The place:
One day, in the first or second week of November, 2022, I go out to areas around Rock Creek Wilderness, Oregon. Chanterelles are the target, but I also end up picking more Pine Mushrooms or Western matsutakis than ever before.
The terrain is rugged out there and about as steep as it gets while remaining mostly traversable. Thanks to the inaccessibility of the terrain, there are pockets of old growth coastal spruce scattered throughout the valleys, the largest and rarest trees quite a hike from any maintained trail, a few of them 10 or so feet in diameter. The mountainous valleys in the area between Florence and Yachats open up to the beach, where that section of the Oregon Coast Range mountains abruptly plunge into the ocean.
I’ve spent more than twenty days hiking around this location over the last decade, but mostly just day trips. This time I was going for an overnight mushroom hiking trip at this location, like I have done 2 times before.
I did pretty well with the mushrooms on this trip, as is usual in the area. After 8 or so hours of hiking that terrain off trail, around impassible thickets or small cliffs, and over 6 ft tall downed logs, I fall asleep real easy an hour or 2 after sunset.
That day I parked the car and settled in for the night about a mile up NF-1055. The roads NF-1055 and NF 57 circle the approximately 7500 acre wilderness area. Not far up that prominent ridge road you get to fall asleep to the distant but still clear sound of the ocean. If the wind is calm.
I pitched the tent off to the side of the road near the car. Getting to another spot to set up the tent could take an hour and it was already near dark. Another car might not to drive by in a night, so sleeping by that road there usually isn’t so bad.
Nobody drove by that night, but there’s a few reasons I suspect something else came by. I fell asleep normally, on a cot, in a small tent, adjacent to NF-1055 around 9:30 PM.
Anomaly #1: The Light
I awoke to a bright orange light coming through the tent. I felt half asleep, groggy, and not very surprised or in any rush. I wonder if the sun is up already. It’s bright enough I could clearly see the zipper tag on the tent hatch to open it. I otherwise use a flashlight to locate it. The time between opening my eyes and opening the tent hatch was probably about 10 seconds.
Just after I opened the tent hatch, I am momentarily stunned by the brightness of the light, and then it disappears. It’s totally dark and I can’t see anything.
I managed to make out 2 detalis; one was the direction of the source of the light, and it appeared to be approximately level with me. The other detail was that some tree sillhouettes were visible, meaning the light was behind them. That would put it some distance in the air, or hundreds of feet in the air if it was in the center of the valley.
My normal and wide awake reaction would likely have been a shot of adrenaline, but apparently I was too drowsy to react in that way. I stared into the darkness a few seconds before my mind started to work with the thought; “what was that?”
Could somebody have been flying a drone out here with an orange spotlight? No, there wasn’t any noise.
I recalled the time I saw some space trash or relatively slow moving something, burn up in the atmosphere, with orange and white flames where I could make out individual licks, for 5 or so seconds before that thing disappeared over the horizon. I was genuinely concerned the world was about to end as I had never seen anything like it before, and haven’t seen anything like it since.
No, I don’t think so. This was way brighter. And it was low, like not in the sky, I’m pretty sure. Probably not some rare stuff burning up in the atmosphere.
It could have been somebody with something on the opposite side of the valley. Except that’s even less passable terrain and there’s not a road, and that would be the brightest portable light I’ve ever seen. Focusing it at me, almost a half mile away? No
I was still groggy but no longer half asleep after thinking about it a few minutes. I put on my shoes, grabbed the flashlight, went to the car, opened it up and checked the time. It’s 2:20 AM.
Huh. Was I dreaming? It wouldn’t be my first false awakening/sleepwalked hallucination.
No, that really happened. You saw an orange light for a few seconds and then it disappeared. Maybe you just saw your first UFO. Me and Grandma.
Too bad it was just you out here. Oh well, it’s gone now. Or maybe it just turned off it’s light.
I finally am alert enough to get creeped out by the thought of some unknown thing in the air nearby that I couldn’t see or hear. I was up for a few more minutes, wondering and looking, but the slight agitation I felt fades quickly. There’s nothing but the dark forest and the relaxing sound of the distant ocean. I went back to bed and quickly fell asleep.
I wake up a little after 8AM. You slept like a rock for about 11 hours. Nice, should be good to go to climb these mountains all day. I put away the bed and tent, take a crap -more on that later- and put on the hiking outfit, then proceed to get hiking and picking.
I did not recall waking up and seeing the light immediately the next morning, something like 2 hours pass before the memory hits me. I saw some light last night. What the fuck was that?
Next I’m struck that I had just about forgot it happened. My normal response would be more along the lines of HOLY SHIT, WHAT IS THAT? but I often wake up so drowsy it’s basically a stupor. Guess anything could happen in that stupor and there’s decent chance I’ll forget it.
I wondered if there is any use in telling anyone about it, as I carry on with the hiking and picking. It was after noon when I was standing, gazing out over the forest, breathing heavily and recovering from however many hundreds of yards I just did on 30-40 degree slopes. As I’m doing this I remember, I did this in a dream last night.
Not the heavy breathing part, but standing, waiting and gazing out over a forest. Similar environments or objects often trigger dream recall during the next day. I stood there and try to gather all I can remember about the dream, like I usually do if I have a minute. This one has a decent number of details as far as my dream recalls goes:
Anomaly #2: The Dream
I remember plenty of weird dreams, but perhaps the most unique detail here is that I have never recalled a dream where I thought I was in a hospital or healthcare facility before. Also, this thing with the segmented window is bewildering.
The forest view is different in the dream. I’m looking out a large window, like as tall as me and 2 or 3 times as long. I’m waiting, gazing out the window at a forest, over the tops of conifers.
The glass I am looking through has some segmented lines in it, as if it was made of bricks or something.
I notice a white lab coat doctor-looking person standing a foot or two away form me to my right, watching me. The top of his head is about at my shoulder. I take his attention to mean I should say something and I’m wondering about the window, so I ask:
“is this window some kind of composite, or do you make it in one piece?”
The doctor person gives me an odd intent look. I get the sense I’m not supposed to be talking. I have no memory of the sound of the voice, but I have a distinct memory of this doctor-looking person’s response: “we can’t talk about the glass.”
Whoops, guess he doesn’t really want to talk. Whatever, there’s more hospital business to attend to. I’m led away from the window.
The next detail I recall is sitting on a bench in a mostly empty room, much smaller than the room with the window. There’s a person next to me, but I recall no details of what this person looks like. I feel like I should just keep quiet, keep my head down and get through the things you need to, efficiently. This hospital is doing important, life saving work and I shouldn’t take any more of it’s time than I need to.
This sense of respect for where I was is a distinct impression of the dream, and I was just passing through, waiting for it to be over.
The window room and small room are disconnected pieces. The dream recall is spotty and incomplete.
The final piece of this dream I recall is leaving. It’s not really a hospital I respect anymore, for whatever reason, and it’s time to go.
It was one of those ramps lowered off a suspended surface. The memory of the ramp is distinct, it’s maybe 3 or 4 feet wide, and steep, climbing about my height (6 ft) over about 12. I can’t remember walking down the ramp, or what it is attached to. I’m already a few feet away, looking back at the ramp and the father of a highschool friend who I really did not want to cross. I had done something wrong, or something really bad had happened and he was not happy with me, so I should leave in a hurry. Which I do, turning to walk away down a gravel road in the woods.
It might have only taken 20 or 30 seconds for this dream recall to occur. I try, but no further details come.
This father of a teenage friend could take a tone when expressing disapproval that was harsh, not loud or yelling, it might be described as piercing or sharp. Like damn, I’m glad my dad doesn’t scold or disagree with me like that.
If something was going to choose one of my memories of a person that would induce me to try not to engage and be looking forward to getting away from, this could be the most effective choice.
That was a fucking weird one. This person hasn’t crossed my mind in most of two decades, and he beckoned me away from a ramp that was apparently connected to some kind of hospital in a dream last night?
Generally, it’s not that difficult for me to see the way in which dreams are reactionary exploratory remixes, or some form of commentaries on things that occurred recently in life, and this one was way off the map. Which happens maybe a couple times a year.
Having stood there a few minutes resting and then recalling the dream, I wasn’t any longer breathing hard and was ready to resume traversing mountainous slopes in search of mushrooms. I moved on without thinking much more than, that was a weird damned dream.
Another 30 or so minutes passes before I make the association with the light and notice, both of those things happened last night.
What the shit. Was I just abducted?
Could be. Who the hell knows. Does it even matter? One more account among the many thousands.
I went on with my day, enjoying the discipline of the physical activity and stocking up on nourishment in a gorgeous forest like I do. I stayed at it all day. It was getting late.
Anomaly #3: The Sickness
I started to get a headache, about 90 minutes before sunset. I’m still loading up on mushrooms, and the headache doesn’t stop me as it started minor. However, it gets worse and worse over the next few hours.
I wondered, why am I getting a headache? I’m hydrated, fed, and haven’t sweat myself hyponatremic. I’m well familiar with getting headaches from these things due to a somewhat rigorous athletic history. The other causes of headache I know well are from consuming too much alcohol, and flu/cold fevers or infections. I got a headache one time from being too close to varnish fumes a few minutes to long, and another time from walking around Bangkok smog for about 10 hours straight. Those fume headaches were pretty slight, and went away in 30 or so minutes after getting away from the fumes.
Apart from these things, I don’t get headaches. I haven’t gotten a “random” headache since high school, something like 23 years ago. I’ve never gotten a headache while hiking in the cool season before. Weird. Maybe you’re coming down with an infection.
About an hour after the headache started, my eyes started to burn, and ears started to ring. Tinnitus is another symptom of drinking too much alcohol or infections for me, otherwise I don’t really get it. Burning sensation in my eyes was something I had experienced before, when my grass pollen allergy was really bad as a youth, or when in clouds of fine dust or smog.
The air is about as clean as air gets where I was. Right about sunset, the headache was bad. Not the throbbing pulses of pain that is a normal headache for me, this was a constant pressure that felt like it was behind my eyes.
I pack up, get in the car and begin the 90 or so minute drive home.
30 minutes later, the tinnitus, burning eyes and headache have all gotten worse. At that point, all three symptoms were individually like nothing I had ever experienced. I’m not nauseous, but my stomach was in a knot and I felt a little dizzy and delirious. I become concerned about my ability to drive a winding highway.
I am not a person who worries too much. The only time I ever sought medical treatment I was literally dying and as good as dead without bowel resection surgery, and there I was once again certain that something is very wrong and I don’t know what it is. If this gets any worse, pull over. There’s no cell service out there, what do you do? Maybe you can sleep it off.
At about 2 and half hours since I first noticed the slight headache, and soon after thinking I probably shouldn’t be driving, the symptoms leveled out. I was sick with something but able to finish the drive home without feeling like I’m putting anyone in danger.
I get home and am in bed about 15 minutes later. The symptoms hadn’t gotten worse for about an hour and I wasn’t in the extreme pain I knew as life threatening, so I was pretty sure I wasn’t dying. If it isn’t better by morning, you can seek medical attention. I laid in bed awake for some time with head and eyes buzzing and burning, with the tinnitus like I had never heard, stomach in a knot, dizzy, somewhat delirious, but not the same delirium one gets from a fever which I am well familiar with.
I knew, I was sick with something new. However my state of mind was such that I wasn’t really thinking about anything other than the sickness. I did not recall the light or the dream again that day once the sickness started.
I fell asleep, without any sense of drowsiness, more like losing consciousness during an intense fever. I slept 10 hours and wake up feeling normal apart from being hungrier than usual.
I hadn’t been up for long and I was doing an internet search on my confusing illness from the night before.
It definitely wasn’t caused by anything I had eaten or drank, as I had been consuming the the same regular staple food for days prior to the symptoms, and those aren’t the kinds of foods that can spoil dangerously or otherwise be completely obvious. I could have been dealing with some kind of infection I had never dealt with before. Where could I have picked something up?
Before I come up with any other possible sources of infection or poisoning, I see in the search returns that another match is radiation poisoning.
Wait, you saw a light and had a weird dream, and got sick with something you’ve never been sick with before, the symptoms of which are a strong match to radiation poisoning.
Well shit.
Anomaly #4: The Mystery of the Disappearing Dookie
This is slightly out of order, in that this thing happened first thing the next morning after seeing the light. It was before I recalled the dream, hiked all day, and then became sick.
This one might sound silly to some, but from the perspective of the person who lived it, this is the reason I am sure something crazy happened that night, and what I experienced was not the result of some random, rare kind of poisoning or infection.
The other 3 anomalies are, individually, curiosities compared to this shit.
I had been eating good food my body knows well for a week prior. I ate twice a day, my meals had been alternating between a spiced squash and oat porridge with blackberry puree and hazelnuts, and a wild rice and black barely tomato stew with some vegetables and crab.
For those not familiar with eating high fiber staples and having one big crap (healthy bowel movement) a day, constipation is nonexistent. Instead, shit is like clockwork and it occurs early in the day.
I don’t eat breakfast apart from coffee, lunch was the porridge dish, and stew for dinner.
Waking up early and hiking all day somewhat regularly causes the regular morning bowel movement to hold until later in the day, assuming I have good food in me. So not going through the first daytime of hiking is normal.
Then it was the evening. After I ate dinner that night before I saw the light, I thought “wow, you still haven’t crapped yet.” An hour later, the thought occurred again; “I can’t believe I didn’t crap today. I’m probably gonna have to wake up and go in the middle of the night, and its gonna yuuuuuuuge. I should go dig the hole now in case it comes urgently.”
But I didn’t get out of bed and dig a hole. I stayed in bed and fell asleep, with my guts full of food, the night I would see the light and have the dream.
I woke up the next morning with the sensation that I needed to go. It wasn’t that urgent.
The bowel movement was a 3-4 inch diameter puddle. Basically nothing.
What the shit? Where is the massive 2 day pile of dookie? Why is it liquidy?
Never in my life has something like this happened, and the fact that I had been eating the same food for most of a week straight makes constipation out of the question. To cap the mystery, the next day after hiking and getting sick, there was no unusually large bowel movement, and when the digestive clockwork did resume, the wild rice and black barely I had eaten was not there.
Note for the unfamiliar: whether or not wild rice and/or black barley was consumed in volume, is about as obvious as night and day in a stool sample. The almost black color doesn’t change during digestion and this is often a unique property of the foods consumed by an individual.
Dinner the night of the event was the last serving of the large pot of black barley wild rice stew I had made a week or so ago, and it was not there the days after the sickness.
Another note for the unfamiliar: some people have a daily habit of covering their stool with woodchips or sawdust. If the pile of shit is not going directly into a deep dark hole, one gets a brief if inadvertent look at it when depositing sawdust or woodchips. They notice things even if they are not trying to, such as the unchanging and obvious color of wild rice and black barely.
The big point of all the shit-talking here, is that beyond any reasonable doubt, I took a crap that night I don’t remember.
And I can add diarrhea to the list of symptoms experienced even though that headache wouldn’t start for another 11 or so hours after this symptom presented itself and then disappeared.
It will probably sound dumb to people who haven’t personally experienced the specific highly regular bowel movements eating this way will do, but this is the bit that’s 100% certain to the person that lived it.
Reiterate; beyond any reasonable doubt, I took a crap that night I don’t remember.
SUS AF
Once in a lifetime anomalies will pop up from time to time in life. Unusual, one of a kind dreams could be relaitvely common if an individual doesn’t often remember dreams, though I am not one of them.
Add another once in lifetime anomaly. One can think of these anomalies statistically; the odds of one of these things happening in a single day is low for most people who are 40 years or older, but not incredibly low.
But then two of them happen in single 24 hour period. Let’s guess the odds of personally encountering or experiencing something totally novel which they did not seek out and have never experienced before is 1/100 for each 24 hour period (for a middle aged person, which could be high or could be low depending on the person.)
The odds of two such occurrences in the same day would be 1/100 x 1/100 , which is one in ten thousand.
And add another anomaly in this 24 hour period. You are up to one in a million
And add another anomaly in this 24 hour period. You are up to one in one hundred million.
The light, the dream, the sickness, and the shit. The odds that these 4 anomalies didn’t have a single cause is incredibly small.
In fact, one could call it kinda dumb to bet that these 4 things didn’t have a single cause.
So what is the cause?
“It was a mushroom picking trip. You ate a funny fungi” one friend fond of trash talking said. This is the kind of shit one has to trudge through if they attempt to communicate the experience to most normalish people.
Nope I didn’t eat anything funny, but I guess it’s possible I inhaled some funny spores. Except there’s no documented precedent for something like that happening outside of a moldy dwelling so, probably not.
One could say it’s possible that all these people who saw a light in the sky and then underwent a bewildering experience suffered from food or water poisoning of some kind, though “hallucinations” generally are not a symptom unless the poisoning almost kills them -it would be fairly obvious they were near death.
If “hallucination inducing poisoning” is the cause of most the “light in the sky with other bewildering phenomena” cases, it’s likely to be a fairly obvious pattern. Being associated with chemical psychedelics gets the case disregarded by any journalist honestly attempting to document the phenomena. Those experiencing it are explicitly stating: it was not a hallucination and they were not on drugs.
There’s really no reason to accept this explanation en mass, apart from giving oneself a reason to avoid considering something they really don’t want to be true.
In fact, in perhaps the best documented case of food poisoning inducing mass psychosis, it was the population observing the individuals with the more obvious reactions to eating ergot that underwent the more virulent form of mass psychosis, in that the violent execution of innocent people -burning, etc of witches- is a much more insane thing to do than what was done by the individuals more obviously expressing the symptoms of eating hallucinogenic rye.
Remind oneself here that the more virulent form of mass psychosis is known to occur in individuals observing those who are more explicitly experiencing novel phenomena.
Also don’t forget, there’s thousands of instances of this phenomena reported across the near entirety of cultures and geography on the planet, and most of the researchers who are thoroughly aware of each distinct pattern and the rates at which they appear in reports often state that the evidence is conclusive that this phenomena is not most generally a form of mass psychosis.
It’s happening.
Another common method of dismissing the phenomena en mass -which a small percentage of reports have been demonstrated to be- is that the “light in the sky and bewildering experience” phenomena are in total, the made up stories of attention seekers.
You think ALL of these people want to be known for this? In a world where telling the truth as they understand it will get them ridiculed, rejected, dismissed -at times from their career, leaving the alleged attention seeker uncertain as to how they are going to continue housing and feeding themselves?
That’s stupid. Even if the most extreme case of assuredly putting oneself out of a career is mostly limited to commercial pilots, medical or psychiatry licensees, and military, there’s plenty of individuals among said professions who are among those reporting the phenomena.
They often wait until they are retired to say anything because of the extreme ostracism.
The individuals that cling to this “made up story” dismissal are probably individuals that desire attention and fame to such a degree, they often consider spinning controversial tales. They like the attention, and can see why someone would do it.
They’re projecting. Assholes.
Ultimately, most people may dismiss the phenomena -or chalk it up to mass psychosis in one form or another- simply because it sounds too crazy.
“Unbelievable” is not an actual reason, it’s an emotional reaction and it is to be expected given the phenomena has a good chance of fundamentally undermining common conceptions of reality.
Masses of people were similarly astounded by the concept of hot air balloon flight for a period, as people flying with a giant balloon seemed so crazy that it must be some crazy story somebody just made up.
It wasn’t, and this pattern of disbelief appears regularly when it comes to people being told by others of something radically novel that may fundamentally change their worldview.
It happens.
I don’t know what happened, and I don’t suspect I was “abducted by aliens.”
I suspect I was “brain-beamed by pretentious critters with high technology.”
A lot more syllables, but the accuracy is worth it. The term “alien abduction” has a too much baggage. The program and reaction is already set in most adult’s minds.
I would be surprised if they were interstellar travelers as the term “alien” is often thought of. I was a few thousand feet away from the ocean for the event discussed here, and there’s been multiple sightings reported by military personel of “aircraft carrier size” objects rising out of the ocean and disappearing into the clouds.
Go ahead and take a wild guess.
Seeing what’s happened to human technology in less than 4 decades, it’s not very difficult to imagine that something has technology which enables it to easily evade detection by anything human. Or that there exists some electromagnetic tool that allows one to “sleepwalk” a human around in a dream state while controlling the appearance of the dream.
Actually, pretty sure it’s happened repeatedly since this original event that occured 2 and a half years ago. Pretty sure, I’m familiar with what the hypothesized brain beam feels like at this point, though I don’t have a guess as to whether or not these experiences represent an aborted beginning or an end of an event.
The application of this technology is some component of the phenomena referred to as “Exploding Head Syndrome.”
That shit’s fucking hilarious.
The name of the syndrome is accurate. There are also sensations of vibration and spinning, and it happens as the targeted individual is going into or coming out of sleep, suggesting it has to syncronize in some manner with the target at a certain stage of the process of sleep.
There are other versions or methods of this electromagnetically mind altering technology suggested by the significant percentage of the reports regarding the phenomena that involve seeing the light or craft when wide awake, and then “coming to” hours and in a few rare instances, days later -commonly referred to as “lost time.”
It’s not difficult to be more specific and call it “the remote shutdown of the brain’s ability to form memories” -a blow to the head or flunitrazepam not neccessary.
The “dream state manipulation” discussed in this specific account is distinct from “lost time” accounts. The various forms of the phenomena suggest that “critters with high technology” are not a single or unified entity even if they are all following the protocol of leaving no physical trace. That is, apart from some briefly radioactive ground or whatnot.
Conclusion
Maybe I’ll go with “electromagnetically roofying motherfuckers” as the proper term. Gosh darn it that feels good.
Why they gotta be like that? Fuck this shit
Or there’s a really good reason for it, except I’m probably gonna die like the rest of them, knowing basically nothing about who is doing it and just guessing as to why it is happening. A proverbial rat in a cage.
“Oh lighten up. You are at least a great ape in an arboretum. You have the slightest idea what’s out there, and you could go ahead and roll with your worst nightmare. You should be saying thank you. Asshole.”
I’m not the one leaving people ignorant and electromagnetically roofying them and making them sick! ASSHOLE!
Ignorance is bliss for now and it’s currently your birthright on Earth. You’re welcome.
Fuck you everybody goodnight