Category: THE FOREST DARK LOGBOOK

The Forest is often seen as a symbol of the unconscious. It’s used as a metaphor for entering the unknown: “In the middle of our walk of life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost”.
Dante, The Divine Comedy

Transformation is usually part of the story. The hero enters the forest and discovers something about himself. Luke Skywalker meets his father in the forest. Often the hero is tested. Sometimes he doesn’t survive the confrontation with the unknown.

This is a very common interpretation for many stories, particularly fantasy. Indeed it seems that nearly every movie or novel like the Lord Of The Rings fits into this pattern.

Isn’t it a bit too easy to say that even the old stories about the forest deal with an encounter with the unconsciousness? If we could not come up with simple rational explanations we say it’s all psychological.

These interpretations are certainly true to a large extend of fiction and some other creative productions since the forest got established as kind of a metaphor for a long time. Writers might introduce the forest as symbol for the unconscious even purposely, since the reader already knows about the metaphorical meaning of the forest.

But, aren’t we thinking in circles? Because the forest is used very often as a symbol it doesn’t mean necessarily that it works the same way every time. There are endless real forests in this world and not everything is related to man. And because some movies and stories repeat the same concept with the same meaning again and again we can’t say that the forest is a symbol in general for encounters with the unknown self and that even if you enter the forest in the real world you meet your own unconscious. No. There are different stories here and perhaps another truth.

It’s indeed a bit narcisstisic if we interpret anything in the outer world as part of our own inner psyche. What if the forest has a life of its own? The forest might have some sort of deeper meaning but it isn’t necessarily related to man.

The Forest Dark is sometimes said to be an archetype.

It’s incredibly difficult to come up with a proper definition for archetypes, a term which is used very often, but often people mean very different things when they speak of an archetype. C.G. Jung had a very specific idea about archetypes and wrote a book about it. But even with studying the huge volume of Jungian readings it’s not easy to explain what an archetype exactly is.

There is an interesting aspect here, when we not only think of archetypical images of so-called living agencies, which have a living on its own in the human psyche. There is one interpretation of archetype which resembles Plato’s idea of the eternal “forms” – something which cannot seen in itself but is expressed in many variations (there are endless variations of tables but only one basic idea what a table is).

According to Plato the forms or the archetypes exist in an intelligible realm. “In the Phaedrus the Forms are in a ‘place beyond heaven’ and in the Republic the sensible world is contrasted with the intelligible world in the famous allegory of the cave…Socrates postulated a world of ideal Forms, which he admitted were impossible to know” (Wikipedia).

In other words the archetypes or the forms exist in the Otherworld. Our world is a corruption of the real world. What we are seeing are shadows of the real thing.

If we translate the example of the table we might say that there are endless variations of forests but there is only one ideal forest, which is not part of our own world. We cannot see it in itself but we can develop a sensibility for the “Forms”, we might feel them and artists can create images of its various aspects. We long for the ideal image, maybe the luminescent forest in Avatar was in some way an artistic expression for our deepest wishes.

Like with many other things we are in danger of losing the idea of the forest as more as we cultivate the last resorts of this planet and industrialize the forest. That’s maybe why we are drawn sometimes to the wilderness, we want to remember what we have lost (why do we travel so much, looking for the perfect landscape and never become satisfied?).

It’s not necessary to reinterpret the idea of the forest as a symbol of the unconscious, but remember one thing: if you are deep in a Forest Dark and you can’t see much because it’s a moonless night your reaction is usually not a journey to the inner self. Instead your senses get sharpened. Survival instinct awakes. You want to know who else is there when you hear the many noises between the trees. You calculate how far you away from civilization, and you ask when you have taken the wrong path.

That’s maybe the important aspect here: the forest is also a symbol or an archetype with both positive aspects since you find beauty (and sometimes something to eat) but also troubling aspects as a zone where we don’t know what’s really going on. Maybe this is the important aspect of the archetype – the forest is the place where we can get lost, but not only in the depths of the own psyche but in a sense that we become aware that we don’t know a lot, that our very idea of reality could be shattered any time. We don’t see the forest for the trees. However, rather than becoming repressed or even depressed the Forest Dark as archetype makes us active in a way of becoming alert, and in the end we learn that we need to explore if we want to survive.

In some sense things could be seen the other way around: the forest is not so much part of your inner psyche but it can be something which enters your life from the outside – by walking through the forests of our world we get in touch from time to time with agencies, which exist in another realm but radiate their energies from their world into our own, even into our deepest self. We become aware of creations which belong to another plane of existence.

And sometimes it means not literally walking into the forest to get into a situation where we don’t see the forest for the trees. Like Dante Alighieri said there are moments in life where we found ourselves in a maze and have lost directions. It may be a result of our own decisions but not necessarily.

I have to admit that I am not an exception from the rule, and if I create a scary story set in the woods enounters with inner demons or some dark stuff from the unconscious is always a promising path. However even with this concept we should not rule out intrusion from the outside – think of astronaut Bowman’s treacherous reality in 2001 with a virtual world set up by aliens. If there is somebody out there who knows our deepest self, what if he could create these encounters with the darkest sides of the unconscious?

“n., v. awed, aw•ing. n.
1. an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, or wonder produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, etc.
2. Archaic. power to inspire fear or reverence.
3. Obs. fear or dread.”

(From The Free Dictionary)

“Blessed is the man that senses awe always, and he that hardens his heart will fall into evil”

Aramaic Bible In Plain English

Neuropsychologist and positive psychology guru Pearsall defines awe as an “overwhelming and bewildering sense of connection with a startling universe that is usually far beyond the narrow band of our consciousness” (In Awe: The Delights and Dangers of Our Eleventh Emotion).

Awe seems to be a mix of strange and contradictionary feelings. Even there are many definitions it seems difficult to exactly express what we exactly mean by “awe”.

It’s something which obviously cannot grasped easily by the intellectual mind. Maybe it is easier to understand if we share information about “awe inspiring experiences”.

Even most of us can’t tell us what exactly a feeling of awe is it seems to be worth to think about awe. It’s not like horror or pure fear, it’s more a mix of fascination, fear and more. My impression is that if you are drawn to something beyond you know you are unconciously looking for the sensation of awe. Our drive to travel towards the most extreme points of our planet or to walk alone into the wilderness might have to do something with it. There aren’t many sufficient explanations why people are purposely looking for danger, why are they getting too close to an erupting volcano or diving into waters full of sharks.

Some mountain climbers claimed they do their exhausting and neck-breaking climbs because they want to find “themselves”. Consequently this means they don’t really know who they are.

So, awe seems about something which is connected with some sort of insight. It’s not necessarily about yourself but also an experience which leads to a new understanding of the world.

Maybe awe is a primal feeling or sensation which happens when you become aware of the otherworld. It’s happening when you stand in front of the dark gate and what is usually behind a veil becomes visible for a short moment.

We’ve heard the call and sometimes we get what we have been looking for all the time.

The connection of the feeling of awe with mind challenging experiences like sightings or near death experiences is obvious.

However, does the feeling of awe lead to true insight? Our big problem again is how to distinguish between projection, delusion and the truth.

Here is one more quote from the above mentioned book: “6. Awe results in a sense of a severe challenge to our ‘mental set,’ resulting in the need to decide between ‘accommodating’ the awe experience through creating new ways of thinking, feeling, believing, and behaving; or ‘assimilating’ what happened by briefly enjoying it and returning back to one’s prior way of thinking and being”.

Pearsall emphasizes the life changing aspect, which again is also true for otherworldly encounters. It isn’t said if the person who had the experience is becoming more joyful or more fearful. We don’t know if we have an awe inspiring experience what it could exactly mean to us. Mostly this seems to be about seeing the world in a different way. Scientists found that people who had awe inspiring experiences are experiencing time in a different way (a thesis expressed in the article “Awe Expands People’s Perception of Time, Alters Decision Making, and Enhances Well-Being” by
Melanie Rudd, Kathleen D. Vohs and Jennifer Aaker”).

The otherworldly encounters doesn’t necessarily mean some sort of enlightenment. Maybe there is a very ambiguous aspect here. One definition of awe was “Archaic. power to inspire fear or reverence”. And being blessed by sensing awe always could be also interpreted as some sort of awareness or that being alert is important, even it’s true what the scientists say that awe inspiring experience in some cases often enhance our well-being.

The phenomenon of “awe” fascinates me because of it’s not a simple feeling, it’s the ambivalence, which makes it interesting, particularly for any movie project. Stephen King wrote once that he thinks that many writers and artists working in the fantasy, science-fiction or horror genre kept a “sense of wonder”. Usually we loose our sense of wonder when we grew up. Seeking awe inspiring experiences or the attempt to create an awe inspiring experience for an audience as a writer or artist might represent our desperate and secret wish to get back childhood feelings, which had been long lost – even these feeling might have to do with primal fears and horror. It might be also a reason why people enter the dark forests of our world; sometimes we are looking for the monster which both fascinates us and terrifies us in the same moment. We want to see what’s hiding in the darkness, we’re afraid of the noises in the middle of the night in the empty house but we don’t want to go away. We could escape the storm but we follow the twister instead. We want to know what’s lurking inside the dark cave. Sometimes it’s the strange moments in life where we really feel at home.

Imagine you ended up on the other side. You might be dead in the normal world. But you still can see the living. They cannot see you. You can’t make them aware that you still exist. You see their sorrow, you see them getting into danger. You want to warn them, but you can’t. They deny that you still exist. You have become invisible. What if you could change that?

The idea of an intermediate realm is an idea, which exists in many cultures. In this realm the soul often doesn’t know what happened. The idea was used in famous Hollywood movies like “Ghost” or “Always”. In the intermediate realm of Hollywood a guide usually appears then who leads the person on his individual journey towards heaven. However in many reports and stories people are caught for a long time in the intermediate realm and help never comes. Almost every ghost story depends on the concept of an intermediate realm. I was always intrigued of the idea that there might be some people who are able to come back from this other realm of existence. It has been often discussed if this is possible. Accounts of near death experiences suggest that people returned from the intermediate realm. Some cultures believe that shamans could enter the intermediate realm and come back after they “did their job” on the other side. In ancient time this was obviously a common idea. Think of “Orpheus”. Eastern traditions offer even more distinct ideas about an intermediate realm. The Tibetan Book Of The Dead (Bardo Thodol) gives advise for appropriate preparation before entering the intermediate realm. The intermediate realm is seen as an interval between death and rebirth. The name for the realm is bardo and it is a state of consciousness.
What we also know is that some cultures had rituals and ceremonies to prevent the person who died to get caught in the intermediate realm. Sacrifices were made, if the person was a king or leader of a tribe monumental megalithic tombs were built and a set of rules was set up. There were different reasons for these traditions. Empathy for the deceased was one reason; they don’t want to live with the idea of a person caught in the intermediate realm suffering for an eternity. However there are also records of huge fears that the person would return somehow and haunt the living. This fear has become an important idea in many ghost stories. You shouldn’t wish that the person does really come back from the other realm of existence. If somebody was already too long in the other world and comes back there is imminent danger for the living – this is the lesson usually told in ghost stories – think of “Pet Sematary”.

I don’t think this is necessarily the truth.
The intermediate realm seem to represent the celtic idea of the Otherworld in a certain sense, even this kind of Otherworld is only one of many realms of existence and the Otherworld is much deeper. It’s impossible to understand what travellers who are able to return from the intermediate realm of existence have gone through. They have seen things beyond our imagination. I am dealing with that idea in my movie project from the very beginning and also that there might be souls who are special, who are more prone to travel between the worlds. These souls or people might have already developed another level of conscious and have special skills.
They aren’t helpless any longer as the person in the introduction of this post, they are powerful, but to become such a person they must master the treacherous reality both of our world and of the Otherworld. Some may fail. Traps are everywhere. The dark side will always try to stop any development. There is dangerous ground everywhere.
People with special skills who have made a journey through several states of consciousness might exist, even the ideas of super-heroes in movies are fantasy. However any fiction has some background in reality.
For example it’s remarkable that in the reports of alien-abductees or fairies in former times the victims seem sometimes to develop special skills and are more prone to telepathy and other paranormal abilities as other people after their experience. Vice versa we could speculate that these people already are born “special” and visits in the the intermediate realm or abduction episodes are part of their development.

My movie project is set against the backdrop of a haunted forest. I didn’t chose one of these well-known places around the world as a setting, which enjoy popularity on the web or in tourist guides for a good reason. I have also to admit that even I spent a lot of time in the woods I don’t have visited these famous sites during development of the feature film project nor do I plan to go to in the near future. There is a simple explanation for this: I am convinced the best possibility to “waste” a haunted site is to make it public. Of course, there is a very good chance to have some extraordinary experiences at these sites but the well-known haunted forests are also a perfect opportunity for self-deception. As soon as you are surrounded by other tourists who strongly believe that they reached a site where something weird is going on there will be something happen. But not a real supernatural thing, its often more things, which have to do with mass suggestion, maybe indeed something which has to do with a certain atmosphere. This psychic atmosphere is however created by its visitors not the haunted forest itself.

So, are there real haunted forests? Yes, I believe they exist and there are many of them. What’s mostly intriguing about the stories about haunted forests is that most of the stories about them are very similar. The mother-of-all haunted-forest-stories is certainly Hansel and Gretel and if you look at the basic elements of the story it’s the same you find both in real stories and in many modern horror-movies: 1)somebody gets lost in the forests, 2) a time of disorientation and fear for the person trapped in the forest 3)The encounter with the Otherworld or the supernatural threat. 4) Sometimes the missing gets transformed and returns. Sometimes he will never get back from the forest. Does that sound familiar? Remember “Blairwitch”?

However if the stories about a place sound too much like the “good-old-legend” we should become skeptical: either it was made up for educational reasons (not only Children should stay out of the forest, but it was a good thing to keep villagers under control in previous centuries if you make them afraid to not go secretly into the woods – maybe they would have discovered not a ghost but freedom). But what if the old legend was brought up because it’s too horrifying to tell what’s really roaming the forest at night?

Furthermore there seems to be a strong spiritual element about stories about haunted forests. James George Frazer, the famous scientist, who wrote the book “The Golden Bough” about the spiritual roots of mankind identified one particular myth, which could be basically seen as a haunted forest story.

The classic haunted forest is the large and impenetrable forest of the North. These type of forests could still be found in Northern America, Canada, the UK (Scotland), Scandinavia, Germany and it’s Eastern Neighbours. There are many well known stories about supernatural horror in the forests of Scotland, Sweden and Norway. The Mediterranean area feels different, is like another world with its own Mythology.  I can’t explain why but to me the typical haunted forest isn’t necessarily a primeval forest. I see it more or less as a forest with a damp, wet atmosphere where sunshine doesn’t reach the ground and where a lot of rain falls.  It must also not always an isolated, remote area but certain geological circumstances might play a role; my guess is that areas where there are very old mountains like the Appalachians are more likely to cultivate haunted forests. Or the endless sea of trees in Scandinavia. Writer Kerstin Ekman also mentions an original myth around the haunted forest theme – it’s the sad story of King Olof who rejected the fairy queen and died soon after he returned from the forest.

Many forests could become haunted forests. There might be sometimes very rational reasons involved, which can be explained: spending a lot of time in a forest for example during a long hike could also work as kind of a sensory deprivation. Like in meditation content from the unconscious then emerges. Disorientation happens easily particularly for people from big cities who are not used to be far away from civilisation. Even you hear many animals or the cracking of twigs it’s usually much more quiet inside a forest, which could lead to strange sensations.

However there might be haunted forests, which are closer to the other realm or work like batteries, where unexplained things might happen and foremost are Gateways To The Otherworld. ( I described my own experience with a certain place in that post). The Bavarian Forest in Middle Europe along the Czech-German border seems to me such a hotspot, where people have again and again strange visions or they are clairvoyant. There are stories about a hermit in the forest who got famous for his predictions about World War I and II.

My conclusion is that the haunted forest is a concept that exists already for a long time. We haven’t yet any final answer about what’s real going on, what’s real and what is part of the imagination. I believe a haunted forest can manifest at many places, it might even a little green in the middle of Berlin or London, which can become a very scary place if you go there at the right time. The “real and famous” haunted forests might be very interesting in many ways, but maybe the “haunted forest”, if we see it as a kind of zone or gate where the other world connects with our normal world, might have travelled long ago to another place and what you see if you go there is like an extinct volcano.

But what can become a haunted forest for YOU?  I am not so optimistic that visiting a famous (touristic) haunted forest does get you into extraordinary experiences since the Otherworld loves to hide.

However it might be possible that the haunted forest finds you.

Following the idea of the reversal of the “based on a true story” approach I remember some strange things that happened not when I was deliberately looking for motives or research for the movie project. Something happened when I coincidentally missed a bus or took the wrong direction at a crossing and ended up in interesting circumstances. You wouldn’t believe where  I found the little hut in the picture below.

Any connection with the Otherworld can’t be forced. It’s up to the other side to decide what happen. If there’s maybe one thing where the Otherworld seems closer than anywhere it’s that it likes to play tricks with the mind. This make the haunted forests a bit dangerous since they could lead you in wrong directions or even more. Furthermore a lot depends on our own attitude. If we approach a haunted forest either with arrogance or too many fears we might pay a price.

I do also believe that the “haunted forest” is a place we already know. We had been there already. It’s kind of an archetypical image we have partly forgotten. Our journeys into the dark forests of this world are attempts to remember what has been forgotten. The moment we remember might be indeed a frightening experience.

The haunted forest in my screenplay is named “Witch Mountain” and I am sure that Witch Mountain really exists and it can be found some day.