Imagine this, your teenager calls you in a panic,
terrified, begging you to come get them. You
find them shaken, eyes wide, words tumbling out
in fear. You stay up all night trying to calm
them, watching every move, every word, and then
by morning they're gone. No phone, no jacket,
just gone. This is the haunting story of 16 -year
-old Carly Gousset. and the mystery that still
grips California today. Welcome to Beyond the
Silence, Whispers Across America. I'm Sammy,
your host. Driven to shine light on the dark
corners of forgotten cases, demand justice, and
keep alive the voices the world has tried to
silence. Today, we're confronting one of the
most bewildering cases I've come across. Maybe
you have too, if you follow missing persons.
The disappearance of 16 -year -old Carly Gousset
from a quiet patch of California is a story heavy
with heartbreak, confusion, and more questions
than answers. Before we dig in, I'll warn you.
This episode will pull you through the tension
and distress those closest to Carly lived that
night. Let's start with Friday night, October
12, 2018. Carly asked her dad, Zachary, and her
stepmom, Melissa, if she could go to her high
school's football game. Pretty standard teenage
stuff, right? Only she actually headed out with
her boyfriend, Donald, not to the game, but to
a party on Dixon Lane. Not gonna pretend I never
lied to my parents when I was a teenager, but
this detour, that's where the night goes off
script. At the party, Carly smoked marijuana.
Now here's where things get murky. Donald, her
boyfriend, said she hadn't smoked in a while.
Maybe that played a role, or maybe this is what
her friends wondered too. The weed was laced
with something. What's clear is she started to
panic. Music scared her. Even Donald scared her.
She ended up running off into the night, telling
Donald not to follow. I mean, I've heard of bad
reactions, but this kind of paranoia was... Intense.
Around 8 .45 p .m., Carly called Melissa, dropping
any pretense about the football game. She's frantic,
says, Come get me. I'm booking it down Dixon
Lane. Hurry, hurry, hurry. I'm scared. If you've
ever had a call like that, you know the feeling
in your gut. Melissa speeds over and finds Carly
in the darkness, pale, pupils super dilated.
The drive home is a mess. Even with Melissa there,
Carly can't calm down. She's jumping from seat
to seat, convinced the car is going to kill her,
then repeating over and over how scared she is.
Some of us have experienced anxiety attacks before,
but this was fear pushing straight past any rational
comfort. Back home, she's either huddled up,
afraid of everyone, or clinging to her parents,
desperate for connection. As the evening grinds
on, Carly keeps shifting. Telling Melissa she
wants to paint her toenails, color, read the
Bible. Trying to anchor herself maybe in small
comforts. Around 10 p .m., Melissa, worried sick,
secretly records Carly. I get why she did it.
She thought maybe it'd help Carly realize how
bad being under the influence could get. No one
knew these would end up as the last real evidence
of Carly's mental state that night. Listening
to those audio clips, Carly's voice is shaky,
apologizing, telling Melissa she loves her, then
suddenly asking, are you going to call 911? Am
I going to live until tomorrow? You can hear
her fear, her confusion, all of it unfiltered.
To calm herself, she spent hours writing on a
piece of paper, possibly her therapy homework.
Melissa stayed with Carly until after 3 a .m.,
checking on her and the boys into the night.
Eventually, Carly ebbed into sleep. And that's
where the strange, sleepless night leaves us,
right on the edge of something ominous, but nobody
could imagine what was about to happen. The next
morning's timeline is a point where things get
even hazier. Sometime around 7 .15, maybe 7 .30
a .m., Melissa wakes up. First thing she notices,
the front door, wide open. Carly's gone. Her
phone is left on the kitchen island. No jacket,
no purse, nothing else missing. Instantly, panic
sets in. Melissa wakes up Zachary and they start
searching the area. Those first few hours, they're
make or break. If someone's gone on foot, those
early witness accounts and tracks are the only
shot you have to get ahead of the worst outcomes.
Witnesses did come forward. Kenneth Dutton, a
neighbor who knew Carly, saw her around 6 .30
a .m. with a piece of paper in her hand walking
through the neighborhood. He said she looked
up at the sky, like almost lost. Then there's
Richard Eddy, who describes seeing a thin girl
with long hair, holding paper, walking by his
house near Highway 6. Was it the therapy homework
she'd been clutching overnight? Most believe
it was. What really gets me is the direction.
Highway 6 is no place for a teen girl to wander
alone. Remote, lots of open, empty land, cold.
Carly was seen with no coat, just a white t -shirt,
gray pants, vans. The authorities jumped in right
away. Dogs, helicopters, every resource they
could muster, but nothing turned up. Scent dogs
tracked her to the highway, but the scent vanished
there. It's like she just disappeared into the
air. Everything happened so quickly. Zachary
contacted Carly's biological mom, Lindsay Fairley,
who immediately felt something was off. The Mono
County Sheriff's Department was brought in, took
witness statements, canvassed the area, but Carly
was nowhere to be found. Her boyfriend Donald
rushed to the home as soon as he heard. It all
unfolded in this suffocating rush, but in the
end... They were left with just those sighting
reports, that open door, and a vanished 16 -year
-old. If you ever wonder why people keep covering
the Carly Gousset case, this is why. It's not
just the mystery, it's the echoes of real frantic
fear, and the lives that have never been the
same since that morning. So what could have happened?
That's the chasm that splits this case wide open.
And it splits the family too. There are a few
main theories floating out there, each with their
own supporters and skeptics. 1. The accidental
overdose. Lindsay, Carly's mother, points to
Melissa's secret recordings and the distress
Carly was in, believing that Carly died at home
and her father and Melissa covered it up. She
said on Doctor, Phil, and elsewhere that the
shifting stories from Zachary and Melissa raised
too many questions. Her version is that Carly's
fear, rambling about dying, asking if she would
make it to tomorrow, that all points to something
fatal happening inside that house. On the flip
side, Zachary and Melissa have stuck unwaveringly
to their story. They say that Carly left on her
own, still alive in the morning, and sightings
back that up. There are witness accounts. The
dogs, even polygraphs that haven't flagged them
as deceptive. Some extend the theory to an abduction,
since the scent trail stops at the highway. Maybe
someone picked her up willingly or not. There's
a wild card, too. Was there something in the
weed that night? Something laced that triggered
this extreme paranoia and confusion? And then
there's the possibility that Carly disappeared
voluntarily? Maybe the paranoia? The episodes
about being tracked. Maybe what happened wasn't
just about that night, but about mental health
struggles that nobody fully understood at the
time. The desert, though, is unforgiving. There's
a slim chance someone survives long out there,
in just a t -shirt and pants. Search efforts
never really stopped. Every supposed sighting
sparks hope, but even the lead in Tonopah, 100
miles away. led nowhere social media churns with
rumors wild stories false alarms it's haunting
for families they get pulled between hope and
despair with every tip that goes nowhere the
tension within the family is still raw and real
and the uncertainty has only deepened the divides
i guess at the end of all this the bigger question
is how does a kid evaporate into thin air in
the digital age How do mental health, substance
use, and the limits of modern search technology
leave us with so few answers? Carly's case exposes
not just the pain of one family, but the gaps
that still exist in how we protect and find vulnerable
people. If you know something, don't stay silent.
Call the Mono County Sheriff's Office. Reach
out to the National Center for Missing and Endangered
Children. We can't let Carly's story fade. If
anyone out there holds the key, now is the time
to speak up. That's it for today's episode. The
questions remain and the search continues, because
every lost soul deserves answers, and every story
deserves to be heard. What are your thoughts?
What do you believe happened? Share your voice,
because sometimes the smallest detail can spark
the biggest breakthrough. I'm Sammy, and this
is Beyond the Silence, Whispers Across America.
Thank you for listening, stay safe, and I'll
see you next time.