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Category: Forest Horror

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Is The Forest Dark The Real Forest Behind The Trees?

An outstanding novel as a model

Fiona Barnett’s excellent novel “The Dark Between the Trees” presents a fascinating idea within a compelling modern story of Forest Horror.

A doomed expedition gets caught in a mysterious, otherworldly forest that is superimposed over the normal forest they enter at the beginning of the story. A huge oak tree disappears overnight, and another realm breaks into the ordinary reality with flickering and shimmering perceptions that appear like hallucinations in the first place and then become a brutal reality.

It’s a fascinating concept since it gives the well-known ideas of the power of places and the zones of the supernatural a new dimension.

The book, which stands in the best tradition of Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, shows convincingly how a hidden dimension breaks through the fabric of normal reality: 

“There were two forests, and one of them kept flickering into sight – not even on the edge of her vision now – but sometimes right in the middle of it.” (From Fiona Barnett’s book)

Even though it is fiction, it provides a promising premise for real investigations into the unknown.

The zones of the paranormal

The otherworld as an (normally) invisible landscape behind the ordinary makes sense: If we go through the different phenomena of the supernatural, from mysterious light orbs, UFOs, to ghostly apparitions, the lowest common denominator is location:

Again and again, it is certain hotspots: notorious haunted forests, zones where Ufos are seen, bewitched fields – landscapes where things happen.

Local legends and witness accounts “draw” maps over time: There are clusters of mysterious disappearances or places where “lights” are seen more often: Hessdalen in Norway is a prominent place, or the Brown Mountain Lights in the US. Somehow, the otherworldly “landscape” is connected to our landscape. Or is it vice versa? Are our landscapes the “normal”, “visible” part of a larger unknown dimension?

These unknown dimensions might manifest in many ways, and it is the dark forest behind the visible world.  It is the layer between the trees.  A layer where orbs, beasts, and ghostly apparitions can occur. At night. Mostly. And it is indeed, like in the novel, the impression that something gets superimposed over the normal reality. A layer that is active under certain circumstances.

Another interesting concept in the book is the overlapping of different times, which allows one to go missing and still be alive after centuries (no more info here to avoid spoilers). 

It is interesting because we see a common thread that runs through fiction, folklore, and eyewitness accounts of real experiences: It’s always certain places where the veil between ordinary reality and an unknown dimension is thin. Time seems to run different and the motive of getting lost and trapped in a realm where time is different pops up again and again. We see typical motives from the fairy lore here, which then appear again in UFO-stories of close encounters and abductions.

But does it have some real relevance?

Our media is full of replicated content or even KI-created stories. We need to look out for the real stuff: Original field research, original interviews with witnesses, and verified stories. Then it would be interesting to see how much real events reflect this common thread. 

A great discovery is researcher Paul Sinclair, who made the documentary WOLF LANDS, wrote books (Night People and the Truth Proof), and is the creator of a YouTube channel. His channel TRUTH PROOF and work are pure gold in the flood of “automated content”. His expeditions and talks with witnesses often lead to the fascinating forests and landscapes of Yorkshire, which has a reputation for the paranormal. He and his friends and family do what everybody should do who has a serious interest in phenomena: Talk to the people, visit the locations, and – important – analyse. Its a pleasure to have someone who combines open-mindedness and critical thinking, and it is interesting to hear the conclusions of such an experienced researcher. Things shouldn’t be taken too literally.

In one of his best videos, “Something haunts the woods,” he concludes: “Do certain locations guard secret knowledge? Is Danes Dyke ( a forest in Yorkshire) one of those rare places where reality frays at the edges? Here, ancient earthworks stand watch over centuries of whispered tales… To some, Danes Dyke is just a relic of a forgotten age. but to those who know its secrets…it’s a gateway to something far stranger” (Taken from the video description). 

What we see again and again is that there is a convergence here. Fiction and researchers paint a similar picture, and also that researchers, authors, and scientists coming from different perspectives and different backgrounds often present similar conclusions after years of thinking and working on these themes.

Many insights from Paul’s videos find confirmation in the writings of Patrick Harpur and Jacques Vallée. Again, the common denominator is the power of place; it is location. The best of fiction, such as Fiona Barnett’s “The Dark Between The Trees” or the classics from Algernon Blackwood (The Willows, The Wendigo), takes these insights further and is also a way to deepen our understanding of an otherworld which might be right next door. Another world, which indeed is a Forest Dark.

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Why do motives in Folk Horror feel familiar?

What is Folk Horror?

Folk Horror is a subgenre of horror—often literary or cinematic—that draws on rural settings, archaic beliefs, rituals, and pagan traditions. It emphasizes the persistence of older, often pre-Christian ways of life that exist beneath or alongside modern civilization.

However, Folk Horror wouldn’t work if its stories didn’t feel familiar or ring true, if they were a mere invention of novelists and screenwriters. Folk horror is largely about something “ancient” that has survived: an ancient cult, an ancient force, or an ancient ritual. When movies or folk-horror-themed books were written, the writers could already rely on an existing foundation. Part of that foundation is landscape as a mysterious and living entity with magical forces.

Power Of Place

The power of place, which might not sound very credible in our rational, scientific world, is nevertheless a well-known, familiar concept. It works for the subgenre of folk horror as for its relatives, cosmic horror and forest horror. The idea that landscape is more than mere soil, more than hills and valleys, is a well-known concept.

In Folk Horror, the landscape itself is a living entity with intentions. It can change the mood of characters immediately. It can trigger fear, panic, dread, or even a deep sadness. In folk horror, the idea of psycho-geography is alive. It might be the mere shape of the landscape, but often mountains, forests, or a lake hold magical power. They are the seat of the elder gods or work as a storage where memories of battles and horrific events are stored. The power of place is responsible for mysterious disappearances or unusual crime rates.

Clues in Literature

Let’s start with the obvious. This influential book reads like a foundation for Folk Horror:

James Frazer’s The Golden Bough (first published in 1890, expanded through 1915) is a monumental work of comparative anthropology and mythology. It investigates ancient religious rituals, magic, fertility cults, and mythic archetypes—particularly focusing on the dying and reviving god.

And here is another one: The Witch-Cult in Western Europe is a 1921 anthropological book by Margaret Murray, published at the height of the success of Frazer’s Golden Bough.[1] Certain university circles subsequently celebrated Margaret Murray as the expert on Western witchcraft, though her theories were widely discredited. Over the period 1929-1968, she wrote the “Witchcraft” article in successive editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Both books may have been outdated or, in some aspects, even refuted by modern science, but they are still an excellent reference for models and images that exist in the collective consciousness. They are part of our imagination.

Without these foundations, Folk Horror and often Forest Horror as well wouldn’t work. We accept the (weird) idea that the land is character and can even have its own intention, yes, that the forest itself can drive us into insanity because there is an existing framework. Underneath the bleak and technological surface of our modern world, magic and ancient belief systems have survived. These belief systems took on many shapes and were sometimes incorporated by modern religion, for example, Thanksgiving.

But it needs more than tradition or repeating patterns in movies and literature to do the trick – what happens in a movie like The Ritual must feel true, we must feel the ominous power of the land like in The Witch. One explanation is that our rational mind might deny the supernatural force of a landscape, but our instincts tell us another story. We don’t believe in the secret cult behind the mountains in the remote village, but we suspect it exists.

A famous case happened once on the Danish Island of Anholt when a few findings of ritualistic items led to the wildest speculations about a “satanic-cult“. Even murder was suspected. It was a professor of Folklore Studies from Regensburg, Bavaria, Christoph Daxelmueller, who shed light on an interesting phenomenon: There was never any convincing evidence for rituals or the existence of a cult on the island of Anholt. Instead, it was an existing construct in people’s minds that led to misleading conclusions. He assumes that magical thinking endured over the centuries and even the scientific revolution. As he said in his book “Aberglaube, Hexenzauber, Höllenängste”, “As a system of thought, magic draws on the idea of the sympathetic structures of the cosmos. The interweaving of macrocosm and microcosm enables a network of communication between humans and gods or demons, with magical rituals representing pictorial and symbolic acts for the mediumistic beings performing them” (translated). And this heritage played a pivotal role in the speculations about the ritualistic items found on Anhold.

Imagination Is Key

The heritage of magical thinking is essential for folk horror to be effective. But it is not just a cultural construct conveyed by books, stories, and films that matters. It is about what we feel about these stories. Even the rational mind remains skeptical; instinct often tells us a different story. And our imagination:

It is not necessary to play a true or not-true game, but folk horror stories and forest horror give us a glimpse of a deeper truth, of a hidden world behind our everyday reality where unseen forces shape destinies and form our lives in secret ways.

To create or properly understand this genre, we need to embrace the concept of imagination as William Blake did: a storehouse of images and collective memories, and a way to see the world with a deeper vision or double vision, as Blake said.

Folk horror motives feel familiar because we learned about them through cultural tradition, but also because they are part of our imagination, where archetypal images are stored like (sometimes) forgotten memories.

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Connection Between Paranormal Activity and Crime?

A strong connection between paranormal activity and crimes is one of the most common motives in fiction, but also in lore and in so-called true stories. There are a number of stories where the paranormal activity is considered the cause of the crime. This applies especially to hotspots like the Bridgewater triangle.

Is this a cheap excuse for criminals? Of psychopaths who want to evade persecution? Or is there more to this? Fact is that haunted landscapes are often related to a higher number of extraordinary crimes, among them shocking crimes, satanic rituals, abductions, or mysterious disappearances.

There are many arguments against paranormal influence triggering malevolent human behaviour. We are fully responsible for our actions. Claims of “a voice told me to do this” are either cheap excuses or the result of conditions like Schizophrenia. But there are perhaps natural and less natural trigger effects that can play a role.

In the case of the Bridgewater triangle, where all sorts of crimes happened as animal mutilation or vandalism, but also serious crimes as murders, copycatting might play a role. Groups of people were attracted to the reputation of the place and started their own nonsense.

There should also be other sets of circumstances considered when it comes to hotspots for crimes in forests, mysterious mountain regions, swamps, and other areas. These include remote, abandoned regions that are less densely populated, which have served as a refuge for drug dealers and other criminals. Alternatively, there may be little law enforcement in a certain region.

There is also the question of what happened in the first place

A murder and an unsolved crime are the most common reasons for later paranormal activity.

A ghost of the victim of a murderer seeking revenge. Or the crime is unsolved, and the ghost haunts the place in order to bring the murderer to justice. The brutal crime left a residue, like a memory stored at the place it happened. Many hauntings in houses or special places are connected with crimes.

Sometimes it is said that the original crime leads to paranormal activity, which causes further crimes. A house or a place, or a forest is cursed.

This is the case with the Bridgewater triangle and the Freetown Fall River Forest: The brutal murder of Indian American king Philip and the slaughter of the American indian tribes there is one reason for the curse of the Bridgewater triangle, according to some believers.

However, this is a prominent example of how it works both ways.

People also say that the massacres and the betrayal that happened there are the result of ancient, old, darker forces. That’s hard to believe, as indigenous people were slaughtered nearly everywhere in the New World.

Another reason why we may attribute crimes and other events to paranormal activity is our own mindset. Everybody knows the “local legend” concept used in countless movies and stories. The lore of haunted places goes way back to the times of the Old Testament. This creates two effects: We attribute certain traces, events, and types of crimes as ritualistic, even if there might be no occult background here. Often, it is conspiracy theories that have a life of their own in our world, which create a certain interpretation. The second effect is that we see the paranormal at work even in cases where there is no evidence for this, but there is a long and strong tradition of storytelling shaping our thinking.

Nevertheless, the “power of place” is a concept well known around the world, and there are things that cannot easily be explained away.

What is the power of place?

We are talking about a less comprehensible force and a much more mysterious force, rather than a curse or a haunting. The power of place might also be something much more complex than a vortex or a portal. And not something which is the main cause of a specific event.

It is the “something” in the trees, in the fields, in the earth, that we can never comprehend. We can feel it, it is the subtle force shaping things at certain places, not a voice but an ancient influence.

It would be naive to attribute certain events or even crimes to that force, but perhaps there is a tendency in certain places to make things more likely to happen here as in other places. Mysterious disappearances are a prominent example – conditions of a landscape, like a wilderness, can only partly explain the statistics.

The key characteristics of paranormal zones remind us that we have to abandon the normal ways of thinking in our everyday world if we want to get a sense of the unknown. Things are more paradoxical than logical. The otherworldly realm even demands we accept contradictions.

Any of these zones, like the Bridgewater Triangle, the Alaska Triangle, or the Bennington Triangle, are hotspots of countless bizarre phenomena which are not simple UFOs or hauntings. They appear to shape human history in mysterious ways over longer, eternal periods, and not as a sort of intervention that causes an individual to do a certain thing.

Why is that?

If we look at the Bridgewater Triangle, we have reports of all kinds of phenomena: Thunderbirds, UFOS, Bigfoot, little people, giant cats, orbs, experiences of being watched, a sense of sylvan dread, a mysterious hitchhiker, a trucker pursuing drivers on a lonely road, mysterious disappearances, satanic rituals, briefly the whole set of strange phenomena. This is odd. The popularity of such places might trigger hoaxes or people invent things, but it is still remarkable. Things that can’t be explained away happen. And there is a blurred line between normal reality and the otherworldly here. The phenomena are real but not literally real. This is the biggest challenge for the human mind. But it explains why there is no simple connection between crime and paranormal activity.

One of the researchers of the Bridgewater triangle said that whatever resides there is an old soul. This is a good image. Something that works in large periods and something that doesn’t relate to humankind in a way we understand. It is more something that exerts a hidden influence upon us.

What does this force want?

Of course, there is no simple answer to this. Perhaps it is the transformative power of nature. William P. Simmons writes in Lost in the Wildwood: Sylvan Dread in Weird Fiction: In the confused paths of our minds, the forest is always there, ready for us to enter, ready to enter and transform us. For centuries, our imaginations have populated the forest with mythical beasts and beings, ancient powers that inspire delight and dread. Old Gods flourish in Oak trees and rivers, Elemental spirit walk borderlands of soul and soil. The Earth itself, imbued with a secret sacred sentience, hints of vast possibilities that we cannot define.” He speaks of a “cosmic intelligence beyond our logic and science, facts and spreadsheets. A secret soul both malevolent and nourishing”.

What exactly this force does, we don’t know. What we do know is that extreme circumstances bring out the best but also the worst in men. A famine, isolation, and starvation can awaken barbaric impulses. Civilisation is always a thin layer, barbarism is never far away. But the cause of horrific actions or crimes is never a power of place, or nature, it is what already exists in humankind.

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Local Folk Horror Stories – Intrinsic Part Of Topography and Heritage

Peter Engelmann, October 22, 2024

Today’s creepypasta researchers and YouTube presenters might search for local legends, supernatural stories, and the mysterious in the first place.

But it gets interesting if researchers and authors who are not after the uncanny in the first place discover ghost stories and unexplainable events in certain regions as a constant. They make us aware of something that seems obvious to the fans of folk horror but isn’t so much on our minds as we think.

These stories about witches, mountain lights, disappearances, ghosts, and supernatural encounters are like a layer that belongs to the landscape. Today this layer might be less accessible as people are less isolated and there are fewer families with close ties where different generations live under one roof: A while ago these stories were passed on from generation to generation and were part of the cultural heritage.

An Explorer Of The Supernatural Stories From The Bavarian Forest

When Karl-Heinz Reimeier, a local historian from Grafenau in the haunted Bavarian Forest began to visit families to learn more about traditions and life conditions in the remote region in Europe he wasn’t after ghost stories. But soon he learned that nearly in every family a ghost story or a mysterious supernatural story exists that plays an important role. Typical cases are the “announcement stories” where somebody announces his death even if he isn’t there. A picture falls from the wall or even voices occur the moment a close relative dies. And of course, there are endless supernatural stories from the dark forest (the Bavarian Forest certainly is one). Some of the typical themes of horror in the forest are similar present as those in haunted places in America or elsewhere. Mysterious lights for example play an important role, the witches in the forest and encounters with otherworldly creatures. Sometimes it is the devil itself.

Stories with a special quality

Nevertheless, there is always a special quality in these stories that makes them unique and ties them to the place and a specific landscape. The supernatural events are often connected to a very specific location. Reimeier says in a short report by local broadcaster Bavaria television that even though there is often a natural explanation there a 5-10% of stories that will never be explained. What’s important to him is the deep meaning of these stories for the people and the people who narrate them. Even if it is often a sad or uncanny story the narrators are alive, enriched, and fully focused when they speak about otherworldly experiences or old legends.

Folk Tales are soul, there aren’t just scary stories or cautionary tales. Often a “morale” is introduced later in the story. But again and again, they occur to be part of the connection of the land, they are a way of experiencing the landscape. In the Bavarian Forest, there is even a specific name for the lore, an old German word, “Weihrazt”. It indicates a special quality that these tales are not just creepy or scary. The word suggests more of a special kind of experience and a special reality that is there. Reimaier wrote a popular book “Wenn’s Weihrazt” – Stories from the Intermediate World. An excellent subtitle that describes the nature of the old legends and ghost stories.

The Intermediate Realm is bound to places

When it comes to the other world there is often a distinction between an (abstract) higher realm that is so different from our ordinary world that it creates an ontological shock if somebody enters these higher realms and an intermediate realm which is not so different from ours but exist on another plane of reality. It is the otherworld of the celts and there are similar conceptions known from the indigenous people in Northern America. The folk tales seem to happen at points where the intermediate realm and the ordinary world overlap at certain places or at certain times for example Samhain or winter solstice.

What Do We Learn From That?

There is another thing here which is obvious but easily overlooked. The author of the book “Wenn’s Weihrazt” visited families or single-living people and did long interviews with them. They stem both from a situation and a milieu where the internet wasn’t present as it is now and he got the “raw material”. In our digital era now there is endless replication and reproduction. So, often when you hear a story it might be that the story is already contaminated with all the stuff that hangs around on social media and elsewhere. We can’t turn back to the old times, but for everybody interested in the stories from the intermediate realm, the original folk horror we should always look for the original.