A friend of mine regaled me at length with his book review of David Paulides “Missing: 411” books.
The basic concept seems to be valid. People have been going missing from National Parks, sometimes turning up dead, sometimes never being found.
The deeper implications, as my friend derived them from the book, and as several web sites conclude, is that this is – oohoohooh mysterious! And that the National Park Service is conspiring to suppress awareness of it. And that the disappearances are not explainable by conventional knowledge.
So… Is this just a new conspiracy fantasy by some horse-shit muck-raker who somehow found a list of police reports? Or is there something meaningful beneath it all, if only one digs down through the slime?
My friend was going on about how it had to involved “interdimensional gates” and that there were weird “weather pattern reversals” associated with the disappearances. Yeah, right, and Zionist Chemtrails brought down the WTC to cover up the Apollo landing hoax.
But is there anything of value in the issue of unsolved disappearances from National Parks?
I’ve heard him on Coast to Coast AM a few times. Here are some items from the Coast archives. See if YOU think there’s anything odd about these.
“The majority of the cases were associated with bad weather, berries (people picking berries for instance), near a swamp or water, and of the children who disappeared most were with dogs at the time, he detailed. Most of those who vanish are under the age of 12, and about 50% are found alive, but semi-conscious with little memory of what happened.”
“A three-year old boy mysteriously vanished in 1999 in the Poudre River area in northern Colorado. When the boy’s remains were found four years after his disappearance, there was no evidence of a mountain lion attack, but among the oddities were the condition of his shoes, which looked almost new, and one of his teeth was found sitting atop a bed of pine needles.”
“The case of a missing park ranger at the Rocky Mountain National Park, Jeff Christensen, was also strange. In the middle of the seven day search for him, they heard gunfire within the park, and unusual radio clicking (Christensen had carried a radio with him). Several days after the search ended, his deceased body turned up in a boulder field, but his head had been bandaged.”
“He also recounted the Myles Robinson case, a 23-year old who disappeared in the middle of the night in a small town in the Swiss Alps. His body was found seven days later on a cliff in another town where there was no transportation to at the time of his disappearance.”
“In the case of Keith Parkins, a young boy who disappeared near his grandparents’ home in Oregon in 1952, he was found unconscious 20 hours later, over a dozen miles away.”
They seem odd, to be sure, but…so what? People do odd things.
As far as I can tell, the whole deal is about people who wander off the regular trails, get lost, panic, thrash about, stumble in random directions, and then die.
It doesn’t seem like there’s anything to write a book about. It’s as if someone were to take any other category of human endeavor – sports, crime, literature, cuisine – and write up the weirdest events associated with it. Sports flukes, stupid criminals, literary hoaxes, deadly cuisine. Things happen.
Is there any real evidence that the NPS is aware of a problem that they are attempting to suppress?
More to the point: why? If this really were happening, with solid evidence, the NPS would go immediately to Congress and ask for funding to address it. Why would they cover anything up, when that is not at all in their interests?
If there was a town, and there was enough ‘commerce’ to have it noticed his body was there, obviously there was some sort of transportation - perhaps not bus, train, car or airport, but people out in and out somehow. [walk or horse probably.]
Were they “snowed in” at the time? Sometimes, even in America, some towns get so much snow that travel to that town is impossible. This happens especially in the high mountains. IIRC, The Alps count as high mountains.
Do you know why “The Ididerot” is run every year? It is not because the medicine could be trucked in to combat the small pox epidemic.
I am not a Conspiracy Theorist. I just know that sometimes roads are impassible.
I read a book about deaths in Yellowstone, and most were solved, but the majority, as I recall were drowning so a certain number of bodies weren’t recovered because they sank in the lake, or got washed down the river.
A fascinating yet sad read. Never heard of the 411 books.
I was at Crater Lake, and watched people running and jumping, out on little snow shelves, on the wrong side of the safety wall, right above a steep, nasty, deadly slope of ancient lava. Like dancing above a meat grinder! Insane!
Or at Yosemite, at the base of Lower Yosemite Falls, when the water volume was diminished in late summer, watching people climb the cliff faces with no safety equipment at all. The whole “free climbing” thing at Yosemite is terrifying. National Geographic had an article celebrating it, but I think it’s madness.
People who are used to the city don’t always have an idea of how remote the wilderness is.
You know, in Law and Order, or whatever, it always seems difficult to get rid of a body. You know how hard it is here in the desert? You just find a spot away from the road or trails, and leave it. Chances are, no one will ever find it. And that’s within walking distance of civilization. There’s a lot of land with no reason for anyone to go into it. Same with Yellowstone. That is a BIG park.
And people do stupid things, or just simply get lost, and sometimes they almost get back before they die. Those are the ones found with mysterious bandages on their heads. You know, because they did first aid, they knew some survival skills.
Yes, people go missing. Being on a local S&R, I know this well.
Mostly kids (who hide very well) or stupid or unlucky.
Always ill-prepared. (Parents, you* could* give your kids a whistle and don’t scare the holy crap out of him with bogus “stranger danger”.)
Dudes- carry the following with you at all times: A way to make fire, a LED flashlight, & a whistle. In the wild add a waterproof way to make fire+ tinder, another light, and a little mirror. All that is mostly signaling, not “Survivalism” altho of course in reality, survivalism is about being found.
A Knife, survival blanket, extra layer and one more water bottle are good. Skip the fishing gear, snares and etc unless you are going quite deep. Small first aid kit is nice.
But- there’s no BigFoot. Really. I am even willing to accept that some unknown bear species may be the Yeti, but BigFoot is 100% hoax. There’s no native American lore that’s decent, and that’s the sign of FAKE!- the local natives almost always seem to know of any unknown large animal, even if “civilized man” do not.
So, the book is scary. People do disappear, and it’s "mysterious’ to the layman, sure. In some areas, there are carnivores who might take a human down, why not? But no BigFoot. It’s a scam, 100%.
We were out rockhounding in the desert and followed some tank tracks. Turns out they were WWII tank tracks, and in one gully we found a long dead US Army Jeep, upside down. We were likely the last people to have seen it since 1940 or so. We took the shovel. That’s how we know- it hadn’t been stripped. A Jeep- lost for 40 years. So- yes, a body would be easy by comparison, esp since animals would eat most of it.
Once you get off a trail, it’s not hard to be on ground that hasn’t been trod for decades. And get lost.
People get hypothermia feel like they are burning and go a bit crazy because of it, they may even jump into the river… which of course does nothing for how long they have left … being too cold they can’t operate their muscles…
Does the book conclude it’s Bigfoot? I haven’t read the book; I am only going by what my friend said. His conclusion is that it’s “extradimensional” which is a completely unnecessary idea. As you note, deserts and forests are big; they’re “extradimensional” in the conventional way: of enormous dimensions!
All of my skeptical instincts are that the book was hyperbole and probably garbage too. The idea that the Dept. of the Interior is suppressing information seems just unworkably stupid. If anything, they’d want to emphasize the danger and issue more warnings. They’d be going in front of Congress and asking for a bigger safety and rescue budget.
In your list of good things to have, these days, one could include a nice GPS device. It’ll help a lot (till the battery fades. But, heck, there are solar-powered battery chargers for the really dedicated!)
I’d like to see a full investigation of all scout troop leaders involved in any child disappearance, ever, to see what they have been up to since the kids in their care vanished. I had a dry drunk pedo vacation bible school teacher who would’ve easily been able to dispose of a body in the wilderness after he finished with it. Thank God we never went hiking, I was the slow fat kid and never would’ve been seen again.
