The available data that connects the water-related cases together (mainly the ones of students being found dead in water in some college cities) makes them somehow more inexplicable than the cases of people who got lost in a forest and were never found (cases in which all data is missing). Similarly, I would also like to see a chart of Missing 411 cases by date of disappearance, or ideally both date and time, so that there’s more to compare again with normal disappearances, and in the case of dates, also with tourist and hunting seasons, like any numbers of how many tourists or hunters can be found in the forest at what time of year. If those exact statistics aren’t available, similar ones should exist to give us an estimate. Of course, proving that the times and dates at which people get lost mysteriously are normal times at which there’s an opportunity to get lost doesn’t prove that the disappearances are entirely mundane. If there’s an intelligent perpetrator behind any Missing 411 disappearances, they are likely to know when to lie in wait for people — at the times and dates when there’s the most opportunity. However, they may not follow that perfectly. Unfortunately, there are many people who go missing and are never found. What Can You Do to Help Find Missing Persons? Subjects found alive having no memory of the disappearance, or giving an account that sounds incorrect, confused, or outright fantastical

Medical emergency would then prevent you from wandering away very far, unless it was a psychotic break, but regardless, many of the missing were in excellent physical and mental health. Which leaves being jumped by someone or something as the most likely explanation. Especially considering that feeding grounds are a great place where to lie in wait for prey, and perhaps the best way to narrow down where people will be found in a big forest, and roughly when. This can be a standalone subset of cases. The locations often have “devil” in their name and tend to be close to water, boulder fields, and large granite formations

Here I have to give credit to Seriah Azkath and the Snake Brothers, who pointed out the likely direction of causality regarding this profile point on a recent Where Did the Road Go show. Put simply, this profile point is something that makes it harder to find a missing person and easier for people to get more lost. That’s probably why it correlates so much with cases that remain unexplained. They even mentioned a hunter explaining that some hunters follow bad weather intentionally to catch more prey. These are all angles that can and should be investigated, since precise targeting, luring, and covert disappearing of people aren’t trivial tasks. There’s bound to be some sort of infrastructure for this, especially since it is a global phenomenon and since having the staff of the establishment where you want to disappear someone on your side or having infiltrated the school which your potential targets attend would make everything much easier. This would also explain why it happens in only some cities — you can’t simply improvise it anywhere without having the infrastructure. Yes, you are supposed to be thinking of Dirk Gently. The concept of a holistic detective may be a fiction invented by Douglas Adams, but the interesting aspect of his science fiction ideas is that while crazy-sounding and hilarious, they are logically consistent and potentially realistic. Like his idea of a probability-based engine — many macroscopic physical “laws” are only aggregates of chaotic movements and interactions going on at the subatomic level. Objects can spontaneously teleport, it’s just very, very, very unlikely. So what causes so many hikers to go missing? There are a number of possible explanations. One is simply that national parks are vast and wild places, and it can be easy to get lost.

Alaska has the highest rate of missing persons in the United States. 41.8 people out of every 100,000 go missing in Alaska. Peterson, Judy (March 12, 2012). "Los Gatos author explores 'Missing 411' from national parks". The Mercury News. Archived from the original on July 5, 2021 . Retrieved November 29, 2018.

My Book Notes

Paulides got to work and uncovered several lines of evidence that suggested negligence of the park service for failing to locate the missing people.