Missing 411: Brandon Swanson’s Strange Location

One thing you didn't mention is that Brandon was legally blind in 1 eye due to an accident. I am also legally blind in 1 eye. I can't do well with depth. And also using 1 eye, the good eye gets "tired" from time to time. Add on to that him having a few drinks? Super easy to get lost.

Falling into an abandoned well or cistern or even a deep hole of some kind sounds plausible to me. My house/property has been a homestead for at least 130 years so probably has multiple old wells near the house I have no idea about. I do know that the last one drilled is 180 ft deep. He could have fallen without his father hearing the fall. I once dropped my phone down an entire flight of stairs and the person on the other end was still talking when I got to it. They didn't hear my phone banging down the steps. Also, when someone falls they don't have to scream or make any noise. When I was a teenager I fell (mostly slid) down a ravine covered in wet leaves about 60 ft and besides the initial "whoa" (which I didn't say loudly) I never made a sound on the way down.

When I was 10, my family was visiting friends in upstate NY. Our friends lived in an old farmhouse. I was playing out back in the field and just didappeared. My brother said one minute I was behind him, and the next minute, I was gone. He went and got our parents and they all started to look for me. After a mins they said they hear me but not see me. Finally they came apon a metel disk on the ground. When they moved it, they saw me standing in a room under the ground. I was far enough down that needed to get a ladder to get me out. I had fallen into an old food preserveited bunker. I don't know how else to explain it. I've learned that many old farm had these rooms as a place to keep their food so it wouldn't go bad. Obviously it's a long shot but something like this may have happened to Brandon, but he didn't land on his feet like I did, and he was either hurt or was not able to get out. When I fell in, the metel disk just flipped and went back to its original position. So by looking, you could not tell anything had happened. The last thing is that this room was so old, no one had any idea it even existed.

This is the case often confused with Brandon Lawson who went missing in west Texas. He was missing for years, with similar elements to his story. They traced him to some areas where the property owners wouldn’t let anyone search. Finally the property changed owners, the new owner allowed a search, and Lawson’s partial remains and bits of clothes were found. Look him up because for ages it was A BIG MYSTERY including a very weird phone call he made to 911 while he was lost.

As someone that got lost in a city area (in my car) for 3 hours looking for a street that was less than half a mile from where I started...I feel like you guys might be giving Brandon a lot of credit for definitely knowing where he was. He obviously got confused and happened to think he was near Lynd. It could have also been a situation where he was saying he was near Lynd, but what he actually meant was he was near Tauton, and was just mixing up the names. I've had whole conversations with people where I was saying a different name but I didn't catch that it was the wrong name because I knew what I was talking about and it only occurred to me I was saying the wrong thing because the person called me out and said 'wait I think you mean ____' and that was when I'd realized I'd been saying the wrong name the whole time. Either way...still weird they never found his remains.

I’ve always wondered HOW he said “Oh shit”. Was it a yell, sounding fearful or startled? Did he say it casually, like he’d stubbed his toe or he’d forgotten something? Or was the tone awestruck, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing? I’ve heard this case many times, but that seems to be an elusive piece of the puzzle that nobody can answer other than his parents, and their interviews don’t make it clear. Great job on the coverage, by the way. I appreciate your style and your thoroughness. Subscribed.

He probably fell into an undocumented well, a sinkhole, or some other type of hole. When i was little, i was on a nature walk with my dad and grandpa through a meadow with lots of wildflowers and very tall grass. I was off the narrow, unmarked, dirt trail a bit looking at flowers and chasing butterflies while dad and grandpa were strolling on the path and talking. At some point, i fell into a hole that was at least half full of water, but i never touched the bottom, so i have no idea how deep it actually was. I had managed to catch myself on the lip of the hole, but my body was still half submerged in the murky water. I screamed for my dad and grandpa to help me, but they had gotten ahead a bit, so it took them a moment to realize the weird sound they were faintly hearing was a 3-4 year old me screaming for my life (i couldn't swim at the time, so if i fell in fully, i would have died easily). They looked around and couldn't see me, so they started calling out to me and followed my voice to find me. If i hadn't managed to catch myself so i could scream, they wouldn't have been able to find the hole because the grass totally obscured it. Dogs might have been able to find me if they could manage to get police to the same general area in this random meadow, but i would have been dead by then.

Im an outdoorsman and even ive beem lost. Ive always been the group navigator and im pretty good at it. A confused man after a crash that doesnt take note of his surroundings because hes not an outdoorsman or traveler can very very easily get confused and lost. Echos, lights, sounds, anything can lure you the wrong way if dont know what youre looking for

The thing that sticks in my craw about this one, is that he was literally on the phone with his father up until the very second he disappeared. Just talking normally until "oh shit" then silence. The dad didn't hear anything strange, no loud noises like he got hit by a car, no splashing in the river, just complete silence. That bugs the hell out of me. Like he just disappeared into thin air just doesnt make any sense. Unless he somehow perfectly stepped into a sink hole and disappeared instantly leaving no noise at all, that's all I can imagine.

Coming from a VERY rural part of Iowa & having driven many back roads in all kinds of weather: it's easier to get lost than people think. I've been completely sober driving back roads in the daylight & gotten lost because I wasn't watching the street signs but was counting the cross roads. This is a pretty common thing where I grew up. "You go right off the highway 3 cross roads out, count 5 cross roads, turn left, it'll be the 2nd farm on the right." That's a pretty common style of directions to give in rural areas. This also means if you miss count you can easily end up on the wrong road. Also if a bridge is out & you have to detour around that can throw you off too. Add in being tired/drunk & you can quickly get off course. Brandon might very well have thought he was closer to Lynd than he actually was. Beyond that cutting through fields at night isn't wise. If the cows aren't well socialized to people they can & will charge at you. He might have gotten chased (the "oh shit") & lost his phone. Yes, he was walking for 45 minutes but was he walking straight? Did he walk along a fence line until he found a good place to climb over? Did he hurt himself climbing over? There are a million factors in how far he could have gotten & where he thought that he was. Also do we KNOW that he was flashing his head lights or do we just have the dad's words? Not saying he's lying but he could have misremembered or Brandon could have been lying since he knew he was farther away than he actually was & was worried about getting in trouble. He might have planned to go to a friends' house for help & go home the next day. We may never know.

I read a theory once that he may have fell into an illegal well, and therefore won't be found unless the well is found. Don't know how likely that is, but always thought it was an interesting out of the box theory that fits nicely in the circumstances of the disappearance. EDIT: I wanted to clarify a few things regarding wells in Minnesota since my comment has blown up. First off, "[u]nless you have a Well Maintenance Permit, Minnesota law (statues 103I. 301) requires the sealing of abandoned wells." So (barring that exception) the distinction between an unsealed abandoned well and illegal well may not mean much, at least in MN. Second, a list of well locations in the area probably exists, assuming someone didn't illegally drill one themself without notifying the comissioner. That list I imagine is privately maintained only by the commissioner. I can't imagine a FOIA would be useful in this regard, but maybe someone with a legal background can shed light on this. The following laws pertain to wells in Minnesota. "In Minnesota, all wells must be installed by contractors licensed by the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), except that an individual may construct a well for personal use on land owned or leased by that individual, and used by the individual for farming or agricultural purposes or for the individual’s place of abode. In all cases, the well must be constructed according to the requirements of Minnesota Statutes, chapter 103I, and Minnesota Rules, chapter 4725." MN statutes 103I.205 WELL CONSTRUCTION subsection b: "The property owner, the property owner's agent, or the licensed contractor where a well is to be located must file the well notification with the commissioner."

I got into an argument with my girlfriend and left her appointment at 11pm after drinking a pint and half of Brandy during a level 3 ice storm. My place was 23mi away, I got 4mi from home and ran out of gas. I had no choice but to walk the rest of the way but because I was wasted I ended up walking 8mi in the opposite direction. If I didn't come along my friends apartment complex I would have died. I didn't see a single person the whole time and understand how something like this can happen.

Ok so there is an exact time that he said shit and phone went down. Start at car walk until that time limit. Keep walking from the car out til the time runs out. Circle 45min walking from car. I've always wanted to try this experiment everytime I hear this case. Great video.

One thing I want to say (because I often hear this used in a point in various missing persons cases) is that not everyone shows it when they are wasted. I can be absolutely drunk to the point of getting sick and I don't stumble, slur, or any of the typical signs of a drunk person. My body temp goes up, I get comfortable and perhaps flushed, but over the phone in particular no one I know would be able to tell the difference. I communicate just as coherently. So I'm leary when people say someone didn't appear to be drunk. Unfortunately we don't know Brandon's personal telltale signs, but if it's possible his choices were due to him trying avoid the police due to being intoxicated, it's possible he was more intoxicated than his parents guessed. Not that that that solves his disappearance or anything, I just think people tend to over assume that everyone can tell when someone is sloshed.

I can’t imagine how his family must feel :( to be on the phone with him and then he just vanishes. Terrible.

He said "Oh, Shit." I would start from there. That can only mean he slipped, saw something, some animal popped out or a number of other bad variables. The father didn't hear a yell or a scuffle. Just start with what we actually know and work it from there.

Just thought of something else… While MN is not known for sink holes like other states (e.g. Florida), in the 1970s MN crop farmers started a large scale effort to trench & tile their fields to drain low spots. In fact, most fields are probably tiled. Brandon may have been walking along flat terrain and encountered a sink hole that was created when underground water flow from a broken tile system undermined the terrain… It wouldn’t take much of a hole to trap someone his size.

One important thing to note on the river theory; it's mentioned earlier on that they could hear him cycling his headlights over the cellphone. So, with the audio quality being established, wouldn't it be pretty clear that a creek is being approached from his dad's end of the call? I mean, a creek running heavily is gonna be noisy, especially not being very wide. The bugs and frogs make a HELL of a noise too. Source: grew up in the sticks. Prolly gonna die in the sticks.

I love that you go into detail about the Native American history of the area featured in each episode. Being a result of the British education system, I know very little about American history, so I’m incredibly grateful.

I don’t get how they could have possibly gotten the gates out across the river in time for his body not to float past if they had to wait to start the search