In the Woods Somewhere

Unearthing Dark Secrets in the Great Smoky Mountains: A Former Park Ranger Recounts the Mysterious and Terrifying Disappearance of a Young Boy

In the Woods Somewhere

by William Danton

I was a ranger of these Great Smoky Mountains when I was 21 years old. Hard to believe. Grandfather was a ranger. Father too. Me and him was rangers at the same time, him up in Gatlinburg and me down in Bryson. I think he’s pretty proud of that. I know I was.

My pa always told me that these mountains was the oldest in the world. “Older than time,” he said. Shrouded in mystery. He’d seen and heard all manner of unexplainable things during his years with the National Park Service. Bigfoot. Wildmen. Witchcraft. You name it. My old man was real superstitious, so I took his tales with a grain of salt growin’ up. That all changed with the Andrew Graves case. I realized there might have been some truth in what the old man had been tellin’ me.

June 21st, 1983. The solstice. I remember. Was fresh out of ranger school at the time. A young buck eager to prove myself. Pa had garnered quite the reputation with the park service, so I knew I had some big shoes to fill. I was ready for anythin’, but no amount of training or fatherly wisdom could have prepared me for that fateful day.

They had me posted at the Deep Creek Station. It’d been pissin’ rain all mornin’, and it was just startin’ to let up that afternoon. That’s about when some feller ran in soaked to the bone. Panicked as all hell. Said he was a Scoutmaster. His troop had been hiking along the Deep Creek Trail when they got caught off-guard by the storm and had to shelter in place. That’s when he noticed one of his Boy Scouts was gone. Andrew Graves, age ten. He told his troop to stay put, and braved the downpour for the nearest ranger outpost. I immediately called in a missin’ person report for the boy. This was serious.

We were burnin’ daylight. Time was of the essence. About an hour later we’d scrambled together a modest search party of a couple dozen men at the trailhead. A few rangers, a few cops, and some local hunters. We quickly spread out in search of little Andrew.

Day turned to night, but the search pressed on. Our party numbers had quadrupled by sundown. More rangers, police with dogs, and volunteers joined our ranks. They even flew in a search and rescue chopper from Knoxville. All this, yet still no sign of the boy.

As night fell, a thick layer of fog rolled in, suffocatin’ the woods in an eerie haze. The fog became so dense that they had to abort the chopper. Couldn’t see a damn thing. Too risky to fly in those conditions.

‘Round midnight, we got a glimmer of hope on Andrew’s whereabouts. A police K-9 unit found one of his hiking shoes stuck in the mud. At that moment, it dawned on me that the boy had been runnin’ from someone… or something. Any trace of whatever it was had been washed away by the storm.

Myself and several other rangers followed the search dog to the mouth of an uncharted cave about a mile off trail. What we found inside still haunts me to this day. 

We followed the dog into that ‘ol cavern with our flashlights and sidearms drawn. Cave paintings depicting scenes of death adorned the walls all around us as we delved deeper into the unknown. After what felt like an eternity, we finally reached the end of the cave. That’s where we found him... motionless… lifeless. 

 I’ll never forget the look on that poor boy’s face. Pale as death. Bug-eyed with his mouth ajar. Terror stricken. Coroner said he’d screamed so loud that he dislocated his own jaw. I can’t imagine what he witnessed in his final moments. I shudder at the thought.

His chest had been torn open exposing a broken ribcage. His heart was gone. The official coroner’s report listed Andrew’s cause of death as a cougar attack, but I knew it was bullshit. Just somethin’ to give the tourists closure. Somethin’ that made sense.

Years on, I worked up the courage to go back to that godforsaken cave. Why? Morbid curiosity I guess. Pa warned me not to, but I went anyway. I should’ve heeded his advice.

I returned to where we found Andrew’s body. That’s when I heard it… thump-THUMP… thump-THUMP… thump-THUMP… a heartbeat echoed through the cave. Just then my flashlight died unexpectedly, and I was at the mercy of the darkness. Again… thump-THUMP… thump-THUMP… thump-THUMP… only louder. I’ve never felt fear like that. The kind that penetrates your soul. By some miracle, I was able to feel my way back out into the light. I was lucky to be alive.

In my youth, I loved wanderin’ off the beaten path. Nowadays, I’m less adventurous. Not out of fear, but I don’t wanna put my chips forward and go out and meet somethin’ I don’t understand. My pa always told me that these old mountains held some very deep dark secrets. Secrets that mankind ain’t meant to know about. Whatever killed that boy all them years ago is still out there. Out there, in the woods somewhere.

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