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 smooth flesh with no features. He said the guy had shoved him, and he'd fallen down the cliff. I don't know whether or not to believe the guy, he was obviously in a lot of pain and might have been hallucinating. But the thing that got me was the EMT badgering him for more information. The guy was in the midst of having his leg cut off to get him out of the crevasse, and he's asking the guy about 'the faceless man'. I don't know what his deal was, but it seemed excessive and kind of dicksick. Honestly, I wouldn't have even mentioned it except that the guy's stories about the faceless man have stuck with me.<br><br>* I saw a man in a parka and ski pants climbing a cliff face. I know what I saw, and it was exactly what the faceless man was described as wearing. It was from a distance, and the guy was wearing a parka and Ski pants, so I couldn't see his face. I'm not saying it was the same guy, I'm just saying that I've seen someone that matches his description. I'm not sure whether I believe the story, but I think I might have to search the area around that cliff.<br><br>Edit: I'm blown away by the amount of interest this has garnered. I'm going to try and answer some of the more common questions I've seen:<br><br>* There's always someone in the helicopter with the person being rescued. We don't just toss them back like a bag of potatoes. It's an EMT, or in some cases, it will be an SAR officer. In this case, it was an EMT.<br><br>* The little girl who was taken by 'the bear man' didn't say specifically that he had no face. However, when we showed her pictures of people, she said that he didn't look like anyone in the pictures because he didn't have 'eyes like a person'. She just said that he looked like a bear, because he was covered in hair and stood up on two legs like a person. I know it's probably just the description a scared kid would give, but it's haunted me for a while.<br><br>* I don't think the 'faceless man' is a serial killer or a monster. I think it might be some kind of prankster or jerk who thinks it's funny to endanger people. If he's real, I think he's a human being with a twisted sense of humour. <br><br>* I will try to look into the stories of the faceless man, and I'll do what I can to get more information for you guys. I'll probably ask my superiors about the climbing incident, and see if they'll let me look into the reports. I'll do what I can, but I can't promise anything.<br><br>Thanks again for your interest, and I'll probably update tonight or tomorrow with more information.