The Strange Disappearance of Embry Hamilton in the Nevada High-Desert Basin, Alamo, Nevada

Embry Hamilton vanished while on a late September trip through Nevada’s High Desert from Boise to Las Vegas. Embry had been missing for seven years and the family hired me to take one last look before they declared him legally dead.

          On a rainy fall afternoon, I visited the Hamilton home, a white Victorian replete with gables and a turret which was set on tony Warm Springs Avenue in Boise. I knocked on the door and a demure Latina greeted me, leading me into a dark living room. A mature woman in black sat stoically in an overstuffed chair, beckoning me forward. After introductions and labored talk, Louise Hamilton suddenly waved her hand dismissing me, saying in a low voice: “Embry’s gone.”

          As I left, the Latina passed me a large, manila envelope containing the state police summary. When I got home I scanned the file, learning that Embry and driven to Vegas to meet an old friend. He had planned to take a two-day drive via US-93 through Nevada’s great basin desert to Vegas.

          Curiously, there were two separate reports by mystics that the family had hired. There were also pictures of the supposed seers. The first was an older man with a white pony tail. He claimed two men and a woman who had attended the Burning Man Festival in Black Rock had kidnapped Embry at Wells, where I-80 crosses 93 in Nevada. The trio, high on drugs, had taken Embry into the Humboldt-Toiyabe, National Forest and killed him, burying him deep in the Santa Rosa-Paradise Peak Wilderness. Authorities organized a massive search with law enforcement, volunteers, and corpse dogs, but no trace of Embry was found in the Nevada rough country.

          The second mystic, a slender woman in her 30s, claimed she saw Embry further south at the intersection of US-93 and Route 375, the extraterrestrial highway which skirts Area 51. The gifted woman claimed to see a large silver sphere hovering over Embry’s car and his vehicle slowly levitated up into the belly of the orb. The mystic described a blinding light, a sharp bang and then the object was gone, taking Embry with it. There was a memo attached noting that Ms Freeman, the noted psychic, had committed suicide by hanging a month after describing Embry’s abduction to the Hamilton family.

          After reading the file and talking to a friend who was a retired Idaho State Trooper, I decided to retrace Embry’s steps. Supposedly, his first day would have taken him as far as Crystal Springs, Nevada where the extraterrestrial highway ends at US 93. I was on my patio by the river and felt a sudden chill as a gust of wind swept down from the north. I thought of Mrs. Hamilton sitting in her darkened living room. Once Embry was formally pronounced dead, Louise would inherit the bulk of the 100 million dollar estate.

          What had happened to Embry Hamilton?

To be continued.