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, and never found a single trace of the little boy. <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 never found a trace of the girl. <br><br>I don't know if anyone has heard of the 'missing 411' cases, I felt like some of you might have, so I wanted to personally confirm that these cases are very real, and in some cases, very disturbing. <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 rational explanation, but it's sort of strange. <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. I don't know if it's true or not, but I hope it's not. <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, nose, and mouth should have been. He said the guy had pulled him down, and he'd fallen into the crevasse. I don't know how much of that was the drugs they'd given him, or the hypothermia, or whatever else, but it gave me goosebumps to hear it. <br>* This is the last story, and probably the strangest. I was out looking for a family who were scouting out a new trail. They were all supposedly very experienced, but they didn't come home when they were supposed to. We went out looking for them, and I was sent out on foot. I was the only person in my area, so I had a canine with me. We'd been searching for hours, and the canine was getting agitated. He'd found a trail, and was pulling at his leash, wanting to follow it. I let him lead, and he pulled me straight towards a drop-off. I pulled back on the leash, yelling at him, and he began barking furiously. I'd never seen him behave this way before, and I was starting to get scared. Suddenly, he spun around and began running in the other direction, pulling me along. We'd been in that area for hours, and I knew there was nothing that way. After a few minutes of walking, the canine stopped. He'd lost the trail, and he couldn't find it again. I was confused, because I'd never seen him lose a trail like that before. We'd been following that trail for almost twenty minutes, and then it just...disappeared. I called for help, and the rest of the searchers came out. We never found the family, and the case is still open. <br><br>These are my stories. I'm sorry if they aren't as exciting as you were hoping for, and I'm sorry if they don't really fit the 'nightmare' theme. I just wanted to share my experiences, and I hope you found them interesting!