Forests hide so much. In Central and South America, jungles cover ancient cultures. In America, our forests are the location of missing persons, cryptids, stairways to nowhere, abandoned railroad tracks, spectral lights, abandoned homes, cemeteries, and so much more.
🌳🌳🌳
Bigfoot is not the only mystery in the forests. Dogman has often been reported. Dogman is said to use mindspeak, warning folks to get away and bringing an ominous vibe as if one is being stalked. The wee folk are sighted more often than we hear about. Like the Skinwalker, folks are afraid to refer to it or use its name because it's considered to draw their attention to you. The wee folks are seen with the Tall Guys or on their own. One case I have recorded was a man in Florida who saw one of the wee folk in a tree, only it was cloaked enough to blur out some of the forest. In more recent times, people have reports of the Slenderman and Rake.
Forests have a way of growing up around old homesteads and cemeteries -
There is a strange forest phenomena being pointed out recently - stairways in the forest.
Trail cams in the forest have rendered viewers speechless at times -
.jpg)
Then, there's the questionable trash left behind, archiving a period in time.
.jpg)
.jpg)
Spook lights are often seen in the forest. Visitors chase them, never to actually find the source. This one (below) is in Oklahoma down a creepy back road.
Joplin Light
Some forests harbor dark things that cannot be explained. The Devil's Tramping Ground is an area said to possess evil intent and where bad things occur.
Devil's Tramping Ground,
Bear Creek, NC
Showcased on "Destination Truth" show, Hoia Baciu forest in Romania has a circle in the center of the forest where strange lights are seen, people are scratched, thrown, and get sick. To make it even more sinister, nothing grows in the circle.
Romania
Inherently, we humans know there are predators in the woods. Since the beginning of time, tales of wolves carrying off children helped to keep the kiddies in the village and not getting lost. We feel eyes upon us. We sleep restlessly. We hike with increased speed when we hear something else walking nearby.
🌳🌳🌳
If you wanted to hide something unexplainable, a forest is an ideal hiding spot. With dappled light, trees, vines, boulders, and bushes, anyone or anything can remain unseen.
At the same time, a walk in the woods can provide mushrooms, pinecones and twigs for crafts, ginseng and fiddleheads, and an overwhelming sense of being sheltered.
Depending on the time of year, the forest is a friend or a foe. It houses predators that might want to take us down - wild cats, wolves, bears, wild boars....
Then, there's the dangers to our health hidden away, sometimes in beauty, like dangerous mushrooms that can kill.
Ticks that carry diseases -
Mosquitos that carry malaria and yellow fever -
As mankind has moved away from nature and tried to recreate it in our backyards, a forest can seem like a foreign land, without proper lighting, with strange creatures, and easy ways to get lost.
In fact, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Yosemite National Park are two forested areas with the most missing persons. Some forests, like Aokigahara (Suicide Forest) on Mt. Fuji in Japan is not only a forest well known for the amount of people who end their lives, but also because people get lost in quite easily. It is dense and dark and all paths look the same.
It became popularly known that people go missing in forests all the time, more than we thought. Reporting by authorities is strangely silent and vague. Thanks to David Paulides of CanAm Project, his "Missing 411" series of books/documentaries/YouTube Channel, it's been impossible to hide these truths. Many go missing in very odd ways, right in plain daylight, leaving behind no clues or very bizarre clues.
Forests may be mysterious, but they are also amazing gifts from our Maker. They supply medicinals, wood, foraged calories, oxygen, game, water, and beauty. They are sort of gardens of Eden all over the planet.
And, somewhere deep inside there is a little child who remembers the magic, the fear, and the excitement of the woods as portrayed in film and literature -
Take a walk in the woods, do some creepy photography to capture the shadows, the lichens, the rotting fallen tree trunks, the mushrooms, the dense foliage...
