CLASSIC: Missing 411 with David Paulides

Each year, thousands of people visit national parks across the US. And, tragically, some of them don't return. Join the guys as they interview David Paulides, the prolific author of the Missing 411 series, to learn more about his work and research into these disappearances.

They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh, this is a doozy folks. Uh. We are sharing
a classic episode that we really enjoyed about the following
crazy thing. There is no federal account of how many
people disappear in national parks? Do you remember this one?

(00:20):
I remember it well and it comes up quite often
actually in other stories that we talked about on stuff
that it wants you to know. Hundreds of people in
fact go missing in US national parks every year. Um,
and there really isn't a place where you can look
at an actual number for that. And David Polites is
an expert in this. He wrote a book called Missing
for One one that was made into a documentary. UM.

(00:44):
Really thoughtful, interesting guy, and we had a great chat
with him back in And spoiler, this is a little
bit of homework fellow conspiracy realists, because I think we
might have David back on in the future. Here it
is from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History
is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now

(01:07):
or learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noll. They call me Ben and you are

(01:28):
you that makes this stuff? They don't want you to know.
As always, we're joined with our super producer Alex w
and the ones and twos? Are you gonna wave? Is
it all? Has he always been there? Is it like
the shining? Is it like that scening, that scene the shining?
I guess it's like it's happily ever after from now on.
It does get to a place where the things that
are in your life at the moment get to a

(01:48):
point where they feel like they've just always been like that,
even if it's only been a week for one thing.
That's very normal to people who live in the US.
It's just the sheer side of this country, the sheer
enormity of it, to those purple mountains, majesty, It's yeah,
it's huge. And we have large swaths of land that

(02:09):
are largely unpopulated by human beings, and a lot of
these lands are allocated by the government as a place
where you can go right, and every year millions of
people visit public parks, go one day hikes, go on
more um more involved treks, you know, long term camping.

(02:34):
There is a darker side to some of these explorations,
and the fact of the matter is that not all
of the people who go into the wild return many
in fact go missing. And for years now, folks, you
have been writing to Matt Nolan I asking us to

(02:55):
take a closer look at this phenomenon of people who
just go miss and not just in in um wilderness
in the US as we'll find, but in places in
other places around the world. And the question is what happens?
How do we track this? And in our exploration of

(03:15):
this topic, we went directly to the source to the
most well known expert on disappearances in national parks, Ladies
and gentlemen. Today, in this episode, we are joined by
David Politis, the prolific author of numerous works, the mastermind
behind the Missing four one one series, and the creator
of the new Missing four one one documentary. Welcome to

(03:37):
the show, David, Hey, thanks a million, guys. I appreciate
being here. So I guess the first things first, if
we want to file it under that category for everybody
listening out there, could you tell us a little bit
more about the Missing four one one phenomenon, which began
as a book series. Is that correct? Correct? I'm a

(04:00):
former police officers spent twenty years in California and municipal
department there, and after I left, I started to do do
some research in a national park and some two National
park rangers knew me from other books I had written.
They were following me around. Uh Later on, I left
the park went back to my room independently. They each

(04:23):
came back and went to the room, knocked on the
door and said that they had something to tell me,
and they knew who I was. They knew I had
investigative work I've done in the past, and they said,
we have a story for you. And what they had
said was is that they had worked at other parks,
and they had worked other missing persons cases in those
national parks. They eventually got together. They talked about compared

(04:45):
notes at the park that they were at and they
thought there were some peculiarities there that needed to be
looked into. Namely, during a search, during that first seven
to ten days that someone goes missing, there's a lot
of publicity, there's a lot of press, there's a lot
of people looking for the missing person. At the end
of that, in the ten days, there's nothing. Everything stops,
there's no follow up, there's no investigation, there's essentially nothing

(05:09):
more that happens. And when they looked into it. They
thought that the locations that these people went missing were
odd many and went missing in places that weren't deep
in the woods, but might have been fairly close to
the center of the park, or a populated area, or
a location where a lot of people should have seen
what happened. And they the more they looked into it,

(05:30):
and the more they tried to find out information, they
were stymied themselves. They couldn't get some reports, and they
thought the whole thing was just strange. So I said
I'd look into it. I left the park the next day,
called a couple of law enforcement friends. I said, this
is what I heard. See if there's any validity to it.
You know. Later on they called me back and said, wow,
there's something here. There are a lot of disappearances and

(05:52):
there's not a lot of follow up, and there's not
a lot of information available. So the National Park Service
has a contingent of National Park Police officers and they're
all trained at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. They
get outstanding training. It's the big department. And we knew
that if we filed a series of Freedom of Information

(06:13):
Act requests against the National Park Police, this could be
a jump off point for our investigation into these missing people.
So the first thing I did was filed against them
for a list of missing people, and within six weeks
I get a notice back from him. An attorney calls
me from the Park Service and says, why do you
want the information? And I know from reading the Freedom

(06:37):
of Information Act they can't use the rationale behind why
you make a request for determining if they're going to
give you the information or not. And I told him
that and he said, no, no, no, you're gonna get
the information. We just want to know why you're using it.
And I said, just doing some research. And the person
then came back and said, well, we don't have any
list of missing people. And I said, wait a mint.

(07:00):
You guys have a huge law enforcement group. I could
go to any small to medium sized law enforcement agency
in the United States, walk into their chief's office, and
within an hour he would have a list of all
the missing people in his jurisdiction. Now you're telling me,
in your large jurisdiction you don't have any lists missing people.

(07:21):
He said no, Well, if you go on to the
website of the National Park Service and you kind of
look around there, they have a lot of lists. One
of the more interesting ones is a list of all
the movies made on National Park Service property. So they
know the importance of keeping lists and the importance of

(07:42):
keeping lists of missing people, and they chose not to
give it to us. So I was a published author
at the time, and I used an exemption, and I said,
I want to use my exemption, and I would like
to get the information from your agency, and if you
and have it like you claim, I want you to

(08:02):
put the list together for me. So they get back
to me later and they said, well, we did a
little search and your books aren't in enough libraries to
qualify for the exemption. Well, folks, there is no such qualifier.
It says if you are a published author, this qualifies period.
And I reminded him of that, and they said, well,

(08:22):
this is just an internal policy we have. Okay, So
let's just pretend that I want to pay for the information.
How much are you going to charge me for a
list of missing people from Yosemite National Park and then
a list from your entire jurisdiction. He goes, we'll get
back to you. They get back to me and they said,
well for a list from Yosemite National Park, it's gonna

(08:44):
cost you thirty four thousand dollars. And if you want
to list from the entire National Park Service, it's going
to cost you one point four million dollars. Wow, what
what kind of justification did they have for that number? None?
They said that they would use an analyst at six
an hour, and they figured it would take them that

(09:05):
long to put it together. Now, since then, I've learned
a lot. I shouldn't just have these lists just available
like in a database, Like can they just send you
a spreadsheet? Like? What is it? What does it take?
Such meticulous mining and paying some specialists. It seems like
that's the whole point of keeping these kinds of records
right exactly. And I know that there's I'm not the
sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to some things.

(09:26):
So I reached out to some investigative journalists I know,
and I threw this by him, and I said, do
you believe they don't have a list? I could not
find one journalist that said, there's there's no possibility in
this world that the National Park Service Police doesn't have
a list of missing people in their jurisdiction. Everyone says
that they do. They just don't want to give it up.

(09:48):
But the rationale behind this, and since then, this was
six seven years ago now is I've had several people
like yourself step up and say, hey, we will buy
the National Park Service a laptop and put Excel on it.
And every month there's called a month. There's a monthly
report that comes in from every National Park Service property

(10:11):
from their superintendent of the highlights of what happens in
that park. Somebody goes missing, somebody gets killed, whatever. Well,
they could have an intern which costs nothing, screen those
monthly documents and put every person's name on an Excel
spreadsheet on that laptop. It would essentially cost them nothing.

(10:31):
They chose not to publicize this. Now, interestingly, just within
the last month, they've started to put one or two
people on their website from each park that's gone missing.
We're trying to understand the rationale why they're putting those
people up as missing, but not the vast numbers that
are missing in the park. Namely, the people that they're

(10:54):
putting missing are people I've already written about or talked about.
But they're not putting up all of them. And I
don't know why and it's frustrating because it's such a
roadblock to future work. The amount of time and energy
we have to expand to find a case that's thirty
or forty years old where somebody's never been found, That

(11:15):
energy is huge. But they're forcing us to do it
because they won't help at all. And this, uh, this
investigation just just for everyone in the audience. When when
we're talking about investigating a specific case, a specific case
of a missing person, this doesn't just involve, uh, you know,
reading newspapers of the time. This also involves heavy research

(11:38):
into the staff of the part at the time, the
rangers that would be there, any local law enforcement. This
can include family interviews. This is a exhaustive process, not
to mention any kind of search and rescue efforts that
you know are deployed, as as depicted in your film UM,
which I'd like to go into maybe a couple of

(12:00):
the cases that are in the film, when in particular
the case of a young boy who turned up missing
UM and was surrounded mainly by family and I think
a family friend and his grandfather, and it's as you described,
you know, a very quick disappearance where the child was
following his parents to like a fishing creek, and then

(12:23):
they turned around and he was gone. And they stayed
at the campground for three days with police and you know,
local uh citizens um volunteering to do a kind of
search party. And nothing came of this ultimately, and it
ultimately the case was dropped. But how how does this
Why was this case such an interesting one that you

(12:45):
chose to kind of feature it as sort of like
a bookend in your film? Um, how is this kind
of like an interesting case study of these types of situations?
So if you, if you by chance read five missing
persons cases, you're you're probably going to find five sets
of circumstances that are totally different without a lot of commonality.

(13:08):
Now you read five thousand missing person's cases, and soon
you're going to see that specific points start to jump
out at you, and certain commonalities keep replicating themselves time
after time. If you look at just one case, like
the Coon's case, your your intuition may go to, oh,

(13:30):
you know, it was a human interaction. It was some
type of crime committed against the child by someone maybe
at the campsite or someone nearby, I know who did this,
blah blah blah. But if you look at hundreds of
missing persons cases, you see that law enforcement caused. Pete
calls people at the scene suspects many times when they

(13:52):
get frustrated that they can't solve it. In the Coon's case,
the child has never been found, and it just so
happened that we had a crew up there as this
was evolving and occurring. Now, initially you're gonna you're gonna think, well,
this isn't so interesting, except there's so many side lights
to a missing person's case that people don't understand and

(14:14):
how law enforcement goes about investigating those cases. And as
for me, I was involved in a case in northern
California where a girl disappeared. Well, the FBI was involved,
just like they weren't the Coon's case, and they named
the father as a suspect. In this case, I was.
I was there on and it wasn't for weeks until

(14:34):
they finally said, you know what, the father is in
a suspect. And then weeks later they end up arresting
a suspect charging with murder and he's convicted. So people
that are named suspects aren't necessarily the ones who did it,
and if they were, they would have filed charges in

(14:55):
the coon's case. There's not one piece of hard evidence
to point to anyone committing any of this crime. Yet,
if you look at that case and you compare it
to the profile points that we've established in six years
of seven years of research, you'll notice that it's a
dead on match. Happens at a remote campsite. The parents state,

(15:16):
they turn around, the child's gone. They bring in canines.
The canines can't pick up a scent. They bring in
cadaver dogs that smell the trucks and the vehicles that
were at the scene in case they transported dead body.
They can't pick up a scent. All of these things
start to lead that Wow, you know what. That's one
of the profile points that are established in the Missing

(15:37):
four on one books after reading thousands of cases. The
handlers bring a dog to the scene. The dog turns around,
sits down, doesn't want to can't find a scent. They
bring in cadaver dogs. Cadaver dogters look around, they can't
find a scent. The parents say, you know, the child
was right here, we turned around, it was gone. Well

(15:57):
it sounds stupid when you first hear that, but the
reality of it is. It's happened hundreds and hundreds of
times if you read the books, and law enforcement when
they get frustrated, they'll say, well, the only thing we
can think of is that the parents or the relatives
or somebody in the area must have taken the kid.
But there's no evidence. And like I keep saying, if

(16:20):
you're going to accuse somebody, why don't you arrest them
because there's nobody that's been found. There's nobody that's been arrested.
It's a big who done it? And I'm not gonna
say that nobody at the theme did do it. I'm
just saying right now, I'm I'm somebody who lives in
the world of facts, and there's no hard facts to
suspect anybody there of doing anything other than law enforcement

(16:43):
calling him a suspect. And they do say, well, you
know they failed the polygraph. Well I've heard that hundreds
of times in other cases where they called other people's
suspects and they were later cleared. A mind of reasons
for failing in polygraph, and that's that's one of the
main reasons why polygraph aren't allowed in criminal court. Yes,
it's uh, I'm really glad that you mentioned that part, David,

(17:05):
because more and more, Um, I think more and more
people are aware that polygraphs are I don't want to
say pseudo science, but there's in exact science, perhaps, and
in exact science there is very there's way more compelling
arguments against polygraph being used because people get nervous, right. Uh.

(17:28):
There are also various ways to trigger polygraph in the
worst case scenario. This may be an interesting insight, Uh,
Ladies and gentlemen, the idea that law enforcement might name
innocent bystanders as suspects, perhaps out of frustration, and with
some of these commonalities that you're describing here, David, that

(17:51):
the cadaver dogs catch no scent, the child disappeared promptly. UM.
We've we've found some other commonalities that you have listed
in the Missing four one one series, and we'd like
to explore those in depth after a word from our
sponsor and we've returned. Before the break, we talked a

(18:23):
little bit about the additional commonalities that can be found
or profile points here and in Missing America four one one,
North America and beyond. Uh, David, we have a we
have a couple of commonalities here that I wanted to
spend some time asking you about. But one thing that

(18:45):
really really stuck out, both in our interview today and
when we had spoken a little bit earlier, was that
when when children, specifically when when children have disappeared in
various cases, they they are found in these incredible places
or their their bodies are recovered in places that are

(19:10):
extremely anomalous. Could you tell us a little bit about
this factor this phenomenon. Sure? If one of the first
of all, one of the things that I think the
audience needs to understand is the vetting factor that we
use before we'll even include a case in any of
the books or in any of the studies. One of

(19:30):
the first things is is that if there's any evidence
of human intervention and abduction, any criminal activity, we won't
use it. If there for adult or child, if it's
a voluntary disappearance, meaning mental health is at stake, we
won't use it. If there's any evidence of animal predation,
you know, animal attack, killing, dragging away, anything like that,

(19:53):
we won't use the case. So what we're left with
is a series of who done it's and in percent
of the cases or more maybe there's never even a
suspect named in the case. The coon's case was one
of those weird cases where we happened to be there
while it was happening, and we filmed it. Now, there's
another case in the film where a two year old

(20:15):
child walking along a mountain trail, supposedly being watched by
some friends of the family. He gets out of their sight,
he disappears. Four years later, the remains are found fifty
ft above the trail. Now, myself and a film crew
went up there and essentially had to do it on
our hands and knees. We probably should have had ropes.

(20:37):
It was so steep to get to the location where
those remains were found. Now, when I give up speech
in front of a conference, I asked people in the audience,
I say, so, how many of your parents? And I
asked him if your child, at two years old was
left in the woods and you walked away, what do
you think that child would do? And some of the

(20:58):
parents say, well, at two years old, that child would
have played in the dirt and probably gone to sleep
right there, Or maybe they would have walked downhill fifty yards,
found something interesting, sat down, played and gone to sleep.
Then I asked him how many would have walked up hill,
you know hardy. Anybody ever raises their hand, they think
on my child, and there's no way would walk uphill

(21:18):
and exert energy. And then I put a table up
that's in one of my books that shows many, many
cases where small children are found at phenomenal heights from
where they were last seen. And when those children are found,
there's no evidence of any animal attack, any human attack.
They're just found their deceased. Many times at autopsy they

(21:42):
can't even determine the cause the cause of death, which
is unusual. There's also a table I showed phenomenal distances
that small children take. And also in the movie there's
a case where a two year old disappears in this
rural area and nineteen hours later they're found twelve miles

(22:04):
away over two mountain ranges, barely alive, and the person
when interviewed as a small age of course, they don't
remember anything. Now, the reason these are important is it's
easy for us as adults to understand that small children
covering phenomenal distances is highly unusual. Small children going up

(22:27):
in phenomenal heights is highly unusual and probably not not
it probably can't occur. So how do they get there. Well,
these incidents occur in areas where there aren't other people.
It's not like somebody could have taken the kid and
done this, or carry them or forcibly abducted them. These

(22:50):
are in areas that are really remote when these things
occur and there's no evidence. Remember, there's no dogs that
contract this, because that's the most common profile point. Canines
can't track the victim or professional trackers that are brought
in find no tracks leaving that scene. So how does

(23:12):
the victim get from point to point? That's the commonality
that nobody can understand, and that's probably one of the
most concerning points that I get from readers is how
does this happen? And where does this information come from?
It comes from search and rescue reports, law enforcement reports,
missing person reports, interviews with families, interviews with law enforcement

(23:35):
people or search and rescue people, and that's where most
of the information gets gleaned from. Dave. In one of
the cases that you had just mentioned where the child
was carried up to a height that you guys had
to travel use ropes to travel to. In in the film,
it mentions that at least the law enforcement that was
interviewed they seem to mention that they believed it was

(23:56):
an animal attack. When you're when you're going through and
researching these cases, because you, guys don't you don't look
at cases that are definitely animal attacks. So it sounds
like law enforcement is trying to make pieces fit to
solve a case. Great point, guys, great point. So initially,

(24:18):
when we looked at this case, exactly correct, the press reports,
the interviews the sheriff gave said, oh, yeah, it was
a mountain lion attack. So initially we kind of stepped
back and look at that, and then we started to
dig deeper. Well, the victims dad wasn't at the scene

(24:39):
and always thought that this was unusual. Well, at the
press conference on this event, search and rescue people that
had gone up there and recovered the remains had told
the father that they found the pants of the child
turned inside out at the scene. Yet at the press conference,
the sheriff told them, hey, put the pants right side,

(25:00):
let's show him. And when the dad asked the sheriff
why he did, dad, he walked away from the father.
So the dad takes all the evidence and all the
reports and presents it to multiple mountain lion experts and said, hey,
what's your opinion about what happened to my son? And
each of them said, well, it wasn't an animal predation case.
And I don't know why the sheriff said it. And

(25:22):
on all of the clothing that was found, there was
no blood on any of the clothing. So the sheriff
made a statement to call the community to make it
appear as though they had the answers, and in reality
there were no answers. And you gotta you gotta lean
on the experts and maybe not one. And the father

(25:43):
understood this, that's why he went to multiple and independently
they all said the same thing. So it you know,
that case is is a huge Who done it? What
happened to this child? How did they get five fifty
ft up the side of this cliff? Essentially? Why wasn't
of blood on the clothing? Why were the pants turned
inside out? It goes on and on. Was that the

(26:05):
case where they also found like a single tooth They
found a single tooth on top of a log in
at about ninetet in elevation horrendous winters, blazing gals snow
up to ten feet in that area. How did the
too skin on top of the log and was sitting there.
It's also like there's a crime scene photo in the

(26:26):
film and it literally is just sitting there. There's no blood,
it looks completely clean. Like that's just very unsettled. It
was it was four years later, right, or something to
that effect, when the body was recovered. Just just to
be Devil's advocate, I'm assuming there was there were other
animals who came along and took care of the body. Unfortunately.

(26:48):
One interesting factor that's explored in in the books as
well is the concept of geographical clusters of an unusual
number of disappearances happening over time in uh specific regions

(27:10):
or areas. Could you could you tell us a little
bit about this concept and how you and your team
discovered it. Sure. When when I was in law enforcement,
I worked a couple of big teams that would work
serial rapists, robbers, burglars, and one of the things we
used was a map, a pin map, and every time

(27:30):
a crime occurred, we'd put a pin on the map,
and we usually knew that the first crime that somebody
did was usually the closest to their home, and they
would start to work outwards. And as I started read
through hundreds of reports. A few locations just stuck out
in my mind. Hey, I read about this before. So

(27:52):
after a couple of years, I started to have piles
of reports in my living room of different locations, and
as time went on, certain piles got larger, and eventually
I got more piles. Now, I don't like to say
this as a concept, because I don't deal in concept
and theories. Two things you want to find in any

(28:13):
of my books is any theories about what's happening or
any possible suspects as to what did this. I lay
out a series of facts, and facts are the most
important thing you're going to read about, and in a
lot of books you're gonna hear a lot of wild
theories and conjecture. I don't lay that out. I'd let
you come to whatever decision you want to come to,

(28:35):
even though the facts that you read are highly strange.
There are factually fifty nine geographical clusters of missing people
in North America to fit the profile points that we
laid out, And the biggest cluster of missing people in
the world is your Semite National Park. Now, some people

(28:57):
may say, well, yeah, but you know that probably probably
has the most visitors well, yeah, but if you look
at the circumstances that we've laid after these missing people,
I don't care if it's downtown Paris or downtown New York.
That's strange that a lot of these people have never
been found, even though they disappeared in an area where

(29:18):
they should have been found. Canines should have been able
to track. There should have been an evidence track or
professional trackers to be able to follow these people. Um,
these warn't voluntary disappearances. There were no mental health issues.
Where are these people now? One of the predominant points
we haven't talked about yet, but boulders, boulder fields, and

(29:39):
granite are somehow involved in this, meaning bodies are found
in boulder fields. People disappear in boulder fields or around granite.
And that's another one of those points that came out
after reading hundreds and hundreds. Well, where's probably the biggest
boulder field and granite location in the world other than Yosemite.
And I know that's strange, but when you look at

(30:01):
the surrounding area and how many people have disappeared in
and around Yosemite, coupled with other locations in the world
that also have these boulder fields or granted it starts
to look at Now, if we go back to the
coon's case, two feet from where Door disappeared is a
giant boulder field, and we show it in the film,
and it's one of those subtle notes that if you

(30:22):
follow the books, you're going to say, oh, yeah, that's right.
There is that giant boulderfield that no one wants to discuss,
right above where he disappeared. Now he hasn't been found,
and I don't know the relationship that could be could
exist there, but it's there. You mentioned in the film
another commonality that we haven't discussed yet that many of
these um folks who disappeared had some sort of physical disability. Um,

(30:45):
can you go into that a little bit. A lot
of times it's not something that's evident, you know, the
person isn't limping down the trail. But a lot of
times the victim may have autism or dementia. And and
again it's not something obvious and you would say, well, yeah,
you know, maybe somebody with autoism or dementia that that

(31:06):
seems a reasonable way to disappear. They didn't have all
their mental capabilities and they vanished. Again, sticking with those
profile points, Why can't we track those people down to
where they are located? Where did they go? How come
they're not found? It doesn't make sense. Now. On the
opposite side of that intellectual spectrum, I've also written about

(31:32):
people with phenomenal intellectual capabilities that have vanished. One of
those sub types is physicists. There's a series of physicists
that have disappeared under strange, strange circumstances and never been found.
One of them disappeared in the mountains above Los Angeles.
Was taking a hike with some people on the trail.

(31:54):
He didn't feel too well. He stopped and the person
at the back of the line opt as well with him,
and he didn't feel good. So these two guys sat
there and the guide at the back of the line said, well,
I'm gonna wait a couple of seconds, you can go ahead.
And this physicist was visiting from Germany, and he took
off down the trail and eventually the guy got back

(32:15):
to the lodge and the physicist wasn't at the watch
huge search of the entire area for weeks. The German
physicist was never found. And this is another of the
subgroups is Germans, or people with German heritage seemed to
disappear at a higher percentage than the norm, But German
physicists disappeared in a much higher percentage than anyone else

(32:36):
in the US. It's a very very unusual subgroup. I
would say unusual for sure. Um oh gosh, I see
my mind just reels and I want to start asking
you about reasons like why why would a bunch of
physicists go missing? I so badly want to get into

(32:57):
some of the allegations and can incepts have been floated
to us over the years about these kind of things. Well,
I'll tell you that. So there's been six missing four
one one books aboutes written. And I probably have said
this many times in interviews, but if you listen to
every interview I've ever done, you're probably gonna glean maybe

(33:17):
three to five of what's in the books. And we
have a lot of tables, a lot of graphs, a
lot of data. We have lists that I encourage people
to look at in the back of the books and
try to make some sense out of it. And the
truth is is that of the people who have read
the six books, and there's been hundreds, if not thousands,
tens of thousands. Nobody has ever read the six Books

(33:41):
and come back to me and said, I have the formula,
I understand what happened. Here's what it is. Everyone. I
could say, probably I've had five hundred people or a
thousand people right to me in the last three years
and say, I've watched all your videos. I know exactly
what it is. Then you know, off the top of

(34:02):
my head, I can answer them quickly and said, yeah,
but what about this, this, this, and this, Oh, I
didn't know about that, or what about this, this, this,
and this, Oh, I didn't even know about that. And
the truth is that the people that have read the
six books will come back and say, you know, I
initially thought that it might have been A but then this, this,
and this happened, and so it can't be A. And

(34:23):
yet all the profile points are consistent, so we know
that they have to be interrelated. The only thing I
will say is that I'm sitting in my room right
now looking at the cluster map, is that approximately of
all of the clusters are within a hundred and fifty
miles of a huge body of water. Namely, the clusters

(34:44):
run from north to south through the Cascades and down
through the Sierras on the west coast, and then from
north to south along the east coast through the Appalachian
Appalachian Trail, and then there's clusters all the way around
the Great Lakes. Now there's one strand of clusters that
kind of goes around the top of Idaho, Montana and

(35:05):
then down through the Rockies, but it's pretty scattered, and
they don't have the bulk of the numbers that's east
and the West Coast and the Great Lakes have. The
water is an important feature, and I don't minimize that
at all, and I think about that all the time.
Why are the clusters in close proximity to water, and

(35:26):
what's the relationship to that and why is that so?
And then once you look at the cluster map, you'll
notice that right in the middle of the US North Dakota,
South Dakota, Kansas, that swath north to south through the
middle or the furthest points from the ocean have almost
no missing people that fit our criteria. It's a very

(35:49):
strange sight. So when you start to think about all this, uh,
you know, I've had twenty people that have sent me
thesis linked documents saying this is what I think it is,
but again it's somebody who's ever read the books, and
easily after the first couple of pages, I can say, well, yeah,
but it's not this because of this, this, this and this,

(36:11):
And I don't minimize the people writing in but you
have to understand that unless you read the six books,
you're never going to glean all of the options and
all of the elements that come into play that do
match the criteria. So I mean, you you say that
it's not your purpose to kind of conjecture of what

(36:32):
the what actually is happening here. You're just kind of
like laying out some facts and letting the reader make
their own assumptions or make their own connections. And in
order to do that, you know, you you kind of
need to really dig into the totality of these cases.
But I mean you must have some ideas. I mean,
I think you know, our listeners would be very interested

(36:52):
to talk about that and to kind of get a
sense of what are some of the options here? What
in what realm are we talking about? So if I
had a good option, I tell you, And if I
heard one out there, I tell you. And every time
I hear somebody say, well, tell me what you think. Well,

(37:13):
I'm interested you tell me what you think, because just
because I'm a good accumulator of data doesn't mean that
I know what all those options are and what what
all those options mean. And what I mean by that
is that I may be really good at collecting data
on missing people, siphoning the data, getting it down to

(37:36):
a subgroup that all has commonalities. But you guys know
that there's probably fifty things in the world that are strange,
unusual and are looked at as predatorial. But each one
of those groups has an expert. I'm not the expert
on all those fifty areas. I'm focusing in on one thing.

(37:59):
If people say the information in and all of a sudden,
a lightbulb goes off to me and says, this is it, Well,
I'm for sure I'm going to say something, but I'm
not going to say something stupid and make myself and
my team look like a bung of idiots just to
appease somebody who wants to know my opinion or unsupported

(38:19):
look at something just the way that's going to happen.
That's how people in research lose their credibility. And when
I'm dealing with families of missing people. I'm not going
to let them go online and look at me saying
something stupid and unsupported and then lose my credibility in
that world that's going to happen. I'm gonna lay I'm

(38:40):
going to continue to lay up the facts. If I
find a fact that matches what I'm doing, I'm gonna
be the first one that's going to step up and
scream to the world what's happening. But until that point happens,
I'm still doing research, especially considering the way that the
National Parks, you know, we're so hesitant to give out
this kind of information and almost seems like it unsettles

(39:02):
people in law enforcement capacity or in you know, government capacity,
like to even consider that there might be some kind
of connection in these cases. I just wonder why, you know,
if you've got such little help from the National Parks folks,
do you get a sense that law enforcement are also
holding something back or not giving you all of the

(39:23):
information that they have access to. That's a good question. Um.
I think if you watch the movie, you're going to
see that there's several different law and for some people
in it. And part of my job is to keep
credibility in that world, because once I lose my credibility,

(39:45):
they won't cooperate anymore. Now, just because the National Park
Services and cooperating doesn't mean general law enforcement won't. And
there is a group of people out there that are
willing to look at the dat go and essentially look
at facts. And once you delve into it and you

(40:08):
realize that Dave politis never said of what is alleged
on YouTube and other various sites. He sticks just to
the facts and all these other allegations that he said
this or he thinks that, but he's never said it.
So law enforcement watches these things, and if some of

(40:31):
them believe I said some of these wild things that
people allege, they won't want to talk to me and
they won't give me credibility, and it hurts with the
victims families that need help. Now, there is a group
out there that knows exactly what I'm about, and they've
read the books, and I've given a talk in front

(40:51):
of the largest search and rescue organization in the world
about this, and at the end of my talk there
were there two Alaska State true for sitting at the
back of the audience, and what I'm stood up and said,
you know, Dave, you're saying exactly what we already know,
and we've worked so many of these type of cases
and we have no idea what's going on, but you're

(41:13):
saying what everyone doesn't want to talk about. And the
guy said, thanks, thanks for talking about and he sits down.
Now since that, I've had many search and rescue people
contact me and said, you know, that's exactly the truth. This,
this is what happened to us on this search. And
in fact, in the movie we interview some search and
rescue people that talked about a super strange case. And

(41:36):
it's just an example that once you understand what we're
all about, and you understand that, hey, we're about the facts,
that there's a lot more of this going on than
we all want to talk about, and the local news
probably isn't going to talk about it because it's uncomfortable,
but it happens. So it sounds as if one thing

(41:59):
that maybe occurring is that individual government employees, like individual
rangers or state troopers are and are approaching you and
your team with their own experiences, but there's a larger
system at play which is much less cooperative. Would you

(42:21):
would you say that's that's a fair assessment. I think
you hit the nail on the head um A few times.
I've talked about this, but a friend of mine and
I were in a national park and we're at a
substation and there's a group of older men sitting around
this table talking and you can tell that there are
a couple of current park rangers and a couple of

(42:42):
apparently retired ones, and this one guy was talking at length,
and I told my friends that we're going to wait
until this guy leaves the room. I want to talk
to him. And after about forty five minutes, he gets
up and in the parking lot, I approached him and
I said, I'm retired law enforcement and I heard you
in there, and I wanted to talk. He goes, yeah, sure.
He explained to me that in the Park Service, the

(43:06):
detectives for the National Park Police are called special agents,
and there's usually about one special agent for every two
or three national parks. Yosemite has a couple of special
agents assigned just to Yosemite, but normally it's one or
two per every national park, and they're like the detectives,
and they follow up on cases. And I explained with
the National Park System had done to me in abstracting

(43:30):
us getting data and information, and and I asked him,
I said, can you give me any insight as to
why this is going on? And the guy looked at
me dead in the eye and he goes, well, Dave,
I'm a retired special agent, spent thirty years with the
Park Service, and I know exactly what's going on. It's
called the lack of integrity, and certain people in the

(43:51):
National Park Service, police and in their administration have a
complete lack of integrity and they won't do the right thing.
And he says, it's been that way for many years,
and I'll probably be that way from anymore. And this
is not an indictment the National Park rangers that the
public sees every day. You know, they're they're great people.

(44:14):
They're doing God's work out there. This is a selected
group at the higher echelon. They're making these decisions and
making these policies. And when I talked to this retired
special agent, we've talked for a long time, and it
was enlightening because it was his perspective, being that insider,
that this is really what's going on. And then he

(44:36):
pointed us to a web a couple of websites that
were maintained by other park rangers that talked about the
discrimination that was going on to them, their inability to
get reports when they filed Freedom of Information Act reports,
and it was it was sort of a relief, knowing, Wow,

(44:58):
this isn't just happening to me. This is how two
people inside their organization. And if you go to our website,
can am like Canadian American, can i am missing dot com,
there's links to all these things and you can see
for yourself that this really is happening. And the Park
Service has done a phenomenal job kind of portraying themselves
as a holier than that organization that Yogi the Bear

(45:20):
is the best friend. But when you look at the
underlining of it, it's not anything like the publicity says
it is. It's totally different. And with this in mind,
we're going to going to explore a little bit about
various allegations, and we're going to explore the future of

(45:44):
missing for one one after a word from our sponsors,
and we have returned. So, David, one thing that you
said that I think really made our ears perk up

(46:08):
collectively is you mentioned that in the online sphere. I
guess that there have been people who are spreading what
we would call it, uh, misinformation or perhaps misrepresenting what
this endeavor is actually about. Um, could you could you

(46:33):
tell us a little bit about that misinformation because we
want to make sure our audience has has it clear.
I think we've I think we've outlined pretty well, UM,
some of the process for which cases to explore the commonalities, right,
discovered the fact that this is aggregation of facts. Right,
So what what are these what are these people saying

(46:56):
that is misinformation? Remember, one thing is that I have
never and I would never name anything as a suspect
or come up with any theory about what's happening unless
I could support it, and I never have. And there's
a lot of people that say, oh, he he said
this or he meant that. If I say something or

(47:17):
I meant something, I'd just come out and say it.
And I think a lot of people and a lot
of organizations out there that represent the the fringe gentleman
of cryptozoology or whatever want to align themselves with credible research,
and so they want to align themselves with what we're

(47:38):
doing in the hopes that it will give them additional credibility.
And the truth of the matter is if you read
the books, you'll know I've never done any of that.
And whether it's a lot of people say well must
maybe it's a group of National Parks employees or US
for Service employees that want to discredit me so that

(48:00):
the mainstream of society won't read what we've put together.
You know, Oh, it's just some cook he's saying some
things that can't be supported. I've yet to find anybody
that has ever read the data in that those books
that has attacked us, because they read for themselves and
they're all listed where we got the sources, where the

(48:22):
information came from, and you can go there and read
it for yourself. So I mean, it's thousands and thousands
of hours of research and the gleaning of data that
has and that has taken us to where we are today.
Now why the attacks occur, Well, I mean I've had

(48:42):
other investigative journalists tell me, Dave, it just comes with
the territory. When you come out with information that makes
the Department of the Interior look like fools or makes
a Park service look in apt, you're going to get attacks.
And it just comes. It comes with the territory. I
understand that now at the beginning, but I get it now.
One thing that we always like to investigator, that we

(49:05):
feel as part of our due diligence on the show
is to look at the allegations, like, as you said,
the misinformation, because it's something it's stuck out to me.
You know, I would see criticism of something on online
regarding missing for one one, and then I would go
back and check out the books I had read. And
you know, honestly, I had looked through the books trying

(49:28):
to see if there were conclusions, and I can I
can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that there there aren't.
This is a this compilations of you know, case research
on the skeptical side for the more skeptical in our audience.
One thing that interested me immensely was that I would
read these investigations or presentations by you know, people who

(49:50):
would consider themselves the word we keep using a skeptical
more on the skeptic side. And one thing that I
thought was pretty fascinating was that most of these people
said in in their presentations, you know, they said, uh,
we looked at this and these are all genuine disappearances

(50:12):
and the facts are all correct, and sometimes quote unquote
Internet skeptics do a very poor job of applying critical thinking.
So I was I was impressed with that, And it
seems like the only real the only real bone of
contention I found from their side was that they were

(50:35):
saying they thought there were mundane explanations for these disappearances,
but they didn't say what those explanations might be. And
so then I started looking at, according to the data
we have, what are the most some of the most
common disappearance causes for people who are camping and stuff
like that. As you said, a lot of these things

(50:58):
don't seem to don't seem to fit into those easy explanations.
Are are you aware of this stuff? And how would
you respond to, uh, the to those folks who maybe
in our audience or maybe just somewhere out there in
the ether, who would say that there are explicable causes

(51:20):
for this, Well, it's hard to respond to something like
that on such a general format. If you want to
talk about specifics, I'll go toe to toe with anybody
on any case in any book. But that's a that's
a common trait when someone tries to discredit anything, Well,
I think this, okay, how do you respond to that? Well,

(51:46):
if we've gone through the vetting process of those points,
and Search and Rescue believes that none of those issues
are there, then why do you think something different? And
I would probably guess that the people saying these things,
I've never read one book they've you know, there's there's
something called plausible the liability, and a lot of these

(52:10):
people are uncomfortable with where the books may take them
because it takes you out of that comfort zone and
puts an aura on the wild environment that you know,
maybe this isn't Disneyland when you walk into a national park,
and maybe you're not as safe as you tend to
think you want to be. And if it's not a

(52:32):
mountain lion and it's not a bear attack, and it's
not a human attack, and it's not a voluntary disappearance,
what does that leave What what took the person? And
how did the person get from this point to this point?
And there was an animal predation and there's no injuries
to the body, and blah blah blah blah blah, why
can't they figure out the cause of death in this case?

(52:52):
And you start to think these things, and it starts
to become uncomfortable. And I think a lot of people's
mentality is is they need to go to the wilderness
to clean their mind. And if I take that away
from them, that cleansing and that freedom, and that that
great feeling they have when they go there, I've taken
something valuable from people. And I've heard this before. Now

(53:16):
one of the things I tell everybody is that even
though I know what I've written, I still go to
the wilderness all the time. And I go, but I
go cautiously. I never go anywhere alone most of the time.
The vast, vast vast majority of time. If I do
go somewhere someplace alone, I always carry a personal locator beacon.

(53:40):
And the people in my books that I write about
would probably still be alive today if they had one. Namely,
it costs between a hundred and three hundred dollars. You
get lost, you pull the button. It sends a transmission
up to a satellite satellite sands as transmission to the
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and they call the local

(54:01):
search and rescue where you're at because they have your
GPS corgans now and they send a search party out
to find you. In the cases I've written about, I
only have one case where somebody activated to transponder and
wasn't found alive. Only one that was just outside of Yosemite,
and he was found into really weird circumstances. I have

(54:21):
never had a case where somebody was carrying a firearm
and activated a transponder and was found de ceased. I've
never had one of those ever. So I mean, I
have a law enforcement background, so I carry a gun
all the time anyhow, But I carry a gun, a transponder,
a compass, a map. I always tell somebody where I'm going,

(54:42):
and I always checked the weather before I leave. I
think if people followed those easy to follow instructions, we
could eliminate disappearances by probably. I think that's really, really,
really smart. Just just learn what you need to do
when are going to go into the wilderness, even if
you're with another person, just make sure if you get separated,

(55:05):
you're gonna be okay. It gets a little dicey, though,
when you're dealing with like a two year old, you know,
or a five year old. How do you teach your
two year old how to use a transponder? You know,
keep the kid with you. Oh yeah, I will obviously,
but it doesn't always happen. That's that's true. And this
this is a really important point. Whether you consider yourself

(55:25):
that an OUTDOORI has been a survivalist, you know, or
whether you think occasionally, one day in the future you
might go camping. Um, these points are are crucial because
I think people forget easily. Um how that it's called
wilderness for a reason. Wild things can occur. And you

(55:47):
always practice the buddy system, always have and as as
David said, like always have somebody who is not out
in the woods with you, who knows where you're going
roughly and what time you're expected to be back. So,
speaking of survivalism, survivor man makes an appearance in this movie.
So is less Stroud somebody you have worked with before

(56:11):
in the past. How did that come about? Less read
the books and he got ahold of me, and he said, Dave,
those books were phenomenal, and he goes, you're really onto something.
He goes, It's something I've thought about for a long time.
And he goes, if I can help you with anything
to promote this safety strategy and the reality of what

(56:33):
you've written about let me know, I'll help you. Well,
we got to time to film and we sat around
and had a discussion about how we could utilize his services,
and we said, well, how about if we utilize you
to try to replicate uh a path that a two
year old took through the night to get a certain
to get to a certain location. He goes, I'm on,

(56:53):
I'll do it. So we met him and crew went
out with him overnight, and that he proved to me
that there's no way this two year old could have
done this. And I don't think that there's anyone in
the world more credible or more attuned to the environment
and less stroud. So I have never heard anybody who's
seen the film and watched that segment that said, oh

(57:15):
you know that was saked, or you know, everyone says, wow,
if less couldn't do it, this two year old, sure
as that couldn't have done it. Oh man, that is
a great point. So that particular case that he helped
out with occurred in the nineteen fifties. One of the
other clusterings that we saw are clusterings in time like
specific years where there were a lot of missing persons.

(57:38):
Can you go over some of some of those clusters
and when they occurred. So all the geographical clusters are
there now. Inside some of those clusters are are time clusters,
and there's certain periods of time in certain areas where
a clustering happened, where there were multiple people over a
short period of time advantage. There's some in Michigan, there's

(58:02):
some on the West coast, and unless we laid it
out in a list format, it probably wouldn't be evident.
And there's also certain disappearance And somebody found this out
and sent it to us, and I can't take credit
for it. I think it was a guy in Finland

(58:23):
sent it to me and he said, Dave, do you
realize that three of the disappearances you've documented occurred when
ships and planes disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle, They disappeared
on the same day. I said, Oh, that's weird. And
I looked and they verified what the guy said, and
I said, it's sure, it's true. So you know, again,

(58:45):
there could be a lot more to these disappearances than coincidence.
And when you look at the numbers and you understand
that it's just not the U. S And Canada, but
there's nine other countries where this exact same thing is happening,
and the top countries besides you US in Canada are
Australia and the United Kingdom are the next two. So

(59:05):
it's very strange. Definitely strange. Yeah, So, David, I think
we're nearing the end here. But is there anything that
we haven't talked about that kind of strikes you as
something important for listeners to understand about. What what what
drove you to do this project and to continue kind
of pursuing these cases and what's the future? Yeah, and

(59:26):
what's next? Well, I think that once you meet these
families and you interact with them, and you realize that
they've been robust by almost every government agency in existence,
and that after that seven to ten days cycle, everyone
wants to forget about the disappearance. These people feel abandoned.

(59:47):
And I'm not just talking about the National Parks Service.
I'm talking about the Department of the Interior of the
US for service. It's just not one agency. Seems as
though nobody wants to even address the topic. And if
someone is a victim of a homicide or somebody dies
from an auto accident, there's finality to it. These people

(01:00:09):
have nothing, they don't know where their loved one died,
they don't have the remains they can go and visit.
They They're left with this open ended wound that nobody
wants to help them close. And you give them a
little attention, if you kind of give them a path
to get more details, if you let them know that

(01:00:31):
they're not alone. But there's hundreds and hundreds of other
families just like there's that also are being victimized the
same way. It helps them. And I've seen this happen
many times, and being friends with these families is super
important to me. And they're all great, great people who

(01:00:52):
are living a life of almost torture. And once you
understand that, it hurts, it hurts that our government doesn't
do more than help them. Now, what's next is our
research is continuing and we're learning more things from victims, victims, families,

(01:01:15):
people who have read the books. I always at the
back of each book is my email. I tell people
to write. I read every email everything I get, and
I encourage people to give me their thoughts after they
read the books. One of the things that we're doing
is in October of this year in Denver, We're having

(01:01:36):
what's called the Mile High Mystery Conference, and there's gonna
be a lot of people. They're speaking, and one of
the people that is speaking at the conference is Alan Attadero,
who lost his son, and Alan someone who has tremendous insight.
He's a high school teacher, He's very, very smart, and

(01:01:56):
he speaks from the victim's perspective, and I think that individuals,
once they hear him present, we'll say, wow, there is
really really something here. If you don't want to believe
it from me, here it from Allen. I'll be presenting
there as well some other researchers. But I think it's
going to be one of the first times that the
public is going to hear directly from a family member

(01:02:19):
the truth and how they've been misdirected, misguided, and essentially
lived years without any assistance. David, thank you so much
for coming on the show today and giving us a
in depth look at a phenomenon that many people, well

(01:02:40):
more and more people are aware of, but many people
may not have been aware of until they heard this interview.
In the book series is missing for one one and
the documentary is out as we record this episode today.
You can get it right now on Amazon Video to stream,
or you can buy the thing and have it forever.

(01:03:01):
So David, thank you one more time for coming on
the show and sharing your research with us. UM, we
really appreciate it, guys. I appreciate the opportunity to speak
for the families and from our research, and glad to
come back anytime. Awesome, Thank you so much, Thank you
so much. And here we are broadcasting from the future

(01:03:24):
to reflect on this interview that you have just heard,
and you know we've actually all just heard as well
listening back to it. UM, I don't know what did
you guys think. I thought the Mr Pliz that's some
really interesting points about maybe not necessarily answers, but at
least these patterns that he sees and organizes, which is
no small task. You know. He mentioned that he was

(01:03:46):
sitting in a room while he's talking to us, and
it has in that room there's a map that has
all the clusters of disappearances throughout North America. And I
just imagine David existing in that world for so long. UM,
he sees a whole different picture than I can see
as an outsider just reading a bit and watching a documentary. Yeah,

(01:04:06):
I thought it was interesting that his response, um, when
when I had asked him, you know, what would you
say to people who believe that these are not you know,
that these are not related, right, And he did say, um,
exactly what you're reiterating that he felt those were on
Those were remarks on a general level, And so it

(01:04:29):
was interesting that he welcomed anybody listening, including you out
there folks, to write to him or contact him about
a specific case. But it's something that we see happen
often in multiple investigations. It kind of reminded me of
you guys, remember the smiley face killer theory, and so

(01:04:50):
one of this is, um, there there's some retired law
enforcement professionals who are convinced that there is a serial killer,
group of killers drowning young college age men across the
United States, and the big debate that they keep having
is whether there really is a discernible pattern with commonalities,

(01:05:13):
or whether these things are just being grouped together. You know,
it just feels to me like the commonality in these
cases largely were the fact that these things happened on
national park grounds. And as we've discussed in our previous
episode about you know, national parks and disappearances. They're massive

(01:05:35):
and there's a lot of nefarious reasons. People can target
these areas for their own own purposes, whether it's you know,
organized crime trying to uh kind of mask something they've done,
hide to body or what have you, or whether their
predators may be seeking out people in remote areas to

(01:05:56):
target for you know, their own And yeah, I think
that's one of the issues here. We're grouping together so
many different instances that you're right, could have so many
different causes. But when you look at them together like that,
it's that idea of maybe maybe I can see something
different by looking at them together rather than on a

(01:06:16):
case to case basis. That's what it feels like to me.
David has been doing over all these years of research,
and there's a there are those specific um commonalities as
he sees them that they listed right, children, um berries
was one right, extraordinary travel you know of the of

(01:06:37):
the like the point of disappearance to the point of
discovery of remains, so um. You know, it's a it's
a debate that continues on in multiple multiple venues, you know,
multiple avenues of expression. And I don't I don't know
because he you know, he doesn't talk about what might

(01:07:01):
be causes. He he mentioned a little bit what other
people had written to him and said, but you know,
he is just aggregating the data. I respect that desire
to maintain that kind of credibility that clearly is at
the core of what he's doing and all this work
that he's put in. But it it there is a
part of that attitude that leaves you a little cold,

(01:07:21):
where it's like, you're putting this much work into what
you know, you might call an investigation, but there's no result.
There's no even speculation, there's no even hint of like
what this might be. And I don't know that That
left me wanting, well, I'm gonna go out and say it.
There's no one, there's no five, there's no ten causes

(01:07:42):
for all of these disappearances. Because you're talking about so many,
each of them is going to have a slightly in
my opinion, each one is going to have a slightly
different explanation for why it happened and how it happens.
So that's your take. It just got an idea. It
struck me bolt of lightning out of the blue. Right. Uh,
we want to know what you think listeners. So what
do you think would be a probable cause, What do

(01:08:04):
you think would be a plausible cause. What do you
think would be an improbable cause or a or a
um not impossible thing? Because you know, I know, I
think you brought up a great point when you talk
about organized crime. We do know, for instance, um an
alternative lifestyles to subcultures. So we know, for instance, UM

(01:08:25):
there are various people living off the grid under the
surface of American culture. We know that numerous communities team
and thrive, and numerous unseen events occur. Yeah, there's something
for everybody. You know, We've been living in this uh,
this crazy culture that we have where there are so
many different types of personalities and dare I say, perversions,

(01:08:47):
and you know, reasons to lots of reasons to go
disappear into the woods. I guess that's what I'm getting at,
whether it's for some kind of ritual or some kind
of you know, like I said, targeted attack, I just
I just kind of felt like, by the very nature
of combining all of these cases, Mr Polites was implying
without saying so, that there was something unusual or or related,

(01:09:14):
something some connection that he keeps hinting at by the
very nature of the fact that these are all, you know,
grouped together to see like, look, he's he's presenting them
in that way. How can you not? You know? I
feel like there is an implied something's going on here,
and that's in the film. There's an air of like mystery.
It's like we we found a single tooth or like,

(01:09:35):
you know, like all of this stuff, it's presented in
a way that to me comes off as like, what
the hell is going on here? You know, I don't know,
that's just me. I see what you're saying, and that's
I think that's why. Um, we're also interested in hearing.
I don't want to speak for everybody. I'm personally very
interested in hearing what the listeners have to say about.

(01:09:58):
And uh, I just have to men, because we're talking
about national parks. I know this doesn't have anything to
do with anything, but I've been reading more about it
and I'm excited. You know, you guys know how I
go through the obsessive phases. So Rainbow gatherings, Yeah, man, yeah,
that okay? Are we going? I do you want to? Okay, well,

(01:10:19):
we'll put a go pro on you and Nolan I
will be like the We'll be like the guys at
the desk, like the hacking will hack for you. I
think what we do is we put together some type
of artisanal foods and then we just go and we
started catching. We'll give you an earpiece and we'll feed
you hippie lingo. All right, Yeah, you know Ramsey coworker

(01:10:43):
here is really good at pickling things. I think that's
our taken in. Okay, we'll need to build a different
identity for you because Matt Frederick is too well known.
From the moment we drop you off, like a few
miles outside of the gathering. What do you think about
being the pickle man? Yeah, that's pretty good, or the
man with pickles. I don't know. Either way, I'll go

(01:11:04):
with it. Or we could just give you a new
identity where your last name is Pickleman. Oh, yes, Stephen Pickleman,
Peter Pickleman's a little too out of those. Yes, I
don't know. Not in a rainbow gathering. That's true. That's
true if you if you are wondering what this bizarre
they were talking about is and you're thinking, um, guys,
you keep talking about this thing, but you're not telling

(01:11:26):
us what is actually happening. Yeah, we understand a rainbow
gathering is a it's about what it sounds like. Yeah,
it's an alternative. Uh, it's an annual I think it's
annual alternative gathering in national parks in the United States
where a bunch of people live in a intentional community
temporarily where they don't have money and they have As

(01:11:51):
you said, I think it is the age word. There's
like a hippie vibe, and it seems like what I've
been reading about has more to do with sort of
the dark side of this, because if you want to
if the FBI is looking for you or something, you
want to disappear in a place and you don't have money,
something like this could work as long as you're not,
you know, a violent monster. And then I also started

(01:12:13):
wondering about cults and uh, other you know, intersections with
other other cultures off the grid in the US UM
and what kind of background checks are involved when you
join up. I don't think I don't think there's many.
I don't know, dude. I just found this article in
The Mirror, The UK Mirror, Mirror dot co dot UK
photographer documents life at Rainbow Gatherings festival where people get

(01:12:36):
naked to be one with nature. And not only are
these gorgeous photographs like these are wonderfully composed photographs. There's
one in particular where it's like this lagoon and everyone's
naked and it looks like the Garden of Eden or
something like. It's wild. Uh, So check it out if
you get a chance. But it's it's n SFW for sure,
it'll get It'll give you a sense of what that

(01:12:58):
Rainbow life is like. Yeah. Uh and the okay, so
I've seen like two documentaries about it. Um, just in
the course of this new obsession, this new phase and
uh And honestly, I don't think there are requirements to join.
Apparently the way a lot of people are greeted, if
we just showed up, they would say welcome home. That's

(01:13:20):
what they say it silo. Yeah, but I got walls, man,
I got pace. I'm not. I don't know if I'm
if I'm about that life. Just to jump back into
four one one really fast before side the point of
the show. Yeah, One thing I do want to mention
here is that in the course of our research over
the years on David Politis and Missing four one one

(01:13:42):
and Canadam Missing and all of the various projects that
he's been involved with. We are aware that one of
the websites David maintains is the North America Bigfoot Search
or n A b S. And if you go on
the IMDb page for the new Missing four in one
documentary that we watched for this interview, it is listed

(01:14:03):
under there as the production company. It's listed in A
B S. And it does seem like David has distanced
himself from this and he may not actually be involved
in the day to day operations of the site, but
it is certainly a thing he has been involved in
the past. And with that, please send us your comments,
your ideas, everything we talked about earlier. Send them to

(01:14:25):
us on Twitter or on Facebook where we're Conspiracy Stuff,
or you can find us on Instagram where we're Conspiracy
Stuff Show. And that's the end of this classic episode.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
of different ways. One of the best is to give
us a call. Our number is one eight three three

(01:14:47):
std w y t K. If you don't want to
do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email.
We are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff
they Don't want you to Know is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart radio,
visit the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff they Don't want

(01:15:46):
you to Know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart radio, visit the i
heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.