The Near Missing 411

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

You chose to hit play on this podcast today.

Smart Choice.

Make another Smart Choice with AutoQuote Explorer to compare rates for multiple car insurance companies all at once.

Try it at Progressive.com.

Progressive Casualty Insurance and Affiliates.

Not available in all states and situations.

Prices may vary on how you buy.

Part 1.

Foreboding.

David Paliders, an ex-police officer turned author, believes something strange is going on in and around North American national parks, where hundreds of people go missing each year.

He refers to this phenomenon as the missing 411.

However, over the course of this episode, we will be examining a cross-section of his research which receives perhaps the least publicity and analysis.

Those of the near-missing 411.

ABC Tuesday, Dancing with the Stars is back with an all-new celebrity cast.

You have the crew: Robert Irwin, Alex Earl, Andy Richter, Shen Affleck, Aaron Davis, Lauren Howreggi, Whitney Levitt, Dylan Efron, Jordan Childs, Ilaria Baldwin, Scott Hoyd, Elaine Hendricks, Sanielle Fischel, and Corey Feldman.

This season, get ready to feel the rhythm.

If you got it, flunt it.

Dancing with the Stars premieres live.

Tuesday, 8:7 Central on ABC and and Disney ⁇ .

PrizePicks will give you $50 instantly when you play your first $5 lineup.

You don't even need to win to receive the $50 bonus.

It's guaranteed.

Just download the PrizePicks app and use code Spotify.

That's code Spotify on PrizePicks to get $50 instantly when you play a $5 lineup.

PrizePicks, run your game.

Must be present in certain states, visitprizepicks.com for restrictions and details.

It has now just been over a decade since David Palidas first went public with his research into the many unexplained disappearances which have occurred in North America's national parks.

His work is notable for the sense of mystery and downright eeriness it exudes,

as well as the way in which it conveys the feelings of grief and loss experienced by the loved ones of those who have vanished.

Amongst the many examples he has cited,

it is commonly those cases in which little or no trace was ever found of the missing person which have received the highest degree of notoriety.

But his insistence, unlike many others across his field, not to commit to any one definitive theory about what may be responsible for this tragic and recurring phenomenon is as ominous as it is frustrating.

There are, however, a number of cases identified during the course of his work involving witnesses who were seemingly able to step back from the brink of disappearance.

Otherwise, unremarkable, Salt of the Earth people, whose extraordinary experiences have often been picked apart and ridiculed by their communities, when they have been brave enough to come forward and share them.

Witnesses whose stories suggest that Pallidas could be correct in that there may be many possible reasons for so many disappearances which have occurred throughout the North American landscape.

A common occurrence reported by countless hunters, hikers and national park employees has been referred to as the silence.

This eerie phenomenon seems to strike at random, with witnesses finding themselves standing alone, the woods around them having gone deathly quiet.

And whilst it would be expected that the presence of a nearby predator or even themselves may cause birds and other small animals to go quiet, witnesses report that this silence seems to go far beyond that.

Those who have experienced it often struggle to convey just how oppressive it is.

stating that the atmosphere around them seems to become thick and heavy, that even the sound of nearby running water or the wind rustling through the trees seems to cease altogether.

One witness described it as feeling as though in one instant they were in the natural physical world, and the next, they were somehow transported to an imposter world.

It was almost as if they were on a film set which couldn't quite replicate their real surroundings.

They also felt as if they were being observed by some unseen force the entire time.

People react to this strange phenomenon in different ways, and more often than not, nothing sinister comes of it.

But the experience of an unnamed park ranger working within the Smoky Mountains National Park suggests an even more mysterious element to this bizarre occurrence.

In May of 1992,

this park ranger, who we'll refer to as John, was midway through one of his regular patrols when he decided to stop and take a sip of water from his canteen.

Unscrewing the cap from the small container, he slowly realised that everything around him had gone silent.

Thinking that a large predator may be nearby, He walked across to a suitably tall tree and sat down on the ground with his back propped up against the trunk.

In this way, he would be able to keep an eye out for any large animals without having to worry about anything creeping up on him from behind.

As time passed, John began to get an overwhelming feeling that something was very wrong.

Far above him, The branches of the trees continued to sway in the same afternoon breeze he could feel brushing across his face, and yet he could not hear any of the rustling or creaking he would have expected to.

Turning his head left and right, feeling as if he had been wrapped in an invisible cloak of cotton wool which seemed to muffle every natural sound, he became increasingly unnerved.

After several minutes, John became so spooked that he decided to get up and head back to the trailhead.

But as he walked away from the tree he had been sitting against, he came to an immediate halt.

Looking down, he realized that a portion of his right foot had completely disappeared.

Everything from the crease of the toe cap forwards had entirely vanished.

Staring in disbelief, He moved his leg forwards and was horrified to see more of his foot disappear.

When he pulled it back again, his foot reappeared in its entirety.

Stepping back, John reached out with his right arm and was bewildered to see his hand completely vanish from sight.

When he lowered it again, his hand reappeared.

It was almost as if there was an invisible portal just in front of him.

Feeling a tingling sensation in each of the affected limbs, the Ranger decided not to venture any further and walked back to the tree, sitting with his back against it as he had done so previously.

After another five or ten minutes, the woodland sounds returned, and only then did John dare to venture forth and return to the trailhead, knowing in the core of his very being that he had just narrowly avoided becoming yet another missing person of the Smoky Mountains National Park.

Also during the early 90s, a similarly disturbing and inexplicable incident would play out at a residential premises located on the outskirts of a small town in rural Michigan.

As they had done so on many evenings,

the two young siblings who lived at the address had been out playing in their backyard, which happened to back onto an area of dense woodland.

At some point during their horseplay, the seven-year-old daughter of the family had launched the ball they were playing with into the tree line.

Apprehensive of the shadows forming within, as the sun slowly made its way towards the horizon, she had insisted her older brother be the one to go into the woods and retrieve it.

After a short argument, her nine-year-old sibling had finally relented.

and had begun to make his way across their backyard towards the waiting thickets.

But just as he had reached a point only several meters away from the undergrowth, their ball had come flying out of the trees, landing on the grass directly in front of him.

As the pair had stood peering into the shadows to see who was responsible for returning their ball, they detected a sudden movement, about 10 meters away hidden in shadow.

At first, they believed it to be their father playing a prank of some kind, but as they crept into the tree line, they saw a strange, pale and gaunt face peeking out from behind one of the trees, staring intently back at them.

Judging by the height at which its head peered out from behind the tree, it was obvious that it was very tall, far taller than either of their parents.

and it had a lank of jet black hair which hung down three or four feet in length.

Despite its imposing height and strange features, the siblings still believed that it was their father wearing a mask and standing on a tree branch, messing around as he was known to do.

As they advanced further inside the tree line, the strange face suddenly pulled back out of sight.

and then almost immediately reappeared behind another tree about 10 meters further into the woods.

The children had giggled and laughed, telling their father to knock it off, but the face remained staring intently at them, without any hint of emotion.

They advanced again, and sure enough, as soon as they had got to within three or four meters, the face withdrew and instantly reappeared behind another tree much further back.

This happened a number of times before the boy finally became frustrated and decided to run towards the apparent prankster, only for it to vanish from sight once again and immediately reappear, this time a good 30 or 40 meters back into the woods.

Not even two seconds had passed before its face had re-emerged.

Even the younger sibling who was just seven years old had realized that it would have been impossible for a human being to cover such a distance in such a short space of time.

They were also more than a little unnerved by the fact that at no point had they seen its body moving between the trees as it retreated.

The pair realised that when they turned back, they could no longer see their house through the trees.

They were suddenly gripped by a feeling that something was not right.

Only minutes had passed, and yet they seemed to be far deeper in the woods than they had ever dared venture before.

It slowly began to dawn on the boy that he and his sister were being lured away from the safety of their backyard.

Taking her by the arm, he hurriedly began to lead her in the direction opposite to the setting sun.

With their house being east of the tree line, he knew this would lead them back home and to safety.

Behind them, the eyes of the mysterious watcher watcher regarded them with some interest,

seemingly content to let them escape before it slowly faded back into the shadows.

Almost 20 years later, perhaps the most infamous near-missing 411 case would take place several hundred miles away in the neighboring state of Ohio.

On a Wednesday evening during late September of 2010, a bow hunter by by the name of Jan Maccabee, wife of the revered optical physicist Bruce Maccabee, had ventured into the woods near her home to visit her usual hunting spot.

The location in question consisted of a hide which had been installed atop a large tree and was accessed via a ladder from the woods below.

Situated some 15 to 20 feet off the ground, it was surrounded on all sides by thick and towering branches, looking out onto an open corridor between the trees, which stretched away in an easterly direction.

Jan had already been out to the stand earlier that day to install a hangar for her bow, which she had photographed using her BlackBerry mobile device.

It was with the same handset that she now sat taking further pictures and texting her husband.

while she patiently waited for any quarry to make its way out into the open.

The rest of the day had been cool and damp, but as evening approached the temperature had risen, with the moisture on the vegetation around her slowly starting to burn off.

Jan was midway through sending a text when she realized that the sounds of the forest had fallen completely silent.

Unnerved when this eerie development did not abate over the next few minutes, she had shared her anxiety in a message to her husband.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of what appeared to be an unnatural haze, roughly halfway up a tree situated about 20 feet away from where she was.

Jan would later describe what she saw as similar in appearance to a mirage created when a road or other surface seems to shimmer under the heat of the midday sun.

Initially believing that what she was looking at was the result of something caught in one of her eyes, she had closed and rubbed them for a few seconds before looking up again.

But to her surprise, the strange haze was still apparently clinging to the side of the same tree, roughly 10 feet higher than she was.

Then without a sound, The mysterious entity glided down towards the forest floor, directly across her field of vision, moving at a consistent and controlled speed.

Sitting perfectly still so as not to betray her presence, she had just managed to take a picture with her phone before the haze reached the ground below her.

The moment it did so, it completely disappeared from sight, with all the sounds of the forest suddenly returning around her.

Utterly perplexed by what she had just experienced, Jan took several more photos for comparison before cautiously clambering down from her hide.

It would not be until much later that evening, over dinner with her husband and some friends, that she had related her experience.

During the course of this conversation, Jan had produced her Blackberry and examined the images of what she had seen for the first time.

Her photo, which has now been evaluated by specialists across the globe, including her own husband, seems to depict some sort of reflective pattern passing directly before her.

And although there is no defined shape to this strange distortion, it is apparently reflecting and diverting the light around it, creating a prism-like effect.

Later, on that same evening, She would learn that there had been a further mysterious incident at a local high school, not even even an hour after her own experience.

On that occasion, a late band rehearsal at a local high school had been halted by a bright light, which had been seen hovering in the skies overhead.

As the students had ceased their practice and watched on in wonder, this strange object had changed colour and then shot off at some speed into the heavens.

When relating each of these three incidents, it is of note that Pelidas has never sought to expand upon them or offer any form of overarching explanation, and although all three are very different in nature, they are unified by the apparent lack of an overt hazard to those who experienced them.

In each example, be it an encounter with a portal to an unknown destination or an entity whose intentions are unclear, no obvious threat or danger was presented to the witness.

And yet, in all cases, what was being experienced was so inexplicable and haunting in nature that those involved felt the need to disengage with it.

In retelling these occurrences, one can only speculate as to what awaited them had they pushed the envelope, and proceeded to explore just that little bit further.

Join us in part two when we'll be recounting the tales of those who came even closer to never

being seen again.

Part 2 Missing Time

On the evening of the 2nd of September 2011, switchboard operators at the Siskiou County Sheriff's Office received a panicked phone call from the parents of a missing child.

The fact that the boy in question was just three years old was worrying enough, but of much greater concern was the location he had apparently disappeared from.

The parents' campsite was located in the foothills of Mount Shasta, a towering and inhospitable region which had claimed countless lives over the years.

As a result, The area was soon flooded with personnel from every branch of the emergency services, as well as a sizable group of civilian volunteers.

But upon their arrival, as the boy's father related the circumstances surrounding his son's disappearance, certain members of the search and rescue teams had shot nervous glances at one another.

Apparently the child had walked off into the surrounding countryside accompanied by the family dog.

and it was only upon the canine's return that the alarm had been raised.

It had staggered back into the campsite, soaked to the bone and shivering from the cold, before collapsing onto the ground, exhausted and quite alone.

The thoughts of the assembled emergency workers and volunteers had instantly turned to the nearby McLeod River, their immediate concern being the possibility that the dog had entered the water in some failed attempt to rescue its young companion.

With the river's current being particularly strong due to recent rainfall, in such a scenario, the chances of locating the missing child would be very poor.

It was with great relief then that four hours into the search, a canine unit had unexpectedly stumbled across the boy, alive and well, hiding in a small bush down by the riverbank.

Carrying the tired and shivering toddler back into the campsite, there had been a few raised eyebrows over the fact that he had been found in an area which had already been searched several times.

Such concerns were soon drowned out, however, with the outpouring of joy and gratitude when the child was reunited with his emotionally overwhelmed parents.

But little did those present know it at the time that the boy's disappearance was only one small facet of a much deeper and more haunting experience.

About three weeks after the ordeal, the boy's parents had gone out for the day, leaving him in the company of his grandmother, Cathy.

As she had sat watching him play with his toys on the carpet in front of her, she had been delighted when out of the blue, he said that he loved her.

Her joy over this unexpected show of affection was short-lived, however.

when he continued by saying that although he loved her, he did not like his other Grandma Cathy.

As far as she knew, she was the only Grandma Cathy in his life, as his maternal grandmother's name was Jenny.

When she asked him what he meant, there had followed a somewhat awkward exchange, in which the boy explained what had happened to him during the time he had been missing.

He related how he had been found by someone who looked exactly like her, but had walked and talked in a strange way.

This other Grandma Cathy had apparently picked him up and carried him to a place underground full of strange-looking spiders, where he had seen what had looked like backpacks and guns all piled up.

As she had climbed down the ladder after him, Her body had flickered when the light coming from above had shone down upon her.

When this happened, he had caught a brief glimpse of something else beneath his grandmother's skin, which convinced him that this wasn't really his grandma Cathy,

it was something else pretending to be her.

The boy went on to explain how there had been other strange people in the place below the ground, frozen and unmoving, like robots which had been switched off.

He had also related how the one pretending to be his grandmother had on several occasions tried to get him to defecate on a piece of shiny paper, not fully explaining the reasons for this odd request.

When he had not been able to do so, she had told him a story about how she was from outer space, and that she had put him into his mother's tummy when he was a baby.

This strange copy of his grandmother had then carried him back up to the surface and stayed in the bushes with him until they heard one of the search and rescue teams approaching.

She had then left, telling him to wait in the bushes until they found him.

When the boy's parents returned from their day trip, his grandmother had related his strange tale to them.

At first they laughed it off, marveling at their young son's vivid imagination.

only to pause when they saw the look of confusion and concern in Cathy's eyes.

Nervously, she began to explain how a year previously, she had also been camping with a friend down by the MacLeod River when she had an unsettling experience of her own.

Awakening one morning, she had found herself lying face down in the dirt outside her tent and sleeping bag.

with no recollection of how she came to be there.

Not long afterwards, she had been violently sick and had discovered a strange mark on the back of her neck.

She had initially assumed that she had been bitten by a snake or spider until her friend emerged from his camper van nearby, exhibiting the same dreary symptoms and with an identical mark in exactly the same place on the back of his neck.

When they spoke of what happened the night before, They discovered that all they could remember was seeing a pair of mysterious red eyes regarding them from the nearby trees.

Everything else was a complete and utter blank.

400 miles to the south of Mount Shasta,

a similarly bewildering occurrence would befall a young couple hiking through one of North America's most beautiful yet notorious national parks.

The pair had arrived at Yosemite as part of a larger group of friends who had embarked on a week-long camping holiday.

Midway through their vacation, they were hiking near an area called Glacier Point when they realised just how far they had pulled ahead of the rest of their companions.

They decided to sit and wait near a small boulder field and had been chatting for about 10 minutes when it suddenly dawned on them that the night had closed in.

This was immediately troubling to them, as they could have sworn it was no later than mid-afternoon.

A quick check of their watches confirmed this, displaying the time as just after 3pm.

Their first thought was that perhaps a solar eclipse had occurred, of which they were unaware, but this idea was quickly dismissed when they saw that the sky was full of stars and accompanied by a crescent moon.

Standing alone in the night, with little in the way of equipment to make camp, they had begun to discuss the options available to them, but within minutes they became aware of raised voices, heading back down the trail towards them.

After a short time, they could make out their names being called, and with the greatest sense of relief, they had answered.

Torchbeams danced across their faces as some of their friends rounded a nearby bend in the trail, accompanied by several park rangers.

The couple were initially confused by the overwhelming joy and relief expressed by all those present, but it soon became apparent that something extremely bizarre had occurred.

According to their friends, they had been missing for the past three days.

The boulder field in which the couple had waited had been searched several times, but not a single trace of them had been found.

To this day, they have no idea what happened to them during that time.

Sandwiched between the Tahoe and El Dorado National Forests, Placer County has always proven popular with hunters and hikers alike.

This is despite the fact that it is very close to the site where five young men would mysteriously disappear during the late 1970s, with four of their number later being found deceased and the fifth remaining missing to this day.

A decade before that incident, an equally unusual and mysterious event would take place within the same hills and forests to the east of Yuba City,

and it would again feature a small group of friends who had made their way out into the evening in search of adventure in nearby Sisko Grove.

They were all keen bow hunters, and amongst their number was a 28-year-old local man by the name of Donald Shrum.

As they had spread out amongst the trees looking for tracks, Shrum had somehow lost sight of the friend closest to him and found himself separated from the rest of the group.

A little uneasy at the prospect of wandering through the woods alone, he had searched in vain for the rest of his friends, but it was to no avail.

As the evening had closed in, he had decided that the safest course of action would be to shimmy up a nearby tree and see out the night in the safety of its branches.

But not long after he had done so, securing himself to the trunk by tying his belt around his waist, He had caught sight of a bright light moving through the sky overhead.

As Shrum had watched on with interest, the approaching aircraft had begun to zigzag from side to side, descending closer to the ground as it did so.

Believing it to be a helicopter, sent out to locate him after his friends had raised the alarm, he had called out and lit flares to attract its attention.

Sure enough, The light in the sky began to gravitate in the direction of the tree in which he was seated, continuing to descend until it landed at a point roughly 50 yards away.

It was only then that the hunter realised that what he was looking at across the forest could not be a helicopter, as aside from the fact that it was completely silent, it was far too large and had no obvious means of propulsion.

Shrum continued to stare at the object, which was shaped like a cigar and as large as a 14-storey building, when a smaller craft suddenly materialised alongside it.

This lesser vessel then approached, coming much closer to the tree before landing on the ground nearby.

Shrum stated that three figures, bedecked in silver reflective suits, then emerged from its interior.

As he looked on, two of these figures, who he would later estimate to be around five feet tall, stayed with the craft whilst the third, which was much larger, began to make its way towards him.

Shrum would go on to say that this third figure seemed to be acting under the direction of the other two, and that due to its awkward and laboured movements, he could immediately tell that there was something quite unnatural about it.

As it reached the bottom of the tree, he realized that it looked less like a person and more like a mechanical being.

It had a head, body, arms and legs, but it was composed entirely of a metallic material.

On its face there was an opening where the mouth would be, which was situated just below a pair of orange glowing eyes, but he couldn't see anything resembling a nose.

Moments later, The creature or robot or whatever it was produced a puff of white smoke from its mouth, which then floated up towards him and caused him to lose consciousness.

When he came to a few minutes later, Shrum had looked down to see the two smaller figures now climbing up the tree towards him in an apparent attempt to effect his capture.

Shouting an alarm, he began to throw various items from his rucksack down upon them hoping to force their retreat.

before letting loose with an arrow at the larger entity which was still standing at the bottom of the tree.

A metallic sound rang out as the arrow struck the taller figure's exterior, which caused the others to retreat to their craft.

They returned shortly afterwards, however, in the company of what appeared to be a second mechanical figure, which proceeded to issue forth more of the white gas, again rendering Shrum unconscious.

Coming to for a second time, the hunter once again saw the two smaller creatures climbing the tree towards him, but this time they were much closer, their outstretched arms mere inches from his feet.

Terrified, he used matches from his pocket to set fire to objects, which he then threw down upon them, causing them to scatter once again.

Shrum would spend the next hour or so fighting off further attempts to capture him, before he blacked out following a third dose of the mysterious white smoke.

He awoke in the dawn light, but there was no trace of either the craft or any of the beings which had tried to abduct him.

An hour or so later he encountered one of his friends, Vincent Alvarez, who explained that he had seen an odd-looking craft flying overhead whilst he had been out looking for Shrum.

From the description offered by Alvarez,

it soon became apparent that his friend must have seen a larger craft heading away from the area.

This prompted him to wonder if he had been successful in his efforts to prevent the entities from reaching him, or if they had done anything to him whilst he was rendered unconscious.

Unlike the accounts featured in part 1 of this episode, The witnesses involved in our last three stories were ultimately unsuccessful in their efforts to avoid contact with the phenomenon they had observed.

All of them would experience some degree of missing time and would be haunted by the uncertainty of what might have happened to them whilst they were not in possession of their faculties.

And yet, as with the other cases we have examined, none of those involved seemed to endure any lasting harm or undue suffering.

Could it be that what they encountered is entirely unrelated to many other cases cases which have been identified by David Polidas through his work?

That it may be something else which is responsible for the countless individuals who go missing each year in North America's national parks.

It should be noted that aside from the accounts of Donald Shrum and Jan Maccabee, Few of these cases feature verifiable names or dates regarding the events which took place, which of course makes them much more difficult to authenticate.

There is no evidence beyond a vague anecdotal retelling of what occurred, and the veracity of such statements remains uncertain.

What is clear, however, is that the vast and beautiful landscapes of the North American continent hide many dangers, some of which we understand,

and perhaps others we do not.

and that we must continue to exercise great caution as we venture ever further into these remote regions.