I don’t know about you, but the person I start with is David Paulides and the website I start with is either his YouTube channel or his website CanAm Missing dot com. Read his books or watch his videos and you’ll likely be convinced the globe has a serious and ongoing missing persons phenomenon going on. (And I’m not talking about the 80’s rock band. Lol, is, or was, Paulides a fan of that band?) It’s not just Canada and America. If you’re already familiar with Paulides’ work, this article isn’t going to contain any information you haven’t already heard. Btw, if you’re interested in buying his Missing 411 books, my recommendation is to go all out and buy them all at once as a set from his own website. Here is the current link.

Here’s what I’ve learned… there appears to be patterns and trends in the phenomenon. Specifically on the victim-half of the equation, the who, the what, the where, and the when have patterns. Who is going missing, what is taking place, where it is taking place, and when it is taking place. “How” and “why” only have hypotheses. On the perpetrator or predator side of the equation the “who” and the “what” are also left up to hypotheses. What I mean by that is that there are 0.000 fact-based answers. By facts, I mean evidence.

Now is probably as good a time as any to clear up what we mean, and what the differences are, between “evidence,” “facts,” and “truth.” “Fact” and “evidence” can be used somewhat interchangeably. “Truth” is a bit more complicated, because there are two basic ways in that “truth” is used. 1) A fact exists and it is true. 2) A theory exists and it is true. #2 is untrue, but people use this all the time. There is no such thing as a “true theory.”

To make matters more difficult, in today’s very messy world, you will see a hot megaton of people conflating these two ways of using the word “truth” and calling themselves “scientific” or “science-based.” (I’m trying to keep this article short, I promise.) A true fact does not prove or disprove a theory as being true. It can only support a theory or poke a hole in a theory. Theories generally never become “Law” but they can appear to be that way over time. A theory, technically, is never “true” or “the truth.” I love to be the bearer of hard news and here it is: a theory is only “pretty good” or “workable” or “something you resonate with.” Or, it isn’t. So therefore, the reason an airplane flies is because the scientific theories that helped to build it are “pretty good.” That’s it. That’s all you get. The fact that any plane flies does not prove the scientific theories that helped to build it are true, nor does it prove the theories are laws. You only want theories to be true, and in the case of the airplane you want it to be true so that you can travel and arrive at your destination safely. What we humans are doing, we are kind of rounding off the numbers or using shorthand. Similar to what we do with the irrational number pi by calling it “3.14.”

Unfortunately in the fields of religion and the paranormal, we sometimes see people taking hypotheses and theories and making up “facts” and “evidence” to support them. By “making up” we mean finding or creating false evidence and then presenting it as true evidence. Which is lying accompanied with the use of objects during the liar’s presentation. This is sometimes referred to as “bearing false witness,” but I digress.

The beauty of David Paulides’ Missing 411 books is they don’t even get to the realms of hypothesis and theory. He only presents the facts. And like I said, patterns and trends have been found in the facts. Here’s some examples:

Who goes missing – overrepresented categories
People of German descent, physicists, people of high intellect, bow-hunters, elk hunters, huckleberry pickers, ultra-marathoners, children. Worthy of note, sometimes very Christian and religious people also disappear.

What goes missing
Usually the entire person (their body) disappears and is never found. However, sometimes shoes are found. Sometimes other strange remains like “a tooth” or “clothes neatly folded” are found. Sometimes when a body is found, it will appear in an area previously searched. Sometimes a coroner cannot find a cause of death. Sometimes a coroner finds a cause of death that doesn’t make sense. Sometimes a coroner “rounds off” on the report and says the cause of death is something that it wasn’t. Sometimes postmortems reveal high levels of GHB in the body.

Where they go missing – overrepresented categories
Near lots of water, large bodies of water, granite boulders, boulder fields, national parks, forests, very remote locations, places with “devil” or “hell” in the name. There are cluster zones as well as special places. Special places include Yosemite national park, Mt. Ranier, and Crater Lake. It is important to note that this is not to say people don’t go missing in cities, because that does happen too.

When they go missing
After a person separates from a travel partner or group. (Referred to as “point of separation.”) Full moons, new moons, similar dates as other people went missing. During hiking, hunting, camping, and sometimes… after drinking at a bar. This is not to say that people only disappear while alone. Sometimes people disappear in pairs, in groups, or with their pets.

Like I said, “who” or “what” is causing people to disappear is only in the hypothesis and speculation stage. And “how” and “why” they are taken are also at the hypothesis and speculation stage. So it is as mysterious as mysterious can get – which is distressing and upsetting of course. Worthy of note, Paulides recommends anybody going into a forest or national park should carry a personal locator beacon. Should you get lost or go missing, this allows you to be found via satellite. You can find them on Amazon dot com for about $300. And if you’re comfortable with it, also carry a firearm. For as much research Paulides has done, he says he does not yet have any record of somebody going missing with BOTH a personal locator beacon and a firearm.