Frequently, my grandson asks me what I did for fun as a child. I told him I grew up during the late 70s and early 80s. It was a different time. We didn’t have cellphones, cable television or even a computer. We spent our days riding bikes, playing football or we just took long walks. 
We also explored the local woods and picked raspberries. Today’s kids avoid exploring anything unless it’s worthy of a selfie for social media. We also read many books. For instance, author Mark Twain wrote a novel titled The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I read this book many times back in the day.
And if you aren’t a Mark Twain fan, I am guessing you have probably never heard of Hannibal, Missouri. According to the www.visithannibal.com website, it’s 100 miles north of St. Louis along the Mississippi River. It’s a popular tourist attraction, famous for its caves, and is where famous author Mark Twain spent his youth. He also used Hannibal as the setting for his Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn novels. Missouri is famous for its caves and has over 6,000 of them. People often travel from across the country to explore them. For instance, the Onondaga Cave and the Ozark Caverns are popular tourist attractions.
But what many people don’t know is that Hannibal also once had its own authentic explorers. Billy Hoag, 11, Joel Hoag, 13 and their buddy Craig Dowell, 14, grew up in Hannibal. Like the fictitious Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, the boys loved adventure. Joel had his own telescope and gazed at the stars. He even once jotted down that he had seen a UFO through his telescope.
In 1967, the city was building a road heading south out of Hannibal. The area was busy with construction workers and their large machinery. The workers used dynamite during construction, which created new cave openings. The adventurous boys used this opportunity to explore these newly created caves. Although their parents and the construction workers told the boys to stay away from the caves, they didn’t listen. This isn’t surprising. For these young boys, the call for adventure was too powerful to ignore. Sometime around 5 p.m. on May 10, 1967, a witness saw the boys with a flashlight and shovel near a cave called Murphy’s Cave.
After the boys failed to return home, authorities were called. The community came together to search for the missing boys. Expert cave explorers came from other parts of the country to help find the missing boys. The searchers feared they may have climbed into a cave and got trapped after workers used dynamite. The searchers knew they only had about three days to find the boys. If they weren’t located immediately, they wouldn’t have a chance of surviving. The official search for the missing boys lasted for about two weeks. Afterward, other groups continued searching on their own. No one located the boys or ever saw them again.
So what happened to the lost boys of Hannibal? The most common belief is they climbed into a cave, got trapped and then died. However, there are other theories. An alternative theory is that someone may have abducted the boys. Author John Wingate, wrote a book about the strange disappearance of the Hoag brothers and their friend.
Wingate said he spoke with a psychic who claimed serial killer John Wayne Gacy abducted and killed the three boys. To me, that theory sounds like a stretch of the imagination. Today, you won’t hear too many people discussing this story. There are too many unanswered questions. Did the boys get trapped in a cave or did someone abduct them? The answer is probably underneath a stretch of road in Hannibal, Missouri.
Marc is a longtime resident of Clermont County and an avid reader. Contact him through his website at www.themarcabe.com or through Facebook: www.Facebook.com/themarcabe or his Twitter account @themarcabe. Marc also has a podcast called Catch my Killer where he interviews family members seeking justice for their murdered loved ones. You can listen at www.catchmykiller.com.