Sevenyearold girl was sleeping in forest. Then she woke up to find herself surrounded with strangers.
Little Daisy Bennett was a happy young girl. She and her three brothers were raised by their loving parents, Melissa and and Frank Bennett. Daisy was a wild child with long, flowing blonde hair and the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen. According to her parents, that is. The family home was on the edge of a large wooded area and they had an expansive garden to play in.
Daisy never wandered past the edge of the garden, though the woods actually scared her a little bit. That was until she started watching Winnie the Poo. Daisy became convinced that the woods behind her home were the 1000 acre woods where Winnie the Pooh and his friends lived in Frolic. Melissa was careful not to crush the stream of daisies, but she also didn’t want to encourage her daughter to go off looking for any of the characters. On September 13, 2007, Daisy was again playing in the back garden.
Frank was still coming home from work and Melissa was on the back patio watching Daisy run around. The air was getting cooler as winter approached, but Daisy refused to wear a coat. The best Melissa could convince her of was a long sleeve shirt. Melissa wasn’t worried, though. She’d planned to let Daisy get some energy out for five minutes or so and then bring her inside for dinner.
She’d left her famous lasagna baking in the oven, Daisy’s favorite meal. A few minutes had passed until Melissa heard a loud bang and one of the sons yelling, mom, come quick. She raced inside to find her nine year old with Burns on his arm after he had clearly tried to take the lasagna out of the oven. What on Earth were you doing? Melissa asked him.
Her son looked rather shocked and seeing how bad the burn looked, she told her oldest son to grab the first aid kit and grab the burn gel. In a panic, with the bad burn and lasagna spread all over the kitchen floor, Melissa left Daisy outside for exactly four minutes. Realizing she needed to bring Daisy in, Melissa instructed her oldest to run the burn under some tepid water and she’d be right back. It was around this time that Frank pulled into the driveway. Daisy, come inside, sweetie.
We’re going to order some pizza for dinner. There’s been a bit of a whoops with the lasagna, Melissa called to her daughter. Daisy didn’t reply, though Melissa initially thought that Daisy was mad about the supper, even though she loved pizza too. She called her daughter’s name again, but still no reply. Melissa wasn’t panicked yet.
She jumped off the porch and began to jog around the garden, thinking Daisy might have been hiding somewhere. After she looked in all of Daisy’s usual hiding spots, Melissa began to panic. She then heard Frank pull into the driveway. Melissa sprinted into the house to find that Frank had discovered the chaos in the kitchen. All the mess would soon seem like the most important thing in the world after the next sentence came out of Melissa’s mouth.
Frank, I can’t find Daisy. Frank thought Melissa was joking. Not that she ever joked about something like that, but there was no way Daisy was missing. He’d spoken to Melissa an hour earlier. Everything seemed fine, the kids were well and Daisy was safe on Earth.
Do you mean Mel? He asked Melissa, then explained what had happened, and Frank then raced outside himself, hoping he would find where Daisy was hiding. He too couldn’t locate her. Then they called the police and a search was launched. Parents are always looking into missing children cases, but the detectives could see that they had nothing to do with Daisy going missing.
They were working off the assumption that she’d run into the woods and hoping no one had lured her in there. Once news broke of the bubbly beauty that was missing, volunteers came in from far and wide to aid in the search. 350 volunteers, to be precise. September 14 had no new leads. September 15 saw the same.
They didn’t want to show it to the family, but the detectives were losing hope at this point. The weather hadn’t been freezing, but it had been cold enough that a little girl would have battled to hold onto any warmth in it. Daisy was also without any food, and they didn’t know whether she knew to drink from the streams to stay hydrated. She was seven years old after all, hardly a survival expert. Days three and four of the search still turned up nothing, but day five showed something.
A volunteer had found a single blonde strand of hair hanging in a branch. It was a miracle that they even found this. The woman happened to need to tie her shoe, and as she picked her head back up, the hair glinted in the evening light. The search then lasted well into the evening. They hoped Daisy was close by, but were confused as to how far she’d come.
The search area was 2 miles from the Bennett’s yard, a long way for a little girl to walk. The searchers unfortunately found nothing. Day six was much of the same, and the majority of day seven too. Until the evening of the 7th day. Detectives knew that they’d have to scale back the search if Daisy wasn’t located very soon, and they already knew the likelihood of her being found alive was slim to none.
If they didn’t find anything that pointed to where she was, the case would be considered a recovery mission, not a rescue, and you won’t quite believe what they found. At 813 PM that night, the woods were dark and the searchers all had flashlights. In this particular group, a three, there were two officers and four volunteers. Everyone was exhausted at this point and had orders to head back to their cars. At 08:30 p.m.
They’ve been killing themselves over the past week and were all absolutely exhausted. Then the words I found her wrung out. Everyone in the group looked over in the direction of Officer Henriksen, who had his flashlight planted firmly at the spot on the forest floor. The others slowly walked over and shown their flashlights on the most miraculous scene. There little Daisy Bennett was lying in a curled up ball in the bowl of some tree roots.
The officer leaned down to check if Daisy was alive and breathing, but before he could do that, those brilliantly blue eyes of hers popped open. The volunteers quickly turned their lights off. All but Officer Henriksen, who scooped Daisy up and noticed she was in remarkably good shape for a girl who had been missing in the woods for seven days. Daisy had no cuts on her, no bruises or scrapes, and she seemed calm. What are you doing here?
She asked the officer quietly. He chuckled. We’re out looking for you. Of course, Daisy. Your parents have been very worried.
He didn’t want to press her for any details as he was worried about how she would handle things. Mentally nap, Daisy said to him. Assuming she was saying she wanted to take a nap, the officer replied, I’m sure you’re very tired. We’ll have you back home in no time, Daisy, and you’ll be able to have the best night’s sleep with your parents. What?
Daisy said next shocked the officer. No, I was taking a nap. I came to find Pooh Bear this afternoon and he told me to sleep here while he fetches some food. The officer couldn’t help himself. Daisy, what do you mean this afternoon?
Do you know how long you’ve been out here? Since this afternoon, she responded. The officer carried Daisy the rest of the way in silence. Melissa and Frank, as well as the boys, were ecstatic to have Daisy back. They later admitted to the media that while they tried to stay hopeful, they did know as the past days the chances of seeing their Sunshine was getting lower and lower.
Daisy was looked over by an ambulance that was waiting back at the Bennet house. After looking Daisy over, the nurse came over to the lead Detective and had a question for him. How long did you say this little girl’s been missing? Seven days, the officer replied. I’m sorry, but that just isn’t possible.
The nurse went on to explain her findings. Daisy was in perfect health and appeared to have eaten in the last few hours. Her blood pressure and water levels were all within the normal range and she appeared alert. Hardly what you would expect from a little girl who had just been through what Daisy had been through. Everyone decided it would be best for Daisy to not have any more questions that night.
It was late and it would be best if she was able to get a good night’s sleep back at home. And have things return to normal. When Melissa took Daisy in that night, her daughter said she wanted to tell her something. Melissa later recounted that the conversation went something like this. I’m sorry I went into the Woods, Mommy.
I wanted to find Pooh and his friends. It’s OK, sweetheart. We don’t need to talk about it now. But Daisy clearly wanted to talk about it. I had a crazy dream, Mommy.
Pooh Bear and I had an adventure in the Thousand Acre wood. We had honey and berries, and he introduced me to Tigger and Eore and Piglet. Well, that was very nice of him. And then I woke up with that man in his life. I was in the Thousand acre woods for a week, Mommy, but I only had a nap.
Melissa listened to her daughter and assumed she was overtired. Daisy then drifted off to sleep. But when she was taken in to be questioned by a child psychologist, Daisy stuck to the same story. She mentioned the 1000 acre wood and all the characters she met. Daisy also spoke about how they kept her warm at night and gave her food to eat and showed her where to drink water.
The most shocking thing of all was that it was clear that Daisy honestly believed she had simply taken a nap and had a dream. She had no idea that she was in the woods for a whole seven days. After hearing the story, many people have had different theories. Some think that Daisy was so traumatized that she blocked out what happened. But that doesn’t explain how she kept herself warm, fed, and watered through those seven long days.
Maybe one day a memory will come back to Daisy and she’ll explain what happened to her out there. As of today, Daisy’s story hasn’t changed. What do you think happened to her?
Thanks for reading.