Four Years Later: Teens Vanish Near Wedgefield, Search of Manchester Forest Yields No Answers

**Editor's Note: This is a copy of the original article from the Wedgefield Ledger posted on May 12th, 2025.

It has been nearly four years since a group of five teenagers disappeared after entering Manchester State Forest, a sprawling 28,000-acre woodland in central South Carolina. The case remains one of the most baffling missing-persons mysteries in the state’s history.

The group, all juniors and seniors of Wedgefield High School, was last seen in Wedgefield early on the spring Saturday morning of April 25, 2021. They were reportedly headed to explore what's known in Wedgefield as "The House," a local legend of a large, abandoned property located in Manchester State Forest that's said to appear only to those who want to find it.

"The House" has lived almost entirely in rumors for years and supposedly doesn't exist on any map. The teens were seen on foot entering the woods at around 5:12 am and never returned home.

Days later, their phones and two backpacks were discovered at the edge of a dirt service road deep inside Manchester State Forest, roughly five miles from the nearest paved road. The bags contained only bottled water, snacks, and personal items. What investigators found on the phones, however, raised far more questions than answers.

The Untraceable Doorway

The recovered devices contained several photographs of a run-down house partially hidden in the woods, its porch sinking into overgrowth. Investigators scoured Manchester State Forest and adjacent private tracts, searching for the structure.

“We went road by road, trail by trail, with those pictures,” recalled a retired Sumter County deputy who assisted in the search. “Nobody had ever seen that house. There’s nothing like it mapped anywhere in the forest.”

Even stranger was a single photograph posted online through one of the teens’ social media accounts in the hours before their disappearance. The shot shows a blackened doorway framed with ornate, hand-carved molding. No matching image was ever recovered from the phones themselves.

Photograph posted on teen's Instagram (ruth_less_always)

“That picture doesn’t exist on any of the devices we collected,” said one investigator familiar with the case. “It was uploaded, but no one knows who took it or where it came from.”

A Forest Full of Stories

Manchester State Forest, located between Sumter and Clarendon counties, is known for its labyrinth of dirt roads, swampy lowlands, and hunting tracts. The woods hold remnants of South Carolina’s timber industry and have long been a backdrop for local ghost stories, though no official reports have tied paranormal activity to the area.

Some locals now refer to the vanished group as “The Wedgefield Five.” Residents claim the house in the photographs resembles old plantation properties rumored to have been swallowed by forest growth after being abandoned decades ago.

“I grew up out here,” said Michael Lowe, a longtime hunter of the Wedgefield area. “There are places you don’t go because they don’t feel right. There’s an energy in some of those swamps that’ll turn you around before you even really get going.”

Fiction Imitates Mystery

The case caught the attention of local author Thomas McFadden, whose debut novel AROUND draws heavily from the imagery and rumors surrounding the Wedgefield disappearances.

“I don’t claim to know what happened,” McFadden said. “It’s probably a mix of folklore, tragedy, and internet myth-making. But something about that door—this idea of stepping into a place where light doesn’t exist—stuck with me. That became the seed of the book.”

While McFadden emphasizes that AROUND is a work of fiction, he alludes to the fact that there are many similarities between his novel’s haunting central location and the elusive house depicted in the missing teens’ photos.

Questions Without Answers

Despite searches by local law enforcement, volunteers, and park rangers, no house resembling the one in the photos has been found, and no trace of the teens has surfaced. The official investigation was closed two years ago, though the story continues to haunt Wedgefield.

Today, the doorway photograph remains a popular topic among Reddit users and TikTok investigators. Some believe the image is a digital fabrication. Others are convinced that it depicts a real, hidden structure deep in the forest—perhaps one that no longer exists.

As for the families of the missing, four years later there are no leads, no closure, and only the faint hope that someone, someday, will find that house.

Editor’s note: This article compiles unverified accounts and local lore. We could not locate official records or police reports tied to the events described. Locations are intentionally generalized to protect private property and public safety.