# 5 Unsolved Mysteries That You Absolutely Need To Know | 197

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 31 Mar 2026, 44 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO2836788670.mp3

Join me for 5 chilling cases that are too dark for Netflix. Episode 197 of the true crime podcast btw. 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇 Support My Work: 🛍️ Merch: https://lazy-chill-zone-shop.fourthwall.com ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡History Video Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/7km5pLWpYWEj1mrPpEfRUr?si=0FHYnZf-Qs2FY1GyLevfig ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472 unsolved mysteries, true crime, cold cases, unsolved mysteries, missing persons, murder investigation, forensic evidence, serial killers, crime scene analysis, dark history, criminal psychology, real life horror, police investigations, DNA breakthroughs, forensic genealogy, crime documentaries, criminal profiling, mysterious disappearances, solved cases, justice system, law enforcement stories, cold case files, creepy mysteries, true crime storytelling, crime reconstruction, chilling cases, investigative reporting, modern forensics, victim advocacy, unidentified remains, crime scene forensics, disturbing cases, true crime analysis, hidden clues, infamous crimes, real crime stories, forensic evidence, heists, art theft

## Transcript

[0:00] A 17 year old girl stepped away from a school concert she'd
[0:03] helped organize, drove home to change her clothes, and walked
[0:07] into a nightmare. On the evening of December 1st,
[0:12] 2017, Maggie Long entered her family's home in Bailey, Co and
[0:18] never came back out alive. By the time deputies arrived,
[0:23] the house was burning, and somewhere inside it, Maggie was
[0:26] already gone, set on fire by the very people who'd broken in to
[0:30] rob the place. To this day, nobody's been
[0:34] arrested or charged, and the police believe the motive for
[0:37] this crime might be far more sinister than a mere robbery
[0:41] gone wrong. Maggie's parents were Chinese
[0:45] Vietnamese immigrants who'd fled Vietnam, spent time in a Chinese
[0:49] refugee community, and eventually made it to the United
[0:53] States in 1989. They settled in Bailey, a small
[0:57] mountain town about an hour southwest of Denver, and built a
[1:01] life from scratch. Her father, San Long, started as
[1:05] a chef in a Chinese restaurant before buying the business
[1:08] outright. Over the years, the family
[1:11] expanded to operate 4 Chinese restaurants across the Denver
[1:15] metro area. Along with a liquor store and
[1:18] local real estate investments. They were one of the few Asian
[1:22] American families in a predominantly white community,
[1:26] and by all accounts, their ethnic origins didn't lead to
[1:29] any issues in the community. Maggie was a senior at Platte
[1:33] Canyon High School with plans to attend college out of state and
[1:37] eventually pursue a career in medicine.
[1:40] On her birthdays, rather than accumulating presents for
[1:43] herself, she'd solicit donations for money.
[1:47] With these donations, she'd purchase socks and ingredients
[1:51] for sandwiches, which she delivered to homeless people in
[1:54] Denver. The timeline that night is both
[1:58] straightforward and deeply disturbing.
[2:01] Maggie had been at school helping organize a concert.
[2:04] She left to head home, planning to change clothes before heading
[2:07] back to the event with supplies. But when she arrived, burglars
[2:11] were already inside the house. What happened next wasn't quick,
[2:15] and investigators would later determine that the suspect spent
[2:19] a significant amount of time inside the house with Maggie.
[2:23] A physical altercation took place, and then, rather than
[2:27] simply fleeing, the intruders poured an accelerant on Maggie
[2:31] while she was still alive and set her on fire.
[2:34] They torched the house to destroy evidence and disappeared
[2:37] into the Colorado evening. But let's go back to the rather
[2:40] odd circumstances of how the crime was reported for a second.
[2:44] Around 7:00, a 911 call reported people inside the residence
[2:49] causing damage and property destruction.
[2:52] Interestingly, the call actually came from an individual who had
[2:56] rented a space within the large house.
[2:59] The caller mentioned at least one male on the property, and
[3:02] Park County deputies were dispatched to the house fire.
[3:06] And I want you to keep the fact that the caller could only
[3:08] definitively identify 1 male suspect on the property in the
[3:12] back of your mind because it raises some questions, but I'll
[3:16] get to that in a moment. Firefighters put out the blaze
[3:20] and found Maggie's remains inside her bedroom, tragically
[3:23] burned alive by the attackers. She was two weeks short of her
[3:27] 18th birthday. The early days of the
[3:31] investigation were messy, with some public confusion about
[3:34] whether Maggie had actually been found.
[3:37] It wasn't until December 7th that Park County officially
[3:41] confirmed Maggie's body had been recovered from the burned
[3:44] residence. That week long gap between the
[3:47] crime and the public confirmation only deepened the
[3:51] unease in a community already reeling from the news.
[3:55] Investigators quickly determined this had been a burglary, though
[3:59] as you'll see in a moment, there may have been a further
[4:02] disturbing underlying current to the attack.
[4:06] The stolen items painted a specific picture.
[4:08] A Beretta and a rifle were taken, along with roughly 2000
[4:13] rounds of ammunition and some valuable jade figurines.
[4:19] Someone seems to have known what was in that house, or at least
[4:22] had solid reason to believe it was worth hitting.
[4:25] The task force comprising the local Sheriff's Office, the
[4:29] Colorado Bureau of Investigation, as well as two
[4:32] federal agencies, concluded that at least three men were directly
[4:36] involved. Composite sketches were released
[4:40] and vehicles of interest included a late 1990s to early
[4:43] 2000s light colored Chevy Astro and a Ford pickup.
[4:49] The tip line received nearly 500 leads over the years, each one
[4:53] chased down and cross referenced, but each of these
[4:57] came to nothing, at least publicly.
[5:01] In May of 2020, one 3 1/2 years after the slaying, the FBI
[5:05] reclassified the investigation to include a much more sinister
[5:09] element. They said that she may have been
[5:11] targeted because she was Asian American, though ultimately they
[5:15] didn't give any reasoning for this reclassification.
[5:19] The Park County Sheriff acknowledged he wasn't aware of
[5:21] specific evidence that led to this designation.
[5:25] Ultimately, to me, this suggests that there must be a significant
[5:29] element of this case that only federal investigators know
[5:32] about. It also raises questions about
[5:35] why local law enforcement wasn't looped in on what this reasoning
[5:39] is, which potentially raises some uncomfortable questions.
[5:45] Notably, some believe that the renter who made the emergency
[5:48] call may have been responsible for the attack on Maggie.
[5:53] However, the investigative task force cleared him of all
[5:56] involvement, and given that there was FBI involvement, I
[6:01] suspect he was subjected to a fairly vigorous investigation.
[6:05] While I'd usually attempt to speculate on a cold case, in
[6:09] this instance we simply don't have enough for me to do so.
[6:14] There's the allegation that Maggie was targeted due to her
[6:17] Asian American heritage, but ultimately we know absolutely
[6:21] nothing about why that may have been the case.
[6:24] Another thing I find incredibly unusual about this case is the
[6:28] fact that there are three very distinct looking sketches of the
[6:31] men who may have been involved. Detectives haven't explained how
[6:35] these sketches were made. And the renter who called the
[6:38] cops only made mention of 1 male suspect on the scene.
[6:43] Again, this suggests that there's a lot more evidence here
[6:47] which is being held back, presumably for investigative
[6:50] purposes anyway. Unfortunately, this case doesn't
[6:55] really seem to have gotten the attention it deserves.
[6:58] And like all cold cases, making sure Maggie isn't forgotten is
[7:03] the only way the mystery gets solved.
[7:09] There was a phone on a counter and prescription glasses on a
[7:12] table sitting right where he'd left them.
[7:15] But a 38 caliber revolver, a leather holster, a red backpack,
[7:21] a set of hiking boots, and most importantly, the man himself.
[7:26] We're all gone. Sometime on February 27th, 2026,
[7:32] retired United States Air Force Major General William Neil
[7:35] Mccasland walked out of his Albuquerque, NM home and into
[7:40] thin air. His wife had left for a routine
[7:44] doctor's appointment, and a repairman had spoken with
[7:47] Mccaslin just an hour before. When she returned precisely 54
[7:52] minutes later, the house was empty and he hasn't been seen
[7:56] since. And the deeper you look into who
[7:59] Neil Mccaslin was, what he knew, what he oversaw, who he worked
[8:04] with, the harder it becomes to treat this as a simple missing
[8:08] person case. Mccasland was an aeronautical
[8:12] engineer who graduated from the US Air Force Academy in 1979 and
[8:17] later earned A doctorate from MIT.
[8:21] Over a career spanning decades, he held director level positions
[8:25] at the Pentagon and within the National Reconnaissance Office,
[8:29] one of the most secretive intelligence agencies in the
[8:32] country. He commanded the Phillips
[8:34] Research Site at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico,
[8:38] overseeing roughly 2000 personnel working on space
[8:41] vehicle research. And then in May 2011, he assumed
[8:46] command of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright
[8:50] Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, a position he held until
[8:54] his retirement in October 2013. That last assignment is where
[8:59] things get interesting. Mccasland was responsible for
[9:03] approximately $4.4 billion in combined science, technology and
[9:09] research development funding. He led one of the largest
[9:12] scientific research centers in the entire Department of
[9:15] Defense. The work was cutting edge
[9:18] advanced material science, future weapons systems,
[9:22] classified space programs. Mccasland was a big league
[9:26] player, to put it mildly. Wright Patterson, for those
[9:31] unfamiliar, is also the base that's been at the center of UFO
[9:35] lore for the better part of a century.
[9:38] And as a personal aside, I had strongly believed that it was
[9:43] featured in at least one episode of The X-Files, and I went down
[9:47] a bit of a rabbit hole and found out it wasn't.
[9:50] So I guess you could say that's a new Mandela Effect unlocked.
[9:54] Or perhaps my memory just isn't perfect.
[9:56] But yeah, it's probably the latter, honestly.
[10:01] The base has long been rumored to harbor the extraterrestrial
[10:04] debris recovered from the 1947 Roswell incident, though
[10:08] unsurprisingly, the Air Force has consistently denied those
[10:12] claims. But naturally, the association
[10:15] hasn't gone away, and it wouldn't stay quiet for long.
[10:18] After Mccaslin vanished, the Bernalillo County Sheriff's
[10:23] Office issued an alert. The day Mccaslin was reported
[10:26] missing. His wife called authorities at 3
[10:29] O 7:00 PM on February 27th, roughly 3 hours after she'd
[10:34] returned home, to find him gone. From the start, the details
[10:38] didn't add up cleanly. Mccaslin left behind his phone,
[10:43] his glasses, the kind of things most people don't intentionally
[10:47] abandoned. He apparently took his wallet,
[10:51] his revolver, A holster, a backpack and a pair of hiking
[10:55] boots. He's been described as an avid
[10:59] outdoorsman who regularly hiked, ran and cycled in the Sandia
[11:03] Mountains foothills near his home.
[11:06] The question was whether he'd gone out voluntarily or under
[11:09] duress, and if voluntarily, why he'd left without his phone or
[11:14] glasses. Authorities canvassed hundreds
[11:17] of homes looking for surveillance footage.
[11:20] Drones, helicopters and canine units swept the Sandia foothills
[11:26] and surrounding canyons. On March 7th, 8 days after
[11:31] Mccaslin disappeared. A Gray Air Force sweatshirt was
[11:35] recovered roughly 1.25 miles east of his home.
[11:40] Initial testing found no blood on it, and the family couldn't
[11:43] confirm whether it belonged to him since it had quite a generic
[11:46] appearance. Then the search expanded to
[11:49] Colorado, where Mccasland and his wife maintained a second
[11:53] home in Pagosa Springs. Investigators found clothing
[11:57] there, including a light green long sleeve button up shirt and
[12:01] hiking boots that matched items Mccasland was believed to have
[12:04] been wearing. Authorities were careful to note
[12:07] that he likely owned more than one pair of hiking boots, so the
[12:11] discovery didn't necessarily rule out anything.
[12:14] Back in New Mexico, night searches with infrared equipped
[12:18] helicopters over the Sandia cliffs proved frustrating.
[12:21] An unseasonably warm spring meant the rock faces retained
[12:25] heat well into the dark hours, rendering the thermal cameras
[12:29] nearly useless. As one investigator from the
[12:32] Sheriff's Office put it, the mountain was essentially
[12:35] glowing, which honestly, when I read that, I had to include that
[12:40] description given the subject matter.
[12:43] The FBI formally joined the investigation by mid March, but
[12:47] there's been no indication of foul play, no confirmed
[12:50] sightings, and no digital trail to follow.
[12:54] The case as of right now, remains wide open and few other
[12:58] confirmed facts have been released to the public.
[13:03] It didn't take long for the Internet to notice something
[13:06] about Mccaslin's background. In 2016, WikiLeaks published a
[13:11] trove of hacked emails from John Podesta, chairman of Hillary
[13:15] Clinton's presidential campaign. For those who are unaware, he's
[13:20] a well known advocate for government transparency on UFO
[13:24] related matters. Among those emails was a message
[13:27] from Tom Delong, the arguable frontman of Blink 182 and
[13:33] founder of the alien focused organization called To the
[13:36] Stars. Delong had written to Podesta
[13:40] specifically about Mccasland, claiming that the general had
[13:43] relevant knowledge about the Roswell crash.
[13:46] He claimed that the wreckage had been shipped to the very
[13:49] laboratory Mccaslin later commanded at Wright Patterson.
[13:53] In the emails, Delong characterized Mccasland as
[13:56] someone who wasn't a skeptic on the subject.
[13:59] After Mccaslin vanished, these emails resurfaced with a
[14:03] vengeance, suggesting there was a connection between his
[14:06] disappearance and the broader extraterrestrial phenomenon. 1
[14:12] congressman even questioned whether Mccaslin's disappearance
[14:15] was part of a broader pattern of disappearances and deaths
[14:18] related to advanced scientific programs in recent years.
[14:23] And I'll get into that a bit more in a moment, though not in
[14:25] depth, because as of right now, there's really nothing to
[14:28] connect the cases. Mccaslin's wife, Susan, for her
[14:33] part, strongly pushed back against the speculation.
[14:36] Publicly, she acknowledged that her husband had a brief
[14:39] association with the UFO community through Delong.
[14:43] She admitted he worked as an unpaid consultant on military
[14:46] and scientific matters to lend credibility to Delong's projects
[14:51] and media work. Despite this, she was clear that
[14:55] Mccaslin didn't possess special knowledge about extraterrestrial
[14:58] debris or bodies at Wright Patterson.
[15:01] She attributed the rumors to misinformation and asked the
[15:04] public to focus on finding her husband rather than chasing
[15:08] bizarre theories. Unsurprisingly, this did little
[15:12] to quiet the theorists, many of whom suggest that Mccaslin
[15:16] wouldn't be sharing national security secrets with his wife.
[15:21] As briefly mentioned earlier, the narrative forming in some
[15:24] circles online is that Mccasland is part of a broader pattern of
[15:27] attacks against scientists and related professionals.
[15:31] For instance, Nuno Laurero, a renowned fusion physicist at the
[15:36] Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was shot and killed
[15:40] in December 2025. In February 2026, a similarly
[15:46] renowned astrophysicist at Caltech was shot outside his
[15:50] home in California. Right now, at least publicly,
[15:54] there's no evidence to suggest that these cases are linked to
[15:57] one another at all. More than a month after Neil
[16:02] Mccaslin walked out of his house, there are no answers and
[16:06] no confirmed sightings. The only thing we have is a
[16:09] missing 68 year old man with a resume that reads like something
[16:13] out of a James Bond film. The theories will continue to
[16:17] multiply and honestly, that's inevitable when the subject
[16:20] involves classified programs and a retired two star general.
[16:25] However, the simpler possibility remains on the table too.
[16:29] He was an aging outdoorsman who went for a hike and met with an
[16:33] accident in unforgiving terrain. Hey friends, it's Jimmy here.
[16:41] And if you're a regular viewer, you may have guessed that this
[16:44] is the point in the video where I beg you to hit the subscribe
[16:47] button and the notification bell.
[16:49] And if that was your guess, you'd be 100% right.
[16:53] So please do me a huge favor and hit all those buttons since it
[16:57] really helps me out in the algo. On April 6th, 1922, a young
[17:06] toddler named Pauline Picard vanished from her family's farm
[17:09] in the hamlet of Goa Saludu, near Saint Rivois in Brittany,
[17:13] western France. It was a remote corner of the
[17:17] country, nestled in the Monterey mountain range, the kind of
[17:21] place where strangers didn't go unnoticed.
[17:25] Pauline had been playing outside, and then she simply
[17:28] wasn't there anymore. Her parents raised the alarm,
[17:32] and within hours, more than 150 people fanned out across the
[17:36] surrounding woods and farmland. They turned up nothing.
[17:41] No footprints, no torn clothing snagged on a fence, no witness
[17:46] who'd seen a little girl wandering down a lane.
[17:49] The weeks that followed were agonizing, and the local
[17:52] authorities conducted their own inquiries but came up empty.
[17:57] There were no credible suspects, no physical evidence pointing in
[18:01] any direction, and for a month the case went cold.
[18:06] Then, on May 6th, 1922, exactly 1 month after Pauline's
[18:11] disappearance, police contacted the Picards with startling news.
[18:16] A young girl matching Pauline's description had been found in
[18:20] Cherbourg, a port city in Normandy, roughly 250 miles from
[18:25] their farm. Contemporary newspaper accounts
[18:29] differ on the precise details of her discovery, but what everyone
[18:33] agreed on was that this child was alone, silent and
[18:38] unidentified. The Picard's travelled to
[18:42] Schaerberg and identified the girl as their daughter, and
[18:45] Pauline's mother was reportedly overcome with emotion upon
[18:49] seeing the child. They brought her home to
[18:52] Brittany, and on the surface it seemed like a miraculous
[18:56] reunion. But something wasn't right, and
[18:59] the girl was deeply withdrawn and fearful in a way Pauline
[19:02] hadn't been before. More troubling still, she didn't
[19:06] speak a word of Breton, the regional dialect that would have
[19:10] been Pauline's first language. What little she did speak was in
[19:15] French only, which according to some sources was a language
[19:19] Pauline didn't yet speak at all. And to get into the history a
[19:23] bit more, Breton is a Celtic language, much like Irish or
[19:27] Scottish, and during this period many rural families didn't speak
[19:31] French at all prior to formal schooling.
[19:34] Her parents chalked it up to trauma and whatever ordeal the
[19:37] child had endured during her month long absence.
[19:40] It didn't make much sense, but they were happy, and the
[19:43] neighbors accepted the explanation too, at least for a
[19:47] while. On May 25th, 1922, less than
[19:53] three weeks after the girl from Cherbourg arrived at the Picard
[19:56] farm, a cyclist made a grim discovery in a ditch somewhere
[20:00] around a mile from the Picard property.
[20:03] He found the decomposing remains of someone who appeared to be
[20:06] around Pauline's age. I'm going to spare you the finer
[20:10] details here, but let's just say she suffered a horrible fate and
[20:15] had various body parts removed. Beside her body, her clothing
[20:20] had been neatly folded and arranged, and the Picard family
[20:24] identified the clothes as those Pauline had been wearing.
[20:28] This is where the case becomes deeply unsettling, since that
[20:32] ditch had been searched multiple times during the initial
[20:35] efforts, both by the locals and by officials.
[20:40] The body hadn't been there a month earlier, which meant
[20:42] someone had placed it there after the search concluded, or
[20:46] it had been moved from somewhere else entirely.
[20:50] The investigation that followed was underwhelming by modern
[20:54] standards. The examining judge determined
[20:57] that the body belonged to Pauline Picard and ruled the
[21:00] cause of death accidental, possibly due to exposure.
[21:05] It's a conclusion that strains credulity.
[21:08] But this judge, for reasons unknown, found that the
[21:11] indignity suffered to her body were likely the result of an
[21:14] animal. And I don't think it's a hot
[21:17] take to conclude that someone who dies of exposure doesn't end
[21:22] up dismembered with her clothes folded beside her.
[21:25] No animal does that. It's simply not possible.
[21:30] Yet no further criminal investigation was pursued, and
[21:33] no one was ever charged. And then the story somehow gets
[21:37] even more disturbing. The girl from Cherbourg was
[21:41] simply abandoned by the Picards and returned to Normandy.
[21:46] The civil court there gave her the name Marie Louise Pauline
[21:50] and placed her in the care of the Franciscan Sisters of Notre
[21:54] Dame de Vos. She died of measles in the first
[21:58] days of 1924, still unidentified, still unclaimed by
[22:03] any family who recognized her as their own.
[22:07] What truly happened to Pauline Picard remains unknown, and the
[22:11] identity of the girl from Cherbourg does as well.
[22:14] The case generated significant press coverage at the time, with
[22:17] papers running contradictory accounts that muddied the waters
[22:21] further. Rumors circulated through
[22:24] Brittany that Pauline had been kidnapped by a wealthy family
[22:28] who'd substituted the body of their own deceased child in her
[22:31] place. It's a theory that sounds
[22:34] bizarre, but in a world where the Picard simply discarded the
[22:38] child they had been taken care of, perhaps it's not fully
[22:42] implausible. There's a hallway you've walked
[22:48] through 1000 times, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, beige
[22:53] carpet stretching toward a door at the far end, and not a single
[22:57] other person insight during the day.
[23:00] You wouldn't think twice about it, but at 2:00 in the morning,
[23:04] totally empty, that same hallway becomes something else entirely.
[23:10] The walls feel closer. The silence hums.
[23:14] That feeling has a name, or at least the space that produces it
[23:18] does. It's called a liminal space, A
[23:21] term borrowed from the Latin word lemon, meaning threshold.
[23:27] In anthropology, liminality describes the middle stage of a
[23:31] ritual, the point where a person has left one state of being but
[23:36] hasn't yet arrived at the next. The concept was first
[23:40] articulated in the early 20th century by the ethnographer
[23:43] Arnold van Genep, who studied rites of passage in traditional
[23:47] societies. He identified 3 phases,
[23:51] separation, transition and incorporation, and it was the
[23:56] middle phase, the liminal 1, that fascinated him most.
[24:02] Later, the anthropologist Victor Turner expanded on this idea,
[24:06] arguing that liminality wasn't just a cultural phenomenon, but
[24:10] a deeply human one. It was a state of ambiguity,
[24:14] where the normal rules of identity and social structure
[24:18] temporarily dissolve. For decades, liminality remained
[24:23] a concept discussed mostly in academic circles.
[24:27] But as you're probably well aware, the Internet got hold of
[24:30] it. Around 2019, online communities
[24:35] began circulating photographs of empty malls, abandoned swimming
[24:39] pools, dimly lit parking garages, and the back rooms that
[24:43] seem to stretch into Infinity. These images triggered an
[24:47] immediate, visceral response in millions of people, but they
[24:51] weren't horrifying in any conventional sense.
[24:54] These liminal spaces became shorthand for a particular
[24:57] flavor of unease, and the phenomenon has spread like
[25:01] wildfire across the Internet ever since.
[25:05] This begs the question why these seemingly completely ordinary
[25:08] spaces spark such an unusual feeling in millions of people
[25:12] across the world. What makes a liminal space
[25:16] unsettling isn't what's in it, but rather what isn't.
[25:21] These are environments designed for human activity, built with
[25:25] the explicit purpose of being occupied, yet photographed or
[25:29] experienced in a state of total emptiness.
[25:32] A shopping mall exists so people can browse and buy products,
[25:37] while an airport terminal exists so travellers can wait and
[25:41] board. Strip away the people, and these
[25:44] spaces lose their entire reason for being, and they become
[25:48] architectural shells, structures that imply a function they're no
[25:52] longer performing. Cognitive science offers a
[25:56] compelling explanation for why this bothers us so much.
[26:01] The human brain is a prediction machine, and every moment of
[26:04] every day it's building models of what it expects to encounter
[26:09] based on prior experience. When you walk into a grocery
[26:13] store, your brain has already loaded a template.
[26:17] Aisles, carts, other shoppers, background music, and various
[26:21] different smells associated with food.
[26:24] If any of those elements are missing, especially the people,
[26:29] your brain registers a prediction error.
[26:32] Something doesn't match the model and the result is a low
[26:35] grade alarm signal that manifests as discomfort or
[26:39] unease. This prediction error framework,
[26:42] sometimes discussed under the broader umbrella of predictive
[26:45] processing theory, helps explain why liminal spaces feel so
[26:49] distinctly wrong. Your brain isn't detecting
[26:52] danger in the traditional sense. It's detecting an absence where
[26:56] presence should be. And because the brain treats
[27:00] unexplained prediction errors as potential threats, the emotional
[27:04] tone shifts toward anxiety. Evolutionary biologists, for
[27:08] their part, speculate that this may have a strongly advantageous
[27:13] component. Imagine for a second you're
[27:16] living on the Savannah, and you come up to a watering hole
[27:19] that's usually teeming with various animals and perhaps
[27:22] other people. If there's no people there, it's
[27:26] a strong signal that something is deeply off, that perhaps
[27:29] there's a predator in the area. There's another layer to this,
[27:35] and it has to do with memory. Many of the most iconic liminal
[27:39] space images evoke a strange sense of deja vu, not because
[27:44] you've been to that specific place, but because you've been
[27:48] to dozens of places just like it.
[27:51] The carpet pattern in a particular picture of a hotel
[27:54] hallway is 1 you've seen in a person or in pictures hundreds
[27:58] of other times. The fluorescent lighting in that
[28:01] empty office is the same lighting from every office
[28:03] you've ever worked in. Liminal spaces exploit what
[28:07] might be called generic memory. Your brain stored templates of
[28:11] common environments rather than specific episodic memories of
[28:15] particular places. This creates a paradox, and the
[28:19] space feels deeply familiar and completely alien at the same
[28:23] time, since you recognize it without being able to place it.
[28:29] Psychologists have long studied this type of experience under
[28:32] the heading of the uncanny. This is the concept where
[28:36] something that is deeply familiar is incorrect in subtle
[28:39] ways you could have never predicted, much like a humanoid
[28:43] type robot. Liminal spaces are a near
[28:47] perfect instance of this idea of the uncanny, since they take the
[28:51] most mundane, forgettable environments of modern life and
[28:55] render them eerie. And they do this simply by
[28:58] removing the human element, the one thing that we always expect
[29:03] in human environments. Neuroscience research on scene
[29:07] recognition supports this interpretation, and research is
[29:11] very much ongoing. Studies using functional brain
[29:15] imaging have shown that the brain processes familiar
[29:17] environments differently than novel ones.
[29:21] Current research suggests that a dedicated space in the brain is
[29:24] assigned to rapidly categorized spaces based on stored
[29:28] templates. When a space matches the
[29:31] template structurally but violates it contextually, the
[29:34] resulting neural mismatch can produce feelings of strangeness
[29:37] and disorientation. Beyond the cognitive
[29:41] explanations, there's something more personal happening when
[29:45] people respond to liminal spaces.
[29:48] Many of the environments that feature most prominently in
[29:51] liminal space imagery are places associated with adolescents,
[29:56] their spaces soaked in emotional residue, environments that once
[30:01] held significance during formative periods of life and
[30:04] have since been abandoned or simply forgotten.
[30:08] Personally, I think this might be one of the reasons Five
[30:11] Nights at Freddy's has proved to be such a popular and enduring
[30:15] media franchise. It essentially takes a Chuck E
[30:18] Cheese type location we remember from the past and removes the
[30:22] human element. Of course, that franchise does
[30:25] add in an active threat element in the form of the animatronics,
[30:29] but the core aesthetic is very much liminal.
[30:33] Here's what makes the liminal spaces phenomenon genuinely
[30:36] interesting though, at least to me.
[30:39] People don't just stumble across these images, feel disturbed,
[30:43] and then want to avoid them like they do with other sort of
[30:46] phobias. The people who are into liminal
[30:50] spaces actively seek them out, and subreddits dedicated to the
[30:54] concept have hundreds of thousands of members.
[30:59] YouTube videos exploring the concept have racked up untold
[31:02] millions of views over the last decade or so.
[31:05] This voluntary engagement with discomfort isn't as paradoxical
[31:10] as it might initially seem on the surface.
[31:13] Psychological research has consistently found that people
[31:16] derive pleasure from controlled encounters with fear and unease,
[31:20] a concept sometimes referred to as benign masochism.
[31:25] The keyword is controlled, and when you're scrolling through
[31:27] liminal space images on your phone, you're experiencing the
[31:31] emotional charge of wrongness without any actual risk.
[31:35] Your nervous system gets to practice its threat detection
[31:38] routines in a completely safe context, and the result is a
[31:42] kind of enjoyable unease, if that makes any sense.
[31:47] There's also an aesthetic dimension that, of course,
[31:49] shouldn't be overlooked. Liminal space photography,
[31:53] whether intentional or accidental, tends to have
[31:56] striking compositional qualities.
[31:59] These pictures often have a rather dreamlike element, which,
[32:02] again, is perhaps deeply aesthetically pleasing to the
[32:06] human mind. Perhaps what's most revealing
[32:09] about our fascination with liminal spaces is what it says
[32:13] about the human relationship to certainty.
[32:16] We crave narratives that give certainty, and liminal spaces
[32:20] deny us that knowledge. They're middles without clear
[32:24] beginnings or definitive ends, transitions frozen permanently
[32:29] in time and photograph form. You can't tell if someone just
[32:33] left the room or if no one's been there for decades.
[32:36] And that ambiguity is the entire point.
[32:39] It's the source of both the deep discomfort and the enduring
[32:43] fascination with the concept of liminality.
[32:50] In May 2016, nineteen year old Logan Shindleman sent a cryptic
[32:55] message to a friend saying he wasn't sure he would survive the
[32:58] week. Days later, his black Chrysler
[33:02] Sebring was found abandoned along Interstate 5 in
[33:05] Washington, with his wallet, phone and even snacks still
[33:09] inside. Logan himself had vanished
[33:12] without a trace. The strange circumstances of his
[33:16] disappearance baffled investigators and left his
[33:19] family desperate for answers. Logan was born and raised in
[33:25] Tumwater, WA by his grandmother Ginny, a popular student and
[33:30] talented football player in high school, he was known for his
[33:33] humor and friendly nature. Being Arab, Caucasian and Black,
[33:38] however, sometimes left Logan feeling out of place.
[33:42] A racial incident toward the end of high school upset him greatly
[33:46] and led him to cut off contact with several friends.
[33:49] After graduating in 2014, he attended Washington State
[33:54] University for one year, but his grades slipped and he dropped
[33:58] out, moving back home with his grandmother.
[34:02] By 2016, Logan was working odd jobs and trying to figure out
[34:08] his future. Family members noticed he had
[34:11] become more withdrawn and anxious, and he expressed unease
[34:15] about his sister Chloe's live in boyfriend.
[34:18] In the weeks before he vanished, Logan's grandmother feared his
[34:22] frequent smoking of the street cabbage was making him paranoid.
[34:26] He was a young man at a crossroads, uncertain about his
[34:29] identity and direction, which makes his sudden disappearance
[34:33] all the more perplexing. On the morning of May 19th,
[34:39] 2016, Logan told his grandmother he had an epiphany about his
[34:44] life and would be going away for the weekend.
[34:47] Jenny had to leave for work, so their conversation was cut
[34:50] short. When she returned home that
[34:53] evening, Logan and his car were gone.
[34:57] At first, Jenny assumed Logan might be visiting his mother in
[35:00] Olympia, but by May 22nd, when no one had heard from him, her
[35:06] worry turned to alarm. Before contacting the police,
[35:10] she drove around town and called Logan's friends, but found no
[35:14] sign of him. Finally, she contacted the
[35:17] Thurston County Sheriff's Office and officially reported Logan
[35:21] missing on May 23rd. Only then did she learn that
[35:26] Logan's car had actually been found abandoned on the highway
[35:30] and impounded on May 20th. 3 days Earlier that afternoon, on
[35:38] May 20th, multiple drivers on Interstate 5 had called 911 to
[35:43] report a black convertible drifting across lanes near
[35:45] milepost 92 S of Tumwater. The empty car coasted across
[35:51] three lanes and bumped against the median barrier. 1 truck
[35:55] driver told police he saw a man jump out of the passenger side
[35:58] of the rolling vehicle and run into the surrounding woods.
[36:01] The man was described as white, about 6 feet tall with light
[36:05] colored hair, a description that clearly didn't match Logan.
[36:10] By the time state troopers arrived, the mystery man was
[36:13] gone and Logan's Sebring was sitting empty on the shoulder.
[36:20] Inside the car, officers found Logan's personal belongings left
[36:24] behind. His wallet with ID cards and
[36:28] cash, cell phone, keys, and a bag of recently purchased snacks
[36:34] were all in the vehicle. Notably, Logan's EpiPen for his
[36:38] severe peanut allergy was also found there.
[36:42] To his family, this was a chilling sign that Logan had not
[36:45] planned to be gone long. He wouldn't have left without
[36:48] such a vital item. The car was towed, but
[36:52] unfortunately it hadn't been processed for evidence at the
[36:55] scene due to the initial confusion.
[36:58] By the time investigators realized its importance, any
[37:02] forensic clues it held were likely contaminated.
[37:08] After Logan was reported missing, authorities launched an
[37:11] extensive search. Police, volunteers, sniffer dogs
[37:16] and helicopters scoured the wooded area near where the car
[37:20] was found, but turned up no sign of Logan or anyone else.
[37:25] Detectives dug into cell phone records and other data.
[37:28] Logan's cell phone activity showed a puzzling path on May
[37:31] 19th. It travelled S on I-5 from
[37:34] Olympia down to the Vancouver, WA area, about a 2 hour drive,
[37:40] then back N toward Tumwater later that night.
[37:44] This suggested that Logan, or at least his phone, covered a lot
[37:48] of ground the day he disappeared.
[37:53] Investigators also gathered any odd tips.
[37:57] In the early morning hours of May 21st, a driver reported
[38:00] seeing a half dressed young man wandering near Interstate 5 in
[38:04] an area known for transient activity.
[38:07] This led to speculation that Logan might have been
[38:10] disoriented or in distress, but a patrol search didn't find the
[38:14] individual and it remains unclear if that sighting was
[38:18] related. At one point, an apparent check
[38:21] in from Logan's Facebook account at a local airport LED family to
[38:25] wonder if he'd flown somewhere, possibly to meet his estranged
[38:29] father overseas. Logan's father was from Saudi
[38:34] Arabia and had never had any real involvement in his life, so
[38:38] some thought this epiphany he claimed, could have been about
[38:41] dear old dad. However, this turned out to be a
[38:46] false alarm. The check in was described as an
[38:48] old post resurfacing and not a real time event.
[38:52] Over a year later, in mid 2017, a new witness came forward that
[38:58] shed more light on the highway mystery.
[39:01] A woman recalled seeing Logan's car parked on the shoulder of I5
[39:05] on the morning of May 20th and she claimed that a young black
[39:09] man was standing by the car with two white men.
[39:13] One of the men was described as tall and skinny with scraggly
[39:16] blonde hair and I'll fitting clothes.
[39:19] Police released a composite sketch of this unidentified man
[39:22] based on her account. Unfortunately, despite
[39:26] publicizing the sketch, the individual she saw have never
[39:30] been identified. Detectives interviewed those
[39:35] close to Logan for leads given the reported friction at home.
[39:40] Chloe's boyfriend was questioned, but he passed a
[39:42] polygraph test, and investigators found no evidence
[39:46] tying him to Logan's disappearance.
[39:49] Logan's family also noted his increasing paranoia and
[39:52] personality changes before he vanished, suggesting he might
[39:57] have been struggling with mental health issues.
[40:00] In the end, police couldn't find any concrete evidence of foul
[40:04] play, nor any proof that Logan is still alive.
[40:08] The case remains A baffling blank, an investigation with
[40:12] plenty of strange clues but no definitive answers.
[40:19] With no resolution, several theories have been proposed to
[40:22] explain what happened to Logan. Many believe that Logan may have
[40:26] left on his own to start a new life.
[40:29] Some of his relatives believe he was overwhelmed by his identity,
[40:32] struggles and personal issues, so he deliberately walked away
[40:36] from his life. While this theory seems to be
[40:40] quite popular online, there's some obvious problems with it.
[40:45] First, it struggles to explain why he would abandoned his car
[40:49] in such a dramatic fashion, which would simply draw more
[40:52] attention to his case rather than less attention if he wanted
[40:56] a clean break from his previous life.
[40:59] Tossing together all the elements of a bizarre mystery is
[41:02] clearly not the way to do it in a quiet way.
[41:05] But perhaps most importantly, why would he leave behind
[41:09] essential items, including his EpiPen, a device that he needed
[41:14] to literally save his life? To me, this latter piece very
[41:18] strongly suggests that no, this was not voluntary in any way.
[41:26] Another theory is that Logan's disappearance involved foul play
[41:30] connected to dope, although he was only known to use pot.
[41:34] Some speculate that on May 19th or 20th, he might have gotten
[41:38] mixed up with dangerous people. Those who knew Logan, however,
[41:42] doubt he would have gotten involved with harder stuff.
[41:46] It's also been posited that he could have had an accidental
[41:49] overdose and that others disposed of him in a panic.
[41:53] Again, though, it's important to remember that this is extremely
[41:56] speculative since he was only known to smoke weed.
[42:03] Perhaps the most common idea, though, is that Logan suffered
[42:06] something from within. Logan could have experienced a
[42:09] mental health crisis or psychotic break that led him to
[42:13] behave erratically and disappear.
[42:16] His family observed that he had been paranoid and not acting
[42:20] like himself shortly before he went missing.
[42:24] Under this scenario, Logan might have wandered off into the
[42:27] wilderness while acting under a delusional framework.
[42:31] The Pacific Northwest is full of vast, thickly forested areas
[42:35] that are simply not possible to fully search, so the fact that
[42:39] intensive searches failed to find him doesn't rule this out.
[42:43] Others have added that his age is roughly when people tend to
[42:46] experience their first psychotic episode if they're going to
[42:50] experience one in their life. Further yet, his over usage of
[42:55] the grass during this period could have exacerbated his
[42:58] underlying problems. Given the tensions at home, some
[43:04] in Logan's family have wondered if an altercation with his half
[43:07] sister's boyfriend could have escalated into violence on the
[43:11] day he disappeared. In this theory, the highway
[43:14] incident might have been staged to cover up what really happened
[43:18] to Logan. Elsewhere, others have
[43:21] speculated that the two men seen with Logan may have been friends
[43:24] of the boyfriend. However, police found nothing
[43:28] incriminating in the boyfriend's interviews and have not
[43:31] identified any person of interest among Logan's
[43:33] acquaintances. This remains simply a
[43:36] speculative allegation, and police consider him to be
[43:39] cleared. Nearly a decade later, the
[43:45] disappearance of Logan continues to remain a chilling unsolved
[43:48] mystery.

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