Journalist David Paulides Discusses Missing 411 and Bigfoot DNA

David Paulides, a former lawman turned investigative journalist, will be with us in February to discuss two subjects dear to his heart: the search for bigfoot and his book “Missing 411”, which deals with the unaccountably high number of odd disappearances in our national parks. The number of cases Paulides found was so large that his research was published in two separate volumes, one covering the eastern U.S and the other covering cases from the western states. Last spring, George Knapp devoted two four-hour “Coast to Coast’ shows to David’s work in this area, due to overwhelming interest in his work.

Paulides is the Executive Director of the North American Bigfoot Search (NABS) organization. The seven year old NABS was begun in the Silicon Valley area by a group of technology executives with a pronounced interest in the bigfoot subject. Some had had their own bigfoot encounters. This privately-funded group, which concerns itself with scientifically proving the existence of the “biped” as they like to call him, is unique because NABS investigators are willing to revisit or stay in various hotspot locales for extended periods of time, pursuing the cases exhaustively.

One of the group’s primary goals has been to locate physical evidence, such as hair from a bigfoot, that could be DNA tested in order to prove the biped’s existence scientifically. Over time, NABS team members not only located such evidence, but they networked with five other bigfoot organizations to obtain bigfoot hair samples from around the country, hoping to assemble a detailed genetic profile for the creature. As a result of his work with NABS, Paulides has written two books, “The Hoopa Project” and “Tribal Bigfoot.” He will be updating us on the results of Bigfoot DNA Project initiated by his group.

The bulk of David’s presentation will be devoted to material from his book, “Missing 411” which deals with the peculiarly large number of anomalous vanishings in our national parks and forests. A tip from a national park ranger led David to begin a three-year plus, 7,000 hour investigation of this phenomenon. Paulides now has 450 such cases. Acknowledging that animal attacks and accidents do occur in the forest, he contends that these disappearances are different because they provide no clues that suggest such prosaic causes.

The Missing 411 research depicts 28 clusters of missing people across the continent, something that has never been exposed before and which shocked researchers. This is not a phenomenon that has been occurring over just a few decades. Clusters of missing people have been identified going as far back as the 1800s. Paulides details instances where people have vanished within minutes, never to be seen again, and where bone fragments of victims were found, as if they’d been eaten, yet their clothes had been carefully removed.

One bizarre trend among the cases is that the victims often appear to have traveled vast distances. There is one case involving a two-year-old boy named Keith Parkins, who vanished near Umatilla National Forest. The child was eventually found 19 hours later, an astounding 12 miles away from where he disappeared, after being gone for 19 hours. The journey in question would have required the toddler to cross two mountain ranges, not to mention fences, creeks and rivers. This case is just one of many where people have disappeared and later been found ”several hundred percent” outside of the search grid-system customarily used by search and rescue teams. Another common theme in these cases is that it will often rain or snow following the disappearance, but when the victim is later found, they will be wearing clean, dry clothes and “there’s no way they could have been outdoors while they were gone.”

Paulides is reticent to offer a specific theory as to what is behind this rash of disappearances. However, MUFON is bringing you this presentation because we suspect that something very strange has been going on that may well involve UFOs and or bigfoot. Interestingly, Paulides expresses considerable suspicion over the government’s lack of interest in these events. “There’s got to be some type of cover-up going on at the federal level, because there’s no reason in the rational world why the Parks Service wouldn't be tracking people who disappear inside their system.”

To that end, he cites two separate instances where a person went missing and teams of Green Berets showed up in the area, made no contact with the other searchers, and proceeded to conduct their own search ”as if they were on their own private mission that no one else understood.”

The meeting is at:

• Tuesday, Feb. 19

  8 p.m.

• Unitarian Universalist Church

  12355 Moorpark St.., Studio City, CA