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, 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 or not to believe the guy, he was obviously in a lot of pain and could have hallucinated the whole thing, but the way he described it was so vivid. I don't know, maybe he just made it up to get attention or something, but I really don't think so.<br><br>* This is the last one, and it's the one that gave me chills. I was out searching for a guy who hadn't come home from a camping trip. We went to the campsite, and we found all of his equipment exactly as it should have been, minus the sleeping bag. There was no sign of a fire being lit, but we found a large stump a little ways away from the site that was covered in scratch marks, and there was blood on it. We figured that he'd probably been attacked and dragged away, and we followed the blood trail to a nearby stream, where we lost the trail. The canine didn't pick up a scent, and we never found the guy. A few weeks later, we got another call about a missing person in the same area, and I was one of the responders. When we got to the campsite (and it was exactly the same spot), we found that this guy had also had all of his equipment, minus the sleeping bag. We thought it was kind of weird, but figured maybe the guy had forgotten it or something. We saw the stump, and the guy asked us about it. He said he'd never seen a tree with scratch marks like that before, and he wondered what would have caused it. I told him about the case I'd worked a few weeks before, and he looked at me skeptically. He said that he didn't think it was a animal that scratched the tree, because the marks were so uniform. I agreed with him, and we both wondered out loud why someone would scratch up a tree. He said, 'Maybe it was someone who was in a lot of pain.' I figured he was just being poetic or something, but then I got a weird feeling. I don't know. I don't even really know why I mentioned this story, because it's not really weird on its own. It just gives me a weird feeling, you know? <br><br>That's it. I'm going to go patrol the area on foot for a bit. Like I said, most of my calls are really straightforward, but these ones have always bothered me. Thanks for reading!<br><br>**Update:**<br><br>I've gotten a *lot* of questions about the first story, so I figure I'll just answer them here. <br><br>1: When we asked her more questions about 'the bear man', she just shut down. She didn't say anything else, and whenever we brought it up again she just cried. We didn't want to traumatize her any further, since she'd already seen her brother get taken, so we didn't push the issue. <br><br>2: We never found any trace of a bear, but the little girl was positive that he had been a bear, or at least that he had hair like one. She wasn't upset by the idea of bears, either, so I don't think it was just that she was scared of bears and that's why she said it was one. <br><br>3: We searched every inch of that place. It was the longest call I've ever been on, and we had tons of other SAR officers there. We didn't find any trace of the little boy, and we never figured out what had happened to him. <br><br>4: The little girl was only 6 at the time, so I don't think she made it up for attention. She was genuinely upset by the whole thing, and I don't think she would have made it up. <br><br>Thank you so much for your interest, and thank you for the awards! I'll probably post more stories and update the ones I've already posted if you guys are interested!