Dennis Lloyd Martin's Disappearance
The story of the boy who disappeared from the Smokies is one of the strangest and creepiest stories of a child disappearing I have ever heard of.
The reason I haven't told anybody is because it involves a whole bunch of conspiracy that not many people would actually believe.
Dennis Lloyd Martin disappeared from the Smokey Mountain National Park in Tennessee on June 14th, 1969.
He was playing with 2 other boys, one his relative, one who came from a different family who also had the last name of Martin.
His father witnessed him go into a bush. He just thought he was gonna try and pop out to scare the two other boys. But after a while, his father got concerned as the other boys had passed by the bush multiple times, and he still hadn't popped out.
His father checked the bush. Dennis was nowhere to be found. His father raced into the forest, as it was only a few feet away, and ran for 2 whole miles before he realised there was no way in hell his son could have made it that far in the amount of time he had been missing.
5 miles away, another family was wanting to look for a place to spot some bears. A Forest Ranger guided them to a spot that had known bear activity. When the family got to the spot, they heard a loud and shrill roar, "unlike any animal I've ever heard" as the father put it. He then said him, his wife, and his young son witnessed a large, upright figure, walking along the horizon, but when it spotted them, it tried to stay hidden. The father was scared shitless, but he was able to engrain of couple of the creatures features into his brain.
It was tall, shaggy, and furry. But he was also able to get the detail that it seemed as though it was carrying something. Something bright red.
Dennis was wearing a bright red shirt that day.
When the search for Dennis was called, the Park Service weren't the only ones searching. The FBI and Green Berets also arrived to search for Dennis. But the Green Berets wouldn't say who told them to be there, and why THEY were trying to look for some random kid. Every request for these details to be revealed were flat out ignored.
Years later, Dennis' father, who had tried to forget about Dennis to move on with his life, said as though it seemed as though the 3 government entities weren't working together, but competing against each other. As if there was some prize at the end of this case.
But going on, the family who had witnessed the furry and shaggy figure tried to report this to Forest Rangers. The father even offered to go to the FR station and show them the spot he had witnessed the creature. But they said "We'll come to you." Yet they never did.
Feeling as though his account wasn't being taken seriously, he went to the press. They published the story about a furry, tall, and shaggy creature that showed up only hours after the boy disappeared. How the deafening scream was that of no other animal. Yet the detail of it carrying something was completely left out. Nobody would take the paper seriously if they did.
Dennis' father learned about the "Ape Man" or "Man Bear" as the media called it, through the newspaper, not the Wildlife Services. When he confronted them they said the account was "Inconsequential" and "Wouldn't lead anywhere" as it didn't fit the time frame (the other family's account was 2 hours after many officials deducted the time at which Dennis disappeared)
Dennis' father walked the trail to the spot the creature was witnessed. It took him only a hour and a half, and that was on the track. If something went through the thick and hilly forest, it could 100% take 2 hours to walk to that spot.
In the end, Dennis was never found. Months of searching and not a single trace of the boy was found.
For the rest of his life, Dennis' father firmly believed that whatever happened to his boy that day, the "Shaggy" man had something to do with it.
Look up "The Boy who disappeared from the Smokies" on Google and YouTube.
On YouTube there is a great animated video about the whole incident that goes into more detail than I have.