16-Foot SOS Made of Trees. The Voice on the Tape Said He Couldn’t Move

A 16-foot SOS made of felled birch trees in a Hokkaido bog. A cassette tape with a man's voice that says he cannot move. 14 real Missing 411 style cases of people found where they should never have been able to go. In July 1989 a police helicopter searching for two climbers in Daisetsuzan National Park spotted three giant letters below Mount Asahi. Next to them, a shelter built against a pine, a backpack, amulets and a cassette recorder. The first lab report said the bones were a woman's. A government aerial photo showed the sign had been there for almost two years. This is the Mount Asahi SOS incident, and it is only the first case. From a field in Somerset in 1768 to a ranch driveway in Arizona in 2025: who put Bella in the wych elm, a barefoot toddler on a cliff ledge in Kentucky, a two-year-old who crossed nearly seven miles of Arizona mountains overnight, a woman found higher on a desert peak than hikers could climb, two dogs who stayed beside the men they came with, a rope hanging above a man who never climbed, and footprints going up a volcano that never came back down. Real national park disappearances, told from the public record. #Missing411 #SOSIncident #UnsolvedMysteries #Echo7 00:00 Mount Asahi SOS: 16-Foot Letters in a Bog 07:08 Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm? Hagley Wood, 1943 16:26 Melinda Oakeson and Kenneth Howard: Too High, Too Far 23:44 Charles Gough and Rich Moore: The Dogs That Stayed 30:52 Boden Allen: Age 2, Nearly 7 Miles, One Night 35:28 Eric Robinson: A Rope Above a Man Who Never Climbed 44:23 Craig Arnold's Footprints and the 1987 Photo 49:19 Misaki Ogura and Nomfundo Mkhwanazi 58:26 Katherine Hull, Lebanon Springs, 1936 1:04:08 Owen Parfitt: The Empty Chair, 1768 1:07:40 Marjorie West and the Violets, 1938 1:12:09 The Tape: What the Voice Said CASES IN THIS EPISODE Still missing 1768 — Owen Parfitt · Shepton Mallet, Somerset, England 1938 — Marjorie West · Marshburg, McKean County, Pennsylvania 2009 — Craig Arnold · Kuchinoerabu Island, Japan Found 1805 — Charles Gough · Helvellyn and Red Tarn, England 1936 — Katherine Hull · Lebanon Springs, New York (remains found 1943 in Massachusetts; identification preliminary) 1943 — "Bella," an unidentified woman · Hagley Wood, Worcestershire, England 1984 — Kenji Iwamura (name attached to the case) · Mount Asahi, Hokkaido (found 1989) 2011 — Eric Robinson · Uinta Highline Trail, Utah (found 2016) 2019 — Misaki Ogura · Doshi, Yamanashi, Japan (found 2022) 2023 — Melinda Oakeson · Craggy Wash, north of Lake Havasu City, Arizona 2023 — Rich Moore · Blackhead Peak, San Juan Mountains, Colorado Found alive 2018 — Nomfundo Mkhwanazi · Emmaus, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa 2019 — Kenneth Howard · Magoffin County, Kentucky 2025 — Boden Allen · Seligman, Arizona Case statuses are accurate as of October 2026. Marjorie West's case is carried as open by the Pennsylvania State Police; if you have information, contact them. SOURCES Wikipedia, "SOS incident"; Smart FLASH, Asahidake SOS case (smart-flash.jp) Wikipedia, "Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?"; Undiscovered True Crime KSL.com, Uinta Triangle, 2025; Deseret News, 2016 ABC15 Arizona and azfamily, Melinda Oakeson, 2023 NBC News and WYMT, Kenneth Howard, 2019; KUNC (NPR), Boden Allen, 2025 Daily Dispatch (South Africa), Nomfundo Mkhwanazi, 2018 Wikipedia, "Charles Gough (artist)"; NBC News and Scripps News, Rich Moore, 2023 Wikipedia and PBS NewsHour, Craig Arnold, 2009 Tokyo Sports and Japanese Wikipedia, Misaki Ogura, 2022 Wikipedia, "Disappearance of Katherine Hull"; Wikipedia, "Owen Parfitt" The Charley Project and Narratively, Marjorie West Every case in this episode is real. Names, dates and details come from the public sources listed above and were checked by a person before publication. We use AI tools as assistants, including for the narration voice, while the research, fact-checking, writing and editing are done by our team. Some visuals are illustrative reconstructions and do not show the actual people or locations. If you spot an error, tell us in the comments and we will correct the record.