Emily Parker's Disappearance From Yellowstone Is Going Viral, but What’s the Real Story?

It would be every parent's worst nightmare: You're traveling to Yellowstone National Park on what is supposed to be a fun-filled and memorable family vacation. But instead of having the time of your life, your dream vacation turns into a nightmare when your young daughter goes missing.

That's what some people say happened to one family when Emily Parker went missing in Yellowstone. Her story is plastered all over social media, and her story has gone viral as a result.

And it's not just the misery of losing a child in the massive wilderness of Yellowstone that has people hanging on the edge of their seats. But instead, it's the footage of what happened next when a young woman walked into a police station years later, claiming to be the missing teen. Only now, she was all grown up with a story to tell.

A story, by many accounts, that is too sensational to be true. Keep reading to find out what really happened to Emily Parker.

Pictures of a photogenic 16-year-old posed next to a bloodied and dirtied woman are circulating on social media alongside a story that explains how these two images came to be. One such post, shared by the account Bad Romance, says that the teen went missing while traveling with her family, vanishing without a trace into the woods.

For seven years, her family searched for her, at times joined by the police and helicopter units, but nothing was ever found. That is, until she returned.

At least, that's what some videos shared to TikTok claim to show. However, upon closer inspection, the stories don't line up. While each clip uses the same audio of a woman claiming to be Emily Parker (and then immediately asking officers not to call the press), the images keep changing. One video shows a blonde woman wheeling into the police station on skate shoes.

Another shows a brunette walking in and then cowering behind a desk.

While the stories seem to have gripped so many people, it seems that they are far from true.

Each tale leaves a little teaser at the end, like in the Facebook post from Bad Romance that says Emily arrived, "Alive. Older. And carrying a truth so disturbing that detectives immediately closed the station doors and called in federal agents," before linking to a post about the rest of the story.

In short, it seems like the stores are largely AI clickbait, designed to get views.

While Emily Parker's story may be fictitious, it's true that people do go missing in Yellowstone. Sadly, sometimes they are never found. According to the Cowboy State Daily, when compared to the number of visitors that come to the park each year (the number is in the millions), only six people have disappeared in the park since the 1960s.

The publication says that the park doesn't officially keep track of the names of the missing people, but Dan Campbell may be the most famous one.

The 42-year-old man, along with his dog, went missing in 1991 while illegally hunting for shed elk antlers. Sadly, his family believes that he may have been the victim of his fellow man, and not the wilds of the 2.2-million-acre park, as they believe he was murdered by rival antler hunters.