The Elusive Lisa Theris

Back in the year 2017, the amazing survival story of Lisa Theris hit the tabloids:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkHQR2yzle0&t=1s

Over a million views on this outlet alone.

Lisa went on a media blitz and I was hooked. The first version of Lisa's Story that I had heard was she went camping with 2 guys, they MAY have had a drink or two, and then they abandoned Lisa in the woods. What jerks!

Then the next version of Lisa's Story I heard was, okay, okay, there MAY have been other drugs involved, but now is not the time to judge Lisa, she had obviously been left in the woods for a month, and no matter what, her story was one of survival.

Then there was the version of Lisa's Story where she wasn't camping at all, the two men were involved in a robbery, Lisa was tagging along, and then all three fled into the woods. When the two men came out, each claimed that the other had killed Lisa.

By the time the Daily Mail got ahold of the story, the third one was, more or less, the story of record.

But a week later, the harsh media glare caught up with Lisa, as she was accused of being whacked out of her mind on Meth. She wasn't dumped or lost in the woods, naked and afraid, she shed her clothes and was on the tail end of a drug induced binge, the outside world was nothing but a blurry haze.

No matter what, though, she was 100% lost in the woods...

For a month....

Then one of her friends supposedly chimed in that she saw her at WalMart during the time she was missing....

I thought maybe I would do a story about Lisa one day and became her Facebook friend. She had thousands of 'em. It took me about two seconds to figure out everything STILL wasn't as it seemed.

Lisa Theris' Old Facebook Profile

Wow, for a poor girl lost in the woods for a month, people in her hometown sure were mean, I thought. Almost every day, people from around the country would praise Lisa for her courage, then deep in the comments section, someone would call her a liar. They would challenge Lisa to tell the "real story."

Lisa Theris would then defend herself "my book will have My Story."

Then, after a year had passed:

Naked with Only the Will to Survive came out. (You can get your copy today at Amazon for $5.90.) From Amazon -"Lisa Joy Theris survived 25 terrifying days and nights lost in a dense forest in rural Alabama. She had no clothes, no food and no phone. Theris had absolutely nothing, except the will to survive. Her story made national news. After many exclusive interviews with Lisa, the harsh details of what Theris endured are now being released for the first time."

With reviews being mostly positive, the book was still panned by a VERY vocal minority:

Then she disassociated herself from her own book, which was written in conjuncture with a couple of local writers. Her Facebook Feed became more erratic as she seemingly found love and dumped her thousands of Facebook Friends. (Me included.)

But your author never wrote the Lisa Theris Story, he was too lazy.

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I was also too lazy to drop my outline from the Drafts Section of the blog. About once a year, I would think to myself, "I hope Lisa Theris is okay, no matter what the truth of that month entailed. She obviously survived some sort of trauma, whether it be self-induced or not."

So this morning I came across that draft, yet again, and put on my Detective Hat.

I started at Facebook. The latest Profile for Lisa Theris had a picture and only 4 friends. It wasn't active and I believe that the profile with the picture from 2022 wasn't necessarily her account, even if it is her in the picture.

Went on Instagram and found her immediately. The account only had 13 posts in its history.

Many social media influencers have 13 posts in an hour.

And this is where our journey ends. I went to TikTok, and literally the first dozen searches were all dorks like me "Whatever Happened to Lisa Theris?"

She didn't appear to be there, but TikTokkers re-hashed many of the same Daily Mail articles that I had saved. It was an internet feeding frenzy with amateurs regurgitating the same small morsels of information, quoting tabloids and gleaming small clues from her shrinking social media presence.

Which brings us to our own unique point.

Beacon of Speech, at its core, is Fred and Ted. I run the blog and Ted is the counterweight. Ted doesn't even like it when I use his last name in articles. Ted has never been on Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram. Hell, Ted doesn't even have an old MySpace Account. If you googled Ted, you couldn't even find his name in the White Pages. He had a flip phone until the year 2024.

But I assure you that Ted exists.

I hope Lisa Theris isn't found. I hope that she met a nice young man and started a family. I hope that she is living life to its fullest away from the glare of social media. And I hope the young man that she married is named Smith or Jones. You know how many Lisa Smiths there are? Thousands.

In America, you can disappear, if you want to. Lisa Theris' episode in the deep woods of Alabama is now over 8 years in the rearview mirror. She doesn't have to live life in the digital domain, reminded of youthful mistakes.

You're one of the vocal minority screaming Lisa Theris is a liar? She's in her 30's now. Even if she's the town drunk, she doesn't deserve the ridicule of the collective online hive.

As for Ted, he is very content knowing that you don't know who he is.