Otherworld – The Forest Dark

2025/11/242025/11/24

Liminal Spaces In The Forest – Do they exist?

Peter Engelmann, November 24, 2025

What do we mean by liminal spaces?

Over the past decade, the term’ liminal spaces’ has gained popularity. The reason is the modern use of “liminal” within the internet culture. The most prominent example is the backrooms, which originated in the creepy pasta subculture.

The Backrooms are mostly abandoned spaces that exist in an intermediate realm between our world and another dimension, but are also sometimes claimed to be real. They emerged more like an urban legend rather than an actual discovery, and were visualized by filmmaker Kane Parsons on YouTube with his channel Kane Pixels. The foundation was the original backroom picture posted on 4chan, which depicts an abandoned office space with fluorescent light, green-yellowish walls, and old carpets. The picture and the videos present an unparalleled eeriness and become a setting for many follow-up horror stories with the labyrinthine and endless office spaces increasingly populated by monsters and other creatures. Meanwhile, the A24 studio is preparing a Backrooms movie.

The backrooms concept is particularly interesting because of the otherworldly concept: Entering the backrooms is based on the premise that one enters the backrooms by “no-clipping“, which means slipping from our normal reality into the backrooms. This term stems from gaming language but represents an old idea in connection with the otherworld: you could slip through reality into another realm and be caught there.

Folklore is full of such stories, where people went off the way and ended up in fairyland. Sometimes, as in the Rip Van Winkle Story, time runs differently than in ordinary reality, and the protagonist spends ages there.

The similarity between the Otherworld in folklore and liminal spaces was also identified by Ethan Sabatella in Senchas Claideb: “The concept of liminality in storytelling is nothing new and has motifs in folk traditions spanning back for centuries”.

The no-clipping concept is one fascinating example of how an old concept of the otherworld reemerges into the modern digital world. The whole liminal spaces phenomenon proves that the otherworld always finds a backdoor to slip into our modern consciousness.

It’s not surprising that these transition spaces between the ordinary world and the intelligible higher (spiritual world) take the shape of abandoned malls or empty labyrinthine office spaces. Imagination is at work here, and otherworldly or daimonic visionary worlds often take shape, which makes sense for the individual experiencing it. An abandoned office space makes more sense in our mechanistic, technological-dominated world as a cave inmidst the woods where fairies or dragons reside.

However, there is more to these liminal spaces. They are at the same time familiar and not familiar; they are like lost places, but seem less defined, more out of touch with ordinary reality.

The strong impact the images and videos on the web have lies with their representation of the uncanny. The uncanny is always at the core of horror and has a much stronger effect than any monster that might occur later in the videos.

The basic principle of the uncanny is that something that should be normal becomes unsettling.

This is where liminal spaces become interesting: it’s often the most normal, even boring places that become unsettling just because one or two things are changed:

An airport stripped of passengers, an empty mall where usually shoppers fill shops, or an endless office space where people work.

It’s maybe not a surprise that these liminal spaces became popular at the time when the pandemic happened.

During the corona crisis, a lot of normal places became temporarily similar liminal spaces: streets without pedestrians or train stations without people.

That uncanny feeling is not so much an intellectual experience, but rather an emotional one or something which comes from deep inside: The fear that our normal world is fragile, that in truth everything can fall apart at any time.

Furthermore, it is the anxiety that goes on in these rooms and the idea of being trapped without escape. However, it is not only anxiety; it is the typical ambiguous feeling in horror of being attracted to something and being repulsed at the same time. Attracted because the room might represent something of the past we are longing for and repulsed because of the nightmarish scenario of being imprisoned in an otherworldly realm that is just bleak, cold, and merciless.

Is the forest a good candidate for a liminal space?

We find different opinions about this question. At first sight, the forest might be something completely different, because it is a natural world – the fear in the forest is created by other factors, like getting lost or paranormal phenomena, and it is not related to these more technological liminal spaces which dominate the liminal spaces subculture on the web.

In a more traditional sense, the forest is full of liminal spaces: There are many areas where the mysterious and the familiar merge as secret groves or edges of the forest. The core idea of the liminal spaces is their transitional nature; it is about potent places, and they can change the visitor fundamentally.

If we dig further into the definition of liminality, it has a double meaning. It can be both spatial and non-physical states, such a rites of passage.

The forest as a setting for rites of passage is nearly a stereotype, which perhaps makes the extreme opposite – urban areas, lost industrial places – attractive for subculture to be different.

However, that is not what we mean by liminal spaces in the forest when it comes to the Otherworld, because the forest is not just a metaphor or setting; here, the forest is a daimonic entity itself. It is full of soul and can be as shapeshifting as the industrial liminal spaces.

In many stories and accounts, the familiar forest becomes uncanny. A wanderer gets lost because landmarks are suddenly not there, animal noises disappear, and lighting becomes more unnatural, even though it was daylight a few minutes ago.

Then we find ourselves often lost, cut off from civilization, and unable to navigate a dense and confusing environment. This leads to paranoia and a breakdown of sanity.

We see some obvious similarities between modern liminal spaces and the dark forests of this world.

However, the much more interesting similarity is grounded in the very fabric of reality as described by Patrick Harpur as daimonic reality, in which the Otherworld is defined “as a subtle, intermediate realm of existence, also referred to as Daimonic Reality, that is neither purely objective (physical) nor purely subjective (psychological)“.

Most important here is the definition of the Otherworld as an intermediate realm:

Intermediary Realm: The Otherworld sits “in between” the spiritual/intelligible world and our familiar material, sensory world. It is this “middle realm” that allows for communication and mediation between human beings and “the gods” or the divine.

In Harpur’s definition, the Otherworld is a liminal space, per se. The modern liminal spaces are excellent representations of the old idea of the Otherworld in a new form. Their constant shape shifting and ambiguity, real/not real, meet exactly the long tradition of descriptions of the otherworld.

In this sense, the question is not if the forest is a liminal space because certain dark forests and modern liminal spaces as the backrooms, are both manifestations of the Otherworld.

2024/12/132025/04/19

Ontology Of Paranormal Triangles – Alaska Triangle, Bennington Triangle, Bridgewater Triangle

Peter Engelmann, December 13, 2024

Paranormal hotspots are often called triangles, which refer to a triangle-shaped zone. The triangle is a zone where statistically more strange events occur than elsewhere. But it is not only about sheer numbers. Some triangles share the same components, the same kind of altered reality.

The original triangle is supposedly the Bermuda triangle which was popular during the 70ties and 80ties. I will focus here on triangles on land, specifically in Northern America. The well-known Bennington Triangle, The Bridgewater Triangle, and The Alaska Triangle share many things in common.

And there is one triangle where strange things culminate, where everything appears more extreme than in any other place. And this is the Alaska Triangle.

Devil’s Country: The Alaska Triangle

Even though some reports might be exaggerated it’s mindboggling what happened there. According to some sources over 16000 people have gone missing in Alaska since 1988 or over 20000 since the 70ties. A whole town, Portlock, was abandoned under strange circumstances. Countless ships and planes have vanished and have yet to be found. Strange accidents happen, UFO sightings are notorious, and sightings of creatures are countless.

Of course, there are natural reasons why these strange things happen in Alaska: The state in the North is one of the last vast wildernesses on Earth with rugged terrain, high mountains, arctic climates, and impenetrable forests. No wonder, people go missing here. One mistake can be deadly in these extreme surroundings.

Nevertheless, even though strange disappearances, accidents, and events may have natural explanations the presence of the paranormal can’t be overlooked. In the series Alaskan Killer Bigfoot by Discovery UK, the forest around the Portlock lagoon becomes a dangerous, unpredictable zone and the Alaska Triangle Series on History.com unfolds a whole paranormal universe. The shows might accentuate certain effects and bend the truth in scripted reality but the whole picture is impressive.

But what exactly is the Alaska Triangle?

According to The Economic Times, “Alaska Triangle, encompassing Anchorage, Juneau, and Utqiagvik, has seen over 20,000 disappearances since the 1970s. The region gained attention in 1972 when a plane carrying two US politicians vanished. Explanations for these disappearances range from unusual magnetic activity to natural dangers in the rugged wilderness.”

Interestingly the paranormal quality of the triangle focuses strongly on a couple of motives and theories:

Especially electromagnetic anomalies, portals, and vile Vortices play a central role in the narratives. Compasses, GPS, and other devices fail suddenly in the Alaskan triangle and are susceptible for the cause of accidents and strange disappearances.

These ideas about vortexes and electromagnetic anomalies may have been triggered by Ivan T. Anderson’s vile vortices and then developed further. There is some credibility to the electromagnetic field anomalies however no groundbreaking research revealed portals or energy vortexes. But the vortexes, portals, and anomalies are a repeating element in all narratives around the triangle and also appear in theories about the Bennington and the Bridgewater triangle.

The Bridgewater triangle is called a vortex in itself, and there is supposedly a vortex there that swallows the unaware: https://regina-clarke7.medium.com/i-once-lived-inside-the-eerie-bridgewater-triangle-56a5693f64e3

In the Bennington Triangle, the famous Glastonbury Mountain is connected with an energy vortex: Over the years, several mysterious happenings have been reported in the area, leading some to speculate that Glastenbury Mountain could be an energy vortex or exist in an alternate dimension. There is also a legend about a cursed boulder that engulfs hikers into a bottomless pit and a story about a creature, possibly Big Foot, that resides in the woods. From: https://happyvermont.com/2023/10/11/bennington-triangle-happy-vermont-podcast/

Vortexes are a common feature in many paranormal features and have been described here previously: https://www.theforestdark.com/wordpress/energy-vortexes-and-triangles/

The quote from Happyvermont.com contains interestingly the other prominent features we find also in the Alaska triangle and the Bridgewater triangle:

-alternate dimension.

– big foot, Cryptids, Creatures

– and boulder, stone, or mountain “swallowing people” (attributed always to old American Indian legends).

The latter one is really interesting as a weird explanation of why people disappear. It bears some resemblance to old European legends about people disappearing in the underground or getting abducted in underground terrain.

In any of the triangles, the bigfoot/creatures play a big role. Again the Alaska triangle comes up with the most overwhelming sightings and ideas about creatures.

Here it is the NANTIAQ, which is more ghost or demonlike than the common Sasquatch. And it gets really interesting that the Nantiaq in Alaska is linked to the idea of alternate dimensions according to American Indian lore. It is a shapeshifting creature that can travel between dimensions. And even more, it has humans abducted into these alternate dimensions. It can rest in old trees and witnesses describe it sometimes more as an energy. The whole Portlock mystery centers around a NANTIAQ-like creature terrorizing the inhabitants until they abandon the town.

What do we have here?

We have very similar patterns and motives when it comes to the elements of the paranormal triangles. However, these common elements have different specifications. What do we make of this?

On one hand, skeptics might say that these motives are part of a collective consciousness, that legends and narratives travel. Therefore there is nothing extraordinary about them.

Indeed it might be possible that the reported phenomena masking the original, the real phenomenon that remains hidden behind a veil. Then we use common patterns to understand what’s going on. Perhaps, what’s going on in these triangles is beyond our comprehension.

And the best way to get closer to these great mysteries of the Great Northern is to listen to the stories which were told by those who had the experience. The most common element of the frightening encounters, the strange disappearances, and the uncanny adventures is a sense of dread, of something greater, something beyond our understanding. One of the most compelling tales of the Alaska triangle is “The Strangest Story Ever Told: The Legend Of Thomas Bay by Harry D. Cold which has in some way the excellence of Aldernoon Blackwood’s stories but has a real background: “WHAT was the secret of Alaska’s Thomas Bay? It held fabulous wealth in gold, but, for most men, even gold wasn’t enough to lure them there. Yet, brave men dared to visit its bleak shores. Some returned horror-stricken, refusing to talk about what they had seen…:” (Goodreads)

Here we get a feeling about what makes these triangles. Are there vortexes, are there UFOs or creatures out there? We don’t know for sure. But the fear of these men, their stories, and the horror they experience deep in the Forest Dark is real. Whatever they heard, whatever they might have seen, and which changed their lives it was out there.

2024/08/11

SHAPESHIFTING REALITIES

Peter Engelmann, August 11, 2024

A fundamental quality of the otherworld is its shapeshifting quality. This is the common denominator between myth, folklore, fiction, and “true story witness accounts”. Nothing is what it seems in the otherworldly forest. Small and big can change within a second. A nearby place can be suddenly far away. Nothing is what it looks like. The otherworld is a zone where our laws of nature do not apply—UFOs, as modern daemons perfectly represent this shapeshifting quality.

This shape-shifting is a common experience in dreams. Usually, the shapeshifting otherworld is seen as the counterpart of ordinary reality, the otherworld as a mirror world, often with the distorting mirrors in a mirror cabinet. These uncertainties of reality apply not only to the objects, space, or the inhabitants of the otherworld. Time is different too: “On the other hand, a short period of clock time can seem like an age in the Otherworld” (Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality).

Apparitions are the most common feature of shapeshifting phenomena. The fairies are shapeshifters par excellence as their modern counterparts, the aliens. But also beasts, “giant-black cats” bigfoot, or other denizens of the forest have a shape-shifting quality. They are known – of course – for shapeshifting: a dwarf becomes a cat or even something inanimate can become a living creature. Or appearing as a living creature. Fairies can make small things big and big things small.

The most intriguing quality of apparitions is their contradictory nature: they are both real and not real in the same moment, both material and immaterial at the same time. This is a concept even hard to grasp for those who spent years studying these themes. It demands us to abandon our common idea about reality. A step nearly impossible to take for the ordinary man. Even scholars, initiates or shamans struggle with these fundamental fissures in our understanding of the world.

Nevertheless, this is where we are. Did somebody figure out what Ufos are? Science explained phenomena like a color-shifting lake where bacteria turns blue or green water into purple. But many mysteries remain a mystery. A missing person is found at an impossible distance. In science, we are puzzled by the mysterious ambivalence of quantum particles, the unknown nature of dark matter, or the impenetrable dark holes. Excellent writer Patrick Harpur found the definition for this special kind of reality: He called it Daimonic Reality and titled his legendary book Daimonic Reality too.

The world is full of encounters with daimonic reality. A key takeaway from the idea of daimonic reality is that we often see only the surface of something but the whole reality is veiled and is hiding in another dimension. A deer is not what it seems. Harpur describes Even the celestial bodies, the stars, and the objects in the skies can be windows into another dimension.

Often so-called abduction cases or encounters of the third kind are much more puzzling than they seem at first sight: Patrick Harpur recalls in Daimonic Reality the case of Virginia Horton who experienced a couple of supernatural experiences. On one occasion in France not far from the river Rhine she got lost in the woods and returned later with a bloody blouse. She talked about an encounter with a deer which seemed like a magical being. Simple “supernatural explanations” such as an alien encounter with the alien disguising as a deer don’t work here. Harpur writes, that under “Hypnosis, Virginia talked more about the deer: ‘ I had a sense of personality inside this deer.’ The sense that there is someone behind phenomena is the sense of the daemonic, the divine even, in all things”.

The Forest As Shapeshifter

Nature itself can be daimonic. Folk Horror tales describe this power of place and the hidden quality of nature around us. The field is more than just a field, the tree is more than a tree and of course, the forest itself has both transforming and shapeshifting qualities. What happens inside the observer and what happens on the outside we often don’t know.

We learned from the great writer Algernon Blackwood the idea that nature is a sentiment being: William P. Simmons writes in the preface of his anthology “Wildwood”: “Sky, soil, trees, grass, air, water – everything that man defines in scientific or organic means, Blackwood imbued with a personality, a soul. In ‘The Willows”, ‘The South Wind’ and others, Nature is not only a symbol of life but a self-aware entity that might be only a part of a vast, fragmented host of powers. The forest, the wildwood, is beyond science and rationality. Blackwood’s conception of nature is both beautiful and horrifying, beyond good or evil, immeasurable and undefinable” (Wildwood, Shadow House Library of Weird Fiction).

The mysterious island in the river Danube in “The Willows” is a good example of what William P. Simmons describes in the preface of Wildwood. The island seems to be constantly changing. An island in the wilderness of a river is a place of change. But when the story’s two protagonists stop and spend the night much more is going on. An uncanny presence plays tricks with the mind and nothing is any longer what it seems.

But is the forest as a shapeshifter only a concept in literature and myth?

Traditionally shapeshifting is the ability to physically transform oneself through unnatural means and not only in the perception of others. We need to get back to this to understand how common this feature is in many forms: Many Gods are shapeshifters: Think of Zeus or Proteus who could change his shape at will. In Norse mythology it is Loki. You find them anywhere in any religion or mythology. Sometimes the transformations into animals or monsters are not voluntary as in the case of Medusa or Arachne. It can be a punishment.

Creatures and supernatural beings are often shapeshifters by nature like vampires or werewolves. The skin-walkers of the Navajo are shapeshifters who roam the woods and the fields like some other tricksters. Then we have fairies, witches, and wizards. Fairies are among the most prominent shapeshifters. They can be humanlike or even appear as humans but quickly shift into a different form. Perhaps the mysterious lights in the forest are a fairy.

So far we are talking about entities. Living beings, agencies, Gods, and demons who can perform metamorphosis. What about the place, the forest itself? The first thought which comes to mind is of course, that any forest challenges our perception. The change of light, the darkness, not seeing the forest for the trees. If we have that feeling of getting lost, if we feel Sylvan dread, our surroundings change. But is it all in the mind? Or is metamorphosis possible? Can a path disappear, the landscape takes a different shape, a different mood?

Well, there are alleged true stories. They are often related to cases where people got lost in the woods or the unsolved missing 401 cases. Here comes an example from “Only In Your State”:

“A few visitors have reported encountering bridges made of birch branches and twigs that span small creeks. According to the visitors’ reports, once they cross a bridge and move away from the area, they are unable to relocate the bridge. It doesn’t matter if the hiker carefully marks her path, or even retraces his footsteps exactly – the bridge (and in some cases, the stream) will simply disappear. This phenomenon has been reported most frequently in the area surrounding Berry Pond.” (Spend The Night At Massachusetts’ Most Haunted State Park For A Truly Terrifying Experience)

This is a very typical example: A path that suddenly isn’t any longer there or even the dimensions in the forest feel somehow “wrong”. Is it possible? It depends on our worldview: If it is true what philosophers say, that our visible, everyday world is only part of a larger invisible world any kind of transformation, distortion or shape-shifting isn’t so absurd.

Or as William P. Simmons said:

“By entering the Wildwood, we are inviting metamorphosis, a terrifying breakdown of how we attempt to define existence. A world that lives, breathes, and feels as dramatically as the humans who stumble along its paths.”

This is the common thread, a reoccurring motive: In movies from IN THE EARTH by Ben Wheatley to the classic “STALKER”, in great literature as in “THE WHITE PEOPLE” by Arthur Machen to Algernon Blackwood but also in countless witness accounts from the Bridgewater triangle, from haunted forests all over the world and even in smaller woods which hold secrets and are always trapdoors to a deeper, different reality.

2024/03/172024/03/18

William Blake, Fourfold Vision: Bringing together ordinary world and the otherworld

The Forest is a place, where the invisible world is close. It is a place for imagination. The Forest is more than the trees. It is the place for the visionary to see cosmic life.

One of the most extraordinary and influential artists and poets was William Blake. We can grasp the power of imagination through him and other writers of the beginning of romanticism. But there is more to it. Blake opposed the materialistic worldview and kept a much longer tradition alive—a tradition of seeing a deeper truth in the ordinary world.

However, there are a couple of points here, that make Blake particularly interesting:

William Blake – A Visionary in the era of enlightenment

Unlike some romanticists or modern esoterics, he is not out of touch with the ordinary world, he seeks the connection with the other world, the eternity in his words, and our oft bleak and dark everyday world.

Another remarkable thing about Blake is that he is a shamanic figure without the typical initiation as a turning point in his life. He seems to be aware of the other world from the very beginning.

Furthermore, his visions don’t seem mysterious or as hard to understand encounters with the unknown.

His Christian upbringing allowed him to shape his creative works inspired by visionary experiences in a unique cosmology that includes Christianity and elements from antiquity.

He is if we will a natural-born daimonic man, a person at home in both worlds. Unlike many people, Blake embraces the otherworld.

Blake seems, like Wordsworth, never has lost his childlike imagination. However, it is not imagination in the way we see it today, but a way of seeing. There is more than meets the eye:

Blake’s Double-Vision

“Blake distinguished between seeing with the eye and seeing through it. He insisted that his poems are not just figures of speech, but true accounts of the natural world transformed (invariably personified) by the power of the creative imagination”. (Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality, Page 90)

A famous Blake quote refers to the sun in the morning:

Do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like a guinea?

Oh no, no, I see an Innumerable Company of The Heavenly Host….

(William Blake)

This is double-vision. Seeing the literal thing but this literal thing is like a symbol representing a larger reality, a deeper meaning. It might be difficult to understand for modern Westerners this idea. Blake was still with one foot in the older traditions of a more magical, spiritual worldview and with the other foot in the scientific worldview of the Enlightenment. He is famous for his criticism of the modern worldview labeled Newton’s Sleep.

Blake’s State Of Mind: Ulro, Generation, Beulah, Eternity

Therefore he developed a model, a system of different levels of vision or states of mind:

Four-fold Vision

Ulro = mostly presenting the single vision, a materialistic worldview, the world as data in modern terms

Generation = a view focused on production and reproduction without higher goals

Beulah = a more empathic worldview with the dark side of moralism

Eden or Eternity = which is also the four-fold vision. A coexistence with the divine, where the otherworld is seen too. The spiritual dimension becomes real and is seen as the normal material world.

Mark Vernon offers an excellent introduction to Blake’s system of the states of mind in The Four-Fold Imagination, What we can learn from William Blake’s visionary imagination.

Of course, this is not a view offered in everyday life, it is the goal of shamans, of meditation of a life-long quest. However, it is available for everyone who opens his eyes, “A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees” Blake says. But we can learn to no longer see the world as the fool sees it.

It is books like Daimonic Reality by Patrick Harpur that offer a field guide to reconnecting with these deeper dimensions, to understand a four-fold vision.

One thing that we need to keep in mind is, that we don’t know if the higher realms are only the heavenly realm Blake envisions in some of his poetry. There are darker, dangerous realms out there, which Blake recognized too. This is the Forest Dark.

Visionary Experiences in The Forest Dark

Is it only that the daimonic world appears threatening because it is suppressed in our times? That would be the Freudian view, but if we look at the endless reports of visionary encounters a more complex image comes to light.

The Forest Dark. It’s no secret that many encounters with the unknown realms ended in a catastrophe. Fairies and aliens abduct people into their fairy realm. People go missing as the famous Referend Kirk who investigated the secret Commonwealth. People die or lose their wits. This is perhaps the most common danger of otherworldly encounters and visionary experiences They are not always a blessing. The trained mind who learned fourfold vision may be better prepared to handle mind-blowing visionary encounters. However often the Otherworld seems to choose the inexperienced wanderer in the darkest corner of the woods.

Blake and others recognized this special quality of the forest:

“Shelley, Keats, and Blake may have captured the wonders of nature but they were just as quick to recognize its destructive forces and temptations, horrors and alienation. A reaction to the Enlightenment Romantic writers went deep into the woods, as their ancestors had before them, to find, monsters and miracles.”

From: Lost in the Wildwood: Sylvan Dread In Weird Fiction

A forest is a place where certain energies appear to gather, a borderland inviting daimonic creatures and a portal to the higher dimensions. In the outstanding anthology there are more good notes about the specific quality of the forest: “A living embodiment of our dreams and nightmares, the forest has played an ancient and vital role in shaping the human imagination and literature.”

It is in the forest where our ideas of existence are tested, where initiation and metamorphosis happen. A four-fold vision can happen here, perhaps more easily, but it can be unpredictable, as we can’t know which forces reside in the deep forests from the very beginning of time.