by stormbreath
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As many of my long-time readers are aware, I avoid covering disappearances and cases that take place in the middle of the wilderness, and especially those that are a combination. I’m not going to come out here and say that there is nothing spooky in the woods, and I’m doubly not going to say there is nothing to be afraid of in the woods. It’s quite the opposite, really: we know exactly what is in the woods, and all of it is immensely terrifying and spooky. It just isn’t - 99.99% of the time - paranormal.
Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon went hiking with limited supplies in the jungle. They died of exposure. Kyron Horman played hooky and ran into the woods behind his school. He died of exposure. Maura Murray ran from the police after crashing her car and fled into the forest. She died of exposure. There are no mysteries in these deaths, nothing supernatural to blame it on.
Mother Nature wants you dead. And she is goddamn good at making sure that happens. Her next best skill? Ripping your corpse apart and burying it so thoroughly they will never find a single piece of you. In short: if somebody goes missing, and they were last seen in the wilds, we have a pretty good idea what happened to them.
Radek/Augustyn is different. I said before that 99.99% of the time, it's not paranormal. This is that tiny sliver, that one in ten thousand case where something actually does seem to have gone wrong, and gone spooky. I don't think this is a case that can be chalked up to simple force of nature like normal.
I hate to say it, but I think David Paulides might be right about this one.
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FIRST Radek and Second Augustyn were a pair of Australian tourists in New York state and amateur outdoorsmen. The two apparently had dramatically different levels of experience. Radek had spent his early twenties backpacking around Poland and had significant experience with the outdoors. Augustyn, on the other hand, has conflicting stories. His family claims he had little to no experience with the wilderness and were suprised by his decision to go hiking, while an ex-girlfriend has testified the opposite.
In either case, the two were visiting Washington D.C. for the wedding of their friend from high school THIRD NAME, who worked for the Australian embassy in the city. Radek and Augustyn had made plans to stay in the United States after the wedding and go hiking in Appalachia, as Radek was considering a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. After the wedding (on August 1st, 1998), they rented a car and drove to Roanoke, Virginia, arriving late in the evening on Sunday the 2nd. They got dinner at Texas Tavern, and stayed at a Motel 6.
They woke up the next morning, and headed to the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, heading to the Pines Campground, located about an hour outside of Roanoke. They set up a campsite here (this campground is free, the reason it was chosen) and went on a day hike in the area. Upon getting back in the evening, they chatted with a group of women who were staying at the campground next to them. They would be the last to see the pair alive.
The day after, Radek and Augustyn headed deeper into the Jefferson National Forest, with the intent of dispesered camping — roughing it in the wilderness. Their actions from here on out are unknowable, and we are forced to rebuild what happened to them from what little was found in the woods belonging to them. The exact timeline of what happened will never be known.
It is worth going over, at this point, the obvious mistakes that the pair committed. For starters, they did not have a clear plan of what they were doing and where they were going. Terry McInnis, one of the women at Pine Campground, remembered that the two did not have a clear plan of where they were headed in Pine Campground. They did not have a contact who was waiting for them to signal a sign of safety — only THIRD NAME indirectly, as they had left their luggage at his house, to collect before their flight back to Australia. Finally, and most damning of all, the two only had experience camping in Australia, and not in Appalachia.
THIRD NAME reported them missing when they failed to return to his house and collect their bags on August 7th, five days after they had last been seen alive. By this point, they had likely been dead for days. THIRD NAME is not to blame for this: the two did not inform him of their plans, and it was only after they failed to collect their bags and missed their flight that he was able to tell something was wrong.
Rescue operations made it to the scene, and quickly encountered Terry McInnis and her friends and learned of the last sighting of Radek and Augustyn. They went into the forest, focusing their efforts on the last known bearing of the pair, although keeping a wide range along width of it.
The remains and possessions of Radek and Augustyn were found in three main locations. The first was the remains of a campsite, located near the trail a few days hike in. The campsite looked as though it had been abandoned in a hurry. The two seemed to have had enough time to grab a bag and run, as many essentials — as well as the pairs bags — were missing, suggesting the pair had taken them with them. However, many other items — such as the pair's tents, sleeping materials, a pair of clothes seemingly left to dry — were left at the campsite.
It was immediately suspicious to investigators. The mix of materials left behind suggested the two had been forced to leave in the span of only a few minutes. Just enough time to get what they would think they'd need to survive, but little more. There was little determination of what caused the attack — was there a motive, or only animal instinct?
Regardless, the location of the campsite indicated some clues. It was along the trail, but [there was some evidence pointing in the direction they went]. Search and Rescue refocused their operations, sending all units southbound from the campsite and deeper into the forest, searching for the pair.
They find three things at first:
- Abandoned campsite
- backpacks and anything heavy
- camcorder with videos
And they just found the body, hence crewtime writing about it now. may have to adjust opening to account for this.
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Catskill_Mountain_House#/media/File:Overlook_Mountain_House_-_Back_to_Nature.jpg
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:George_Washington_and_Jefferson_National_Forests
- https://soundbible.com/1372-Raptor-Call.html
- https://soundbible.com/1711-Dinosaur.html [THIS ONE, PUBLIC DOMAIN]
- https://freesound.org/people/swinning/sounds/507066/
- https://freesound.org/people/reinsamba/sounds/15280/
- change the location to the Appalachians
- they discover an ancient evil ghost
- maybe use the foggy Mountain House image? (might be wrong vibe for the ancient ghost idea)
- mountain house has to be explained, ancient ghost doesn't
- pre-indigenous ghost — this is a ghost of something older than humanity. not a dinosaur, probably a sapient thing of some kind. details shaky, as ghost is never directly seen.
- ghost of a deinonychus that has become something else in the time since its death millions of years ago. much smarter, versed in occult powers
- the two are never found, but their supplies are (campsite?)
— rename one of the two or both; one can still be Polish but I want them to be Australian in this version. Maybe make one southeast origin sounding name? Bala?