STATE COLLEGE — Halloween in State College has always carried a certain electricity. The bars swell with costumed students, music spills from apartments and the streets echo with the laughter of young people chasing a night they’ll half-forget in the morning.
But in 2001, the holiday left behind something the community has never forgotten.
Hyun Jong “Cindy” Song, a 21-year-old Penn State senior with her entire life spread out before her, vanished into the dark hours after Halloween night. More than two decades later, her name still lingers in whispers. An unsolved mystery that cuts deeper than folklore because it happened here, in a college town that prides itself on familiarity and safety.
Song was last seen just before 4 a.m. on Nov. 1, 2001. She had spent the night out with friends, dressed in a bunny costume: a black skirt, white top and bunny ears perched playfully on her head. The party wound down and a friend dropped her off at her State College apartment. Cindy walked inside. That, investigators believe, is where the trail goes cold.
When detectives entered her apartment later, what they found painted a strange picture.
Her backpack sat by the door. Her cell phone was in its usual spot. Even her false eyelashes had been removed, suggesting she had at least started her nightly routine before disappearing.
But other things were gone: her purse, her ID, her credit cards and the bunny costume itself. That detail struck investigators. Why would she remove her lashes but leave in the same outfit she had worn all night? Why take her ID and cards if she wasn’t planning to go somewhere?
No signs of forced entry. No overturned furniture. No noise reported by neighbors. Cindy Song, who had been preparing for her final semester at Penn State, simply stepped off the map.
At Penn State, she majored in integrative arts. She worked two jobs while balancing her studies, preparing to graduate in spring 2002. Her professors saw her as someone with vision. Her friends described her as reliable. The kind of person you could trust to show up even when she was stretched thin.
The idea that Cindy would vanish voluntarily never made sense to those who knew her. She had too much in front of her, too many plans.
The early weeks of the investigation were a blur of flyers, interviews and tips. State College police searched for anyone who might have seen Cindy after her return home.
One of the first chilling leads came from Philadelphia. A witness in Chinatown claimed they had seen a young Asian woman matching Cindy’s description being forced into a vehicle. The possibility suggested abduction, but inconsistencies in the witness account prevented the tip from being confirmed. The lead fizzled.
Years passed and the case grew colder. Then, in 2003, it took a dark and unexpected turn.
Authorities received information from an informant named Paul Weakley. He claimed that Cindy Song had been abducted by Hugo Selenski, a man with a growing reputation as one of Pennsylvania’s most dangerous criminals.
Weakley alleged that Selenski and an accomplice, Michael Kerkowski, had kidnapped a young Asian woman around the time of Cindy’s disappearance. According to the account, she was held against her will in a basement vault until she died.
When police later searched Selenski’s property in Luzerne County, they unearthed the remains of at least five individuals, burned and buried. The discovery horrified the state and confirmed Selenski’s capacity for violence. But among the remains, Cindy was not found.
Despite the sensational lead, investigators could never definitively tie Selenski to her disappearance. He was charged and convicted in other killings, but Cindy’s name was left hovering in the margins of his case as yet another ghost in a trail of brutality.
In the years since, Cindy’s disappearance has joined the lexicon of local legend. Her story has been featured on “Unsolved Mysteries”. Her story is repeated in true crime podcasts, whispered in State College dorms and retold to incoming students who ask about the region’s most unsettling mysteries.
The tone shifts depending on who is telling it: to some, she is the victim of a stranger’s violence; to others, she is a ghostly figure who slipped out of her apartment into the night and was swallowed by forces unseen.
Unlike folklore though, this story is not imagined. A real person, with a name and a future, never came home.
There is something about the details that won’t let the story go. The costume left behind in fragments, the mundane objects of everyday life still in place, the unfinished narrative of a student who had only begun to sketch out her adulthood.
Disappearance cases like Cindy’s pierce communities because they leave no resolution. There is no body to mourn, no crime scene to explain, no suspect definitively tied to the crime. Just absence and the endless speculation it breeds.
For Centre County, Cindy’s case stands alongside other unsolved mysteries that shape the region’s uneasy undercurrent.
It has been nearly 24 years since Cindy Song stepped out of her friend’s car, waved goodbye and walked inside her apartment. Every piece of evidence confirms she made it home.
None explains why she never left.
Today, the binders remain open in Ferguson Township. Her name remains on missing persons registries. Her photo, smiling and youthful, continues to circulate.
In a town that thrives on rhythm, her story remains a dissonant note, reminding everyone that some endings never come.
The eerie truth is that in Centre County, not all stories find an ending. Some stay unfinished, whispering through the years.
Cindy’s is one of them.
