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What defines a missing person?
What defines a missing person?
As defined by the government and state police of Australia, a missing person is defined as: Anyone who is reported missing to police, whose whereabouts are unknown, and there are fears for the safety or concern for the welfare of that person. Missing persons can be of any age, gender, ethnicity, or background and the reasons why people go missing are many and varied. Reasons for a person going missing include but are not limited to Mental disorder, Child abduction, Murder, Online relationships, Wanted to 'disappear', Addiction, Abductions, Criminal activity, Dementia, Domestic violence, Exploitation, Financial stress, Homelessness, and/ or Trafficking.
According to the latest data from state and territory police from news.com.au, "there are currently 2623 long-term missing in Australia — and most of them went missing in New South Wales. Currently, 816 people are missing from NSW, followed by 559 in Victoria, 386 in Queensland, and 353 in Western Australia. Tasmania has an overall 176 missing, while Northern Territory has 170, South Australia has 149 and ACT has 14. In South Australia, out of the 149, police revealed 56 are declared as major crime investigations; 51 are missing, presumably on land; while 42 are missing at sea." After extensive research, I could not find the resource used by the site to collect this data however according to the official AFP missing persons website, "Of the 56,000 missing persons reports submitted to police in 2023 approximately 99% were located. However, there remain approximately 2,500 long-term missing persons, who have been missing for more than three months with over half of these missing persons being between the ages of 13-17."
There are three broad categories of missing person cases by explainable means:
Firstly, there are those who lose their way in the wilderness or become disoriented via trauma or dementia.
Secondly, there are those who succumb to persuasion or abduction.
Thirdly, there are those who "wish" to go missing of their own accord and who are in complete control of their own accord. These are deliberate acts and are the most common type of missing person cases.
Lastly there are the missing 411 cases...
What is the missing 411 Phenomenon?
What is the missing 411 Phenomenon?
If you have any particular interest in missing persons cases or criminology then you are probably familiar with the missing 411 persons phenomenon, if not I will provide a brief overview of the topic.
Missing 411 is the first comprehensive research about people who have disappeared in the wilds of North America. It’s understood that people routinely get lost and some want to disappear, but the cases involved are strangely unusual. Very few officials have ever studied the archives for similarities, traits, and geographical clusters of missing people however many YouTubers have studied the connections as well as others who are interested in the topic on larger platforms such as Reddit. The man behind the Missing 411 theory is David Paulides, who is known as a former police officer who is now an investigator and writer known primarily for his books dedicated to proving the reality of Bigfoot and establishing the Missing 411 conspiracy theory. Missing 411 is a series of books and films, which document cases of people who have gone missing mainly in national parks in American areas such as the Great Smokey Mountains and elsewhere, and assert that these cases are unusual and mysterious. In these books, Paulides suggests that something supernatural is at play, such as folklore characters or other iconic supernatural figures such as the wendigo. However, contrary to data analysis which suggests that they are not statistically mysterious or even unexpected. Many people have further studied this phenomenon on website platforms or other means such as social media, one I would like to give special mention to is The Lore Lodge Founded in 2021 by Aidan Mattis and Aidan Thornbury, who have extensively covered these missing 411 cases as well as providing his theories based on the information provided by government files and reports made at or after the time of the case.
I have not personally read or seen the Missing 411 movie or book series therefore I feel unfit to provide any opinions on the movie or the books or the author who wrote them. However, these pieces may be highly esteemed within the paranormal community, especially for those who believe in Bigfoot (also known as the sasquatch) and the lore and history behind the large hairy man that has been largely known within native and westernised American folklore long before recorded history. I mention Big Foot as it is an important piece of the missing 411 phenomena and is the explanation suggested by Paulides for the strange missing persons cases in northern America and Canada.
A little about Big Foot -------------------------------------------------
Within and outside of America, Bigfoot is generally attributed to the mountainous Western region of North America and can be generally described as a 7 to as large as 15 feet tall, or 2.1 to 4.6 meters in metric measurements. most describe the "beasts" to be large, muscular, and bipedal human or ape-like creature covered in black, dark brown, or dark reddish hair. And depending on where you are asking or who you are asking, Big Foot has been recorded to help missing people even going as far as to bring supplies to travellers, to attacking 'random' individuals and carrying them into the woods, never to be seen again...
A user from Reddit provided some helpful short-term descriptions of "big-foot" in different mythologies:
Sasquatch: The name comes from the Salish word se'sxac, which means "wild men".
Yeti: The Himalayan region's mythical monster.
Yowie: An Australian creature that has been sighted over 3,000 times in the Blue Mountain area of New South Wales.
Hibagon: The Japanese equivalent of Bigfoot.
Orang minyak: The Malaysian "oily man" monster.
Rugaru: A creature believed by the Ojibway to appear in times of danger.
Mogollon Monster: Arizona's version of Bigfoot, said to live near Payson.
Skunk Ape: A similar folk tale of a wild humanoid from the southeastern United States.
Almas and Yeren: Similar folk tales of wild humanoids from Asia.
Missing 411 (2016)
Missing 411 (2016)
A documentary that chronicles the similar disappearances of five children in the wilds of North America, across multiple decades.
Missing 411 the novels
Missing 411 the novels
The entire 10-piece book series written by David Paulides can be found on Amazon which I have linked below.
What makes a missing 411 case?
What makes a missing 411 case?
To understand a missing 411 case you must first understand the meaning behind the name. The first word of the phrase speaks for itself, missing in terms of people means "Anyone whose whereabouts cannot be established" and will remain missing until their whereabouts are confirmed, or proof of well-being can be accounted for. Well, what does 411 mean? you may be asking yourself. Well, a brief history of the number is that in its origin 411 is a telephone number for local directory assistance in Canada and the United States. Until the early 1980s, 411 – and the related 113 number – were free to call in most jurisdictions. The service is commonly known as "information" in the United States, although its official name is "directory assistance". Hence 411 can be defined as relevant information or the truth, making the phrase missing 411 come together to mean "missing information" or "missing truth" which is in my opinion, an accurate description of the cases I will begin to uncover.
The commonality between all of these missing 411 cases is that their is typically a "gap" in the informartion, or loop holes that make it almost impossible to find a rational or reasonable explination for why or how these people in particular go missing. As I mentioned above, there are three main reasons for a person to go missing, however even philosophical principlas such as Occam's razor in most if not all cases, cannot explain what happens to these missing persons.
Occam's Razor: By definition, Occam's razor in philosophy, is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements. It is also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony. According to the New Scientist web page "Occam's razor is a principle often attributed to. 14th–century friar William of Ockham that says that if you have two competing ideas to explain the same phenomenon, you should prefer the simpler one." For example if someone has a headache, it is more likely that they are simply dehydrated than it is that they have a brain disease.
Because of the inability to rationally describe what causes these strange events, people such as Paulides use the supernatural or folk lore approach in which they attempt to pinpoint the reason of absence on the paranormal, or historical folklore.
What links these cases together?
What links these cases together?
Along with the common factors found with these cases listed above, the key factor that ties all of these cases together to form the missing 411 phenomenon is how utterly unexplainable these cases are. Missing 411 cases cover a series of seemingly unsolvable cases that commonly fall under a list of common attributes such as but not limited to:
Children typically (but not always) survive and are found whereas adults typically (but not always) remain unfound or remains are found.
occur in national forests or wilderness locations.
Majority of cases are hikers.
a lot of cases occur near boulder or 'block' fields, as well as ravines.
people are found travelling absurdly large distances supposedly on foot in short periods of time.
missing 411 persons commonly describe being 'helped' by a "bear" or a large, hairy, ape-like creature.
People found after long periods of time are in surprisingly good health and have minimal to no external or internal damage done, even in extreme conditions and terrain.
People may be found with their clothes neatly 'folded' beside them or their belongings are found collected far away from the remains of the missing person.
sniffer dogs (canine units) or bloodhounds are unable to track the missing person.
There are more common factors that could be mentioned however these I believe to be the most important or the most commonly found connection between these cases as they do not define 411 cases as a whole, but are what link them together to help researchers better understand what could link these cases together.
Is it a statistically reliable explanation?
Is it a statistically reliable explanation?
Whether or not the missing 411 phenomenon can be explained by supernatural is something that continues to baffle skeptic detectives and journalists who are still compiling data to see whether or not these missing peoples cases can be explained by supernatural means.
A quote from Matrin Renzy, a publisher from the Medium quoted that "in urban cases from the Missing 411: A Sobering Coincidence book account for only 117 cases in total, and that most Missing 411 victims are hikers, which only apparently started disappearing after WW2, or at least that’s when their disappearances started being recorded." I would highly reccomend reading this article as it provides an exploratory statistical analysis of what all these cases have in common. Of the American missing 411 cases, the data collected by the Medium on the 16th of March 2023 (complete credit goes to them for this data by the way).
The data concluded that Of the 1,127 missing people in total, there are:
In terms of gender:
853 males (75.7%) and 274 females (24.3%).
479 (42.5%) are 0–17 years old, 625 (55.5%) are 18+, and 23 (2%) are of unknown age.
We can conclude from this that the male percentage of disappearance is 25% above expectations. psychologically this could be explained with the theory that men tend to be more reckless and solo hikers have a higher chance of being men than women, and if you have gotten advice from any experienced hiker it is that you never go hiking or hunting alone as it is extremely dangerous. Also if you have an accomplice to vouch for your whereabouts there is a much higher chance of you being found in the event that something does go wrong.
Of the confirmed adult victims:
199 (17.7%) are 18–24,
113 (10%) are 25–34,
73 (6.5%) are 35–44,
69 (6.1%) are 45–54, 62 (5.5%) are 55–64,
and 106 (9.4%) are 64+.
Their status when or If they where found:
269 (23.8%) were found alive,
355 (31.5%) were found dead,
and 501 (44.5%) were never found.
Other data sets include:
Vast majority of those found alive were minors, 247 out of 268.
Young men between 18–24 years of age were found dead much more often than the rest of the adults (64% versus 13–40% for all other adult gender+age groups).
The elderly have the highest rate of not being found (81%).
Women, both minors and adults, are found more often alive than their male cohorts by roughly 10–15%.
Dogs failed to find scent and track the victim in 81% of cases. ( One of the linking factors I mentioned connected these cases above (: )
86 victims (7.6%) were found alive and 198 (17.6%) dead in or near water.
61 victims (5.4%) were found alive and 124 (11%) dead in a place previously searched (59 of those found alive were minors).
417 victims (37%) disappeared in the afternoon between noon and 8:00 p.m. and 205 (18.2%) in the remaining 16 hours of the day (the rest of the reports presumably don’t include precise time of disappearance).
Bad weather adversely affected 381 search and rescue missions (33.8%), but the search outcomes were almost identical with cases where bad weather wasn’t involved.
220 cases (19.5%) involve reports of missing clothing, 176 case descriptions (15.6%) mention shoes or socks specifically.
Written and edited by Lucy Jewell
Last updated on the 6th/October/2024
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