Park Rangers Reveal Strangest Stories On The Job

Buzz Feed

10 hours ago

Park rangers are essential to keeping our national parks safe, beautiful, and running smoothly. But when your "office" is deep in the woods or out in the desert, you're bound to see some things.
On a late-night scroll, I wound up on a couple of threads from rangers and park employees sharing the wild things they've seen on the job — and the stories were just too good not to share. From hilarious moments to life-or-death rescues to the completely unexplainable, here's everything they shared:
"Someone came into the visitor center wearing one of those realistic wolf head masks instead of a COVID-19 mask. Like the kind where the jaw moves when they talk. I looked up and saw this dude coming in and legit wondered if I was about to get robbed, but he just got a map and asked about birds and then left and took the mask off."
"Another time, somebody once dumped a bunch of live chickens in the woods, and my coworkers and I had to try to catch them. Lots of people were driving by, and they would see the park police car off to the side of the road with the lights flashing, and they'd slow down, all worried, and then they'd see us sprinting after chickens and start cracking up."—BoldlyGone1
"Warning, this is a bit long, but it is true. In the late '70s, I worked as a park ranger for a summer job while going to university in the fall and winter semesters. As long as there was no forest fire ban, we allowed campers to have campfires on their campsites. One wet Sunday morning, after a very rainy night, I was coming off the midnight to 8 a.m. shift. I was alone on duty in a park with over 200 campsites, something that wouldn't happen now. Around 7 a.m., I heard this god-awful screeching coming from the camping area."
"I ran over to find a guy rolling around in the dirt, with his friend trying to douse fire on his pants. They had not made kindling for their fire before the rain had started the night before. Instead, they had gotten drunk. Now, in the wet, cold morning, they wanted to start a fire to warm up and probably cook. They were probably still drunk. Drunk or sober, they were stupid. It was so wet that it was impossible to set fire to round chunks of firewood. So, one of these guys was spraying barbecue lighter fluid on the wet firewood when the other guy struck a match. Some of the lighter fluid had spilled down his nylon rain suit. When it caught fire, the plastic had melted into the guy's legs."
(Cont'd) "Anyhow, the guy's legs were burned pretty badly. The park is 50 km from the city, where the hospital is. I got the guy in the cab of the old 4x4 truck we used to haul picnic tables and outhouses around, and I beat it for the city. The truck was an old beater with no overhead lights to flash and no siren. I had the window down, no air conditioning, and the thing rattled like a bucket of nails. Keep in mind that there were no cell phones then, and we only had spotty VHF radio coverage in the park. There was no way and no time to call for an ambulance. It was down to me and the old truck."
"When I got to the city, I was going about 130 km/hr. I hasten to add that this was a summer Sunday morning, and there was zero traffic...except for a cop. I blew past him and did not slow. He turned around and chased me, lights flashing and a siren screaming. He chased me right to the emergency entrance of the hospital like that. He was at my door as I was getting out, and he was yelling at me, losing his mind. Until the smell hit him. The smell of the burnt skin and melted plastic was not something you wanted to smell again."
(Cont'd) "The camper guy had gone into shock and was pretty well unresponsive. I told the cop to hold on, I would be out to talk to him in a few minutes. I put the camper on my shoulder and carried him into the hospital emergency unit like he was a side of beef. (Hey, it was over 40 years ago, and I was in great shape back then.) The nurses got the doctor, and they started to work on the guy."
"A bunch of guys came running into the ranger station carrying their buddy with his pants partially pulled down, and he was bleeding. His buddies had dared him to sit on a barrel cactus, and of course, he had about 10-15 needles in his butt. We were 25 minutes from the nearest town and about two hours from the nearest hospital. The town had a rotating doctor at an urgent care center, but it was not really equipped to handle something like this. So we had to call in a medevac helicopter to pick him up. His buddies were freaking out."
—beachbear4life
"I wasn't a ranger, but I did work in Yellowstone for a summer. I once saw a woman egg her toddler on to pet a baby elk with the mother nearby. Pulled over and had to explain to her that Yellowstone wasn't a petting zoo, the animals are wild, and a mama elk is very protective and very capable of killing both you and your child if you get too close. She scoffed at me. People are insane."
"I was a facility officer in a backcountry park. This park is super isolated, we worked alone for 8-day shifts, and I would go days without seeing anyone during my days-long shifts at the start of the season. It's now much busier, but at the time, I'd actually ration my visits to the lighthouse to once per shift since they'd be my only human interaction and I didn't want to burn them out on me. Lol. From the cabin, I had binoculars that allowed me to scan the beach in case campers arrived, and I'd go check their camping tags. One evening, I was scanning the beach and I had to do a double-take."
"It wasn't the normal wolves/sea lions/elk/deer. Nope. It was a large group of nudists. I felt like a weird voyeur, so I put down the binoculars and hoped that if I gave them an hour or two, they'd want to put on clothes due to the ridiculous swarms of mosquitoes. NOPE. That was fun checking their camping tags."
(Cont'd) "I also had campers come report a dead (murdered) body that had washed up on shore on one of the other beaches in the park. It was really awful for those poor campers. I had to organize the police to come out and retrieve the body. It had been at sea for some time."
"My dad found a dead body in a suitcase when he was a ranger."
—TheReformedSanic
"One of my best buds from college became a ranger in the Southeast US. A few years back, he told me about an old married couple he had recently helped out. He had seen them come to the park several days in a row, and found out they were visiting from out west, and they had gotten engaged there decades prior. They had been searching for a spot they'd taken pics of where he popped the question, but were having trouble."
"After looking at the pictures and figuring out roughly where they were trying to get to, he escorted them in his vehicle, then hiked with them to where he thought it would be. They found it, and he left them there and went back to his station at the entrance. He said he got a weird feeling once he got back and felt like he needed to wait to see them whenever they left. Well, once it came time to lock up at night, he still hadn't seen them leave, so he reported it, left his assistant to wait at the shack at the entrance, and went back to where he left them."
(Cont'd) "He found both of them lying down, spooning along the bank of the river. Neither were alive. He called the cops. He went through the whole nine yards and then went home. The police were able to disclose to him their identities, but weren't sure of anything else initially."
"My cousin is with the forest service in the Montana/Wyoming area, and I decided to go up there with her to literally test the waters. She does hydrology and has to ride out to the middle of nowhere to test streams and snow runoff to ensure no contaminants. I thought that sounded fun and wanted to do a bit of a tour with her. We were going to have to camp out there for two nights, so we packed up all our gear in saddlebags or saddlebundles and started out."
"The first day and night were amazing. Beautiful scenery and amazing air quality. It really is so peaceful out there. Anyway, we started out on the second day, and my cousin said, 'You want to see something weird?' Of course, I said yes, so she led me on a bit of a side journey into this tiny little ravine."
(Cont'd) "We ended up traveling about two hours away from our actual path we had laid out. At the very end of this fold in the land, she dismounts and tells me to get off my horse, too. We tie them up in this gorgeous little clearing, and she tells me to follow this tiny wildlife path and bring our little rechargeable radio."
(Cont'd) "My cousin trails behind me as I do, and this wire, after coming straight up from the ground, is strung across limbs of trees, then back to the ground, then it snakes around rocks and finally deadends into an outlet. That outlet is mounted on the side of a desk. It looks like a schoolteacher's desk from when I was growing up, with a metal base and a pseudo wood/plastic top thing. No chair, building, nothing, just this outlet and desk."
"I am staring confused as all hell at this desk in the middle of a forest when my cousin takes the radio, pulls out the cord, and plugs it into the outlet. That fucker then lit up and started blaring static. The wire was being fed from somewhere. Now, the place where we were had no road access, no buildings for many miles, and no other people around. And yet, there was a live outlet. Weird as shit. No spooky jump scares or bodies, just one lone powered desk in the middle of the woods. I wish I had taken a picture of it."—Sand_Dargon
"Park ranger here. I work at a park just outside a metro area, 5,000 acres and a 1,500-acre lake. Super busy park, but we have some areas off the beaten path. Once, I stumbled on some creepy ass animal sacrifice stuff because I happened to follow the crows. You rarely have to worry about animals; it's the people we share this world with..."
"Not me, but my dad, who was a ranger. He said once he was out in the forest with one other ranger, and they had to camp overnight halfway to their destination. Well, that night they heard footsteps, many of them, outside their tent. Then, they heard at least 20 people scream, 'Get out!' Needless to say, they got the fuck out and radioed it in. The next morning, the cops went out and searched and found four skinned animals pinned to the trees around their campsite."
"I'm a ranger and work at a pretty remote desert park. This happened before I got there, but the other rangers I work with were there. They went to do a patrol during summer (our off-season) at one of our seldom-used campgrounds. On a patrol, our maintenance ranger found a burnt-out car in one of the sites. The desert is a weird place, so he just calls the sheriff and waits. Sheriff arrives, and it turns out there's a body in the driver's seat. With no arms and no legs. Just a torso and head. Burnt. Sheriffs just marked it as a suicide and removed the vehicle. We are close to Mexico and get a lot of illegal drug traffic, so I guess they don't even bother trying to solve those. Super sketchy."
—BeerAndOxytocin
"Ex-ranger here. We had a group of frat boys making way too much noise. We came by twice, and at the second stop, I told them, 'This is your last warning.' Not only is it rude for other campers to be so loud, but it's exceptionally dangerous. Everyone knows that the local mountain lions are attracted to loud noises at night, and these 'ghost cats,' as they are called, can creep right up on you without you hearing or seeing them. Whatever you do, you don't leave your tent tonight, and if you hear anything, don't make a sound. So, we went back to the station, grabbed a Lion pelt and the night vision goggles."
"Once they were all in their tents, we crept into the campsite and made fake lion tracks everywhere. We set up the lion pelt propped up over some sticks. The other ranger got out the PA and, from a distance, started doing fake lion calls, slowly getting closer. I pulled the Jeep forward like we were arriving on scene and got out. Turned on my mag light and illuminated the silhouette of the lion pelt. Because I was moving quickly, the shadow of the lion appeared as if it were moving."
(Cont'd) "At this point, the frat boys were losing it. The other ranger shouted, 'Stay in your tents!' followed shortly by 'She's coming around at us,' and then, 'There's another one!' and finally, 'Let's get the fuck out of here.' At that point, we turned off the flashlights, grabbed the lion pelt in the darkness, jumped in the Jeep, and sped off."
"I was the lone recreation ranger in a small district in southern Idaho. The nearest town from the guard station was about 1.5 hours away by car. After moving into the guard station, the solar power was not working, and I couldn't sleep for about a month due to various factors like bats in the cabin and something walking on the deck at night. The woods there always had an eerie feeling to them, unlike the Southwest Ponderosa forest that I was used to."
"About two months into the seasonal job, I started to hear something walking and scratching on the deck at night...perhaps even on the door. Now, this district was known for its badgers and beavers, so I didn't think much of it. But when leaving the cabin at night, I always had an eerie feeling like I was being watched. One night, I was returning from my weekly grocery run, and I had a bad feeling. At the time, I did not have my shotgun in the vehicle."
(Cont'd) "After stepping out of the vehicle, I looked to the right of the cabin, about 50 feet from my front door. All I could see were two eyes about 3.5-4 ft in the air. To say I freaked out was an understatement. I started yelling, 'Get the fuck out of here,' but the eyes only crouched down and inched closer. At this point, I could tell it was a large animal of some kind, definitely not a coyote. I tossed a piece of firewood in the general area, and the creature leaped back a bit but did not make a sound. "
(Cont'd) "That night, I drank about four IPAs and slept with my shotgun. In the morning, the trail crew came up. We found mountain lion tracks all over the porch, rocking bench, and compound leading back to the creek."
"After that event, I always heard the rocking chair move and someone or something walking on the porch, but never found any tracks after that point. Considering that it was always muddy up there, it was weird not to find any tracks. I've been stalked by mountain lions before and never had that eerie feeling like I did in those woods."—CloudGod13
"So my dad is a forestry technician, and this happened to one of his coworkers. They were up doing some sort of job in the very northernmost part of Ontario. Anyways, it was in the middle of the night, and she was half asleep and vaguely heard something outside her tent. Then she felt something push against her tent, and the zipper slowly opened. She opened her eyes and saw the head of a polar bear in her tent. Polar bears are far from the cuddly toys that you see, and they are known to be super aggressive and will hunt and eat people. She lay there paralyzed with fear, thinking that it was the end, and then slowly the bear retracted its head and left."
And lastly:
"I have so many of these, but I'll share my favorite. I have been a ranger in the USFS for almost fifteen years, but this took place about three years after I joined. We were getting calls about a lone wolf with a collar on hanging around a campsite — weird, since wolves aren't known to be in the area, but when you work in the field long enough, you start to realize anything is possible. No calls had mentioned violent behavior from the animal, though, thank god."
"I departed from the station around noon to check out the places where it'd been sighted. I wandered around for about three hours (no further calls during that time) until I took a break for water. I sat down, had a snack, drank some water, and got ready to go again when the thing was about 20 feet out, trotting near the treeline. It seemed friendly and had a collar, so I whistled to it, and it came over to me. Getting a closer look, I could see it wasn't a wolf. It was huge, but it was dark and didn't have the right body structure, though I could see why it'd be confusing from a distance."
(Cont'd) "I radioed in and reported that I had a dog with me. But as soon as I said I'd bring it in, the dog fucking took off. I went after it, and I swear it was a game of chase for at least five minutes as we steadily ran through the forest. (Also, please don't go running through the woods unless you know the area like the back of your hand.) The dog FINALLY slowed down near a rock bed/creek area and started pacing around a spot. I drew closer and didn't see anything off at first, then I noticed it — the overgrowth had almost disguised what appeared to be bones."
(Cont'd) "The bones were identified as a teenage male who died by suicide. He'd been reported missing in the area long before I became a ranger, and there'd been pretty much no hope of finding him. I spoke to his mom on the phone (she called to thank me personally), and she asked how I found her son. I mentioned the black dog. I thought I said something wrong since there was a pause on her side of the line."
"After I gave a couple of details about the dog, she quietly explained that her son, who struggled with making connections, sank into a deep depression after the death of his best friend...the very dog that'd led me to him. I think I spent the rest of the day stunned. I continue to be in disbelief, in a way. But I know what happened."—throwaway8242930
What's your wildest, creepiest, or strangest story while deep in the backcountry, woods, or desert? Let us know in the comments or in this anonymous form.
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
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