Casey Hathaway and the 'friendly bear'
A three-year-old who wandered from his great-grandmother's yard in Craven County, North Carolina, in January 2019 was found alive two days later and said a bear kept him company.
2019 CE · 35.29, -77.04 · status: explained
The account
Casey Hathaway went into the woods while playing with other children. Hundreds of searchers, dogs, drones and helicopters covered more than 1,000 acres in freezing rain. On the second evening a volunteer heard crying, and an EMS captain found him tangled in briars, cold but otherwise unharmed. He told relatives he had 'a friend in the woods that was a bear'. The sheriff did not say whether he believed it; reporters noted the area has many black bears and that his favourite cartoon was 'Masha and the Bear'.
The sceptical view
Small children survive surprisingly long in cover and often hide or stay still; a toddler's account mixes real and imagined things.
Connections in the atlas
- Christopher Ramirez, Grimes County
- The Missing 411 'profile points'
- Robert Koester, 'Lost Person Behavior'
- 'Missing 411' and Yosemite