The 'Missing 411' book series
Ten self-published volumes (2012 to 2020) collecting disappearances in North American and foreign wilderness areas, arranged by region and by theme.
2012 CE · 37.30, -121.95 · status: claim
The account
The first two volumes, 'Western United States & Canada' and 'Eastern United States', appeared in 2012, followed by 'North America and Beyond' (2013), 'The Devil's in the Details' (2014), 'A Sobering Coincidence' (2015, on missing people in towns and near water), 'Hunters' (2016), 'Off the Grid' (2017), 'Law' (2018), 'Canada' (2019) and 'Montana' (2020). Each case is told from newspaper clippings, family interviews and search records, with Paulides marking which of his 'profile points' it fits. The books are an index of real tragedies; their framing, that the cases form a pattern with no ordinary cause, is the contested part.
The sceptical view
Critics point out that the books list matching cases without a comparison group: thousands of people are found every year in the same terrain, so a list of strange-seeming cases shows nothing about rates.
Connections in the atlas
- Kyle Polich's data analysis of Missing 411
- David Paulides, author of 'Missing 411'
- The Missing 411 'profile points'
- 'Missing 411' and Yosemite