Missing 411

[Explorer]

^^^

Excellent summary, MIB

 

I agree with your cogent assessment.

 

I don't quite understand how so many people in the BF research community still defend Ketchum's work (including Paulides).

 

I don't pay attention to that work anymore and don't pay attention to those who defend it.

[bipedalist]

20 hours ago, wiiawiwb said:

Just curious, what is the propaganda, of 411 propaganda, that you're not fond of?

 

In my case it is selective recall of facts about cases, known effects of hypothermia that seem to scream out recognition but tendency to ignore them and tendency to lead on the audience.  I am also not impressed by his call-out of those who disagree with him by lumping them into the majority of squatchers who he claims are rude, intrusive and possibly dissed his family as noted in his tirade at the Sasquatch Summit in Ocean Shores several years ago.  History and associates in prior background started  me rethinking his approach; after reading Hoopa Project I refused to invest in any more of his pablum. This despite knowing Bobby Short, someone I corresponded with,  was totally onboard with him.  We could disagree and keep it respectable.  Some friends and researchers direct experience with unethical elements of Ketchum's work didn't help any. (reminds me of a BFF thread on BF ethics in research we once had) In sum, he is just a little too slick, like some politicians I have known and would not vote for a second time. 

Edited March 26, 2020 by bipedalist

[norseman]

22 hours ago, bipedalist said:

 

In my case it is selective recall of facts about cases, known effects of hypothermia that seem to scream out recognition but tendency to ignore them and tendency to lead on the audience.  I am also not impressed by his call-out of those who disagree with him by lumping them into the majority of squatchers who he claims are rude, intrusive and possibly dissed his family as noted in his tirade at the Sasquatch Summit in Ocean Shores several years ago.  History and associates in prior background started  me rethinking his approach; after reading Hoopa Project I refused to invest in any more of his pablum. This despite knowing Bobby Short, someone I corresponded with,  was totally onboard with him.  We could disagree and keep it respectable.  Some friends and researchers direct experience with unethical elements of Ketchum's work didn't help any. (reminds me of a BFF thread on BF ethics in research we once had) In sum, he is just a little too slick, like some politicians I have known and would not vote for a second time. 

Don’t you think certain cases like the Martin case, far outweigh any fringe cases that may or may not be hypothermia?

 

Regardless of your opinion of Paulides? I will say this. Without him? I wouldn’t know about these cases.

[WSA]

Couldn’t agree more Norseman.  

 

As well, there sometimes is a similarity between the way the missing persons cases get dismissed and the dismissal of Sasquatch encounters. Not saying these two things are necessarily related causally, mind you. Just saying there are sometimes seen the same remarkably similar approaches to both. When you say, “Oh, he got lost”, or “Another hunter shot him and hid the body””, you are not that far away from the same tired approach Sasquatch skeptics employ when they say, “Oh, he saw a bear”. Both defy the logic of the situations and the evidence and equally impugn the intelligence of the witnesses.  

 

At the end of the day, people see Bigfoots. At the end of the day, a significant number of people have disappeared in the wilds of NA under unexplainable circumstances. That we don’t why either of these things are happening is no license to deny they are. 

 

[bipedalist]

I didn't deny or dismiss that people disappear, I just don't believe and subscribe to the theory they are abducted, mutilated, tinkered with otherwise molested by B F or E T or EBE mostly in National Parks. I am intimately familiar with the lay of the land of the Martin case, I have backpacked the Twentymile section up to the AT/Spence/Russell Field on Eagle Creek, it is steep, primitive with blind sections of rock prongs reaching out over a sometimes raging Creek; if he made it down the Fontana Lake side at all, he could easily never be found Special Forces or not

Edited March 28, 2020 by bipedalist

[WSA]

Sure, Bipedalist..the country is as you say, and I’ve passed through that section over Thunderhead Mt.  in winter and summer both. While what you say is undeniably possible, the idea that it happened that way is tantamount to saying, “It was just a bear”...possible, but absolutely out of step with the reported facts. You don’t have to believe that these disappearances are BF related. I am not sure I do. What  I do believe is these are not glibly explained by handy and reassuring narratives about accepted and pat scenarios . They make us feel better, but they are not useful for making sense of these kinds of events. 

[wiiawiwb]

I am deeply thankfully that Paulides had the vision to bring these disappearances to the public's attention. Something very odd has gone on and continues to this day.  I don't know what it is but whatever is going on is profoundly discomforting.

 

"It was a bear" is silly on its face. Only an uninitiated, metro-urban dweller could confuse the two when the thing is walking or running on two legs.

 

 

 

 

[bipedalist]

The wild hogs in that area are also huge and would make quick work of someone small especially if surprised with young

[WSA]

11 hours ago, bipedalist said:

The wild hogs in that area are also huge and would make quick work of someone small especially if surprised with young

Again...a fact without much dispute (although a hog at that elevation, and the low density of the population in those years argues against it somewhat) but this theory does not comport with the known circumstances and conditions then existing. This kind of tossing around of limitless and reassuring possibilities is not very useful in narrowing the definition of the occurrence, or others like it. All it serves to do is dissipate the attention given to it and, like I said, reassure us that random, unexplained, uncanny and sudden disappearances don’t happen in the backcountry. Excuse me, they do. I see the missing 411 project first as only trying to establish this baseline reality. 

 

I should add too: As someone who used to take week long solo backpacking trips in both the East and West, whenever I could, the reality of this freaks me out especially. But, better to face this and admit it rather than scrolling down the list of perfectly mundane but factually implausible explanations. 

[bipedalist]

Just a note that I think all of this is hyperbole but I do not give negative feedback in this thread; I just disagree on this clade of confabulation that Paulides proscribes but does not interpret well. Therefore I will not buy his books, watch his videos and when possible will avoid him at conventions and online guest appearances.  I may not be a "passionate member" but I have done that section of the AT twice through the Smokies, people disappear and die and the the story of somebody seeing a bear-like individual running away with a child is not registering with me in the Martin case.  Get wet and lost in the Smokies and you can be toast easily. 

Edited March 28, 2020 by bipedalist

[norseman]

I definitely know something strange is going on in our national forests. I’m not sure if it’s feral humans or Bigfoot. This is independent of anyone.

 

I definitely know it’s not a bear or hypothermia. So I guess I agree with Paulides on that point.

 

I definitely thought the Ketchum study was a sham. And Paulides could definitely be a snake oil book salesmen. I’m not defending him personally.

 

But some of his cases make the hackles stand straight up.

 

Edited March 28, 2020 by norseman

[MIB]

1 hour ago, norseman said:

But some of his cases make the hackles stand straight up.

 

Exactly.   

 

Exactly.

 

Exactly.

 

MIB

[wiiawiwb]

4 hours ago, bipedalist said:

Just a note that I think all of this is hyperbole but I do not give negative feedback in this thread; I just disagree on this clade of confabulation that Paulides proscribes but does not interpret well. Therefore I will not buy his books, watch his videos and when possible will avoid him at conventions and online guest appearances.  I may not be a "passionate member" but I have done that section of the AT twice through the Smokies, people disappear and die and the the story of somebody seeing a bear-like individual running away with a child is not registering with me in the Martin case.  Get wet and lost in the Smokies and you can be toast easily. 

 

There are lot of places where you can get wet and lost and die of hypothermia. No question about it. Many of the 411 cases involve someone who went missing and people in his/her party along with SAR were there immediately searching. A body should be found as there isn't enough time for the person to wander off, in some cases.

 

The case I know the most about is a recent one in November 2015 where Tom Messick was hunting with 6 other people. He was within a hundred years of the nearest person and he was put in a position where he sat and waited for others to drive a deer to him and three others.  When he didn't show up at the designated time one person immediately went to alert the authorities while the other people in the party began searching.  There were literally over three hundred search and rescue people. Tracking dogs couldn't pick up a scent nor could cadaver dogs. Helicopters with thermal/night vision equipment scoured the skies. Divers checked every inch of every body water in the area. The area was grid searched over and over again. His rifle was never found nor was his walkie-talkie nor any article of clothing. 

 

No body was found nor was there any trace he was ever there. One fellow hunter mentioned that he heard a noise he never heard in the woods in his life. He said it sounded like a trap shutting. What the heck is that? He didn't self-disappear, he wasn't taken by an animal, and he was wasn't involved in foul play. What in God's name happened to him?

 

This case was in the book Missing 411: Hunters and the first case profiled in the movie Missing 411: The Hunted, last summer.

[SWWASAS]

Would be interesting to play the sound that I had on my recording to the person who heard the "trap shutting"  and see if that was what he heard.     In my case the sound was about 15 or 20 seconds before a deep voice said "too close".    I have no memory of anyone saying anything.     The sound was like a toilet flushing or a door opening and air pressure equalizing.   Had a bit of a metallic clank to it.   Reminds me of a submarine hatch opening.     I had heard something hit the road behind me that I assumed was a rock falling off the cliff on the side of the road.     When I got home,   I listened to the recorder trying to hear the rock and figure out where it hit behind me.   I heard the mechanical sound then the voice on the recording.    I have no memory of either or of any appreciable missing time.      I would not ascribe any of the experience to BF.     It I pinned in on anything it would be an ET encounter just because of the mechanical nature of the sound.   

[VAfooter]

While probably few, if any, I wonder how many of these missing, wanted to "disappear"?