Thelma Pauline Melton, known to her friends and family as "Polly", was born on February 26, 1923. Polly had been married to a man named Bob Melton, who was 78 at the time of Polly's disappearance, for six years. Bob had two grown sons from a previous marriage. This was Polly's third marriage, but she didn't have any children of her own.

Polly and Bob lived in an Airstream trailer. Bob's health had been declining over the past few years, but they still loved to travel. Their primary residence was in Jacksonville, Florida, but for three months out of each year (during the fall) they would stay at the Deep Creek Campground, located next to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, in North Carolina.

Polly loved hiking and would go with friends everyday, weather permitting. She never went hiking alone. They always stuck to the easy trails and Polly's personal favorite was the "Deep Creek Trail".

On the day of Polly's disappearance she went hiking with two friends named Red and Trula. They set out on the Deep Creek Trail at about 3pm on September 25, 1981. To begin with Polly was walking at a slower pace than her friends, which they lightly teased her about. At about 4pm they started back for the campground and as they neared the location of Polly and Bob's trailer (there was also a parking lot nearby, which will become relevant later when we get into the theories), Polly suddenly started walking faster. At first, Red and Trula thought her faster pace was in response to the earlier teasing, but Polly walked faster and faster, outpacing them, eventually reaching one of the hills and then disappearing from view. Red and Trula reached Polly's trailer at about 4:30pm and found Bob right where they left him, alone. Bob hadn't seen Polly since she left and had no idea where she might be.

They, along with Red's husband and another friend of Polly's, set off back down the trail, searching the area for Polly, asking hikers along the way if they had seen her, but no one had. No sign of her was found. After two hours of searching, they notified the park rangers that Polly was missing, who in turn contacted the police. Police officers attempted to follow Polly's tracks, since the sole of one of her shoes was distinctive (it had a crack across the ball of the foot). They were able to track her for a while but her footprints eventually became obscured by the tracks of others. From what they could tell, however, it didn't appear that she had wandered off the trail.

The trail was shut down to the public the day that Polly went missing and over 150 people and 9 search dogs aided in the search. The search dogs picked up her scent on a tree that had fallen in the woods but nowhere else. The authorities didn't find this significant though and assumed that she had probably rested there at some point and had maybe taken a smoke break. The search turned up nothing else.

Four days later the trail was reopened to the public and the search officially ended on October 2nd.

More details about Polly:

• She suffered from high blood pressure and frequent bouts of nausea, both of which she took medication for.

• Due to medical issues, Polly wasn't permitted to drive alone and so Bob did all of the driving.

• Polly was said to be an extremely private person.

• She volunteered at the Presbyterian Nutritional Center and had been doing so for four years, during the months they were staying in Deep Creek Campground each year. Oddly, the day she went missing she chose not to volunteer there. This is notable because the day she went missing was a Friday and she always worked there on Fridays. The routine at the Center was to write down if you would coming in to work the next day and on the 24th, Polly did not indicate that she would be coming in the following day. So she knew ahead of time that she wouldn't be working there on Friday.

• Her supervisor said that she had never used the Center's phone in four years of volunteering there, that is until the day before she went missing in which she used the phone several times. No one knows who she spoke to and they were unable to trace the calls.

• Her minister said that she had alluded to having an affair with another man and that she felt very guilty about it. He also stated that she was starting to come out of a depression that she had been in for years following her mother's death and that she seemed to be doing much better. No one else in her life knew anything about this mystery man that she was allegedly having an affair with and no one was ever able to find out anything about him or who he was.

Theories:

• She ran away with her mystery man to start a new life. Was she walking slowly to begin with on that last hike because she was pacing herself, knowing that she would need to get far ahead of her friends at the end of the hike? There was a parking lot near the area where she was last seen. Was her lover waiting there to pick her up? The strange phone calls the day before and the fact that she uncharacteristically chose not to work at the Center that day seem to lend credence to this theory. However, she left behind her blood pressure and nausea medications, as well as her ID, and her bank account was never touched again.

• Kidnapping. Some have theorized that she might have been snatched from the trail by kidnappers, although her friends didn't hear anything and there were no signs of a struggle anywhere in the area.

• Suicide. Her mother's death in 1978 devastated her and she suffered from depression afterwards. She had been taking Valium for a while, but by 1981 she was no longer being prescribed it. However, Bob had a prescription for Valium and his bottle mysteriously went missing the same day that Polly did. It's unknown how many pills were left in it though and from what I've read, it's pretty hard to fatally overdose on Valium by itself.

Six months after Polly's disappearance, something odd happened. A check in Polly's name was cashed in Birmingham, Alabama, about 300 miles southwest of where she vanished. The check was for interest due on a bank certificate. It's unclear how long after this authorities looked into it, but when they did they found that the signature on the check appeared to be Polly's. Unfortunately, the teller had no recollection of what the person who cashed the check looked like or anything else about them. Polly's only known bank account in her name was in Jacksonville, Florida, and that account hadn't been touched since her disappearance. However, Polly was born in Alabama and still had family there at the time.

I find this case really intriguing. What are your thoughts on what happened to Polly?

Sources:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/37204923/pauline-melton

https://unsolvedappalachia.org/thelma-pauline-melton/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn8snNWD7tk&ab_channel=gabulosis