People go missing all the time. 600,000 are said to missing in the U.S. each year. Most of those can be attributed to many suicides, many drownings whether they were accidental or not, and animal predation, those who want to 'disappear', natural causes like strokes, heart attacks. There are murders that happen. But there are ALWAYS those cases where the shit just doesn't add up. Some important parts of the puzzle are missing. The case is weird...they disappeared? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
You see these new robotic limbs that have sensors to the muscles and shit?
People have, like, full-on robotic legs and feet, like, walking up ramps and stuff.
There are, like, tons of videos.
It's kind of amazing.
I did see that.
It's pretty incredible.
It's only a matter of time, you know?
Yeah, dude.
The bionic man is becoming an actual reality these days.
It's literally happening, like, right in front of our eyes in our lifetime, homie, piece by piece.
No doubt.
Six million dollar man has gone from notes to a novel to a film to mainstream.
To your body, bro.
To your freaking...
Yeah, that's pretty incredible, actually.
But you know what, Scott?
Yeah, what's that?
Do you understand the implications that this has on sports?
More specifically, on the NCAA or the NAIA or the NJCAA or the NCCAA or the CCCAA or the USCAA, along with all class divisions, including the high school equivalent, such
as the NCSA?
Shit.
Yes, yes, you know, I think I'm following where you're going with this.
You remember all that hoopla that happened with the high schools and colleges allowing transgender athletes to compete against the opposite sex?
Oh my gosh, yeah, that was a total mess, and it's still going on.
There's a battle ensuing over the rights for transgender athletes to compete, as you said, and there are the anti-LGBTQ groups that are lobbying against it.
And, you know, as it stands today, there are at least 19 states in the United States that have banned transgender students from participating in such sports altogether.
Yes. So, now we are introducing bionic limbs, legs specifically, and I see that they have made giant leaps with this technology.
Oh! You like that?
And so when the stuff is perfected and can be implemented onto or into the human body flawlessly, well...
You're going to have 9-year-olds, 15-year-olds, 19-year-olds with bionic legs wanting to play basketball with all of those without bionic legs.
And so, I mean, it's going to cause problems in the world of sports, which the world of sports has never seen.
Or anyone has ever seen.
But yeah, you bring up a good point because, you know, if I was out there on that court crushing the dribbles, running circles, rebounding, rimshot, just blasting apart.
Backboards. The last thing I would want to do is shin myself on some bone-breaking titanium steel leg.
You know what I mean?
Like, that could just put a really quick end to what might have been a glorious evening sipping brackish pond water with my main man Larry Bird behind the bleachers kind of life.
You know what I'm saying?
That's exactly what I'm saying.
There's going to be a fucking turf war eventually if it isn't resolved quick.
I guess the issue will have to be brought up with the Supreme Court, you know, of the screw United States.
Damn it, Wayndale.
Nice one, Wayndale.
But of course, the Supreme Court would love to take that case over any other case where there's actually a lot more at stake for the American people.
Today, we will be hearing three very important cases.
Life-changing, even world-changing cases.
Case one.
Bionic Limb Sports Association versus the NCAA, the NAIA, the NJCAA, the NCCAA, the CCCAA, and the USCAA.
Interesting. I'd like to see a bionic limb.
What about you?
That would be wonderful.
Where did I put my pants?
This is a three-panel court, and a vote shall be taken.
Say aye, or fear if you say nay, you shall be gibbeted.
Aye. Aye!
Very well.
As for the United States versus Hillary Clinton, dismiss.
As for the United States versus George W. Bush, also dismiss.
We are gods.
None are above us.
Now, we the blameless, most pure of justices, after reviewing this riveting case, it is our opinion that this is something we would like to see.
See what I mean?
Yes, that was actually a really good audio representation, which made it perfectly clear.
Trouble is a Bruin.
Trouble is always a Bruin, my little willow oofgood.
But you can save Elora Dannon, and in turn, take down Bev Morda and save the world.
As long as I don't have to defeat the Aborsisk, he's the worst.
Well, let's get real here, Scott.
Are you a camper?
Do you like camping?
Why, yes I do.
Now, are you a glamper?
Or a legit camper?
Because those are two entirely separate things.
And one isn't even camping.
Well, actually, I am a legit camper.
I used to pack the tents up when we were young, throw them in a backpack, hike out to a meadow on Mount Hood about seven hours, camp for a couple nights, and hike back out the next day.
So you've camped a lot.
Yeah, I grew up camping.
In all of your camping adventures, were there any that stood out as being sort of weird, or were there any times that something felt sort of off about the situation?
You know, honestly, I had pretty just regular-ass camping adventures growing up.
What about hiking?
You like hiking?
Yeah, I do.
I do like hiking.
Were any hikes that you've embarked on strange in any way?
Um, well, you know, if I think back, like...
Did you feel that you were being watched or maybe even stalked from within the shadows and darkness?
Um, well, I don't know about all that, but what I was gonna...
Did you ever hear the sounds of what could only be footsteps behind you?
Perhaps they were the sounds of the crunching of the detritus below the weight of a bipedal humanoid, or something else.
Maybe something from your nightmares.
Just out of your view, blending in with the foliage all around you.
Um, I couldn't say all that.
Do you yearn for road trips, Scott?
Maybe you enjoy a good afternoon of hitchhiking while blindfolded, huh?
You seem to be the type of homo sapien sapien who loves to cross-country ski.
Um, well I can't really speak to that seeing as I've never really gone- And I know you're the type, Scott, who puts on a full camouflage suit, skin tight, and you paint your face the same.
You throw a big fat dip in your upper lip and douse yourself with elk piss.
Forget about the orange vest.
And then you sit out there in the woods and wait and wait and wait.
Yeah, I give up.
Do any of these activities worry you in the least bit?
Like, would you be apprehensive to do any of these things today?
Um, I mean, if we're speaking honestly, yeah, probably.
You know, I'd probably think about it a little bit more than I used to think about it at that time.
Well, Scott.
What if I told you that people go missing during all of these activities, and many others of course, but they go missing in very strange circumstances.
And what I mean is that people go missing in situations where there is simply no logical explanation, no apparent logical sense.
Now, I'm not talking about your everyday kidnapping or murder or person who intended to quote-unquote disappear.
Ah yes, the common day things.
Not talking about any of those.
I am talking about very strange disappearances, where the facts as we know them seem to defy nature.
Sure, some of them have a fairly rational reason behind them, perhaps.
But others simply don't.
But Scott, some of these missing people actually reappear.
Sometimes they return on their own, or sometimes they are found.
But they usually have peculiar stories to tell about their disappearance, stories that challenge our perspectives, our way of thinking about the world around us.
And Scott, there are a ton of people who simply aren't introspective or have any desire to give the stranger things of this already very, very strange world we appear to exist in even a moment of dedicated thought.
They don't ask questions.
They see the world in black and white.
But as you know, this world is mysterious, sometimes uncanny, sometimes haunting.
There is no doubt that our existence is weird, man.
Everything that goes on around us is quite frightening, actually.
The planets, the solar system, the universe, the comets, the black holes, the fabric of space and time.
As above, so below.
The micro to the macro.
It's all very strange, and we as humans can profess to know what we say we know.
And sure, at the human level, it's in our nature to define, categorize, quantify, and measure the information that our senses gather around us.
Because if we didn't, then what would our purpose here be?
That's so true, man.
That is basically all we do.
We generate, categorize, number, label, generate, categorize, number, and label, and the cycle continues.
Take it all away.
All the things that we run around being stressed and anxious about, get rid of it all.
So I see what you mean.
We've created these things to define, to categorize, quantify, and label.
It gives us meaning.
It's what our brain strives to do.
Solve patterns.
Solve puzzles.
Try to orient us in this way that makes quote-unquote sense to us humans.
The planet doesn't care.
That's what I'm saying, man.
I guess we need to do something, or else we're just banging sticks and stones together, calling it time well spent, you know what I mean?
Well, Scott, I do know what you mean.
And there are so many things that we humans do not understand, even if we claim that we do.
We can put out our theories, our hypotheses, and we can attempt to deduce things to their most simplest reasoning.
And the easiest approach is, of course, Occam's razor.
Never fails.
Now, Occam's razor is defined in many ways, and one of those is that you have two competing ideas to explain the same phenomenon.
And you should always prefer the simpler one.
That comes from newsscientist.com.
Another way to put it is shaving away of the unnecessary assumptions when distinguishing between two theories.
And that comes from tripleas.org.
The name Occam's Razor is generally associated with the 14th century philosopher and theologian named William of Occam.
The fact is, though, that it was not he who invented the principle that Occam's Razor is.
The credit seems to have been given to him due to how often he utilized the principle and how much he relied on it.
In fact, it wasn't even attributed to him until a few hundred years after his death.
It was actually the 17th century Liebert Freudmund.
who takes the credit for coining the term in his book On Christian Philosophy of the Soul, in which he mentions Navakula Okami.
And that comes from Elliot Sober's 2015 book, Occam's Razor, A User's Manual.
Liebert himself, a scientist and theologian, was actually in direct correspondence with René Descartes, who you mentioned last week.
And I find that pretty cool that these iconic men were getting together and discussing their theories.
And Descartes, of course, was a French philosopher, theologian, scientist, free thinker, a soldier, a physician, and a lawyer, and is said to be the father of modern philosophy.
I guess he actually coined the phrase, he with stinky butt, wake up with stinky finger.
Well, that's not true at all, and I think you meant to say, I think, therefore I am.
Oh, yeah, yeah, that's what I meant to say.
I was only saying if you were following along.
But René Descartes was not a friend of everyone, as no one really is.
In fact, a theory was put forward in 2010 by an academic at the University of Erlangen.
His name is Theodor Ebert, and he found something unusual with the official story of René's death.
Officially, it is said that he died of pneumonia at age 53 on February 11, 1650.
But Ebert says that he was poisoned by the Catholic Church for some of his views, which he published in many of his books.
Dude, the guy wrote like 734 books, by the way, which is insane considering that he probably didn't start writing until at least late teens, right?
Well, 15 or so.
So in about 40 years' time, he produced 734 books.
That's like 18 books a year.
That's fucking prolific writing.
Absolutely. Shakespeare said I've only written 11. And your favorite, Luis Lamar?
Oh, yeah.
He's only written about 350, which includes his novels and short stories.
And he was 80 years old when he died.
But then there was Maria del Socorro Talado Lopez, better known as Corrine Talado.
She was a Spanish author who published over 4,000 titles, mostly in romance.
Your favorite.
And in 1962, UNESCO declared her the most read Spanish writer after Miguel de Cervantes, which is incredible.
And she was born in 1927 and died in 2009 at age 81. Wow, she saw some stuff.
That's pretty astounding, bro.
And Miguel de Cervantes is a genius who gave us the first great novel of world literature, which would be his iconic piece called Don Quixote.
Good piece.
Which is pretty interesting, seeing that he lived from around 1547 until 1616, the same time period as Descartes and Friedmont, who you just mentioned, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Rembrandt, and you said Shakespeare, but Shakespeare was really Francis Bacon.
And there seems to be a lot leaning toward that, actually.
Anyway... There was an independent analysis on Ebert's theory, and it said that the analysis of the documentary evidence indicates the high probability that Discard was poisoned with arsenic on two occasions.
Once on February 2nd, and again on February 8th, the second poisoning proving to be fatal.
But how would we know those dates?
Well, apparently he had a doctor who took scrupulous notes.
And later, when examinations took place of the evidence, it was found that Discard had a strange skin pigmentation that wouldn't have developed from pneumonia.
But it certainly would have developed some arsenic poisoning.
And there was also blood in his urine, which is another sign of arsenic poisoning.
And Descartes, although a devout Catholic himself, actually feared the Catholic Church.
And in fact, he feared persecution throughout most of his life because he was a free thinker.
He was accused of many things, and being an atheist was one of them.
And can you imagine what that would do to your reputation in the 17th century?
Oh man, yeah, you might have to call into work and let them know you wouldn't be back for an indefinite period of time while you rethink your whole faith hanging up in a fucking gibbet somewhere.
Dude, gibbets are fucking gnarly, bro.
And to think gibbeting was finally abolished in 1834, and I can't help but think about one of the greatest films of all time which portrayed a gibbeting, the movie Willow.
Willow! Such a good movie, man.
I'm gonna have to watch it again.
It's been years.
Yeah, I love that movie.
One of Val Kilmer's best.
He's in kind of a sad state these days, though.
But, you know, still doing a couple gigs here and there.
Well, apparently there's a Willow 2 coming out.
Yeah, they're rebooting Willow with the original Willow Man Warwick Davis.
What the hell, bro?
Are you kidding me?
That is going to be a fucking masterpiece.
Oh, it truly will.
The greatest swordsman that ever lived.
Well, we must move on to the topic of today.
Yeah, why are we in this abandoned farmhouse, man, with what looks like bloodstains and strange lengths of rope laying all around?
Well, you can thank Wayne Dale for this one.
Oh, Wayne freaking Dale, man.
Just try to ignore it.
Today we are here to talk about some of the most bizarre, odd, and unusual missing people's cases.
Those all mean the same thing, by the way.
Well, that is how much I want to emphasize just how exceptional, astonishing, and perplexing these cases are, Scott.
Well, they must be fairly uncommon, newfangled, and peculiar if you need to use three separate words that might mean the same thing, homie.
You got that right, Scott.
Many of these cases defy a rational explanation.
And while there are truly a lot of weird disappearances, not all of them are indeed out of the normal realm of possibility.
Yes, some are people who just want to disappear.
Some are suicides.
Some are kidnappings and murder.
Some are animal predation.
Some are accidental.
Some are natural causes.
But then, some are truly extraordinary.
And it's those cases that we will touch on in our ongoing series of episodes about missing people.
Yes, this will be a running theme where every now and then we will do an episode on missing people's cases.
Yes, and in terms of those where the circumstances are a bit strange and there's not a rational explanation, or maybe there is, but there's still a lot of questions left to be asked.
Right, right.
Many of our stories will be from the Missing 411 books by David Polites.
Now, we know David Polites has been getting a hell of a lot of flack for his work these days.
Probably more so for his background in law enforcement.
Well, actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not too sure.
But that's fine and all.
People will have their opinions.
And I get it.
He was kind of a dick cop, and I don't agree with the bad things that he did.
I think he's an asshole for all of that shit.
Couldn't agree more.
But I, for one, believe that people can and do change for the better and that people can be better people despite their previous shortfalls, their mistakes, even their beliefs.
It's why we have what's called forgiveness and empathy and sympathy and all those other positive attributes that humans possess.
And unfortunately, though, assholes will be assholes.
That is eloquently put, Coop.
And I'd say the reason that people can't live together is because you have one side who just want to be forgiven for mistakes, and the other side who act like they've never committed a mistake in their life and have nothing to be held accountable for.
And they certainly are unwilling to forgive those who seek to be forgiven.
Nice. Where did you read that?
Oh, Reader's Digest, actually.
The Canadian version.
Oh, what's the latest centerfold?
Oh, well, since you asked, it was one of the most frightening creatures that roams this earth.
These horrible little creatures are formidable, truly terrifying.
Whoa, what is it?
The Canadian Eastern Grey Squirrel, just sitting there, tail up, staring directly into your soul.
Ooh, Jesus.
They'll probably receive a lot of complaints for that one.
Yeah, I'm surprised it's not banned already.
I mean, it's a horrifying image.
Someone is going to lose their job.
I would not want to be a fly on that wall.
Well, back to Politis.
I don't care if he researches Bigfoot and has his own theories on subjects that some people immediately discount because it doesn't match up with their own beliefs or views, you know?
Yeah, I mean, not everyone's going to agree on everything.
It's just a fact.
Just like not all buttholes are bleached.
I wish they were.
But some of the world's greatest minds throughout history were labeled as quacks and charlatans until their theories were later proven after the deaths and then widely accepted thereafter.
Oh, absolutely, dude.
William Harvey, another 17th century quack.
Yeah. He was the first to accurately describe how blood circulated through the entire body.
Before that, people thought that blood was pumped through the liver for some reason.
Well... It was Galen, a second-century philosopher and physician, a total fraud, who thought that the liver created blood from the food we ate, then sent that through the left side of the heart and lungs.
And dude, that was bleed for 1,500 years, you know, up until that bum William Harvey figured it all out.
So crazy.
Yeah, and Harvey wasn't much liked, obviously.
His research was ridiculed, and many physicians of his time would say that they would rather err with Galen than proclaim the truth with Harvey.
Brutal, man.
And Ignaz Semmelweis, the unprincipled sham, well, he brought basic hygiene into the hospital setting, but was ridiculed by so many doctors who, to them, they felt that he was just criticizing them on their cleanliness, and it was their egos that were hurt.
So they rejected his research for decades.
And that was just the 19th century.
Fuck, that was like basically yesterday.
And speaking of yesterday, in the 1980s, Barry Marshall, an Australian doctor, an absolute phony, theorized that a particular Heliobacter pylori bacteria was responsible for both ulcers and stomach cancer.
The medical field didn't believe him, though.
So what did this crazy doctor do?
Around 1982, he took some of that bacteria from a patient's infected stomach, mixed it into a warm liquid broth, and drank it.
He then became ill, then he biopsied portions of his own gut, cultured the bacteria, and then proved that the bacteria was in fact responsible for ulcers.
What a bamf!
Okay, now that I've got this piece of infected stomach...
I'll just steep it in my favorite tobacco tea blend for ten minutes.
Okay, swirl that around.
Now, let's give this a taste.
Ah. Uh.
That's excellent.
Much better than I anticipated.
And he was hooked ever since.
Anyway, the point being that some of the shit we hear about but have no definitive answers to right now as of today doesn't mean that we won't have answers 10 years from now or 20 years or 50 or 100 years from now.
People are ignorant to believe that this is it, that we know everything there is to know, that there's nothing else to learn, yada yada, you know?
There are new discoveries made every single day.
Dozens upon dozens of new species of plants and animals are quote-unquote being discovered.
Exactly. And they, they being the scientists, say that we know more about the surface of Mars than we do about the bottom of the oceans, which just speaks volumes.
According to whalebonemag.com, over 80% of the ocean floor remains undiscovered, uncharted, and unmapped, meaning the majority of our planet is unexplored.
As for Mars, 100% of the surface has been mapped.
And for those of you who don't know who David Polites is, he is the author of like 17 books and has filmed a few documentaries, most of which are about the very weird cases of missing people.
Now, it is important to remember that the cases he compiles are not your run-of-the-mill missing people's cases.
That is, they don't fall under the quote-unquote normal circumstances which are typically present in the average missing people's case.
But more on that in a minute.
David was in law enforcement for 20 years or so in California where he worked in various capacities.
He did a regular patrol.
He was on the SWAT team, street crimes unit, and some other work as a detective.
So the takeaway here is that he is well-trained in conducting investigations, and that is important to keep in mind.
Most certainly is, because you have all these armchair detectives talking shit about his investigations and research, acting like they could do a better job.
Reddit is full of those guys.
Oh my...
God, yes it is.
Everybody is an expert.
But a lot of people hone in on a couple facts about David.
And for them, this is the straw that broke the camel's back, so to say.
So, in 1996, David was charged with a misdemeanor for allegedly setting up a fake charity in order to get celebrity autographs.
And for this, he resigned from his position and left the force entirely.
Now, many people point to this and say, see?
He can't be trusted.
Which is just ignorance on their part.
That's actually pretty funny and kind of genius, but I don't really get why he thought he'd get away with that, you know?
Plus, what does that have to do with missing people?
Absolutely nothing.
Yeah, well that's not all he's been accused of.
He was also accused of entrapping gay men at bars and then arresting them.
And there is a newspaper article about this published in 1983 in San Francisco, I believe.
And the article went on to say that several attorneys were working on getting the police to stop allowing officers to hang out at adult bookstores known to be gay hangouts and then acting gay themselves in order to entice the legitimately gay men and then arresting them for being gay,
which actually did happen quite a bit, not just in San Francisco, but all over the world, especially in the 1980s when being openly gay opened you up to violent and often deadly attacks.
But... If it is true that David Politis was doing that shit back in the 1980s, and he probably was, then that's really shitty of him.
But the point is that I, for one, and many others, do not discount David Politis' investigative work in compiling what he believes to be missing people's cases that do not fall within the normal or logical explanations of typical missing people's cases.
In fact, he has certain criteria that need to be checked off in order to even be considered a strange case that he will look into.
Yeah, they have to have missing elements, holes in the story, something that doesn't add up.
What are those exact criteria again?
Well, first, the person had to have gone missing within a national park, a rural area, or a large reserve of public land.
Second, there has to be exceptionally odd circumstances that surround the disappearance.
Third, voluntary disappearance and mental illness do not appear to be the case of the disappearance.
What would the exceptionally odd entail exactly?
Well, for example, say in a group setting or at least two people walking in the woods on a very clear and unobstructed path.
Let's say there are two people.
They are walking.
One person usually, you know, always in the front leading, right?
And they look back at the friend and, you know, they're back there walking.
They're just having a good time.
And then in some cases, you know, only within seconds, they'll look back again for whatever reason.
Right, right.
According to David Politis, there are 90,000 people who are legally declared missing in the United States at any given time.
And the strange thing is that many of these disappearances happen on clearly marked hiking trails that are very popular hiking spots.
Right, so there are usually expected to be some people around in the general vicinity or somewhat close by to the area that they go missing in or had seen them in moments before they go missing.
Right. And the missing people in the cases he documents are usually very proficient in hiking and knowing their way around the terrain.
You know, they are seasoned hikers who are cognizant of the dangers of hiking and these people are usually very well prepared.
Sometimes not, but usually they are.
But then there are also very weird cases of children going missing.
Not those who are either never found or found after their death, but children that go missing for a certain amount of time, usually in very horrible conditions where it is apparent that no person would likely survive.
And arguably one of the stranger aspects is that there will be massive search parties which are conducted, yet the child will never be found.
And we're talking multiple days of searching, only to reappear a day or two later after the search has ended, sometimes longer.
And these children will often tell of very weird stories of what had occurred to them.
In one story, a child tells that they were right there amongst the searchers looking for them, and they were trying to call out, but no one could hear them, as if they were in a different realm.
Other children tell of strange creatures that kept them safe while they were missing, who kept them fed and sheltered from the less-than-desirable conditions.
Coop, remind me and our listeners, how did the Missing 411 project begin exactly?
So Mr. Polite says that he was working on a case in a national park when an off-duty park ranger came up to him and started explaining his view on some of the missing people's cases that he had come across.
He explained that some of the cases are highly questionable and just didn't make any logical sense to him.
So Polite started to dig in.
He would find that the National Park Service does not or did not keep a database for missing people in their parks.
This went for the entire country.
There is no system to document those missing people's cases throughout the nation's parks, and therefore no accountability on the government's part.
He also found that it is the same for Canada, and has even stated that it's a worldwide phenomenon.
So here's the issue.
The Department of Justice has NAMIS, or the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, and it states that 600,000 people go missing in the U.S. each year, with around 30,000 being found or the cases ultimately being solved.
There are around 43,000 active cases listed since its founding in 2003, but this number should technically be around 10 million if you did the legitimate math.
Now, in regards to national parks, reporting is voluntary, so many of these disappearances aren't even reported.
Furthermore, of the roughly 1,600 people who go missing in national parks each year, it's said that about 77% of them are rescued or found.
This leaves about 368 cases going unsolved each year.
The National Park Service currently only lists an average of three cases each year.
And if we look at the reports versus those gone missing since the National Park Service's founding in 1916, the report rate is about 0.07%.
That is insane.
Holy shit, that is so low.
I'm just sitting here thinking, I can't believe that it's voluntary.
To report these things.
I mean, people are people.
Whether they're in a national park or not, you can't just say, well, these people disappear.
No need.
They're in a national park.
Whatever. That's just crazy to me, bro.
Right. They'll just be like, well, they'll pop up eventually.
Right. But even today, despite the years that David Politis has tried to get the Park Service to take accountability and document these cases, in conjunction with an update of the Authorities Act in 2006, The appropriate authorities are still not obligated to report missing people within the parks.
It's still voluntary.
But apparently the National Park Service does have one classification.
Missing and presumed dead.
This leaves it incredibly easy to write each case off as solved.
Yeah, no shit.
Someone goes missing and they just say...
Missing and presumed dead.
Well, Paul, should we go watch the bucks lay it to the does before the sun sets on us?
We can hold hands if you'd like.
David Pallaitis found all of this to be quite odd.
And it is odd.
Also, there were times when he would approach some of the National Park Service's personnel who were in charge of the information that David was after, but they would either refuse to cooperate with him or would give him wrong or misleading information.
Which only made him more curious.
Yeah, for sure.
But unfortunately, it's also what killed the cat.
Yes. Curiosity killed the cat.
Oh, yeah.
You know where that saying came from?
Um, no, but I feel like you're about to tell me.
It's thought to date back to the 16th century.
The original saying was, care killed the cat.
Oh, yeah.
And care stood for worry or concern.
In fact, the man attributed to the name of Shakespeare, because there's a lot of speculation as to whether Shakespeare is who they say he was.
Absolutely. But in his work titled Much Ado About Nothing, which is thought to have been written around 1598, there is a quote.
What courage, man!
What thou care killed a cat?
Thou hast metal enough thee to kill care?
Sarah! Sarah!
Sarah, where are you?
Sarah, there you are.
Rub my feet!
No! Don't run away from me!
Sarah! Come back to me, Sarah!
No! Sarah!
No! Don't applaud!
No, stop!
Sarah! Stop it!
No! Sarah!
Poor guy.
Yeah, the anguish.
Because of this, Polites filed dozens upon dozens of Freedom of Information requests to get the information he was after, and he'd get some of it.
According to him, he has spent around $1.2 million to cover the fees with filing those requests.
And some Freedom of Information requests, not necessarily the ones that Polites wanted, they cost upwards of tens of thousands of dollars.
Freedom of information.
Yep, just another one of Bush's brilliant play with words.
Paulides began to sift through the thousands of forgotten cases of people gone missing in national and state parks and various other areas, and he would soon make a discovery that had him scratching his head.
There were clusters of these weird disappearances in certain areas.
Usually, these clusters are in national parks, and the one park that eerily has the most missing people under the strange criteria he uses is Yosemite National Park in California.
Oh man, would not have called that actually.
Which one would you have guessed?
I probably would have guessed something more random like arches or something, you know, all those crevasses and stuff like that, you know, where it's like really easy to get trapped or like swept away by a flood or something.
Yeah, true.
Yeah, so it's kind of surprising.
Polites isn't alone in his research.
A very large number of professionals, including active and retired police officers and National Park Service rangers, And search and rescue experts, and investigators, and a wide swath of other professionals, they're all working together to try to solve or resolve these bizarre cases.
In fact, they started the Can-Am Missing Project, which covers both Canada and the United States.
And they have a website.
And in my opinion, the Can-Am website sucks beyond belief.
One of the worst I've ever seen.
The layout is horrible.
It doesn't fit to page, so you have to scroll to the right in order to read the text instead of just scrolling down.
And it goes pretty far.
And it's the ease of access that people look for when visiting a webpage, and the Can-Am webpage is devoid of that.
A second issue with their page is that there isn't much information about anything on it.
There's one tab that draws you into thinking you're going to find something really cool, but then after clicking it, you're brought to a password-protected page.
Now, there are a few tabs with information, such as some police documents about a few cases, with some random bits hidden here and there.
And a third issue is that every tab you click brings you nowhere of interest unless you intend to buy one of David Polite's many books.
And there are like 20 very basic tabs toward the top of each page.
So that part of the navigation of the website works very well in his favor.
In the Canon webpage, it acts...
More like an index to all of Polite's books and of the work that the Can-Am Project has done, but there's really no information to disseminate from it.
And with all that said, again, I personally support Polite's and the Can-Am Project for the work they do in bringing these otherwise forgotten cases to light.
I do admit that there are things they do or say that I don't agree with, but overall...
I feel that they are doing some decent work where no one else is, so I support that aspect of it all.
I mean, at least they're trying, right?
They're doing something like nobody else is.
Okay, so what are some of these so-called circumstances that are unusual or strange or don't fall within the quote-unquote normal missing person's case?
Like I said a minute ago, some of these people go missing within mere minutes if not seconds when there are other people directly around them.
Such as people who are hiking in a group and everyone is accounted for, but then only moments later, someone's gone without any sound or sight or sign of any of them.
No drag marks, impossible animal predation, no sight of items that the person might have dropped if they were suddenly attacked by something.
And more bizarre, there's no sounds such as a scream from the person or a holler or a yell.
I mean, there are no animal sounds, just nothing.
And this brings me back to the Valley of the Headless Men case where Annie went missing when they were hiking.
Remember that?
Yeah, she just, like, was gone.
Yeah, and they tracked her down, like, nine days through the woods.
And there's just, like, no way she could have been, like, that far ahead of them, like, naturally.
Right. She's always ahead of them, climbing over mountains that they couldn't even climb over.
Yeah. And she was naked, too.
Like, she took all her clothes off.
Like, what the hell?
That's just, I don't know.
I don't like to think about that too hard because it's so spooky.
It is spooky.
And then that guy started climbing like the hillside.
Yeah. Like, look around.
Or is dude just like grudge style.
Anyway, another unusual circumstance is that not only can the rest of the group not find any trace of the missing person, but upon an actual search and rescue mission for that person...
Either the trained search dogs can't pick up a scent or the scent is followed only for a little while, only to suddenly end in a random place with no further signs of the person.
Other circumstances that I mentioned earlier are that there can be these massive search parties that go for days, often like up to a couple of weeks.
And, you know, they search a very large area of land where the person went missing.
Yeah, like huge areas, and they comb over the land, often searching the same areas more than once just to try to, like, find some sign that maybe they missed before or just to make double sure that there's really nothing there.
Right. And these areas, you know, they're combed by trained professionals, but nothing can be found.
Then, you know, once the search party is over, or even when it's still happening in some cases, the missing person will simply reappear from an area that had already been heavily searched.
And more unusual circumstances include people being found many, many miles away from where they were last seen.
And according to the Can-Am Project and Politis, these distances would be near impossible, if not entirely impossible in many cases given the time frames.
Like, this person was right over there 20 minutes ago, and we found them 20 miles away on foot.
You know, shit like that.
Also, many of these cases involve children who physiologically just could not traverse the distances or terrain where they are found in the given time frame.
In one such instance, Polites...
Had the famed survivor, Les Stroud, retrace the steps of two-year-old Keith Parkins, who went missing after wandering away from his family's cattle ranch in Ritter, Oregon.
And this is an extremely popular case, and it's been covered a million times, but we'll just give our little bit of panache to it.
And this is the case we will start with in our ongoing series of missing people's cases.
And I will state here that we will not only use the cases David Pilates has compiled.
Partly because there are many others that he hasn't investigated, and partly because we can't buy all of his books.
Yep. There's always a reason.
Yeah. But we'll cover ones that we don't have to pay for, because honestly, we aren't making money doing this podcast, and this podcast actually costs money to be managed, so we can't just go out and buy books, although we wish we could.
And that is why we ask for listener support, of course, so we can continue to do research.
Better resources equals better research.
We would rather not have advertisements in the podcast, and we will try to go as long as we can without them.
But that means that we will need to rely solely on listener support.
Doing a podcast is actually very challenging.
Some are.
The ones that require research and compiling are.
And they are time-consuming to boot, to put together, and then post-edit.
Just throwing all that out there for you guys that maybe think we just show up and talk every week.
And if you want to help support the show, we have a Ko-Fi page set up where you can donate $1 or $5 or I think any amount at $1 or more.
And we have a PayPal page set up, and both of those are on our Facebook page, The Paranautica Podcast.
So if you'd like to help us out, please check out our Facebook page.
We would definitely appreciate it, you guys.
Again, sure, many of these missing persons cases can be logically explained under normal circumstances, and some definitely have, and many more will be.
The fact is that these cases are still intriguing whether or not there are unexplainable circumstances surrounding them, or if there is a paranormal or unnatural explanation, or if they turn out to be nothing unusual at all.
But it's important to remember that these are real missing people's cases.
And because of David's work and the Can-Am Project's work, these cases are being paid attention to when they would otherwise not be.
And some of the cases are being solved directly because of their work.
So that alone is a reason to appreciate what they do.
Yes, sir.
There's nothing weird here at all, just a normal disappearance where the person had a heart attack or was killed by an animal or whatever.
Their aim is to discount David Politis as much as possible.
But what they are omitting is the fact that David has brought a lot of attention to these cases, which has helped tremendously in helping to find real people and close these cases.
Also, contrary to many people's opinions, David has never claimed these cases to be supernatural or paranormal, or that some unknown or unexplained entity or force is behind them.
He hasn't even claimed that Bigfoot is behind it all, which is another reason.
Scott.
Let's ride our flat-tire tandem unicycles over to Ritter, Oregon, where the date is April 10th, 1952.
I'm not really sure about the physics of such a vehicle, but, you know, I'll give it a shot.
Wouldn't that be fun?
A tandem unicycle?
Shoulders. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Stacked on top of the other person.
I don't know.
Two-year-old Keith Parkins was playing with his older brothers on their family ranch.
It was lunchtime, so they started back to the house to eat.
For whatever reason, Keith stayed behind at the barn, and the bros didn't notice.
But once their mother realized that Keith hadn't come back to eat, they all went back to the barn to look for him.
They couldn't find any sign of Keith anywhere in or around the barn, or within eyesight around the immediate landscape.
And this is a cattle ranch.
the land is relatively flat in the immediate area with a more craggy landscape with large boulders cliffs and rocky hills out in the distance to them it was impossible for keith to have made it all the way to that area of rough terrain in that short period of time that they went inside
the house and then back to the barn to look for him
Yeah, no shit, dude.
Two-year-olds are not agile by nature.
Like, yes, unless you have a freak of nature, and no offense, that's kind of cool in a way, and disturbing in another, but generally speaking, a two-year-old is extremely fragile and extremely slow.
Especially, look, any parent out there knows that their two-year-old is more interested in sleep than most anything else, right?
What I mean is that toddlers and young children will sleep at least half of the day.
Sure, they have a ton of energy at times, but that doesn't last, and they crash hard, bro, for hours.
Yeah, man, that is totally true.
Also, the temperature was near freezing, and there were snow patches on the windswept land.
By the afternoon, maybe an hour or so after their mother Etna and Keith's brothers went looking for him, Etna contacted authorities and a basic search and rescue team was formed.
They spread out in a line within speaking distance and began to comb the entire area.
Throughout the day, more people would arrive to help in the search.
And it's estimated that about 200 people had joined in.
Into the evening, searchers would find footprints which looked like Keith's about three miles away from the barn.
The search would continue throughout the night and well into the morning.
About 7 a.m. on the 11th of April, Searchers would find Keith in an area called Skull Canyon, which sits about 12 miles from the barn.
12 miles?
There's just no way, dude.
Like overnight and freezing temperatures?
Keith was laying face down in snow, but his coat and his hat were on the ground next to him.
Keith was alive, but he couldn't move due to the freezing temperatures.
Apparently, he had injuries to his face, scratches all over his face, but only on his face.
His clothing had rips in them as well.
So let's put this together.
He was last seen at the barn around noon on the 10th and was found at about 7 a.m. the next day.
So that's roughly, I don't know, 18, 19 hours.
He was found without his coat and his hat on.
Right. I surmise that would likely be paradoxical undressing, which is when a person becomes so cold that they think they're too hot or something, and in severe cases of hypothermia.
They can sort of exhibit that behavior, which is usually fatal, because then there goes every last shred of protection that you originally had.
Yes, hypothermia can cause confusion and delirium.
And honestly, as long as your body temperature is below 95 degrees Fahrenheit for those in the United States, or 35 degrees Celsius for the rest of the world, you are putting yourself in risk of hypothermia.
Keith had scratches on his face, and only his face.
And we could surmise that this is due to the bushes and the scrub on the land.
But why only his face?
Why not on his hands and his arms?
He went through the entire night with no flashlight or anything but clothes on his body.
So if he was walking into brush, you'd think you'd have his hands out in front of him to feel for whatever's around to find his way.
And the rips in his clothing, specifically his jacket, was thought to have been caused by barbed wire fences in the area.
David Polite says that Keith was found roughly 19 miles away from the barn.
A newspaper article at the time said he was found nine miles away from the barn in a straight line.
The thing about that is that you couldn't walk in a straight line for nine miles.
You'd have to navigate around many geological obstructions to get to Skull Canyon, thereby walking far more than nine miles.
So, the search and rescue team, they walked in one direction for three miles, where they would find footprints that looked like Keith's.
The Prince seemed to go in a different direction, about 45 degrees to the left, and led to the top of a craggy hill at Skull Canyon, where they found him laying face down in the snow.
The terrain is rather difficult to navigate, as I mentioned earlier, and that's speaking for an adult doing that hike.
Now you have to consider a two-year-old doing it as good, if not better, than many able-bodied adults, including the search and rescue team.
And that is where Les Stroud comes in.
Les Stroud is a Canadian writer and director, and he's best known for the show Survivorman and subsequent survival shows.
He is actually credited as being the person who pioneered the made-for-TV survival shows.
Yeah, man, no, he's done a lot.
He's very knowledgeable and has extensive experience with, you know, primitive living, living off the land, surviving.
He's done a ton of survival shows where he just survives, you know?
But yeah, I don't know who's better, Les Stroud or...
Yeah, he is for sure.
They both have extensive survival skills, and I think skill-wise, they're pretty even.
While Bear has a lot more military training, Les has a lot more primitive living off-the-land experience.
Right, and the point being that Les Stroud is very fit, very capable of climbing cliffs and mountains, no problem.
Exactly. And so Les Stroud started talking with David Polites, and he agreed to follow Keith's footsteps from the barn
Through the likely path that Keith took, because we don't know exactly where Keith went, but you have to take the amount of time that had passed, the 18 or 19 hours or so, and the distance that he was likely to have traveled, so anywhere between 8 to 12 miles.
Celeste followed the direction that Keith likely took, and also considered other likely paths.
There's a sneak peek of David Polite's 2017 Unexplained Disappearances, which he posted on YouTube.
In which Les Stroud follows the likely path of Keith Parkins.
And here are the six statements that Les Stroud makes in the two-minute clip.
Eight miles.
That's as the crow flies.
It's impossible to walk out here.
As the crow flies, in the span of less than 24 hours, you'd have to believe that this two-year-old had covered perhaps as many as 12 miles.
Even with a full moon tonight, I can't see anything going through this bush.
So if I'm a two-year-old child and I've got to walk or crawl through this, I get to this time of night, I can't see Keith going anywhere.
I can't go anywhere.
How a two-year-old could travel through the topography I'm traveling now, little shoes, and into sub-freezing temperatures, even if this kid is full of energy.
Yeah, that's pretty strange and definitely worth, like, pondering over.
It's difficult for trained adults who have experience, not only in the world, but just moving through terrain such as this, to cross through that terrain.
And here's this two-year-old child that supposedly did it in the night with sub-freezing temperatures.
I just don't buy it.
There's just no way.
Okay, so what is the most likely explanation?
Let's go Occam's razor here.
I would put out there that he was possibly dragged by an animal, like a large cat, maybe a cougar even.
I mean, that could make sense.
It's a powerful animal out at night at times.
Sure, yeah, okay.
That would make sense considering the scratches on his face and some of the rips in his clothing.
And the fact that when he was asked about what happened, two-year-old Keith said that a cat had scratched him.
Oh, okay.
Well, I mean, that's sort of points for.
Case closed, right?
What are we even doing here?
Well, it would make the most sense.
Occam's razor.
But then you have to think about the fact that he wasn't scratched anywhere else but his face.
And he didn't have any other reported injuries anywhere else on his body.
So if a large cat dragged him, 8 plus miles, as the crow flies, up and over cliffs, over mountains, through brush, being dragged, there's no way there wouldn't be further injuries.
And it is extremely likely that the cat would have bit him on the neck as large cats do.
You know, to their prey to kill them.
And they then usually drag them off by gripping onto their neck with their teeth.
And if the cat didn't bite his neck, which we know didn't happen, then it would have bit a limb at some point, right?
Or another part of his body to drag him off.
But like I said, there were no reported bite marks anywhere.
I mean, the chances of a hungry predator not biting the neck or any part of the body over a period of 19 hours while dragging this body over a distance of at least 8 miles is insanely low.
Just improbable.
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, you know, cats are known to go for the neck to kill.
And I guess my only counterpoint would be, like, if somehow, and I mean, this is, like, astronomical odds, right?
If somehow...
This was like a female cat and something about his motions and maybe his smell triggered sort of like a motherly response, like a cub almost.
You know, it's been shown that sometimes animals with small children behave differently than with adults, you know, or like prey, so to speak.
I can't speak to any of those off the top of my head right now.
And that's like a huge, I mean, improbable.
Chance that that was the case.
But as far as, you know, his wounds that he did have, hard to believe that he wouldn't sustain any more injury other than some scratches on his face.
It's just unrealistic.
I mean, it's possible, but it's definitely not likely.
So you're proposing sort of like a Jungle Book scenario.
Mowgli, is that his name?
Mowgli, yes.
Mowgli. Good memory.
Where Boyd gets lost, animals, you know.
Take care of him.
Yeah, attempt to raise him, like rear them as their own.
Yeah. It's possible.
I mean, you know, we've seen crazier things.
So that's a strange one.
And if there really is nothing weird about it, and a large cat did in fact drag him off over that period of time and not leave any bite marks on him, then I mean, that in itself is still a weird story.
Yeah, and take into account that it's a two-year-old.
They aren't the best at explaining things exactly as they are.
I mean, they barely have the vocabulary to articulate how they're feeling.
So he says a cat scratched his face.
If it was a cat that scratched his face, why the hell did the cat only scratch his face and nothing else?
It leaves more questions.
And to point out here, if you're being scratched on the face by a cat or anything, you're going to at least try to put your hands up to help protect your face.
You're not going to sit there and just let the cat do that.
So that's why we usually have quote-unquote defensive wounds on victims who are attacked, you know, with weapons or animals.
It's because they're trying to protect themselves.
They aren't just like, No more scratch on me, please.
Right. And if it wasn't a cat, then what the hell scratch his face?
No shit.
What the hell, man?
What creature of the night just lurks endlessly looking for its next scratch-facey, unsuspecting victim, and then would inflict said scratches directly to the face?
It's creepy, man.
It could only be Hillary
The usual suspect.
Has to be.
Moving on.
The next story is about a 10-year-old boy named Bobby Bisop.
The year was 1958, and little Bobby was attending a Catholic camping retreat in the Rocky Mountain National Park.
There was a large group of other youths.
This already sounds like it's not going to end well.
And it doesn't.
Bobby was partially deaf and very introverted, so he enjoyed running off to do things on his own since socializing was rather difficult for him.
But a group of the boys, including Bobby, would go down to Cabin Creek to do some fishing.
It wasn't all that far from the camp, and there would be camp counselors very close nearby.
Well, naturally.
This part of the creek was well known to the camp counselors, as it was a frequented fishing spot.
And had been for years.
It's where the boys would always go fishing, just like their fathers and their fathers before them.
At some point, everyone is called back to the camp for dinner.
Bobby, being partially deaf, had to be ushered a little bit by a counselor, and then the two headed back toward the camp, with Bobby being behind the counselor.
The counselor looked behind him to see Bobby walking close behind, staring around at the forest.
He then turned to face forward and continued to walk.
Only moments later, he turned around again to check on Bobby, only this time, Bobby was gone.
The counselor stopped and yelled for Bobby, but he didn't get a response.
The counselor assumed Bobby was simply playing a trick on him, so the counselor went around trying to find him behind trees and within the brush, but he couldn't find him anywhere, and he wasn't responding to any calls by the counselor.
So the counselor ran back to the camp and gathered the other counselors to help look for Bobby.
They desperately looked for Bobby, but couldn't find him anywhere.
And that would begin an intensive nine-day search involving about 400 police officers, Air Force officers from the nearby Lowry Air Force Base, search and rescue teams, and volunteers.
They would use aircraft from the nearby base to fly over the area, and also use tracker dogs to help find Bobby's trail.
But they would find no trace of Bobby Bizzip.
He was there, and then he was gone.
But soon, a clue would come.
You see, there would be a visiting doctor in the area during the incident, and he claimed to have seen the missing boy in a hardware store about 15 miles away.
This was the only potential clue they had.
So if that was true, how would Bobby have gotten there?
I'm going to go full Ockham right now and say that he was probably kidnapped by someone out there in the woods, lurking near the camp, just like, I want to...
Take me one of these chillins.
And then, you know, maybe the man needed some items, just assuming it's a man, from the hardware store because, you know, everyone needs things and the stores are where those things are.
So you have kidnappers and killers.
You know, they're people too.
They do all the same stuff that everybody else does.
So I feel like that's maybe the simplest of reasonings.
Right. And it certainly sounds like he was kidnapped from the forest.
But guess what?
That lead went nowhere.
Then, about one year later, someone found some bone fragments, some torn clothing, and a broken hearing aid.
Remember, Bobby Bishop was partially deaf.
These items were found in a very remote spot, about 2,500 feet up Mount Meeker, which is about three miles from where Bobby went missing.
Testing of the bones confirmed that they belonged to Bobby Bishop.
The question here...
is how he was not found when that entire area was ruthlessly searched by people on the ground with trained tracker dogs and airplanes flying above.
The whole area had been searched for nine days.
My question is, well, did they even search Mount Meeker?
Or did they just stay in the lower elevations assuming that Bobby could not have climbed a mountain?
We don't know.
But the searchers and those involved in the recovery...
We're stumped on why Bobby would have ran off and climbed a mountain.
They hold on to the theory that lost people typically seek lower ground rather than climbing to a higher elevation.
But in my opinion, that is purely speculative and subjective.
There is no doubt that people will climb higher elevations if they are lost in order to be able to look for any landmarks or anything to give them a sense of direction.
The issue here is, if that whole area, including Mount Meeker, was searched, as they say, then how did they miss Bobby Meeker?
Yeah, I mean, you would think that, especially with the dogs, but, you know, if I'm thinking about it and I'm just, you know, doing the what-ifs, what if he was kidnapped and a person killed him and then returned his body near the spot where they remembered kidnapping him from,
just to...
You know, throw off the trail or something.
I don't know.
No, it's probable.
I mean, I'm sure it's happened.
People, you know, kidnapping someone from an area, this area gets searched, but the, you know, person takes that victim somewhere else, does whatever they do, but then, like, knowing that that area was already searched, then they would just bring that body back to that area.
Yeah, exactly.
Perfect crime.
Yeah. Yeah.
Kind of confuses the investigators, right?
Right. Well...
Let's climb up on a double-decker tandem pogo stick and pogo our way 1,560.9 miles east over to Marshall, Minnesota.
Ah, yes.
The breed who bleed purple, and they're known for their wonderful bike paths.
Ah, yeah.
And the name Minnesota actually comes from the native Dakota, Minnesota, which means sky-tinted water.
Scott, can you guess what their state drink is?
Their state drink?
Um... Maybe iced tap water?
I don't fucking know, dude.
It's milk.
Oh, I should have known.
Any milk?
Just milk?
Not hemp milk or almond milk?
Goat milk?
Milk. It says milk.
Oh. Well, that's great.
You know, my buddy told me he was bathing in some milk.
Like, almost fully submersed in this tub of milk.
So I asked him, pasteurized?
And he said, no.
Just to my chin.
Oh, wow.
That's good.
That joke was utter destruction.
Oh, and don't loiter in Minnesota.
They will arrest you.
Yes, they will.
All right.
So now we have 19-year-old Brandon Swanson, who was from Marshall, Minnesota.
And on this particular Wednesday night, he was celebrating the end of the spring semester with some friends from the Minnesota West Community and Technical College.
They would attend two different parties, one in Marshall, near where he lived, and another in the nearby town of Canby.
And Brandon was said to only have had a few drinks and certainly didn't drink enough to impair his behavior.
His friends noted to police and to his parents that he did not drink enough to be visibly intoxicated.
So a little before midnight, Brandon decided to head home.
He got in his car, a Chevrolet Lumina, and began the 30-mile trip.
A trip he was very familiar with as he'd driven those very roads daily to go to school for years.
Not long after beginning this trip down the dark, desolate, graveled farmland roads, he ran into trouble.
He drove into a ditch and became high-centered, which caused a couple of the tires to come off the ground, making it completely inoperable.
After being bummed out for a bit, he decided to call his parents at around 1.55 a.m.
They answered the phone as any parent would at that hour.
Frustration mixed with concern, and he explained to them what had happened and that he needed a ride.
Of course, his parents agreed and asked him where he was.
He told them that he was near the town of Lind, which is about ten minutes away from their home in Marshall by car.
The phone call apparently kept cutting out, as there was bad reception, so Brandon's parents tried to keep him on the line as long as possible.
While on the call for a while, maybe fifteen to twenty minutes, Brandon became frustrated with his parents because they couldn't find him.
He would even hang up on his mother Annette at one point because his parents were telling him that he was giving them the wrong directions.
But he was convinced that he was giving them the correct directions and that they just were unable to follow his directions.
Well, I think we've all been there at least once or twice.
When he did that, his mother actually called him back and she apologized for thinking that he was giving them the wrong directions.
At some point...
And these are like...
familiar roads to all of them right I mean 10 miles from their home so this isn't like some new crazy backwoodsy territory where he's out some forestry road with some friends you know I mean more so for his parents and himself but they were all very familiar with the
entire area it was literally home yeah and there aren't any major obstructions like huge rolling hills or massive factories blocking their view either yeah exactly
So Brandon finally told them that he would just walk toward the city lights in the distance that he believed to be Lind.
Now, he either told his parents to drive to a parking lot of a bar in Lind and wait for him there, or to pick him up at a friend's house in Lind, as those are two conflicting stories I found.
As his parents drove down the roads looking for him, Brandon would stay on the phone with his parents as he walked along the very dark road.
He said he passed by some fences and could hear water flowing nearby.
This meant that he was somewhat close to the Yellow Medicine River, which was said to be about 15 feet deep that night.
But the river is 15 feet deep in some places.
In other places, it is only knee-deep, so there is a big fluctuation of water depth on this river at any given time, along any stretch you may be on.
And the fences were of no help to them, considering that it's farmland, and there are fences everywhere you look.
As Brandon walked, he looked all around him in the vast darkness, only speckled with distant tower lights, farmhouse lights, and very distant glows from the surrounding towns.
He couldn't believe he was walking all alone out there and that nobody could find him after all this time.
Suffice to say, he couldn't believe that he couldn't see any car lights anywhere around him either.
And likewise, his parents were just as frustrated, if not more, than he was.
They're frustrated being out there looking for him in the middle of the night.
They're probably thinking like, man, this dumbass, you know, his car trouble is probably not being responsible with the car.
And now he's drunk and we can't find him.
I mean, I'm sure they didn't know what the situation was, dude.
You know, they didn't think it was going to be serious.
So the last thing parents want to be is woken up in the middle of the night and they're not going to be just like stoked to hop out of bed and jump in the car and, you know, go driving around.
They hate stuff like that.
But that frustration would quickly turn to fear.
Now before we continue, there are two stories here.
One being that Brandon's dad dropped Annette off back at home so she could go back to sleep, and then his dad returned to find Brandon, with Brandon still on the phone with him as he headed back out into the darkness.
And the other being that Annette was never dropped off.
But either way, the phone call would last 47 minutes before suddenly, at around 2.30 a.m. on May 14, 2008, Two words would come from Brandon's lips.
Oh, shit.
Apparently, his phone didn't hang up or disconnect or anything like that, according to his parents.
And his dad would say that it sounded like the phone was falling as Brandon said, oh, shit.
I say this because most of the articles I read and the YouTube videos I watched say that the phone immediately disconnected after he said, oh, shit.
But that is contrary to what his parents said.
His parents would frantically call him back over and over, but each call would ring and ring until it went to voicemail.
And that is another point to consider about the phone disconnecting right away.
So calls being made to a disconnected phone or a phone that has been turned off, the call would essentially just go straight to voicemail, maybe after one ring, right?
His parents would then reach out to Brandon's friends to ask them for their help to drive around the desolate roads.
Some of them would do so, but none of them would find Brandon.
They would search until about 6.30 a.m., and by that point, his mother, Annette, reported Brandon missing to the Lindt police.
Some officers would then join in on the search.
The deputies would find Brandon's car stuck in a ditch on a gravel road near the Lincoln County line, which brought in man made of wet clay, Jack Vizeki, the county sheriff.
*music*
Come, fish.
Come, fish, come.
Now, the first rule is obey all rules.
Secondly, do not ride on the walls, as it takes a lot of work to erase riding off the walls.
And thirdly, Ron Howard, you throw like a girl.
They investigated around the car, but they couldn't find any footprints which made it impossible for them to determine which direction he began walking.
Except... We know he was intending to walk to Lind, which he thought he could see in the distance, only it wasn't Lind, but most likely either the town of Porter or of Taunton, which were both nearly equidistant northwest and southwest, respectively, from where his Lumina was found.
His car was also about 25 miles northwest from Lind, the town that he thought he was close to and thought that he was walking toward.
The authorities would then call in search dogs to track Brandon's scent.
And this is always weird to me when I hear that,
you know, quote, no evidence that he had drowned, end quote.
You know, it's like, what evidence could there be other than an actual body, which would lead you to say definitively, Oh, they drowned.
Right, you know, like, Ted finds a sock washed up on the shore of the river, and he's like, Oh, he done drowned.
I needn't investigate no further.
Hey, fella, what are you doing with my sock, mister?
Oh, hey there, fella.
You have my sock in your hand.
Sock? That's my sock.
No, I don't.
Can't you see we're swimming here?
What sock?
This isn't yours.
It's a missing man's sock, and I'm taking it for evidence.
Evidence? What's that in your pants?
Who are you, mister?
Um, I'm a special agent.
I'm super hidden undercover governmental agent.
Spy. Oh, yeah?
Who do you work for, then, mister?
I work for the worldwide, uh, secret government black ops branch of the Pentagon in, you know, Washington, D.C. Shut up, it's a secret.
I can't tell you this.
Get out of here, you creep.
And drop my sock before I throw this cell phone I found in the mud at you.
Alright, hold on, man.
I'm leaving.
Hold on, man.
I'm severely bow-legged.
Not only is my right leg four inches shorter than my left leg, my left foot is the size of a healthy summer gourd.
Yeah, I see that, you weirdo.
Get out of here, you creep.
Furthermore, they had set up artificial dams in the river to help find him if he had drowned, but nothing came of it.
The experts thought that his body would have been washed up on the shore at some point, but it never did.
And the river is pretty calm.
There aren't rapids in it as far as I can tell.
And there would be subsequent searches for his body over the years, but again, nothing.
No trace of him has ever been found.
Not a shoe, not a sock, not a bone.
Absolutely nothing.
Now, let's go over a few of the submitted theories floating around about this.
Alright, so, voluntary disappearance.
Scott, what do you think about that?
I don't think so at all.
I think if he was trying to disappear, I don't think he would have bothered being on the phone that long with his parents, and I don't think he would have called them at all.
Yeah, I mean, there's no evidence or anything to suggest that he wanted to disappear and start a new life.
So how about a mental breakdown?
No, his friends said he didn't drink anything crazy at the party.
He wasn't in some kind of downward spiral.
He had a group of friends, you know?
And he sounded very salient on the phone speaking to his parents.
He was frustrated that they couldn't find him, but that's normal.
He wasn't like, I just need to get out of here and drive away and you need to come find me right now.
You know what I mean?
He didn't sound like a person in crisis.
Right. And plus there's no evidence that he had ever suffered a mental health crisis.
There were no family problems and both friends and family said that he was emotionally stable.
Yeah, I mean, that's probably why he called his parents in the first place, because someone that doesn't have a good relationship with their parents, well, unless they're in, like, serious, serious trouble, probably not going to be the first person that they call.
Right. A third theory would be an accident.
So he had an accident.
Well, I mean, he says, oh, shit, and then he's never seen or heard from again.
So, yeah, he obviously had some type of accident, you know?
Yeah. You know, did he fall on the river?
I mean, that was the immediate assumption.
But like I said, no body was ever found.
His dad said that it sounded like the phone was falling as he said, oh shit.
But he didn't hear any sounds of water splashing or weird underwater sounds that you would expect to hear if your phone fell into water, right?
So did they ever find the phone?
No, the phone was never found either.
See, that's weird to me.
We're so good at finding phones.
This is like 2008, right?
Yeah, 2008.
Well, then it's a little strange that they weren't able to quote-unquote find this phone.
You'd think they'd be able to.
There's a possibility that he fell into a large hole in the ground, but again, no large hole has ever been found.
Yeah, they would have found it eventually.
Right. And then there's a possibility that he found an old farmhouse and he went inside to stay warm but succumbed to hypothermia.
But, I mean...
Doesn't explain the last words to the parents.
That and a body would have been found.
Totally. I don't think any creature is going to eat up every little bit of a body.
You know what I mean?
There's going to be something left over.
There's some dried blood.
Something. Shreds of clothing.
Something's always left.
So then there's a suspicion of a suicide.
No, he clearly wasn't a person in crisis.
He was talking to his parents.
He was trying to be found.
He was frustrated they weren't finding him, so I don't think so.
Right. And again, he didn't have a history of mental illness, and he didn't exhibit any signs of depression or loneliness or anything.
He wasn't giving his belongings away to his friends.
Yeah. There's just no sign for that.
The next one, how about a homicide?
Honestly, as crazy as it sounds, I feel like homicide could be a more likely scenario than some of these other ones just because it could explain why a body was never found.
If the person knocked him out over the head and then chucked his phone because they saw he was on the phone.
Someone's just out there lurking in the woods like, I want to do a killings.
Sees him, throws the phone, so you hear this phone tumbling around, takes the body, you know, and drives it far away.
It's a long shot, but...
I mean, there's speculation that someone saw Brandon while he was walking and decided to kill him, right?
So I went on Reddit, and I was able to track down a certain BigBud16V747, and he said that he went to the school that our buddy Brandon Swanson went to.
And he said that Brandon actually owed money to a drug dealer.
He didn't say how much he owed, but he said, quote-unquote, that was the word on the street.
Oh. Interesting, interesting.
And there's no body to ever do a toxicology, so he may not have been drunk at the party, but what if he was on something, you know?
He owes money to this drug dealer.
We don't really know what kind of drug it was, but he has quote-unquote car trouble.
His car's in the ditch.
He thinks he's walking towards Lind, but he's not.
He's not even close to Lind.
He's 25 miles away from Lind.
So, I don't know.
That, to me, sounds like someone that might be on something.
See, and I thought maybe he ate some acid at this party, or maybe he was dosed without knowing it.
And he's like, boy, I gotta get out of here.
And so he just jumped in his car.
He's like, I'll see you guys later.
Started driving.
Got in a crash.
You know?
So, I mean, here's my theory.
Brandon was drinking a little more than people thought.
Maybe not a lot, but maybe a little more.
Or maybe he ingested some sort of drug, like a hallucinogenic.
But we just don't know.
So he got in his car.
He was driving.
He got his car stuck in a ditch.
Then he's, you know, he got out.
Started walking, talking to his dad on the phone.
Right. They didn't see any cars out there.
His parents didn't see any cars driving.
He didn't see any cars driving.
But apparently Brandon is allegedly walking in some specific area in a specific direction.
And we don't know if he was jumping over fences.
We don't know how close he was to the river other than him saying, I hear the sound of water.
We literally have no information to work with.
But personally, I think he fell into the river.
But again, they dredged the river.
They put up these dams to find a body.
Yeah, they dammed it up.
There's just no evidence of him falling into the river.
They found nothing, you know, unless sometimes debris gets caught underneath the water's surface, like little, you know, like logs and like a little log jam.
And sometimes a body could get washed into one of those and kind of stuck there.
And then more debris would pile up behind him and just kind of compact him down there, right?
But again, they dredged the river.
They didn't find a body.
Yeah, I mean, that would be, you know, not to say stranger things haven't happened, but just like million to one odds that his body would have been pinned in that river.
I mean, just the way they drained it, I feel like even they would have been able to find something under the water's surface after the drainage.
You know, they said it's only knee deep in some areas.
It sounds more like a creek sometimes.
Right. I just feel like they would have found him.
And bodies float, you know?
Right. But, I mean, while Brandon may not have been drunk, you know, perhaps there was another driver or something, and they hit Brandon as he walked.
He said, oh, shit.
And then the car hits him.
The phone flies out of his hand, and that's why you hear the phone falling.
Driver's like, oh, shit, what did I just do?
Picks Brandon up, throws him in the back of the truck, and, you know, never seen again.
I mean, that's one theory.
Kind of fails when you consider there's no blood or anything found anywhere.
No skid marks.
Plus, he would have told his dad or his parents that he maybe saw cars coming.
So, I mean, that doesn't really work either.
Yeah. I mean, because if you're walking, you're going to hear a car coming behind you.
You're going to hear that.
Especially flat land, nothing around you late at night.
You're going to hear it.
Yeah, totally.
I mean, they would have heard cars coming by over their phone.
I mean...
I don't know, man.
It's got to be the river, but his parents doubt it.
Nobody's found.
Yeah, he definitely could have fallen into the river, for sure.
You know, if I was going to give my one theory, and maybe it's because I want it to be fantastical, but I feel like maybe if he owed enough money, maybe someone did do something about it.
But at the same time, if you owe money and then you kill the person, you're never going to get your money.
So... Yeah, and there's this little side note on that, too.
It's like, you know, people kill people over $5.
So the amount of money would really have nothing to do with it.
That's true, too.
Yeah, people have been killed for less.
People have been killed for looking at somebody the wrong way.
You know, so...
Amount isn't important, I suppose, but...
I don't know.
If it was any kind of savvy drug dealer, I suppose, you'd want to...
You'd either want to keep him alive so you get your investment back or you'd want to kill someone who you didn't think mattered to make a statement so nobody else shorted you in the future.
Yeah. But I mean, this is a...
Was he white?
Was he Caucasian?
Yeah. Maybe wouldn't want to kill a Caucasian male, you know, in college because you'd assume that there's probably someone around that cares, you know, just demographically.
Yeah, and that is true.
Anyways, that's all my theories.
That's the extent of my expertise.
Where's the phone?
Where is the phone?
But I have one question about this whole thing.
It's a question for Brandon's dad, I guess.
And I want to know exactly, how did Brandon say, oh shit?
Because it all depends on the tone, right?
The tone describes a severity of a situation.
For example, you know, you're walking on the street, you see a cool vendor with a cool shirt there with a cool design on it.
You're like, oh shit.
Oh shit.
You know?
I've let a few of those oh shits out in my time.
Right. And then maybe you're standing there looking at this cool shirt and then you see two really big mean looking dudes come up to you with knives about to rob you and you're like, oh shit.
Oh shit, yeah.
And then maybe you're driving around looking for some circus peanuts, but you see a bus coming that's driven by an elephant coming toward you and it swears and you land at the last second just about to strike your car and you're like, oh shit!
Yes, yes.
Or maybe your boss calls you into the office at the end of the day and it doesn't sound very good and sure enough, you're getting fired.
No 401k, no pension, no severance pay.
You're ruined and you say, oh shit.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
This is important.
The point is that there are different ways to say, oh shit.
It's the tone that tells you what's up.
So we need to know exactly how Brandon said, oh shit.
Was he walking?
And then a portal opened up and sucked him in?
And right as it was happening, he said, oh shit!
But he dropped his phone.
But it was sucked into the portal as well, hence why the phone has never been found.
Well, apparently, remember that kid found it that was swimming in the river, you know, the one that that dude grabbed his sock off the bank, thinking it was Brandon's, and the kid said to drop his sock, or else he would throw the cell phone that he found in the mud at him.
You know, remember that?
I do remember that, you're right.
Or did he walk upon a family of Bigfoot?
Brandon stood there in disbelief and said, oh shit, dropped his phone, and just started living with them.
Yes! The younger Bigfootita quickly ran back, grabbed the shiny phone, and she would later become the first shameless Bigfoot MySpace influencer.
Bigfootita. Sounds more like a fusion of a certain popular but horrible sandwich shop and some delicious Mexican food.
Yeah, I'll take maybe six Bigfootitas, and yeah, I'll take six of those.
Yes, six.
I said six, you son of a bitch.
Come on, hurry up.
I'm freaking starving here.
I got shit I gotta do.
Six. Yes, six.
Don't make me come back there and twist you up like a noodle, you grimy, dead ass.
Where's my six Big Fatidas?
I like how you went walking there.
Yeah, I had to go walking, bro.
He would definitely order some Big Fatidas.
He would, too.
Six of them.
Six of them.
Holy shit.
This guy means business.
That's the type of guy you would want to cross the street to avoid, even if he was only wanting to give you a word of advice.
Yeah, you don't want to cross that guy.
Really short fuse there.
And typically when a guy wants to give you a word of advice in New York anyways, it means you're going to get smacked up the side of the old dome piece.
Yeah, I think Wayne Dale.
Wayne Dale is fairly close to being one of those guys.
God damn it.
Wayne Dale, man.
Hey, be easy on him.
Yeah, he's just a big old softy dummy.
He can't help it.
Well, Scott, what do you think about these missing people's cases?
Maybe not exactly these that we covered today, but the entire phenomenon of what appears to be worldwide.
Well, I'm glad that there's at least some effort, vain though it may be, to at least bring some awareness and bring some attention to these missing people's cases because at the end of the day, these people have families, people that still think about how they're missing.
How there hasn't been any resolution.
I mean, that's just got to cause such a huge emotional scar.
Just to not know.
It's almost the worst.
And when it comes down to it, these are real people in these cases.
Yeah, of course.
Yeah. And I'm glad that there's some work being done.
And hey, who knows?
Maybe we'll keep the spark alive in our small way.
Hopefully. Well, alright everyone, that's going to do it for today's show.
Oh yeah?
You're just gonna ignore me now, huh?
You're just gonna go off like that?
Pretend I'm not here?
Like I don't exist?
Standing here with these six big fatidus?
We hope you enjoyed it.
We're just having fun here.
Taking life one day at a time while all this crazy shit is going on all around us.
We need to be safe out there, man.
I'm about ready for full body armor.
Just walking, just to walk one block to a food truck, you know?
No joke.
And don't forget to share, like, and subscribe to the Paranautica Podcast.
