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 bother me, things that I think about a lot. I've talked about them to other officers, but we don't really know what to make of them other than "shit ain't right". So, here are my stories.<br><br>*There was a case I worked on a few years ago that really stuck with me. An 8 year old girl fell down an embankment. When we found her, she was dead. She had broken her neck in the fall. When we moved her to put her in a bag, we found a Dare bear that had been misplaced by the fall. The bear had a small note stapled to it that read "Meet me by the big tree at the end of the trail at 3:00. Don't tell anyone or the bears will get you. -Robbie". There was no one in her party named Robbie. We couldn't find anyone matching that name in the park. We never found out who wrote that note.* <br><br>*Sometimes, we get calls from people saying they've been on a trail for hours, but can't find their way back. Most of the time, they're just stupid, but sometimes, we can't find them either.* <br><br>*We had a report of someone saying they'd been attacked on the trail a few weeks ago. The hiker said he'd been walking alone when a man with no eyes ran out from behind a tree and attacked him. It didn't make a whole lot of sense, so we asked for more information. He said the man with no eyes was big, at least 8 feet tall, and had actually scratched the man's eyes out in the attack. The man said his attacker was gone when he came to, and he'd been crawling down the mountain until he got to the parking lot. We haven't found anything to back up the man's story.* <br><br>*I gave a kid a search and rescue bear yesterday. He was 10 and his mom was happy to have him get the reward for climbing a difficult trail with her. As soon as I handed him the bear, he started to cry. I was confused and asked the mom what was wrong with him. She told me that she and her son had been in the park for three months. Her son had been missing for two of those months, and she'd been searching for him the entire time. She'd finally found him a week or so ago. He was in good health, and hadn't said much about where he'd been or what had happened. She was just glad to have him back. I gave him the bear, and as soon as he held it, he started crying and screaming. He kept saying "The bears took me, the bears took me!". His mom said he'd been saying stuff like that since he'd been back.* <br><br>*We found a body stuck in a hollow tree a few days ago. It was a young girl, no ID on her, no reports of anyone missing that matched her description. She didn't match anyone in missing persons either. We'll keep looking, but we might never know who she is.* <br><br>*One of my coworkers went out to look for a hiker that hadn't come back. When he found him, he was in the fetal position on the ground, and he just kept repeating "They're out there, they're out there, they're out there". He wouldn't say who "they" were. My coworker said when he looked around, he didn't see anything out of the ordinary, but he got the longest, most terrifying feeling that they were being watched. He's been off work since.* <br><br>*I was doing a training exercise for some students in the park a few weeks ago. We were out on the trail, and one of the students asked where we were. I looked around, realizing I didn't know. I'd been on this trail countless times, I knew where every landmark was and how to get back to the parking lots, but that day, nothing around me was familiar. After 20 minutes of trying to find a landmark, we had to contact dispatch for coordinates. I have no idea what happened.* <br><br>*There's a local legend that I used to find kind of funny. It's about a park ranger named Jim that was Shot in the 70's. Apparently, some prospectors were on the mountain, and an inexperienced park ranger approached them. He didn't know how to handle the situation, and the prospectors got scared and shot him. A few days later, one of the prospectors went to the authorities and told them where to find the body. When they found the body, they found a hand written map in the guy's pocket, and the area where the body was had been circled. There's no way the prospector could have gotten there in time to put the map in the Ranger's pocket before we found the body. The map has never been found, and the prospectors are serving life sentences.* <br><br><br>That's it for now. I might have more later.