If you go out in the woods

Your father's gone a-hunting
He's deep in the forest so wild
And he cannot take his wife with him
He cannot take his child - Leonard Cohen

Near Cisco Grove, California on the night of September 5, 1964 Donald Schrum, a 27-year old employee of a local missile production plant became separated from his two bow-and-arrow hunting companions. As dusk approached he took shelter in a tree, lashing himself to a branch with his belt. After settling in, Schrum - identified only as "Mr S" in the files of the US Air Force's Project Blue Book - saw three objects in the darkening sky, a rotating and protruding light afixed to each that emitted "cooing" noises. Mr S thought they were rescue helicopters, searching for him, so he climbed down the tree and set signal fires. It was then, he realized they were not helicopters.

They were three somethings, [I can find no description of the appearance, other than "strange looking" and "different than anything he'd seen before"], shining beams of bright white lights, and they were circling his location. As he watched them descend, from beneath two of them, two smaller objects were delivered to the ground. Soon after he lost sight of them, he heard a loud crashing in the underbrush, and frightened, climbed to the lower branches of a tall pine tree.

Dr J Allen Hynek picks up the story, in The Hynek UFO Report:

He thereupon witnessed two humanlike individuals approaching his signal fires. They were garbed in silbery collarless suits, had unusual protruding eyes, and communicated to one another via an unintelligible cooing noise. According to Mr S., they were trying to dislodge him from his tree position when a third "alien," described by Mr S. as a "robot," appeared on the scene. Mr S. fired some arrows at the "robot" but failed to distract or divert any of the strange individuals. [Another account reports that when he finally hit the robot, "there was an arc flash and the robot was knocked backwards."] Then he tried lighting parts of his clothing on fire and throwing it at them to frighten them away. The individuals had violent reactions, and at the same time their craft began to ascend upwards, emitting a vapor which caused him to black out.

Schrum regained consciousness in the early dawn, found his companions and told them what had happened. Later, he told his father-in-law, who persuaded him to talk to authorities. Hynek mentions that the Air Force report notes "Mr S" appeared "stable and consistent in telling his story," though it explained the alleged sighting as "psychological." The Air Force kept the tape of Schrum's narrative, as well as one of the arrows he had fired at the robot.

Hynek adds:

The story of a bow-and-arrow hunter, held at bay high in a tree, setting flame to parts of his clothing and tossing them down onto the heads of his assailants until he was half-naked, passing out because of strange fumes emitted by "aliens," is certainly hard to believe, unless one considers it within the framework of the whole parade of stories similar to it.

It's a story that belongs to traditional folklore: the hunter who wanders off into strange woods and experiences enchantment. To our degraded understanding, enchantment sounds cute and quaint and precious, when it can be as frightening as a fairy tale.

Hynek's book was published in 1977 and I read his account of the Schrum case for the first time last Thursday, and what it most recalled for me was the "chupa" flap of the early 1980s, centered upon the small, remote town of Parnarama in northern Brazil. Jacques Vallee researched the cases, travelling to Parnarama to interview witnesses and survivors (at least five people were said to have died from close encounters), and the results were published in his 1990 book Confrontations.

(By the way, last Spring, Jeremy of Fantastic Planet wrote a terrific piece entitled Ultradimensional Terror and You which used the chupas as a springboard into an exploration of the Twin Peaks mythology as a "ready-made semiotic set within which to discuss the possibility of ultradimensional entities invading our 'Reality' and essentially having their way with us.")

Vallee writes that the chupas were usually described as small "boxlike UFOs equipped with powerful light beams" which flew over "the wooded areas and the river valleys at night. All of the victims in Parnarama were deer hunters who had climbed into trees during the night, as is frequently the case in that part of Brazil." Unless someone in Parnarama had gotten hold of The Hynek UFO Report, and the people conspired to punk Vallee and others, I find that an interesting fact.

In most cases, the chupas flew above the treetops and shone their beams toward the earth. They were said to make a humming sound, "like a refrigerator or a transformer," and did not appear large enough to contain a human pilot.

From Confrontations:

The hunting technique used in the region is unique: the hunters climb ten to fifteen feet into the trees, then spend the night in a hammock waiting for deer or other game. They take a flashlight with them to spot the animals.

A theory among local people is that the chupas are attracted by the flashlights, come over the hammocks, and strike the victims with their concentrated beam. However, I found little consistency in the descriptions of the beam itself. One witness compared it to an electric arc. On an interview tape another witness said he remembered a "bad smell" like an electrical odor (ozone)? and saw a blinding light, with pulsating colors inside....

Several people reported being exposed to the chupas in late 1982 as they were lying in their tree hammocks.... They had lost their previous vitality. A 43-year old man who "used to be afraid of nothing" now lives in constant fear. He is "scared of things that are not part of my experience."

After being struck by a chupa beam, victim Dionizio General "came rolling down the hill. For the following three days he was insane with teror; then he died." Another, Abel Boro, screamed as the light engulfed him. A friend ran to the Boro house to get his family, but Abel was dead, his body white, by the time they arrived. (It might be presumed that the isolated locals would leap to the explanation that chupas were spirits of the woods, but Vallee notes a local rumour that chupas were "American prototypes" stealing their blood.)

What are some points of congruity between the Schrum incident and the "chupas," and what might they suggest?

• The victims were hunters who bedded down in tall trees
  
• Schrum's UFOs and the chupas behaved as though drawn by fire and flashlight
• They emitted strong beams of light and similar sounds (a "cooing" and a "humming")
• Their actions appear intended to terrorize, even to death
  
• The extraterrestrial hypothesis again offers the least satisfying explanation

Think of the apparent futility of Schrum's whatevers, shaking the tree all night with the apparent purpose of dislodging him. Apparent. Because like the Hopkinsville monsters, who beseiged a farm house all night long but never threatened to enter, if they'd really wanted him out of that tree, they could have had him. But they weren't trying. Not really. Like the Flatwoods Monster, and "Mothman," and others, it just meant to say "Boo." Like Fungus the Bogeyman, their job is to give us a good scare. (Though, as the chupas tell us, if they scare us to death that's our problem.) Why? I like how Jeremy put it: fear is "the porterhouse steak of garmonbozia," and garmonbozia is Twin Peaks-speak for the the intense human emotions upon which vampiric entities feast.

One more hunter's story, this from Patrick Harpur's Daimonic Reality.

Carl Higdon, a 40-year old mechanic, was hunting elk in Wyoming's Medicine Bow National Park on October 25, 1974, when he decided to try a part of the woods little explored by hunters. Higdon came upon a group of five elk, and put his gun to his shoulder and fired.

Harpur writes:

Something strange happened. The sound of the shot was curiously muffled and the bullet seemed to travel so slowly that Carl was able to watch it in flight. It fell to earth some 15 to 20 meters in front of him. It was completely crushed. Amazed, Carl picked up the bullet and put it in his pocket. Then, turning at the sound of a branch cracking, he saw a very tall man standing about 20 meters away in the shade of a birch. This man, or whatever he was, had yellow skin, bristling straw-colored hair, and was wearing a black costume.

He approached Carl and said, surprisingly, "How you doin'?" - to which Carl replied: "Pretty good." "Are you hungry" asked the stranger. "Yeah. A little," said Carl. The man tossed him a package containing four pills, telling him to take one, which would last him for four days. Carl did take one, whereupon the man asked if Carl would like to go with him. "I guess," said Carl, and for the first time he saw a transparent illuminated "cubicle."

Carl embarked, noticing two other figures clad in black and five elk in a cage. They travelled to what the stranger called his "planet," but Carl was not allowed to leave the vehicle. Returning to the forest, Carl was dropped out of the cubicle onto rocky ground, near an unknown cow trail. He followed it, and came to a truck stuck in the mud, and used its CB radio to call for help. It turned out to be his own pick-up, which he had not recognized. When police arrived they found him "distraught, red-eyed, tearful, and (like the medieval near-death visionary, Alberic, who could not remember his mother) unable even to recognize his wife, who had come with them. He could only repeat the story of the pills and the men in black."

A wild tale, and like all such tales, impossible to verify. Yet his bullet was in his pocket where he'd placed it, folded like a glove. And to ask But was it real? is likely to miss the point. Fungus the Bogeyman returned to a home and family after a good night's scare. To what, and to whom, do these entities return? Does the yellow man in the black uniform ever say "Honey, I'm home?" Are there factories assembling the bizarre and ungainly robots of Schrum's and many others accounts? Why is there so little standardization of craft, and why are there so many different kinds of entities? Religion and occult lore have more to say in this regard than exopolitics, because these things are manifesting themselves for us.

Higdon might not have been terrorized, but he was drained, left a blubbering mess, like so many who encounter the Other. The Otherworld, too, has those who play good cop/bad cop. So long as they feed.

By the way, Professor Pan has an excellent post on the attempted manipulation of UFO manifestations, including a fascinating anecdote of his own apparent summoning.

The Black Lodge, Part 2

"Thou shalt be secret, a fear to the world" - Aleister Crowley

"Wow Bob, wow"

The case of Jose Antonio Da Silva is certainly bizarre, but in the unexpurgated annals of UFO history it is not particularly exceptional. That's distressing, and on many levels. Not least, for those who entertain the extraterrestrial hypothesis, who have only the image of emotionless "Greys" fixed in their heads, and who want things to make sense. And in a sensible world, even one that allows for alien visitation and abduction, there is no place for red-bearded dwarves in a room of stone. But when you have time, and I mean a lot of time, dip into this database of humanoid encounters, maintained by the Northwest Saskatchewan UFO Research Center, and see the varieties of contact. (And I advise against it at three in the morning, alone in your dank basement.) Then consider that unreported cases are estimated to outnumber reported by a factor of ten.

Undoubtedly, many encounters could be ascribed to the mere chemistry of the brain. But perhaps "mere chemistry" is a poor choice of words. Perhaps chemistry - which has long been used in conjunction with magick - actually does unlock hyperspace. The late psychonaut Terence McKenna said that "Right here and now, one quanta away, there is raging a universe of active intelligence that is transhuman, hyperdimensional, and extremely alien."

McKenna claimed his experiences on the powerful psychoactive DMT, which is naturally produced in small quantities in the brain, were "true hallucinations" of hyperreality.

Cliff Pickover writes "As a metaphor, consider infrared goggles":

A person leans on a tree. At night, we don't see the person. Put the goggles on, and a new reality results -- a truer reality -- and we see the man. Similarly, is it possible that our brain is a filter, and the use of DMT is like slipping on infrared goggles, allowing us to perceive a valid reality that is inches away and all around us?

A thread, begun yesterday on the discussion board, contains some fascinating accounts of the DMT universe, which demonstrates for many users the characteristics of a genuine reality subject to exploration, populated by entities which have existence distinct from the observer. Most commonly seen are playful elves, and mantid-like entities of cold intellect, which perform examinations upon the human subject.

From the accounts:

There are surprising and remarkable consistencies among volunteers’ reports of contact with nonmaterial beings. Sound and vibration build until the scene almost explosively shifts to an “alien” realm. Volunteers find themselves on a bed or in a landing bay, research environment, or high-technology room. The highly intelligent beings of this “other” world are interested in the subject, seemingly ready for his or her arrival and wasting no time in “getting to work.” There might be one particular being clearly in charge, directing the others. Volunteers frequently comment about the emotional quality of the relationships: loving, caring, or professionally detached. Their “business” appeared to be testing, examining, probing, and even modifying the volunteer’s mind and body.

...

I was lying on what seemed to be a large marble slab, cold and hard. Surrounding me were four tall (7' ?) emerald green mantis type creatures, all chittering at me in some high pitched language(?). I felt no fear, no threat. It seemed they were trying to communicate, though none of their sounds made any sense to me. This went on for what seemed like about a half hour. Then I began to wonder how I would get back, and as that thought crossed my mind, it was like a rubber band contracting, as I snapped back from hyperspace, and into my body.

And McKenna again, answering "What happens on DMT?":

A troop of elves smashes down your front door, and rotates and balances the wheels on the afterdeath vehicle, present you with the bill and then depart. And it's completely paradigm shattering. I mean, you know, union with the white light you could handle. An invasion of your apartment by jewelled self-dribbling basketballs from hyperspace that are speaking demotic Greek is not something that you anticipated and could handle. Sometimes people say, "Is DMT dangerous? It sounds so crazy. Is it dangerous?" The answer is, only if you fear death by astonishment.

Remember how you laughed when this possibility was raised.. and a moment will come that will wipe the smile right off your face.

Before things get too hippy and trippy, let's remember this: not only does US military-intelligence have an occultic aspect, but it is also the conductor of the world's most significant chemical experimentations. Most famously, powerful psychoactives. "Between the years 1947 and 1963, CIA and Army scientists examined, tested, and in some cases refined every drug which subsequently became available on the black market during the 1960's, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin, PCP, amyl nitrate, mushrooms, DMT, barbituates, laughing gas, and speed, among others." I wonder what unexpected discoveries were made in the course of such work.

If it's true, that hyperreal portals exist and can be accessed by humans, then it shouldn't surprise us terribly if the denizens of hyperspace have found a means to visit us.



Because see, here's the one uncomfortable fact about UFOs that we can speak with confidence: they should be hallucinations, but too often, they are not. They leave behind traces of themselves in our reality: bizarre radar returns, singed vegetation, multiple and independent witnesses, burns and pricks on the flesh of abductees. And yet the signature of encounters is a logic which appears to us absurd, or perhaps archaic to our modern minds. Perhaps it would have made more sense to our ancestors, who recounted many similar visitations.

Consider two more cases, from Vallee's Dimensions:

On November 6, 1957, twelve-year old Everett Clark, of Dante, Tennessee, opened the door to let his dog Frisky out. As he did so, he saw a peculiar object in a field a hundred yards or so from the house. He thought he was dreaming and went back inside. When he called the dog twenty minutes later, he found the object was still there, and Frisky was standing near it, along with several dogs from the neighborhood. Also near the object were two men and two women in ordinary clothing. One of the men made several attempts to catch Frisky, and later another dog, but had to give up for fear of being bitten. Everett saw the strange people, who talked between them "like German soldiers he had seen in movies," walk right into the wall of the object, which then took off straight up without a sound. It was oblong and of "no particular color."

In another of the tantalizing coincidences with which UFO researchers are now becoming familiar, on the same day another attempt to steal a dog was made, this time in Everittstown, New Jersey. The name of the town in the second case is almost identical to that of the witness in the first.

While the Clark case had taken place at 6:30 a.m., it was at dusk that John Trasco went outside to feed his dog and saw a brilliant egg-shaped object hovering in front of his barn. In his path he met a being three feet tall "with putty-colored face and large frog-like eyes," who said in broken English: "We are peaceful people, we only want your dog."

The strange being was told in no uncertain terms to go back where he belonged. He ran away, and his machine was seen to take off straight up some moments later. Mrs Trasco is said to have observed the object itself from the house, but not the entity. She is also quoted as saying that when her husband tried to grab the creature, he got some green powder on his wrist, but that it washed off. The next day he noticed the same powder under his fingernails. The ufonaut had been dressed in a green suit with shiny buttons, a green tam-o-shanter-like cap, and gloves with a shiny object at the tip of each.

Most "serious" UFOlogists would happily purge these episodes from their records. (A "green tam-o-shanter"? Moving right along....) Yet, disquietingly, they contain many of the same elements which also appear in cases used to support the extraterrestrial hypothesis. And they are more typical of close encounters than they are not.

In the Fall of 1954, France experienced an explosion of novelty, with a rash of UFO sightings and close encounters. Here are a couple of brief examples, from Richard Dolan's UFOs and the National Security State:

Yet another humanoid encounter took place two nights later [September 28] in the town of Bouzais. A man had notices that someone had stolen grapes from his vineyard and decided to stay up late and catch the thief. At about 10:30 p.m., he saw a luminous object descend and three figures emerge. He was then paralyzed and lost consciousness.

...

[On October 5] at about 6:30 a.m., near Le Mans, some Renault employees were going to work when they saw a luminous object on the ground near the road. They felt "pricklings and a sort of paralysis." The object then emitted a burst of green light and flew away very low over the fields. At 3:45 p.m., near Beaumont, several people saw a bright object coming toward them. When it was about five hundred feet away, they felt a strange sensation and became paralyzed. The object left a smell similar to nitrobenzene. Two reports that day also emerged of hairy dwarfish beings; in both cases the creatures took off in crafts that swiftly departed.

And from NWSURC's database of humanoid enounters, this July, 2000 incident from Buenavista, Argentina:

After hearing noises and strange voices coming from the kitchen area 10-year old Marisol Diaz went to investigate and was confronted by several short figures both males and females, resembling "little dwarfs". They had human-like features, with large eyes, pinkish colored skin, wearing white shimmering clothing, boots and the men wore some type of headgear, the tallest of the figures, apparently a male appeared to be bearded. The female entity had long blond hair and the shorter figures (children?) wore short pants and shoes. They seemed to have been examining some cleaning detergent and other kitchen items. They spoke in an unknown language that somehow the little girl was able to understand. They seemed to be commenting on the toxic make up of the cleaning detergent. Upon noticing the little girl the little group quickly exited out the rear patio. There an adult witness who apparently saw more similar figures on top of a nearby tree saw them. In the same area there had been reports of low flying multicolored lights and other phenomena.

The entities' desire to retrieve dogs, the theft of grapes, the examination of kitchen detergent, of Da Silva's fishing equipment and rosary, are of a kind with the frequent observation of UFO occupants collecting specimens of flora and fauna, which is typically interpreted by researchers as aliens conducting "scientific surveys." (Though the tremendous number of reported sightings, and the estimated unreported visitations, would seem to undermine the intellectually-soothing "survey" explanation.) Vallee writes: "the stories quoted in this connection verge on the ludicrous. But to pursue the investigation further leads to horror. This is a facet of the phenomenon we can no longer ignore."

If ritual, satanic abuse is genuinely perpetrated and covered-up by authorities and institutions sworn to protect the innocent; if elites are really raping and murdering children with impunity and without qualm, then something has seriously altered their sense of reality, and for a purpose. To commit such crimes, they must think they know something we don't. Something has satisfied them that the great religions are lies for slaves, and that the universe belongs to strange and bloody gods.

Those who dismiss Aleister Crowley's visions often say they were the product of deep trance states enhanced by drugs. But altered states have long been a part of religious experience. And as we've seen, there's an ancient alchemy of chemistry and magick, and today's chemistry does appear to open doors to strange, other realities and entities, similar to those claimed to be visiting us.

From one of Thelema's holy books, Liber LXVI, Liber Stellae Rubeae, some words which Crowley was inspired to write:

21. Then again the master shall speak as he will soft words, and with music and what else he will bring forward the Victim.
22. Also he shall slay a young child upon the altar, and the blood shall cover the altar with perfume as of roses.
23. Then shall the master appear as He should appear - in His glory.
...
48. I am Apep, O thou slain One. Thou shalt slay thyself upon mine altar: I will have thy blood to drink.
49. For I am a mighty vampire, and my children shall suck up the wine of the earth which is blood.
50. Thou shalt replenish thy veins from the chalice of heaven.
51. Thou shalt be secret, a fear to the world.

Elites have not dabbled in occult matters for simple curiosity, or to encounter the divine, or to feel "one with the universe." It is not to raise human consciousness that the Pentagon has experimented with drugs. Every exploration, every occult "working" has been to accrue more power to itself. This is the logic of magick's left-hand path, the politics of which is fascism, with an aristocratic bearing. (And let's not forget, Crowley himself was an asset of British intelligence, whose file was labeled "use with extreme caution.")

In many encounters, as in Da Silva's, the entities ask the humans to be their guides into our reality, or tell them they have been chosen for the purpose. See, for another example, Victor K's story from Russia, in 1991. Victor was told he was selected to be their "representative" on Earth. The entities explained they needed a representative because "we expend to much energy during terrestrial materialization." Interestingly, when Victor asked how they moved about in space, he received the answer "We do not move, we are everywhere all the time." (Afterwards, "Victor suffered from unexplained seizures, headaches and strange markings were found on his body.")

Da Silva, we saw, said no. Victor's answer is unrecorded. I wonder what would result, if someone who also had authority in this world, or could speak on behalf of such an authority, said yes.

There's nothing left for the Hubble to do but fall, and NASA can't spare a few million to keep in touch with the Voyager spacecraft just as things get interesting again out there at the heliopause. Such priorities suggest authorities have deduced that, regardless of whether the truth is out there, power is not. And it's the accruing of power, not intellectual titilation, that really drives the research dollars. Such priorities suggest that, though UFOs must continue to be of extreme sensitivity to the defense establishment, the extraterrestrial explanation is a tremendous sleight of hand.

Remember Twin Peaks' rogue agent, Windom Earle? I don't think he's a rogue anymore. I think he has a seat at the table:

Once upon a time, there was a place of great goodness, called the White Lodge. Gentle fawns gamboled there amidst happy, laughing spirits. The sounds of innocence and joy filled the air. And when it rained, it rained sweet nectar that infused one's heart with a desire to live life in truth and beauty.

Generally speaking, a ghastly place, reeking of virtue's sour smell. Engorged with the whispered prayers of kneeling mothers, mewling newborns, and fools, young and old, compelled to do good without reason.

But, I am happy to point out that our story does not end in this wretched place of saccharine excess. For there's another place, its opposite: a place of almost unimaginable power, chock full of dark forces and vicious secrets. No prayers dare enter this frightful maw. Spirits there care not for good deeds or priestly invocations. They are as likely to rip the flesh from your bone as greet you with a happy "Good day!"

And if harnessed, these spirits in this hidden land of unmuffled screams and broken hearts would offer up a power so vast that its bearer might reorder the earth itself to his liking. This place I speak of, is known as the Black Lodge. And I intend to find it.

Now's a good time to ask: am I just scaring myself? Is talk like this just a stupid, spook-house indulgence, when the mundane world alone is enough to make my hair stand on end? I hope so. But I don't know. And regardless of whether something like the Black Lodge has hyperspatial existance - something ancient, and evil, and powerful, that can impinge upon our time and space - I do know that some of those who would presume to rule us, who have assembled for centuries in their own lodges and secret orders, have, for a long while, intended to find such a place.

So perhaps we ought to inquire, as best we can, whether their pursuits have enjoyed success. And perhaps the first thing we should do is ask, If they have had success, what kind of world would this be?