Skip to content

Gene Cartwright

Gene Cartwright is a seven-year-old boy from a Dahlonega trailer park who vanished from the field behind it, setting off the missing-persons case that draws the task force to Georgia in The Things in Appalachia.
Type NPC (missing child)
Aliases Gene
Affiliation Cartwright family, Dahlonega Trailer Park
Status Missing; presumed dead by the team (as of Appalachia 04)
First appearance Appalachia 01 (mentioned)

Description

Edward Nick's mother put Gene at "probably seven years old. He might have been eight", and the older of the two boys. He lived in trailer 920 at the far end of the park, while the Nicks lived in 513. Sheriff Burke's file lists him as a missing boy of seven. His shoes were red with white soles (Appalachia 01, Appalachia 02). The team never meets him.

History

Gene vanished about a week before the task force was assigned the case. Burke's file names him alongside Willow Greengrass, her sister Primenthol Greengrass and the five-year-old witness Edward Nick (Appalachia 01).

Edward's mother told the team that Gene was by the bent tree at the wood line when the screaming started. Edward told her that something appeared out of nowhere, grabbed Gene and took off into the woods. In the field behind the park, Huell climbed the tree and recovered a child's shoe with a tuft of pale hair caught in the laces. The hair felt like soft body hair and still had its ends. Kurt and Huell agreed the boy was almost certainly dead. Kurt then phoned Sheriff Burke, who asked whether the shoe was "red with a white sole". It was. See Gene's Shoe and The Field and Bent Tree (Appalachia 02).

In Appalachia 04 the team visited his mother, Monica Cartwright, at the Dahlonega Trailer Park. She said Gene had been playing in the woods with the Nick boy, who started screaming; when she ran out, Gene was gone. She told the agents not to come back unless they found her son. Outside, Kurt said the boy was almost certainly dead, and Andrew said they would have to call child protective services if he turned up alive. Monica also described a naked, hairy figure like Chewbacca at the end of her driveway a month earlier (see The Bigfoot Hoax).

What remains unknown

Gene's fate is never resolved in the recorded episodes, and the shoe's hair is never tied to a particular creature. A second missing boy, Frederick, later vanished near the old mines (Appalachia 03, Appalachia 04).

Trivia

  • Dr. McManley's very fat pet tegu, which tries to climb Huell's leg in the first episode, is named Cartwright; Zack's Huell greets the lizard by that name again in Appalachia 04 (Appalachia 01, Appalachia 04).

Appearances