David Paulides, a former lawman turned investigative journalist and Bigfoot researcher, joined George Knapp to discuss more missing person cases from national parks and forests that government agencies seem to be less than interested in seriously investigating. At this point, he’s looked at some 600-650 disappearances from national parks and open spaces in North America, and found around 34 clusters, which involve three or more people missing in geographical proximity to each other. The cases often involve children, who sometimes disappear along with a dog– many times if they are found alive, they can’t speak or recall what happened to them.
He recounted the case of “John Doe” which involved a child who disappeared near a creek river in 2010 near Mount Shasta. He was found after five hours, and described being taken into an underground cave by a woman he thought was his grandmother. In the cave were people who like looked robots, and eventually he concluded his ‘grandmother’ was also one of the robots.
Paulides reported that the cases don’t show evidence or disturbances that would be associated with animal attacks or a crime scene, which search and rescue dogs would typically uncover. One of the the new clusters he’s found is in the Mount Rainier area, and he detailed a case involving a Yale graduate Eagle Scout who went birdwatching along a trail in 1999, and was never seen again. While the disappearances remain mysterious, Paulides has concluded they involve abductions of some kind. By way of precaution, he noted that while some of the missing persons were armed, and some had locater beacons, none of the people in the cases ever had both.
At the top of his appearance, he commented on the Bigfoot DNA findings recently presented by Dr. Melba Ketchum– Paulides was part of the group that brought in samples for Ketchum’s study. He believes her conclusions are sound and rigorous, but the doubts raised by many Bigfoot researchers stem from her finding that the creature was human rather than ape-like, which goes against their preconceptions.
Biography:
Dave Paulides holds two degrees from the University of San Francisco, and has a professional background that includes twenty years in law enforcement and senior executive positions in the technology sector. A boyhood camping experience with his father in the late 1960s sparked his interest in Bigfoot. In 2004 he was one of the founders of North America Bigfoot Search where his investigative and analytical experiences were invaluable in researching Bigfoot sightings. He spent two years living among the Hoopa tribal members, listening to and recording their Bigfoot stories. The Hoopa Project is his first book, based upon his experiences in the Bluff Creek area of Northern California.
Other Articles/Info:
I-Team: Strange Circumstances Surround Park Disappearances
May 04, 2012
The summer travel season is nearly here which means millions of people will be heading for national parks and national forests. As it turns out, a few of them won’t be coming back.
Each year, hundreds of people are reported missing in national parks and forests. Most are eventually found, but there’s a smaller category of cases that are never solved, including a few close to home.
It is not a revelation to report that people get lost in wilderness areas or forests. The I-Team is investigating a different kind of mystery that involves disappearances which are not caused by predator attacks, criminals, or bad luck.
A former cop has put together hundreds of case files regarding clusters of missing persons in national parks where the circumstances are strange.
“I was staying in a hotel off park service land and there was a knock at the door,” said David Paulides.
The person who came to confide in law enforcement veteran Dave Paulides was a government employee who told one heck of a story about people who vanish in national parks, places like Yosemite, but also national forests, including the Toiyabe west of Las Vegas.
In the years since the knock at the door, Paulides has scoured small town newspaper archives and pestered federal agencies for records. He found so many cases of missing people that one planned book became two, filled with more than 400 cases of people who went into national parks but never came out.
34 Strange National Park Clusters of Missing Persons Across America
A third book entitled: “Missing 411-North America and Beyond” by David Paulides is the “first edition that presents missing people and relevant facts from five countries (Australia, England, France, Iceland and Indonesia) outside of North America and examines the parallels between the cases. The book also includes a multitude of new stories from North America.
“David Paulides has shined a light onto one of the greatest and most disturbing mysteries of our time: the simple and awful fact that people disappear, especially in our national parks, and little effort is made to find them, let alone inform the public about the danger.
Even when massive searches are mounted, and people are found, the events surrounding their loss and recovery are often far beyond logical explanation.
This is the most comprehensive and expertly presented series of books on the subject ever written, and the latest volume, which includes stories from five countries, is sobering, chilling and far too well researched to ignore. Essential reading.”
Lost in Oregon: Hiker’s 2012 disappearance joins hundreds of unsolved wilderness cases
“A staggering 189 men and 51 women officially remain listed as missing since 1997 by the Oregon Office of Emergency Management after trekking into Oregon’s wildest places, said Georges Kleinbaum, search and rescue coordinator for the office.
Former police officer turned investigative journalist, and author of Missing 411, and Missing 411 Eastern US, David Paulides, discovered weird and odd disappearances in U.S. national parks and forests that no one can explain. These isolated missing person cases from National State Parks (NSP) were beginning to form clusters around certain mountainous regions. Sometimes these clusters are purely geographical while others identify a linkage based on age and sex of the victims. Sometimes the only clues left by the missing were their clothes, neatly piled.
In many of the cases, victims appear to travel a vast distance or into a location which should be physically impossible to reach. For instance, a two-year-old boy named Keith Parkins, who vanished near Umatilla National Forest. The child would eventually be found 12 miles away after being gone for only 19 hours. The journey required that the toddler venture over two mountain ranges, as well as fences, creeks, and rivers. This case is just one of many where children disappear and are later found “several hundred percent” outside of the grid system carefully designed by search and rescue teams. Moreover, there are some rare cases where, after tracking dogs have led rescuers to a large river, search teams will explore the other side and “miles away, they find the kid.” Other times, the dogs pick up no scent at all, and give up.
Case Spotlight
This part will highlight cases where the missing has not been found and where our research indicates it meets the criteria for investigation. Many of these cases include documents which were obtained through the Freedom of Information act (FOIA) and we have included them to give the visitor a personal look of what truly happened in that incident.
Missing: Kevin Robert O’Keefe, Residence-Sacramento, CA
Date Missing: October 8, 1985
Location: Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska
The following pages were received from the National Park Service and represent the entirety of their case file on Mr. O’Keefe. There are several aspects of this case which are very disturbing and we will discuss them at the end of the report.
Case Summary:
The only report we did not upload which we did receive from the NPS were maps.
On page one of the NPS report, paragraph one, last sentence the rangers make note that they found O’Keefe’s tent with a broken center pole. NPS personnel believed that the victim was out for a day hike and secured the tent and left the belongings they found in place, they would return the following day.
The day following the initial discovery of the tent, rangers went back to the campsite and again checked to see if the victim had returned, he had not. Rangers left the scene, notified Alaska State Troopers and then asked for additional assistance to search the campsite location. The second day following the initial discovery of the site, NPS officials did an air and ground search failing to find the victim.
NPS was able to contact relatives of the victim and they did confirm that he would be making short day hikes from his primary location and would not be making overnight trips. Rangers did find a variety of supplies belonging to the victim at several locations near and far from the camp site. The victims sleeping bag and backpack were found at the scene, confirming he did not voluntarily go anywhere anywhere overnight. They also found his day pack, indicating he had not left the scene for a day walk.
One major issue of concern in this case is that searchers found the victims boots and knit hat several hundred yards from the campsite. Several hundred yards from this site searchers also found a glove liner belonging to the victim. Nobody will live long in Alaska in any season without adequate footwear, and Mr. Okeefe was without his boots, something no rational hiker would ever voluntarily discard. It seems extremely odd that his glove liner was also found quite a distance from the primary site, a discomforting find.
We do know of several other campers who have disappeared under very similar conditions. A broken pole inside of a tent indicates that somehow the tent was pushed down breaking the pole. Visitors to this site may find this highly unusual but once you have read thousands of missing case files involving finding campsites, this is not that uncommon. It is also not uncommon to find clothing belonging to the victim, clothing that would not be normally discarded (Boots, gloves, etc).
A review of this case leads CanAm investigators to believe that the victim was either asleep in his tent or somewhere near his site when a very unusual and catastropihic event took place. All of his provisions for survival were at or near his primary campsite. No, we do not believe that a bear attacked the victim or his site as food and other supplies were laying on the ground in the area undisturbed and there was no blood or other signs of s struggle noted by NPS investigators.