The Hill

Park Predators

In the fall of 1981, Polly Melton, a 58-year-old experienced hiker, vanished without a trace on Deep Creek Trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Despite an extensive search involving rangers, dogs, and volunteers, no evidence of her was found. Her

Key takeaways

• Polly Melton's disappearance occurred despite her familiarity with the trail and lack of any signs of struggle or injury.
• The absence of physical evidence—no clothing, personal items, or scent traces—even after a large-scale search suggests she may not have been in the park at all.

Main topics

• Missing persons cases in Great Smoky Mountains National Park
• The mysterious disappearance of Polly Melton in 1981

Notable quotes

"If she had been in the park, the dogs would have found her. They were well-trained."

Conclusion

Polly Melton's disappearance remains one of the most perplexing unsolved cases in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Despite

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Every case on park predators has a twist, but Chameleon takes deception to a whole new level. Hosted by journalist Josh Dean, Chameleon digs into the real stories of people who reinvent themselves through lies, cons, and double lives. If you're ready to explore the world of scam artists and little white lies that spiral into unforgettable scandals, listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (0:27) Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the story I'm going to tell you today takes place in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, very close to the Tennessee-North Carolina border. It's a bizarre missing persons case, which is a statement that feels like deja vu for me to even say. Reason being, if you've been tuning in to the podcast since the very beginning, you know that missing persons cases in this particular park is a subject I've broached before. Just go back and listen to The Local, an episode I did about Michael Herron's disappearance in 2008. The Field, which is the case of missing boy Dennis Martin from the late 1960s. And then there's also The Student, Trenny Lynn Gibson's mind-boggling disappearance from 1976. All these cases are confounding, frustrating, and follow an eerie pattern. One moment someone is visible, and then the next, they're just gone. Never to be seen again. with little to no clues left behind. Today's episode falls into that same category. It happened in the fall of 1981 on a trail in the southern part of the park that's been around since the 1930s. It's an attraction long loved by mountain bikers, hikers, and campers who are eager to see the region's beautiful streams and waterfalls. The iconic fog of the Smokies rises and falls here just like it does everywhere else in the park. And just like that fog, there's an opaqueness shielding answers in this particular case. Perhaps by the end of this episode, you'll have landed on a theory that you feel certain about. But perhaps not. This is Park Predators. Speaker 1 (2:47) Around 4 o'clock in the afternoon on Friday, September 25th, 1981, two women named Trula Gudger and Pauline Cannon were hiking on Deep Creek Trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park with another one of their friends named Pauline Melton. Pauline, who most often went by the nickname Polly, had been walking with them when suddenly she started walking faster and got fairly far ahead of them. At that point in their hike, the trio had made it to the end of the trailhead and were about halfway back on their return trip. The route, which is a loop, is about four and a half miles total, two-ish miles in and two-ish miles out. Seeing that Polly was going faster than them, Trula and Pauline called out to her, but Polly just glanced over her shoulder at them and laughed. Then she continued onward over the top of a small hill. Her friends thought her behavior was odd, especially because they knew Polly smoked like two packs of cigarettes a day, so It seemed strange she'd suddenly gotten the burst of energy and raced so far ahead of them. When Trula and Pauline crested the hill Polly had gone over, they stopped a bit confused. Their friend was nowhere in sight. I have to imagine that in that moment, the women probably didn't panic or get too worried because they likely assumed Polly had outpaced them and would meet them back at the start of the trailhead. According to news coverage from that time, after finishing their hike around 4.30, Trula and Pauline returned to their camping trailers near Deep Creek Campground, where they found Robert, Pauline's 78-year-old husband, sitting in he and Pauline's trailer. His wife, though, wasn't with him, and he said he hadn't seen her since the group left. That concerned the women, so much so that they quickly roped in Pauline's husband to go back down the trail and search for her. When he returned without finding Polly, the group then contacted the National Park Service and reported her missing. Speaker 1 (4:35) Around 5 o'clock, the NPS launched a formal search for the missing 58-year-old and closed Deep Creek Trail as well as a neighboring shorter trail. The search effort on that Friday night and in the following few days involved at least four park rangers and as many as 25 people. The terrain wasn't as treacherous as it was complicated. Carson Brewer reported for the Knoxville News Sentinel that there were several side trails that branched off Deep Creek Trail. Some of those paths connected to the nearby campground, while others shot directly off the main trailhead. A few of the trails led to nearby waterfalls, while others looped to the main road. An article by Dot Jackson for the Charlotte Observer explained that there were at least three bridges on Deep Creek Trail which one would have to cross while hiking. And of course, running right through all of this was Deep Creek itself, a stream of water that feeds several area waterfalls. So in the dark on that Friday night, searchers used lights to illuminate the creek and some of its deeper pools. You know, just in case Polly was in one of those. But she wasn't. The situation was perplexing because Polly was an experienced visitor who was familiar with the area she'd gone hiking in. United Press International reported that she'd been visiting Great Smoky Mountains National Park, specifically the Deep Creek region, for at least two decades prior to her disappearance. According to a park ranger who spoke with the Asheville Citizen Times, Polly's friend said that the Deep Creek Trail was a path she'd hiked many, many times. It was considered a somewhat easy trail. So even if she had been unfamiliar with the terrain, it wasn't like it was the type of trail that would have been overtly challenging for most people to traverse. Carson Brewer's article for the Knoxville News Sentinel explained that Polly had high blood pressure and was a chronic smoker, but despite that, she was considered experienced enough to hike the trail with ease. The following morning, Saturday, September 26th, authorities brought in several dogs to assist in the search. Those animals came from as far away as Virginia and as close as Haywood County, which is near the city of Asheville, North Carolina. Initially, NPS officials told the press that they didn't suspect foul play was involved, despite the fact that they thought the circumstances of Polly's disappearance were unusual. One park ranger publicly dispelled any suggestion that she might have been attacked by an animal or kidnapped. Reason being, according to him, Deep Creek Trail was well-traveled. So I think the implication there was if either of those scenarios had played out, someone should have heard or seen something. Polly was reportedly between 170 and 180 pounds and stood 5 feet 11 inches tall. And yet, according to park rangers, no one other than her two friends even remembered seeing her on the trail the day she vanished, let alone witnessing something untoward happening to her. It seems at that point, authorities' main theory was that she was just lost in the woods somewhere. The NPS speculated that she might have experienced a medical event, like a seizure, and gotten disoriented. Officials assumed that if that was what happened, it was unlikely she'd gotten very far. According to the coverage, Polly was also very afraid of snakes, so most people assumed she would have stayed as close to the trail as possible if she'd gotten lost, not ventured into untamed woods where snakes were more likely to be. Speaker 1 (7:53) But the optimistic outlook that she was just somewhere close by and waiting to be found waned the longer the search went on. The Monday after she was