On June 15, 2012, 32-year-old college graduate James "Jake" Dutton came to rest at the Willamette National Forest in Oregon.
His car was found in a parking lot near a reservoir, while he was planning to take a 15-mile journey along the French Pete Trail.
Dutton was well prepared for tourism and took a large backpack with him.
He planned to return home on June 18, but did not return. They searched for him in two visits with the involvement of dogs and volunteers, but they did not find anything.
On August 24, 2016, the skeletal remains of a human, lying just a hundred feet from the French Pete Trail, were stumbled by an accidental tourist and it was soon revealed that they were the remains of James Dutton.
Next to the skeleton was his backpack and two cans of bear repeller spray. The skeleton retained the pants, but there were no other clothes at all, like shoes.
At the same time, there were no signs that a predator (the same bear) attacked Dutton, and no gunshot wounds, no signs of fractures or other injuries were found.
Promotional video:
The cause of death proved to be impossible to determine, and the doctors eventually wrote that he died of hypothermia. In the month of June. Naturally, this immediately raised many questions, although questions appeared immediately when the skeleton was found. It lay so close to the trail, and in 2012 the entire area next to it was well searched. The body would be immediately stumbled upon if it were in the same place.
Then they began to check what the temperature was in June 2012, and it turned out that the average did not fall below +21 degrees Celsius. True, it can be cool at night here and the record low temperature in June can drop to as little as +5 degrees Celsius, but that June there were no such cold nights here.
It should be noted that James Dutton was a very experienced tourist, and before that he worked in the US Coast Guard and did a lot of physical training. He went on campaigns from his youth and knew this area well. He had a mobile phone with him, but during the search, his signal was never detected. The phone was found next to the skeleton.
Where Dutton's clothes went - his shirt and jacket, as well as boots, remained unknown, as well as the reason why he took them off, especially if he was freezing.
A version was put forward that Dutton deliberately went on a hike in order to commit suicide, but his family and friends denied this, assuring that it did not look like a guy at all, and that he also planned a hike with his 12-year-old nephew in the same reserve.
Researchers of anomalous phenomena believe that something unusual and supernatural was to blame for Dutton's death. As proof of this, they cite another case of a strange disappearance of a tourist, which happened in 2007 just 9 miles from the place of death of Dutton. And the body of this tourist was never found, by the way.
The missing person was Daming Xu, 60, a native of China, who is a professor of mathematics at the University of Oregon. For his age, he was still a very vigorous and strong man and loved hiking. On November 4, 2007, he went on a hike for a couple of days in the same Willamette National Forest and never returned.
The last one to see him was a young couple Paul and Stephanie, and according to them Xu was in a good mood and walked briskly along the trail. When Paul and Stephanie returned from their route to the parking lot, they were sure that Xu was already there, but they were told that he did not return from the trail.
Soon a massive search was announced with the involvement of service dogs and volunteers, but nothing was found from Xu, no things, no remains. The strangest thing was that the service dogs first correctly took his trail, and then he seemed to break off in the middle of the path. The dogs just stumbled in confusion.
On November 15, 2007, a tattered half of a tourist brochure that belonged to the professor (the second remained in his parked car) was found on the ground among stones in a rather hard-to-reach rocky area and far enough from the tourist trail. What brought Xu here and where did he go after? This remained unclear.