Missing 411

[Sylvanz]

So my son came over today and was telling me about "Missing 411". An author has been researching the odd disappearances of people in national parks. It sounds apocryphal to me, and he's leaning skeptical. I can't find mention of it on the main site, so I was wondering if anyone had heard of this "strange" phenomenon? As my son described it to me, it sounded like the typical, "No one knows what's really going on!11!!!" and you find out that, "why yes someone does."

[Crius of CoH]

I stumbled across a YouTube video series a week or two ago about that - think it was "Top 10 mysterious Disappearances in National Parks" or something, with several others in the series. Didn't view, as they were "recommended" videos not actually in the subject I was pursuing. But I did see that there were videos on the subject.

ETA: yeah, a quick Google search yields everything from a New York Post article from September to dozens of videos on the subject. It's a thing.

[Gutter Monkey]

I saw quite a few references to it when I used to lurk around Bigfoot believer forums. The 411 guy David Paulides was very active in Bigfoot 'research' and he was actually the guy who brought Melba Ketchum in to test alleged Bigfoot DNA which lead to the ridiculous conclusion that Bigfoots were a crossbreed of humans and extinct giant lemurs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Paulides


Edit: here's a youtube video of skeptic/data analyst Kyle Polich investigated the Missing 411 claims
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQhv3dEMFOc

[TallGeekyGirl]

I'm sure people do go missing in National Parks all the time, sometimes under mysterious circumstances. The problem is that these days it's not always easy to tell the difference between a legitimate story and a creepypasta.

[Sylvanz]

I know right? My son sort of kinda' wants to believe it for some reason. He's always marched to the beat of a different drummer. Anyway, I told him to watch the video, after he questioned the wiki link. I told him the very fact the guy was a big foot enthusiast should put his credibility into question. My son told me, "Yeah, but he was a cop for 15 years, that's got to have some credibility." I told him that it didn't cut it for me. My son will eventually know it's hooey but I think he likes to play with the idea.

[Gutter Monkey]

I was going to say something about how this conspiracy theory has a low level of woo and that might make it more accessible/believable to many people when the obviously crazy conspiracy theories would be harder to swallow but I just had a quick browse through the thread titles of the Missing 411 subreddit and it turns out there's LOTS of woo connected to this.

Bigfoot University Conference 2017 presented by Team Squatchin' USA in Bremerton, Washington, USA: "23 TS-USA Bigfoot University Conference Speaker Panel" held on 23 April 2017 -- from 50:31 (50 minutes and 31 seconds) to 52:20 listen to Joe Hauser tell the story about his cat and the vortex.

Dark Matters Radio, 27 Mar 2014, Don Ecker interviews Christopher O'Brien: Begin at 1:28:54 to hear O'Brien address "Quote: I have been told by law enforcement that a part of our government does know that there is a quasi-military group out there doing ritual magic involving blood ritual sacrifice"

"Human Mutilations: The Sum Of All Fears" by Scott Corrales -- "But there exists . . . the possibility that our fellow humans may have succumbed, on one occasion or another, separated by time and space, to a devastating, unknown force that relieves them of their vital fluids." [Pages 22 to 24, PDF]

[Alarm]

Originally Posted by Gutter Monkey

Also known as an unknown exsanguinating injury...
like a stabbing or a shooting that no one saw.

[thorny locust]

Or, possibly, also known as dehydration.

Which is a real danger for unskilled people (and sometimes for skilled ones) doing various things outdoors, and which can most certainly kill.

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

Originally Posted by Sylvanz

My son told me, "Yeah, but he was a cop for 15 years, that's got to have some credibility."

That's the logical fallacy known as appeal to authority.

If you want to read about disappearances in the National Parks, a very reputable book (without a single Bigfoot in sight) is Death, Daring & Disaster: search and rescue in the National Parks.

Seaboe

[Gutter Monkey]

Originally Posted by Seaboe Muffinchucker

That's the logical fallacy known as appeal to authority.

If you want to read about disappearances in the National Parks, a very reputable book (without a single Bigfoot in sight) is Death, Daring & Disaster: search and rescue in the National Parks.

The description of the book says "375 exciting tales of heroism and tragedy drawn from the nearly 150,000 search and rescue missions carried out by the National Park Service since 1872."

Y'know, if there's been 150k search & rescue missions in national parks then 1.6k missing person cases sounds entirely plausible and non-controversial to me.

[TallGeekyGirl]

If you DO want to read some obviously fictional but still very creepy stuff, just do a Google search for "stairs in the woods."

You'll find a link to a series of Reddit posts presumably written by a Search and Rescue officer. There's also a YouTube video of someone reading the stories if you prefer "audio book" style.

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

Originally Posted by Gutter Monkey

...nearly 150,000 search and rescue missions carried out by the National Park Service since 1872."

I was actually thinking that if there'd been a valid sighting of bigfoot, it would've been one of the stories they told. Yeah, that many who are still missing is only about 1% of the total searched for--and that quote (150,000) is probably 10 or so years old.

Seaboe