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, nose, and mouth should have been. The Climber said the guy had pushed him, and he'd fallen down the cliff. I don't know whether or not to believe the guy, but I've had a weird feeling for the last few days.<br><br>* I was on a call with another SAR officer, and we were looking for a family that had gone hiking together. The father had been a seasoned hiker, and we weren't worried about finding them, but when we did, it was weird. All three of them (husband, wife, daughter) were huddled together at the base of a tree, and they were all crying. When we approached, they asked us if we'd seen her. We asked who, and the father told us that their daughter had been playing in front of them on the trail, and she'd been taken by a woman. The daughter was apparently playing with a ball, and it had rolled down the hill, and she'd gone after it. The parents had lost sight of her for a few seconds, and when they came to where she should have been, she was gone. The mother told us that a woman had come and taken her daughter, and she'd asked them not to follow. The father said that the woman hadn't been human, that she'd had wings, and she looked like she was made out of ash and smoke. We never found the daughter.<br><br>* This is the last story, and it's the one that's bothered me the most. I was out on a call, and it was a singular missing person. A 22-year-old guy who hadn't come home from a climbing trip. We knew where he'd parked his car, and everyone who had seen him before he started climbing said that he seemed perfectly normal, if not a little excited. The guy was an experienced climber, and he was climbing a pretty tough route, but he'd done it before, and we weren't too worried about him. I was teamed up with another SAR officer and a canine, and we set out on the climb. When we got to the top, we found the guy's car keys, wallet, and phone. There was no sign of him, and the canine wasn't picking up a scent. We thought he might have gone over the edge, but we didn't find a body, and there was no blood or signs of a fall. We were baffled, until the canine started barking. She'd found something, and when we came over, we saw it was a small bag that was filled with photographs. We figured they were the missing guy's, and he'd probably used them to weigh down his tent, but something about it bothered me. I opened the bag to look at the pictures, and the first one was of a guy in a climbing harness. He was standing on a cliff, and he looked really happy. I flipped through a few more pictures, and they were all of the same guy, in different climbing spots. I recognized some of the places, and the guy had apparently climbed all over the world. I was starting to feel a little weird, because the guy in the pictures looked really familiar. I looked at the back of the pictures, and they all had dates written on them. The first picture had a date a few years ago, and the last picture had a date of '02. I was confused as to why someone would keep decade-old pictures of climbs. I flipped through the rest of the pictures, and towards the bottom, the guy started bringing a woman with him on his climbs. I recognized the cliffs in the pictures, and they were all in places that we'd had accidents. I flipped through a little more, and the last picture in the stack was of the woman. She was alone, and she was cuddled up in a sleeping bag. She was smiling, but she looked sad, and I recognized her as a Climber who had gone missing a few years ago. I asked my partner if he knew the people in the pictures, and he didn't. I asked the canine's handler, and she didn't either. Something told me to look at the very back of the stack, and I did, and the last picture was of me. I was in my climbing gear, and I was standing on a cliff, just like the guy in the first picture. I do a lot of climbing, and it's possible that I'd met the guy, or he'd seen a picture of me and thought it was cool. But something about it chilled me to the bone. I spent the rest of the search looking over my shoulder, and I nunca could shake the feeling that I was being watched.