Part Of Highway 16 in British Columbia, Canada, Where Many Disappearances Took Place
Graphic Source: Me

Sometimes we find places that have had so much evil happen there, that we have to wonder what is going on. I guess the first thing that people think of when I say something like this, is a so called haunted house, such as the Amityville Horror home. I have been there, well outside of there and believe me it is only an ordinary looking house that has been disguised to look different, in an attempt to keep the curious away, but I am not talking about houses or even castles, for that matter, and I am not talking about ghosts. I am talking about bigger areas, like bodies of water or particular spots on the land or even roads. Yes even roads can have an awful history that just can't be explained. One of these roads is know by the name that the people around it have given it, it is called the Highway of Tears.

The highway is located in British Columbia, in Canada and is officially named Highway 16. So what makes this highway so mysterious? I guess it is the fact that nine women have been murdered there and hitchhikers have disappeared from there. As a matter of fact, Amnesty International estimates that 32 aboriginal Canadian women have disappeared from the highway in the last three decades and one non aboriginal woman. The road has been called the Bermuda Triangle for hitchhikers. The area where the murders took place and the hitchhikers disappeared from, is about 425 miles long and very deserted. It cuts through pine forests, rivers and remote indigenous reserves.

Nicole Hoar

Nicole Hoar vanished in 2002 while on the road. She had the misfortune to hitchhike. She was going to visit her sister and had been working in British Columbia as a tree planter. Even though the disappearance happened about 5 years ago, a private investigator has been hired, to see if he can find any clues to the disappearance. Over 100 volunteers have joined him to comb through a bushy area just south of the highway. The girl's father was also assisting. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police joined the group. The object of the search was to find either pieces of clothing or human remains. So far nothing has been found. Maybe I have seen too many movies of crazy families that murder travelers and hitchhikers, but this certainly sounds like someone or some family that is living near the highway is killing unsuspecting people and it may be a man that is either small in stature or a woman hater. I say small in stature because it would be easier for him to overpower women than men, but I really know nothing about the case except what I have written.

Tamara Chipman

In 2006, a young lady named Tamara Chipman decided to go for a hike along Highway 16, near the Prince Rupert industrial park. The poor girl disappeared and no trace of her was ever found. Her son is now motherless. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are still looking for her. She was not a small woman, she was 5'10'' and about 130 pounds. How does someone disappear into thin air. Could it be that some fiend offered her a ride and she accepted or that someone just jumped out of a car and grabbed her?

In 1995, Lana Derrick went missing from Highway 16, Since that day, right after the last snow melts, her aunt organizes a search and they go out looking for Lana. This has been going on for 12 years at this point. About the only thing that these girls had in common was the fact that they were all indians and lived a poor existence. There is one exception, one woman that was not a indian and still disappeared. The reason I say that they lived a poor existence is the fact that the standard of living on the reservation is much lower than the standard of living in the rest of Canada. It is said that as you drive on Highway 16, you see posters in many spots showing photos of the missing women. Some of the indigenous people believe that these are hate crimes and not performed by one person, but by many who hate indians. Others believe that there is a serial killer on the loose. If this is true, he has been operating for quite some time and has to be in his fifties or sixties, or at the very least in his late forties. Notice I said he, but who knows?

One woman stated that many years ago, she accepted a ride for a truck driver, but he tried to rip her clothes off and rape her. She states that she only got away by biting his hand and jumping out of the vehicle. She said that she never reported it because she felt that nothing would have been done anyway. A private investigator, who himself was a former policeman, said that he thinks that the police are not doing enough.

Not all of the bodies are missing. Romona Wilson disappeared from Highway 16 when she was 14 years old was found on the side of the road 12 years ago. She had been raped and strangled. It took 10 months to find the body. Matilda Wilson the poor child's mother never recovered from her loss.

Sometimes in cases of disappearance, you have to wonder if someone wanted to disappear. Indeed at least one of the women who disappeared was said to have had 3 arrest warrants issued for her. It had been reported that she had shown up in court after she was reported missing and that one charge against her had been dismissed, but it was just a clerical error on the part of the court.

In the same area, Monica Ignas was only 15 years old, when her body was found in a gravel pit in 1975. She has been missing about 5 months. Another woman left a pub in the area in 1989 with her uncle and another male. A month later her body was found by hikers The cause of death is unknown. A report was released in 2004, by Amnesty International, that stated that indigenous women between the ages of 25 and 44 years old, in Canada, were 5 times more likely to die from violence than the rest of the population in the same age group. This is a shocking figure indeed and a disgraceful one.

One convicted serial killer of indian women was John Martin Crawford. He was convicted in 1996 of killing 3 indian women. Police suspected that he was guilty of a couple of more murders, but couldn't prove it.

You may wonder why, with all these disappearances going on, why indian women hitchhike. It is a way of life for them. They don't own cars and there is scant transportation from the reservation. If they want to go anywhere, they just about have to hitchhike. Apparently someone realizes this and is taking advantage of the situation to kill the women.

Yes there are some places on this planet of ours that seem to reek of evil, but they are not the so called haunted places, they are real places with real people, people that are being put in jeopardy every day by deranged killers that prey on them.

The following websites are from the people that I got the photos from. In return I am listing them here in case you would like to visit them.

http://www.iammissing.ca - Missing Persons
http://www.windowsofhope.ca - Keeping families Together
http://www.stopchildabuse.ca - Stop Child Abuse