June 14, 2012

Ray, the "forest boy," who lived in the woods for 5 years, and doesn't know his last name.

He says that he lived with his father, that the father died, and he buried him in the forest. 
The teen said he did not know why is father died and could not say where he had been buried.

Ray said he and his father sought refuge in the woods after his mother, Doreen, died in a car crash when he was 12.

He wears a pendant with the letter “D” around his neck, which he says is in remembrance of his mother. Authorities also could not find any record of a woman named Doreen dying in a car crash in Germany in the past decade....
Theories?

UPDATE: Fake!

19 comments:

Bob Ellison said...

Psychosis.

jungatheart said...

I highly recommend _The Painted Bird_ by Jerzy Kosinski, a beautifully wrought tapestry of savagery about a boy separated from his parents in Eastern Europe during WW II.

Scott M said...

But was he carrying the flame?

jungatheart said...

That's one of the things I remember most, shhhh.

Roger J. said...

Very strange case--my first cynical instinct was some sort of hoax--but the real world can be much more complex--will be interesting to see how this plays out

Wince said...

"Theories?"

Take it away Nat King Cole.

LordSomber said...

Trauma? Mental illness?
Some older accounts posit that he may have wandered over the Czech or Austrian border.

GulfofMexico said...

Alabama Moon. Hoax based on book/movie?

ndspinelli said...

Looks like another John Edwards love child. Too bad he didn't bury Edwards in the forest.

Quaestor said...

An overblown neurotic fantasy of the kind teens are prone to, like living the vampire fantasy -- sleeping by day, prowling by night, cajoling the girlfriend into letting him taste her blood. But that's just a kind of hoax, is it not, a hoax intended to fool the hoaxer as well as the hoaxed.

They say a "linguistics expert" has determined Ray is not a native English speaker. I doubt a linguist could determine this with certainty in the case of a clever and well-practiced hoaxer.

tim maguire said...

It's hard to believe a 17 year old who lived in society until he was 12 can't remember his name. Mental illness possibily, runaway more likely.

yashu said...

Interesting. May very well be a hoax... a fabulating or confabulating runaway...

I'm reminded of the cases of Sywald Skeid and Andreas Grassi.

edutcher said...

Like stray Japanese soldiers on some of the big islands in the Pacific, the last holdout of a hippie commune.

Mitch H. said...

1) How many extensive woods are there in the vicinity of Berlin?
2) He apparently spoke little German and primarily English, but doesn't sound like an English-speaker.
3) According to his story, they went into the woods when he was twelve. How many first-world twelve-year-olds have you encountered who couldn't tell you what their last name was?

Hey, maybe it's a time-traveling version of Andreas Grassl!

Sydney said...

I was thinking he was Caspar Hauser come back from the dead.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Sounds like the book My Abandonment

Anonymous said...

A hoax.

He was 12 when his father died, and couldn't remember his own name after only 5 years? How did he survive?

Dust Bunny Queen said...

The no dental work item is interesting. But it does sound fishy. Unless no one ever told your your last name or just called you Boy or Ray....you might not know what you last name is.

There have been some horrific cases of child abuse and isolated and un-socialized children.

Richard Dolan said...

Theories?

Blame Bush. It ususally works.