Post by Stickman on Oct 1, 2008 20:53:04 GMT -6
Hello. I'm (sort of) new here and haven't found a real opportunity to post something until now, when an urban legend caught my interest.
The Aokigahara Forest (aka the Sea of Trees) lies at the base of Mt. Fuji in Japan. It is an old forest, and is supposeably haunted by legends of monsters and ghosts.
The forest is a popular place to commit suicide, and has the highest rate of suicides on Earth except the Golden Gate Bridge. Since the 1950s, more than 500 people have lost their lives in the woods. In 2002, 78 bodies were found. The suicide rate has led officials to post signs urging people planning on killing themselves in the woods to seek help. The annual "body hunt" began in the 1970s, consisting of an army of police, volunteers, and journalists. Occasionally, human remains are found in distant regions of the forest, but usually are scattered bones and incomplete skeletons.
A popular myth states that the magnetic iron deposits in the volcanic landscape causes compases to hopelessly malfunction (pointing south as north), and the dense trees cause cell phones and GPSes to fail. Because trails are endless and impossible to find once lost, this also makes it easy to get lost. So far, this is the closest forest on Earth I've heard of to that of the fictional Black Hills.
I just heard of this forest on the Sci-Fi channel series, Destination Truth. Although the show usually gets the audience's hopes up and results in nothing, this episode was very Blair Witch-like.
During the team's investigation during the night, they split up and took different trails. Just the camerwork, shaky, with nightvision shots of trees and close ups of nervous team members mimics the Blair Witch Project's.
Throughout the night, one figure of a person was seen crouching on the edge of the trail, and another was seen standing in the middle of a trail. Nothing was found during a second look. At one point, whistling was heard in the woods, but investigation revealed nothing. One male team member became lost after meeting up with three Japanese college students, camping and looking for bodies (sounds familiar, minus the body-searching). The walkie-talkie breakup made it hard for everyone to communicate. When the college students left, the team member couldn't find his way back to the trail, and could barely communicate with the team. He eventually came across a tent... It was collapsed on one side and filled with water. There was no sign of people anywhere. Inside was rotten food, a machete, and an incense burner among other things. After walking for awhile more, the team member began to call into the woods for the team (who he'd completely lost on the walkie-talkie). No answer came, but he soon found the base camp.
Other events that night included hearing a muffled scream (alledgedly sounding like a child's) and finding the contents of someone's wallet on the forest floor, ripped up and strewn about.
The only real video evidence recorded was of what appears to be a human figure, just at the edge of the camera's view. No features can be made out, but the figure stands up, crouches back down, and quickly moves into the darkness.
Anyway, seeing as this hasn't been discussed before, I thought it might be interesting. Thanks for reading.
The Aokigahara Forest (aka the Sea of Trees) lies at the base of Mt. Fuji in Japan. It is an old forest, and is supposeably haunted by legends of monsters and ghosts.
The forest is a popular place to commit suicide, and has the highest rate of suicides on Earth except the Golden Gate Bridge. Since the 1950s, more than 500 people have lost their lives in the woods. In 2002, 78 bodies were found. The suicide rate has led officials to post signs urging people planning on killing themselves in the woods to seek help. The annual "body hunt" began in the 1970s, consisting of an army of police, volunteers, and journalists. Occasionally, human remains are found in distant regions of the forest, but usually are scattered bones and incomplete skeletons.
A popular myth states that the magnetic iron deposits in the volcanic landscape causes compases to hopelessly malfunction (pointing south as north), and the dense trees cause cell phones and GPSes to fail. Because trails are endless and impossible to find once lost, this also makes it easy to get lost. So far, this is the closest forest on Earth I've heard of to that of the fictional Black Hills.
I just heard of this forest on the Sci-Fi channel series, Destination Truth. Although the show usually gets the audience's hopes up and results in nothing, this episode was very Blair Witch-like.
During the team's investigation during the night, they split up and took different trails. Just the camerwork, shaky, with nightvision shots of trees and close ups of nervous team members mimics the Blair Witch Project's.
Throughout the night, one figure of a person was seen crouching on the edge of the trail, and another was seen standing in the middle of a trail. Nothing was found during a second look. At one point, whistling was heard in the woods, but investigation revealed nothing. One male team member became lost after meeting up with three Japanese college students, camping and looking for bodies (sounds familiar, minus the body-searching). The walkie-talkie breakup made it hard for everyone to communicate. When the college students left, the team member couldn't find his way back to the trail, and could barely communicate with the team. He eventually came across a tent... It was collapsed on one side and filled with water. There was no sign of people anywhere. Inside was rotten food, a machete, and an incense burner among other things. After walking for awhile more, the team member began to call into the woods for the team (who he'd completely lost on the walkie-talkie). No answer came, but he soon found the base camp.
Other events that night included hearing a muffled scream (alledgedly sounding like a child's) and finding the contents of someone's wallet on the forest floor, ripped up and strewn about.
The only real video evidence recorded was of what appears to be a human figure, just at the edge of the camera's view. No features can be made out, but the figure stands up, crouches back down, and quickly moves into the darkness.
Anyway, seeing as this hasn't been discussed before, I thought it might be interesting. Thanks for reading.
