David Paulides is one of the most interesting characters working outside of mainstream journalism/publishing/documentary film making.
A former police officer of 20 years, a person who has two Master Degrees and worked for a number of years in HR for big tech companies, his road to doing this has been a long and winding one.
Whilst working in HR, he was approached discretely by the owner of the company, a multimillionaire, who was interested in contracting Paulides due to his police and detective background. The owner of the company had seen what could only be described as a Big Foot out in the woods many years ago, and being rich now, wanted to task someone with doing a real in-depth research project and sorting out real sightings from BS. Paulides initially turned him down, only to be persuaded to do it by the temptation of making a book out of his findings. Paulides went on to engage in tireless and deep research and publish two books about Big Foot.
It was whilst in a National Park investigating another fringe topic many years later that Paulides was approached by two off-duty park rangers, who told him about their concerns over the amount of people who had disappeared under highly unusual circumstances in their park during the nearly thirty years of their service. They told him how initially there might be huge coverage both by SAR and press, but once any search had been called off, interest soon waned. Yet they never forgot, and were concerned that, even though many people never, ever turned up, even as a dead body or remains, there were never any follow up investigations.
Paulides called some detective friends of his to check out the veracity of their account and soon found there was indeed serious grounds for concern.
After he had investigated many hundreds of different disappearances he began to see a disturbing repeated set of circumstances surrounding these events, or as he terms it, profile points. He eliminated from his list any case that was demonstrably the result of criminal activity, animal attack or anyone with a reason to have run away.
He started to self-publish books detailing accounts of all the people who had disappeared, using newspaper and police/coroner reports from the time gained through Freedom of Information requests, and where he was able his own investigations interviewing witnesses, police, SAR team members etc.
After he had published about eight of these books, his son encouraged him to start making shorts video clips going with a camera to where someone had disappeared and outlining the basic details of the case, placing these clips on a YouTube channel. This was partly I believe in response to and popularity of the uploading on YouTube of various radio interviews Paulides had given over the years (most specifically to Coast to Coast) listened to by tens of thousands of people (myself included).
Eventually Ben Paulides persuaded his dad to take a step further and make feature length documentaries. Ben co-directed the first of these, the excellent Missing 411 from 2016. It was a brilliant film, concentrating on children who had gone missing and had turned up, in most cases sadly dead, many, many miles away in very unusual locations (such as halfway up the side of a scree field on the side of a mountain) that in no way should a lost child have been able to get to themselves especially in the time frame between when they went missing and when they were found. I would personally rate this first film 7 out of 10, as whilst it is brilliant, it airs on the side of caution a lot, and it is possible to dismiss it as 'okay, unusual, but not impossible'.
The second film he made came out in 2019, and to me it was a massive improvement, as it focused on people who have a large amount of experience in the woods/nature, pretty honed survival skills, and are armed! Missing 411: The Hunted, I would rate as an 8 out of 10.
It was much more thought provoking, and try as I might, I just could not rationally explain how any of the cases outlined could have happened. Also, there is a brilliant section were Paulides talks to experts in the wilds and gives a very detailed list of what you should do and what you should take to make sure you yourself do not end up one of Paludes cases. This to me, goes above and beyond just a documentary maker telling a story, this is educational and preventative measures, well done Mr. Paulides.
Now we come to this film. It took Paulides three years to compile this work! Hampered in no small part by the outbreak of CoVid 19 and the incredibly sad death of his own son through suicide. According to Paulides this film took the most amount out of him both financially and logistically. It was a long, arduous and difficult journey, but for me, it was incredibly worthwhile.
I would personally rate this documentary as a 9 out of 10. So you can see for me there is a steady progression in quality for each of his feature length films. I must confess I was worried about the nature of this film looking at the poster. I am an incredibly sceptical person, and do not just believe in any conspiracy theory just because it is intriguing. It is one of the prime things that attracted me to the work of Paulides in the first place. For many, many years he has refused in interviews, in his books, on his YouTube channel and in his documentaries to be drawn on what he thinks the root cause of these mysterious disappearances. Partly because he genuinely did not know, he could not figure out one thing that made sense across all the cases. He was also quite open to the idea that there could be several different route causes that just happen to all coincide with the same result (i.e. People going missing) partly because he did not want to be wrong in his estimation, only for his idea as to the cause to later be disproved and therefore all his work discredited.
As a former police detective, he understands the importance of evidence. After all many of the people he arrested over the years would not be able to be prosecuted if only circumstantial evidence was provided. Therefore, before drawing any conclusions, he has always demanded that there be real, tangible proof of the concept.
So it was, seeing the image of the UFO and the name of the documentary, I was quite worried that this would be a massive departure from his usual cautious approach. I need not have worried.
Paulides has already steered us to the conclusion in his previous work that there is no satisfactory standard explanation for what is happening, and that, without a rational reason for these bizarre disappearances, we should look for the not-normal, the paranormal as it were. This is simply more of the same. As the title suggests, Paulides is presenting us with connections, he is not definitively saying that UFOs are responsible for these disappearances. He is not even saying that UFOs are definitely the work of alien creatures. He is merely presenting us with the startling coincidences' that seem to suggest there might be a connection.
I am sceptical, but I am also open minded. Three times in my life I have witnessed things in the sky that I could not readily explain. Two of them I am fairly sure are misinterpreted human technology. One of them, well, it was so bizarre I too am drawn towards a paranormal explanation being the only option.
Whether you believe in the 'paranormal' implications of Paulides work or not probably depends on your state of mind, which probably depends on whether you yourself have ever encountered anything unusual and how you have gone on to explain or rationalise that.
I am a scientifically minded person. I believe that everything, eventually will be able to be rationally explained to everyone's full satisfaction by pursuing the scientific method of gathering and analysing data.
Even as a sceptic, I can see how sometimes thing happen or are seen that you simply cannot explain. What was it we witnessed that day I cannot say. I have never again seen anything like it. Therefore, I am open to the witness accounts of some of the things described in this documentary.
I urge you to approach this with the same open mindedness, and you will be richly rewarded. Paulides talks to some very, very credible people, most notably a former FBI agent. All of whom seem to confirm that there are things happening that just defy any kind of rational explanation.
This documentary is well planned, executed and again, incredibly thought provoking. I am sure just by having the name UFO in the title it will put many people off, but I am also sure that it will open many more people up to the truly intriguing Missing 411 phenomenon than have ever heard of it before. I really hope Paulides is not only able to make his money back on this investment (don't forget these are really self-funded/crowd funded type docs - there is no central big studio or TV company behind them) but not only that, make a healthy profit so that he can spend more time making more documentaries. I genuinely think he is one of the best documentary makers out there right now. If the trend continues, I guess his next documentary will have to get a 10 out of 10 from me.
Thank your David Paulides. Keep up the good work.
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