The wilderness.

We are drawn to it.

It's an escape, a challenge, a place to find a piece of ourselves we lost in the noise of the civilized world.

We go to the mountains and the forest to feel small, to feel a connection to something ancient, primal and pure.

We seek the silence, the beauty, the raw, unfiltered truth of nature.

We seek to test ourselves against it, to prove that we are still part of that world.

But there is a contract we sign when we step off the pavement.

We agree to enter a world that is not ours, a world that is indifferent to our presence, our plans and our survival.

It operates on a set of rules far older and more absolute than our own.

It does not care about our intentions, our families, or our technology.

For most, the trip is a memory, a photo album, a story told over dinner.

But for some, it's the end of the story.

They walk into the wild and they do not walk out.

They vanish.

Not just lost, but gone, erased by the landscape, leaving behind only echoes, unsettling clues, and a void of unanswered questions that haunts the families, the searchers, and the very trails themselves.

Today, we are not just looking at cases of people who got lost.

We are delving into the deep mysteries, the disappearances that defy logic, that challenge our understanding of what can happen when a human being steps into the unknown.

We'll investigate the case of a small child who disappeared in front of his family in plain sight, vanishing as if plucked from the earth.

We will journey to a haunted stretch of trail in Vermont, where a college student walked into the woods and was never seen again.

We will unravel the deeply bizarre story of five friends who drove into a mountain snowstorm and into a mystery that feels like a terrifying, surreal Riddle.

We'll explore a forbidden, dangerous trail in Hawaii where a teenager vanished, leaving behind only cryptic photos.

We'll examine the haunting final photograph taken by a 12 year old Boy Scout lost on Southern California's highest peak.

And we'll read the final, heartbreaking words of a seasoned hiker who got lost just half a mile from the trail, and whose journal chronicles 26 days of survival and the agonizing failure of the search to find her.

These are the stories of the Vanished.

Our first story takes us to June 14th, 1969.

It's Father's Day weekend.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is bursting with life.

The park is a sanctuary, a sprawling expanse of green hills and ancient forests.

William Bill Martin, his wife Vidya, and their two sons, Douglas, 9, and Dennis, 6, have come from their home in Knoxville, TN for a family camping trip.

Their plan is a classic Smokies hike.

Drive to Cade's Cove, then hike the trail up to Spence Field, a large grassy highland Meadow or bald known for its stunning views.

They aren't alone.

Bill's father is also there, as is another family, the Covington's.

It's a group outing.

Dennis Martin is a typical 6 year old, energetic, playful.

He's wearing a red T-shirt, brown pants and his KED sneakers.

The hike up is uneventful.

The group reaches Spence Field, a popular spot just off the Appalachian Trail.

The adults settle down to enjoy the view and rest.

The children, naturally, have other plans.

Douglas Martin, Dennis's older brother, and the Covington boys decide to play a prank.

Their idea is simple.

They'll split up, circle around in the woods and jump out to scare the adults.

It's the kind of game children have played for eternity.

The boys split into two groups.

Dennis, wanting to be part of the fun, follows one group.

This is the pivot point, the last moment of normal.

Bill Martin, Dennis's father, watches his son trail the other boys.

He sees Dennis step behind a large Bush.

He looks away for a second, maybe to talk to his wife, maybe to look at the view.

When he looks back, Dennis is gone.

At first, there's no panic.

He's a six year old boy.

He's hiding.

The adults call his name.

Dennis, come on out.

Game's over.

The other boys emerge from their hiding spots, laughing.

But Dennis isn't with them.

The calls get louder.

Bill, Martin and the other men begin to search.

They circle the field.

They push into the brush.

Dennis.

The laughter has faded.

A cold, sharp fear begins to creep in.

This is not a game.

They search for two hours, two hours of shouting his name, of pushing through the dense, tangled undergrowth that borders the field.

This vegetation is infamous in the Smokies.

Known as rhododendron Hells or Laurel slicks.

It's an apartment name.

These thickets are so dense you can't see your hand in front of your face.

They grow into a tangled, interlocking web that is nearly impossible to move through.

You can be 5 feet from another person and neither of you would know it.

But Dennis is small.

Surely he couldn't have gone far.

As the sun starts to dip, the terrible reality sets in.

Bill Martin and the Covington Father hike 7 miles back down the trail in the growing dark to alert Park Rangers.

The call goes out.

A six year old boy is missing on Spence Field.

What happens next is to this day the largest search and rescue operation in the history of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The response is massive.

Park Rangers, volunteers from nearby towns, and eventually the National Guard.

In total, 1400 people would join the search.

But the wilderness has already decided to fight back.

That very night, just hours after Dennis vanishes, the skies open.

A torrential rainstorm floods the mountains, over 3 inches of rainfall washing away any potential tracks, any scent, any tiny clue Dennis might have left.

The temperature plummets.

A six year old boy wearing only a T-shirt and pants is now facing a cold, soaking, terrifying night.

The search becomes a desperate race against time.

The search area is expanded.

Grid searches are formed.

Men link arms and walk shoulder to shoulder through the brush.

Nothing.

The rain makes the Rhododendron Hells even more treacherous, turning the ground beneath them into a slick, muddy soup.

Searchers reported being able to hear each other, but not see each other from only a few feet away.

The military gets involved.

A team of Green Berets special forces is brought in from Fort Bragg.

These are elite trackers, survival experts.

They set up a command post.

They apply their specialized skills.

They too, find nothing.

No red T-shirt, no KED sneaker, no sign of a struggle, no drag marks, Nothing.

It's as if the earth swallowed him, and in the vacuum of evidence, strange stories began to emerge.

On the third day of the search, a park Ranger finds a single small footprint, barefoot in a muddy area miles from Spence Field.

The FBI is called in to analyze it.

It's determined to be a bear's cub print, or perhaps from another searcher.

It's a dead end.

Then searchers hear what they think is a child's scream.

They rush toward the sound, but it's high in the mountains.

The acoustics are treacherous.

The sound echoes, bounces off ridges.

They can't pinpoint it.

Was it Dennis?

Was it a bird?

An animal?

It, too, leads nowhere.

But the most baffling and most controversial piece of the story comes not from the searchers, but from another family.

The Key family, from nearby Gatlinburg had been hiking in the park that same afternoon, miles away from Spence Field in an area called Andrews Bald.

Harold Key, The father told Rangers he heard a sickening scream from the woods.

Concerned, he walked off the trail.

What he saw would become the focal point of the Dennis Martin mystery for the next 50 years.

Hiding in the brush, Key claimed he saw a man.

A rough looking man, or as some reports later sensationalized it, a wild man.

The man was large, unkempt, and was trying to stay hidden.

As Key watched, the man darted through the trees and over the man's shoulder.

Harold Key saw something.

Something he couldn't make out clearly, but his first sickening thought was that it was a small child.

He rushed back to his family and they left the area deeply unsettled.

It was only later that night, when they heard the news reports of a missing boy, that Harold Key made the connection.

He reported his sighting.

The report was problematic.

In the chaos of the search, it was either lost, de prioritized or dismissed as the ramblings of a spooked tourist.

By the time searchers, including the Green Berets, were directed to the area of the sighting, days had passed.

The trail was cold.

The search for Dennis Martin was officially called off weeks later.

The park's official stance was and remains, that Dennis wandered off, got lost, and succumbed to the elements, the rain and the cold on that first night.

But the Martin family never accepted this.

How can a six year old boy watched by his father vanish in seconds?

And more importantly, if he died of exposure, why was nothing ever found?

No clothing, no bones.

The Green Berets stated that if the boy was in that search area, they would have found him.

This is where the questions splinter into dark theories.

Theory.

One animal attack.

This is the grim logical possibility.

The Smokies are black bear country.

Could a bear have snatched the boy?

Searchers, including the Green Berets, said no.

A bear attack is violent.

It's messy.

There would be drag marks, blood, torn clothing.

The search teams, trained to look for these very signs, found zero evidence of a bear or any other predator.

Theory two lost to the elements.

This is the official theory.

Dennis hid, got turned around, wandered into the dense woods, and the storm did the rest.

His body, small and hidden by the thicket, was simply missed.

It's plausible the Smokies are vast, the terrain unforgiving, but the sheer scale of the search makes this hard to accept.

1400 people, helicopters, elite trackers, and not one single thread.

Theory 3.

Abduction.

This is the theory that haunts the case.

It hinges on the Harold Key sighting.

Did a feral man, someone living off grid in the park, see an opportunity and snatch the boy?

This theory taps into a dark vein of Appalachian folklore.

For generations, rumors have persisted of wild families living deep in the mountains, descendants of settlers who refused to leave when the park was formed.

The area was also rife with illegal moonshine stills.

Was it possible the Key family stumbled upon a still and the Wildman was a moonshiner?

Did Dennis stumble upon one?

If so, why take the boy?

It's a theory that creates more questions than answers.

The case of Dennis Martin became a dark legend.

It's a foundational story for authors and researchers who study unexplained disappearances in national parks.

Bill Martin returned to Spence Field for years, searching for his son.

He never found an answer.

The wilderness keeps its secrets.

Dennis Martin's disappearance is a foundational case of a child being erased by the wilderness.

But he is far from the only one.

Sometimes the person who vanishes isn't a child, but a young adult on the cusp of their life, and sometimes the location itself seems to have a hunger.

For this we must travel N from the humid, dense forests of the Smokies to the cold, rugged mountains of Vermont.

Our next case is Older Stranger and serves as the dark centerpiece for one of America's most mysterious hotspots, the Bennington Triangle.

The date is December 1st, 1946.

Paula Jean Weldon is an 18 year old sophomore at Bennington College.

She is bright, creative, and by some accounts, a little melancholic.

On that chilly Sunday afternoon, she finished her shift at the college dining hall.

She returned to her dorm room and told her roommate, Elizabeth Johnson, that she was going for a walk.

She was dressed for the cold, but not for a serious trek.

She wore a distinctive red parka, blue jeans and sneakers.

She had no extra gear, no food, and only a few dollars in her pocket.

She walked to the college's entrance, hitched a ride for a few miles, and was dropped off at the entrance to the Long Trail, a famed 272 mile footpath that winds through Vermont.

Paula was not an experienced hiker, but she was known to take solitary walks.

This day, however, she was seen.

Multiple people saw her begin her walk.

A local man named Louis Knapp drove past her but didn't stop.

More significantly, she was seen on the trail itself by a group of hikers, including an older couple, Ernest and Allen Whitman.

They recalled A brief, pleasant conversation.

Paula, cheerful and in good spirits, asked them how far the trail went.

They warned her that the trail was muddy and she was underdressed, but she laughed it off and continued up the path.

The Whitmans were the last people to see Paula Jean Weldon and speak to her.

She continued up the trail, rounded a bend, and never returned.

Back at the dorm, her roommate Elizabeth wasn't immediately concerned.

She assumed Paula was at the library studying for finals.

It wasn't until the next morning, when Paula failed to show up for classes that the alarm was raised.

The search began, and it was massive.

Bennington College shut down completely, and hundreds of students and faculty joined the search, combing the woods alongside state police and local volunteers.

But the investigation was immediately flawed.

At the time, Vermont had no state police force, only local constables.

Jurisdictional squabbling between departments.

Hanford, the first critical 48 hours.

The trail was scoured.

The woods were grid searched.

Bloodhounds were brought in, but the trail was cold.

The search expanded and the FBI was eventually called in to assist.

They found nothing, not a single clue.

No footprint, no scrap of her red parka, no sign of a struggle.

Like Dennis Martin, she had been erased.

The vacuum of evidence was quickly filled by theories, theory, one lost to the elements.

This is the simplest answer.

Paula, inexperienced and I'll equipped, got lost, perhaps took a wrong turn and succumbed to the freezing December night.

It's plausible, but the search was incredibly thorough, focusing on the very trail she was on.

Seasoned Woodsman, who led the search, were baffled that they couldn't find a single trace.

Theory 2.

She ran away.

This theory gained traction.

Perhaps Paula, unhappy at college, had staged her disappearance to start a new life.

Rumors swirled around campus.

She was secretly pregnant, or she was running off with a secret lover.

But if so, how and why has she never been heard from since Theory 3?

Foul play.

This is where the case gets dark.

Suspicion fell on several local men.

1A woodsman named Fred Cadet lived in a shack along the trail.

He had a strange reputation and reportedly had a heated argument with his girlfriend the day Paula vanished.

When questioned, he lied to police about his whereabouts, claiming he was at home all day.

He later admitted he'd been out hunting.

Searchers, including Paula's own father, became convinced Cadet was involved, but police could find no evidence to link him to the crime.

Paula's disappearance was strange enough on its own, but it became the stuff of legend when locals realized she wasn't the only one.

Between 1945 and 1950, in this exact same area, at least four other people vanished under bizarre circumstances.

It began a year earlier in November 1945.

MIDI Rivers, a 74 year old hunting guide, was leading a group of 4 hunters.

He knew these woods like the back of his hand.

He walked ahead of the group and was gone.

The only trace ever found was a single rifle cartridge in a stream.

Then three years to the day after Paula vanished.

On December 1st, 1949, a man named James Tedford got on a bus to Bennington.

He was a veteran returning to his home at the Soldiers Home.

He was seen in his seat one stop before town, but when the bus arrived he was gone.

His luggage was still in the rack.

In October 1958, year old Paul Jepsen vanished from his family's farm.

His mother, a caretaker, left him to play near their truck while she fed the pigs.

When she returned minutes later, he was gone.

Bloodhounds tracked his scent to the same Rd.

Paula Weldon had walked where the trail simply went cold.

And just 16 days after that, a 53 year old woman named Freda Langer went hiking with her cousin.

She slipped and fell in a stream, got wet and decided to walk back to camp to change.

When she didn't return, a massive search was launched.

She too vanished.

Her body was the only one ever found, but it was found months later, in May 1951, in an area that had been repeatedly and thoroughly searched.

These events, all clustered in one small area, created the legend of the Bennington Triangle.

Was it a serial killer, a natural phenomenon, or just a string of terrible, unrelated tragedies?

Paula Weldon's case remains the most famous.

An 18 year old girl in a red parka who told her friends she was just going for a walk and stepped off the map of the known world.

A lone person vanishing is terrifying.

But what happens when an entire group of friends disappears together?

What happens when the clues they leave behind defy all logic, creating a Riddle that is more surreal than tragic?

Our next case is one of the most baffling and surreal mysteries in American history.

It's been called the American Diatlof Pass.

It's not about a lone hiker, but a group of friends.

And the clues they left behind don't add up to an answer, but to a series of disturbing, illogical questions.

On February 24th, 1978 in Chico, CA, 5 young men from Yuba City and Marysville piled into a 1969 Mercury Montego.

They were friends.

They were excited.

They were driving to Chico State University to watch a college basketball game.

These weren't just any group of friends.

They were special.

They were a unit.

4 of them.

Ted Wire, 32, Bill Sterling, 29, Jack Hewitt, 24, and Jack Doc Madruga, 30, had mild intellectual disabilities.

The 5th, Gary Matthias, 25, had a diagnosis of schizophrenia, but he was high functioning, took his medication and was a beloved part of the group.

They were all part of a day program for adults with the intellectual disabilities.

They were intensely close.

Their lives revolved around two things, their jobs and their basketball team, the Gateway Gators.

They were set to play in a tournament of their own the very next day, and this trip to Chico to see a professional game was the highlight of their week.

Jack Madruga was the driver.

He was the most independent of the group and was fiercely proud of his turquoise and white mercury.

His family said he never let anyone else drive it, and he babied the car.

This is a critical detail.

The game ends.

Their team, UC Davis, wins in a thrilling comeback.

Elated, the five men pile back into the Montego.

They stop at a convenience store around 10:00 PM.

The clerk who knew them remembers them.

They bought snacks, soda, candy bars and cartoons of milk.

They were happy, polite and seem to be in a hurry to get home for their big game the next day.

This is the last time they are ever seen alive and accounted for.

To get home to Yuba City, they needed to drive South, but they didn't.

For some unknown reason, Jack Madruga drove E up into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, into the Plumas National Forest, into a snowstorm.

When the men don't return home, their parents panic.

This is unthinkable.

They are men of routine.

They always come home.

A police bulletin is issued.

3 days later.

A park Ranger finds the car.

The discovery makes no sense.

The Mercury Montego is parked on a remote, winding, snow covered dirt Rd.

It is 70 miles from Chico.

It is hopelessly, bewilderingly in the wrong direction.

The car itself is the first Riddle.

It's stuck in a snow drift, but not badly.

Police reports state that five healthy young men could have easily pushed it out.

The car is unlocked.

The driver's side window is rolled down.

The undercarriage is undamaged, suggesting it wasn't driven erratically or forced off the road.

Inside, the evidence is even stranger.

The wrappers from the convenience store are there.

The milk cartoons and sodas are there, uneaten and undrunk.

The keys are gone, but the gas tank is 1/4 full, plenty of fuel to turn on the heat or to drive away if they had pushed it free.

There is no sign of violence, no sign of a struggle.

The men have abandoned a perfectly functional car, a car Jack Madruga loved, in the middle of a Blizzard on a mountain they had no reason to be on.

Why?

The snow is too deep.

The search is called off, to be resumed when the spring thaw comes.

For four agonizing months, the families wait.

June 4th, 1978.

The snow has melted enough for a Forest Service Ranger to drive up the mountain.

He follows the road from the car, 19.4 miles, a long, agonizing uphill walk from the abandoned car.

He comes across a Forest Service trailer, a small shelter for workers.

He opens the door.

Inside he finds a body.

It's Ted Wire.

He is lying on a bed covered in eight sheets, wrapped like a mummy.

But the scene in the trailer is a tableau of the bizarre.

An autopsy would later show that Ted Wyher had starved to death.

He had lost nearly £100.

His feet were black with gangrene from frostbite.

Based on his beard growth.

He had been alive in that trailer for as long as 13 weeks.

He did not freeze.

He starved.

This is the central horrifying mystery because in the very same trailer, in a storage shed just outside, was a year's supply of C rations and canned food, enough food to keep all five men alive for months.

There was a propane tank with fuel connected to a heater.

There were matches.

There were blankets and furniture.

Some of the food had been eaten.

Investigators found 12 empty cans, all opened with AP38 military style can opener, but the bulk of the food crates and crates of dehydrated meals and sea rations was untouched.

Wire's wallet with cash was on a table.

His ring was there.

This was not a robbery.

Why did Ted Wire, inside a shelter surrounded by food and heat, starve to death?

The discovery of Wire's body turns the search frantic.

Search teams now fan out from the trailer.

2 days later, they find more remains.

4 1/2 miles from the trailer, back toward the car, they find the bodies of Bill Sterling and Jack Madruga.

They are on opposite sides of the road.

They had clearly succumbed to hypothermia.

Madruga was found clutching the keys to his Mercury.

It seems they had been trying to walk back to the car.

A short distance away, searchers find the bones of Jack Hewitt, likely dragged there by animals.

That's four of the five men Ted Wire starved in the trailer.

Sterling, Madruga and Hewitt frozen in the woods between the car and the shelter.

But where was Gary Matthias?

His tennis shoes were found inside the trailer.

This suggests he was there, but he was gone.

And even more strangely, the shoes he was wearing belong to Ted Wire.

To this day, Gary Matthias has never been found.

To understand this mystery, you have to try to answer a series of impossible questions.

Question one why did they drive up that mountain?

The families have a theory.

The men were simple and easily excited.

They may have been trying to find a friend who lived in a nearby but different town.

Or they may have simply taken a wrong turn and in their trusting nature just kept going.

Question 2.

Why abandoned the car?

This leads to the foul play theory, and it hinges on another witness.

On the same night, a man named Joseph Shuns had driven up the same Rd.

got his own car stuck, and suffered A mild heart attack.

While waiting for help in the dark, he saw headlights.

Behind him, he saw a pickup truck and a group of people he described as a man, a woman, and a baby.

He also heard whistling.

Later, he saw other flashlights as if a second group was searching for the first.

He called out, but they went silent.

Did the Yuba County 5 stumble upon something they shouldn't have?

A drug deal?

A crime in progress?

Were they forced up the mountain at gunpoint by the people Shun saw?

This theory explains abandoning the car.

It explains walking 19 miles in a Blizzard.

Someone herded them, but it doesn't explain the trailer.

If you were a criminal, why would you March 5 men 19 miles to a shelter, break in for them, and then just leave them with food?

It makes no sense.

Question three, What happened in the trailer?

This is where the most plausible and most tragic theory emerges.

It centers on the one person who is still missing, Gary Matthias.

Matthias had schizophrenia.

His family insists he was fine, and he was, as long as he took his medication.

His medicine was found back at his home.

He didn't have it.

Imagine this scenario.

The men are lost.

The car gets stuck.

Matthias, off his medication, slips into a paranoid delusion.

He convinces his friends, who trust him, that they are in danger.

We have to run now.

They abandon the car and start walking.

They walk for 19 miles, an incredible feat.

They find the trailer.

They break in.

A window was broken from the outside.

They are safe.

But Matthias's paranoia deepens.

He sees the military sea rations.

He believes the food is poisoned.

He is the only one in the group with military experience.

Along with Madruga.

He would know to use the P38 can opener, but in his delusion he forbids the others from eating, or perhaps only doles out a small amount.

Ted Wire's feet are badly frostbitten.

He is unable to leave.

Matthias takes care of him, wrapping him in sheets as he slowly starves.

The other three, Madruga, Sterling, and Hewitt, realize something is terribly wrong.

They decide to walk back for help.

They leave the trailer and freeze to death on the road.

That leaves Matthias at some point after Wire is dead.

He decides to leave, but his own shoes are unusable, so he puts on Ted Wire's larger shoes, walks out of the trailer, and disappears into the forest.

It's just a theory, but it's the only one that comes close to explaining the uneaten food, the strange care taken with Wire's body, and the missing man.

The Yuba County 5 Mystery is a story of snow, confusion and inexplicable choices.

It's a tragedy born from being lost in a frozen, remote landscape.

But the wilderness doesn't need to be cold to be deadly.

Sometimes the danger is the terrain itself, a place so beautiful and so treacherous that it lures people to their end.

For this, our next case takes us from the frozen Sierra to the tropical, treacherous mountains of Hawaii.

This is the 2015 disappearance of Daelen MOOC Pua.

The trail is the Haiku Stairs, more famously known as the Stairway to Heaven on the island of Oahu.

It's a series of 3922 steps scaling the sheer knife edge ridges of the Koalao Mountains.

Originally built by the Navy during World War 2 to access a radio station, the stairs are now officially closed.

They are illegal to hike, dangerously deteriorated and guarded against trespassers.

But for thrill seekers, the forbidden nature and the otherworldly views make it an irresistible challenge.

Dalen Mok Pua was a 17 year old from the Big Island.

He was adventurous, kind and visiting his grandmother on Oahu.

On February 27th, 2015, he told his family he was going hiking.

He took a bus and with a backpack, water and his phone, he slipped past the guard and began his ascent of the haiku stairs.

He wasn't shy about it.

He took photos and videos, posting them to social media.

He sent texts to his family.

He was on top of the world.

One of his last photos is haunting.

It's a selfie showing him on the trail with the clouds and the steep green Ridge behind him.

He sent a message to his family saying he was on the other side of the mountain and in a safe place.

Then silence.

When he didn't return, his family reported him missing.

The search began.

Rescuers from the Honolulu Fire Department and volunteers scoured the area.

But the Koalao Mountains are not a normal hiking area.

The ridges are razor thin with 2000 foot sheer drops on either side.

The vegetation is so thick it forms a dense dark canopy and the weather is volatile with wind, rain and fog rolling in without warning.

Searchers found Daylen's backpack, but it wasn't on the main trail.

It was found hanging on a tree part way down a small unofficial pig trail, a path used by hunters.

Inside were his phone and some supplies.

This discovery only deep in the mystery.

Why would he leave his bag with his phone and continue on?

The search intensified.

Helicopters were used, drones were flown, searchers rappelled down cliffs.

They found nothing.

But the clues from his phone and from other hikers began to paint a confusing picture.

The photos on his phone showed he had indeed made it to the summit.

The old radio station.

He had achieved his goal.

Why didn't he come back down the way he came?

The area is a maze of intersecting, dangerous Ridge trails.

It's believed that instead of returning down the illegal stairs, he may have tried to hike out via a different legal trail, a common but very long and difficult route for those trying to avoid getting arrested at the bottom.

But then another hiker came forward.

He said he saw Dalen that day on the trail, looking lost and asking for water.

He pointed Dalen in the right direction.

If this is true, why did he then deviate onto a dangerous side path?

And what about his message in a safe place?

Was he being literal or was it a message that something had gone wrong?

The Theories are agonizing.

Theory 1A Fatal fall.

This is the most likely in the mist, in the rain, on a slippery narrow Ridge.

He simply took a wrong step.

A 2000 foot fall would leave little to find, especially in the dense jungle below.

Theory 2.

Lost and disoriented.

He may have gotten lost on the confusing network of trails, become disoriented in the fog, and wandered into an impassable ravine, eventually succumbing to the elements.

Theory 3.

Foul play.

This is the darkest theory.

The haiku stairs and the surrounding area are known to have encampments of people living off grid.

Did Dalen stumble upon something he shouldn't have?

Did he have an altercation?

This might explain him leaving his bag, perhaps in a panic.

But there is 0 evidence to support it.

The search for Dae Len Pua was eventually called off.

His grandmother, who still lived at the base of the mountains, said for years she could feel him up there watching.

The haiku stairs remain a dangerous, illegal and beautiful monument, now haunted by the memory of the boy who climbed into the clouds and never came back.

Dalen Pua's story is a modern one, defined by social media posts and digital photos.

It's the tragedy of a teenager seeking adventure.

But our next case is tragically similar.

A young boy pushed to his limits who also vanished, leaving behind one last heartbreaking image.

This is the story of a 12 year old boy on a Boy Scout trip who vanished on Southern California's highest peak.

And it's the story of the last haunting clue he left behind.

It was July 19, 9112.

Year old Jared Negrede, a Boy Scout from El Monte, CA, was on a hike with his troop.

The destination was San Gorgonio Peak, an 11,500 foot monster of a mountain.

It's a grueling high altitude hike, a serious challenge even for experienced adults.

Jared was known to be a bit slower than the other boys.

He was a dedicated scout, but this hike was pushing his limits.

At some point during the ascent, he began to fall behind.

The main group accounts differ on what happened next.

Some reports say his troop leader, seeing him struggle, told him to sit and wait for the next adult leader to catch up.

Other accounts suggest he was simply left behind and trying to be tough and keep up.

He took a wrong turn.

Whatever the specifics, the result was the same.

When the troop regrouped at the summit, they did a headcount.

Jared was not there.

Panic set in.

The leaders and other scouts began shouting his name, backtracking down the trail.

But he was gone.

A massive search and rescue operation was launched.

One of the largest in California history, the San Gorgonio Wilderness is vast and rugged.

The terrain is a mix of dense forest, steep canyons and exposed rocky ridges.

The search went on for weeks.

Hundreds of volunteers on foot, on horseback and in helicopters scoured the mountain.

They began to find clues.

First searchers found a small bag of beef jerky, then a water bottle, then his backpack lying near a stream bed far off the main trail.

It seemed Jared had gotten lost, wandered downhill looking for water and set his pack down.

But the most chilling clue was found nearly a year later by hikers in a remote, almost inaccessible Canyon miles from where Jared's pack was found.

It was his camera.

Police developed the film hoping for clues to his last movements.

Most of the photos were what you'd expect, group shots of the scouts, pictures of the trail, the mountains.

But the last few frames were taken after he was lost.

There were photos of the landscape clearly off trail, a photo of the sunset, and then the last photo, frame 13.

It was a self-portrait, taken in the dark with the flash.

It's a blurry, disorienting close up of Jared's face.

Only his nose and eyes are visible.

He isn't smiling.

He looks scared and he looks lost.

This single photo tells a devastating story.

Jared was alive after nightfall.

He was alone.

He was in the dark, in the high altitude, cold, and in a final desperate or perhaps just confused act, he pointed his camera at his own face and pressed the button.

The theories here are tragically simple theory, one lost to the elements.

This is almost a certainty.

Jared lost an off trail, wandered into a Canyon as night fell.

The temperature at that altitude would have plummeted below freezing.

He was dressed for a day hike, not for a night of survival.

He succumbed to hypothermia.

The photo is his last recorded moment.

Theory two animal attack.

The area is home to mountain lions.

It is possible after he was weakened by exposure that he was attacked.

This might explain why his remains have never been found despite the discovery of his camera and pack.

The photo is a message in a bottle.

A final, heartbreaking I Was here from a 12 year old boy who did his best to keep up but was swallowed by the mountain.

His body has never been recovered.

Jared's last photo is a haunting, silent testament to his final moments.

We are left to guess what he was thinking, what he endured.

But our final case today is different.

It is a mystery where we have the final words.

We know in agonizing detail what it is like to be lost and to wait for a rescue that never comes.

The mystery here is not what happened, but why.

This is the story of Jerry Inchworm Largay.

In 2013, Geraldine Largay was living her dream.

At 66, the retired nurse was hiking the Appalachian Trail, all 2200 miles of it.

Her trail name was Inchworm.

She wasn't a survival expert, but she was experienced, meticulous and tough.

And she wasn't alone.

Her husband, George, was her trail Angel.

He drove their car, meeting her at prearranged Rd.

crossings every few days with fresh supplies, food and a place to rest.

It was a perfect system.

By July 2013, Jerry had been on the trail for months.

She was in Maine, tackling one of the most rugged and remote sections of the entire trail.

She had just navigated the infamous Mahoussak Notch, often called the hardest mile of the AT.

She was in a dense, flatter, but more confusing section of woods.

On the morning of July 22nd, she left to lean to and headed north.

Her next stop was a rendezvous with George, 22 miles away at the Route 27 crossing.

She was due the next day, July 23rd.

She was last seen by another hiker that morning.

She was in good spirits.

Everything was fine, but at some point in the afternoon, in the dense jungle like woods of Maine, Jerry Largay made a simple fatal error.

She stepped off the trail, likely to find a private spot to use the bathroom.

When she turned to go back, she couldn't find the trail.

It's a hiker's worst nightmare.

The AT is marked by white blazes on trees, but in this section, the undergrowth is so thick that if you step 30 feet off the path, it can disappear.

Jerry was lost, but Jerry was a modern hiker.

She had a cell phone.

She knew she was in trouble and she tried to get help.

We know this because we have the texts.

At 4:18 PM on July 22nd she sends a text to her husband George.

In some trouble.

Got off trail to go to BR, now lost.

Can you call AMC to see if a trail maintainer can help me?

Somewhere north of Woods Rd.

XOX.

The text never sent.

There was no signal.

She tried again and again.

She knew the protocol.

Get to high ground.

She bushwhacked trying to find a clearing, a hill, anything to get a signal.

She sent another text, lost since yesterday, off trail 3 or 4 miles.

Call police for what to do XOX.

It never sent.

For 11 days she tried to send a text.

None ever went through.

The next day, July 23rd, George waits at the Route 27 crossing and waits.

Jerry never arrives.

By July 24th, he knows something is wrong.

He reports her missing.

The main warden service launches a massive search.

Just like with Dennis Martin, the effort is huge.

Grid searches, canine teams, helicopters with thermal imaging.

They search for weeks.

The search is complicated by the terrain.

It's dense, nearly impassable.

The forest canopy is so thick, thermal imagers are useless.

Searchers could have walked 50 feet from her and never seen her.

But they search.

They search the trail, the ravines, the streams.

They find nothing.

Not a wrapper, not a footprint.

Inchworm has vanished.

The official search is suspended after a month.

George and the family are devastated.

The trail community is baffled.

How could an experienced hiker on the AT with a support system just disappear?

October 14th, 2015, Two years and three months after she disappeared, a forestry surveyor is working on a contract.

Walking a remote plot of land, he stumbles upon a small collapsed tent.

Inside he finds skeletal remains, a backpack, and a small spiral bound journal.

It is Jerry Largay.

The discovery reveals the true agonizing nature of the mystery.

Jerry Largay's campsite was found only 3000 feet, just over half a mile from the Appalachian Trail.

She had been so close, why was she missed?

Her campsite was inside a restricted Navy SEER training area that's survival, evasion, resistance and escape.

The Navy uses this dense, unforgiving terrain to train its elite pilots how to survive if shot down.

While the Wardens had searched parts of it, the restricted status and the thick as nails terrain meant she was hidden in plain sight.

The phone recovered from the scene told the story of her first frantic days.

But the journal, The journal tells the story of the rest.

Jerry Largay, a woman of profound strength and grace, kept a daily log of her 26 days lost in the woods.

For the first few days, she is practical.

She set up her tent to be visible from the air.

Using a silver blanket, she rationed her food.

She writes about the search planes flying overhead.

She is convinced she will be found.

But as the days turn into weeks, her entries change.

She runs out of food.

She is cold, wet and starving.

The hope begins to fade.

Finally, knowing the end is near, she tears a page from her journal.

It's a final message.

When you find my body, please call my husband, George and my daughter Carrie.

It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me, no matter how many years from now.

She signed it and dated it August 6th, 2013.

She would survive for at least 12 more days after writing that note.

Her last entry is brief and final.

It is simply dated August 18th.

She survived alone for 26 days.

The mystery of Jerry Largay isn't what happened, it's why the search failed.

How can a 66 year old woman half a mile from the trail with helicopters, dogs and hundreds of searchers be missed?

The answer is a humbling 1.

The terrain was the enemy.

The dense woods of Maine are not a park, they are a fortress.

They muffled her sounds.

They hit her tent.

They blocked her signal.

Jerry's story is a profound modern tragedy.

It's a testament to her incredible will to survive.

But it is also a terrifying lesson.

She did almost everything right, but she made one small mistake, and the wilderness, indifferent and absolute, did not forgive her for it.

Dennis Martin, Paula Jean Weldon, The Yuba County 5 De Len Pua.

Jared Negreta, Jerry Largay.

A child, a student, a group of friends, a teenager, a Boy Scout, a seasoned hiker.

Their stories are radically different, but they are bound by a chilling common thread, the ease with which a person can be erased.

These stories haunt us.

They haunt us because they lack resolution.

Our brains are not built to accept a question without an answer.

We need the final chapter.

But the wilderness doesn't write final chapters.

It just ends the story.

These cases become dark mirrors.

We see ourselves in them.

We've all taken a wrong turn.

We've all stepped off the path for just a second.

We've all felt that small prickle of fear when the woods go quiet.

What if in that one second, the path disappeared behind us?

But it's crucial to remember that these are not just campfire tales.

They are real people.

Real families are still living in the void these disappearances created.

Bill Martin searched for his son.

Until his death, the Weldon family never knew if Paula was alive or dead.

The families of the Yuba County 5 still wonder what really happened in that trailer.

The PUA family is still searching for their son.

The Negrete family never got to bring their boy home.

George Largay lost the love of his life.

So what do we take away from this fear?

No respect.

The Wilderness is not a movie set.

It demands our full attention.

If you go out there, you need to be prepared not just with water and snacks, but with the 10 essentials, navigation, a map and compass and the knowledge to use them.

A headlamp, sun protection, first aid, a knife, a fire starter, an emergency shelter, extra food, extra water, extra clothes.

But in the modern age, there is an 11th essential, and it's the one thing that would have saved Jerry Largay's life.

A personal locator beacon or PLB, A satellite messenger.

These devices do not rely on cell service.

They communicate directly with satellites.

If Jerry Largay had pressed the SOS button on one of these, a helicopter would have been winching her to safety within hours.

If you hike, if you climb, if you go where the signal bars fade, you should have one.

It is not an option.

It is your lifeline.

The trails will always call to us.

The beauty of the wild is worth the risk.

But we must go with humility.

We must go prepared.

We must respect the contract we sign when we leave the pavement.

Be safe, be prepared, and stay on the trail.