Smoky Mountains For Freaky Friday...!

I don't want to mislead anyone here. It isn't the Smoky Mountains that are freaky, but the increasing number of disappearances connected to the area that is.

The really freaky thing about all the disappearances is that they are ongoing. Still, no one has an answer as to why!

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park Disappearances

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park borders Tennessee and North Carolina and is the most visited national park in the US. Therefore, it’s probably inevitable that the park has its fair share of unsolved disappearances.

On June 14, 1969, six-year-old Dennis Martin went on an outing to the park with his family. Dennis and three other boys split off in separate directions to play a prank, but Dennis did not return and a massive search of the area turned up nothing. A nearby witness recalled hearing a frightening scream sometime that afternoon before he saw a rough-looking man running through the woods.

Years later, a man found what appeared to be the skeletal remains of a child in the park but did not inform the authorities because he was hunting illegally at the time. When he finally reported it during the 1980s, the remains could no longer be found. No one knows if either of these events had any connection to Dennis Martin’s disappearance.

Another unsolved Smoky Mountains disappearance involved 16-year-old Trenny Gibson who vanished during a school trip to the park on October 18, 1976. While the students were hiking, Trenny somehow became separated from them and disappeared, never to be seen again. On September 25, 1981, 58-year-old Thelma Melton was hiking through the park on Deep Creek Trail with two friends when she got way ahead of them and disappeared after walking over a hill. No one could find her afterward.

More recently, 24-year-old Derek Joseph Leuking went missing on March 17, 2012. His vehicle was found in the Newfound Gap parking lot. All his gear had been left behind, but there was a note on the windshield which read: “Don’t try to follow me.” No trace of Leuking could be found anywhere in the park, adding his name to the list of people who have mysteriously disappeared into the Great Smoky Mountains.

I reckon that many places have their share of missing person stories, but so many close in the same area starts me to wondering, ya know?

Coffee in the kitchen again. It's trying to rain and turn colder.