odd disappearances

On Sunday night's program, George Knapp was joined for the full four hours by David Paulides, a former lawman turned investigative journalist, for a discussion on a series of weird and odd disappearances in U.S. national parks and forests that no one can explain. "Only the top 15 people in the Parks Service know what we are talking about," Paulides said about the hundreds of mysterious vanishings that have occurred at these locations. Acknowledging that animal attacks and accidents do occur in the forest, he contended that these disappearances are different because they leave no clues to suggest such prosaic explanations. Over the course of the evening, he detailed instances where people vanish within minutes, never to be seen again, and where bone fragments of victims were found, as if they'd been eaten, yet their clothes have been carefully removed.

One bizarre trend amongst the cases is that the victims appear to travel a vast distance or into a location which should be physically impossible to reach. To that end, Paulides detailed the story of a two-year-old boy named Keith Parkins, who vanished near Umatilla National Forest. The child would eventually be found an astounding 12 miles away after being gone for only 19 hours. The journey, Paulides said, would require the toddler to venture over two mountain ranges, as well as fences, creeks, and rivers. The case, he revealed, is just one of many where children disappear and are later found "several hundred percent" outside of the grid system carefully designed by search and rescue teams. Additionally, Paulides noted that there are some rare cases where, after tracking dogs have led rescuers to a large river, search teams will explore the other side and "miles away, they find the kid."   

While Paulides was reticent to offer a specific theory as to what is behind this rash of disappearances, he did observe that the DNA of children is more pure than adults, which may suggest some kind of alien abduction scenario. He also cited a common theme of these cases where it will snow or rain following the disappearance, but the victim will later be found wearing dry, clean clothes and "there's no way they had been outdoors." Beyond that, children who have gone missing, and then returned alive, recall encounters with wolf-like creatures or a bear that "cuddled with them all night." Compounding the mystery, Paulides said that, in several instances, people have disappeared at locations with "devil" in the name, which may indicate that these places have a long history of sinister events attached to them.