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 smooth flesh where his eyes, nose, and mouth should have been. He said the guy had pushed him, and he'd fallen down the cliff. I don't know whether or not to believe the guy, but I've had a weird feeling for the past couple of days.<br><br>* I got a weird report from another SAR officer the other day. He was out looking for a guy who'd gone hiking with his dog, and he saw someone walking a dog on the trail. He called out to the guy, asking if he'd seen the person he was looking for, and the guy just looked at him and kept walking. When my friend described the dog to me, he said that it looked like it had been dead for a while. Bad smell,bsd visible wounds, strange coloring in the fur. He figure the guy had been hiking with his dead dog, and he'd wandered off into the woods and that's where we found him. No sign of the dog, but the guy was conscious and calm. He didn't seem to have been outdoors for as long as he had, and he was pretty lucid. He said he'd been hiking with his dog, and the dog had fallen down a cliff and died. He'd buried the dog, and was leaving the park when someone approached him. He said it was a woman with long black hair and green eyes, and she told him that she'd seen his dog fall, she'd picked it up, and it was okay now. She'd been walking with it, and she'd given it something to eat, and now it was fine. She asked if he wanted to come and play with her and his dog, and he told me that he'd been about to say yes, but something about her scared him and he'd run. He didn't know where he went after that, but he was pretty insistent that it hadn't been long. <br><br>* I search a lot of areas that are inaccessible with vehicles, and I always carry a cart with me. It has all my equipment, including rescue rope, a defib, oxygen, a stretcher, and other miscellaneous supplies. I've never had it weighed down, and I can roll it pretty easily, but I've had instances where the cart is moved while I'm not around. Once, I'd set up a small shelter to spend the night in, and I'd left the cart at the base of a tree with a bunch of other equipment. I woke up in the morning to find that the cart had been turned over, and it was about fifty feet away from where I'd left it. All the equipment was still there, and nothing was missing, it was just as if someone had decided to move it while I was sleeping. I've also had instances where I've left the cart at the base of a cliff while I go up to search, and when I come back, the cart is at the top of the cliff, or in an entirely different location. I've gotten into the habit of tying the cart to a tree whenever I have to leave it, and that seems to work okay. <br><br>These are just a few stories from my experiences, and I'll probably add more as I think of them. Thanks for reading!