Whistling Through the Graveyard
Chapter 3 - Albert Fountain Must Die!
Chapter 4 - Love Is Stronger Than Death
Christene Dawn Skubish was born in Los Angeles County in 1970, the daughter of Lawrence and Brenda Skubish, who were married just before Apollo 11 deposited Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the moon. With the birth of her son Nick, Christene became a single mom.
What happened to her and Nick in June 1994 made the news in a lot of places, so it's not like this story has been locked away in a vault since Christene died. I guess I was living under a rock, because I didn't know about any of it until after I created a Find A Grave memorial for Christene in 2012, a little over 18 years after her passing.
Christene and Nick left her family's house near Sacramento on 5 June 1994, which was a Sunday. Christene was driving to Carson City, Nevada, and took US Highway 50 through El Dorado County. Christene and Nick went missing at this point, and on June 8 her stepfather Dave Stautzenbach filed a missing person report with the police.
On 10 June 1994 local resident Deborah Hoyt and her husband were driving on US 50 in a wooded, mountainous area near Pollock Pines, California, when they spotted what appeared to be a nude woman lying by the side of the road at Bullion Bend. It freaked them out enough so that they pulled over at a payphone later and reported the incident to the police. By the time local police attempted to investigate the report it was apparently after dark and they saw nothing.
El Dorado County sheriff's deputy Rich Strasser went back to the scene on Saturday morning, the 11th. Cruising along Highway 50, he spotted what appeared to be a child's shoe by the side of the road. He pulled over to investigate and walked back to where he had seen the shoe. Nearby, on foot he was able to see something that couldn't be seen from the road, a car at the bottom of a 40 foot embankment with the roof torn off.
Strasser hiked down to the car and found Christene's body in the driver's seat and Nick curled up in the car, barely alive after being exposed to the elements for five or six days. (In the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, even in June at high elevations it can get quite cold at night). Nick's clothes were in the car but he was naked, covered in scratches and blisters from what might have been poison oak. Christene's body was fully clothed and it looked like she had died at or shortly after the time of the car crash.
I'm guessing Deputy Strasser immediately carried Nick back to his patrol car, and Nick was airlifted to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento where he recovered quickly from the experience.
The official date of Christene's death is 11 June 1994 because that is when her body was discovered. It's clear to me from everything I have read that she probably actually died on the 6th of June, or possibly the 5th, depending on when she left her family's house.
After putting all the pieces together, the most likely explanation for what happened is that Nick was able to scramble up the embankment to the highway. Being a 3 year old he may not have known what to do at that point, plus he was probably hurt during the crash and then scratched up by undergrowth during his trek up the embankment. As for his lack of clothing when found by Deputy Strasser, he might have gotten too hot at some point and then not thought to put the clothes back on, or he might have fouled himself while trying to go to the bathroom and known enough to take the dirty clothes off.
He was probably lying there when Deborah Hoyt and her husband drove past, and for some reason either Deborah didn't see him clearly or else she and her husband reported it to the police as a naked woman even when she could see it was a child. By the time the police showed up later, either they just didn't see him or he had climbed back down to the car, even with no roof it was probably more of a shelter than anything by the side of the road.
Human psychology being what it is, it's possible Deborah reported the sighting to the police as a woman because if she really did see a child and she and her husband didn't stop immediately, there could be a lot of questions, recriminations, and finger pointing later.
The one thing that throws me about the story is that if the shoe next to the highway belonged to Nick, how and why did it get there? Again, we're dealing with a 3 year old here, so he might have left the shoe there for some reason that made perfect sense to him, and none to us. Or, for that matter, maybe the shoe didn't even belong to Nick. That would be a world class coincidence, wouldn't it?
Occam's razor does point to Nick being the person that Deborah Hoyt saw on June 10th. But what if Deborah really did see what appeared to be a woman's body by the side of the road?
Could Christene have manifested herself as some kind of apparition to someone driving along the highway? If she did and that's what Deborah Hoyt saw, without a doubt it saved Nick's life. And if there is a psychic force strong enough to make the dead appear to the living, maternal love is about as strong as it gets.
Whether or not anything metaphysically bizarre happened here, there were already two miracles in place on 11 June 1994. One, that a three year old could survive under those conditions for five days after his mother died, and second, that Deputy Strasser saw that shoe by the side of the road that led him to the crash site. By comparison with those two, Christene coming back from the dead to make sure someone found her son doesn't even seem that far fetched. Either way, you can forget Harry Potter, Nick Skubish really WAS the boy who lived.
Only Deborah Hoyt and possibly her husband know for sure what Deborah saw by the side of the road that day. And what they did saved Nick Skubish's life, even if they didn't stop immediately by the highway and investigate what was going on themselves. The Hoyts got their proverbial 15 minutes of fame and whatever did or didn't happen, I would not expect them to recant their story 24 years later.
I try to keep an open mind on these types of things. I have experienced a few weirder than weird moments in my life and I have learned that the more I think I know ultimately reveals to me just how vast the chasm is of my ignorance.
As to which story you want to believe, it's like the scene at the end of the movie Life of Pi where Pi, having told the insurance investigator and then the writer Yann Martel two versions of the story about the aftermath of the shipwreck, asks which version they like better. To which the unanimous answer is the one with the tiger. With Christene Skubish, both stories are good, it's up to you to decide which version you like better.
Christene's story was featured on the television show Unsolved Mysteries in 1997. It apparently also was the inspiration for an artifact on the science fiction show "Warehouse 13" known as "Christene Skubish's Toy Blocks", which have the property of allowing "(the) transfer (of) someone's will, enough will to allow someone to temporarily return from the dead as a corporeal ghost".
Christene is buried at Forest Lawn Cypress in Orange County, California in the Everlasting Hope Section, Lot 1539, Space 4. She is buried with someone who I believe is her maternal grandfather, James Harold Nichols. Christene's father Lawrence passed away in December 1994 and is buried in the town of Portage in northwestern Indiana near Chicago.
Sources:
Boy, 3, Recovering After 5 Days in Car With Dead Mother Los Angeles Times, 14 June 1994
Christene Skubish on Family Search Dot Org
Christene Skubish on Find A Grave
Highway 50 Phantom on Unsolved Mysteries
Christine Skubish's Toy Blocks on Warehouse 13 Artifact Database
Chapter 5
Chapter 5 - Marimon Davis, Gone But Not Forgotten
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