Masquerade Podcast: Unexplained Mysteries With Author Steph Young

A haunting last photo is all that his parents are left with. The photo is a close-up shot of his face, set against a bleak, dark landscape. He is alone, we think. He is lost, we believe, and he is very afraid. How he vanished has never been solved. He was a boy scout aged 12, and he vanished into thin air. He was with his scout group on a hike. There one minute, gone the next. It was July the 19th 1991, and 12-year-old Jared Negrete was on his first overnight camping trip in the San Gorgorio wilderness in the South-Eastern part of the San Bernardino National Forest of California. It is an area the LA Times calls, ‘A breath-taking bramble of rocky crags, sandy switchbacks, and dozens of trails, many of which meander to nowhere….’ After Jared disappeared, a 19-day search for him found only his camera with that last haunting photo, and some discarded candy wrappers. How could he vanish in the middle of the wilderness? There was no road to leave by, no transport out of there; no route out, apart from a very long