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 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 few days. I'm not going to climb anywhere for a long time, that's for sure.<br><br>* This is the last one, and it's the one that's inspired me to write this post. I've been an SAR officer for years, and I've never seen anything really strange. I've seen some sad stuff, and some creepy stuff, but nothing that was really anomalous. This was the first time, and it will probably be the last. Today was the first day I've felt scared on the job, and if I'm being completely honest, I don't think I can keep doing this. When I was a rookie, I was teamed up with an older SAR officer because I didn't know the forest very well. He was a vet, he'd been around for a long time, and he was the smartest guy I'd ever met. Over the next few years, we became friends. He was always a tease, and he'd always make jokes at my expense, but he was also incredibly generous. He'd do anything for anybody, and he took his job very seriously. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the guy. So when he didn't come back from his shift two days ago, we knew something was wrong. <br>He was out searching for a guy who'd gone out looking for deer sign. The guy was an experienced hunter, but he didn't live around here and he wasn't used to the terrain or the weather. We weren't that worried about him, but we still had to go looking. So out goes Greg, and he doesn't come back when he's supposed to. We gave him a little extra time, figuring he'd gone further than he thought he would, but when it started getting dark, we started getting worried. So we go out looking for him, and we can't find him anywhere. None of his equipment is missing, and his car is still parked in the lot. We're all very worried, and we're starting to think worst-case scenario. We search the areas again, and we can't find a trace of him. We're starting to think that maybe he'd gone out to look for the missing guy, and something had happened to both of them, but instead of acting like a normal human being, we start to get weird discoveries. <br>The first was that his uniform had been dropped on the ground, tossed over a branch like a piece of trash. There was no blood on it, no sign that anything had happened to him, it was just...discarded. We figured that maybe he'd gone back to his car and changed into his civilian clothes, but like I said, his car was still there and he wasn't in it. We kept looking, and we found his radio. It was smashed up pretty bad, but it didn't look like it was a weird accident. It looked like someone had smashed it deliberately. Then, we found his handgun. Now, we don't usually carry sidearms, but there have been a few instances where they've come in handy. We're not required to carry them, but this guy did, and it's a good thing he did or we might not have figured out what happened. Because, along with his gun, we found a piece of paper. Someone had drawn a picture of a man with no face, and underneath it was written 'You shouldn't have followed me.'<br><br>* I'm not going to go into too much detail, but we have reason to believe that Greg followed someone into the forest. Who it was, or why they were out there, we have no idea. But Greg is gone, and we haven't found any trace of him. <br>This was the last straw for me. I can't stay an SAR officer if this is what I have to worry about. I haven't quit yet, but I'm thinking seriously about it. <br><br>I wish I could tell you more about what happened to Greg, but the truth is that I have no idea. I've been re-reading this, and I realize that a lot of what I've said here doesn't make much sense. I'm sorry for that, and I wish I could explain things better. I'm just really upset right now, and I'm scared. I'm scared that 'the bear man' is going to come for me, or that I'm going to run into the faceless guy, and I'm going to end up just like Greg. I'm sorry if none of this makes sense, I'm just really worried and I don't know what to do. <br>I don't know what's going on, or who these people are, but I know I don't want to deal with it anymore.