Top 3 IMPOSSIBLE places people were found | Missing 411 (Part 18)

every year hundreds of people go missing under baffling conditions in the woods of north america i'm talking about people that are right in front of someone and then in an instant they're just gone and they're never found again or in some cases they are found again but they're in places that are impossible to access one former police detective named david politis has investigated thousands of these strange disappearances and he documents what he finds in his incredible book series called missing 4-1-1 today we're going to look at three of his strangest missing 4-1-1 cases but before we get into today's stories if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format then you've come to the right channel because that's all we do and we upload three four even five times every week so if that's of interest to you please give the like button vip access to the king dakar roller coaster at six flags great adventure new jersey and once the like button gets to the top of the ride go ahead and manually turn off the ride and then close the park also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads alright let's get into today's stories [Music] on may 21 1941 betty albright and her three-year-old son eldridge traveled to her mother's house in rural woodstock maryland betty had asked her mother if she would look after her son for the afternoon so betty could catch up on some much-needed sleep they arrived at betty's mother's house at about 1 30 and right away betty went inside handed her son to her mom and went upstairs to take a nap as for eldridge and his grandmother they went out in the backyard to play now eldridge loved going to his granny's house because she had this enormous backyard for him to play in if you were standing on her back porch looking out it would be 250 meters of just open grass for him to run around in and it butted up against this huge forest and in the middle of her property looking straight out at the forest there was this three meter gap in the trees that if you walked through it it would bring you down to this creek bed that was seasonal and there was very rarely any water running through it from the porch anyone that was standing in this creek bed you could clearly see and so eldridge was allowed to play in the creek bed so long as he didn't go right or left in the creek which would put him out of view from anybody on the porch and so this particular day when eldridge and his grandmother went outside eldridge wanted to go play in the creek bed so he immediately starts running across the yard towards it along with his grandmother's three dogs as for his grandmother she just didn't have it in her to go all the way down to the creek bed so she decided she would just sit on the porch and read a book and keep her eye on eldridge she remembers watching her grandson go all the way across the yard get to the break in the trees and then step down into the creek bed where he began goofing around with the dogs and throwing rocks and having a good time clearly in view and for the next 5-10 minutes she just stared directly at her grandson and the dogs and at some point she picked up the book next to her and she began reading the book and then periodically looking up to check on her grandson and then back down to the book at about 2pm she was looking down at her book when she heard her grandson yell out for help now three-year-olds yell out for help all the time sometimes it's a big deal and sometimes it's not such a big deal but oftentimes the sound of their voice gives away how serious it is no matter what they say it's like their tone gives away should i take this seriously or is this just a kid being a three-year-old and she would say that the way he was yelling sounded like a real emergency when she poked her head up even though she had seen him you know less than a minute ago playing in the gap in the trees now she's looking and he and the dogs are gone and so of course she's alarmed she hops out of her seat she goes down the steps and she starts walking across the yard towards eldridge and she's yelling his name and she's walking quickly when she got about halfway across the yard she heard eldridge yell out again except this time his voice was coming from way off in the forest way farther away from the last time he had yelled out it gave the impression to her that he had moved a great distance from the last time he yelled to her and it triggered something inside of her that was telling her something is terribly wrong and she began running towards the creek bed still no sign of the dogs she can't see anything she's just running towards the creek bed when she gets about 10 meters away from the break in the trees she hears her grandson yell out for a third time barely audible way off in the forest he yells out for help and as he's yelling it sounds like someone has stifled him and covered his mouth mid yell so she runs through the break in the trees down to the creek bed where she stops and she looks out in front of her and it's just dense forest and there's no eldridge there's no dogs there's nothing she looks to her right down the creek bed and there's nothing down there and then she looks to her left and one of her dogs is in the creek bed maybe 10 meters away facing away from her and the dog is positioned in such a way that it's clearly looking at something and so she runs down to the dog thinking she's going to see maybe eldridge or the other dogs but there's nothing beyond the dog the dog is just rooted to the spot it's hair is raised it's growling and it's taking little steps back like it's been spooked at whatever it's seen or whatever it's looking at and she just looked up and tried to look in the direction the dog was looking but there was nothing it was just forest and so at this point she felt certain that someone must have abducted eldridge and so she turns she tries to pull the dog to come with her but the dog's not budging and so she runs back to the house to wake up eldridge's mother the two of them come back down to the creek bed the dog is still in the same position growling and staring in the same direction as if whatever it's looking at hasn't gone anywhere and they look for a couple more minutes they're yelling for eldridge and the grandmother is telling her daughter look i think he's been abducted we got to call the authorities and finally she relents and so they do manage to get the dog they run back to the house and they call the police shortly thereafter the state police showed up with this huge contingent of searchers and they immediately went down to the creek bed where they started pushing predominantly to the left side which is where the dog was angled and it was also where the grandmother had heard her grandson yelling from and very quickly police discover some of eldridge's footprints about 50 meters down on the left side of the creek bed they were in some sand right at the edge and they were walking away as if he was leaving the area he had been told to stay in which was in that gap in the trees but interestingly the footprints it looked like he had been walking for maybe 20 or 30 meters when inexplicably the prince just stopped as if he stopped in the sand where he was but had he gone right left straight turned around had he gone in any direction there would have been additional prints in the sand but there wasn't which gave the impression that was where someone must have lifted him up and kidnapped him but they never found any prints connected to a kidnapper for the rest of the day and that night they would not find any more signs of eldridge or the other two missing dogs the next day about 24 hours after eldridge had gone missing there were a number of search crews that had gone well outside of the primary search area in hopes of maybe finding one of the two lost dogs because they thought maybe they could bring them to the lost child and this one crew that was four miles away from where eldritch had gone missing they were walking past a swamp when one of them heard what sounded like a child whimpering and it was coming from inside the swamp and so immediately they turn and start walking into the swamp which had fairly deep water and they get to this clearing and they see there's this rocky overhang with high grass all around it kind of forming like a cave and they hear this whimpering again and it's coming from underneath that rock and they rush over and they're pulling the grass aside and sure enough tucked underneath this rock inside of this kind of makeshift cave is eldridge he was laying on this really well-constructed bed of leaves that looked like an animal's den so either eldridge had found an animal's den or he had built himself this beautiful bed of leaves when they approached him he was sleeping underneath this rock and so that whimpering sound he was making he must have been making in his sleep and so as they got closer to him he woke up and he kind of sat up and he's very groggy and confused you know all of his clothes were really badly torn up and he wasn't wearing any shoes but he overall seemed okay he just was very confused seeming and so they scooped him up and they brought him back to search headquarters reunited him with his mother and his grandmother and everyone's just so relieved that he's alive but at the same time people were like how did he get four miles away in the middle of a swamp and so after the doctor cleared him saying he was okay besides some scratches and bruises the police along with the mother and the grandmother sat down with eldridge and asked him you know what happened but unfortunately eldridge appeared to not know this had even happened he didn't even know he had spent 24 hours out in the middle of the woods by himself it was like he had blacked the whole thing out because eldridge was found alive and unharmed the police did not continue to investigate this case and so we don't know what caused him to suddenly be yelling for help and appeared to be drifting farther and farther into the woods we don't know what the dog saw in the creek that scared it so badly we don't know how eldridge moved four miles through a dense forest over multiple swamps only to wind up in yet another swamp inside of a cave although the police came out and said eldridge must have just wandered off on his own basically everybody involved in this case believes someone or something abducted him it's just very fortunate he was found alive unfortunately there's no clarification about what happened to the other two dogs although the way it's worded in the story it does sound like they were never found in the 1950s the thorpe family lived in dunbar pennsylvania which was a small town of less than 1 000 people their house was on a very quiet street with very few neighbors anywhere near them and their property was right up against this forest that was right in their backyard their daughter two-year-old anna loved to play in their backyard but she was instructed to stay on the grass section of their backyard and not venture into the forest because the forest was snake infested and anna was terrified of steaks and so she happily obliged on may 5th 1950 anna was playing in her backyard in that grassy section and her mother was in the kitchen looking out the back window into the backyard and her mother looked down for a second when she heard her daughter scream she looked up and anna was gone she immediately ran outside and she's yelling for her daughter she's looking all around and she knows she must have gone into the forest and she's thinking to herself she must have been bit by a snake and she's laying on the ground somewhere that's why i can't see her and so she runs into the forest and she's screaming for her daughter and she's not getting any response she's starting to panic all her yelling has gotten the attention of her two older sons that were in the house they come running outside and they join the search and they start fanning out and they're looking for anna and she's just gone and so after only a few minutes of looking anna's mother decides she has to call the police the police show up and they launch this massive search and word got out to the residents of dunbar that one of their own had gone missing a child no less and so virtually everyone in dunbar showed up to be a part of the search and they combed that whole forest behind their property and there was just no sign of anna after the first 24 hours had gone by and they had not found any sign of anna they decided to expand the search area from a one mile radius to a three mile radius and within just hours of this change there was a crew that was three miles away from where anna had gone missing and they found anna and she was alive she was laying under this blackberry bush all she had on was a single shoe next to her was a pile of clothes when they went up to her she seemed okay they picked her up and they brought her back to the search headquarters where they reunited her with her parents a doctor looked at her and the doctor said you know there's no signs that she was attacked there's really no signs of any wear and tear on her at all it doesn't even look like she was outside for the past 24 hours when anna was asked about what happened to her she wasn't able to give any sort of meaningful answer because she's only two years old but the reason this case is included in today's video is not because you know she vanished mysteriously in the forest and that she was actually found three miles away versus one or you know that she was found with just a shoe on the reason it's included in today's video is because for her to have been found where she was found the only way the only way for her to have arrived at that spot was if she crossed 10 barbed wire fences there was no other way for her to have gotten there the only other way would have been a massive detour that she literally could not have covered an adult probably couldn't have covered in the amount of time given so this two-year-old with no scratches on her body is found on the other side of ten barbed wire fences i mean even if you take the barbed wire off of the fence a two-year-old climbing a large fence that alone is kind of a herculean task and to do it without scratching your body it's it's not possible it's truly impossible a may 7th article in the la times said the police were baffled by this ten fence dilemma and they said the only way it would make sense is if she had been abducted and dumped there but the police also repeatedly said there was no evidence to suggest she had been abducted or attacked or harmed in any way it was just where she was found did not add up ultimately the police came out with a statement saying this had to have been an accident that anna the two-year-old managed to just somehow walk her way past all these fences and was found where she was and thank goodness she's alive but interestingly the police confiscated her clothing and would not give that back to the parents indicating there was further investigation happening even though the child had been found but unfortunately the police never revealed whether or not they actually discovered anything else about this case and like in the eldridge case anna's parents did not press for more information about what happened to their daughter because she was found alive and unharmed now anna's case might seem like some crazy anomaly and that's all it is but this is not the first time something like this has happened in this small area in pennsylvania two years earlier and less than 10 miles away from where anna went missing another two-year-old ronald collier also went missing in the same stretch of woods his mother had been sitting with him on their back porch which overlooked the same forest and at some point his mother had gone inside leaving ronald sitting on one of the seats when she came back out again ronald was gone his mother estimated that she was inside for maybe 10 or 15 seconds tops the police and the community came out in force and they combed through the woods and they could not find any sign of ronald and the police got really frustrated with ronald's parents because they felt like this is impossible how could this child not turn up considering the timeline you've given us which is you went inside for 10-15 seconds and your son is now completely gone he's completely vanished like you must have something to do with this and so the police made ronald's parents take polygraph tests and his parents passed all of them the search for ronald continued for several weeks but unfortunately it was ultimately terminated and they never found him people in the area believed someone or something maybe a bear or some other animal was lurking in the tree line and watching ronald and as soon as his mother went in the house they ran up and snatched the child and ran away with him however the police came out and said there was no evidence to back up that this child had been kidnapped that what's far more likely is ronald just got up and walked away and disappeared however two years later when anna's case happened these similarities between her case and ronald's case were just too much for locals to overlook and so people began saying you know it looks like anna was abducted and placed where she was ultimately found inside of those woods and so probably whoever or whatever took anna is the same person or thing that took ronald but anna was just lucky enough to survive although this mystery predator theory is just that a theory it does seem more likely than ronald in 15 seconds getting up and running off into oblivion never to be found again and anna scaling 10 barbed wire fences in a 24-hour period without a scratch on her body unfortunately though we'll probably never know the truth in september of 2004 49 year old robert springfield along with his two teenage sons left their home in wyoming bound for the bighorn mountains in montana they were planning to do some elk hunting on the crow reservation which is the homeland of the crow tribe and robert and his family were members of the crow reservation and therefore had the rights to hunt on that land the specific spot the boys were going to be hunting was black canyon a particularly steep and rugged area but robert was well equipped for this type of environment because he had previously served in the united states marine corps in their special operations unit which would have meant he would have received a very high level of outdoor survival training which is perfect for living up in the mountains robert's sons had apparently learned a lot from him and were very competent outdoorsman as well they arrived at the reserve on september 19th and immediately headed out to do some bow and arrow hunting their plan was the two boys would break off from their father and head over to the edge of the canyon and attempt to drive elk down into the valley so their dad could take a shot at them but late in the afternoon the two teenage boys had not seen a single elk and so it was getting to be time to head back to the pre-range meeting spot and so they packed up their stuff and they headed there the boys make it to the meeting area and their father robert is not there so they sit down and they begin to wait and an hour goes by two hours goes by three hours goes by still no sign of their dad they can't get in touch with them they have no cell phone service and so they're thinking to themselves okay you know worst case scenario he got turned around and he'll have to spend the night out in the cold but he's got warm winter clothes on he knows what he's doing he'll be fine and so as the sun was setting the boys did finally leave to go tell authorities that their dad was you know lost in black canyon somewhere but it was just not registering for them that this could be life-threatening that something really bad could have happened to their dad he was just a superman figure to them and it just did not cross their mind authorities launch a search that night that includes the use of helicopters with thermal imagers doing low flyovers of the entirety of black canyon thermal imagers pick up a heat signature and so anyone that is alive gives off a heat signature and so at night if you were flying overhead and you saw a person in the middle of a canyon where there's virtually nothing else around them they would stand out like a bright light but that night the helicopters combed all over black canyon and they never saw robert however authorities would say that you know this guy he's trained you know former special operator he probably went and found shelter so he could be inside of a cave or maybe he made himself a shelter with tree branches and it's obscuring him from the thermal imager and so we'll just have to look tomorrow but the next day despite bringing out hundreds of searchers and bloodhounds and people on horseback and more helicopters and planes flying overhead there's no sign of robber and after several weeks of still not finding any sign of robert they ultimately called it off the family was obviously crushed but more than that they were just dumbfounded the idea that something bad had happened to invincible robert that just didn't add up for them and so after the official search was terminated they would continue to make trips into black canyon looking for their father their husband but unfortunately like all the searchers they never found any trace of him and eventually accepted that he was gone one year later in october of 2005 a hunter who didn't know anything about robert springfield or the fact that he had disappeared this hunter is in black canyon in the same area where robert springfield had disappeared and this hunter is walking through this really dense forest he's all alone he's an experienced hunter and he's not on a path he's just kind of combing through the woods and he starts to hear what sounds like a crow screeching and at first it doesn't really register with him it's only in retrospect that he recalls this sequence of events as he kept walking on the screeching intensified to the point where he just could not ignore it and so he stopped and turned to listen to the screeching crow that he couldn't see through the dense forest but he could tell it was in that general direction this hunter said as soon as he stopped and he turned and began actively listening to this crow he had this weird sensation that the crow was trying to actively communicate with him it was a very strange experience he had never had anything like it in his entire hunting career and he spent lots of time outdoors and so he felt like he had to go over and see what was going on with his crow and so he starts walking towards the crow he still can't see it it's very thick vegetation and he's getting closer and closer and he gets to a place where he can just barely see this crow it's in a clearing there is this large tree stump right in the middle of the clearing and this tree stump is not short it's like six seven eight feet high in the air it looks like this tree had broken in the middle and fallen over and this crow is sitting on the top of this kind of gnarled stump and the crow is just incessantly screeching and from this hunter's perspective he can see the crow and he's kind of staring at it and as the hunter is looking at this crow the crow suddenly turns and looks directly at the hunter and it recognizes the hunter can see the crow and the crow stops screeching and is just staring directly at the hunter and this hunter would say he felt so unsettled by the sudden behavior of the crow because it was almost like confirming the crow was looking for him and now he had found him and he stopped screeching him looking at him the bird continued to stare silently at the hunter to the point where the hunter felt compelled to walk out of the vegetation into the clearing to kind of confront the crow and so he stepped into the clearing and the crow the whole time is not screeching anymore just looking at the hunter and the hunter's standing in the clearing and he looks at the crow and the crow suddenly looks straight down the hunter follows the crow's gaze down to the ground and he sees at the base of the tree is a human skull and the hunter's so taken aback by this he looks back up at the crow who's looking at him again and the whole situation is so terrifying to this hunter that he just makes a note of where he is and he runs as soon as the hunter got out of the woods and was back in cell phone reception he called authorities authorities showed up and he showed them on the map where he had discovered this crow and the skull next to a tree and sure enough the authorities make their way out and they find the skull right under this tree the crow at this point is gone when they walked up to the tree stump they discovered it was not just a human skull it was also a human femur bone right next to the skull and then next to that was a set of boots that have been placed right next to them neatly next to one another and then next to that was a belt that had been tightly wound up and placed next to the boots and then next to that was a jacket that was not folded but was balled up and inside of the jacket was a wallet containing cash and robert springfield's id cards the authorities launched a search in that area to look for the rest of robert's remains but unfortunately they were never recovered also his bow and arrows were never found the fbi was brought into the case because foul play was suspected and they eventually determined that robert must have been shot and then they later recanted that statement and said actually he was hit by a falling tree but if he was struck by a tree then where is the rest of him wouldn't it have been in that area and then why were all of his things neatly stacked certainly he wouldn't have done that after getting hit by a tree so who neatly stacked his things after he was hit and then also where is his bow and arrows but despite how improbable it sounds that is the official theory that he was hit by a falling tree the family along with many other people believe he was attacked by someone or something up in those mountains but if he had been attacked his sons would have heard the struggle because they were in an area where sound carried really really well and if a person attacked him why didn't they take the money out of his wallet also where robert's remains had been found was very close to where his original campsite had been with his two sons on the night he had gone missing and so it was firmly located inside of the initial search grid meaning had he been under a tree or been left for dead by some attacker in that area he would have been found in those first couple of weeks that they were looking before the search was terminated so the fact that he wasn't found means either hundreds of people didn't see him including a helicopter with thermal imager or he wasn't there until after the search was terminated and if so where was he and perhaps the weirdest aspect of this entire case is the claim by this hunter that a crow apparently lured him over to this tree stump where he found robert's remains if you believe this hunter story and many many people do then do you really think it's a coincidence that all of this took place on crow reservation home of the crow tribe i think not but will we ever know the truth about what actually happened to robert i don't know so that's gonna do it guys if you found the secret in today's episode let us know in the comments what it is and where you found it so give us the time stamp and if you're the first to do that we will ping you at the top of the comments section if you enjoyed today's video and you haven't done this already please give the like button vip access to the king dakar roller coaster at six flags great adventure new jersey and once they get to the top manually turn off the ride and close the park also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly three four even five video uploads if you want to get in touch with me you can direct message me on instagram or on twitter my username for both platforms is the same it's john ballen416 i also have a ton of content over on tiktok where my username is mr ballen if you have a story suggestion please submit it to our subreddit just called mr ballen it's linked in the description below so whether i see you on twitter instagram ticktalk reddit youtube or some combination just know that i really appreciate your support and until next time that's gonna do it see ya

Channel: MrBallen

Views: 8,141,756

Keywords: missing 411, David Paulides, missing person, strange, dark, mysterious, scary story, true story, missing people, mystery, unsolved mystery, solved mystery, black canyon, montana, Wyoming, elk hunting, bow hunting, bow and arrow, hunting, special forces, special operations, Usmc, Marsoc, force recon, swamp, cave, missing, scary af, terrifying, disturbing, true crime, crow, Native American, crow tribe, burial ground, fallen tree, fbi, horror, horror story, horror fan, spooky, spoopy, storytime

Id: kExkpDOGf0s

Length: 26min 6sec (1566 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 09 2020