Speaker 1: Welcome to Missing Persons case Files, A place where they're gone.
Are not the forgotten? What's happening in the forest of
North America? How are so many people disappearing only to
have the remains found much later, or, in many cases
not at all. Are the predators to blame giant hair
covered beasts or even more terrifying us as humans? Maybe
it's both, Maybe it's neither. These are just a few
of the questions we'll look to uncover here on the
Missing Persons case Files.
Speaker 2: In October of twenty sixteen, a father and son set
out into the Oregon Wilderness stalking black tailed deer. After
they split up, only one of them made it out
of the woods. This is what happens when a hundred disappears.
This article is written by J. R. Sullivan, published June
thirteenth of twenty twenty four on fieldinstream dot com. Trevor
Higgins was starting to panic. Even if his dad had
shot a deer, he should have reached the trailhead by now.
Or if he'd fallen and broken a leg, Trevor was
sure his dad would have berely crawled to the road.
He wasn't the kind of god to depend on some
one else for help to sit and wait for rescue.
But two and a half hours had passed since his dad,
Shawn Higgins, had entered the woods. Maybe more. Trevor wasn't
sure any more, but he knew that his dad should
have come back to the truck already. Their plan was simple.
Sean forty one would height down the narrow footpath looking
for a black tail. Meanwhile, Trevor twenty one, who had
killed a boat the day before, would wait with the
truck at the next trail, had two miles up burnt
Ridge Road and the Sissiqui Mountains of southwest Oregon. After
a couple of hours, they'd meet up and drive to
get Will Chandler, Trevor's uncle, whom they had dropped off earlier.
They did this sort of thing often, There was no
reason for Sean to have taken more than an hour
or so to make the hike. Now, a storm began
to bear down on the mountains, which further unsettled Trevor.
He watched as the October sky grade. He could see
a darkness coming. At two thirty p m. Will Chandler
showed up at the truck. Trevor, his nephew and Sean,
his brother in law, were supposed to pick him up
three hours ago, but they never showed up, so he
had to walk seven miles down the mountain by himself.
Cold and irritated, he yanked open the truck door. Trevor,
What and the hell is going on? He said, But
the moment he saw Trevor's face, he knew something had
gone wrong. My dad hasn't come out yet, Trevor said.
For as long as Will had known Sean, he'd never
once failed to show up like this. Will and Trevor
agreed that they needed to look for Shawn before the
weather worsened, but even now the conditions weren't conducive to
a search. The wind was blowing hard enough to shake
the pick up, and tree limbs crashed down around them.
It wouldn't take long for the rain to erase any
boot track from the trail. With nightfall just hours away,
Will and Trevor split up in hopes of finding Shawn quickly.
Trevor would start at the fore trailhead where he dropped
off his dad that morning, while Will hiked in from
where the truck was parked. They'd meet in the middle
after one of them had found Seawn. Trevor drove his
four wheeler north to the far trailhead, but the narrow
path forced him to hike from there. As he struck
off down the trail, he could see far through the
old growth timber, and rock outcroppings. Trevor had grown up
hunting this piece of wilderness, but his dad knew it
even better, Another reason why his failure to show was
so unnerving. Shan knew the mountains and ridges about as
well as any one, and was an expert in pursuing
deer in the timber. He jokingly referred to himself as
doctor Blacktail. The wilderness that surrounded Trevor lies within the
one point seven million acre Rogue Rigor Siskiyou National Forest.
It is unforgiving country, with high, sharp bridges and dense
stands of cedar and fir. The area where Trevor and
Shawn were hunting, in particular, had seen its share of
close calls and tragedies. Most notably, in November of two
thousand and six, a family from San Francisco made a
wrong turn off the one lane road that traverses the mountains,
the same road Trevor and Shawn had taken that morning
and ended up twenty one miles back in the woods,
snow enveloped their station wagon. After seven days of waiting
for rescue, the father, James Kim, left his family in
search of help. His body was found four days later
in an icy creek. His wife and two daughters survived.
About a decade before that, a camper salesman new to
the area and dured nine weeks in his snowbound pickup
strainded deep in the back country before he starved to death.
He kept record of his experience on a legal notepad,
writing toward the end, I have no control over my life.
It's all in his hands. These men are far from
the only ones who have perished or gone missing in
this wilderness. Each year in Oregon, about eleven hundred people
require rescue from the wild, ninety nine percent of whom
make it home alive. From nineteen ninety seven to twenty sixteen, however,
eighty lost persons were confirmed dead in the backcountry, and
another seventy six stepped into the woods and have not
been seen since. Ribbon marked the path through the timber,
and Trevor followed it away from the train. Head wind
whipped through the trees and rain puddled on the ground.
I started to freak out, he recalls. The only thing
that was really going through my mind was I need
to find my dad. Trevor followed the trail for nearly
an hour and a half until he reached a clearing
atop a ridge line. He had no idea if Will
had found his dad. He'd been in such a rush
to get on the track and search that he had
neglected to bring a cell phone, much less a compass
or GPS. He had only his Remington seven hundred, a knife,
a lighter, and the clothes he was wearing. From the clearing,
the trail split, and though the ribbon stopped, Trevor decided
to head right, believing that way led back toward the road.
The trees that engulfed him made it difficult to gauge
where he was going, and with darkness falling and the
rain intensifying, he became desperate to find his way back.
I just wanted to get to the pickup, he says.
I wanted to see if my uncle found my dad.
The underbrush grew thick, and Trevor pushed his way through
as fast as he could. After another mile or so,
he stumbled upon a deep drawl with a creak at
the bottom. He could barely see as he eased down
the slope. Suddenly his feet kicked out from under him,
and he tumbled to the bottom. After a moment, he
managed to stand and collect himself. He was shaken, but
thankfully uninjured. He looked up toward the ridges that surrounded him,
walls of blackness. He was lost, but he knew that
he'd be worse off continuing blond than he would be
making a camp. He tried not to imagine his dad
somewhere out there alone. I just kept telling myself over
and over that my dad had made it out that
he was with my uncle. At five a m. Sunday morning,
Stephanie Higgins woke to the knocking of the front door.
It was her father, David Petite, who lived a house
over That night, Will after failing to reconnect with Trevor,
had phoned his wife back in Coos Bay, a small
community on the Oregon coast where they all lived, who
had then called Petite to deliver the news. He told
me about Seawn first, and I flipped out. Stephanie said,
it took him a minute to tell me. Then about Trevor.
Stephanie's father and sister got in the car and they
set out for the Rogue River sask You National Forest,
about three hours away. Thunder boom through the hills and
cannons as they weaved up the back roads into the hills.
Stephanie and Sean had been together since they were teenagers,
often skipping class to hunt and fish along the Rogue River.
Sean's father had died when he was in grade school,
and he'd grown up with his grandmother. Stephanie joked that
he had married her for her family. He and Stephanie
had Trevor young and another son, Garrett, seven and a
half years later. Trevor now had a job unloading log
trucks and lived nearby with his girlfriend, so they still
saw him regularly. During the drive, Stephanie told herself again
and again that Sean and Trevor were together. I was
praying to God that it just got dark and they
had to stay the night in there, she said. They
arrived at the trailhead about an hour before rescuers. Stephanie
waited and watched, hoping Sean and Trevor would come out
at any moment, but no one would let her join
the search. Fearing she assumed that she might see something
she'd never forget. I felt helpless, she said, if she
were the one who would vanish, there was no way
that Sean and Trevor wouldn't be out there looking for her.
We are not sit around and wait for shit to
happen kind of people. As the morning wore on, more
people came to help, guys that Sean had worked construction
jobs with, and friends from COO's Bay. Search parties were formed,
dogs dispatched, and reinforcements called. About three miles away, Trevor
woke cold and wet at dawn Saturday. In the night,
he made a shelter from down libs and dead bark,
leaning them against a tree. He tried to start a
fire with wood, shaving and small strips of clothing, but
he couldn't get as lighter to work, and everything was
damp or soaked.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for more paranormal odyssey.
Speaker 2: By midmorning, lightning cracked the sky. As Trevor gathered his
gear and set out into the storm. He headed toward
where he thought the road might be, but just forty
yards from the shelter, something told him to stop. My
dad had plenty of friends who had hunted that area
with him for years. He said they could be looking
for him. Plus, he trusted that his uncle had found
his dad and that together they would be searching. I
wasn't sure exactly what was going on, so I figured
I'd try to set myself up to where I could
survive as long as possible. He spent the rest of
the day rebuilding his shelter, using an extra raincoat to
better insulate the structure and to collect rainwater. He tried
to make a fire again, but it was useless. There
was little to do but wait. People kept coming back
from searches with nothing to show for their efforts. A
day passed, then two friends took off work to scour
the woods, some staying out for twelve hours at a
time in the heavy, freezing rain. Stephanie couldn't make herself
leave the mountain. She slept in her car, replaying in
her mind. Her conversation was shown before he and Trevor
had left that weekend, the forecast had called for thunderstorms.
If you and Will want to be idiots, then fine,
But don't you take my baby, she told him, referring
to Trevor. But Sean had insisted upon hunting because the
deer would be moving as the storm approached. They'd be
out of the woods before it got bad, he promised.
You know what, Sean had added, If I die and
I'm up in the woods doing something I love, then
I'm happy. Trevor passed his time in the shelter listening
for noises in the distance. It rained on and off
day and night, but whenever there was a break, he'd
walk a little call out and wait for a response.
Late on his fourth day in the woods, he hiked
up a hill and heard dogs barking. He blew a
whistle that he had made from an empty shellcasing, hoping
to get their attention. Then came the sound of people talking.
He yelled and blew the whistle more, but soon the
woods fell silent. Maybe rescuers are narrowing in, he thought.
At mid morning came another sign of hope. A helicopter appeared,
flying within one hundred yards of his shelter. He ran
into a nearby clearing and waved frantically by firing his
rifle into the air three times, but the chopper moved on.
That was honestly the worst part Trevor said. He was
hungry and cold, and his feet had gone numb, making
it hard to walk. He had stilled himself to survive
for as long as he could, but he knew his
situation was dire. It was surreal, he said, coming to
terms with the thought that this might be the end,
that he might die before his parents and grandparents. You
want to at least be able to say goodbye to everybody,
he said. Still, he tried to stay calm. He had
to make it back for his dad. It would destroy
him if I had gotten lost out there and had
never been found. On Trevor's fifth day in the wilderness,
the weather broke and sunlight poured through the trees. At
ten a m. He stripped off his damp clothes and
hung them up to dry. He was sitting in the
dirt when he heard another helicopter circling nearby. It came
within view, and he tried to flag it down, waving
a yellow bag tied to his rifle barrel, but the
chopper quickly disappeared. He was devastated. He wondered whether that
was his last shot at rescue. With winter coming, the
mountain would soon be impassable. They couldn't keep sergic forever.
At two thirty p m. Though he heard voices far
off through the trees. He yelled and yelled and got
an answer. Two men appeared in a clearing. They had
been looking for him. They had told him, what took
you so long? Then, Trever asked jokingly, every emotion that
Trevor had restrained over the past five days seized him.
He started to laugh, then he wept. A few minutes
later laid for reasons he couldn't explain. He began to
laugh again. The men had a fire belt within ten minutes,
by which point Trevor worked up the nerve to ask
the question, are you searching for one lost person or two? Two?
They said? They confirmed his worst fear. His father had
never made it back to the truck. He thought he
was going to vomit. I told myself for so long
that my dad was out looking for me, and that
he was fine, he said. Stephanie was at the top
of the mountain when word came that Trevor had been
found and was being airlifted to the hospital. She pleaded
to speak with him over the radio to hear his voice,
to ask if he had seen Sean, but Trevor couldn't talk.
She was overjoyed that he had been found, but whatever
relief she felt quickly faded. What about Sean? What about
my husband? At that point, she said, I knew it
was really freaking bad. She met Trevor at the hospital.
He was hypothermic and his kidneys and liver were shutting down,
but he would recover. Doctors even let him eat a
bacon cheeseburger. When Stephanie saw him for the first time,
she threw her arms around him. I couldn't speak, she said.
When she eventually calmed down, Though she asked if he'd
seen any trace of his dad, Trevor broke into tears.
She stopped asking him questions after that. Stephanie returned to
the mountain later that day. Even though there was no
reason to suspect foul play, she couldn't keep her mind
from spinning. What if Sean had walked up on some
bad dudes steep in the woods. What if they did
something to him? What if someone on the road had
accidentally run over him and tried to cover it up.
Since she knew, but she couldn't shake these thoughts. The
Sheriff's department suspended the search for Shawn Higgins on October
twenty fifth of twenty sixteen, and the eleven days since
he disappeared, search teams had uncovered no trace of him
and were no closer to knowing where he might be.
With so much time having passed, the odds were against
his survival. Stephanie had spent nearly every waking moment on
the mountain since Shawn disappeared. She knew people had to
return to their lives, to their families, but she would
have done anything to convince them to stay. I would
have sent three hundred thousand people down there to look
for him, she said. Over the next couple of months,
she and family members returned to the mountain every weekend,
searching areas that might have been overlooked, But by early December,
snow had blanketed the mountains, haunting their efforts. They made
plans to return next spring. At what point do you
stop looking, Stephanie asked herself. At what point do you
admit that your best friend and the father of your
children has ceased to exist. She didn't have an answer,
neither did Trevor. It's hard to say with confidence how
many people like Sean or missing in the American wilderness.
Some experts claimed that the number could be as high
as sixteen hundred, but the government doesn't keep nationwide records
of missing persons in the wild Trevor sees though, how
his dad could have gotten lost like he did, given
how that particular trail makes you think you're on one
ridge when you're really on another. But Stephanie speculates that
whatever happened to Sean was bad and quick. I think
it happened immediately, she said, a tree fell on him,
or he fell somewhere. The months following Sean's disappearance have
felt stagnant, the loss the only window through which the
family can see the world. Trevor moved back in with
his mom and brother and returned to his job before
his dad went missing. During downtimes, Trevor used to get
out of his lobstacker and talk with the other guys,
but now most days he stays in the machine by himself.
What gets to me the most is how come I
was found but he wasn't. At first, Trevor couldn't get
through a day. He'd break down and start crying. With
the help of counseling, he has begun to settle into
the reality of life without his dad. I can't change
what happened, he said. I just want to work hard
like he did and treat everyone good. What a very
heartbreaking missing person case. It is tragic when you lose
someone like that that you love and you have no
answers to make sense of anything. And then on top
of that, Trevor had the survival the survivor guilt. Why
was I found? Why was my dad continuously lost? Searched
for but looked over? It is a very heartbreaking case,
but one that I wanted to cover, and I appreciate
you coming and supporting the show and listening to this case.
If you have anything to add to it, please leave
it in the comments below. Take a few seconds just
to like and subscribe to Paranormal Odyssey. We would appreciate it,
and until our next case, we'll talk to you later.
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, thanks so very much for checking out this
episode of Paranormal Odyssey. Love you guys so much all
the continued support. I want to ask everyone please take
just a second go rate and review the show wherever
it is you get your podcasts. Also like to remind
everyone about Paranormal Odyssey Live, which can be found every
Tuesday evening eight pm over on YouTube, as well as
every other Saturday Tiffany and I Do and after our
show at ten pm over on YouTube. Guys, please go
check that out hit that subscribe button if you are
new over there, we would appreciate that so much. Also, guys,
if you would please head over and check out our website,
Paranormalworldproductions dot com, we'll see you next time.
Speaker 2: Guys, they say you don't gotta go, but you cast
stay and I don't want to poles all we're all happen.
Chrys Child, that child everything, call him ride back, ride back,
and the joy from me joy to stay right there,
come it right away. Its sassssssssssssssssss