The Forest Dark

Across all civilizations, the world’s mountains were viewed as the sacred home to the gods. If we look for the power of place mountains obviously are very good candidates. However not any mountain is sacred. The ancient belief raises many questions as modern mysteries about people who have vanished in the mountains.

If there is one outstanding example for the power of place in connection with mountains it’s Mount Shasta located in California, which is a destination for mystics and curious people all over the world. There is supposed to be a “vortex” over the top of the mountain and some people are convinced it’s a gate to higher dimensions.

Legends of biblical proportions surround this mountain and – of course- its suspected to be an alien landing site.

Like with many other “sacred mountains” its a mix of religion, tradition and old legends which make the mountain extraordinary.

Sceptic people might argue that there are very easy explanations why mountains became sacred regions and often have a long tradition of mysterious stories. One thing is weather – even relatively low mountains create their own weather – for example Brocken mountain in Germany is often surveilled with clouds and mist and there are the most extreme weather conditions there. No wonder it became the setting of the “Walpurgisnacht”, the night were the witches meet.

Furthermore mountains were unexplored territory. People had a huge respect to climb up the mountains; Petrarca’s expedition to Mont Ventoux in 1336 was a courageous thing. But for a long time the mountains remained terra incognita.

Even in our days many cultures think of the mountains as seat of the gods. In the Philippines British tourists who stripped on top of a sacred mountain were held responsible for provoking an earthquake later because they angered the mountain god.

The mountains as a place for encounter with god or of encounters with the supernatural is a familiar idea for nearly everyone: everybody knows about Mount Sinai where Moses received the commandments “the LORD came down upon mount Sinai”

In our days mountain climbers report “live-changing” experiences. Even with seeing Earth through the astronaut’s eye today in television mountains offer a fundamental change of perspective. Going into the mountains is often kind of an initiation ritual. We know of mountain climbers who became obsessed with their mountain. There is a sheer endless number of tragedies often because people think they must stand on top of a certain mountain.

There is nothing supernatural about this “call” usual its mostly human ambition and often human madness.

Nevertheless mountains can be mysterious places. Again – its interesting that only certain mountains made a career as sacred mountains. If you ever have flown over the alps you have seen an endless number of peaks.

There are notorious places on Earth. Places where unexplainable things happen and where people go missing and the obvious explanations of accidents or unlucky circumstances and coincidences doesn’t work.

Peter Weir’s “Picknick At Hanging Rock”, based on Joan Lindsay’ 1967 novel is a story about the disappearance of several girls in an ominous Australian mountain region. It isn’t a true story but represents archetypical elements of stories of missing people – a place which seems enchanted, the impossibility to find traces and what really happened and somebody who returns dazed.

In the end it looks more like the missing people didn’t fell victim to some monster but something which took possession of their mind.

People behaving strangely and getting confused at certain mountains, losing their sense of reality and get lost. There are real stories which relate to the famous “Picknick At Hanging Rock” and maybe the success of “Picknick At Hanging Rock” relates to the deeper truth embedded in the story.

A famous mountain for legends about disappearances is Brown Mountain in North Carolina. The area is well known for its “Brown Mountain lights” probably a similar phenomenon like in Hessdalen, Norway. The disappearances inspired one of the most famous blues grass songs, “Legend Of The Brown Mountain Lights” written by Scott Wiseman.

It’s interesting that the modern stories of disappearances of people relate strongly to older folk legends about abductions by fairies. Often there is a light which guides the wanderer into the wrong direction.

And if evidence is found or even a body some mountains have become well known crime-sites for the most mysterious and unsolved crime cases.

The “Lead Mask Case” in Brazil is a scary and mysterious case which happened on the “Morro do Vintem” Hill near Rio de Janeiro. Two bodies of two Brazilian electronic technicians were discovered on August 20, 1966, in odd conditions: The two males where lying next to each other, slightly covered by grass. Each wore a formal suit, a lead eye mask, and a waterproof coat. A small notebook was identified, in which were written cryptic instructions. Their skin war burnt as if they had been in contact with a source of strong radiation. Even an expedition, led by Jacques Vallee in 1980, couldn’t explain what really happened on this hill.

It seems there are “mountains of madness” on Earth where we could get in touch with something which hasn’t been understood or explained by science and which could become dangerous to us. Some mountains seem inhabited by forces which had been there long before mankind and they still exist.

“Great revelations of nature, of course, never fail to impress in one way or another, and I was no stranger to moods of the kind. Mountains overawe and oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests exercises a spell peculiarly its own. But all these, at one point or another, somewhere link on intimately with human life and human experience. They stir comprehensible, even if alarming, emotions. They tend on the whole to exalt.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

Foreign countries, landscapes and places can change us: ‘Nobody wanders under palm trees with impunity,’ wrote Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in his Elective Affinities. At first sight it seems that entering a territory which is different or unknown to us must have some sort of impact because it confronts our ways of thinking. We travel far away to get away from our daily routines.

There is more. The strong aura of some places can make you feeling dizzy or drunk.

Some places even seriously messes with your mind. We remember stories of people who ended up in madness on long journeys into exotic countries as in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart Of Darkness”.

Places can work on a much deeper level in the human soul and trigger inner developments we don’t expect.

If this is the case it raises fundamental questions not only about the human condition but about the distinct “reality” of different places, countries, landscapes.

We know that the same laws of nature apply around the planet and in the universe we know (most of the time).

Apart from that our world and the landscapes on Earth are an incredible place with an endless variety of shapes, climates, vegetations, cultures of different nations. One way this variety is expressed is in the many different languages and dialects we hear when we travel around. It’s an interesting question where dialects come from. It seems sometimes that every place on earth, every valley in the mountains any island or even every city has its own air and keeps an influence on every living being. When I was in St. Ives some years ago I saw the unique and bold behavior of seagulls, which is different like they behave elsewhere and which inspired originally Daphe Du Maurier’s The Birds”.

Sometimes we say we feel a certain air. “There are good/bad vibes here”. We could also say there is an aura or an atmosphere. Atomsphere has a second meaning here aside from the mix of gas which surrounds our planet. It’s something which can be felt, we can also describe a certain air or atmosphere but it’s nearly impossible to understand what it is. There is something mysterious about the certain air of a place.

In the first place we have many “normal” conditions which can make a difference; any area has its own climate and weather patterns. Weather is also a good metaphor. Temperature, humidity, pressure, wind let us feel in a certain way about the location where we are. Recently BBC future wrote about “The mysterious ways the weather changes the body and mind” and revealed stunning research. Falling air pressure is a pain in the head is one example. It’s still very difficult to find proof but subtle changes in the atmosphere can have deep impacts.

Certainly thunderstorms have a direct influence on the body through electromagnetic impulses, and there is also a relation between weather and the crime rate.

Weather and climate is useful also as a metaphor because we can feel a drop in air-pressure but we don’t see it. It’s the same with many other influences: in any place there is a certain atmosphere and we can feel it but there are many things which also can’t be measured or seen. Particularly haunted places or haunted forests work in a specific way. Sensible people sense an uncanny atmosphere more like a smell, something which is there for some moments and then vanishes.

There are people which are convinced that there are also thought atmospheres at certain places. Dion Fortune describes some impressive experiences: a friend of her – usually an experienced teacher and not afraid of stage fright – became nervous when she had to speak at the same place where before her some girls had to to perform and exhibited terrible stage-fright. Fortune herself remembers herself of having felt an atmosphere of depression in a hostel room where a drunkyard had lived before.

These cases suggest that there is something like “fields”, something like electromagnetic charged fields. Rupert Sheldrake developed the theory of “morphogenetic fields”, which offers interesting explanations but is difficult to prove.

It’s interesting if these mental atmospheres exist on a much larger scale. Sometimes its surprising how a village or even a city breathes a certain air. There are cities where people seem to be under constant pressure and appear shy or afraid and there are cities where you feel free and welcomed. It’s not explained why that doesn’t change with people coming and going and between different generations. It’s like any place has its own soul. It influences our behaviour and what we think. The “genius loci” exists.

Dion Fortune’s examples suggest that there are man-made-mental-atmospheres. Later Fortune also says that tragic events can create an uncanny atmosphere or a tangible tension which is really there. Apparitions and ghosts are sometimes described like video-recordings, like a memory which is stored up at a certain place. Many stories reveal an old story responsible for the haunting.

But there is more about atmospheres and places. The “certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces”, which Lovecraft describes seems to be created by powerful cosmic energies. There are places where he have incredible reports how people seemed to be under some sort of spell and changed profoundly.

And we have places which have a reputation for being connected with the supernatural as the famous Bermuda-triangle or Area51.

There are twilight zones on this planet, which haven’t neither be explored or explained. We don’t know why there are haunted forests or even streets which have a reputation for people vanishing. In the original sense a twilight zone is “an area of ambiguity between two distinct states or conditions”. Perhaps these zones are places are still rooted somehow in the otherworld.

But what can happen to us when we cross such a place or even live there for a longer time? Under certain conditions we tend to make different decisions and our attitude changes. We might do things which we would be normally afraid of. Me might do bad things but also better things. Leaving certain places can be a big improvement.

“‘Nobody wanders under palm trees with impunity” – we get close to that quote from Goethe now. Can visiting a place put you on a mission or even decide your destiny? My movie project deals with these experiences.

Visiting a location or a place can definitely be inspiring. Sometimes we can’t describe exactly our experience at a certain place but we can put it in a story revealing the deeper truth which is deep in the mountain, the forest or the impenetrable darkness of a lake we once had been visited.

Nevertheless another very interesting question remains: if we got changed by visiting a place can we also change the equilibrium of the same place? Maybe something wouldn’t have happened if we never arrived there.

We might also end up in a trap, because we are already under the spell of a place we cannot stop to become part of a larger game.

There are enough stories where the hero somehow couldn’t any longer leave the place or the city even it would be wise to leave immediately. The reason usually is that it’s not physically impossible to leave but the hero doesn’t want any longer to leave. He has become part of the special atmosphere like Jack Torrance who understood it was his job to look after the Overlook hotel.

“A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain–a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.” (H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature, 1927)

An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia terms “Supernatural horror” “HPL’s most significant literary essay and one of the finest historical analyses of horror literature”.

H.P. Lovecraft is writing about literature but he seems to believe in a certain human condition. This raises interesting questions. Does it mean that he believed that his “cosmic horror” is a real thing? Did he really believe in supernatural beings as intruders into our world as a fact or was his primary concern what could make a supernatural-horror-story most efficient? We know that later Lovecraft gave advice on how to do a horror story and had a diary with ideas what might make good horror effects. He wrote a lot about writing techniques but we don’t  really know so much about his innermost religious or philosophical beliefs. Of course there is a whole mythology here – a very strong one which had an incredible influence later on movies and literature and there is even a term for Lovecraft’s philosophy: “Cosmicism”. But we should be careful, because there is many interpretation here which doesn’t necessarily mean  that it always represents  Lovecraft’s real opinion.  We are better advised to hear what he says.  In 1918 H. P. Lovecraft  wrote a letter about religion to his friend Maurice W. Moe,  In the letter it is said:

“I desire to know approximately what my life is in terms of history—human, terrestrial, solar, and cosmical; what my magnitude may be in terms of extension,—terrestrial, solar, and cosmical; and above all, what may be my manner of linkage to the general system—in what way, through what agency, and to what extent, the obvious guiding forces of creation act upon me and govern my existence. And if there be any less obvious forces, I desire to know them and their relation to me as well”.

Lovecraft sounds more like a scientist and as we know from his works which are often somewhere in-between science-fiction and horror he was very rational. It seems the traditional horrors and superstitions didn’t work for him any longer. His monsters are indescribable – in one of his best stories he confronts his reader’s with the horrors of an abstract or scientific idea: “The Colour From Outer Space” makes us mad because it  deals with a color we don’t know and if we start to imagine such a color it drives not only the hero of his story into madness. Lovecraft’s horrors are extreme trips into unknown territory.

Why put Lovecraft such effort into the creation of such intellectually complex horrors rather than using the simple madman, ghost, ghoul or vampire?

It is an interesting parallel that his writings about the nature of supernatural horror stems from the same decade where science made really big steps forward, Albert Einstein published his relativity theories, nuclear science was making its discoveries which later changed the course of mankind forever. Industrialization was taken into new dimensions and memories of the horrors of an “industrial war” (WWI) were still fresh.  In the arts the German expressionism created images which looked like their were stemming straight from Lovecraft’s universe.

As a person strongly interesting in science Lovecraft’s new conception of horror was only naturally. There is a certain irony here for those who are familiar with Lovecraft’s stories that today’s discoveries and theories about “Dark Matter” and the demonic particles in Quantum Theories sound more like Lovecraft’s ideas rather than a real existing thing. In quantum physics, ” that most terrible conception of the human brain–a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature” have become a reality if we believe our scientists.

But there is more here than meets the eye. Lovecraft’s definition of the supernatural horror is much different as in today’s horror cinema where the fantastic is often replaced by the axe-swinging madman or CGI-Ghosts which are very human-like.

Lovecraft did know that if dealing with the unknown it is something which goes beyond human comprehension. Horror to Lovecraft is often something the hero of his story can’t really understand. The monstrosity can’t be measured.

This is not only a conception in literature this is indeed human experience if we try to understand the very essence of visionary experience, records of wonders and otherworldly encounters and life-changing confrontations with energies from the otherworld. These reports are full of violations of laws of nature and seeing things which couldn’t described properly afterwards.

As said in the previous post about Ludwig Tieck’s novel from the era of Romanticism we find traces of visionary experience often in fiction even if the writer has had completely different intentions.

If we follow Lovecraft’s essay we also understand why it is so difficult to do a real good story about cosmic fear because it is not something which could be developed in the storyline. Particularly the movies have difficulties to create such effects because the very nature of “cosmic horrors” lies not so much in the precise mechanics of the plot but there is a vagueness, something which couldn’t even exactly planned in a script:

“Atmosphere is the all-important thing, for the final criterion of authenticity is not the dovetailing of a plot but the creation of a given sensation”.

“We may say, as a general thing, that a weird story whose intent is to teach or produce a social effect, or one in which the horrors are finally explained away by natural means, is not a genuine tale of cosmic fear; but it remains a fact that such narratives often possess, in isolated sections, atmospheric touches which fulfil every condition of true supernatural horror-literature. Therefore we must judge a weird tale not by the author’s intent, or by the mere mechanics of the plot; but by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point. If the proper sensations are excited, such a “high spot” must be admitted on its own merits as weird literature, no matter how prosaically it is later dragged down. The one test of the really weird is simply this—whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe’s utmost rim. And of course, the more completely and unifiedly a story conveys this atmosphere, the better it is as a work of art in the given medium.”

I can say that “this atmosphere” and the  “cosmic horror” has been the motive at the core of the idea of the Forest Dark Project. There is a hidden dimension in our world which resists to be revealed easily. Writing supernatural horror is a consistent struggle to capture maybe little pieces of that “atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces”; these forces which roamed the planet long before the beginnings of mankind, but were described in the the stories by H.P.Lovecraft and others.

They’re still here and keep watching us. Some of the paranoia-movies of the 50ties grasped that cosmic fear which mankind is familiar with for a very long time. Even there are only a few ones in any generation – we see cosmic fear in the best works of Stephen King also – who are really interested in the hidden dimensions behind our realm of reality – the tradition continues.

It’s the writers and artists like Lovecraft who had chosen to become “The Real Nightwatch”: the people watching out in the night and later tell us about the most ‘undescribable  and blasphemous things’ roaming the woods deep in the night.