A lot of people join the national parks service to pursue what they think is their dream job– after all, they get to spend every day surrounded by nature and wildlife in the most beautiful places on earth. And for the overwatch crew, it is the ideal job–but only if you’re prepared for the weird phenomena that’s bound to happen when you’re miles and miles out of the way of civilization. It’s almost like reality is somehow altered in the forests; even the most skeptical rangers can tell you some bone-chilling tales about their rookie days while they lead you on night hikes through the endless pines and valleys:
• lúcio and tracer were leading a group of families on a hike through one of the more scenic valleys about a month ago, and it wasn’t going quite as well as they expected; there were a lot of young kids in the party, so they were forced to move at a painfully slow pace down the trail. It ended up with tracer determining that they wouldn’t be able to make it back to camp before sunset, so she decided to stay with the party while lucio would hike back to headquarters to get the rangers’ van and drive everyone back to the campground.
Before he left, one of the kids kept asking him about the “weird whistles” that were following them throughout the hike. Confused, lucio had smiled cheerfully and assured him it was just one of the many species of bird that live on the park grounds–nothing to be afraid of–but as he was trekking back to base alone, he heard a high-pitched warble coming from behind him once every few minutes. It was faint, but as time passed and the sky darkened, its volume increased steadily, as if whatever was making that noise was getting closer and closer.
When lúcio turned around for the last time, shining his flashlight on the path behind him, he swears on his life he saw a freakishly tall man–or at least a creature that looked like a man–with dark eyes, staring directly at him, making that same warbling noise, only he wasn’t puckering his lips like most people would when they whistle. instead, his mouth was wide open, like the noise was coming from his throat. lúcio didn’t even stop to question him as per protocol, he just turned around and made an olympic, land speed record-breaking dash for headquarters, managing to sprint from Bear Cliff to the main road in about two minutes, faster than anyone had ever done before him. (the previous record was held by mccree, who was able to run that path in about five and a half minutes. No one knows how the hell lúcio was able to run that fast without breaking the sound barrier.) Mercy thinks he just saw a lost camper and was experiencing an auditory hallucination due to dehydration or exhaustion, but to this day lucio insists he knows it was real. He wasn’t even tired at the time, being a seasoned hiker, and after all–how would that kid have heard the whistling too?
• if you’re looking for a particularly gory tale, just go strike up a conversation with hanzo or mercy. being the most experienced search and rescue rangers still on duty, they’ve seen their fair share of mauling victims, murdered campers, or people who just died of exposure–all horrible things, but ultimately things that still have a rational explanation. no one, however, can seem to explain one case that happened a little over ten years ago, when mercy was new to the team and still receiving training from hanzo.
They got a call one morning from a frantic young woman insisting that her parents were missing when she woke up that day. Sure enough, when they assembled a team and got to her campsite, one of the family’s two tents was shredded open, clothes and supplies strewn all over the place. Strangely, the daughter’s tent was untouched. Suspecting a bear attack, hanzo instructed mercy to treat the young woman for shock while he assembled a search team and some dogs to set out looking for the missing couple. The dogs were able to pick up a scent, but the trail only lasted about a quarter of a mile before it literally stopped cold. It was almost as if the couple had been walking, and just vanished on the spot in the middle of a mossy clearing.
Weeks passed, and no one ever found them; at least, until mercy spotted something flesh-colored at the base of a pine one day while leading woefully unprepared hikers back to headquarters to stock up on supplies. When she got closer, she saw the remains of a single human arm, which turned out to belong to the girl’s father. This finding seemed to confirm the bear attack theory, but when hanzo came to investigate, he realized the arm was miles away from the spot where the dogs lost the scent trail. furthermore, he noticed some strange soot markings on the fingertips– the same soot that covers the huge stone megalith everyone was so wary of. “See?” he had said to her. “This is what happens when you touch it.“
• mccree vows that he once saw a throng of startlingly bright lights spinning rapidly and making huge arcing paths back and forth across the sky while stargazing on a mountain summit with hanzo. He thinks they were extraterrestrial spaceships, or forest spirits or something. People would probably believe him if hanzo would corroborate this story, but that would first require that he willingly admit to stargazing with mccree.
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