They were twenty-seven teenagers, full of life, headed for one last adventure before adulthood. Then, they vanished, without a trace. No calls.
No bodies. Just silence. For twenty-two years, the story of the class of ninety-nine was nothing more than a terrifying urban legend.
A cautionary tale whispered around campfires. That is, until a hiker stumbled upon a rusted school bus in the woods, swallowed by moss, filled with moldy yearbooks, and something else. Something no one was prepared for.
June 3rd, 2021. Oregon’s rogue River Siskiyou National Forest. A seasoned hiker, off his usual trail, catches sight of a strange yellow object through the trees.
Thinking it might be old equipment or a ranger outpost, he gets closer, only to find the shattered shell of a school bus, half consumed by the forest. The number on the side is almost unreadable. Inside, it looks like time just stopped.
Dusty backpacks still strapped to seats. Faded Polaroids. A cassette player lying on the floor, warped by moisture.
Pages from a yearbook stuck together from mold. But in the very back seat, a pile of clothing. And beneath it, what was unmistakably a human jawbone.
When investigators arrived, they immediately connected the bus to one of the most chilling cold cases in Oregon history. The disappearance of Forest Grove High School senior class, class of 1999, during their graduation trip. But the deeper they looked, the more impossible it all became.
There was no record of the bus ever being rented. No trail cameras had picked up its no road nearby. And inside, personal items belonging to nearly every single missing student.
Some of the belongings were intact, but others were arranged deliberately, like a message or a ritual. What happened on that bus wasn’t an accident. And what the forest kept hidden for over two decades was more than a tragedy.
It was a secret no one was meant to find. The halls of Forest Grove High School buzzed with the electric energy of seniors on the brink of freedom. Locker doors slammed, laughter echoed down corridors, and teachers wore the weary smiles of people counting down the days.
It was May 1999, and for the class of 99, graduation was just around the corner. Among the sea of navy caps and gowns being prepped for the big day, 26 students stood out. Not because they were extraordinary, but because they were close.
A tight-knit group, grown together over the years through shared classrooms, heartbreaks, inside jokes, and Friday night games. Lacey Monroe walked the hall with effortless grace, a folder clutched to her chest. She was everything her parents hoped for, valedictorian, student council president, future Ivy Leaguer.
Her father, Mayor Thomas Monroe, never missed a chance to mention her achievements during city speeches. But those who knew Lacey closely saw the pressure behind her polished smile, the late night study sessions, the panic attacks hidden behind bathroom stalls. Not far behind, Jared Fields darted into the AV room, camera in hand, narrating his own mockumentary of high school life.
Jared was the class clown, bold, relentless, occasionally obnoxious, but his eyes carried a sharpness few noticed. He planned to turn the camping trip into his final project, a time capsule of their last week together. Gonna be my Blair Witch, but funnier, he’d joke.
Tyrese Hall towered over most of his classmates, shoulder pads long since replaced with the proud weight of a full-ride football scholarship to Oregon State. Everyone expected big things from Tyrese. Coaches, classmates, his mom especially.
But with every scholarship offer came a growing fear. What if he failed? What if the best years of his life were already behind him? Then there was Emily Tran, the girl whose presence was often marked only by the soft scrape of pencil on paper. Her sketchbook never left her side.
Filled with portraits of classmates who never knew they’d been drawn in forest scenes, she claimed came to her in dreams. She rarely spoke unless spoken to, but when she did, it lingered. Emily wasn’t exactly part of the group, but somehow they all trusted her.
As the final bell rang on a Friday afternoon, the school was alive with celebration. Someone blasted Green Day’s Good Riddance from their car stereo. Teachers handed out final permission slips, and talk of the upcoming trip to the Rogue River Wilderness dominated every conversation.
June 5, 1999. It was supposed to be a celebration. 27 seniors from Forest Grove High School had been planning their graduation trip for months.
After finals, college acceptance letters, and years of small-town monotony, this trip was their moment of freedom. The destination, a remote campground nestled deep within Oregon’s rogue River Siskiyou National Forest. Isolated, scenic, and far away from parents, curfews, and rules.
They left that Saturday morning in a yellow school bus driven by Mr. Harold Griggs, a substitute driver filling in for the usual one who had called out sick the night before. Departure was cheerful. Students waved to their families, backpacks stuffed with snacks and sleeping bags.
A few parents captured grainy camcorder footage, laughter, cheers, and a group photo just before boarding. That was the last anyone would ever see of them. That evening, one of the parents, Mrs. Elsie McClure, received a voicemail at 6.41 p.m. It was from her daughter, Rachel.
In the background, muffled laughter, someone yelling, turn that off, then a pause, and silence. No goodbye, no hang up, just static. When the bus failed to check in at the campground that night, it was first assumed they’d gotten delayed.
The weather had turned foggy. Roads in the forest were narrow, barely paved, and lined with sheer drop-offs. Parents called, but no one answered…June 3rd, 2021, nearly noon. A hiker named Travis Milner, an off-duty firefighter from Medford, Oregon, decides to explore a trail system that is rarely used deep inside the Rogue River Siskiyou National Forest. He’s not looking for anything in particular, just solitude and silence.
But a few hours in, after bushwhacking through thick undergrowth far beyond the marked paths, he sees something strange. A flash of yellow, almost entirely buried in brush and decay. As he clears back the ferns and dead vines, the shape begins to form.
Metal, windows, cracked rubber tires sunk deep into the earth. It’s a school bus, rusted, broken, its frame twisted and smothered by years of growth. The number on the side is faint, nearly gone, but just barely readable.
Number 57. The door is jammed, swollen from weather and time. He forces it open, coughing as stale air pours out.
The interior is a tomb. Dust and mildew cling to every surface. Seats are ripped.
Ivy grows through shattered windows. And on the floor, rotting but still recognizable, lie school bags, letterman jackets, and a pair of moldy graduation caps. A jacket with a Forest Grove high school crest hangs limply on the edge of a seat.
At the back, lying beneath collapsed luggage racks and debris, he spots the bones. Not one set, but several. Some are fully skeletonized, others partially decayed.
It takes him a moment to understand what he’s seeing. There are multiple sets of human remains. 17, later confirmed.
He calls 911 immediately. Within hours, the site is cordoned off by law enforcement. Investigators, forensic teams, and anthropologists swarm the scene.
And just like that, the mystery that had gone cold in 1999 is suddenly burning again. The media descends. Families who had spent 22 years grieving, or hoping, are forced to relive it all over again.
The investigators begin cataloging the contents of the bus. Most items are weather damaged, some destroyed beyond recognition. But in a cracked, mold-covered backpack shoved under the driver’s seat, they find something unusual.
A manila folder, waterlogged but still intact. Inside are hand-drawn sketches, charcoal and pencil, signed in the bottom corners by Emily T., Emily Thompson, one of the missing seniors. Her body is not among the remains.
The sketches are haunting, disturbing. One shows a ring of figures standing in a forest clearing, surrounding a fire. Another shows faces hidden behind crudely drawn masks, blank, expressionless.
Another sketch, darker and more frenzied, depicts blood dripping from tree branches, forming a circle on the forest floor. Symbols are scrawled in the background, none matching any known language. Some pages appear torn or ripped from a journal.
The last sketch in the folder shows what looks like the school bus, but different. It’s surrounded by tall, faceless silhouettes. And in the front window, behind the wheel, is a mask.
Investigators identify the remains using dental records and DNA. Of the 28 people who disappeared, 26 students and two teachers, 17 bodies are accounted for, but nine students are still missing. So are both teachers, including Mr. Carl Muse, the AP History teacher, and Ms. Janine Crawford, the chaperone.
The discovery shatters any remaining theories that the class simply ran away or died in a crash. The bus is too deep in the forest, with no path wide enough for a vehicle of that size to reach without a trace. No roads nearby.
No tire marks. It didn’t crash there. It was placed there.
Hidden. Why only 17? Where are the others? And why was Emily, a quiet student who barely spoke in class, drawing scenes that looked like rituals? Investigators comb the area within a half-mile radius, but the dense terrain slows the search. No footprints.
No remains outside. Only silence. And the weight of something they can’t quite explain.
The case is reopened, not just as a recovery, but as a possible crime scene. Foul play is suspected, and as the sketches are leaked to the press, a new theory begins to circulate. One far darker than anyone had considered before.
What really happened to the class of 99 in those woods? And who, if anyone, planned for them never to return? Days after the discovery of the school bus in the Oregon woods, the police station in Bend was flooded with news vans, investigators, and concerned citizens. The entire state was buzzing with a mystery. What had happened to the class of 1999? What was the meaning behind the bones found inside the rusted school bus? And why, after more than two decades, had nothing surfaced until now? Then, on the morning of June 10th, an unassuming figure walked into the Bend Police Station.
The early morning haze lingered in the air, and the fluorescent lights of the station hummed with the usual monotony until the door swung open, and a man stepped inside. He was gaunt, thin to the point of appearing almost fragile. His face was unshaven, his clothes ragged, a tattered jacket hanging loosely from a skeletal frame…They were all dead, you know, he began, his voice shaky but resolute. The ones who didn’t, the ones who resisted, they were never seen again, never heard from, just gone. Jarrett paused, his hands trembling slightly as he wiped them on his pants.
He had been sitting in front of investigators for hours now, but the weight of his confession had never been so real, so suffocating. His words had already started to unravel the decades-old mystery. But this, this was the moment when the truth would finally emerge.
It started the day the bus broke down, he continued. We were miles from the nearest road, deep in the forest. The engine sputtered and died.
We couldn’t move the bus, we couldn’t get it started. So we waited, and waited. Jarrett’s voice quivered as he relived the memory, the dissonant sounds of the forest creeping back into his mind.
That’s when they found us. He leaned forward, his gaze locking with the investigators. They wore these robes, grey, like they’d been living in the dirt.
I think they called themselves the Chosen. They said they were from an off-grid sanctuary, a place of peace, a place to escape the outside world. They told us the world was falling apart, that society as we knew it was crumbling.
Jarrett shook his head, his eyes drifting to the floor. It sounded like a joke. But we were stuck.
No one had signal on their phones, and none of us had any idea how to fix the bus. So we followed them. We didn’t have a choice.
The investigators exchanged glances, their faces impassive but keenly focused. Jarrett was speaking now with more urgency, his voice rising as the story poured out. At first, the commune was peaceful.
It felt almost too good to be true. They gave us food and told us we could rest. They promised us everything we needed.
They took care of us and gave us shelter. The air felt different there, like it had weight, like everything was slow. But after a while, things started to shift.
Jarrett paused again, his breath catching in his throat. They started talking about reconditioning, how we needed to let go of our old lives. Our past.
We weren’t allowed to talk about where we came from, what we were running from. They told us we had to forget everything. They called it Klenzenji.
The word hung in the air like a warning. Jarrett’s eyes flickered with something akin to fear, something darker than mere recollection. They gave us food, he continued, but it didn’t taste right.
It was off, like they were drugging us, dulling us. Some of us started getting these vivid dreams, nightmares that felt too real, too intense. And then they started making us sleep in shifts, very controlled, very specific.
They want to know when we were awake and when we were asleep. It didn’t matter if you were tired, you had to follow the schedule. He rubbed his eyes, clearly exhausted by the memory.
Some of the kids started to resist. They couldn’t take it. They wanted to leave, but they were too afraid.
They were terrified of what would happen if they didn’t comply. I saw a few of them try to escape. I heard their screams when they were, when they were dragged into the woods.
They were never seen again. The room was deathly quiet, the words hanging in the air like a sinister fog. Jarrett’s lips trembled as he spoke again, his voice growing quieter.
They told us they were the chosen ones. The world had ended outside those woods. The only thing left was their commune.
They said we were chosen to live in a new world, to be a part of something greater. But it wasn’t a choice. It was a prison, and those who didn’t accept it.
He swallowed hard, his throat dry. They were sacrificed. Jarrett’s eyes flickered with a cold, distant fear.
I wasn’t the only one who saw it. Those who tried to leave, the ones who fought back, they were offered up to the forest. No one ever came back…The book became a sensation, sparking new theories about the class of 99, the militia, and the twisted events that had unfolded in the woods. Some people believed every word. Others dismissed it as the ramblings of a But one thing was certain.
Jarrett had seen something, something beyond human comprehension, something that no one would ever be able to fully understand. The aftermath of the class of 1999’s disappearance remained an open wound in the community. The forest still held its secrets, and the answers were buried deep beneath the moss and vines, waiting for someone brave enough to uncover them.
Jarrett’s memoir became a symbol of both truth and madness, a final, haunting chapter in the story of the students who vanished without a trace. As for the families of the missing, they were left to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives. Some continued to search for their children, convinced that they were out there somewhere.
Others, like the families who had always supported Jarrett, were left with only the knowledge that their loved ones had never truly come back. The forest had claimed them, and the truth was far darker than anyone had ever imagined. It had been months since Jarrett’s memoir was published, and the frenzy over the class of 99 had not died down.
The story still hung in the air like a shadow over the community, with families torn between hope and despair. Some were convinced Jarrett had fabricated everything, while others believed he had scratched the surface of something far darker. Jarrett had become a recluse, only emerging when necessary for interviews or to meet with authorities.
But on a cool, overcast afternoon, he made his way back to Forest Grove High School, the place that had once been filled with laughter, the bright futures of the class of 99, and the promise of a summer filled with adventures. Now, it was a memorial, an empty reminder of what had been lost. He stood alone in front of the memorial dedicated to his classmates, the polished stone slabs engraved with the names of every student who had disappeared.
The plaque gleamed in the muted light, a symbol of the void that had consumed the town. Jarrett knelt down, pulling something from his jacket, a faded, moldy yearbook. He opened it carefully.
The pages yellowed with time. There, at the back, was a note that only he could have written. He placed it gently inside the yearbook, tucking it under the cover, where it wouldn’t be found until someone looked closely.
The note read, We try to leave. Only I made it. I’m sorry…For a long moment, Jarrett just stared at the memorial, the weight of his grief and guilt pressing down on him like the forest itself. He felt the memories of those lost, the faces of his friends, their laughter, and the horrific final days of their journey. And then, without a word, he turned and walked away, leaving behind only the yearbook and the haunting message for anyone brave enough to seek the truth.
Some say Jarrett made it all up, created a story to explain the nightmares that had never left him. Others say the truth was even darker than he claimed. That what happened in the forest had been something far worse than anyone could imagine.
But one thing is certain, what happened to the class of 99 still haunts the trees of Oregon.