two group members that he was with decided to stop and take a break. However, he felt a strange and overwhelming urge to keep going, often accompanied by a sense of blurred or even lost time. And the witness says this.

[00:05:17] Once my group and I got above treeline, and by several boulders, my two friends decided to slow down and drink some water. I don't know why, but I was overcome by an urge that pulled me to keep moving, and eventually

[00:05:30] I got lost, and my perception of time vanished. It felt like a dream because I kept changing locations, but I couldn't remember walking there, and I never questioned it. Somehow I got to a cliff, and suddenly I was by a huge pile of rocks.

[00:05:46] I began feeling sick and dizzy. I took off my gray and olive windbreaker to reveal my neon scout shirt, and I folded my windbreaker into a pillow, and I laid down. Suddenly a man dressed in black tights with a red cross ran towards me, and told me that

[00:06:02] I looked dehydrated, and there was a weather station that I could eat at. I then put on my jacket after getting cold and headed up to the weather station. I met up with my troop there, and they were worried and informed me that I had been missing

[00:06:15] for almost an hour. When we made it back down, I fell asleep in the car, and I was totally drained. A similar case comes from a poster called SuperPaytonM022, who says that he lived in

[00:06:31] a house nestled right up against a large expanse of woods in the state of Kentucky, and describes himself as an avid hiker and outdoorsman. When he had his strange experience, he was around 15 years old, and was out exploring with his two dogs, Max and Bo.

[00:06:48] This is his experience. I was hiking a trail that runs up behind my aunt's house, one that I had hiked day in and day out, and I was just out and about enjoying the woods.

[00:06:59] I remember looking up the mountain, which I had never hiked to the top of before, and feeling this strange call. It wasn't really a voice, but it was an urge that I just couldn't ignore.

[00:07:11] Keep in mind that I am a very timid person, and hiking unfamiliar trails on my own freaks me out to this day. That day, however, all my fear had dissipated, and all thought left my head. I climbed higher and higher, and my dogs followed me.

[00:07:27] I don't even know how to describe the feeling that came over me, but I remember just staring down at my feet, and feeling at peace as I climbed. There was a moment when I paused to look at the houses below.

[00:07:39] I had never been that high up, and I felt amazed. I took a picture on my phone, and then I looked around for my dogs. Bo had already run off, and Max was following. I called out to them frantically to stop, but they didn't listen, and they disappeared.

[00:07:56] At this point, looking down the mountainside, I was very afraid. But then I looked back up the hill, and it came over me again. I kept hiking. I kept telling myself I'd go just a bit further, just to see a little bit more.

[00:08:10] I remember looking down at my feet, just like before, and listening to the silence of the woods around me, and feeling at peace. It felt so easy to just keep going deeper, and so difficult to turn around.

[00:08:22] Bo felt this call as well, because even after I did break out of it and turned around, I then called back to her, but she wouldn't stop. I had to actually catch up to her and physically turn her around and pet her before she would

[00:08:35] come back with me. Eventually I heard my walkie-talkie crackle. Everything was distorted, and I couldn't make out any of the words. I assume now that I was just out of range for it to pick up, but back then it freaked me out.

[00:08:49] Whatever had come over me lost its hold on my mind, and my dogs were still gone. Panicked I began running downhill, and it's a wonder I didn't get hurt. As I neared the wide section of the spring near the bottom, my walkie-talkie picked back

[00:09:03] up, and I heard my dogs running down the hill behind me. I got home, and mostly forgot about it. I just told myself I had almost been lost, and to be more careful. I don't know what's out there, but I do know this.

[00:09:18] The woods call to us all. In some of these cases, the lure that draws these people in is something other than a voice or a feeling, but some sort of entity. And this can be seen in a bizarre report from poster Supreme Symbiote, whose story revolves

[00:09:38] around her mother, who grew up in an extremely rural area in Paraguay. One day the mother was out playing as a child along with her grandmother, when it seems that she was pulled into the nearby forest by powers beyond our understanding.

[00:09:54] This is what the poster had to say. The area where my mom grew up is especially rural in the countryside, where most of the poor people were. Her house was across from very thick woods that stretched for miles.

[00:10:07] One afternoon before it got dark, my grandma and mom were outside. My mom was about seven at the time when she spotted what she described as a beautiful little white baby chick. She's always loved animals and enjoyed catching them, so she wanted to catch it.

[00:10:24] It kept running away from her, even though it seemed like she was just about to catch it multiple times. After what seemed like she was running in a circle for minutes, my grandma came out of nowhere and yanked on my mom's hair.

[00:10:36] My mom said that at that very moment, she was broken from a trance. The sun had already set, and she was actually very deep in the woods. My grandma smacked her really hard on the head and told her that El Pombero had almost succeeded in taking her.

[00:10:53] My mom tried to explain to my grandma about the pretty little chick, but of course it was nowhere to be found. My grandma said that my mom seemed to be playing normally, and then all of a sudden just started fast walking toward the woods.

[00:11:08] My grandma thankfully ran after her and was able to catch up to her. But I always think about what would have happened had my grandma not been there to stop it. I'm glad that she was there.

[00:11:24] With strange phenomena like this going on in the woods, it's no surprise that hunters should have their own brushes with strange forces beyond our comprehension out in the wilderness. And this next case comes from a hunter by the name of James Dalton.

[00:11:38] His strange experience began with a squirrel hunting trip with his father and brother, and on this occasion they had decided to split up and then meet back at the car just before dark. This was pretty normal for them, and there was nothing particularly strange about the

[00:11:51] day at that point. Yet, as the witness went through one area of the forest that was very familiar to him, he says that a wispy fog began to seep through the ferns around him, and the usual sounds of the forest ceased.

[00:12:05] As he stood there, his ears began to ring for reasons he couldn't understand. Unsettled by this, he began to head back toward the car, when he noticed something moving through the ferns toward him.

[00:12:17] At first he took it to be a squirrel or a possum, but it seemed to be headed directly for him, which was very odd behavior for a wild animal, and this put him immediately on edge. Things were about to get even stranger still, and he explains the following.

[00:12:35] This is very, very unusual behavior for a wild animal. I thought that maybe it was a lost dog, and I suddenly realized that this could be a rabid animal. At this point, I lowered my shotgun and pointed it at the so far unseen animal.

[00:12:49] When I did this, this thing changed its direction when it was about 30 feet from me, and it ran off to my left. I never did see what it was, and I've assumed all these years that it was something so small

[00:13:01] I just couldn't see it, even though it was moving in the ferns pretty well as it ran through them. Whatever it was then kept going until it was about 50 feet from me, and then it just stopped.

[00:13:13] The ferns were only about two or three feet tall in this area, and not very thick, and I could never figure out why I never saw this thing. I then walked forward in the direction of where this thing had come from.

[00:13:25] I decided to walk to my right a little, and in the direction of where my brother should be, and just get out of there. After walking a short distance, I came to a very thick and tall patch of briars.

[00:13:37] The briars were about eight feet in height and about ten feet in depth. I remember thinking that I have never seen such a large patch of briars in this area before. I then looked in both directions to see if there was a way to walk around the briars,

[00:13:51] and I couldn't see an end in either direction. It reminded me of a very large row of concertina wire from a World War II battlefield. My first thought was, oh well, I'll have to go back the way I came.

[00:14:04] But as soon as I had this thought, I was overtaken by a very, very ominous feeling that something was not right here. At this point, I decided to push through this patch of briars and get to the other side, no matter what it took.

[00:14:17] I got scratched pretty badly on my arms while doing this, but I couldn't help myself. I kept pointing my shotgun behind me with my right hand while pushing through the briars with my left, just in case this rabid animal charged me again.

[00:14:32] Now I was surprised again that when I got to the other side of the patch of briars, the first thing I noticed was that the sun was out and was setting behind the trees. The sky was clear again. It was 5.30pm now.

[00:14:45] I couldn't believe that it had taken me two and a half hours to walk just 200 feet. I could hear birds singing and squirrels barking. The atmosphere was back to normal, and I knew that everything was as it should be.

[00:14:59] Then I heard my father beeping the car horn, signaling that it was time to go. What a great feeling it was to hear that horn. I never did tell my father or brother about this experience, and I'm not sure why.

[00:15:12] Maybe it was because I knew that it was such a strange experience that they would have had to have been there to feel the foreboding feelings to understand it. In these next couple of accounts, I'd like to focus on cases where the individuals actually

[00:15:28] went missing, but were eventually found in relatively good health, albeit with rather perplexing explanations as to how they disappeared. In July of 1955, two-year-old Ida Mae Curtis went missing from a lumber camp in Kootenai National Forest in the U.S. state of Montana.

[00:15:47] The mother of the girl frantically claimed that she had seen a bear carry off her child into the forest and that it had been cradling the girl as it ran off. Following a two-day intensive search carried out by around 350 people, Ida was found safe

[00:16:02] and sound not 300 yards away from where she had gone missing, in a crude shelter. She would later relate that she had been fed and cared for by a large bear during the time of her disappearance.

[00:16:15] Authorities were skeptical of the tale, but the family has always insisted that it was true. Before I continue, please remember that you can share your experience with me through email or voice message at paranormalmysteriespodcast.com or at sharemyevp.com.

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[00:17:00] And be sure to follow me on social media for show updates and future content. And of course, links to all of my contact and support information can be found in the show notes. This next case is even more unnerving, and involves a woman who went missing in France

[00:17:18] in the 1950s. The woman claimed that she had been walking along a river when some inexplicable force had forcibly grabbed her from behind and then dragged her into the brush. This coincided with an abrupt change in weather from clear to stormy, and the woman claimed

[00:17:34] that she heard a voice somewhere above her say, Here you go. As if offering her to someone else. Then just as suddenly as it started, it stopped, and she was abruptly dropped to the ground.

[00:17:47] She then ran off to take refuge at a nearby farm, where the farmer claims that he found a large red handprint etched across her chest. In some cases, there is no identifiable entity, but rather some mysterious force that seems

[00:18:03] to be intent on making sure that these people don't get found. One case brought forward by radio personality Art Bell, and was originally published in the Fortean Times, relates the tale of a 19-year-old woman who vanished on her way home from visiting a neighbor.

[00:18:20] A search was conducted, only to find the young woman suddenly appear in her home, sobbing uncontrollably. She would later claim that as she had been walking along, she had felt her body jerk involuntarily,

[00:18:33] after which she had felt compelled to walk in the opposite direction of where she had intended to go. During the whole frightening ordeal, she claims that an unseen barrier had prevented her from returning to where she had wanted to go, instead pushing her farther away.

[00:18:49] As darkness fell, she claimed that she had seen the search party members looking for her, but that they couldn't see or hear her, no matter how much she called out to them or banged against the invisible veil that separated them.

[00:19:01] Finally, the barrier lifted, and she was able to return home safe, but unmistakably shaken, out of her wits. This report is similar to another case that occurred on September 22nd, 2012, when 53-year-old Linda Ortega was hiking along with her 56-year-old brother, Eddie Huff, in the forests of the

[00:19:24] Arkansas Ozarks, near the town of St. Joe. And although the brother returned and claimed to have seen his sister off at a relative's house and that she was safe, in reality, she was nowhere to be found.

[00:19:38] A large search was then launched, and Ortega was fortunately found that day in the woods, albeit in a profound state of distress. But the circumstances surrounding the whole ordeal would become increasingly more bizarre.

[00:19:53] When she was questioned on what had happened, Ortega could not recall how she had been separated from her brother. She did mention that she thought that he had been hurt somehow, and that she had tried to find help for him.

[00:20:04] As she had walked along, she claimed that she had come across other hikers, but that all attempts to communicate with them had been futile, as if they had not seen or even heard her.

[00:20:14] She also said that she could see other shadowy figures who seemed to be hiding from her in the woods, and she described these entities by saying, quote, These people were hiding in bushes. They were weird people. Very weird people. Unquote.

[00:20:31] One of the searchers who found Ortega, a deputy, DeWayne Pierce, said that when they had found her, she wasn't quite about her head. Among the many cases of vanishing people on record, some of them seem to stand out as particularly odd.

[00:20:48] Some of these cases involve numerous weird clues, and there are even some occasions in which the missing person suddenly comes back, although this does not always solve the mystery. On occasion, these reappearing people bring with them a whole myriad of new oddities,

[00:21:04] with the victim missing time, and unable to express where they have been, in some cases even reappearing far from where they had started, with little explanation as to how they got there.

[00:21:15] One such case is that of a little girl who vanished off the face of the earth, only to reappear and make her disappearance even stranger than it already was. Located in Washington County, near West Fork, Arkansas, is Devil's Den State Park, a 2,500

[00:21:33] acre wilderness area that is a magnet for tourists in this region. Here, people come to engage in all manner of outdoor activities, including picnicking, camping, hiking, mountain biking, horseback riding, and seeing the numerous sandstone

[00:21:48] caves, bluffs, ravines, rock shelters, and crevices that dot the area, as well as hunt for fossils, of which the area has many. The area is a popular destination for families looking to enjoy the great outdoors, and in

[00:22:04] 1946, the Van Alst family made their way here for a fun family trip to do just that. But it would soon prove to be anything but fun. One day the family were near their campsite, and the family's daughter, 8-year-old Katherine

[00:22:19] Van Alst, was playing in the creek in her bathing suit as her brothers fished, when at some point she wandered off and seemingly just vanished. Her father and brothers had apparently been right near her, and basically looked away for a moment to look back and find her gone.

[00:22:36] It was thought that she had just gone off a bit, and that she had gone back to the campsite, which was just a stone's throw away, and there was no alarm at this point.

[00:22:45] However, little Katherine was nowhere to be seen, and she would not answer calls to her. As they continued searching the woods and campsite with no sign of her, the panicked family then notified park officials, and a large-scale search began.

[00:23:00] Searchers launched a meticulous search of the entire area for several square miles, with every moment that went by seen as critical, since the girl was barefoot, and dressed in nothing but a bathing suit, hardly the sort of attire appropriate for being out in the woods.

[00:23:16] The search went on for six days, with no sign of the missing girl, and hope was waning. That was until at one point, a team of volunteers in the forest had passed by a cave, from which little Katherine Van Alst suddenly appeared, and casually waved at them.

[00:23:33] According to those who were there, she was extremely and unnaturally calm, and almost in a daze, when she simply uttered, Here I am. What made this completely mind-boggling was that the spot where she was found was around

[00:23:46] seven air miles away, and six hundred feet higher than the place where she had originally disappeared, which would be just the first of many odd details. The most bizarre thing was that this eight-year-old girl had walked an estimated thirty miles'

[00:24:01] zigzagging course to get where she was found, all in harsh, steep, treacherous wilderness terrain in her bathing suit, and with no shoes on. This particular area is riddled with rocky terrain, thick forest, and steep hills, so

[00:24:15] one of the perplexing things for authorities was how she could have managed to cover that distance in six days, through this challenging landscape, barefoot. Her feet were described as swollen, and she was also covered with insect bites and scratches

[00:24:30] from briars, so it was apparent that she had done some wandering, but she also didn't seem to be in nearly as poor condition that one would have suspected, and she had covered so much distance that even a properly equipped adult would have had a tough time matching it.

[00:24:45] She also seemed to be in better shape than one would have suspected from her ordeal, as the cave that she was in just happened to have a freshwater spring. Another oddity was that the place where she was found had already been thoroughly searched

[00:24:58] by aircraft and tracker dogs twice, without having found any trace of the girl. So why had she suddenly appeared there, and why had she been so remarkably calm after such a frightening experience? The strangeness would only continue from there.

[00:25:15] According to missing person researcher David Paulides, author of the Missing 411 series of books and multiple documentaries, there were several oddities when police actually spoke to the girl. She claimed that she didn't remember much about the six days that she had been missing,

[00:25:30] merely saying that she had eaten berries to stay alive, and that she found herself in the cave. Paulides has mentioned that the area was overgrown with many types of poisonous berries, so the fact that she chose the right ones to eat has been seen as curious, especially since

[00:25:46] she had no real outdoor experience. The girl had also supposedly made some strange remarks, explaining that when she had gone missing, she had simply been unable to find her campsite or her father and brothers, despite being right near them.

[00:26:00] And she would also claim that on several occasions, she had shouted out to people searching for her, but that they had apparently not been able to hear her. She also said that she had seen the tracker dogs, but had been too afraid of them to approach.

[00:26:15] According to Paulides, she also made the strange mention of how she had slept in warm grass on the first night when she went missing, but she never elaborated on what this cryptic statement actually meant.

[00:26:31] In this next case, we are once again reminded that some of these disappearances may have more to do with bizarre entities than we think. This report took place in Lumaki, Finland, near the village of Hermunen. On August 19th, 1965, four members of the Kuninga family were out picking blueberries

[00:26:50] in the surrounding woodland, and at one point they spread out to see who could pick the most berries. At this time, they still made sure to stay within eyesight of one another. But things would soon take a very odd twist.

[00:27:04] Around noon on an otherwise calm and sunny day, the father, Matty Kuningas, would claim that he heard something rather peculiar coming from the darkened woods, which apparently sounded like odd bubbling sounds, which was coming from up on the slope that he was on.

[00:27:20] Although he couldn't see anything strange up that way, the strange gurgling noises continued, and at some point he realized that he was not alone. Looking back up the slope, he noticed a small man-like being, perhaps around three feet

[00:27:35] tall with orange skin and wearing green skin-tight coveralls, who was just sitting there staring down at him. It peered at him for some time before standing up to come walking toward the startled man with a shambling, stumbling gait.

[00:27:52] And this is when a sudden gust of wind swept through the area. This peculiar creature then veered off to the side to come to the edge of a bog, before vanishing into thin air.

[00:28:03] When he looked at his watch, Matty realized that a full thirty minutes had gone by, of which he could not account for. It would later turn out that the son, Tuwebo Kuningas, had also seen the strange little man, even claiming that he had heard it utter human-like speech.

[00:28:20] And it was also found that this entity had been sitting atop a massive mossy stone that no one could remember ever having been there before. Strangely enough, although both of them had seen it, they both claimed that they had been

[00:28:33] under the influence of some paralyzing effect that had somehow prevented them from calling out for help. And they would also claim that they had experienced some sort of repelling effect that kept them from approaching the entity.

[00:28:47] Tuwebo would also explain that this anomalous boulder also had a slight repelling effect, and that he had not been able to get close to it. I can't help but find these cases fascinating, not only because of their mysterious nature,

[00:29:04] but also due to my own history of working and recreating in the outdoors. I've backpacked in some extremely remote terrain, and I can't help but wonder how many times there may have been an unseen force or even an odd creature just beyond my reach. What do you think?

[00:29:22] Have you had a bizarre experience in the great outdoors? If you have, I would love to hear about it, and you can share it with me via the links in the show notes.

[00:29:31] Until next time, thanks to all of you for listening, and I'll see you back here in my next episode... of Paranormal Mysteries.