The Kim Family Disappearance on Bear Camp Road

Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new groupie setting mist from Mavily New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible, all-day-gum fee grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new groupie setting mist from Mavily New York. In today's episode, we're starting in Oregon, where one mist turned sent a young family deep into the snowy wilderness, trapping them on a road that they should have never been on, with no cell service no way out, and two little kids in the backseat. Then we're heading to Vancouver Island, where people vanish in ways that are hard to explain, hard to prove, and even harder to stop thinking about. But first, if you haven't done so, please leave us a five-star review. That helps our standing with Spotify, and my goal is to hit 10,000 five-star reviews. I don't even know if that's possible, but we're really trying to do it, and so please help us out. I appreciate all of you so, so much, and listen on if you dare. This is going to be one of the most unique stories that you've ever heard. And I say that because it doesn't just have a twist, it actually has two different endings. It has a happy ending that should fill you with joy and relief, but it also has an extremely disturbing ending, one that I promise is gonna linger in your mind long after this video ends. So with that said, let's take a virtual trip together right now to the beautiful state of Oregon. To start this story off, I need to introduce you to a woman named Katie. So when Katie was 21 years old, she went on a camping trip, and on this trip she met 26-year-old James Kim. What I'm gonna say next is gonna sound really corny and cheesy, but when Katie first saw James, she just knew that someday he was gonna be her husband. Katie was quoted saying he, again, referring to James, was the cutest thing I'd ever seen in my entire life. She got matching tattoos, and that was pretty much how we met. We were inseparable after that. The couple would go on to marry in the year 1999, and this marriage would eventually lead to the births of their two daughters, both Penelope and Sabine. Everything about the Kim family was textbook. I'm telling you, it was perfect. They were happy, and they also had an adventurous side. No, not that type of adventurous, get that, get your mind out of the gutter. What I mean is that they would literally go on adventures as a family. I'm talking things like road trips, exploring new places. They would go on the types of trips that would create memories so lasting that the kids would be left with a lifetime of nostalgia. Now James Kim had a very well-established career in the space of technology review. In fact, some of you might even remember seeing him on the TV network, Tech TV, which doesn't exist anymore, I believe, he would test products, or he would do these technology reviews. And then, after leaving the network, James would go on to get hired as the senior editor for CNET, which is an even more recognizable media company that reviews technology and covers tech news. Again, I'm sure a bunch of you are probably familiar with this site. And again, maybe you even read some of James's stuff at the time. The Kim family also owned two retail stores in their home city of San Francisco, and it was actually Katie, who kind of oversaw these stores and ran the day to day. And yet, despite being so established in San Francisco, the couple had been dreaming about moving the family further north. And they'd been dreaming about this for many years, by the way. The two main cities that they had been considering, a move to were Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. Katie and James had visited these cities before, but in late November 2006, an opportunity arose to explore them once again, and this time explore them through the eyes of their two young daughters, which would of course make the experience all the more special. And thus, the Kims departed on a Thanksgiving road trip that would take them north all the way to Seattle, where they would visit some family and then south all the way to Portland, where they would visit some friends before finally concluding at a resort on the Oregon coast near Gold Beach. The family drove up to Seattle. They had a wonderful Thanksgiving. And then the following morning with their stomachs full of turkey and stuffing, they began retracing their route south on interstate five, stopping in Portland, Oregon, which by the way is my second favorite Portland behind Portland, Maine. They stopped in Portland, Oregon for the night. And then the next day, November 25th, they were able to kind of kick that post Thanksgiving food comma for good. And they began the drive south to Gold Beach, Oregon. So like I just mentioned, and honestly, any of you from the West Coast will probably know this interstate five was the main road that the family had been following for pretty much all of their road trip up until they made the detour to head over to Gold Beach. In fact, it appears that they had traveled so many miles on I five that they actually got a little bit too comfortable with that road. And well, they let their guard down. So they leave Portland and they drove for over three hours south on I five. And during this, they casually drove past exit 119, which by the way, brings drivers in southern Oregon kind of over to the coast. Now for the family, this seemed like just another mile marker on their journey, just another exit, a small and significant moment in a long day of driving. I would be willing to bet that they didn't even really notice when they passed this exit. But what they didn't know was that skipping exit 119 would set off a chain of events, a seemingly innocent decision that would become the first flicker of a firestorm, plunging them into a nightmare darker than they could ever imagine. I want to remind you that this story takes place in the year 2006. And so when the Kim family missed that exit without even realizing it, they didn't have Google maps to just reroute them, you know, it's a lot more complicated than that. The only navigational aid that they actually had was a simple paper map. It wasn't like their phone started screaming at them to do a U turn or whatever. That's not what happened. So by the time they realized that they had missed their exit, they had traveled nearly an hour further to the south. And conventional wisdom would say that at this point, they should have just taken an alternate route in order to kind of cut over to the coast. But in this specific circumstance, there is a huge problem with that logic. In southwestern Oregon, where the Kim family was, there's basically nothing but forest and wilderness between interstate five and the coast. I'm talking miles and miles and miles of national forest and woods, dense wilderness. This area is incredibly remote. In fact, there's literally a town in this area called remote, which is kind of funny. These are the things that I discover when I research these stories. And true to its name, this town is so small and isolated that it doesn't even have a post office. And I'm saying this. I'm rambling about this because I'm just trying to illustrate that there's nothing there. There's I five, there's the coast and nothing in between. Well, actually, I shouldn't say nothing because there's no towns other than, you know, remote towns, haha, but there are a few roads. You could call them that cut through, that cut from I five over to the coast. But folks, these are not your typical roads, okay? These roads are are unmaintained. They don't have any amenities or services, certainly no gas stations and McDonald's. And they're also seldom traveled by anybody except for the most daring adventurers. These are true wilderness roads. And during the late fall and winter, many of these roads aren't even open to the public. And so when the Kim family reached the northern outskirts of a town called Grant's Pass, they found themselves in a major dilemma. In order to cut over to the coast, they they had very few good options. They would either need to backtrack up the interstate back to exit 119, or they would need to continue south on the interstate all the way down into northern California before kind of looping back north up until they reached Gold Beach. Both of these options were incredibly inconvenient and annoying. And the Kim's debated which option was slightly less annoying until Katie noticed something else on the map. There it was. The solution to their predicament, a third option. This option was a road that went west from Grant's Pass and seemed to be basically a straight shot from there over to the coast. This road, this route, is called Bear Camp Road. The Kims had never heard of this road before. They had no idea that the winding single lane road was not suitable for winter travel. They had no idea that the Kalamuth Mountains, it winds through, would be covered in heavy snow over the next few days. They had no idea that almost 12 years ago, to the date, by the way. 56-year-old Dwitt Finley had taken this very same road, become stuck, snowbound, and then spent nine agonizing weeks waiting to be rescued before he finally died of starvation. Meet new grippy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickyness, no residue. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin. That still feels like your skin. Try new, grippy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Maybe it's Maybelline. The Kims had no idea if this road was a viable option. And again, this is 2006, so they couldn't just, you know, Google it from their cell phones. And so what they did instead was pull into a nearby gas station to see if they could try to get some more information. They pulled in and then James got out of the car to go speak to the attendant. And this is what Katie said about what happened when he returned to the car. Quote, "James came back to the car frustrated. He thought that the attendant gave strange directions and that the man was acting like he didn't understand what James was asking. Now some you will know this. Oregon is one of only two states that doesn't allow motorists to pump their own gas. Like you have to have somebody else do it for you." And so maybe the attendant that James spoke to was just in a bad mood because of how useless his job was. Or maybe he was just confused about what James was asking him in the first place. But yeah, I mean, either way, this gas station attendant did not communicate that Bear Camp Road was a dangerous route for anybody to take this time of year. If the attendant had communicated that, then truthfully, I probably wouldn't be making this video right now. For whatever reason, the Kims decided that they were gonna do it. They were gonna take this road. Again, it looked like a straight shot over to the coast and they just had no idea what was gonna be in store for them next. And so they leave the northern reaches of Grants Pass. They drive west on Bear Camp Road. And for the first few miles, things pretty much seemed normal. It was getting pretty late at night by this point. And so Katie actually fell asleep in the passenger seat. Basically thinking that she was gonna wake up in a few hours or whatever just as the family was pulling up to the coast. But instead, Katie would wake up to find her husband navigating their car through the pitch black wilderness on this single lane road with snow dumping down all around the family car. She wakes up and she instantly recognizes that the family were in trouble. And as fate would have it, she was exactly right. The Kims tried to continue on down this road, but as they climbed an elevation going further and further up into the mountains, the snow got more and more intense. James and Katie were incredibly confused. I mean, they thought they were on the correct route towards the coast, but the weather was becoming so dangerous that they actually decided that at some point along the way, they must have taken a wrong turn. Again, there's no Google maps to redirect them. You know, they had to kind of just go off of instinct here. And their instinct was telling them that it was time to backtrack. And so James brings the car to a halt. But this road that they were on was so narrow and so slippery covered in snow that he was actually unable to turn the car around, you know, so they could head back. And so instead, the only option James had was to just kind of put it in reverse and then inch backwards, you know, backwards down this slick slippery road, knowing that if he made just one wrong move, you know, one yank of the wheel too far, the family car was gonna go tumbling down the drop off that was on the side of the road. I mean, talk about white knuckling the steering wheel. This is just a terrible situation. But James was able to reverse down the road far enough until he reached this intersection right here. So you're looking at Google Street View right now. Obviously, this photo has taken many years later. And it looks like a beautiful scene, right? It's totally normal, just a normal, pretty forest intersection here. But the scary thing about this intersection is that for the Kims, one of these two roads was a road with no return. You see, when the Kims decided to kind of backtrack and turn around, they actually were making the wrong decision. They had been going the right way. And when they reversed down to this intersection, the weather was getting so bad, they knew that if they went to lower elevation, it wouldn't be snowing quite as hard. And so they saw that the road on the right kind of went downhill. They knew that the road on the left went further up because that's where they had came from. And so they ultimately decided to take the right side of this fork. Folks, this would prove to be the second wrong turn that the Kims took on this fateful night. Bear Camp Road was already incredibly remote. Again, if you don't believe me, rewind to that part about the rambling I did about the town of remote anyways. Bear Camp Road is already this super remote road. But the road that the Kims turned onto, you know, the right hand side of that fork was even more remote. And it also didn't even lead to the coast, which was their ultimate goal, obviously. Instead of going to the coast, this road that they turned onto was basically only used by loggers. And it just went deeper and deeper into the wilderness before kind of branching off into smaller logging roads in a maze that basically doesn't end. This road was not meant to be traveled on, especially in the winter and come to think of it, it actually wasn't even supposed to be open. You see, about a month before the Kims made their fateful turn onto this logging road, employees for the Bureau of Land Management or BLM for short, were dispatched to this very intersection so that they could close the gate on the road that branched off to the right and block anybody from going down it. This would ensure that traffic would stay on Bear Camp Road and continue in the direction of the coast. However, when these employees arrived at the intersection, they determined that there might have still been some people either hunting or recreating further down the logging road at the time. And of course, they didn't want to like close the gate and lock them in. And so the employees decided not to lock the gate at that moment. And then in a decision that can either be attributed to laziness or incompetence, this is the government we're talking about after all. The employees never came back to lock the gate, which they obviously were supposed to do. They just left it wide open. And ultimately, because the gate was never locked, the Kims would end up driving down this logging road through the snow for 23 lonely miles. Around two in the morning, the Kim family finally stopped for the night and they decided that they needed a break. I mean, they were clearly driving themselves deeper and deeper into the wilderness. And so they decided that they would just stop, try to get some sleep inside the car, and then reassess their situation when the sun rose in the morning. Maybe at that point, it would be easier to navigate or maybe hopefully other cars would come through once there was daylight. I mean, who's driving around at two in the morning? They had some hope. But when the sun rose on November 26th, the Kim situation was looking even more grim than it had been when they parked the car the night before. They had actually kept the car idling throughout the night, because it was freezing cold, and they needed to stay warm. And the cost of this was very steep. Their gas tank was nearly empty, you know, just kind of teetering on the edge of running completely dry. And when they looked outside the car, the landscape was completely desolate. There were no tire tracks in the snow other than their own. There were no footprints, and there were basically no signs of human life whatsoever. It was as if the wilderness had swallowed the family whole, leaving them utterly isolated from any other human beings. At this point, the Kims realized that they were trapped in an impossible situation. I mean, they could wait around for rescue, but that meant they would be risking death by starvation or freezing in the cold mountain temperatures. And of course, they could try to escape on their own, but that was an equally perilous choice, because they had no idea where they were, and any attempt to drive themselves out could leave them even more lost, and were still the treacherous road that they were on was lined with these sheer drop-offs, which were now hidden beneath a ton of snow, by the way. And these were a constant. threat and and they were ready to turn again a simple driving mistake into a fatal plunge for the family. I'm telling you every single option that the Kim's had at this point carried danger and their time was running out. Ultimately, the Kim's decided to stay put for a second night. And in an effort to kind of pass the time, they actually turned on their car radio. For a brief moment, the familiar voices of, I don't know, Justin Timberlake, Acon, Snow Patrol, you know, the music that was popular in 2006. For a brief moment, these songs provided a flicker of comfort and an escape from the grim reality that the family found themselves in. However, this escape, well, it was instantly shattered when a weather forecast interrupted the music. The announcement was chilling. Another powerful winter storm was barreling straight for the mountains that were now holding the Kim's captive. You know, they were already snowbound and stranded. And so hearing this was just about the last thing that they wanted to hear. It was a total gut punch. And it was now clearer than ever that driving themselves out was no longer just risky. It was pretty much impossible. This left the Kim's with only one thing to focus on. And that was survival. Imagine setting your makeup than forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. Jelly Miss technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day comfy grip. Try new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. Maybe it's Mavily. Every single choice, every single moment that they had now revolved around keeping themselves and more importantly, they're two young daughters alive. I mean, how crazy is it that their daughters are with them throughout all of this? It's just terrible. And speaking of terrible and terrifying, well, the Kim family's second night in the woods was nothing short of just that. Terrifying. They're periodically running their car in order to blast the heat and keep themselves warm. And they knew that once their car ran out of gas, it would essentially turn from their lifeline into a frozen tomb. But as if that wasn't enough to worry about, as darkness fell, a new fear emerged from the shadows. Bears. Folks, I'm talking about bears. Through the frosted windows of their car, the family spotted these black shapes kind of moving through the woods. Multiple black bears were kind of prowling around in the wilderness near their car and trapped inside of their cramped vehicle, the family huddled together, knowing that the thin walls of their car, the glass of their windows, were the only thing separating them from the predators that were right outside. Katie was quoted saying, "I remember seeing bears that looked like they were scaling a mountain going straight down a cliff." At one point during this night, Katie was so scared for her daughter's safety that she actually zipped her inside of her sweater in this crude attempt to kind of hide her from the bears that were on the other side of the car window. Katie said, "I knew that bears are scared of loud noises. We were repeatedly honking the horn, honking the horn all night, we were scared to death." Thankfully, the bears didn't get them, and the family survived their second night in the wilderness cramped into the car. But when they awoke, they were forced to confront an issue that would only grow more and more dangerous as time went on. And that would be hunger. Again, they just spent two nights out there. They hardly have any food. I mean, like most families that are traveling with young children, they did have some, like, snacks for the road trip and stuff, but those were never meant to sustain them for very long. Hot food, real sustenance, and enough of it. Well, all those things were absent from the family vehicle. Katie actually began breastfeeding her children, trying to keep them nourished with what little her body was able to provide. However, she wasn't getting the proper nutrition that she needed, and her and James began to worry about how long they would be able to keep the children fed. The only survival resource that was plentiful for the Kim family was ironically enough water, which it's great to have enough water. You needed to survive, but in a way, the water in the form of snow was actually the thing that was kind of keeping them trapped in the first place. For three excruciating days, the Kim family clung to hope, melting snow for water and rationing every single crumb and every ounce of strength as they waited for a rescue that seemed more and more distant with each passing hour. And eventually, the Kim's second worst fear next to death became true, which was they ran out of gas, their cars sputtered off, and it basically robbed the family of their most important means of survival, which was heat. They were now starving, they were cold. And for James and Katie, the worst part about all of this was having to helplessly watch their children suffer through this situation. And this was almost too much for Katie to take. This next quote is going to be a little graphic and so maybe skip ahead 10 or 15 seconds if you're concerned about that. Okay, he'd been warned. Katie was quoted saying, I made James promise me that if anything happened to the children and if they died, that he would take his pocket knife and he would slit my wrists and he would lie us all out in the snow together. The Kim situation was going from bad to worse, but James refused to let despair win. He actually hatched an idea to keep the family warm now that they were out of gas and he quickly got to work removing their car tires in order to make this happen. You probably know where I'm going with this, but if you don't, I'm talking about fire, fire folks, fire provides warmth. Now everything in the forest was blanketed with snow and soaking wet. And so starting a fire in these conditions would be incredibly difficult. But James reasoned that the rubber from the car tires, which were now useless for driving, obviously, might burn hot enough to create this massive fire. This would provide some much needed warmth for the family and it could actually double as a signal to rescuers. It would produce a bunch of smoke, maybe they would get spotted from the sky, maybe. And I say that because at this point, the Kims didn't even know if rescuers were even searching for them. As the Kims sat there in the freezing cold, barely clinging onto life, they would have had no idea that not only were they being searched for, but their names and their faces were currently being plastered on TVs and newspapers all over the country. On Wednesday, November 29th, the Kims house sitter back in San Francisco reported them missing because they hadn't returned from their road trip. Police quickly began retracing the Kims steps and they found out that their last known transaction was at a Denys in Roseburg, Oregon on the evening of November 25th. Again, that is obviously the night that they got lost. The police also learned that the family had not made it to their reservation in Gold Beach, which meant that something had happened to them between that Denys and Gold Beach. They got to work searching and by the way, this search area is incredibly vast. But basically from the start, a lot of searchers and locals in that area had this gut feeling that the Kims might be trapped near the now infamous bear camp road. Again, it wouldn't have been the first time that somebody underestimated this road's treacherous conditions and found themselves in a life or death situation. It's actually happened a couple times. And so search teams quickly honed in on this area, combing it very early in their efforts which is usually a good thing. They were kind of on the right track and in a more just situation they would have found them. But fate would deliver a cruel twist in the search efforts. While bear camp road itself was search very heavily, this critical logging road that splintered off, you know, the road that the Kims were actually on, well, this road remained completely untouched. And again, this is incredibly frustrating because rescue is actually very, very close, even achingly close, you could say. But at the same time, it was basically just out of reach. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. Try new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. As the search dragged on, day after day, the case began to receive more and more media attention. I mean, the fact that James was a well-known figure in the tech space he had been on TV a little bit, and also just the fact that a beautiful, innocent family had kind of just vanished. Well, these facts just really seemed to resonate with the American public. And of course, as the case received more and more media attention, more and more people stepped up to help as well. Two of the people who stepped up to help were Eric Fuqua and Noah Pugsley, who both worked for Edge Wireless. The two of them did some digging, and they actually discovered that on November 26th, the Kim cell phone had briefly connected to a cell tower in Glendale, Oregon. It was just a quick ping. It wasn't like they had any real service, but this ping had been logged, and it had actually come from the west of this tower, which was, again, in the direction of Bear Camp Road. The discovery of this ping came on December 2nd, and it further proved that the Kims were likely near this remote road, or on one of the many logging roads that intersected it. Folks, I can't stress enough how significant the day December 2nd, 2006 is for this story. Because not only is it the day that these Edge Wireless engineers were able to narrow down the search location, but it's also the day that James Kim made a desperate life or death situation in order to try and save his family. Again, despite the brief cell phone ping that had happened a few days earlier, the Kims had no cell service. Obviously, they would have just called for help if they did, and well, I wouldn't be telling you this story right now. I wish that is what happened, but it's not. James had tried to signal for help by building this fire, but that had also failed. All the fire had done basically was burn the family's tires and other possessions away, including one of their daughter's favorite stuffed animals, which is very sad. For James, the brutal truth was basically undeniable at this point. The only way to save his family was to set out on foot and find help. They had been waiting for so long at this point. Nobody had come, and so James just felt like this was the last thing to do. Now Katie wasn't really convinced, but she couldn't stop him, and so the couple poured over their maps, and they noticed the town of Gallus. They estimated that this town was only four miles away, which was a distance that seemed pretty manageable, even in these treacherous winter conditions. And so, clinging on to hope and to determination, James made the agonizing decision to leave his wife and his daughters behind. But before he stepped into the wilderness by himself, he promised Katie that he would return by the evening if he couldn't find rescue. And he meant it when he said that. This was a vow that James intended to keep no matter what the cost. But what James and Katie didn't know was just how deep they had driven themselves into the wilderness, because they were not only four miles away from the town of Gallus. They were actually about 16 snowy and treacherous miles away. James Kim never returned to the family car that evening. Katie had no idea what had happened, and so all she could do was just to continue to huddle up with her daughters, and just hope and pray that rescue was around the corner. And while it wasn't quite around the corner yet, it was going to be coming soon. Two more days went by, and then on December 4, private helicopter pilot John Rashor decided to do a flyover of Bear Camp Road. Now, something I find incredible about this is that John wasn't working for any official rescue effort. Like I said, a lot of private citizens kind of stepped up to try to help find the Kim family. And so John was just using his own time and his own resources to try and help out. He had actually been flying, looking for the family the previous day as well. And when he was doing this, he noticed some tire prints in the snow on a particular logging road that branched off from Bear Camp Road. However, when he noticed this, John was running very low on fuel. And so he had to kind of abandon the rest of the search that day, and he resolved to return the very next day to investigate these tires further. And when he did, he continued searching down this logging road until John made a bombshell discovery that would soon be all over news headlines throughout the United States. While following this remote logging road, John noticed a female waving an umbrella from the road below him. He also noticed SOS stamped out in the snow and John immediately reported this sighting over the radio. He had a good feeling that he had found them. And within minutes, every single search helicopter that heard his radio call was hovering above Katie and her children. Folks, they were found. They were found starving and suffering from various stages of frostbite, but they were found and they were found alive. When Katie first saw those helicopters, she could only assume that James must have actually made it out to town. Maybe it took him a little longer than he planned, but he had made it. And of course, he had sent the helicopters to rescue the rest of his family. And so EMTs were lowered down to the family, and they were scooped back up into the helicopter, and they were brought to the hospital. And by some miracle, none of them were even in critical condition. Of course, they were starving and they were very cold and everything, but they all survived and they all made a full recovery. And the most incredible part is that they had been in the wilderness, in the cold, surviving for nine full days. Folks, remember at the beginning of the video, I told you there was two different endings to this story. This is the first ending. This is the happy ending, obviously. The resolve that Katie, Penelope and Sabine show during this awful, awful situation is just so inspirational, it's absolutely, it's one of the most incredible things I've ever heard. Now when rescuers were first lowered down to assist Katie and the children, they were very confused because they found that James was not with them. And Katie would shortly become very confused as well when she found out that James had not been the one who called in the helicopter. As it would turn out, James didn't make it to town. And while his family was being rescued, James Kim was still out there in the cold, dark wilderness fighting for his life. Once Katie and the children were rescued, the search for James Kim was ramped up to a whole new level. And then about two days after his family had been rescued, James's body was spotted from high above in the air, lying motionless in a creek below. He had walked over 16 miles from the car before he passed away, all in this heroic last-ditch effort to save his family. James had died due to hypothermia and in a very sad twist of fate, he was actually found only about a mile away from the buildings that make up the black bar resort. Now this resort was closed for the winter months, but it could have definitely provided James with some much needed shelter and food if he had been able to reach it. It appears that James became turned around while trying to go find his way out and to find help. And he even shetted some of his clothing along the way, which is a classic sign of hypothermia because why would someone do that in the freezing cold? James basically hiked until his body would no longer carry him forward. He then collapsed in the creek, having given literally everything he had up to and including his life in order to save his family. Folks, this is obviously the second ending to our story, the more disturbing, not so happy one. And in the aftermath of this story, there's been a lot of talk about why the entire situation happened in the first place and of course, you know, who's to blame for it. And I'm not really going to get into that too much. Maybe I'll save that for a future video and if you have any thoughts, feel free to leave them in the comments. I just really want to say this, James Kim made the ultimate sacrifice for his family. You cannot and will not find a more dedicated and selfless father. in existence. Many men will fantasize about putting themselves on the line in order to save their family, but few men will actually be put in a situation where they have to do it. For James, this wasn't just a fantasy he was actually living it, and without any hesitation, without a second thought he plunged himself into the unforgiving wilderness to try and save his wife and his children, knowing full well that it might cost him his life. That did not matter to him. The only thing that mattered was that he tried and do everything he could to save them, which, regardless of how they ended up in that situation in the first place, it's a very heroic thing, and so please show James some love in the comments, and of course, please do the same for Katie, Penelope, and for Sabine. The Kim Family story starts with the kind of mistake that anyone could make, right? A missed exit? A bad road? The assumption that they could still find a way through, but on Vancouver Island, the fear is much different. People don't just get lost. They disappear into places. They thought they understood. Listen to me, there's something going on in the woods of Vancouver Island. I've always heard about how people disappear there, and like, some disappearances in a heavily wooded area are probably normal, but it's more so how these people go missing that doesn't really make any sense. Many experienced hikers have gone missing in the woods of Vancouver Island, but it's not just them, not even the locals are safe. In fact, some of the strangest wilderness disappearances on the island are from townsfolk who didn't usually even go hiking at all. Meet new grippy setting missed from Mabelie, New York. Gel to Miss technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible, all-day comfy grip. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin, that still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting missed from Mabelie, New York. Maybe it's Mabelie. Picture this. It's the middle of the night on November 29th, 1980. One of the worst storms in decades is sweeping across Duncan, a small city on the southeastern edge of Vancouver Island. On the Taylor family farm, 32-year-old son Granger Taylor isn't in bed under the covers. He's up, and he's walking down the hallway to his parents room. Once there, he tapes a note to their door, and then he just turns away. He goes outside into this horrible weather, which includes like a pitch black sky, massive forked lightning, and sheets and sheets of rain. He then gets into his car, and if it wasn't for the terrible weather, you would see that the car was bright pink. Granger's a little unique like that, right? He's a big guy, six foot three, 240 pounds, but he's kind of a gentle giant. He tends to keep to himself on his parents' farm, and he reassembles old cars, trains, and even airplanes in his free time. And look, I'm pretty good with a Lego set that comes with like an instruction manual, but this guy could take apart just about any machine and then put it back together. He was, he was kind of a genius, and so when he painted his car pink, people just thought, well, that's Granger. He must have a good reason, right? And you'd also think that he must have had a good reason for driving into this intense storm in the middle of the night on November 29th. And by the way, he's not just driving randomly. There are 537 named mountains on Vancouver Island, and he's driving to one of them in particular, Mount Prevost. It's only a few miles from his home, but it's steep, and it's surrounded by dense rainforests, and so it's not exactly an easy drive. And this particular mountain is also sacred to the local indigenous people, the Cowachan, who believe that their very first ancestor was placed there by God himself. And look, all that to say is that this is a very mysterious and a very odd place for Granger to be driving to in the middle of the night during an intense thunderstorm. And predictably, at some point on the drive, he went off the road. And we have to just figure that his windshield is just getting slapped with a bunch of wet tree branches. And so it's unclear how he's even like able to see, but somehow he makes it to the mountain. But what happens next? Well, we'll never know, because Granger was never seen ever again. However, you'll recall that note that he left on his parents' door. Well, in the morning, they found it, and you can't possibly imagine what it said. "Dear mother and father, I have gone away to walk aboard an alien spaceship, as reoccurring dreams assured a 42-month interstellar voyage to explore the vast universe, then return. I am leaving behind all my possessions to you as I will no longer require the use of any. Please use the instructions in my will as a guide to help love Granger." Okay, okay. I know what you're thinking. You're probably thinking Kyle, you've lost it. You can't seriously be telling me that this guy got abducted by aliens, right? And look, there's a reason that I never talk about aliens in my videos. I'm not an alien guy. It's not my thing that's not what this channel's about, but I do want you to hear me out just this one time, okay? So Vancouver Island is a huge, quite mysterious place, honestly, just off of the coast of British Columbia, Canada. It's covered in steep mountains, dense rainforests, large lakes, and these rushing rivers that can pretty much all kill hikers who aren't paying attention, and then, you know, once they're gone, the terrain makes it very difficult to find their bodies. Now don't get me wrong, Vancouver Island looks absolutely gorgeous, and I'm sure there's some really awesome amazing people there, but there's definitely some weird stuff going on. In fact, some locals even wonder if there could be maybe a darker explanation for some of the disappearances that I'm about to get into. They wonder if there aren't maybe some kidnappers or serial killers or maybe even supernatural beings in the woods. I'm not sure about that one, but there's rumors, okay? And all that stuff is super strange, but in the case of Granger Taylor, the culprit seems to be even stranger somehow. In fact, Granger's whole life was pretty hard to believe. I mean, he was 32 years old, but his best friend was an eighth grader. The eighth grader, Robert Keller, was a middle school dropout that Granger kind of took under his wing, which is obviously very strange, but from my understanding, there wasn't anything nefarious going on here. Robert has always had nothing but good things to say about Granger, and he says that without Granger's friend, he probably would have become a juvenile delinquent. But instead, Granger showed him how to build all kinds of amazing machines. And this almost brings us full circle in a way, because this is where you get a sense of how Granger had, he had this almost spiritual connection to the woods. And what I mean is that he would go into these dense rainforests on the island, and he would find full steam engines that were left there, or crashed World War II planes that had been hidden by overgrowth for decades. It was almost like he knew how to get the island to share its secrets, and then he'd used his amazing strength and his engineering abilities to pull them out of the woods and onto his parent's farm, where he would then restore them. And Robert got to help him with these projects, and he was even there to help Granger paint his car pink. And folks, it was while working on these projects together, that Granger started to tell Robert about the aliens. And look, I'm not here to pretend that what Granger was saying about these aliens was true. I'm just trying to tell you what he actually thought. He was probably a little delusional. But regardless, Granger said that the aliens came to him in his dreams, and he said that they needed his expertise while on a voyage. At first, Granger thought that maybe he had just had like a memorable dream or something, but then, apparently the next night, they came right back, and these aliens supposedly told him the exact day and time that they would come pick him up, though he wasn't supposed to tell anyone about this. The only details that Granger would share were that the aliens were coming on November 29th, and they would come in the middle of a terrible storm so that the clouds would hide their ships from view. Now, you have to keep in mind once again, even though it's a little weird. Robert, he's hearing this stuff, and he's just a kid. And so he didn't really know what to think. So he figured he would wait and just kind of see what happened on that particular day. On the morning of November 29th, it was overcast, but that wasn't exactly anything unusual for Vancouver Island. And Robert, by this point, figured that Granger's story had all been like a hoax or a delusion. But then, right around noon, the sky turned black. So black, in fact, that Robert could barely even tell if it was night or day anymore. And pretty soon, huge lightning strikes started to erupt out of the clouds, and this intense rain followed right after that. Granger showed up at Robert's house at 6 p.m., and Robert thought that maybe Granger had thought up some unique project for them to work on while they waited out the storm. But Granger was not there with a project. He was there to say goodbye. He explained to Robert that he really was leaving with these aliens that night, and that Robert couldn't come with him. And the thing was, while this supposed voyage would only last, you know, a quick 42 months for Granger, it would apparently last decades longer on Earth, and Granger was talking about Einstein's theory of relativity, of course, which suggests that time moves slower for fast moving objects, like for instance, an alien spacecraft traveling at light speed, and whether or not he believed him in this moment, it quickly became apparent to Robert that Granger wasn't just saying goodbye for now. He was literally saying goodbye for good, because he believes that the next time he returned to Earth, Robert would be long dead. Which for as strange and probably deluded as this whole situation was, that's almost like kind of an intelligent thought at the same time from Granger, but I don't know. For his part, Robert obviously still didn't really know what to think. He actually slept pretty poorly that night, kind of with all these things bouncing around his head. And I feel for him. I mean, there was already a bunch of loud thunder outside to keep him awake, but then on top of that, he was genuinely worried about his friend. By morning, the storm had finally cleared a to clock rolled around, which was the time that Granger would usually pick Robert up, but Granger was nowhere to be found. Robert called his home, he called his parents, but they hadn't seen their son either. And that's when his parents found the note taped to their door. An island-wide manhunt was launched, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which is, I guess, the Canadian equivalent of the FBI, but I could be off on that. Anyway, as they used helicopters to search the thickest parts of the forest, but Granger, as well as his pink car, were nowhere to be seen. The police ended up interviewing Robert's father, but strangely, they didn't interview Robert himself. And Robert found that very odd. I mean, why wouldn't they talk to the person who was Granger's best friend? A few years past, and there was still no sign of Granger, his parents eventually had him declared legally dead, and one weird thing about his will was that he had crossed out any reference to his death and replaced it with the word departure, almost as if to suggest that he really had just gone up to space. Obviously, no one truly knew what happened, but some people actually believed that Granger was still alive and he had just kind of run off somewhere. And after a while, Robert became one of those people. He continued to believe that Granger was alive, and eventually that faith was rewarded. Because six whole years after Granger's disappearance, the police received a tip that would change this case forever. Six whole years after Granger had disappeared, Robert was sitting in his family living room when his father shared something incredible that he had just read in the newspaper. Apparently, the police had found Granger's car, like all these years later, which is just unbelievable news, and so you're probably wondering after all this time, where was the car? And let me tell you, it was on Mount Prevost, which you might remember. However, the car was not in one piece, it was actually in a whole lot of pieces. The police didn't even find an actual car, it was more of like a blast site. It was in like this big black explosion crater in the middle of the woods on this mountain. Truly a wild crime scene, the car steering wheel was found up in a tree branch. Part of the engine block was lying several feet away from that, and worst of all, police recovered several bone fragments at the scene. Now, you have to remember, this was many, many years ago, and so DNA testing wasn't widely available, so they just assumed, of course, that the bone fragments belonged to Granger. This was because they were able to determine from the wreckage that the car was in fact his, but that begs the question, how the hell did this car just explode? Like what is that? Did this strange alien spaceship incinerate it maybe? Well, probably not, I mean, the only explanation that the police had for why the car had actually exploded was that Granger must have had some dynamite with him at the time of his disappearance. And Granger did have access to dynamite by the way. He even had some in his workshop on the farm, but the police had no explanation for why he would have driven deep into the woods with explosives in the middle of the night during a storm and then blown up his car and himself like, now if you want a more positive theory, Granger could have brought the dynamite with him because he somehow thought the aliens would be able to use it, but of course there's also the more obvious cynical answer, probably the real one in my opinion, which is that Granger was, well, mentally ill and perhaps he went out there to take his own life. But it is worth mentioning that neither the far-fetched alien theory nor this theory about Granger taking his own life sat right with Robert. And for one, the police claimed that the car they had found that had been blown up was a blue car. And of course, Robert knew that this could not have been true. I mean, Granger's car was very famously pink. Hell, the two of them had even painted it together. And Robert also didn't see how they could say the bones were Granger's when they had no way to test them, and he also didn't buy the dynamite explanation either. You see, Robert had actually been in Granger's workshop looking for him after the disappearance, and he was sure that he saw Granger's supply of dynamite sitting there completely untouched. And so, the police explanations made absolutely no sense. For a very long time now, Robert has refused to believe that Granger is dead. He thinks it's even possible that the police are actually covering up what really happened to him. After all, why didn't they even bother to question him back when Granger disappeared? It was almost like they didn't want to know the actual truth. And then years later, when Robert requested to see the bone fragments so that they could be tested with modern technology, he got a response that only made his suspicion even worse. Get this. I told you this was going to get stranger. The police told Robert that the bones had been misplaced, lost, and Robert couldn't believe this. I mean, this is just so suspicious. The Canadian Royal Mounted Police losing a victim's remains didn't seem very likely. Now, it's really hard to say whether there actually was a cover up here or if the police were just going off of the information they had. I mean, they might have just said the car was blue because that was the color that it was originally registered under, and they might not have wanted to interview Robert because he was a minor at the time, and they really might have just misplaced the bones. But with all that being said, I do think that taking your own life using dynamite in the middle of a storm is a really, really strange way to go. But then again, Granger was a strange guy. Maybe the alien story was just something he told his young friend so that he wouldn't be shocked by the reality that Granger was actually considering taking his own life. However, despite my skepticism about the alien thing, I do want to say one thing in defense of Robert's alien theory. And that is Granger's choice of Mount Prevost as his meeting place with the aliens is incredibly eerie if you know about the indigenous stories revolving that particular mountain. So I mentioned at the top of the episode that the Cowachan people view that mountain as sacred. It's of the utmost importance to them because they believe the first of their people, a man named Stutson, was placed on Earth here by God himself. And there are two important stories featuring Stutson that are set on Mount Prevost. One story says that Stutson was lonely and so God directed him to a cave on the mountain where he met a dog who could serve as his companion. And then another story says that God sent Stutson and his brother a vision of a great storm that would flood the island. And then in order to save themselves, the Cowachan would have to bring their canoes up the mountain. And as the waters rose, they tied their canoes together around the mountain and rode out the flood all the way up to the peak. I think that these stories are really interesting because in a way, they almost both apply to Granger Taylor. He himself was a lonely guy who's only true friend was this eighth grader and he looks to that exact mountain as a place where he could meet beings from another world who could maybe finally make him a little bit less lonely. I don't know. You have to admit, it is a lot like Stutson asking God for a companion and then receiving his dog. And then just like Stutson and his brother, Granger received a vision of this huge storm and in order to sort of, you know, be saved from it all, he had to go to the mountain. Again, I'm not big into the spiritual and alien stuff. I like to keep my stories grounded in reality most of the time, but this one in particular just leaves me feeling like maybe there is something kind of otherworldly about Vancouver Island. And I don't know if it's aliens or God or serial killers or whatever, but there's definitely something strange about those woods. And with that being said, not every Vancouver Island disappearance can be blamed on supernatural forces. And scarier reality is that the terrain in this region can kill just about anyone. All it takes is one wrong move or one lapse in concentration. And even the most experienced adventurer can be gone like that realistically, it can be very hard to find a body in this kind of wilderness. I mean, there's thick, plant growth, rock slides, rushing water. All of these things can hide a body and ensure that their loved ones never get any closure. And we all like to. think that this would never happen to us, but for the friends and family of the experienced climber Lawrence Phillipsin, well Vancouver Island served as the ultimate reality check. Now, Granger and Lawrence were very different. Lawrence was a relatable every man, you could say. He was like the cool grandpa that we wished we all had. He wore high-waisted pants, he had a big nose, big ears, big glasses, and honestly, he was ready to take on the world. Now, in 2020, he was 65 years old, and he lived in Campbell River, which is right next door to Strathconia, provincial park. He raised his sons on the island, often taking them up mountains, and he looked forward to doing the same with his grandchildren one day. Lawrence became very well known throughout the island after making friends at the local climbing gym. Now, I haven't been able to find an exact number of climbs and hikes and excursions that he completed in his life, but from what I did find, he had between 30 to 40 just with his most frequent climbing partner, and so I wouldn't be surprised if he had, like, well over 100 by the time you add in all of his other friends and family, and all the times he went out alone. And so, given all of this experience, no one ever questioned when Lawrence would go out and do things in the mountains by himself. He knew the island like the back of his hand, and he always seemed prepared. Lawrence decided to do a three-day solo climb in June of 2020, and his itinerary is another great example of how experienced he was. I mean, three-day solo would be difficult enough for a lot of people. I've done that a handful of times, so I can tell you that personally, but during that time, Lawrence planned to summit three whole mountains. Philberg, Cobb, and Hague Brown. In Philberg and Hague Brown in particular are both over 6,000 feet above sea level, and so definitely pretty ambitious, especially for someone his age. But even so, when Lawrence left home on Tuesday, June 30, 2020, everyone assumed that he would be back on Friday, just like clockwork. Lawrence drove from his home in Campbell River to a logging road in Strathconia Park. He left his car there, and then set out on his journey. But by the morning of Friday, July 3, 2020, he had failed to return, and he had failed to check in with anybody. Lawrence had disappeared. By Monday, July 6, one of his friends, a man named Lindsay Elms, had joined with several other of Lawrence's friends, as well as Canadian search and rescue to try and figure out what the hell had happened. Search and rescue dropped Lindsay and other experienced climbers off by helicopter in the mountains, right along, Lawrence's predicted route. They spent the day climbing all of these difficult cliff faces, hoping that they would find Lawrence, or at the very least find his body. Now, I've never been to this area, but from the photos I've seen and from what everyone says, it seems like an absolutely beautiful area, like beautiful terrain. But I imagine that it must have taken on like a sinister quality when you're conducting a rescue operation, or a body recovery mission like this. I mean, you look out and you see all of these jagged peaks covered in snow, and you just see how far down there is to fall, and below that is just this endless dark forest with god knows what hiding inside of it. It seemed like Vancouver Island had struck again, because everywhere that Lindsay and the search team looked, well, they didn't find anything. They just found gray rocks and green trees with no flash of color that might indicate Lawrence's tent or his gear. They ended their day on top of Mt. Philberg, completely exhausted, and not having seen any sign of Lawrence. Lindsay and the search team spent the rest of the week planning a much larger search operation for the coming weekend. They mapped out the GPS tracks of all the different search and rescue teams so far, and they felt that there was a section of forest that no one had covered. And so they sent out the word for more volunteers, and by Saturday, July 11th, they assembled in the park to once again search for Lawrence. However, this time, as they looked out over the endless fir trees, a massive gray cloud swept down from the mountain. Rain started pouring down on everyone, and so they now couldn't use their helicopters, and it would just be miserably cold, even dangerously cold during their search. And so once again, it was almost as if Vancouver Island didn't want Lawrence to be found, but despite this, and this is just incredible, the team went ahead with the search on foot. I've hiked a lot of miles in the cold rain, and it is not fun. And so I have tremendous respect for this. They combed through the forests, hacking away at all of the brush, and overturning every single rock. They did absolutely everything they could, but it just wasn't enough. It pains me to say that in Lindsay's words, it was like Lawrence had just disappeared off the face of the earth. An entire month went by without any break in the case whatsoever. And I can only imagine that this must have been very agonizing for Lawrence's friends and family. Again, you just don't know what can happen when it comes to these woods. However, on August 13th, 2020, two unknown climbers were making their way up Mount Lang, a mountain at the very beginning of Lawrence's route. The bluff ahead of them looked too tough for their ability level. And so they turned around to head back, but as they descended, they stopped in their tracks, because they saw something colorful sticking out of the rock, something that just looked out of place. And when they moved closer to examine it, they found something that they never expected. It was Lawrence Phillipson's body. Search and rescue was called in and arrived at the scene. And from what they could tell, Lawrence had apparently fallen from the rock face above. And there was no way to tell how that happened. I mean, maybe he lost his footing, or maybe he even made it to the top and then slipped and fell backwards. There aren't a lot of details provided about the condition that his body was found in, but it seems like it must have been in pretty bad shape. Search and rescue as well as the corner agreed that he must have been killed pretty much instantly from the fall. And that means he might have broken his neck or shattered his skull or or both or even worse, if it can even get worse. I don't know, man, it just goes to show how treacherous this terrain is and how dangerous climbing can be in general. I mean, one wrong move or one freak accident and your climbing career as well as your life can come to a permanent end. And I wanted to mention this story because it's also an example of why Vancouver Island doesn't need aliens or serial killers to be scary. Lawrence knew how to climb as well as pretty much anyone on the island. And yet, in just an instant, he lost his footing presumably, or leaned back a little bit too far or looked in the wrong direction and he fell to his death. And then dozens of people spent days and days and days and weeks looking for him and couldn't find him because the island's mountains are so huge and they had buried him beneath their rocks. It's incredibly sad, but honestly, it's also incredibly lucky that he was ever found at all.