This is the story of how an ordinary student went hiking on the Appalachian Trail and disappeared for 3 years.

How hundreds of people searched for her and couldn’t find her.

And how a chance discovery by a caver revealed a truth that is still hard to believe even now.

Get ready to hear about survival in conditions that would break most of us and how the thin line between life and death sometimes depends on a single random person.

Lauren Parks was 22 years old.

She was a junior at the University of Richmond’s biology department, specializing in botany.

She was short, athletic, with dark hair tied back in a ponytail.

She was the type who preferred weekends in the woods to parties in the dorm.

She grew up in the suburbs of Richmond in a middle-class family.

Her father was an engineer and her mother was a school teacher.

She was an only child.

She had been fond of hiking since childhood.

Her parents often took her to national parks on weekends.

By the age of 22, she had more than 30 hikes under her belt, including several multi-day routes in the mountains.

Lauren was not a frivolous tourist.

She knew the safety rules and always took a map and compass with her, even when using GPS.

She knew how to build a fire in any weather, knew edible plants, and could administer first aid.

Her backpack was properly equipped, a tent, sleeping bag, stove, 5 days worth of food, water filter, first aid kit, knife, whistle, and raincoat.

On July 10th, 2010, she left Richmond for West Virginia.

The route was not difficult, a section of the Appalachian Trail in the Manonga National Forest, about 60 km.

The plan was to hike for 3 days, sleeping in a tent, and then returned to her car.

She had already hiked this section 2 years ago and knew the trail.

Lauren left her car in the parking lot near the trail head, a small gravel area for 10 cars on Highway 133 called Senica Creek Trail Head.

She signed the log book on the information board, a mandatory procedure for all hikers.

She wrote her name, the date, her planned route, and her return date, July 13th.

She sent her last message to her friend on the evening of July 11th around 900 p.m.

The text was short.

Spending the night by the creek tomorrow to the pass.

The connection is bad, but everything is okay.

After that, Lauren’s phone was no longer reachable.

On July 13th, when she was supposed to return, her friend started calling.

The phone was turned off or out of range.

By evening, her friend called Lauren’s parents.

They tried to call themselves to no avail.

On the morning of July 14th, Lauren’s father arrived at Senica Creek trail head.

His daughter’s car was in the same place.

The hood was cold, the interior was clean, and there were no signs of a struggle or break-in.

Lauren had the keys, of course.

At a.m., he called the Ranger Service.

At a.m.

, the search operation began.

The search was led by Sergeant David Holmes of the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office.

48 years old, 26 years of service, 12 of them in search and rescue operations, stocky with gray stubble, in a worn uniform.

He spoke slowly, clearly, without unnecessary words.

20 rangers from the Forest Service, 15 volunteers from the local search and rescue team, and dog handlers with three dogs were brought in to assist with the operation.

A Coast Guard helicopter was assigned on the second day.

First, they checked the obvious places.

The trail runs along Senica Creek, then climbs to Spruce Knob Pass at an altitude of about 1,200 m.

The route is marked with white marks on trees, so it is difficult to get lost.

Along the trail, there are several campsites, cleared areas with fire pits and primitive toilets.

The dogs picked up the trail near the parking lot.

The scent led them along the trail for about 3 km, then broke off.

It just disappeared.

It was as if Lauren had vanished into thin air.

That was the first oddity.

The dog handler, a woman in her 50s with a sheep dog named Rex, said to Holmes, “I’ve never seen anything like it.

Usually, the trail is lost at the water or on the rocks.

Here, it’s a dirt trail.

The trail should have continued.” Holmes ordered the search area to be expanded.

Teams combed the forest within a 5 km radius of the trail.

They checked ravines, streams, and rocky outcrops.

They looked for signs of a tent, a campfire, any traces of a campsite.

Nothing.

A helicopter flew over the area for two days in a row.

They used a thermal imager, but to no avail.

The forest there is dense and old with tall fur and maple trees, and visibility from the air is poor.

But if Lauren had been lying wounded or dead in an open area, she would have been spotted.

On the fourth day, they found her backpack.

It was lying in the bushes about a 100 meters from the trail in a small hollow between the hills.

The backpack was open, its contents scattered.

A tent, a sleeping bag, a stove, food bags.

Everything was there.

But some things were missing.

A knife, a flashlight, a first aid kit, water bottles.

They found her phone nearby.

It was turned off.

The battery was dead.

The last recorded signal was on July 11th at 21103 from a cell tower 20 km away.

Holmes examined the site.

There were no signs of a struggle.

The ground was undisturbed and no branches were broken.

The backpack lay as if it had simply been thrown down or dropped.

There were no traces of blood, no traces of animals either.

Forensic experts took the backpack and its contents.

Analysis showed only Lauren’s own fingerprints and natural contaminants, dirt, plant fibers, nothing suspicious.

The search continued for another 10 days.

Volunteers from neighboring counties, Laurens University students, and her classmates joined the operation.

At its peak, more than 100 people were working in the forest.

They combed through more than 50 km.

They checked all the caves in the area.

There are about 20 of them, most of them shallow, 10 to 15 m deep.

They searched abandoned forest cabins, old observation towers, and hunting lodges.

They found nothing.

On July 27th, the official search was called off.

Holmes held a press conference.

He said something like this.

We did everything we could.

We used all our resources.

Unfortunately, Miss Parks has not been found.

The case remains open, and we will continue to follow up on any new leads.

Lauren’s parents did not give up.

Her father hired a private investigator.

Her mother printed flyers with her daughter’s photo and posted them all over West Virginia.

They offered a reward of $10,000 for information.

Dozens of people called.

They said they had seen a girl who looked like Lauren in a parking lot near Charleston or at a gas station in Ohio or on a bus to Pittsburgh.

They checked every lead.

All of them turned out to be false.

Gradually, interest waned.

The media moved on to other news stories.

The volunteers returned to their own lives.

Her parents continued to search on their own, coming to the forest every weekend, walking the trail, calling out to their daughter.

No one answered.

By the fall of 2010, the main version of the investigation was as follows.

Lauren strayed from the trail, fell into a ravine or a hidden crevice, and died from her injuries.

Her body could have been washed away by summer rains or carried off by animals.

The forest is large and finding a body is almost impossible.

An alternative version was an attack by a bear or a cougar.

However, no attacks were reported that season and there were no animal tracks at the site where the backpack was found.

The third version, which was whispered about, was voluntary disappearance.

Maybe Lauren had problems that no one knew about.

Maybe she wanted to start a new life.

Her parents categorically rejected this version.

A fourth version, kidnapping, was considered, but quickly dismissed.

Too remote a location, too few people.

Maniacs don’t usually hunt prepared tourists in national parks.

The case gradually cooled down.

The file was shelved in the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office.

Lauren Parks was officially listed as missing.

Mark Tennyson, 36 years old, a professional speliologist and amateur geologist from Pittsburgh.

Tall, thin, with long hair tied back in a knot.

He worked as an engineer for a construction company, but spent every vacation in caves.

He specialized in exploring the littleknown cave systems of the Appalachians.

He searched for new entrances, made maps, and took photographs.

Over 10 years, he explored more than 200 caves in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.

On August 7th, 2013, Tennyson arrived in the Monanga National Forest area.

His goal was simple, to check out several potential cave entrances that a ranger friend had told him about.

The coordinates were approximate, but Tennyson knew his way around.

He walked along an old forest road that had long been overgrown with grass.

The road led to an abandoned logging station that had been in operation in the 1970s.

Now only the concrete foundations of the buildings and rusty rails remained.

About 2 kilometers from the main trail on a hillside, Tennyson noticed something strange.

A rock ledge covered with moss.

Normally he would have walked past it, but something caught his attention.

The shape was too regular, square.

He moved closer.

Under the moss was metal, a hatch about a meter by a meter in size, made of thick steel, heavily rusted.

The hinges were covered in dirt, but the structure was clearly man-made.

Tennyson cleared the moss with his hands.

Faded letters painted on the surface of the hatch appeared.

FS17.

There were no other identifying marks.

He tried to open the hatch.

For the first few minutes, it wouldn’t budge.

Tennyson took a crowbar out of his backpack, inserted it into the gap, and leaned his weight on it.

The metal creaked.

Then, suddenly, the hatch gave way and swung open.

A musty, stale smell wafted from the opening.

Tennyson turned on his flashlight and shown it down.

Inside was a concrete shaft with a metal ladder.

It went down 8 or 10 m.

The walls were damp and covered with mold.

It was dark at the bottom.

Tennyson climbed down.

At the bottom, the shaft turned into a corridor, also concrete, narrow with a low ceiling.

The floor was flat, covered with puddles in places.

The air was heavy, but breathable.

The corridor ran straight for 20 m, then turned right.

Around the corner was a metal door.

It was massive, about 10 cm thick, with a large turning mechanism in the middle, like on a submarine.

Tennyson turned the mechanism.

The door opened with difficulty.

The hinges were rusty.

Behind it was a room.

It was a bunker, an old military bunker from the Cold War era.

Tennyson had seen such bunkers before.

In the 1950s and 1960s, similar shelters were built throughout the country.

Most were abandoned after the end of the Cold War.

Many were not even included in official lists.

The room was rectangular about 6x 10 m.

Concrete walls low ceiling with ventilation pipes.

Metal shelves lined the walls.

On the shelves were boxes, cans, and canisters.

Everything was covered in dust and cobwebs.

In the center of the room was a table, two chairs, a primus stove, and several batteries for flashlights.

On the table were papers, a pen, and a notebook.

And there was also a generator, a small gasoline generator in the corner.

Next to it were cans of fuel.

Tennyson went deeper inside.

On the other side of the room was another door.

It was also metal, but smaller.

It had a bolt on the outside.

The bolt was pushed back.

He pushed the bolt back.

The door opened inward.

And then he saw her, a woman.

She was sitting on the floor by the far wall.

Her back was against the wall.

Her legs were stretched out.

Her hands were resting on her knees.

She was alive, but she looked like a ghost.

Her skin was pale, almost gray.

Her hair was long, tangled, and dirty.

Her face was thin, her cheekbones protruding.

Her eyes were wide open, but her gaze was empty.

She looked at Tennyson, but did not move.

She did not even blink.

She was wearing a dirty t-shirt and sweatpants.

She was barefoot.

On her right leg were shackles.

A thick metal chain about 2 m long was chained to a pipe that ran along the wall.

There was a smell in the room.

Strong, unpleasant.

The smell of an unwashed body.

Urine rot.

Tennyson froze.

For a few seconds, he just stood there, not knowing what to do.

Then he slowly approached.

He crouched down a couple of meters away.

He said quietly, “Hey, can you hear me?” The woman flinched sharply.

She recoiled against the wall, pressing her back against it.

Her hands rose, covering her face.

She was trembling.

Tennyson raised his hands, showing that he was unarmed.

“It’s okay.

I won’t hurt you.

My name is Mark.

I’ll get you out of here.” The woman didn’t answer.

She continued to tremble.

Tennyson took out his phone.

There was no signal.

The concrete walls were blocking it.

He quickly climbed up to the hatch.

On the surface, he got one bar.

He dialed 911.

The operator answered after three rings.

Emergency services.

How can I help you? I need the police and an ambulance.

Urgently.

I found a woman.

She’s being held captive.

She’s alive, but she needs help.

He gave the coordinates as best he could, describing the location, the distance from the main road, landmarks.

The operator said that a team would be dispatched immediately.

Tennyson returned to the bunker.

The woman was still sitting by the wall.

He brought her water from his flask and handed it to her.

Here, drink.

She looked at the flask.

Then slowly, very slowly, she reached out her hand.

She took it.

She brought it to her mouth.

She drank in small sips as if she was afraid the water would be taken away.

Tennyson sat down on the floor opposite her.

He spoke calmly, quietly.

“What’s your name?” A long pause.

Then the woman opened her mouth.

Her voice was broken.

Lauren? Another pause.

I’m from Richmond.

The sheriff and his deputy were the first to arrive.

20 minutes later, an ambulance and two more patrol cars arrived.

Then, firefighters with hydraulic cutters arrived to cut the chain.

Lauren was carried out on a stretcher.

She was conscious, but barely responsive to what was happening.

She didn’t speak or cry.

She just stared at the sky.

It was the first time she had seen the sun in 3 years.

At the hospital, she was examined by a team of doctors.

The results were terrifying.

Her weight was 38 kg.

At a height of 165 cm, this was critical malnutrition.

Her body mass index was 14.

And anything below 16 is considered life-threatening.

Muscle atrophy, especially in her legs.

Lauren could barely walk.

Her muscles had simply atrophied from lack of movement.

Multiple old fractures.

Two cracks in her ribs that had healed incorrectly.

A fracture of her left collarbone.

A fracture of the little finger on her right hand.

Scars on her wrists and ankles.

Marks from ropes or chains.

The skin in these areas was rubbed raw.

Vitamin D deficiency, a sign of prolonged lack of sunlight.

anemia, dehydration, teeth in poor condition, cavities, gum inflammation.

Her psychological state was even worse.

Lauren couldn’t speak coherently.

She answered questions with one-word answers or remained silent.

She was afraid of loud noises.

When a door slammed or someone spoke suddenly, she would cringe and cover her head with her hands.

She couldn’t look people in the eye.

She was constantly trembling.

Doctors diagnosed her with acute post-traumatic stress disorder, deprivation, signs of prolonged psychological abuse.

The hospital’s chief psychiatrist, Dr.

Emily Grant, a woman in her 50s with gray hair and tired eyes, said at a press conference, “This condition is typical for people who have been held captive for a long time without sunlight and without normal human interaction.

These are classic signs of isolation and deprivation.

Recovery will take years.

The bunker was examined by a forensic team from Charleston.

They worked for 3 days.

They photographed every inch and collected all the evidence.

The bunker was built in the 1950s.

It was one of hundreds of similar structures scattered across the country during the Cold War.

It was officially closed in the 1970s.

The documents were poorly preserved and its exact location was not indicated on any modern map.

Inside they found food supplies, canned food, dry rations, biscuits.

Most of it was past its expiration date, but still edible.

There were 20 L canisters of water, a generator with fuel, lamps, batteries.

On the shelves were blankets, clothes, and hygiene supplies.

Soap, toothpaste, toilet paper, and also medicines, antibiotics, painkillers, bandages, syringes, empty ampules.

In the main room, they found magazines, ordinary school notebooks filled with handwritten notes.

The handwriting was masculine, small, neat.

The notes were strange.

Dates, times, short notes.

Experts identified the person by his handwriting and fingerprints.

Gerald Matthews, 52 years old, a former electrician from the town of Elkins, 30 km from the scene.

Criminal record.

In 1996, he was convicted of assaulting a woman.

He attacked a tourist in a parking lot near a campground and tried to drag her into his car.

The victim resisted and he backed off.

He received a three-year suspended sentence and mandatory psychiatric treatment.

He underwent treatment formally and his observation ended in 2001.

Since 2002, Matthews had been living alone in a trailer outside the city.

He rarely worked, getting by on odd jobs.

Neighbors said he was quiet, unsociable, strange.

No friends, no connections.

The investigation established the following.

Matthews knew about the bunker.

He may have worked at a military facility in his youth or learned about it from someone else.

He found the entrance and restored the bunker to working order.

He brought supplies there and equipped it as a shelter.

Then he began to follow tourists on the Appalachian Trail.

He chose single women.

He studied the roots and waited for the right moment.

Lauren Parks was not his first attempt, but perhaps it was his first successful one.

On July 11th, 2010, he intercepted her on the trail.

How exactly is unclear.

Perhaps he approached her pretending to be a lost hiker and asked for help.

Or he attacked her from behind and knocked her unconscious.

Lauren was never able to remember the details.

Her memory was blocked by the trauma.

He took her to the bunker.

How is also unclear.

Perhaps he drove her there on an old forest road that comes quite close.

or he carried her in his arms.

The distance is not great, only 2 km.

He threw away Lauren’s backpack to throw off any search.

He turned off her phone.

He scattered her belongings.

He kept her chained up in the bunker.

He fed her the bare minimum, enough to keep her alive, but not enough to allow her to resist.

Sometimes he gave her sleeping pills or sedatives.

Empty ampules were found in the trash.

According to medical records, there was no physical sexual abuse, but psychological abuse was constant.

Isolation, threats, punishment, control.

Matthews kept journals recording everything.

It was his form of control.

He wanted to document his power.

In April 2012, Matthews disappeared.

His body was found in June of that year in a trailer.

The cause of death was a stroke.

The exact date of death was determined to be approximately the end of April or beginning of May.

After his death, Lauren was left alone, locked in a bunker, chained with limited food and water supplies.

She lived like this for over a year.

Lauren only began to speak 3 weeks after her rescue.

First individual words, then short phrases.

Psychologists worked with her daily, very carefully.

She recounted what she remembered.

The first weeks were the worst.

She screamed, tried to break free, banged herself against the walls.

Matthews rarely came once every 2 or 3 days.

He brought food, changed the water, took away the waste.

He hardly spoke.

When she tried to break free or hit him, he just left and didn’t give her food for a day or two.

Lauren quickly realized that resistance was feudal.

Gradually, she stopped hoping.

She stopped counting the days.

She just existed.

She slept and ate when she was given food.

The rest of the time, she sat by the wall and stared into the darkness.

Time lost its meaning.

The days merged into one gray blur.

There were no windows, no clocks, only a lamp that Matthews turned on when he came in.

Then he turned it off and left.

She tried to think about her parents, her friends, her home.

But gradually these images faded.

Reality narrowed to the size of the room, to the chain on her leg, to the sound of footsteps in the hallway.

Then Matthew stopped coming.

Lauren didn’t know how much time had passed.

Maybe a day, maybe two.

She waited.

Then she realized that her food supply was running out.

She had about a week’s worth of water left.

She began to conserve.

She drank a few sips a day.

She ate one can of food every 2 days.

The water ran out first.

Lauren started drinking the condensation that collected on the pipes.

Cold drops, dirty, but liquid.

The food ran out after a few weeks.

She didn’t know exactly.

Then there was only hunger, constant, oppressive, maddening.

Lauren lay on the floor and didn’t move.

She had no strength, only thirst and pain in her stomach.

She thought she was going to die.

She wanted to die.

Just close her eyes and never open them again.

But her body continued to live.

After a while, Matthews finally came.

He brought food and water.

Lauren pounced on the can of stew, eating with her hands, choking.

He no longer kept records.

He came less often.

He looked bad, pale, haggarded.

He said something about illness, about the hospital.

Lauren didn’t listen.

She just waited for food.

Then he stopped coming again.

This time for good.

Lauren didn’t know how much time had passed.

Weeks, months.

Everything blurred together.

She stopped counting.

She just waited.

Sometimes she heard sounds from above.

the noise of the wind, rain, birds, very distant, almost unreal.

Sometimes she thought she was imagining them.

She stopped speaking aloud.

Her throat was dry.

Her voice was gone.

When Tennyson arrived, Lauren initially thought it was a hallucination or that Matthews had returned.

She did not understand what was happening until she was brought to the surface.

The light was unbearable.

The air was too fresh.

Everything seemed unreal.

The public was divided.

Some demanded an investigation.

Why the search was called off so quickly, why the bunker wasn’t found, why Matthews was missed.

Others said that the tourists themselves were to blame.

You shouldn’t go into the forest alone.

The authorities launched an internal investigation.

They checked all the actions of the search team.

The conclusion was that the operation had been carried out according to protocol and all available resources had been used.

The bunker was outside the search area.

The entrance was hidden and there were no records of it.

No one was punished.

No one was held responsible.

Sergeant Holmes retired 6 months later.

At his farewell dinner, he told his colleagues, “I see her face every night, and I can’t forget that she was there 2 km away.

” and we walked right past her.

Mark Tennyson was awarded.

The governor of West Virginia presented him with a medal for civic courage.

Lauren’s parents offered him a reward of $10,000.

He refused.

In an interview with a local newspaper, Tennyson said, “I just happened to be in the right place.

Anyone would have done the same thing.

The main thing is that she’s alive.” Lauren spent four months in the hospital.

Her physical recovery was slow but steady.

She gradually gained weight and her muscles returned.

Her fractures healed.

Her psychological recovery was more difficult.

For the first few months, she hardly spoke.

She sat in her room and stared out the window.

She was afraid to go outside.

She was afraid of strangers.

She was afraid of the dark and asked for the lights to be left on all night.

Gradually, very slowly, she began to return to normal.

Psychologists worked with her everyday.

Her parents came every day.

Friends wrote letters.

A year later, Lauren gave her first interview.

The journalist from the Washington Post was a woman in her 40s, calm and tactful.

The conversation was recorded on a tape recorder, but most of it was not published.

It was too difficult.

Lauren said, “I thought no one was looking for me.

I was just waiting for the end.

Every day I thought, today is probably the last day.” But my body didn’t want to die.

It kept breathing.

My heart kept beating.

And now here I am.

I’m alive.

I don’t know why.

I don’t know what to do with it, but I’m