Okay, okay, I need to get this out because it's eating at me and nobody's talking about it anymore and that's just wrong, that's just wrong. There's a man who's been missing for over ten years now, Derek Walsh, 47 years old when he vanished, and I've spent the last three years researching his case because something happened to him out there in the Sheep Mountains and we deserve to know what. I'm a paranormal investigator, been doing this for about fifteen years, mostly in the Southwest. I focus on disappearances near military installations, places where the official story doesn't add up. And Derek's case, it's got everything. Strange phenomena, government proximity, a man who walks into the desert and just ceases to exist. No body, no trace, nothing but a cell phone. Let me tell you about Derek. He lived in Las Vegas his whole life. He was an experienced solo hiker, spent most of his free time exploring the Mojave and Great Basin deserts. We're talking serious hikes here, multi-day trips with minimal supplies, no GPS, no compass, sometimes not even maps. He'd go alone, camp under the stars, climb mountains that most people wouldn't dare approach. He had his YouTube channel, DesertDrifter47, named that because he had this crazy habit of picking up rattlesnakes. Got bit once. Didn't stop him.
In June 2014, Derek left a comment on a YouTube video called Son of an Area 51 Technician. The comment said, and I've got this written down exactly, 'That ain't nothing. I am a long distance hiker. One time during one of my hikes out by Nellis Air Force Base, I found a hidden cave. The entrance to the cave was shaped like a perfect capital M. I always enter every cave I find, but as I began to enter this particular cave, my whole body began to vibrate. The closer I got to the cave entrance, the worse the vibrating became. Suddenly I became very scared and high-tailed it out of there. That was one of the strangest things that ever happened to me.' Now Derek had posted plenty of comments on forums before, talking about his hikes. He wasn't shy about his adventures. He once wrote, 'I solo hike across mountain tops that most people wouldn't dare go. I have been in more caves than I can count. I play with rattlesnakes for fun.' Another time he said, 'I have been doing this sort of thing for over 20 years. I go where no one goes, and I never take anyone with me.' This wasn't a man who scared easily. But something about that M shaped cave terrified him. He described his whole body vibrating. Getting worse the closer he got. A fear he couldn't explain. And he ran. Derek, who played with rattlesnakes for fun, who scaled giant cliffs, who'd been rescued by helicopter only once in 20 years when he blew out his leg at the top of a mountain, he ran from that cave.
The cave was somewhere in the Sheep Mountains, about 40 miles north of Las Vegas, south of Area 51. The Sheep Range peaks at Hayford Peak, over 9,900 feet above sea level. The area Derek was hiking in, it's brutal. Full of old mine shafts the military used for chemical disposal. Drug addicts and dealers living in some of those mines. Bodies have been dumped out there. It took Derek about 10 hours of hiking just to reach the area of the M Cave and get back to his car. After Derek posted that comment, people went crazy. Some believed him, others called him a liar, said he was making it up. The skeptics really got under his skin. So in October 2014, Derek decided to go back. He was going to find that cave again and film it, prove to everyone he wasn't lying. He made a video on October 18th called M Cave Hike. He brought his Ruger 9mm handgun this time. remember when his video went viral, people were debating it everywhere - Leo' In the video, he's standing by an abandoned mine shaft, talking about searching for the cave. He spent the whole day out there looking. He didn't find it. Couldn't locate it again. And that made the trolls even worse. More comments calling him a fraud, saying the cave never existed. But here's the thing, one commenter, before Derek went back that second time, left him a warning. It said, 'No. Do not go back there. If you find that cave entrance, don't go in, you won't get out.'
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