DON’T GO to Appalachia. Ever. Trust Me.

Today, I'm going to be giving you five chilling examples of why you can never go alone in the Appalachian Mountains. And once I've finished those stories, if you can handle it, I'm going to tell you a bonus story about a man who lived through every hiker's worst nightmare. If you've listened to a few episodes now and you're enjoying the show, please leave us a five star review and hit the follow button and do it right now. I have a goal of reaching 1,000 five star reviews and we're not even close yet and so please help us out and by hitting the follow button you'll also be helping our standing with Spotify. So once again, do it right now and listen on if you dare. All across Appalachia, people are disappearing or disappearing and then turning up dead. And the most disturbing part is that this has been going on for literal decades. In June of 1970, a man named Jimmy Lewis pulled over to how do I say this gracefully relieve himself, we'll say. And as he walked into the woods to try and find that perfect spot we've all been there, something strange caught his eye. He looked a little bit closer and he realized that it was a car. This didn't really make sense. He knew something was wrong, but he walked towards the car anyways. I mean, he just really couldn't help himself, right? He was curious. He reached the car and he peeked through the window and what he saw made his stomach drop. All he had done was just pull over to take a quick piss, but suddenly he had gotten way more than he bargained for. Now, let me introduce you to a woman named Nancy Dean Morgan. Nancy was a 24 year old woman working for Vista, which stands for volunteers in service to America. And it's basically the domestic version of the Peace Corps, you could say. Nancy was young, she was idealistic, and she was drawn to a life of service. As part of her work with Vista, Nancy was assigned to help in the remote Appalachian Mountains in Madison County, North Carolina. Oh, and just for the record, I'm from New England. We call them the Appalachian Mountains up there. And so I know that everyone in the South calls them the Appalachian Mountains. I think, did I say it right? So when I'm referring to the region of Appalachia, I'm going to say it that way, but when I'm referring to the mountains, I'm going to say Appalachian because that's just, that's just what I know. Anyways, back to Nancy, so she's in Madison County, North Carolina, you know, in a region marked by deep poverty and proud independence. And it's there that she threw herself into community work. Her ability to help was noticed by appreciative locals, fellow volunteers, of course, and even some more unsavory locals who didn't exactly like the idea that they needed help from outsiders. By mid-June of 1970, Nancy only had a few more weeks left in her current service in North Carolina, and she planned to go off to nursing school in the fall. Oh, and she'd even told a few people that she was then going to come back to Appalachia and use her nursing skills to help the community even more. And I say that because I want to illustrate the kind of person that Nancy Dean Morgan was. She had truly fallen in love with the Appalachian region and its people, but all of her plans changed when something absolutely chilling ended up happening. On Sunday morning, June 14, 1970, Nancy prepared for an evening hanging out with her friend and fellow vista worker who was named Ed Walker. She ironed a pair of maroon cutoff shorts and a ribbed blue top, and she reached the home of Ed Walker several hours later. And the two of them spent some time talking about their future vista projects and Nancy's goals in nursing. They dinner and two more of Ed's friends even came over to watch a movie to just kind of chill, right? Those friends would eventually end up leaving, and that just left Nancy and Ed to chat on the porch. They're talk went on until the lay hours of the night, and when Nancy finally left, Ed even helped her turn her car around on his narrow, you know, steep road, and she watched as she drove away. But little did Ed know that that would be the last time that he ever saw Nancy. Days later, Nancy hadn't shown up to her volunteer post, and her co-worker started to become increasingly concerned. I mean, this wasn't like Nancy. You know, she wasn't someone who had missed her obligations, and it definitely wasn't like her to not tell anyone why or like where she went. I unfortunately couldn't really find the exact timeline from when Nancy officially disappeared, but I did read that the authorities claim to not have any record of her being reported as missing. And so they never actually opened an official search. And to be honest, that's just one of the many frustrating mistakes in this case and in this story. And so without official help from the authorities, groups of locals and fellow Vista volunteers searched all over the area, right? And that's where we get back to Jimmy Lewis, the man we met at the very beginning of this story that stumbled upon an abandoned vehicle. On June 17th, Jimmy Lewis was driving along the hillside of Hot Springs Mountain, not very far from the Appalachian Trail itself, right? And again, he pulled over to go pee in the woods. I guess when you got to go, you got to go. And of course, no one wants to get caught taking a pee on the side of the road. And so he kind of went a little bit deeper into the trees so that he wouldn't be seen. And that's when he noticed a government issued vehicle along the side of the road. This vehicle looked lonely, even abandoned, and even though it was a little bit far away, Jimmy instantly recognized that something was way off here. It was almost like it was haunted. I don't know. Chills ran down Jimmy's spine as he slowly approached the vehicle and carefully peaked through the windows. Almost at the same time, he realized that this was a vista vehicle. And that's when he saw sitting inside of it the body of Nancy Dean Morgan. Now, how do I say this? Like, this was such a brutal scene that even the most veteran investigators could barely stomach it. And again, I have to be careful with my words here, because I don't want to get in trouble on YouTube. You know, I appreciate YouTube. I want to respect YouTube's guidelines. But what I can say is that they found Nancy tied up. In some accounts, she was described as hog tied, which, you know, like her arms and legs were all tied up together, which is just a disturbing and helpless thing to imagine. And even more sickening to experience, obviously. And to make matters even worse, Nancy was also found without any clothing on. And the autopsy reports would indicate that she had indeed been s8, if you know what I'm saying, and then strangled to death. So authorities now had an even bigger job of figuring out who could have possibly been capable of doing such awful things to another human being, especially such an innocent human being. It's hard to describe this stuff, man. I mean, they had barely even started searching for Nancy and all the sudden that short-lived search was over. But the bigger mystery now was only beginning. The local sheriff at the time, who was a man named Roy Roberts, would soon have to juggle this investigation by his own department alongside who else but the FBI. Because, you know, Nancy was technically a federal employee. And the U.S. Forest Service, because her car was found on U.S. Forest Service land. And so all of these agencies would descend upon the county and create something of a mess. And the investigation would be unable to nail down an exact list of suspects for the crime. The Madison County community had their own thoughts on the case as well. There were reports of a meeting between locals where people largely agreed that Nancy Dean Morgan's murder case had more to do with the culture of the Vista program that she was in than it had to do with, you know, their actual town. They thought that the murder was giving their town, their community a bad public image and instead wanted to blame these outsiders, right? And then more rumors about Nancy herself started to kind of swirl around, right? There were rumors that prior to her death she had once dated a married man. I don't know if that's true. Probably isn't, but with gossip like that going around, one could feel little by little that the momentum of this case was becoming less focused on justice for Nancy and her family and more about just assigning blame. And as all of this craziness was going on, the authorities started to turn their eyes towards Nancy's friend Ed Walker. Remember him? As a main suspect, Ed mentioned that he and Nancy had a close relationship and even said that they had once kissed while on a double date, at least that's what I heard. But Ed insisted that above all else, the two of them were just friends. But despite that, the authorities continued looking into Ed and they started to build some theories of their own. So this is wild. One theory proposed that Ed and Nancy might have been into holding gatherings of multiple people that involved some love making if you catch my drift and that during one of these encounters, things might have gotten a little rough and that's how Nancy accidentally died. Another theory claimed that Ed had choked Nancy while in the middle of a fight with another man. And it's important to note that these are just theories obviously, you know, without evidence or witnesses to any of these crazy theories, none of them really stuck and I think we can say there. Probably not true. Ed eventually did take two polygraphs and as the investigation slowed, it was becoming clearer that they didn't have anything that would point to Ed's guilt in Nancy's murder. In March of 1971, nine months after Nancy's body had been found, the FBI essentially closed the investigation and Sheriff Roy Roberts would would eventually resign before his term ended. I said this a second ago, but this was a mess of an investigation. And if you needed any more evidence of that, you might want to know that for some reason, some unexplainable reason, it took authorities nearly a month and a half before they even checked Nancy's vehicle for fingerprints. Now, I don't watch a ton of CSI, but I feel like that's pretty much step one in any investigation, right? I mean, I know a lot of the times I'll sit here and kind of unfairly maybe scrutinize most investigations. I'm sure it was a crazy time. And not everyone is always 100% perfect at their jobs. I totally get that. But I don't know, to wait so long to check for something basic like fingerprints, I don't know. I think it's pretty fair to be flabbergasted by that. Is that just me? And so yeah, the case went cold in 1971 and it wasn't until over a decade later that someone actually stood trial for Nancy's murder. But if you were hoping that this case started to get handled in a more professional and competent way, boy, do I have some news for you? In 1984, a man named EY Ponder, the current sheriff and a powerful political presence in Madison County, well, he was trying to strengthen his re-election campaign by reopening Nancy Dean Morgan's case. He was trying to grab local headlines by solving such an infamous and disgusting crime that the community all knew about, you know, something that had been just kind of hanging over this community's head for so long now. In order to reopen this case and ultimately win re-election, he got a hold of a sketchy local informant that he had worked with in the past named Johnny Waldrop. You see, back at the time of Nancy's murder, Waldrop was actually living with his mother who happened to be Ed Walker's neighbor. Sheriff Ponder essentially got Waldrop to make an incriminating statement against Ed Walker, you know, something about witnessing and interacting with him at the time. And even though this statement was coming 14 years after the murder, Ponder eventually arrested Ed Walker based on Waldrop's words. Over a decade later, and now married in living his own life, Ed Walker had to sit in jail and was drained of his life savings as he dealt with the travel expenses and legal fees, right? The case moved forward, but it became increasingly muddy as Johnny Waldrop failed to show up to testify on multiple occasions. The public would increasingly realize that Sheriff Ponder had been more focused on scoring a political victory than seeking any real justice for Nancy. And eventually, Ed Walker would be acquitted based on Waldrop's unreliability and the prosecution's inability to prove that he had killed his friend. And I wish that I could say that this failure is what forced investigators to finally get their act together here, but I think you're all smart enough to realize that that is not the direction that we're going and heartbreakingly, Ed Walker and his family would never be given any money or reparation for this incredible miscarriage of justice. Him and his wife both lost their jobs in the fallout of all this, despite the fact that as far as the court was concerned, he was not guilty. And once again, the legal system and the authorities in this case had fully failed everybody involved. Nancy, her family, her friends, her loved ones, and of course Ed Walker and his family and his friends and his loved ones. Nancy's murder case would go cold all over again or at least it did until 1998. When a local writer named Mark Pinsky dug into the case and began pointing towards a man in prison named Richard Johnson. Pinsky talked with Johnson, who admitted to being with a group of local men drinking beer back in 1970 when Nancy drove by them in her government issued vehicle. And if the timelines lined up here, I believe Johnson would be describing seeing Nancy early on June 15th right after she had left Ed Walker's house. Johnson then described how the group he was with went on to kidnap Nancy at gunpoint, SA her and then eventually kill her. He also admitted that this group had done things like this before and gotten away with it. According to Johnson, after they killed Nancy, the group then drove her vehicle and abandoned it near Hot Springs Mountain where it was eventually found. Now that sounds pretty damning obviously, but I do want to note that Richard Johnson was literally in prison for poisoning his five-year-old daughter at the time of these confessions. And so he's not exactly the most trustworthy or reliable source of information in this case either, but it's also important to note that Richard's father, Leroy Johnson, was the Hot Springs Police Chief from 1953 to 1984. And so the overlapping power struggles and conflicts of interest in this case make it really hard to rule out a cover-up or at least some intentional negligence. It just kind of feels wrong. Mark Pinsky, the writer who's been most involved in covering this case since the authorities largely gave up on it, tends to believe that Richard Johnson was at least one of the men involved in Nancy's murder and from everything that I've read, you know, I'm not an expert on this case, but I kind of tend to lean that way as well. But still to this day, no one has ever been convicted for the assault and murder of Nancy Dean Morgan. She lived her life with the goal of helping the Appalachian community that she had come to love so much. But after her death, many people in that very same community failed her. And I'm not even just talking about those that killed her. Now I often get asked if telling these really sad stories all the time for these videos like affects me. And the truth is that it doesn't really, but every now and again, I'll have a story like the one I just told you that kind of does. I mean, that's a dark one. And to be honest, we're just getting started because this next one is the same way. And so in March of 2011, a man named Christopher Lee Sesna journeyed into the Misty Great Smoky Mountains National Park with way more than just the iconic fog hanging over his head. Christopher was from North Carolina. And just like myself, he had a love for the outdoors. The people in his life didn't really think of him as reckless or unprepared. But those closest to him knew that something wasn't quite right leading up to this journey. In the weeks leading up to his trip to the Smokies, Christopher's family had grown deeply concerned for him. They said that he was just being withdrawn and that they thought he was probably depressed. And as a result, they started to check in with him more often, or at least they tried to. Christopher wasn't really returning many of their calls. He wasn't answering their messages. And so finally, they went over to his house to basically see what was up, right? They hoped that all their worries and their worst fears would be proven wrong, would just be proven as, you know, we all overthink things sometimes. Maybe Christopher would be just fine. Maybe he'd just been really busy lately. But when they got to his place, that is not what they found, not even close. Christopher was not there. And when they started to look through some of his things, his items for clues, they discovered something that made their stomachs drop instantly. You see, they knew that Christopher owned a gun like many Americans, but they couldn't find this gun anywhere. It was missing, and so was Christopher. And so finally, his family filed a report with the authorities on April 27th to be exact. Over a month since anyone had last seen Christopher, and it wasn't long before search and rescue crews started scouring the area around his North Carolina home and then expanded to the more wild and remote places nearby. They knew that Christopher was very familiar with the area, and they of course feared that he had some very dark intentions. And as a result, you know, there was a good possibility that he would want to be out in the middle of nowhere. And that's precisely where they found the most bone-chilling piece of evidence in this entire case. And of course, I'm talking about just like our previous story, Christopher's abandoned car. They found Christopher's car parked at the newfound gap overlook, which is a popular spot in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, right along the North Carolina Tennessee border. Now, I've actually been to newfound gap before, and I had no idea about this story at the time. And honestly, I'm pretty glad that I didn't. So if you're visiting the Smoky's anytime soon, I'm sorry, the Appalachian Trail, Appalachian, actually crosses the gap and then winds through dense forest, following the spine of the Smokies across miles of remote rugged terrain. I remember this very, very well. And I can tell you firsthand that this stretch of the trail is both extremely beautiful and extremely brutal. It was one of the more challenging parts of my Appalachian Trail. Through hike, to be honest, you have these soaring views, which is awesome, but you also have these sheer drops. And the weather up there can turn on a dime, right? At the time of Christopher's disappearance, it was still the early spring and up at that elevation, temperatures could easily dip below freezing at night. Fog is very common. They don't call it the Smokies for nothing. And as a result, so is disorientation. Now, when they looked at Christopher's car, there were no signs of foul play. It looked like he had just parked, walked away, and then never came back. Which is precisely what made this scene look so strange, right? Park Ranger. Doctors immediately started searching. Helicopters scanned all the valleys, canine units tracked sent trails that started strong, but then would just kind of fade abruptly. Teams on foot combed the area for days, focusing on the sections of trail that Christopher was most likely to have taken. But despite all this effort, they found nothing. No sleeping bag, no scraps of food, and especially not his gun. But then, just a few months after Christopher's disappearance in May of 2011, search crews and their dog tracking team made a massive discovery. They found the body of a man deep in the woods, roughly 250 yards away from a vehicle pull out along Newfound Gap Road, inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park. And though this wasn't the discovery that Christopher's family was ultimately hoping for, it would have been a lot better to find him alive, obviously. At least this would give them some hope, and maybe some closure, right? Well, folks, that hope would fade very quickly, when authorities announced that the discovered remains didn't belong to Christopher, but actually belonged to a 58 year old man named David Harrington. You see, David Harrington was from Largo, Florida, and his family had recently reported him missing, just like Christopher's family had done. David's story is incredibly heartbreaking because he basically drove his SUV out to Newfound Gap, walked into the woods, and then tragically took his own life. I honestly couldn't find that much information about his story beyond those facts. But I mean, what are the odds, right? A body was found in the exact area Christopher went missing right around the same time, but it was not him. It was just someone else entirely. It's just one tragedy stacked on top of another, and to make matters worse, at the same time that police found Harrington's body, they also announced that they planned to scale back their search for Christopher. It's possible that Christopher got lost down the trail, I don't know, maybe he got caught in some bad weather and just wasn't ready for it. That does happen a lot in the Smokies, honestly. But of course, the overwhelming theory is that Christopher may have taken his own life deep in the woods, choosing a place of solitude, far from roads, and certainly far from people. We know that he had grown more and more disconnected in the time leading up to his disappearance. And even though it's a heartbreaking theory, it unfortunately fits with what his family feared the most. But the one thing that gets me about this is that Christopher didn't leave behind a note for anyone to find, which, you know, it's not exactly unheard of, you know, for these circumstances, but often times as hard as it is to, you know, kind of stomach this, people leave behind notes before they take their own life like this. So ultimately, there's just no way to know for sure what actually happened. But as of today, at least as of the time of recording this video, Christopher has not been found. No conclusive evidence has ever surfaced. For his family, that means they get zero closure. Their force to confront just endless nightmares about what could have happened to him, and if there was anything that they could have done to save him, which, again, there probably wasn't. We're talking about mental illness here, ultimately no one is responsible except for the person themselves, but that's just a heartbreaking wow. And it's even more heartbreaking when you realize that Christopher's family are not the only ones left wondering about where in Appalachia their loved one might be. Christopher's story might sound like just an isolated incident, but then just one year later, another tragedy occurred in the exact same place, except this time we were left with an insane, mysterious, handwritten note that said, quote, don't look for me. Now to be clear, I'm not suggesting that these two cases are related, but it is a very, very haunting coincidence. Let me explain. So in March of 2012, 24-year-old Derek Luking checked out of a hotel in Cherokee, North Carolina, near the entrance of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In fact, I've actually told you about Derek's story once before a long time ago, but it gets so just strange that I have to talk about it again. It's honestly stuck with me ever since I first started researching it. Derek lived full-time in Louisville, Tennessee, and he worked a pretty demanding job at a psychiatric hospital. He was clean-cut and had recently graduated from a religious college. A surveillance camera recorded him leaving the hotel room at 4am on March 17th, and he was carrying a small day pack, right? Derek was going out on a hike by himself, or at least that's what it seemed like. He drove his white Ford escape to the newfound Gap Trailhead, right there where the Appalachian Trail crosses the road. And again, this is the very same location that Christopher Cessna went missing, and where David Harrington's remains were found as well. I don't know if I believe that places can truly be haunted, but if they can, I would not be surprised at all if Newfound Gap is one of the most haunted trailheads of all time. I don't know. Derek parked his car, leaving behind his phone, his wallet, and his iPod, which is pretty strange, right? I mean, I never go anywhere without checking off the essentials, my phone, my wallet, my keys. I bet you all are probably the same way, right? I mean, constantly slapping your pockets and keeping a mental inventory of our daily 21st century must have items, right? It's clear that Derek didn't have that same thought, either forgot those items entirely or maybe he left them behind on purpose. In the two days leading up to this mysterious hike, it turns out that Derek had spent more than $1,000 on camping and survival gear. It seemed like he was prepping for one hell of an outdoor adventure, but that doesn't really make sense because again, he was photographed wearing a small little day pack, you know, the day that he went to the park and all of that gear definitely wasn't going to fit in that backpack. Like what's going on there? Derek's parents lived in Virginia at the time and they were proud of their son for graduating and starting his adult life. They hadn't heard from him, you know, for a couple of days leading up to this, but that wasn't totally unusual. But what was unusual was when they got a random call from Derek's roommate. And this is the kind of call that every parent I imagine would just absolutely dread. Their son's roommate called to say that he hadn't seen Derek in a few days. Derek's alarm clock had been going off in his room non-stop and when his roommate finally went in to check on him, all he found was Derek's empty room. His parents also found out that Derek had failed to show up for work that day. Nobody had seen him and now all sorts of alarms were going off, you know, not just his alarm clock. Where the hell could Derek have gone off to? His parents drove from Virginia to Louisville, you know, as soon as they learned about all this. They searched his room and his computer and they found Google searches for hikes around Great Smoky Mountains National Park and reservations for a hotel room outside the park. They followed all of those clues all the way to his hotel room in the town of Cherokee. When they finally entered that room, things felt eerie and empty. Of course, they looked around the room, all around the room hoping to find their son in there and find him safe and sound, but what they actually found only scared them even more. There was a Bible and a bottle of liquor just kind of sitting on the floor and this, of course, freaked them out and it would freak me out too. Derek clearly wasn't in the room anymore and so they got back in their car and they drove toward Newfound Gap Trailhead where because of the Google searches, they thought that their son might have been heading. Derek's parents pulled into the Newfound Gap parking lot at about 8.30am on March 17th, which is the exact same day that Derek had been seen on that surveillance camera earlier in the morning, which is crazy. They were basically right behind him. I mean, surely they were going to get him before anything tragic happened, right? When they pulled into the parking lot, they immediately saw his white Ford escape and they felt a sense of hope from this. Like, they had finally tracked him down. His car was right there. But when they looked inside the car, not only did they find a bunch of his brand new survival gear, but they also found a small note. His mom reached for the note slowly and when she saw what was written on it, her worst fears didn't just come true, but they were literally written in her son's own handwriting. The words on the note were simple and chilling, it said, quote, "don't look for me." And as you could probably imagine, his parents did not intend to follow the note's instructions. Official search teams were deployed immediately. I'm talking Rangers, dog teams, volunteers, helicopter crews, all of those different teams combed the mountains. The park's dense underbrush was checked foot by foot. For days, they searched and searched, but they couldn't find anything. No clothing, no campsite, no footprints, zero sign of Derek. And it sucks to say this, but to this day, Derek is lost to the wilderness. I mean, this is one of the most notorious cold cases in all of national park history. And like I said, the first time I ever heard this story, it's just stuck with me. Some people say that Derek might have been trying to replicate the TV show Manverse Wild. He was apparently a big fan of the TV show and maybe he stocked up on all that survival gear with the hopes that he could go on an adventure like the ones he saw in the TV show, right? And maybe in the process of doing that, he bit off a little more than he could chew and he got caught out in the forest and had no way to help himself. Or, a lot of people suggest that Derek could have tragically taken his own life. And that would certainly start to explain the mysterious and heartbreaking notes that he left behind, as well as the scene in the hotel room with the Bible in the liquor bottle just left out on the floor. And of course, either one of those explanations is terribly tragic. And my heart breaks for him and his parents' man, like his parents, who like almost got him, you know, when all of this started, like they were so close. In fact, I'm sure the loved ones of my next subject in the next story would have loved to get as close as Derek's parents almost did to finding him. On August 23rd, 2008, a man named Mike Heron left his condo in Maryville, Tennessee, with a very simple plan. That was to go up to his family's farm on the outskirts of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. To spend the weekend, just mowing grass in, just tending to the property, right? He called both of his sons Andy and Matt, and he left a voicemail for Andy to let him know that he was going to come by and borrow a lawnmower for the weekend. Everything about the day so far seemed completely normal. But what happened next was anything but normal. By the middle of that same day, the neighbors near the farm saw Mike riding his green ATV, even waved over to them as he drove down Bell Branch Road, which was a road slash trail that led towards the woods on the property. The weekend moved along, and by Monday, August 25th, Matt and Andy had expected their dad to check in with them. The three of them all worked together, building homes in Tennessee, and it wasn't like Mike to just kind of go off the grid like that. I mean, they at least expected him to bring back the lawnmower, and so they began to worry a little bit. But they hoped that calling their grandmother, who was named Alma, would give them some peace of mind. You see, grandma Alma lived next door to the farm, but she said that she hadn't heard from or seen their dad either. The brothers didn't waste any more time, and they decided to drive to the property themselves. And what they found there was unsettling, to say the least. For starters, Mike's truck was parked at the edge of the driveway, but it wasn't like fully pulled in. It was as if Mike was in the middle of moving it around, but never had the chance to finish what he started, which is strange. The truck was also unlocked, the windows were down, and inside of it were his keys, his wallet, his license, his credit cards, along with his firearm. Nothing appeared to be stolen or even disturbed, and the same went for the house itself. It was also untouched, even though the doors were unlocked. Personal items were all where they were supposed to be. The only thing missing was the green ATV, and Mike himself. At 4pm that very same day, the brothers called the Black County Sheriff's Office. Heavy rain began falling less than an hour later, which lasted several days and definitely complicated any search efforts. But nonetheless, the search for Mike started seriously on that very Tuesday, August 26. During the afternoon on this particular day, a family friend who was helping the search was about a mile away from the farm looking around a steep hillside along a strange road that he was sure that Mike would never have used. But you have to remember that everyone involved was getting increasingly desperate, and that desperation would end up working out for them in the end, because that family friend did find something up that obscure road, but it definitely wasn't anything worth celebrating. It was Mike's abandoned ATV. The vehicle was in high gear, the kill switch was off, and the keys were still in the ignition. According to Mike's son, Matt, that was a bad sign. Matt explained, quote, "We grew up riding. If you turn something off with a key, you turn the key off, leaving it like that drains the battery." Mike wasn't a wasteful or careless person. I mean, this was their dad, their hero. If you have left this ATV here, that could only mean something horrible had happened in the process. They searched all around the location where they found the ATV. They turned over every rock and scoured the dirt for tracks of any kind. I mean, they were desperate to find something that could point them to their dad. Some sort of explanation for what the hell had happened. Folks, they found nothing. And of course, that only deepened the mystery. Mike's family and the authorities have considered many possibilities over the years. And while some of these theories lead into the strange or supernatural, others suggest that Mike may have taken his own life, despite the fact that that's something his sons and his mother strongly dispute. I mean, there were no signs of depression, financial trouble, or any red flags in the days leading up to his disappearance. Another rumor plays off some unfortunate stereotypes, some popular ones about Appalachia as a region in the southern US. And so some have alleged that Mike may have accidentally came across like a secret bootleg alcohol distilling operation, and that the criminals running that operation decided to kill him and then stashes ATV down the road where it was eventually found. And there's never been a shred of evidence to back this up. And so to me, this seems like nothing more than people's wild imaginations, but I don't know. And if you were to ask me about my own crazy imagination, I think it's entirely possible that Mike was driving his ATV through the woods and possibly ended up crashing or falling off of the vehicle and getting injured or possibly dying far away from the ATV itself. And then maybe some unknown person found the ATV and with Mike nowhere in sight decided to kind of drive it around before deciding to abandon it without considering to turn the key off the right way. And then being too embarrassed or worried about getting in trouble to every tell anyone that they drove the ATV once the news of Mike's disappearance started to swirl around. But again, I mean that's just speculation, that's just my own imagination, I'm trying to be as realistic as possible, but I mean clearly even that version of the story doesn't explain why Mike has never been found either dead or alive. Mike was 510, he weighed 185 pounds and he had brown hair and hazel eyes. He was last seen wearing khaki cargo shorts, a faded red t-shirt and t-va sandals. He would be 67 years old today. He's currently declared legally dead but his family still hopes that one day the truth will come to light. And so if you happen to have any information regarding his tragic disappearance, please reach out to the authorities as soon as possible. Now pretty much all of these stories have centered around like Southern Appalachia but of course another place with deep Appalachian roots is West Virginia and unfortunately West Virginia is also a place that's all too familiar with strange tragedies like this. On a cold January morning in 2022, way up in the quiet wooded hills of West Virginia, a man named Brynn Hargraves didn't show up to work. At first his boss wasn't like too concerned, I mean maybe he had just slept in, I know that probably happens to me weekly, honestly. I wasn't built to wake up early and do the 9 to 5 grind, but of course that's probably why I chose to be a YouTuber instead and make my own schedule or that's one of the reasons anyways. And I don't know exactly how to say this without coming across wrong but Brynn wasn't just anyone either. He was from England and that's where he made a name for himself as a professional rugby player. He even won something called the Challenge Cup back in 2008. But eventually Brynn hung up his cleats and he moved to Morgantown West Virginia for a quieter life in Appalachia working in the oil and gas industry. He lived alone at the Whisper Creek apartment complex near Cheath Lake, a quiet area that looks picture perfect by day or at least it does on Google Images, but by night it could easily look like a creepy house in the woods, almost something straight out of a Friday the 13th movie, I don't know. And that's part of what made his absence from work extra chilling. I mean people knew he lived alone and so when his boss, his friends and his family kept calling and calling but all they could ever get a hold of was his voicemail, they were at a total loss and that's when authorities were finally on the receiving end of a phone call. But of course this phone call didn't come from Brynn, it came from his downstairs neighbors. Again, Brynn lived in an apartment and his downstairs neighbors hadn't even heard that he was missing but they were calling to report a massive water leak. You see water was pouring from their ceiling down into their apartment and so they assumed that it was some sort of plumbing issue and assumed that it was occurring in the unit upstairs which was Brynn's. But Brynn was missing which is very very strange, like what's causing this water leak then. Authorities obviously knew that it was time to act on such a mysterious report. And so on January 16th, 2022, local deputies arrived at Brynn's apartment. The first deputy walked up to the apartment door and realized that the door was just unlocked. I don't know a lot about detective work, but I'm pretty sure an unlocked door would set up a very haunting tone. right off the bat, and so the deputies kept walking through the apartment, and as they proceeded down the hall, they could hear a noise coming from the bathroom. It sounded like a loud hiss, or someone making a. like a shushing sound, right? The first deputy reached for the bathroom door handle slowly. He turned the knob, and he opened it as carefully as he could kind of peeking into the room. What he saw was the shower still running, but absolutely no one in there, which kind of blew their minds, like how long could the shower have possibly been running for? And was it Bren himself that left it on, or was it someone else entirely? They searched the rest of the apartment thoroughly, but Bren was still nowhere to be found. However, they did find his wallet, his passport, his ID, all that stuff was still in there. Other than the bizarre state of the shower, everything in the apartment looked to be pretty normal. There's a sign of a struggle, no sign of forced entry, no note, and pretty much no other clues. And so after the apartment was searched, the sheriff's office launched an even larger scale search. And I always feel like a broken record when I tell these stories, but of course, you know, we're talking police, dogs, drones, foot volunteers, you know, people scouring the nearby woods and the nearby lakes up in this region for months. They followed every lead, every scent, every trail that they could possibly find. But the dense west Virginia forest is pretty much the undefeated hide and seek champion of the world. Back in the UK, Brin's family was getting very frantic. His mother, Maria Andrews, flooded social media with heartfelt messages. You know, she posted little tributes of love and grief that painted the picture of a devoted son suddenly ripped out of her world, which is tragic. His brother, Gareth, gave interviews and started fundraising campaigns, raising money to hire a private investigator after the official search efforts ended up ending. And there were theories too, but because of course there were, right? Some people said that Brin had been struggling after a bad car accident, had left him with constant back pain. His mother specifically believed that he'd suffered from a brain condition called CTE, which is pretty common in high contact sports like Rugby. She believed that his brain injuries caused him to have seizures, one of which caused the bad car accident, and that his chronic pain may have taken a serious toll on his mental health as well. Maybe some people thought he had simply decided to give up and take his own life. But if that were the case, why did no one find him then? And so naturally, other people began to suspect something much darker. His unlocked door and his running shower didn't really make any sense, I mean, could someone have come in and taken him or harmed him? And if so, just how big and strong would that theoretical attacker have to be to overpower a champion rugby player? His family even thought through the idea of him maybe intentionally disappearing, but his brother, Gareth, pushed back on that when he said, quote, "His wallet and his ID and passport are still in his apartment." So he had no means of access to his cash and no ID to travel. His brother also wondered if there might have been some foul play. He thought, quote, "Could someone else be involved?" And he even wondered if Bryn had been the victim of "abduction," but there was never any evidence to support that theory either. And so the investigation stretched on. Seasons changed. Snow fell, melted, and fell again over the hills of Cheat Lake. And his case lingered on like the fog over the quiet Appalachian community. Eventually, the official search and all the search and rescue teams, they all moved on from the case. But of course, Bryn had to be out there somewhere still, right? In late February, 2023, somebody made an unexpected discovery, and I say, somebody, because through all my research, I actually couldn't figure out who exactly made this discovery. Someone counts suggest that it was made by the family's private investigator, and others suggested it was a search crew of some kind, but that doesn't really sound right since we know that the rescue efforts had been shut down at this point. But either way, who made this discovery isn't nearly as insane as where they made the discovery. Because there, in a wooded area between South Pierpont Road and the Honolay development, in an area that had been combed over by tons of people over the course of the search, under dense brush, they found the body of Bryn Hargraves. And what's even crazier is that they found Bryn's body across the street from his apartment. Like I'm talking literally yards away. It seemed like Bryn had actually been right there all along. I mean, how does that even happen? The place where he was found had been searched before, you know, combed by police and dogs and volunteers, and yet somehow what had been hidden all that time, just waiting to be found, was the answer to a year's worth of questions, and of course finally some peace for his family. And to be clear, I'm not suggesting some sort of cover up here, like, you know, they moved his body back there after the fact, it seems from my perspective that they just missed it somehow, which was really strange, but at least there was some resolution to this case, and yet questions still linger, because there's never been any cause of death announced by the authorities. Could Bryn have hit his head in the shower and then walked out of his apartment in days, or did something much darker happen? Whatever it was, do me a favor right now, please go into the comments and send some love to his family who I know are heartbroken, but at least they don't have to wonder where he is anymore, and leave some love for the rest of the people I've talked about in this video as well. If there's anything that you should take away from this video, it's that the Appalachian region is full of deep rooted culture, and it's also home to deep, dark secrets. Now if you can handle it, be sure to listen up, because you're about to hear about a man who lives through every hiker's worst nightmare. Hit the follow button if you haven't already done so, and let's get into it. On a normal Friday morning in June of 2021, Andrew Devers made an impulsive life-changing decision. The native Nebraska interned Washington State resident decided to go for a hike, and so he grabbed his backpack, a water bottle, and a can of spaghettios, and he drove himself to a trailhead that he had never been to before. His hike started normally, but within a few hours, a terrifying realization had sunk in. He had no idea where he was, where the trail was, or how the hell to get back to the safety of his car. What had started as just a short little hike, you know, something to do, had quickly turned into a life or death situation. Night one turned into night two, and night two turned into night three. He could hear voices traveling down the river, but nobody could hear him yelling back. He ate wild berries in a desperate attempt to stay energized, and he also drank from wild streams and rivers, despite the fact that he had no way of filtering the water. A record-breaking heat wave swept through the area, adding heatstroke and dehydration to the list of potential dangers. Eventually, Andrew was even violently swept off his feet by the strong current of the river, and he nearly drowned right then and there. He knew his chances of surviving were getting smaller and smaller with each passing day. Eventually, Andrew came to the realization that he was going to die, and his only objective after this was to make it easier for the rescue workers to recover his body. This is the terrifying ordeal of Andrew Devers. On June 18th, 2021, 25-year-old Andrew Devers decided he needed some fresh air. It was the summer after all, the sun was shining, and Andrew now lived in Washington State, which is a state that's known for its natural beauty and outdoor recreation opportunities. Why not go for a hike, he thought, what could possibly go wrong? Andrew wasn't a total beginner, but he definitely wasn't an expert hiker either. He had been going out for a short day hikes a few times a summer for the past number of years, and he did feel comfortable hiking on his own. For this particular hike, Andrew chose the Pratt River Trail, which is a trail that he had never been on before. He grabbed his backpack, and he loaded it up with a bottle of water and a can of spaghettios, and then he drove out to the middle for campground in North Bend, Washington. It was here that his adventure began. Well, actually, taking one quick step back before Andrew hiked out, he actually realized that he had left some cans of mountain dew in his trunk. He knew that this was definitely not the optimal hiking drink, but it was there, and so he threw a few cans of it in his backpack as well. As Andrew began hiking, he quickly realized that the Pratt River Trail was different than any trail he had been on before. He was used to hiking on wide, well-graded trails that receive a lot of foot traffic, but this trail, however, did not receive much use at the time, it was very narrow, it was overgrown, and it was difficult to follow in a lot of spots. Now, I will say that once you've got a decent amount of hiking experience, you do tend to get pretty good at following not so obvious trails like this, but for an overcome Confident beginner like Andrew, solo hiking and overgrown seldom used trail is a recipe for disaster. Andrew continued down the Pratt River Trail and despite its difficulty, he actually quite enjoyed the first part of his hike. Eventually the trail opened up in an area that had been devastated previously by a landfall. Downed trees and branches were everywhere and it made the already confusing trail even more confusing for Andrew. He hiked a bit further but soon decided that the conditions were too difficult and that he didn't want to finish the trail. And so he turned around and he retraced his steps down back to the scene of the landslide and it's here that he made an understandable but also very dangerous mistake. Following his intuition, Andrew Devers continued down what he believed was the trail and rather than proceeding slowly double checking his surroundings to make sure that he was going the right way, Andrew kind of just zoned out and got lost in his own head. Now this is totally normal to do while hiking, I've done it countless times, especially if you have ADHD like Andrew does. But unfortunately after just zoning out down the trail for around 45 minutes, Andrew would come to deeply regret his lack of awareness. If you didn't guess it by now, Andrew had taken a wrong turn and while he was kind of just lost in his thoughts walking down what he thought was the trail, he was actually wandering further and further into the wilderness away from any established marked routes. By the time he realized he had taken a wrong turn, there was no longer any visible path for him to follow. Andrew began looking for any sign of where to go, but a few hours passed and he still couldn't find his way back to the trail. Now this is the moment where I feel like most people would probably start panicking. I mean, you're lost, you're all alone in the wilderness with no overnight gear. I mean, that's a pretty scary situation. Andrew, however, didn't panic. He remained hopeful that he would hear somebody eventually. And since the weather was still nice, he thought his chances were pretty good. There's actually a few important lessons that I want to highlight real quick here. The first one is that if Andrew had been using a GPS or even just a paper map potentially in a compass, he would have likely been able to stay on the correct trail or at the very least he could have used these tools to navigate himself out to safety. And the next lesson I want to highlight here is that whenever you're unsure of which way a trail goes, you have to proceed with caution. Don't just choose a path and follow it blindly. I mean, you gotta take your best guess, but then you should move slowly and continuously reassess if you've chosen correctly. I really don't mean to criticize Andrew here. I really just think that those are important lessons to know. And with that, I also want to highlight something that Andrew did absolutely right in this situation, which was to not panic. This is obviously much easier said than done, but by remaining calm, Andrew definitely gave himself the best chance of survival. And not only did he stay calm, but he was actually pretty damn optimistic, even when it became obvious that he would be spending the night in the wilderness. He genuinely believed that he would find his way out in the morning. And so he settled in. He used his backpack to cover his feet. He pulled down his shirt to cover his torso and he ended up using his long hair as a pillow. He made it through the night and by the next morning, Andrew was still feeling pretty confident. It was now Saturday, a weekend, and so surely it would have been a busy day on the trail. He figured that all he had to do was just to wait. Just wait it out until you hear some other hikers. And then at that point, he would be able to make his way out of the woods no worse for where. I respect the hell out of Andrew's confidence and optimism in this situation, but unfortunately, it wouldn't last and it would actually go in the complete opposite direction. Andrew did in fact end up hearing the voices of other hikers. But when he called out asking for help, he got no response. It's likely that the conversations he was hearing were actually carried upstream from long distances away. And so they sounded much closer than they actually were. This is the point when Andrew's attitude started to change. He didn't realize how far away the conversations were, and he became livid that nobody was responding to his shouts for help. Eventually, Andrew realized that nobody was coming to help him, and unfortunately, he was right. At this point, he had not even been reported missing yet, and so he began moving down the mountain in an attempt to reach the river. Flying helicopters from above would have had no view of the hikers below. And so going to a spot where they would easily be able to see him seemed like an obvious, potentially life-saving move. He was still incredibly angry at his situation, and as a result, he wasn't being very careful as he charged through the brush. Andrew ended up tripping, and was shanked by a sharp stick right underneath his kneecap. Around this same time, he also realized that his water bottle had fallen out of his backpack, and so he now had no way to carry water around with him. I mean, clearly his situation was going from bad to worse. He was now bleeding with no medical supplies to treat himself, and he was at a high risk of dehydration. And folks, in case you lost track of the timeline here, at this point, Andrew had only been lost for a little over 24 hours. This is also about the point where Andrew was reported missing. His then-girlfriend, Christina, had been worried when he didn't return from his hike, but for the first number of hours, she kept justifying to herself why he hadn't returned. She thought maybe he had made some friends on the hike, or something like that, but eventually reality set in, and she did in fact report him missing. I do want to note that she reported Andrew missing much faster than happens in most of the stories I cover on this channel. Another night went by, and on day three of his ordeal, Hunger was really starting to get to Andrew. He needed to find something to eat, and he needed to do it fast. While searching, he noticed some trees falling down on the other side of the river that he was following. It looked like somebody over there was cutting down trees, and so with his hunger and fatigue growing, Andrew saw this as his ticket to safety. And so he decided to make his way across the fast moving river to try and go contact these people. He began wandering along the river banks, looking for a safe spot to cross, and eventually he found a cluster of rocks that he could use to hop across the water. And it goes without saying that's much easier said than done. I've rock hopped across many rivers over the years, I know many of you watching have as well, and these rocks are wet, they're slippery, and they're also loose. And so one misstep, or one moment of hesitation even, could send you plummeting into the current, and as you probably guessed by now, that's exactly what happened to Andrew. He almost made it, too, that's the crazy part. He had six rocks to hop across, and he was still going strong after rock number five. The sixth rock got him, though, unfortunately. It moved out of place when he stepped on it, and it sent him right into the water where he was pushed downstream. So he's just being sent down the river at this point. His only hope was to grab something on the side of the river in order to pull himself out, which he did when a stray branch came into view. But of course, his branch snapped when he grabbed onto it. He was still determined to save himself, however, and so Andrew tried again. He grabbed onto another branch, and this time, miraculously, it worked, and he very quickly found himself standing up on the side of the river. Crisis had been averted, at least for the moment, and actually another miracle was about to take place as well. As Andrew was collecting himself after nearly drowning, he felt a calling from his then-girlfriend, Christina. Here, he could have sworn is what she said, telling him to look to his right. When he did this, he discovered a trail of berries that led him to a soft, mossy spot that would have been pretty nice to sleep in. He now had a little bit of food, a somewhat comfortable spot to rest, and earlier in the day, he had actually discovered an abandoned knife and a pot, which were now two additional tools for his survival arsenal. Finally, Andrew was experiencing some strokes of luck after suffering so many blows over the previous days. But despite this luck, Andrew was still in deep trouble. He decided to stay put in this spot near the berries for two days. He rested and tried to let his wounds heal, although, the longer he went without proper food, the less effective his body was at doing this. On the morning of day 4, Andrew saw a helicopter fly by above, slowly covering the land across the river from him. He waited an astonishing nine hours from 7am to 4pm, hoping that this helicopter would come to his rescue. But unfortunately, once the helicopter had cleared its section of land, it immediately flew away. The helicopter had not been assigned to look at the river, and so rather than spotting Andrew and then trying to land or even dropping down a rescue worker, the helicopter just zoomed off without stopping or giving any indication that it had seen him. Andrew thought to himself, quote, "That was your only way out." At this point, he was really starting to run out of hope. After Andrew had gone missing, a record-breaking heat wave swept over the Pacific Northwest, further adding to his sense of hopelessness. He was already very limited in his mobility, and now, Now if he strayed too far from the river, he would surely suffer a quick death. By day four of his ordeal, Andrew's mind had completely lost the ability to keep track of years and months. He was unable to think beyond the present moment and the immediate future. He was totally fixated on his short-term survival. He was also fighting a fierce mental battle, struggling between accepting his inevitable death, or continuing to fight for his survival. His mental health had suffered in years prior, and at points in his life, he had even contemplated suicide. And yet despite this, here he was in a situation where it would have been easy, even understandable perhaps, to give up, and yet he continued to fight for his life. Andrew's mind went back and forth in this battle, taking wide swings in either direction. And at one point, he had basically accepted death. To the point where he only pressed on in order to make the rescue workers jobs a bit easier. Andrew had brought along a notebook for what was supposed to be his short hike, and now that he had some time on his hands, he sat down and began to write. He started by writing out his will and some of the other dark thoughts that were going through his head. But then he changed course, and he decided to write down wedding vows to his then girlfriend. This was an expression of hope for Andrew, and it gave him something to keep fighting for. And so he fought on, and he fought on hard, by the way. As the days went by, Andrew was becoming so exhausted and depleted that he was basically just staggering forward for as long as he could before he would collapse, sleep for a little bit, and then struggle back to his feet to repeat the process. He did this for several days, but then on day eight of his ordeal, something absolutely incredible happened. Maybe it was due to Andrew's perseverance, maybe it was just dumb luck, or maybe it was a combination of both. Either way, during the afternoon of day eight, Andrew just randomly stumbled back onto the Pratt River Trail. He recognized the trail due to his memory of the way that acorns were scattered on the forest floor, indicating a path to follow. This was the very same path that he had formerly lost. When Andrew realized that he had made it back onto the trail that would lead him to safety, he began screaming triumphantly at the top of his lungs. He had somehow against all odds, one, that's how he viewed it. He wasn't exactly out of the woods yet, but for the first time since he had gotten lost, his chances of survival were actually looking pretty damn good. He began hiking back in the direction of the trailhead, but he was still moving slow. The sun eventually began to set, and so rather than risk further injury or death, Andrew settled down right on the side of the trail for one more night. If they won't help me, I'll put myself right in front of their face. This is what Andrew thought as he curled up confidently on the trail, knowing that he was close to the trailhead and close to his car. And then, the next morning, he was woken up around 7am by the first hikers on trail that day. They were actually trail runners, and these two runners marked the beginning of the end of Andrew's nightmare or deal. They gave him some food, and then they turned around to go some and help. Within a few hours, Andrew was being helped out of the woods and brought to the hospital. By some miracle, Andrew not only survived, but he actually escaped with pretty minimal injuries. Sure, he was scraped up and malnourished, but these were things that he would quickly recover from. In fact, the doctors that treated him were very surprised that he was doing so well physically. And while this physical aspect is important, obviously, the mental aspect is important as well. Fortunately, it seems as though Andrew is doing better these days, certainly better than he was when he was lost in the woods. But even to this day, he's still quite shaken from this experience. I actually had the pleasure of working with him and talking with him in order to put this video together, and so I can definitely see the emotional impact that this ordeal has had on him. And speaking of working with Andrew, he made it very clear to me and also in many interviews that he did after this happened, that he regrets a lot of the decisions that he made on that hike. He can all agree that he definitely made some mistakes that nearly cost him his life. We can acknowledge that and we can learn from it because it is the truth, but I also think that we should show Andrew some grace. We've all made mistakes after all. Those of you that watched my last video and watched this channel regularly, certainly know that I myself made plenty of these mistakes in my younger hiking days. And the fact that Andrew is willing to admit these mistakes and take accountability for them says a lot about his character. It also says a lot that he was even willing to let me cover this story in the first place so that thousands of people can learn from the mistakes that he made. And so with all that in mind, I will say he made it clear to me that he has no problem taking the heat from people in the comments and stuff, but I don't know, please keep these things in mind before you just run off to start ripping on him in the comments section. He's owned his mistakes. I think that's the most that you can do in a situation like this. And I also guarantee that there's nothing you can write that he hasn't heard before. I asked Andrew if he had any message that he wanted to pass along to my audience. And this is what he wrote to me, quote, "I wish to let the viewers know that it's genuinely fine to make mistakes and eventually you find your way back again." Laughing is a beautiful jumpstart for your meat suit when all else fails. If life has you lying on the ground, staring up at the stars of your mistakes, it's okay to joke about how glorious it was to be here in the first place. Keep your chin up, buttercups, and stay spice. If you want to follow Andrew, I encourage you to check out his Twitch, and you'll find his, quote, "more carefully constructed thoughts at his YouTube channel." The last part of what Andrew wanted to include in the video was, quote, "Thank you for hearing my message, and I wish for you to enjoy the rest of your existence aboard our oblong space rock."