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 down to his last known location. We found him trapped in a small crevasse with a broken leg. It was not pleasant. He'd been in 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. He said the guy had sung a little song to him, and that he'd tried to run, but the faceless man had pushed him down the cliff. I'm not sure if that was true, or if it was a result of the guy's delirium, but I will say that we found proof that the guy had gotten to the top of the cliff. There were food wrappers and an empty water bottle, and they were all exactly as he had described them. <br><br>* I had one call come in from a wife who was concerned because her husband hadn't come home from a solo hiking trip. She'd called his friends to see if he'd gone home with them, but he hadn't, and she was getting worried. We went out in search of him, and we found him sitting at the base of a tree, doing some acid. He'd taken a hiking trail, but had decided to take a detour into the woods, where he'd planned to take his acid. He took it, and then he started to feel scared, so he called his wife. Unfortunately, he was so far out of range that his phone had no reception, and he didn't want to leave his little 'shroom spot, so he just waited there until we found him. He was very high when we got to him, and he kept telling us not to let 'the bears' get him. He was adamant that there were bears in the area, and we could see that he was working himself into a panic. One of the other SAR officers had an idea, and he pulled out a candy bar and gave it to the guy. The guy started to eat it, and he said it tasted like bear, and that it made him feel calm. We were able to get him out of there, and we called his wife to come take him home. I heard the next day that he was absolutely embarrassed about the whole thing, and that he'd never take acid again. <br><br>* There have been a few instances where the people we've found have been acting strangely. One guy was just crawling back and forth across the forest floor, sniffing, almost like a dog. He looked up at us, and he didn't seem to register that we were human. He just kept sniffing, and after we got him out, he didn't seem to remember who we were. He just knew that we'd gotten him out of the woods. <br>I've also had a few calls where the people we've found have been absolutely terrified. They'llcurl up in the fetal position and beg us not to take them back out there, or they'll try to fight us off. In one instance, a guy tried to cut me with a knife, but we were able to subdue him and get him out. When people like that are back in civilization, they don't seem to remember what happened. They just know that they were actually missing, and that we found them and saved them. <br>The last incident like this that happened was particularly disturbing. We were looking for a guy who'd gone hiking with his dog. Apparently, he'd been on the trail, and the dog had run off into the woods. The guy had chased after him, and that's where he disappeared. His wife called us when he didn't come home, and we went searching for him. We found him in a small clearing deep in the woods, and he was crouched over, scratching at the ground. Weird, I know, but we've seen that kind of thing happen in the wilderness before. But when we got closer, we saw that he was making what looked like a nest out of leaves and branches. And then we saw the dog. <br>He was burying his dog, and we could tell that the dog had been dead for a while. There was no sign of injury, and the guy's car was found at the park with all of his climbing equipment inside. We have no idea what killed the dog, or why the guy had taken him all the way out there to bury him. I guess we'll never know, because when the guy got back, he didn't seem to know that anything out of the ordinary had happened. He was pretty distraught about the death of his dog, but he told us that he'd gone off the trail because he'd heard howls, and he'd gone to check it out because he thought it might have been his dog. He said he'd lost sight of the path, and he couldn't find his way back in the dark. He told us that he'd tried to find shelter, but in the end, he'd just decided to try and make it through the night. He remembered being comfortable, and warm, and he said he'd fallen asleep thinking that. The next thing he knew, we were there, and he was burying his dog. He didn't know how his dog had ended up out there, or how it had died. He was heartbroken, and we felt bad for him. Like I said, though, the guy hadn't taken the dog with him, and there was no sign of injury. The guy was absolutely distraught about it, and I'm not sure I believe him. <br><br>That's pretty much