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 and fall down a cliff, and we find them on a nearby ridge or channell. 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 cases I get. <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 our team got there, we found the daughter right away. She was crying and scared, but otherwise okay. But we never found the boy. We searched for nearly two months before we gave up, and it was the way things ended that bothers me so much. We never found a single trace of that kid. No signs of struggle, no signs that he'd fallen or been dragged away. It was as if he'd been lifted out of the forest, never to be seen again. I search those memories for anything I might have missed, but its the same as it was when I first started thinking about it: nothing.<br>The other was an adult who was out climbing alone. We got a report from a neighboring climber that the guy had fallen, and they couldn't find him anywhere. When we got there, we couldn't find any sign of him either. We had climbers on the cliff face, people searching the forest, and a helicopter searching the surrounding area. The climber had told us the exact place where he'd last seen the guy, but we never found him. Before we gave up, we went to talk to the climber who'd made the report, and that's when things got really strange. <br>When we talked to the climber who reported it, he looked shocked that we hadn't found the guy. He repeated that he'd seen the guy fall, and that he was sure the guy had gone down into the forest. But that wasn't what had gotten our attention. It was that the guy said he was sure a person had fallen, but when we pressed him for a description, he told us that it wasn't exactly a person. He said that from where he was, the guy looked normal enough to be believed, but that now he wasn't so sure. He said that the guy who'd fallen (and I'm going to use "guy" for simplicity, but its important to remember this may not have been human) had been wearing a parka and climbing gear, but that its legs had been too long, and its arms too short. That the only places it actually touched the rock were its hands, which he had said looked too big for a human. He also said that the "guy's" helmet had been too small for its head, which had been "shaped weirdly". That was all he'd seen before the "guy" had fallen, and by the time he'd gotten down to search for it, it had already disappeared. We never found the guy, and part of me hopes I never do.<br><br>* A few times, I've been out searching on my own when I've seen people watching me from up in the trees. They're always gone when I go up to look for them, and whenever I tell my superior about it, he always tells me it's just paranoia from being alone in the woods for too long. Maybe it is, but I know what I saw, and it wasn't just an animal. I've seen people up there, and at least one of them was looking right at me.<br><br>* I was out searching for a missing climber once, and I saw a man preparing to climb. I told him the area was closed, and he asked why. When I explained that a man was missing, the guy just laughed and told me that he knew the guy, and that he was okay. When I pressed him for more information, he just said "You won't find him, and that's for the best". I tried to get more out of him, but he just ascended and I lost track of him.<br><br>* I was out searching for a kid who'd wandered off from one of the parks. When I was looking through a gully, I heard voices. It sounded like a man and the kid, and I couldn't make out what they were saying. I followed the sound, and when I came around a corner, there was no one there. I never found the kid, and I'm not really sure what's going on with that one.<br><br>* I was talking to one of the other SAR officers, and I mentioned the first story, about the little boy who disappeared. He told me he had a similar story from when he was in training, and one of the vets took him out on a search. This vet had been around for a long time, and the guy told me the vet had some stories about people disappearing in these woods that didn't seem to fit with the usual ideas of what happens when someone disappears. The vet had told the guy that there were some places in the forest where people just... disappeared. Nothing to be found, no signs of what happened. Just gone. The vet had also told the guy that some of these incidents had happened long before the forest was turned into a park, and that the forest had a bad history. The vet had also told the guy that he'd seen things out in the forest, things he couldn't explain, and that the guy would too, if he stuck around. At the time, the guy thought it was just the vet messing with him, but now I'm not so sure.