Owls is a weird take. The obvious thing would be to assume they made it all up. If the weight of their testimony and the evidence is too strong to go with that, you're already past a naturalistic explanation.
Owls do not do somersaults. Owls are not bulletproof. I absolutely guarantee you a bunch of Kentucky hillbillies cannot and would not fail to hit a pair of fearless owls given a whole night to shoot at them. Whether the hillbillies were stone cold sober as claimed or blind drunk, those owls would be full of holes. There would be copious evidence of their demise. To claim they were owls is to claim those owls had supernatural powers.
Most of the “it was swamp gas” people are city-dwellers who would genuinely be surprised by the sight of a sandhill crane or bear and mistake it for something unearthly. Their failure of imagination is to assume the people in these sorts of locales would have the same reaction.
Personally when I lived in Appalachia I loved the owls and never mistook them for goblins, let alone shot at them. I think if I saw one glowing and doing backflips I might.
But then I never shot at anything. I’m not great at being a redneck. I would always rather watch the turkeys do their thing than eat them.
Was sorely tempted to shoot the deer who kept eating my tomatoes and lettuce though. If it’s gonna be you or me it’s gonna be me. Fuckin hoofed rats.
Owls also mind their own business and are easily startled away. Once startled away, they don't come back. Is there another recorded event of owls relentlessly harassing someone? I'm guessing no.
Aspects of owls can sure seem supernatural! Ever seen a saw whet owl successfully hunt mice through 2 feet of snow? (I realize it's explained by their extraordinary perceptual abilities, but it's hard to believe it until you've seen it.) I have, and you just shake your head. (Maybe I should tell that story the way a Stephen King character said all good stories should begin: Once upon a time, when we all lived in the forest....)
Hum,hum hum, possibly a trite explanation (carnies con? wacky tobaccy ? mass hysteria?), possibly a bit of really strange, damnedifIknow.
I have over the years, on a number of occasions experienced things absolutely defying rational explanation (No not alien abduction, not shape changers, just occurrences unexplainable by physics, laws of chance, etc.).
I'm not buying nor selling. I am convinced thought that: There are far far more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in anybody's philosophy!
A couple Euros I follow have mentioned the spooky otherworldliness of North American forests compared to Europe. It's like some primeval spirit left over from the natives that once prowled the land.
We tamed our Place of Power back in the Heathen Times and confined them, so we can simply avoid them. There are some places i visited, like a grove near the place I grow up. A young man war suicided there by "satanists", my uncle found him. You can feel it is a "different" place, like ancient temple like l'Antro della Sibilla at Cuma. I never tried, but if American groves had "that" energy I would be terrified.
Maybe that is the reason only Irish-Scotch hillbillies and their Celtic Catholic-pagan deep magic succesfully conquered that land.
I've only felt that once while hiking in the woods atop Mt. Jacinto over Palm Springs, CA. I love near the Appalachians now so I'll bet they are really haunting.
You have a marvelous gift for understatement! Castaneda's Don Juan allegedly taught him how to detect places of power, in this case in the AZ/Northern Mexico area. He claimed there were places that were either beneficial (where the earth's power was restorative), or harmful. Animals, for example, will often be drawn to or avoid these places by virtue of some innate ability. It was taught as an aspect of becoming a hunter, and 'making oneself available to power.'
In dense Ashe Juniper my grandfather had a cabin in the Texas hill country and it was there that I often spent summers in the late 80’s. Many sleepless nights when awake by a large window, I perched myself with a flashlight and a comic book. Until one evening I watched as crouching, featureless but luminescent beings no more than 3 to 4 feet in height approached the window and simply stared at me. I woke my grandfather who, to my surprise, took the matter seriously and marched outside, shotgun in hand. The next morning the police came by but nothing much came of it. It was assumed to be local teens who had a habit stealing pain pills from the old timers in the area.
Enjoyable read, thank you. Also, if you’re not already aware of him, you might want to check out Bob Gymlan’s channel on YouTube, he did a great video on this very peculiar episode and hit on a lot of the same points regarding the skeptics as you did.
Your reference to barred owls made me smile. We lived in central MA for a decade, and our property was in a woods that was just teeming with them. Listening to them talk to each other (their "conversation" could escalate until it sounded like an argument between angry chimpanzees) was one of the few fond memories of living there. Interestingly, their only mortal enemy is the Great Horned owl. There were periods of time when one would enter the area, and the barred owls would seem to just disappear until they left. I still occasionally hear their 'who cooks for you?' call in the distance here in KY.
I’ve been hiking not far from Hopkinsville. Some crazy terrain- ravines, cliffs, and caves as you noted. It can feel spooky- or sacred. Is spooky just a modern echo of sacred?
If I were ever to write a memoir, I would save the following strange event for it. But I will never write a memoir. It's a pity, too, because I have a sensational title for it. However, inasmuch as Substack affords its users a certain valuable anonymity ( anyone who thinks my name is "Bobby Lime" deserves to be taken by a three card monte sharp ), I shall leave the story here. It's part of the close aftermath of a far larger story, one which killed several people and ruined unknown numbers of lives. I barely have the energy to write what follows, so you can understand why I won't be writing the book.
When I was seven, I was nearly killed in a mass murder. I was in the hospital for a month. After my mother had tucked me in on my first night at home, given me a kiss, left the room, and shut the door, I lay in bed staring aimlessly at the part of the wall which faced me. The backboard of my bed was against a window, and every minute or so, headlights would sweep across my wall where it joined the ceiling. When the car came from my right, I saw nothing. But when it came from my left, for two or three seconds I saw innumerable ectoplasmic little critters, gamboling like dolphins in an aquarium and grinning at me.
A few months later, the first time I went back to the scene of the crime, I did have a post traumatic stress disorder flashback, but in the six months I was homebound before I was able to go back to school, I had nothing in the way of anxiety. Actually, I had as good a time in those months as a kid in such circumstances could have. I read most of The Hardy Boys books. My mother fixed my favorite foods often. I never mentioned my strange little nighttime visitors, who were there every night before I drifted off to sleep until one night they weren't. I never questioned their disappearance anymore than I had wondered about their showing up in the first place. I took it for granted that they had a more important assignment elsewhere.
I have had one other supernatural nighttime visitation, but it was my mother and, I suspect, her guardian angel forty years later, in the three or four minutes before the hospital phoned to tell me she had died. The moment the phone rang, I knew what it was about. When I hung up after my brief conversation with the nurse, I became aware immediately that I had had visitors by my recognition of the absence of an energy in the room which I had not noticed before the phone rang.
Being a believer I accept a spiritual world but don’t totally understand it. It amuses me how often purported Christians reject a spiritual world which is clearly explicated in the Bible.
Try it while driving! One night I was driving my wife and mother-in-law home from a family gathering, and a Great Horned owl with a rabbit in its talons swooped into my field of view. (I suspect the weight of its prey prevented it from gaining altitude.) I stamped on the brakes with both feet, slewed to a screeching halt, and needed a couple of minutes to get my heart rate down and shake out my shorts. Both ladies woke up and couldn't figure out why we were stopped in the middle of a lonely road. The only supernatural aspect to the event was my reflexes!
Interesting stuff, but I disagree with the conclusion. These stories are not demonic, but fairie. If you compare the centuries-old stories of Fey Folk with aliens/UFOs and similar strange encounters, you'll notice many parallels: small, humanoid, intelligent beings, who are not quite solid and seem to defy physics, associated with abduction, time dilation, and non-human morality. Thus, this seems to be a modern version of fairies, still up to their usual tricks.
But then we must ask, are fairies real? They could well be, which would explain the numerous consistent stories about them. Some degree of truth to these tales would fit Occam's Razor better than countless unrelated witnesses all lying in unison.
I wish I could believe stories like this. But it seems a lot easier to me to believe that these people are just lying.
Which would also be weird, but not so weird to me as goblins or aliens. I've seen some truly compulsive liars in my time, and I've seen them commit to truly bizarre lies.
Owls is a weird take. The obvious thing would be to assume they made it all up. If the weight of their testimony and the evidence is too strong to go with that, you're already past a naturalistic explanation.
Owls do not do somersaults. Owls are not bulletproof. I absolutely guarantee you a bunch of Kentucky hillbillies cannot and would not fail to hit a pair of fearless owls given a whole night to shoot at them. Whether the hillbillies were stone cold sober as claimed or blind drunk, those owls would be full of holes. There would be copious evidence of their demise. To claim they were owls is to claim those owls had supernatural powers.
Most of the “it was swamp gas” people are city-dwellers who would genuinely be surprised by the sight of a sandhill crane or bear and mistake it for something unearthly. Their failure of imagination is to assume the people in these sorts of locales would have the same reaction.
Personally when I lived in Appalachia I loved the owls and never mistook them for goblins, let alone shot at them. I think if I saw one glowing and doing backflips I might.
But then I never shot at anything. I’m not great at being a redneck. I would always rather watch the turkeys do their thing than eat them.
Was sorely tempted to shoot the deer who kept eating my tomatoes and lettuce though. If it’s gonna be you or me it’s gonna be me. Fuckin hoofed rats.
That venison would go good with tomatoes 🤣👍🏻‼️
Owls also mind their own business and are easily startled away. Once startled away, they don't come back. Is there another recorded event of owls relentlessly harassing someone? I'm guessing no.
I’ve heard some can be assertive and territorial. Never experienced this myself.
I'm sure that is true if you are near their tree and they are raising young.
Aspects of owls can sure seem supernatural! Ever seen a saw whet owl successfully hunt mice through 2 feet of snow? (I realize it's explained by their extraordinary perceptual abilities, but it's hard to believe it until you've seen it.) I have, and you just shake your head. (Maybe I should tell that story the way a Stephen King character said all good stories should begin: Once upon a time, when we all lived in the forest....)
Not in person, but yes it's amazing. Animals in general can be very impressive, and not always in a pleasant way, haha.
I suppose if they had the presence of mind they'd find the things we do remarkable too but I always get the impression that they take it for granted.
Hum,hum hum, possibly a trite explanation (carnies con? wacky tobaccy ? mass hysteria?), possibly a bit of really strange, damnedifIknow.
I have over the years, on a number of occasions experienced things absolutely defying rational explanation (No not alien abduction, not shape changers, just occurrences unexplainable by physics, laws of chance, etc.).
I'm not buying nor selling. I am convinced thought that: There are far far more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in anybody's philosophy!
A couple Euros I follow have mentioned the spooky otherworldliness of North American forests compared to Europe. It's like some primeval spirit left over from the natives that once prowled the land.
I’ve mentioned it a few times before, and in my last essay about Tombstone. America is a haunted land.
David Lynch understood this.
We tamed our Place of Power back in the Heathen Times and confined them, so we can simply avoid them. There are some places i visited, like a grove near the place I grow up. A young man war suicided there by "satanists", my uncle found him. You can feel it is a "different" place, like ancient temple like l'Antro della Sibilla at Cuma. I never tried, but if American groves had "that" energy I would be terrified.
Maybe that is the reason only Irish-Scotch hillbillies and their Celtic Catholic-pagan deep magic succesfully conquered that land.
I've only felt that once while hiking in the woods atop Mt. Jacinto over Palm Springs, CA. I love near the Appalachians now so I'll bet they are really haunting.
California has its own weirdness. Look up the lore around Mt. Shasta sometime.
You have a marvelous gift for understatement! Castaneda's Don Juan allegedly taught him how to detect places of power, in this case in the AZ/Northern Mexico area. He claimed there were places that were either beneficial (where the earth's power was restorative), or harmful. Animals, for example, will often be drawn to or avoid these places by virtue of some innate ability. It was taught as an aspect of becoming a hunter, and 'making oneself available to power.'
Live not love😂
In dense Ashe Juniper my grandfather had a cabin in the Texas hill country and it was there that I often spent summers in the late 80’s. Many sleepless nights when awake by a large window, I perched myself with a flashlight and a comic book. Until one evening I watched as crouching, featureless but luminescent beings no more than 3 to 4 feet in height approached the window and simply stared at me. I woke my grandfather who, to my surprise, took the matter seriously and marched outside, shotgun in hand. The next morning the police came by but nothing much came of it. It was assumed to be local teens who had a habit stealing pain pills from the old timers in the area.
That sounds like the beginning of an interesting short story.
Next time try steel shot. It doesn’t work as well as silver on etheric bodies but it’s cheaper and you don’t have to load your own ammo.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/649028.Monsters
Enjoyable read, thank you. Also, if you’re not already aware of him, you might want to check out Bob Gymlan’s channel on YouTube, he did a great video on this very peculiar episode and hit on a lot of the same points regarding the skeptics as you did.
https://youtu.be/ddN_at9Plp8?si=4evgw_DkuKmO1iFs
I didn’t see that, but thank you.
I've seen a barred owl standing in the road over roadkill one night. Startled me as I thought it was something unearthly till I got closer in the car.
It's good to know .22 repels if it doesn't kill them. I have more of that, though I'm trying .223 first.
Your reference to barred owls made me smile. We lived in central MA for a decade, and our property was in a woods that was just teeming with them. Listening to them talk to each other (their "conversation" could escalate until it sounded like an argument between angry chimpanzees) was one of the few fond memories of living there. Interestingly, their only mortal enemy is the Great Horned owl. There were periods of time when one would enter the area, and the barred owls would seem to just disappear until they left. I still occasionally hear their 'who cooks for you?' call in the distance here in KY.
I’ve gotten to see three in my life that I remember.
They’re beautiful birds.
I’ve been hiking not far from Hopkinsville. Some crazy terrain- ravines, cliffs, and caves as you noted. It can feel spooky- or sacred. Is spooky just a modern echo of sacred?
Spooky and sacred can be encompassed by the term ‘sublime.’
https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/the-theory-of-the-sublime-from-longinus-to-kant/
Don’t go all Kant on me!
Written exactly 5 months before Halloween, I’ll bet?
If I were ever to write a memoir, I would save the following strange event for it. But I will never write a memoir. It's a pity, too, because I have a sensational title for it. However, inasmuch as Substack affords its users a certain valuable anonymity ( anyone who thinks my name is "Bobby Lime" deserves to be taken by a three card monte sharp ), I shall leave the story here. It's part of the close aftermath of a far larger story, one which killed several people and ruined unknown numbers of lives. I barely have the energy to write what follows, so you can understand why I won't be writing the book.
When I was seven, I was nearly killed in a mass murder. I was in the hospital for a month. After my mother had tucked me in on my first night at home, given me a kiss, left the room, and shut the door, I lay in bed staring aimlessly at the part of the wall which faced me. The backboard of my bed was against a window, and every minute or so, headlights would sweep across my wall where it joined the ceiling. When the car came from my right, I saw nothing. But when it came from my left, for two or three seconds I saw innumerable ectoplasmic little critters, gamboling like dolphins in an aquarium and grinning at me.
A few months later, the first time I went back to the scene of the crime, I did have a post traumatic stress disorder flashback, but in the six months I was homebound before I was able to go back to school, I had nothing in the way of anxiety. Actually, I had as good a time in those months as a kid in such circumstances could have. I read most of The Hardy Boys books. My mother fixed my favorite foods often. I never mentioned my strange little nighttime visitors, who were there every night before I drifted off to sleep until one night they weren't. I never questioned their disappearance anymore than I had wondered about their showing up in the first place. I took it for granted that they had a more important assignment elsewhere.
I have had one other supernatural nighttime visitation, but it was my mother and, I suspect, her guardian angel forty years later, in the three or four minutes before the hospital phoned to tell me she had died. The moment the phone rang, I knew what it was about. When I hung up after my brief conversation with the nurse, I became aware immediately that I had had visitors by my recognition of the absence of an energy in the room which I had not noticed before the phone rang.
Midcentury Kentucky hillbillies with better stories than modern Hollywood.
Being a believer I accept a spiritual world but don’t totally understand it. It amuses me how often purported Christians reject a spiritual world which is clearly explicated in the Bible.
I live in Rhode Island and this video has achieved the status of legend here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=myZB7DCXeO8&pp=ygUgTmV3cyByZXBvcnQgUkkgZ2lhbnQgc2VhIG1vbnN0ZXI%3D
New England sea monsters are a subject unto themselves.
Seriously.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucester_sea_serpent
"Hallucinations caused by food poisoning" would be less of a stretch than owls.
Though a big owl swooping down by you at night is pretty spooky!
A bunch of people strung out on hallucinogens usually don't agree upon their hallucinations.
Try it while driving! One night I was driving my wife and mother-in-law home from a family gathering, and a Great Horned owl with a rabbit in its talons swooped into my field of view. (I suspect the weight of its prey prevented it from gaining altitude.) I stamped on the brakes with both feet, slewed to a screeching halt, and needed a couple of minutes to get my heart rate down and shake out my shorts. Both ladies woke up and couldn't figure out why we were stopped in the middle of a lonely road. The only supernatural aspect to the event was my reflexes!
Interesting stuff, but I disagree with the conclusion. These stories are not demonic, but fairie. If you compare the centuries-old stories of Fey Folk with aliens/UFOs and similar strange encounters, you'll notice many parallels: small, humanoid, intelligent beings, who are not quite solid and seem to defy physics, associated with abduction, time dilation, and non-human morality. Thus, this seems to be a modern version of fairies, still up to their usual tricks.
But then we must ask, are fairies real? They could well be, which would explain the numerous consistent stories about them. Some degree of truth to these tales would fit Occam's Razor better than countless unrelated witnesses all lying in unison.
I wish I could believe stories like this. But it seems a lot easier to me to believe that these people are just lying.
Which would also be weird, but not so weird to me as goblins or aliens. I've seen some truly compulsive liars in my time, and I've seen them commit to truly bizarre lies.