Collages by Jen Renninger. Source images: Cave Mountain Church © Tim Ernst; map of Haley’s route © Tim and Pam Ernst; map of Hawksbill Crag Trail © Danny Hale; Haley on the Hawksbill Crag Trail, April 29, 2001. Courtesy Kelly Hale Syer; Hawksbill Crag trailhead © Danny Hale; clipping from The Madison County Record, May 4, 1978
Twenty-two years ago, a six-year-old girl—my cousin—got lost in the Arkansas Ozarks, prompting what was at the time the largest search and rescue mission in the state’s history. Her disappearance would eventually connect my family to another story, a dark and bizarre one involving kidnapping, brainwashing, murder, and a cult that believed in the imminent end of the world, laced with the kind of eerie coincidences or near-coincidences that cause perfectly rational people to question what they think they know about reality.
On Sunday, April 29, 2001, Jay and Joyce Hale, my father’s older brother…
