Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Sept. 7, 2015 - Art Bell

02:14:54

Art Bell MITD - Dave Paulides Missing 411

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	♪♪♪ From the high desert in the great American Southwest, I bid
	you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be on God's green Earth.
	Well, mostly green anyway, in all those time zones, each and every one covered like a blanket by this program.
	Which we call Midnight in the Desert for a good reason.
	That's where we are, in the desert.
	Cacti and everything all around.
	Serious desert.
	Just over the hill from Area 51.
	Rules of the program are simple.
	There are only two.
	No bad language.
	We don't need that.
	And only one call per show.
	That's all we need.
	And so, those are the rules.
	Now, the big news of the day is Stonehenge.
	Holy mackerel!
	Have you seen what's going on at Stonehenge?
	There was an archaeological group working in the Stonehenge area, you know, using ground-penetrating radar and looking for whatever might be there in addition to Stonehenge.
	And I guess there have been other crews there previously, never found anything.
	But this group goes They're about ready to pack up, pack it in, and go home, because they didn't find anything.
	Like the other groups.
	And then all of a sudden, they found this incredible array of rocks.
	Just like the Stonehenge rocks.
	Some up to, what, ten feet high, or higher?
	A hundred of them, or more.
	Arranged in what appears to be a kind of a semi-circle around Stonehenge.
	Now, this is really big stuff.
	If you want to see more about it, heartbell.com.
	We've got the story up there.
	It is just today breaking.
	Other news, I guess, almost worth noting.
	It has been a summer of chaotic activity, politically.
	We've got Donald Trump.
	We've got a socialist, Bernie Sanders, ripping up Hillary.
	It is upside down as it has ever been in American politics.
	God bless them.
	The people have had enough.
	Well, it was supposed to be their first step to freedom from places like Syria, where they'd be killed.
	But now, thousands upon thousands of migrants are mired in despair, anger, and frustration.
	In Western Europe.
	It's just a mess.
	They're on an island now, a Greek island.
	They're trying to get to mainland Greece so they can continue their journey.
	By the way, Germany has said they will take them in.
	That's where they're trying to go.
	I just have one other quick note here at the beginning and I want you to listen to this and it doesn't sound overly strange.
	I get a lot of emails from people.
	This is from a French man.
	From Quebec.
	And it's not really that strange, but it is.
	He said, Art, I had a strange encounter when I was about 21, back in 99.
	I was working at a gas station.
	Finishing my shift, when a family of four with two children, boy and a girl, came in.
	First glance, they seemed normal.
	But the children had blonde, darn near white hair, While I was looking at them, they both turned in my direction at the same time and stared at me in a silent but very intense way for about five seconds, but it felt much longer.
	They had big blue eyes with large pupils, and I mean one and a half to two times what we would consider normal.
	They had both the same height.
	Nobody in the store seemed to notice them after they left.
	The parents didn't look a bit like them, Brown hair, normal eyes.
	Have you ever heard of any story like this?
	Sorry for the spelling, I speak French.
	David. And I don't know why that hit me. It's...
	It just did.
	It's weird.
	And thank you, David.
	Maybe we'll get some feedback and proceed.
	Well, I'm not sure where we would proceed, do something like that, but maybe that's what we'll do.
	All right, coming up in a moment, I know a lot of you have been awaiting David Paulides.
	He's here.
	David received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of San Francisco and has a professional background that includes 20 years in law enforcement and senior executive positions in the technology sector.
	In 2010, it seems a ranger at a national park informed him of a series of unusual disappearances that occurred in national parks, right?
	And this started an investigation into people that have vanished in national parks and forests.
	The result was David has now written five books, all entitled Missing 411.
	Western U.S., Eastern U.S., North America and beyond.
	The devils in the details would be his latest.
	It's a pleasure to be with you as we begin another week of Midnight in the Desert.
	Better.
	Better audio.
	Better content.
	More content.
	and uh... will get into all of this and so much more the pleasure to be with you as we begin another week
	of midnight in the desert better audio
	better content more content
	just better better better better
	the the
	the Take a walk on the wild side of midnight.
	From the Kingdom of Nigh, this is Midnight in the Desert with Art Bell.
	Please call the show at 1-952-225-5278.
	That's 1-952-CALL-ART.
	That's a number that you don't want to call right now, actually.
	That's 1-952-CALL-ARTS.
	That's a number that you don't want to call right now, actually.
	Write the number down and hold it for later when we take calls.
	And I'll explain about how to make them when we do.
	In the meantime, welcome to a man that I should have talked to a long time ago, but I was sort of retired at the time, David Polides.
	Welcome to the program.
	Pleasure to be here, Art.
	Thanks.
	Good to have you.
	So, David, I know you've made the talk show rounds and rounds and rounds and rounds.
	I don't know how many you've done.
	A lot, I guess, right?
	It's been going on about five years, and I've talked to all your compatriots out there.
	I'm sure you have.
	I unfortunately have not caught you.
	I don't listen to other talk show hosts because I'm always scared that I'm going to pick up something from them and then subconsciously grab onto it and repeat it, and I don't want to do that.
	So I'm a neophyte in terms of, you know, I have a general idea of what you talk about, but if somebody was brand new, like me, Um, how would you start with them?
	I would say that, uh, I was in a national park doing research on a peripheral topic.
	One time I was getting followed around the park by a couple of park rangers.
	I was interviewing contractors at the park about something else.
	At the end of the day, I left the park.
	A couple hours later, I get a knock on my door.
	It's one of those park rangers in plain clothes.
	And he says, Dave, I know who you are.
	I know your background, and I have some information that somebody like you ought to get a hold of.
	So I invited him in, spoke to him for several hours, and he stated that during the last several rounds that he had been at different parks in his career.
	Rangers had talked about disappearing people.
	And he said that at the front end, there's always 7 to 10 days where there's a lot of exposure, a lot of press, a lot of big search efforts.
	And at the end of that period of time, there's nothing.
	There's no follow-up.
	There's no other effort to find the person.
	In fact, there's nothing that they could find after that.
	And they themselves tried to find information about the people, and they were somehow restricted in getting much of the information they were looking for.
	And he said that the other part of it was that some of the locations that the people disappeared didn't make a lot of sense to him.
	He said sometimes they disappear right in the middle of humanity in a park, and other times they disappear in the middle of nowhere, but there was no consistency that he could tell from it.
	But the consistent part that he was concerned about, and other Rangers he stated were concerned about, was the lack of follow-up, the lack of effort after the people disappeared, the lack of accountability after they disappeared, etc.
	Okay, you were a cop?
	For 20 years, yeah.
	20 years.
	Regular cop?
	I worked street crimes, detectives, SWAT team, three or four different detective units.
	Alright, you said they were concerned about the lack of follow-up, right?
	Correct.
	When somebody disappears in a national park, jurisdictionally, who does it belong to?
	So the National Park Service has a group of between six and seven hundred full-time sworn law enforcement officers that are trained by the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
	These people are very well trained, probably better than half the police officers in the United States.
	These people are full-time law enforcement rangers in the park carrying guns with the responsibility of law enforcement.
	They have a hierarchy inside the park service of chiefs, directors, assistant directors, etc.
	They understand policing very well.
	They understand the sense of accountability.
	They're a large organization, and you see them at the park every once in a while driving around.
	They write tickets, they make arrests, and they have a division inside of them called Special Agents.
	And the Special Agents are the detectives inside the Park Service that do the follow-up and the detective work.
	Okay, so they're federal, right?
	Oh, yes.
	So, it is their jurisdiction, so nobody would come marching in from a local county or any other jurisdiction at all.
	Except maybe the FBI, I guess, who was bad enough.
	Yeah, and the FBI in some of these instances was invited in, but you're right, they hold the primary jurisdiction.
	Sometimes they do invite search and rescue organizations from counties and nearby jurisdictions to come in.
	Other times, they don't let anybody in.
	So there's no consistency there, but you're correct in your assumption about jurisdiction.
	Okay, well then if they were coming to you with concern about the lack of follow-up, why weren't they looking in the mirror?
	I didn't understand that at the beginning, but then after I started to look into it, it becomes pretty obvious the mentality and kind of the approach with the Park Service.
	If you just Google search National Park Employees Complaints, let's say, there's an aura inside that system that isn't healthy.
	And the way they treat their own employees is pretty despicable.
	Just a quick story, there was a park ranger that disappeared in Arizona.
	He was never found.
	They refused to pay that ranger's wife his salary and his benefits.
	saying he just left the park. Well, he's never been found.
	And finally, she had to go to federal court to sue him for the benefits.
	Oh my. Okay, so it sounds to me like the problem is inside of their policing organization.
	Absolutely. And what I tell every group that I speak to is that the front-line rangers that you see that are showing
	you around the park and helping you with botany and fisheries, etc.,
	They're salt of the earth people.
	They are the best of the best.
	Really nice, wholesome folks.
	This kind of mentality and the responses we got from our Freedom of Information Act requests are policies made by the high administration in the parks.
	All right, well, now here, I guess, is where you can tell me a couple of the wilder stories.
	I would like to know what makes these disappearances so bizarre.
	So when we started this, we were trying to understand where the majority of these disappearances were occurring so we could focus an effort.
	So we filed a series of Freedom of Information Act requests against the Park Service asking them for their list of missing people inside their system.
	Seems like a natural, easy thing to go through.
	Well, several weeks later, I get a call from an attorney inside the Park Service asking me why I wanted that information.
	Really?
	I mean, why should you even have to file a Freedom of Information Act to get this information in the first place?
	You're singing to the choir here, Art.
	I'm with you 100%.
	All right.
	So anyway, forced to do it.
	You did it.
	And knowing a little bit about the law, that's an inappropriate question to ask anybody.
	And in fact, in the Freedom of Information Act, it says that they can't ask that question and use it as a determining factor if they give you the information.
	And I asked them, I said, well, why are you even asking me?
	It's a mundane request.
	I'm just interested.
	And he goes, I need to know.
	I said, fine, we're just doing research.
	Right.
	And he says, well, we don't have any lists.
	And I said, well, what do you mean you don't have any lists?
	And he says, we don't keep track of missing people inside our parks.
	And I said, how can that be?
	And he says, no, we don't have any lists.
	Well, at the time I was a published author.
	So I said, OK, I want an author's exemption because I'm published.
	I want the list.
	And he says, well, we'll have to get back to you.
	With a list that they don't have?
	Well, I'm asking him to do the job now.
	Well, he said, we don't have a list.
	We don't keep lists, right?
	Right.
	So about a month, month and a half later, I get another contact, this time from the regional coordinator out of Denver.
	And she tells me that, well, Dave, I was told by our administration that your books aren't in enough libraries to qualify for the exemption.
	Okay.
	And I said, okay.
	Can I just curiously ask how many libraries one has to be in to qualify?
	Oh, that's the million dollar question.
	And they said, well, that's their decision, Dave.
	That's not mine.
	And I was speaking from the Denver office.
	Okay.
	From that point, I said, OK, well then tell me how much money it's going to cost me to get the list from Yosemite and from your entire system.
	She goes, OK, I'll get back to you.
	Another four or five weeks come by.
	She calls me back and she says, Dave, well, the list from Yosemite is going to cost you $34,000.
	What?
	And the list from the entire system is going to be $1.4 million.
	What?
	What are they, faxing it in gold?
	I already don't get this.
	Okay.
	And I'm sure you said, excuse me, how much and why?
	I didn't write a check, that's for sure.
	Good.
	So that outlined some important points and it was pretty obvious from the get-go that they didn't want that information getting out.
	Apparently not.
	And in talking to some of the best journalists I could find, everyone said, Dave, they're outright lying.
	There's no way they don't keep track of missing people in their system.
	And I tend to believe that because over the last six years now, people have sent me a series of lists that the Park Service keeps.
	One of them is a list of movies that have been filmed in the Western U.S.
	National Parks Since the 1940s.
	Okay.
	So, they find value in that, but they don't find value in knowing where missing people were located.
	I've got to back up and ask.
	I mean, it just blows my mind.
	How could the list cost that much?
	Surely, you ask.
	Well, they told me that it would take a supervisor earning $65 an hour Uh, going to each one of these locations or them, uh, contracting it out at these various locations, them going through their files and digging through their files, trying to find missing persons cases.
	Boy, uh, that's just incredible, but okay.
	Um, okay.
	So did you finally secure a list or the list?
	Well, it's a real slippery slope, Art, because after digging through the policies and procedures and how the National Park handles missing people, after 10 years, they have a category called missing presumed dead, which technically, after 10 years, you're no longer missing.
	Right.
	Got it.
	Missing presumed dead.
	All right.
	So anyway, did we finally get a number of Of all categories, missing, presumed dead, whatever else?
	No.
	No, they refused to work it.
	And I decided, along with a series of other people, that what we would do is we would, one by one, do the best we could, going through archives and finding the number of missing people at the different locations.
	National parks, monuments, etc.
	And at this point, It branched out to also U.S.
	National Force, because a lot of things happen right on that periphery.
	And we're at about 1,600 people right now in North America.
	Wow.
	May I ask this?
	That would be your number, you're thinking, 1,600, yes?
	Oh, no.
	No.
	I mean, it's probably double or triple that.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Here comes my question anyway.
	Just for starters, if you take that number and you apply it to the number of people that visit our national parks by percentage, and then you look at North America, let's say, because we can probably get the stats best for North America, and compare it to the number of people missing in North America for any given year, do we see a difference?
	Well, first of all, the number would be infinitesimal compared to the number of people that visit the park.
	No, by percent.
	Yes, yes, of course, but by percentage again.
	Again, I don't want to make that because we truly don't know.
	At this point, I'd be playing into their hands by giving you a number.
	Yeah, that's true.
	All right, but I was just trying to get a comparison or an idea if it's larger than the national average Of people that go missing every year or not?
	What would be your guess?
	Oh, I'm sure it's way less because the numbers that you read about in the newspapers and the magazines and the FBI statistics are very skewed.
	That's true.
	If one runaway disappears from their house six times in a year, that's six different missing people that go into the statistics in NCIC.
	Okay, that's true.
	So it's a very skewed number.
	It's only the number where it says suspicious unknown perpetrator, which is about 1.5% of all disappearances of missing people.
	All right, let's move on then to what makes these disappearances so puzzling.
	So after reading thousands of reports, And going over many, many articles and just grabbing anything we can, we started to find that certain things come out at you that are abnormal.
	And we first set the criteria at rural disappearances, no suspects on the case.
	The person can have a history of mental illness.
	It can't be a voluntary disappearance.
	There's no evidence of an animal attack or human predation.
	And one of the biggies is lack of scent.
	And by the canines or the bloodhounds that came to the scene, they can't find a scent trail of the victim.
	Many, many of the times, the victim, if they're found alive or deceased, they're missing clothing or shoes.
	Depending on the geographical area they disappeared, boulder fields and berries are involved.
	And soon after the victim disappears, bad weather is often associated with the disappearance.
	If the victim is found, they're often found near creeks, rivers, and bodies of water.
	And the majority of the incidents occur in a time frame between 4 to 5 p.m.
	or slightly later.
	If the missing is located, they are often found unconscious or semi-conscious.
	And later on, when they're questioned, the majority of time, these victims can't remember what happened, where they went, or how they disappeared.
	Wow.
	In an abnormal number of times, where a doctor or the parents talk about it, they talk about the person having a fever, a low-grade fever.
	This is the one that will blow your mind, but the missing are most often found in an area that had been searched many, many, many, many times before, sometimes dozens of times, and bam, they're all of a sudden right there.
	Alright, well you've sort of moved it almost to the paranormal.
	I mean, with those facts alone, I'm not jumping to the paranormal, I'm just saying that it seems impossible.
	Well, I'll keep going, and this will probably even draw you more there, but there's, more often than not, there's two ends of the intellectual spectrum that are involved in these disappearances.
	There's a significant number of physicists, physicians, and super, super smart people that disappear, and many times they're never found.
	Really?
	A lot of times, people with significant autism, dementia, impaired ability to think, etc., They disappear, and oftentimes, if they're found, they can't explain what happened.
	Of course.
	And then one of the last things is that there's a geographical clustering of these people.
	There's 52 clusters of missing people in North America.
	And this is something that surprised us, because when you're dealing with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, you don't realize it until you put a map on the wall and start putting pins on it, where they start to fall out.
	Interesting.
	So, two ends of the scale of the intellectual scale, and that's the scientists you mentioned, very bright people, and then autistic people, and people at the other end of the scale, but not so much in the middle.
	Middle people, middle ground, like me, meh, it happens, but it doesn't happen, it seems, to the frequency That we're looking at for these both ends.
	And that's, it's a strange paradox that we realized probably in the middle of the research.
	Well, important though, because of course it could, it could go to motive.
	I mean, what do they want with people with these attributes?
	Oh, and I get emails about that all the time.
	People read the books and they say, well, you know, could it be this, this, this?
	A lot of great ideas.
	But no evidence yet.
	Well, when the people are found, whether they're deceased or alive, and they go through either an autopsy or they go through a doctor's examination, the other thing on this is that many times the medical examiner, if they find the person, if we find them, they can't determine the cause of death, which is pretty strange.
	It's very strange.
	It does occur.
	I mean, sometimes They are stumped, and they don't know what kills somebody, but they do call it a natural death.
	Alright, hold on, David.
	David, please, I guess.
	And yeah, this is very weird stuff, to be sure.
	This is midnight in the desert.
	I'm Art Bell.
	I've got a pretty good question, I think, when I come back.
	Stay right where you are.
	Stay right where you are.
	Doing alright.
	In that darkest time between dusk and dawn, from the high desert, it's a-
	Bells midnight in the desert.
	Now, here's Art.
	Here I am.
	We always give one of those a night, don't we?
	David Polides is my guest, and I must admit he's laid down a sobering list of things to shake your head at.
	All these people going missing in national parks, and not much follow-up within the National Park Organization with regard to what happened to them.
	Alright, welcome back, David.
	Um, I live here in the desert, uh, and I mean serious desert, you know, cactus and very serious.
	Temperature goes up typically to 110, 112 or higher during the summer.
	And inevitably every summer, uh, people with no prior history of mental illness, uh, simply decide to wander out into the desert where they inevitably die.
	So I guess it is reasonable to ask if something like that could be going on with respect to the National Parks as well.
	If you decided to take your own life for whatever rational or irrational reason you might have, the National Park would be a pretty place to do it, yes?
	Sure, but if there's ever any inclination that that person had a mental illness or was about to commit suicide, it wouldn't be one of the cases that we considered or wrote about.
	Okay, well, not all suicide is irrational, necessarily.
	I mean, that's subjective, but, you know, if you've got something wrong with you, then, of course, it's a likelihood.
	Another thing that occurred to me that I want to ask you about is the possibility, and I haven't actually heard the details of any of these cases yet, and I want to do that, but does any of this lead you to the conclusion that we could be dealing with a serial killer, or even a series of serial killers?
	So if I could just back up a little bit, when you talk about people who want to commit suicide, there's large numbers in the books that I write about that are very young children.
	And so that issue of suicide or voluntary disappearance is kind of washed away.
	And if you remember that if you just stick to those profile points I gave you, no scent, they bring in professional trackers, there's no track that they can find.
	That people don't call for help.
	It's like they have vanished completely.
	There is no track to follow.
	There is no scent.
	Sometimes the canines will walk in a circle and lay down.
	Sometimes they look at the trail and they just don't want anything to do with it.
	No, David, I'm with you.
	I mean, everything you've laid down leads me toward the paranormal.
	I'm trying to sort of back up and see if there's any other thing that might make sense.
	You know, a serial killer, of course, doesn't make sense.
	And there would be sense, and there would be tracks, and there would be a lot of things.
	So, you know, I'm with you.
	I'm just reaching.
	And that's logic.
	And when I tell a group of people, this is where everybody goes in that comfort place in your mind, trying to rationalize this away.
	And the first thing is, well, could it be a serial killer on the trail?
	Well, I live in Colorado and my guess is probably 80% of the people on the trail carry a gun.
	So I've never heard of somebody trying to abduct somebody on the trail because there'd be a firefight and there'd be dead people laying there.
	Very good point.
	Very good point.
	And the other thing is, is that what do you do with somebody who's 5'10", weighs 200 pounds?
	You're not going to carry him very far on a trail.
	No.
	No, you're not.
	Maybe you bury them.
	You know, I don't know.
	You set up a series of things that, again, lead right back to the paranormal, because it's all so impossible.
	Can you give me a couple of specifics?
	You know, you've documented these cases, so if you reach back for one of them, or the most puzzling cases you can find, give me a couple of them.
	Well, let's start with some this summer that happened that are right on key.
	Talk about Grand Canyon National Park and there was a group of people going down the river with a tour company floating down the Colorado.
	Right.
	They're about four or five days in and they always stop at this one place that has a small creek that flows into the Colorado.
	They let everybody get out.
	They walk up this creek.
	Not very far, a couple hundred yards, and there's a waterfall that goes into this deep pond.
	People jump off the rock into the little water pool, and then they all walk back after a couple hours to the boats, and they go further down the river.
	Well, Morgan Heimer was one of the tour guides, and he was in his first year from the University of Wyoming, 22 years old, a stellar kid.
	June 2, 2015, the group stops four or five days in, far outside the normal bounds of the park.
	I mean, they were really deep in there.
	And the group gets out, and they walk up to this pool, they have fun, and Morgan is the last person in line as they're walking back.
	He's wearing his life preserver, he's carrying a water bottle, and the creek is so small that people said you could wade across it without it coming up to your waist.
	To make a long story short, everyone gets back, Morgan doesn't come back.
	Someone from that company called me and told me the details, and I'm telling you now that a lot of it didn't become public
	but they said that they were absolutely baffled what happened to him
	because it makes no sense that he could go anywhere canyon walls were steep
	uh... they got out their satellite phone they called for help
	next that night late the national park service shows up they search for a few
	days they don't find anything he's never been found
	now roger marsh from mufon read a couple of my books
	he wrote an article for the huffington post called don't be last in line
	because many of the stories in my books
	involve people that are last in line or first in line on a hike
	and get out of sight momentarily and disappear
	and are gone it.
	Um, okay.
	If you're a serial killer, that's how you're going to pick somebody off.
	You're going to wait for the last guy in line.
	Now, again, I know you're going to recite everything you've recited, and I'm going to agree with you, but indeed, that's what you would do.
	You wouldn't pick somebody in the middle, then you've got a fight on your hands, right?
	Well, and I can only go case by case with you, but in this instance, they are so many miles from anybody.
	Nobody is even in the area, and there's no way to walk into that area without walking in for days to get to the specific location.
	Was Morgan ever found?
	No.
	No bones?
	No, no, nothing that could yield up the DNA and says that, you know, that says this is Morgan Hymer?
	Nothing has ever come up.
	I'm sure that they went to his parents and got some DNA material to put in a database, but at this point, happened June 2nd, 2015.
	Gone.
	That's weird.
	Really weird.
	If somebody had grabbed him, I mean, they weren't that far apart in the line, were they?
	I asked that because you'd grunt, you'd scream, you'd do something if somebody grabbed you.
	Absolutely you would.
	And that's another thing, there's a complete absence of any yells for help, calls for help in these cases that we're talking about right now.
	Now, some of the other things that have happened over the years, there is some indication that something really strange is going on, because the person happened to be on the phone with another individual at the time they disappeared.
	In these cases that we're talking about right here, there's nothing.
	Okay.
	That one's weird, alright.
	Somebody who has heard you in previous shows, I guess, elsewhere, asks, please ask David about the condition of the feet.
	Well, that's a million dollar question that I ask myself all the time.
	And the reality is that you've got to understand the mentality of the search and rescue people.
	from the last known position over very rough terrain?
	Well that's a million dollar question that I ask myself all the time and the
	reality is is that you've got to understand the mentality of the search
	and rescue people.
	They don't think anything strange is going on.
	They don't think anything unusual has happened.
	They just think the person's missing.
	And many times the news broadcast will show somebody walking back with no shoes and nobody ever thinks to ask them what happened or thinks to say, how did you lose your shoes?
	The question is not asked because these people are not criminal investigators.
	They're not thinking along the lines that you and I are right now.
	And I don't blame them for that, because search and rescue people, 95% of them are volunteers.
	They could be engineers, they could be human resource people, they could be anything.
	But they're just there looking for people.
	And they're just so happy that they found them, that's the end of the game.
	International Park, assuming you got separated and or lost, the last thing you would take off would be your shoes.
	Because Obviously, you're stepping on all kinds of things that can harm you, so that doesn't make any sense at all.
	Okay.
	A jump ahead question.
	Since all this publicity, you've had book after book, and I wonder how the National Park Service has reacted to the publicity you've generated.
	I can tell you that we're in the middle right now of making a film about A number of these disappearances.
	And we met a family at Mesa Verde National Park and they told us a story about their dad who disappeared.
	And while we were in the park, we were with the victim's family and they wanted us to interview the chief park ranger and the superintendent about the disappearance.
	Right.
	And these people went to the front desk.
	And those two individuals would not even come to the front desk and talk to those people.
	They had an assistant come up and said, well, they're unavailable.
	And they said, well, when can we talk to them?
	Well, they're not available right now.
	And that type of mentality towards a victim's family when they lost their dad in that park was absolutely unbelievable.
	Well, was it your name that got the inattention?
	We hadn't even been in there.
	We were standing outside and they walked in.
	Alright, then let me circle back to the question.
	Since you've written these books, with respect to you, how has the National Park Service been treating you?
	They can't be happy.
	Well, no.
	I mean, we continue to file Freedom of Information Act requests for reports on missing people inside their park.
	They classified me last year as what's called a commercial requester.
	I've never heard that before.
	And because of that, they quadrupled the fees that they would charge the normal public for anything I wanted.
	As an example, there was an incident where a park ranger disappeared in Rocky Mountain National Park.
	Disappeared for 10 days.
	She was found dead.
	I made a request for that report.
	They said it was going to cost me $7,500.
	seventy five hundred dollars uh... what whatever happened to law enforcement cooperation
	All right.
	Oh, that's a really good question.
	We're actually at Rocky Mountain National Park on a peripheral issue, and I'm in this little satellite office on the way up to one of the mountain climbing sites, and I see a table with four individuals, older guys, sitting around talking, and they talk like they were cops, but they were all in plain clothes.
	I told my friend, I said, hey, we're waiting right here.
	I'm not going anywhere.
	I got to talk to one of these guys.
	One of them walks out.
	I meet him in the parking lot.
	I introduce myself.
	He goes, oh, my name is so-and-so.
	I'm a retired special agent from the Park Service.
	I'm thinking, oh, I hit the glory hole right here.
	We ended up talking for a couple hours in the parking lot, and I explained all the issues I'd had with the Park Service and how they had obstructed, delayed, done everything they could.
	And I said, how do you account for that?
	And he said, Dave, it's very easy.
	He's a complete lack of integrity.
	And he went in and he told me a story about an investigation he was doing into a park superintendent about high criminal felony case.
	And he got a call from Washington, just said, just drop it, leave it alone, walk away.
	And he goes, Dave, that's the way the Park Service works.
	And the answer to the question, why is it corrupt?
	He didn't, he didn't really go into that.
	He just explained it in very simple terms that don't be offended because it's probably not you per se, but it's just the way they do business.
	And he said, you're never probably going to get that information out of them regarding missing people because they don't want you to have it.
	All right.
	How weird does it really get?
	I mean, go ahead and hit me with a couple of other cases.
	You would think that with some of the weirdness you're describing, it would have caused other investigators, paranormal type people at this point, to jump in and begin investigating and looking for signs of Bigfoot or some wolfman or God knows what.
	So, proceed.
	I'm told you have a lot of cases and I'm interested in how weird they really are.
	So, why haven't other people looked at this?
	Something called plausible deniability.
	Meaning, in our world, we've been told it's normal for people to go down a trail and disappear and never be found.
	Really?
	Well, and that's kind of the way it goes, because you only hear about these people for a couple days, a couple of reports.
	Once they're missing, and they're never found, you never hear about it.
	Well, maybe it's normal on TV.
	You know, the last guy in line disappears, just gets snatched away.
	It doesn't happen that way in real life, only you're saying it does.
	Talk about another case this year, June 9th, 2015, Chiricahua National Monument, jurisdiction of the National Park Service, a 44-year-old woman with the mental capacity of a 5-year-old is with her dad, who's a physician, and her mom.
	They're in the motor home of their dad, they stop at the monument, and the girl gets out with her mom and they go to the restroom.
	The mom goes to the restroom and so does the girl.
	The girl leaves early to go back to the motorhome.
	The dad's waiting there, not far away.
	She never comes back.
	Mom comes back.
	They said, well, let's look around.
	They look around.
	They can't find her.
	They call for a National Park Ranger and a search starts.
	Sure.
	Now, what's interesting about first of all, her name was Janet Castrogen.
	She's never been found.
	That was this year, June 9th.
	What's interesting about this, this is the same location.
	Okay, so she's mentally impaired, you've already said.
	One would imagine she could have wandered away.
	disappear on duty and never be found Paul Fubier disappeared. Really? Okay so she's
	mentally impaired you've already said one would imagine she could have
	wandered away one would not imagine she'd get very far and that if something
	awful happened fell if she fell or whatever obviously she would be found.
	Absolutely They bring in a series of canines and bloodhounds from different search and rescue organizations and they all say we can't find a scent trail.
	And the dogs had something to start with?
	Some article of clothing or something that they could, you know, grab the scent from and then go look?
	Absolutely.
	That is really, really weird.
	And the park ranger, what about him?
	He's Presumably something of a survivalist himself, or have some of those skills, yes?
	I wouldn't call him a survivalist at all.
	In fact, he was probably more the urban park ranger.
	Everything I read about him in the file, and I did get a file on him, it was about eight inches thick, and they did a huge investigation on him.
	There were allegations at the beginning that it was a voluntary disappearance, and like I said, this is the case where they refused to give his widow any benefits at all.
	She had to get an attorney and sue him in federal court and finally make him pay.
	It was unbelievable when you read the story.
	But no, he's never been found.
	Not anything at all?
	Not an article of clothing?
	Not bones?
	Not anything?
	Nothing.
	I don't see how that can be.
	Well, he walked off on a trail, was supposedly going to go check on something.
	Reports said that it was late in the afternoon.
	People saw him leave.
	He left.
	They went and searched the area later.
	They found nothing.
	Yeah, that is...
	It's just not within my realm of understanding to... I'm gonna have to try and process this.
	All right, David Polides is my guest.
	We've got a bit of a break coming up while I think all this over.
	Disappearing, I understand.
	Getting lost, I understand.
	Not finding a trace of the individual, I don't understand.
	We'll be back.
	We'll be back.
	Love.
	Get your ticket to ride by calling 1-952-CALL-ART.
	That's 1-952-225-5278.
	Well, that is our number.
	David Polides is here.
	Midnight in the Desert is a wild trip across the day's divisor.
	Get your ticket to ride by calling 1952.
	Call Art. That's 1952-225-5278.
	Well, that is our number. David Polides is here.
	We're talking about missing, people missing in national parks across America.
	People missing not just in, well, he or she wandered off and that was that.
	Well, actually, it is that.
	But there's no trace.
	There's no scent.
	There's no bones.
	There's no autopsy.
	Or, in the few cases there is, then a cause of death is apparently many times not found.
	So, David, welcome back.
	Somebody asks that you tell a story or tell me about some little girl who was actually fed berries by a wolf.
	Hello?
	There was a story a while back where a girl disappeared in the 1800s in Michigan and her dad and another guy were looking for her and as they walked up something jumped off a log into the water She was really a small girl, didn't have a good grasp on language yet because she was so small.
	And she said that, uh, wolf fed me berries.
	He asked where her hat was.
	Wolf ate it.
	What happened to your shoes?
	Wolf ate them.
	It was one of those stories that was fascinating, but you can't take it literally because of the limited language ability of a small child.
	So you don't really know what she might've been explaining.
	Um, okay.
	Well, that's weird enough.
	I take it she was she's still alive and well somewhere.
	I think that was I think she's passed on.
	It was in the 1800s.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	1800s.
	Okay.
	Oh, I'm sorry, 1800s.
	I didn't mean that part.
	OK.
	So how many cases, I mean, we've got the 44-year-old woman.
	We've got the park ranger.
	We've got how many other people in similar circumstances that just flat disappear?
	I mean, without a trace?
	July 10th of this year in Lemhi County, Idaho.
	Lemhi County is about a hundred miles due west of Yellowstone National Park and about a hundred miles, maybe 125 miles north of Twin Falls.
	It's in a very, very rural area.
	A dad, a mom, a two-year-old boy, grandma and grandpa, and another guy all go camping together into this remote area.
	They drive a dirt road, horrible road, for miles and miles to get into this lake area.
	And this lake sits in a giant bowl.
	Nobody's back there.
	It's really, really rural.
	Well, his name is Dior Koontz, Jr., two years old.
	His dad and his mom tell grandma and grandpa they're going to go take a walk.
	Grandma and grandpa maybe didn't hear it or something, but there's 15-20 minutes where nobody is watching this kid.
	And he disappears.
	And mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, everyone searches for him, can't find him.
	Now they get a hold of the Lemhi County Sheriff's.
	They search.
	They bring extra resources in.
	They search.
	Canine search.
	No scent trail.
	There's a really small creek.
	They go up and down that 10 times.
	They search the lake.
	Nothing.
	Make a very long story short, they ended up calling in the FBI and they helped in the search.
	Now, one thing I talk about is that in some of these cases, the FBI shows up and it's bizarre because there's no evidence of a crime.
	The FBI has protocol that on very small children with unusual disappearances, they will respond.
	FBI was there on this one.
	Now, I've told this story before and I'll say it again.
	Back in the late 1950s, early 1960s, there was a boy named David Scott, two years old.
	And he and his family took a vacation in Mono County on the east side of the Sierras.
	And they went into an area almost identical to where Dior Koontz and his family went to, except this was a little more people.
	There was a road going in.
	There was a couple of lakes.
	The family's inside their trailer.
	They see David.
	He's two.
	He's very small.
	And they come back out a minute later.
	He's gone.
	And again, this valley is really steep hills all the way around.
	It's not that far from Sequoia and Yosemite.
	It's all granite.
	It's rough.
	There's no way anyone's getting out of this little valley.
	That's the thought of law enforcement.
	Well, they call in the mountain rescue teams for the Marines and the Army, where they do training over on that end.
	And these guys start looking everywhere.
	And they cleared the valley.
	They were searching cars leaving Mono County in the trunks, everything.
	Eventually a sergeant and another guy start going up the side of one of these mountains on a series of switchbacks.
	And they go up the side of this mountain 3,000 feet.
	And they get to the top of the mountain, they go, hey, we're this far, we might as well keep walking.
	They go down a small valley, they go up the other side of another mountain, and behind a giant boulder, there is David Scott.
	Laying almost naked, no shoes, no shirt, no pants, a diaper, that's it.
	Wow.
	And I can guarantee, Art, if anyone who's had kids, that kid did not get there on his own.
	Of course not.
	Not that far.
	There's no way.
	And marks on his body?
	Well, that's what they asked the Marine that found him, and he said, you know, I'm not an expert on that, and I don't want to comment.
	And I did a huge archive search on this.
	The Sheriff's Department doesn't have the report anymore.
	And in the archives, there was never anything on the cause of death or anything about David and the disappearance other than the facts I just gave you.
	Now, I do tell people that the trail up the side of that mountain from where he was camping, there was nothing on the side of that mountain.
	It was a granite wall with a trail of switchbacks.
	So if he was standing on that mountain, anybody could see him walking the switchbacks going up, and he could look right down and see his parents.
	So it doesn't make sense.
	No, it sure doesn't.
	Boy, and it brings you right back to the, you know, the impossible brings you to the paranormal, or at least it eventually gets you there.
	and i'm not trying to jump there but you're not giving me much
	choice if it was a predator there would have been
	obvious signs of a predator even if it you know the body wasn't eaten
	there'd be marks everywhere it would be
	little boy would have been a mess These are recent.
	Here, let me try this.
	You've given me a lot of recent cases.
	Is there a cluster date wise or year wise as you look back?
	I mean, when you're trying to put together a puzzle like this, that's part of it, right?
	When did these things happen?
	Was there a cluster?
	So, in my books I explain this because at the back of every other book there's a complete list of all the missing from that book, the dates they went missing, the locations, states, etc.
	There's one thing about these disappearances is that if there were five of them in one summer, in one location, everyone would jump all over it.
	But there's a distinct lack of consecutive disappearances in one location.
	I call it the hopscotch effect.
	You know, it may happen in Yosemite now, And then it happens in Crater Lake National Park in a month, and then it may happen in Great Smoky Mountains National Park in another month.
	But having a series in a row in one location does not happen.
	Okay, numbers wise, if you look at the amount of The number of years that you've researched thus far, is there any way at all to say, you know what, in 1999 or 2000 we had a real peak of this, or in 2015 we're having a real peak of this, or are those records just not available?
	Probably the one location that sticks out more than anything else is from the late 1920s to the late 1940s.
	More young children in that age bracket between 2 and 8 disappeared in Pennsylvania than in any other time or any other location I've ever seen.
	Wow.
	And do you attach any meaning to that?
	So, one thing I like to do is I like to be a fact-oriented guy.
	And let the facts take you where you want to go.
	But I won't go out on that limb because I got to admit, I'm not an expert in all these different areas.
	And when I go out and next week, I'm going to go meet a family of one of these missing people, a recent one.
	I don't want them reading about me saying I am claiming some far out crypto subject did this because my credibility in front of that family is going to be trashed and they won't want to talk to me.
	I'll ask them to use the knowledge I have and use it to their benefit, but I don't want that compromised on a topic they know little or nothing about.
	Fair enough, but when you lay these cases out again and again and again and again with these facts that seem so impossible, For the rest of us, not to jump to these conclusions is rather difficult, because you just make it impossible.
	I mean, somebody just cannot disappear without a body being found, without a scent being around.
	Just gone.
	You might as well have called it, I don't know, not a trace for a one-one.
	anything else is just that because that's what it is not a trace of these
	people they just are as though they disappeared or they were heaven help us
	from saying it taken up like a cow by a UFO I don't know this is just you know
	go ahead one thing I don't do is I don't minimize anything anyone says and I have
	learned so much in six years from people talking to me and telling me their own
	thoughts and opinions about what's going on.
	I mean, I've had eight or nine, maybe 10 thesis length explanations from people who are 100% positive that they know what's going on here.
	Now, obviously, none of them are right, but the truth of the matter is, is that I've learned a lot from this because there's parts of all of their thoughts that do make sense.
	But then there's other parts that are completely impossible.
	And when I wrote the first book, Eastern and Western US came out almost simultaneously, you know, there was a certain level of evidence that you could look at.
	And as you keep going forward, you start to realize, well, what may have been applicable in the first book sure isn't applicable now because this tire that we're working at, there's like three spokes in that tire right now.
	And I'm guessing in four or five years, there's going to be more spokes in that tire that are going to cause much more of a conundrum in my thinking about what's really going on versus what I may have thought at that first book.
	Well, here's what I see.
	As you write book after book after book about national parks, the National Park Service is going to get less and less pleased with you because, of course, they depend on visitors for income, for their jobs, And when you hear these kinds of stories, it doesn't exactly make you want to strap on a pack and head into the woods.
	As I've stated in every interview I've ever done, and I'll be glad to say it here, is I encourage everybody to go to the national park.
	And I say, don't ever walk alone on a trail.
	Personally, I always carry a gun when I'm in a national park.
	I always carry a personal transponder device.
	And in all the research, in all the cases I've ever read, Art, I've never found a case where somebody disappeared carrying a gun and a personal transponder device.
	Good advice.
	And carrying a gun in a national park is perfectly legal, yes?
	As long as you have a carry concealed weapons license that's applicable to the state that the national park's in, you can carry it in the park.
	Um, all right.
	I don't know what to say.
	Hit me with a couple of more cases.
	You've certainly given me very recent ones.
	And so I guess this is, how else do you say it?
	It's ongoing.
	It's still going on now, right?
	And that's what I want people to understand.
	I mean, when you read the books, these are historical lessons.
	I mean, I have cases going back to 1752 that match this profile.
	So it's happened a long time ago.
	It's still happening today.
	And I always get asked, they say, well, Dave, is it happening more calm?
	Is it more common today than it was three years ago?
	And the best I can tell, it is.
	And I don't think it's because the awareness of everyone is there.
	I don't think that the news are reporting it any better.
	I honestly think there are more cases today that fit this profile.
	And it's disconcerting to say the least.
	I wonder if it is a worldwide phenomenon.
	Absolutely.
	And you say that because?
	I've got cases in nine countries.
	Probably not the time or funds or ability to go and investigate each one, but nine countries, huh?
	Yes, sir.
	Okay.
	This is going to really come out of left field, and maybe you've never heard of it, David, but I got a really weird email not very long ago from somebody who said that they're beginning to encounter, this is going to sound funny, staircases in the middle of national parks.
	Staircases.
	Now, why would a staircase be in a national park?
	I don't know, up against the side of a hill or whatever.
	And I read that on the air, not knowing what it meant or why the person sent it to me other than they saw staircases.
	And then I got an email from somebody who had a photograph of staircases going down the highway on a flatbed.
	Now, it was said that the National Park Rangers were told about these staircases and where they exist were told not to touch them, not to Pay attention to them.
	I have no idea what that means.
	I don't know whether you've ever heard of that before.
	Have you?
	So somebody sent me a link to where this was originally posted.
	And I heard both sides of this.
	I heard some people saying it was a hoax.
	I heard some people saying it was true.
	So I really don't know what to believe about it.
	But with the number of people in the woods that have a cell phone, you would think that there would be a whole lot of pictures of these floating around if it was true.
	You would think?
	Um, you certainly would think so.
	It's not radio, but it is what's next.
	Exclusively on the Dark Matter Digital Network, Midnight in the Desert, with Art Bell.
	Now, here's Art.
	Here I am again.
	Uh, David Blades is my guest.
	And David, let me ask you a couple of things they're asking me.
	Josh says, ask him about the case of Dennis Martin in the Smoky Mountains and what he was told by Dennis's father about the FBI agent on the case.
	Does that resonate?
	Oh yeah, this is a lengthy story.
	We have time.
	I hadn't planned on talking about it, but I'll be glad to.
	Okay.
	Dennis was a six-year-old boy.
	And he and his dad, his grandpa, and his brother went up to a location in Great Smoky Mountains National Park called Spence Field.
	It was Father's Day in the early 60s and they were camping out and during the day the kids and the grandpa and the dad were playing and having fun.
	They were sitting at a corner of the park up near the edge of the forest in this big field and they were running around and this other family comes up to them And asked Mr. Martin if the kids could play together.
	Sure.
	And he said, absolutely, this is great.
	And the other man leans down and introduces himself, and his last name was Martin as well.
	Which is quite a coincidence.
	It is.
	And the kids start playing together, and they decide they're going to play hide and seek.
	And, you know, one guy's looking, and all the kids run off and hide.
	And Mr. Martin said that he watched his son Dennis Go behind a tree right at the edge of the meadow.
	And after everybody said, come out, Dennis didn't come out.
	Mr. Martin said he got up, never took his eyes off the tree, walked towards it.
	His son wasn't there.
	Well, right next to this tree was the Appalachian Trail.
	He said that he ran nonstop for two miles down that trail and never found his son.
	Came back, told his dad to go down the hill, get park rangers, And that started one of the biggest searches in that part of the country ever.
	And it also, that afternoon, it started to rain.
	And it rained there nonstop for a week and a half.
	So during the search efforts, the FBI sent an agent to the park to quote unquote monitor the case.
	And he teamed up with another park ranger that monitored the case.
	Now, at that time, after a couple days, The Green Berets show up via helicopter into the park.
	They land, they get out, and they set up a base with their own communications.
	The park rangers come over and say, hey, we could team up together, we could work since we know the park, blah, blah, blah.
	They said, nope, we work alone.
	And contrary to what you will hear out there by some people, there was never anything definitive about who called the Green Berets in.
	Because I have a report that's about four inches thick, and I've gone through it six times, and nobody wants to stake a claim into who called them and why they were there.
	Two times, I've filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the Department of the Army, asking for the orders for that Green Beret team on that date.
	Two times, Art, I never even got a response.
	It wasn't a denial.
	Did somebody have a very close, high-placed friend in the military?
	If they did, it's not in any report I ever saw.
	So the Green Beret were there for about a week.
	They pull out.
	Mr. Martin never left the park for six weeks.
	Now, as Dennis was disappearing, unbeknownst to anybody at Spence Field, there's a family that's at the bottom of the park that drives in, goes up to a park ranger, and says, we want to go to a location where we can see a bear.
	And the rangers tell him to go to this place called Rowan's Creek.
	So mom, dad, kids start walking up this pretty rural area, not a real defined trail, up this slow canyon.
	And as they're getting up there, they hear a scream defined as a deafening scream.
	Now, the last name of this family is pretty coincidental as well.
	Their last name was Key, K-E-Y.
	And this is the key part of the case.
	As they're walking up this valley, The younger son says, Dad, look up there.
	I see a bear on the side of the hill.
	The father looks up on the hill and says, No, son, that's not a bear.
	That looks like a man and he's hiding behind the trees from us.
	And the family sees this and this thing is darting behind the tree.
	You can't see him very well and eventually takes off.
	Well, the family goes home, doesn't know a kid's missing.
	Next day in the Knoxville Times, front page story about a boy disappeared on Spence Field at the exact, well, you know, maybe 45 minutes before these guys walked up this valley.
	So Mr. Key calls the Park Service and says, I think I may have something for you and I will come to the park and show you the location where I saw it and we can see if it makes any sense.
	Well, the supervising detective for the Park Service at that time calls him back and says, no, don't come to the park.
	We'll come and we'll meet you halfway.
	So Mr. Key meets him.
	Now this is unusual because when you're a cop, you want to see what the people saw, where they saw it.
	You bet.
	So this makes no sense.
	And they met and that was the end of it.
	Well, a Knoxville Times reporter happened to hear about this meeting and hear about the observation from the Key family from a family member, not even a source related to the park.
	And he goes over to Mr. Martin and asks him if he's heard about this.
	Mr. Martin goes, no, no one's ever told me about this.
	He goes over to the search and rescue people and goes, do you know about this?
	And they go, yeah.
	But it's not relative to you, don't worry about it.
	He goes, no, you promised me everything I would be told.
	And they go, yeah, but it's impossible.
	The timelines don't make sense.
	Well, Dwight McCarter, who's still alive, was the chief tracker for the Park Service.
	And Mr. Martin went to him and told him, this is the time, this is the place, could it be?
	And McCarter said, yeah, it's possible.
	He goes, why don't you and me make that hike tomorrow and see how fast we can make it.
	The next day, Mr. Martin and McCarter make that hike in plenty of time.
	And Mr. Mr. Martin knew then that the Park Service was holding something from him and wasn't telling him the whole story during the entire search effort.
	Make a longer story very short here.
	At the end of six weeks, eventually everybody pulls out.
	They don't find anything.
	Contrary to what you may read somewhere, there was never any evidence Dennis was anywhere.
	They essentially found nothing to prove he was anywhere in the area they were searching.
	So about three years ago, I went to Knoxville with another investigator and we went right to Mr. Martin's front door and we knocked on the door.
	He's living in the same house he was when his son disappeared.
	He comes to the front door and I said, Mr. Martin, you're looking at the guy probably who knows more about your son's case than anybody but you.
	I came all the way from California.
	I just want to talk to you for a few minutes.
	And he said, Dave, my wife and I, I promise never to talk about this again.
	It's ruined our lives.
	And I said, I've come all this way.
	Just give me 15 minutes.
	He goes, you got it.
	He steps out onto the porch and we had a very enlightening conversation.
	One that brought tears to my eyes.
	I knew this man had been lied to incessantly by the park service.
	All right, hold it, hold it right there. That's really a good hook.
	15-minute conversation that changes the life. Fascinating stuff. Inexplicable stuff. I'm Art Bell.
	I hear the drums echoing tonight.
	From the Kingdom of Nye in the High Desert.
	If you'd like to call, if you have a question.
	If you don't, I can't imagine you wouldn't.
	please bring ourselves at one nine five two two two five fifty two seventy eight
	that's one nine five two call parts alright i will begin
	to open the phone lines now uh... if you'd like to call to have a question if you don't
	i can't imagine you wouldn't public line
	area code nine five two two two five five two seven eight the uh...
	the way to get in by skype in north america is MITD51
	All you do is go to Skype and add us as a contact.
	MITD-51.
	Internationally, MITD-55.
	That's midnight in the desert.
	MITD, not case sensitive, 55, internationally.
	Once again, here's David Bleeds.
	David, you were on the porch with this man who finally granted you, what, 15 minutes to talk about this case.
	What did he say?
	So, there's two of us talking to Mr. Martin, and he said, Dave, you know, you've read the reports, you know that they lied to me, and they continue to lie to me today.
	And he said that that timeline about what the Key family saw and my son's disappearance, he goes, it worked because I walked it with McCarter.
	And he said it was obvious that the FBI and the National Park Service didn't want me to know about the Key family, and that's why they kept it away from me.
	And I did later interview McCarter about all this, and he substantiated everything Mr. Martin said.
	And one thing I always ask people when I'm interviewing them is I say, so is there anything about this incident that I didn't talk to you about that I should really know about?
	Right.
	And I said, I said, and he looks at me, he goes, absolutely there is.
	He goes, you wrote about a series of disappearances in the park and around the park at that timeframe.
	I said, yes.
	And he says, and you wrote that an FBI agent monitored all of those cases.
	I said, that's correct.
	His name was Jim Reich.
	He goes, do you know whatever happened to Mr. Reich?
	Or Agent Reich?
	I said no.
	He said he committed suicide.
	Oh.
	And we confirmed that a month later by talking to another agent that worked with him.
	And the only thing he would confirm is that Reich did commit suicide.
	Um.
	Tell me about the lies.
	I mean, yes, there were lies told.
	What were they?
	So for starters, they never told Mr. Martin about the Key family.
	When he found out about the Key family, they said that the timeline between the disappearance and what they saw didn't fit.
	He asked about why the Green Berets were there.
	They didn't tell him.
	Uh, he asked about what Agent Reich knew about other cases.
	They wouldn't tell him.
	He asked him if there was any evidence that his son was abducted.
	They said no.
	Well, when he finally got a chance to meet the Key family and ask them about what they saw, the family said, well, we saw this look like a person up on the side of that mountain, died in between trees, and it had something on its shoulder.
	You're describing every parent's absolute nightmare.
	I want you to think about this.
	Mr. Martin is in a position where he has to trust the one organization that's going to help him.
	Can you imagine living with this for a lifetime and knowing that they've lied to you, they've hidden the truth, and they won't help you?
	And there's no explanation for the suicide at all, other than what we can imagine from knowing about the case.
	That's all I know.
	In how many cases that you've investigated, David, has a medical examiner actually been
	able to come up with a cause of death?
	There's been more than a few, and usually it comes out to being hypothermia.
	I would think perhaps stroke and heart attacks, that kind of thing as well, people not used to the exertion.
	Actually, I've never seen a stroke as a determination, and there may be a heart attack, but I honestly don't remember one.
	The creature or the being that you described, or was described to you, I guess is more accurate, you know, a lot of people are going to think that's Bigfoot.
	And that's the place where a lot of people like to go.
	And you've got to understand that not only did I talk to Mr. Martin, but then I went back and we interviewed McCarter twice, the head tracker for the Park Service.
	And I said, hey, is all of this true, what Mr. Martin said?
	He looked me in the eye and looked the other guy in the eye and he says, it's all true.
	I said, then what was it that Mr. or that the Key family saw on the side of that mountain?
	And he said, a couple months before Dennis disappeared, there was a park ranger that stopped somebody in the park and they got in a fight and the park ranger was beaten pretty bad.
	And this was before the park rangers carried guns, even before law enforcement guys in the parks carried guns.
	And he says, Dave, There was a group of people at the time, and he goes, there probably still is, that live off the grid, that wear furs over their shoulders, that live in the park, that we can't control, and they do petty crimes.
	And he goes, this is what probably took Dennis, but nobody wants to admit it.
	No, it's not a petty crime.
	Or even close.
	For sure.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	What about signs of foul play?
	I mean, at these various sites where these people disappeared, obviously when law enforcement of whatever sort goes in, they're going to look for any signs of foul play at all.
	Not just since.
	Sometimes the dogs can do it, sometimes the dogs can't do it.
	More times than not, they can.
	But, I mean, they're going to look for other signs of foul play, right?
	Absolutely.
	Nothing?
	Nothing.
	Many times the They bring in enough search and rescue people that they're walking shoulder to shoulder through these areas.
	Right.
	And they want to make sure they don't miss anything.
	But again, I want to take people back to the mentality, and this isn't a diss on the search and rescue people.
	They are not law enforcement people.
	When they're looking for somebody in the field, they're not looking for evidence of a crime.
	They're looking for a missing person.
	There's a big difference.
	They could be trampling right over evidence that may be important to me with my knowledge base.
	But they don't really care because they just want to find the missing persons.
	They're going home and that's it.
	But they're never found.
	There's no bodies.
	There's no bones.
	There's no DNA.
	There's nothing.
	They're just gone.
	This is what's so weird about it.
	And in the cases where they have been found alive, you're telling me and I'm curious how many cases this would be where they are found and they can't remember what happened.
	Well, there's a few.
	There was a case out of Arkansas where a woman and her brother, I think it was, were walking around the woods.
	They got separated.
	She wasn't seen for several days.
	She eventually is found by search and rescue.
	She comes out and she said that she was hiding during the time she was missing because there were people in the woods that were stalking her.
	And at the beginning, she said that she would walk up on them, hiding behind a bush, and say, what are you doing?
	And they would hide even further.
	And the physician that examined her said, no, she doesn't have psychosis.
	This is what she really said happened.
	And she made it out alive after several days.
	She lost a lot of weight.
	But that's just one story that I can think of off the top of my head where somebody survived and told something pretty bizarre.
	And that's pretty bizarre.
	All right.
	Let's take a few calls.
	Let's try it.
	Debbie on Skype.
	Hello.
	Hi, Art.
	Can you hear me OK?
	I hear you.
	Hi, this is Debbie in Arlington.
	Hi, David.
	I'm enjoying the program tonight.
	Thank you for taking my call.
	I have a couple of questions.
	It kind of came to my mind.
	I was thinking about a case that has been going around on Facebook, and a young man came up missing in Antonio, Colorado, and he was from Chattanooga, Tennessee.
	And the Feds were brought in on this case, and he went missing back in the mountains back there.
	He was at a dude branch and came up missing, and he was with two friends.
	He was only 19.
	Okay.
	I kind of have my doubts that he just disappeared.
	I mean, the two friends probably seen something.
	Did they see anything?
	And I think that might be the case with a lot of these people.
	Did they see anything?
	I'm sorry?
	The two friends, did they say anything?
	Uh, no, no, no information has been released on what their statements were.
	Like I said, the feds have come in on it, but you know, there's been no word on, you know, where he went or he just disappeared.
	But my point really is, I think the friends had something to do with it.
	And I think in a lot of these cases, and I don't know, but just listening to what you're saying, it seems like if you want to kill your husband or your wife, I mean, what a better place to go?
	These people don't do their jobs.
	I'm sure a simple Google search could turn that up at any point that, you know, I mean, nobody gives a darn over there.
	What happens?
	Okay, David?
	These aren't human to human crimes.
	There's no evidence of anything other than maybe this Martin case where there was a human involved.
	There's no scent trail.
	There's no tracks leaving the area.
	Sometimes professional trackers are brought in.
	There's no evidence that the person even left the region.
	So I know people will regularly go to this place in their mind because it's a comfort place because what I'm explaining is very uncomfortable But I have never had anybody who's read the stories and come back and thought a human did it.
	Ever.
	No, it doesn't.
	It really doesn't make sense.
	And the sightings that there have been, now you told me about the one that to me sounded like Bigfoot, but what do I know?
	Have there been other similar weird sightings like that?
	You know, there are those random times where small children say things that Could be interpreted many different ways and I don't put a lot of emphasis on it because there's really no physical evidence that those things happened other than their statements.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Lots of calls.
	You're on the air with David Paludis.
	Hi.
	Hi Art.
	Hi David.
	Thank you for taking my call.
	I'm one of the people who read stories about the stairs and the forest, but I guess my question involves different stories.
	It seems like There are a lot of kids who go missing but then are sometimes found a couple days later that recall stories about either fuzzy men or people with disfigured faces, and I'm curious to know if David has encountered this or if he has any inclination as to what this might be, if maybe there are people in the woods who are, like you said, off the grid, or could it just be that maybe, like, these kids touch a psychedelic mushroom and then they start seeing things and then they're found three days later?
	Thank you.
	I've read thousands of case reports.
	I've never heard of anything like that.
	Okay.
	Now one thing Art, he did touch on, these small kids that are missing for a couple days.
	In that David Scott case where I said he went up 3,000 feet, I have more than probably two or three dozen cases of two-year-old, three-year-old, four-year-old kids that disappeared and were found thousands of feet uphill from where they disappeared from.
	Or many, many miles from the location they disappeared from.
	So, the idea that these kids got from A to B on their own, once you read the facts, it's impossible.
	Impossible is a word.
	That's what keeps drawing people back, I think, too, including me, to the paranormal aspect of this, because there's no rational explanation otherwise.
	None.
	I mean, there simply isn't.
	These kids can't do that.
	Well, there's a survivor man, Les Stroud.
	He's read the books.
	We actually interviewed him for the trailer for our movie.
	Yeah, I know his show.
	Yeah.
	And he said factually, he said, hey, Dave, there's no way I could even do some of these feats that supposedly these two and three year old kids did in their time frame.
	And he said, you know what?
	You lay down the facts.
	You don't come up with theories.
	And some people have a tough time with facts because they're cold and they're hard and it's tough to argue them.
	But when there's a story in one of them about a two-year-old kid at a ranch in Oregon, he's found 13 hours later, eight miles away and two mountain ranges away.
	His story?
	True story.
	Was he found alive or dead?
	He was found nearly frozen in a creek bed he lived.
	So many stories.
	Here's one.
	I generally don't read emails, but about a year ago, a 10-year-old autistic boy went missing from the family camp in a park either in Oregon or Washington.
	He was right near his father, who turned for a minute or two to attend to the campfire.
	He turned back.
	The boy was gone.
	Called.
	Searched.
	Nothing.
	Huge search team.
	Spent three days looking, all yelling his name and worried as the nights were very cold.
	He was not wearing a jacket.
	On the third day, one of the searchers, who had combed an area over and over, calling the child, decided he'd backtrack up a trail one more time, calling out his name, and was thunderstruck.
	There was the boy.
	He seemed to come from nowhere, standing on the side of the trail.
	He called to him, but he never came.
	Walked up to him, picked him up, walked down the trail to the search center.
	I saw the boy on TV, and he was in remarkable condition.
	He was on a gurney and smiling just as big as he could be, waving to everybody, enjoying the attention, happy to see everybody, wasn't injured, not suffering.
	For all three days in the forest.
	Never any follow-up.
	It was astounding.
	Sounds like one of your stories, except it turned out well.
	Exactly.
	Pretty weird.
	Pretty weird stuff.
	Nathan, you're on the air with David.
	Hi.
	Nathan on Skype.
	Going once, going twice.
	Go on, Michael.
	Michael on Skype.
	We'll give you a try.
	Roswell, sir.
	It's Michael from Virginia.
	Hi there.
	David, you mentioned earlier in the show the difficulty you've had dealing with the U.S.
	Park Service and FOIA requests.
	Have you contacted either your Congressman or the Department of Interior's Inspector General for help in getting your FOIA request approved?
	Also, David, what's your personal theory for these disappearances?
	Thanks, Art, and hello to Belga.
	Okay, I don't think we're going to get a personal theory.
	We can try.
	What about the FOIA thing?
	So the Inspector General, to the best of my knowledge, plays no role in appealing or approving this.
	There's an appeal process and I've got overturned.
	I mean, it's been upheld twice that I didn't get the report.
	All they have to say is it's an open case and because of investigation reasons, they don't want to release it.
	And these are just straight missing persons cases.
	Whereas another national park would give me the exact same circumstances and give me the case on a missing person, Yosemite will never give up a case on anything.
	And so there's no consistency at all in the Park Service.
	All right, might as well give it a try.
	I mean, surely as you have investigated these cases, Tons more than we've discussed tonight. That's where you
	must have some personal Hunch the right word
	But I guess you probably don't want to take a shot do you So as I stated earlier what I may have thought at the end
	of the first book We've run two marathons as we get to the fifth book now
	So and I have two or three spokes to the wheel Do I?
	Do I have any positive evidence, physical evidence of what's done it?
	No.
	Now, ladies and gentlemen, there's a group of people that are sitting on the periphery that are just waiting for me to say something so that they could pounce on and destroy the reputation of my organization.
	Sure.
	I've stated nothing but facts in five books.
	And I've told people, to the best of my knowledge, what to do if they go into the woods.
	Carry a firearm.
	Carry a personal transponder.
	Don't walk alone.
	Don't let your kids go out of your sight and keep everyone close.
	Now, the reality is, is if I was sure that I knew what was happening, I would step up and say it.
	I'm not going to compromise my own ethics and guess Because my guest at the first book wouldn't have been my guest today, and my guest today won't be the one I'm going to give you two years from now.
	Alright, your guest, maybe you can talk about this, your guest after the first book, what would that have been?
	It's irrelevant.
	Yeah, I do understand, and it sounds to me as though Your guess would be somewhere in the paranormal world, and if I were you, I also wouldn't want to make it.
	So, I guess we wait for evidence.
	But with the paranormal, a lot of times that just never comes.
	Never.
	Anyway, um, good.
	There's a lot of calls for you, obviously.
	You know, everything's filling up, people want to know about this.
	As I said earlier, it's every parent's nightmare.
	And hearing these things, I don't think it's going to, despite what you said about carrying a gun location device, I don't think it's going to encourage people to go into the national parks.
	And I can't imagine the national park people are at all happy with you.
	So let's keep taking calls.
	Hello there.
	You're on the air with David.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Yes, hello, this is Dean.
	First off, I want to start off, there's so many interesting questions I want to ask.
	David, I'm a USF alumnus also, and I know that the Jesuits and their colleges train us to be fact-finders, A, and B, to give service to our fellow human beings.
	So I thank you for doing this, even if you are writing books.
	I would like to get to the bottom of this.
	I, in 1980, was in Big Sur area, hiking with an American Indian friend of mine.
	We were about 12 miles back on a very narrow trail that, you know, way down into God knows what in a canyon on one side and way up very steep, very bushy.
	There was some kind of a spring 12 miles in.
	Anyhow, we became separated.
	I told him, for an Indian, he sure didn't walk very fast.
	I went ahead and you know I did break the law because during that period we had the zebra killings going on in the San Francisco area and I did have a .22 pistol with me and he did also have a firearm.
	We weren't there to cause any havoc.
	We were only to shoot them if we got into trouble and you know I know people shouldn't be doing this but if you're responsible you keep it out of sight maybe it does help you.
	But when I came to one part of the trail Before dark as I was headed back out toward Highway 1, I did get a really strange feeling.
	I'm not someone who identifies as psychic or anything.
	A very odd feeling as I went into a bend that was very dark and just something told me something was watching me or someone.
	I moved very quickly to get out of there.
	Anyhow, back after dark when my friend came into camp, I happened to mention that and he said that he was in the same area.
	And being a Native American, he thought perhaps an animal was watching us.
	But I can say that when I brought this topic up to some teenagers that I work with, because sometimes I will talk about the UFO stuff that my community is into, I was shocked where a young man about 16 talked about where it had happened to him recently when he was a little kid a few years back, where he was in a park.
	He went missing.
	And they found him the next day, and he said he didn't know where he was.
	He said, I don't know what happened to me.
	So there's something creepy going on when people will admit to it, and I don't know what the answer is, but you say you don't want people to break the law, but I'm telling you, next time I go in camp and I'm bringing a pistol with me.
	Yeah, I can't imagine not doing that, and that indeed is your advice, David.
	Take a gun with you if you have to.
	I guess better to break the law, if you have to, than end up just another one of David's stories.
	So, let's go to Bryson on Skype.
	Bryson, hello.
	Hello, Bryson.
	Yes, hello.
	Yes, sir.
	Can you hear me?
	I do.
	Okay, I was going to say that right when Derrick Liu King and Michael Cochini disappeared, I was actually hiking up to Elk Mollet, and then there was a third person who disappeared at that time, and it was real weird.
	We'd hiked to Elk Mollet, my friend Chelsea and me, and then we hiked on up to higher up in the mountains, and one of the, like, Restaurant employees was interviewing someone and I thought we were eavesdropping on an interview for a job because they asked, well, do you have any medical conditions that would hinder and this and that?
	And it turns out a third person disappeared during that weird time.
	And I know that the, um, and it's in the Smoky Mountains National Park.
	Um, that, that, um, looking guy was never found.
	And Michael Caccini, they just recently think that they have found his remains, maybe.
	So there you go, another one.
	At least they found remains.
	In that case, I guess they won't know until DNA tests are done.
	But in so many of the cases that David describes, there's not even traces left to pull DNA from.
	It's just a vanishing.
	These people are gone.
	I wish I could reach and think of something to say here that would be logical, but there can be no logical answers to the facts that you've laid down, David.
	Let me try a different approach with you.
	Since you're unwilling to venture forth an opinion or a guess on your own, and I don't blame you for that, do you have anybody who's responded to all these books you've written Who you consider may have at least a pretty good idea of what may be going on?
	No.
	No?
	No.
	Alright.
	I mean, I've heard, you gotta know Art, I've heard them all.
	Everything you can think of, I've heard it.
	And when you start to get down into the minutia of it, none of it, there's one factor in all of it that doesn't make sense depending on The suspect that they pick.
	And I'm not trying to be evasive, but it's just a lot of people think that there could be multiple things going on.
	I mean, talk about spokes in the wheel.
	Tonight, we're just talking about those rural disappearances.
	Well, most recently, in the last 15 months, I've committed my time to looking at urban disappearances.
	Namely, college-age men and some women that have disappeared in a university setting and were found dead in a river, pond, creek, something like that.
	And what's been unusual about that is that the profile points that I've identified with you tonight, almost all of them that could transfer to that setting did.
	Many times the coroners can't find a cause of death, or they'll say it's hypothermia, or they'll say maybe it's drowning.
	There's many, many instances that I've documented where the coroner say, the person disappeared January 1st, they found him March 1st, they've been gone for 60 days, but they haven't been in the water for 60 days.
	We can only confirm that they've been in the water based on the physical attributes the body shows.
	They've only been in the water for five days.
	Right.
	Oh, the coroner can usually tell them pretty much Exactly how long they've been in the water.
	There are pretty good telltale signs.
	But you're saying in a lot of cases they're gone for months and then they end up being a floater.
	Correct.
	All right.
	Hi, you're on the air with David.
	Hello?
	Yes, sir.
	Go ahead.
	Yes, sir.
	Sir, my name is Justin.
	I am a sheriff's deputy detective with a local sheriff's office in Florida.
	Okay.
	And I specialize in agricultural rural crimes, and I represent an organization that is made up of agricultural detectives all over the state of Florida.
	We get together and we meet and do training once a month, and then once a year we do a big seminar.
	And I've been trying to get ahold of Mr. Pelaez, and I'd like to know if he'd be willing to come in and teach our guys about this.
	I mean, these are the kind of guys that if a missing child, a missing person happens, we're unseen.
	And we're involved.
	They'll bring us in from other counties.
	We'll bring in the four wheelers, the SWAT buggies, the airboats.
	And we're also the kind of guys that we can take a case that started out as a missing person.
	And if we notice all the signs that there's something up, this is more serious, we can decide, hey, this is now a crime scene.
	Don't touch the body.
	Bring in the technicians.
	We're going to turn this into a crime scene now.
	All right.
	All right.
	That's quite enough.
	Let's stop there for a moment.
	David, Do you do that sort of thing?
	Are you called in to talk to law enforcement about the kind of cases that you've been covering?
	Well, in the past, I made a presentation in front of the largest search and rescue organization in the world, NASR, and I spoke exactly about the things we're talking about tonight.
	If people want to get a hold of me, you can go to my website, CANAM, like Canadian American, C-A-N-A-M, missing.com, and there's a contact Well, persistence pays.
	I'm sure he gets a lot of email.
	through that.
	Okay.
	All right, call it.
	Give that a try.
	I had sent several emails through that and never got a response.
	Well, persistence pays.
	I'm sure he gets a lot of email.
	In fact, how do you handle all that, David?
	It's laborious.
	We have a policy.
	We will respond to everyone's email, and I can tell you, we work our butts off doing it, but I think we do.
	If I miss something, I'm sorry, but we do.
	All of us.
	All right.
	When another case occurs, and at the rate they're going, there's going to be another one, obviously, and you go to the Park Rangers to I have never and I would never do that.
	Oh?
	in their investigation because it's another case of the same kind you've
	No.
	been following are you going to get in uh... any cooperation or are you
	going to meet with very very stiff
	resistance i have never and i would never do that
	law enforcement people and search and rescue people don't need help
	and i think that
	the general mentality is is that the reason they're there they know a lot more than you
	you.
	And at the early signs of a disappearance, it's really hard to tell what the true facts are.
	Sometimes it takes weeks.
	Sometimes it takes months.
	Sometimes it takes the family reaching out to me to say, hey, somebody told us about you.
	These are the facts.
	Does it fit?
	So, no, I would never, ever do that, because I know the response I'd get.
	Okay.
	Whoever's next, it's your turn on the phone with David.
	Hi.
	Good morning, Mark.
	Good morning, David.
	It's Scott in San Diego.
	I am somewhat mystified at the notion that first there are no comprehensive lists of these disappearances, and then all of a sudden, for tens of thousands of dollars, you can get your hot little hands on these lists.
	One of the other callers touched on this, the idea of getting in touch with your U.S.
	Senators or Congressional Representatives.
	Another step which I've found to be effective when you get roadblocked by an agency is to research the Congresspersons or Senators who have oversight capacity over these agencies and contacting them because See, it's easy to say no to a regular human being or even a reporter, okay, of these agencies, but they are very reluctant to say no to a congressman or a senator, especially one who's on an oversight committee.
	There is that.
	So has he tried this or thought of trying this?
	Because that seems to be a good end run.
	Well, he's right, David.
	When you get stubborn people, In the federal government, generally going to Congress or a senator, if you can get them to help, gets rather immediate attention.
	You would think so.
	I went to a congressman on a case involving a girl who disappeared in Yosemite, Stacey Arras.
	She disappeared over 30 years ago.
	She was 14 years old at the time.
	She lived in a city next to me when I lived in California.
	She lived in Saratoga, California.
	Right.
	I was denied that case.
	The special agent handling the case said, it hasn't been touched in 12 years.
	There are no suspects.
	There is nothing new, but you, I'll quote him, you will never see this case.
	I said, why?
	He said, you will never see it.
	So I filed an FOIA.
	I was denied.
	I appealed it.
	I was denied.
	I spent a week doing a formal presentation and documentation to my congressman.
	I was denied.
	And the congressman came back and said, don't get, don't touch it.
	You'll never get it.
	We were, we approached the park service about it and they told us we'll never see it.
	I said, they told you the same thing?
	Yep.
	And nobody ever expanded on don't touch it.
	You won't see it.
	You'll never see it.
	That was it.
	That was it.
	I know three other people out there that have read the books and thought, well, I could get that.
	And they all write to me later on and go, wow, you're right.
	They won't give me anything.
	That is just so weird.
	Again, it would lead me back into the, for some people, the unthinkable.
	Why would they tell you?
	You'll never see it.
	Don't touch it.
	You'll never get close to it.
	We're not going to let you have anything.
	For what reason?
	I can only think of one.
	And I guess we shouldn't bring that up.
	This is midnight.
	You know that ghost is me.
	And I will never be set free.
	As long as I'm a ghost, you can't see.
	Coming to you at the speed of light in the darkness.
	This is midnight.
	In the desert with Art Bell.
	with Art Bellow.
	Now, here's Art.
	David Blitis is with us.
	I hope I'm getting that name right.
	I'm trying.
	David, I know as a parent, if I had a child That disappeared, just disappeared, as you have been describing these disappearances.
	I would not rest for all my, the rest of my life, until I had some sort of resolution to it.
	I mean, without a body, without a trace, these people seem to be gone.
	And I can't imagine parents giving up.
	So I'm sure you've run into that, right?
	Oh, absolutely.
	Imagine that you're at the location where your son or daughter disappeared, and you have to make the decision to leave.
	You're essentially giving up.
	I mean, I've met a few of these people, and it just destroys you as a human being, just as you described.
	Yes.
	A parent would never give up.
	They would always be thinking that Little Johnny would show up suddenly, smiling, like Little Story, I read you.
	But that doesn't happen.
	So these people are left with absolutely nothing.
	Even in the worst of cases, usually, a body is finally found, and there's some sort of closure, bad as it may be, you know, as please find out it was, there's some sort of closure.
	But with nothing, That's a hard life to imagine.
	All right.
	Next, Kansas City, I think you're on the air.
	Hi, Art and David.
	How are you?
	Fine.
	A couple things, Art.
	I could probably talk to you until you go off the air, but I'm the former president of a missing persons foundation here in Missouri that was created in honor of two children that were murdered that were missing for over three years.
	I went through a lot of extensive training.
	We actually created and established a group here.
	In conjunction with local law enforcement as well as county and and they put us through some extensive training had crime scene guys come in I I noticed the deputy called a few minutes ago and he was asking about about helping everything and believe it or not when somebody says that the police don't need your help they really do there's this is just so unorganized throughout the whole country I know like locally here we we search for people local Thank goodness for an organization like ours, but you can go to the next jurisdiction over and they're scrambling.
	What do we do?
	What do we do?
	You know, getting to this national parks thing, I can recall a case, I don't remember the person's name, that wasn't missing in Arizona.
	Parked his car, went hiking, was missing for a year or two.
	They finally found his remains because people were persistent in searching, but you get out in those isolated areas, you don't have cell service, And just like a small town where I live, we've been out searching for people and we've grid searched wooded areas.
	You would not believe the amount of homeless people that we encounter while we're out there.
	Let me ask you a question if I might.
	With the number of searches you've done, how many times have you come up, I mean completely empty, something that would fit the criterion that Dave has been talking about?
	We've come up empty, however, remains were eventually recovered in a body of water.
	In one particular instance.
	Another instance, still missing.
	So, but the circumstances are much different.
	It's not National Parks.
	There were some really disturbing issues that led up to the disappearance of a very small child.
	Well, David's investigation now has gone even past the National Parks and into more urban areas.
	I'm interested in asking David a question regarding that.
	Yes.
	And he may know the answer to that.
	You get into jurisdictional issues when you go on national property.
	However, I know missing persons reports can still be filed by family members and such.
	Who actually goes?
	Now I know, for example, like a lot of the times the FBI won't get involved unless it crosses a state line or there are circumstances that actually push it to To be pursued by the federal level because of maybe something that they've discovered that says, hey, this is a federal crime.
	But who actually takes jurisdiction on park property at that point?
	Just if it's a local case, it's not something that's crossed the state line.
	There's nothing suspicious.
	They just simply went missing in a national park.
	David?
	It's all national park.
	It's their jurisdiction.
	They have the police department.
	They have the authority.
	They take it.
	Is their department actually trained to handle an investigation like that, just like a local law enforcement
	agency would be?
	I kind of look at a park ranger...
	Their law enforcement guys...
	Go ahead, I'm sorry.
	No.
	So don't think about a normal park ranger.
	They have a law enforcement branch that are national park rangers that have been trained by the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
	They're better trained than most police officers in medium-sized towns across the nation.
	They have a hierarchy.
	They're very competent people.
	Then, they have special agents.
	Just like FBI agents, they have special agents that are detectives that are the follow-up branch of the National Park Police.
	Yes, they have a jurisdiction.
	They've been trained in how to do this.
	They know.
	Now, you said something that's fascinating that was brief.
	Jurisdictional issues on searches.
	I can't tell you the number of times that victims and victims' families, they're missing a loved one, And they want resources brought in, specialized resources.
	Right.
	And the local search and rescue group plays king of the hill and says, nope, no more people are coming in.
	That's right.
	Nope, no more resources we're going to use.
	And I cannot tell you the number of times I've heard from families about it's obvious they needed more people.
	They needed fresh canines because their dogs were tired and they wouldn't entertain it and they wouldn't bring more people in and they acted as though They were the king of the hill.
	I've heard this so many times, and I know search and rescue protocol, and it doesn't make any sense why the people are acting in this manner when you're on the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th day of a search, when you need to cover a massive amount of area at that point, why you're not calling for more help.
	And I sometimes wonder if there may be circumstances, like I know here locally we've run across a couple of those, but It was foul play.
	It was crying foul play.
	So they didn't want anybody else coming in because they thought there was going to be a crime scene for sure.
	There was a very strong possibility of foul play and they did not want anybody else involved.
	Well, the incidents I know about, there was never any inclination of foul play.
	It was a straight missing persons and they weren't finding any evidence of where they were at and they kept moving their perimeter and the grids out further and further and further.
	Right.
	Very interesting.
	Yeah, sure is.
	Thank you very much.
	Yeah, jurisdiction is always kind of a weird thing.
	I, you know, I, I worked with police for several years as a 911 dispatcher.
	And it's, I guess it's just part of being human, right?
	People They claim their own territory.
	They want to hold on to their own territory.
	They don't want additional people in.
	In the case where you mentioned, for example, the Green Berets that came in, I imagine somebody in the family connected to the family or somebody had some connections high up in the military and just had it done.
	So those kind of things can occur and I imagine if that occurs nobody questions jurisdiction.
	Well, I know of two cases in the U.S.
	where the Green Berets were called.
	Really?
	And I only know the Martin family, and I know the Martins didn't know anybody in the Green Berets.
	And the number of times that I've been on the radio like this, every time after something like this, somebody will contact me anonymously and say, hey, I'm a Special Forces person.
	I'm going to tell you flatly that the Green Berets will go nowhere in the United States to search for anybody.
	That's not what we do, that's not what we're trained to do, and that never happened.
	Now, we may have been there, but we weren't searching for somebody that was missing.
	I've had these emails, like, probably ten times in the last five years.
	Well, maybe on paper, somebody had to put down that they were there for a different reason, if you follow me.
	In other words, in some higher military hierarchy, another reason was officially put on paper because, well, they don't search for people.
	But, in fact, that's what they were doing.
	Uh, David, hold on.
	I can imagine that happening.
	I can't imagine these cases that we're hearing about.
	I just can't imagine.
	Don't you be withdrawin' Stay by my side, keep on, you gotta go now, I'm a happy man.
	I'm a happy man.
	Now, here's Art.
	Yes, here I am.
	And David Plaitis is my guest.
	We've talked about a number of missing people, people who have just literally vanished, actually.
	And Corby speaks for a lot of people when he says, look, why go on all these shows and talk about this if you're not going to offer any opinion?
	Granted, he doesn't want to affect his credibility, but then why go on and just let your books speak for themselves?
	I get it is very frustrating is what he says, and it is frustrating.
	And yet I understand why you will not So, if there's no hard evidence to say what's happening, then you're guessing.
	Do you see any scientists out there in the academic world guessing about a hypothesis?
	of your continued writing about this is, David?
	So if there's no hard evidence to say what's happening, then you're guessing.
	Do you see any scientists out there in the academic world guessing about a hypothesis?
	I don't think so.
	And in your world, in this world of cryptozoology, paranormal, I think people are so used to
	people making outrageous claims that it's abnormal for somebody to come along and say,
	wait a minute, I want to wait and see where this goes.
	I want to accumulate actual evidence, whether it's circumstantial or not.
	And before I stick my credibility and integrity on the line, To me, it's amusing that people are demanding or they say that they want to have an answer, because I don't have a good answer.
	Actually, they do understand.
	They understand what would happen if you said what they imagine you might say, and you're so right.
	You would be dismissed immediately by a large portion of the law enforcement community, scientific community.
	A lot of people would just go, And nobody would ever pay any attention to you anymore.
	It would happen.
	I know.
	I don't disagree with that.
	And I don't disagree with the man who writes and says it is frustrating to be presented with the impossible and not to be able to venture even an opinion, virtually.
	I get the problem.
	Let's go to the phone.
	Hello there.
	You're on the air.
	Hi, Art.
	Hi.
	Most people who listen to shows like yours know the government keeps lots of secrets, like secrets about aliens, secrets about my labs, secret space program.
	You don't have to just be a listener to shows like mine.
	Lately, I think, if you did a survey on who believes the government tells us the truth, it'd be down in the single digits.
	But the fact that they lie to the families indicates to me that they probably know who is responsible.
	Well, that's actually a pretty good question, David.
	Do you think that it indicates that they do have knowledge about what it is, or is it just a complete lack of knowledge, and so, like you, they're not willing to touch it?
	I think that the people that are your contact points at the park, the superintendent, the chief ranger, I really don't think they know.
	But I do think that they're walking to the orders of somebody higher up.
	And Mr. Martin told me, he said, you know, Dave, I think the superintendent's just a pawn.
	Somebody else has him doing everything they want him to do.
	I just don't know who's giving him his orders.
	What do you think of that, man?
	Well, I think all these things are going to be revealed, because if you notice, there's more and more truth coming out all the time, and I think it's going to come out very soon.
	Well, I hope you're right.
	I really do.
	Let's go to Skype and Trey in Atlanta.
	Hello.
	Hey, Howard.
	How you doing?
	Fine.
	I have two quick things, then response.
	I'll take off the air.
	Sure.
	First of all, these seem sort of similar to, like, the ancient fairy and Wendigo stories.
	And second of all, as a boy, I remember going into the woods.
	I'm from the South.
	And I remember there were certain places that just didn't feel right, and things happened there as you grew up.
	There were murders, you know, whatnot.
	Sure.
	And even going on to my own son in Boy Scouts, when I would take him hiking or camping, whatever, there was very few places, but some places you just felt as a parent that weren't right, that you didn't belong there.
	There was something there watching back.
	I get it.
	Yeah.
	Exactly.
	And thank you both.
	I'll take it off the air.
	All right.
	I don't know that there was a question there to answer, but there are.
	There certainly are places that don't feel right as a parent.
	You know about them when you come up against them.
	On the phone, you're on the air with David.
	Hi.
	Hi, Art.
	This is Ray in Citrus Heights.
	I have two questions and I'll take the answers off the air.
	Number one, I want an approximation of the ratio of male to female abductions from the National Parks and Forest.
	And number two, I know why he won't answer is to a hypothesis, but what I would like to know is why he thinks the feds are being so secretive about this incident, these incidents, and I'll take my answers off the air.
	Thank you.
	Okay, so the ratio of male to females?
	Probably 80-20.
	More males?
	Yeah.
	Wow, really?
	All right, his second question, I think we just sort of answered that a moment ago, or the best we could.
	If they don't have an answer, Then I guess they're just going to say, leave it alone.
	I want to come back to your current investigation, which is moving into urban areas.
	And again, you said it's mostly young men, and then many times they end up later just floating in the water.
	Whereas most crimes, most violent crimes, are actually committed by men, young men, and generally against women.
	So this kind of runs against the Um, against the grain, doesn't it?
	You know, there's a, uh, it does.
	Uh, there's a series of disappearances and deaths in Manchester, England, and the men disappeared and they were found in the canals of the city.
	And you could Google Manchester canal deaths and see.
	And the community, it's still happening right now.
	And the community is up in arms because there's a lot that have disappeared since 2009 and been found in the canals under the same exact conditions that I write about in this last book.
	Namely, many times they can't determine the cause of death.
	In every instance, there's no witness to what happened.
	It doesn't make a lot of sense because a lot of those canals you can stand up in them.
	They call him the pusher.
	Some people think that the people were just pushed in, but you've got to apply logic to that.
	So what?
	You're pushed in the water.
	Just because you hit the water doesn't mean you're dead.
	No.
	But the circumstances and the clustering effect in Manchester, again, match that clustering effect around the Great Lakes, Boston, New York, etc.
	All right.
	On the phone.
	You're on the air with David.
	Hi.
	Hello?
	Okay, I can't hear you.
	We'll go to the next one.
	Hi.
	Hey Art, it's Tom from Florida.
	Hi Tom.
	Yeah, I just wanted to state that I firmly believe that the government knows what's going on.
	I think that they are possibly, because it's taking place in national parks, it possibly could be connected with underground bases.
	That's where they're taking the victims and possibly using them for scientific studies.
	And that's not even throwing out the possibility of the possible treaty they have with the Well, you know, all that sounds pretty crazy until you realize that the truth is the government has experimented on its own people.
	There's a lot of history, for example, in San Francisco years ago of experiments that were done with chemicals, and you know, you go, oh no, our government wouldn't do that, and yet they absolutely did.
	So, you just can't rule it out.
	James, you're on the air with David, hi.
	Hi, Art.
	Hi, Dave.
	It's a pleasure to speak with both of you.
	Art, I had emailed you a couple weeks ago about some mysterious staircases.
	You're the one.
	I emailed you a couple weeks ago.
	Yes, yes, yes, yes.
	I already brought this up earlier to David, so go ahead.
	Yeah, sorry, I must have missed that part.
	Dave, I had a question regarding the individuals that appeared to be drugged or in a lucid state.
	I was wondering if you were familiar with the drug scopolamine?
	I used to take it.
	Scopolamine, really?
	Yeah.
	Because as far as I'm familiar with, from what I've been hearing is that that's the particular drug that's been used in like South America and Colombia to drug people in order to kind of put them in a zombified state.
	Some people call it the devil's breath.
	Well, scopolamine is something that was used to avoid seasickness in years past.
	And I just remember that.
	It was a little patch that you put behind your ear.
	But right now, there's something called GHB.
	It's a date rape drug.
	Right.
	It makes you completely immovable.
	You know what's happening.
	And that was found in high levels in many of the cases of these people that drowned.
	So, you put somebody in water, they're alive, they're breathing, they can't fight, they can't swim, it appears they drowned, but unless the coroner's testing for GHB, it's just going to go by as a drowning and the kid's dead.
	And would that be normally tested for after autopsy?
	In other words, would they do a tox screen that would include this?
	A tox screen?
	99% of the time, GHB is not included.
	All right.
	Caller, thank you very much, and I appreciate the quality, by the way, of all the callers.
	It really has been astoundingly good.
	Let's, I guess, go to another phone call.
	Hi, you're on the air with David.
	Yes, hello, Art and David.
	I just want a real quick comment, Art.
	You and Richard See's show is the best five hours of any type of programming out there.
	Thank you.
	And you're welcome, sir.
	And this is a couple of quick questions.
	But David, has he?
	This is Ryan in the Sonoran Desert, by the way, Buckeye, Arizona.
	Has David looked into or had anybody come forward from Native American reservations or areas where people got missing around certain sites?
	Because there's a lot of information out there and books written about wormholes and portals and some of these locations are very sacred, like the Grand Canyon for the Hopi.
	The second question, real quick, is remote viewers.
	Have any come forward to help you out, either privately, or have you reached out to them and have you got any results back?
	And I take it it's just another area.
	Thank you, Art.
	All right, well, the first one is off into the paranormal area.
	I doubt you're going to get your answer.
	The second is kind of fringe paranormal, but you might Get some sort of answer.
	Remote viewing does seem to be real.
	And it does seem some people have this talent.
	And it really would be interesting to ask some of them to profile some of these really, really puzzling cases and see what they come up with.
	So I guess that's a little like asking a cop if he wants to call in a psychic.
	But it is an interesting idea, David.
	Absolutely.
	I'm one of these guys that has an open mind on that stuff, and I have an open mind on all these elements that could be related to what's happening here.
	And I'm not one to discount a psychic.
	I'm not one to discount remote viewing.
	I think it's all plausible.
	Well, it is, and they might come up with something that might lead us somewhere, because, boy, You know, the person who wrote the thing about getting frustrated, they really are right.
	I mean, you have described accurately all of these incredible cases that have absolutely no answer, or if they do have an answer, it's one that leads us down a path that, well, you can't talk about, really.
	Frustrating.
	Hello there.
	You're on the air with David.
	Hello, Art.
	Hello, yes, Art and David, great show tonight.
	I just wanted to bring up a case that David may be familiar with.
	It was an interesting case that happened in the 1980s in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, in the Jackson area.
	It was actually a group of autistic children that were hiking with a couple of instructors on a mountain called Black Mountain, and coming down, this one of the youngsters, I think he was between 8 or 10 years old, got separated from the group.
	They never found the kid that later, earlier, excuse me, as they got off the mountain, they never found the kid.
	They sent up over 250 people.
	This is not a very big mountain.
	This is Black Mountain.
	It's only about 3,200 feet.
	They didn't find the child.
	A couple of interesting asides about this.
	They didn't find the child that night.
	I think it was possibly another night also that he stayed on the mountain.
	Interestingly, even though they had all these people that were professionals as far as search and rescue, there was a fireman down in Marshfield, Massachusetts that ended up finding the boy.
	He was watching a television show.
	This is about 250 miles away.
	He had never done anything like this before.
	In the television, the news show talked about the child.
	All of a sudden, he had an epiphany that he was going to be able to find the child.
	to Black Mountain in New Hampshire, climbs the mountain, and lo and behold, he finds the child.
	Now, a couple of interesting facts about this was, later on, you find out that the child, who was autistic, later began to be able to communicate better after this incident.
	So they asked the child, What, you know, how did you survive?
	Because the chair had plummeted way below 30 degrees, and they were very worried that the child might not survive the night.
	And he said that he had buttoned to a part of the mountain where he was surrounded by this white light, and that the white light kept him warm, and he was fine.
	And the interesting thing, again, is after this incident, he ended up uh... actually becoming more cognizant more or more
	communicative and uh... another interesting fact about a light about this
	was that the fireman from marshfield
	uh... it turns out that uh... he had the he was a big hero after this news in the newspapers
	etc and he ends up uh...
	coming out in admitting that he was an arsonist an arsonist that they had been looking for in the southern
	part of Massachusetts, and he had come out because he had felt this message from God
	that he was going to be able to find his child and his whole life turned around.
	I don't know if you ever heard of the case at all.
	No, I haven't, but it's quite remarkable.
	And I wonder if any of the other cases in which...
	Well, were there many cases in which an autistic child was apparently taken or missing and
	and then then located uh... david
	There were a few, yeah.
	Did any of them exhibit the kind of, I don't know, recovery that that man talked about?
	I've never heard of that before.
	It's fascinating.
	The whole thing, David, is fascinating.
	Your new book is Missing 411, A Sobering Coincidence, is that right?
	Correct.
	When is that going to be available?
	Available today.
	Available?
	On our website.
	All right.
	All right, well, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on and puzzling us all.
	Thank you, David.
	My pleasure, Art.
	Thank you.
	We'll do it again one day.
	David played us, and, you know, it is frustrating.
	Really frustrating to hear of these impossible disappearances.
	Just impossible.
	Without a trace, it might as well have been called.
	These people are gone.
	You have to wonder if you have to force documents out of the government's hands to find out how many, then how many are there really?
	Good night from the desert.

▲