Selected by M86: Brandon Victor Swanson, a clean-cut community college student who disappeared under mysterious circumstances from Marshall, Minnesota in May 2008. He went out with a friend to celebrate the end of the school year, and whilst driving home he got his car stuck in a ditch. Brandon called his parents to come help him, but they couldn’t find him. Then suddenly he cursed and the line went dead. When the police found his car, it was over twenty miles from where Brandon had said it was.
There’s no hard evidence of foul play and it sounds like his disappearance could have been an accident of some kind; there was a theory that he accidentally walked into a river. I’ve heard stories about people who walked into telephone poles and the like while talking on cell phones in broad daylight, never mind pitch darkness. But authorities searched the area of the Yellow Medicine River and Mud Creek pretty extensively, and couldn’t find anything. Another problem with the drowning theory: Brandon’s cell phone remained turned on and ringing for two days after his disappearance.
Brandon’s been missing for five and a half years now; his parents keep their porchlight on for him but they no longer believe he’s alive.
The Charley Project Blog 