 Over the last few Monday mysteries, we have been looking into disappearances and vanishings from state parks. Of course, if you look back on our Monday mystery playlist, some of the cases we've covered have been quite old. But the last few cases we covered have been modern. And today we're going to be covering a modern case. A case of a young 22-year-old boy who went missing in Washington. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Please hit that subscribe button and give us a like. As always, a very, very special thank you to all of our producers and our patrons on Esoteric Atlanta. Unfortunately, I'm still in the same situation where for some reason when I go into my patron account, I cannot pull up your names or your email addresses. I am getting notified that I'm getting new patrons and producers and I am so, so grateful to you guys. But if you have not heard from me, that's why for some reason my account is not giving me access to any of your information for me to reach out to you or for me to be able to create a credit roll, which I really like to do in my videos when it's just me talking is to give that credit roll with your names on it because without you, like seriously, this channel would not exist. I am pretty much a one-woman show and so your support means the absolute world to me. For a while, I thought not being able to see the people, my patrons and my producers was just a glitch in the system, but it's still that way. And so I did have Stephanie and Taylor pull some cards on it just to see what's going on. And it does look like there is something happening with the platform, maybe some rearranging going on. We know that's happening with a lot of these big platforms. So hopefully that will clear up soon. However, despite what's going on with patron behind the scenes, I am going to try to find somebody in my personal life to see if they can go into my account and figure out if there's a way for me to retrieve that information that I'm missing so that I can reach out to you guys and I can create a credit roll. If you're watching and you have a patron account as well and you're experiencing the same thing, please let me know in the comment section below and please let me know if you know how to rectify the situation because it's really frustrating me that I can't get access to your information. I really, really want to be in contact with my patrons and my producers. All right, with that being said, welcome to Esoteric Atlanta. My name is Bryce and today on Mystery Monday, we're going to be talking about the disappearance of Jacob Gray. Okay guys, just a little heads up before we get into Jacob's story. I am so excited because my friend, your friend, our friend Liz from TikTok is going to be coming back on the channel this week. For those of you who have been around for a while now, you know that Liz was a regular on the channel for a while, but she did go on a little adventure and she's back. And so I can't wait to catch up with her this week and hear about everything she's been doing and everything that she has learned. I know you guys always loved it when Liz came on and so that's something to be looking forward to this week. I do have on one of her sweatshirts from her Etsy shop. This is the sweatshirt that says born for a time as this. Of course that comes from the Bible verse from the book of Esther where it is said perhaps you were born for a time such as this, something we all are learning about our timeline right now. And I'm telling you ever since I wore this sweatshirt, I don't think I've actually taken it off because it's so freaking comfortable. I will put a link to her Etsy shop down in the description box below. I'm going to try to keep the sweatshirt on while I film this episode but it is getting a little bit warm. So if I take it off, if you see my clothes change, that's why. I do want to also say that covering these vanished and missing and sometimes deceased people on Mystery Monday is something that is sometimes a little bit hard for me because I don't want this story to be as quote unquote entertainment. I want us to really honor the people who have passed and use their lives and their passing as a way for us to try to understand what is actually going on in these national parks. My heart truly breaks for every person who has gone missing and especially for their family and the loved ones that they have left behind. Hopefully by covering these cases, their lives have not been lived in vain. Hopefully through their stories, we can be shown glimpses of the truth of what is really going on in our world. For example, with Jacob Gray's story, I learned something that I didn't know or maybe didn't know I know. It came as a shock when I was looking through some of the files that national parks here in the United States act almost as sovereign countries themselves. That was wild to me. I had no idea that these national parks actually exist within their own boundaries and therefore the laws and the rules are different when it comes to handling missing people. This is why in a lot of these vanishing cases, the national park has to request assistance from local police departments or from the National Guard or for any type of a volunteer service that is functioning outside of the park. It's because the park itself is considered its own sovereign territory. As a taxpayer, this kind of makes me a little bit upset because from what I understand, some of our taxes do go to the functioning and the funding of some of these national government-owned state parks that now I've learned act as their own country anyway. So a lot of shady, shady, shady stuff going on. And hopefully this type of bureaucracy won't follow us into the new earth. I don't think it can follow us into the new earth. And hopefully we will become wiser about why some of these areas of the earth are marked off as national parks. I think anybody on this channel knows as well as I know that there is more to it than just marking off some land to keep it natural. I think we all know and speculate that there's something else that is happening on these properties. Jacob Gray was a 22 year old boy from Santa Cruz, California. Growing up in Santa Cruz, Jacob was very athletic and from what I understand, he came from a pretty athletic family. He spent a lot of his childhood out in nature, surfing, scuba diving, all that kind of stuff that you do when you come from a coastal town. From what I understand, Jacob himself was a very, very strong swimmer which is important to remember when we get into his actual disappearance. Four years before Jacob disappeared in 2017, his parents divorced. Now, I come from divorced parents myself. I think a lot of us have gone through that and that can be quite taxing on the children. And from what I learned, Jacob himself had a very, very hard time with his parents divorced. Now, this is important for two reasons. One, this is going to come up later on when the body is discovered. People are going to speculate that Jacob himself was struggling with depression and maybe he himself was the culprit behind his own passing. However, I don't really think that's so given the circumstances of how his body was found which we will get to. And I do think that as a lot of us have gone through our own parents divorce, yes, it's depressing, yes, it does cause trauma, yes, it can cause some PTSD, but it's not something that people can't handle. And just because somebody is struggling with mental health over a situation in their life does not necessarily mean that they are going to then take their life. As I researched this case, his depression over his parents divorced seemed just like an easy, easy, easy reason for what actually happened to him and probably something that the nefarious people that I believe were associated with his passing clung to in order to take the attention off of them. The second reason why it's important to understand the circumstances behind Jacob's parents divorce is because that is why Jacob was up in Port Townsend, Washington where he vanished. According to my research, Jacob's grandmother lived up in Port Townsend, Washington and Jacob decided to go up there to kind of have a moment of reprise to enjoy the nature and to figure out his life. 22 years old to me is so freaking young. I've read before that they want to up the age of adolescence to 23 years old and I actually very much agree with that because people in their early 20s to me are no different than teenagers in a lot of way. They're still growing. Their brain hasn't finished developing and I do think it's an awesome opportunity when young kids such as Jacob can take advantage of being in a different town, work odd jobs and just enjoy their lives for a little bit before taking on a more serious career. Jacob also was preparing for a cross country trip according to his mother. Jacob had decided that he was going to pedal bike his way across the United States to get to Vermont where his older brother Micah was stationed with the National Guard. Jacob estimated that it would take him about two years to actually cross the terrain on a bike. He had planned to stop along the way and work odd jobs and really just enjoy the journey. I mean, after all as cheesy as it is, it's not about the destination. It's always about the journey. And what a huge undertaking that would be for Jacob. I can't imagine the satisfaction one would feel when they completed such a journey as pedal biking your way across the United States. It seems that before Jacob was going to attempt to take this cross country adventure, he was doing little trips in order to prepare. Makes sense, right? You wouldn't just decide to pedal your bike across the country without actually training for such a task as that. And what a better place to train than in the outdoor elements of Washington State. In fact, Jacob had built two cartons, two milk cartons attached to his bike in order to carry all of his supplies. And when he left on April 5th of 2017 to go on a little bit of an excursion, he had both these milk cartons attached to his bicycle with all of his supplies on him. Jacob was heading to camp at the Olympic National Park. Now another important thing to note is that for this excursion, Jacob did leave his cell phone at his grandmother's house. Again, this was 2017, not that long ago. And I don't know many 22-year-olds or 32-year-olds or 42-year-olds at that, that would actually purposely leave their cell phone at their grandmother's house and not have it with them while going on this excursion. Perhaps Jacob was very consciously aware of what he was doing. And perhaps he was trying to take a few days just to get his thoughts collected to train and to prepare for this journey across the United States. On April 6th, the very next day of 2017, passers-by noticed that Jacob's bike and his supplies had been abandoned on Solduck Hot Springs Road. Ranger John Bowie was the first to notice the abandoned bike, but when he went to go inspect the bike, it appeared that Jacob had literally just left his bike there and was possibly down at the waterfront to collect more water. In fact, the bike was left nearly 40 feet from the edge of the river. Now, as I said, it appeared to the Ranger that Jacob or whoever owned this bike. I don't know if you knew it was Jacob at this point. It appeared to have just kind of left it as is because he did have a tarp placed over his belongings like he was just trying to protect his belongings while he stepped away for a moment. The only odd thing about what the Ranger noticed was there were arrows from bow and arrows in the ground around Jacob's belonging. However, it appears that Jacob was the one who owned the bow and arrows. In fact, later on, we would see an inventory of everything that Jacob had on him. This inventory included pots and pans, wool blankets, duck tape, a toolbox stove, a deck of playing cards, a Bible, dehydrated meals, two first aid kits, carabiners, bow and arrows, a rain poncho, sleeping bag, a tarp, ropes, and a bungee cord. Jacob was protecting his belongings while he had ventured out. This was not abnormal for this area. And on top of that, nothing was wrong with the bike. It wasn't like he had just abandoned his bike because something had happened to it. He was perhaps trying to find someone to help him. No, everything seemed to be in place. Again, the only odd thing about this scene was the four arrows that had been shot into the ground around the bike. There's also one other odd thing about this scene, but we won't learn about that until later on. By the next day, April 7th of 2017, the bike and the tarp and everything was still as it was. And so at this point, the Park Ranger decided to snoop around a little bit. Obviously, this guy had some gut instinct that even though everything appeared to be okay, perhaps it wasn't. While looking through Jacob's belonging, he did find a list of all of Jacob's relatives with their phone numbers attached. Now, I will remind you that Jacob did not bring his cell phone with him on this excursion. However, again, he did have a piece of paper with numbers on them to his family members. None of this screams depression and someone trying to take their own lives to me. If you were trying to go out and take your own life, why would you then have a piece of paper with your loved ones' phone numbers on them for an obvious case of emergency if you needed to get in touch with them? Why would you also be bringing food with you and supplies for camping if you were just going to end it all right there at that national park? The whole depression, the whole narrative that he potentially took himself out just does not sit with me in this story whatsoever. Again, not only do I believe that there are nefarious actions happening in these national parks, but none of the evidence points to him planning on doing that. The first person that the ranger called was Mallory, Jacob's sister. Jacob's sister then told the ranger to get in touch with her parents down in Santa Cruz. Obviously, immediately after they were notified that their son's belongings had been abandoned by the side of the road, both the parents and Mallory, the sister, came up to Port Townsend, Washington to help with the search. The family arrived by April 11. And from my research, it is noted that Randy, Jacob's father, was one of the most active members of the search and rescue to find his son. He brought his wetsuit, he brought all of his supplies to be able to scope through the area on his own. Again, as I said in the beginning, Jacob did come from a very athletic family who knew how to work nature. Now, as I said, the bike was parked about 40 feet from the river. And so the ranger assumed that Jacob had gone down to the river to collect more water. The ranger did notice that it appeared that somebody had been at the riverfront and had potentially slipped in. However, it appeared that whoever had slipped into the river had gotten themself out again. Now, again, as I said in the beginning, Jacob was known to be a very strong swimmer. Growing up on the Pacific Coast himself, surfing, doing all the water sports, he himself was not a stranger to the power of water. From what I read, Jacob would have known when to float with the current and when to push back against the current. And again, it did appear that somebody had gotten hit. If he had slipped in, it looked like there was actual evidence that somebody had pulled themselves out of the water. However, when biologists would be pulled in to examine this case, they speculated that it might not have been Jacob at all who slipped into the water and pulled themselves out. They speculated that this could have been an otter or, in fact, a mountain lion. On April 12th, volunteers from the Olympic Mountain Rescue were brought in to look at the scene. And they discovered that someone, potentially Jacob, had switched out their shoes. It appeared that Jacob originally had his hiking boots on, but at his bike, his hiking boots had been switched out for running shoes that he had brought with him as well. This is very, very, very strange. If we're looking at the possibility that Jacob had gone down to the riverfront. Now, Washington State is not known to be a place of sunshine. Washington State is a very, very rainy state. It's very gray. Again, think of Seattle. This is just what it's known for. And so for Jacob to walk downhill to the river, while the weather was a little bit cold and rainy, after all this was April, he would not have put on his running shoes. Running shoes, even though there are treads on running shoes, they're not made for this type of terrain. But what is made for this type of terrain are hiking boots. So why would Jacob, someone who obviously knew at least a little bit about what he was doing, seeing that he had two sets of shoes, change out his hiking boots for his running shoes to go downhill in mud and in rain to get to the water? It doesn't make sense. It's not adding up. By April 15, the local sheriff office was called in to assist in the search. They did try to interview people that possibly saw Jacob, but most of the witnesses who saw Jacob only saw him in passing. And so therefore, their testimony, according to the sheriff's department, was not considered credible. Around this time, the sheriff's department and the Rangers did take the official inventory of everything left by the side of the road, where they eventually moved everything into a boat house near Crescent Lake. Much to the confusion of people tied to this story, around this time biologists were called in to scan the banks of the river for any signs of Jacob. They went about 12 miles down the river. Now, this was strange because there are people who are trained to be rescue divers. These are people that are actually, again, trained to dive into the rivers of Washington State in the weather and the terrain and be able to look for missing people. Why? Why the hell did they call biologists in? The biologists basically could look at the log and tell you what type of animal passed by it. And so needless to say, after the biologists scanned 12 miles down the lake, Randy, Jacob's father, himself put on his wetsuit and went behind them because this just makes no sense. Not only that, but the National Guard actually contacted the State Park to volunteer to send a helicopter overhead to see what they could see. And if they had allowed this to happen, we might have known what happened to Jacob a lot sooner than we eventually will know what happened to Jacob. And this all had to do with Jacob's brother, Micah, who was over in Vermont stationed with a Coast Guard. And so he was himself trying to call in favors to get volunteer teams to come in and help search for his baby brother, but the park declined. A bit like the Jared Atadero case, where there was a decline from help from people who genuinely wanted to help. These are not people being paid to do this. They are volunteering, but yet the park is declining. They even brought cadaver dogs and the cadaver dogs did hit on some things. And this kind of told everybody that they were going to be looking for a body at this point. Now, the active search for Jacob only lasted about a week, maybe a little bit over a week when the park decided to downgrade his search to what is called a passive search. Basically what this means is they were not going to continue looking for Jacob unless there was a reason to look for Jacob. Like in case some evidence were to appear in the park, that would give them reason to need to go try to look for Jacob again. So basically they were not going to be looking for Jacob. A lot of the park rangers had a suspicion that maybe Jacob had drowned. The Pacific Coast line is about 78 miles from where Jacob's bike was found. However, according to even the biologist, there's just no way that he would have been pulled out to the ocean, especially again since he was very, very, very well-quipped to handle the water. Jacob's father, Randy, ended up closing his business down in Santa Cruz and basically spending the next 16 months going back and forth between Santa Cruz and Washington. He ended up becoming pretty good friends with a man named Derek Rands who is a notorious Bigfoot hunter. So this could be another theory as to what happened to Jacob because the Pacific Northwest is notoriously a place where Bigfoot is spotted. And according to the Cassiopeans, just a little side note, Bigfoot is like the pets of the weird other world veil. Like Bigfoot would be like our dog. Like they think Bigfoot is like this adorable little pet. Anyway, just something interesting to share with you guys from the Cassiopean board regarding Bigfoot. We have Bigfoot sightings down here in Georgia as well because we're at the base of the Appalachian Mountains. So there are some Bigfoot museums here too. But this Derek guy, he kind of was known for his obsession with Bigfoot. In fact, he had also been on TV shows talking about his research and his hunting of the Bigfoot. He had a place called The Barn which allegedly is like a museum for Bigfoot and he did offer Randy, Jacob's father, The Barn as a place for him to sleep and live while he was continuing his search for his son. Basically by himself, seeing that the National Park was kind of done looking for Jacob. On August 10th of 2018, a group of biologists traveled 5,300 feet above sea level at Ho Mountain to be able to study some of the wildlife out there. Ho Lake, which is on top of the mountain, is about 15 miles from where Jacob's bike had been abandoned. And much to their surprise, when they got to the lake, they discovered the remains of a young boy. The boy did appear to be Jacob because his wallet was on him. But the body wouldn't be formally ID'd as Jacob Gray until his dental records were examined. Now this is where the mystery gets even more, I guess, mysterious. Now again, Jacob went missing in April. April here in Georgia is quite humid and hot, but in Washington it's still very cold and perhaps a little bit snowy. Especially at the beginning of April, especially on the date that Jacob went missing because the date that Jacob went missing, there would be no way for him to make it to the top of this mountain because there were avalanches. Like no way he could have actually made it to the top of this mountain. So how did his body end up there? Many people speculated that he actually died of hypothermia, which would make sense because it is cold, but again, he would not have been able to make it to Ho Lake at this time of year. And even his death certificate still claims that his passing is inconclusive. I am very happy that the family of Jacob Gray does now have their closure. They're able to put Jacob to rest and hopefully try to recover and deal with the trauma of losing a child and a brother. But I do hope as we move into a time of justice that the truth of Jacob's passing will become known. That there will be justice for whatever was done to this young 22 year old boy who had his whole life ahead of him. As always, I would love to hear your thoughts and your opinions down in the comment section below. Thank you guys so much for sitting through this episode today. I hope that you're having a wonderful start to your week. I know that people are feeling very frustrated and very antsy right now with the timeline that we're in. But just know that it is always darkest before the dawn. Keep your head held high. Know that you were born for such a time as this and you yourself are a badass. Oh, and again, I've gotten so many people commenting about my opening song. That song is my friend Josh's song and there is actually a link down in the description box below. It's always there. If you want to listen to the full song or purchase the full song, it's down there in the description box. I thank you so much for your compliments. I know that makes Josh very, very happy. So many people tell me that they dance to the opening song and that's super awesome. I'm glad that it brings you joy and I know that Josh will be very happy to know that it brings you joy as well. If you want to help out an artist here in Atlanta and a friend of mine, his song, the full song, again, down in the description box below. Alright guys, have a wonderful day and I will talk to you soon. Bye.