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Camp Greylock Missing Campers

Wildwood Lake Incident

In the summer of 1996, three campers residing at Camp Greylock were reported missing after their camp leaders had taken 16 campers on an excursion to Wildwood Camp Zone to teach the kids how to sail in canoes. Each camper had their own canoe, and were instructed to sail downstream to another part of the camp - an exercise that was done every summer. 

With only one camp instructor present on the day (the other had reportedly fallen ill to heatstroke the day before and had to stay behind), sixteen year old camper Lloyd Winters was instructed to wait at the finish point for the campers who were disembarking from their canoes. Camp counsellor Randy Williams stayed at the starting point to help the campers board their canoes. Campers who made it safely to the other side reported that Winters was not there when they arrived. Randy sailed down behind them, but was only able to see the last couple of campers ahead of him. Upon arriving and doing a headcount, they realised two campers had not made it downstream either. 

Park rangers were alerted and all of the remaining campers were sent home. The police were called into the forest by the park rangers, and searches were conducted over the next two days for Lloyd Winters, and the two missing campers Davey Bowers (age 13) and Ana Mooney (age 15). Two overturned canoes were found in the middle of the lake, prompting the police to do an in-depth search of part of the lake for possible bodies. A search party made up of campers’ parents and police officers combed through the forest in search of Lloyd Winters, who had not boarded a canoe that day. They never found anything in either of the searches, and the investigation was officially closed two weeks later. 

Camp Greylock was closed indefinitely, despite the incident taking place on the Wildwood Camp Zone campgrounds. Wildwood Camp remained open. Ian Perez, a fellow camper and close friend of Lloyd Winters went on to illustrate the “Responsible Reese” and “Missin’ Millie” cartoons in an effort to promote wilderness safety and awareness. These characters became forest mascots, with posters plastered all along hiking trails. 

In 2006, Camp Greylock was reopened. 

Laurence Wise

Laurence was a 12 year old boy from France, visiting Atlanta on vacation with his parents in 2011. The family had seen advertisements for the Wildwood Camp Zone and decided to drive Laurence out there themselves. They reached the campground in late August, dropping him off there before driving back to the city. They reportedly did not know that camp had finished two days prior, and everyone had gone home. 

After three days, they discovered their mistake and went back to find him, but he was nowhere to be found. Searches for him were conducted on a large scale due to his age, but no one was able to find him after two days of non-stop searching. The parents were arrested on suspicion of child abandonment. 

Laurence was found two weeks later after calling the police on a roadside phone box. He is the first missing person in Wildwood to ever be found. 

When questioned, he told police that he spent a day trying to figure out how to sail to the other side of the lake, believing that the rest of the campers were over there. He had fallen out of a canoe in the process, but was able to swim back to the shore. He then spent a few hours looking for a way into any one of the cabins, before giving up and lighting a fire to sleep beside. He stayed there for two nights before concluding that they were not coming back. Then he spent the next day following the tyre tracks out to the roadside, which he then walked along (in the wrong direction) until he found an emergency phone. However, until he found it, he would spend each night a little further into the forest, sleeping by a fire. Luckily, it rained multiple times, and he had a water bottle that he kept refilling. He also had a few granola bars that he started rationing after the first day. After he ran out, he resorted to picking berries. By the time search parties had been sent out, Laurence was already 45 miles down the road. He stated that he only ever saw one car pass him on the highway, but it went too quick for him to signal it. 

When police picked up Laurence by the emergency phone, he was passed out from exhaustion, heatstroke and hunger. He was taken to a hospital and monitored for a week. 

Police continued to investigate Wise’s parents and concluded that they knew that camp had ended but dropped their son there anyway to get rid of him. They are accused of being aware of previous missing person’s cases in Wildwood, as various older news articles were found within the father’s possessions. In 2012, they were charged with child abandonment and remain in prison (as of August 2012). 

Wise was sent back to France to live with his aunt.

Lou Daley

Lou Daley was an active member of the Wildwood Conspiracy Forum. The forum grew massively between 2010 and 2012 when YouTube documentarian Daniel Worrel created his first video on the various missing person cases linked to Wildwood. All the information was gathered by him, Lou, and a few other active forum members. One notable one is Hollow Point City resident Wynn Campbell, who joined the forum seeking answers after his sister Olivia went missing in 2009. He was able to access old Hollow Point Daily articles at his local library, pertaining to previously undiscussed cases. Lou Daley then continued this research by searching for archived news footage of reports from various cases. Daniel Worrel was able to use this in his documentaries. The two then continued to work closely together over the internet to produce more videos on the matter. 

In August 2011, Lou announced that he would be going out to Wildwood himself upon discovering what he thought was a lead on Laurence Wise - no one had searched the area on the other side of the lake, and it was observed in police reports that one of the canoes was missing. Police had since closed the investigation and ignored Daley’s pleas to check the other side of the lake which was still uncharted, so he decided to go and look for himself. It is believed that Lou attempted to sail out to the other side of the lake, which is supposedly a two-day journey. 

His last post to the forum was one day before he set foot into Wildwood, and is the only evidence that he went out there and subsequently went missing. No one saw him arrive there as he hitchhiked there from Georgia, and the only people who knew what he was doing were his fellow posters. His final post read:

“If you don’t hear from me again, it’s because Wildwood took me.”

Daniel Worrel and other forum members waited one day before contacting authorities and alerting them of his disappearance. When police called off the search after two days, Worrel and another poster (wildfire737 AKA Benjamin Winstead) flew in to join search efforts. They rented a bigger, stronger boat, and sailed to the other side. They then spent a day walking along the outskirts of the shore, but saw no signs of life. They shot a flare up, spent hours yelling through a megaphone, and left a note and some supplies for Lou. Out of fear for their own lives, they then sailed back. Lou was never found. 

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