Rebel Road
Exploring the road less traveled on faith, mystery and the supernatural.
Rebel Road
Hiking, Camping and Missing 411 | Summer Supernatural Safety Part 1
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Yay! It's supernatural summer safety all summer long with Mary and Haley!!! Grab your tents, hiking poles and those snacks as we dive into some of the missing 411 cases, a few facts, Appalachian lore and of course safety tips to keep you safe this summer season! In this episode we dive into the theories of feral mountain inhabitants, supernatural entities, and the strange phenomena that surround these cases, all while sharing vital safety tips for outdoor adventures.
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Don't think this is strange.
SPEAKER_00Whatever it is, man, whatever it is at this point, I know, I know. We have to get back to the car.
SPEAKER_01Welcome back, everyone. I hope you didn't miss us too much while we took just a short little break as we geared up for our summer series on supernatural safety and well, honestly, really just practical safety tips while doing some of those activities that many of us enjoy in the summer. So the month of June, we're covering hiking and camping. Haley, do you camp or hike either of those? Mary, I love a good hike, but as soon as someone starts talking to me about camping, I'm thinking to myself, please don't talk to me like this when you're talking to me like this.
SPEAKER_00That's funny. I used to camp and I hike all the time. I used to free climb. I did all that stuff. Young Mary, she was a fearless girl. But old Mary, I just thank the Lord for all my angels because yeah, I should have died so many times. That's part of why we're doing this.
SPEAKER_01I believe you. I know we were inspired for the supernatural safety after our BEK episode. And listeners, what was our rule? We never let them in. So we kind of took that idea and rolled it into some obvious and maybe not so obvious things to share with you all.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, with summer coming at us super fast, I thought, well, let's see if there's anything that we can find that kind of works around summer activities. And not to terrify anyone out there, but summer is the season that most people disappear and the season for the most abductions. And that's largely because people are out and about, they are doing things. But Haley, I've got another question for you. Have you ever been to the great Smoky Mountains?
SPEAKER_01I think you know the answer to that question. Yes. Uh we'll get into it later in the episode. But Mary and I, our family is from Tennessee, so spend a lot of time there. And we are going to start with the Smoky Mountain National Park. And if we can keep you a little safer while you're out there enjoying your vacation, the summer hikes, the camping trips, then this podcast is worth all the time that we've have spent. And so, Mary, I'm gonna ask you a question. Have you heard of missing 411? With David Pilates?
SPEAKER_00Yes, ma'am, I have.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I thought you would have, but our listeners may not know what they are. So let's start there. 411 cases are mysterious disappearances that happen typically in rural areas, heavily wooded areas or national parks, and they have to meet a certain criteria. And we'll talk more uh about national parks. There's a huge conspiracy rabbit hole to get into on that. Uh, but we're going to get to the criteria. But first, we have a true case to share from the missing 411 collection. And so, Mary, let's tell that and let's get into our first supernatural summer safety tip story. And again, if you've guessed it, it's gonna be out of the Smoky Mountain National Park.
SPEAKER_00It was Father's Day weekend, 1969, and the Spencefield Highlands were alive with the sound of a family outing. Summer was warm and the air was humid and hung over the great Smoky Mountains. A six-year-old Dennis Martin darted behind a thick cluster of rhodendron bushes, wearing his favorite bright red t-shirt. He giggled as he schemed with his brother and his friends to prank the adults. They planned to split up, sneak around the perimeter of the clearing, and jump out and scare their fathers. Dennis' father, Bill Martin, overheard the giggling children and watched his son step behind the foliage. Barely 30 feet away, Bill looked away for a moment, waiting for the punchline of the children's joke. Then three of the boys leaped out from the brush, shouting and laughing. Bill smiled, expecting his youngest to burst out a moment later, but the clearing felt quiet, save for the buzzing of insects and the gentle rustle of leaves. Bill called out Dennis's name.
SPEAKER_01No answer. He walked over to the bushes, parting the thick leaves, expecting to find the boy hiding or holding his breath. There was only empty space. Within minutes, the playful afternoon collapsed into a panic. Bill sprinted down the trail, shouting into the dense wilderness, while other family members swept the immediate area. Dennis had vanished in a window of less than five minutes, leaving no footprints, no broken twigs, and no sound of a struggle. By nightfall, a fierce mountain thunderstorm rolled in, dumping inches of rain that washed away any potential tracks and dropped the temperature drastically.
SPEAKER_00What followed became the largest search and rescue operation in the history of the National Park Service. Over the next several days, the quiet mountain community was overwhelmed by more than 1,400 people, local volunteers, seasoned park rangers, bloodhounds, and even the green berets deployed to the rugged terrain, combing through the treacherous, steep ravines.
SPEAKER_01Yet the wilderness offered nothing back. The bloodhounds repeatedly lost ascent, acting confused or refusing to track altogether in certain areas. Deepening the mystery was a chilling report from another family, the Key family, who had been hiking miles away on the same afternoon. They reported hearing a sickening, faraway scream around the time Dennis disappeared. Shortly after, they witnessed a rough-looking man hiding in the bushes, hurriedly carrying something heavy over his shoulder toward a secluded ridge. Despite the timeline aligning, investigators could never definitively connect the sighting to Dennis.
SPEAKER_00Decades have passed since that June afternoon, and the bright red shirt Dennis wore has never been found, nor has a single shoe or trace of his presence. The forest simply closed around him, leaving behind a haunting void.
SPEAKER_01So this is a true case, and I have to say, this is every parent's worst nightmare.
SPEAKER_00It absolutely is a nightmare. So he just vanished. His dad was watching. He was with his cousins and his brothers, and he was less than 30 feet from his father. And there were no footprints, no screen. He just poof gone. So let's talk about another thing that I found kind of interesting in this case. Let's talk about those green berets showing up. Haley, have you ever heard about a special op team coming in to look for a missing child? Never.
SPEAKER_01And the Smoky Mountains aren't even a training area. I found that part very interesting as well. So to have what 60 to 70 green berets show up, that just adds to the strangeness. And it makes you think they were there looking for something more than just Dennis, especially with it being the Smoky Mountains, a state park, and the conspiracy around state parks.
SPEAKER_00Right? And they didn't just show up, they came full tactical. Eyewitnesses said that they were carrying their guns, they were going in kind of for a fight. But my heart, it just goes out to his family. Can you imagine being on vacation? They're camping there, and having to leave without your baby boy. I'd be like, sorry, Mike, I live here now. And I think Mike would have been the same way. It would have been very hard to get me off that mountain. But back to your point, Haley, what could have happened to him? Let's look at it. So he stepped behind a rhododendron or a mountain laurel thicket in Spencefield. And so it was a wide open field, but there were these laurel thickets there. And these thickets, they get intensely thick. In fact, their nickname is called Laurel Hells. They grow dense and wide. So to a six-year-old, stepping into them would be like entering a little lost world, like a labyrinth. So his dad saw him go behind them, or did he actually step into them? Like in our story, his dad departed the bushes and actually did look inside the bushes for him.
SPEAKER_01This is a good time to point out if you are camping with children, never let a child out of your line of sight, even if it is for a short period of time. It amazes me how many people you can see just walking into the grocery store and their kids are just trailing behind. No matter the scenario, you always keep your kids in your line of sight. And Dennis, back to our story, he disappeared in less than five minutes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's crazy. So absolutely never let your kids out of your sight. So the first theory, let's go back to Dennis. So the first theory was that he got lost, but there were no tracks. He disappeared at about 4:30 p.m. In June in the mountains, you could still have light for at least another four hours. But to make it worse, like a giant thunderstorm came through and washed out any possible tracks. And then the tracking dogs they couldn't find his scent, which was crazy odd because rain and high moisture often trap those scent particles and amplify the odors on the ground. They prevent them from dispersing, like let's say if you were in a desert or someplace that was very arid, they actually hold on to the scent longer. It kind of actually helps to lock it in. It creates this ideal sponge-like tracking condition. So why couldn't those dogs walk onto his scent if that was the case?
SPEAKER_01That is a good question. I wonder if there's some science there about how much rain. If you have just a quarter of an inch, the scent's gonna be there. But it was a huge, huge, heavy thunderstorm. So I wonder if that contributes to that scent and what the dogs can pick up. I don't want to go too far into another conspiracy, but what if, Mary, what if it's weather manipulation and they're able to turn on certain things when the kids go abducted for other reasons?
SPEAKER_00It's possible. I mean, they've said that they've had weather manipulation capability for decades. So sometimes.
SPEAKER_01So maybe a future episode for us. But back to, and we got to stay on track, but back to the story, those park rangers they were notified at 8:30. And then that thunderstorm came. So the next day, almost 240 volunteers were back in that field circling and searching for Dennis. And let's not sidestep the account of the people who saw that that figure that was carrying something in the underbrush. And some reports claim something red. So it is possible, and I'd say highly likely that the kid was snatched. But by what we think often snatched by another human being, but is it possible it was something else?
SPEAKER_00And sadly, that report was dismissed because the Rangers just couldn't fathom the possibility that someone could get from Spencefield to the location that that figure was seeing. It was like five miles away. Right.
SPEAKER_01Right. But it was someone. They couldn't fathom someone, but maybe, maybe it wasn't something human.
SPEAKER_00Right? In the original report, and another reason why it was dismissed is because they described it as some like a hairy, haggardly figure. They didn't really describe it as a man. In our story, we changed it to a man just so that we could really emphasize that maybe it wasn't a man.
SPEAKER_01Which I think is even more terrifying. Mary, what do you think, or how do you feel about feral mountain people?
SPEAKER_00Honestly, I think that the idea of them is more terrifying than anything we could find in the supernatural element. That's what I think of feral mountain people.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, definitely not something that you're gonna see walking down the street, but I think 1000% they're there. Again, to the story. If it wasn't human or Bigfoot, which at first we didn't think that there were a lot of stories around Bigfoot kidnapping children, but folks, we were wrong. We'll get into that and you can look into that too. It could have been maybe an animal attack. I I don't know, Mary. Was that even ruled out?
SPEAKER_00An animal attack they thought was likely, like a by a bear or a mountain lion, but it was quickly ruled out because there was no torn clothing, no blood, and no tracks. Dennis just stepped into those thickets and he vanished. Now, with an animal attack, you would have, I mean, they can carry a child off silently, but you would have signs of torn clothing from being dragged. You'd have drag marks, you would have, if not a lot of blood, a few blood drops because of puncture wounds and claw marks. But there was nothing like that. He just vanished.
SPEAKER_01That is really just chilling and heartbreaking. Again, a parent's worst nightmare. But let's share another story. Dennis was six years old, easy to maybe get lost and disoriented. But let's think about if someone was older. So we have a story. We're gonna tell the story of 16-year-old Trinity Gibson who vanished while on a field trip in the same park at the Smoky Mountain National Park.
SPEAKER_00The autumn air was crisp on October 8th, 1976, as a school bus carrying 40 students from Beardon High School wound its way up the mountain roads. Among them was 16-year-old Trini Gibson. It was a bright, clear Friday morning, and the teenagers were full of energy, eager to spend the day hiking the scenic trail to Andrew's Bald in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The hike began like any other school field trip. The students broke off into small, informal clusters, stretching out along the rugged mountain path. Treni was wearing a heavy blue jacket and a striped sweater. She moved comfortably back and forth between different groups of classmates.
SPEAKER_01By mid-afternoon, the hike was nearing its end. The groups were heading back down the trail toward the parking lot at Klingman's Dome. The path was flanked by a dense, almost impenetrable wall of spruce fir trees and thick undergrowth. Treni was walking near the middle of the long line of students. Just a few dozen feet ahead of her, a pair of classmates were laughing and chatting. A few dozen feet behind her, another small group followed. The trail took a sudden, sharp bend around a blind curve obscured by the heavy foliage.
SPEAKER_00Treni walked around the bend. Moments later, the students behind her rounded the exact same corner. The trail ahead of them was empty. Trenny was gone. At first, no one panicked. Her classmates assumed Treni had simply quickened her pace to catch up with the group ahead. But when the students reached the parking lot and began boarding the bus, Treni's seat remained empty. As the afternoon sun dipped below the ridges, the realization set in. Treni had vanished from the trail. 30 seconds, and she was gone. By nightfall, park rangers and tracking dogs arrived at the trail. What followed was a massive, agonizing search that mirrored the Dennis Martin disappearance just seven years prior. Teams combed the steep, treacherous drop-offs lining the trail. Bloodhounds were brought in to the exact bend where she was last seen, but the dogs grew confused, pacing in circles before completely losing her scent at the edge of the path. Searchers looked for any sign of a slip or fall, a broken branch, a scuff mark in the dirt, a dropped item. But the terrain showed absolutely no evidence of a struggle or a sudden accident. It was as if she had simply stepped off the face of the earth. In the days that followed, investigators questioned every student and teacher on the trip. No one had heard a scream, no one had seen a stranger on the trail. The students who were just ahead of her reported that they had never heard anyone running to catch up, nor did they hear the sound of someone crashing through the dense brush beside them. Decades have passed, and the dense forest of the smokies have kept their secret.
SPEAKER_01Okay, we have an older child walking alone, but sandwiched between groups of people, and this person just vanished. This time, from witness reports, in less than 30 seconds.
SPEAKER_0030 seconds. That's not a lot of time, Healy. They didn't hear a scream or the rustle of tree branches or anything. She was just, again, gone. And one more thing that I thought was interesting was how they described the foliage along that path, thick and dense. Just like the thickets in Dennis.
SPEAKER_01You know, Mary, the brush being dense and thick, well, first of all, some of that foliage in the mountains, it does. If you go and you read the stories and those accounts, it does mention how thick that foliage gets. But you cannot imagine really how thick it gets until you have seen it in person. It's crazy. And you know what it makes me think of? Uh, I can't remember the exact movie, but I actually think this is in a couple maybe older movies. How someone will fall into this thick foliage and the vines like and things immediately grow over the people and it like consumes them. I uh honestly, it's possible anything's possible these days. So maybe this should be another safety tip. Don't get close to any foliage, the trees, the brush that's really thick and dense, and don't go off alone. Even if you are with people, always stay in someone's line of sight. I don't care if you think it's crazy. Hold hands, make the chain, uh, tie ropes to each other, really. I don't know of any stories where someone went missing while holding hands or being tied to each other.
SPEAKER_00I think stay away from thick brush is an excellent tip. Anything can be hiding in there anywhere. So just that little grab of your ankle and it swipes you to the ground and it pulls you in. That forest will swallow you up, just like you said with your movies, Haley. And this is just another heartbreaking situation. You send your kids off on a field trip and you expect they're gonna come back happy and joyful, but she never did.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, again, a parent's worst nightmare. It had to be so hard. Now, the prominent theory was that she just got lost, stepped off the trail for some reason, and was lost. But again, tracking dogs, they could not find her scent. It was the same thing with Dennis. You know, what's that about? We mentioned the rain, but in this story, we didn't hear about any rain.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no one could figure out why these dogs couldn't follow the trail in both of these cases. In Dennis's case, they said it was because of the big storm that rolled through, but I'm not sure about that. And in Trinity's case, they circled where she was last seen, but they would not step off that trail. It was like her scent and her just vanished there. 900 searchers were out there, no trace. I mean, that's gotta be crazy. They knew where she disappeared, and the fact that the dogs couldn't find her scent, that is one of the requirements to make it a missing 411 case, scent dogs that are unable to track the victims, and they seemingly just leave no scent behind. They just can't follow a scent. Very interesting.
SPEAKER_01Now, more 411 requirements are sudden weather, such as in the case of Of dentists, like thunderstorms or snowstorm, disappearances by boulders, caves, and bodies of water, often cases have children, elderly, or highly experienced outdoors people. And sometimes the people are found alive, but they have no memory of what happened to them and are usually found in areas that have already been searched.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, 411 are nightmares. And you can find the 411 books by going to the website, go to missing411.com. You just really can't get a clear picture of this phenomenon until you start reading these books, until you start thumbing through these hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of cases that he has put together. People vanish in our national parks, hiking, camping, just enjoying vacations, not having a care in the world. They're laughing, they're just living. So from 2018 to 2023, 1180 people have vanished and have never been found. Their cases are insolved. Hundreds of cases, like Dennis and Trinity, the people just vanished. They left no trace. I used to hike, I loved it. But if I'm being honest, I still do if it's a nice, easy walk. But now I just have different rules when I go out. I'm not like I used to be.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, let's go over the rules. Hiking 101 safety with a little supernatural flair. Number one, tell people where you are going and when you will be back. And I'm not talking about tell the people that are also going. Call your mom. Call your mom every day, but call your mom an extra time that day or whoever. Let them know what the plans are and also check the weather forecasts. The second one: do not go alone. If you do, you need to wear a personal locator beacon. And you can buy one for about $400 or maybe cheaper. I don't think anyone has disappeared wearing a personal locator beacon. They may have been found dead, but they were found. Okay. So moving on to number three. If traveling in a group, never break off, never leave anyone behind. You always stay together. You always stay in the line of sight of each other. If you have to pee, that's all right. We all do. You need to whistle or keep talking while you're doing that. And do not, once again, do not let your children wander off alone. You need to go with them and you need to hold their hand.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Number four, know before you go. Look up that trail, that hike, and do a little supernatural investigation. See what you might encounter. And also while you're there, look at the wildlife. What are the dangers you could encounter? Number five, wear a whistle. If you get in trouble, blow it and keep blowing. And when you're in a group of people, have a signal. Like four short bursts or two very long ones, etc. Something like that. Because something could grab you, and they could grab that whistle and they could just start blowing on it, trying to lure your friends to them. But chances are they won't know your guys' secret pattern. So get a whistle, find a pattern. And number six, this is a good one. Pray before you head out. Are you on the trail for safety, for endurance, for discernment? Just pray, pray, pray. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01All right, we're about halfway through. Number seven, listen to your gut. For as Mary said, your discernment. If it feels off, it is time for you to turn around and go back the way you came. Okay. Number eight, pack for delays. You need to think about extra water, snacks. We got to have snacks, food, medicine, layers, just in case the weather changes. It's just like the insurance. It's just in case. So take it. Number nine, bring a flashlight. Do not rely on your cell service.
SPEAKER_00And number 10, if you do get lost, stay where you are. Just camp right there. Don't roam around. Don't think, hey, that tree looks familiar. Stay where you are. Most people who get lost in the woods wander around and they wander deeper and deeper and get further and further from hell. If you just stepped off that trail and you find you're lost within 10 minutes, stop. Camp where you are. Number 11, if you're caught in the woods and you're lost and you have your cell phone with you, change your outgoing message. Make it say, I am lost, give them your last location, the date and time that you're leaving this message, and what the weather is like. That's very important. And number 12, if you own a gun, carry your gun. If you don't carry, bring a knife, bring an axe, airspray, whatever. Just be prepared for any situation.
SPEAKER_01Number 13, situational awareness. If the woods go quiet, you need to be on high alert. Put the phone down, take the headphones off. And honestly, now that I say that out loud, maybe you should always have one out at all times, no matter what you're doing, because you never know what might come up on you. So situational awareness is really hard to have when you have both of your headphones in, just an FYI. Number 14, sign in at the ranger stations. They keep track of who's out there and they are anticipating the same number to come out. They keep track of that. So make sure sign in at the ranger stations. 15, bring a trail guide, a map, a compass, or something. Men get lost on the side of the road every day of the week. So don't rely on your man. Just make sure you got the guide, the map, or the compass.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And number 16, stay away from that dense, thick brush and tree line. Never ever step off the path or out of the field if you're in a field to go look at the wildflowers that are just a little bit further down the hill. Stay in the designated areas. And number 18, never attempt to cross flooded streams or fast-moving water. Avoid climbing wet rocks near waterfalls, which is the leading cause of hiking accidents.
SPEAKER_01Mary, I know that probably seems like a lot of rules for our listeners, but we haven't even gotten into the real supernatural ones. They were all really great, even for day-to-day living, right? But the supernatural ones, we're gonna get to those next week. But before we go, we chatted a little bit about feral people in the mountains. And as I mentioned, our family is from the mountains of Tennessee. They weren't feral. I don't know, maybe sometimes maybe, but they did talk about other people in the mountains.
SPEAKER_00Mom always talked about the medicine man. I don't know if your mom did. This medicine man who lived deep in the woods, like high up on the mountain, like even deeper than they did. And she said it would take Granny days to reach him and then to come back. So that's just kind of crazy to me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I vaguely remember that story as well. But we have one last little comment to read for everyone. This is from an anonymous Reddit user about the great Smoky Mountains and feral people. And I just want to add, the Smoky Mountains are part of the Appalachians, or as the locals say, the Appalachia. But here is that person's account.
SPEAKER_00The FBI knows. It's why they do not get involved. I've heard other stories that there was some attempt to kill these feral wild men, but they still exist even today. And I'm not talking about some end-of-days extremists who took to the woods. I mean feral, completely wild men. They have their own language. They live underground.
SPEAKER_01We do not go into the woods at night. During the day, we make sure to stay on the trails. Sometimes you will smell it, that putrid smell. At night, you'll hear them hollering. Supposed inbreds. The locals around here know what happened to Dennis Martin. He was snatched by one of the feral wild men. It's not uncommon for people to go missing here. They are normally found. But you'd also be surprised on the number of children that simply disappear. The FBI has covered it up for years. Where do you think the movie The Hills Have Eyes came from? It's true. I hear them from time to time. Disturbing sounds. They live all up and down the mountains here in national parks and forests. And there you have it, friends. Someone said it. And what do you think? Are feral people responsible for the disappearance of Dennis and Trinity? Or did they wander off? What else is lurking in the Appalachians and our nation's state parks? We hope you join us next week as we dig into more disappearances and stories and explore the folklore side of supernatural safety. And as always, keep it weird and pull it back to Jesus. Oh, and don't step off the trail. Bye.
