# The Creepiest Cases of People Disappearing | Part 34

An episode of [Scary Interesting Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1705969819), 24 Jun 2026, 21 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72672757/the_creepiest_cases_of_people_disappearing_part_34.mp3

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## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome back to Scary Interesting. In this video,
[0:04] Speaker 1: we're going over three incredibly strange disappearances. The first is
[0:08] Speaker 1: something completely different than anything that's been covered in this
[0:10] Speaker 1: series so far. Meanwhile, the final story is one of
[0:13] Speaker 1: the most infamous disappearances in all of history, and one
[0:16] Speaker 1: that was particularly viral online. As of today, though it
[0:20] Speaker 1: is still unsolved and extremely strange. As always, viewer discretion
[0:24] Speaker 1: is strongly advised. Paul Baxter grew up in Preston, about
[0:37] Speaker 1: sixty miles northwest of Manchester, England, and like a lot
[0:40] Speaker 1: of boys, he spent a fair amount of time sprawled
[0:42] Speaker 1: out on the floor playing with toy cars, trucks, trains
[0:45] Speaker 1: and airplanes. On his seventh birthday in nineteen seventy seven,
[0:49] Speaker 1: his parents surprised him with a new railway themed toy
[0:52] Speaker 1: set that came with all the bells and whistles like tools, barrels, carts,
[0:55] Speaker 1: hard hats and maintenance workers. Paul apparently had so much
[0:59] Speaker 1: fun with the set that his parents had a hard
[1:01] Speaker 1: time getting him to come to dinner that night, and
[1:03] Speaker 1: the novelty didn't wear off for quite some time. Like
[1:06] Speaker 1: most toy sets, though a number of pieces went missing
[1:08] Speaker 1: over the following days and weeks. Some disappeared under his bed,
[1:12] Speaker 1: and others under rugs and other furniture around the house.
[1:15] Speaker 1: A little over a decade later, Paul would get a
[1:17] Speaker 1: bad case of pneumonia when he was about eighteen years old. Luckily,
[1:21] Speaker 1: he made a full recovery and other than that, the
[1:23] Speaker 1: x rays didn't reveal anything out of the ordinary. Later
[1:27] Speaker 1: he began working as a postman, got married, and started
[1:29] Speaker 1: a family with his wife Helen. Then, in two thousand
[1:32] Speaker 1: and four, when he was thirty four years old, he
[1:34] Speaker 1: developed a brain abscess that caused pus and dead tissue
[1:37] Speaker 1: to accumulate and a small portion of his brain. Thankfully, though,
[1:40] Speaker 1: doctors would catch in time to prevent a catastrophe, and
[1:44] Speaker 1: afterward memori showed that everything was all clear. By then,
[1:48] Speaker 1: Paul had also been a heavy smoker for well over
[1:50] Speaker 1: a decade, but even so he enjoyed decent health well
[1:53] Speaker 1: into his forties. Fast forward to twenty sixteen, and he
[1:56] Speaker 1: and Helen were proud grandparents. They still lived in Preston,
[1:59] Speaker 1: and generally speaking, life was good. But it was around
[2:02] Speaker 1: this time that the years of heavy smoking seemed to
[2:04] Speaker 1: have finally start to take their toll, Paul developed a
[2:07] Speaker 1: persistent smoker's cough, and later that year he'd bean coffee
[2:11] Speaker 1: up globs of chunky yellow mucus on a regular basis.
[2:15] Speaker 1: Early on, he and Helen hoped it was just a
[2:17] Speaker 1: run of the mill respiratory infection, but since Paul was
[2:19] Speaker 1: a heavy smoker, they worried that the symptoms might be
[2:22] Speaker 1: the first signs of something far worse, like emphzema or
[2:25] Speaker 1: lung cancer. Paul waited another year before scheduling an appointment
[2:29] Speaker 1: with his general practitioner, but when he did, she quickly
[2:32] Speaker 1: diagnosed him with pneumonia and put him on antibiotics. He
[2:35] Speaker 1: and Helen were relieved when the symptoms went away shortly after,
[2:38] Speaker 1: but then they came back a few weeks later, so
[2:40] Speaker 1: once again Paul went back to see his doctor. This
[2:43] Speaker 1: time though she heard an odd rattling sound in his
[2:46] Speaker 1: lungs when she listened to his breathing through a stethoscope,
[2:49] Speaker 1: so to be on the safe side, she sent him
[2:50] Speaker 1: to a nearby hospital to get his chest X rayed,
[2:53] Speaker 1: and sure enough, the images showed an ominous gray mass
[2:56] Speaker 1: at the bottom of his right lung. This was obviously
[2:59] Speaker 1: cause for concerns, but doctors couldn't be sure that the
[3:01] Speaker 1: mass was a tumor or that Paul had an emphasy
[3:03] Speaker 1: or cancer. For all they knew, it was just a
[3:06] Speaker 1: benign lump of mucus that reformed when the stubborn infection
[3:09] Speaker 1: came back. To get to the bottom of it, they
[3:12] Speaker 1: sent Paul to a respiratory clinic at another hospital to
[3:14] Speaker 1: get a bronchoscopy. As you might imagine, though, Paul and
[3:18] Speaker 1: Helen were getting more and more word with each new referral,
[3:20] Speaker 1: and as the big day approached, they couldn't help but
[3:22] Speaker 1: wonder if the procedure would reveel something serious and potentially
[3:25] Speaker 1: life threatening, as they were well aware fifty year old
[3:29] Speaker 1: smokers rarely got good news after bronchoscopies. Paul showed up
[3:33] Speaker 1: at the hospital in mid September of twenty seventeen. Before
[3:36] Speaker 1: getting down to business, the doctor administered a local anesthetic.
[3:40] Speaker 1: Other than some mild discomfort, Paul barely flinched when he
[3:43] Speaker 1: put the tiny wan mounted camera into his mouth and
[3:45] Speaker 1: began pushing it down his windpipe and into his right lung. Meanwhile,
[3:50] Speaker 1: the doctor looked into a nearby manor as he guided
[3:52] Speaker 1: the bronchoscope to the affected area, and before long he
[3:56] Speaker 1: found the mass, which was exactly where it was supposed
[3:58] Speaker 1: to be. In some respect, it was like most other
[4:00] Speaker 1: masses he'd seen in smoker's lungs over the years, but
[4:03] Speaker 1: there was also something unique about it too. Instead of
[4:06] Speaker 1: being a solid mass, it was partially open on one
[4:09] Speaker 1: side and on the inside he saw an odd orange
[4:12] Speaker 1: color that looked entirely at a place. He could also
[4:15] Speaker 1: tell that it had been there for a while because
[4:17] Speaker 1: it was encased in lung tissue and mucus. Paul couldn't
[4:20] Speaker 1: see the monitor, but when the doctor told him what
[4:22] Speaker 1: he saw, he said he had no idea what it
[4:24] Speaker 1: could be. At that point, the focus shifted from identifying
[4:27] Speaker 1: it to getting it out of his body. The bronchoscope
[4:30] Speaker 1: was equipped with small pincers called biopsy forceps, but unfortunately
[4:34] Speaker 1: they weren't long enough to reach the item in question,
[4:37] Speaker 1: so the doctor had no other choice but to remove
[4:39] Speaker 1: the bronchoscope and refer Paul to a hospital in Manchester.
[4:43] Speaker 1: He obviously wasn't looking forward to another invasive procedure, but
[4:46] Speaker 1: for better or for worse, he and Helen were looking
[4:48] Speaker 1: forward to having the medical issue solved once and for all.
[4:51] Speaker 1: Some time later, the doctor at the hospital in Manchester
[4:54] Speaker 1: moved the longer bronchoscope into place, gripped the orange item,
[4:57] Speaker 1: dislodged it from the guy mass at the bottom of
[4:59] Speaker 1: a police lung, and pulled it up out of his
[5:01] Speaker 1: airway and out of his mouth. Initially, the doctor had
[5:05] Speaker 1: no idea what it was, but Paul knew the second
[5:07] Speaker 1: he laid eyes on it. At that moment, memories from
[5:10] Speaker 1: his childhood came flooding back with remarkable clarity. There in
[5:14] Speaker 1: the bronchoscope's stainless steel pincers was a one centimeter tall
[5:18] Speaker 1: orange traffic cone from toyset he got on his seventh birthday. Understandably,
[5:23] Speaker 1: everyone in the room had a good laugh when Paul
[5:24] Speaker 1: told him what it was, and remarkably, the color and
[5:27] Speaker 1: tiny markings were almost as clear and vibrant as they
[5:30] Speaker 1: were the day he opened the package. Paul said that
[5:33] Speaker 1: he regularly put small parts in his mouth while he
[5:35] Speaker 1: was playing, but he didn't remember inhaling the little orange cone,
[5:38] Speaker 1: and at the time, Paul's healthy seven year old body
[5:41] Speaker 1: recognized the item for what it was, a foreign invader,
[5:44] Speaker 1: but since it couldn't break down the plastic or get
[5:46] Speaker 1: it out of his lung into the next best thing.
[5:48] Speaker 1: It walled it off from the rest of his lung
[5:50] Speaker 1: by encasing it in tissue and mucus. Lucky for him,
[5:54] Speaker 1: it happened when his airway and lung tissue were healthy
[5:56] Speaker 1: and flexible, and the strategy worked for more than four
[5:59] Speaker 1: decades until the fifty year old heavy smoker began having
[6:01] Speaker 1: symptoms associated with a serious lung infection and possibly something
[6:05] Speaker 1: much worse. Unsurprisingly, once the cone was moved, the incessant
[6:09] Speaker 1: coughing and pescimucus went away almost immediately. The case was
[6:13] Speaker 1: eventually covered in the British Medical Journal under the title
[6:16] Speaker 1: an Airway traffic Jam a plastic traffic cone masquerading as
[6:19] Speaker 1: a bronchial carcinoma. Paul now keeps the little traffic cone
[6:22] Speaker 1: in a glass jar as a memento, and although he
[6:25] Speaker 1: keeps a closer eye on grandkids when they're playing with
[6:27] Speaker 1: small toys, he also described the whole ordeal as absolutely hilarious. Now,
[6:32] Speaker 1: as you might have noticed, this wasn't a person disappearing,
[6:34] Speaker 1: but still technically a strange and compelling disappearance, at least
[6:38] Speaker 1: in my opinion. Sunday, January sixteenth, nineteen seventy seven was
[6:45] Speaker 1: pretty cold in eastern Pennsylvania, but even so, two friends
[6:49] Speaker 1: set out on a hike to a popular summit about
[6:51] Speaker 1: seventy five miles northwest of Philadelphia, known locally as the Pinnacle.
[6:55] Speaker 1: The viewpoint is located on the historic Appalachian Trail near
[6:58] Speaker 1: the summit of Blue Mountain. The hike was a rocky
[7:02] Speaker 1: nine mile loop from the parking area to the Pinnacle
[7:04] Speaker 1: and back again, and some hikers turn around at the
[7:06] Speaker 1: first viewpoint, known as Pulpit Rock. For those who continued
[7:09] Speaker 1: to the Pinnacle, at sixteen hundred and thirty four feet
[7:12] Speaker 1: or about five hundred meters, get some of the most
[7:13] Speaker 1: spectacular views anywhere on the Appalachian Trail. When the two
[7:17] Speaker 1: hikers made it, the view of the countryside in the
[7:19] Speaker 1: winter air was nothing short of breathtaking. Then, after resting
[7:23] Speaker 1: and getting their fill in the scenery, they decided to
[7:25] Speaker 1: check with a few caves before heading back down to
[7:27] Speaker 1: the trailhead and calling it a day. Since most of
[7:30] Speaker 1: the caves in the area were pretty well known, they
[7:31] Speaker 1: were usually littered with beer cans, cigarette butts, and other garbage,
[7:35] Speaker 1: but that day was different. Shortly after entering, the two
[7:38] Speaker 1: friends stumbled onto something else there before them. Hunched over
[7:42] Speaker 1: an old fire pit, sat a gaunt, blue eyed young
[7:44] Speaker 1: man with scraggly red hair. When the initial shock were off,
[7:48] Speaker 1: the horrified hikers realized that he was dead and frozen solid.
[7:52] Speaker 1: Police arrived at the cave later that afternoon, and considering
[7:55] Speaker 1: what time of year it was, it was immediately odd
[7:57] Speaker 1: that the man was only wearing blue slocks and a
[7:59] Speaker 1: light sweight jet. He definitely wasn't prepared for the weather,
[8:02] Speaker 1: and it looked like he tried to start a fire
[8:04] Speaker 1: just before he died. Other than the clothes he was
[8:07] Speaker 1: wearing in a blue stone ring on his finger, he
[8:09] Speaker 1: didn't have any additional food or camping gear. During the autopsy,
[8:13] Speaker 1: the medical examiner was only able to determine that he
[8:15] Speaker 1: was somewhere between twenty five and thirty five years old
[8:18] Speaker 1: at the time of his death, and that he'd probably
[8:20] Speaker 1: only been there for a day or two by the
[8:22] Speaker 1: time the hikers found him. Foul play was also quickly
[8:25] Speaker 1: ruled out, so in the early going it looked like
[8:27] Speaker 1: a tragic case of an ill prepared hiker dying from exposure.
[8:30] Speaker 1: Then the toxic College report came in. The man apparently
[8:33] Speaker 1: died from an overdose of prescription barbiturates. Barbiturates are sedatives
[8:38] Speaker 1: that are usually prescribed to patients suffer from anxiety, insomnia,
[8:41] Speaker 1: and seizures. They're also misused as recreational substances, and opiate
[8:45] Speaker 1: attics sometimes take them to lessen withdrawal symptoms. All of this,
[8:49] Speaker 1: taken together, led to a puzzling picture, and it led
[8:51] Speaker 1: to the question did the man take too many on
[8:54] Speaker 1: purpose or was it an accident? And what led him
[8:56] Speaker 1: to the cave in the first place, and then, maybe
[8:58] Speaker 1: most importantly, who was as the man who tragically died
[9:01] Speaker 1: there After the autopsy, the Medical Examiner's office gave the
[9:05] Speaker 1: man's fingerprint cards the local police. Back then, only a
[9:08] Speaker 1: few states had digital fingerprint databases, and the FBI's fingerprint
[9:12] Speaker 1: identification system didn't go live until mid nineteen ninety nine.
[9:16] Speaker 1: They also released an artists rendering to television stations and
[9:19] Speaker 1: newspapers in the area. This is that rendering. Despite the
[9:22] Speaker 1: fingerprints in the sketch, though the young man was never
[9:25] Speaker 1: identified so like nearly all John and Jane does, he
[9:28] Speaker 1: was eventually buried in a public cemetery for unidentified and
[9:31] Speaker 1: unclaimed corpses. The mystery man eventually became known as the
[9:35] Speaker 1: Pinnacle Man, and he would remain that way for decades.
[9:38] Speaker 1: After the burial, his case file and autopsy got lost
[9:40] Speaker 1: in the shuffle, and that was almost the end of
[9:42] Speaker 1: the Pinnacle Man's story. Then, in two thousand and nine,
[9:45] Speaker 1: though Pennsylvania Chief Deputy Coroner George Holmes heard about him
[9:49] Speaker 1: for the first time. By then, the FBI's fingerprint identification
[9:52] Speaker 1: system had been up and running for nearly a decade.
[9:55] Speaker 1: Corner Holmes took an interest in the old case, but
[9:57] Speaker 1: all he had to work with were dental records and
[9:59] Speaker 1: a grainy cop of the original fingerprints. He first tried
[10:02] Speaker 1: to identifying the man using dental records, but that was yet
[10:05] Speaker 1: another dead end. Then, in early twenty nineteen, the authorities
[10:08] Speaker 1: exhumed the body from the cemetery, extracted DNA, and used
[10:11] Speaker 1: it to update the man's profile in the National Missing
[10:13] Speaker 1: and Unidentified Person System. The system then spit out two
[10:17] Speaker 1: potential matches for unsolved missing persons cases in Illinois and Florida. Unfortunately,
[10:22] Speaker 1: neither those leads panned out either. Finally, though nearly fifty
[10:26] Speaker 1: years after the hikers discovered the body. In twenty twenty four,
[10:28] Speaker 1: representatives from the organization asked the Pennsylvania State Police to
[10:32] Speaker 1: send them the original fingerprint card that was taken during
[10:34] Speaker 1: the autopsy. When the fingerprints were entered into the system,
[10:38] Speaker 1: it immediately recognized a match for a man named Nicholas
[10:41] Speaker 1: Paul Grubb. So who is Nicholas and how did he
[10:44] Speaker 1: end up in that cave? Nicholas grew up in North Philadelphia,
[10:47] Speaker 1: but he was actually born in South London on January third,
[10:50] Speaker 1: nineteen fifty. That meant he was just twenty seven years
[10:53] Speaker 1: old at the time of his death. He and his
[10:55] Speaker 1: older sister Sandra moved to the United States with their
[10:57] Speaker 1: grandparents in nineteen fifty seven, when he was only seve
[10:59] Speaker 1: years old. Interestingly, his grandfather, Norman, was widely regarded as
[11:04] Speaker 1: one of the twentieth century's most influential Christian evangelists. After
[11:08] Speaker 1: serving in the First World War, Norman and his wife
[11:10] Speaker 1: Pauline left their lives behind and went to work with
[11:13] Speaker 1: her missionary father in the Belgian Congo. The family eventually
[11:16] Speaker 1: moved back to London and ran Pauline's father's organization. When
[11:19] Speaker 1: he died in nineteen thirty one. Also, interestingly, Nicholas's father
[11:23] Speaker 1: and grandfather were pretty much polar opposites. Whereas Norman was
[11:27] Speaker 1: a man of God, his son Paul became what one
[11:29] Speaker 1: newspaper described as the call girl King of London. Paul
[11:33] Speaker 1: owned and operated a number of strip clubs as well
[11:35] Speaker 1: as an escort service, and as the story goes, police
[11:38] Speaker 1: allegedly found a fourteen year old performing a strip tease
[11:41] Speaker 1: during raid on one of Paul's clubs. Shortly thereafter, Norman
[11:44] Speaker 1: and Pauline moved to the United States with Nicholas and
[11:47] Speaker 1: his sister, possibly to distance the grandkids from what they
[11:49] Speaker 1: viewed as a bad influence. A little while later, in
[11:52] Speaker 1: the fall of that year, Norman wrote that he didn't
[11:54] Speaker 1: think his grandson Nicholas was adjusted to life in the
[11:56] Speaker 1: United States, and he thought the atmosphere in the local
[11:59] Speaker 1: school was far from my deal. About a decade later,
[12:02] Speaker 1: after high school, Nicholas, probably much to his grandfather's disappointment,
[12:05] Speaker 1: seemed to follow closer to his father's footsteps than his own.
[12:09] Speaker 1: Somewhere along the line, he apparently got mixed up with drugs.
[12:11] Speaker 1: He also spent some time in Colorado, and while there
[12:14] Speaker 1: he was fingerprinted. After running with the local authorities, it
[12:17] Speaker 1: was these very fingerprints that identified him. Decades later, after
[12:21] Speaker 1: the identification, the authorities discovered that most of Nicholas's immediate
[12:24] Speaker 1: relatives were already dead. The cave where the hikers found
[12:27] Speaker 1: Nicholas's body was only about fifty miles from where he
[12:29] Speaker 1: grew up with the sister and grandparents, and in hindsight,
[12:32] Speaker 1: the police artist impression was about as accurate as they come.
[12:35] Speaker 1: In the fall of twenty twenty four, nearly fifty years
[12:38] Speaker 1: after his death, Nicholas Paul Grubb was finally laid to
[12:40] Speaker 1: rest next to his grandparents at George Washington Memorial Park
[12:43] Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania. As he might have noticed. Though, even despite
[12:47] Speaker 1: his identification, what ultimately led him to the cave that day,
[12:49] Speaker 1: along with a number of other pieces of his tragic story,
[12:52] Speaker 1: is still a mystery. Kenneth Lee Veach or Kenny, was
[12:59] Speaker 1: born in Lfe, Las Vegas, November twentieth, nineteen sixty six,
[13:02] Speaker 1: and he was defined by the environment around him. Kenny
[13:06] Speaker 1: eventually had a daughter and the two had a close pond,
[13:08] Speaker 1: even though his relationship with her mother didn't work out.
[13:10] Speaker 1: As a young father. He spent a lot of time
[13:12] Speaker 1: working and hanging out with his daughter, but when he
[13:14] Speaker 1: wasn't he regularly went on epic, multi day journeys into
[13:18] Speaker 1: the vast expanse of mountains and desert outside Las Vegas,
[13:22] Speaker 1: and these trips were definitely a little more adventurous than
[13:24] Speaker 1: typical exploration. Kenny apparently chased down rattlesnakes and picked him
[13:28] Speaker 1: up with his bare hands. He explored abandoned prospector towns,
[13:31] Speaker 1: crawled into mine shafts not much water than he was,
[13:34] Speaker 1: and ventured into cave systems that few people even knew existed.
[13:38] Speaker 1: At just five foot eight and one hundred and forty pounds,
[13:40] Speaker 1: he was also fairly well suited for desert exploration. He
[13:43] Speaker 1: was lean, wiry, and moderately muscular, and that meant he
[13:46] Speaker 1: could travel fast, squeeze in the tight spaces, and survive
[13:48] Speaker 1: on a few handfuls of trail mix and a couple
[13:50] Speaker 1: of bottles of water a day. According to friends and
[13:53] Speaker 1: family members, he often spent two or three nights in
[13:56] Speaker 1: the desert with barebones gear and provisions. In most cases,
[13:59] Speaker 1: he didn't even take a map or compass. Maybe the
[14:02] Speaker 1: only thing he regularly carried other than his water was
[14:04] Speaker 1: his camera because he liked filming his exploits. In two
[14:08] Speaker 1: thousand and six or two thousand and seven, Kenny met
[14:10] Speaker 1: a woman named Sharon who shared his love with the
[14:12] Speaker 1: great outdoors. They began dating immediately, and once they got
[14:15] Speaker 1: to know one another, she occasionally joined him on his
[14:17] Speaker 1: trips into the desert. Then, in twenty eleven or twenty twelve,
[14:21] Speaker 1: Kenny started his snake bit McGee YouTube channel because he
[14:24] Speaker 1: wanted to share his videos. He also spent a fair
[14:27] Speaker 1: amount of time watching similar videos on other channels, and
[14:29] Speaker 1: he regularly posted comments. Kenny also had a number of
[14:33] Speaker 1: jobs over the years, but he always saw himself as
[14:35] Speaker 1: an inventor and an entrepreneur at heart. Unfortunately, he also
[14:39] Speaker 1: had his fair share of product flops and field businesses. Eventually,
[14:42] Speaker 1: he came to the realization that he'd run out of
[14:44] Speaker 1: money if he didn't find steady work, and shortly thereafter
[14:47] Speaker 1: he took a job as a service tech for a
[14:49] Speaker 1: local coffee company. This job apparently was completely unfulfilling for
[14:53] Speaker 1: someone like Kenny, so he quit in late twenty thirteen,
[14:56] Speaker 1: but before long money got so tight that he had
[14:58] Speaker 1: to sell his house By this point, Sherian was more
[15:01] Speaker 1: worried about him than ever. Between the failed businesses, the
[15:04] Speaker 1: lack of money, and his inability to sell the house,
[15:06] Speaker 1: Kenny had slipped into a dark funk. Sharian begged him
[15:10] Speaker 1: to get professional help, but he refused because mother nature
[15:12] Speaker 1: was his preferred method of therapy. However, at the same time,
[15:16] Speaker 1: by all accounts, the once therapeutic desert excursions were becoming
[15:19] Speaker 1: less and less effective in the face of his growing
[15:21] Speaker 1: inner turmoil. Then in June of twenty fourteen, something changed.
[15:26] Speaker 1: Kenny watched a video on another YouTube channel that featured
[15:29] Speaker 1: the son of a man who allegedly worked at Area
[15:31] Speaker 1: fifty one. The man in the video recounted things his
[15:34] Speaker 1: father allegedly told him about Area fifty one when he
[15:36] Speaker 1: was drunk. After watching it, Kenny scrolled down to the
[15:39] Speaker 1: commet section and detailed an instant he had in the
[15:42] Speaker 1: sheep range just outside Area fifty one a few weeks before.
[15:45] Speaker 1: He claimed that he parked his car at a remote
[15:47] Speaker 1: trailhead and went on a five hour hike into the mountains,
[15:50] Speaker 1: and later that afternoon he stumbled onto a bizarre cave
[15:53] Speaker 1: with an M shaped entrance. Fittingly, he called it m cave.
[15:57] Speaker 1: He also claimed that it emitted some kind of humming
[15:59] Speaker 1: energy that made his body vibrate, and that the closer
[16:02] Speaker 1: he got to it, the stronger it got. Now, obviously,
[16:05] Speaker 1: Kenny was definitely at home in the desert. He had
[16:07] Speaker 1: seen some pretty weird things over the years and didn't
[16:09] Speaker 1: spook very easily, but that instant was different. In fact,
[16:12] Speaker 1: he was so shaken by the experience that he immediately
[16:15] Speaker 1: stopped the trip and went straight back to his vehicle.
[16:17] Speaker 1: This was something he had never done before. This story
[16:21] Speaker 1: would end up causing quite a stir online. Of course,
[16:23] Speaker 1: some viewers claimed that he made it up, but others
[16:25] Speaker 1: suggested that he'd go back with the camera, film himself
[16:28] Speaker 1: exploring the cave and post the video onto Facebook. And
[16:31] Speaker 1: Kenny wasn't want to back down from a challenge, so
[16:33] Speaker 1: he decided to return to the cave that October, and
[16:36] Speaker 1: this time he took his video camera and his nine
[16:37] Speaker 1: millimeter handgun for good measure. Kenny parked at the same
[16:41] Speaker 1: trailhead and began retracing the footsteps that he took the
[16:44] Speaker 1: first time. The hike was relatively uneventful and early going,
[16:47] Speaker 1: but somewhere along the way he apparently noticed an odd
[16:49] Speaker 1: black ram watching him from ridgetop. It apparently moved when
[16:53] Speaker 1: he moved, and stopped when he stopped. He didn't film
[16:56] Speaker 1: it because it was too far away, but he did
[16:57] Speaker 1: film much the rest of the hike. To make a
[17:00] Speaker 1: long story short, the ram eventually disappeared, and Kenny didn't
[17:02] Speaker 1: find the mysterious cave with the M shaped entrance. Even so,
[17:06] Speaker 1: he posted the video on his YouTube channel a few
[17:08] Speaker 1: days later on October eighteenth, considering his original claim, though
[17:11] Speaker 1: his viewers generally thought it was a giant letdown, and
[17:14] Speaker 1: once again some thought he made the whole thing up. Kenny, however,
[17:17] Speaker 1: assured his viewers that it was a minor setback and
[17:19] Speaker 1: that he'd go back and find the cave the following month.
[17:22] Speaker 1: On the evening of Sunday, November nine, he told Sharon
[17:25] Speaker 1: he's going on a hike in the desert and that
[17:27] Speaker 1: he'd be gone for a few nights. It is unclear
[17:29] Speaker 1: how much she knew about the whole m cave controversy,
[17:31] Speaker 1: but the following morning, Kenny climbed into his car and
[17:34] Speaker 1: drove out of the city toward Area fifty one. For
[17:37] Speaker 1: this trip, he packed even less gear than he usually did.
[17:40] Speaker 1: He took his cell phone and a few other odds
[17:41] Speaker 1: and ends. We don't know if he took his nine millimeter,
[17:43] Speaker 1: but according to Sharon, he definitely did not take his camera.
[17:47] Speaker 1: She expected him to be backed by the evening of
[17:49] Speaker 1: Wednesday the twelfth, or the following morning at the latest.
[17:52] Speaker 1: When he didn't make it, she witted five additional days
[17:54] Speaker 1: before finally calling the police and reporting him missing. On
[17:56] Speaker 1: the evening of Monday, November seventeen, police quickly discovered his
[18:01] Speaker 1: car at the Sheep Ranch trailhead, and the following morning,
[18:03] Speaker 1: dozens of friends and family members, committing volunteers and professional
[18:07] Speaker 1: emergency services descended on the area. Initially, the searchers didn't
[18:11] Speaker 1: find Kenny, any of his belongings or any sign of
[18:13] Speaker 1: a traumatic instant like a blood trail. But on Saturday,
[18:16] Speaker 1: November twenty second, they found his phone near the entrance
[18:19] Speaker 1: to an abandoned mine shaft, about a four hour hike
[18:21] Speaker 1: from where his car was parked. Since the vertical shaft
[18:24] Speaker 1: was too dangerous to enter, the authorities brought in a
[18:26] Speaker 1: crew with a camera secured to a long tether. Needless
[18:30] Speaker 1: to say, everyone thought there was a good chance that
[18:32] Speaker 1: Kenny fell into the mine and died. Tensions were high
[18:35] Speaker 1: as the crew slowly lowered the camera into the darkness,
[18:37] Speaker 1: and it seemed to take forever to get to the
[18:39] Speaker 1: bottom of the shaft. But when it did, there was
[18:41] Speaker 1: no sign of Kenny or any of his gear. In fact,
[18:44] Speaker 1: the mind shaft didn't look like it was disturbed. In ages.
[18:47] Speaker 1: To Kenny's daughter, this was great news. She knew that
[18:49] Speaker 1: her dad was a consummate desert survivor, and with no
[18:52] Speaker 1: body and no proof of death, there was a good
[18:54] Speaker 1: chance that he was still alive. So after that the
[18:56] Speaker 1: search continued. Tragically, though Kenny would never be seen again.
[19:00] Speaker 1: Sherrian also did a number of interviews with local news outlets,
[19:03] Speaker 1: but while she tried to put on a positive face
[19:05] Speaker 1: for cameras, behind the scenes she told meskiters a darker story.
[19:09] Speaker 1: One of the defining moments of Kenny's life was an
[19:11] Speaker 1: early nineteen ninety four when his fifty four year old
[19:14] Speaker 1: father ended things after a long struggled depression. Tragically, Kenny
[19:18] Speaker 1: was the one who apparently found him. This was said
[19:21] Speaker 1: to be a major contributor to the chronic depression that
[19:23] Speaker 1: Kenny himself would going to deal with for the rest
[19:25] Speaker 1: of his life. To her, the fact that Kenny didn't
[19:28] Speaker 1: take his camera on that trip was more than a
[19:30] Speaker 1: little telling. Deep down, she knew it wasn't just a
[19:32] Speaker 1: careless mistake. In fact, to her, it could only mean
[19:35] Speaker 1: one thing. She told investigators about his depression and money problems,
[19:39] Speaker 1: and that on more than one occasion he even told
[19:41] Speaker 1: her that they'd never found his body if he decided
[19:43] Speaker 1: to end things. Investigators also eventually discovered that Kenny did
[19:47] Speaker 1: a number of related Internet searches in the weeks leading
[19:49] Speaker 1: up to his disappearance. They also found a spiral notebook
[19:52] Speaker 1: in which he scribbled the phrase helped me over and over.
[19:56] Speaker 1: In the following weeks, friends, family members, fellow hikers, and
[19:59] Speaker 1: a number of Kenny's I Heard YouTube followers organized unofficial
[20:02] Speaker 1: searches to see if they could find him and put
[20:03] Speaker 1: the matter to rest once and for all, but in
[20:06] Speaker 1: the end they all came up empty handed. To Sharon,
[20:09] Speaker 1: the evidence was pretty clear. She believed that he placed
[20:11] Speaker 1: his cell phone and needed the abandoned mindshaft to throw
[20:13] Speaker 1: everyone off his trail. As you might imagine, in the
[20:16] Speaker 1: absence of a body, there have been several other theories
[20:18] Speaker 1: put forward to explain the strange incidant. The first theory
[20:22] Speaker 1: is that Kenny had an accident will hike into the cave.
[20:25] Speaker 1: That's how things played out. Death by exposure dehydration would
[20:28] Speaker 1: have come relatively quickly. As for why his body wasn't found,
[20:31] Speaker 1: you could have fallen into a sinkhole, a crevice, or
[20:33] Speaker 1: some other area where his body was hard to find.
[20:36] Speaker 1: Then there was a more elaborate theory. This theory supposes
[20:39] Speaker 1: that he might have actually found the mysterious m cave.
[20:42] Speaker 1: It also puts forth the idea that it was actually
[20:44] Speaker 1: a secret government facility and that he was killed to
[20:46] Speaker 1: prevent him from ruling its location. Apparently, Kenny loved a
[20:50] Speaker 1: good mystery, so we can't rule out the possibility that
[20:52] Speaker 1: he wanted to create and to be a part of
[20:54] Speaker 1: an enduring mystery of his own. If that is the case,
[20:56] Speaker 1: he was certainly successful.

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