Top 3 SPOOKY stories from missing people FOUND ALIVE | Missing 411 (Part 21)

every year hundreds of people go missing under baffling conditions in the woods of north america i'm talking about people being right in front of their friends or their loved ones and then in an instant they're just gone and they're never found again or they are found again but they're found in places that are seemingly impossible to get to one former police detective named david politis has written a book series called missing 4-1-1 where he investigates these incredibly strange cases today we're going to look at three missing 4-1-1 cases that even amongst strange disappearances these rank as particularly bizarre 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 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 replace the like buttons 2021 calendar with a 2020 calendar that has a one glued over the xero 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 on june 16th 1946 five members of the van ulst family arrived at the devil's den state park in western arkansas to spend a week in a cabin they had rented after getting unpacked the father along with his daughter who was eight years old named catherine and her two older brothers they headed down to the swimming area which was this creek that led up to the side of a dam once they arrived at the creek catherine and her two brothers jumped in the water and started goofing around and there were some other kids there they were playing with as well and their father just sat on the edge to watch now the swimming area had one really deep section that was right up against the dam wall that you were allowed to swim in but the kids that were not strong swimmers tended to stay away from and catherine was not a great swimmer and at one point she kind of drifted into the deep section and her father didn't notice and her two brothers didn't notice but a woman who was staying at the campground who the van als family didn't know happened to be standing next to the edge of the water and saw catherine struggling and so she reached in and pulled her out and katherine was fine and the woman told her you got to be more careful you shouldn't be swimming in the deep end if you're not a strong swimmer and catherine said okay and so as they're talking catherine's father hears them and looks over and sees his daughter talking to some stranger and so he makes a sound and waves in their direction to get this woman's attention to be like hey you know what are you doing talking to my daughter and the woman she sees this and she must have been a mother herself because she picked up on his uncomfortability and so she turns to him and says oh no everything is totally fine i was just helping your daughter get out everything is totally fine and so catherine's father turns to his daughter and says hey you gotta be more careful don't go in the deep end and catherine's like okay and instead of going back into the water catherine walks to the back side of the dam because this dam it was not a steep drop off on the outflow side it was like a gradual slope of these big boulders that the kids at this campground would climb all over and their parents would watch them from their positions next to the swimming area and so catherine's father was watching his two sons and then he looked over and watched catherine and back and forth he kept his eye on all of his kids but at some point when he was looking at his sons he looked back at catherine and she was gone and so he stood up and he walked over thinking maybe she's gone all the way to the bottom and she's just out of sight because she's crouched down or something but when he got to the edge and looked down she wasn't down there and so he's looking all around and he's thinking to himself this is impossible i just saw her on the rocks like seconds ago where could she have gone and so he looks at his sons who are still in the swimming area and he says hey have you seen catherine and they're like no we haven't seen her and then he turns to the woman that had previously pulled catherine out of the water and he says have you seen my daughter and she said no the last i saw her she was on the rocks i don't know where she went and so before long catherine's father is screaming for catherine he's enlisted the help of everybody at this campground that's in the vicinity to go look for his daughter there are people jumping into the swimming area up top there are people jumping into the swimming area on the back side of the dam i mean the whole area is getting searched and there's no sign of this girl and after about an hour of looking catherine's father went and got police after two days of searching the very thick forest that surrounded this dam and finding no trace of catherine authorities decided it was far more likely she had drowned either above or below the dam than it was that she wandered off into the woods considering where she was last seen and so they shifted focus and began draining these two sections of water to see if her body would be at the bottom but when they were drained she wasn't there and so once again they went back to searching the forest and so on june 22nd six days after catherine went missing a group of searchers were located seven miles way into the forest they were walking up this mountain and they're yelling catherine's name and as they're walking they stop when this little girl wearing only a bathing suit walks out of a cave looks down at them and just says here i am the searchers couldn't believe it it was catherine and besides some scratches on her arms and some bug bites she seemed like she was perfectly fine in fact they would say she was eerily calm it was like she was waking up from a dream she was reunited with her family who could not believe she was still alive they brought her to the hospital and the doctors looked at her and said yep besides some superficial cuts and some bug bites she's fine and two days later she was discharged so this eight-year-old who's never spent any time in the woods before this is her first exposure her trip to devil's den state park survives on her own out in the wild for six days and six nights with only a bathing suit on and despite there being no potable water anywhere near her where she was found up on that mountain she was determined to be relatively well hydrated and it only lost a couple of pounds also you need to understand the staggering distance she covered because while she was found seven miles away from where she went missing that's as the crow flies that's what you see on a map those seven miles in the wild you don't walk perfectly straight lines there's too many obstructions there's mountains there's trees there's all sorts of reasons that you end up zigging and zagging to wherever you're going and so rescuers believe the minimum real distance she would have covered to get up to that cave was about 30 miles and she did it barefoot catherine defied every search and rescue model for eight-year-olds that get lost in the wild she was way outside the boundaries of what anybody would expect basically she should have died when authorities asked her you know how did you do this she said i don't know i don't remember how i got lost in the first place i only remember sleeping on warm grass the first night and then her next memory is waking up inside of a cave on day six she has no idea what happened between day one and day six when she traveled those 30 miles and somehow subsisted on some water source and some food source while some say this is just a really weird case where she got very very lucky others think there was something in the forest that chased her and adrenaline kicked in forcing her to run the 30 miles to that cave and because it was so traumatic she forgot the experience but like virtually all of the missing 4-1-1 stories we have a lot more questions than answers [Music] on april 29th 2001 six-year-old hayley zaga was on a hike with her grandparents in a very rural part of arkansas called the upper buffalo wilderness area for an area to be deemed a wilderness area that means no vehicles of any kind can come through there making it incredibly remote and incredibly wild hence the name they had taken this trail that brought them up to the top of this bluff that was about 200 feet higher than where they started and they got to this incredible overlook and they're looking down over this river and at some point at about 11 in the morning they turn around to head back on the return trip by about 11 30 they're making their way down and haley spots a waterfall that's off the side of the path and she wants to go to it she asks her grandparents can we go check out this waterfall and the grandparents kind of scope it out and it seemed like the only way they could get down to view this waterfall would be by literally climbing a tree and descending over this cliff and it was something that the grandparents just did not feel comfortable letting their granddaughter do and so they told haley no we need to keep going we're not gonna go check out that waterfall and haley being a six-year-old she really wanted to see this waterfall and she wanted to get her way and so she threw a tantrum and she sat down on the trail and she said well if you're not going to take me to the waterfall i'm not going to move you're going to have to carry me and the grandparents are like no we're not going to carry you you need to be a big girl i need you to stand up and start walking with us and haley refused and so her grandparents said okay we're going to leave you and they turned around and they kept walking down the trail not far and they were still totally in view and it's broad daylight and they would turn around expecting their granddaughter to stand up and kind of begrudgingly walk after them and at some point she did haley stood up and she's like okay you know wait for me and so she starts walking and the grandparents are like all right and so they're walking ahead of haley and as they're walking haley would just slow down more and more and more and her grandparents could tell she was doing this she was just trying to be frustrating and she was intentionally trying to take as long as she could but the grandparents made sure they kept her in their views they would walk a little ways and turn and she'd be right there they'd walk a little ways they'd turn and she'd be right there over and over again and then at some point when they turned she wasn't there and so the grandparents immediately run back up and they're looking around for haley thinking she probably darted behind a tree to hide because she wants you know to be a little bit more frustrating for them and so they're kind of looking for her they're not that worried yet they start yelling for her saying come on we do gotta leave you gotta come out we gotta go but there was no word from haley it was just silence and she was just totally gone and for the next 90 minutes the grandparents just ran all up and down this trail screaming for haley and they never found her and so they ran down and they called police the largest search and rescue mission in the history of arkansas was launched for hayley zaga it included hundreds of searches on the ground including eight dog teams and helicopters overhead there were firefighters the national guard was involved but after two days despite this incredible search really no progress had been made the only thing that had been found was one of the dog teams had tracked her scent up to a nearby road where the dog stopped meaning the scent is now gone and unfortunately what that told investigators is it looks like haley got picked up by some motorist but 51 hours into the ordeal there were two searchers well outside of the primary search area they were about two miles away from where she'd gone missing they spotted her she was sitting next to this brook with her feet dangling in the water and when she saw them she kind of waved and they said are you hayley zaga and she said yeah and she had a couple of scratches on her arm and on her face but overall she seemed okay and so haley was reunited with her family and then she was brought to the hospital to be observed after haley had regained some of her strength investigators asked her you know what happened and she said that she was walking behind her grandparents and that she looked down and then when she looked up again not only were her grandparents gone but she was looking at this wall of trees like she was not on the trail anymore she didn't know where she was and since she was only six years old she didn't stop and look around or yell instead she just kept walking in this direction that she didn't recognize and she walked and walked and walked and she never found the trail again she said pretty soon it got dark and she slept on top of that bluff and then the next day when the sun came up she walked down the bluff and she made it to the river and then she walked along the river until she found a cave where she slept for the second night and then the next day when she got up she was found after she gave this explanation investigators had a lot of questions like if you were sleeping up on the bluff on that first night then why couldn't the helicopter see you because that's all they were doing was flying over the bluff and they had thermal imaging they could have very easily picked you up and so they asked her you know are you sure that's where you were and she said yeah that's where alicia told me to stay and they were like who's alicia and she said oh she's my imaginary friend i met her on the bluff and so immediately the investigators and the parents are like okay she's clearly coping with this traumatic event by creating this imaginary friend and so they don't ask any more questions about the imaginary friend instead they continue to ask questions about basically how she got from where she was lost to where she was found and they say okay haley how did you get down the bluffs because there's only one way down and it can be hard to find especially if you're off the trail and haley said well alicia brought me to a trail and she led me down the bluffs and she stood in front of me and made sure that i didn't fall forward and so her parents and the investigators are now starting to think you know maybe this isn't an imaginary friend if this person is right in front of her kind of propping her up and so they ask hayley you know can you describe what alicia looks like and haley said sure she has black hair brown eyes she's a little bit shorter than me she's four years old she likes to tell jokes and she likes to sing songs and then haley began singing songs that she had learned from alicia and began telling jokes she had learned from alicia even though haley was giving this vivid description of this four-year-old girl named alicia running around the bluffs it just couldn't be possible and so haley's parents and the investigators went back to treating alicia as just an imaginary friend just a simple coping mechanism and so the investigators went back to just doing their interview with haley they got all the information about how she got from the bluffs down to the river as much as they could and then because haley was fine they said okay you're good see you later now haley's case was a really big deal and it was all over the news especially after she was found and so her interview where she said this imaginary friend named alicia had assisted her in getting down the bluffs and had basically taken care of her that was put in print and after it was published there were some readers that realized there was another little girl who had gone missing in the exact same spot as haley 23 years earlier she was four years old she had black hair brown eyes her name was alana and she had died on those bluffs after this connection was made it got national media attention because suddenly news outlets were saying this imaginary friend was actually alana and that she was haley's guardian angel in fact haley was brought on dateline to talk about her imaginary friend this year haley who's now 25 years old posted a video to her youtube channel where she tells her story of what happened over those 51 hours she was gone and in the story she talks about her imaginary friend and she says you know before alicia i never had an imaginary friend and afterwards i never had an imaginary friend but at the time alicia was very real to me and i don't know who or what she was but she saved my life in september of 2012 53 year old linda ortega went to visit her brother eddie huff in st joe arkansas st joe is a very rural part of arkansas and it's about a mile away from the buffalo river national park the park is thickly forested and mountainous and there's hundreds of small water bodies that are strewn throughout on saturday september 22nd linda and eddie decided to go for a walk in the park because eddie apparently had heard of some great fishing spot and he wanted to go find it in searching for the spot they stepped off of the trail and got turned around now they realized they got turned around but it's broad daylight and they figured okay we'll find the trail soon but as the sun was setting they had still not found the trail and they realized they were badly lost then some very strange things happened that we only have a marginal understanding of what we know is the brother and sister were together on that first day they went missing we know they were together the following day on sunday still looking around for a way out of the park but still at the end of the day we're lost then the next day on monday we know the pair separated because eddie re-emerged out of the park hopped in his car like nothing was going on drove back to his house walked inside and his family's like where have you been you've been missing we've been calling you where have you been and where's linda and he's like oh everything's fine i dropped linda off at a relative's house she's fine too his family's looking at him like do you not understand that you've been missing for like three days here and he was just trying to tell them that everything was fine but as they asked him more questions about specifically what were you doing specifically how did you get lost specifically what time did you drop linda off tell us all the details as they did that eddie started to realize that oh my goodness i actually don't know what happened and so his family called this relative that eddie had claimed he dropped linda off at and when the relative picked up they said no we don't have linda here i've not spoken to eddie and i've not spoken to linda and so the family turns back to eddie and they're like where's linda and eddie just said i have no idea and so the family contacts police and a search is launched for linda and they look all over this park for days and days and there's no sign of linda and people are starting to get really worried about her and then on thursday so three days after eddie had re-emerged from the park and five days after they had originally gone missing some searchers that were on atvs were about two miles away from the entrance of the park in this very thick area and they found linda and she was alive and initially just like her brother eddie she really had no idea what was going on she said she didn't understand how she got where she was and she was just really confused and so they brought her back to the hospital and they put her under doctor's care and she ended up being fine but as she's laying in the hospital she starts kind of coming too and her memories start flooding back and she tells the story of what happened to her and it's unbelievable she said she and eddie went into the park to find that fishing spot and at some point they stepped off the trail thinking they were going to find it but they didn't they got turned around they were lost and they were confident they were going to find the trail and get out the same day but they did it and so the sun went down and they were forced to sleep out in the wild and so the next morning they get up and they continue to look around they're yelling for help and there's no one around they're in this very dense part of the forest and all day again they're looking for this trail and they don't find it and so that night again they sleep out in the wild linda said her memory starting with the next day which was monday started to get really foggy she said she woke up and for some reason she just got up and started running into the woods she thinks it's because she thought eddie was hurt and she was running to get help and so it must have been around this time that eddie in his dazed state got up and meandered his way successfully out of the park meanwhile linda said she was just running like a maniac into the middle of the woods screaming for help from someone even though she's in the middle of nowhere and then miraculously she says she saw a group of people way off in the distance it looked like a group of hikers and she started yelling for them and waving to them and trying to get their attention and she said they all stopped and turned to look at her but they didn't show any sign that they had actually heard her they were not trying to interact with her they were just looking at her linda said she thought that was pretty odd but she just kept on running towards them and screaming and yelling and trying to get their attention and she said when she got about a hundred meters away from them instead of them reciprocating waves or making a sound they all ducked behind trees like they were trying to hide from linda linda said this was the first time she felt really unsettled by what was happening but she was desperate she needed help and so she just kept walking towards them and she got to about 50 meters away when they all poked their heads out and looked out at her and then poked their heads back like they were not trying to interact with her and linda said she felt really scared and stopped and began backpedaling away from this weird group of people that are hiding behind trees and so while keeping her eyes on the general area where she knew they were hiding she backpedaled all the way back to about 100 maybe 150 meters away again and this group came out from behind the trees and continued to stare at linda linda said at this point she was terrified she didn't know who or what those things were but they were not there to help her and then she said her memory got really foggy because all of a sudden her next memory is her laying on the ground in this pitch black forest her brother's not near her and she's hearing footsteps and she believes it's this group of people or things that are walking towards her but it's so dark she can't see anything and she said all night she heard the sounds of these people or things walking around the perimeter of where she was laying totally exposed in the middle of the forest linda said her memories from this point until she was rescued are all mixed together but she said she had one memory that really stood out to her because it was so terrifying she said on one of the last morning she was out there she woke up she was laying on the ground she opens her eyes and it was still dark but the sun was starting to come up and so there was enough light that she could begin to make out the layout of the forest and so she sat up and immediately got the sense that she was being watched but she didn't know by who or from where it was coming she just had this intuitive sense that she was being watched and as she's feeling this way she hears movement coming off to her right and she turns and standing next to a tree about maybe 20 meters away is this dark silhouette of a man who's just staring at her he's got no features he's just this shadowy figure and so she's horrified and then she realizes there's another one and she looks at that one and realizes there's another one and another one and another one they're all around her they're all around her looking in these dark shadowy figures and she's so scared and as she's looking around at all of them it seems like they registered that she sees them and at that point they all turned and start running into the forest in all different directions she said after that she has no idea the sequence of events or what happened all she knows is that the whole time she was out there she was scared she felt like there were people watching her in the woods and then at some point rescuers showed up and she was saved linda's totally crazy account of what happened combined with eddie's bizarre behavior totally baffled investigators they really didn't know what to make of this how did eddie find his way out again and why did he think linda was at a relative's house and who were the people linda was seeing and why can't either of them remember 90 percent of the experience one theory is they must have eaten berries or some other food item that had hallucinogenic properties and they were literally just hallucinating the whole time however if you follow along with david politis's missing 4-1-1 phenomenon or if you watch from the videos on this channel about the missing 4-1-1 and you know there are lots of other examples of people that go missing in the woods of north america that never ingest any food or any liquid so there's no hallucinogen in their system and they still have similar experiences to what linda and eddie did so how do you explain that so that's going to 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'll pin you at the top of the comments section if you enjoyed today's video and you haven't done this already please replace the like buttons 2021 calendar with a 2020 calendar that has a one glued over the xero 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 tick tock 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 instagram twitter tick tock 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: 4,551,899

Rating: 4.9446054 out of 5

Keywords: scary, scary story, spooky, spooky story, spoopy, missing, missing person, missing persons, mystery, mysterious, strange, dark, storytime, camp fire story, mrballen story, mrballen storytime, scary af, woods, forest, haunted forest, paranormal, alien, aliens, unidentified, Bigfoot, Sasquatch, yeti, creature, unidentified creature, camping, tent, imaginary friend, imaginary, lost, lost in forest, shadow person, shadow people, sleep paralysis, hallucinating, scared, horror, horror story, David Paulides

Id: wSiHjKIckNM

Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 01 2021