Believers will tell you “yes” in no uncertain terms. Skeptics will be just as quick to tell you it’s all bullshit. So what’s the truth? Is David Paulides on to something, or is he a shyster shilling snake oil? I don’t think it’s the latter. I do think he’s mostly sincere. But without me going through every single case and doing an exhaustive evaluation, I will say that people whose opinions I trust have told me that he does have the tendency to include some cases of mysterious disappearances in the wildernesses of North America in his case files that, upon closer examination, aren’t all that mysterious. They say he’s a tad too willing to accept extraordinary claims without any extraordinary proof.
That being said, the same thing applies to what I always say about the thousands and thousands of sightings of Bigfoot or UFOs. (Actually it would be tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands.) Yes, the most logical explanation when someone claims to see something like that is that the person is either mistaken of just plain fibbing. But if even one such incident is legitimate—and sheer probability would suggest that there must be one—then Science has some ‘splainin’ to do. Same thing with those strange disappearances in the woods. Maybe most of the time the person does just get lost. But even if that explains 99.5% of these cases—what about the 0.5%?