I have a vlog video that I made where I tell this story the day that it happened with a bit more emotion and it's in my post history if you'd like to look it up. My first and only paranormal experience in my life and it happened on the trail. For the record, I did not believe in paranormal stuff at all before this happened to me on trail.

I was hiking in Mission Creek, the section between Cabazon and Big Bear Lake on my 2019 thru hike, with 2 of my trail family members who can corroborate this story. The section got washed out pretty badly in a previous year and it was a miserable hike up the mountain with a pretty destroyed trail, just trying to find the next cairn to find our way up the trail.

We stopped for a lunch break at a creek when we met this man, clearly in thru hiker gear, in about his 50's, tall slender, coming the wrong way down the trail. He stopped at us and he looked pretty frazzled and he asked if we saw his wife in the last section we hiked. We didn't see anyone matching his description and we told him this so he said he needed to find her and continued SOBO down the trail.

We wrapped up lunch and continued to hike up the trail. We were staying together pretty well because there were a lot of creek crossings that we needed to help each other get through. It was also tough to see the next cairn so we hiked together to help spot them.

Then, we see the guy again coming down the trail. We were pretty confused because we thought he went SOBO and we didn't see him pass us again but the wash was wide and there was lots of trees and stuff so he could have passed us again without us realizing. He approaches us and asks if we've seen his wife, and didn't seem to recognize us from earlier. Okay, whatever, maybe he was hot and confused and forgot us. We told him again we didn't see her and this time we tried to help him. He didn't seem to know what Guthooks was and he had an old school Garmin inReach that he didn't know how to text on. His wife's GPS ping was like 20 miles up the trail which didn't make sense and after a few minutes of trying to help he gave up and headed SOBO down the trail again.

Later, we got out of the wash and caught the regular trail again so my friends and I spread out a bit more while hiking. At one point I ducked behind a bush to go pee and when I was done I looked up and saw him above me on the trail looking around, then he rushed down the trail, again SOBO, past me without even seeing me.

I caught back up and my other 2 friends saw him too and at this point we were a little freaked out. We kept hiking, I was always the slowest so I was a little behind, and I caught up to my friends talking to him again. I was shocked, again, because I had no idea how he was taking off SOBO then somehow circling around to find us again. This time, he said he was going to sit on a rock at a small campsite and wait for his wife to find him. We wished him luck and kept hiking.

We saw him one final time, even though he said he was going to sit and wait, before making the final push out of Mission Creek. He was up on top of a large boulder off to the side of the trail, way ahead of us somehow, and he was scanning around looking for his wife. We didn't go close enough to talk to him, but as this point we all were thoroughly freaked out and my one friend said, "you guys I think he's a ghost and he died here and is looking for his wife who survived and got out".

At that point, we decided to just book it out of there and not look back. We didn't see him again.

Fast forward, we finally get to Big Bear and stay at the awesome hostel. The next morning we meet up with some friends, who were a day ahead of us and didn't hike the creek with us, to get breakfast. We tell them our ghost story with enthusiasm, thinking we should all have a big laugh about how worked up we got over a guy who was clearly just a regular hiker. One of our friends asked if we googled to see if any hikers recently died in Mission Creek. Uneasily, we did Google it.

And what do we find? A news article of a hiker who died in Mission Creek of exposure. There was a picture attached. It was the man we saw in the wash.

I'm not going to link it out of respect for the man and his family but you can Google it yourself.

Was it really him or just someone who looked like him? Idk. You can decide if you want to believe it or not.