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 later. 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 skin where his eyes and mouth should have been. He said the faceless man had thrown him down the cliff, and he'd been stuck where we found him for almost two days. Obviously, we never found any evidence of another guy up there, but I don't know what the hell would cause a guy to make up a story like that.<br><br>* I had one call come in from a husband who couldn't find his wife. They were out hiking, and she'd gone off the path to pee. That's when it gets kinda weird, because the husband was insistent that he'd waited for her, and when she didn't come back, he came looking for her. Apparently, he'd gone *way* off the path, because we found him miles away from where his wife had last been seen, and he had no idea where he was or how he'd gotten there. He was absolutely hysterical, begging us to find his wife, and he didn't seem to know what was going on. We ended up having to get him reinsured, because he was taking the whole thing very badly. We never found his wife.<br><br>* I had one call from a very panicked young female hiker. She said she and her sister were out hiking, and they'd been followed for a while by a man in a parka. She said he didn't seem to be wearing pants, and that he was walking on all fours. She was adamant that we come out ASAP, because they were scared, and they didn't know what to do. When we got there, they were absolutely terrified. We searched the area and didn't find anyone, but we told them to head back to the trailhead and we'd walk behind them, just to make them feel safe. We didn't see anyone, and when we were walking, the sisters were very quiet. We asked them if they needed anything, and the younger sister said no, but the older sister was staring at us very intensely. As we got closer to the trailhead, we could see their car, and the older sister suddenly started crying. She told us that she was glad we'd been there, because she'd been afraid that we were in on it. Then she stopped. When we pressed her for more information, she refused to talk, so we figured they were just scared and let them go.<br><br>* This is the last one, and it's the one that gave me the idea for this post in the first place. I was teamed up with an older, very experienced SAR officer because we'd had reports of bear sightings, and we were looking for a kid who'd wandered off on a family hike. We'd received reports that the kid had been seen with a man in a parka, and the police were trying to identify the man. When we got to the area where the kid was last seen, we started searching, and we found a small boy matching thekid's description pretty quickly. He was upset, but he seemed okay, so we calmed him down and told him we was going to take him back to his parents. When we asked him if he'd been with the man in the parka, he said yes, but that the man had left him with us, and he'd told the kid not to wander anymore. We asked where the man had gone, and the kid pointed up the mountain. We figured he might have been dangerous, and the police were looking for him, so we called for guidance on what to do. We were told to go after the guy, figure out who he was and bring him in for questioning. We went the direction the kid pointed, and started climbing. We searched that mountain for hours, and we never found a trace of another person. How the hell did the kid see him? <br><br>That's it. I'm sorry if these stories seem a bit disjointed, it's my first time posting.