On November 12, 2008, a couple near the northern California city of Eureka found 23-year-old Christine Walters naked and bleeding on their doorstep. They took the incomprehensible young woman to a hospital, where she refused to explain what had happened to her. After she was discharged, Walters told her mother in Wisconsin that she had been chased by demons through a forest after she participated in a shamanic ritual. Her mother offered to fly to California to get her, but Walters insisted that she would fly back to Wisconsin by herself.
According to her mother, Walters acted paranoid on the phone over the next few days. She believed that the forest demons were trying to hunt her down. She couldn’t say why she was bleeding and naked that day because the demons would hear her. On November 14, Walters left her ID and backpack at a coffee shop and walked out. She was never seen again.
Walters had been staying on the West Coast for the four months preceding her disappearance. She had fallen in love with northern California’s natural beauty and alternative lifestyle scene. According to friends and family back home, she had met a group of like-minded spiritualists. Walters was a trusting person, and it’s possible that she might have become involved with a dangerous crowd among the alternative community.