I apologize for the short update, guys. Things have gotten a little crazy around here, and I'm not sure how often I'll be able to update going forward.

A firefighter who was helping us at the training op told me about a call he'd gone on, supposedly to rescue a kid from an absolutely massive tree. He said they didn't give him details, just that they needed him to come out and help because they lacked the proper equipment. He'd been called out specifically because the tree was so huge that the SARs didn't feel safe trying to climb it. He'd been a tree-trimmer before joining the VFD, so it was easy enough for him to grab his old equipment and come help out. He was led out about two miles, and the team stopped at one of the biggest trees in the area and pointed up. He laughed and asked the op captain how the kid had gotten up there, made some joke about the old "cat in a tree," but the captain just shook his head and told him to get up there and get the kid down. He said he knew something was up, but he didn't push it. He said that as he climbed this tree, he started wondering if they were playing a prank on him.

"There was no way this kid should have been able to climb this fuckin' thing. It was massive at the base, but about halfway up, it started tapering, and I almost had to turn back a few times because I really didn't think it was gonna hold me."

But he said he kept going, and when he was just about at the top, he saw a flash of blue in the branches.

"I saw the kid's shirt caught in a branch, and I called out to him and told him to come near me if he could, but he didn't say anything. I kept moving, calling the kid's name and telling him not to be scared, that I was there to help him. By the time I got to him, I knew he wasn't gonna answer me. I found him, or what was left of him, cradled in the fork of a branch, and the fact that he was up there was sheer luck. If he'd fallen any other way, he'd have come crashing down. It wouldn't have mattered, because this kid was dead long before he ended up in that tree. I don't know who put him there, or how, or why, but it was fucking sick. Kid's intestines had popped out of his mouth, and were hanging in the branches. It was like some sick fucking Christmas tree, the way they were draped all over everything. I got a better look and saw they'd even popped out of his ass, his guts were hanging out the bottom of his pants. His eyes were gone, I assume shoved out from whatever force caused him to fucking pop like a stress ball. You ever seen a body that's been floating in water for a long time, how their tongues swell up and stick out? His was like that. I remember because there were flies crawling all over it. I think I must have gone into shock, because... man, I just pushed that kid down with a stick that I broke off a branch. Just kind of poked him until he fell. I don't know why I did that. I almost lost my job because of it. But the thought of hauling that kid down over my shoulder the whole way, gathering his guts up and coiling them around me like rope so they wouldn't get snagged... I couldn't do it."

"I've seen a lot of dead kids. More than I'd ever admit. I've seen a kid who hid in a full bathtub during a house fire; boiled him alive, turned him into literal soup. But this... I don't know what did this, but the thought of touching that kid's body made me feel like I was going to lose my mind. I heard him hit the ground and I figured everyone would freak out, but they knew he was dead when they sent me up there. They didn't say anything, but they didn't shout, freak out or anything. I got to the bottom and I started to get up in the captain's face, asking him who he thought he was sending me up there when they knew damn well the kid was dead. But he just told me it was none of my concern, and thanked me for getting the evidence down. I remember he said that, I remember it specifically because it was so weird to hear it phrased that way. The evidence, like he wasn't even a person. Like he'd never been a little kid who got lost and had something fucking unspeakable happen to him. The captain had a crew lead me back out of the woods, but he and two others stayed behind, and I thought that was weird. Why wouldn't they have me help get the kid out? I tried asking but the guys leading me out just told me they couldn't discuss an open case."

I asked him what he thought had happened to the kid, and he got really pensive and thought about it for a bit.

"I would have said a crush injury, based on how his guts came out like that, but with those injuries, you see massive contusions under the skin, obvious trauma. This wasn't like that. It was almost like that kid got caught in a big vacuum and had his guts sucked out. Even then, there was no trauma. None at all. It bothers me, man. It bothers the hell out of me."

One of the vets at the training op reads "NoSleep," and he recognized my stories. He knows me pretty well, and we've swapped stories before. He asked if he could share something he's noticed about the stairs, and some thoughts he had.

"I'm really glad you decided to share these. I think it's important that people be aware of what's out there, especially since the Forest Service is doing such a good job at covering it all up."

I asked him what he meant. "What do you mean, what do I mean? The lack of any kind of media attention? No coverage of missing kids, or bodies found miles from where they got lost in the first place? David Paulides hit this right on the head, the FS is doing everything they can to keep people coming here, even if it isn't safe. I mean, to be fair, it's not like these things happen every day. But the numbers add up, and it's worth looking into. Especially the stairs. I was surprised you didn't mention the flipped ones."

I didn't know what he was talking about, I couldn't remember him ever talking about something like that. He seemed somewhat incredulous.

"Dude, I can't believe you've been on this long without seeing them. No one told you about them?" I shrugged and asked him to elaborate.

"Well, there's the normal stairs, the ones that pop up when we're out aways. I know you know about them. But sometimes, I've run across ones that are flipped upside down. I guess it would be like if you had a dollhouse, and the stairs were a separate piece. Take that, flip it upside down so the top step is stuck in the dirt, and put it out in the woods. They're like that. I don't see them as often but they're odd, to say the least. It makes me think of footage taken after a tornado, when houses are all blown apart and random things are left standing, like chimneys and garden walls. Those ones freak me out more that the normal ones because I can't really write those off as easily."

I don't scare very easily, like most of us who work out here, but that idea stuck with me, and it bothers me. I'm going to try and find more out about them. He also mentioned how many people were bothered by the guy with no face. He got really excited and told me he'd seen something similar.

"I was out on a training exercise a few years ago. I was camped out in my tent and I heard someone walking around outside of camp. We're told not to wander far, which you know, so I wondered if maybe it was a rookie who'd gotten up to pee and couldn't find his way back. Remember that guy in our group a few years back who almost fell off the damn mountain? Well, I'm paranoid about that happening again, so I got up to see what was going on. I went to the edge of camp and I called to whoever it was and told them that camp was this way."

"But they kept going back out into the woods, so I went after them. I know it was stupid but I was half asleep, I just really didn't want to deal with some idiot getting hurt. I followed this thing on a dead-straight course for about a mile, and then it stopped on the edge of a little river. I could see the outline of it because the water was reflecting the moon, and it looked just like an ordinary guy. He had a pack on, and it looked like he was facing me. I asked if he was okay, if he needed help, and he cocked his head like he didn't understand me. I always have my pocket knife on me, and it's got a little thumblight attached to it, so I turned that on and lit up his chest, so I wouldn't blind him."

"He was breathing slow and deep, so I wondered if he was sleepwalking. I went closer and asked him again if he was okay. I moved the light up, and something didn't seem right, so I stopped. He kept breathing in this real slow, deep breaths, and I gradually figured out that that's what was bothering me. It was like he was pretending to breathe, but not actually doing it. His breaths were too even and deep, and all his movements were exaggerated, like his shoulders going up and his chest moving."

"I told him to identify himself, and he made this muffled noise. I moved the light up and I shit you not, this guy had no face. Just smooth skin. I freaked out, and I sort of fumbled my light, but I saw him move toward me but he didn't actually move. I don't know how to explain it, but one second, he was at the edge of the river and the next, he was five feet from me. I never looked away or blinked, it was like he moved so fast that my brain couldn't keep up. I tripped and fell on my ass and I could see this line open up on his throat. It stretched up to his ears, and his head tilted back and he smiled at me with his throat. There wasn't any blood, just this gaping, dark hole, and I swear he smiled at me with this gash in his throat. I got up and I ran as fast as I could back to camp. I couldn't hear him following me, but I felt like he was always right behind me, even though when I looked back, I couldn't see him. I calmed down when I got back to camp; the fire was still going and I guess that pack mentality of being with other people made me stop and breathe a little. I waited by the fire to see if he'd follow me there, but I didn't hear anything else for a few hours, so I went back to bed. I know it sounds weird, but the whole thing was just so surreal that it was almost like I immediately wrote it off as my imagination."

We were telling ghost stories one night before bed to scare each other and poke fun at whoever got creeped out. Most of the time, it's the rookies, but one woman told a story that actually managed to get under my skin a little bit, and I know the same was true for others. She said it was true, but then again, every ghost story told around a campfire is supposedly true. Somehow, though, I don't think she was making it up. It had that ring of truth that only really traumatizing events have.

She said that when she was a kid, she and her friend used to go out in the woods behind her house a lot. She lived in northern Maine, where there's a lot of dense, unpopulated national forest. She said the woods up there aren't like they are here. They're so thick in places that the trees block out the sun almost completely. She and her friend grew up there, so they weren't scared of being out there alone, but they did always maintain a sense of caution in certain areas. She said it was never really talked about, but they always knew not to go more than a mile or two beyond their homes. The adults never said why, but it was an unspoken rule that no one ventured out that far.

She and her friend made up stories about bears as big as houses that lived out there, and they used to scare each other by hiding and making growling noises while the other searched for them. She said one summer, there was a series of awful storms that blew down a lot of trees, and set one part of the forest a few miles behind her house on fire. Fire crews got it under control, but she said some of them came back not quite the same.

"It was like they'd been to war. You could tell who'd really gotten scared because they had the same look on their faces, I think it's called shell-shock. My friend and I said they were like walking dead people. They didn't smile or say anything if you went up to them, and most of them left town as soon as everything was over. I asked my parents about it, but they said they didn't know what I was talking about. Once everyone was told the woods were safe again, my friend and I decided to try and hike out to where the fire had been. We didn't tell our parents where we were going, and it was pretty exciting to think that we were disobeying them like that. We hiked out about two miles or so, and we started seeing burnt trees and stuff. I remember my friend got really upset because we found the skeleton of a deer curled up under a tree, and I practically had to drag her away. She wanted to bury it, but I didn't want her touching it because its antlers were weird. I can't remember why, I just remember thinking that there was something wrong with them and I didn't want either of us going near it. The farther we went, the more burnt everything became. Eventually, there were no standing trees, and it was like being on another planet. Almost nothing green, just brown and black everywhere. We were standing there, looking at it all, and we both heard someone shouting in the distance. I panicked because I thought it was my dad, and that he was going to tell me I was grounded. My friend broke off and went to hide behind a big rock, because she said she didn't want to be caught out here. Her parents had forbidden her to come out in the woods at all, and she'd lied and told them we were going to a movie."

"I followed her, and we kept listening. I could hear this voice getting closer, and I realized they were calling for help. I thought maybe it was some hiker who'd gotten lost and needed directions back to town. That used to happen all the time, so I was used to helping people out. I heard him following my voice, so I kept calling out until I saw him running in the distance. He got closer and I could see of his face was all red. I told my friend to give me her pack, because she had a first aid kit. She made this noise like she was grossed out, and she asked if I saw his face. I told her to shut up, and I jogged up to meet him. I stopped about halfway and when he stopped in front of me, I could see that his nose and lips and part of his forehead were all gone. It was like they'd been sliced clean off. He was bleeding bad, and I saw that the knees of his pants were red too. I took a step back but I was too scared to move much, and he grabbed my shoulders. It felt like I got a shock, and he jerked back. He started babbling, and I couldn't tell what he was saying, except that he kept asking how long he'd been gone. He asked me where "his unit," was, but I just shook my head. He looked me over and he saw my Walkman and screamed."

"He just kept babbling and touching his face, and I realized he wasn't wearing the right clothing. He had some kind of weird grey cloth jacket and almost formal pants on, and the jacket had these weird buttons and red borders on it. I kept shaking my head and I told him that I couldn't understand what he was saying. I went to open the first aid kit but he screamed again and said the only thing I could really understand."

"Don't touch me! You'll make me go back there!"

"After that, he ran off, and I could hear him screaming the whole time. When I couldn't hear him anymore, I turned around, and my friend was crying. I just turned around and started walking back toward town. She asked me over and over what had happened and who that was, but I didn't say anything. When we got home, I told her I didn't want to play in the woods with her anymore. We're still friends, but we don't talk about that guy. Not ever."

I'll update as soon as I'm able.