Found: Missing girl in the woods
Katherine Van Alst
June 16 1946 5 members of the Van Alst family arrived at the Devil’s Den in Western Arkansas to spend the week camping in a cabin they rented. They headed up to the swimming area where there was a creek. This swimming area had a deep section but if you were not a great swimmer you stayed with it. Now Katherine was ended up in the deep end and a stranger lifted her out of the water her father came over and asked what she was doing and the woman explained that she was struggling in the deep end.
And instead of going into the water Kathrine then walks into the backside of the damn it was like a gradual slope And her father was able to watch Kathrine and the boys at the same time. But one time when he is looking at the boys and goes to look at her and then Katherine is gone. He then asks the boys and the woman who helped her out of the water if she had seen her.
Then he gets everyone who is at that cabin and everyone helps to look for her they go into the water and the forest area about an hour after looking for her and she still hasn’t been found Katherine’s father calls the police. Two days go by of them searching. Then after that, they assume that she drowned so they started draining the creeks but she wasn’t there. So they keep looking for her. 6 days total go by of her missing and they are looking in the wooded areas and they saw a cave and they saw a girl in a bathing suit that said here I am and besides just scratches and a few bug bites she was just fine.
The volunteers that found her even said she was eerily calm They even took her to the hospital and they said she was perfectly fine. So this Eight-year-old who has never spent any time in the woods before somehow survived six days on her own in the woods. for six days and six nights with only a bathing suit on. Despite there being no purified water anywhere near her. She was relatively well-hydrated and only lost a couple of pounds. Also, she was found seven miles away from where she was originally seen last. Now those miles form an airborne view but when you are in the mountains you climb uphill downhill you zig and zag to get to where you are going rescuers actually think on foot she walked around 30 miles. And she did it barefoot!
When authorities asked her how did she do this she said she couldn’t remember and she didn’t know how she got lost in the first place. She only remembered sleeping on warm grass the first night, then her next memory is waking up in a cave on day six. She has no memory of what happened in between that time and somehow wasn’t super dehydrated or malnourished. Some think that she just wandered off and just doesn’t remember what happened.
Others think that something was chasing her and adrenaline kicked in and that is why she was able to go that thirty miles, and it was so traumatic that her mind blocked out the experience.
- Someone may have abducted Katherine from the campsite and taken her to the cave where she was found. However, this theory seems unlikely given the distance she traveled and the fact that she was found alone.
- Katherine may have been aided by someone who found her in the wilderness and helped her reach the cave where she was found.
- There is also the possibility that Katherine’s disappearance and survival are simply the results of chance and luck. It’s possible that she stumbled upon the cave where she was found by chance, or that she was able to survive through sheer luck and resourcefulness.