It's easy to get lost in the woods, but most people make it out eventually. But
then there are those unfortunate souls who are seemingly swallowed alive by the forest.
Their stories are plenty creepy, so let's head into the woods and find out more about them.
On July 8, 2014, 28-year-old German tourist Lars Mittank disappeared after getting into
a fistfight over football teams. He'd been vacationing with friends
at Bulgaria's Golden Sands, and owing to a ruptured eardrum sustained during the fight,
he couldn't fly. So he stayed the night in a cheap hotel close to the airport. He texted
his mother that he didn't feel safe while noting that he was hiding from four men.
Mittank returned to the doctor's office the following day, but he ran out, climbing over
an 8-foot barbed-wire fence to escape into the forest. His last known moments were caught on
security footage from the hotel, which showed him pacing in the foyer and hiding in the elevator.
The medication that Mittank was prescribed may have escalated his paranoia. It's possible that
the blow to the head he sustained or the antibiotic may have caused him to fall
into psychosis, although that is not listed as one of the medication's side effects.
As The Berlin Speculator reported in 2020, a truck driver may have given Mittank a ride in 2019,
only to realize who he was after the fact. His mother Sandra believes that he
somehow lost his memory while in the forest, and might still be alive.
On June 9, 2013, 19-year-old Maureen Kelly left her camp at the Canyon Creek Campground
near Vancouver, Washington. She told her friends that she was going on a "spiritual quest" into
Gifford Pinchot National Forest. She removed her shoes and all her clothing aside from a
fanny pack containing a pocket knife, matches, and a compass. Kelly's friends expected that she
would return in a few hours. The terrain that she was traversing was very steep,
so she couldn't have gone too far. As Undersheriff Dave Cox told ABC News,
"It's a rough remote area with a lot of timber and brush.
It's going to be a tough go for her, especially with no shoes."
The search crew combed the area for any trace of Kelly, but all they could find were footprints
going to a paved road, and those footprints weren't necessarily hers. Temperatures were
in the mid-70s when she disappeared, but they plummeted to 40 degrees soon after.
Authorities assume that she died, though no trace of her has been found.
"Please, let's keep searching. Do not give up on her."
TV production assistant Terrence Woods Jr. disappeared on October 5,
2018 while filming in Penman Mine, an abandoned gold mine in Idaho, for Discovery's Gold Rush:
Dave Turin's Lost Mine. On that morning, he texted his father that he would be cutting his time on
the shoot short by several weeks. He'd emailed his production company RawTV that he needed to
be with his mother owing to a health condition, even though his mom said that wasn't necessary.
Woods had reportedly been having mental health issues. On the evening of his disappearance,
he said that he needed to use the bathroom and then dropped
his radio before running down a cliff into the forest. People ran after him,
but they returned torn and bloodied from the rough terrain. The formal search didn't
begin until the next morning and ended unsuccessfully six days later. Woods'
parents suspect that RawTV may not be telling the whole truth. As his father told Deadline,
"You say my 97-pound son ran down the cliff without tripping, falling,
hurting himself. You don't have a trace of his blood or piece of his clothing."
"There was something going wrong, and he felt he couldn't deal with it, and he wanted to leave."
Raw denied the accusation, insisting that they did all they could during the search-and-rescue.
As a spokesperson put it,
"In such a tragic case there will inevitably be speculation about his disappearance, which is
neither helpful or fair to Terrence, his family or the crew who worked so hard to try and help."
When Paula Jean Welden went missing on December 1, 1946, the 18-year-old Bennington College sophomore
wouldn't have been hard to recognize. She wore a vivid red coat with a fur collar, along with
jeans and sneakers that suggested that she didn't intend to hike for very long. A gas station owner
reported a thin woman running through a gravel pit near the college, and a man reported that picked
up a young woman hitchhiking and dropped her off near the mouth of the Long Trail.
The last sighting of Welden was by a watchman, who warned her against hiking in such light clothing.
After her disappearance, classes at Bennington were suspended so that the students could help
with the search. Welden's father called in police from New York and Connecticut,
as Vermont lacked their own force. Suspicion fell on both her father, with whom she'd had
a falling out, as well as supposed boyfriends. It doesn't appear that Welden was running away,
though, as she reportedly left behind money and an uncashed check from her parents.
In 1955, a lumberjack said that he'd followed Welden into the woods and knew where she
was buried. But when he was questioned, he admitted that he was joking. Then in 1968,
a skeleton was discovered that offered investigators hope,
but it turned out to be too old to be Welden's. Since then, no sign of her has been reported.
For almost 20 years, Thelma Pauline Melton regularly hiked the Deep Creek Trail in the
Smoky Mountains, which is where she went missing on September 25, 1981.
On that fateful day, she was with two friends and her husband Bob,
who was 20 years older than his wife and not up for hiking. Melton was overweight,
had high blood pressure, and needed medication, so it was unlikely that she would stray far.
Deep Creek is listed as an easy trail, so the terrain shouldn't have been challenging for the
58-year-old Melton. During the hike, she began walking faster, leaving her two friends behind.
When they finished the same path and returned to the trailer 30 minutes later,
Melton wasn't there. She was reported missing within an hour and a half.
More than 150 people and nine dogs searched the trail that week, but nothing turned up.
In the aftermath, Melton's pastor implied that she might've been having an affair,
though no evidence was provided. There was also a suggestion that she might've harmed herself,
but there wasn't much evidence for that either. Some theorize she planned her disappearance as a
way to escape to a new life, but before heading out for the hike, she'd prepared spaghetti
sauce for dinner that night, suggesting that she most likely intended to return.
Only she never did.
On January 13, 1980, park ranger Paul Fugate vanished from his job at Chiricahua National
Monument in Arizona. He told a coworker that he expected to be back by 4:30 P.M. but to
start closing if he wasn't. He also left his radio and keys behind while he checked out the trails.
Fugate was declared missing that night, and a full search commenced two days later. The
only lead was from an acquaintance and Fugate's wife, who claimed to have seen him in his uniform,
unconscious between two men in a pickup truck. Other workers found signs of a fight and spinout
tracks in a dirt road. In 1983, the Cochise County Sheriff's Office claimed that the arrest of, quote
"more than one person" for Fugate's murder was soon to occur. However, no one was ever charged.
The National Park Service initially began making partial salary payments to Fugate's wife but
later fired him in absentia and demanded the salary payments back with 11% interest,
claiming that he abandoned his post. But he left behind cash,
valuable guns and camera equipment, and a truck he'd been restoring.
After 40 years, without disclosing why, the Park Service's Investigative Services Branch reopened
their inquest into Fugate's disappearance. To this day, there is a $60,000 reward available.
Shawn Higgins knew the Siskiyou Mountains in southwest Oregon quite well. On October 14,
2016, he and his 21-year-old son Trevor went out hunting. They separated while they were out,
with a plan to meet up at the truck later to pick up Trevor's uncle, who was hunting in a
different part of the woods. Trevor waited by the road with a freshly killed buck,
but his father never arrived. He and his uncle looked for his dad,
but to no avail. Trevor then built a shelter once night fell so that he wouldn't get lost himself.
Shawn hadn't brought his backpack with him,
as he expected that he wouldn't be in the woods long. It was a tragic omission,
because in the bag was a GPS device, which would've allowed his family to find him.
Four days later, Trevor was found alive a few miles from where he'd begun his search.
His mom Stephanie had hoped until then that Trevor was with his father.
When medics airlifted Trevor, he was suffering from severe hypothermia. Hundreds of people
took up the search for Shawn, but nothing was found. As Stephanie told her local NBC station:
"I have a really hard time believing that he would get lost.
I mean, that is the one thing that really bothers me, and the fact that we have found nothing."
On August 1, 2018, Samantha Sayers left at 8 A.M. for a solo hike on the Vesper
Peak Trail in the North Cascade mountains in Washington state. Her boyfriend had work
and couldn't join her, but she expected to check in with him by 6:00. But by 8 P.M.,
he was at the trail trying to track her down. At 1 A.M., her family reported her missing.
The Vesper Peak Trail is not meant for novices. But Sayers was far from a newbie,
and she'd hiked there before. The search for Sayers involved 14 dog
teams, helicopters with thermal imaging cameras, and drones canvassing the area.
Volunteers left bags containing supplies, along with notes reading,
"Stay Strong! We're looking for you. Everyone is thinking of you."
"Out of our entire group of friends,
she would definitely be the one to fight off a bear if she needed to."
Police interviewed witnesses who saw her ascend, but no one admitted to seeing her return.
She had lunch near the peak with an unidentified man at around 3 P.M.,
but they went their separate ways afterward. After three weeks, the official search was called off.
Chet Hanson was a fan of nature photography, which may have contributed to his disappearance
on November 11, 1997 in Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state.
He brought 35 pounds of camera equipment with him when he left around 6:30 A.M. on his hike
and told his mother that he would be home for dinner. When he didn't show up on time,
she wasn't too concerned and assumed that he was just staying with friends.
Hanson was reported missing only after he failed to come in to work the next day.
His car was found at the Deer Creek Trailhead. It was opened and contained photo negatives,
a key ring, and papers, none of which provided much of a clue about his whereabouts.
Hanson reportedly hadn't dressed to be gone for very long, as he wore only light clothing and
left no itinerary. He was a strong hiker, but he also preferred to do his hiking cross-country,
ignoring the trails to get shots of waterfalls and lakes. Despite the search team bringing in
sniffer and cadaver dogs, no trace of Hanson or his camera equipment has ever been found.
Stefan Bissert was a German exchange student and Fulbright scholar at Oregon State University.
On January 20, 1992, he went hiking in Washington state's Olympic National Park,
along with a buddy, Gerd Forstmann. They'd intended to hike to Deer Lake,
which would've been about 4 miles away. But alas, Bissert made the mistake of
leaving Forstmann behind so that he could hike 23 miles to the Hoh River trailhead.
Such a hike through the snow in one day would've been nearly impossible.
Few experienced mountain climbers would even attempt it. Bissert may have been a healthy
young man, but he was in no condition for this challenge. Forstmann reported Bissert missing
the next day. The path that he must've taken would've sent him through the Olympic high
country and an unforgiving winter storm that lasted for a week, which impeded rescue efforts.
Bissert unfortunately hadn't dressed for an ambitious hike or to camp overnight in the snow.
He had little more with him than a day pack containing only a few pieces of fruit.