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 and nose and mouth should have been. He said the faceless man had pushed him, and he'd fallen down the cliff. I don't know whether the guy just hit his head harder than he thought, or if something truly happened, but I'll never forget the look of utter terror on his face as he told us what had happened.<br><br>* I had one call come in from a husband who couldn't find his wife. They were out walking on a trail that was basically a loop, so you could walk in a circle around the whole forest. He said they'd been walking for a while, and he'd stopped to read a sign that was on one of the trees. When he looked up, his wife was gone. He walked back down the path, but he couldn't find her, and figured she'd just gone on ahead of him. When he got back to the car, she wasn't there, and he began to worry. He called us, and we came out to search for her, but we couldn't find any trace of her. We figured she'd gotten sick of waiting and gone into town, or gone home, and we told him to call her friends and family and see if she was with any of them. I got a call from him a few days later, and he told me that he'd received a voicemail from his wife. It was just the sound of rustling, and then someone tried to take the phone away from her. A man's voice came on the line, and he said he had the woman, and she was safe. He told the husband to meet him at a nearby park at 3 am if he wanted to see her again, and then the message ended. Of course, the police were called, and they set up cameras at the park. The husband was told to go alone, and when he got there, he saw a figure in a parka standing in the shadows. When he got closer, the figure stepped into the light, and it was his wife. Except that, according to the husband, it ' wasn't really her.' He said she was acting strangely, and she seemed calm, and detached from the world around her. He said she smelled disgusting, like rot and death, and that he could see scratches on her face. He tried to take her home, but she didn't want to go. He said she told him that she'd been given something amazing, something she couldn't wait to give to him, and then she collapsed. When she came to, she had no memory of anything that had happened, including the voicemail and the meeting at the park. He was told to have her see a psychologist, and he hired someone to protect her for a while, but nothing ever came of it. The police never caught the man, and as far as I know, the case is still open.<br><br>I've got a few more, but that's all I can think of for now. I'll try to update when I can. Thanks for reading!<br><br>**Edit:** Some people have asked about the credibility of some of the stories, and I guess I should have thought of this before I posted them. I'm not in a good position if I start giving out identifying information about the calls I've been on, so I won't be able to provide any proof. I'm sorry to say that you'll just have to take my word for it. I'm also not trying to scare anyone off of hiking or climbing. I love the outdoors, and I think you should still go out and enjoy nature. Just be safe, and be smart. And if someone tells you not to go out alone, listened to them. There's a reason they say that.