The Great Smoky Mountains National Park stretches along the border of Tennessee, North Carolina in the southeastern United States and covers a vast area that includes 187,000 acres of very old forest.
The park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is the most visited national park in the United States.
With about 10 million visitors a year, it is perhaps not surprising that someone is lost here on a regular basis, but they are usually found by lifeguards within 48 hours. However, every year there is a growing number of those who go missing, crossing the border of the park, and then they are never found either alive or dead (paranormal-news.ru)
The most famous and often discussed disappearance of people in Great Smoky Mountains Park is the disappearance of 6-year-old Dennis Martin. On June 14, 1969, on the occasion of Father's Day weekend, the Martin family went to the park for a picnic hike. They have been doing this for several years now, and everything went smoothly.
On this day, the family camped in Spence Field on the soft grass of a meadow near the Appalachian Trail. As the adults sat on the grass and chatted, Dennis, his brother, and two boys from other families, taken by the Martins with them, decided to have fun and scare Dennis's parents.
The plan was as follows: to run away, hide in the forest, and then jump out at the adults from different directions at the same time, screaming.
Three of the boys went one way, and Dennis, who was the youngest, went the other. By the way, he was wearing a very conspicuous bright red shirt. Then everything went as planned, three boys jumped out screaming and frightened the adults, but then people asked where Dennis was. Since the other boys saw him only a few minutes ago, they assumed that he simply missed his exit, and so they sat down to wait for him to jump out from behind the trees.
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But Dennis never showed up and after that no one saw him, either alive or dead.
Dennis' father, Bill Martin, went into the thicket to look for his son, expecting him to simply hide deep in the bushes, but even a subsequent careful search in the area showed no sign of a boy. More and more worried, Bill and Dennis' grandfather, Clyde Martin, walked in different directions, farther and farther from where the boy was last seen. And they still didn't find anyone.
Further, the park rangers were notified of the missing child and they launched a massive search, which lasted until dark and was interrupted when heavy rain began. The next day, the search for Dennis continued, and at the same time the first (and as it turned out, the only clue) was discovered. A certain Keyes family reported that when, a couple of hours after Dennis disappeared, they were 6 miles from Paul Clarence, they heard a loud cry of a small boy, and also saw some movement in the bushes.
At first it seemed to the Keys that it was a bear, and then that it was still a man carrying some kind of load on his back. But the authorities for some reason refused to investigate this place, believing that it had nothing to do with the disappearance of Dennis, as it was too far from the scene.
In the following days, an intensive search for the child also yielded nothing, although the park was searched far and wide by hundreds of people, including volunteers, FBI officers, the National Guard, green berets and even psychics. There were also people with dogs and several helicopters. All newspapers wrote about the disappearance of Dennis Martin. He was described as a healthy and stable child who went on hikes with his parents not for the first time and everyone hoped that they would find him right now.
But the rains continued, daily searches gave nothing and hopes melted. Also, a thick fog fell on the forest, which is quite familiar in this area. Over the following weeks, several footprints were found in the forest, presumably from children, and thrown underwear. But Dennis's mother said it wasn't her son's underwear.
The search continued even after several months, although not on a large scale. The authorities practically declared him dead. In parallel, various rumors and theories began to unfold about what happened to the boy. Basically, they said that he had been kidnapped, but such a version broke down on dry facts.
No pedophile could have known at what moment a child will separate from a group of adults and remain alone to grab him in these very few minutes. And to grab it so that the boy did not even have time to squeak, otherwise he would have been heard. And if it was not a pedophile, but someone who wanted to annoy the Martins and kidnapped the child for ransom, then why did he not contact them after?
The version that the boy was simply lost in the forest also seemed inappropriate. This place was searched very carefully and in those minutes Dennis could not physically go far. In addition, as mentioned above, he went on hikes with his parents for several years and knew how to behave, and he also knew this place.
It also seemed strange to everyone that there were no footprints of a child in the forest. He seemed to have entered the forest and … disappeared into thin air.
In the end, Dennis Martin was never found, including over the following years. This strange case remains unsolved until now and attracts writers who are trying to understand and find new evidence or details in such cases. One of these is David Polids, who managed to unearth something interesting in the park's ranger magazine (later strangely lost).
Ranger Dwight McCarter reported that during the search for Dennis Martin, there were special forces in the park that did not contact the rangers, local authorities and volunteers, but seemed to pursue their own goals. At the same time, they were perfectly armed, as if they were looking not for a child, but for someone else.
Another bizarre detail that David Polyde found is that the lead investigator in the case, FBI agent Jim Rike, later committed suicide for unknown reasons.
Subsequent disappearances
In the years that followed Dennis Martin's disappearance, other people began to mysteriously disappear from the park. On October 8, 1976, a 16-year-old high school sophomore from Knoxville named Trenny Lynn Gibson took a field trip to the national park with 40 of her classmates.
The students walked from the parking lot to an area called Andrew's Bald and immediately split into several groups for convenience. It was an old and well-worn route, on which it was difficult to get lost, but at some point in the group Trennri was in, they noticed that the girls were no longer with them.
The strangest thing was that she was not seen anywhere, and those groups that followed her group along the same route. That is, if Trenny had just fallen behind, she would have been immediately noticed. In addition, this area is very popular with tourists and there are always a lot of people here, but no one has seen the girl anywhere.
Despite subsequent intense searches, no sign of Trenny Gibson has been found. She simply disappeared without a trace right under everyone's nose.
Another bizarre disappearance occurred on September 25, 1981, when 58-year-old Thelma Pauline (Polly) Melton went camping with two of her friends near the Deep Creek Campground. It was an easy trail for Polly, who had been hiking for 20 years, so she knew everything around here and sometimes overtook her companions. And at some point she again overtook them, going forward along the path, and … no one ever saw her again.
Her friends searched everything in the area, but could not find any indication of where she had gone. Even more unusual, Polly was a rather obese woman and suffered from high blood pressure and frequent nausea, for which she took medication. In any case, they could not physically move far from their group. She was also a happy person with no depression or signs of wanting to commit suicide or any other apparent reason to want to disappear.
Again, a massive search was launched, but no sign of Polly was found. Authorities could not even find footprints of her on the trail, although Melton's left shoe had a noticeable crack that would have made her tracks well visible and easily distinguishable from those of other tourists. However, no trace of Polly Melton has ever been found, and she is still missing.
People mysteriously disappear in Great Smoky Mountains Park in our time, including in 2008, when 51-year-old Michael Niron disappeared here, and in 2012, when 24-year-old Derek Joseph Luking disappeared. On June 5, 2014, Paul Paur disappeared here.
No one still knows what happened to these people. There are actually many dangerous places in the park and they could fall, break, break their neck, etc. But then they would have found at least bodies from them. And if they were attacked by bears (and they are found here), then at least a few bones or clothes. However, in many cases, not even a trace was found from them.