Child's Tennis Shoe¶
The Child's Tennis Shoe is the German-looking child's shoe found at the bottom of the hidden elevator shaft beneath the Consolidated Gold Mine, the only trace of missing boy Frederick.
| Type | Item |
| Aliases | German shoe; Frederick's shoe |
| Holder | Handed to the search party and the sheriff's deputies |
| First appearance | Appalachia 03 |
Description¶
A single child's tennis shoe. Andre called it "German-looking" and joked that it was Deichmann brand; the players riffed on lederhosen and elf shoes. It is a different shoe from the red, white-soled one found in the field earlier, as Rita checked (Appalachia 03). See Gene's Shoe.
Properties¶
None are established. It suggests that the missing German boy Frederick had been in or near the old elevator shaft.
History¶
Discovery. Following the wounded creature's streaky red blood trail, the team reached a vertical shaft with coiled cables, an old elevator with no way up. At the bottom lay the single shoe, which they took (Appalachia 03). The shaft is part of the Hidden Modern Tunnel below the Consolidated Gold Mine.
Handover. Out of the mine, Huell said bluntly, "Kid's dead, though. Here's the shoe," and a German woman from the tour group burst into tears. Kurt told the searchers there was a slim chance that, if someone had taken the boy, they had brought him to the surface by a route the team could not follow from below, and gave them the shoe (Appalachia 03).
Later. In Appalachia 04 the sheriff said the latest missing child had only one parent, who spoke almost only German, and that a translator was two days away. The shoe itself is not mentioned again. In Appalachia 09 the worker Clive was dismayed to hear that children had gone missing in the mines, but the episodes never say whether Frederick was one of the people taken by the ape-man operation.