Gallery: 2-Year-Old Boy Vanishes And Police Follow Paw Prints Through The Woods To Solve His Case

In October 2017, Chelsea Nobel woke up in the middle of the night with a sinking feeling that something was wrong. She immediately looked over to where her 2-year-old son, William, was sleeping and saw he was gone.

After frantically searching her home, Chelsea called the police. Thus began an extensive search for the missing boy in and around the Mississippi community.

Helicopters, K-9 units and volunteers spent hours searching the heavily wooded area, but William was nowhere to be found.

Then, authorities spotted a set of tiny footprints in the woods. And every time they discovered what they assumed were William’s footprints, they found a second set of prints — only these prints belonged to an animal.

As it turned out, William definitely wasn’t alone in his disappearance…