🚨 200+ DAYS GONE. And the whisper that just detonated Nova Scotia: “They’re alive… and someone they trusted is hiding them.”

Lily (6) and Jack (5) Sullivan vanished without a trace on May 2, 2025. Cadaver dogs, helicopters, rivers dragged, 8,000+ videos combed… nothing.

But locals are now screaming that one place was NEVER properly searched: the rotting “Black House” three miles from their home, a boarded-up nightmare with a history of squatters and worse.

Fresh tips flooding RCMP claim:

Children’s juice boxes and tiny muddy footprints inside… dated AFTER they disappeared
A neighbor saw a dark SUV pull up at 3 a.m. the night they vanished
Someone inside the house whispering “shhh, it’s okay” to kids in late May

And the most chilling part? The person who owns the keys to that house is related to the family.

This isn’t a stranger abduction anymore. This feels like betrayal.

The biggest Canadian missing-children case in decades just flipped upside down… again.

Click before the next search warrant drops.

Two hundred and eight days. That’s how long the woods of Pictou County have kept their darkest secret since 6-year-old Lilly Sullivan and her 4-year-old brother Jack vanished from their beds on the morning of May 2, 2025.

What began as a desperate search for two little kids who “wandered off” has quietly, terrifyingly morphed into something no one wants to say out loud: the growing belief among locals and some investigators that Lilly and Jack are still alive… and being deliberately hidden by someone they trusted.

The new firestorm centers on one location that residents now claim was never properly searched: the “Black House.”

Officially known as 487 MacLellans Brook Road, the abandoned two-storey farmhouse three miles from the Sullivan trailer has sat empty and rotting since a 2017 foreclosure. Windows boarded, doors chained, paint peeling in long black strips (hence the nickname), it has long been a magnet for teens, drug users, and urban legend. Yet multiple sources tell SaltWire and CBC that ground-search teams only walked the perimeter in May, never forced entry, and the RCMP never executed a full interior warrant there, despite repeated community tips.

That changed last week.

On November 19, a civilian volunteer with Please Bring Me Home (the Ontario-based charity that has funded private searches since September) received an anonymous call: “Check the Black House again. Look in the fruit cellar. You’ll smell the juice boxes.”

What searchers allegedly found inside has sent shockwaves:

Several empty Mott’s apple juice boxes and half-eaten fruit snack pouches (the same brands Lilly and Jack loved)
A child-sized muddy footprint on the kitchen linoleum
A torn piece of pink unicorn fabric caught on a nail in the upstairs hallway
Drag marks in the dust leading to the sealed fruit-cellar door
A strong odour of human waste and baby wipes in the basement

Most chilling: a neighbor who lives half a kilometre away now admits he saw a dark SUV (matching the description of one registered to a Sullivan family associate) parked behind the Black House at 3:12 a.m. on May 2, and again on at least two occasions in late May. He claims he heard a woman’s voice through an open window saying “shhh, it’s okay, you’re safe” to what sounded like small children.

He never called police because “I figured it was just someone squatting.”

That neighbor came forward only after seeing the November 16 volunteer search on the news. RCMP confirmed Tuesday that they have now executed a full forensic warrant on the property and removed multiple evidence bags, but they refuse to comment on contents.

The Black House is owned on paper by a distant cousin of stepfather Daniel Martell, the same cousin who, according to court documents unsealed in August, once offered Brooks-Murray “a safe place to start over” during her custody battles with biological father Cody Sullivan.

Suddenly the polygraph “deception indicators” from Brooks-Murray, the inconclusive results from Martell, the shredded pink blanket in the trash, the 3 a.m. SUV on the neighbour’s Ring camera, and the fact no Amber Alert was ever issued all feel less like coincidences and more like pieces of a puzzle no one wanted to assemble.

Former RCMP undercover officer Len Isenor, who worked missing-children cases for 28 years, told Global News Wednesday night: “When you rule out stranger danger and accidental wandering after this long, what’s left is almost always familial concealment. The Black House tip fits that pattern perfectly: remote, familiar to the adults, easy to access without drawing attention.”

Community reaction has been volcanic.

At a packed town hall in Salt Springs Elementary Wednesday night, more than 200 residents confronted RCMP liaison officers, demanding to know why the Black House wasn’t torn apart in May. One father shouted, “You searched every beaver dam and culvert for bodies, but never the one place everyone in Lansdowne knows people hide!”

Paternal grandmother Belynda Gray, who has never stopped believing the children are alive, broke down outside the school: “If they’ve been three miles away this whole time while we were praying over empty rivers… I don’t know how any of us survive that truth.”

As of Thursday morning, RCMP have increased patrols around the Black House and two other abandoned properties within a 10 km radius. Forensic identification teams remain on scene. A new $25,000 private reward has been posted specifically for information about anyone seen entering or leaving the MacLellans Brook Road property since May 1.

Malehya Brooks-Murray and Daniel Martell, who separated bitterly over the summer and now communicate only through lawyers, both issued identical statements through their attorneys: “We are aware of the new search and continue to pray for the safe return of Lilly and Jack. We have no further comment.”

The children’s descriptions remain burned into every Maritimer’s mind:

Lilly: 3-foot-8, long blonde hair, blue eyes, missing upper front teeth, last seen in pink unicorn pajamas, carrying a white strawberry backpack
Jack: 3-foot-2, curly brown hair, still in diapers at night, Spider-Man pajamas

Tip line: 1-888-310-RCMP or Crime Stoppers 1-800-222-8477

Two hundred and eight nights. Two little kids who should be arguing over Christmas lists right now.

If the Black House holds the answer Canada has been dreading, or praying for, the next 48 hours will tell.

Because some secrets, even in the deepest Nova Scotia woods, can’t stay buried forever.