“Subject Deceased”: 35 National Park Employees And Rescue Officers Share Their Scary Job Stories

As a kid, my parents took my brother and I camping in an Apache pop-up trailer. One trip, we went to Yellowstone National Park.

Per the warnings, we took our ice chest into the trailer each night.

. . .

One night, I heard something scrape the door. Didn't think anything of it...

The next morning we got up to see a bunch of people looking at our door. Came outside to find three six-inch-long black marks that were most likely a bear; luckily the creature did not puncture the door's flimsy metal.

I went backpacking for 3 days with some friends like January 1st of this year. First night I was there I was sleeping in my 2 person tent with one of my buddies and I started to hear something walking outside of the tent around 4am, I think “it’s probably just some animal there are elk everywhere who knows but I’m safe” I try going back to bed but it sounds like what ever is out there just keeps pacing the tent back and fourth, I turn my head so the back is facing the corner of the tent and it felt like there was something moving it’s face into the tent trying to smell me, I stay very still hoping whatever is there goes away, then all of a sudden it stomps and just misses my head, I remain still and get the feeling of it moving it’s head in again, I quickly elbow it but nothing was there and I heard no more noises after that not even running if I spooked it, I grab my pistol that is in the other corner and wake my buddy up and tell him the situation, I open the tent and look outside, nothing. I still have no clue what that could have been and wished I opened the tent when it was pacing.

I was a backpacking guide and skills instructor for a therapeutic wilderness program. I basically took at risk youth on backpacking expeditions. We had a ton of weird experiences.

This one still bothers me. I was reminded of it by the mystery of the staircases in the woods.

I was leading an expedition over the Devils Elbow from our main base camp into Panthertown Valley. We had decided to spend a day on a nearby detour to some waterfalls.

We’d seen two so far and were deep into a bushwhack looking for a third one. We were struggling through a thicket of briars and brambles when suddenly everything clears. No trees, no bushes, no briars... only an overgrown grassy clearing. Dead in the middle was a rusted old Ferris wheel.

It wasn’t huge, probably only 30ft high and obviously build for smaller children. It was rusty and sun faded with tall grass grown up around its base. We just stood there in silence, unsure of exactly how to process it. There was no reason for that to have been out there. Somebody, at some point hauled that thing in piece by piece and assembled it there. The question is why?

I’ll go ahead and plug my sub here, as it was inspired by the S&R creepypasta. You’ll find more like this there.

r/backwoodscreepy.

My aunt and uncle once found a person frozen solid on Gasherbrum II.

Hiked past a full wicker living room set (coffee table, sofa, arm chair) out in the middle of nowhere in the desert miles from any form of civilization. I was bummed that it was still early into my hike because it would have been a great lunch spot.

Worked at a summer camp for a while as a teen. While walking towards the staff cabins we see a dark figure peering into one of the windows. My buddy and I walk over and see its some dirty looking dude like he just crawled out of the wetlands bordering the camps. We say hello and the dude looks at us and books it into the wetlands.

Pretty sure it was a homeless dude, later that summer another one was caught sleeping in one of the campsites a day before the kids arrived and we had to do walk around each site looking for hobos from there on out.

I worked for a pizza place in Yosemite National Park. This one kinda off seeming guy came in and asked for mushrooms on his pizza. But like, not just mushrooms. Demanded the thing was absolutely smothered in mushrooms. He told us to remake it twice because there were not enough mushrooms. By the time it was satisfactory for him it was inedible for most people. National Parks attract some weird ones.

Hiking way off trail in the Tetons, stopped for a breather and then heard the sounds of something big walking through the fallen leaves: CRASH CRASH CRASH CRASH. Like, clearly footfalls. Sounded like something heavy, elk or grizzly size - I could hear branches snapping when it stepped on fallen branches. But the thing was, I couldn’t see it! There was nothing moving anywhere around me and I had a pretty good line of sight all around.

I just sat very still looking all around while it went CRASH CRASH CRASH CRASH, until finally it walked away. It was totally like there was an invisible (but very audible, lol) ghost walking around me.

All I could think afterwards was that maybe there was a little gully close by that I hadn’t seen, and it was walking in the gully. There were a lot of fallen trees and though it looked like mostly level ground, the Tetons generally do have gullies & depressions. Maybe a couple of tree logs were hiding a gully, idk.

I still tell people about the “invisible elk” that I met, lol.

Worked at a National Monument in the middle of nowhere Oregon one summer. As in, population of 7000 for the entire county. One night, my friends and I were driving back from a late game night on the highway through the monument. It was around midnight, so absolutely pitch black except for our headlights and literally no one else for miles (monument is day use only). We get to the intersection in the gorge, and all of a sudden see a car stopped, lights off, in the middle of the highway. We got closer and saw a guy slumped over the steering wheel. My friends were talking about getting out to see if he needed help, and I said hell no let’s get out of here.

We drove out of the gorge to where we had service, and called the police. I found out later that it was a DUI and he had his young daughter with him. I am both very glad we did not stop to try and help and glad we called the police. He was in a place where someone coming from the other direction could have easily hit him because it was so dark and the roads are so narrow and windy.

TL:DR - stopped car in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere.

One of our properties has an abandoned hunting shack on it. My coworker and I decided to check it out to see if it was creepy, and it wasn't. No vandalism, due to being on private property deep in the woods, just some hangers and boxes labeled "files'. We left, and made sure to shut the door tight so animals/bugs wouldn't get in.

We passed the shack the next day in our buggy, and the door was wide open, but the screen door was shut. No one goes on this property and hunting has ceased there.

I was out climbing in the Rockies around Banff, Canada with some friends. It was a nice, normal day and everyone was just working on their routes. It was a quiet area with only a few routes so it was just the three of us out there. All of a sudden a loud trumpet/ deep air horn kind of noise breaks the silence. It goes off a couple of times.

No idea what it was, never heard it before, never heard it again.

I worked at a national park for about 4months when I really needed money. It's a big group of lakes and a few caves (I'm gonna describe it like that since I'm not okay with saying the real location) , 2 months in and another cave entrance was discovered.i don't mean a big cave but a small water cave. Knee deep. When I hear about it I went to go check it out beafor with got its own little path to it and all that. It was pretty boring but the next day a few workers came to ad a path to the location. They discovered a body of a man in his 40s. He fell from a cliff that is a popular photo area, was probably alone on the trip. Nobody noticed , I didn't see any of it but I heard that he completely decomposed and and there where just bones.

I've told this story before but didn't really get an explanation.

My husband and I were hiking in jasper park, Canada. We were talking and passing other hikers every 15-20 minutes or so. We got to a part of the trail that reaches the peak, and then slowly starts to move down the side of a foothill and the trail is on the side of a slope.


We hadn't seen anyone in maybe 30 minutes. All of a sudden the entire earth started to shake and there was a thunderous noise. We both squat down together and looked frantically around, trying to find the source of the noise but we saw nothing and heard nothing like branches breaking. I thought for sure it was an elk or something, but if there was an animal, it would have been on the trail either ahead of us or behind us.

We started to make loud noises and I started cracking two rocks together. We kept doing this until we saw another couple hikers about 15 minutes later. We asked if they heard or felt anything and they said no, so we warned them that there may be an animal on the trail ahead.


It would be nice to know what it was.

I live next to a national park. As in, you go to my back fence, hop over it, and you're in the park. It's a pretty well travelled one, I usually feel perfectly at ease in there because I'm in Australia, so worst I have to worry about is snakes. No bears, no mountain lions, and we're old hat at dealing with spiders so they're no big deal.

One night I was asleep at home, in bed, when I heard something large sniffing under my window. It was crunching around in there, grunting loudly. I have never heard anything like it before or since.

All I can think is maybe it's a wombat, but we don't get them around here... not a clue.

I’m not a park ranger but I did have to get rescued by them last week!

We waited in the woods for them to find us for about 3 hours just after sunset. Intermittently, we kept hearing this creepy wailing noise in the distance, but not far enough away for comfort. My best guess is that it was cars driving over a bridge in the road just across the creek we were trapped on the wrong side of.

So it wasn’t anything dangerous, but it was kind of unsettling until we were able to figure out what it was.