In one of the wildest and most beautiful places on the planet, among the rocks and ancient trees of King’s Canyon National Park, a tent was found, abandoned, half collapsed, in complete silence.

When it was opened, a sleeping bag was found inside, soaked through with dried blood.

On top of it lay a small suitcase containing a neatly severed piece of human tongue.

Two words had been carved into the inside wall of the tent with a knife.

Follow Me.

It’s about a tourist who went hiking and never came back and about what was found a year after his disappearance.

It’s a story that still has more questions than answers.

It all started on Friday, September 16th, 2022.

Ethan Miller, a 32-year-old programmer from San Francisco, parked his silver Subaru in a parking lot at the end of the road at the entrance to the King’s Canyon Trail.

This was nothing new for Ethan.

He was an experienced hiker who had gone on solo hikes many times before.

The Sierra Nevada mountains were his passion, a place where he recharged after long weeks of working on code.

This 3-day hike along the famous route through the Ray Lakes was his reward for completing a project.

He packed his backpack and checked all his gear from his satellite communicator to his water filter.

Everything was in place.

He wasn’t a reckless adventurer.

He was a methodical and cautious man.

Ethan left a parking permit on the dashboard, clearly indicating his route, and estimated return date.

Sunday evening, September 18th.

He slung his backpack over his shoulders, adjusted the straps, and stepped onto the trail.

The weather was perfect.

Several other hikers who encountered him that day later recalled that he seemed calm and confident.

He smiled and nodded when he met them.

Just a regular guy enjoying the outdoors.

That evening around , his sister Emily in San Francisco received a short message from Ethan’s satellite communicator.

Just a few words.

Made it to the Ray Lakes.

Everything is according to plan.

The views are unreal.

We’ll be in touch on Sunday evening.

Emily smiled.

This was nothing unusual for her.

her brother would go off into the mountains, send a quick message to say everything was fine, and disappear for a few days.

She knew he was happy there.

She replied, wishing him a good rest, and went about her business.

That was the last message anyone ever received from Ethan Miller.

Sunday, September 18th, passed.

Evening came and turned into night, but there was no new message from Ethan.

Emily began to worry a little, but she chocked it up to possible delays.

Maybe he decided to go the extra mile.

Perhaps he was just tired and went to bed early.

Anything can happen in the mountains.

But when Monday morning came and there was still no word from her brother, her concern turned to real fear.

She knew her brother.

He was punctual.

If he said he would be in touch on Sunday, he would be a couple of hours delay.

Maybe a whole day.

No.

By lunchtime on Monday, September 19th, Emily called the King’s Canyon National Park Ranger Service.

She explained the situation and the rangers took it seriously.

First, a patrol officer went to the parking lot.

Ethan’s silver Subaru was still there.

The permit under the windshield confirmed Emily’s words.

He was supposed to return the day before.

A check of the license plate number showed that the car belonged to Ethan Miller.

The disappearance of a person in the wilderness was officially confirmed.

The next morning, Tuesday, September 20th, a full-scale search operation began.

Rangers, volunteers, search dogs, dozens of people combed the area around the Ray Lakes.

A helicopter was sent up, circling for hours over granite peaks and deep gorges, searching for any sign of a trail, a bright patch of clothing, or a backpack.

The search area was huge and incredibly difficult.

This was no recreational park.

This was wild nature in all its power and indifference.

Steep slopes, scre, dense thicket, icy rivers.

One wrong move and you could fall into a creasse where you would never be found.

Rangers questioned all tourists coming off the trail.

Some remembered a lone tourist matching Ethan’s description.

Yes, they saw him on Friday.

He was heading toward Glenn Pass.

He looked fine, well equipped and alert.

Nothing unusual.

No one saw him on Saturday or Sunday.

Search parties retraced Ethan’s route again and again.

They looked under every rock, examined every crevice.

They looked for signs of a struggle, scraps of clothing, traces of blood, an abandoned backpack, anything.

But they found nothing.

The dogs lost the trail on the rocky sections of the trail.

The helicopter saw nothing but endless rocks and trees.

Days passed.

The chances of finding Ethan alive dwindled with each passing hour.

The weather began to deteriorate.

The search became increasingly dangerous.

After 2 weeks of active searching, the operation had to be called off.

The official version was that it was an accident.

Most likely, Ethan fell off a cliff or drowned in the river.

His body is probably where it cannot be found.

It was a blow to the family.

The absence of a body, the lack of answers is the worst kind of torture.

Ethan’s car, which had been parked in the parking lot for longer than allowed, was towed away.

The case was classified as cold.

Ethan Miller became another face on the board of people missing in the American wilderness.

Almost a year passed.

It was August 2023.

The story of Ethan Miller had been virtually forgotten, remaining only as a pain for his family and another file in the park service archives.

On August 25th, a young couple, Mark and Sarah, tourists from Sacramento, decided to leave the main trail in the Ray Lakes area.

They were experienced hikers and wanted to explore a small side canyon that looked particularly picturesque on the map.

The descent was steep and overgrown.

Few people came here.

After walking about half a mile into the canyon, they saw it.

Among the rocks and sparse pine trees, a piece of faded blue fabric was visible.

It was a tent.

It wasn’t just pitched, but seemed to be driven into the ground, weighed down with rocks, and partially covered with dirt and pine needles.

It stood in a place where no one in their right mind would set up camp, too far from water, on an inconvenient slope, and most importantly, it was hidden from view.

It was impossible to see it from the main trail.

Mark and Sarah stopped.

Their first thought was that someone needed help.

Mark shouted several times, “Hey, is anyone there?” Only silence and the rustling of the wind answered him.

They approached the tent.

It looked abandoned.

The fabric was faded from the sun and covered with a layer of dust.

The zipper at the entrance was tightly closed.

Mark felt a pang of alarm.

Something was wrong here.

He pulled on the zipper.

It gave way with a dry, cracking sound.

As soon as the entrance opened, a strange, faint smell hit his nose.

It wasn’t the smell of decay they had expected to smell.

It was the dry metallic smell of old blood.

Mark looked inside.

The tent was empty except for a sleeping bag neatly spread out on a sleeping pad.

A vast almost black stain of dried blood spread across the dark blue fabric of the sleeping bag.

There was a lot of blood, but that wasn’t the worst of it.

In the center of the bloody stain lay a small transparent bag with a clip, the kind used for sandwiches.

Inside the bag was a small, dark piece of flesh.

Mark and Sarah stared at it for a few seconds, unable to comprehend what it was.

Then it dawned on them.

It was a piece of human tongue.

It hadn’t been torn off or bitten off.

The cut was clean, almost surgical.

Sarah felt nauseous and recoiled from the tent.

Mark, frozen in horror, continued to stare inside, trying to comprehend what he was seeing.

His gaze swept across the interior of the tent, and then he noticed something else.

On the inside of the tent, just above the entrance, something had been scratched out.

The letters were uneven, but clear.

The sunlight filtering through the fabric fell on them at such an angle that they were visible to one another.

The knife had cut through the waterproof layer, leaving whitish scars on the dark fabric.

Two words, “Follow me.” At that moment, an icy horror gripped them both.

This was not the scene of an accident.

This was a crime scene, and the message carved into the tent sounded like a sinister warning or a desperate last note.

They didn’t touch anything.

Stepping back from the tent, Mark took out his satellite communicator with trembling hands and pressed the SOS button.

A few minutes later, a confirmation appeared on the display.

The signal had been received.

Help was on the way.

They sat down on some rocks a few dozen meters away from their gruesome discovery.

Unable to speak, just staring at the gorge and waiting for the silence to be broken by the sound of a helicopter.

They realized that they had stumbled upon the solution to a year old mystery.

But they couldn’t have imagined how strange and inexplicable this solution would be to anyone investigating the case.

The rangers helicopter landed on the nearest suitable site about half a mile from the ravine.

Two rangers and the Fresno County Deputy Sheriff descended to Mark and Sarah.

The couple, still in shock, pointed to the tent.

From that moment on, the site was declared a crime scene.

It was cordoned off with caution tape, and every rock and pine needle became part of the puzzle.

A preliminary examination confirmed the tourist’s account.

Everything was exactly as they had described.

The tent, the blood, the bag with the piece of tongue, and the words carved into the tent.

But the investigator’s professional eyes immediately noticed details that had escaped the frightened tourists.

The main oddity was the cleanliness.

Not hygienic cleanliness, but order.

Except for a huge blood stain on the sleeping bag, there were no signs of a struggle inside the tent.

Nothing was scattered or broken.

A small pot and a gas burner had been washed and neatly folded into a case.

Spare clothes lay in a neat pile.

Next to the sleeping bag lay a closed multi-tool, a small folding knife with pliers and other tools that belong to Ethan.

It looked as if someone had done something terrible and then methodically cleaned up before leaving.

It didn’t fit any standard pattern of a murder in the wild.

The crime scene investigation team worked at the site for several hours.

They collected soil samples and photographed every inch of the area.

They did not dismantle the tent at the site.

It was carefully detached from the ground, taking care not to damage it and packed whole for transport to the laboratory.

Everything inside, including the sleeping bag and the gruesome find in the bag, was sealed as evidence.

The deputy sheriff, a veteran with 20 years on the job, shook his head as he looked at the scene.

In his entire career, he had never seen anything like it.

It didn’t look like a robbery.

It didn’t resemble an attack by a wild animal, and it didn’t appear to be a domestic dispute.

It was something else.

Quiet, cold, and inexplicable.

The mystery deepened in the lab.

The first thing they did was examine the fragment in the bag.

The forensic expert confirmed that it was indeed part of a human tongue.

DNA analysis left no doubt the biological material belonged to the missing Ethan Miller.

But the most shocking part was the conclusion about the nature of the injury.

The expert pointed out that the cut had been made with a single precise confident movement of a very sharp blade.

There were no nicks, no signs that the victim had struggled.

with surgical precision.

The report said it looked more like torture or a ritual act than spontaneous violence.

According to the expert, it would have been virtually impossible to inflict such an injury on oneself, especially so neatly.

Then the forensic experts examined Ethan’s multi-tool.

They found microscopic traces of blood on the knife blade.

A DNA test confirmed that the blood belonged to Ethan Miller.

Additionally, nylon fibers were found on the tip of the blade, matching the composition of the tent material.

A gruesome picture emerged.

This knife was most likely used to cut off the tongue and then carve the message, “Follow me.” But here, too, the investigation reached a dead end.

The knife handle had only old smudged fingerprints belonging to Ethan himself.

Not a single foreign fingerprint.

Not a single hair, not a single thread from the clothing of a stranger was found on the knife or in the tent.

Nowhere.

It was as if a ghost had been at the scene of the crime.

The words, “Follow me,” baffled everyone.

What did they mean? Was it a clue to where the body could be found? Or was it a dying message describing the killer who stood behind him while he carved those words? Or maybe it was the ravings of a man losing his mind.

The investigators leaned toward the first version.

The answer must be somewhere behind the tent, further into the gorge.

The discovery of the tent sparked a second, even larger search operation.

This time, they weren’t just looking for a missing tourist, but the body of a murder victim.

The search area was narrowed down to the gorge where the tent had been pitched and the surrounding slopes.

Dozens of volunteers and police officers combed every inch of ground.

They used metal detectors in the hope of finding a belt buckle or a zipper from a jacket.

They brought in specially trained dogs trained to search for remains.

The dogs behaved strangely.

They walked confidently toward the tent, circled, but further into the gorge.

trail ended.

They could not indicate the direction.

A week of searching yielded absolutely nothing.

Not a scrap of clothing, not a discarded backpack, not a bone, no signs of a body being dragged, nothing to indicate that someone had carried a body weighing nearly 80 kg out of this ravine.

The terrain was so impassible that it seemed impossible to pull a person out of there unnoticed without leaving any traces.

But someone had done it.

Either the killer was a master of disguise or something had happened that defied logic.

The investigators were left with a set of contradictory facts.

On the one hand, there was the scene of a brutal crime.

On the other hand, there was a complete lack of clues leading to the perpetrator and the absence of the main piece of evidence, the body.

Several theories emerged in the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office, each more insane than the last.

The first and most obvious theory was murder.

An unknown asalant attacked Ethan, perhaps another tourist with mental health issues.

He forced Ethan into the tent, tortured him, cut off his tongue, and then killed him.

After that, for some reason, he cleaned up the tent, took the body, and hid it in the mountains without a trace.

The motive remained unclear.

All of Ethan’s valuable equipment was still there.

Personal animosity, but Ethan was hiking alone and had no conflicts with anyone.

A random attack by a maniac perhaps.

But the methodical and clean execution did not fit the image of a chaotic psychopath.

The second theory, which was reluctantly discussed in whispers, was ritual murder.

The whole picture was too symbolic.

The severed tongue as a symbol of silence or punishment for some words, the strange location of the tent, the absence of the body.

Perhaps Ethan had been the random victim of some sect or group conducting rituals in the wilderness.

But this theory was pure speculation.

There were no other similar cases in the area, nor were there any reports of such groups.

And then there was a third theory, the most terrifying and illogical.

What if there were no killers? What if Ethan Miller did it all himself? This version seemed delusional, but the lack of any traces of outsiders made it worth considering.

Could a man in a state of acute psychosis caused by loneliness and stress do such a thing? cut off his tongue, carve a mysterious message on a tent, and then go into the mountains and hide so that no one would ever find him.

The medical examiner’s report spoke against this theory.

The surgical precision of the cut virtually ruled out the possibility of self mutilation, but the investigators had no other explanations for the absence of any traces of different people.

Time passed.

The active investigation reached a dead end.

The Ethan Miller case became a cold case again, but now it was in the homicide department.

It became a local legend, a scary story that tourists told each other around the campfire.

The story of the tent in the canyon.

To this day, the case remains unsolved.

Part of Ethan Miller’s tongue is all that remains of him.

His body was never found.

The tent, sleeping bag, and knife are kept in the evidence room, silent witnesses to the tragedy.

No one has ever been able to figure out what the words, “Follow me,” really meant.

Was it a clue to the location of his body, which was never found? Or was it the last thing he saw, the shadow of his killer standing behind him in the complete silence of the Wild Mountains? The answer to that question will most likely remain forever there in the silent granite heart of the canyon.