David Paulides

David Paulides is a writer, researcher, and investigative journalist known primarily for his publications on Bigfoot, and on the disappearances of people in national parks to which he attributes a mysterious, unspecified cause or causes.

Paulides attained his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of San Francisco, after which he decided to pursue his long-time dream of becoming a police officer. In 1977, he began working at Fremont Police Department. In October 1980, he transferred to the San Jose Police Department and worked in the patrol division on the SWAT Team (Merge), patrol and Street Crimes Unit. During his time as a detective, Paulides worked in the Vice/Intelligence Unit, and a variety of specialized assignments.

Prior to leaving the San Jose Police Department, Paulides received an offer to work in high-tech industry, where he was "tagged as an executive who could flush out businesses, go deep into their background, and perform due diligence on partnership development and acquisitions." This was the beginning of his use of his investigative skills, after his law enforcement background, in a different station in life. Paulides retired from high-tech, and since about 2008 has written five non-fiction research books on unexplained phenomena.

Bigfoot/Sasquatch

Once Paulides retired from high-tech, he pursued the topic of Bigfoot for several years, creating the Bigfoot research group titled, "North America Bigfoot Search", publishing two books, and sponsoring the publishing a white paper on the subject.

Paulides' white paper analyzed one hundred and eleven samples of hypothesized Bigfoot DNA evidence and was published in the Journal of Advanced Zoological Exploration in Zoology, a publication with little mainstream recognition. The white paper is affiliated with and authored by eleven different scientists from nine different research organizations, including the Texas A&M Department University of Biology, Biochemistry, and Biophysics, the Helix Biological Laboratory in Detroit, the Center for Human Identification at the University of North Texas, and numerous other peer-reviewed research facilities. In an interview with Coast to Coast AM host George Knapp, Paulides stated that the goal of his organization was to prove that the biped exists, and he feels they have done so; as such, he has moved on from the Bigfoot world to newer projects.

Missing 411

Paulides' current project is Missing 411, a series of non-fiction books documenting unsolved cases of disappearing people in national parks. His work on this subject began when he was doing research in a national park when an off-duty park ranger found him and expressed concern about the questionable nature of some of the disappearing persons cases which occur in the parks. The rangers knew Paulides' background and requested that he research into it and see if he could find any leads. Paulides obliged, and since then asserts that he has uncovered multiple lines of evidence to suggest negligence on behalf of the park service in keeping track of their missing people, and a continuous series of disappearances from all across the U.S., and even other parts of the world, that seem to him to defy logical and conventional explanations.

As of 2015, Paulides has written five books on the topic of missing people whom he contends disappeared or died under mysterious circumstances in National Parks and wilderness areas. According to his most recent book, A Sobering Coincidence, his group does not yet have a theory on what is causing the disappearances, although their field of suspects is narrowing. He advises that readers go outside of their normal comfort zone in trying to nail down who or what the culprit is.

Regarding the topic of Bigfoot: scientists discount its existence and consider it to be a combination of folklore, misidentification, and hoax, rather than a living animal, because of the lack of physical evidence and the large numbers of creatures that would be necessary to maintain a breeding population. Occasional new reports of sightings sustain a small group of self-described investigators. Many reports of sightings are attributed to being various animals, particularly black bears.

Regarding the Missing 411 claims: Kyle Polich, a data analyst and host of the Data Skeptic podcast, presented his analysis of Paulides' claims to a SkeptiCamp held in 2017 by the Monterey County Skeptics. He concluded that the allegedly unusual disappearances represent nothing unusual at all, and are instead best explained by non-mysterious causes. The possibilities include incapacity due to falling - or other sudden health crises - leading to a lone person becoming immobilized far off-trail, drowning, bear (or other animal) attack, environmental exposure, or even deliberate disappearance. After a thorough analysis of the missing person data, Polich summarized that these cases are not "outside the frequency that one would expect, or that there is anything unexplainable that I was able to identify."