Joe Rogan Experience #2502 - David Paulides

TL;DR

David Paulides discusses his 1,500+ documented cases of people mysteriously vanishing in national parks, with patterns suggesting possible non-human involvement.

Key Points

1.Paulides was recruited by two off-duty park rangers at Yosemite. They had done Freedom of Information Act requests against their own agency and couldn't get missing persons reports, alarming them enough to seek an outside investigator.
2.The National Park Service refuses to maintain or release a list of missing persons. When Paulides requested one, they quoted him $1.4 million for the full system list or $34,000 for Yosemite alone — he built it himself over two years.
3.A key Yosemite case involves 14-year-old Stacy Arras, missing for 46 years. She walked toward a lakeside treeline to take photos in front of witnesses and vanished; the only evidence found was a lens cap, and FOIA requests are still denied.
4.The FOIA denial cited an ongoing criminal investigation — 40 years later. Exemption 7A was used, claiming disclosure could interfere with law enforcement proceedings, which Paulides argues is legally inconsistent with a missing persons classification.
5.Paulides has 1,200–1,500 cases where search dogs failed to track missing persons. Dogs either won't track, turn around, or show complete disinterest — behavior he says is outside normal canine conduct and suggests the person wasn't physically present during the search.
6.Bodies are frequently found in areas that were already thoroughly searched. In one Midwest case, a truck driver's body appeared in a field two weeks after a coroner's death estimate, in a spot canines and searchers had already covered.
7.A Canadian firefighter vanished from a New York ski resort and reappeared 2,500 miles away in California. He woke up mid-conversation in a truck near Sacramento with no memory, still wearing ski clothes, and the truck driver was never identified.
8.Carl, a Wyoming hunter in Medicine Bow National Forest, claims he was taken aboard a craft by alien entities. He says his bullet stopped mid-air and deformed against an invisible barrier, elk froze in place, and Wyoming law enforcement could not explain the bullet's deformation.
9.Carl reported that tuberculosis scars and other medical conditions were healed after the encounter. He was 91 when Paulides interviewed him and believed he was returned because he had a vasectomy, making him less useful reproductively.
10.Paulides identifies elk hunters as disproportionately represented among the missing. He attributes this partly to elk hunting occurring in remote backcountry with few witnesses, making it easier for an unknown force to act undetected.
11.Twelve tree planters in Washington State all witnessed a UFO lift a single elk while the herd scattered. The workers feared they were next and abandoned the site; the incident was investigated by MUFON with consistent testimony across all witnesses.
12.Paulides notes a statistically anomalous concentration of German hunters disappearing in Wyoming's Medicine Bow area. He links this to broader patterns in his data showing Germans are overrepresented among abduction cases, possibly connected to Nazi-era occult and UFO research.
13.Travis Walton's case is cited as evidence that abductions are not unique. Walton disappeared in the woods, had multiple witnesses including an adversary, all passed polygraphs, and his physical condition upon return — not dehydrated or starved — mirrors other cases.
14.Colm Kelleher of Bigelow's Skinwalker Ranch told Paulides investigators witnessed a portal open in a meadow. Two researchers observed a growing luminous tube until it was large enough for something bipedal and seven to eight feet tall to crawl through.
15.Paulides was originally hired by two millionaire tech founders to investigate Bigfoot after both independently had sightings as children. He eventually accepted, investigated in Tennessee's Great Smoky Mountains, and found footprints and hair samples before pivoting to the missing persons research.