This Story has scary parts.
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 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.
Boy Scout Trail