The 2009 disappearance of the Jamison family — Bobby, Sherilynn, and 6-year-old Madyson — captured the media’s attention and the public’s interest because of the bizarre backstory associated with it. Here was a family caught on camera acting like zombies, who believed they were being haunted by a ghost or tormented by a demonic spirit when they suddenly fell off the radar.
Their bodies were found in 2013, and while it was not possible to say for sure what ki*lled each person, it is thought that they were mu*rdered, but no one knows who did it or why. It’s possible that the scary backstory has nothing to do with what happened to the Jamison family, but it’s still very interesting.
October 8, 2009
Bob Jamison (44), Sherilynn Jamison (40), and Madyson Jamison (6 years old) lived in Eufaula, Oklahoma. Their bodies were found in Red Oak, which is in the Sans Bois mountain range, about 30 miles away. Bobby and Sherilynn were thinking about buying a 40-acre piece of land, which is why the family went there. The family was going to live in a storage shed they already had.
This may have been a last-minute choice because Colton, Sherilynn’s son from a previous relationship, saw his mother two weeks before the family went missing and said Sherilynn didn’t say anything about the family’s plans to move.
The Jamison family packed up their pickup truck on October 8, 2009, and drove off into the mountains. They were never seen alive again.
When no one heard from the Jamisons for a few days, the search for the family really got going. The police looked for the family for eight days before they found their truck. That’s when things began to go haywire.
The truck was found in Latimer County, which is about an hour’s drive from where the Jamisons live. Based on what was in the truck, it didn’t look like the Jamisons were going to be gone for a long time. The family’s malnourished dog, Bobby and Sherilynn’s cell phones, wallets, and purse, as well as a GPS, maps, and $32,000 in cash, were all found in the truck . The truck was in good shape, and there were no signs of damage from an accident.
Bobby and Sherilynn were both on disability when they went missing, so their family and friends were shocked to find a lot of cash in the truck. It is unclear where the money came from, and some believe it was earned through drug dealing by the couple. [1] But people who knew Bobby and Sherilynn had a hard time believing that they would have brought their young daughter with them to do drugs.
I know what drugs can do to a family because I was one. If the Jamisons had a serious enough drug problem or were high enough on the drug-dealing food chain, they could have taken their poor little girl with them to buy or sell drugs.
The police found the Jamisons’ truck, their dog that was hungry, and other things, but they didn’t find the Jamisons themselves until November 16, 2013.
On that day, just three miles from where the truck was located, hunters discovered the skeletal remains of two adults and one child. Forensic testing confirmed that the remains belonged to Bobby, Sherilynn, and Madyson Jamison.
Now…About That Crazy Backstory
Bobby and Sherilynn Jamison were ready to start over in the mountains, away from its all the trouble in their lives.
At home with the Jamisons, things were not going well. In 2003, Bobby was in a car accident that left him with long-term back pain, which clearly made him unhappy. Her illness was bipolar disorder, and she was given medicine for it, but she didn’t always take it. As someone who has bipolar disorder, I know how dangerous it is to skip taking your medicine, but I also know how bad some of the medicines used to treat the disorder can make you feel.
Because Sherilynn’s disorder wasn’t well managed, she went through severe depressive episodes and would get angry and lash out at people, including her husband. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Jamisons’ marriage was very troubled.
The couple stayed to themselves most of the time, and when they were at home, they were very spiritual. But this wasn’t always a good thing in their lives. Bobby and Sherilynn thought that evil spirits were in their house, so they told a pastor in the area what they were worried about.
It is normal for kids to have imaginary friends, but Sherilynn thought Emily was actually a bad spirit. Little Madyson had started talking to an imaginary friend named Emily.
Bobby had also become scared that evil spirits were following the family around. Someone told him that there were some ghosts living on the roof of the family’s house, so he asked the pastor where he could get “special bullets” to ki*ll them. Bobby also planned to use a copy of The Satanic Bible that he had bought to try to get rid of the ghosts in the house.
At first glance, it seems pretty clear since the Jamisons haven’t been seen. There was a family trip to the mountains, and they were ki*lled by a crazy “mountain person,” right? Okay, maybe. Maybe not, though.
As there were only three skeletons in the closet, the police had to look into the family’s past. What they found made them more confused than it solved.
The Video
CCTV footage from outside the Jamisons’ Eufaula home was found by the police. Bobby and Sherilynn can be seen walking back and forth between their house and their truck while loading things while they look like zombies. There is no sound from either person. “Disappeared,” an Investigation Discovery show, talked to a police officer who said the couple made about 20 trips back and forth, and sometimes they weren’t carrying anything. They would stop and stand still with blank looks on their faces at times.
The family might have been too focused, but think about it… Is it likely that two people went 20 times from their house to their truck and never talked to each other? The question is “Why?” if they were in a hurry or thought someone might be watching them.
The couple may have been high because of the strange behaviour seen on the surveillance video.
But the surveillance video was also upsetting in other ways. Tags have been written on the side of the storage container in that picture. Sherilynn told her neighbours that she thought she was a witch and that the messages she was spraying on the container were important and meant to protect her.
A friend of Sherilynn’s told the police that she sometimes conducted seances with Sherilynn, though Sherilynn took them much more seriously than she did.
Sherilynn had written odd messages on the storage container about her black cats being poisoned, as she believed that someone from the neighborhood had k*illed her cats, and “witches did not like it when their cats were ki*lled.”
As you can imagine, Sherilynn’s neighbors found the behavior extremely off-putting and they avoided the Jamison family like the plague. Of course, that’s exactly what the Jamison’s wanted.
Both friends and family agreed with the Jamisons that their home was haunted, and a few have shared that they, too, experienced odd things inside the house. But with severe depression and paranoia looming large over the family, it’s not hard to imagine that the house had a “heavy” feel to it.
Theories
If you haven’t already, brew a pot of coffee and find a comfy place to sit because there are a multitude of theories about what happened to the Jamisons.
The Jamisons Were Members of a Satanic Cult
This is what Sherilynn’s mother, Connie Kokotan, says: “My daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter were on an Oklahoma cult “hit list.”
What she said:
“That part of Oklahoma is known for that…cults and stuff like that…from what I’ve been told and from what I’ve read. I was told (around the time of Sherilynn’s disappearance)…that she was on a cult’s hit list.”
The alleged cult’s name wasn’t given by Ms. Kokotan, and police haven’t found any ties to one.
She went on to say that there is no way Bobby and Sherilynn would have put their daughter in danger, but I’m not so sure. More on that later…
Spiritual Warfare
I do think there is spiritual war. It is certain that there is a spirit world, and that spirit world has both good and bad spirits. Don’t read this part if you don’t believe in any of these things. It’s not that I want to preach; I’m just using the religious beliefs I know best to give the theory a fair test.
I think that when people hear the phrase “spiritual warfare,” they picture a ghost or Satan himself kil*ling someone, as if the devil had really kil*led the Jamisons on that mountain. Someone in red clothes with horns and a pitchfork knocked them over and sucked their life force out of them. I guess you can’t really rule it out if you believe in spirituality at all.
I get it. For a Christian, it’s not any stranger than thinking that God’s Son rose from the dead after three days.
But from what I’ve seen, spiritual warfare is more subtle. Mental illness and drugs are two important parts of this case that are used to fight it. For some, drinking brings out their “demons.” Giving up drinking is part of the answer to this problem. I have bipolar disorder, and I know what it’s like to be deeply depressed. If you believe in a real Satan, it’s not crazy to think that Satan uses mental illness to make people even worse off.
Part of what helped Sherilynn with her severe depression was a bottle of medicine that she would sometimes choose not to take. I don’t blame her for anything. I’m just saying, if you believe the devil or dark spirits can trap someone, then you must also believe that God — or light, or whatever you personally call it — provides a way out.
And I say “part of the solution,” because many people are genetically predisposed to mental illness and never show signs, but then some tragedy or stressful event triggers it. In the case of substance abuse, people have typically turned to drugs to numb themselves from a painful reality. So, taking medication and getting clean are only two aspects of the solution. You also have to get to the root of the problem and fix whatever that is.
