There is Something in the Woods

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David Paliders, a former police officer turned researcher, has spent spent years investigating unexplained deaths and disappearances in North America's national parks.

His work has catalogued thousands of cases that defy simple explanation.

In this episode, we follow his findings and ask the question, is there something in the woods?

Something that stalks and hunts human beings?

The national parks of North America are some of the most haunting and beautiful places on earth.

From Yosemite and Yellowstone in the US to Yoho and Jasper in Canada, all offer something stunning and unique.

Whether that be snow-tipped mountain ranges, serene lakes, endless grasslands which stretch as far as the eye can see, or forests that seemingly never end.

These parks attract millions upon millions of tourists from all over the world.

Their landscapes are truly a sight to behold and it's no wonder that so many visitors flock to these areas of outstanding natural beauty year after year.

But it should also come as no surprise that many people get lost whilst hiking or hunting in these regions.

And although most of them are located by dedicated search and rescue efforts within 48 hours, some vanish, often in mysterious and inexplicable circumstances, never to be seen again.

Magnificent and unforgettable these places may be, but in amongst all that splendor, there appears to be a dark and sinister truth that authorities seem reluctant to address.

Oftentimes described in the US as the nation's silent mass disaster, People have been disappearing from national parks in their thousands over the last few centuries.

The exact number is not known because, astonishingly, the US National Park Service has only recently begun to compile a database on these missing persons.

This was a fact stumbled upon by David Paliders, a former police officer turned author investigating the high strangeness in which these people seem to vanish.

Polidas has catalogued over a thousand of these bizarre disappearances in a series of books titled The Missing 411.

Although his investigations are comprehensive, the picture he paints is by no means complete.

He fears there could be many more cases that are not known to the public and probably never will be.

Pilidas apparently began working on this project shortly after visiting a national park where he was approached by a ranger.

This ranger told him that he was part of the search and rescue effort on a couple of recent unexplained disappearances and that he believed something bigger was going on.

Being an accomplished outdoorsman himself, Palidas was intrigued by the notion of experienced hikers and hunters going missing in terrain which they themselves were highly familiar with and promised to investigate it.

Little did he know it at the time, but he had just embarked on an almost insurmountable task involving years of research and investigation which would culminate in an extensive body of work and bring these mysteries well and truly into the spotlight.

He began by filtering out certain factors so that he could focus solely on incidents which defied conventional explanation, logic or behaviour.

He excluded cases that explicitly involve foul play, mental illness and therefore the possibility of suicide, clear signs of animal attack, the possibility of missing persons drowning or being washed away and at least to begin with cases in and around urban areas.

Over time, he noticed that these disappearances formed into clusters, congregating specifically around North American national parks and the Great Lakes.

Pilidas concludes that something strange is going on, something as indefinable as it is elusive, as unsettling as it is mysterious.

He believes there could be an unknown quantity behind these disappearances, one which is intelligent and patient, predatory and unseen.

What follows is a select few of the strangest vanishings ever recorded in US and Canadian national parks, and one must bear in mind when considering these cases that conventional explanations have either been ruled out completely or are extremely unlikely.

Possibly the most famous example of someone vanishing without trace in a national park is that of Dennis Martin, a 6-year-old boy who had set out with his father, grandfather and 9-year-old brother on the 14th of July 1969 to hike up to an area known as Spence Field.

At around 4pm, Dennis, his brother and a couple of other young boys they had befriended decided to play a game of hide-and-seek.

As the game ended, all of the boys came out from their hiding places except for Dennis.

He was nowhere to be seen.

The last time anyone saw him, he was running towards a bush on the edge of the field, behind which there was thick woodland.

His father, William Martin, became increasingly concerned and proceeded to run two miles up the Appalachian Trail in the hopes of locating his son.

But he found nothing.

Over the next two weeks, more than 1500 searchers covering an area of 56 square miles and with the aid of helicopters and sniffer dogs searched in vain for the missing child, but it was all for nothing.

Even a crack team of Green Berets joined the effort, although they worked alone and refused to engage with anyone outside of their group, which many people saw as strange in and of itself.

Typically, the Green Berets would only be called out in matters concerning national security.

On the day that Dennis disappeared, the Key family, hiking up towards Rowan's Creek about 4km away from Spence Field as the crow flies, heard an almighty scream at around 5.30pm.

This was about an hour and a half after Dennis was last seen.

When they looked in the direction the scream had come from, they saw what they described as a bear crossed with a man, carrying a small child over its shoulder and scurrying off into the dense forest.

The FBI dismissed this, saying that the timeframes involved were too narrow and that no one could have hiked that distance over rough terrain in such a short amount of time.

However, a ranger involved in the search by the name of Dwight McCarter proved this assertion to be false when he hiked the same journey in just over an hour.

Nevertheless, Dennis was never found.

and the case remains open to this day.

Trenny Gibson was a high school student from Knoxville who visited the Great Smoky Mountains whilst on a field trip in October 1976.

She was with 40 of her classmates and they were hiking from a parking area to a spot called Andrews Bold.

As the afternoon wore on, the students broke up into smaller and smaller groups, each determined by their respective walking speeds.

Trenny was about 20 meters ahead of her group when she was seen to suddenly stop in the middle of the path.

Friends later reported that she was looking off to one side, almost as if she had spotted something in the bush.

She then stepped off the trail in the direction she was looking and disappeared.

Police did not initially believe her friends when they indicated where she had left the path, as it was a steep, almost sheer drop.

followed by hundreds of meters of dense woodland.

It would have been impassable without the use of heavy-duty equipment.

However, her friends were insistent on this fact and despite massive search efforts, Trenny Gibson was never seen again.

In July of 2010, a man by the name of Eric Lewis was climbing Mount Rainier with two of his associates.

They were all tethered together by the same piece of rope and were spaced about 20 to 30 meters apart.

The lead climber, Don Storm Jr., stopped at 14,000 feet and waited for his two companions, hoping they could summit the mountain together.

He was joined shortly afterwards by the second climber, Trevor Lane, and they both waited for Eric to arrive.

However, he never did.

After reeling in the rope, they discovered that he was not attached to the other end, even though they had caught glimpses of him behind them only moments before.

Bad weather had been rolling in and they assumed that he had detached himself in order to take a rest, something which would have been highly irresponsible but not unheard of.

Heading back down the mountainside, they saw no sign of him whatsoever and discovered that his tracks seemed to just stop in the middle of nowhere.

Helicopters scoured the slopes but found nothing.

Search and rescue discovered his backpack, climbing harness, and snow shovel at 13,600 feet, but neither Eric nor his body was ever found.

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Stephanie Stewart was a 70-year-old wildfire spotter working for Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada.

On the night of the 26th of August 2006, she happened to be working at the very remote Athabasca Lookout Tower, situated 25 miles northwest of Hinton.

She had a very important job, looking out for any sign of bushfires during the day and sleeping at the tower during the night.

On the morning of the 27th of August, she failed to carry out a routine radio check-in with her supervisor.

a task which was required at least three times a day.

Another fire spotter was sent to the tower to check on her but found that she was gone.

All that was missing from the cabin was her blanket.

There were no signs of a struggle or a forced entry having taken place.

The stove had been lit and a pot of water had been placed on the hob, but the contents had long since boiled away.

Her truck was still outside and authorities found no tracks leading in or out of the area.

other than those left by her own vehicle.

She was of a sound mind and had a loving family.

It seems unlikely that she would have just left in the middle of the night for no apparent reason.

Stephanie was never seen again and her disappearance caused the provincial government to change the way lookout towers operate throughout the region.

Charles McCullough was a 19-year-old amateur photographer from Virginia.

In December of 1974, he hitchhiked out to the west coast on an extended vacation, photographing scenery along the way.

In January the following year, he found himself staying with a friend in Oregon.

He planned a short excursion out to Crater Lake to photograph the beautiful winter landscapes there and then to return to his friend's house two days later.

However, he was never seen alive again.

Massive search and rescue efforts were launched, but nothing was found, no tracks, no scents and no eyewitnesses.

A year later, a couple of hikers located a backpack 12 miles off the trailhead and after being examined by authorities, it was determined that it belonged to Charles.

Park Rangers got a horse patrol out to the same area within hours, and shortly afterwards, they found McCullough's body, or at least what remained of it.

The scene was strange to say the least.

All they found of him was his jeans, unbuttoned, sitting on a log in the middle of nowhere, frozen in position as if an invisible man was sat inside them.

His socks were sticking out of the legs at the bottom as one might expect, and inside them they found small foot bones.

Twelve feet away they found the top of his skull.

His shirt, coat, boots and all of his other belongings were nowhere to be seen.

and they never found the rest of his body.

Most perplexing of all was how he had even got to this location to begin with.

On the day he vanished, there was seven and a half feet of new snow on the ground, making it impossible to travel there at that time, even if he had used a snowmobile.

A similar case occurred in Canada's Yukon Territory in 2004.

49-year-old Bart Schleier was, according to everyone who knew him, the greatest outdoorsman you never heard of.

He was smart, strong, unbelievably fit and had been hiking and hunting in the wilds of North America since his preteen years.

There was no doubting his experience.

In September of 2004, he chartered a pilot to fly him into a remote region, 175 miles north of Whitehorse with the intention of hunting moose alone.

He was well equipped, taking along three crates of supplies which carried his food, camping equipment and hunting gear.

The pilot dropped him off and arranged to return three weeks later to pick him up.

That was the last anyone ever saw of him.

When the pilot did return, he found Bart's camp set up and well stocked, but could see no sign of the man himself.

The RCMP mounted an extended search of the area and eventually found a few of his teeth and shards of bone on the ground about 60 feet from his camp.

Not too far away from these remains, they found his dry bag on the ground, indented as if he had been sitting on it and his hunting bow propped up against a tree.

Examination of bear and wolf scat in the area ruled out the possibility that he had been eaten by a larger animal.

His friends are quick to dismiss this in any case, saying that he was far too canny an outdoorsman to have been surprised by a bear or some other large predator.

Aside from this, there was no disturbed ground or snapped branches indicating any sign of a struggle, and authorities queried if he had in fact been taken unawares by a bear or wolf, why had the supplies at his camp not been raided?

Another strange case which occurred two years earlier in 2002 centered around a 20-year-old surveyor from Ellersley, Georgia.

Christopher Tompkins was working as part of a four-man crew crew near Dense Woodland in Harris County.

At the end of the day, the team headed back to their vehicle and was walking along Warm Springs Road, a straight highway which is bordered by woodland on both sides.

Each crew member was walking roughly 50 feet apart and Christopher was last in line.

Within a few seconds, he had vanished.

His colleagues went back to the point he was last seen and found around 12 cents in coins on the ground.

They also discovered one of his work boots snagged on the barbed wire fencing lining the road, as well as fibers from his work trousers.

Despite a wide-ranging search involving hundreds of people, Christopher was never found.

Several months later, his other boot was located by the property owner near a swamp.

900 yards from where he had vanished.

The fact that they found the contents of of his pockets on the road suggests that he had been turned upside down.

Todd Guib was a 22-year-old man from Casnovia, Michigan.

On the night of the 11th of June 2005, he attended a keg party with his cousin but left at around 12.30am because he was feeling tired.

He hadn't drunk much but decided to walk home as he preferred not to take the risk of driving whilst under the influence.

At around 12.51am he called a friend and was heard to say, I'm in a field, before the phone suddenly cut off.

The friend called him back but heard only heavy breathing and or rushing wind before the call cut off again.

Todd then tried to call his friend back two more times, the last attempt being at 12.57, but nothing else was heard from him that night.

The next day he failed to show for a family gathering, which was completely out of character for the young man, and when it was discovered that no one else had seen him after the party, his concerned parents reported him missing.

A huge search took place, involving over 1500 volunteers and helicopters equipped with infrared.

Lakes and swamps in the area were dragged and dived, but nothing was found.

It was as if Todd had simply dropped off the face of the earth.

Three weeks later on the 2nd of July, a couple walking along the shore of Obenhall Lake saw something out in the water.

It looked like a man standing upright, his head and shoulders bobbing on the surface of the lake.

It turned out to be the body of Todd Guybe.

The location where he was found shocked everyone, as the lake had been searched multiple times in the intervening weeks and it was in completely the opposite direction to where he had been heading.

The cause of death was listed as drowning whilst under the influence of alcohol but no water was found in his lungs and his blood alcohol limit was relatively low.

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So, who or what is responsible for these killings and/or disappearances?

Palidas is reluctant to single out any particular culprit or cause, but he has indirectly hinted at several possibilities, and the tone of his books is highly suggestive of something out of the ordinary.

Skeptics have largely disparaged Pallidas' work, arguing that oftentimes he deliberately omits certain details which do not fit his narrative, and that there are rational explanations for every single one of these cases.

Their reasoning includes Animal attacks, a serial killer or possibly even several, people becoming disorientated or injured, people having a desire to intentionally disappear or commit suicide, drug dealers or drug manufacturers conducting business out in the wilds and killing those who stumble upon their operations, and finally quick or sudden death due to illness or exposure.

Animal attacks will always leave telltale signs which include blood, pieces of flesh, torn clothing, tracks, scents and signs of a struggle having taken place such as snapped branches or disturbed ground.

None of the cases Polidus presents apparently show any evidence of this and he therefore rules this out as a possibility.

The same can be said for potential serial killers.

It is highly unlikely that they would fail to leave any trace of having been there, not to mention DNA evidence on any remains.

Becoming lost or disorientated is indeed plausible, but many of the people who disappeared were highly familiar with their surroundings and had either hiked or hunted in those locations countless times before.

And even if they did get lost, why did organised search parties, sniffer dogs and helicopters with forward-looking infrared still fail to find them?

In all of these cases, the individuals were of a sound mind.

at least as far as their friends, families and colleagues knew, so this makes suicide an unlikely cause, although not an implausible one.

Disappearing intentionally to start a new life on the other hand could be a possibility, but doing so would be an immense undertaking, would take months of planning and cost a great deal of money, something which would be difficult to hide from friends or loved ones.

In either of these cases, this does not explain why search and rescue parties and later investigations are unable to locate any trace of them whatsoever.

Drug manufacturers operating in remote regions is not unheard of.

After all, anyone who has ever watched the TV series Narcos will know that Pablo Escobar used the Colombian jungles to conceal his production operations.

That being said, the National Parks of North America seem an unlikely place for such practices given the number of annual visitors.

Drug dealers would know that killing someone would only invite more unwanted attention to the region in the form of the National Park Service, search and rescue parties and police officers.

Finally, succumbing to some underlying illness or injury sustained whilst hiking is probably the most likely cause of these disappearances.

Polidas even notes that many of these individuals had some form of disability or condition or reported feeling unwell before they vanished.

However, It is very odd that search and rescue attempts still fail to locate their bodies.

One would think that that an individual who is feeling ill would not stray too far off established trails, if at all.

Depending on the nature of an injury, accident victims would not be too difficult to locate either, especially with the help of sniffer dogs and search helicopters equipped with infrared.

So, when all of these explanations have been exhausted, what are we left with?

Polidas is mystified by the apparent commonalities between each case, such as the fact that in instances where dead bodies are found, they rarely find the victim's shoes or boots, or they are in a state of undress, and a satisfactory cause of death is difficult to establish.

Of course, some people have suggested that these disappearances are the result of something paranormal or supernatural.

Theories have ranged from woodland spirits to large cryptids such as Bigfoot or the Dogman, alien abductions, people slipping through interdimensional portals, and even certain plant life activating some form of defense against human presence.

And as unbelievable as these suggestions may sound, there have in fact been instances where people experience such things whilst in national parks and lived to tell the tale.

There is a bizarre phenomenon which countless people have reported whilst hiking, known simply as the silence.

Usually, whenever a large predator is nearby, the woods tend to go go quiet.

But this phenomenon is entirely different.

Not only does all wildlife fall silent, but the breeze rustling through the leaves dies down completely, and the air seems to thicken, almost as if time itself has frozen.

By all accounts, it's an incredibly unnerving experience.

People often report feeling as if they are being watched or even stalked by something during this time.

Jan McAbee, wife of renowned optical physicist Bruce McAbee, experienced this deathly quiet while she was bow hunting in Ohio in 2010.

It was around 6.30pm and she was in a tree hide approximately 15 feet off the ground.

She reported that everything suddenly went quiet and within minutes she noticed an odd distortion moving through the branches about 20 feet from her position.

She described it as a humanoid figure and that it appeared to be cloaked.

She managed to take one picture before it moved off and the sounds of nature returned.

The image shows what looks like the edge of a face with hair sticking out from behind it, backlit by the sun.

A compelling piece of footage uploaded in 2016 by YouTuber Scott Carpenter appears to show what looks like a Bigfoot peeping out from behind a tree, perfectly camouflaged by its surroundings.

And although this could be nothing more than a case of pareidolia, it is interesting nonetheless.

Whatever is responsible for these disappearances, whether it is paranormal, supernatural, or something altogether more ordinary, the prospect of losing your way in such vast and often inhospitable terrain is no less frightening.

Truly, these places are wonderful examples of just how beautiful our world can be, and this story should not deter you from visiting them if you are lucky enough to have the opportunity.

But we would urge you to be vigilant, make all the necessary preparations, and take all the necessary precautions.

And finally, expect the unexpected.