The Vanishing of the Class of ’99: 27 Teenagers, One Bus, and a Forest That Forgot to Let Go

They called them the lucky ones.
Twenty-seven teenagers from Forest Grove, Oregon — alive, wild, and free on the cusp of adulthood. On June 5th, 1999, they boarded a yellow school bus for one last weekend together before graduation.

They never came back.

No wreckage.
No bodies.
No signal.
Just silence — and a story that would echo through the Pacific Northwest for the next twenty-two years.

Chapter One — The Last Ride

It was supposed to be a celebration.

The Class of ’99 at Forest Grove High had finished their final exams, tossed their notes, and packed tents and coolers for a weekend camping trip in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. The plan: two days by the lake, a bonfire, and a lifetime of stories to tell.

At 9:12 a.m., a yellow school bus — number 57 — rolled out of the high school parking lot. Behind the wheel was Harold Griggs, a substitute driver who’d been hired that morning after the original driver called in sick.

Witnesses described Griggs as polite but “off.” Mid-50s, gray mustache, hands that trembled slightly as he loaded the gear. No one had ever seen him before. No one would ever see him again.

Inside the bus: twenty-seven students, singing, laughing, and filming themselves with disposable cameras and a camcorder borrowed from the media lab. The footage — recovered years later — shows them driving through the forest, music blaring, sunlight flashing between the trees.

At 10:47 a.m., the bus passed through the town of Galice. A store clerk remembered them stopping for snacks. Emily Tran, one of the seniors, bought a sketchbook and a pack of pencils. Then they drove off — heading toward a trail that didn’t exist on any map.

That was the last confirmed sighting.

By nightfall, the bus hadn’t reached the campground.
By morning, parents began calling each other. Then the school. Then the police.

A search began that would span three states and two decades.

Chapter Two — The Search

Hundreds of volunteers combed through 400 square miles of wilderness. Helicopters scoured the tree lines. Divers searched the rivers. The FBI joined after the first week.

They found nothing.

No tire marks. No debris. No tracks in the mud. It was as if the forest had swallowed the bus whole.

Then came the first clue.

Two weeks after the disappearance, a hiker discovered a cracked disposable camera near a riverbed — the same brand the students had bought in Galice. The film inside was missing.

Days later, a letter arrived at the Monroe family home — addressed to their daughter, Lacy, the class valedictorian.

Five words, written in shaky handwriting:
“We made it. Don’t look.”

There was no return address. No fingerprints. The ink was fresh, but the paper was damp — as if it had been pulled from the woods.

The handwriting was close to Lacy’s. Close, but not exact.

The FBI’s official statement, released in August 1999, listed the disappearance as “a likely vehicle accident resulting in total loss.” But privately, investigators admitted there was no evidence of a crash, fire, or flood.

Theories spiraled — from abduction to cult activity to a coordinated runaway pact. But the case eventually went cold.

Time moved on. Parents died waiting for closure. The forest, meanwhile, remained quiet. Until 2021.

Chapter Three — The Bus

June 3rd, 2021.

A hiker named Travis Milner was cutting through an unmarked section of the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, roughly 40 miles from the nearest paved road. He saw something bright through the trees — a flash of yellow, almost metallic in the fog.

At first, he thought it was an old construction trailer.
Then he realized it was a bus.

Half-buried in moss and mud, its frame twisted and decaying, Bus #57 sat like a carcass.

Windows shattered. Roof caved in. Tires melted into the soil. Inside, vines curled through broken seats.
The forest had eaten it alive.

When police arrived, they expected to find an empty vehicle.
They didn’t.

Beneath the final row of seats, investigators found human remains — skeletal, scattered, partially fused to the metal floor. Over the next two days, they recovered seventeen bodies.

DNA confirmed they were members of the missing class.

The remaining ten were never found.

Inside the bus were personal belongings:

13 backpacks

A cracked cassette player

A class ring

A Polaroid photo of the group standing in a clearing

And Emily Tran’s sketchbook — miraculously preserved in a sealed plastic bag.

The drawings inside were disturbing.

One page showed a circle of figures around a bonfire.
Another, the bus itself — surrounded by tall, faceless shapes.
The final page was a single line of text, smeared and faint:

“The forest is awake.”

Chapter Four — The Survivor

One week after the bus was found, the case took a turn that defied explanation.

On June 10th, 2021, a man walked into the Bend, Oregon Police Department. Thin, pale, eyes hollow.

“My name is Jared Fields,” he said. “I was on that bus.”

DNA tests confirmed it.

Jared Fields — class clown, football team videographer — missing since 1999.
He was alive.

His story changed everything.

Chapter Five — “The Chosen”

According to Jared, the bus didn’t crash.

“The driver took a wrong turn,” he said. “At least, that’s what we thought. But he knew exactly where he was going.”

After hours of winding dirt roads, the bus broke down. No cell signal, no help. Griggs told the students he’d hike to find a ranger station. He never returned.

That night, strangers appeared.

“They came out of the trees — people in gray robes, faces covered by wooden masks. They said we were safe. That we’d been ‘guided here.’”

Jared described a small off-grid commune deep in the forest — men, women, and children who called themselves The Chosen.

“They believed the world outside was poisoned — spiritually and literally. They said we’d been ‘selected’ to rebuild what was pure.”

At first, the group was kind. They shared food, built fires, taught songs. But soon the tone shifted.

“They separated us,” Jared recalled. “They said we had to cleanse our minds. No talking. No leaving camp. No light after dark.”

The students were given strange meals — thick soups that made them drowsy. They were forced to chant before bed, repeating phrases Jared couldn’t fully remember.

“After a while, people started disappearing. Always at night. The ones who questioned things. The ones who cried.”

Jared claimed he saw Griggs — the driver — again.
“He wasn’t with us anymore. He was with them.”

By the end of summer, only half the class remained.

Jared said he escaped during a rainstorm.
“I ran until I couldn’t hear them chanting. I slept in caves, ate whatever I could find. I thought I was still in Oregon, but I didn’t recognize anything. The forest just kept going.”

He was eventually found by a trapper near the California border in 2003 — delirious and dehydrated. He never told anyone who he was. For 18 years, he lived under different names, terrified the cult would find him.

When the bus was discovered, he said, he felt them “wake up again.”

“They never left,” he whispered to police.
“They live under the trees.”

Chapter Six — The Hollow Path

Investigators searched the forest where Jared claimed the commune existed. They found no structures, no evidence of a settlement — only symbols carved into tree trunks: spirals surrounded by small circles, matching the drawings from Emily Tran’s sketchbook.

Anthropologists identified them as variations of an ancient pagan sigil meaning “The Hollow Path” — a phrase associated with isolationist sects dating back to the 1970s.

Between 1997 and 2003, at least fourteen hikers and drifters vanished near the same forest. None were ever found.

Was the Class of ’99 simply the largest group taken?

One former forest ranger came forward anonymously, claiming he’d stumbled across “a hidden community” near Bear Camp Road in 2000. “They wore masks,” he said. “And they watched me until I left.”

No report of that encounter was ever filed.

Chapter Seven — The Book and the Disappearance

After his statement, Jared was placed in protective custody. He refused most interviews, except one — a ghostwritten memoir published in 2022 titled The Forest That Devours.

In it, Jared described the commune’s rituals, the songs they sang, and the belief that the forest itself was a living entity — a “Mother Root” that demanded loyalty and sacrifice.

He wrote that those who tried to leave were “reclaimed” by the earth.

The book was a bestseller — and a lightning rod. Some hailed him as a survivor. Others accused him of fabrication. But for the families of the missing, it reopened old wounds — and new hope that answers might still exist.

Then, just as suddenly as he had appeared, Jared vanished again.

On September 14th, 2022, he was seen standing alone at the Forest Grove High memorial — a bronze plaque engraved with 27 names.

He left a note tucked behind a candle.

“We tried to leave.
Only I made it.
I’m sorry.”

The next day, his car was found abandoned outside the forest. The driver’s door open. The keys still in the ignition.

No trace of him since.

Chapter Eight — The Tape

In 2024, a park ranger conducting routine fire-prevention clearing near the bus site unearthed something buried under a root system — a small, mud-caked camcorder.

The tape inside was degraded, but one fragment survived.

Grainy footage.
A clearing lit by firelight.
Teenagers standing in a circle, faces blank, eyes reflecting flame.

A man’s voice off-camera says,

“Tonight we return to the soil.”

Then static.

The timestamp reads: June 7, 1999.

Chapter Nine — The Forest That Remembers

Today, the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest remains as vast and untamed as ever. Tourists still hike its trails, unaware they’re walking above one of America’s most haunting unsolved cases.

Every June, the families gather at the memorial. Twenty-seven candles, though only sixteen names have confirmed remains. The rest — still missing, still waiting.

Some say the forest is cursed.
Others say it’s just nature reclaiming what belongs to it.

But hikers still whisper of strange laughter echoing through the fog. Of music that sounds like old 90s pop, fading in and out between the trees.

Rangers call it sound drift. Locals call it the Class Reunion.

Whatever truth lies buried beneath those roots, it hasn’t finished speaking. Because sometimes, the forest doesn’t just remember —
it waits.