fromthenorthwoods-blog

[fromthenorthwoods-blog]

Empty Night

               Recently I experienced something that I can’t explain, and not just because it may be of a paranormal nature. Literally, I just can’t explain it. I have absolutely no idea what happened or what may have happened, I just have my recollection to rely on. I’m not even sure how to introduce the experience, so I’ll skip the prelude.

               A few months ago, I lost my best friend to heroin. We’ll call him The Kid, because that’s what I always called him. We had grown up together, been closer than brothers, and considered each other some special hybrid of brother/friend/adventure companion. Since that night, the night that will forever be my Worst Night, something inside me has sort of retreated into its shell. I’m not withdrawn or  depressed or outwardly showing it, but it’s definitely something I’m doing a poor job of coping with internally. I’m not writing this as some sort of word therapy-the loss of my friend is integral to the story.

               Anyways, my method of dealing with loss has pretty much always been to go away inside and to go fishing a whole lot. There’s something calming and centering about being on a river with nothing but the trees for company that helps me to put life in perspective, and acts as a sort of cathartic balm for the wounded parts of my psyche. Naturally, when I lost my buddy, I began to fish like a man possessed.

               There are three spots we used to fish all the time, and each is more productive at certain times of day or in this case night. The spot in question always produced bass after dark for us, and I’ve spent many nights alone and with The Kid smoking, fishing, and listening to the sounds of nature in that spot. I’ve never once felt any sort of discomfort there (aside from the time an owl tried to eat one of our lures), and the night in question was no different.

               I was seated in one of those fold-out chairs on the bank, having just arrived and gotten my gear set up. I had two lines out, one with a live bluegill as bait and the other set with some corn in case a carp happened to swim by (unsurprisingly, the night was carpless). I had the radio on, and was listening the BBC’s overnight broadcast. I remember specifically they were discussing Uganda and I was looking up at the stars when it happened. The last thought I remember having was “Hey, Kid. Hope you’re doing well wherever you are, and I miss you so much.”

Literally everything went away. Literally. Everything.

For what felt like years, but could have been seconds or hours (though I know from my watch that it was about two or three minutes), there was nothing but Empty Night. The stars were gone. The river was gone, the sounds were gone, my physical form was gone. All that existed were my own thoughts and the Empty Night. My mind was fucking panicking. Panicked to the point where if I’d had access to my physical form, I’d have run from that river straight to my car and gotten out of there as fast as possible. Hell, I wouldn’t even take my gear, I’d just run. But nope, since I had literally no body, I could go nowhere.

               The next thing I knew, though I do remember being panicked and repeatedly thinking “This is what it’s like in the Threshold” (note- I have no idea why that words seems like it should be capitalized, but it does. Sorry, English majors!) I was right back into myself. Nothing had changed. I looked around, looked at my fishing rods. The line with the live bluegill was still moving as it would if a small fish were attached, so that was right and proper. The carp rod was motionless and unproductive, so no change there either. The river was still the river, and the water was still wet and somewhat cool when I splashed it on my face.

               I sat there for a few more minutes, mostly because I was trying to figure out what the hell had just happened to me. When nothing else out of the ordinary occurred, I began to slowly pack my rods and gear. I was almost anticipating another occurrence, or some other weird shit to happen, but nothing did. I packed and left without incident. I drove home in silence, because for some reason I couldn’t stand the voices on the radio.

               I didn’t even bother to take my gear in the house when I got home. I didn’t bother to go to bed. I laid on the couch and slept harder than I have in years, to the point where my fiancé thought I might be sick. I wasn’t, I was just more exhausted than I’ve ever been in my life. When I woke up 18 hours later I felt fine, and haven’t had an occurrence of that particular phenomenon since.

               If anyone else has any explanations for what may have happened, please let me know. I literally have no idea what it could have been.

Stay safe out there-

Northwoods

[fromthenorthwoods-blog]

The Woods, The Weirdness, and Staying Alive

First, let me make something abundantly clear: The biggest dangers in the wilderness are also the most mundane. I am 100% sure that a vast majority of woods vanishing, fatalities, and accidents are caused by natural things such as falling off cliffs, falling into sink holes, or simply wandering off trail and never being able to locate it again. Add to that the possibility of snake bites, mountain lions, bears, bee stings (if you have an allergy and forgot your epi pen), and freak storms, and it’s easy to see how someone could meet with misfortune out in the back country and meet with fatal consequences. 

That being said, there are definitely things in the wilderness that we neither know nor understand. A quick search of the interwebs will provide you with hundreds of stories about something “not feeling right” or “a low tone that made me nauseous/scared/paralyzed.” If you’ve read the posts below, you know I myself have had experiences I cannot explain, and I to this day have no idea who or what caused them (though I have my suspicions in the second case). 

There are ways to keep yourself safe from these dangers, and none of them involve talismans or mystical items of any kind. First of all, humanity advanced to ‘apex predator’ status because we hunt in packs. Use that evolutionary trait to your advantage by NEVER BEING ALONE IN THE DEEP WOODS. This is just good advice in general, because it’s easier to limp back to camp on a twisted ankle while leaning on a buddy that it is to hobble back leaning on a stick. A second way to ensure your own safety is to USE TECHNOLOGY TO EVEN THE ODDS. Humans cannot echo-locate. We compensate by using GPS units. We don’t have sharp claws or teeth, so we compensate with cold steel or hot lead. We’re not telepathic, so we make up for it with cell phones. If you’re going into the deep woods, make sure you bring a GPS TRANSPONDER, CELL PHONE, AND FIREARM. If you’re unable or unwilling to carry a firearm, PLEASE, carry the GPS and cell phone. 

In the same vein, NEVER INVESTIGATE ANY NOISES OR VOICES ON YOUR OWN. Realistically, don’t investigate them at all, but if you have to satisfy your curiosity, be armed and bring backup.

Finally, a last piece of advice with only anecdotal evidence. LET SOMEONE KNOW WHERE YOU WILL BE CAMPING, WITH EXACT GRID COORDINATES AS CLOSE TO ACCURATE AS POSSIBLE. One time, I didn’t tell anyone where I would be. I was gone for 5 days. When I got home, I found out my great-aunt had died while I was gone, but that no one knew where I was and couldn’t find me to tell me. It was kind of a bummer, my great-aunt had been a great lady and I would have liked to say goodbye to her before the end. 

Of course, these rules may be a bit of an overkill for a short jaunt through your local park, but they’re 100% necessary if you plan to spend any substantial amount of time in the deep woods. Be careful, be safe, and keep your eyes open. 

-Northwoods

[fromthenorthwoods-blog]

A Word Of Warning, Continued

As promised, this is the second story of facing a danger I could not identify at the time and have had no luck in identifying since. Well, that’s not totally true, since I have had several people tell me what they thought it was, and oddly enough they all said the same thing. I’ll tell the story first, and then tell you what I was told it was. 

Event #2-The Tabletops, Oklahoma, 2014- I have family that lives in one of the small towns that borders “The Tabletops”, a reportedly haunted area of the state that, according to legend, plays host to everything from Satanic covens, to witches, to werewolves and cults. Aside from the first and last on the list, I don’t believe in any of those things, so the Tabletops to that point didn’t hold the terror for me that it seemed to hold for locals. Besides, I knew of a flood control up there that held huge catfish and that my brother-in-law had permission to fish, and there was no way I was gonna let those fish go uncaught if I could help it. 

     My brother-in-law (we’ll call him Ty) has lived in the area his whole life and is very familiar with the stories of the region. He’s also a savage, and has very little regard for danger or his own safety, and so like me had disregarded these tales as the imaginings of bored kids and old geezers. He had not, however, disregarded what is a very real threat in that area: wild hogs. Those things are mean and aggressive, and we’d seen some very large (200-330 lbs) specimens in the area, so it was decided we’d each take a rifle and a sidearm with us. 

   After clearing our plans with The Warden (an affectionate name for my sister), we made the 20 minute trip into town to get bait, beverages, and cigarettes. Once arriving at the combination gas station/restaurant/bait shop and loading up on supplies, we went to the counter to pay for our purchases. Because this is a town of less than a thousand people, Ty knew the guy working behind the counter. Seeing our bait, he asked us where we planned to go. Ty replied, “A little flood control I know up in the Tops, on Old Man So-And-So’s land.”

 The guy nodded but didn’t reply, and seemed a lot less friendly as we walked out of the store. When I mentioned it to Ty, he said that this guy was one of those who believe the Tabletops is full of evil stuff, and not to pay any attention to it. Because I am an idiot, I complied and thought nothing else of it. If I had, I might have saved myself the scariest experience of my life to that point. 

Fast forward an hour, and we’re pulling up on this flood control. To get there, we’d taken a maze-like system of lease roads and rutted tracks, but the spot looked like it was worth it. A small stand of trees stood to the left of the pond, and a small well had been capped right in front of that patch of trees. The flood control was pretty clear, but the bugs and plant life we saw indicated that this was a healthy body of water. We could actually see the big catfish up near the bank, so we knew we were in for a good day. As we set up our rods and reels, Ty casually looked over to me and said “Oh, yeah, forgot to say. If you hear a voice that sounds like mine, but doesn’t yell your full name, ignore it. Pay it no mind at all, wait til it goes away.” 

 Now, I’ve heard stories from that area of Skinwalkers, yee naadlooshi, etc. Figuring Ty was trying to scare me, I did my best to look nonplussed while I lit a cigarette and tossed him a sarcastic thumbs up. He looked me dead in the eye and said “No, for real man. Ignore it.”

My first cast put his warning out of my head in moments. The fishing at this spot wasn’t so much good as it was phenomenal. Ty attributed this to the fact that, to his knowledge, only he and Old Man So and So had ever fished it. I attributed it to “who the hell cares” and simply proceeded to catch more fish in the span of four hours than I thought was possible. 

During that four hours, the sun had dipped into it’s twilight stage and we were getting low on bait. As we packed up our stuff, I heard a low, almost melodic voice coming from....somewhere. I didn’t know where or what it was, but it sounded a lot like a distant radio, so I wrote it off as just that. As we loaded our stuff into the crew cab of the pickup, I heard it again, and this time Ty did too.It was voices, but they sounded strangely familiar.  It was like there were people I knew out there, in that patch of woods, speaking to me underwater. Occasionally, they would get more clear and I could distinctly make out my name or Ty’s name in the babble. 

He didn’t look at me or the direction of the noise we heard. “Northwoods, ignore it. Ignore it. If you see it, don’t shoot it, don’t do anything. Ignore it.”

I did, until I couldn’t any more. What made me unable to ignore the sounds any more was the fact that I heard MY OWN VOICE calling out to Ty for help. The fact that we were armed to the teeth didn’t even enter our minds- after locking eyes for a second and seeing the pure fear in each other’s faces-we hopped in the truck and got out of there as fast as that engine would take us. 

To this day, neither I nor Ty will go back to that spot. I was asked to go back once by a family member who had heard the story, and the thought of it literally had me shaking. Last I heard, the farmer who owned it will not give anyone permission to be on the land, and has told Ty that he (the farmer) will never go out there again. 

What I Was Told It Was-For the record, I have never wanted to talk about this. I am not a person who is easily scared, and I have been in mortal danger many times. This is, without doubt, the scariest thing that had happened to up to that point (though scarier things have happened since-stay tuned for those). When prodded, I did speak to some tribal members and elders about it. They identified it as a Skinwalker, or “yee naadlooshi” or “naaglooshi”. According to legend, they can mimic voices and do so in order to lead people into the woods. The people it leads in there are never seen again, or if they are it’s usually in a post-mortem sense. Since I have no idea what else it could be, and since I have great respect and trust in the elders who shared with me, I tend to think they were correct in their assessment. Since hearing their stories, I’ve spent a good bit of time researching skinwalkers across the US, and most of the stories are very similar to what I experienced. 

Afterword-The Tabletops is a scary place, and there are a lot of weird things that go on out there. There are reports of skinwalkers, UFO’s, and demonic happenings across that whole area, but there are also very real and very scary crimes that go on out there. The two that most readily come to mind are the Jamison case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamison_family_deaths) in which a whole family vanished after a series of strange events and were recovered deceased months later and the story of Paul and Melody Jones (http://www.reddirtreport.com/oklahoma-mysteries/cold-case-missing-and-murdered). Paul was a cousin of mine, and though there are theories, his murder has never been solved and his wife has never been seen again. Rest in Peace, Paul, and may a ray of sunshine warm you as you cross over. 

[fromthenorthwoods-blog]

The First Post: A Word of Warning

     Hey y’all. So for the first post of this blog, I figured I’d get something really unpleasant out of the way right off the bat: be VERY careful when you venture into the wilderness. Now, that may sound like some really obvious information, but there’s more to it than just “being safe”. Obviously, you always want to know where you are (GPS or a really good map/orienteering skills are key for this one), have food and water, have a means to start a fire, etc. 

     For those of you who have even a small amount of camping experience, these seem really obvious, and they are. There are, however, dangers that we as humans cannot fully explain or quantify, and they’re showing up more and more often in the wooded and wilderness areas of the world. While there are many great publications about the more esoteric dangers in the wilderness (David Paulides’ “Missing 411″ is a standout), I’m only going to talk about the two phenomenon I’ve personally experienced. 

Event #1- North Country of NH, about ten miles from anywhere: A good friend (I won’t name him, but we’ll call him Ranger, as in “Former US Army Range”r) and I had hiked into a very remote pond nestled in the White Mountains, where we’d been told there were huge trout that were pretty much untouched by other anglers. This pond was about an hour hike in from the nearest Forest Service road, and easily met the criteria to be defined as “wilderness”. As we hiked in, following the route we’d marked on the map, I noticed Ranger’s hand resting on his open-carried sidearm he kept on his right hip. Given Ranger’s former profession, I wrote this off to tactical preparedness and kept hiking.

After a pretty straightforward walk and a quick break to drink water and reorient, we found ourselves at the pond. Once there, we spent another half hour looking for a suitable camping site. Like many remote northern ponds and lakes, this one was surrounded by thorns, brambles, and undergrowth, but one can usually find a clearing, especially in areas where others have camped before. So, as usual, me andRanger start looking for a clearing. It wasn’t long before we found one, but there was something....wrong about this place. 

The ground was almost perfectly level, with no undergrowth, no stumps, no grass. Just a clearing covered in dead pine needles. As I looked around and opened my mouth to say something to my Ranger, he raised his hand in a fist, the military signal for silence. Straining my ears, I did my best to hear what he was hearing. After about 45 seconds it occurred to me-there was absolutely nothing to hear. The birds, the wind in the trees, the rustling of leaves....all gone. That silence was like a stifling blanket over that clearing. Ranger at this point drew his weapon, and began to walk backwards out of the clearing, his eyes scanning the entire clearing for some perceived danger. I followed suit and produced my own weapon, also walking backwards with my senses on high alert. 

As soon as we left the clearing, the noise came back. Birds, bugs, wind, the typical woods noises. I looked at Ranger, wanting to ask what the hell had created such a weird feeling. The look on his face told me it was time to go. I’d never seen this man bat an eye for any sort of danger, but now he looked genuinely concerned. I asked him what was up, if we should keep looking for a clearing or make ourselves scarce in these parts. His reply chilled me to the bone. 

 “Listen Northwoods, I think we need to be gone from here most ricky-tick. There’s something out there, and it doesn’t want company. I know what I can do, and I know what you can do, but I have no idea what the thing watching us from that fuckin’ tree line could do.” He never would elaborate on what it was he’d seen, but to this day flatly refuses to go anywhere near that pond. 

**The second story is even longer, so in the interest of avoiding text walls, I’ll publish that as a stand-alone post, along with some things I’ve learned about “wilderness avoidance of scary shit”.**

[fromthenorthwoods-blog]

Welcome to the North Woods

Hi everyone. If you’re reading this, you’re either a friend of mine or just interested in what I have to say. Either way, thanks for taking the time to read this.

This blog will most likely be a once-or-twice a week effort covering topics such as conspiracy theories, politics, society at large, and practical stuff like camping and fishing. At first glance, these may seem unconnected-trust me, there’s a method to my madness. If you’ve taken the time to read this far, thanks again. I’ll be posting my first weekly post shortly.