What creeps me out especially on cases like this is that nobody has any idea, really, what actually happened. We know all the "coulds." But until actual remains are produced, or a live Dennis Martin comes forward, we can never truly know. The "most likely" scenario here is Dennis got caught up in some natural hazard posed by the environment and that together with his young age led to his disappearance-- compounded by the storm. Probably one of the most telling notes I saw was that searchers themselves were in some cases seriously injured in the course of this search.
Trigger warning: Scavengers and predators-- they do in some cases consume bones. This is a concern in that nothing may be left to provide any answer if the child wandered into some hazard. Also, I know bears are mentioned repeatedly on this thread, the area didn't just have black bears, which usually don't pose a strong threat. This area (at least today, and there seems to be something of a history for it) has extremely aggressive wildlife and they've had bear attacks there. (The bears are enormous, too.) Is such behavior unusual for black bears? Yes, but it's a known problem in the area where Dennis went missing. To my knowledge, when the bear decides on a target for whatever reason things get scary fast, so weirdly, I don't think a bear's that out of the question here. They don't always drag prey, they often carry it, and they don't always leave "a lot" of blood, or much blood in some scenarios. And bears come suddenly, there may have been no notice for screaming.
Looking at
Knox News, not completely ready to rule out a human, either:
“When we got about half a mile or maybe three-quarters of a mile from the car, we heard a scream,” Key told News Sentinel reporter Carson Brewer. “A trouble scream. … An enormous, sickening scream … We couldn’t tell which direction it came from, but it sounded like it came from higher on the mountain to me.”...Minutes later, something moved in the brush....“I looked across the creek and saw a man in the bushes,” Key recalled. “I couldn’t tell much about him because he was going down the creek toward the cars ... He was definitely trying to keep from being seen. … I thought maybe he was a moonshiner.”...Key said he crossed the creek and found what looked like a crudely drawn map on a scrap of paper about where the man would have been. When he came back, he noticed the only other car parked at the roadside, an older-model white Chevrolet, gone.
So that's quite, quite weird, and when they do these massive searches-- not saying "it's impossible" they'll come up empty, that's not the case. But the coming up empty together with the Keys story is unsettling. Probably not, but if I saw a UID that was a potential match, I'd submit it. It's along the lines of the Sodder family. Not likely, but... as of yet unknown. And maybe that way forever, unfortunately.
