The Near Missing 411 - Part One | Foreboding

FOLLOW OUR PODCAST

Since the launch of this channel, we have looked at a number of mysterious disappearances in and around the national parks of North America, which were identified through the work of David Paulides. Over the next two episodes, we will be examining a cross-section of his research which, receives perhaps the least publicity and analysis, those of the near missing 411.

Check out these other channels and videos!
@LetsReadPodcast
5 True Scary Missing 411 Cases | VOL 4
@canammissingproject
Missing 411 David Paulides Presents a Brilliant Engineer that Vanishes Into the Woods of Illinois
@Top5Unknowns
5 Disturbing "Missing 411" Mysteries
@MrBallen
5 STRANGEST disappearances in forests (Part 2) | The Missing 411 phenomenon

ABOUT THE CHANNEL
Turn off the lights, get into bed and plug in your earphones. It's time for a creepy bedtime story. For the discerning horror fan, we cover the most chilling cases throughout history. From the paranormal to the supernatural, unsolved mysteries and strange deaths to cryptids, conspiracy theories and the most disturbing of true crimes, all told in a unique and creepy way. Join us every week for a new scary story.

BECOME A MEMBER FOR EXTRA REWARDS!

EMAIL

MUSIC
CO.AG

[davidmlong]

I work in a small state park in Ohio, spanning 698 acres. One day, an eerie incident occurred while I was cleaning up litter along a trail near Abatement Area B, a man-made pond designed to compensate for drained wetlands due to the marina's construction. I left the idling gator I was using nearby since it was old and unreliable. About 200 feet away, it suddenly fell completely silent. Initially, I assumed it had run out of gas or stalled, and I might need to walk back for maintenance. However, I soon realized it wasn't just the gator; the entire forest had gone eerily quiet – no birds, traffic noise, or wind, just an unprecedented silence.A growing sense of unease washed over me as I felt an unseen presence lurking amidst a stand of dead trees, and it clearly didn't have my best interests at heart. It was akin to a bored cat observing a mouse, showing no immediate intention to pounce but definitely watching. Every instinct screamed for me to run back to the gator, yet a gut feeling warned that something terrible might occur if I did. So, I cautiously and purposefully made my way back to the gator.Approximately 50 feet from the gator, the sound of its idling engine, along with all the other usual sounds of nature, suddenly returned, as though someone had flipped a switch. When I shared this experience with a Native American friend who knew that part of the park well, they confirmed that it had always given them the creeps, and they never ventured there. They also cautioned that if I had run, it might have been the last thing I ever did.

[pablochacon]

I experienced “the silence” the first time I went camping. Craziest part of it was that it was a public camping area, with plenty other campers within yards of us. We had packed everything away for the night, my buddy and I were sharing a tent, and my other two friends who were a couple were in their tent with their three dogs. After some small talk, my buddy was fast asleep, and so were my other two friends. I couldn’t sleep, I felt tired but was restless and I was attributing this to being in a totally different environment. I suddenly began to notice how still, heavy, and silent the night seemed to have become. I should have been hearing the sounds of the wind ruffling through the trees, the sound of my friend’s dogs moving about in their tent, the sounds of small animals like insects and other small critters, but nothing. I felt as if my tent had morphed into a windowless, doorless, sound proof room. I had the urge to peek outside through the tent’s zipper, but something deep in me told me not to. I don’t know how long this lasted, I did my best to not think about it and was finally able to get some sleep.

During breakfast the next morning, my friend brought up how scared she was because she heard noises outside. She heard what she described as “howling and whooping” nearby and her dogs were getting all worked up about it. She said she was so scared by whatever it was, that she grabbed all three of her dogs and held them up against herself in an attempt to keep them quiet. She asked me “did you guys not hear all the commotion last night?” I said no, and asked her about what time she had heard it. Apparently this all had happened at around 11 at night, I was up at that time, it was during “the silence”. I tried to dismiss what she heard by telling her it might’ve been coyotes out hunting. I heard absolutely nothing though, and neither did my friend.

The next night, the same thing happened, but this time I literally heard as “the silence” went away, and it was then replaced by a low humming sound. This time my friend experienced it with me, and was beyond creeped out. We just payed there speechless until the sound vanished, and the sounds of the woods and night returned. A couple years later I came across David Paulides work, and was disturbed at the similarities of my experience to what other people claim to have experienced in national parks.

This happened to me in Flagstaff Arizona

[yankee]

I was a misfit, loner kid. In the late 1970's I started taking long walks in Dog Town, a woodland that was the first settlement of Europeans here in the 1600's. Long abandoned, you could still follow old paths and find the stone lined cellar holes of the original homes. The glacial stones were used to build foundations and walls were all that remained after centuries. I had a cat, a tom, and he was a "barn" or outdoor cat. We were close and he would usually go with me on these walks of an hour or two.
On one such trip I went further than I had before and we discovered several cellar holes clustered together and a wider bit of track. The ruins of a farm or village perhaps. As I moved in to investigate I heard my cat meow, a long low creepy almost howl. he was frozen and staring at a van sized boulder ahead of us. I called to him to come forward but he refused to move. Then it hit me: the eerie feeling of being watched, and being in danger. I stopped and stared at the boulder, a few more steps were taken but the feeling grew stronger- I was sure there was something behind it. The cat let go another low meow and did something I'd never never seen a cat do before- he started walking backwards with his face kept focused on that boulder.
I called him, he kept backing up, two more steps and he started to turn around. As he did he looked me right in the eye and I knew he was begging me to follow him. Then he started back the way we had come, first slowly then picking up speed.
I looked towards that boulder again and then back at my cat leaving. I followed the cat. The sense of dread receded.
After that I kept walking but the cat would always turn back for home after only a few minutes into the woods. I went on alone one day and I found that spot again, I had a club and a big knife and I was determined to have a good look around. But it wasn't the same, no sense of dread and nothing there but ruins and stones.

[christimmerman]

This reminds me of an account related to me by a close friend. The event didn't happen to him, but to his good friend. Someone he has grown up with since childhood. A no nonsense type of guy that doesn't make up stories. His friend would always go hunting, in the same area, every year near Ruidoso, New Mexico. He told my friend he knew that area like the back of his hand, that is, until he didn't. He described walking in a familiar area, and then all of a sudden nothing looked familiar. He said the normal landmarks he used were not there and everything felt very different. Then, he looks off in distance, and sees a group of native Americans walking in a single line. He told my friend they were wearing attire that you would see them wearing in pictures of the late 19th century. He said he froze and watched them walking for some time. It's like they just showed up out of thin area. Then, he said all of a sudden, the surrounding area looked familiar again, the group of native Americans had disappeared, and he could identify the usual landmarks he was used to seeing. To this day, my friend told me, his childhood friend, still recounts this strange event.

[BrockLee]

I've experienced "The Silence" once before (the paranormal kind). I've stepped out into the middle of the night to go scorpion hunting, or tarantula hunting, or snake hunting HUNDREDS of times here in Arizona. I've seen things, heards things and felt things which caused me to never go back to those spots again. The Silence was one of the worst things I've ever experienced. The things I see/hear/feel will rarely be something which scares me so badly that I have to leave...The Silence was one of those things:
I was out looking for scorpions on a trail about half a mile South of the Salt River. I was about 50 - 100 feet away from the gate which leads you into the trail. I was just walking when all of a sudden...DEAD SILENCE. The loud-buzzing noises of the cicadas just went dead, and I couldn't hear ANYTHING. And, what was described in the video was exactly what I felt: the air/atmosphere getting heavy; the feeling that "something" was watching me; the feeling of everything around me being fake; but, I also felt some sort of static electricity all over my body (I'm a very hairy guy, and I REALLY felt it). The moment all of the sounds went dead is when I started looking around with both of my flashlights. I already had my black-light flashlight on to see the scorpions; and, I turned on my regular bright-white light to see if there was some sort of predator around me. I looked left, right and even turned around a few times; but, didn't notice anything. It felt like something was definitely watching me, though. Then, I looked at the full Moon and thought, "Why does the Moon look so weird?" I couldn't put my finger on exactly WHY the Moon looked weird, but it almost looked like it was 2-Dimensional...as if it was just a flat-light which someone hung up in a dark room. And, when I looked at the shrubs and bushes being illuminated by the light of the Moon, they looked strange...as if they were fake, as well. But, what was really strange was how the shadows of everything out there were pointing in different directions.
I decided that I should step back and get to my car because something was TERRIBLY wrong. And, all it took was three steps backwards to cause all of the noises to return. I looked up at the Moon, and it looked normal, now. The shrubs and bushes just looked like shrubs and bushes. Even the shadows of everything were pointing in my general direction (to the West). So, I thought, "Hmm...maybe I should just go home now." So, I walked the short distance back to my car, and drove back home. The next day, my herping buddies called me to see if I had any luck out there, and I told them what happened and where it happened. They knew the spot, because we had gone there a few dozen times over the years. But, when they went that night...they experienced NOTHING.
There were other times when I experienced a silence...but, it was nothing like "THE Silence." Sometimes you will walk into an area and everything goes silent...except for the sound of the wind, water and other sounds made by nature. I've experienced that quite a few times, and I do believe it was simply my/our presence which caused the animals to shut-up. But, The Silence I heard (or didn't hear) that one night was something TOTALLY different. The way the Moon looked, and how the shadows were pointing in a 180 degree array from the Moon was what terrified me the most about it. It was almost like the Moon was only about 200 feet ahead of me (it explains why the shadows were pointing in different directions). I don't know how to explain it...but, I know for a fact that wasn't the Moon I was looking at, at that moment.

[ellisbud]

Love the addition of the Predator clicking during the third story. Nice little easter egg

[Nuinwing]

Greetings from Finland.
I also have experienced the Silence a few times and my experience is extremely similar to what the visitors to American national parks experienced. In each case I experienced the Silence, I remembered my moms advice telling me that if I ever feel like something is watching me while I'm in a forest, never look behind and never run, no matter how much I want to. The odd thing is that my mom never mentioned the Silence or anything like it when she told me that advice and yet that was the thing that was first in my mind when the Silence happened.

And I guess this also means that the Silence is not limited to the north America.

[lindahaugh]

Having experienced "The Silence" more than a few times while hunting, it is the most eerie and unnerving feeling in the entire world. There's no reason it should be, but when the normally slightly noisy woods is dead quiet, well, I'll just say that those experiences are probably where some of my anxiety comes from

[nope]

Early this year I was on a trail on a mountain ridge straddling the Virginia/West Virginia border with my girlfriend and a friend. Maybe 15 minutes or so into the hike my friend pointed out how everything had gone silent, and it really was oppressive and just felt wrong. We could even feel wind on our skin but there were no sounds except for our footsteps. Right before we got to the overlook (we did a segment of only around a mile maybe) it was like a switch was flipped, there was a small group of people there that we heard talking immediately, and the birds started chirping again. Nothing happened to us, but it was super eerie

[hanifloka]

I want to relate an experience my aunt had very recently. She was hiking down Mt. Salak in Indonesia, she's part of a group that went up to Kawah Ratu and she decided to go down along with 2 teens from the group. Partway through the journey, she became exhausted and told the teens to go on ahead without her. But no sooner had she stopped, the environment around her went quiet. Like, eerily quiet. No wind noise, no birds chirping, total silence. Her instincts told her something was off, so she stood still, waiting for a sound. Any kind of sound. Thankfully, the wind returned along with the laughter of the main group coming from behind her. But for a few seconds she was on the cusp of being another missing 411 case at Mt. Salak. Her story reminded me of this video. And I told her John's story. She was shocked at how close she was to becoming a 411 case but also relieved because she was saved by her instincts.

[Khemtime]

I feel like I need to run down the street yelling “BEDTIME STORIES IS COVERING MISSING 411!” I haven’t been this excited since you guys covered Skinwalker Ranch.

[jacewood]

i never thought 'the silence' was so common. i experienced it myself a few weeks ago in a forest near where i live in England. i had just finished taking photos in a bird hide that overlooked a massive lake, and had decided to head back as some other people came into the hide, scaring off the birds. the forest had been very busy, as it is a popular walking spot and it was very warm. but as i started walking back, i noticed that everything had gone silent. i couldn't even hear the running water of the river that ran by the path. no animals, no people. it was the eeriest thing I've ever experienced, i froze on the spot as i felt like something was watching me. after about 5 minutes a person came up the path and everything returned to normal. I thought I was just imagined it, so never told anyone.

[MikeB]

The story about the park ranger was unnerving. The story about the two kids being lured into the woods was absolutely terrifying.

[Knights_Oath]

I had an experience with the silence and more. I was walking down a marked trail in a national park in North Carolina. At one point I noticed that the forest was dead quiet. No animal noises no trees rustling, not a sound. To my absolute horror, I felt the strange sensation of something looking at me as prey. I had returned from Afghanistan less then 6 months before, so it was a feeling still fresh in my mind.

I started walking a few feet then took off in a dead sprint. I did this for about 200 yards until I went around a bend in the trail. I saw a large hollow in the bottom of a tree and jumped off the trail and into it. I pulled out the large knife I brought with me and prepaid to defend myself. About 20 seconds later, something just like a cloaked Predator alien ran by me and up the trail about 50 yards. Where it went after that I have no idea. I sat there for a long time when suddenly the sound of the forest returned to me.
I never told a soul until after I heard Jan's story as I honestly thought I was insane or it was just a dream.

[ernestweaver]

A friend of mine and I used to go 4 wheeling in the Withlacoochie state forest in west
central Florida. One cool rainey day in December we were in the Citrus tract area near Holder Mine. Sunset was approaching and we drove up behind a couple in a Jeep. They were stopped on the trail just sitting there. I tapped the horn a few times and they didn't move, look back or even flinch. We walked up to them saying a few things until I got close enough to the driver and already had his and his girlfriends attention. But they just stared and pointed up the trail. We saw a deer at a dead stop and she 'A Doe.' was staring towards the East and her back half of her legs were Not there. But she was standing as if she had her bottom half of her legs were there! We looked at each other in disbelief. She was only ten or so yards from us and there was nothing obstructing our view. After about 5 minutes she started walking and the rest of her legs came into view. Then she leaped into the thicket and disappeared. We didn't notice how quiet it was until all the sounds came back at once. We all looked at each other and turned 180 and got out of the woods completely. No we drink beer sometimes but no drugs. I know what I saw that day about 25 years ago.
Edit: My bad. I said East instead of West.

[whereabouts]

I experienced The Silence. I was a teenager fishing at a local dam. The small lake was always packed with bluegill and crappie. I was having a fun day of catch and release using canned corn for bait. Dozens of fish hung out around the dock waiting to be caught. No matter the day or time you could always see and catch fish there, and easily. That day I had caught and released nearly a dozen fish in my first hour. Then The Silence came. The air got heavy, it got noticably warming within seconds, the lake lost it's glimmer from the sun shining overhead, not a cloud in the sky, and everything seemed to stop. No noise, no gentle breeze, no fish by the dock. Everything was seemingly put on pause but me.
I had an intense feeling of being watched by something in the hills around me. Completely unnerving. I yelled with no return echo. I dropped a small lead sinker in the water, no splash, no ripples, no lead sinker in at the bottom of the lakes crystal clear and eerily now solid looking water. I stood there looking around to the other fishing spots at various locations across that small lake. No one. I could have sworn there were while I was fishing not 5 minutes earlier. Then it dawned on me that the music that was coming from my car wasn't. My mixtape of pearl jam, rhcp, and other mid 90s jams was no longer audible. I was still, in my mind while processing what was happening, singing along to Give It Away. Then I got heavy, I felt impossibly physically heavy. Gravity had intensified. I wanted to move but couldn't. I was frozen, incapable of moving my legs but still able to rotate my neck and waist. Then an owl, of all the creatures on earth an owl landed on the handrail of the dock and looked me in my eyes. A rush of euphoria and freedom saturated me to my bones as the owl, seemingly telepathically, said, "not yet" and flew off over my head. Only after it passed over me was I able to completely turn around using my legs to track the owl's flight only to discover no owl.
The Silence dissipated, Red Hot Chili Peppers played from the speakers of my 1980 Monte Carlo, the breeze picked up, the lake glimmered, the fish were back, the air cooled. Someone had unpaused reality.

[haloedge]

The silence happened to me when I was younger. I was fishing with my grandparents and everything but us went silent. It was incredibly eerie. But it got stranger when we noticed the sun was no longer setting in the west. It was now in the east. We all had saw it and we were confused, trying to rationalize the whole thing. At some point, everything reset: sound came back and the sun was back where it belonged. I still want to rationalize it but it's been marked as one of those unexplainable things that happen here in Michigan.

[snootdingo]

These are my FAVORITE of all the missing 411 cases. The ones who came back, or who nearly were taken, are seriously disturbing.

[melissatheminx]

I'm in the UK. in 1998, myself and a friend experienced 'the silence' whilst sitting in a Riverside pub for an afternoon glass of Coke. There were a few other customers in there, and the usual chatter and ambient noise. Suddenly it went silent. Total silence, like being in a vacuum. I felt everything slow down, and when my friend called to me, her voice was in slow motion, as was I when I turned my head round to face her. Everything felt dreamy and hazy, as if time stopped. I then felt time seemingly stop, and then movements returned to normal speed, but everyone in the pub, including staff were gone, except myself and my friend. We got up from our seats and walked around, and I noticed my high heel shoes were't making any noise on the wood floor, just a muffled kind of soft thud. I wasnt scared, strangely, just very puzzled. I looked out the window and watched a sailboat wih a red sail going down the river for what seemed an eternity. I noticed something strange in the middle of the pub floor, there was a 1950's type old bubblegum dispenser machine that hadnt been there before, very incongruously just plonked in the middle of the room. We even went behind the bar to try and find someone. No one in there at all. It had that film set feeling, like it was'nt quite right, and things out of place. Like a recreation of the pub. It was at this point I became aware of feeling watched. Observed. Not like prey, but like we were being observed in an experiment to see how we would react. Calmly, I told my friend to sit back down, then asked her to close here eyes with me, and will ourselves 'back'. She seemed to understand what I meant, and we tried. First time we opened our eyes, and we were still in that strange 'nowhere' pub. Second time, I was really starting to feel panicked and almost angry, .. then as I shut my eyes again, to will myself 'back' to normality, the sound, people and normal time came back to the room. No one else seemed aware that something strange had happened, and chatted normally. We left the pub, but I have no recollection of what happened that day after we left the pub. Memory is hazy. The strangest thing about that incident, is that my friend and I never spoke about it until about ten years later when she brought it up in a phone conversation we were having one night. For some reason I still cant explain, we had felt we should never talk about it, even to each other. There was also another incident in the same place, out side the pub several weeks later, when we had been outside in the evening watching a firework display on the other side of the river. We had felt the same sowing down, and dreamy feeling, and my friend had turned to me and said..'Its happening again', ..but this time, as soon as we had become aware that it was happening, it was gone as soon as it came. Ive never experienced anything like it since, but those incidents changed the way I see the world, and I know things are not always secure, or as they seem.

[jadenpeltier]

Hearing about the “Silence” has helped me understand the one time i experienced a similar experience in the bush but couldn’t understand why I felt full of dread and panic like I have never experienced in my 10 years of navigating that bush,
I was in the bush picking Blueberries( I would sell 100$-120$ a day I would make doing it)
I was about 5 km away from the little “settlement” I lived in and I was making my way from mountain to mountain that were about a 20 min hike from eachother that I would have to “bushwhack” to get to, and as I made my way into this grassy grove that was like a small valley in the middle of the bush with a big rock face and tall birch trees, but when I made my way to the bottom of the grove I stopped to try and listen for the usual noises I tend to look for but I couldn’t hear ANYTHING from the surrounding foliage and felt almost as I wandered into somewhere I shouldn’t have been I was immediately filled with a TERRIBLE sense of dread and fear and began running as fast as I could out of this “grove” I later tried to rationalize the lackof sound to being in a valley where the wind wasn’t able to hit the trees leaves but thinking back on it the trees stood tall enough that the tops were as high as the trees outside of the “valley grove”

For further context:
I lived in a place called “the radar base” in Hanmer, Ontario (Sudbury) that in itself is a creepy place, it’s a little place consisting of about 50 houses where the military workers operating the Radar base and their families lived in during the “Cold War era”

The radar base sat at the top of hill about 1 km through the bush and was decommissioned for decades by the time I lived there, it was Huge, old and falling apart and had really unnerving presence