The Forest Dark – Page 19 – The Forest Dark Com Project

2017/03/302018/05/01

Otherworldly Traps

“ROSLIN
Things. The forest is showing me…
Things…”(The Forest Dark Screenplay)

People getting lost or people losing their wits after they entered a dark place in the forest. Are there supernatural traps hidden in certain places in this world?

In fairy tales the trap is a very prominently motive. Writers were fascinated by these folclore stories. There are famous works particularly in the period of romanticism. An example which was described earlier is the “Runenberg“.

Another well-known trap is the court of venus, “Venusberg”. These traps lure the wanderer into another realm. The man who can’t resist will finally lose everything.

These kind of “erotic traps” use temptation. Of course, this is something which works very well in a number of stories.

However it’s indeed primary a literal motive not a very realistic one.

We don’t expect a beautiful fairy queen tempting us to walk straight into a rift in time and space when we enter the woods.

Otherworldly traps are perhaps something which works in a more subtle way. Nevertheless these kind of traps could be very powerful and dangerous.

It seems that there are places in this world were people lose their orientation or get depressed. The perfect description of this kind of otherworldly trap could be found in Algernoon Blackwood’s “The Willows” where two wanderers get maddened by a supernatural force and one of them is close to committing suicide.

“The Willows” is also a fictional supernatural tale but what happens could be closer to what’s really going on. Every year a number of hikers vanish mysteriously. In most cases there are very rational explanations for what has happened with these persons, but some cases remain unsolved. There are areas which have a reputation for this like “The Bennington Triangle”. According to the Indians the woods are cursed in this territory in Vermont.

I think there are two ways to make you losing your wits. If there are forces which could look deeply into the soul of a person these forces will find the weak spot. They will hit you on the most personal level. The other way is showing you disturbing things, things which are somehow not right, something like H.P. Lovecraft’s “Color From Outer Space”.

These kind of phenomena exist. There were described for example in “Dangerous Lights”. Obviously, they act more on a psychological level. They are happen in a realm somewhere in-between the physical world and the inner-life of a person.

Getting into the mind of a person is the most efficient way how a trap could work. The purpose of the trap it to break somebody’s will. Without a strong will we are an easy prey for whatever lurks in the forest. As soon as we are depressed and disoriented we’re lost. Sometimes the victim returns but is changed forever.

Peter Weir’s famous movie “Picnic at Hanging Rock” describes the mysterious disappearance of a group of girls in the Australian outback. One of the victims returns but cannot describe what happened. The girl is changed and cannot remember anything.

The movie is based on a novel which is fiction but played around with the “based on a true story” pattern. The ending was left open for interpretation but the otherworldy quality of the “Hanging rock”, which exists, is a dominant motive. There are hints that it is the special quality or power of place itself which is responsible for the events.

This story is a very good example for a supernatural trap. It’s like a paradigm. We find similar stories surrounding other notorious place like Freetown-Fall River State Forest. In this case the forest itself seems to be the trap, like the famous woods in the Blairwitch-Movies.

2017/02/262018/05/01

Games In The Forest

Forest Horror Stories are in some way often close to the reality in a computer game or a simulation. This is because there seems not only the character’s misjudgment of the situation is leading him into dangerous territory. In the dark forest we are like Katniss Everdeen confronted with the interventions from an invisible game maker. It’s like being chosen for the hunger games without knowing it.

Sometimes it´s surprising we accept the conceptual approach in forest horror because of course we know the story was written by an author and certain events in the forest are created by the director and his crew. This is always a problem in storytelling and drama and for badly introduced interventions which change the course of action there is even a term from the old Greeks. It’s called “deux ex machina”. Particularly if we see a so-called found coverage film it could easily look like some trick.

Of course good acting and the right use of effects and emotion could put the audience in a state where the audience doesn’t think too much about the construction of the story. However there is more about it. As said in the previous post it seems that on some level close to base reality the other world appears like a simulation (whereas it is questionable to interpret reality generally as simulation) or even a game where we have interventions of the “game maker”.

Perhaps we accept these stories because sometimes they feel true. Even in reality life is not “character-driven”. There are interventions from invisible forces from somewhere. Therefore the best writers are able to write something which rings true which make use of “cosmic interventions”. There are real cases which look like a weird constructed plot with supernatural interventions. This is an impression particularly if it comes to stories and reports of real events in the forest. Naturally its difficult to distinct between reality and “scripted reality” – every witness report gets interpreted, fictionalized or becoming a folk tale with some sort of morale in the end.

If we look at the real accounts of “forest horror” as described in “Dangerous lights” with cases in Brazil, Jacques Vallee’s investigation of the Happy Camp events in California, The Freetown Fall River Forest case or the Hoia Bacu Forest we find the same dramaturgy at the bottom of the story as in many forest horror stories. It looks like some “Elder Gods” orchestrating supernatural events which are overwhelming for the human mind. The events often go far beyond the “local old legend” encompassing some ghost roaming the woods.

A typical difference between “real accounts” from haunted woods and fictional horror is the forest as a physical attacker. What’s happening in the forest in most real stories is not so much a physical attack from the woods itself its more as something which happens somewhere in-between reality and imagination, somewhere between dream and real experience. Forest horror feels true if we understand Lovecraft’s idea of cosmic horror: “A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present” It all happens more on an atmospheric level rather than a pure physical level in the first place, only later it could lead to physical consequences.

These forces tend to play tricks with the mind. Indeed some events and sightings sound like a part of a game or like everything is happen in a form of virtual reality. However we don’t know the mechanism of the game or the intentions of the game maker. Thus we try rituals and study magic, often we need to solve a riddle in the forest and getting lost. We don’t understand any longer what’s going on. Perhaps this is the true nature of the game: It’s all about not losing your mind in the first place. Then we might be able to understand the nature of our own role in this game and overcome its limitations. Perhaps this is the trick both in a forest horror story or in real life: don’t do what the game maker wants you to do and overcome your limitations.

2017/02/112018/05/01

Is Our Reality A Computer Simulation?

What’s really going on? This is the question at the bottom of my movie project as many others.

Space X Pioneer and Tesla founder Elon Musk said “The chance we are not living in a computer simulation is “one in billions”. He is not alone and the “Matrix”-like idea has become a legitimate scientific hypothesis.

Neil de Grasse Tyson, director of the museum’ Hayden Planetarium said: “If that’s the case, it is easy for me to imagine that everything in our lives is just a creation of some other entity for their entertainment” (Scientific American, Clara Moskowitz, April 7, 2016: Are we living in a computer simulation? ).

It seems that the simulation hypothesis is a simple explanation for the dark forest we are living in.

What if its another theory hiding just what’s really going on and making us fatalistic? What if there is a someone out there using such beliefs to oppress people?

At first sight the computer simulation theory makes a lot of sense because it suits not only our everyday life experience but could also explain supernatural encounters and religious experience.

Many people feel they are part of a larger drama, but don’t know the director or the screenplay of their lives. They encounter the same situation and similar characters again and again.

Moreover there are repeating patterns in life as in a “Game Of Thrones” where often a similar twist does happen.

Are we trapped in some sort of “Truman Show” or even the “Hunger Games” without even knowing it?

THE VERGE asks “if we are avatars being guided by creatures in another reality” (Richard McCormick, Jun2, 2016).

Yes it feels a lot like this because we can’t see the driving forces in the universe but there is a strong perception of some (divine) intervention in many situations.

Hauntings in the forests and Ufo-Encounters often appear like paradox stage-plays or some video-clip played again and again. This is like part of a computer game or simulation.

However there are some simple questions which are often avoided. What we can actually do by ourselves is creating some very convincing cyber space which looks very real.

But what is about physical objects? Could a solid object like a wall or a tree be nothing else as some sort of cyberspace-reality? Maybe in the future, but it couldn’t be easily imagined from our experience.

What’s happen is that the advocates of simulation theory are blurring the distinction between mind and matter. It’s true that living in an online world is changing perception and virtual realities become very real. But that doesn’t change base reality. Sometimes we need to be careful not mixing up things here. If we take a walk in the forest without any mobile devices we experience base reality again. And hopefully we’re still sometimes “offline”.

What makes simulation theory very interesting is that indeed visionary encounters and supernatural events could happen in some sort of realm of reality which resembles a computer game. The reports often sound like some sort of “cinematic” experience and we ask where is the projectionist. However this applies to a level of the other world, like the celtic otherworld, which is still close to base reality.

Nick Bostrom, Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University writes about the hypothesis that we are living in a simulation created by posthumans, who want to simulate the world of their ancestors: “the posthumans created the world we see; they are of superior intelligence; they are “omnipotent” in the sense that they can interfere in the workings of our world even in ways that violate its physical laws”, Nick Bostrom, “Are you living in a computer simulation”, Published in Philosophical Quarterly, Vol 53, No, 211). This sounds like typical alien encounters and alien intervention from outer space and gives perhaps some bizarre events some meaning.

But is it more realistic or more credible as a highly developed extraterrestrial visitor who is guiding our civilization in a subtle way?

And, there is an account of visionary experience as long as mankind exists and these accounts tell a different story. On some level the other world is abstract and can’t be encompassed with our models of the universe.

We may be indeed part of a big game but it doesn’t work the way we usually think. Archetypical images for example are often simply disturbing and cannot be explained or interpreted.

It’s no surprise that simulation theory is basically an adaption of much older theories going back to ancient times. Seeing the world as a computer simulation is in a way like Plato’s allegory of the cave. Computers didn’t exist at this time. But the philosophers knew that what we see might be a simulation but in the end its much more then simple simulations.

2017/01/242018/05/01

Tunnel In The Forest

A tunnel is a typical mythical image often seen in connection with the forest. The tunnel is also an icon for the gateway to the afterlife. In most near-death-experience the tunnel and the light are common elements of the visionary experience. The connection with the forest makes sense: “it is said the forest is a standard icon for the crossing in to the netherworld (in the hero’s journey)“.

A tunnel has often a hypnotic energy. We cannot resist entering the tunnel. Even if the tunnel is dark we are drawn towards it. A tunnel often means change. When we leave the tunnel we enter a new world. Sometimes also things happen inside the tunnel, which change the person who entered the tunnel. Tunnels are also a typical motive in literature and folklore for magical events like time-travel: a person enters a tunnel and leaves after a short time, but much more time has passed outside the tunnel. And in some cases you never leave the tunnel. Or you enter the tunnel and when you leave you end up in a place far away.

The tunnel is in reality a gateway but its also another archetypical image for transformation. Tunnels can be metaphors for significant turning points in life. Crossing the tunnel is often connected with “Rebirth” or “Resurrection”, which is a theme in my movie project.

In that way the tunnel has a positive meaning. However can we sure if we stand in front of the tunnel? Reality close to the realm of the afterlife or the netherworld is full of deceptions. Sometimes it might be possible that the tunnel is a trap but it is hard to resist the temptation. The temptation is there because the tunnel experience seems such a common feature in visionary encounters. It’s something everybody knows.

In Near-Death-Experience the tunnel is like a standard, a fact, something which always happens. An interesting question would be if in a certain situations somebody could project the image of the tunnel into our consciousness in order to provoke an action or lure us into the realm of the otherworld.

For example in the famous story of Rip Van Winkle the protagonist is lured into a hollow which is actually a place of supernatural powers when wandering through the wilderness of the Catskill Mountains. He falls asleep and discovers shocking changes when he awakes. Furthermore when he returns its 20 years later. It’s not revealed if the hollow was really there and where Rip Van Winkle really was all the time in the short story. Sometimes a tunnel or some hole in the forest isn’t what it seems.