A 66 year old former US Navy nurse and avid hiking trail enthusiast goes missing in 2013 only to be discovered 2 years later a few miles from the trail. Her diary also located where her remains are found described her last days after having survived for several weeks before succumbing to the hunger and the elements! Though rescuers had combed that area thoroughly, she was somehow missed! Remember these people are active though missing they can signal or call out to searchers if they hear them, so why, in close proximity these two elements never make contact remains a puzzle? This is only one of many aspects of the mystery of disappearances we can only wonder about.

Another commonality of the missing persons in our national parks that David Paulides has noted is that often it is the well-conditioned and healthy hikers, campers, and hunters who would seem to the least likely to disappear do! It would seem to be the other way around. Even active duty and retired police who are out hiking in the forest have disappeared without a trace! This should be grounds for concern as something seems to be operating with impunity!

Jeffrey Aylwards, a first responder retired from Plymouth, Massachusetts as well as a former military officer, he was a regular on this section of the Appalachian Trail On his way to Mt. Kattadhin from New Hampshire, and had sent to text to his family that he would be emerging from the wilderness in about 4 hours! He was never seen alive again. He had expected to appear on Route 17 near Rangeley, Maine. After he went missing a search ensued it would not be until two weeks after he had died according to the coroner’s report that his body was discovered. A man who had overcome alcoholism and remained active while being treated for diabetes, he seemed healthy and very capable. Being that he was very familiar with the terrain, this remains a persistent mystery.

“Steady Eddie” was his nickname, a veteran hiker on the Vermont segment of the Appalachian Trail who always notified his family when he would go off for an adventure there and when to expect him back. Another commonality described by David Paulides is whenever weather conditions become stormy either before or after a disappearance, this usually obstructs rescue efforts and leads to a permanent if not fatal incident that leads to a discovery a long time later. A multi-agency search effort between local police, state police, and other organizations failed to turn up any results, but one backpacker reported that he’d seen Mister Kerker at a rest station close to a creek crossing. Knowing that heavy rains had made many creeks flooded torrents and dangerous to cross the search led officials downstream to finally discover Kerker’s body! Coroner’s exam proved cause of death as drowning. These two accounts are unusual as the remains of the missing person were located in a relatively short period of time.

In the Smoky Mountains section of the Appalachian Trail a 16 year old teenage girl, Trenny Gibson, disappears without a trace during a high school field trip not long after stepping off the school bus that transported her and her classmates there. Despite a huge search effort over several days, the young teen, well thought of and popular, while being a hard worker who even saved her money, would never be seen nor her remains recovered! Like so many vanishings, she was within close proximity to her schoolmates when she simply disappeared! Bearden High School in Knoxville, Tennessee students mourned her absence after 200 searchers had scoured the area and found no clues at all. Even the FBI took up an investigation into Trenny’s disappearance, yet were unable to obtain any meaningful clues. This occurred in 1976. Once again a cold sustained rain followed Trenny’s disappearance as 19 Park Rangers and volunteers conducted the first elements of the search effort until the next day when the US Army and National Guard teamed up with helicopters to conduct aerial searches to no avail.

Over the years between 1976 and the early 1990’s a six year old boy, named Kelly, would vanish while playing in the snow in the front yard of his mother’s rented house in Pine Tree Holler, a small village of 50 people. Despite several police investigations and interviews of the mother, nothing ever turned up! 71 year old Gladys Kidd would be the next unanswered disappearance along the Appalachian Trail, living on a small farm that her late husband had established. Located near Moorhead, Kentucky, it seemed Gladys simply lived for her grandkids, cooking for them, and spoiling them whenever she could.

However, though she had dated a few men after her husband passed away, but Gladys had never expressed much interest, and her family knew all about how these relationships ended up until something mysterious happened. Several ominous phone calls occurred at all hours with only hang ups resulting if anyone but Gladys answered. She had mentioned that it was now too hard for her to keep up with the farm, but a quick tour of houses within the city seemed to show nothing but disinterest from her. On the day she vanished, Gladys went to her bank and withdrew her entire savings of 80 thousand dollars in cash! The bank president was concerned for her safety and offered to give her a cashier’s check, but she demanded cash.

The family found that grandma had sold the farm as well to their surprise! Authorities checked all possible leads and even known criminals who operated by scamming the elderly out of their money and came up empty handed. Months later letters from different cities began arriving with her family recognizing Grandmother’s hand writing, but not her use of grammar or verbiage. Gladys, was not very literate and the words being used were out of character for her. Perhaps, someone was dictating to her what to write or she had copied a script? One letter said that her grandson could have her Chevy Classic Malibu. Another letter warned her family not to try and come looking for her because she would never want to go back to living her life as she had before she left! Her 700 dollar a month Social Security checks went uncollected, another sign that things were very wrong, but Gladys was never located again!

As baffling as these cases are, and there are more intricate details too lengthy for me to include here, the same common denominator shows up. The odd and unpredictable behavior of the victims seems one unmistakable factor, weather continues to play a role in almost all these cases, and despite great efforts, search and rescue with even aerial searches and cadaver dogs who use scent to be very effective in locating remains, were ineffective! One can brush off all these accounts as attributable to the dense vegetation and tricky terrain, but when experts cannot find even a clue, the continued mystery become an ominous legacy that’s hard to overcome!