Park Chief Ranger Steve Kloster was quite familiar with cases of people getting lost in the forest. He managed more than 6,700 acres of land and stories of tourists, and even locals wandering off somewhere and not being able to find their way back home wasn’t surprising to him.
However, there was one case of a missing boy that worried him a lot. Kloster knew something was very off about the whole story, and he was right.
Steve Kloster felt like something wasn’t adding up in his case, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. It’s been 11 days since the boy went missing, and there were no signs of him.
What worried him the most was that the boy’s stepdad was also strangely in the picture. Did he have to do anything with his disappearance?
Austin Bohannon was an 18-year-old teen who had seen extreme adventures that even some experienced mountaineers and hikers could only dream of. When he and his stepdad decided to go on a hike in Smokey Mountains, Austin was ready for any obstacles and troubles on the way.
Unfortunately, nothing could have possibly prepared him for what happened during their adventure.
After he was pronounced missing, the search parties were sent out to look for him in the area. However, there wasn’t a single trace of Austin.
He was an experienced hiker, but this time, luck wasn’t on his side.
The day he went missing started out like any other day. Austin and his stepdad Hubert were excited about their big adventure.
They have visited the Great Smokey Mountains National Park before, so they were familiar with the hiking trails there.
It’s pretty easy to get lost at the Smokey Mountains, especially for the first-timers, as there were only a few markers on the site. People frequently get lost there but eventually find their way back home either by using a map or getting help from other travelers.
However, Austin and his father thought they wouldn’t face that problem since it wasn’t their first time, but they were wrong.
The main reason for their trip was to search for a particular type of plant that grew in the area. Austin and Hubert were aware that collecting plants from national parks could get them in serious trouble with the law, but they were willing to take the risk.
The root of that plant was in high demand, and people were willing to pay a lot of money for it.
With health supplements and energy drinks becoming more and more popular, they could potentially earn as much as $600 per lbs.
They had to be careful not to get caught, but Austin’s stepdad made a big mistake near the creek.
According to Hubert, he slipped on a wet rock and dropped his eyeglasses in the water. Although he was able to regain his balance and avoid injuries, he didn’t find his glasses.
He had poor vision and couldn’t see much without them.
To make it worse, Austin and his stepdad chose a challenging hiking path, so going ahead without the glasses would be a problem for Hubert. Since he wasn’t able to see clearly, he could hurt himself along the way.
He had to retrieve his glasses somehow, so Austin jumped into the water to look for them.
The boy tried to locate Hubert’s glasses by moving his feet around in the water, but he couldn’t find them. After some time, Hubert decided to help him and jumped in the water too.
At that point, they were both desperately looking for them everywhere in the creek.
Without his glasses, Hubert was almost blind. He could only see shapes and shadows, and in a matter of minutes, he found himself away from where his stepson was.
He assumed Austin was next to him the entire time, but since he could barely see anything, he was actually in the opposite direction from him.
When Hubert realized that he was nowhere near his stepson, he turned around to look for him, but there was no sign of Austin. He called out his name multiple times but got no response back.
When Chief Ranger Kloster heard Hubert’s story, he knew he was hiding something. So, what actually happened to Austin?
Kloster didn’t buy Hubert’s story. First of all, why did he wait two days before informing the authorities about his missing stepson?
Something just wasn’t adding up. Hubert was hiding something and possibly changed the whole story to get away with whatever he had done to his stepson.
Kloster sent out a search party along with helicopters and canine units to find the missing teen, but unfortunately, they couldn’t find any leads because it has been days since he had gone missing. Kloster was losing his mind trying to put the pieces together of what might have really happened to Austin.
He had a gut feeling that his stepdad had done something horrible to him.
There was no progress in the search for Austin after a whole week.
Kloster was still confident that Hubert was hiding important information that could help solve the case, so he decided to have a chat with him.
He pulled Hubert aside and asked him some questions. He tried to sound as polite as possible to get him to open up to him and share new information.
However, he felt like their conversation wasn’t going anywhere. Hubert didn’t want to talk about his stepson’s disappearance, which made it even more suspicious.
He was getting very frustrated with Hubert, and his tone changed from calm to harsh. How could someone stay so calm when their child is all alone somewhere in the woods?
It’s been more than a week since Austin had gone missing. After a couple of hours, everything suddenly became clear to Kloster.
Hubert eventually admitted to harvesting the wild ginseng plants in the area, which was illegal. With that information, Kloster was able to pinpoint the exact location where Austin had disappeared.
He contacted the expert guides, who happened to know exactly where to look for the missing boy.
Chief Ranger hoped that Austin was still alive.
“He’s young; he’s in shape, and there’s all kinds of water out there,” But if he managed to survive, then how come he still hasn’t been found after almost two weeks?
He sent out search parties many times, but they always returned empty-handed. Kloster was starting to lose hope.
In the meantime, Austin was fighting to survive. There was one survival theory that he had learned a long time ago, although using it in practice was much harder than he thought.
He desperately searched for cellphone service, but the chances of catching reception in the wildness were slim to none.
He wanted to call his mother, but his phone screen showed no cell phone service bars.
Austin also needed to find freshwater, so he decided to follow the creek until he found the source, which was at the very base of the mountain.
But there was another problem- he realized that he had been walking in the wrong direction for the last two days.
Now, he was even more lost in the wildness. The search parties wouldn’t be able to locate him there. Austin had to go back, but he didn’t know which direction he should follow.
Every night, Austin prayed he would be able to survive tomorrow and keep moving forward. He felt weak and tired as he hadn’t eaten any food in days, and his energy levels were low. Starvation had caused his body to go into a survival mode.
In the meantime, hundreds of people were searching for him everywhere. While K9 searched the forest, others used boats and helicopters to locate him.
One day, Austin heard a helicopter circling overhead, and he knew they were looking for him. Unfortunately, he couldn’t let them know that he was there and they couldn’t see him because of the thick forest.
Finally, on the eleventh day, Austin noticed a boat and some kayaks in the river ahead of him. “Luckily, I saw a boat, a guy and his daughter,” he said afterward.
“I waved them down and hollered at them…”The people on the boat immediately recognized Austin and brought him back home safe to his parents.