Anniversary (Archive)

    We know their names and their birthdays. We know who was missing teeth, who was afraid of the dark, who had bruises. We know who had a harelip scar, who had a brother that died while being born. We know what they wanted to be when they grew up. We can fill books with what we know but what we don't know are the only things that matter to us. We've retraced our steps and gone over every piece that we have but in the end it doesn't add up to anything, so all we can do is pore over it and try again and again to make it all go somewhere, lead to something, because nothing else is important anymore. All that matters is what we don't have.

    Here is what we know: On June 21st, 1995, the local Cub Scout troop met at the south entrance of the national park, which is located approximately twenty miles from town. They were led by two Scout Masters, Huxley and Anders. There were eighteen boys in attendance, ranging from ages seven to ten. For many of them, it was their first real camping trip. The town is small, and most, if not all of them, knew each other at least by name. Every one had been given permission by their parents to go. Their uniforms would have been freshly cleaned, their packs new and still stiff on their shoulders. We can only imagine the cacophony of all those young boys running around in the picnic area.

    We bring this up because they were real. People forget that. They were real. They were alive and you could touch them. They ran around and they had nightmares and they enjoyed ice cream. They were real children with lives.

    The Scout Masters got everyone together and took attendance. One witness remembers seeing them before they left on their own hike.

    "They were by the tables, big group of them. Honestly I was glad when they went the other way. Cute but... you know. Didn't really want them on my back. I guess I don't feel like that now, though. But they seemed like they knew what they were doing."

    The group entered the forest around eight in the morning, as best we can figure. There aren't any cameras out there, of course, but based on their schedule we feel confident that it's an accurate figure. They took a trail that leads into the mountains about forty miles before looping back around and ending about five miles from the entrance. The group intended to go about five miles, where they would camp at the base of the mountains at an established site. Along the way, they passed a group of tourists who reported nothing unusual. The boys were in good spirits, following along and chattering noisily. One of them, a boy we later determined to be an eight year old named Peter Connolly, waved hello as he passed. The tourists waved back.

    As the group made their way up the trail, they stopped frequently to identify the plants and trees. During one of these stops, the boys began a pine cone war, which a passing hiker became involved in. The game ended when a younger boy, we aren't sure which, suddenly began to cry, and a ceasefire was called. The hiker said the boy didn't appear to be injured; rather, he seemed to be frightened of something up in the trees, something he kept pointing at. The hiker didn't see anything and he moved on. The group stayed for a little longer before moving on.

    Further up the trail, a candy bar wrapper was discovered, impaled on a branch. We aren't sure who put it there, but one of the boys' mothers told us that it was her son's favorite brand.

    "He really likes them. I keep them in a drawer so he can have one after school. You can't find them here, you have to go to Denali's up in Bridgeport. They have them. They know he likes them." She began to cry so we ended the interview. We kept the wrapper initially, as evidence, but it has since been given back to the boy's mother. When we interviewed her, it was being kept on the fridge, held up by a magnet with the boy's picture on it. She didn't allow us to photograph it for this record.

    The boys reached the campsite around one. One other family was present, but did not intend to stay the night. They had been there for a few days, and were packing up as the Scouts were settling in. The family, a father and his two daughters, made small talk with the boys and the Scout Masters.

    "Oh it was fun. They were running around. I had the girls help set up the tents." He looked out back. Before the interview, he had sent his two young daughters outside. "I mean it was fine. They were fine. We've been up there a million times. They got set up, and I was talking with- Howard? Huxton?" We corrected him. "Huxley, yeah. Huxley. We were talking and he said something about did I know any good swimming places? But you know that time of year it's so cold, so I told him that. And he said that's fine and we just sort of talked for a little longer, and then me and the girls headed out. Nothing bad or anything. They just wanted to go swimming and have fun."

    From this point, we don't have any official record of what the group did. We know, based on what was left behind, that the tents were put up and a fire started. Sticks were found with blackened tips, so at least a few of the boys roasted things in the fire. Logs were set up and there were scuff marks in the dirt where the boys rested their feet. Someone tossed their cap up in a tree and it was still there when the search party arrived. They probably intended to retrieve it on the way out. The boys sat around the fire and told stories. They roasted things and the Scout Masters smoked cigarettes and drank at least four beers (the cans were found outside the camp. Again, we believe they intended to retrieve them later.). A trail through the brush led us to believe that at least some of the boys went to a clearing and looked at the stars. They are remarkably clear out there. The boys went to bed; the Scout Masters stayed up for a while longer to make sure everyone was asleep. At some point they too went to bed, and the camp was quiet.

    There is, again, no official account of what happened next. All we know for sure is that at some point, the camp was packed, and the group moved on. Nothing save for the articles mentioned were left behind. The group moved west, farther up the trail, and it is believed that they were headed for the swimming area. All of the boys' mothers confirmed that their children took swimming equipment. All of them knew how to swim. Whether they actually went, of course, we aren't sure. But we can imagine the group winding up the trail, the boys in a line, talking to each other and singing songs. The boys would be looking forward to swimming, to spending another night out in the woods. Their spirits would have been high; they would have eaten a good breakfast of eggs and hot dogs. Which makes it all the more heartbreaking that at some point along the trail on June 22nd, all twenty people in the group vanished.

    The group was due back that afternoon. Parents began arriving around three, and when the group still hadn't shown up by five, a few of them decided to hike a ways up the trail to see what had delayed them. After hiking almost three miles and having seen no sign of them, they realized that something was wrong, and they hurried back to the entrance. The call came in at approximately six, and by seven the park was swarming with police and rescue. Those of us in town were quick to learn about it; word traveled fast and the hysteria that came along with it was almost intoxicating. Within minutes, it seemed, the town was full of police, Park Rangers from neighboring counties, search teams, large German Shepherds on leashes being led to the entrance, their noses to the ground. The search itself was massive, and encompassed tens of miles of the park, much farther than anyone was realistically expected to have traveled. Dogs were taken out, given multiple scents to work with in all directions. There was, certainly, no lack of effort that could explain why nothing, and no one, has ever been found. In an almost grotesque move, all eighteen sets of parents were brought before the cameras in a huge, miserable group. They were given turns to give their children messages, to plead with their imagined captors, to offer rewards, to offer forgiveness. For weeks, the population in town was almost doubled. Many families, including ours, offered room and board to the volunteers flooding in at an incredible rate. Eventually, it made national news. Every tree in town wore a yellow ribbon.

    But as time went on, and the search turned up nothing, people began to leave. They went back home to their real lives, and as incredible as it seems, the boys were largely forgotten. A quiet rumor began to spread that the group had drowned in the lake, although no one had been found in it. For a long time people talked about the pit at the bottom of that lake, which went deep, deep into the Earth, and contained more than those twenty bodies. The rumor persisted, was used to justify the removal of the yellow ribbons, the signs on telephone poles screaming 'BRING OUR BABYS HOME'. On August 15th, the chief of police gave a televised speech, insisting that the case was still open and being investigated. Despite the severity of the crime, the nation moved on. Donations dried up, searches could not be afforded. The lake was closed, and the yellow ribbons vanished.

    On June 21st, 1996, local emergency services received a call from a terrified woman who claimed that something was in her backyard. No transcript exists of any of the calls made that evening, but through many interviews we have been able to piece most of them together. The first call, from the terrified woman, was placed at approximately eight in the evening. According to the officer who took the call, the woman claimed that someone had defaced one of the trees in her backyard. She could not explain how they had done it, or who it might have been, but as she described it, one of the trees in her yard now had a face. The face, she said, was screaming loudly and begging her to come outside and help it. She wanted the awful thing removed immediately. An officer was dispatched and went to the scene, but discovered nothing. The woman could not explain where the face had gone.

    Two hours later, calls began to pour in from all over town. As we later discovered, all of the calls were placed from homes that bordered or were located in the woods. An elderly man called to complain about two boys who were playing some sort of game at the edge of his property. The boys, he explained, had crammed themselves into one shirt, and were playing at being conjoined in some awful fashion. Their screaming woke his wife, who was gravely ill, and he wanted to press charges. Two blocks down, a young single mother reported seeing a very young boy running at the edge of the trees, but that he never seemed to move. He simply ran in place, his arms pumping, his face wet with tears. She looked him in the eye and, as if by magic, he disappeared. One mile away, on a property located within the forest, a hunter reported seeing a boy walking upside down through the air, almost twenty feet off the ground, carrying his own spine in his arms like a baby. All across town, strange noises were heard. Muffled conversation, screaming, crying. A name was heard, which was later connected to one of the missing boys. A woman reported hearing a strange repetitive sound that she likened to the sound a chainsaw makes when it strikes rock. It woke her two children and frightened them badly enough that she bundled them up in her car and drove to her mother's house a county away.

    And still the calls poured in. Well into the small hours of the night, people reported seeing horrible things. One man, a notorious drunk, called in stone sober to report having seen the head of a young boy emerging from the ground, the mouth a distorted, elongated scream of terror. As the head rose from the ground, the jaw did not end, but stretched like taffy, until the whole affair was more than double his height. He shut all the blinds tightly and drank himself into a coma. He has since died, and we cannot confirm his story. All over town, on the anniversary of the disappearance of those twenty souls, the strange apparitions were seen, heard, in some cases felt. A teenage girl, walking in the woods with her boyfriend on a late-night date, stumbled over something. Upon closer inspection, she determined that what she had tripped over was not, in fact, a bush, but was the top of someone's head. When it moved under her fingers, she and the young man fled into the night, terrified beyond reason.

    As the sun began to rise, the calls dwindled, and then stopped. Despite the entire town having heard and seen the strange apparitions, the incident was not discussed in any media, or even between the people themselves. However, an exodus of the town soon followed. Many of the eighteen families moved away, never to be seen again. They left quickly and with no fuss. They simply packed their things, took their remaining children and fled in the night, leaving behind empty houses and rooms painted blue or yellow or green. We did not pursue them. The town, desperate to move on, willfully forgot those yellow ribbons, those painted rooms. While the houses still stand, they remain empty. Squatters do not live there. The rooms are bare and the houses stand like physical memories. There is constant talk of demolition, but nothing ever comes of it.

    The twenty people lost on June 21st, 1995, have never been found.