Missing 411: Documentary About 1,400 Missing North American Hikers Gets Funded Via Kickstarter

Missing 411, a documentary based on the mysterious and tragic disappearances of over 1,400 children and adults in national parks in the United States, has surpassed its $100,000 Kickstarter goal and continues to collect funding.

Missing 411 — the documentary — is the brainchild of Ben Paulides. Ben’s father, David Paulides, is at the heart of the Missing 411 story. Several years ago, when David Paulides, a writer/investigator, was working on something completely different in a national park, a national park ranger approached Paulides with a strange story.

The park ranger told Paulides that in his 30 years of service within the National Park Service, he had been privy to many searches for numerous missing persons, and some aspects of each and every search had left him troubled.

What the park ranger said was subsequently investigated for over six years by Paulides and compiled into four different Missing 411 books.

The pattern of the searches for the missing persons went as follows according to the park ranger: each time there was an intense week-long search accompanied by a media blitz. When the week was up, the search was called off and ended without another word. No records were kept of the searches by the Park Service or the federal government.

And it didn’t end there.

Paulides detailed in his Missing 411 books how there were other strange coincidences and through-lines of continuity from case to case. Strange weather patterns seem to accompany every single disappearance. On several of the missing persons cases, Green Berets were brought in to commence the search, even though military officials maintain that Green Berets would never be used in a civilian search on U.S. soil. When some people go missing, and are then found again, they always have a medical or psychological condition which affects their ability to speak or communicate where they’d disappeared to.

Dave Paulides’ six-year search to find out what happened to over 1,400 children and adults in the national parks of the United States, led to four volumes of Missing 411 books. Now his son, Ben Paulides, is putting together a documentary to tell the story of Missing 411.

Dave and his son, Ben, recently appeared on the Mysterious Universe podcast. Ben spoke about the approach of the documentary considering the wide number of cases examined in his father’s Missing 411 books.

“We knew that we wanted to approach very interesting stories, but at the same time, stories that kind of connected the dots, so to speak, and we were limited somewhat by the budget so far, and that’s why we went to Kickstarter. But we were fortunate enough to work with [Emmy-award winning videographer], and we got a lot of people on board with the documentary working for next to nothing, pretty much just cost, to do this because they believed in what we were doing. They believed that we might be able to shed some light on it.”

Here’s the trailer that Ben Paulides put together for the Missing 411 documentary Kickstarter page.

Have you heard about the strange disappearances described in the Missing 411 books? Have you read the books? What do you think happened to all those people who have gone missing in the nation’s national parks?

[Photo by Mike Hewitt/Getty Images]