The Forest Dark

What is a forest? Is it the trees or the space that exists between them?

It sounds like a very simple question, however there is a big difference between the answers from NASA or from Ellie Davies, an excellent and fantastic British photographer, whose thrilling “ghostly-forest-photography” was recently presented on welcometotwinpeaks.com.

NASA scientists  raised that question when they discovered difference in satellite-derived maps of global forest cover. The reason was varied definitions of what constitutes a forest.  There is some urgency in the need for a definition because deforestation  is responsible for one-sixth of greenhouse gas emissions.

“The authors (of an scientific article) call for either a single, clear definition of forest that can be used globally or, preferably, a shift away from “forest/non-forest” maps to new maps of measureable ecological characteristics like tree cover, canopy height and biomass” (http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasausgs-mission-helps-answer-what-is-a-forest)

Scientists emphasize the forest’s importance as “carbon stock”.

Nevertheless the eyes of satellites in space will always see only a surface. The forests of a planet are more than carbon stock. They are living organisms, a very complex system of individual organisms interacting.

Furthermore there is a spiritual dimension here proven by the endless stories of humankind and its ambiguous relationship with the forest. For many peoples the forests were the seats of the Gods.

But is there something between the trees? We know about biochemical substances or gases emitted by plants.

Mythology however is telling us about the intangible forces in the forest. In some cases it might be some form of energy field but also even more supernatural forces which can’t be measured but encompassed by human imagination.

https://youtu.be/ypgNd3pk9fE

“A forest is what exists between its trees, between its dense undergrowth and its clearings, between all its life cycles and their different time-scales… A forest is a meeting place between those who enter it and something unnameable and attendant… Something intangible and within touching distance. Neither silent nor audible.”
(John Berger quote from welcometotwinpeaks.com, Between the Trees, 2014 Statement from John Berger in ‘Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance’, p.135-140 Verso, 2007.)

This is also what the Forest Dark is about; “Something intangible” is there. It’s impossible to understand the forest in all its dimensions but sometimes we feel it.

The forest is indeed a “meeting place”. Sometimes we will meet ourselves there, on other occasions something strange, which was always there.

“Some evil Spirit attends.
Hovering and blazing with delusive Light,
Misleads th’amaz’d Night wanderer from his way”( John Milton).

“Ghost Lights” are also known as will o’ the wisps. They seem to be a special type of dangerous lights in the forest. They’re both deeply rooted in folklore as a strange light that attracts travellers from pathways into dangerous marshes or graveyards. The scientific explanation is that ghost lights, often seen over bogs, are likely phosphene or methane gas emissions visible at night. However many reports doesn’t fit the scientific explanation. The deeply disturbing stories surrounding these anomalous lights are strongly related to the afterworld or otherworld since they are harbingers of death.

Ghost lights are reported around the world. Sometimes they are related to fairies or lost souls who made a pact with the devil. They are believed to lead travelers to their demise. They are also called “fairy fires” or “foolish lights”. In Wales the light predicts a funeral that will take place soon. The old legends have many counterparts in modern urban legends.

The interesting difference between ghost lights and the more ufo-like orbs (sometimes however are also the earth-lights and ball-shaped ufos are labeled as ghost lights) is their distinct behaviour. They are acting like living-beings; like a character. They are irritating people and luring them into danger. Or they are some sort of message.  Furthermore they are often related to typical ghost-stories like the killed railway worker who becomes a spook-light and appears near abandoned railway tracks.

These stories sound often fairy-tale like or like some sort of old superstition. However it’s good to distinct between the phenomena and the belief-system surrounding it. We don’t need necessarily believe the interpretation or the good old legend but often there is truth even in weird tales.

Ghost lights are one of the many mysteries in our dark forests. There are so many sightings and even in our modern world ghost lights are reported a lot.

They do represent a real phenomena.

The associations with the realm of the dead in many stories suggest that they appear in zones where our dimension overlaps with other realms of the otherworld.  These intermediate realms have become an integral part in my movie project. I haven’t seen ghost lights so far but will do further research since this seems to be one of the most common paranormal phenomena in many forests.

Furthermore the quality of something which leads you away from the ordinary world into a different realm is a very interesting aspect of this phenomena.

Perhaps ghost lights are the visible call of the otherworld.

Ghost lights appear not only in folk tales. John Milton uses the phenomena in a metaphorical sense when he implies Satan in the description of the mysterious ghost light in “Paradise Lost”:

“Hope elevates, and joy
Bright’ns his Crest, as when a wandring Fire
Compact of unctuous vapour, which the Night
Condenses, and the cold invirons round,
Kindl’d through agitation to a Flame,
Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends.
Hovering and blazing with delusive Light,
Misleads th’amaz’d Night wanderer from his way
To Boggs and Mires, and oft through Pond or Poole,
There swallow’d up and lost, from succour farr”

Dante’s journey in the “Divine Comedy” begins in a dark forest. In many stories as works of art the setting of the afterworld and afterlife is a dark forest. In the “Redwall” fantasy novel series a dark forest is the place that many creatures go after death as in the “Warriors” series by Erin Hunter. The dark forest has a long tradition as the entrance to the classical underworld (Hades) as described by Virgil. Does the idea of an otherworldly forest between life and death has a real background?

In previous posts the matter was already discussed as the Forest Dark As An Archetype, Haunted Forests and Paranormal Forests. Nevertheless there are still a lot of open questions left, particularly if we abandon our traditional ideas of “here” and “there” and of “before” and “after”.

Afterlife means logically something which comes after you have died. But we learned already that there are people who visit the land of the dead during their lifetime, for example the Shamans. Near Death Experiences are common around the world, thus a lot of people have been “there” involuntarily but returned. Ghosts are supposed to exist in afterlife but some people believe they haunt our everyday world. If we look through reports and sightings of ghosts their behavior resembles often somebody who got lost in the woods. If we imagine “afterworld” more as the “otherworld” it is perhaps something which is always present and can be experienced in some ways during your lifetime.

Even we have an endless imaginary of “Afterlife”, the Forest seems a very good image to illustrate an intermediate realm. It is said the forest is a standard icon for the crossing in to the netherworld (in the hero’s journey). A “standard icon”: this is a term which works very well for me. If we imagine what an icon is it opens up many possibilities. Think of our computer screen. Icons open more windows. Subsequently if the forest dark is an icon it is only the surface where many windows or (other worlds) might open up.

In a literal sense, the dark forest setting is a strong image: It can be both an uncanny and familiar and very positive image. We don’t know what’s lurking behind the trees. There might be danger out there. In former times wild animals roamed the forests. On the other side a forest can give shelter and protection. It can be a deadly place if people get lost but the forest can also safe your life – there are stories of people who survived because they ate berries and mushroom for weeks. Refugees often found shelter in dark and impenetrable forests. The forest is the source of life. Without the forest our whole planet would die. Perhaps the ambiguity of the forest image explains why the forest became an icon for the crossing in to the Netherworld.

The forest dark is an icon, which can be interpreted in many ways. I suggest seeing this icon as a kind of window which opens up into the unknown. And the unknown is ultimately the Otherworld or afterworld. Every haunting and the most unexplained phenomena are linked to the afterworld. They remind us that the afterworld is always there.

In some places and in some circumstances this afterworld seems to be very close and very strong. Maybe some haunted forests or places are perhaps not some alien landing site but a place where the veil between our world and the intermediate realm between “here” and “there” is very thin.

One of the most popular sites for sightings of mysterious lights is Hessdalen in Norway. The phenomenon is well documented but not explained. Scientists developed interesting theories and some see the phenomenon as a physical phenomenon related to electricity. There is even an observatory there and lots of measurements are taken. However one scientist said in a TV-documentary if Hessdalen “could be a portal to a different world”. Drawing a connection between the concept of the “afterworld” (and otherworld) to a real place on earth might sound very weird. Nevertheless in the same documentary it was said that the Hessdalen phenomenon is of a character challenging us to expand our conceptions of reality even further. If we follow Patrick Harpour (Daimonic Reality) who said that the Otherworld mirrors our there might be also places where our world mirrors the Otherworld.

Strange phenomena in the forests on Earth have sometimes a natural explanation, or they will be better understood in the future. Nevertheless there are phenomena which couldn’t be explained away, and they’re not only scary but sometimes deadly. Mysterious lights have been seen in many places, often regularly. The Brown Mountain Lights in North Carolina or in Hessdalen, Norway, appear a bit like strange weather phenomena. Unidentified lights in the sky are often interpreted as UFO-encounters, and they become “sightings”. The lights which were reported in Parnamara, Brazil, during the early eighties, however killed people, says UFO-researcher Jacques Vallee. Similarly the sightings reported in one of the most notorious haunted forests of the world, the “Hoia-Baciu-Forest”, in Transylvania, Romania, seem to have a life-threatening quality.

The investigative website “theparanormal.ca” mentions a man called “Patrut” “who is president of the Romanian Society of Parapsychology and since the early ’70s he has been studying occurrences in the forest such as unexplained splotches of light and luminescent orbs hovering in the sky. He says that when you spend too much time in the HBF, you can experience symptoms such as anxiety, insomnia, excessive thirst, nausea, vomiting and headaches”. The Hoia-Baciu-Forest is called the “Bermuda Triangle of Transylvania” and everything began with a UFO-Sighting. The stories about this famous forest sound impressing, however often if a place is well-known one should be careful to trust any reports about apparitions and other paranormal events.

Jacques Vallee’s reports from Parnamara in Brasil sound very serious and are extremely disturbing. Obviously there had been several cases in this forest region in North-East Brasil where hunters were “attacked” by lights during the night. The encounters in the forests and river valleys must have been bizarre and dangerous. The locals spoke of so-called “chupas”, which they say are looking like flying crates and made noises like refrigerators. Under these crates there was a light which sent deadly beams. In one case the “chupa” looked like a spinning car tire with headlights. Vallee mentions a witness, Ribamar Ferreira, who saw his friend Abel Boro dying after he was engulfed by a blinding light. Ferreira escaped and returned with the family of his friend. They found Boro dead and the body seemed to be bloodless.

In 1982 several people who had encounters with “chupas” felt ill and were changed forever. Another victim couldn’t speak any longer three month after the encounter, his hair became white and six month after the event he was mentally wrecked and behaved like a one-year-old infant.

The air-force of Brasil sent a team to investigate but it was never explained what really happened. Vallee speculates that the victims were exposed to some sort of radiation. Furthermore he says in his book “Confrontations” that the lights or other phenomena reported by the witnesses doesn’t represent what literally happened. He also says that for example microwaves could induce serious hallucinations.

It’s remarkable that these kind of dangerous phenomena which happen sometimes in forests are not a new phenomena. The reports and stories show a striking resemblance with older folk tales about the “elf stroke” for example in Scotland. Often a strange light is integral part of the story. I didn’t even know about that when I introduced a scene in my movie project about a dangerous light.

The important lesson here is that some accounts of paranormal encounters in the forests might not represent exactly what happened, but the events are definitely “real” in a sense that they could hurt or even kill people. Furthermore it might be good not to think of a certain forest as an evil or haunted forest – it is always the place. Some people speculate that “Hoia-Baciu-Forest” is a gate to another dimension. Maybe, in some sense, there is some truth here.

Algernoon Blackwood describes in “The Willows” a place where the borders between our world and the other world is thinner then elsewhere. In his stories the protagonists are attacked on a psychological level but there also something happens on a physical level. His description is very close to the reports of some real events.

The “dangerous lights” in the UFO-reports seem to work also on different levels. They could be windows between our and an extra-dimensional dimension. And if we get too close to such a window we are in grave danger.