I think I stumbled across a monster in the desert. For context I am a national park ranger, and I work at Joshua tree in california. I have worked there for three years with my good friend jordan. Jordan is much more manly than I am, has a beard, long hair, and is tall. We have been in a little information building at the back of the park for two years. We were tour guides at the front of the park for a year, but we got in trouble for trying to race each other and see which group could finish the trails the fastest. We are at the far back and rarely see anybody because there’s barely any trails back here compared to the front of the park, where everyone usually hikes and camps, back it’s one or two trails and just desert.
Occasionally we will get one or two families coming into the building, usually asking where the bathroom is where the nearest trail is, but other than that we have no company, just us two. But this is where the weird part comes in. A ranger who was staying with us for three weeks told us stories about how rangers back here can see green lights miles away. He also told us that rangers would stumble across burnt bushes and Joshua trees in a circle, just out in the middle of the desert. He even told his own weird story, about how he was marking a new trail and came across these lizard tracks. These lizard tracks were as big as a human and he tracked them for a few miles before the tracks stopped and he couldn’t locate them anymore. He warned us that there might be aliens back here and if we go missing then everyone will know why.
I told myself that these stories were folktale and they weren’t true. I never really experienced something weird until a few weeks ago. Me and Jordan were arranging the new pamphlets for the park when a tall lady came into the building. She tells us that she and her son were hiking one of the trails when he said he needed to go to the bathroom and walked behind a huge rock for privacy. She took some pictures of the desert and after ten minutes she noticed that her son wasn’t back yet. She went around the boulder and he wasn’t there. She said that his backpack was resting neatly on a small stone and there were no other signs of him, like he vanished into thin air. She searched for him for a couple hours then came back to ask for help. We told her we would find her, packed up our stuff and went onto the trail.
We started at the boulder, nicknamed Lion’s face, because it looked like a lion roaring, and agreed that we should travel in zig zags to cover a wider range in a shorter time. Maybe he ran off and was scared of something, and if we covered the trail in zigzags we would be able to find more clues, than walking in a straight line. We would send the day searching and put the tent up at night because it was too dark and old to look for him. In the morning we would tear down the tent and keep searching for him, yelling out his name and searching for clues. Jordan said he would check how many miles we walked with the map he brought along him
On the second day the only clue we had was the singular footprint of man, and decided we should turn our direction to where the footprint was pointing. After that we found absolutely zero evidence. We thought that was weird because we would have to at least find a footprint because of the sand. But we had found nothing until the third day. While we were looking, Jordan stumbled across an orange tent. He called me over and I noticed that 1st. The tent was crushed 2. It looked like wet sand was on the tent, as if someone dug up wet sand and placed it over the tent. Jordan opened up the tent zipper and stuck his hand inside. He yelled and jumped back. “Jesus Christ, dude there are bones in that thing!” he ran to the nearest bush and threw up. I put on some gloves that I had stuffed in my pocket and prayed to God that the bones were mushy or had skin on them. I lifted the tent and poured the sand out. Sitting there in the middle of the sand pile were these bleached bones. They looked weathered and had been there for years. A white card was sticking out of the sand and I picked it up.
It was the kids driving license. I looked back at the bones. There was no way that these bones were his, they were bleached and looked too weathered to be his. He was only missing for three days. I stared at the bones for a little longer until Jordan called me over to him. “Look,” he said, pointing at the nearest bush. Sitting there nested in the dead brush was this little cluster of sticks. I noticed that it kind of looked like a person, a bundle of sticks as the head and and a stick going across the bundle, possibly the arms. I looked around and noticed that all these bushes had these little figures. I picked up the doll and Jordan started working on putting the bones in plastic bags. The entire time we were getting the evidence, I felt watched. It was as if something in the middle of the desert, miles and miles away, was staring straight into my soul, telling me that I shouldn’t do this and leave the bones where they were or I was going to get hurt. I asked Jordan if he felt the same thing. He said yeah and that we should hurry up. We actually quickened our pace on the way back to the information building, and during the entire time I noticed that Jordan’s eyes were dodging left and right, as if he was looking for someone or something.
We gave the evidence to the police and actually forgot about the whole incident until a few weeks ago. We were just chilling in the information room, trying to hide from the hot sun when I heard something on the window. I looked up and froze. Standing there was a man that looked like he was in his 20s. He looked like he had been in the desert for centuries, he was very dirty and his skin was cracked from the hot sun. But his eyes, the eyes were different. It was as if someone took the eyes of a goat and put them in a human’s eye sockets. He stood there, shielding his eyes and looking inside, at us. He stood there for a ew minutes before he just walked off into the desert. He didn’t go to his car, to trail, just a straight line into the desert. I told a higher up and they said they thought it was weird and if that ever happens again, to report it immediately. We are freaked out, but I kinda feel relieved because we will be getting a veteran ranger that will be with us for the next four months. I will see if I find anything weird and will report in the next few weeks