636: Vanished: Three Disappearances Nobody Can Explain

Hey there, it's Ryan Seacrest for Safeway.

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Gather out.

This happened in Columbus, Ohio on April 1st, 2006.

Brian Schaefer walked into a bar at 115 in the morning with two friends.

One way in, one way out.

The building was covered in cameras.

Every exit monitored, every door, all watched, all recorded.

Brian was a 27-year-old medical student.

The plan was med school, then residency.

The Mario's girlfriend Alexis, but that plan would never happen.

In a building covered by security cameras,

surrounded by 200 witnesses, in a room with one way in,

and one way out, Brian Schaefer vanished.

Two weeks earlier, Brian's mother died.

Renee Schaefer lost her battle with a rare cancer that destroys bone marrow.

She was Brian's anchor.

The one who pushed him through undergraduate studies in microbiology.

The one who celebrated when he got into Ohio State's medical program.

She died in March.

Brian was at her bedside holding her hand when she passed.

Two weeks later, he carried it everywhere.

Friend City handled it well, kept his grades up.

He attended every lecture.

But those closest to him noticed the exhaustion,

the way he'd stare off during conversations.

The forced smile when people asked him how he was doing.

The night of March 31st,

Brian had dinner with his father, Randy, just the two of them.

Brian looked drained.

Dark circles under his eyes.

Randy thought his son shouldn't grab that night,

thought he should rest, but he didn't say it.

He would regret that silence for the rest of his life.

After dinner, Brian called Alexis Wagner,

his girlfriend of two years, also a medical student.

She got home to Delito to visit her parents.

Brian asked Alexis if they were still on for Miami.

She said she couldn't wait.

Brian was excited three days on South Beach,

and Brian planted surprise here with a proposal.

The ring was already picked out.

He said he'd see her Monday,

then he called Clint Florence,

his roommate, his closest friend.

Time to celebrate the start of Spring Break.

They started at the Ugly Tuna around nine,

a bar on the second floor of the Gateway Building

near Ohio State University.

They had around, they went bar hopping

through the arena district and Chor-North.

One shot at each stop.

Nothing excessive, just two friends blowing off steam,

after a brutal semester and the worst month of Brian's life.

Around midnight, they ran into Meredith Reed, a friend of Clint's.

She offered to drive them to their next stop.

Brian said, back to the Tuna.

The last place Brian Schaeffer would ever be seen alive.

The last place he would ever be seen at all.

The security camera captured them at 1.15am,

three friends riding the escalator to the second floor.

Brian looked relaxed, happy even.

The Ugly Tuna occupied the entire second floor,

exposed brick, industrial lighting,

the bar along one wall tables everywhere,

a stage in the corner.

The place was packed with college students

celebrating Spring Break, loud music,

and louder conversations.

Brian moved through the crowd,

buying drinks, talking to people,

witnesses later said he was more outgoing than usual,

more social, like he was working hard to have a good time.

Around 1.40am, Brian and Clint stepped out to the balcony area

overlooking the atrium.

The camera caught them there.

Brian leaning against the railing, Clint beside them.

They talked for a few minutes.

But at some point during that conversation,

they got into an argument.

The camera saw it all.

They went back inside.

15 minutes later, Brian was outside again alone.

The camera recorded his final moments.

He stood near the entrance, talking to two young women,

bond early 20s.

The conversation lasted about two minutes.

Brian smiled, the women laughed,

nothing seemed wrong.

Those two women were never identified.

Not Ohio State students, not locals, anyone recognized.

They appeared on no other camera in the building

or surrounding area that night.

19 years later, nobody knows who they were.

Brian said goodbye and the camera showed him turning,

walking back toward the bar entrance, moving off screen.

That was the last time anyone saw Brian Schaefer.

At closing time, Clint and Meredith searched the entire bar.

Bathrooms, back rooms, storage areas.

They asked the staff.

Nobody had seen him leave.

200 people came down the escalator as the bar closed.

Brian wasn't among them.

Clint called to cell phone.

It would straight to voicemail.

They waited outside until sunrise.

Brian never came out.

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Please review every second of security footage.

Every camera, every angle.

The lead detective tracked every person who entered the bar that night,

then tracked them leaving.

Everyone was accounted for.

Everyone except Brian.

The detective told reporters,

I can say with 100% certainty that Brian Schaefer did not leave via the escalator.

The service elevator required a key card,

only employees had access.

Staff were on camera using it all night,

non-match Brian's description.

But the back exit was more complicated than it first appeared.

A service door, not far from where Brian was last seen,

opened to a first floor hallway that was connected to an active construction area

with its own exterior exit.

Officers said navigating it would be nearly a possible drunk,

but the cameras covering that route weren't fixed.

One pen back and forth on a cycle.

The other was manually operated.

There were gaps.

Not many, but enough that a person could slip through unseen.

That was the only crack in a sealed box,

and nobody can prove Brian went through it.

No witnesses saw anyone use the exit.

Nobody saw anyone at the construction site,

but the gap existed.

In a case that seems impossible, every detail matters.

Police checked cameras at three other nearby bars.

None of them saw Brian either.

Wherever he went after walking off camera at the tuna,

no other camera spotted him.

K-9 units tracked Brian's scent from the street to the escalator,

up to the bar entrance.

Then the dogs circled the same spot near the door and sat down.

The trail stopped.

As if Brian was there one minute, then gone the next.

Police organized search parties.

Volunteers called the campus.

Construction sites, abandoned buildings.

They searched the Allentangie River,

which runs through Columbus near the campus.

They even convinced the city to let them search the sewer system.

Thumbsters, every alley within miles.

Brian's apartment was only six blocks from the bar.

His car was parked outside.

Nothing inside was disturbed, closed, and his closet.

Books on his desk.

Whatever Brian was planning, he was planning on coming home.

His phone went directly to voicemail.

There was no GPS in 2006, so no way to track it.

He had his wallet with him, but he didn't use his credit cards.

He didn't touch his bank account.

No activity on anything.

Monday morning, Alexis's engagement ring still sat in his apartment.

She waited at the airport, but Brian never showed.

And the flight to Miami left without him.

Everyone who saw Brian that night was asked to take a polygraph.

His father Andy took one and passed.

Meredith Reed took one.

Past.

Bar staff.

Other friends.

All agreed.

All passed.

All except Clint Florence.

Clint was the only person to spend the entire evening with Brian.

The last friend to see him alive.

The one who admitted they argued on the balcony, but wouldn't say why.

When police asked him to take a lie detector test, he refused.

Then he hired an attorney.

Later, he was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury.

He refused to answer questions there too.

Refusing a polygraph is legally smart.

Defense attorneys tell clients to refuse them because the machines are unreliable.

Clint's refusal doesn't make him guilty, but in a case with zero leads and zero evidence,

it's the one thread that won't stop pulling.

Meanwhile, the search spiraled outward.

A psychic told Randy Schaefer that Brian's body was in water near a bridge pier.

So Randy and Derek, Brian's younger brother, bought waiters.

They spent their weekends in the Alentangie River, searching under bridges.

Randy had just buried his wife and now he was standing knee deep and freezing water

searching for the body of his son.

Brian had a Pearl Jam tattoo on his arm.

When the band played Cincinnati later that year,

Eddie that are stopped between songs and asked 15,000 people for information about Brian Schaefer.

The lead singer of one of the biggest rock bands in the world, standing on stage,

personally asking for help finding a missing fan.

We just wanted to take a second back to try to figure out what to play.

We just want to send this one out and let it know where we are.

Nobody had anything.

15,000 people in a stadium and not one useful lead.

Then in September, something happened.

Alex had been calling Brian's phone every night before bed.

Every single night since April, the same thing every time,

straight to voicemail, straight to voicemail.

But then one night, five months after Brian disappeared, his phone rang.

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For the first time in months, Brian Schaefer's cell phone rang,

but nobody answered.

Singular Brian's wireless provider said it was probably just a glitch.

But a ping from the phone was detected at a cell tower in Hilliard, Ohio.

14 miles northwest of Columbus, something activated that phone.

The lead was never explained.

The phone went silent again and never pinged another tower.

Some investigators looked at the so-called Smiley Face Killer Theory.

Some believed the serial killer was targeting drunk college aged men in the Midwest

and dumping their bodies in rivers.

Young men think Brian's profile had turned up dead in waterways across several states.

Please look into it.

The FBI looked into it.

Both rejected any connection.

If the Smiley Face Killer was real and most law enforcement said he isn't,

Brian would be the only victim whose body was never found.

A possible sightings reported in Michigan, in Texas, in Sweden.

A man matching Brian's description was seen at a bar in the Caribbean.

Another was spotted at a bus station in the southwest.

Police investigated every single one.

Sent officers, compared photos, checked records, nothing panned out.

Randy Schaefer drove to Columbus every weekend for two years,

walked the streets around the Gateway Building, handed out flyers, searched the river,

hired investigators, spent everything he had.

In 2008, two years after Brian vanished,

Randy was killed in a freak accident when a branch broke from a tree and fell on him.

Derek Schaefer, Brian's younger brother,

inherited everything alone.

The search, the questions, the weight of a family that stopped existing one member at a time.

A mother, a brother, a father.

Three people gone in two years.

Derek kept searching.

He still does.

Shortly after Randy's death,

Clint Florence's attorney sent a letter to a private investigator work in the case.

In it, he wrote,

if Brian is alive, which is what I'm led to believe,

after speaking with a detective involved,

that it is Brian and not Clint,

who is causing his family pain and hardship.

The detective on the case believed Brian was alive.

In 2020, the Ohio Attorney General's office,

digitally aged Brian's photo to show what he might look like in his mid-40s.

Date line covered the case.

America's most wanted covered it.

The internet never let it go.

There's a subreddit dedicated to finding him.

And every year on April 1st,

people share his photo and ask the same question.

Where is Brian Schaefer?

He would be 46 years old today.

19 years of past,

his phone has never pinged another tower.

His credit cards have never been used.

His social security number has never appeared in any database.

No hospital records,

no police reports,

no death certificate.

His body has never been found.

The ugly tuna clothes years ago,

the building still stands on North High Street.

The cameras are gone now.

New businesses occupy the space,

but the escalators still runs.

But somewhere in those final seconds,

in an arrow window between camera angles,

between one frame and the next,

a 27-year-old medical student vanished.

The footage is still there,

archived in police evidence,

framed by frame,

second by second.

Cameras prove that Brian Schaefer entered that building.

They also prove that somehow,

he never left.

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Gather round.

This happened.

In October 2009,

hunters found an abandoned pickup truck

on a dirt road deep in the Samoy mountains

of southeastern Oklahoma.

The engine was cold.

The doers were unlocked.

Inside a small terrier named Macy

was pressed against the seat.

She was barely alive.

She was trapped in the cab for days

with no food, no water,

and no one coming back for her.

They also found two cell phones,

two wallets,

and a GPS unit.

There were coats and jackets inside,

even though the nights were dropping

into the 40s,

and sitting in plain sight,

$32,000 in cash.

There were no footprints leading

away from the vehicle,

no blood,

no sign of a struggle.

The truck was owned by Bobby Jamison.

He drove to the mountains

with his wife Cheryl Lynn

and their six-year-old daughter Madison.

For what reason,

the police never figured it out.

The only thing we know for sure is

that Jamison family is gone.

Bobby and Cheryl Lynn Jamison

lived in Ufala,

a quiet town on the shore of Lake Ufala

in southeastern Oklahoma.

Bobby was 44,

a bad car accident years earlier,

and left him with chronic back pain.

He lived on a disability settlement.

Cheryl Lynn was 40.

She suffered from bipolar disorder for years.

They fought, they struggled,

but they had their daughter Madison

and made a plan to get out.

In the fall of 2009,

the Jamison's found a 40-acre platt of land

near the town of Red Oak

about 30 miles from home.

It was deep in the Samboi range,

remote and wooded,

the kind of place where you could disappear

from the world.

They wanted a fresh start

to leave Ufala and everything in it behind.

On October 8th,

they loaded up the truck

and drove out to see the property.

Madison rode in the back seat

with her dog, Macy.

This was the last day

anyone saw them alive.

The truck was found a few days later

by hunters who reported it

to the Latimer County Sheriff.

When deputies arrived,

the first thing they noticed was the dog.

Macy was dehydrated and weak,

but alive.

The second thing they noticed

was the money,

about $32,000 in cash

sitting in plain sight.

Nobody touched it.

The family's belongings

also told a strange story.

Their IDs were still in the truck,

so were their phones.

Their coats were still in the truck,

and October nights in the Samboi range

got cold.

Wherever the Jameson's went

after they parked,

they went without identification,

communication,

money or the right clothes

for the weather.

They took nothing.

One detail the sheriff noticed

from security camera footage

at one point,

Sherylaine placed a brown

briefcase in the truck

that briefcase was never recovered.

Neither was the 22-calibre hand

gun that she stashed in it.

The cash, all $32,000 of it,

sat untouched when the truck was found.

The Jameson's weren't wealthy.

They weren't known for carrying cash.

The disability settlement

may explain where the cash came from,

but it doesn't explain why they

brought every dollar they had

to look at a piece of land in the mountains.

But the security cameras at their house

recorded something

that investigators have never

been able to explain.

The footage is time stamped

the morning they left.

It shows Bobby and Sherylaine

making a trip after trip

between the house and the truck

back and forth,

loading boxes,

carrying bags.

They don't speak to each other.

They don't look at each other.

Between trips,

they stop staying completely still

and stare at nothing,

not at the ground,

not at the sky,

just somewhere in the middle distance.

Then, after a few seconds,

they start moving again.

Same pace,

same silence,

like robots or zombies.

The sheriff who reviewed the tape

said they looked like they were in a trance,

not arguing, not rushing,

not behaving like a normal couple

packing for a day trip,

just silent mechanical repetition,

like two people running on a program,

like two people without free will.

The Jamisons were already in trouble

long before they disappeared.

And every layer of the investigators

pulled back,

revealed something darker.

Bobby was locked in a bitter legal battle

with his own father, Bob Dean Jamison.

In 2008, Bobby had filed a protective order,

claiming his father had tried to run him over with a car.

Bobby's petition described his father

as a very dangerous man.

He accused him of being involved with meth

and other criminal activity.

He set his father threatened to kill him,

his wife and daughter.

Then there were the spirits.

Bobby and Sheryl Inn had both visited

their pastor separately.

They told him the same thing.

Something was living inside their house,

spirits, entities they could see,

but couldn't make leave.

Bobby told the pastor he'd gone out

and bought a copy of the Satanic Bible,

not to worship anything he said,

but to find instructions

for driving the spirits out of the house.

He asked if he knew where to buy special bullets

that could shoot the entities off the roof.

The pastor didn't know what to say to that.

Nobody did.

A handyman who'd been staying with the family

in the weeks before they disappeared

had connections to white supremacist groups.

After the Jamison's vanished,

investigators took a hard look at him.

They interviewed him multiple times.

They couldn't tie him to the disappearance.

On the property was a large metal storage container

the family planned to move into

while building on the new land.

Sheryl Inn had spray painted messages across its sides.

One line said,

witches don't like it when their cats are killed.

The neighbors didn't know what to make of it,

neither did the police.

Inside the abandoned truck

was an 11-page letter from Sheryl and the Bobby,

handwritten and full of rage.

She called him a hermit.

She said she resented him.

She said she didn't need him.

Friends who read it later said it wasn't a good buy note.

It was angry and raw.

The kind of thing you write at three in the morning

when you've had enough.

And then there was the last photo.

It was on Bobby's phone,

taken the day they vanished.

The image shows six-year-old Madison standing alone in the woods,

not smiling, not crying,

just standing perfectly still among the trees,

looking directly into the camera

with a blank hollow expression

like she was waiting for something to happen.

Nobody knows who took that picture.

It was on Bobby's phone but he wasn't in it.

Neither was Sheryl Inn.

Madison is alone.

Trees behind her dirt under a feet.

And whoever was holding that phone,

was the last person to see that little girl alive.

Hey there, it's Ryan Seacrest for Safeway.

It's stock up savings time.

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Search teams covered hundreds of acres.

Dogs tracked sent trails that went nowhere.

Helicopters flew grid patterns over the mountains.

Volunteers walked shoulder to shoulder through dense brush

and still they found nothing.

In four years passed.

In November 2013, two deer hudders were scattered

in remote part of Ladderer County,

dense oak forest, rocky terrain,

less than three miles from where the truck was abandoned in 2009.

One of them stopped walking.

Something pale on the ground caught his eye.

Half hidden in the underbrush were bones,

scattered across the forest floor by four years of storms and animals.

To adults, one child.

In July 2014, the Oklahoma Medical Examiner

confirmed what everyone already knew,

but no one wanted to hear.

Bobby Jamison, Sheryl and Jamison, Madison Jamison.

The official cause of death was undetermined.

And that word undetermined is rare.

Medical examiners almost always find something.

A fracture, a puncture, toxicology, something.

But the Jamisons gave them nothing.

No bullet damage to any of the bones.

No knife marks.

No damage to the highway bone, which means they weren't strangled.

Four years of Oklahoma heat, cold rain, and wildlife

destroyed the evidence of whatever killed them.

The case became national news.

Hundreds of tips came in over the years,

and none of them let anywhere.

Every theory fell apart.

Math, police searched the house and found nothing.

No drugs, no paraphernalia.

No evidence of dealing or using.

Murder suicide.

But Sheryl and's gun was missing,

and the bodies were three miles of rough terrain from the truck.

Now Bobby's father, he had an alibi,

and died two months after the family vanished.

The handyman with white supremacist ties

was a person ventures for a while,

but nothing connected him to the disappearance.

Sheryl and his mother believed that the family was pulled into a cult,

and she never changed her story.

The sheriff who worked the case said one thing stayed with him

above everything else,

not the money, not the letter,

not the photo of Madison in the woods.

It was the footage.

Bobby and Sheryl and moving through their house,

like they were sleepwalking,

loading that truck in total silence,

stopping to stare at nothing,

then starting again,

over and over and over.

He said he watched it more than a hundred times,

and every time it looked less like a family packing for a trip,

and more like robots running a program.

The $32,000 is still in an evidence locker.

The briefcase has never been found.

Sheryl and's gun has never been found,

and nobody's ever explained

what made Bobby and Sheryl in low-that truck like zombies

on the last morning of their lives.

And most likely, nobody ever will.

Gather round.

This happened.

Marshall, Minnesota, May 14th, 2008, 1.54am.

Brandon Swanson called his parents

from the side of a dark road.

He was 19 years old, last day of college.

His car was in a ditch.

He just needed a ride.

His father, Brian, drove out looking for him.

They stayed on the phone for 47 minutes.

Brandon saw lights in the distance.

He started walking toward what he thought was town.

Then on the phone, with his father, he said,

oh shit, then the line went dead, and Brandon vanished.

Brandon told his parents he crashed near Linde,

a small town about seven miles from Marshall.

That's where his father searched, up and down those roads,

looking for a gray Chevy Luminum in a ditch,

looking for a son walking along the road.

But he found nothing.

At 6.30am, the Swanson's reported Brandon missing.

The officer wasn't concerned.

Young guy, last day of school, been out drinking,

probably sleeping at office somewhere.

One cop told Annette Swanson that her son had

a right to be missing.

She didn't accept that.

She pushed.

She demanded they check the cell records.

Well, the records told a different story.

Brandon's last call didn't ping a tower near Linde.

It pinged near Porter, 25 miles in the opposite direction.

Brandon was completely wrong about where he was.

He thought he was seven miles from home.

He was 30 miles away.

On a gravel road in the middle of farmland,

surrounded by fields and darkness.

No streetlights, no houses.

Nothing but flat ground and sky in every direction.

Yellow medicine county sits in southwestern Minnesota.

It's prairie land.

The kind of place where you can see headlights

from 10 miles away on a clear night.

And in May, the corn hasn't come up yet.

The fields are bare dirt and stubble.

There's nothing to hide behind.

There's nothing to fall into.

There's nothing that should swallow a person whole.

Police found his car that afternoon.

Stuck up on an incline near a bridge on a county road.

Door's open, key's gone.

Brandon had taken them with him when he started walking.

The nearest town was Porter.

Population 178, but Brandon never made it.

Now think about that.

Brandon grew up in Marshall.

He driven these roads his whole life.

And somehow after his car went into the ditch,

he was convinced he was near Lind, a town he knew.

He recognized nothing around him because there was nothing to recognize.

Just gravel and darkness and the flat line of the horizon.

And here's where it gets strange.

The lights Brandon saw in the distance,

the one he walked towards,

were probably a red beacon on a grain elevator in tone.

A single light on top of a tall metal structure,

visible for miles across the flat prairie.

Now from that distance through the darkness,

it looked like a town.

It looked like safety.

It wasn't.

Between Brandon and that light,

was three miles of open farmland,

the yellow medicine river, and nothing else.

No roads leading where he was going.

No buildings.

Just black earth under a pitch black sky.

Brandon walked into the night.

Phone pressed to his ear,

convinced he was heading towards civilization.

He was heading into miles of empty fields.

Then he cursed into his phone.

Then the line went dead.

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Searches started at first light.

Helicopters overhead.

Officers walking the roads and ditches.

Volunteers comb the fields.

They brought in dogs trained to track human scent

across miles of open ground.

Canine units with hundreds of successful tracks between them.

Dogs that have found bodies buried under six feet of soil.

The dogs picked up Brandon's trail near his car and followed it.

West Northwest along field roads.

Three miles through darkness.

Past barbed wire fences and drainage ditches.

Then to an abandoned farm.

Buildings dark.

Door is hanging open.

No one living there for years.

Then the trail turns south and followed the yellow medicine river.

A shallow waterway that cuts through the farmland.

Muddy banks.

Thick brush on both sides.

And Brandon had mentioned hearing water during his call.

He mentioned passing fences.

He told his father the ground was getting uneven and harder to walk on.

The details matched perfectly.

The handlers expected the trail to end at the river's edge.

Confirming Brandon fell in and drowned.

But the dogs didn't stop.

They waited across the yellow medicine river.

Way steep in places.

The current strong enough to push against their legs.

The dogs picked up the scent on the opposite bank.

Brandon had crossed the river in the dark.

He didn't fall in.

He didn't drown.

He made it to the other side and kept walking.

The dogs kept going north along a gravel road

until they hit the yellow medicine county line.

Then the trail ended.

Not at the river.

Not at a body.

It stopped in the middle of nowhere.

Open farmland.

No structures.

No landmarks.

As if Brandon had been lifted off the face of the earth.

Now searches continued for years.

Every spring after snow melt.

When the frozen ground thawed and the rivers dropped low enough to wait.

Every fall after harvest.

When the fields were cut and you can see the ground for miles.

Volunteers walked in lines across the prairie.

They covered 122 square miles.

They walked every inch of the river.

They drained puns.

They searched abandoned farm buildings one by one.

Barnes with collapsed roofs.

Roots sellers filled with standing water.

Grained bins that hadn't been opened in decades.

Nothing.

No body.

No clothes.

No phone.

No keys.

Not a single thread.

Brandon swans and walked into the darkness that night and disappeared.

The official story is Brandon drowned in the yellow medicine river.

Walking in the dark disoriented.

He stumbled into the water.

And that's the simplest explanation.

But the evidence doesn't support it.

The bloodhounds tracked his scent across the river, not into it.

At Brandon to drown, the trail would have ended at the water's edge.

But it didn't.

The dogs picked up his scent on the opposite bank and kept following it north.

His father talked to him for 47 minutes.

Bryan Swanson says his son didn't sound drunk or confused.

He sounded like himself.

Frustrated about the car and eager to get home, but coherent.

He was navigating by landmarks he was making decisions.

Not stumbling blind through the night.

And then there's the final words.

Now listen to what that phrase is and what it isn't.

It wasn't a scream.

It wasn't a cry for help.

It was surprise.

The kind of thing you say when you see something unexpected.

Brandon saw something in the darkness.

He reacted that he was gone.

Fowlplay has never been ruled out.

The area is remote.

Miles empty farmland.

isolated roads abandoned properties.

Someone could have been out there.

Could have seen his headlights from the road,

watched him crash and followed him into the fields on foot.

At 230 in the morning and that kind of darkness,

you wouldn't see them coming.

You wouldn't hear them over the wind.

But there's no evidence of that.

No witnesses.

No suspects.

No motive.

No DNA.

No tire tracks.

No sign of a struggle.

Just a trail that ends in the middle of nowhere.

Brandon's parents never moved.

They kept their porch light on every single night for years.

A net left his bedroom exactly the way it was.

Bed unmade.

Clothes on the floor.

Textbooks stacked on the desk.

She said she wanted it ready for when he finally came home.

Brian Swanson replayed that phone call in his head a thousand times.

47 minutes of his son's voice.

The last 47 minutes.

Anyone heard Brandon alive.

He told reporters the hardest part wasn't the silence after the swear.

It was the 47 minutes before it.

The normalcy.

The casual frustration of a kid whose car is slid off a road.

Father and son talking like it was any other night.

Like everything was going to be fine.

The Swanson's lobby the Minnesota government.

They testified they pushed.

In 2009, Minnesota passed Brandon's law.

Police now have to investigate missing adults immediately.

No more waiting periods.

No more right to be missing.

Every state should have that law, but most don't.

Brandon's case was reclassified from missing person to

endangered missing person.

Then to suspected homicide.

But no arrest has ever been made.

And no person of interest has never been named.

The case file remains open with the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office.

The yellow medicine river still runs through that farmland.

The grain elevator in Tonton still has its red light.

The gravel roads are still empty at night.

And if you drive county road 10 past Porter at 2 a.m.,

you'll see exactly what Brandon saw.

Darkness so complete.

It swallows your headlights 30 feet ahead.

And somewhere out there in the space between Porter and nowhere

is the answer to what Brandon Swanson saw in the last moment of his phone call.

A surprise swear and then silence.

He's been out there almost 18 years and he's still out there

and his family is still waiting.

Thank you so much for hanging out today.

My name is AJ.

This is the WIFIles and that was a campfire story.

No debunking, no analysis.

Just a creepy story to scare you and the kids.

And that one is true and unsolved.

If you had fun, I'd appreciate it if you can like,

subscribe, comment, and share.

That stuff really helps.

And like most topics we cover here,

today's was recommended by you.

So if there's a story you'd like to see,

go to the WIFIles.com slash tips or send us an email.

We'd love to cover that story.

And if you'd like to hear any of these campfire stories expanded

into a full episode,

if it's a few I'd like to do, then definitely let me know.

Remember the WIFIles is also a podcast.

You can take us on the road.

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I'm plowing through the plugs.

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It's because I'm going to fast.

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Glad to meet you.

Those are the plugs.

I got through this fast and I could.

And that's going to do it.

Till next time, be safe.

Be kind and know that you are appreciated.

But then another piece,

very safe, very,

becomes the truth.

My friends.

And it never ends.

No, it never ends.

I feel the crap getting.

I got stuck inside my old home.

With an K-Out truck.

I've been only two hours.

Dude, stand, look, you've rigged

fake the moon landing alone.

On a film set,

I wore the shadow people there.

The ride's well-eating.

It's just for the smiling man.

I'm told.

And his name was Cole.

I can't believe.

I'm dancing with the fish.

She had no fish on Thursday.

Not sweet.

They jade too.

And when I'm happy,

I'll do the night.

All I ever wanted was

to just hear the truth.

So the world falls on your feet

all through the line.

The mouth man's side

and van the solar storm still come

to a god-duh

to see the city underground.

Mysterious number stations

planet surf,

hope to

rock the stockade

and wet the dark watchers' smiles.

In a simulation,

don't you worry though

the black night set a light

and told me so.

I can't believe.

I'm dancing with the fish.

She had no fish on Thursday.

Not sweet.

They jade too.

And when I'm happy,

I'll do the night.

All I ever wanted was

to just hear the truth.

So the world falls on your feet

all through the line.

She had no fish on Thursday.

Not sweet.

They jade too.

And when I'm happy,

I'll do the night.

All I ever wanted was

to just hear the truth.

So the world falls on your feet

all through the line.

You're the last to dance.

You're the last to dance

on the dance floor

because she is a camel.

You can't want to love the dance

when the feeling is right

on the way with him.

So I'll do the night.

You can't love the dance.

You can't love the dance.

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Enjoy savings on top of savings when you shop in store or online for easy drive up and

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See website for full terms and conditions.

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