Mystery Bridge

< David Paulides & Missing 411 >

One of the most requested guests on paranormal radio and internet programs is David Paulides. He started appearing on such shows to discuss Bigfoot around 2007. But it wasn’t until he started publishing extensive investigations on missing people that his popularity took off like wildfire. In 2012 he came on the air with host journalist George Knapp on the program Coast to Coast AM to promote his Missing 411 book series. It was love at first listen for the audience and they haven’t stopped begging programmers to have him back since then – which Coast, and dozens of other shows, have done many times.

Paulides is a former police detective who went into the bigfoot hunting business after 20 years on the force. A deep dive into internet gossip gives different accounts on whether he left the San Jose police department on his own or was at odds with superiors. He calls it “retired.” He self-published a couple of books on the famous cryptid - one dedicated to proving the reality of Bigfoot. But that brought nowhere near the attention that his Missing 411 series of books got. Missing 411 volumes cover different regions of the United States, and in each one he systematically documents mysterious disappearances of people in national parks and elsewhere. Paulides attributes unexplainable, unspecified causes to these disappearances. These are not your typical lost-in-the-woods tragedies.

If you’ve heard Paulides interviewed, you know right away why he’s one of the rock stars in the supernatural field. He gives detailed, coherent accounts of some of the most bizarre and unexplainable disappearances of people anyone’s ever heard. He is thorough, he leaves no stone unturned. But that’s not what sets him apart from other investigators of strange phenomena. Paulides doesn’t hint at or claim to know what’s causing the occurrences. He’s unbiased, unfazed by questions, open to ideas, and he doesn’t go near cases with a reasonable explanation. If the answer could be random drowning, homicide, typical getting lost – he doesn’t go near it. He brings to the table only the freakiest, creepiest stories you’ve ever heard in your life. And he sounds just like a cop telling them.

Interviewers can never go wrong asking Paulides to tell the story of how he got into researching bizarre cases of missing people. He tells it the same way every time, and it’s juicy. An avid outdoorsman, he describes visiting an unnamed national park where he was approached by someone who had worked in multiple national parks. The person had found out he was a former police officer and investigator, and wanted to raise a red flag with someone outside the park system. The whistleblower told him that they felt not much was being done when a patron goes missing in the park, and not only that, there was no follow up or help for the families.

This led Paulides down the path of researching missing people in national parks, and how it’s handled internally. He does an amazing job of never disparaging the people who work in the parks, but instead blames administrations and policy makers. His introduction always involves the re-telling of how he has asked formally, in writing, for lists of missing people at different parks, and always gets the same answer: we don’t keep a list of people who go missing in the park.

It’s an incredible hook, because if you weren’t listening before you sure are now. He doesn’t mention his previous work on Bigfoot sightings and the books he has written. It’s understandable on one hand, as it would muddy the waters of his current endeavors. He never says Bigfoot is taking people. He says he doesn’t know what’s going on, but it’s definitely a cover-up and it’s definitely not something obvious. Even the most skeptical listener can roll with that.

Paulides has multiple pet cases he can detail from memory in his interviews, although his books are packed with hundreds of cases that fit his specific criteria. Again, it’s not just the stories themselves but the concise way he tells them, full of absolutely eerie facts and details, that makes listening to him so addictive.

One such case is the June 1969 disappearance of 6-year old Dennis Martin in the Great Smoky Mountains. On Father’s Day weekend, the boy’s family was on a camping trip and had stopped off at a popular resting point on the trail – a grassy mountain meadow known as Spence Field. Another family was relaxing there, and the children in the group started to play hide and seek together. As the adults sat out on the grass chatting, Dennis, his brother, and two other boys played a game until suddenly nobody could see Dennis, and he didn’t respond to shouts of his name.

Family, park rangers, and other hikers spread out to search for Dennis almost immediately, but he was nowhere to be found. That evening, there was heavy rainfall, which is bad news for search and rescue. But they continued when they could and the search for Dennis Martin became the largest in National Park Service history. Dennis seemed to have disappeared completely, leaving no trace at all. His disappearance is still a mystery.

A boots-on-the-ground researcher, Paulides has visited many of the places he covers in his investigations. He also talks to people who were involved, when he can do so without being obtrusive. He was able to speak with Dennis Martin’s father Bill Martin, who had shut out all journalists and questions over the years since his son went missing. When you hear Paulides detail this difficult conversation, all the hairs on the back of your neck will stand up and your spine will tingle.

Paulides can rattle off dozes of cases like this – facts, specifics, first hand knowledge. The Missing 411 Series is up to 8 books now. Paulides and his son have also made a bunch of YouTube videos and two feature-length documentary films together: Missing 411 (2017) and Missing 411: The Hunted (2019). In 2019 he was part of a History Channel series called Vanished, and it’s only here that he seems to allow in an explanation as a possibility, although he doesn’t say it’s a solution or a fact. The show brings up the idea of portals. Portals that would take a living being into a different dimension.

David Paulides continues to be one of the most favored speakers in the field and continues to produce books on the subject. Will he ever arrive at a final conclusion? Audiences will be there to cheer him on either way. And maybe that’s the point, it’s the journey that is meaningful, not the destination.