Missing 411: The U.F.O. Connection (2022) - full transcript
Connections between unexplained missing people and U.F.O's .
DAVID PAULIDES: How do you
put this behind you
and move forward?
That's something I ask
each missing person family
because I don't understand
how you can do that.
-I can't.
-Yeah.
I mean, you know,
I want some type of closure.
I want him to be found.
DAVID:
One of the most
confusing and frustrating
investigations
by law enforcement
is related to people
who disappear
in highly rural locations,
forests, plains,
deserts and regions
with few residences.
These cases
offer no witnesses,
few clues
and a strange lack of
evidence.
Where are these people?
How did they disappear
without leaving a scent trail,
no tracks
and a distinct
lack of physical evidence.
The investigators left
with the distraught family
grieving about a missing
loved one, wanting them found,
where many times
the search area
is the size
of a national forest.
My name is David Paulides.
I'm a former
San Jose police officer
who has worked with complex
and long term investigations,
while being assigned
to Vice & Intelligence,
street crimes, SWAT,
and various detective roles.
I'm a bestselling author,
investigating missing people
in national parks, forests
and rural locations
for over 20 years.
The investigative process
has led me to interview
incredible witnesses
that tell a fantastic story
that challenges
the investigative protocols
every detective follows.
We are staring
at unconventional
possibilities
supported by witnesses, video
and most recently,
our own government.
The human species
has been watching the Earth
for thousands of years.
Hunting, gathering
and observing.
From the moment
we left our cave,
we have looked to the skies
in amazement and wonder
about unidentified objects.
MAN 1: Are you recording?
MAN 2: What's that?
DAVID:
In just
the last 100-plus years,
we have left the ground
and flown into the clouds
with a different perspective
about our life in this world.
DAVID: We've
continued to be amazed
and perplexed by flying
objects
that have capabilities
far beyond
what our government
says is ours.
Are these crafts
piloted by entities
that have our best interests?
Is our planet
merely the ant farm
for complex societies
light years from Earth?
Could it be we offer
other worlds new DNA
that's needed to refurbish
their existence?
Or are they driven by a plan
that is so far beyond
our capability to comprehend
that the human mind
isn't programmed to accept
and live with
the consequences?
Join me
on a fact finding journey
that has never been disclosed.
Keep an open mind
on the possibilities
and a warm
and compassionate heart
for the missing.
GEORGE KNAPP:
In multiple
Missing 411
books,
it looks like people
are snatched out of
off the ground
and then some of them
are dropped back
into these locations.
The little kids
that are suddenly,
miles and miles away.
It seems like, I know
you don't want to commit
to any particular explanation
because you don't
have enough evidence to
to point at one in particular.
But some of this stuff
certainly ventures
into the area of the
paranormal
and, uh, and one
of the stories
that I was able to
break earlier this year
was about Skinwalker Ranch,
that, a program that had been
created by the Pentagon
uh, to look at UFOs
also went much further
than it studied,
we would call
paranormal events,
unexplained mysteries
at places like
Skinwalker Ranch
and elsewhere.
And earlier this year
I was invited to go back
by Senator Harry Reid
to meet with two people
whose names I cannot,
cannot make public.
One of these guys
pulls me aside
and then he said,
"You know, we think
that that guy David Paulides
"that uh, that his mystery
with these missing people
"might be related
to the phenomenon
at the ranch."
But the idea that
the phenomena
that's been seen there,
which is sometimes playful
and sometimes dangerous,
might be related
to yours, startled me.
And I don't know
how you react to that,
but maybe
it makes you uncomfortable
uh, being associated
with anything as weird as
that,
but your stuff's
pretty weird, too.
[RECORDER CLICK OFF]
DAVID:
So after reviewing
several thousand
missing person cases,
several distinct facts
started to come up.
And I started to put
piles of these reports
in different areas
of my room
that indicated
certain points of importance.
And after a while I started
to call these, "profile
points".
As an example, in 97%
of the cases that I research,
one of the profile points,
is that canines
brought to the scene
can't pick up a scent trail.
They bring trackers
to the scene
and they can't find tracks
leaving the location
that the person
was last seen at.
So the number
one profile point
in our work
is lack of scent trail.
Some of the most
common profile points
would be
weather related issues,
either just as
the person disappears
or just after they're,
they're missing,
or when the search starts,
there's a weather incident
that inhibits
the searchers ability
to find the individual.
Another one is
the victim's found in an area
that was previously searched.
Oftentimes an area
will be searched
five, six, seven times,
and then all of a sudden
when they're getting
ready to pull out,
the search and rescue
says we give up,
they find the person
in the middle of the area
that had been searched
many, many times.
Oftentimes when
somebody goes missing,
they go missing
in an area near water,
or boulders or
swamps and bogs.
And once
these profile points
were established,
and this is after reading
thousands of reports,
I started to document them.
And say, "Okay, if these
are gonna be the profile
points
"that we use moving forward,
then these will be the ones
"that we have to look for
in the reports
as they come in."
This has become
the overshadowing criteria
for a Missing 411 case.
And in this instance
we're in Vancouver,
British Columbia,
and we are researching
a case of a missing hunter,
someone who had visited
the same location,
20 times in 20 years.
It's a location
that he and his wife
have come to many times.
In this instance,
he came out alone.
He brought his dogs,
his camper,
and his raft,
to do a little fishing,
sightseeing
and just relaxing in nature.
And he disappeared
on the shores of Harrison
Lake.
And we still don't know
what really happened
to Ray Salmen.
DANIELA SALMEN:
Ray
was an outdoor
camper-hunter-fisherman.
Grew up in the woods,
northern Ontario.
Uh, very experienced
and a safe outdoorsman.
Thirty-two years,
we were married together.
For about
a year-and-a-half
before that,
he would have rather gone
hunting, camping with me
than with anyone else.
He was always telling me that.
But I am a fair
weather camper.
I would not have been
out in the bush
if it wasn't for Ray,
Ray made it wonderful.
JOHN MILES:
At the time
I met him, he was about 65.
Just recently retired.
He worked
for Rogers Sugar in Vancouver
as chief maintenance man.
He was empathetic.
He was concerned about
what you felt about something,
which is rare today.
And I liked that,
I enjoyed his company.
He is the type of guy
who is from the old school.
He had this
adventurous spirit.
He had a map of British
Columbia in a booklet form.
Very seldom would I find
a blank page
part of this province
that Ray hadn't visited.
DAVID:
So he drove
up to Harrison Lake
-from your home here.
-DANIELA:
Right.
DAVID:
In a truck
with a camper?
DANIELA:
Right.
And what else
did he have with him?
DANIELA:
A fridge, a furnace,
air conditioner, a few rifles
and maybe
a couple of pistols with him.
And he took his Zodiac with
him and a motor on the
Zodiac.
He had a complete life jacket.
Good flotation device.
So fully equipped.
He had the two dogs,
and if anything comes around,
they would bark.
DAVID:
He'd been to the spot
many times before?
DANIELA:
Many times
because you can get there,
when he was still working,
he could go a Friday after
work
and get there and set up camp
and I've been with him
a couple of times.
We've gone
for a week at a time.
DAVID:
And again
for clarity, he doesn't go
-and just sit
at his camper all day?
-No.
DAVID:
He's out
going over the hillsides,
walking around.
So he's been all through
the mountain sides in this
area
-many times in the past.
-Correct.
JOHN:
He says, "Oh, yeah,
I'm gonna camp down
"by the lake
in this certain spot."
So he says,
"I gotta get going now
"because I've got to
set up camp before dark."
That's the last time
I've seen him.
We were planning
to go out of the lake
and look for old gold mines.
He says, "I'll come down
in the Zodiac and pick you up
on Monday morning."
On Sunday afternoon,
I was doing some repair work
on a trailer up here
and we heard three gunshots.
[GUNSHOTS]
Home alone downstairs,
watching TV
and the doorbell rings.
And it was
a Vancouver City police
officer,
and she was asking
if Ray Salmen is home.
So I went, "What is it?
What's wrong?
Why are you asking me this?"
And she said she didn't
have any information,
and I couldn't contact Ray
even though
he had a cell phone.
There isn't any, uh,
cell phone coverage
at Harrison Lake.
I think I phoned the RCMP
at about five in the morning
and they were very brief.
They never gave me
any details at the time.
They just said he is missing.
So I didn't know if he was
walking with the dogs
somewhere and didn't make it
back.
And as he said to me,
"If you're injured,
if you're in the woods
and you're injured,
"you wait for them
to come to you.
"Don't start trying
to crawl around
wasting energy if you can't.
"They will come
and they will look for you."
And I thought, "Okay,
I know what's happened now."
ADAM PALMER:
A call came in
about going out to search
for a possible missing person
at this spot.
The team knew, I was
actually, I had a lot of
experience in this area.
So I was one
of the first team members
to arrive
at that scene that day.
When we showed up,
his truck and camper
were right at this very spot.
All his belongings
were kind of laid out
under the tarp.
His truck and camper
looked in great shape.
The RCMP goes up,
they find the truck
and the camper locked.
Dogs inside, two dogs,
and nobody is around.
If Ray went out for a hike,
-would he take the dogs?
-Definitely.
-So he wouldn't leave them in?
-Never leave the dogs in.
This is what he's got
the dogs for.
So in your mind, why would
he lock the camper door?
Unless there
was a danger to the dogs.
But what kind of danger
would be there to the dogs.
ADAM:
It was
the strangest thing.
I've never
showed up to a search
where we had full E.R.T
members
and there was guys
with fully automatic weapons
and I remember it
very specifically
because I've never
showed up to a search
where we're
searching alongside
the Emergency
Response Team members.
I was with the RCMP
for 31 years,
and back here
where I'm from,
in the Fraser Valley,
I was here for 22 years.
DAVID: Are you familiar
with the Ray Salmen
-disappearance on Harrison
Lake? -Yes.
DAVID:
So on
a disappearance of a,
a missing person case,
can you fathom in your own
mind why they would send out
an RCMP SWAT team?
For the unanswered questions.
Are we looking at someone
who got murdered?
Are we looking at somebody
who got kidnapped?
Or they may have a tip
that nobody knows about.
I don't know about,
top-secret kind of stuff.
I remember
an officer telling me,
kids showed up
at the Agassiz RCMP
detachment,
saying that
their vehicle was shot at.
And I remember later
talking to the RCMP officer
saying that kids
reported their headlights
being shot out.
If he shot out
somebody's headlights,
and he was that good of a shot
to shoot out the headlights,
then he was probably trying
to get attention
to where he was?
I don't know if I would shoot
at someone's car
to get attention,
because what's going
in my mind is,
"Oh, my God, what if
I accidentally hit someone?"
Now we know Ray
was a responsible hunter,
had a license to
have his guns,
had hunted for decades,
so, yeah, I am with you.
I believe that,
that is very strange behavior.
I remember thinking, "Well
that, that wouldn't have been
Ray."
Ray wouldn't be shooting,
if he did anything,
as he told me, "You shoot
three times in the air for
SOS."
Now, there is more to the
story than just Ray missing.
But not knowing what.
Right directly behind him
was the grad party.
So the party was
happening up over here.
There was estimated to be
above 50,
50 people at that party,
and there was
a massive amount of garbage
we cleaned up when we got
here.
And they didn't consider
that possible evidence as
well?
Something seemed wrong,
um, at that point.
DAVID:
When you hear
the search and rescue persons
rendition of
what just happened,
I don't think in 7,000 cases
that I've ever heard
anything so strange
as telling a search
and rescue group
to go pick up a grad party's
remains of what they left
and then,
coupled with the fact that
there were shots
fired at the scene
and they bring in
a special weapons team
to the area.
But that wasn't it.
The more you hear,
the stranger this story gets.
ADAM:
We would hike
for a couple hours in here
and start grid searching,
and we would
just basically come back
to this point then go again.
Then we also got on ATVs,
and so we had boats.
We had two watercraft
in the lake at that time,
searching the shoreline,
air support as well.
DAVID: And I remember
when I first talked to you,
you said you were told
not to go into the bush?
On the second day,
his belongings
were found by air.
They spotted his clothes.
Now, this is a day,
if not two days
after the initial search.
It wasn't even probably
an hour or two after that,
I remember the corporal,
the RCMP members,
still in uniform,
coming out of the bush,
saying it's unsearchable.
We found his, his clothes.
Um, it's not
worth it to go in there.
It's so clear
because I was like,
"Nothing is unsearchable."
Why would they all of a sudden
just call it that quickly?
DAVID:
I asked Adam
to show me the location
where Ray's clothes were
found.
Strangely, there
was even a worn out
search and rescue tag
on a tree.
ADAM: This is where his
clothes were probably most
likely found.
It's very old.
It's, yeah, that would be
from that time period.
DAVID:
The search
uncovered via helicopter
some folded items
under a log,
and his rifle 400 yards
north of his truck,
right on the beach.
And then over a small hill
quite a distance away,
they found his pistol
laying in a meadow.
DANIELA:
They would,
they would give me
bits and pieces.
They would call,
they would say,
"Oh, we found Ray's
backpack under a tree."
And then later
on they told me,
somewhere in a field
they found his nine
-millimeter.
And I thought Ray would never
leave a pistol anywhere.
So you're into it a few days,
they found these items,
uh, I read that it was
the feeling of the RCMP
that he must be in the water.
Is that true?
As they were saying,
"Oh, we think
he must have drowned,"
and I thought, "Well,
that doesn't make any sense."
His boat is at the campsite,
so he wouldn't
have fallen off the boat.
And if he was on the boat,
he would have had
his life jacket on.
The official report says,
he was injured
and got into the water
and was trying to swim back,
and that's how he drowned.
But it was hard to believe.
DAVID: If anybody said, "Well,
he was stripping his clothes
because he had hypothermia"?
It wasn't raining
and it was June.
It was, it was warm
and I was even up
at 6,000-feet elevation,
and I was
in a T-shirt, sweating.
DANIELA:
They never found
any traces of any blood,
animal or human.
They even said
it was unusual
that they had
that many tracking dogs
and never found a track.
DAVID:
Or a scent?
DANIELA:
Or a scent.
DAVID:
That's
an important point.
When you go
from the point of the pistol,
from the camper to the beach,
you have an established area
to start from, to go to.
It's not like you're going
blindly at this point.
So the dogs
should have been able
to track Ray
point-to-point-to-point
pretty easily,
and they didn't.
The RCMP had a search boat,
combing the shoreline.
Ray's wife also hired
a private response team
to come in
and also search the area.
No body was ever recovered.
So Daniela went out
with the search boat
and actually spent
hours on scene
looking for her husband.
I had arranged
with the Ralston's
to come down
and search for Ray.
DAVID:
Daniela told us
from the beginning
that she thought
that the RCMP was pushing
this probability
that Ray was in the water.
And talking to
search and rescue people
they didn't necessarily
believe Ray was in the water.
And I'm not sure
if you guys were aware,
but they found his pistol
on top of a mountain,
not even anywhere
near the water.
-And Daniela said
there is no way...
-
{end-italic} GENE RALSTON:
Yeah.
-...Ray would
lose such a pistol.
-Yeah.
-Had you heard that?
-We hadn't heard that, no.
So it's interesting.
Initially, I don't think
they wanted to give me back
his, um, guns and rifles.
DAVID:
What about
the backpack?
No, I didn't get that back.
DAVID:
Don't you
think that's odd?
They weren't there
to explain themselves to me.
DAVID: Ever be a reason
to lie to the victim family?
No, not from police, no.
-Ever?
-No, never.
DAVID:
It became
blatantly obvious
that the RCMP was withholding
information from Daniela.
Files obtained through
the Freedom of Information Act
turned up
blacked out paragraphs.
I have encountered
similar issues
through
the Freedom of Information Act
and the release of details.
Some of the off-the-record
interviews that we were doing,
alluded to a connection
to some of the local legends
and bizarre sightings
within this area.
People that go missing
or these things that happen
that don't quite make sense.
It happens in an area where
a lot of time,
there's gold
or there's a history.
There's a legacy.
There's legends.
There are stories
of past occurrences.
There's a reason why
they're called sky ancestors.
DAVID: We heard that the RCMP
has a policy about UFOs?
Yes.
Tell us about that.
If you get involved
with the UFO investigation,
it is, you hand
that information over.
I don't know where it goes.
-So somebody somewhere...
-Yeah.
...is collecting
and tracking this information?
I would say so. Yes.
You have to.
You cannot let that stuff go.
-And they take it seriously?
-Yep. Yeah.
That information is collected,
and wherever it goes
into some secret something.
So during the interview
with the RCMP officer
that was retired,
yeah, it reminded me
of a document that I saw
several years ago.
In March of 1960,
the RCMP had a document
that would have been
classified as restricted,
that had to do with
the Athabaskan Indians,
seeing a UFO in the general
area of where Ray Salmen
disappeared.
And that document in essence,
says that they saw something
that we would consider today
to be your
standard cylindrical UFO.
DANIELA:
We were
camping once at a place
called Fire Lake,
and we were just sitting
around the campfire in the
evening
and there is a large lake,
and on the other side
there's a mountain.
And there wasn't any logging
going on at that mountain
and we were sitting there
and we could see
a light across the lake.
I said, "Oh, there must be
logging going on there.
It looks like there's a car."
And Ray said,
"That's not a car,"
and he goes,
"I know for a fact there isn't
any logging going there."
He knows all the roads,
all the back hills.
He's hiked everywhere.
But as we're looking
at this light,
it's traveling very quickly
and doing 90 degree turns,
very unusual.
So a car in the mountains
wouldn't have been
traveling that way.
And it wasn't just a flash.
We were sitting there
watching this.
And I remember sitting there
for a good ten minutes
watching this
and almost enjoying this.
I thought,
"This is fascinating."
You ever seen anything strange
in the skies out here?
Well, I've been
here a long time.
When I had
the cottage over there,
I had some friends
and he came up
with his girlfriend.
And they camped on the beach.
I guess it was about
2:30 in the morning.
They were in the tent,
on the beach
in the middle of the night,
asleep. My friend said,
"I was sleeping like that,
and all of a sudden
I knew there was a light.
"It woke me up.
"And the inside of the tent
it was like daylight."
He unzipped the door
and looks outside,
and it was like
the 12 o'clock high noon,
on the clearest
day of the year,
and he could see
the beach and the water
and all that for
but he couldn't see past
a certain area
so it was lit up.
And that clicked,
you know?
Hey, I believe
what they told me
because somebody else
told me the same thing.
As an investigator
who has a very open mind,
and absorbs all the details,
no matter
how outlandish and strange,
I really have to put
some parameters up sometimes
about how far down
the rabbit hole I'll go.
Considering this
I'd a good friend
in the state of Washington
that is really a UFO expert.
And I wanna take it to him.
My name is Peter Davenport.
I'm, for the last 26 years
I've been the director of the
National UFO Reporting Center
and that's what I do.
I'm a UFO investigator.
What is the difference
between MUFON
and what you do
in your organization?
Well, they're two
separate organizations.
MUFON is an older
organization.
And MUFON is more
of an investigative body.
It's a membership
organization.
The National UFO
Reporting Center
has one member, and that is I.
Do you ever investigate
any of the reports you get?
Yeah, once in a while.
I have investigated
an elk abduction.
I have investigated
crop formations.
Takes a lot of,
a lot of resources
to investigate a case.
DAVID:
You brought up
the elk case
that you investigated
in Washington?
I was actually at a conference
when the call came in.
He told the story about
14 or 15 people I think it
was,
who were out
planting trees
on a hillside,
on big piece of property owned
by a commercial
logging company.
They had seen an object
approach from the East,
and they stood there and
watched it for a few seconds.
He called the, the object
to the attention of the
workers,
and they all looked up
and saw it as well.
And it flew towards
a herd of elk,
that these guys have been
watching all morning long
as they worked on a hillside.
All the elk bolted
to the northeast to heavy
cover,
except for one hapless elk.
And the object
lifted the elk off the ground,
and it started moving slowly
in the direction
in which
that herd of elk had gone
and it came to a large tree,
an evergreen tree
and bumped into it,
interestingly.
And backed away from the tree.
And then suddenly
shot to the north
and went over
the nearest ridge
to the north.
I called the individual back
who had made
the call to the hotline
and who had left a message.
And arranged
to travel to the site.
DAVID: Was the company
that the property was on
assisting in this research?
They directed question
to Peter Davenport.
Let's put it that way.
So were they interested?
Definitely.
What's general nationality
of the workers?
Hispanic.
Would they speak English?
No. Nobody really knew
exactly what went on,
until we got
some good translation.
That's when I decided
we needed to get somebody
that was one,
in the UFO community
and two,
who could translate well,
and that's when I contacted
Ruben down in California,
I had contacted
uh, some of the workers
and to arrange for us to meet
and gain their trust too
because these gentlemen
were pretty shook up.
I would say they were
in their late 20s, early 30s.
They were married,
they have families.
Yeah. They
were responsible folks.
The three witnesses
saw this object
slowly descending
and it went toward
the elk herd,
which caused the elk to run,
but he was able
to see the object
picking up the elk.
It was not a big
object at all.
The witnesses emphasized
how surprised they were
at how small it was
and still be able to lift
an elk out of the forest.
What they did
was they looked at the elk,
they looked at the craft
and they said,
"Well, okay,
if the elk is this big,
"the craft is gonna
be somewhere between
six and eight feet long.
"About five feet wide
with a little indentation
in the back.
"About 18 inches thick.
"It had a red
and a white stripe
that weren't lights,
"but the white stripe
was like a bright enamel
paint,
"the red stripe
was a duller color."
So when the men in the group
-saw this craft take
the elk out of sight...
-Yeah.
...what was the distance
from where they were
to where
they finally saw it?
I would say the trees
where it ran into
is quarter mile.
But basically I think
it became a small dot
before it disappeared
into the cloud cover.
Down trip was silent,
and as soon as
it got over the elk,
the elk was
basically paralyzed.
It looked like
it was a statue.
It was just stiff.
DAVID: The distance
of the elk from the craft
-always stayed consistent?
-Yes.
How thick was the cable
between the craft and the elk?
There was no cable.
There was nothing discernible
that was holding
the elk to the craft.
The movement was like,
like a coin.
Uh, it was a slow oscillation.
It took about
two-and-half seconds
for it to complete a cycle,
and it's as if,
if you've ever spun a coin
and when that coin
is getting lower and lower,
so it's almost flat
and it goes around on its rim,
that's the type
of oscillation.
What are
the chances, Peter,
that, that could have been
some kind of test vehicle
that our military has,
and they were just trying
out their technology?
About as close to zero
as you can get.
-Could the craft
have been a helicopter?
-No.
In your research
as an investigator
is that common?
Yes, there are many times
so in reports that we get
uh, from witnesses.
They'll say that
they heard no noise at all.
-Did you ever go out
and try to find the elk?
-We did.
We found what we think
may have been the elk.
Uh, it was a dead creature
by the time we got to it,
but we did a
cursory examination
could find no bullet holes,
no arrows sticking in it,
no wounds.
It had good teeth.
It was well fed.
We think it was a female,
pregnant female elk.
Describe the setting
that you saw the elk in?
It was beside a road,
and it was in the valley,
to the north of the valley,
where these men
were planting trees.
It leads me to suspect,
but I have no evidence
that the craft flew over
the ridge to the north
of where these
men were working,
and may have dropped the elk
or lifted off.
DAVID:
So how many days
was it from the time
that they saw the elk
get pulled up by the craft
until someone found
that elk on the road?
The elk was found before
seven days had transpired.
Does that case
rank up there with you
as far as strangeness
and credibility?
Yeah, it's
a pretty strange case.
Uh, it's not every day
that witnesses see a UFO
what we presume was a UFO,
an alien spacecraft
lift an animal
off the ground
and fly off with it.
That's pretty unusual
by any measure.
Were any of them
concerned that,
"Hey, maybe one of these
things could come over and
take me"?
Yeah.
-Did they voice that concern?
-Yes, they did.
They... Some weren't
quite sure if they wanted
to go back to the woods
and work again.
Listening to his voice,
and I could really see
the actual event
that's happening to him
as he's describing it.
And he was shook up about it.
Was he emotional?
From what I recall,
he had a hard time sleeping
for several days
after he saw that.
His words were whether...
he thought,
"Whether it was
something prehistoric
"or was something
extraterrestrial."
So when you heard
that this elk was taken
and you
and you heard the witnesses,
at the end of the
investigation what was your
belief,
credible, incredible,
borderline?
It was credible.
Everyone was credible.
No one appeared
to be wanting to...
mmm, force
a story about anything.
It was just the opposite.
They were reluctant,
really upset them.
They really didn't even
wanna think about it.
Did they give you
any indication at all
that this was fabrication?
No, David.
I would stake my reputation.
No, they were
telling the truth.
DAVID:
After the interview,
I received a call
from Robert Fairfax
regarding the dead elk.
-Hey, Robert.
-Hi, Dave.
I'm calling back because
when we did the interview
of...
there's a couple of things
I forgot to add.
I did meet with
a representative
of the company.
When Peter and I initially
went down to find the elk,
it had a chronic
wasting disease,
prion disease,
that affects the brain
and they had been finding
quite a few elks,
dead elks in the area.
So in the 1980s, in the UK,
there was something
called, "mad cow disease".
It's a prion disease,
and it infected cows.
In the UK, they initially said
that these animals
couldn't transmit
the disease to people.
And they said not to worry.
But it ended up
transferring to people
and it killed hundreds.
And the UK
ended up slaughtering
over four-million cattle
because of this prion disease
that we know as mad cow.
In the U.S. there's something
that's come about,
where chronic wasting disease
is now infecting deer,
moose, elk, cervids,
and this disease
has spread across the U.S.
and it centered
on Colorado and Wyoming.
This disease is fatal
100% of the time to all
cervids.
The state governments
of each of the 50 states
have told hunters
to get their animals tested
and not to eat the meat
of an infected animal.
And they've never stated yet
that this can transfer to
human.
But it's consistent in that
it says, "Don't eat the
animal."
Chronic wasting disease,
seems to be something
that is out of control.
State and federal governments
don't have an answer
on how to control it.
And right now
it seems as though
there's some
type of monitoring
going on across the U.S.
of these infected animals.
DAVID: In Washington,
Peter Davenport
identified one case
and attributed it to CWD.
Now he identified a case
in the state of Idaho,
involving hunters,
that is equally as unusual.
Hi, I'm Chris Bales,
and I have a little incident
that I ran into
on September 27th,
the year 2000.
Um, something that most people
would never ever see
or believe.
We were in the
middle of Idaho,
out in a pretty remote area.
DAVID:
Who were you with?
Um, I was with
my brother Mark,
and a friend of ours,
through construction, Rob
and then his dad was with us.
DAVID: Describe the spot
where you were camping?
Hard to get down in,
and then when you
get down in,
it was pretty tight.
Um, steep canyon
and tall timber.
And it was kind of a dark,
dark hole down in there.
DAVID: And had you been
to the spot before?
We had. We've been
there for several years.
-So you knew it well?
-We knew it well, yeah.
CHRIS:
We had some mules
to hopefully, usually pack
an animal out that we
harvested.
Described the day
and how it started
on this specific incident?
We would start early, I mean,
like four in the morning.
Drive to a spot
and then hike for
maybe an hour
or two in the dark.
CHRIS BALE:
Work
our way around, spotted elk,
trying to follow the elk
and look at some high lakes
that we'd never seen before
and never got up in there.
We'd try and get back
to the vehicles
just before dark.
On this day,
you guys come back,
you fix some dinner,
explain what happened then?
I had finished my supper
and went out to take a whiz
and was starting back
to the trailer,
and Chris came out.
I was, I don't know,
maybe 15-feet from the
trailer.
And when I stepped down,
obviously your head goes up.
The light went across,
hit on something
that's right there,
and instant, instantly
that it was something
that I didn't comprehend,
whatsoever.
When I saw that,
that's when I, you know,
went down on my knees.
I just kind of
turned to my right,
went down on my knees.
Chris looks up
and just goes Holy--
Shit. Holy shit! Holy shit!
You guys have got to see this.
I look up and I see
what he's looking at.
CHRIS:
And I mean,
I was quivering. I yelled.
I was yelling basically
at the top of my voice.
Mark came out of the trailer,
and he said that, you know,
he heard my voice and he'd
never heard me sound that way
before.
He runs out
and I just point up, up above.
It was huge.
It was like a football field.
Hundred feet, direction,
direction, triangular shape.
So how far was the bottom
of that craft from you
in your estimate?
I would say
80-feet plus or minus
somewhere near above us.
Rivets? Canals?
No, that was,
that was one of the things
that,
I am in construction,
I like detail.
Um, I was looking at that
and that the detail just...
I couldn't believe, you know,
there's, there's no seams,
no rivets, no joints.
It's all just
one perfect surface in that.
You could just tell
it was perfect in every way.
The thing that got me the most
was how close it was...
and no noise.
Nothing.
No prop voice.
No... breeze.
No exhaust,
nothing you could smell.
Zero.
And it was a calm night.
No wind.
By that time,
it's starting to move up
and Mark and Rob both
grabbed their binoculars
and we just
watched it just float...
up the draw, just slowly,
no noise.
Um, animals didn't make noise.
Those mules
never made a sound,
and they never
made any motion.
I mean, they, like,
nothing was going on.
We weren't making any noise,
just kind of in awe
of what's going on
and not knowing what it is.
I'm thinking,
"Man, that's sure no
airplane."
We actually
took pieces of paper
and drew up
our own pictures
and wrote down information.
So, Chris, I came across this.
Did you draw that?
I did draw this.
Is that what it looked like?
That's as similar
as what I could come up with.
What were the black dots
outside the craft?
Don't know.
I just remember seeing them.
Um, didn't seem
like there was anything, um...
And was the red dot painted
or did it glow like the white?
It glowed like the white disc.
Did the white lights
also protrude from the bottom?
Uh, it looked like maybe
they were semi-domed.
But it was not really
pronounced like the drawing.
You know, you draw that,
it was more of white fog,
um, circle,
not really unique,
sharp edges or fine detail.
DAVID:
Could it
have been watching Rob?
Could he have been
a target for abduction
and Chris coming
out of the trailer,
thwarted that abduction?
Triangular craft like this
have been seen
around the world,
including, most recently
by our own
U.S. Military pilots.
That night,
did you stay in camp?
Tried to,
but just couldn't
bring myself to do it.
Did you get to know anybody
else who lived in that general
area
and asked them if they'd seen
something like this?
There was people that we knew
that were in the area.
So Mark kind of hedged on,
"Have you guys ever seen
anything kind of different,
"you know, at some point
or anything like that
out in the valley?"
And so little conversation
about it.
I just, we were standing,
you know, on the dirt road
and I put the toe of my boot
down and said, "Well, did you
see something like this?"
And started to draw
a triangle
with my boot in the dirt
and I drew a straight line
and the guy standing next to
me
took his foot
and pushed my foot away
and he finished
my drawing for me on that.
And that was,
there was nothing said
or anything
but that he finished
my drawing.
DAVID:
Is that
some sort of
validation for you?
Um, well,
it made me feel like,
"Yeah, okay.
Other people have noticed
this."
And so yeah,
I guess it's a validation.
So it did affect you?
Oh, it did.
I guess, I'm
vacillating maybe.
Since that night in 2000,
anywhere that you've been out,
-have you seen other
unidentified things in the
sky? -No.
How about Mark and Rob?
No, the same thing, you know,
never really seen anything
that even...
would have guessed at it.
So, Rob, there's gonna be
people that watch this,
and they're gonna say,
"I don't believe it,"
you know, "It didn't happen,"
and all that,
-these guys--
-And I would be one of them.
-You'd be one of them?
-[LAUGHS] Yeah.
So if you saw this story,
you wouldn't believe these
guys?
Well, I'm skeptical.
But I saw it.
And how many times
have you gone back
to that same site since?
-The exact site?
-Yeah.
Never.
When we talk about
the triangle UFO sighting
by the hunters,
I didn't realize at the time
but its location on a map
coincides with
the first documentary I did
called
Missing 411
that involved
the disappearance of DeOrr
Kunz.
When I look at the map...
directly east,
of the sighting of the
triangle by the hunters,
is the exact location
that DeOrr disappeared.
Now when you think about
the vastness of the
wilderness,
what are the chances
that these two incidents
happened in such a close
proximity to one another?
But also looking at the map
and my case files,
it also coincides
with the disappearance
of Ray Jones.
Now Ray was a 39-year-old
service station owner in
Salmon,
who disappeared 53 years ago
on a hunting expedition
with friends.
They separated,
Ray disappeared,
and for 53 years
he wasn't found.
Now a group of hunters
that saw this,
the triangular UFO,
their dad actually knew Ray.
And so every time
they went out,
and hunted this area,
they said that they were
looking for Ray as well.
He wasn't found
and then he's found this year
at the bottom
of a boulder field
in an area that had been
previously searched
dozens of times.
Suddenly he's found there.
And when you map
these three incidents,
you have a very neat triangle.
Which, weirdly, coincides
with the shape of the triangle
that was drawn by the hunters.
Are there any new major
developments in the case?
Not really.
-Has DeOrr been found?
-No.
Are there any named suspects?
Not at this time.
When an investigation
starts to push the limits
of standard everyday
police protocol,
I start to look
for professionals
on the outside
that could assist me.
I'm someone who's not
so stubborn as to admit
what I don't know.
And at this point,
I looked for professional help
in the name of
retired FBI agent John
DeSouza.
My name is John DeSouza.
I was an FBI special agent
for 25 years.
I've worked all types of cases
counterterrorism,
uh, violent crimes,
paranormal cases as well.
And I am pretty well known
for that sort of thing.
Now, your background
to me is interesting
because you've worked
a variety of criminal cases.
I worked on the
Unabomber case.
I worked on 1994
World Trade Center bombing.
DAVID:
The biggest case
you ever worked?
JOHN:
It would
have to be 9/11.
John, how many times
have you testified
in front of the in front
of a U.S. Court
for a U.S. attorney?
Maybe like 100 times.
And how many times
has the court decided
that you're an expert
in a certain area?
Probably every time
I've testified.
I can't think of anybody
who's in a position
more to tell the truth,
and with great things
to risk than you.
No. No.
I've had agents
in the past say,
"Well, Dave,
if there is a series of events
"that all kind of line up...
"similar to what you have
written about," meaning me,
"then those agents could be
forwarding those reports
to a profiling unit,
"and they're putting
the pieces together
to see if there's
connections."
Exactly. Yeah, it's true, too.
So who would be
directing those agents?
That could be Washington,
it could be profiler unit
of Behavioral Sciences Unit.
Are there subject matter
experts on UFOs, aliens,
abductions?
Well, that's what I was
while I was during the,
in the FBI.
And what was
your conclusion in general
about these people
that claim abductions
and disappear and come back?
We report on the ones
that we talk about,
um, those are real.
And I do believe
that they are connected
to extra dimensional beings,
beings that come from
outside of our reality.
In many, many of my stories...
uh, families in the woods...
children are right
next to them...
Everything's fine.
They turn around one second
and the kid's gone.
They're not
anywhere to be found,
and the statement
from the parents
is, "They were right there,
"and then the next second,
they're gone."
Now, if that is true,
that really does answer
a conundrum about
-how they can disappear
and nobody can realize it?
-Right.
Time period is so short
that their disappearance
is not possible
in a purely physical world.
So when you investigated
something like this,
were you ever
questioned later on
by other departments
or other agencies?
No, not by other agencies, no.
Departments?
No. They don't
want to know this sort of
thing
as much as...
as much as they can avoid
the knowledge of this. No.
Long time ago,
this is back
when I was a policeman,
and there were some FBI guys
that were working a case
on something else.
We were talking about,
I don't even think it was
anything spooky or paranormal,
but it was something unrelated
and the agent said,
"Dave, our government
will never acknowledge
what they can't control."
And I always
remembered that statement.
-Do you believe that?
-Yeah, that's absolutely true.
They can't acknowledge it
if they can't control it,
or even if they think
they can't control it.
Wow. What can I say?
John DeSouza fits your
typical model of an FBI agent,
and I've dealt with several
during my years
in law enforcement.
Ultra-credible,
tons of experience,
a stand-up guy
who is speaking the truth.
And during my time
sitting in his office,
you probably couldn't tell,
but I was in stunned silence
just listening to how
he laid out the groundwork
for so many issues
related to our work.
And he brought
instant credibility
to an arena
where a lot of people
don't even wanna address.
John's statement
about parallel dimensions,
his overview of missing people
and his statement
about our work,
all fell right in line
with the 1,500 people
I've documented
in the last 12 years.
But that brings up
a one of the cases
that has continually sat
in the back of my mind.
That's the incident
of the disappearance
of Reinhard
Kirchner in Arizona.
So this is the spot.
In April 2007,
Reinhard Kirchner
made his way from Germany.
He was a physicist.
He drove his rented
camper truck here,
parked it and started to hike.
He'd been here before,
and he liked it.
Reinhard didn't
make his meeting
with his girlfriend
at Las Vegas McCarran Airport,
she called search and rescue.
Eventually found his truck
parked here on Navajo
property.
Started to search several
days. They found nothing.
They know
that he took his camera
and took a small backpack
and he walked into oblivion.
Interesting part
of the case was
while the Sheriff
was at his truck,
there were some local ranchers
that walked up
and talked to him,
and these people said that
during the time
Reinhard was gone,
they had seen
unusual lights in the sky
here.
And what is important
about that to me
as a law enforcement person,
is that they put that
in the report as credible.
His girlfriend eventually
flew home to Germany.
It's been over a decade,
Reinhard and his property
has never been found.
What compelled
Reinhard to this location?
The case remains open,
and we may
never find the answers.
There is one particular case
where credibility
and evidence merge
in one of the most bizarre
cases I've ever investigated.
One where the hunter
reappeared with a story
that tested
the limits of believability
yet captured my imagination
and strangely
physical evidence.
My name is Carl Higdon.
And this is
to talk about an incident
that happened in 1974.
I told my wife that,
I'm gonna go south
and go hunting.
DAVID: What percentage
of the time
that he went out hunting
did you go with him?
MARJORIE: Always.
-Except this time?
-Yes.
Carl and I are together,
mostly 24/7.
So on October 25th, '74...
He went, he went out
by himself completely.
DAVID:
And was that a rare occasion?
MARJORIE:
Yes, very rare.
So that area
where this happened,
had you ever been
there before?
No.
Describe the best you can
where this happened at,
-which forest were you in?
-Medicine Bow National Forest.
The area that
this happened in,
was back to
the north, right at the edge
of the forest.
So I got inside
the national forest.
I walked down
maybe three-quarter
of a mile.
I had seen five elk.
They didn't move.
There was another
strange thing.
They what? Say that again?
They didn't move.
They just sat there.
Carl entered the woods,
lined up on a series of elk.
He even said
that the elk weren't moving,
leveled his rifle
at the animals,
pulled the trigger.
He says his gun went off.
The bullet came out
the end of the barrel
and hit some type
of invisible force field
and dropped to the ground.
That bullet
was recovered by Carl
and later analyzed,
and it did hit something,
what, we don't know.
But the unusual nature
of the travel
of that ammunition
is so odd
that I've never heard of it
in any type of
research before.
You're standing there.
You shot the rifle.
You're turning
and you see the craft.
Give me as much detail
as you can on that craft,
Carl.
Well, it was like looking
at a piece of glass.
Only it had motors around it.
I couldn't figure out
what it was to start with.
So when you're looking
at the at the cube,
can you see through it
and see forest behind it?
Yes.
Was there anything
in the cube?
Not that I could see.
So it was just like
a glass square on four sides,
seven foot-by-five foot
with nothing inside it,
and you can
kind of see through it.
CARL:
Right.
What did you think
when you first saw it?
[LAUGHS] I didn't know.
I just kinda stared at it
because it was unusual.
Then this guy showed up
and asked me if I was hungry.
Told him, "Yeah."
So this packet of four pills
drifted over to me,
just like it was thrown at me.
I took one.
Next thing I know
I was in this cubicle,
but it looked a lot nearer.
There's five elk behind me.
I said, "You got my elk."
He just looked at me
and shrugged.
Told me
that his name was Ausso...
and they were down here
to get food.
I said, "You guys
always come down?"
He said, "Yeah.
We come down every so often.
"We get elk, deer from here.
"And go the ocean
and get fish and take it
back."
MARJORIE: This is the drawing
that Carl drew in the
hospital.
And the, the being
had a, like a hand,
that was a cone
and no hand here,
and his hair was like straw.
-And--
-DAVID: So this is
a very descriptive drawing.
What are these little things?
MARJORIE: Um,
this is kind of an apron,
and it shows where the uh,
kind of where the land is,
in his planet.
Did he-- Did Ausso
seem to have a personality?
He seemed to.
Like...
When he talked to me,
his lips never moved.
I mean, it was back and forth.
But...
He seemed like he knew a lot.
-What color was his suit?
-Black.
DAVID: Black.
The entire suit was black?
MARJORIE: Completely black
because our sun burns them.
So they have to wear black
and they wear like, uh,
like a scuba diver's suit.
Covers them completely.
Did Carl ever say
if he only had one hand
-and didn't draw the second?
-Mm-hmm. Yes.
He did not
have another hand here.
But he had
like a cone over here.
Carl ever have an opinion
if this was a male or a
female?
-Uh, oh, he figures
it was a male.
-A male.
And then this is uh picture
of the, um, the craft.
And this was the controls.
This is where Ausso sat
and this is where Carl sat.
And there was still
five elk in here also.
And when we lifted off...
and then I could see
it looked like a ball...
down below.
I figured it was the Earth.
I didn't know.
And he was taken
to some place that could
best be described
as another planet.
It took him behind a screen
and eventually said,
"We don't need you.
"You don't fit what we need."
The implication to Carl being
is that he had a vasectomy
and they needed somebody
that was 100-percent fertile.
CARL:
I said, "What?
I got to go home?"
And he said, "Don't worry.
Somebody'll come get you,"
and dropped me off
and I hit side of this hill
and rolled down it.
This is a critical point.
When Carl explained
that he was dropped,
I have investigated
hundreds of cases
with unusual circumstances
that show that someone
was dropped into that
location.
This isn't something
that's normally talked about
in investigations.
A lot of times
it's just pushed off
as happenstance
and an accident
that the person
fell into the place.
There's much more to this
and Carl has explained it.
It was after I got off work,
I felt the need to go to him.
I felt that he needed me,
that I had to go help him.
DAVID:
So you get out there,
you have the sheriff there
and everyone's looking.
You're sitting on the hill,
and you eventually get told
-that they found Carl?
-Mm-hmm.
The Deputy Sheriff
got out of the pickup,
crouched down with his gun,
ready to shoot Carl
if he had to
because we did not know,
what, what was going on?
So, so from visually
looking at Carl then,
did he even seem like
it was your husband?
Uh, he kept looking out
through the windshield
and saying, "My elk, my elk,
They took my elk.
"They took my elk."
Who did you think,
"they" were?
I had no idea
what he was even talking
about.
-DAVID:
So at the hospital,
they do a full examination?
-Mm-hmm.
They checked him over
with a fine-tooth comb.
First, they wanted to know
if he was on any drugs.
He was not.
And when I ask him,
the Dr. Tongco,
about, about the spots
on his lungs,
he said, "What spots?
There are no spots."
And in the X-ray,
they found that
his lungs were completely
clear,
which was highly
suspicious and unusual
because Carl had
tuberculosis scars
on his lungs.
So something happened
while he was gone
that cleared that up.
At the time,
did you think that
maybe something
happened on that ship
that they made
you pure and clean?
No, I think it was,
when I was behind the screen
up there
because that's what he said,
"You're not what we want.
We'll take you back."
And I figured it was
because of my vasectomy.
But I'm not sure of that.
DAVID: If it was
because of the vasectomy,
was the insinuation
that if you didn't have one,
you weren't coming back?
[LAUGHING]
That's what I gathered.
So Carl insinuates
that the entities
didn't want him
because his reproductive
system wasn't intact.
Now, if it was,
we probably wouldn't even
be talking about this story.
DAVID:
So I read a name
and you can explain
this to me, Dr. Leo Sprinkle.
How did he
come into the picture
and what did he do?
MARJORIE:
He
was a psychologist,
and he was with
the University of Wyoming.
And he studies UFO-people,
contactees.
He could not say that
he actually believed him.
But he couldn't say
that he did not.
Carl took a lie detector test.
In fact, he took, I don't
know, three or four of them.
What were the
results of those?
MARJORIE:
He's telling
the truth as he believes.
CHRIS:
I don't know
what other people think.
But if they don't believe it,
they don't have to.
I mean, everybody
got their own opinion.
I know what happened to me.
I'm Richard Beckwith.
I am the city attorney
for the city of Rock Springs.
I'm also the state director
for the Mutual UFO Network
and I have been
a practicing attorney
for the last 26 years.
Can you give us
a general overview
of what MUFON does?
We are a worldwide
or global organization
dedicated to the study of UFOs
for the benefit of humanity.
And I'd like to think that
that is exactly what we do.
An incident that I
interviewed, the victim about
was a man named Carl Higdon.
I do remember
that taking place.
I think I was 14 years old
when it happened.
I'd like to know
your thoughts about it.
Well, first of all, I don't,
I don't think
that Carl was lying.
I know Dr Sprinkle very well,
Dr. Leo Sprinkle.
He investigated that case
and did some hypnosis,
some regressive hypnosis
with Mr. Higdon,
and his impression of the case
was that Mr. Higdon
was telling the truth,
or at least what
he believed to be the truth.
So some of the things
about that case
to me reeked of credibility.
He had lung congestion
and scarring on his lungs
before the incident.
And subsequent to it...
-His lungs were clear.
-RICHARD: Yeah.
DAVID: And then
the issue about the bullet
coming out of the gun
and stopping
after hitting something
-and being recovered
and even analyzed...
-Right. Yeah.
They did examine the bullet
and find that
it had struck something
and something really hard.
It has these
physiological characteristics
that are just unexplained.
DAVID: So in your experience
and in your readings
of people
who have been abducted,
how does
the Higdon case compare
as far as the
physical evidence?
Most abduction cases
don't really involve
a lot of physical evidence.
We have the Higdon incident,
a hunter,
German surname,
hunting elk by himself,
claims he has been abducted.
In that same general area,
just last year,
there was a guy
named Mark Strittmater,
you know about that case?
RICHARD:
A couple
of different things
that I find interesting
about that case is that
you've got an individual
that's the same age,
approximately as Mr. Higdon,
also about
the same time of year.
Mr. Higdon's incident took
place on October 25th 1974,
and Mr. Strittmater went
missing on October 19th,
of 2019,
almost 35 years
exactly to the day
in a relatively
similar location.
DAVID: So we're on
Forest Road 801...
And we are in the area
where Mark Strittmater
was coming
to go elk hunting
on October 19th, 2019
in the
Medicine Bow National Forest.
In about 200 yards
before Forest Road 830,
he pulls to the side of the
road for some reason,
and there's
some theories behind,
maybe he was pulling over
because he saw
one of his hunting targets,
big bull across the road,
deer, who knows?
But he pulls to the side
of the road
stops, gets out
of his vehicle,
and he takes a light coat,
a light day pack
leaves his big pack in the
car,
leaves his keys
in the vehicle,
and he gets out.
Off camera, the search
and rescue person told me
that Mark
was a 15-year veteran
outfitter,
for Big-Game in this area.
So he knew
the outdoors super well.
He knew how to track
and he knew elk
didn't walk in a straight
line.
Elk take off and they wander.
So to think that
Mark is more than a mile,
two miles from here,
chasing an elk,
doesn't make a lot of sense.
My name is Kim Meese.
I was girlfriend
of Mark Strittmater
when he went missing.
In your view what--
Wait, what made Mark special?
He was just a giving person.
So how comfortable
was he in the woods?
Oh, he grew up in the woods.
He started hunting as soon
as he could, 12, 13 years old.
-He knew what he was doing.
-Oh, yeah.
In the area
that he went missing from,
where I found his truck at,
we never hunted that area.
But that morning
that he had went out
on the 19th
that he went missing,
I had already made plans
to come to Rawlins
to watch my grandkids.
And he knew that
there was a snowstorm coming
in
and I was worried about him.
And, uh, he tried calling
and sent me a text
and said that
he had missed an elk
and that he was done.
So I assumed
he was coming back to
Saratoga,
which is a 40-minute drive
from where we hunt from.
So I hung out
around the house
for a little bit
and he never showed up
and I left,
and I was trying
to get hold of him that night
to make sure
he made it back
before the snow hit
and trying to call and text
and texts weren't delivered.
Phone calls are going
directly to voicemail.
I hauled ass up there,
looking for the truck.
And then when I got
to that intersection,
I looked to my left,
and that's where I saw
the pickup was sitting.
Explain how it was sitting?
It was on the east side
of the road facing north.
-Did it look like
he parked it there?
-Yeah.
-Did it look out of place
to you at all?
-Yeah. Yeah.
-It did?
-It did.
And when I got to it,
like I said it had snowed
and I had to clean off
probably 12, 15 inches of snow
just to get into it.
And when we would hunt,
we always left our key
in our gas tank,
so I was able
to get in the truck,
and that's when I found
his phone and cigarettes,
his medication.
The only thing that was
missing was him and his pack
and gun.
So when he texted you last,
what did it say?
The last text it says,
I got it at 11 o'clock
says... [READING]
So from that, it kind of
sounded like he was done?
Yeah, and that's
what I assumed
that maybe
he was coming back to town.
You find the truck,
you can't find him?
Do you look around at all?
Or do you just call Sheriff?
No, I walked around the area,
just to see if I could see
any tracks or anything.
And I didn't see anything.
So I came back to Saratoga
and called
the sheriff's deputy.
So right off the
bat we came in.
The first day we came in
with a whole bunch
of ground pounders
and we just went
shoulder-to-shoulder
and walked timber.
And then we went around
and picked a different spot
near the truck
and chose a different
direction
and started
pounding more timber.
DAVID:
That initial search,
how many days did it last?
The first time around,
I think, was seven days,
if I'm not mistaken.
It's like I said,
we were gone
for the first two days of it,
then we got back,
we took off and looked for
him,
and I think total
I had five days in it.
And was there
a subsequent effort to find?
We did go back the spring,
um, we spent a full day
with quite a few resources out
and three different dog teams.
Did your canines hit
on any scent anywhere?
BRYCE:
I never had a hit.
How odd is it
not to pick up any scent?
Very.
As much ground as we covered
in as many different
wind patterns as we hit,
you would think,
you know, law of averages,
you'd at least get
a head turn out of it.
Just somebody should
at least tripped over him.
The amount of people
we've had out
and we flew
drones in the canyon.
Well, three of the canyons,
we flew drones in them.
DAVID:
Did you have any other
kind of air support?
BRYCE:
We did.
We had Civil Air.
The last fall
we had Civil Air in
and they flew
over forest for a couple days.
Was there any evidence
anywhere of animal predation?
You know what I saw?
We tracked one bear
to see what he was,
where he was gonna go.
But the only other thing
I noticed is we never had
birds during that search.
DAVID:
And birds are
an indicator of?
BRYCE:
A body.
You can kind of
hone in on to it.
-BRYCE:
Yeah.
-By the birds.
BRYCE:
Yeah,
and I mean, I run dogs.
I'm a firm believer in dogs,
but at the same time,
if the birds already
have eyes on him,
that makes it a lot easier.
And how odd was this search?
Very. To not...
Most people
have kind of a pattern.
I mean, if you're out hunting
and you see an elk,
you know, run across the road,
you're probably gonna go
find a spot
to actually park,
not just pull to the edge
of the road and jump out.
How difficult would it be
for someone to be lost in
there?
If you really wanted out,
everything around here,
you just walk downhill
until you find a road.
DAVID:
And you'll
eventually hit a road?
BRYCE:
Eventually.
You might have
to cross private property.
But if you're worried
about dying
in the middle of it,
who cares?
DAVID: So in talking
to the search and rescue
people,
I asked them, I said so,
"Was there anything odd
about this?"
-"The whole thing was odd."
-Yeah.
-So they said that the canines
didn't pick up a scent.
-No.
They didn't see any tracks.
-They never recovered
any of his property.
-Mm-mm.
The weather
changed the next day,
and if Mark knew
the weather was changing,
-he wouldn't stay out there?
-No.
At what point
did you tell yourself,
"Hey, Mark
may not be coming back"?
After they got done searching,
they just said,
"You know, it's,
it doesn't look good."
DAVID: A lot of people
said a lot of strange things
about this case,
and in your time
with Mark out there,
did you guys ever
experience anything weird?
-As far as--
-Anything weird?
He was out hunting deer
with a rifle,
and he swore
he saw a UFO out there.
He was coming
out from hunting,
and he's, just happened
to look up, and saw it,
like he said, it was
just like hovering,
following him,
and it freaked him out.
And he tried to look at it
through his binoculars,
but it was getting dark.
And it... So he,
it scared him.
What it looked like to him?
He said
it was just like a black...
I believe it was just black,
it was just hovering.
-And it scared him?
-Yeah.
Because it was like
it was following him out.
Another odd question.
Did Mark have a vasectomy?
A vasectomy? No.
DAVID: He didn't.
Did he say how long
he saw this thing?
He said
it was just following him,
but minutes,
like, disappeared.
What did you think
when you heard that?
Kind of freaked me out
because he was freaked out.
-DAVID: And he was
a pretty calm guy?
-Mm-hmm.
And would he
be the kind of person
ever make up stories like
that?
No.
-So when you heard that from
him believability a 100%?
-Mm-hmm.
That's crossed my mind, too.
After he told me that story,
maybe there was
something out there.
-So how many years
were you guys together, 13?
-Thirteen.
And when he disappeared,
how would you
describe your relationship
that previous week?
Um, normal.
-DAVID: Normal?
-Yeah.
And how did Mark
get along with your kids?
Fine.
How did Marley take this?
Oh, she's...
having a rough time.
And when you sit
and you talk to Marley about
it,
what do you guys talk about?
She's just sad
that he's not here anymore.
Yeah, she took it hard,
and finally...
she just kept asking me
after he left,
if he was coming back?
It's hard for me
to talk to her about it.
So the million
dollar question,
what happened
to Mark Strittmater?
That same question
can be applied
to the thousands
of other cases
I've investigated,
that follow
the same profile points,
we've discussed here.
Families don't have answers.
We move on to the next case,
and it's something
that follows me every day.
I have great empathy
for the families
that are left behind.
I've always been
of the opinion
that there aren't
such a thing as coincidences.
Just east of where
Carl disappeared,
there was another man,
named Gustafson,
and he was from Minnesota,
another elk hunter,
and he also disappeared
and was never found.
Now he was older.
He was in his 70s,
also in Medicine Bow.
But those, those three cases
were in geographical proximity
to one another.
Well, we're in the Medicine
Bow National Forest,
about 20 miles due east
of where the Higdon
and Strittmater case happened.
Same forest,
different location,
right above 8,000,
9,000 feet high up.
And this is the location
that Charles Gustafson
a 72-year-old man
from Minnesota,
came out with his family.
And on October 11th in 2006,
split up from his family,
and they decided
to hunt different areas.
Gustafson went
off for the day.
He didn't come
back that night.
His family members
got concerned.
He was carrying
a Trailside GPS.
He had a compass.
He had food. He had water.
The interesting part
about this gentleman
is he had survival training
in the military.
And so he knew how to,
how to live out here
in the wilderness.
To think that he got out here
and he got lost,
kind of difficult
to understand.
My name is Jerry Colson.
I'm the retired sheriff
of Carbon County, Wyoming.
And in 2006,
when Charles Gustafson was
here
elk hunting
in October of that year,
he went missing.
I was a sheriff at that time.
So in the articles, it said
that he was camped with,
I think a nephew
and some other relatives,
-near Forest Road 111 and 129,
is that kind of ring, right?
-Correct.
DAVID:
I had also heard
that he had been
to this area
many times in the past?
Yeah, according
to family members,
they hunt this area
pretty regular.
And what kind of resources
would you pull
for something like this?
Four-wheel drive
and searchers on foot,
requested a helicopter
out of Warren Air Force Base
in Cheyenne,
military helicopter.
And we would
use Civil Air Patrol.
So we go, you
know, air search.
And we eventually
had searchers
on horseback too.
Brought in some canines, um,
both cadaver and search dogs.
As the time went on,
we went with cadaver.
Did any dog
pick up a scent trail?
No, nothing
that led to Mr. Gustafson.
-You searched for what?
A week?
-About six days.
I had to call it off
about the sixth day
because of the weather
coming in.
The helicopters
were there until
it started snowing
and they had to go.
The unusual nature
of being lost in the woods
and not found,
is that unusual?
It's not unusual for people
to become lost in the woods.
It is unusual
and not commonplace
for us not to find
within a day or two.
People who watch this will
say, "Oh, you know, maybe this
was a case of animal
predation."
What would you say to that?
I mean, we have bears.
I can tell you
the whole time I was sheriff
and I worked at sheriff's
office for 39 years,
I never remember anybody
being attacked by a bear.
How long was it before anybody
found anything related to him?
There were some fishermen
down there
in Rock Creek canyon,
and they were
just walking along,
with everyone else saying,
"Look over there,"
and there's this rifle
sitting in the fork of a tree,
leaning in the fork
of a tree right by the creek.
So they picked it up
and brought it out
and turned it over
and we got it
and confirmed to the family
it was his rifle.
Was anything else found
in that immediate area?
Myself and some
other searchers,
we went down
to the right of that area
where everything was found.
I actually sat down on the
side of the hill there by the
creek.
I looked over
at about ten-foot from me,
here's this fanny pack.
It had a water bottle,
I remember that.
So it turned out
to be Charlie's fanny pack.
So was any
of his clothing or shoes
-or any of that found?
-Never. Nothing.
Other than
his fanny pack and rifle.
That's all that's been found.
So we have
Charles' disappearance
in northern Medicine Bow.
We have
the Strittmater disappearance,
just southwest of where
Charles disappeared.
We also have
the Higdon disappearance.
On the northwest sector
of Cheyenne
is Warren Air Force Base.
And this is the location
that did the air support
on the disappearances
we marked here.
Surprisingly,
I found some documents
about UFOs being observed
by on-duty
Air Force personnel at Warren.
All three men
have German heritage.
All three men, elk hunters.
I had to ask myself,
are there other hunters
missing from this region
that matched that profile?
Are there any hunters
that have gone
missing in recent times,
that kind of match the profile
of these other guys?
Yeah, a guy named Terry Meador
who was a teacher
here in Rock Springs,
I actually knew him,
and he was a teacher
when I was in high school.
And he came up missing
when he had gone out
to go hunting.
DAVID: And the area
that he was in,
can you kind of
explain it to us?
Well, it's very typical
of southwest Wyoming.
It's sagebrush, prairie.
Uh, it's what we call
high desert, isolated.
-DAVID:
Not a lot of cover?
-No.
So where could he go?
He'd have to
crawl into a hole.
-DAVID:
And there are not
a lot of holes there?
-No.
-Not a lot of caves.
-I mean, it's open desert.
Anything out there
in the middle of the desert
that could hurt him?
On occasion
we've had a wolf or two.
I can't think of
any large predatory animals
that would be able to,
you know, take a human being
and drag them off somewhere.
What would be
your thinking on that?
I suppose we could say that
there's a possibility
he was abducted.
Uh, but
there's no evidence of that.
All we know
is that he was there
and then
he's not there anymore.
DAVID:
This is in the
middle-of-nowhere desert.
And his truck
was stuck in a ditch.
And they searched for a week
and they never found him.
Do you see any,
any convening of the facts,
any assimilation
that you could make
between all of these guys?
One of the big similarities,
of course is
that they're all by themselves
and they're all elk hunting.
With the exception
of Mr. Meador,
they're all about
the same age.
In your time as monitoring
MUFON activity in Wyoming,
have you ever heard
of anything similar to this?
We have the cases
involving Pat McGuire,
who owned a ranch over
in the eastern part of
Wyoming,
and he had
a series of incidents I guess
you could say involving UFOs
and I was fortunate enough
to be able to sit in
on one of the regressive
hypnosis sessions.
And he had some experiences.
And he was allegedly told
by a race of alien beings
that he was to build a well,
to dig a well on this location
in or near Wheatland, Wyoming.
He took that very seriously.
He actually went out
and bought himself a tank
and he got the motor off it
to pump the water
out of this well.
But he had geologists,
and all these other folks
tell him that he was crazy
for wanting to put the well
where he wanted to put it,
because it was
just a solid slab of rock.
And there was no way
he was ever
gonna get any water.
But he insisted
that the aliens
had told him
that there was water there
and by God,
he was gonna dig that well.
-And he did.
-Boy.
DAVID:
And you just said
something that is huge to me.
So in the United States,
we have 64 geographical
clusters
of missing people
that fit our profile points.
As unusual as it sounds,
right down the middle
of the United States,
there is an area where
there are no disappearances.
Several months ago,
I got an email from somebody
who worked for the government.
And he said,
"Dave, that area of the U.S.
"corresponds to a area,
"which has been described
by the U.S. Geological Survey,
"as an underground water area.
"It's called
the Ogallala Aquifer."
He says, "You should see
if it corresponds
with your profile now."
What we did is we overlay that
on top of our cluster map.
It's almost a near match,
which is interesting.
Because of my background
with MUFON and UFOs,
I also know about
underwater submerged objects.
And those are
essentially just UFOs
that have gone to water.
And if there was a way
to keep yourself hidden,
yet make yourself
apparent at certain times,
it would be by using the
aquifer in going out through
Wyoming.
And when you think about
the McGuire incident,
and the ability of the UFOs
to go through the aquifer
and up out of his well
if they watered
and then their proximity
in southwest Wyoming
to all the incidents
we've talked about,
again it's another
one of those coincidence
that you can't ignore.
The Ogallala Aquifer,
that covers
almost the exact area
where nobody is missing!
And I put it
in the back of my mind.
I didn't think much about it.
But, damn, you saying
that this person digs a well
and it's an offshoot
from the Ogallala
and the aliens
told him to do it.
-Yeah.
-That's weird.
Now what's really weird
is they tell him to do it
and all the geologists
and all those guys
tell him
that there's nothing there.
He's crazy for doing,
and he digs the well anyway
and taps in and
finds the water.
So the crazy guy was right.
Now, did the aliens
tell him to dig the well?
I don't know, Pat said...
He certainly believe
that the aliens
told him to dig the well.
The reason
for the digging of the well
was so that in the event
that there was
a a global cataclysm,
that there would be
a fresh source of water
for the inhabitants
of that location
when it took place.
DAVID:
Let's put all of this
into perspective.
If we plot the locations
of the Wyoming cluster
of missing hunters on a map,
this coincides with the spread
of chronic wasting disease
throughout southeast Wyoming.
Chronic wasting disease
is decimating
the elk and deer populations
in this region.
All of the missing
and abducted men
were elk hunters,
and all of them
disappeared in close proximity
to Warren Air Force Base,
where numerous UFO sightings
have incredibly documented
by government officials.
We know from the Higdon
and the elk abduction cases
that these beings,
whoever they are,
are interested
in North American elk.
We can hypothesize
that perhaps these beings
are monitoring
our elk population
for what is possibly
the worst wildlife disaster
in North America.
Just northeast of this cluster
is Pat McGuire's ranch,
where the beings told him
to dig a well for water,
that miraculously was fed
by the Ogallala Aquifer.
There are no
clusters of missing
around this property.
Nor are there
clusters of missing
in the main body
of the aquifer.
All the victims
in this incident
were elk hunting.
Each was alone.
Two of the hunters in Wyoming
observed a UFO.
Canines could never
pick up a scent.
A UFO in Washington
was observed taking an elk.
Carl Higdon observed elk
on a UFO.
Only one victim
was ever found.
That was Carl Higdon
who believed he was returned
because he had a vasectomy.
Let's not forget
the first missing person case.
Ray Salmen from Harrison Lake,
British Columbia.
Ray and his wife had seen UFOs
in the British Columbia forest
in the past.
Ray was a hunter.
He was German.
He was camped
adjacent to a lake.
Canines never
picked up a scent.
His clothes and rifle
were found on a beach.
He disappeared,
was never found.
It's another incident
that is an exact match
to the Wyoming cases.
As incredible as it sounds,
you have to start wondering
what is happening here.
There's nowhere to turn
and I don't think
we left many stones unturned.
DAVID:
Frustration and fear
turns to anger,
anger to loss of hope.
As an investigator,
you do your due diligence.
If you can't provide closure
in a traditional sense,
and the incredible
or paranormal
may be tied
to the disappearance,
how do you explain
that to a grieving family
that we might be
dealing with something
that is just beyond
the normal
and the extreme
that leads
to unknown consequences?
It puts me
in a difficult situation.
Puts you
in a difficult situation.
When you have families
that are missing a loved one,
-I can't go tell them this.
-Exactly. Exactly.
-Who's gonna believe me?
-Yeah.
Um, yeah, you can't
because it's... it's
unprovable.
It's a purely
in a physical world,
it's just not provable.
DAVID:
Yet eyewitnesses' reports
of unexplained events
in the skies
are increasing exponentially.
DAVID:
How many calls
do you think you get a year?
Uh, I would say between
30 and 100 per day, typically.
So saying rough around figures
somewhere between
20,000 and 30,000 calls a
year.
DAVID:
And the conviction
and credibility
of those
who have witnessed them
is unnerving, to
say the least.
Believe it or not,
I just know what I saw.
A lot of truths
are really experiential.
DAVID:
Elk hunters
of German heritage
are being taken
in specific regions
in North America.
Witnesses corroborate
bizarre occurrences in the
sky,
directly related
to these incidents.
What's left are the words
of those who have lost so much
and those who returned
to share their stories.