As reported by a volunteer for the
Southern Arizona Rescue Association.
"In all my years of reporting on the outdoors, no story stands out as clearly as this one.""Perhaps it's because I was in charge of the rescue team the ghost "summoned."
Perhaps it's because I still believe there's only one way the lost hiker negotiated that steep series of cliffs, on a moonless night, about a dozen years ago."
They had received a call to look for a lost hiker on Finger Rock Trail, a popular area just north of Tucson.
The hiker had very little experience, no food, water, or warm clothes. My search team found him early the next morning. He was confused, dazed, actually mad at the friends that left him behind, and standing unharmed at the base of some of the area's steepest terrain. He was nowhere near the trail he had wandered away from the day before.
He explained his older brother found him the night before -- just as it was really getting cold -- leading him down the treacherous cliffs in the dark without flashlights, and complaining the whole way about younger brothers who borrow clothes without asking.At dawn his brother "disappeared to get help."
We arrived shortly thereafter, and as we collected an extremely detailed description of his brother to forward to other rescue teams still in the field, he said: "I don't know why he came back? He's been dead for five years you know."
This is a true story, and just as real as the chills it still sends down my spine.
Posted to
One year at summer camp, I was telling a bunch of the younger Scouts the story of "Wood Badge Jim" who used to do adult training at Boxwell Scout Reservation for many years.
Ol' Jim got very ill at the end, and when he wrote out his will he specified that he be cremated and his ashes be scattered next to AkersLake on the Reservation.
Fine and good, but the Council wouldn't give permission for various reasons.
That didn't stop his friends.Two of his long-time cronies took a shiny metal container that looked like a thermos out toward the lake one day and when they returned, whatever was inthe canister was gone.We all know they scattered the ashes, though they could never say so.
Ol' Jim used to do security patrols at night, going walkabout with his flashlight turned off to make sure Scouts weren't out after curfew.And right after that fateful trip to the lake,
people started reporting hearing the crunch of Wood Badge Jim's boots at midnight as they walked to the waterfront.You say, "Hey Jim, what'cha doing out there?"
He'll answer, "Nothing at all!"
Problem is, by this time in the story some older scouts that should have known better were listening mesmerized to the tale.I couldn't believe that I was suckering them in too!
Of course the joke is sprung when you take them out at night and have them yell "Hey Jim, what'cha doing out there??"You listen for a bit and say,
"See, I TOLD you he'd say nothing at all!"
That night, however, I was feeling the grip of my story and said in a low voice, "Look guys, I have to walk to the waterfront.Will you come with me so I don't have to go alone?
We'll walk with our flashlights turned off."
They all agreed! So we headed out.
Now here's where it gets REALLY STRANGE.
At the darkest point along the walk, surrounded by pines so thick you could hardly see the stars, we heard the crunch crunch of boots on the gravels.
"Somebody's gotta say it," I whispered,” Otherwise we'll all be jinxed!" Finally one of the older boys half-shouted, "Hey Jim, what'cha doin' out there?"
Ready for this?
"Oh, nothing at all!" a man's voice said.
The boys shrieked, flashlights came on, and they ran back to camp. If there had been a tree in the way, I swear they would have gone THROUGH it rather than around it.
Hank Farley*came up into the circle of my flashlight."Hey John, how did you know it was me?"
"Just lucky I guess."
That would never happen again, not in a million years!But who knows, it could be that Wood Badge Jim was watching from the trees and smiled.
*(Name changed from Jim Farley to ‘Hank’ to improve story clarity)
Story from John Burkitt