Imagine a quiet place, a tourist camp in the dense forests of Belgium, families with children, tourists, laughter around the campfires. Now imagine that just below your feet, just a couple of meters deep, there is a corpse in a plastic box. It has been there for 3 years. The corpse of a girl who everyone thought was missing.
They looked for her, but they never found her and she was here all this time. This story is not about ghosts. Try that the most terrible evil can hide where you least expect it, in an ordinary plastic box, buried under a tourist trail. And the most horrifying thing about this story is not how they killed her, but how they hid her and that they never found the murderer.
This happened in the early 2000s. Marin, French, was 29 years old. She was not a rebel or an adventurer, on the contrary, according to her family and friends, she was a person organized to the point of exaggeration. He worked in an archive in León and liked order in everything. I had the vacation planned for the next 6 months.
Routes, campsites, packing lists. Everything was written down in his notebook. She was not one to embark on a spontaneous journey. A hike in the Ardennes had been his dream for a long time. I had been preparing it for several months. I read forums, I studied maps. bought new equipment. For her it was not just a vacation, but a kind of project that she wanted to carry out perfectly.

She left alone, but there was nothing strange about that. Marin liked solo excursions, they helped her to collect her thoughts, she did not seek company, she felt comfortable with herself and with nature. That year, the summer in Belgium was hot and dry. The Ardennes was full of tourists. Marin arrived at the official tourist camp called Valle Verde.
It was a popular place, well-kept clearings for tents, a small administrative building, showers, gravel paths, all civilized and safe. At least it seemed so. He arrived in his old car, checked in at the front desk and paid for two nights. The receptionist recalled that she was polite, spoke softly and had a slight accent.
He said that the next day he would go all day to the mountains on one of the most popular routes. Nothing out of the ordinary. Thousands of tourists did the same thing every season. He pitched his tent in a far corner of the camp at the edge of the forest. The place was quiet and secluded, just as she liked it. Other tourists saw her unpacking her things and preparing dinner on a small gas stove.
He didn’t talk to anyone, he just responded with a gesture to greetings. The last time she was seen was at night sitting next to her tent reading a book. The next morning, his shop was still closed. At first no one paid attention to him. Perhaps the person had decided to sleep in or had gone hiking before dawn, although that was unlikely, considering his plans.
At lunchtime, when the sun was already high and the zipper at the entrance of the store was still closed, the neighboring tourists, a couple from Germany, began to worry. They approached and called her by her name. Silence. They didn’t dare to look inside. It would be too intrusive. Instead they went to look for the administrator.
This one, an older Belgian, also ignored at first. He said that everyone had their plans and that they should not get involved in other people’s affairs. But at sunset, when Marín’s record was about to end and there was no sign of her, he decided to go and take a look.

He walked up to the store and called out loud to her several times. Madmoel Maren. There was no response. Then he carefully pulled the zipper. The store opened. It was empty, but it was a strange void. On the floor was a sleeping bag neatly rolled up. Next to him was his large travel backpack. The administrator, breaking all the rules, looked inside the backpack.
There were his things, food, a map, a wallet with money and documents, the keys to the car that was still in the parking lot. Everything was in its place. Only Marin was missing. It was completely illogical. No tourist, in their right mind, would go to the mountains without a backpack, without water, without documents. It was tantamount to suicide. The administrator immediately called the police.
The gendarmes who arrived cordoned off the tent. The usual interrogation began, but it was of no use. No one had seen or heard anything. The night was quiet. No screams or noises of struggle were heard. No one saw anyone approach his tent. It was in a remote corner and the lanterns on the main avenue barely reached there.
The search operation began. Dozens of police officers and volunteers combed the forest around the camp. A helicopter with a thermal camera and police dogs were used. The dogs followed the trail from the store, but lost it almost immediately. The trail was interrupted on the gravel road that led to the parking lot and the exit of the camp.
It was as if he had approached the road and evaporated or gotten into a car. But from whom? The police began to consider all hypotheses. The first and most obvious, an accident. Perhaps he went for a walk without carrying anything, sprained his foot and fell into a ravine. But the search within a radius of 10 km yielded no results.
They combed the forest thoroughly. The second version, voluntary disappearance. But it didn’t make any sense. Why leave all the money, documents and car? Their bank accounts were intact. His family in France was in shock. Everyone claimed that Marine would never have done something like that.

She wasn’t depressed, she had no enemies, she had no reason to just disappear. There remained the third version, the most terrible, kidnapping and murder. But here too there were inconsistencies. Why would a kidnapper leave all his valuables? Normally in these cases theft is the main motive.
Here everything pointed to her being the target. The days passed and turned into weeks. The search operation was gradually reduced. The volunteers left and the police returned to their usual tasks. Only the posters with his photo pasted on the trees and on the information panels remembered Marín. The Valle Verde camp continued to operate.
New tourists were pitching tents, lighting bonfires and hiking. Few knew that a few weeks earlier a girl had disappeared without a trace in that same place. The story of Marín gradually became one of those local legends that are told around the bonfire to make your hair stand on end.
The investigator who handled the case later confessed in an interview that he did not let him sleep. The lack of evidence was total. Not a fingerprint, not a hair, not a witness. The case reached an impasse and was filed with the missing note under unknown circumstances. Marín’s car remained in the police depot for several months and was then handed over to his parents.
They sold it, unable to see their daughter’s last memory. For three years there was no news of Marín. For three long years, her family lived in a situation of uncertainty, not knowing if she was alive or dead. And then, in the Selena Dolina field, they decided to lay a new electric cable. 3 years later, the Valle Verde field continued with its usual life.
The story of the missing Frenchwoman had almost been erased from memory. It had become a mere line in police reports. One day, when there were not many people in the field, a small team of workers entered the enclosure. The local council needed to lay a new power cable to a remote part of the campsite.

El trabajo era rutinario, sucio, pero sencillo. Dos hombres armados con palas y una pequeña excavadora comenzaron a trabajar. Cababan a lo largo del antiguo camino de Grava, el mismo en el que tr años atrás se había perdido el rastro de Marín. La Tierra estaba compacta, pisoteada por miles de pies. El trabajo avanzaba lentamente.
En un momento dado, la pala de la excavadora golpeó algo duro con un ruido sordo. No era una piedra. El sonido era diferente, más sordo como de plástico. Los trabajadores detuvieron la máquina. Uno de ellos saltó a la zanja poco profunda y comenzó a remover la tierra con una pala. Pronto apareció el borde de algo grande de color gris oscuro.
Era un enorme contenedor de plástico. No se parecía a las cajas domésticas para guardar cosas. Estaba hecho de plástico grueso y rugoso, con potentes refuerzos y pestillos metálicos a los lados. Son del tipo que utilizan el ejército o las empresas industriales para transportar equipos. Los trabajadores se miraron entre sí. ¿Qué hacía algo así enterrado bajo tierra en un campamento turístico? Quizás era basura vieja que no se habían molestado en sacar.
¿O alguien había escondido algo valioso? La curiosidad pudo más. Entre los dos sacaron con dificultad la pesada caja de la tierra. Estaba herméticamente cerrada. Uno de los pestillos se dio, el segundo tuvieron que romperlo con un martillo. Cuando por fin la tapa se movió, un olor extraño salió por la rendija. No era el olor a podredumbre al que estaban preparados.
Era un olor químico fuerte y acre, similar al olor del formalina o algún disolvente industrial. Bajo ese olor se adivinaba otro: náuseabundo y dulzón. Uno de los trabajadores, tapándose la nariz tiró de la tapa con fuerza. En el interior, ocupando todo el espacio, había un gran bulto envuelto en una película negra y brillante.
La película era gruesa, como la que se utiliza para embalar mercancías en los almacenes. Estaba enrollada alrededor de algo que se adivinaba sin lugar a dudas como un cuerpo humano. Estaba en posición fetal con las rodillas pegadas al pecho. Los trabajadores se apartaron de la caja como si les hubiera quemado. Uno de ellos, pálido y tembloroso, sacó el teléfono y llamó a la policía.
El campamento Valle Verde se convirtió ese mismo día en la escena de un crimen. La noticia del hallazgo conmocionó a la policía local. El caso Marín, que llevaba 3 años acumulando polvo en los archivos, volvió a la mesa del investigador Jean Pierre Logier. Había envejecido en esos años. Estaba más canoso y cansado, pero recordaba el caso al detalle.

The total lack of evidence haunted him. Now he had the main piece of evidence. Horrible, but still evidence. He went to the scene himself. The campground was cordoned off, and all tourists were asked to leave immediately under the pretext of unforeseen technical work. The relaxed, carefree atmosphere gave way to icy terror.
Forensic doctors in white coats worked over the coffin. Their every move was recorded by a camera. The coffin was taken to the forensic medicine laboratory. There, truly gruesome details began to emerge. First, the identity. The dental record quickly confirmed that it was Marine’s.
The three-year search was over. All that time, she had been there beneath the feet of hundreds of tourists, just a few dozen meters from her tent. Second, the condition of the body. The pathologist was impressed. In three years underground, the body should have practically become a skeleton.
But Marin’s body was in a state that experts described as partially mummified. The level of decomposition was minimal. Analysis revealed that before the box was sealed, it had been filled with a powerful chemical compound, essentially an embalming fluid. This completely halted the decomposition process. This
wasn’t a spontaneous murder. The killer acted with composure and possessed special knowledge. He didn’t just want to hide the body; he wanted to preserve it. Third, the cause of death. And here the investigation hit another dead end. The body showed no fatal wounds, no fractures, and no traces of bullets or knives.

The internal organs were impregnated with chemicals, but it was impossible to determine whether death had been caused by poisoning. There were also no traces of strangulation. The coroner shrugged. In his report, he wrote: “Cause of death undetermined.” But during a detailed examination, he discovered something that chilled the blood of even the most experienced forensic experts.
Beneath each of Marín’s fingernails and toenails were tiny, deeply driven metal staples of the type used in construction staplers. This had nothing to do with the cause of death. It was torture, sophisticated and sadistic torture that left no visible marks on the body but caused excruciating pain.
And the last and most gruesome detail. The forensic experts began examining the plastic box. On the inside of the lid, just above where the victim’s head should have been, they found scratches—many parallel scratches. Forensic examination confirmed it: they had been made by a person’s fingernails.
That could only mean one thing. Marin was placed in the box while still alive. She was conscious, in complete darkness, in a confined space, and desperately trying to get out. She scratched at the lid until her fingers began to bleed. The crime scene was not only gruesome, but monstrous. Not only was she killed, she was buried alive in a coffin filled with chemicals after being tortured.
The investigation resumed with renewed vigor. Now it was no longer a case of a disappearance, but of a serial killer. Because a person capable of such a thing would hardly have stopped at just one victim. The first thing the police did was examine the box. Experts determined that containers of this type were manufactured in a single factory in Belgium.
Its main buyers were the army and several large industrial companies dedicated to chemical production. The search circle was narrowed, but it was still too wide. So the investigators turned their attention back to the camp itself. The criminal must have known the place well.

knew about the existence of the old drainage well where the box was hidden. This well didn’t appear on any maps; only the elders or those in charge of maintaining the grounds knew about it. The police requested all the camp employee files for the year Marin disappeared, and that’s where they encountered the first anomaly.
The file was missing from the file for one of the employees, a seasonal guard who worked at the camp that very summer. His name appeared on the payroll, but there was no record, no address, no photo, nothing. The folder had disappeared. The camp administration couldn’t provide a clear explanation.
Perhaps it was lost during the file transfer, or perhaps someone intentionally destroyed it, and there’s more. The police recovered the video surveillance recordings. At that time, the camp’s system was primitive. There were only a few cameras at the entrance and in the administrative building. Examining the system logs, investigators discovered that the night Marín disappeared, the entire video surveillance system had been offline for 24 hours.
In the log, there was a note saying “scheduled technical maintenance.” The police identified the person responsible for that maintenance. It was the same night security guard whose personnel file had vanished without a trace. The circle was beginning to close. You had a ghost, a man who was in the right place at the right time, who had the ability to take the cameras offline, and who then vanished without a trace.
The search for the ghost guard became a permanent fixture of the investigation. The first person on the list was Luke Verhoven. But when you started searching for that name in databases, you found a void. A person with that name existed, but his digital and paper life was virtually clean.
No credits, no parking tickets, no active social media accounts. He was almost invisible. Investigators began questioning everyone who worked at Green Valley that summer. The picture was strange. Everyone remembered Luke. He was older than most of the seasonal workers. He was around 40. Quiet, solitary. He had no friends.
He did his job with precision, without complaint, but he always kept to himself. No one remembered him ever talking about his family, his past, or his plans for the future. He was simply a function, a man in uniform who patrolled the territory at night. Investigator Lorier felt they were on the right track.

He gave the order to continue investigating, and after several weeks of meticulous work, an interesting fact came to light. Before becoming a security guard at the campsite, Luke Berhoven had worked for several years as an instructor at a private survival school. This school provided training courses for civilians, among other places, in the Ardennes forests.
He knew those places like the back of his hand. He knew how to survive in the wild, cover his tracks, and go unnoticed. That explained his skills. But there was another detail. Before working as an instructor, he had a brief stint of just a few months working in the warehouse of a large chemical company—the same client of the factory that produced those plastic containers.
The puzzle fell into place. This man had knowledge, access to resources, and opportunity. He was the ideal suspect. It took the police another month to find him. He didn’t hide, but he lived in such a way that it was difficult to see him. In a small rented house on the outskirts of an industrial town in another part of the country.
He worked as a warehouse boy in a large department store. He lived alone. He was arrested early in the morning, without any noise or commotion. He wasn’t surprised to see the police at his door. He was completely calm. The interrogation lasted several hours. Investigator Laorier sat opposite him and tried to break through the wall of that icy calm, but Luke Berhoven was like a rock.
He answered all the questions calmly, monotonously, without emotion. Yes. He had worked in that field. Yes, he remembered how the girl had disappeared. It was sad. Why had her personnel file disappeared? He had no idea they were asking the administration. Why were the cameras off? Scheduled maintenance.
The system failed often. Everything is recorded in the logbook. His answers were impeccable. He used bureaucracy and other people’s negligence as a shield. He didn’t slip up once. He showed no sign of nervousness. He looked the investigator straight in the eyes, and his gaze was utterly blank.
The police obtained a warrant to search his house. They turned everything upside down. They were looking for anything. Remnants of that film noir, the construction stapler, the chemical can, any memento he might have taken from Marín. But they found nothing. The house was spotlessly clean. Not a clue, not a hint, nothing that could connect this man to that horrible box in the woods.
Investigator Lorier was 100% sure he had Marín’s killer in front of him. All his intuition, all his experience, screamed that it was him. But intuition can’t be used in a case. The prosecutor studied the file. Yes. The body of circumstantial evidence was impressive. The motive, the opportunity, the special knowledge—everything pointed to seeing him as young, but there wasn’t a single direct piece of evidence, not a fingerprint, not a DNA match, not a single witness who had seen him with Marín.

Nothing. A case built on such flimsy foundations would collapse in court on the first day. The charges would be dropped. A conviction was impossible. With a heavy heart, the prosecutor gave the order. Luke Berheen was released. He walked out of the police station, silently passed several reporters, boarded a bus, and drove off.
No one saw him again. He vanished again. Disappeared like a ghost. Investigator Lorier retired a year later. In his last interview, he said the Marín case was the biggest failure of his career. He knew the killer, had spoken to him, but couldn’t prove his guilt. Camp Valle never recovered from this story.
News of the terrible discovery spread across the country. Tourists stopped coming. No one wanted to rest in a place where a tortured body had lain underground for three years. Two years after the discovery of the box, the camp went bankrupt and was closed. Now it’s an abandoned lot. The gates are rusted and hang from a single hinge.
The administration building is boarded up. The paved paths are covered with grass, and somewhere, beneath a layer of dirt and roots, an empty drainage well remains, a silent witness to a terrible tragedy. Marin’s case remains unsolved, and the man who most likely killed her simply walked away, never to be heard from again.