Casey Hathaway, 3, from North Carolina, went missing for two days.
When the child was finally found in the forest, he stated that he had been walking with a bear all this time, which did not touch him at all.
The boy's parents believe in a miracle and say that “God sent a bear to protect Casey,” and fans of anomalous phenomena are already speculating that it might not have been a bear at all, but a yeti (paranormal-news.ru).
Casey went missing last Tuesday while playing outside his grandmother's Craven County home with two other children. When they missed him, it was assumed that he had gone into the nearest forest.
Hundreds of volunteers, including those with dogs, immediately went to look for the boy, and helicopters flew over the forest. But they could not find the child for two days.
In the meantime, it became colder in the region, and although the winters here are not Siberian at all and not even Moscow's (now in the afternoon here from +7 to +11 Celsius), for a lightly dressed child every night could become deadly. Moreover, it rained heavily on the second day.
Fortunately, after the second day the boy's cry was heard by a local resident Lisa Fracker, who went to the forest to walk with the dog. She found the baby stuck in a large thorny bush, but apart from a few scratches, he was fine.
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The ambulance immediately took Casey to the hospital, but there, too, they were diagnosed with only mild hypothermia and a couple of scratches.
However, when the boy's aunt revealed that Casey had told them that he had been walking with his "best friend" bear all these days, everyone was immediately alarmed.
Casey, by the way, adores bears and one of his favorite cartoons is the Russian TV series Masha and the Bear.
However, why didn't the bear touch the child? Even considering that local bears do not go into hibernation, in the winter in the forest, in any case, there is much less food for them than in other seasons, and a small defenseless child would have gone for a snack.
The boy's relatives believed in his words about the bear and even called him a gift from God to protect Casey. But some researchers of anomalous phenomena suspected that the boy might not have spent time with a bear at all, but with … a yeti.
First of all, none of the hundreds of volunteers who were looking for a child in the forest never saw any bear tracks there. In the forests of North Carolina, black bears are occasionally seen, but they have not been seen specifically in this area.
Secondly, the researchers assure that even if Casey saw bears in cartoons or in books, he would easily confuse them with a yeti, they are exactly the same big, shaggy and can also growl.
Also, many other people began to say that a real bear would really most likely lift the child, and would not accompany him through the forest for a day or two. Moreover, there have been several incidents in North Carolina in past years when bears attacked people and even killed them.