The Secret Vanishings in America’s National Parks –
UPDATED 6.30.14
“If
you go out to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise….” The words of
this innocent children’s song, A Teddy Bear Picnic, reflects the American love
of family camping. The activity of healthful, recreational bonding has been
passed down from generation to generation, all with little worry about the
dangers of the forests and mountains. But the public has been practicing this
popular pastime without the knowledge that over 1100 people have disappeared
from our national parks and open spaces in the past 100 years.
Author:
Nita Hiltner
Reviewed by: Nita Hiltner
On April 27, 2014
Last modified:February 8, 2015
Summary:
This report has become quite popular
in the months since it was published in April of 2014 - which is an indicator
that people are becoming concerned enough about this situation to consult
search engines about the matter PRIOR to heading out on camping and hiking
trips. This is an eerie situation which indeed should warrant caution and
investigation. Be safe out there ...
The National Park Service doesn’t
keep sufficient records on these vanishings, and in fact, it appears to be
hiding this information from the public. Strangely, a big percentage of these
disappearances have clues in common: Huckleberries, dogs, swamps and bad
weather.
Author David Paulides has written
the books Missing 411-Western U.S.,
Missing 411-Eastern U.S.
and Missing 411-North America and Beyond
to tell the little known story of these disappearances dating back at least 125
years in this country. The year 2013 saw more national park disappearances
than in the past 27 years combined. Paulides has hit several stone
walls on his quest to solve the mystery of the disappearances, including the
National Park Service (NPS) and the FBI.
The Beginning
Paulides, with a career in law enforcement, first learned of the disappearances from national park employees who confided their concerns to him about the inordinate amount of missing campers from the parks and the mystery surrounding them. When he began digging for information he saw the 28 clusters of disappearances around the country, the number one cluster being Yosemite National Park, near San Jose where Paulides had served as a police officer.
Paulides, with a career in law enforcement, first learned of the disappearances from national park employees who confided their concerns to him about the inordinate amount of missing campers from the parks and the mystery surrounding them. When he began digging for information he saw the 28 clusters of disappearances around the country, the number one cluster being Yosemite National Park, near San Jose where Paulides had served as a police officer.
Strange Similarities Between
Disappearances
Most of those who have disappeared are children ages 20 months to 12 years and the elderly ages 74 to 85. Not one person carrying a firearm(and only one carrying a transponder device) has disappeared. Typically, a search is initiated and run for about ten days then dropped.
Most of those who have disappeared are children ages 20 months to 12 years and the elderly ages 74 to 85. Not one person carrying a firearm(and only one carrying a transponder device) has disappeared. Typically, a search is initiated and run for about ten days then dropped.
Fifty percent of the children who go
missing are found dead, and the ones who are found are found miles away from
where they disappeared, in areas seemingly impossible for them to get to on
their own. The majority of children who have disappeared had dogs with them. In
some cases, the dogs returned, but the children never did. Children found
alive won’t talk about their experience or say they don’t remember what
happened to them. They’re found usually running a low-grade fever and
appear traumatized. In all cases, the parents say that the child was
right behind them when they disappeared. Usually, the children are wearing
bright, colorful clothing when they disappear, and even if they are found miles
away without the shoes they were wearing, their feet are not scratched or
bruised.
Yosemite National Park, with 40 to
45 cases, has the largest cluster of vanishings and oddly, in most areas where
the disappearances have occurred, huckleberries are almost always in great
abundance.
Many of the areas that people have
disappeared from carry such names as Devil’s Gulch, Devil’s Lookout, Twin Devil
Lake and Devil’s Punch Bowl., perhaps named to reflect the evil people have
sensed in these places over time.
In 95 percent of the cases, bad
weather strangely follows a disappearance, washing out footprints and other
clues and making it impossible to carry on a search until the weather clears.
In 98 to 99 percent of the cases, tracking dogs are unable to find a scent or simply
refuse to track.
Almost 98 percent of the
disappearances occur in the afternoon. Searchers have been known to cover an
area over 100 times, only to later find the person, alive or dead in the same
area they searched before.
click for full size
On the Trail-Stone Walls
When Paulides first requested information from the NPS under the Freedom of Information Act about the missing persons, he was told they had no records. Later, an attorney called Paulides and asked him why he wanted the information. Since Paulides was a published author he was entitled to an exemption from any fees associated with obtaining records from the park service, but the attorney told him that the park service would not abide by that rule, since supposedly, Paulides’ books weren’t in enough libraries. (ed note: judging from the amount of reviews on amazon – Paulides’ books appear to be very popular.) Paulides was shocked when the attorney told him that if he wanted the “non-existent” records from Yosemite National Park, it would cost him $34,000, and if he wanted records from all the national parks, the price tag would be a whopping $1.4 million.
When Paulides first requested information from the NPS under the Freedom of Information Act about the missing persons, he was told they had no records. Later, an attorney called Paulides and asked him why he wanted the information. Since Paulides was a published author he was entitled to an exemption from any fees associated with obtaining records from the park service, but the attorney told him that the park service would not abide by that rule, since supposedly, Paulides’ books weren’t in enough libraries. (ed note: judging from the amount of reviews on amazon – Paulides’ books appear to be very popular.) Paulides was shocked when the attorney told him that if he wanted the “non-existent” records from Yosemite National Park, it would cost him $34,000, and if he wanted records from all the national parks, the price tag would be a whopping $1.4 million.
The Missing Person Cases
In the Rocky Mountain National Park in 1938 a husband and wife hiked high into the park and sat down to rest. Looking up high above them on a cliff in an area called The Devil’s Nest, they spotted a small boy all alone. Thinking the foolish parents were nearby, the couple moved on and later drove home. As they arrived in the valley below where they had hiked they saw as many as 2500 people mulling about, but didn’t stop to ask what was going on. The next morning they saw a photo of the missing child in the newspaper, and recognizing him as the child they had seen, they drove back to the park to tell the searchers but the young boy was never found.
In the Rocky Mountain National Park in 1938 a husband and wife hiked high into the park and sat down to rest. Looking up high above them on a cliff in an area called The Devil’s Nest, they spotted a small boy all alone. Thinking the foolish parents were nearby, the couple moved on and later drove home. As they arrived in the valley below where they had hiked they saw as many as 2500 people mulling about, but didn’t stop to ask what was going on. The next morning they saw a photo of the missing child in the newspaper, and recognizing him as the child they had seen, they drove back to the park to tell the searchers but the young boy was never found.
A two year-old boy was visiting his
grandparents in Ritter, Oregon in 1952 when he disappeared. He was found
unconscious 19 hours later in a frozen creek bed. To arrive there, the small
toddler would have had to run non-stop 12 miles across two mountain peaks in
those 19 hours, quite impossible considering his age and size.
Fact: In 95% of ALL missing children
cases they are eventually found no further than 2.8 miles away from where they
disappeared.
The FBI refused to give Paulides any
information on the disappearance of another small two year-old boy who
disappeared in Yosemite in 1957. In that case the boy simply vanished as he
walked around the perimeter of his family’s camp site. Bloodhounds and hundreds
of people searched for him. He apparently climbed 3000 feet straight up a
mountain. He was found dehydrated and suffering from exposure with a tee
shirt, no pants, one sock and no shoes.
One of the strangest finds by
rangers was a missing man who was found leaning against a log, his pants around
his ankles. The only parts left of him were part of his tibia in his right pant
leg and part of his skull and his scapula bones in one inch by one inch pieces.
Young girls also disappear in the
national parks. In Yosemite in 1981, a 14 year-old girl was backpacking on horseback
with her parents and a group of people up 9200 feet to Sunrise High Sierra
Camp. When they stopped to rest, the girl asked if she could go with a 70
year-old man on the trip 50 feet away to take some photos. The old man sat down
on a log, and the girl went to the edge of an elevation to take a photo of a
lake down below. She walked down the hill and never came back. The FBI agent
told Paulides he would never get the information on this case, that it was none
of his business.
In another more recent Yosemite
case, a young woman was found dead at the bottom of a high cliff from where it
seemed she had been flung. It was determined that she had been raped after
her fatal fall.
In a few cases, Green Berets have
surprisingly shown up to join and/or take over searches. This happened in 1971
in Newcomb, New York when an 8 year-old boy vanished while walking back to a
lodge to change his clothes. His scent was lost in a swamp and he was never
found.
Paulides said the case that really
bothers him the most is of a 6 year-old boy who disappeared in 1969 in the
Great Smokey Mountains. Two families with the last name of Martin happened upon
each other, and their two sons began playing hide and seek in the nearby
bushes. When the parents called the boys into camp and one didn’t return, the
boy’s father went to find help. A rainstorm began as he ran down the hill. At
the same time, further down the hill, another family with the last name of Key
heard a sickening scream and looked up to see what they thought at first was a
man hiding in the bushes. The boy’s father reached the valley and called the
FBI to meet him at the park but the agent told him to meet them at another
location, which made no sense. The Green Berets showed up again and took
over the search completely. Meanwhile, Mr. Martin stayed in the park two months
looking for his son, who was never found. In researching his books, Paulides
visited Martin, the father, who told Paulides that when the Key family spotted
the man in the bushes, he or it was carrying something on its shoulder; however
none of this information the Key family proffered was included in the FBI
report. Paulides was told during his investigation of this case that some “wild
men” live in the park that the park service had not been able to control.
Twelve other people have disappeared
in the same area and the FBI agent monitoring those cases allegedly committed
suicide. The phenomena is not limited to the U.S., either. In the Philippines,
many people have disappeared, most never returning. When visitors go there
they’re told that they must not wear colorful clothing into the jungle. The
bright colors seem to attract whatever it is that takes the people. This clue
is similar to the American children who have disappeared wearing bright
clothing.
In his books and in interviews
Paulides does give some possible reasons for the disappearances. On a recent
appearance on the radio show Coast to Coast AM, Paulides listed
some ideas, such as sasquatch, large birds and extraterrestrials, but he also
mentioned demons as a possible cause, which goes along with the belief in the
Philippines that the Jin or demons are responsible for the abductions.
The reviews of Paulides’ books on
Amazon show that people are glad to have the information to better prepare themselves
to take their families into wilderness areas. Some mention how upset they are
that the NPS would keep this information to themselves, most likely to protect
income from park visits. New York Times bestselling author Whitely Streiber
said the books are sobering and chilling and too well-researched to ignore.
Update
06.20.2014
The latest disappearance is of a 34
year-old California firefighter who vanished with his dog on Friday, June 13 in
the Los Padres National Forest in California. He was camping with a friend when
he ran off shoeless, chasing his dog downhill toward a stream. His friend
searched for hours, then had to hike two days out of the wilderness to find
help. The area being searched is two times the size of the Grand Canyon. On
June 19, the firefighter’s dog was found alive.
Update
06.30.2014
Mike Herdman, the California
firefighter who disappeared two weeks ago chasing his dog during a backpacking
trip to the Los Padres National Forest was found dead June 27. Like others who
have disappeared into the national forests, Herdman was found at approximately
1200 feet above the river bottom which he had chased his dog into the day he
disappeared. When his remains were discovered authorities were astonished to
find him shoeless. Rescue crews spent nearly 5,000 man-hours searching and
covered 50 square miles on foot and horseback, as well as by air, including the
use of two drones. The sheriff stated it was unimaginable that a shoeless
person could have traversed so far in such rough terrain.
David Paulides Strange Disappearances 9-29-2013
About
the Author Nita Hiltner
Nita worked as a reporter for the
Press Enterprise of Riverside, California for 16 years and for several other
newspapers in southern California and Pennsylvania. She's a regular DCX
contributing author focusing specifically on scientific and supernatural
conspiratorial concepts.
- See more at:
http://dcxposed.com/2014/04/27/secret-vanishings-americas-national-parks/#sthash.YtqDfgw9.dpuf
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