In July 2004, two young women disappeared in Yellowstone National Park during a week-l long hike.

Two years later, one of them emerged from the forest, emaciated, disoriented, barely alive.

What she told investigators forced a complete rethinking of who and what might be lurking in the millions of acres of wilderness in America’s national parks.

Her friend was found dead, but those who held them captive for more than 20 months were never found.

Meredith Grant, 23, and Emma Reed, 22, had been close friends since college.

Both graduated from the University of Denver.

Meredith worked as an accounting assistant, Emma as a nurse at a city clinic.

They loved hiking, had been to the Colorado Mountains several times, and were planning more serious routes.

Yellowstone was their first trip to a truly wild area, a territory where infrastructure is minimal and distances between points are measured in tens of kilome.

On July 9th, 2004, they arrived in Yellowstone in Meredith’s car, an old Jeep Cherokee SUV.

They stopped in the town of Gardener at the northern entrance to the park, spent the night in a motel, and on the morning of July 10th, they went to the ranger station to obtain a permit for a route in the back country, an area of wilderness where it is permitted to pitch tents away from equipped campsites.

The ranger who issued their permit, a woman named Deborah Kin, later recalled that the girls looked well prepared.

They had highquality backpacks, sleeping bags, a tent, a GPS navigator, and maps.

They plan to hike a route about 50 km long across the northern plateaus of the park, the Blacktail area, which is rarely visited by tourists due to the lack of iconic attractions such as geysers.

There were meadows, sparse forests, several streams, and hilly terrain.

It was a quiet but picturesque place.

Deborah gave them a 7-day permit, explained the rules for storing food away from bears, and showed them the mandatory overnight stops on the map, places where they could safely pitch their tents.

She warned them that there was almost no cell service in the area, especially in the lands.

She advised them to take a satellite phone, but the girls didn’t have one.

Deborah wrote down their names, car number, planned route, and return date, July 17th.

Meredith and Emma left for the trail head, the starting point of the trail, around a.m.

Their car was seen in the parking lot on the road leading to Blacktail Plateau.

The last confirmed message from them was sent to Meredith’s parents around p.m.

that same day.

The message included a photo of the girls smiling in full gear with the trail in the background.

The text read, “Heading out on the trail.

There’s almost no one here.

It’s beautiful.

We’ll be back in a week.” The coordinates of the photo matched the start of the trail.

There was no contact from the girls for the next 3 days, but that was normal for that area.

Cell phone service only worked on the hills, and even then it was intermittent.

Their parents weren’t worried.

The girls had warned them that they might not be able to get in touch.

Friday, July 17th, the day of their planned return.

By evening, Meredith’s car was still in the parking lot.

On Saturday morning, the 18th, one of the park visitors noticed that the Jeep Cherokee had been in the same spot for several days, covered in dust, the windows fogged up from the heat.

He reported it to the rangers.

Deborah Keane checked the car’s license plate number against her records and realized that the girls had not returned on time.

By lunchtime on July 18th, Meredith and Emma’s parents had been contacted.

No one had heard from the girls since the 10th.

Meredith’s parents immediately left Denver.

Emma’s parents lived in Oregon and flew to Billings, then drove to Yellowstone.

On July 19th, an official search operation began.

A group of eight rangers and volunteers set out on the route indicated in the girls permit.

The weather was hot, around 32 degrees C during the day, which was normal for Yellowstone in July.

The sky was clear, visibility was excellent.

The first few kilometers of the trail yielded no clues.

The ground here is hard and footprints are almost invisible.

After 7 km, the route passed a small pond, a natural body of water in a low-lying area.

The shore here is sandy, and the rangers found the footprints of two people.

The sizes matched the shoes the girl’s parents had described.

The footprints led from the trail to the water, then back to the trail.

A normal stop to replenish water supplies.

Further on, the trail climbed to a small plateau, then led to a wooded area.

About 12 kilometers from the start of the route, the group found the girl’s first campsite.

It was a flat area under pine trees with clear signs of a tent, flattened grass, and small peg marks.

There were no belongings or trash.

The girls had cleaned up after themselves, as they should have.

On the next section, there were fewer traces.

The trail ran along rocky ground through meadows with tall grass.

At about 18 km, the route split in two.

The main trail went east towards Lake Troo.

The second branch, less noticeable, went north to the closed area of the park, a territory where access is restricted due to bear activity and difficult terrain.

Here, the rangers found the girl’s tent.

It lay under a tree neatly folded and packed in a cover.

Next to it were two sleeping bags, also folded.

The backpacks were leaning against the trunk, zipped up.

Inside were clothes, personal items, Meredith’s GPS navigator, maps, and a first aid kit.

The food was partially eaten with about 3 days worth remaining.

The water bottles were half full.

There were no signs of a struggle.

There was no damage to the equipment.

It looked as if the girls had deliberately left their things here, intending to return, but they did not return.

The GPS navigator was checked.

The last saved point was dated July 11th around 400 p.m.

The coordinates matched the location where the items were found.

The route on the navigator showed that the girls had walked about 20 km from the start of the trail in 2 days, a normal pace for a leisurely hike.

The rangers expanded the search area.

They searched the area around the find within a radius of 2 km.

No traces of the girls, no scraps of clothing, personal belongings, traces of blood, nothing.

On July 20th, a helicopter joined the search.

They surveyed the entire Blacktail Plateau area from the air and took thermal images in case the girls were lying wounded somewhere.

Nothing.

Sniffer dogs were brought in the next day.

They were given items from the backpacks to sniff.

The dogs picked up a scent from the site where the tent had been found and led the group north toward the restricted area.

The trail followed a barely visible path for about a kilometer, then disappeared at a rocky area.

The dogs lost the scent.

They tried to find the trail further on, circling the area, but to no avail.

The search continued for 2 weeks.

Every day, groups of rangers, volunteers, and relatives of the girls combed the area.

They checked all the nearby streams, ravines, and caves.

They descended into several crevices.

Nothing.

Meredith and Emma seemed to have vanished.

By the beginning of August 2004, the official search had been called off.

The statistics on missing persons in national parks are grim.

If a person is not found within the first week, the chances of finding them alive are close to zero.

The chances of finding them dead depend on the terrain.

In Yellowstone, with its thousands of square kilometers of wilderness, a body could lie in an inaccessible place for decades.

The case of the disappearance of Meredith Grant and Emma Reed was transferred to the National Park Services Investigation Department.

The official version, the girls strayed from their route and got into an emergency situation, possibly a bear attack, a fall from a cliff, or drowning in a stream.

The bodies were not found due to the difficult terrain.

The parents refused to believe it.

They hired private searchers who made another attempt in September.

The result was the same.

Nothing.

By the winter of 2004, the search had finally ended.

Two years passed.

June 3rd, 2006.

Early morning, a service road in the northern part of Yellowstone near the border of the restricted area.

Communications maintenance technician Robert Jansen was driving to check the communication repeaters installed on the hills.

Around 7 in the morning, he saw a figure on the road.

A woman barefoot in dirty, torn clothes, emaciated with long, tangled hair.

She was walking down the middle of the road, stumbling, clutching her stomach.

Robert breakd looked at him and fell to her knees.

Robert ran over and tried to help her up.

She muttered something, her words indistinct.

He carried her to the car and gave her water from a bottle.

She drank greedily, choking.

He tried to find out who she was and what had happened.

The woman looked at him, her lips moving, but no words came out.

Robert called for help on his radio and gave his coordinates.

20 minutes later, a ranger vehicle arrived with a medic.

The woman was taken to the station and then by helicopter to the hospital in Billings.

She was examined at the hospital.

She weighed 39 kg and was 165 cm tall.

She was extremely emaciated and dehydrated with multiple old scars on her arms and legs, signs of prolonged malnutrition.

Her teeth were in poor condition and her gums were bleeding.

Her hair was waistlength and matted.

Her mental state was one of disorientation with signs of post-traumatic stress and slurred speech.

She hardly spoke for the first day.

She only drank water and ate a little.

The doctors were afraid to give her a lot of food at once.

After prolonged starvation, this is dangerous.

On the second day, she was able to give her name, Meredith Grant.

The Rangers checked the missing person’s database.

A match.

Meredith Grant, 23 years old at the time of her disappearance, went missing in July 2004, along with her friend.

23 months had passed.

They took DNA samples and compared them with material from her belongings left in her backpack.

The match was 100%.

It was her.

Meredith’s parents were notified on the third day.

They flew to Billings from Denver immediately.

Her mother fainted when she saw her daughter.

Her father cried.

Meredith looked at them, recognized them, but did not react emotionally.

She just stared.

A psychologist and an investigator from the National Park Service were assigned to her.

The investigator’s name was Marcus Hall, an experienced man who had been working on missing person’s cases for more than 15 years.

He began to talk to Meredith gently without pressuring her or asking direct questions.

He just was there, letting her get used to him.

On the fifth day, Meredith began to speak coherently.

The first thing she said to Marcus was, “They were holding us.

They weren’t tourists.

They live there all the time.

” Marcus asked her to tell him everything from the beginning without rushing.

Meredith spoke slowly, pausing, sometimes falling silent for several minutes.

Marcus took notes without interrupting.

According to Meredith, she and Emma were following their planned route.

On the afternoon of July 11th, they reached a fork in the trail.

They decided to take the northern branch to see what was there and returned to the main route later.

They left their tent and most of their equipment under a tree, taking only water bottles and a small backpack with food.

They walked about a kilometer along a faint trail.

They came out into an open clearing surrounded by forest.

They decided to stop and have a snack.

She sat down on the grass and took out the food.

Then people appeared, three of them, two men and a woman.

They came out of the forest.

They were dressed strangely, not in tourist clothes, but in something homemade, roughly sewn from skins and fabric.

Dirty bearded men, a woman with long, uncomebed hair, no backpacks, no visible equipment.

Meredith and Emma decided that they might be tourists who had lost their belongings, or perhaps hermits.

They tried to talk to them, asking if they needed help.

The people did not respond.

They just came closer.

One of the men, tall with a beard down to his chest, said, “Come with us.

” Meredith tried to explain that they had their own route and would not go.

Emma offered to give them water and food if they needed it.

The man repeated, “Come with us, otherwise it will be worse.” The second man pulled a knife from his belt.

It was long, homemade, and resembled a machete.

He stood between the girls and the path.

Meredith realized that this was not a request.

It was a demand.

Emma understood, too.

They exchanged glances.

There were no options.

The man with the knife stood close.

The other two flanked them.

Screaming was useless.

There was no one around, just miles of wild forest.

They walked.

They were led deep into the forest along barely visible paths between trees through thicket.

They walked for about 2 hours.

No one spoke.

Meredith tried to memorize the direction and landmarks, but everything blended together.

The forest, the rocks, the streams.

They crossed several small streams, climbed hills, and descended into valleys.

Finally, they came to a place that Meredith described as a hidden settlement.

Dugouts dug into the hillside, covered with logs and turf.

Several old buildings made of logs and boards, half ruined.

a hearth in the middle of the yard with a pot hanging over it.

Ropes were strung around with skins and clothes drying on them.

There were more people.

Meredith counted about seven adults and three teenagers.

Women, men of different ages, all dressed in homemade clothes, dirty, silent.

They looked at the girls without emotion.

They were taken to one of the dugouts, a cramped room that smelled of dampness and rot.

Inside there were skins on the floor and a bucket in the corner.

The door was closed from the outside and blocked with a log.

For the first few days, Meredith and Emma tried to understand what was happening.

They were fed once a day.

Boiled roots, meat of unknown origin, water.

They were allowed to use the toilet under supervision.

They were not allowed to talk.

If they tried to ask questions, they were simply ignored or pushed back into the dugout.

After a week, one of the women, older than the others, perhaps 50 years old, approached Meredith and said in broken English, “You will stay.

You will work.

If you try to leave, we will kill you.

” There was no further explanation.

The work consisted of routine tasks, gathering firewood, carrying water from the stream, cleaning skins, and helping to prepare food.

They were kept under constant supervision.

They slept in the dugout and the door was locked at night.

During the day, one of the men always watched them, keeping a distance of 10 m.

If they tried to stray further from the settlement, they were brought back by force.

Emma did not tolerate the conditions well.

She was a nurse and understood that the food was insufficient, the water was not always clean, and there was no hygiene.

After a few weeks, she began to feel ill, coughing, weakness, fever.

Meredith asked for medicine, for them to be released, or at least for Emma to be given normal food.

There was no response.

By September 2004, Emma’s condition had worsened.

She hardly got out of bed, coughed up blood, and was delirious.

Meredith begged those people to help, but they only brought water and sometimes broth.

No medicine, no medical care.

At the end of September, Emma died.

She lay on the skins in the corner of the dugout, coughing, gasping for breath, wheezing.

Meredith held her hand.

By morning, her breathing had stopped.

Meredith screamed, banged on the door, demanded to be let out.

The door was opened a few hours later.

Two men came in, took Emma’s body, and carried it out.

Meredith tried to follow them, but they pushed her away and locked her back in.

She didn’t see what they did with Emma’s body.

She only heard sounds somewhere beyond the settlement, digging, perhaps.

A day later, the smell of decay intensified, then disappeared.

After Emma’s death, Meredith was kept alone.

The work continued.

Now she was the only one who carried wood and water and cleaned the skins.

They stopped keeping her in the dugout all the time.

They allowed her to sleep by the hearth when the weather was warm.

The supervision was relaxed but not removed.

Someone was always nearby.

Months passed.

Meredith lost track of time.

Autumn, winter, snow.

Cold in the dugout, frost at night, minimal food.

She lost a lot of weight.

Frost bitten her toes.

Was sick but survived.

spring, summer, autumn again.

Sometime around the winter of 2005, she began to notice that the surveillance had become even weaker.

People had gotten used to her.

She had become part of their daily lives.

Sometimes they sent her to fetch water alone without an escort.

They trusted that she would not run away.

After all, where could she go? There was forest all around, miles to any road and no known directions.

But Meredith never stopped thinking about escape.

She observed and memorized.

She realized that the settlement was located in a deep valley surrounded by hills.

The stream flowed westward.

If she followed the stream, it would lead her to a river, and rivers led to roads.

In March 2006, when the snow began to melt, Meredith made up her mind.

She was sent to fetch water from the stream which was about 300 m from the settlement.

She took a bucket and set off.

She reached the stream, looked around.

No one was nearby.

She dropped the bucket and ran along the stream downstream.

She ran as far as she could.

Her feet were bare, her clothes were light, and it was cold.

She stumbled, fell, got up, and ran on.

She heard shouts behind her.

They had noticed she was missing.

She ran faster.

The stream led to the river.

Meredith walked along the river, making her way through the undergrowth, sometimes stepping into the water when the bank was too cluttered with windfall.

She walked all day.

At night, she hid under a fallen tree, shivering from the cold, but she didn’t stop.

On the second day, she came out to the road.

It was a service road, unpaved, but clearly used.

She walked along the road.

She walked for several hours.

She met a car, Robert’s vehicle.

Marcus Hall listened and took notes.

He asked clarifying questions.

Meredith answered, sometimes crying, sometimes falling silent for long periods.

The story took several days to tell.

She couldn’t talk for long.

She got tired and fell asleep.

Meredith’s testimony was verified.

Marcus organized a search party, armed and trained.

Meredith drew a rough map of the route they had taken with those people, the direction of the stream, and the location of the settlement.

A group of 12 rangers and two sheriff’s deputies set out for the indicated area.

In midJune 2006, they took dogs, GPS, communications equipment, and medicine.

They followed Meredith’s description, found the stream bed, and went upstream.

Two days later, they found the valley.

Hills surrounded it with the stream in the middle, overgrown with forest.

They went deeper into the valley.

They found traces of a settlement.

The dugouts were empty.

The hearth was cold, long unused.

The buildings were abandoned.

The people were gone.

The rangers searched the place.

They found things.

Scraps of clothing, tools, dishes, animal bones.

In one of the dugouts, they found the remains of a woman’s t-shirt, faded and torn.

It had part of the University of Denver logo on it.

Emma’s parents confirmed that their daughter had such a t-shirt and had taken it on the hike.

About 50 m away from the settlement, under some trees, they found a shallow grave.

They dug it up.

Inside were human remains, a skeleton, and partially preserved clothing.

DNA testing confirmed that it was Emma Reed.

The remains showed that death was caused by a severe lung infection, probably pneumonia.

There were no signs of violent death or injuries indicating murder.

Emma died of illness, just as Meredith had said, but no people were found.

The settlement had been abandoned probably recently a few weeks ago, judging by the degree of desolation.

Rangers combed the surrounding area within a 10 km radius.

They found several more caches of belongings, traces of temporary camps, but not a single person.

The investigation continued for months.

They questioned all the caretakers, rangers, and local residents to see if anyone had seen a group of strangely dressed people in those areas.

Several testimonies surfaced.

One of the rangers, who had been working in the northern part of the park since the early ’90s, recalled seeing a group of people matching Meredith’s description near the restricted area in 1997.

At the time, he thought they were tourists who had broken the rules and tried to approach them, but they disappeared into the forest.

He didn’t think much of it, deciding they were just hermits or hippies.

A guide who led tourists in the Blacktale Plateau area said that in 2003, he found a strange settlement deep in the forest.

Dugouts, hearths.

There was no one there, he reported to the rangers.

But by the time they arrived to check, the place had already been abandoned.

A theory emerged about a closed, isolated group that had been living outside the system for years, perhaps decades.

People who, for whatever reason, had decided to disappear from society.

Perhaps hiding from the law, perhaps adhering to radical beliefs, perhaps mentally ill.

They knew the area, knew how to survive, and avoided contact.

The FBI joined the investigation, checking databases of missing persons.

Perhaps one of the members of that group was wanted.

The results did not provide a clear picture.

There was too little data.

The search for the group continued until the fall of 2006, then was called off.

Officially, the case remained open, but no active measures were taken.

Yellowstone is a huge area and it is possible to hide there indefinitely.

Emma Reed’s death was confirmed and her remains were handed over to her parents for burial.

The theory of a closed isolated group was accepted as the main one.

No one was arrested.

Access to the area is closed to tourists under the pretext of danger to wildlife.

Meredith Grant underwent lengthy physical and psychological rehabilitation.

She gained weight and regained her health, but the psychological scars remained.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, nightmares, panic attacks.

She refused to appear in public, gave no interviews, and did not communicate with journalists.

In 2007, she moved in with her parents in Denver, changed her appearance, and started a new life under a different name.

Officially, the case of her disappearance was closed as solved.

The victim was found alive.

Emma’s parents filed a lawsuit against the National Park Service accusing it of inadequate security and negligence.

The case was settled out of court and the amount of compensation was not disclosed.

One of the rangers involved in the investigation anonymously commented on a documentary podcast about people who have disappeared in national parks.

We look for loners and predators, but sometimes the most dangerous are those who have decided to disappear forever.

They know the area.

They are organized.

They are invisible.

And there may be more of them than we think.

This story raises questions about what lies hidden in the millions of acres of wilderness in America’s national parks.

How many people live there outside the system? How many isolated groups exist in inaccessible areas? How often do tourists encounter them and simply never return to tell the tale? Official statistics from the National Park Service show that between 200 and 300 people go missing in the parks each year.

Most are found alive within a few days.

About 10% are found dead, accidents, falls, hypothermia, but about 5% are never found.

their cases remain open for decades.

How many of that 5% encountered something similar to what Meredith and Emma experienced? How many were captured by isolated groups and were unable to return? Meredith survived not because she was stronger than Emma.

She survived because she waited.

For 2 years, she obeyed orders, worked, did not resist openly, and saved her strength.

She waited for the moment when supervision would slacken, when an opportunity would arise.

And when the opportunity arose, she seized it.

Emma did not wait.

Illness took her after 3 months of captivity.

In modern conditions, pneumonia can be treated with antibiotics in a week.

In a dugout, without medicine, without drugs, with poor nutrition, it is a death sentence.

The case of Meredith Grant and Emma Reed remains one of the most mysterious in Yellowstone’s history.

Not because of mysticism or unexplained phenomena.

It is because of the real threat that exists in the park and possibly other parks.

Isolated groups of people living outside the law, outside the system, deep in the wilderness.

Groups that capture tourists and hold them captive.

Why? for labor, for control, out of paranoia, out of conviction.

Meredith couldn’t answer all the questions.

Those people hardly spoke.

No explanations, no excuses.

They just held them, forced them to work, controlled them, as if it were normal, as if they had done it before.

Perhaps Meredith and Emma weren’t the first.

Perhaps there were others before them.

those who didn’t return, those who are listed among the 5% of people who have gone missing.

The Blacktail Plateau area now has restricted access.

Officially, this is due to unstable soil and the risk of forest fires.

Unofficially, it is because those people may be there or others like them.

The National Park Service does not comment on the details of the case publicly.

Meredith and Emma’s relatives have been advised not to share information.

Documentary podcasts and articles about the case are minimal and restrained, but information is leaking out.

Tourists planning trips to Yellowstone sometimes ask rangers about the safety of remote areas.

Rangers respond with standard advice.

Stay on the trails.

Register your plans.

Bring communication devices.

And don’t go alone.

But some add an unspoken warning.

If you encounter people who look strange, avoid contact and are not dressed like tourists.

Don’t try to communicate with them.

Turn around and leave.

If they follow you, run.

If they block your path, shout, “Use a whistle.

Do everything you can to attract attention.” These are not official instructions.

They are unspoken tips passed on from experienced rangers to newcomers.

They are based on incidents that are not talked about openly.