Wendigo: American Cannibal

Wendigo: American Cannibal is the seventh episode of the third season of the thriller horror docudrama found-footage television series Lost Tapes. It originally aired on Animal Planet on October 19, 2010.

Plot
The episode opens with "recovered footage" of four campers looking for food by fishing, the camera then cuts to day ten with one of the campers killing a squirrel, finally a girl is shown running from something, when she stumbles upon a strange altar of junk then the camper who killed the squirrel comes into full view of the camera looking extremely demented; In Fall (September) 2009, four college students on a spring break camping trip became lost in the Appalachian wilderness and tried to catch fish and squirrels so that they would not starve, but to little success.

A search party composed of tracker Porter Voss, paramedic Trent Dorsey, and leader Shelby Nash was organized to try to find them. The search party knows that the campers have been lost for approximately two weeks, and know that the campers are named April Desoto, Vince Gabriel, Matthew Gaahl, and Lane Corey, and that they have no first aid experience.

After hiking for about four hours, they hear a strange ominous wailing sound coming from the forest. Dorsey suggests that it may have been made by a human, but they cannot identify the sound or see what made it. Shortly after they hear the wailing, the come upon the students' campsite, which has been trashed, and they discover blood on one of the tents. Nash tries to hail their base camp on the radio, but they are out of range. Nash and Voss send Dorsey to a nearby stream to replenish their water supplies. When he is alone, he hears another wail in the forest and goes to investigate it, coming upon a bizarre scene of items and animal parts hanging from the branch of a tree by strings, including a pair of glasses and what appears to be skin.

At the campsite, Voss suddenly discovers the body of Vince Gabriel hidden in the brush. When they uncover his leg, they see that something has been eating his body and rule out black bears as the cause because the flesh has been chewed off cleanly, not crushed as would be the case with a bear. When Voss mentions that there is obviously something vicious in the woods, they realize that Dorsey has not returned yet and rush to find him. As Dorsey continues examining the scene before him, he is suddenly attacked by a strange creature with claws and a head resembling a deer's skull, which kills him with an ax. As night falls, Nash and Voss continue looking for Dorsey, but to no success.

They come across a cave and enter it, lighting the way with a flare. They suddenly discover one of the hikers, Lane Corey, who is utterly terrified and defending herself with a spear. As Lane tries to explain that there is a dangerous creature out in the woods, recovered footage from the hikers' camera show the events of what happened the campers leading to Lane's hiding in the cave. Mere days before the search party set out to look for them, Lane found Matthew eating something that she could not identify and April becomes severely injured and unable to move. Matthew confided in Lane that something is making him act strangely and suggested that they try to leave on their own, but Lane questioned him about where Vince had disappeared to.

When Matthew changed the subject about what they should do about April, he began to imply that they cannibalize her and Lane became angry with him. Later that night, Lane found Matthew lingering over April's body and making strange sounds, only to turn to her with a bloodied and monstrous-looking face and roars at her. Presently, Voss decides to try to find Dorsey, as it has become clear that the search party's only option is to leave the mountains and return with a much larger group. As he searches, he comes across the same scene that Dorsey did before, only it now includes some of Dorsey's belongings. As he hails Nash on the radio, he suddenly hears a sound and turns around just in time to see the same monster that killed Dorsey roar and swing the ax at him.

Back in the cave, Nash and Lane overhear Voss' death on the radio, and Nash says that they have to leave the cave to try to save him, but Lane insists that he is already dead. They suddenly hear a loud wail and Nash goes to investigate the entrance to the cave. Where they see Matthew, now fully transformed into a Wendigo, enters the cave, but they manage to escape.

As they run through the woods, Lane suddenly trips, and Nash hears what sounds like Dorsey calling her. Ignoring the pleadings of Lane, she leaves to find the source of the sound. Instead, she finds Dorsey's corpse (with his face half-chewed off) and Matthew's "shrine," which now includes Voss's still activated camera, which captures an image of her being brutally killed by the Wendigo.

Lane discovers the corpses of the rescuers and, knowing that she will never escape from the forest, uses her last moments to try to send a message to her family before she, too, is attacked by the Wendigo. A larger search party was organized and found the bodies of Nash, Dorsey and Voss, as well as those of April and Vince. In spite of video evidence to the contrary, their deaths were officially attributed to bear attacks. The bodies of Matthew and Lane were never recovered, and the search for them continues to this day. Tales of the Wendigo still persist throughout the lands of the Northeast U.S., echoing through the mountains. The final image shown is recovered footage of Matthew partway into his transformation into a Wendigo as he roars at the camera.