I’m a Search and Rescue Officer for the US Forest Service, I have some stories to tell

I wasn't sure where else to post these stories, so I figured I'd share them here. I’ve been an SAR officer for a few years now, and along the way I’ve seen some things that I think you guys will be interested in. <br><br>* I have a pretty good track record for finding missing people. Most of the time they just wander off the path, or slip down a small cliff, and they can’t find their way back. The majority of them have heard the old ‘stay where you are’ thing, and they don’t wander far. But I’ve had two cases where that didn’t happen. Both bother me a lot, and I use them as motivation to search even harder on the missing persons cases I get called on. <br>The first was a little boy who was out berry-picking with his parents. He and his sister were together, and both of them went missing around the same time. Their parents lost sight of them for a few seconds, and in that time both the kids apparently wandered off. When their parents couldn’t find them, they called us, and we came out to search the area. We found the daughter pretty quickly, and when we asked where her brother was, she told us that he’d been taken away by ‘the bear man.’ She said he gave her berries and told her to stay quiet, that he wanted to play with her brother for a while. The last she saw of her brother, he was riding on the shoulders of ‘the bear man’ and seemed calm. Of course, our first thought was abduction, but we never found a trace of another human being in that area. The little girl was also insistent that he wasn’t a normal man, but that he was tall and covered in hair, ‘like a bear’, and that he had a ‘weird face.’ We searched that area for *weeks*, it was one of the longest calls I’ve ever been on, but we never found a single trace of that kid. <br>The other was a young woman who was out hiking with her mom and grandpa. According to the mother, her daughter had climbed up a tree to get a better view of the forest, and she’d never come back down. They waited at the base of the tree for hours, calling her name, before they called for help. Again, we searched everywhere, and we never found a trace of her. I have no idea where she could possibly have gone, because neither her mother or grandpa saw her come down.<br><br>* A few times, I’ve been out on my own searching with a canine, and they’ve tried to lead me straight up cliffs. Not hills, not even rock faces. Straight, sheer cliffs with no possible handholds. It’s always baffling, and in those cases we usually find the person on the other side of the cliff, or miles away from where the canine has led us. I’m sure there’s an explanation, but it’s sort of strange.<br><br>* One particularly sad case involved the recovery of a body. A nine-year-old girl fell down an embankment and got impaled on a dead tree at the base. It was a complete freak accident, but I’ll never forget the sound her mother made when we told her what had happened. She saw the body bag being loaded into the ambulance, and she let out the most haunting, heart-broken wail I’ve ever heard. It was like her whole life was crashing down around her, and a part of her had died with her daughter. I heard from another SAR officer that she killed herself a few weeks after it happened. She couldn’t live with the loss of her daughter.<br><br>* I was teamed up with another SAR officer because we’d received reports of bears in the area. We were looking for a guy who hadn’t come home from a climbing trip when he was supposed to, and we ended up having to do some serious climbing to get to where we figured he’d be. We found him trapped in a small crevasse with a broken leg. It was not pleasant. He’d been there for almost two days, and his leg was very obviously infected. We were able to get him into a chopper, and I heard from one of the EMTs that the guy was absolutely inconsolable. He kept talking about how he’d been doing fine, and when he’d gotten to the top, a man had been there. He said the guy had no climbing equipment, and he was wearing a parka and ski pants. He walked up to the guy, and when the guy turned around, he said he had no face, just a blank space where his eyes and mouth should have been. The climber said the guy had lifted him off the ground, and had thrown him down the mountain. We searched the area where he said the guy had been, but we didn’t find anyone, and there were no signs of another human being having been there. <br><br>* A few times, I’ve been out alone looking for someone, and I’ve heard screams. Not like, injured screams, but like, terrified, panicked screams. They’re always short, and I can never find the source.<br><br>* I was on a search with a rookie SAR officer, and we were looking for a little girl who’d wandered off in the afternoon. It had gotten dark, and we’d been searching with flashlights for a few hours when we heard rustling. We drew our guns, thinking it might be a bear or something, but when we turned our lights in the direction of the noise, there was nothing. The rookie said she smelled smoke, and when I looked back at her, she had a weird expression on her face. She asked me if I smelled it too, and I told her I didn’t. She said it smelled like meat, and that it was making her hungry. I thought she was just messing with me, but she was totally serious. She started acting really strange, and I was worried she was going to pass out or something. I told her we’d call for help, and I was going to get her out of there. As we turned around, we saw a figure standing behind us. We both aimed our guns, and I started yelling for the person to stop, but when they didn’t, I fired a warning shot. The figure didn’t move, and I realized it was a little girl. It was the girl we’d been looking for. I can’t describe how we didn’t see her, because she was *right there*, but we hadn’t seen her until I fired that warning shot. I felt sick, because I had almost shot a little girl. We ran up to her, and she seemed totally calm. When we asked her what had happened, she told us that she’d been with ‘the bear man’ for the past few hours. She said he’d given her berries and played hide and seek with her, and when we called for her, he told her she had to go home. We searched the area again, but we never found any trace of another human being. I’m going to go back to that area tomorrow, because I think there’s something really weird going on in those woods, and I want to get to the bottom of it. <br><br>edit: okay so I just got home from work and I've got to say, you guys have blown me away. I've never posted anything on chambers before, and I didn't even expect more than maybe 5 replies. You guys are amazing. I'm going to try to answer as many questions as I can right now, and then I'm going to go to bed. Tomorrow, I'm going to go out there and I'm going to try to get some answers. <br><br>first of all, I'm located in the Pacific Northwest. I can't remember exactly where the first instance was, but the second was in an area that we call 'the abandoned forest' because nobody really goes there. It's not a protected area, but there's a lot of private land up there, and it's very secluded. <br><br>as far as the little girl who went missing went, we of course reported what she told us to the police. They were skeptical, but they looked into it. They never found any trace of the person she was talking about, and they figured she'd just made it up to keep from getting in trouble. <br><br>as for the rookie, she's fine. She was pretty upset that I'd fired at a kid, but when I explained what had happened, she got a little less mad. She’s a vegetarian, and she doesn’t think it was a coincidence that she was so hungry when she smelled what she smelled. She was pretty upset about it, but she’s a professional. <br><br>I’m not really sure how to answer the questions about ‘the bear man’. I’m going to go out tomorrow and see what I can find, but until then, all I have is what the two girls told me. I’m going to try to find out more, but no more information is really available at this time. <br><br>I’m going to be taking my canine with me tomorrow, and I’m going to try to follow the trail into the cliff wall. I’ll keep you guys updated, and I’ll probably post a new thread with the results tomorrow night. <br><br>thanks again for all the interest and support, and I’ll talk to you guys in the morning.