Former San Jose, California police officer turned independent author and documentary filmmaker, best known for the self-published Missing 411 book and film series on disappearances in North American national parks. His 2022 documentary 'Missing 411: The U.F.O. Connection' argues some disappearances are linked to UAP sightings, drawing on cases including Carl Higdon's 1974 Wyoming account.
David Paulides spent roughly 20 years in law enforcement, including time with the San Jose Police Department, before turning to independent research and writing. He states his Missing 411 project began after a park ranger raised concerns to him about unusual patterns in disappearance cases on public lands. Since 2011 he has self-published a series of Missing 411 books cataloging disappearances in and around U.S. and Canadian national parks, which he frames as showing unexplained commonalities; independent reviewers have generally found the patterns he describes are not statistically unusual. Paulides expanded the project into documentary film, and in 2022 released 'Missing 411: The U.F.O. Connection,' which argues that a subset of disappearances, including elk hunters, coincide with UAP sightings in the same areas. The film discusses Carl Higdon's 1974 Medicine Bow National Forest account alongside other cases. Reviewers have generally described the UFO-disappearance link the film proposes as speculative.