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 future calls. <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 gave up and 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. We couldn't get anywhere near her with an ambulance, and her injuries were too bad to carry her out safely. She was in a lot of pain, and her parents were upset and wanted her taken out immediately. We couldn't carry her out safely, and attempting to do so would have risked making her injuries worse. We couldn't leave her alone with her parents because they were too likely to try and take her out themselves, which would have been bad for everyone involved. <br>We had to leave her with one of our officers, and it was clear to all of us that she wasn't going to make it. She asked the officer to stop telling her lies, and to tell her the truth: would she die in the forest? Our poor officer, who had a daughter of his own around that age, broke down and told her that yes, she wouldn't make it. The little girl asked him to stay with her, and to hold her hand until she was gone. <br>He did exactly that, and he was the one who called for an ambulance once she was gone. When we came to get her out... well, you know how bodies deteriorate outside. Especially when it was as hot as it was then, and there was decomp already starting. But all the way to the ambulance, our officer held her hand, and he didn't let it go until they got to the hospital. <br>He took a few months off after that, for depression and PTSD. It was a very sad case, and it keyed a lot of us up pretty bad. <br><br>* I've been with SAR for eight years now. In that time, I've lost count of how many times I've heard a disembodied voice calling for help, or saying things that were just out of context. Telling me that someone was coming, or asking me why I was there, or telling me to leave. I've never heard an explanation that satisfies me for any of it. I've mentioned it to other SAR officers, and they've all heard similar things at some point or another. I don't know whether it's just a result of being stressed and hearing things, or if something else is going on. I do know that it happens frequently enough that it's something you get used to. <br><br>* There was a case where a man was out climbing and a boulder fell off a cliff, killing him. When we came to get his body, we found that it had been... partially cannibalized? I don't really know how else to put it. It was as if someone had come up behind him while he was still alive, and had started eating the back of his skull. There were no bite marks, exactly, just... shaved-away bone. And the brain was gone, or at least a significant portion of it was. We never found an animal that could have done it, and I have no idea what would have acted like that. It was a really strange case.<br><br>* One guy was out hiking with his dog, and the dog went charging off to investigate something. The guy went after the dog, and when he came back, he said he'd found a deploed parachute in the woods. There was no sign of a chute actually being used, and we never found a body or any remains at all. It's possible that someone deployed it, realized they weren't too high and just... walked away? I have no idea. <br><br>* As an SAR officer, I've been lucky in that I don't often get bona fide calls about paranormal shit. Regarding ghosts and the like. Most of the time, someone just calls the regular police and the police call us, and that's that. But I did get one call from a park ranger where he was out patrolling on a horse, and the horse was acting up. He looked up, and there was a woman in a white wedding dress standing in the trees, just watching him. He said that he'd been an officer there for twenty years, and he'd never seen anything like that before. He was pretty sure that the woman he'd seen wasn't human. I'm not sure why he called me instead of the police, but I think he was just looking for... a second opinion? Someone who would take him seriously? Either way, I went out to where he'd seen her, and of course, I found nothing. I'm sure it was just hallucinations, but I'd love to know more about the history of that park. <br>I found out later that the same park ranger had been the one who'd found a young couple who'd been shot and dumped in the park. The case was never solved, and it bothered the park ranger for the rest of his life. It's possible that he hallucinated the whole thing as some sort of guilt manifestation. <br><br>* I was out on a search once and a stranger approached me and asked if I was looking for someone. I said yes, and he gave me very specific directions to where he'd seen a woman who matched the description I'd given him. I followed his directions, and they led me to a woman who fit the missing person's description exactly. I was shocked, and when I turned to thank him, he was gone. I have no idea who he was, or where he came from, because I didn't see him around anywhere. I couldn't even ID him, because I'd been so stressed about finding the missing person. It's a little creepy, in retrospect.