Oh , spooky , but there I make myself laugh . I hope I make you laugh , but there is a lodge that sits overlooking the lake itself .
Good evening , everybody , and welcome back to your favourite log cabin on your favourite fictional spooky island , where each episode , I either bring you spooky stories from around the world or I delve into the missing 411 phenomenon in America . Now settle down , turn out the lights and steady yourself , as it's time for the Spooky Island Radio Podcast .
Time for the Spooky Island Radio Podcast . Welcome back everyone to your favourite Missing 411 podcast , where each week , we dive deep into the mysterious disappearances that have baffled investigators and captivated the public's imagination .
As always , I'm your host , andy , and each episode will explore the mysterious cases of people who have vanished under strange circumstances , leaving behind more questions than answers , and this week is no different . This week we're travelling to Crater Lake National Park in Oregon . Now , I love the look of this place .
It's the sort of spot that I would want to go to . It looks really scenic and I feel not too far from civilization .
So if something happened and you needed to get to a big city or a big town , you're close enough that you could get there within a couple of hours , but yeah , still looks really cool , really scenic , that you could get there for a couple of hours , but , yeah , still looks really cool , really scenic . But yeah , no razzle dazzles this episode .
No long intros , because it's going to be quite a long episode . I did quite a lot of research on Crater Lake and especially its history . So , yeah , as always , just go follow me on Instagram , tiktok and yeah , and leave me a review if you like this and share it with people who you think might like it too .
Um , but yeah , let's just jump straight into it Cause , like I say , um , it's a big episode this week , so let's have a little bit of history of Crater Lake , shall we ? So , around 8000 years ago , if you stood on the shores and just , I am going to get a lot , especially in the start of the episode , when I go into the history .
Obviously , it's a lot of Native American history and there's a lot of names and a lot of place names I'm going to get wrong .
So I'm just going to throw a disclaimer out at the start and unless I really fuck it up , then we shan't bring any , any , I'm not going to stop every time and get it wrong , basically , but I am about to get this name of a lake wrong . So here we go .
So , like I said , 8,000 years ago , if you stood on the shores of the Klamath Lake in Southern Oregon , the horizon would have looked strikingly different than it does today . A snow-capped volcano would have towered over the forested hills nearly 1,000 feet taller than Mount Hood .
To geologists , this was Mount Masma , but the Native Americans who lived around Cloudmath Lake called the peak by other names , such as Moyaina , which translates to big mountain , which , yeah , I mean , it's descriptive . Certainly you know it's a big mountain , so I'll give them that .
Um , but before it erupted , the mountain itself was around 12 000 feet , so no mount everest , but which is about 29 000 feet , um , but yeah , so not not , it's a big mountain , it's not a huge mountain , but yeah , you know . Basically it was a volcano just under half the size of Everest , so no wonder it has such a spiritual connection to the natives .
Now , mount Masma is one in a chain of volcanoes that include Mount St Helens , which famously erupted in 1980 . There was even a film with Pierce Brosnan in it , but uh , don't think James Bond could save all the natives when Mount Masma erupted .
Now , mount Masma's eruption happened in about 5500 BC and it catapulted volcanic ash miles into the sky and expelled so much humus and ash that the summit soon collapsed , creating a huge , smoldering uh basin . Basically . And if you see pictures of um crater lake , that is what it is .
It's basically this massive , massive lake and obviously , if you are on my Instagram and things like that , there will be pictures so you can see this . But basically it is just a massive , massive lake with a little peak in the middle , which is , yeah , you'll see , if you look on the pictures , you'll see what I mean .
But yeah , basically it's erupted , collapsed in on itself , and that's how we got the lake as it is today . Now , eventually , rain and snow melt accumulated in the basin , forming a lake more than 1900 feet deep , and it's the deepest lake in the united states .
Wildflowers , along with hemlock , fir and pine , recolonized surroundings , black bears , bobcats , deers , marmots , eagles and hawks also returned . Now the cataclysmic big word there eruption of Mount Masmer created what we now call Quater Lake yes , I just said that . What we now call Quater Lake . Yes , I just said that .
And accounts of the dramatic event live on in both the geological record and in Native American legends . So let's jump into some of those legends , shall we ? But again , this is where I'm going to start getting names wrong , and Lizzie has just jumped up on the microphone so you can hear her . Lizzie say hello to everybody . Say hello , go .
Meow Say hello , okay , so she's just sat there now . So , yeah , let's get into some of these American legends . So the story goes that Jimo Kmach , or the creator , emerged from a hole in the sky to make mount maspa and then everything else in the world .
In another telling , the creator pushed his way out of the shadowy underworld and through the mountain itself to create rivers and trees , animals and eventually people . This is the version of that of the story perry jatuk , director of the culture and heritage department at the klamath tribal administration , heard as a child .
So sorry if it's a bit , stop start , but yeah , so I suppose it's just the story of of their deity , isn't it ? It's no different than christianity say that god created the world in what is it ? Eight days or something , I can't remember , but um , but yeah . So this sort of goes into the story of how the natives explained what happened on Mount Masma .
So one day , chok Tut says another , another spirit name , lau , peeked out of the hole that the creator had made in the mountain and spied a beautiful woman . He sent an emissary to ask for her hand , but the woman didn't want to marry Lao and live in the underworld , so her father , the chief , refused .
Now , when Lao heard the news , he got all upset and his temper built up and built up and he blew through the hole . Chok Tut says Lao threw through the air , hurling fireballs and torching the forest , forcing the people to wade into the Klamath Lake to escape the flames . Hoping to please Lao , lizzie just bit me on a leg . Thanks for that . Several medicine .
Men or kikos went to sacrifice themselves on the mountain , but this was too much for the creator to bear . He said you have been a good people . You haven't taken all the eggs from a single nest or all the berries from a single , bush Tuk Tuk recalls .
So the creator fought Lao and , after days of battle , finally pushed him back into the hole as the mountain closed up around him . After Lao fell , blue water came gushing out of the hole , chuk Tuk says .
Glamath Indians called the lake Giyawas , and the entire entire area became a sacred place where members of many tribes went to pray , to mourn , to hunt and to forage to seek understanding and power .
Now , I know I might have fudged that a little bit because all the names are a bit all over the place and stuff , but it's basically a really old telling of of what happened and how people of that day and age sort of rationalized it , you know .
So it wasn't , it wasn't the power of the volcano exploded and it was the story of this devilish sort of creature that wanted a girl's hand in marriage and was denied that and then that's what caused the fight and everything and it's um , I just thought it was quite cool like how over time things have changed , but they're sort of telling it how they , how they
saw it , um , but yeah , I just love that about the legend , um , and obviously we find that a lot of areas where these people go missing or these disappearances occur is in sort of areas with quite a big history of Native Americans being there , or like the Grand Canyon episode , which is the first ever of Missing 411 case files . You know that was .
There was a story , I think , of one of the women , one of the rangers , seeing ghosts walking through the forest and being taken into a part in the river where four different rivers connected , because that was like a spiritual place and , yeah , I like the idea that the land obviously goes back a lot further than we've been on it .
Um , and the idea of these spiritual places , um , I don't like the idea of all these people going missing . But yeah , I , you know , I just I think that's a really cool story .
So , just before we investigate a couple of mystery missing person cases , um , I think it's a good idea to give you guys a bit of a background on some spooky anecdotal stories about the surrounding area .
So , firstly , there are said to be ghostly campfires seen on one of the lake's small islands , which are called Wizard Island , and this is what I was saying earlier . It's a little island in the middle of the lake . It looks like a little wizard's hat , hence Wizard Island . But yeah , if you've seen a picture , you'll be able to picture it in your mind's eye .
But , yeah , park rangers have said they have seen ghostly campfires on wizard island only when they hop on a boat and go investigate , there is no campfires lit .
And one very specific night a park ranger says she saw about 10 people dancing around a campfire on wizard island and when she went to investigate , not only was there no one there , but there was no evidence of a campfire or burnt out campfire at all . Oh , spooky , but there I make myself laugh . I hope I make you laugh .
But there is a lodge that sits overlooking the lake itself that is said to be haunted by multiple ghosts . And yeah , I'm really going to have to create a list of places . Like once I'm a qualified nurse and I can save some money , I can plan like a haunted road trip around America .
Um , I don't think Mark wants to come with me because we've already spoken about this , but I'd love to do it , have a certain few places and just like , rent a car , drive from one place to the next , all these spooky locations . But Crater Lake has also been the site of numerous UFO sightings .
On February , the 4th 1997 , three bright disks were seen speeding across the lake , followed by strange lights in the sky that later disappeared into the water itself . These unexplained sightings have fuelled speculation of otherworldly activity in the area .
It is also a hotspot for Bigfoot sightings , and rangers have reported following a large , dark , foul-smelling creature through the woods , only to be pelted with pine cones when they get too close to something . Theories of bigfoot deaths at crater lake have also resurfaced , including some one involving a car accident and another involving a train collision , um .
So , yeah , already , before we've even got into some some case files about missing persons , it's like a melting pot of like creating a bizarre backdrop that we usually see with the missing 411 cases .
So , like you know , like UFO activity in the area , bigfoot activity supposedly in area , a strange supernatural sort of melting pot , almost like a cauldron of spookiness and just history , you know , with the , with the Native American tribes that used to live there . So you know , we've , we're already getting into it .
We've only touched the surface , um , but you can all almost sort of start to understand what it's like , um , and I'll post a video . There was a ufo video that I found , um from crater lake , so I will post that on instagram and tiktoks . You can see it there , um , and yeah , go give , give me a follow .
But yeah , that's enough of the history and background . We get it . It's a mysterious place . Now let's get into some missing persons cases . So the first case is the case of little Sammy Bohilke , b-o-e-h-l-k-e .
So Sammy was an eight-year-old boy and he was with his father , kenneth , on October 14th 2006 , and they were near the Cleatwood Cove area at Crater Lake National Park . Now at around 4pm , the young boy ran up a cinder slope into the woods and vanished , never to be seen again .
Despite an extensive search , no trace of Sammy or his remains have ever been found at this spot in Oregon . That has been synonymous with many strange events over the years . Now that is a short story , but let's delve a little bit deeper .
Sammy had a passionate personality , apparently obviously I don't know bordering on stubbornness , and he also had a mild form of autism which manifested itself in a fear of loud noises and bright lights . He also had an affinity for small spaces .
So he was obviously young , who's only about four foot 11 inches and weighed about eight five pounds and had brown eyes and short brown hair . He was last seen wearing a long sleeved black and green t-shirt , cargo pants , a blue winter coat and suede slip-on shoes with rubber soles .
Now , the boy , um , had camping experience and loved to play outdoors , but given his age , he had no formal training in wilderness survival . So father ken and sam stopped at a pull out at 4pm , about 500 yards east of clee wood grove parking lot and we're walking on the north side of room drivem Drive .
The boy and his father stopped to play tag so hide and seek for anyone in the UK on a cinder slope where Sammy saw some yellow rock he hoped might be gold .
As darkness approached and his dad walked a short distance to the car so the two of them could return to their rented cabin near Diamond Lake , sammy stayed on the slope , refusing to come down , so the father chased up after him , but Sammy , likely thinking it was a game , stayed about 50 feet ahead of him .
I never caught up with him and at that point he disappeared over the top somewhere and I lost him . So that was what his dad said when he was questioned by the , by the rangers and police . Sammy had done a similar thing when he attended the day camp program at Selwood Community Centre between 2012 and 2016 .
The centre's director , kim , said he liked to hide . He was good at hide and seek and wouldn't understand his safety might be in danger if he didn't come out of his hiding place . He does have a tendency to take off . It doesn't surprise any of us that he could have got out the car and took a . Not taken off , it's just a game to him .
Now in 2014 , sam was playing hide and seek at selwood and he couldn't be found , forcing them to call in the police and fire service , who located him . Kim said we called his mum , or ma'am , as it says here , and she finally screamed Sam , you won , you're the best hider . He popped out from behind a tree .
She also said that he'd like to dig to hide himself . Now , if this doesn't put you off having kids , I don't know what will Like . He would dig into the ground and bury himself to hide . I mean , I know he's like had a mild strain of autism , but I think they should have nipped that in the bud a bit sooner . I mean , yeah , just insane .
The search force quickly increased to more than 200 people , combing an area of about six square miles or 4 000 acres . For a week . Searchers scoured the area of dogs , helicopters and heat sensing cameras , but no trace of the boy was ever found . Officials said a helicopter crew spotted some tracks , but they turned out to be from wildfire .
Don't understand how you could get those big stuff , but anyhow , um , yeah , so intermittent search and continued after , um , after this , despite heavy snowfalls in the area . So yeah , where we had that before they try and search , weather gets bad . Dogs couldn't pick up a scent , it's close to water . So yeah now , sadly , it's not a good ending for sammy .
Sadly , he was never found , but strangely enough , nothing of him was ever found again . So no clothes , no bones and no possessions ever found again , with even the tracking dogs never been able to pick up his trail . It's so strange . Maybe he was playing a game of hide and seek and accidentally got himself lost deep in the woods around Crater Lake .
Maybe something took him , but who knows ? This to me is a strange one . Could he have been predated upon by like a mountain lion or a bear of some kind ? But surely this would have been quite messy , quite noisy . He's going to be screaming , he's going to be running , there's going to be blood everywhere . So you think maybe something like that would be found .
But we do know it's a UFO hotspot . So was he taken by something more supernatural ? Who knows ? Who the fuck knows ? But that's why we're here Right now , moving away from Sammy and onto the next peculiar disappearance around Crater Lake , and that is the disappearance of Charles McCullough and what is deemed as the Melting Skeleton . I know some spooky Now .
Charles McCullough was a 19 year old aspiring photographer from Virginia and in 1974 , charles , charles . Charles or Chuck as he was also known left his home state for an extended photography and hiking trip . He left behind his Volkswagen van in Virginia and , with the help of hitchhiking and a bus riding tour , in January of 1975 Charles arrived in Eugene , oregon .
He stayed with a friend in the area for a few weeks before he left for Crater Lake National Park to take winter photos . Now Charles planned to return to his friend's house two days later and several people in the Diamond Lake area claimed to have seen Charles before his disappearance .
Now Diamond Lake is a 45-minute car ride from Crater Lake National Park , so it's not directly in it , but pretty , pretty close . But yeah , at Crater Lake it is believed that Charles planned to hike along the North Road , although five feet of snow was reported in the area for the past two weeks leading up to his disappearance .
Skiers at the time commented that the snow was so soft even with skis that the snow went up to their waist . It's unknown if Charles changed trails , but when McCullough didn't return to his friend's house on February 1st , all law enforcement agencies in Eugene were notified that he was missing .
Now the Oregon State Police put up posters in bus stations around Eugene in hopes for Charles's safe return , and after months of air and ground searches , no signs of Charles McCullough were ever found . Which makes this difficult and different from usual missing 411 cases was that he went missing when he's by himself .
So certain factors that we can account from witnesses we can't use in this case . So , for example , it was days before he was reported missing , meaning we don't know if the weather disrupted the main search . This is usually carried out straight away and people usually go missing from right under people's noses .
But of course we know so far that he was by himself . And being honest with you all at the end of this case is the most intriguing part of the puzzle . So let's carry on . A year later , on october the 13th 1976 , two hikers from texas made a wrong turn while traveling through the park .
They ended up in a remote part of the Sfagden Bog area of Crater Lake to a little desolate canyon . Upon arrival , the hikers found an old , dirty backpack in the bog . They called the park rangers and a day later rangers searched the area , ultimately coming across the remains of Charles McCullough dotted across Byby Creek .
Now , this was 12 miles away from the trailhead . In the backpack , rangers found the key to the Volkswagen later revealed to be Charles' car , the one that he left back in Virginia . The FBI was called to complete the investigation . Charles' remains were bizarre His jeans were reportedly unbuttoned and the belt had come undone .
In his pants investigators found broken off shin bones sticking up . Investigators also found foot bones in his socks , but most of his skeletal remains seemingly had vanished , except for the crown of his skull , which was found 12 feet away . It's quite grisly . It's quite a grisly uh find .
Um , charles's camera equipment had disappeared , along with his shirt , boots and coat . Charles's pants were found sitting on a log and all his money was gone . It is believed that Charles was experiencing hypothermia at this point , and in some cases victims take their clothes off because they feel too hot , but in reality they are freezing to death .
This reaction is called paradoxical , undressing , so strange . So it's been a couple of years since he's gone missing . He was found 12 miles away from where he was last seen , with no snowshoes or skis anything like that , and we know from reports around that time that the snow was very deep and very soft .
So it would have been very difficult for him to get to where he was found , and it seems that sometimes tends to be photographers that go missing , and , like , all of his camera equipment was gone , so it's . You know , did he snap something he shouldn't have ? Did he see something he shouldn't have ?
Um , and yeah , the way he shouldn't have , um , and yeah , the way .
I mean , obviously they're , they're putting it down to the hypothermia , but you know the way his , his clothes were folded on the side away from his body and the way his , he was sort of stood up in the ground just up to his , like his knees , and then everything else was gone apart from the , the crown of his skull .
You know it's , it's gruesome , and could an animal have done that ? But then an animal wouldn't be able to . It's very strange , very , very strange , and I certainly wouldn't want to see that in the woods , but a bit of a strange one . Not too sure what I think about that one . But let's move on to our last strange disappearance .
And uh , we're moving slightly away from quater lake , but it's still in the state of oregon , and to a point called rocky point , just south of quater lake , um , and the disappearance of eight-year-old derek and your breast , and so the date was December the 5th 1998 , the engine , breast and family from Bonanza , oregon , went on their yearly quest for the ideal
Christmas tree near Rocky Point . Eight-year-old Derek , nicknamed bear boy for his passion for the wilderness , accompanied his father , robert , and grandfather , bob , on the search . So Bob , bob and Derek were out looking for a Christmas tree .
He was bundled up in a blue snowmobile suit , hat and felt-lined boots , carrying a hatchet , in hopes of helping to chop down the perfect tree .
The family had arrived in Rocky Point at 2pm and began their hike into the forest together , and after travelling about 150 yards in the direction of a nearby ridge , robert , derek and Bob separated as they searched for the perfect tree . First mistake Derek , armed with his hatchet , was with his grandfather , and Bob had noticed that Derek tended to wander off .
So he kept a close eye on him , but , you know , obviously not fucking close enough , bob , come on . However , derek repeatedly expressed his desire to run ahead to catch up to his father . Now , reluctantly , bob agreed and watched as Derek followed Robert's footprints through the snow .
Bob turned his attention back to searching for a tree , believing that Derek had caught up with his dad . A short while later , robert and Bob met back up on the road , both of them alone , and Robert asked where's Derek , to which Bob replied I thought he was with you . Robert responded no , I told him to stay with you .
And as the family searched for Derek , calling out his name , the snowstorm made it impossible to locate any footprints . So once again , here we have they're looking for somebody and a snowstorm comes in covering the footprints , hindering the search .
So yeah , they were trying to locate the footprints that would have indicated which direction Derek had gone , but despite their efforts , there was no sign of Derek . Robert and Bob stumbled upon a snow angel near a forest road , which they believed Derek had made , but his whereabouts remained a mystery .
As night approached , fear and worry set in , and as the family had no leads on Derek's whereabouts , as a result , the police were promptly called in . And as the family had no leads on Derek's whereabouts , as a result , the police were promptly called in to assist the search .
And the search for Derek was a major effort that involved hundreds of volunteers , police and even a helicopter . And despite the many efforts to find Derek , the search was hindered by harsh weather conditions , including heavy snowfall .
And on the seventh day of the search , the helicopter was withdrawn and the goal shifted from finding Derek alive to recovering his body . Now , despite the official search ending , derek's family , along with a few hundred volunteers , refused to give up and continued their own personal search .
A few weeks later , after Derek had disappeared , a school bookmark with a candy wrapper was found in the forest along with a couple of spots of blood . No-transcript called in and sent a helicopter to fly overhead , hoping to spot derrick .
The sniffer dogs once again were used and brought in to search on foot , but the heavy snowfall made their efforts difficult so he was never found again . He got that candy wrapper with a bit of blood . I wonder .
From my research I couldn't find that the blood was ever tested , or they might not been able to , or , um , whether they thought that was relating to derrick . But again , the third story this week we've spoken about and it's .
They've all got similarities the weather , the sniffer dogs close to water , vanishing from around , family members and you know there is him being um cited and the area that he was kidnapped . Could he , could like , could he have been kidnapped by someone ?
But for him to have been kidnapped , between the time he left his grandfather and his father , someone had to be following them and known , or hoping , I suppose , that he would be by himself at some point . And you know the woods are dense , you know it's .
That's what I find difficult with some of these cases is there's a lot of ifs and buts , you know , and is it possible somebody kidnapped him , yeah , but , or like an animal took him , possibly , but surely they would have heard screaming . You know someone had to be following them , but surely they would have heard screaming .
You know someone had to be following them . It's a lot of ifs and buts and coconuts , um , and so I don't know if it is supernatural or not , or supernatural or whatever you want to call it , but something is taking these people .
These people are disappearing in numbers , um , and yeah , I think that's where we'll call it a day for today , episode Um , so the next episode will be on . Let me check my . So I will be talking about Edinburgh vaults . The next episode will be , um , a normal missing , for not always get this mixed up . Uh , just a normal spooky Ellen radio episode mixed up .
Just a normal Spooky Island Radio episode about Edinburgh Volts . And Spooky Island Radio Film Club is going to be about Dog Soldiers . So if you've not seen that , I would recommend watching it before you listen to my review . It's a bit like a Scotland special next episode . So , yeah , it should be good .
And then that sort of takes us up to Halloween and I might have like a special episode coming out around then and then the week after that it will be the next Missing 411 case , which will be and again , it's a big one and you've probably heard of this national park . It's called , uh , yosemite .
Yeah , so that's where we're going to be going in the next missing 411 episode . So , uh , yeah , bit of a longer episode today .
I hope you enjoyed , um , and think I just found it so fascinating about Crater Lake , um , and , like I say , it's one of those places that I've researched and it this , the whole place just seems to be steeped mostly in history , the supernatural and the sort of creation of the crater lake . Uh , it's just fascinating .
And then , um , you know , I've watched and read a lot of documents , documentaries about crater lake and it just seems like there is more going on there than we're being told and the sheer abundance of UFO sightings in the area for one is just insane when I post pics and vids on my Instagram and TikTok regarding some of these encounters .
But , yeah , if you loved what you heard . Be sure to subscribe , rate and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform . Stay connected with us on social media , like I just said , for updates and behind-the-scenes content and more .
You can find us , like I said , on Instagram , tiktok at Spooky Island Radio , and if you have any creepy stories or suggestions , feel free to reach out to us via email at spookyislandradioatoutlookcom . We'd love to hear from you . So , once again , thank you for listening .
Remember , the night is dark and full of terrors , so stay safe and keep the lights on until next time . This is andy signing off from the spooky island radio podcast and until then , stay spooky and I'll catch you all on the flippity flip . Bye , bye .