In “They Hunt Humans in the Woods,” a Park Ranger named Sam became concerned at several disappearances in the National Park where he worked. He tried to tip-off his supervisor, but was told it was the “just the stress of the job.” He needed evidence, so he went out at night into remote areas from where the visitors had vanished. After waiting in the brush for hours, he heard a rustling sound. He turned and “saw a silhouette, a figure shimmering in and out of view.” He was reaching for his radio as it disappeared, or “dissolved into the forest.” The next morning he reported what he had seen. He was exhausted and was not ready for what happened. An uneasy silence enveloped the station when he finished. A door opening broke the tension. A group of men in black suits entered the station. They introduced themselves as “government agents,” their demeanor both intimidating and bewildering. “We’ve been made aware of your …observations,” the leader spoke, his voice low and edged. “We need you to remain silent, Ranger.” Sam protested that people were disappearing. He said, “They need to know the truth.” But the agent replied, “If you don’t comply, we’ll have no choice but to take further action.” The agents departed with an air of finality, leaving Sam rattled. Sam gathered a group together that night and went back to where the visitors had disappeared. In a clearing one of the missing appeared and told Sam he had been abducted. The lights of a UFO could be seen through the trees, and the man disappeared again. The next night, on the way to the clearing where the man disappeared, an Army truck pulled up next to Sam. He was taken aboard. And he doesn’t know where he is, but someone managed to get his report out to the reader.
Juan, another Park Ranger, has been put on idefinite sick leave for the reports he filed and was forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement. It makes me wonder what the government is trying to hide in those remote forests. It sure isn’t making it comfortable for innocent hikers and campers. What Juan saw is difficult to explain. It was a mountain lion, then it was like Predator, then Reptilian. Maybe it was a shape-shifter. A skinwalker can be a shape-shifter. Why is the government concerned about a Ranger seeing a Native American boogyman? This is the real story.
There are two stories that were reported in two different books and they are farther out into the weird and bizarre than I can imagine. In the first story, a Ranger was following a hiker on a trail and he was intending to increase his speed so he could catch up and visit with him. The hiker was enjoying the beauty of the forest, but something odd caught the Ranger’s eye. The big trees on both sides of the hiker began to bow and form an oval shape around the hiker. The Ranger stopped; he was confused. The the path under the hiker split and opened, the hiker fell in. The Ranger ran up to save the hiker, but all he could hear was screaming, He jumped back. The ground was closing. The Ranger searched all around and radioed in for backup, thinking he’d had a brief stroke. They looked but they didn’t find the hiker. There is another very frightening incident which takes place twice and is recorded in two different books. I had to give the books back so I don’t remember where they are, and the parks aren’t named except for Yellowstone. This incident leaves the Ranger with a sense of despair because we are not safe in any group of trees anywhere. A Ranger was trying to come to the aid of a wounded hunter. The hunter was sitting with his back to a large tree; we’ve all probably done this, right? Suddenly, the bark of the tree split open and rippled, sucking the hunter into the tree. The Ranger stood helplessly, wondering “is this real” and the tree gave what passed for a gulp, and the hunter was gone. The bark closed up as if there were no seam. Did God make a think like this, or did Indians curse the lands they were forced to abandon? Curses are the only rational explanation. Mountains were holy places for the Native Americans. I think they cursed the whole country. We should not have a history of slavery and racism, greed, and all the problems like the Civil War.
And now we’ve got a new problem. As “deepfakes” get better and better, we won’t have any way of distinguishing between what’s REAL from what is UNreal. Consensus reality went out the door around 2001. Who was responsible for 9/11? Ask a dozen people and you’ll get a dozen answers, unless you’re asking people who believe the Commission Report. That counts for 1. Someone deepfaked a video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez complaining about a brand of jeans on the House floor. Chris Cuomo fell for it and criticized her choice of subject matter for House speeches. She came back at him, telling him that he should have “better thinking skills.” Well, no amount of better thinking, reading, or media skills is going to help us when AI gets better at making deepfakes. The article, which was in the NYT, by Z. Tufekci, said that there are AI programs which can detect deepfakes. This is a society with too much information and timewise, I, for one, don’t have time to figure out what’s real and what is fake news. I have given up reading anything on my computer except 2 news sources. I don’t have a TV to save money. The article says we must come up with some ways to proof a piece of media before we lose what’s left of proof of authenticity and verification, or governments will step right through the void. If the governments aren’t run by authoritarians already, it probably won’t take long until they are.
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The Good Guys and the Bad Guys 