Weird Stories in the News

Weird story # 1:

Casey Hathaway, missing 3-year-old, found alive - CNN - CNN.com

At first glance, this story doesn't really sound weird so much as uplifiting. This lost child has been found and returned to safety. That is a 100% positive story.

Here's where it gets weird:

Hundreds of people joined in the search to help find him, including some 600 volunteers and members of the FBI, NCIS and US Marine Corps.

After days of desperate searches for the little boy, crews on Thursday night responded to a report of a child crying in the woods and found Casey "about 40 to 50 yards in the woods, tangled up,"

Okay, the boy wandered out of his grandparents' back yard and into the woods. So you have a starting point to begin the search. And you have 600 people searching for this kid, presumably fanning out from the known starting point. And for what, two and a half days, no one can find him? And he only got 40 to 50 yards into the woods?
 And these weren't a bunch of random idiots doing the searching. There were FBI agents, the local sheriff's department, Marine Corps servicemebers and N.C.I.S.

One of these days, we're going to have to have a serious talk about NCIS. But not today.

How do 600 people spend 2 days looking for this kid who is shouting distance from the place he was last seen and not find him?


Now it gets weirder.

Casey is in good condition and resting, Dr. Nicole Check of the CarolinaEast Medical Center said Friday morning.

Casey’s aunt, Breanna Hathaway in a Facebook post said her nephew was “healthy, smiling and talking” following his return late Thursday.

Doctors at Carolina East Medical Center spent Thursday night examining Casey, who was left mostly uninjured from his time in the woods aside from a few scrapes and bruises. They said Friday that he was “in good condition and will be released later today or tomorrow,” WBTWreported.

He's fine. A three-year-old boy spent three nights alone in the woods, and he's fine?

And it's not like he was out there on warm summer evenings.

"What he survived out there -- temperatures in the 20s, low 20s, the rain, the downpour that almost put our search on a standstill," Craven County Sheriff Chip Hughes told ABC New Bern affiliate WCTI Friday morning. 

So, had he maybe spent some or most of this time indoors? Maybe in the home or the vehicle of an abductor? Nope!

"By his condition it was pretty obvious that he had been out there for the time," the sheriff told ABC News Friday.

The Craven County Sheriff's Office has not found any evidence of criminal activity surrounding the disappearance of a three-year-old who miraculously was found safe 55 hours later, according to a press release.

. . .  law enforcement, who are still unsure how Casey remained mostly healthy in the woods for two day without food or water.

So this is all pretty weird, right?
Ready for it to get weirder?

North Carolina 3-year-old Casey Hathaway says he hung out with a bear after he vanished from his grandmother's backyard

 

Okay, fine. He's three. three-year-olds have vivd imaginations. And being soaking wet in sub-freezing temperatures while dehydrated and hungry could make anyone imagine or dream or hallucinate some pretty wild stuff. 

But. . . 

If there's  no bear, how did the kid not freeze to death? A nice fluffy furry fuzzy bear could certainly keep you warm enough to survive. I honestly think the bear story is at least plausible. A mother bear might see a small human cub and instinctively want to care for and protect it. I've seen enough Animal Planet to know that stranger things have happened.

You know what this is, right?

This is a superhero origin story.

There is virtually no way that this little boy does not grow up to fight crime as Grizzly Man or Bear Boy or something/

Or, if things go wrong, a supervillain.

You heard it here first. And if I were Marvel or DC, I would jump on the rights to this kid's story.

(There were a couple other weird stories, but this one ended up taking too much time.)