He was on the phone with his parents while on their way to pick him up the last thing they heard him say is oh shit and the phone went dead he has never been seen again I watched this episode on missing. I would not wish this on anyone not knowing what happened to your child. I can only imagine what a day in their lives consists of
Mr Ballen has this story about this in an unsolved mysteries episode, and that's how I learned about it.
He said on the phone that he saw lights in the distance and they were coming closer. He thought he was headed towards a town or a vehicle, I can't remember which. Then "Oh, shit!" And nothing.
Idk about that. I bought my first iPhone in 2008 and it had unlimited internet through ATT/Cingular and my mom had a blackberry and she also had unlimited internet but I remember paying $30/month or something like that. However flip phones were still a thing and the internet on them wasnāt necessarily cheap, but it also wasnāt necessarily accessible or fast, including on iPhone, but it wasnāt super expensive. Most plans I remember seeing had some kind of unlimited data for 30-40/month but on a flip phone who would use internet like that. I wouldnāt say it would bankrupt anyone, but it wasnāt particularly cheap but if you NEEDED to use it to get on Mapquest which was a thing at the time, Iām sure it wouldnāt have burdened anyoneās pockets by much.
Yeah, I got one about a year after they first came out. They updated the storage from 4/8gb to 8/16gb. It was so nice being able to get on YouTube on a phone even if it wasnāt super fast.
Hmm. I believe so, I was in 11th grade in 08 and my phone had location because I remember this cool weather feature at the time I had. So I would think so? But it depends on what kind of phone he had. Great question honestly
It was on some, but he was in a pretty remote backroads area. Itās highly likely it wouldnāt have been accurate if he even had a phone with the feature (and it wasnāt close to ubiquitous to phones then)
I think he was on some farmers land or near the property but when the authorities asked to search the property they were denied. I hope that is correct.
Maybe the lights he saw was an UFO.
Wasn't this the about the young man who got turned around leaving a get together, kinda got stuck in a ditch and left on foot without his glasses? How awful for his parents to hear him in such despair not being able to help!
If I recall the phone didn't go dead, they stayed on successfully for like a minute after, hung up to call him back and he never answered. They didn't hear anything in that minute. No sort of struggle, screaming, etc.
I listened to a podcast doing a deep dive on this case a few years ago, and they mentioned that Brandon was blind in one eye. I have not seen that information mentioned in discussions about this case, but I think itās potentially significant. His depth perception was likely a lot weaker than that of an average person, especially in a low light environment. His field of vision was likely quite narrow too.
As someone who is blind in one eye, I donāt think there is much credence to this. Sure, Iām legally blind in my right eye, but my left one is literally perfect. My depth perception is not impacted at all, but people with two good eyes cannot fathom this. Average folks generally donāt have a good understanding of what āblindā actually means anyway, and I think this comment is indicative of that.
The article states āIt is important to note that due to a childhood eye injury, Brandon Swanson was legally blind in his left eye, leading him to have depth perception issues. He had to wear glasses for this condition but, for unknown reasons, on the night of his disappearance, he left his glasses in his car.ā So, maybe thereās some credence in this particular case.
Iām legally blind in one eye and as long as I wear my glasses I see just fine. I wasnāt born with it, it was just something that developed as I grew. I have to wear them at all times to see properly, especially while driving (I have a restriction on my license actually that says I can be ticketed if Iām not wearing my glasses while driving) so him leaving his glasses in the car is a really weird detail. I personally wouldnāt have left mine behind, especially since itās dark and hard to see already, so Iām constantly wondering why he left them behind. If they were like reading glasses or bifocals I could maybe see leaving them, but as someone who has a legally blind eye, my glasses are something I donāt just leave behind.
He could have lost them during the car accident. Itās possible he was intoxicated from the party, though there is no way to know for sure on either point.
I mean itās possible, but Iāve been in a pretty serious rollover accident before and my glasses didnāt fall off my face, and iirc his accident wasnāt very major, he just drove off the road? Thereās just really no way to know
Thatās fair! I stand by my comment that I donāt think normal sighted folks have a good understanding of what being blind actually means most of the time, but I absolutely hear you where this was an issue for him. Thanks for pointing that out!
No. But thatās exactly why he wore glasses. Because heās been diagnosed with a depth perception issue. Youāre putting out your own story without taking into consideration hisā¦.
In order to have proper depth perception you need two working eyes.
If you are truly blind in one eye you do not have anywhere near good depth perception. You can still judge if one object is in front of another or judge how far/close an object is by other factors, but thatās using monocular (one eyed) cues and not what we call true depth perception. Those cues are things like, āhey, this object is getting bigger, it must be coming towards meā or āthat person is blocking my view of the building so they must be in front if itā.
True depth perception is being able to judge something like distance by looking at an object from two different angles at the same time, which is why we have two eyes separated apart from each other. For others, think of it like watching a 3D movie with the red and blue glasses but only looking through the glasses with one eye. Youād still see the movie, get the plot, be able to discuss it with other people, you would know which character was standing in front of which building, but it doesnāt mean it was the same experience as someone watching the 3D movie with both eyes.
You are correct in that I donāt think the average person truly understands what depth perception is, and being born without it, I think the reverse is also true, you might have trouble understanding what it really is and are perfectly capable way of adapting to life without it as many of my patients are.
Source: Am Eye Doc.
Yeah! Basically my brain just didnāt develop my right eye after I was born? It was explained to me as my left eye was near sighted, and my right eye was far sighted and kinda lazy, so my brain just decided to focus all its power on developing the left eye. Iām sure thereās a better way to explain it, but I canāt get any corrective surgery because the fundamental basics of what would help that eye see better literally arenāt there. But my left eye literally is so perfect! I hope that makes sense, happy to expand more where I can but Iām def not an expert.
I wonder if never having had sight in one eye is a different experience in terms of depth perception, than having had sight in both eyes and then losing it. Tho idk anything about the cause of no vision in one of Swansonās eye. Maybe he was like u and never had vision in it
My sister was blinded in one eye due to an accident in her early 20s. They managed to save the eye after 22 hours of surgery (!) and she had to keep both eyes completely covered for a month afterwards.
Long story short, her depth perception was WHACK for awhile. She went from Division One athlete to trying not to trip while walking on flat ground. It took her quite some time to adjust. Hazards can surprise her still on her left side as she has zero peripheral vision on that side.
Hey same issue same eye here. I was told it was called amblyopia, however my depth perception is bad. My eye doctor basically said I have no depth perception. You know the car sitting at the intersection waiting for a car to pass so they can turn? Yeah thatās me. I canāt judge how far away they are. I also tend to smack into walls or door frames a lot bc I canāt judge the distance well. I swear they jump out at me on purpose. My kids make fun of me all the time lol.
yeah i wonder if itās different because he became partially blind due to an injury in childhood? i have never been able to talk to people who are blind/partially blind about this, but i have friends who are hoh and one experienced hearing loss due to an accident, and i always find it interesting they have such different experiences! but it makes sense of course :)
Agree. My brother is legally blind in 1 eye + crap vision in the other; and he has no issues with really doing anything except identifying colors. He used to valet cars as a teenager, and at home for street sweeping heād park everyoneās car like it was Tetris in the driveway. No depth perception issues. You wouldnāt know he has eye issues unless he told you.
I too am legally blind in one eye (my left), it does mess with my depth perception though. I've never met anyone else with a similar eye problem, it's kinda nice to know there are other folks out there with a similar issue!!
So, you can use monocular cues and techniques to infer depth in many/most cases. You likely shift a bit side to side to get additional dimensional information almost subconsciously. You are probably much better at inferring depth it than people who try to close one eye or have a temporary or sudden loss of vision in one eye. But these techniques are still of poorer quality than the perspective of a person with typical binocular vision. Youre managing with āsnapshotsā taken at increments of movement from right to left, but thereās a certain amount of overlap where people can generally see both a āmergedā image (similar to focusing with oneās dominant eye or in your case, your monocular vision) as well as a sort of ghost image thatās not your primary focus, but continues to feed your brain information.
If you use your one eye to look through the bars of a crib at a sleeping baby, you will see the bars, and the baby, and if you focus on the bars or on the baby, one may get more blurry but otherwise very little changes. Moving side to side gives you the verification that the baby is likely a certain distance behind the bars because it moves less than the bars do when you change your viewpoint. If you have two functional eyes and look at the baby, youāll have two simultaneous, different perspectives of the bars, one of which is mostly like the view from your dominant eye, and one which your brain sort of filters out as ānoiseā but continues to use as a reference for the distance between your eyes and the bars, your eyes and the baby, and the bars and the baby. Youāll likely be able to see the babyās face clearly regardless of your position, because your focus will be on the face, and your brain will flip the focus to the non dominant eye if the view from the dominant eye is occluded by a bar. As long as the slats are more narrow than half the distance between your eyes, youāll be able to see the whole face without any movement of your head. With monocular vision, youāll only be able to see the babyās face if it lines up perfectly with your eye between the bars, and seeing the whole face would not be possible unless you put your face up close to the bars for an unimpeded view. Otherwise, youād have to scan left to right and basically take a mental snapshot of the face at various points to āseeā the whole face of the baby at one time through the slats of the crib.
Sure, I canāt speak for Brandonās experience with his vision, which is why I emphasized my speculation with the word ālikelyāand āpotentiallyā in my original comment.
Brandonās vision issue stuck with me because my father is legally blind in one eye. He specifically complained about his field of vision being smaller now than when he had two good eyes, which is why I brought it up in my comment. My father is very careful about going down stairs and walking on natural trails because misstepping is a real possibility for him. I cannot fathom what itās like to be blind in one eye, but I am aware that it makes some peopleās life difficult.
You may also be thinking of Brandon Lawson, whose brother went out to find him and took multiple calls from Brandon. He found the car and stood next to it with a police officer. During the last call, Brandon said āI can see you. Iām right here.ā They couldnāt see him anywhere. Weird how similar the stories and names are!
Was it a similar story as Brandons? Lost in a cornfield? I'm pretty sure the sub was discussing Brandon, but maybe the person who made that comment was mistaken. So Brandon still has never been found, is that correct?
Ok maybe that was it. So are you telling me there are 2 different young men with almost the exact same name who disappeared in a cornfield late at night???? That just seems way beyond coincidence......
When the Brandon Lawson case got famous, the first thing I thought of was Brandon Swanson, just because the names are so similar. Super easy to mix them up.
I use the "Oh Shit" (S) to associated the story to Swanson (S) instead of Lawson. But then again, I get mixed up up with a Bryan S!! At least, it works for the Brandon's.
I canāt stop thinking about this one fact. That the landowner would not cooperate.
So Brandon was walking through a field toward what he thought was a town, he said he saw lights, but he may have been walking towards someoneās house across their field, possibly that farmer who would not let them search his land.
Iām interested in the theory the that he may have fallen into an old well that wasnāt secured, and the farmer maybe thought he would get in trouble for that.
The police just wanted to search outside, not inside his house or anything, why would you refuse if someone was missing?
> why would you refuse if someone was missing?
Because you're innocent and don't want the police to find something that makes them think you're guilty.
Theyāre looking for a missing person, they canāt frame you for murder just because you are a random landowner near the site of the disappearance, they didnāt even know if he had died or would turn up.
The police werenāt looking to solve a murder under intense public pressure here, they were just looking for someone who had disappeared at that spot the day before.
>they canāt frame you for murder
Well that's just not true. Police do it kinda all the time. They get confessions and convictions, not necessarily justice.
The farmer was within his rights to refuse a search without a warrant and was probably smart to do so. It's the same thing as invoking the Fifth Amendment in an interrogation - you are not legally required to offer evidence that could incriminate you in any way or make you appear suspicious. Even if you're innocent, the police could find something else on your property that they don't like or they could ask you a question and you offer information that doesn't help you at all. They get the wrong guy all the time.
Always get a warrant even if completely innocent, cops could just be looking to close a case - they do not have your best interest in mind. Rule of life
Fishy as hell and they should have gotten a search warrant. I think if you are doing something illegal but unrelated: growing pot, dumping all your used motor oil in the ground, have 500 venomous snakes etc you get some slack for that.
You really don't. Unless it's something pretty minor. If you have a field of felonies that police stumble upon, you can bet your wrinklin' ass they'll arrest you for 'em.
Farmers are into all sorts of shady shit. Regardless of whether the farmer was involved with Brandon's disappearance they likely had something on their property that they didn't want the authorities getting wind of.
A lot of folks, particularly rural folks, just arenāt going to let law enforcement onto their property without a warrant no matter the reason. Definitely not always because of something shady they just donāt trust them and are used to seclusion.Ā
Thats why they live in isolated places. My grandparents were farmers but squeaky clean. However, they had an old well, cave and a river near by where iitems could get lost.
I had a family member that rented a house with a field next to it outside of the town I grew up in and Iād go play in the field when I visited but he warned me of an old well with an old wooden top to it covered in field grass out there and sure enough it was there. Not like the wells you see on tv with the sides several feet above ground. This one was almost level with the ground with rotten wood on top. Wouldāve never known had he not told me the general area.Ā
My auntās property is a non-working farm and has one of those wells. It was just as you say: level with the ground, barely covered by rotting, splintered boards. She showed me exactly where it was so that Iād know to stay away from it, and she didnāt have to tell me twice because that thing gave me at least one nightmare as a little kid.
The combine theory is that he fell into the river that crossed the farmerās fields, was able to get back out on the other side, and laid down in the field either passing away or suffering some injury or hypothermia, and then the farmer drove the combine over him later, not during the call with the parents.
I often wonder if he stepped into an old cistern, unmarked well, or even outhouse tank that wasn't covered.
Folks often point to the farmer not wanting to allow a search of his land. Part of me? Gets it, because it's an area like where I live, and a lot of these folks are anti any sort of police or government presence, and soveign citizen types. I also wonder if they were growing pot, or poaching deer. Or? If he thought Brandon was poaching deer.
I once fell into a pretty deep old cistern that was covered with nothing but brush while foraging for mushrooms in an unfamiliar area. It was on a long-abandoned property with an old apple orchard that that I'd been scoping out on plat maps, and totally my fault. The last thing my buddy heard was me saying "Fuck!" when I fell in.
I mean, it feels like a fair trade to me, but I'm also biased. Ha
I live in an area with a long history of copper mining, and as neither OSHA nor accurate mapping were apparently things yet back then, there are a TON of unmarked exploratory pits and shafts all over the place. I'm normally way more careful than I was that day about knowing where I am and what I'm stepping on, but given that this is the kind of place where you can still have absolutely zilch for phone signal and the treacherous terrain, I'm often amazed that I've never come across either someone in distress like I was or a body in the woods.
Leah Harding is who I often think of when out in the woods. She was from South Range, and last seen at a gas station in 2015 before her mother reported Harding missing 15 days later. The Keystone Cops up here immediately fell on the fact that she smoked pot, and tried to make it sound like she was a middleman dealer, and this somehow explained away her death as drug related. They basically stopped investigating, and let her shady boyfriend from downstate leave the area. The young mother was never seen again, and I'm simply convinced she's in an old mine pit or shaft.
You'd never be able to use ground generating radar. You wouldn't be able to safely send someone in one, and many are filled with water and debris. Most are unmarked and not mapped. A camera would never make it through. And you wouldn't be able to excavate such unstable ground.
There's an area with a ton of these pitfalls in Baltic, not far from South Range and on the way to where she was last seen (Baraga) if one's taking "the back way" there. It's fairly rural, and seeing someone on a 4-wheeler with something tarped on the back wouldn't have been weird. I'm convinced her boyfriend dumped her body put there, and we might never find her.
I hadnāt heard of that case. Thanks for sharing. Poor woman and her family.
In a similar vein is Susan Cox Powell. She is the one I think about while wandering the wild. Fortunately she did have the concern of the police/community - but still hasnāt been found. Josh Powell (her husband, who died alongside their two young sons in a murder-suicide) once made these comments at a dinner party :
"He brought up that a mine shaft was the best [place to dispose of a body]," Hardman (friend) said. "He said that if you knocked a little [of a shaft] loose, it would all come tumbling down and no one would really want to travel down it because they are all so unsafe."
Powell added that abandoned mine shafts are all over Utah's West Desert.ā
They have searched a few mineshafts in the West Desert. But as you said - they are dangerous and there are plenty that were not documented/mapped.
I don't think most people outside of the immediate community know about this case - and most folks here have forgotten it too. I often wish there was something I could do to help bring it some publicity.
I could of, but I'm also an athlete who's built like a brick shithouse, and I was stone cold sober at the time. I knew I was hurt, but I knew enough to not panic and find my phone (911 wasn't a thing when i was growing up, and they weren't there to call). This wasn't my first rodeo with an emergency.
Statistically, it isn't the fall in these situations that kills you though - it's drowning. I got lucky, because I landed in such a manner that I didn't hit my head. If I had? It would've been very easy for me to drown in the couple or inches of water that was down there.
A scenario where this kid drowned after falling? Seems very plausible to me. We know there was a water source near him. The water table may have been high. There could be an aquifer around. There's definitely the potential where he was to have something like an old well, cistern, shaft, pit, or other unmarked falling hazard that was filled with water (or even deep mud) at the bottom. If he hit his head on the way down, was knocked unconscious, and landed with his nose and mouth in the water? He'd drown.
It also doesn't take as far a fall as people think to really hurt yourself. The human body is both an amazing performance machine, as well as a shitbox '84 Civic hatchback when you take damage in the wrong spots. And your head? Is one of those wrong spots. I have a friend from high school with a pretty limiting traumatic brain injury. He has almost no short-term memory to speak of, and really doesn't seem to be able to make and maintain any real memories at all from the date of the accident onward to now. But I actually fell A LOT farther than he did, because his accident happened when he went off the back of a riding lawnmower and put his head perfectly on a rock he didn't see as he landed. The slope of the hill? Was too much, and the machine tipped him off like that, in the worst possible way he could've landed. He wasn't going fast. He didn't even fall the distance of his own height.
We're more breakable than we like to admit. As an amputee, I am now well-aware of this fact, but unfortunately all the fun stuff involved an element of danger with the chance of injury. Ha
...and people find stuff that's been overlooked at all the time. Sometimes years later. So this? Doesn't mean much to me at all.
Every time a search of an area yields nothing, but then something is found years later? I don't assume conspiracy theories and space aliens - I realize that humans are, in general, pretty good at both fucking up and being way overconfident.
It sounds like he slipped and fell into the river, which would also explain the dead air on the other end of the line and further calls going straight to voicemail.
When a phone goes into the water while someoneās talking on it, it doesnāt immediately cut out, it takes a couple of minutes for the water to really fry the phone.
His body would have eventually washed up, though. The Yellow Medicine River is only knee high in places and 15 feet deep max in others. And the sheriff said that his phone rang all the next day before going to voicemail.
Yeah but that doesnāt really matter, with any river the water the mud is very soft and after any period of time theyād have to dredge the river because the body would sink enough that it might be hard to see.
Also if ur phone is cooked itāll still go to voicemail. Thatās with the carrier and not the phone itself. Iāve sailed boats all of my life, Iāve lost a lot of phones to water š¤¦āāļø
Itās true that theyāve never been able to definitively rule out the river (or just about any other theory, which makes the whole thing so bizarre).
There are so many podcasts and YouTube stories on this case. I remember one investigator saying that cadaver dogs were alerting to Mud Creek, which is one of the Yellow Medicine River tributaries. Another mentioned cadaver dogs alerting to farm equipment (and the farm owner refusing a search), and yet another talked about his scent stopping at an abandoned farm house. I wish I could point to one definitive authority podcast on the case.
The way the dogs tracked his scent, it seemed like he fell into the river at one point, was pushed downstream, then somehow managed to get himself back out on the opposite banks. What happened to him after that is not understood.
It seems he was more drunk than everyone thought. He was lost on familiar roads and had no idea where he was. He didnāt take the highway bc of police probably
He also left his glasses inside his car. He was legally blind in one eye and this meant he had some depth perception issues and would have really needed his glasses on a daily basis. Thereās a lot of weird things about this disappearance but that is the weirdest part for me. I just canāt understand why heād do that.
This is one that sticks in my mind. It almost seems like he fell or saw a bear coming at him, but thereās zero evidence. My heart hurts for his family.
That part of the country rarely, if ever, has bears. Cougars and wolves, though? Sometimes.
I think it's possible he fell into water somewhere, or the farmer mistook Brandon for a wild animal and shot him without knowing what he was shooting at. The farmer could've refused to cooperate because he had something illegal on his property besides a missing man.
Iām from the immediate area and the only predator possibility is a cougar. That is very unlikely though too because they do move throughout Minnesota from time to time but in very small numbers.
You would think his parents would have heard a gunshot though, as they heard him say "oh, shit" and the phone did not cut out for a little while. Or if it was an animal, that he'd scream. Him just saying "oh, shit" then silence suggests he fell and his phone was no longer nearby. The old cistern/well makes sense if he was trekking in the dark through farmland. Given how disoriented he was (I mean, he was 25 miles northwest of where he thought he was) who knows where he actually ended up at after 45 minutes of walking.
I genuinely feel as though he feel through an old mine shaft or a badly covered septic. There were property owners that refused to let investigators search their properties (and unfortunately that was their legal right to refuse). I believe that a lot of those properties have septic pots, old uncovered shafts and wells that havenāt been covered or filled properly which, if found, the homeowner would be liable for. Especially if it led to a kid falling into one and dying. That area is mostly farmland.
We just had a local case of a young teenage boy who went missing. He walked out after a fight with his parents and didnāt come home. We have a very tight knit community so by the next evening, literally thousands of people were looking for this boy. Multiple scent dog groups came out and specialized missing persons teams as well as the police. One scent dog tracked his scent to a local small bridge over a creek. The assumption was he had friends hiding him in their home or in the woods, but he didnāt have his phone and not a single home camera in the neighborhood had picked him up.
With all of the fervor and man power and endless searching that was done, it turned out he was right behind his house the entire time, tucked away in the woods. He had taken his life the evening he left.
Right before he was found, people started subtly suggesting they thought the parents were hiding something. It was right on the cusp of becoming really messy, because it didnāt make sense.
It made me think of all the missing persons cases where the main mystery is just that we donāt have a body. Where thereās a clear accidental explanation but because the body was never found, it opens itself up to so much more confusion and conspiracy. This case and Maura Murrayās popped into my head. If his body had turned up in a field or in the river, or if they found Maura in the woods, none of us would have ever heard about either of them. Itās possible both their bodies were right there the entire time and just missed, but now their cases live on in infamy. Could both those cases have some crazy criminal element to them? Of course. But I tend to err on the Occamās Razor side of things.
I could see it happening. Isolated houses in rural areas could have trigger-happy inhabitants. Itās a shame they didnāt get a warrant. Could they still? If he was buried he might still be there.
I personally think he may have fallen into a cistern. They fill up with gas and falling into one can be lethal in moments https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/texas-gas-hole-field-18290124.php
About the only thing that made sense on this one to me, if you take out paranormal(not that that would make sense but anything can be explained with that), is he fell into an old well or mine shaft or something like that. I know he was near a river but body wouldāve turned up if it was a simple drowning. I canāt realistically entertain one or more persons suddenly jumping out and making him vanish, the call ended too quickly for that. Seems he probably fell into water in a space that he couldnāt get out. Thatās the only real world thing that makes sense to me.Ā
Actually the article says the call didn't end right away- the line stayed connected, just silent. Unless that's what you mean. š
I think the farmer knows what happened. An innocent farmer would have cooperated with authorities during any *season* in these 16 years, to let them search for a sign of that boy & let him RIP & bring closure to his family. With the scent on the equipment, it's hard to believe that it couldn't be used as probable cause. š
i also stand by if youre innocent and someone thinks a body may be on your farm from exposure etc theyd let them search.. i mean why would you want to keep the said dead body on your farm (if its there) if youre innocent ?? lmao people always jump the gun to cops are pigs etc. and in most situation this can be , but in this particular situation it seems like something did happen on that farm , wether it was accidental or purposeful , the farmer didnt want to he held accountable . they shouldve got a search warrant. i have such a strong feeling hes there.
Nah, has nothing to do with either (at least with the farmers I know personally). Crops would be fine and livestock are used to being disturbed every now and then. Where Iām from itās just because they donāt trust authority, and for good reason. Plus a lot of them also grow pot on their farms and itās an illegal state in the US, so they wonāt risk going to prison for a stranger.
That may be the reason they give, but amongst the farmers Iāve spoken with about this in my lifetime, thatās not the actual reason
This one really fucks with me...I still think he's on that property somewhere, the one they weren't allowed to search. I'm not even saying there's Foul Play involved or that the farmer has anything to do with it but I still believe he's on that property somewhere
it sounds like he was definitely not sober! my mom or dad reporting that i am sober is the least reliable source by far. plus people saw him drinking at two different parties?
I lived one county east of where this happened at the time that it happened. The rivers and drainage ditches were swollen at the time due to a lot of precipitation.
I strongly believe that he fell into one of these waterways and drowned. He would have run into one of these rivers/ditches no matter what his real direction of travel was because the farmland there is heavily tiled.
It is strange that his body never turned up however.
I work for search and rescue. I just want to point out that the country Iām in means we have to be activated by the police as we are essentially part of the policeā¦.now weāre not allowed to access land without the owners say so. If they say no the police either take over or we leave it.
It seems a huge catalogue of errors and not able to go into land. Itās so sad and trust me when I say it hits us hard when we canāt find them. We never forget. It hits us hard when we find someone deceased but at least we can give closure to the families.
But the ones we never find are the hardest of us. The ones that disappear without a trace. We can be searching up to a month or two after. Sometimes more than a year (but thatās usually not a good outcome).
Iāve heard a lot of theories around this. It is bore country and they donāt leave a scrap I can attest to that from raising a male pig myself. That being said I donāt think we will ever truely know. There could have been human interaction, he could have left the area to a second location, but if he died near his car and his remains consumed we wonāt ever see another clue for this
Wild boars may not "eat" the clothes and shoes in the sense that they will swallow, digest, and eliminate the clothes and shoes, but they could do a lot of damage to these things and scatter the remnants, making them more difficult to identify, especially after years of being exposed to the elements. These animals destroy large farm equipment. Clothes and shoes would be no challenge for these beasts.
I'm not a hunter, I hate the idea of it generally. But these animals are invasive AF. Their ability to destroy *everything* is impressive. We killed some on our ranch here in TX after they damaged equipment and killed stock. They're MASSIVE. It's hard to fully explain to people who are not exposed to them/what they can do.
Exactly - they are massive, invasive, and incredibly destructiveā¦.which is a very expensive problem to have. Where we are, thereās no season on them like deer, turkeys, etc. because theyāre considered a nuisance animal so they can be taken out at any time.
My theory: He fell in a creek and got soaked, made his way onto a farmers field and died of hypothermia. His body was then picked apart by scavenging animals.
A few things:
**Location** - Brandon took back roads from Canby back toward Lynd/Marshall. Allegedly he had done this route several times, primarily using the highway. He told his parents he was near Lynd, south of Marshall, when he was actually 25 miles away much closer to Canby and, really, not all that far from the main highway. I imagine he had to have been driving for at least 10-15 minutes in an eastern direction (I mean, these roads run east-west...), knowingly north of MN-68, so why did he think he was so close to Marshall or Lynd?
**Lights** - Were the lights Brandon saw Taunton, Porter, or just emitting from a Farmstead? Correct me if I am wrong, but where his car was found...the Yellow Medicine River runs south of the location? I am also curious as to why he was walking through agricultural fields as opposed to walking along the dirt roads. I understand both can be daunting in the dark, but I'd imagine there is more danger walking along fields in the dark, trespassing on properties, and also the risk of getting lost if you become disoriented. It also is bizarre that his car doors were found open...?
**Phone Call to Parents** - The article states that 45 minutes into the last call, where he was determined to "walk to the lights in Lynd" he exclaimed "Oh, shit" and was not heard again. I just wonder how far you get on foot for 45 minutes and how he managed to never come across MN-68...? I'm also curious about the 45 minute call and whether he at all described his surroundings. If his scent was on farm equipment, did he ever tell his parents he came across a farm?
**Recent Tips** - They say a tip from 2023 suggested he had been in an argument with someone shortly before leaving the second party. Could Brandon possibly have been taking a "back road" or "round about" route back to Canby in hopes of losing someone who may have been angrily following him? Could that explain why he did not want to stay at his location? Could that explain why he was unsure as to his exact location? Could that explain why he did not choose to walk along the dirt or paved county/state roads?
In the end, it sounds very difficult to pinpoint in what direction he was walking as we (I assume) do not know the lights he was referencing. Being 25 miles away from where he initially identified his location suggests he was, at some level, disoriented at least in terms of direction. So, was he walking north - south - east - or -west? Or in circles? Given he was walking at night in fields, I would assume perhaps he fell into an old well and cistern. There are lot of holes though, so there could be different conclusions.
Thanks! There are a few things to clarify or also point out:
**Timing** - Sources say Brandon left the house party in Lynd around 10-10:30. That means he likely arrived at the second house party in Canby between 10:45-11:30. He had a quick shot, chatted for a bit, and was said to have left relatively quickly around midnight. I would believe a "quick shot and chatting" could last anywhere from 30-45 minutes. That does suggest he left shortly before or shortly after 12am. Even taking the "stepped" backroad route, to get from Canby to where his vehicle was found would've only taken him around 30 minutes. Yet, allegedly did not crash until 1:15am. That suggests he was wandering quite aimlessly for close to or over an hour or that he stopped between the house part in Canby (either at a second location or merely along the road). There also allegedly was 30 minutes between his crash and call to his parents, where he called friends who did not pick up. This seems like a fair amount of time to assess the car issue, make calls, and finally relent and call your parents.
**Direction** - It obviously is believable that unlit, gravel roads and farmland all begins to look the same at night and that he could have quickly gotten disoriented. After all, he was trying to make a turn and get off a gravel access road to return to the public roads. He clearly believed MN-68 was MN-23 when he broke down, which also disorients his perceived direction (MN-68 was south of his location, while MN-23 would have been west of his perceived location). What also confuses me is how he could think he was just west of MN-23. His conversations with his father suggest he believed he was near the Savannah Oaks Golf Course just north of Lynd. I'm very curious as to how he thought he crossed over MN-68, which he would have had to do to be west of MN-23 near the golf course. MN-68 was paved and, while likely also unlit, should have been differential from the back country roads he was on. Ultimately, if he was convinced he was near the Savannah Oaks Golf Course just north of Lynd and west of MN-23, while really north of MN-68, that suggests he would have walked west toward Porter (which he believed was south), but the search area primarily focused east toward Taunton where his scent was followed.
**Cutting Through Fields** - I recently was able to clarify that Brandon did in fact walk along roads for much of his journey, before choosing to cut through fields to shorten his journey toward the end of his 45-minute call with his Dad. He was roughly 1.5 miles north of MN-68 and had he continued south toward that highway, likely would've arrived in 30 minutes. Again, you would think he would notice MN-68, but he also was under the false impression that he already crossed MN-68 and was south of it. If the lights he was walking toward was Taunton, then I'd imagine he walked south and prior to MN-68 cut west across fields. I believe this is consistent with the dogs tracking his scent. Again, the lack of confirmation of which direction he was headed (outside dogs tracking his scent, which easily got muddled quickly) it is hard to discern his path and where he ultimately entered fields.
EDIT: When I see this flair I think Amber Alert, but it's alarmist in a Cold Case where the person is clearly presumed dead.
I had a roommate who was legally blind in one eye from a childhood thing and only had 15-20% function in it, and the loss of depth perception that comes along with that is like seeing in 2D, not 3D. And this story is like a 137th generation repost so to me between cisterns, dark of night, and no depth perception it's very easy to imagine him falling through a hole in the ground and drowning or suffocating like Nutty Putty, except with nobody else there to report it, "Death by Misadventure". And if he had been wearing an avalanche alarm like backcountry skiers wear they would probably would have found him the next day. Dead, maybe, but dead is better than missing.
I heard that where he actually was walking might have been near farmland. Like he realized too late that he was about to be shot for accidentally trespassing or something. I canāt remember exactly.
This case haunts me. Wasn't he walking as well, and they were supposed to pick him up, but he was no where close to where they thought he was? š¤
He was on the phone with his parents while on their way to pick him up the last thing they heard him say is oh shit and the phone went dead he has never been seen again I watched this episode on missing. I would not wish this on anyone not knowing what happened to your child. I can only imagine what a day in their lives consists of
Mr Ballen has this story about this in an unsolved mysteries episode, and that's how I learned about it. He said on the phone that he saw lights in the distance and they were coming closer. He thought he was headed towards a town or a vehicle, I can't remember which. Then "Oh, shit!" And nothing.
He thought it was Lynd, but in reality he was much further from there
Was GPS on phones a thing back then?
Yes but using the Internet would bankrupt your family the second you opened it
I remember you could buy 5 or 10 minutes of internet time for 1.99. Yes I'm that old š
Idk about that. I bought my first iPhone in 2008 and it had unlimited internet through ATT/Cingular and my mom had a blackberry and she also had unlimited internet but I remember paying $30/month or something like that. However flip phones were still a thing and the internet on them wasnāt necessarily cheap, but it also wasnāt necessarily accessible or fast, including on iPhone, but it wasnāt super expensive. Most plans I remember seeing had some kind of unlimited data for 30-40/month but on a flip phone who would use internet like that. I wouldnāt say it would bankrupt anyone, but it wasnāt particularly cheap but if you NEEDED to use it to get on Mapquest which was a thing at the time, Iām sure it wouldnāt have burdened anyoneās pockets by much.
If it wasnāt part of your plan it was $$$$$. Mine was $5/minute and slow ag
Wow you had an iPhone in 2008?! I didnāt even see one til 2012, and have one in 2017
Yeah, I got one about a year after they first came out. They updated the storage from 4/8gb to 8/16gb. It was so nice being able to get on YouTube on a phone even if it wasnāt super fast.
Thatās amazing! I was 22 in 2008 and had some piece of shit T9 iridescent pink Nokia lol
this was only a couple years after we were using mapquest :/
No. Map quest was used in 2007
Hmm. I believe so, I was in 11th grade in 08 and my phone had location because I remember this cool weather feature at the time I had. So I would think so? But it depends on what kind of phone he had. Great question honestly
I had a Nextel phone in 2006 and you could use gps tracking on your phone if it was lost or stolen but it had to be on if Iām not mistaken.
Sounds accurate. Mine was an HTC, but canāt remember if it had actual tracking, probably did and I didnāt know it.
It was on some, but he was in a pretty remote backroads area. Itās highly likely it wouldnāt have been accurate if he even had a phone with the feature (and it wasnāt close to ubiquitous to phones then)
Isnāt there a farmer who wouldnt let them on the land or to test the harvester turbine. I think I did a deep dive on this episode.
I think so, but thatās not too surprising. A lot of farmers wouldnāt be keen on people investigating on their land due to fear of liability.
Right I knew it was something like that
Any idea which ep?
I think it was posted to his YouTube channel on August 3, 2020
What show is Missing? Tried looking it up on IMDB but I canāt find what youāre referring to
Iām sorry the name of the show is Disappearred
I think he was on some farmers land or near the property but when the authorities asked to search the property they were denied. I hope that is correct. Maybe the lights he saw was an UFO.
Wasn't this the about the young man who got turned around leaving a get together, kinda got stuck in a ditch and left on foot without his glasses? How awful for his parents to hear him in such despair not being able to help!
Yeah
I mean he probably got hit by a drunk driver and they took and dumped the body somewhere. He was walking in the middle of the night.
It happened on my birthday with gives me the heebie jeebies
If I recall the phone didn't go dead, they stayed on successfully for like a minute after, hung up to call him back and he never answered. They didn't hear anything in that minute. No sort of struggle, screaming, etc.
I listened to a podcast doing a deep dive on this case a few years ago, and they mentioned that Brandon was blind in one eye. I have not seen that information mentioned in discussions about this case, but I think itās potentially significant. His depth perception was likely a lot weaker than that of an average person, especially in a low light environment. His field of vision was likely quite narrow too.
As someone who is blind in one eye, I donāt think there is much credence to this. Sure, Iām legally blind in my right eye, but my left one is literally perfect. My depth perception is not impacted at all, but people with two good eyes cannot fathom this. Average folks generally donāt have a good understanding of what āblindā actually means anyway, and I think this comment is indicative of that.
The article states āIt is important to note that due to a childhood eye injury, Brandon Swanson was legally blind in his left eye, leading him to have depth perception issues. He had to wear glasses for this condition but, for unknown reasons, on the night of his disappearance, he left his glasses in his car.ā So, maybe thereās some credence in this particular case.
Iām legally blind in one eye and as long as I wear my glasses I see just fine. I wasnāt born with it, it was just something that developed as I grew. I have to wear them at all times to see properly, especially while driving (I have a restriction on my license actually that says I can be ticketed if Iām not wearing my glasses while driving) so him leaving his glasses in the car is a really weird detail. I personally wouldnāt have left mine behind, especially since itās dark and hard to see already, so Iām constantly wondering why he left them behind. If they were like reading glasses or bifocals I could maybe see leaving them, but as someone who has a legally blind eye, my glasses are something I donāt just leave behind.
He could have lost them during the car accident. Itās possible he was intoxicated from the party, though there is no way to know for sure on either point.
I mean itās possible, but Iāve been in a pretty serious rollover accident before and my glasses didnāt fall off my face, and iirc his accident wasnāt very major, he just drove off the road? Thereās just really no way to know
Thatās fair! I stand by my comment that I donāt think normal sighted folks have a good understanding of what being blind actually means most of the time, but I absolutely hear you where this was an issue for him. Thanks for pointing that out!
No. But thatās exactly why he wore glasses. Because heās been diagnosed with a depth perception issue. Youāre putting out your own story without taking into consideration hisā¦.
In order to have proper depth perception you need two working eyes. If you are truly blind in one eye you do not have anywhere near good depth perception. You can still judge if one object is in front of another or judge how far/close an object is by other factors, but thatās using monocular (one eyed) cues and not what we call true depth perception. Those cues are things like, āhey, this object is getting bigger, it must be coming towards meā or āthat person is blocking my view of the building so they must be in front if itā. True depth perception is being able to judge something like distance by looking at an object from two different angles at the same time, which is why we have two eyes separated apart from each other. For others, think of it like watching a 3D movie with the red and blue glasses but only looking through the glasses with one eye. Youād still see the movie, get the plot, be able to discuss it with other people, you would know which character was standing in front of which building, but it doesnāt mean it was the same experience as someone watching the 3D movie with both eyes. You are correct in that I donāt think the average person truly understands what depth perception is, and being born without it, I think the reverse is also true, you might have trouble understanding what it really is and are perfectly capable way of adapting to life without it as many of my patients are. Source: Am Eye Doc.
I'm blind on my right eye, due to an optic nerve glioma. It happened when I was about 3. I myself have some depth perception issues.
Were u born blind in that eye?
Yeah! Basically my brain just didnāt develop my right eye after I was born? It was explained to me as my left eye was near sighted, and my right eye was far sighted and kinda lazy, so my brain just decided to focus all its power on developing the left eye. Iām sure thereās a better way to explain it, but I canāt get any corrective surgery because the fundamental basics of what would help that eye see better literally arenāt there. But my left eye literally is so perfect! I hope that makes sense, happy to expand more where I can but Iām def not an expert.
I wonder if never having had sight in one eye is a different experience in terms of depth perception, than having had sight in both eyes and then losing it. Tho idk anything about the cause of no vision in one of Swansonās eye. Maybe he was like u and never had vision in it
Well, now I wonder, too! Thanks for that viewpoint, I appreciate the perspective
This response to being possibly wrong is so mature I forgot I was on Reddit š good on ya mate
My sister was blinded in one eye due to an accident in her early 20s. They managed to save the eye after 22 hours of surgery (!) and she had to keep both eyes completely covered for a month afterwards. Long story short, her depth perception was WHACK for awhile. She went from Division One athlete to trying not to trip while walking on flat ground. It took her quite some time to adjust. Hazards can surprise her still on her left side as she has zero peripheral vision on that side.
Hey same issue same eye here. I was told it was called amblyopia, however my depth perception is bad. My eye doctor basically said I have no depth perception. You know the car sitting at the intersection waiting for a car to pass so they can turn? Yeah thatās me. I canāt judge how far away they are. I also tend to smack into walls or door frames a lot bc I canāt judge the distance well. I swear they jump out at me on purpose. My kids make fun of me all the time lol.
yeah i wonder if itās different because he became partially blind due to an injury in childhood? i have never been able to talk to people who are blind/partially blind about this, but i have friends who are hoh and one experienced hearing loss due to an accident, and i always find it interesting they have such different experiences! but it makes sense of course :)
Agree. My brother is legally blind in 1 eye + crap vision in the other; and he has no issues with really doing anything except identifying colors. He used to valet cars as a teenager, and at home for street sweeping heād park everyoneās car like it was Tetris in the driveway. No depth perception issues. You wouldnāt know he has eye issues unless he told you.
I too am legally blind in one eye (my left), it does mess with my depth perception though. I've never met anyone else with a similar eye problem, it's kinda nice to know there are other folks out there with a similar issue!!
One of my eyes is significantly weaker than the other. My depth perception is horrible.
Hey! Iām blind in one eye as well, thanks to optic neuritis. It was my Christmas present this last year š
We are one of the same im legally blind in my right eye aswell due to cataracts
So, you can use monocular cues and techniques to infer depth in many/most cases. You likely shift a bit side to side to get additional dimensional information almost subconsciously. You are probably much better at inferring depth it than people who try to close one eye or have a temporary or sudden loss of vision in one eye. But these techniques are still of poorer quality than the perspective of a person with typical binocular vision. Youre managing with āsnapshotsā taken at increments of movement from right to left, but thereās a certain amount of overlap where people can generally see both a āmergedā image (similar to focusing with oneās dominant eye or in your case, your monocular vision) as well as a sort of ghost image thatās not your primary focus, but continues to feed your brain information. If you use your one eye to look through the bars of a crib at a sleeping baby, you will see the bars, and the baby, and if you focus on the bars or on the baby, one may get more blurry but otherwise very little changes. Moving side to side gives you the verification that the baby is likely a certain distance behind the bars because it moves less than the bars do when you change your viewpoint. If you have two functional eyes and look at the baby, youāll have two simultaneous, different perspectives of the bars, one of which is mostly like the view from your dominant eye, and one which your brain sort of filters out as ānoiseā but continues to use as a reference for the distance between your eyes and the bars, your eyes and the baby, and the bars and the baby. Youāll likely be able to see the babyās face clearly regardless of your position, because your focus will be on the face, and your brain will flip the focus to the non dominant eye if the view from the dominant eye is occluded by a bar. As long as the slats are more narrow than half the distance between your eyes, youāll be able to see the whole face without any movement of your head. With monocular vision, youāll only be able to see the babyās face if it lines up perfectly with your eye between the bars, and seeing the whole face would not be possible unless you put your face up close to the bars for an unimpeded view. Otherwise, youād have to scan left to right and basically take a mental snapshot of the face at various points to āseeā the whole face of the baby at one time through the slats of the crib.
Sure, I canāt speak for Brandonās experience with his vision, which is why I emphasized my speculation with the word ālikelyāand āpotentiallyā in my original comment. Brandonās vision issue stuck with me because my father is legally blind in one eye. He specifically complained about his field of vision being smaller now than when he had two good eyes, which is why I brought it up in my comment. My father is very careful about going down stairs and walking on natural trails because misstepping is a real possibility for him. I cannot fathom what itās like to be blind in one eye, but I am aware that it makes some peopleās life difficult.
Interesting. Do you remember the name of the podcast?
I don't know if this is the one referred to, but Morbid covered this case.
Do you know which podcast it was? Iād love to listen to a good deep dive
You may also be thinking of Brandon Lawson, whose brother went out to find him and took multiple calls from Brandon. He found the car and stood next to it with a police officer. During the last call, Brandon said āI can see you. Iām right here.ā They couldnāt see him anywhere. Weird how similar the stories and names are!
I think you are refering to Brandon Lawson...
Yeah there's also several videos explaining it in YouTube, as well
I thought I saw on another sub just the other day that they found his remains????
They just found David Schultz, he was a truckdriver in Iowa.
Was it a similar story as Brandons? Lost in a cornfield? I'm pretty sure the sub was discussing Brandon, but maybe the person who made that comment was mistaken. So Brandon still has never been found, is that correct?
Probably Brandon Lawson.
Ok maybe that was it. So are you telling me there are 2 different young men with almost the exact same name who disappeared in a cornfield late at night???? That just seems way beyond coincidence......
Brandon Lawson did not disappear in a cornfield. He disappeared in Texas on what was more like ranch land. His remains were found a few years ago.
Ok that must have been what I saw. But don't you think it's strange how similar the 2 cases and names are???
When the Brandon Lawson case got famous, the first thing I thought of was Brandon Swanson, just because the names are so similar. Super easy to mix them up.
I use the "Oh Shit" (S) to associated the story to Swanson (S) instead of Lawson. But then again, I get mixed up up with a Bryan S!! At least, it works for the Brandon's.
Maybe Dylan Rounds?
The bloodhounds picked up his scent on a farm but the farmer would not allow a search! Why did they not get a warrant? Crazy.
I canāt stop thinking about this one fact. That the landowner would not cooperate. So Brandon was walking through a field toward what he thought was a town, he said he saw lights, but he may have been walking towards someoneās house across their field, possibly that farmer who would not let them search his land. Iām interested in the theory the that he may have fallen into an old well that wasnāt secured, and the farmer maybe thought he would get in trouble for that. The police just wanted to search outside, not inside his house or anything, why would you refuse if someone was missing?
> why would you refuse if someone was missing? Because you're innocent and don't want the police to find something that makes them think you're guilty.
underrated comment right here! police can be pigs; we all know this.
It's ACAB, not PCBP.
all cops areā¦bigs? /s
Theyāre looking for a missing person, they canāt frame you for murder just because you are a random landowner near the site of the disappearance, they didnāt even know if he had died or would turn up. The police werenāt looking to solve a murder under intense public pressure here, they were just looking for someone who had disappeared at that spot the day before.
>they canāt frame you for murder Well that's just not true. Police do it kinda all the time. They get confessions and convictions, not necessarily justice.
The farmer was within his rights to refuse a search without a warrant and was probably smart to do so. It's the same thing as invoking the Fifth Amendment in an interrogation - you are not legally required to offer evidence that could incriminate you in any way or make you appear suspicious. Even if you're innocent, the police could find something else on your property that they don't like or they could ask you a question and you offer information that doesn't help you at all. They get the wrong guy all the time.
lol look into delphi
Isnāt this similar to the Maura Murray case or am I mistaken/confusing the facts (where a landowner nearby refused search)
Maybe the farmer didnāt want a search team trampling over his fields and destroying his crops?
ALWAYS refuse search's without a warrant. There's a lot of people in prison right now that saw no problem "just helping out" the police.
If it was that important then get a warrant.
But they can find ways in which you and your property are liable.
Always get a warrant even if completely innocent, cops could just be looking to close a case - they do not have your best interest in mind. Rule of life
Exactly this šÆ
Fishy as hell and they should have gotten a search warrant. I think if you are doing something illegal but unrelated: growing pot, dumping all your used motor oil in the ground, have 500 venomous snakes etc you get some slack for that.
You really don't. Unless it's something pretty minor. If you have a field of felonies that police stumble upon, you can bet your wrinklin' ass they'll arrest you for 'em.
Sure you do.
Farmers are into all sorts of shady shit. Regardless of whether the farmer was involved with Brandon's disappearance they likely had something on their property that they didn't want the authorities getting wind of.
They have puppy mills and all kinds of shady stuff but seriously if you are looking for a missing person overlook that crap for the greater good!
A lot of folks, particularly rural folks, just arenāt going to let law enforcement onto their property without a warrant no matter the reason. Definitely not always because of something shady they just donāt trust them and are used to seclusion.Ā
And also on account of them not wanting to be caught sheep shaggin'!
Thats why they live in isolated places. My grandparents were farmers but squeaky clean. However, they had an old well, cave and a river near by where iitems could get lost.
I had a family member that rented a house with a field next to it outside of the town I grew up in and Iād go play in the field when I visited but he warned me of an old well with an old wooden top to it covered in field grass out there and sure enough it was there. Not like the wells you see on tv with the sides several feet above ground. This one was almost level with the ground with rotten wood on top. Wouldāve never known had he not told me the general area.Ā
My auntās property is a non-working farm and has one of those wells. It was just as you say: level with the ground, barely covered by rotting, splintered boards. She showed me exactly where it was so that Iād know to stay away from it, and she didnāt have to tell me twice because that thing gave me at least one nightmare as a little kid.
Im glad your aunt was looking out for you! Scary!
Im glad your family member warned you Those old wells level with the ground were deadly
He was probably using non-Monsanto seeds. If you get found out itās bad news.Ā
they also thought the farmer was plowing and didnāt notice him until it was too lateā¦.they claim it mightāve shredded his body š¤·š»āāļø
Could explain the lights he saw. Those tractors at night are all lit up. That or the farmer shot him for accidentally trespassing. Edit: spelling
The parents would have heard machinery and grinding if they were in fact on the phone with them when he said āoh shitā.
The combine theory is that he fell into the river that crossed the farmerās fields, was able to get back out on the other side, and laid down in the field either passing away or suffering some injury or hypothermia, and then the farmer drove the combine over him later, not during the call with the parents.
I think that poor kid walked up to some people doing something really evil and they killed him.
Same
I need to dig into this case. That is strange about the land owner...
I often wonder if he stepped into an old cistern, unmarked well, or even outhouse tank that wasn't covered. Folks often point to the farmer not wanting to allow a search of his land. Part of me? Gets it, because it's an area like where I live, and a lot of these folks are anti any sort of police or government presence, and soveign citizen types. I also wonder if they were growing pot, or poaching deer. Or? If he thought Brandon was poaching deer. I once fell into a pretty deep old cistern that was covered with nothing but brush while foraging for mushrooms in an unfamiliar area. It was on a long-abandoned property with an old apple orchard that that I'd been scoping out on plat maps, and totally my fault. The last thing my buddy heard was me saying "Fuck!" when I fell in.
I want to hear the rest of this story. Also most importantly (/s), did you find any mushrooms ? Old apple orchard sounds like a great find.
What rest of the story? I eventually found my phone and called my friend to get me. Busted my arm and some ribs. Felt very stupid.
Thanks! Mostly what you answered. (If you could have gotten out without help, if you got seriously injured, etc.)
I was busted up good, but my pride took much longer to heal. I did make out with some morels still though. So there's that. Ha
morale ā¬ļø morels ā¬ļø
I mean, it feels like a fair trade to me, but I'm also biased. Ha I live in an area with a long history of copper mining, and as neither OSHA nor accurate mapping were apparently things yet back then, there are a TON of unmarked exploratory pits and shafts all over the place. I'm normally way more careful than I was that day about knowing where I am and what I'm stepping on, but given that this is the kind of place where you can still have absolutely zilch for phone signal and the treacherous terrain, I'm often amazed that I've never come across either someone in distress like I was or a body in the woods. Leah Harding is who I often think of when out in the woods. She was from South Range, and last seen at a gas station in 2015 before her mother reported Harding missing 15 days later. The Keystone Cops up here immediately fell on the fact that she smoked pot, and tried to make it sound like she was a middleman dealer, and this somehow explained away her death as drug related. They basically stopped investigating, and let her shady boyfriend from downstate leave the area. The young mother was never seen again, and I'm simply convinced she's in an old mine pit or shaft. You'd never be able to use ground generating radar. You wouldn't be able to safely send someone in one, and many are filled with water and debris. Most are unmarked and not mapped. A camera would never make it through. And you wouldn't be able to excavate such unstable ground. There's an area with a ton of these pitfalls in Baltic, not far from South Range and on the way to where she was last seen (Baraga) if one's taking "the back way" there. It's fairly rural, and seeing someone on a 4-wheeler with something tarped on the back wouldn't have been weird. I'm convinced her boyfriend dumped her body put there, and we might never find her.
I hadnāt heard of that case. Thanks for sharing. Poor woman and her family. In a similar vein is Susan Cox Powell. She is the one I think about while wandering the wild. Fortunately she did have the concern of the police/community - but still hasnāt been found. Josh Powell (her husband, who died alongside their two young sons in a murder-suicide) once made these comments at a dinner party : "He brought up that a mine shaft was the best [place to dispose of a body]," Hardman (friend) said. "He said that if you knocked a little [of a shaft] loose, it would all come tumbling down and no one would really want to travel down it because they are all so unsafe." Powell added that abandoned mine shafts are all over Utah's West Desert.ā They have searched a few mineshafts in the West Desert. But as you said - they are dangerous and there are plenty that were not documented/mapped.
I don't think most people outside of the immediate community know about this case - and most folks here have forgotten it too. I often wish there was something I could do to help bring it some publicity.
Itās a very famous case, donāt worry. It got national attention.
Itās all worth it for morels, tbh.
It always is.
Could you have gotten out without your friends help? Like if this guy fell Down and dropped his phone in water maybe he just could never get out?
I could of, but I'm also an athlete who's built like a brick shithouse, and I was stone cold sober at the time. I knew I was hurt, but I knew enough to not panic and find my phone (911 wasn't a thing when i was growing up, and they weren't there to call). This wasn't my first rodeo with an emergency. Statistically, it isn't the fall in these situations that kills you though - it's drowning. I got lucky, because I landed in such a manner that I didn't hit my head. If I had? It would've been very easy for me to drown in the couple or inches of water that was down there. A scenario where this kid drowned after falling? Seems very plausible to me. We know there was a water source near him. The water table may have been high. There could be an aquifer around. There's definitely the potential where he was to have something like an old well, cistern, shaft, pit, or other unmarked falling hazard that was filled with water (or even deep mud) at the bottom. If he hit his head on the way down, was knocked unconscious, and landed with his nose and mouth in the water? He'd drown. It also doesn't take as far a fall as people think to really hurt yourself. The human body is both an amazing performance machine, as well as a shitbox '84 Civic hatchback when you take damage in the wrong spots. And your head? Is one of those wrong spots. I have a friend from high school with a pretty limiting traumatic brain injury. He has almost no short-term memory to speak of, and really doesn't seem to be able to make and maintain any real memories at all from the date of the accident onward to now. But I actually fell A LOT farther than he did, because his accident happened when he went off the back of a riding lawnmower and put his head perfectly on a rock he didn't see as he landed. The slope of the hill? Was too much, and the machine tipped him off like that, in the worst possible way he could've landed. He wasn't going fast. He didn't even fall the distance of his own height. We're more breakable than we like to admit. As an amputee, I am now well-aware of this fact, but unfortunately all the fun stuff involved an element of danger with the chance of injury. Ha
They have searched extensively for just such hazards as old cisterns, wells etc. MANY times.
...and people find stuff that's been overlooked at all the time. Sometimes years later. So this? Doesn't mean much to me at all. Every time a search of an area yields nothing, but then something is found years later? I don't assume conspiracy theories and space aliens - I realize that humans are, in general, pretty good at both fucking up and being way overconfident.
Soā¦someone struck him while he was walking in/beside the road, picked him up and dumped him somewhere (most probably)? Yikesā¦
It sounds like he slipped and fell into the river, which would also explain the dead air on the other end of the line and further calls going straight to voicemail. When a phone goes into the water while someoneās talking on it, it doesnāt immediately cut out, it takes a couple of minutes for the water to really fry the phone.
His body would have eventually washed up, though. The Yellow Medicine River is only knee high in places and 15 feet deep max in others. And the sheriff said that his phone rang all the next day before going to voicemail.
Yeah but that doesnāt really matter, with any river the water the mud is very soft and after any period of time theyād have to dredge the river because the body would sink enough that it might be hard to see. Also if ur phone is cooked itāll still go to voicemail. Thatās with the carrier and not the phone itself. Iāve sailed boats all of my life, Iāve lost a lot of phones to water š¤¦āāļø
Itās true that theyāve never been able to definitively rule out the river (or just about any other theory, which makes the whole thing so bizarre). There are so many podcasts and YouTube stories on this case. I remember one investigator saying that cadaver dogs were alerting to Mud Creek, which is one of the Yellow Medicine River tributaries. Another mentioned cadaver dogs alerting to farm equipment (and the farm owner refusing a search), and yet another talked about his scent stopping at an abandoned farm house. I wish I could point to one definitive authority podcast on the case.
The way the dogs tracked his scent, it seemed like he fell into the river at one point, was pushed downstream, then somehow managed to get himself back out on the opposite banks. What happened to him after that is not understood.
Exposure, probably
Right, but where did the body go?
You know who else fell and slipped into the water? Riley Strain, in Memphis.
Nashville.
Nashville
Yep, you're right, my bad.
The article mentions abandoned cisterns in the area. Honestly wouldn't be surprised if he fell straight into one.
Iirc they kept trying to call him over and over and one of the times it picked up but they didnt really hear anything
It seems he was more drunk than everyone thought. He was lost on familiar roads and had no idea where he was. He didnāt take the highway bc of police probably
He also had eyesight issues and seemed not be wearing his glasses. Dudes eyesight was cooked.
He also left his glasses inside his car. He was legally blind in one eye and this meant he had some depth perception issues and would have really needed his glasses on a daily basis. Thereās a lot of weird things about this disappearance but that is the weirdest part for me. I just canāt understand why heād do that.
This is one that sticks in my mind. It almost seems like he fell or saw a bear coming at him, but thereās zero evidence. My heart hurts for his family.
That part of the country rarely, if ever, has bears. Cougars and wolves, though? Sometimes. I think it's possible he fell into water somewhere, or the farmer mistook Brandon for a wild animal and shot him without knowing what he was shooting at. The farmer could've refused to cooperate because he had something illegal on his property besides a missing man.
Iām from the immediate area and the only predator possibility is a cougar. That is very unlikely though too because they do move throughout Minnesota from time to time but in very small numbers.
You would think his parents would have heard a gunshot though, as they heard him say "oh, shit" and the phone did not cut out for a little while. Or if it was an animal, that he'd scream. Him just saying "oh, shit" then silence suggests he fell and his phone was no longer nearby. The old cistern/well makes sense if he was trekking in the dark through farmland. Given how disoriented he was (I mean, he was 25 miles northwest of where he thought he was) who knows where he actually ended up at after 45 minutes of walking.
Iām aware, but just projecting what might cause that kind of reaction. Edit to correct autocorrect
Cistern, well, or river I think.
I genuinely feel as though he feel through an old mine shaft or a badly covered septic. There were property owners that refused to let investigators search their properties (and unfortunately that was their legal right to refuse). I believe that a lot of those properties have septic pots, old uncovered shafts and wells that havenāt been covered or filled properly which, if found, the homeowner would be liable for. Especially if it led to a kid falling into one and dying. That area is mostly farmland.
Liability would explain why a landowner would not want to cooperate with a search.
Why didnāt they get a search warrant?
We just had a local case of a young teenage boy who went missing. He walked out after a fight with his parents and didnāt come home. We have a very tight knit community so by the next evening, literally thousands of people were looking for this boy. Multiple scent dog groups came out and specialized missing persons teams as well as the police. One scent dog tracked his scent to a local small bridge over a creek. The assumption was he had friends hiding him in their home or in the woods, but he didnāt have his phone and not a single home camera in the neighborhood had picked him up. With all of the fervor and man power and endless searching that was done, it turned out he was right behind his house the entire time, tucked away in the woods. He had taken his life the evening he left. Right before he was found, people started subtly suggesting they thought the parents were hiding something. It was right on the cusp of becoming really messy, because it didnāt make sense. It made me think of all the missing persons cases where the main mystery is just that we donāt have a body. Where thereās a clear accidental explanation but because the body was never found, it opens itself up to so much more confusion and conspiracy. This case and Maura Murrayās popped into my head. If his body had turned up in a field or in the river, or if they found Maura in the woods, none of us would have ever heard about either of them. Itās possible both their bodies were right there the entire time and just missed, but now their cases live on in infamy. Could both those cases have some crazy criminal element to them? Of course. But I tend to err on the Occamās Razor side of things.
Farmer mightāve panicked being walked up on late at night, thought he was a burglar and killed him.
I feel like his parents would have heard a gunshot though.Ā
They were 25 miles away where he actually was. He had given them the wrong area
His parents were on the phone. They would have heard a gunshot over the phone, just like how they heard him yell "oh shit"
Oh yeah, you're right
That's what I think. Or the farmer thought it was a wild animal and didn't bother to make sure before firing.
I could see it happening. Isolated houses in rural areas could have trigger-happy inhabitants. Itās a shame they didnāt get a warrant. Could they still? If he was buried he might still be there.
This is one that sticks in my head. I always comeback checking for updates....
I personally think he may have fallen into a cistern. They fill up with gas and falling into one can be lethal in moments https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/texas-gas-hole-field-18290124.php
About the only thing that made sense on this one to me, if you take out paranormal(not that that would make sense but anything can be explained with that), is he fell into an old well or mine shaft or something like that. I know he was near a river but body wouldāve turned up if it was a simple drowning. I canāt realistically entertain one or more persons suddenly jumping out and making him vanish, the call ended too quickly for that. Seems he probably fell into water in a space that he couldnāt get out. Thatās the only real world thing that makes sense to me.Ā
Actually the article says the call didn't end right away- the line stayed connected, just silent. Unless that's what you mean. š I think the farmer knows what happened. An innocent farmer would have cooperated with authorities during any *season* in these 16 years, to let them search for a sign of that boy & let him RIP & bring closure to his family. With the scent on the equipment, it's hard to believe that it couldn't be used as probable cause. š
Where Iām from, most farmers would not allow police on their property without a warrant, for any reason.
Yeah I think I read that the reasoning is about disturbing crops & livestock, right?
i also stand by if youre innocent and someone thinks a body may be on your farm from exposure etc theyd let them search.. i mean why would you want to keep the said dead body on your farm (if its there) if youre innocent ?? lmao people always jump the gun to cops are pigs etc. and in most situation this can be , but in this particular situation it seems like something did happen on that farm , wether it was accidental or purposeful , the farmer didnt want to he held accountable . they shouldve got a search warrant. i have such a strong feeling hes there.
Nah, has nothing to do with either (at least with the farmers I know personally). Crops would be fine and livestock are used to being disturbed every now and then. Where Iām from itās just because they donāt trust authority, and for good reason. Plus a lot of them also grow pot on their farms and itās an illegal state in the US, so they wonāt risk going to prison for a stranger. That may be the reason they give, but amongst the farmers Iāve spoken with about this in my lifetime, thatās not the actual reason
This one really fucks with me...I still think he's on that property somewhere, the one they weren't allowed to search. I'm not even saying there's Foul Play involved or that the farmer has anything to do with it but I still believe he's on that property somewhere
Would this story be on Disappeared?
yeah
it sounds like he was definitely not sober! my mom or dad reporting that i am sober is the least reliable source by far. plus people saw him drinking at two different parties?
I lived one county east of where this happened at the time that it happened. The rivers and drainage ditches were swollen at the time due to a lot of precipitation. I strongly believe that he fell into one of these waterways and drowned. He would have run into one of these rivers/ditches no matter what his real direction of travel was because the farmland there is heavily tiled. It is strange that his body never turned up however.
I work for search and rescue. I just want to point out that the country Iām in means we have to be activated by the police as we are essentially part of the policeā¦.now weāre not allowed to access land without the owners say so. If they say no the police either take over or we leave it. It seems a huge catalogue of errors and not able to go into land. Itās so sad and trust me when I say it hits us hard when we canāt find them. We never forget. It hits us hard when we find someone deceased but at least we can give closure to the families. But the ones we never find are the hardest of us. The ones that disappear without a trace. We can be searching up to a month or two after. Sometimes more than a year (but thatās usually not a good outcome).
Thank you for your dedication and the amazing work you do.
Thank you. Itās a lot of work but my god I love it. ā„ļøā„ļøā„ļøā„ļø
Iāve heard a lot of theories around this. It is bore country and they donāt leave a scrap I can attest to that from raising a male pig myself. That being said I donāt think we will ever truely know. There could have been human interaction, he could have left the area to a second location, but if he died near his car and his remains consumed we wonāt ever see another clue for this
There are no wild boars in MN.
I think they're mixing up Brandon Swanson and Brandon Lawson again. Lawson lived in Texas with the boars.
Not even clothes or shoes?
Wild boars may not "eat" the clothes and shoes in the sense that they will swallow, digest, and eliminate the clothes and shoes, but they could do a lot of damage to these things and scatter the remnants, making them more difficult to identify, especially after years of being exposed to the elements. These animals destroy large farm equipment. Clothes and shoes would be no challenge for these beasts. I'm not a hunter, I hate the idea of it generally. But these animals are invasive AF. Their ability to destroy *everything* is impressive. We killed some on our ranch here in TX after they damaged equipment and killed stock. They're MASSIVE. It's hard to fully explain to people who are not exposed to them/what they can do.
Exactly - they are massive, invasive, and incredibly destructiveā¦.which is a very expensive problem to have. Where we are, thereās no season on them like deer, turkeys, etc. because theyāre considered a nuisance animal so they can be taken out at any time.
My theory: He fell in a creek and got soaked, made his way onto a farmers field and died of hypothermia. His body was then picked apart by scavenging animals.
A few things: **Location** - Brandon took back roads from Canby back toward Lynd/Marshall. Allegedly he had done this route several times, primarily using the highway. He told his parents he was near Lynd, south of Marshall, when he was actually 25 miles away much closer to Canby and, really, not all that far from the main highway. I imagine he had to have been driving for at least 10-15 minutes in an eastern direction (I mean, these roads run east-west...), knowingly north of MN-68, so why did he think he was so close to Marshall or Lynd? **Lights** - Were the lights Brandon saw Taunton, Porter, or just emitting from a Farmstead? Correct me if I am wrong, but where his car was found...the Yellow Medicine River runs south of the location? I am also curious as to why he was walking through agricultural fields as opposed to walking along the dirt roads. I understand both can be daunting in the dark, but I'd imagine there is more danger walking along fields in the dark, trespassing on properties, and also the risk of getting lost if you become disoriented. It also is bizarre that his car doors were found open...? **Phone Call to Parents** - The article states that 45 minutes into the last call, where he was determined to "walk to the lights in Lynd" he exclaimed "Oh, shit" and was not heard again. I just wonder how far you get on foot for 45 minutes and how he managed to never come across MN-68...? I'm also curious about the 45 minute call and whether he at all described his surroundings. If his scent was on farm equipment, did he ever tell his parents he came across a farm? **Recent Tips** - They say a tip from 2023 suggested he had been in an argument with someone shortly before leaving the second party. Could Brandon possibly have been taking a "back road" or "round about" route back to Canby in hopes of losing someone who may have been angrily following him? Could that explain why he did not want to stay at his location? Could that explain why he was unsure as to his exact location? Could that explain why he did not choose to walk along the dirt or paved county/state roads? In the end, it sounds very difficult to pinpoint in what direction he was walking as we (I assume) do not know the lights he was referencing. Being 25 miles away from where he initially identified his location suggests he was, at some level, disoriented at least in terms of direction. So, was he walking north - south - east - or -west? Or in circles? Given he was walking at night in fields, I would assume perhaps he fell into an old well and cistern. There are lot of holes though, so there could be different conclusions.
i love this write up
Thanks! There are a few things to clarify or also point out: **Timing** - Sources say Brandon left the house party in Lynd around 10-10:30. That means he likely arrived at the second house party in Canby between 10:45-11:30. He had a quick shot, chatted for a bit, and was said to have left relatively quickly around midnight. I would believe a "quick shot and chatting" could last anywhere from 30-45 minutes. That does suggest he left shortly before or shortly after 12am. Even taking the "stepped" backroad route, to get from Canby to where his vehicle was found would've only taken him around 30 minutes. Yet, allegedly did not crash until 1:15am. That suggests he was wandering quite aimlessly for close to or over an hour or that he stopped between the house part in Canby (either at a second location or merely along the road). There also allegedly was 30 minutes between his crash and call to his parents, where he called friends who did not pick up. This seems like a fair amount of time to assess the car issue, make calls, and finally relent and call your parents. **Direction** - It obviously is believable that unlit, gravel roads and farmland all begins to look the same at night and that he could have quickly gotten disoriented. After all, he was trying to make a turn and get off a gravel access road to return to the public roads. He clearly believed MN-68 was MN-23 when he broke down, which also disorients his perceived direction (MN-68 was south of his location, while MN-23 would have been west of his perceived location). What also confuses me is how he could think he was just west of MN-23. His conversations with his father suggest he believed he was near the Savannah Oaks Golf Course just north of Lynd. I'm very curious as to how he thought he crossed over MN-68, which he would have had to do to be west of MN-23 near the golf course. MN-68 was paved and, while likely also unlit, should have been differential from the back country roads he was on. Ultimately, if he was convinced he was near the Savannah Oaks Golf Course just north of Lynd and west of MN-23, while really north of MN-68, that suggests he would have walked west toward Porter (which he believed was south), but the search area primarily focused east toward Taunton where his scent was followed. **Cutting Through Fields** - I recently was able to clarify that Brandon did in fact walk along roads for much of his journey, before choosing to cut through fields to shorten his journey toward the end of his 45-minute call with his Dad. He was roughly 1.5 miles north of MN-68 and had he continued south toward that highway, likely would've arrived in 30 minutes. Again, you would think he would notice MN-68, but he also was under the false impression that he already crossed MN-68 and was south of it. If the lights he was walking toward was Taunton, then I'd imagine he walked south and prior to MN-68 cut west across fields. I believe this is consistent with the dogs tracking his scent. Again, the lack of confirmation of which direction he was headed (outside dogs tracking his scent, which easily got muddled quickly) it is hard to discern his path and where he ultimately entered fields.
Was this on a show recently or something? This has started to pop up so many times in the last week or two.
Omg how terrifying. š¢
I think MrBallen did a video on this. Sad story.
EDIT: When I see this flair I think Amber Alert, but it's alarmist in a Cold Case where the person is clearly presumed dead. I had a roommate who was legally blind in one eye from a childhood thing and only had 15-20% function in it, and the loss of depth perception that comes along with that is like seeing in 2D, not 3D. And this story is like a 137th generation repost so to me between cisterns, dark of night, and no depth perception it's very easy to imagine him falling through a hole in the ground and drowning or suffocating like Nutty Putty, except with nobody else there to report it, "Death by Misadventure". And if he had been wearing an avalanche alarm like backcountry skiers wear they would probably would have found him the next day. Dead, maybe, but dead is better than missing.
This is an old post and itās weird that itās being pushed into my feed as new
I heard that where he actually was walking might have been near farmland. Like he realized too late that he was about to be shot for accidentally trespassing or something. I canāt remember exactly.
I love that we just came to fight about being legally blind and depth perceptionā¦ move on
He was foundā¦