The Unexplainable Disappearances of Missing 411

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For the 2 year old who covered 12 miles- theres a good case that a mountain lion (what he interpreted as a kitty cat) had mistaken him as a cub or kitten and delivered him to a safe zone. Sometimes with cats what you find is when a mother loses her own kittens in a state of sadness and motherhood hormones, she adopts the next closest thing as a replacement. In this case it was the child

People who have never been in the woods don't understand how easy it is to get lost in the woods. One hunting season I was walking to my deer stand (about a quarter mile walk from the tree line). I usually walk there right as the sun comes up, but decided to get an early start and left while it was still dark. I thought it was strange when I ended up at a creek because it was about 1 mile from the tree line. I decided to sit and wait for the sun to come up before I walked back. I had walked 4 times the distance I needed and walked right past my stand.

I was almost one of these cases. In 9th grade, I was on a field trip to a sleepaway camp and suddenly vanished. I had fallen down a ravine and hit my head HARD. Confused, in pain, and being supervised by teachers who did not like me in the slightest, I wandered off the campus and ended up 1 km away, on a desolate road... as the sun was setting... in rural Alberta. Thank goodness I was able to get back to camp before the sun set. The most interesting part of this story? NONE OF THE TEACHERS WERE LOOKING FOR ME. The only ones who were actively looking for me was my friend group. Can you imagine being a teacher and being like: ' Whelp! She's dead!'

As someone who was lost in the forest as a very young child and found much further away that the search and rescue said I "should" be. I very firmly believe that many people significantly underestimate how fast and far a small child can make it in a few hours. For example, many adults need breaks while hiking, a child used to running around and playing outside a lot can go all day with no breaks, and often times, their curiosity also motivates them to keep moving. Also, due to their small size, they can easily fit through obstacles that adults can't.

One of the most disturbing theories about this I’ve heard is that in a lot of cases the parents are purposely abandoning their children as way of legally killing them, since going missing in a forest is so easy and happens so frequently. The number of missing children who also have disabilities is depressingly high.

It's such a shame that Wendigoon went missing after his trip to the ocean. Leaving only his button down 50 miles off the shore, and his goatee sitting perfectly shaven 20 feet from his car. EDIT: Aight Mr. Goon, where you at, it's been 12 days ;-;

An interesting angle to missing children that I've heard is that parents underexaggerate when their child went missing. They may not have been paying attention to their child for longer than they say and don't notice their child's absence before a long time passes so they give the ol' "I looked away for one second and he was gone" excuse because they don't want to sound like a bad parent. So then the timeframe and search area/radius can be so incorrect that it's the reason why the child was farther away than they thought or in a different direction than expected.

I grew up in a small town in Appalachia. The story that still makes the hair on my neck stand up is a high school kid who was camping with his family and suddenly, without explanation, ran from the bank of a pond straight into the woods in a random direction and was never seen again. His father and brother tried pursuing him but could not keep up. To this day, there hasn’t been any sign of him dead or alive. Just simply dropped his fishing rod, ran in a random direction, and just disappeared. It’s been over 20 years since it has happened

For the Aarron one, it actually makes a lot of sense. As an experienced hiker, when you are hiking by yourself, especially at night you begin to doubt yourself. A lot. From personal experience, I went hiking with a friend deep in the Washington forest and got lost. Intellectually I could have told you that the parking lot was less than a mile away. However, I was emotional and began to panic and almost climbed a cliff. But for me, I was able to snap back to my senses after skillfully tripping over a log. I then found my way back. But I will tell you while I was panicking, the idea of leaving my back and boots was so tempting because of how tired I was and how hot they were. I believe a similar thing could have happened.

A Note on the Bobby Bissop Case: It was later found that the Catholic camp he was at had major sexual abuse issues, and the man who claimed to have last seen him as well as one of the men who found him were both among the accused abusers. It is very possible he was killed by counselors at the camp, who tried to destroy/hide his body, hence why so little of him was ever found.

when i was a teenager, i went camping in South Dakota with family. when everyone went into their tents for the night, i sat outside to stargaze. it was very populated, lots of other campers around us. but it was pitch black, the only lights i could see was the massive sky of stars above me and the full moon. after awhile, your eyes adjust to the lighting around you, and i could make out more of my surroundings. across our campsite was a very thick forest that climbed up to the mountains and towered above us. a small creek was the only thing separating us from it. i started hearing splashing. i thought it was quite peaceful, until it started getting heavier and closer. i’m thinking an animal, obviously, or maybe some fish. i held my breath and listened, and the splashing slowly turned into the sound of something reaching land. the creek is directly next to our camp. being a teenager, i was hoping to see a deer or something, but when i walked to the edge of the creek, squinting my eyes in the dark, my stomach dropped and i froze. SOMEONE was there. it wasn’t an animal, it was standing upright and looked like a person. i couldn’t see their face but they were very tall. someone is night fishing obviously, i’m rationalizing. i said, “oh my gosh! you totally scared me, i thought you were a bear or something!” silence. i waited for them to say something but all i heard was the crunching of grass. whatever or whoever was there, was climbing up out of the water. i started to back away slowly towards my tent, still not sure if it was a person or if it was an animal. i called out for my uncle and told him to get the gun, i think there’s a bear out here. i heard him fumbling around in his tent, but i also heard a big splash. i ran back to the edge of the creek. it’s dark, but the moonlight illuminated the opposite side of the campgrounds, where i saw the UNMISTAKABLE figure of a tall human standing in the darkness, facing our direction. when my uncle got out of his tent, i frantically tried to get him to see the man who was now RUNNING into the forest but because his eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dark, he didn’t see anything and told me to go to bed. i told my family in the morning but because i was a teenager, no one believed me, but i still vividly remember that event to this day and still wonder what would have happened if i didn’t get my uncle to come outside.

The 2 year old in the middle of a pond on a small island basically with a tree, completely dry, 3 miles away is the most baffling to me, especially the cow thing. If there were absolutely no cows in the area, what the hell did he actually see? I think that's my favorite story, because, hey, the kid was entirely fine, so it's kind of funny, completely mysterious, weird as hell, and slightly spooky because of the cow thing.

Fun fact, when you enter a state of panic, especially out in a wooded area/secluded area, it really does feel like you're somewhere else. You vision gets narrower, things seem more defined and darker almost, you're hearing and actively paying attention to the noises around you meaning even small rustles in leaves sound much louder than they did before. You pay attention to the shadows that move around and it gets harder to breathe. You lose track of time, since your brain is only focused on the goal of staying alive. You no longer feel winded ort tired of running, you feel like you could run miles if it meant escaping whatever it is that startled you so bad. It's a surreal experience, and I've only had it happen once in an area I was familiar with, so I knew how to get home from my location, but I could have very easily gotten lost if I was somewhere unfamiliar.

The last story was heartbreaking. Watching your own child walk for, unbeknownst to you, possibly his last moments, disappear behind a tree line and to never return, has to be the most gut wrenching feeling imaginable.

Someone I know was running a marathon, people doing this marathon often push themselves to a point of exhaustion and start to hallucinate, there’s literally a best hallucination prize Anyways my friend was running and was so tired and she looked off the trail and saw the checkpoint vehicle off trail in the woods, she said it looked so so real, luckily her friends were with her and pulled her back, and when she went to look at it again it was gone. Crazy how your brain can do that, it’s freaky to imagine that if she was on her own she may have just ran into the woods and gotten lost because her brain was playing tricks on her One of the guys who won the award for best hallucination was doing the biking portion, he kept seeing logs fallen across the road and would stop for them, only to realize he was hallucinating, he had to override his brain and just ride through them, but then there actually was a log and he hit it full force. Pretty sure he was fine but the mind is a powerful thing

22:00 dude was fighting for survival and put his trash in his backpack instead of littering what a G

I’m glad this is going to be a series. Because, to me, the most fascinating story of all of the Missing 411 is the boy who was found. And talked about being in a cave with his robot grandma. I can’t think of anything more Wendigoon than a boy held captive by a robot grandma in a cave.

I’ll be honest. My dad is a hunting guide. Is in the woods probably more than someone should be. He often talks about how when he’s out there for 2-3 days alone. He sometimes doesn’t want to come back. He feels an urge to just keep going deeper. But knows once you dive you can come back up.

I once went missing as a young child. Watching this video I realize that I fit a lot of criterias for a missing 411 case, such as: goes missing and is found in an illogical condition and doesn’t remember how they got there. My case was never reported as I had disappeared before, but this time was different. Instead of finding me within 20-30 minutes behind the shed, in a tree or somewhere else, I was found 5 hours later in a bush, in a secluded part of the park. I was 6 and despite being a good climber and a tall kid, there was no way I could have escaped my yard, the fence was too straight, too upright for a kid to climb. I remember being confused as to why I was in a bush, as I remember being in my yard not too long ago. I remember climbing out and seeing my mother frantically yelling for me and her horror did not register in my brain, so I waved at her and called out to her. I saw how she looked at me, even if she was far away, at the bottom of the hill, I could see the sorrow in her eyes. I felt confused, I had never seen my mother so scared before, then it registered that it was night and that I was at the park, which meant that she had probably been looking for me. It was terrifying, in that moment. It was as if I could understand things like an adult, as if I wasn’t a child anymore, but I was so small in something so great and so horrifying it left me dizzy. I wanted to go home, wanted to flee the bush, I felt as if I had been robbed of a piece of my memory.