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.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers. Since government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events, you can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome

(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is all they call me Ben, and you are you
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
As always, we're joined with our super producer Alex w
on 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 scene? That scene the Shining?
I guess it's like it's happily ever after from now on.

(00:46):
It does get to a place where the things that
are in your life at the moment get to a
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 size of this country, the sheer
enormity of it. Those purple mountains, majesty, It's yeah, it's huge.

(01:08):
And we have large swaths of land that 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 on day hikes, go on more um

(01:31):
more involved treks, you know, long term camping. 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

(01:53):
writing to Matt Nolan I asking us to take a
closer look at this phenomenon of people who just go missing,
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 this topic,

(02:17):
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 the show, David, Hey,

(02:40):
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? Uh? I'm a former police officers

(03:03):
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. Later on, I left the park went back
to my room independently. They each came back and went

(03:25):
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 notes at the park

(03:47):
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 the
ten days, there's nothing. Everything stops, there's no follow up,
there's no investigation. There's essentially nothing more that happens. And

(04:13):
when they looked into it, they thought that the locations
that these people went missing were odd. Many of them
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, and the more
they tried to find out information, they were stymied themselves.

(04:35):
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 there's not a
lot of follow up, and there's not a lot of

(04:56):
information available. So the National Parks are US 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 Act requests against

(05:16):
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 of Information Act

(05:40):
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 lists of missing people. I said, well,

(06:01):
wait a minute, 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 lifts missing people.

(06:23):
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

(06:43):
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
don't have it like you claim, I want you to

(07:03):
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,

(07:24):
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 cost

(07:46):
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

(08:07):
long to put it together. Now, since then, I've learned
a lot. We 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.

(08:28):
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.

(08:49):
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

(09:12):
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.

(09:33):
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

(09:56):
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

(10:16):
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

(10:40):
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 would I'd like to to go into maybe a

(11:01):
couple of 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

(11:24):
creek and then 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

(11:45):
interesting one that you 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

(12:06):
different without a lot of commonality. 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

(12:29):
your intuition may go to, oh, 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 peepe calls people at

(12:50):
the scene suspects many times when they 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

(13:12):
to a missing person's case that people don't understand and
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.

(13:32):
I was there on and it wasn't for weeks until
they finally said, you know what, the 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.

(13:56):
In the coon's case, there's not one piece of heart
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

(14:17):
parents state, 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

(14:38):
the Missing 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,

(14:58):
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

(15:22):
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

(15:45):
calling them 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 lot of reasons for
failing in polygraph and that's a that's one of the
main reasons why polygraphs aren't allowed in criminal court. Yes,
it's uh. I'm really glad that you mentioned that part, David,

(16:07):
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.

(16:29):
There are also various ways to trigger polygraph in the
worst case scenario. This may be an interesting insight, 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 the

(16:53):
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

(17:23):
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

(17:46):
that 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 are they are found in these
incredible places or their their bodies are recovered in places

(18:08):
that are 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 that the vetting
factor that we use before we'll even include a case
in any of the books or in any of the studies.

(18:30):
One of 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,

(18:54):
we won't use the case. So what we're left with
is a series of who done it, and in 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 child

(19:16):
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.

(19:37):
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

(19:58):
parents say, well, at 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, well, how many would have walked up hill?
You know hard anybody ever raises their hand, they think
on my child, and there's no way would walk uphill

(20:19):
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 there deceased. Many times at autopsy they

(20:42):
can't even determine the case the cause of death, which
is unusual. There's also a table I show 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

(21:04):
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

(21:27):
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

(21:51):
are in areas that are really remote when these things
occur and there's no evidence. Remember there's no dogs that
contractice 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 the

(22:13):
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 people,

(22:35):
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 an

(22:57):
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 um to
solve a case. Great point, guys, great point. So initially,

(23:18):
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

(23:39):
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

(24:00):
out and let's show him. And when the dad asked
the sheriff why he did that, 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 on all of the clothing

(24:24):
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 understood this. That's why he

(24:44):
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 there blood on the clothing. Why were the
pants turned inside out? It goes on and on. Was

(25:05):
that the case where they also found like a single tooth.
They found a single tooth on top of a log
in at about nine feet in elevation. Horrendous winters, blazing gales,
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

(25:26):
in the 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

(25:46):
of the body. Unfortunately. One interesting factor that's explored in
in the books as well is the concept of geographical
clusters and an unusual number of disappearances happening over time

(26:07):
in UH specific regions 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,

(26:29):
and every time 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 reading through hundreds of reports, a few locations just

(26:49):
stuck out in my mind. Hey, I read about this before.
So after a couple of years, I started to have
piles of reports in my living room of different location
since 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

(27:13):
in any 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

(27:34):
come to. 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,

(27:57):
some people may say, well, yeah, but you know I
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

(28:19):
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

(28:39):
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.

(29:00):
And I know that's strange, But when you look at
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 odd. Now, if we go back to the
Count's case, two feet from where do you or disappeared
is a giant boulder field, and we show it in
the film and it's one of those subtle notes that

(29:22):
if you follow the books, you're gonna 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

(29:43):
sort of physical disability. Um, 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 again it's not something obvious and you

(30:03):
would say, well, yeah, you know, maybe somebody with autism
or dementia that that 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,

(30:26):
on the opposite set side of that intellectual spectrum, I've
also written about 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

(30:47):
never been found. When I'm disappeared in the mountains above
Los Angeles, was taking a hike with some people on
the trail. He didn't feel too well. He stopped, and
the person at the back of the line stopped 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

(31:10):
visiting from Germany, and he took off down the trail,
and eventually the guy got back 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

(31:31):
percentage than the norm. But German physicists disappeared in a
much higher percentage than anyone else 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

(31:53):
why would a bunch of physicists go missing? I so
badly want to get into some of the allegations and
concepts 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 I've said this many times in interviews,

(32:14):
but if you listen to every interview I've ever done,
you're probably gonna glean maybe three to five pc 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

(32:35):
been hundreds, if not thousands, tens of thousands, nobody has
ever read the six books 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

(32:57):
all your videos. I know exactly what it is, and
you know, off the top of 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 is that the
people that have read the six books will come back
and say, you know, I initially thought that it might

(33:18):
have been a but then this, this, and this happened,
and so it can't be a. And 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

(33:41):
huge body of water. Namely, the clusters 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 Lake.
Now there's one strand of clusters that kind of goes

(34:03):
around the top of Idaho, Montana and then down through
the Rockies, but it's pretty scattered, and they don't have
the bulk of the numbers that the 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

(34:24):
the clusters in close proximity to water, and 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

(34:47):
that fit our criteria. It's a very strange sight. So
when you start to think about all this, uh, you know,
I've had twenty people that have sent the thesis length
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,

(35:09):
but it's not this because of this, this, this, and this,
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

(35:32):
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

(35:53):
to talk about that and to kind of get a
sense of what are some of the options here in
what realm are we talking of. 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,

(36:13):
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

(36:37):
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. Yeah,

(37:00):
will send me information in and all of a sudden
a light bulb 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 look at something. There's the way that's going

(37:21):
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 going to continue to lay up the facts.

(37:42):
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 people in law enforcement capacity or in

(38:05):
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 information that they have
access to. That's a good question. Um. I think if

(38:29):
you watch the movie, you're going to see that there's
several different law for some people in it. And part
of my job is to keep credibility in that world,
because once I lose my credibility, they won't cooperate anymore. Now,
just because the National Park Services and cooperating doesn't mean

(38:51):
general law enforcement won't. And there is a group of
people out there that are willing to look at the
data and essentially look at facts. And once you delve
into it and you realize that Dave politis never said

(39:14):
of what is alleged on YouTube and other various sites.
He sticks just to the facts and all these other
allegations about he said this or he thinks that, but
he's never said it. So law enforcement watches these things,
and if some of them believe I said some of
these wild things that people allege, they won't want to

(39:35):
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 of the largest search and rescue
organization in the world about this. And at the end

(39:56):
of my talk there were there two Alaska st trooper
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 saying what everyone doesn't want to
talk about. And the guy said, thanks you, thanks for

(40:18):
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 it's just an
example that once you understand what we're all about, and

(40:41):
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 that maybe occurring
is that individual government employees, like individual rangers or state

(41:08):
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 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

(41:29):
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 apparently retired ones,
and this one guy was talking at length, and I
told my friends, said, we're gonnait until this guy leaves

(41:51):
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
want to talk to He goes, yeah, sure. He explained
to me that in the Park Service, the detectives for
the National Park Police are called special agents, and there's
usually about one special agent for every two or three

(42:14):
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 us getting
data and information, and and I asked him, I said,

(42:34):
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 now I know exactly what's going on. It's called
the lack of integrity, and certain people in the National
Park Service police and in their administration have a complete

(42:56):
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 of the National Park rangers that
the public sees every day. You know, they're they're great people.
They're doing God's work out there. This is a selected

(43:18):
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
pointed us to a web a couple of websites that

(43:40):
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,
this isn't just happening to me, this is happening to
people inside their organization. And if you go to our

(44:03):
website can AM like Canadian American can 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 bears
the best friend. But when you look at the underlining

(44:25):
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 missing for
one one after a word from our sponsors, and we

(45:03):
have returned. So, David, one thing that you said that
I think really made our ears perk up collectively is
you mentioned that in the online sphere, I guess, uh
that there have been people who are spreading what we

(45:25):
would call it, uh, misinformation or perhaps misrepresenting what this
endeavor is actually about. Um, could you could you 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

(45:46):
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
that is misinformation? Remember one thing is that I have
never and I would never name anything as a suspect

(46:07):
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 I
meant something, I just come out and say it. And
I think a lot of people and a lot of
organizations out there that represent this, the fringe gentleman of

(46:32):
cryptozoology or whatever, want to align themselves with credible research,
and so they want to align themselves with what we're
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.

(46:53):
And whether it's a lot of people say well must
maybe it's a group of National Parks and Boys or
US for Service employees that want to discredit me so
that 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

(47:15):
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
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

(47:37):
has and that has taken us to where we are today.
Now why the attacks occur, Well, I mean I've had
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

(47:58):
attacks and it just comes. It comes with the territory.
I understand that. Now. I didn't at the beginning, but
I get it now. One thing that we always like
to investigator, that we 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 like
out to me. You know, I would see criticism of

(48:21):
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 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

(48:44):
in our audience. One thing that interested me immensely was
that I would read these investigations or presentations by you know,
people who 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

(49:05):
these people said in in their presentations, you know, they said, uh,
we looked at this and these are all genuine disappearances
and the facts are all correct, and sometimes quote unquote
Internet skeptics do a very poor job of applying critical thinking.

(49:26):
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
saying they thought there were mundane explanations for these disappearances,
but they didn't say what those explanations might be. And

(49:50):
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 head, a lot of these things
don't seem to don't seem to fit into those easy explanations.
Are are you aware of this stuff? And how would

(50:11):
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
for this. Well, it's hard to respond to something like
that on such a general format. If you want to

(50:33):
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, yeah,
if we've gone through the vetting process of those points,

(50:54):
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
people are uncomfortable with where the books may take them

(51:18):
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
mountain lion and it's not a bear attack, and it's
not a human attack, and it's not a voluntary disappearance.

(51:42):
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?
And you start to think these things, and it starts
to become a comfortable And I think a lot of
people's mentality is they need to go to the wilderness

(52:06):
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.
One of the things I tell everybody is that even
though I know what I've written, I still go to

(52:27):
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.
And the people in my books that I write about

(52:47):
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 SANSAS transmiss in the National
Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and they call the local search
and rescue where you're at because they have your GPS

(53:07):
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
never had a case where somebody was carrying a firearm

(53:29):
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,
and I always checked the weather before I leave. I

(53:50):
think if people followed those easy to follow instructions, we
could eliminate disappearances by probably. I think that's really really,
you're really smart. Just just learn what you need to
do when you're gonna go into the wilderness, even if
you're with another person, just make sure if you get separated,
you're gonna be okay. It gets a little dicey though,

(54:11):
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
that an outdoor has been a survivalist, you know, or

(54:33):
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
always practice the buddy system, always have and as as

(54:55):
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
in the past. How did that come about? Less read

(55:18):
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
you've written about, let me know, I'll help you. Well,

(55:40):
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,
I'll do it. So we met him and true went

(56:00):
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
than Less Stroud. So I have never heard anybody who's
seen the film and watched that segment that said, oh,
you know that was saked, or you know everyone says, Wow,

(56:23):
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.
Can you go over some of some of those clusters

(56:44):
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 that vanished. There's some in Michigan,

(57:05):
there's 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

(57:27):
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,

(57:48):
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 the US and Canada are
Australia and the United Kingdom are the next two. So

(58:09):
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

(58:29):
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.

(58:51):
And I'm not just talking about the National Parks Service.
I'm talking about the Department of the Interior, of the U. S.
Force Service. It's just not one agency. It 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

(59:13):
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

(59:34):
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

(59:56):
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,

(01:00:19):
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

(01:00:39):
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

(01:01:00):
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

(01:01:23):
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

(01:01:44):
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.

(01:02:04):
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

(01:02:28):
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

(01:02:49):
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 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.

(01:03:10):
I thought it was interesting that his response 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

(01:03:33):
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
do you guys remember the smiley face killer theory? And
so one of the this is, um, there there's some

(01:03:56):
retired law enforcement professionals who are convinced that there is
a serial killer group of killers drowning young college aged
men across the United States, and the big debate that
they keep having is whether there really is a discernible
pattern with commonalities or whether these things are just being

(01:04:19):
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 and there's a lot of nefarious reasons.

(01:04:41):
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 target for you know, their

(01:05:02):
own And 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 case to case basis. That's
what it feels like to me. David has been doing

(01:05:24):
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 the like the point of
disappearance to the point of discovery of remains. So um.

(01:05:48):
You know, it's 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 be causes. He he mentioned a
little bit what other people had written to him and said,

(01:06:10):
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, where it's like you're putting this much
work into what you know, you might call an investigation,

(01:06:31):
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 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

(01:06:52):
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 you think would be
a plausible cause? What do you think would be an
improbable cause or a or a um not impossible thing?

(01:07:18):
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, 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,

(01:07:42):
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 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

(01:08:04):
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, something some
connection that he keeps hinting at, by the very nature
of the fact that these are all you know, grouped

(01:08:24):
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,
you know, like all of this stuff, it's presented in
a way that to me comes off as like, what

(01:08:45):
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
for sure. And uh, I just have to mention because
we're talking about national parks. I know this doesn't have

(01:09:06):
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,
we'll put a go pro on you and Nolan I

(01:09:27):
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
here is really good at pickling things. I think that's

(01:09:49):
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 pickleman? Yeah, that's pretty good, or the man
with pickles. I don't know either way. I'll go with it,
or we could just give you a new identity where

(01:10:10):
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 us what

(01:10:31):
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 you said, I think

(01:10:55):
it is the age word. There's like a hippie vibe,
and it seems like what I've been reading ab out
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 wondering about

(01:11:18):
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

(01:11:38):
Rainbow Gatherings festival where people get 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 will give

(01:12:00):
you a sense of what that Rainbow life is like. Yeah,
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

(01:12:22):
would say welcome home. That's what they say. It slo 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 yeside 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

(01:12:44):
and Missing four one one 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 nab US. And if
you go on the IMDb page for the new Missing
four one one documentary that we watched for this interview,

(01:13:06):
it is listed 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.

(01:13:28):
Send them to us on Twitter or on Facebook. Where
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