S1 Ep44: The Beginning that Never Ended

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And listeners of this show will get a $75 Sponsored Job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Astonishing Legends Network. The views and opinions expressed by hosts and listeners on the Astonishing Dead Letter office are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Astonishing Legends Productions, the Astonishing Legends Network, or any affiliated entities or guests. When something unexplainable happens to you, it can make you feel isolated or alone. But trust us, you're not. For over a decade, you've been sending your strange stories to Astonishing Legends. And now it's time for our fellow legenders to hear them too. Join us weekly in Blanket Fortiana as we dig through your intriguing messages to the Astonishing Dead Letter office. Tonight's episode, The Beginning That Never Ended. But there's this idea among many different cultures that there are guardians of the land watching over the world. Yes, beings that were likely never human but have been on Earth for millennia with the goal of protecting the wilds to the extent they can and keeping us foolish mortals from venturing where we shouldn't. And that's true all over the world and across time. And tonight's dead letter from Isla is a perfect example of that. Yes, Isla sent this story to us from Australia, a continent we seem to find cause to talk about on Astonishing Legends several times a year. All right, sir, would you please do the honors? Okay, here we go. I was in grade six and it was a public holiday. My mom's work involved going to national parks and creating programs for a kids' group she ran. She took me and three friends out to a park that was a few hours' drive away. It was October, I'm pretty sure, because everything was dry and hot, but the air was also extremely humid. As the seasonal rains were about to come. It was miserable, in other words. I'm going to use a fake name for my main friend in this story. Let's call her Ellie. So we're driving down a bumpy dirt road in our extremely low-set car and are probably over half an hour off the highway by now when we go down on a dip in the road and hear a massive thump from under the car. When we pulled into the picnic area after another ten minutes of driving, Mom looked under the car and let out a stream of swears that my friends had probably never heard. We had hit the oil sump on a rock and were stranded in the middle of nowhere now, under the wet season heat, with no phone service and no one coming out anytime soon. She immediately told us not to panic and to drink our water slowly when we needed it. As she said this, we saw that my two friends had completely finished their water in the stress of the situation. So she directed us down to a nearby river that wouldn't have crocodiles in it yet, at that time of the year anyway. She told us she would climb the hill next to us and see if she could get a connection on her phone. The one rule she gave us was that we could not go past the rubber matting on the path. That's all. We were just happy to be next to the water as it immediately cooled us down. We set off down the pathway, looking for a perfect spot in the river to sit rather than swim. We had walked for about ten minutes before we got to the end of the rubber matting and hadn't found our perfect spot yet. So, being the dumb kids we were, we continued along the path, walking along slippery gravel and rocks now. We finally came up to the perfect sandbank that was slightly submerged so we could sit but still be in the water. We took our shoes off and jumped straight in. After being there in the water for about half an hour, I noticed Ellie staring up the other side of the bank and not moving. The path we were on was man-made, but the other side of the river was untouched, and the bank rose steeply out of the water like a hill. Because of this, it almost looked like she was looking at the sky. As I watched her, something seemed wrong. She finally noticed me looking and said, Oi, do you see that? I thought she was trying to scare me, but I still followed her eyeline to see what she was talking about. When I caught sight of it, everything felt strange. It felt like my body fell away from my consciousness. A bit like the feeling of going to the sunken place in the movie Get Out. The sounds of the bush got drowned out by an oppressive silence, and I couldn't seem to pull my eyes away from it. The only way I can describe it is as a void. It looked like it could be a man, but not very human-like. Being raised the way I was, I knew some small things about nearby indigenous people's stories, including the stories used to warn people to respect their surroundings. I realized at that moment that we had not followed my mom's one rule, to not go past the rubber mats, and we had been so loud and disruptive to the bush around us. The main thing you're always told when growing up here is to respect the land and the surroundings, and that if you think you see something while you're out, no you didn't. Following what I knew, I mustered all my strength and pulled my eyes and attention away from the void, but not before I noticed what looked like a spear. The presence felt very male to me, which would make sense if it had a spear and was protecting the land. Simultaneously, Ellie and I tore our eyes away from the void and made eye contact. We immediately understood that we had just been through the same experience. Ellie told the others, We have to leave right now, without looking away from me. They groaned and whined, not understanding why we had to leave such a nice spot and go back to the blinding sun and the blistering heat. As they protested, Ellie and I had already launched ourselves out of the water onto the path and were on our way out of there. We couldn't run, knowing that if we did, it would know we had seen it, but also that we would inevitably fall over on the slippery ground. The others put their shoes on as we tried our hardest to keep our eyes straight and not look into the long grass towering over our right side. The grass in that area can get to over two meters tall and is constantly rustling in the wind, which is why this next part was so jarring. As we walked as quickly as possible back down the path, all of the noises of the bush suddenly disappeared, and all we could hear was the wind whipping past our faces, blowing our hair in front of our eyes. The bushland around the area is so teeming with life. You can always hear the shuffle of a lizard or snake in the dirt and the song of all the seed-eating birds around you. There was nothing. No dry leaves rustling in the trees, not even our own footsteps, just the wind. That is, until we heard them. Carried on the wind was what sounded like songs and stories of warning being told in distant, ancient languages. They were like nothing I had ever heard from anyone in the area before. I knew a little about the language groups of the area as I had grown up at school with lots of aboriginal people from many different families and language groups. This scared me. It either meant that the spirits were from far away or from too long ago to be remembered. We kept going forward and eventually made it to the end of the path and burst out through the tree line blocking our view of the car park. As soon as we broke away from that path, all the sounds of the bush flooded back almost deafeningly loud. My mom was sat under a nearby tree casually eating an apple and told us she had called a tow truck and my dad and they were both on their way to us. We sat under the trees and waited. Ellie and I didn't say a word about our experiences until months later when we were sitting around with other friends telling scary stories and we told this. Neither of us knew if we had experienced the same thing so it was shocking when we kept finishing each other's sentences and matching our experience. I sometimes still feel that oppressive feeling and see that spirit watching from far away when I am in a place I am not supposed to be. Like I said, I've always had different supernatural experiences. I don't think there's anyone who grew up in this place and hasn't had some sort of experience. Australia is such ancient and tortured land and we trespass every day. No wonder the spirits and ancestors are angry. Time to pay Blanket Fortiana's bills. We shall return. Astonishing Legends is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things that people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Our journey into the unknown now continues. Well, I love this story because it's a blend of the modern and ancient peoples and spirits mixing with current ones. I really love this story. I think Isla does a great job of describing exactly what this was like, what it felt like. And I also love the idea that this being, whatever it was, didn't necessarily see her. She didn't think it did. So that lends a whole, like, this feeling of omnipotence to, like, you're so insignificant. It doesn't even really matter if it sees you. But it's got this powerful presence anyway. Well, at first, you might think that. And then the other thing I love about a good story here is a hook. And this one had a little bit of a hook to it at the end. And it all centers around a lot of just impressions, your gut feelings once again. And that's how we communicate with the unseen and seen worlds of voids and behind the curtains and this and that. And that's all we got to go on. Again, like, the Mangyan Rim story. It's just that, what was that that I encountered? And so you get this very peculiar feeling, and you're not sure how to file it. And then what I love is that you get some indigenous insight on it of what you may have seen. Now, I'm not saying that's the definitive take on it, because a lot of it is perspective. And it's cultural. It's personal. It has to do with belief about what you think you encountered. And, you know, my point of view is that whatever you feel this thing was good enough to go on. That's it. That should be it. And, you know, the other aspect is to be respectful, no matter what it is, because it's got some kind of power that is exhibited in a way that is beyond our understanding and control. And that's frightening. Well, the first thing I have to point out was that I thought it was hilarious how she described that it was both dry and humid. No, I understood that. I can imagine. I knew what she meant, too. It's like the rainy season is about to start, but the ground is dust dry. But, like, you can feel just this oppressive. And, you know, I felt that a lot. Over the summers in North Carolina, where you're just like, you can tell rain is about to literally explode out of the sky, you know. That's interesting you say that a couple of weeks ago. I kind of felt a little bit of that. And that was, it was a stretch of another heat wave stretch of a, you know, three to five days. And so it was all hot and dry. And then it rained a good bit. And so it was still hot. It still felt and smelled dry, but it was also wet now. And so there's that humidity mixed with the heat. And it might be a little bit, one of my favorite terms here, petrichor. Yes. Here's something I just learned in making sure that I was saying the right term and word. Petrichor, P-E-T-R-I-C-H-O-R, is the term coined by Australian scientists in 1964 to describe the unique earthy smell associated with rain. It is caused by the water from the rain, along with certain compounds like ozone, geosmin, and plant oils, and in soil. So, yeah, the hot concrete smell. So it's a combination of all that stuff. Yeah, it's a combination of stuff to make a unique smell that's known to most all of us. And it brings back a lot of sense memory for me. But just also that feeling of rain on hot concrete or hot pavement or just hot land, hot dirt, that earthy smell. But what I didn't know is that, again, coined by Australian scientists, so not another one of my off-brand tangents. Tangents, no. Well, it is interesting. I learned that word recently, too. You know, I was making the rounds on Instagram or something. The other thing it said was that the reason we could smell it was because it had to do with survival and knowing that you were near water or it was about to rain and you would have water or something like that. But I think the other thing is, and, of course, I have a provincial view of what life is like in Australia, having never been there. And we've talked about it a lot. We talked about the Somerton Man on our main show. We have friends there that we talked to but haven't been there. But this story does lend itself to the idea that people are more in tune with the environment and also capable of being a survivalist. Because what I loved in this story, too, was how her mom was just like, all right, well, I got to go up on the hill and get a signal. You guys go down the river here. Stay on the part that's safe. Right, right. But, like, you know, and ration your water. But we're going to go make a call. Like, she just immediately went into protective survival mode. But it was also funny that Isla's friend immediately drank all her water. Like, had already drank it. That's the comic scene in a comedic movie. Yeah. But I got the sense that, yes, it was a little bit of preparedness, but not enough for my tastes. I want gallons for everybody, you know, because it is said everybody goes through about a gallon or two every day. Right. Really, you can't have enough water or as much as you can when you know you're going to be hours out and, what did you say, at least half an hour from the road. And so, you know, it's very dangerous. And so part of what I think what you're saying, too, is that the land itself is beautiful, mysterious, and dangerous, deadly. So many things, what are they, you know, factoid I'd heard. Australia has, like, five of the world's ten deadliest snakes. Yes. They got five of them. They got half of them there. And just giant blue spiders and whatnot. So, so many things can kill you is that it takes a lot of respect to live there and a lot of knowledge. And every survival manual will tell you, especially the SAS Survival Handbook, just look to what the indigenous peoples do. Because they've been living there for tens of thousands of years. Yeah. These are ancient peoples and maybe even more ancient than the aboriginal peoples that have been occupying Australia for perhaps. Now, this is debated, but the current mainstream thinking, I think, is human presence has been detected in Australia for at least 65,000 years. And that's according to the Australian Museum. So that's at least as old as that they know that people have been there, migrated in from Africa. And then there are other newer discoveries there, just in a cursory research here. Ongoing archaeological research, particularly at Mojil and Victoria, continues to refine our understanding of the timelines with some suggesting potential occupation as far back as 120,000 years ago. Right. Though this remains a subject of debate. I also love the idea. It's a little bit Graham Hancock in that, yes, you have a rich tradition and history of the current peoples there, but there may have been other indigenous peoples before them that came in or were forgotten about. Or maybe a blend of the spiritual, mystical, and very human and having a whole rich cultural civilization of their own, but having gone away and being forgotten. As she says, maybe it's an ancient peoples that were long forgotten, because she was currently more familiar with Australia's indigenous peoples and what their cultural properties are and their languages. And this seemed different. That was actually a quote I wanted to share again from the story where she said, They were nothing like I had ever heard from anyone in the area before. I knew a little about the language groups of the area as I had grown up at school with lots of Aboriginal people from many different families and language groups. This scared me. It either meant that the spirits were from far away or from too long ago to be remembered. Yes. One of my, perhaps my favorite line from her writing here. Yeah. We don't know. And I just love the idea, though, that there were cultures and peoples and civilizations that had risen up and as the way of the world will go had faded away, migrated away, had just gone away. And somehow the residue of their spirit still permeates the land. And we build upon that. Another idea that this story answers is a comment that you frequently hear from people who are skeptical of ghosts. They're always like, How come we never see a caveman ghost? Or how come we never see a ghost of whatever? If you watch the show Ghost, there is a caveman ghost. But my point is, this is that thing. This is something from so long ago. That's right. It predates the modern human. And then for her to hear these languages. So let's talk a little bit about that, about what she felt. I mean, first of all, she sees Ellie, the pseudonym for her friend, locked in a stare. This reminded me of Jurassic Park when they see the velociraptor in the kitchen or whatever. And that actor is holding the jello and the spoon and just staring. And it's like, you look at one. It's like, What are you looking at? And then she looks up the hill and is just like, Oh, yeah. And it's like, We have to. And then they, without looking at their friends, are like, We have to go. We have to go now. And so suddenly, the idea of it, like, Is it the time of year that crocodiles are in the river or not? That's not the biggest concern. The biggest concern is that there's a guardian here. And it's time to go. And I don't know why it made me think of this painting by Pablo Picasso. And it's Don Quixote from 1955. It's a sketch with Quixote on the horse. It's just a really cool, iconic thing. But just like this almost spooky figure, not really looking real, but you can very clearly tell what it is, which, of course, you know, that's Picasso's gift. But just this idea of a void and this thing with this really immense power that was enough to frighten these kids, there's something very salient about that to me. Yeah, and I also thought about Scatman Crothers' stare from The Shining and the paintings on his walls in his bedroom. Anyway, yeah, there's something that grabs you and transfixes you and had, in this case, a physical, a consciousness effect. Also, like she described, of falling, of your body being separated from your consciousness, like falling into this timeless, ancient void. Or not even ancient, just it's the past, present, and future. It's timelessness of the universe and existence. And you've just sampled it by making this connection of being near it. However, the other two girls did not. And we like that aspect as well. It's like, why didn't they notice? Did they just not look in the right direction? Was there some reason that they could not tune into this? Because they were whining, oh, do we have to leave now? I mean, this is such a great, perfect spot. It's cool. And now we have to go back to the hot car. Yeah. But there's something that did not ring true with them or just, you know, connect with them. So, a shared experience, but not with everybody, which is very common when we hear these stories, too. That's true. And I wondered if when Isla saw Get Out, when it came out, and when it got to that sequence, if it was like a sense memory for her of the experience, you know, of when he falls away into the sunken place, which is an amazing, amazing sequence. But the other thing I love is, I feel like if we were going to make an Australian paranormal t-shirt, it should just say, oy, do you see that? I love that. That's what Ellie said to her. Oy, do you see that? There's something in that shared experience where I've had that. And I've talked about that a lot about the roar I heard in the desert, speaking of desert. So, yeah, there's that shared experience where it's like, okay, one, I know that now I just didn't hear this or feel this in my head, that at least between the two of us, we're not crazy. We know what we just saw and heard and felt, or it was tabled until later because the first thing is to get out of there to safety. Did we experience the same thing? So, another aspect of the story is the retelling years later, you know, by the two friends of like, you know, finishing each other's sentences. Like, did, okay, I know that we both saw something and we knew it was otherworldly, but what exactly did we see? Was it the same thing? And them sharing that story is like the Krakowski intruder. Yes. Years later, it's like, yeah, we did say the same thing. This has got to be the same experience, but what was that thing? And so, when I first read the story, the feeling I got was I wasn't sure it was a guardian. I just like, I have no, you know, who am I to say what this thing was just reading this and that it was something, no shade to her take on it, but just that, I don't, it was an odd feeling that even more, it was something just unknowable and timeless, if you know what I mean, that, that yes, it can be perceived as a guardian of the land and something ancestral in a way, but also just it being there has that effect on you. You know what I'm saying? You're making that connection, maybe somewhat similar to people seeing a mantis man pop up in the river that you're fly fishing. It's just like, it's so otherworldly that has this effect on you, but like, what is it really doing there? Is it just a surprise to see them? And so, what we learned in the story as well is that, although they think perhaps it didn't see them or they're trying not to draw attention, it turns out later that she felt something did follow her or was keeping an eye on her from then on. And she never went back. She never, you know, disrespected the land. And I don't think it was a big instance of disrespect in the first place. I believe as human beings, we are allowed to walk the lands, but Native peoples have sacred places that they want to keep sacred for reasons that are ancient and of their own. And that should be respected. But at the same time, it's like you, you, right. You, so you're in an area because here's the other thing is that we don't know the feeling of this other being that just being there was an affront or you've sampled it. Now get out. That kind of, this is what I love is like you're, you're a couple of kids, you're down in the Creek, a 65,000 year old spirit void shows up on a hill and is like, get back to the rubber matting. You can't go past the matting. What are you doing, kid? Get out of here. Every park sign says, stay on the path. Don't trample the flowers. So, no, I get that. And, uh, cause you think about the first peoples, it's like, look, unless you're in a philosophical or even a paranormal supernatural state being autochthonous, meaning roughly that you popped out of the ground. It's like the ancient Etruscans believe that they were autochthonous, that if you ask them where they came from, they didn't say they migrated from somewhere else or we don't know. It's like, well, we popped out of the ground here. So it's ours. We came from the land. And so there is that, I don't know if that sounds kind of silly or you think like, oh, that's just a silly legend. Well, it's a feeling of really being connected to the land. It birthed you, you came out of the ground. The other thing I loved, again, it's just so rich with Australian original culture and belief and legends and lore. And I want to give a shout out to a great book that I read way back in college and, and sadly forgot most of, but it's called the song lines by Bruce Chatwin. It's a 1987 novel, which basically explores the concept of this ancient set of invisible pathways that crisscross the land of Australia and they're used for, for navigation, but also it's a journey and a pathway that you walk, maybe like a vision quest perhaps, but you walk these pathways not only to get places and navigate in the best way, but it's also a means of sharing ancestral knowledge and a people's creation stories. And so it's a method of learning for the younger generations to walk these pathways, learn the cultures. It also ties in with the concepts in Australia of creation and nomadism, you know, that Chatwin explores here because their ancestors, the Aboriginal peoples believe that they sang the world into existence. And so this is another, again, I'm tying this back to the story folks in that she believes she heard the songs and the stories. Imagine that like, you're not hearing chatter in a way or more literally, but you're feeling an impression of songs and stories that have to do with the creation of the land and the beings. Well, I did a little bit of cursory research on this and I came across this concept known as the dreaming or Jakarta and this was pretty fascinating. I guess this was a term devised by early anthropologists to refer to a religio-cultural worldview in Australian Aboriginal mythology. It was first used by Francis Gillen in an ethnographical report in 1896 and later popularized by others. But one of the things that's fascinating about, and this is why we call this episode this, it is also referred to as the beginning that never ended, meaning that Indigenous people understand the dream time or Jakurpa as a period on a continuum of past, present, and future, a beginning that never ended. Anthropologists, I guess, have also translated the concept as everywin or ancestral past or ancestral present or abiding law. So this is a term broadly used by the Worel-Purri people and other Western desert peoples. And it's often translated for non-Indigenous folks as dreaming or dream time. Now, it's our understanding that among the multitude of Aboriginal tribes that for the Worel-Purri, it is a larger concept, but there's others that it is still immensely central and important. But those English terms are actually considered inadequate now or even mistranslations by many scholars and Indigenous Australians. And that's an ongoing debate to this day, apparently. At its core, Jakurpa or dream time refers to the ancestral creation period in desert law. And ancestral beings appearing in both human and animal forms, journeying across a formless land. And as they moved, they shaped the physical world, creating rivers, waterholes, hills, rocks, plants, animals, and even people, languages, and ceremonies. And their ancestral figures also laid down the fundamental moral, practical, and spiritual laws that govern Aboriginal societies to this day. And after that work was done, many of these beings returned to the earth, transforming into waterfalls, hills, or rocks, or ascended to the stars. Others are believed to remain hidden in the land or become natural forces like wind and rain. So the key takeaway here is that Jakurpa is considered living and ongoing, existing as a continuous reality that encompasses the past, present, and future. What anthropologists have termed to every wind is an all-encompassing framework that provides rules for living and a moral code and all that kind of stuff. So it's pretty cool. And the other thing is, you were talking about song lines. Also, there's a lot of artwork. And we brought this up on the show before. I can't remember what episode it was in the main show. We talked a little bit about this artwork that's connected to this overall concept. Do you remember which episode that was? Well, you always talk about, it's an old chestnut, but the Wajinda paintings of what I think are aliens. And look, they're fantastical spiritual beings. I'm not saying it's aliens. No, I am saying it's aliens. But no, a lot of other folks do too. But of course, if you don't buy into that, then it's just a creative interpretation of spirit beings or spiritual ancestors, what have you. But they look a lot like aliens to me. So anyway, but they're just, it's just fabulous to look at. And any, just very, I guess, creative, stirs the imagination and they're inspiring in a way. And just, I mean, they're cool. But getting back to the serious aspect of this, I walked about this quite a bit too, several times, not just the Wajinda paintings. The other concept I've talked about is dream time, as you say, because way back when I was going to the University of Washington, I took a class I really enjoyed, but it was a music ethnology class of different cultures and a great teacher. And he'd been to Australia with some guides and friends there, knew it quite well. And he discussed the concept of dream time as it pertains to their music and their stories and legends. And what I gained from that, and I thought it was so cool, was that as it was described to me, it's much deeper than just telling, you know, the clan legends from one generation to another. You feel it and you experience it. You know, it's another level. Yes. In that when he described, and again, it kind of ties into this, it's a little different from what you're describing. But then again, like most indigenous peoples, it depends on your actual culture in the continent that you're in or your tribe or clan or, or family group. They all vary, but they have similar themes. And in this description, his friend, who's the, the guide showing him around was saying like, Hey, you see that over there, that large, it's by that large tree over there, you know, out in this Australian plane. He goes, I don't see anything. He goes, Oh no, no, mate, it's dream time. He's like, what are you talking about? It's like that large tree. We all know it's there. We can, I think he said we can see it in some sense, but that's a dream time tree. And he's like, well, so explain this to me. He said, well, it's, it's like an overlay of one reality over the more common experience of reality that we all share as, as people like, obviously, yes, we know that you cannot see this tree. And it was kind of like an additional site or ability to see this landscape laid over like an augmented reality of sorts over what is more commonly experienced. You know what I'm saying? And so there is this whole landscape and, uh, they just accepted it as almost like a secondary or an alternate reality acetate laid over the first one. And I thought that was so cool. Then later, as I started to really dwell in this idea, it's like another dimension that they can see. And I tied that in years later, because I always thought it was silly. Like there's no, like an inner earth. What do you mean? Like the earth is solid. There's a molten core of nickel at the center. The mold is not spinning around. Uh, there's magma, there's the mantle, there's all this stuff. There's no giant caverns housing, uh, Lemuria and, and entire civilizations and the shaver experiences and books and writings like that seems ridiculous to me. And then I wondered about the concept of what if that is a, another dimension or plane of existence that happens to be under, it's kind of like Skinwalker Ranch, all these readings that are going under the ground that should not be, it's like the GPS data points are, are like a hundred feet, 200 feet, half a mile below the surface of the ground. Like, so you're saying, or the, look, the telemetry is saying that there are data points that are being picked up where it should be impossible under the ground. So is there something that's giving off a sense or a ping of reality or another plane of reality that is over the land, over the landscape, under the ground, all around us? We just can't see it, but it's there, uh, because you get way out and you start talking about people who have astral traveled and they say, no, there is a culture and civilization on these different planets like Mars, Venus, Mercury, and, uh, there are different peoples and we can't see them and they have their own structures. And it's like, supposedly they've been spotted through some kind of telescopic telemetry, but we can't see them with our usual telescopes. And it sounds ridiculous to us and perhaps it is, but that there are layers that we cannot see in places we think are impossible to exist. It makes me think about a much more organic and human take on Einstein's theory that time occurs all at once and the past, present, and the future is current. And so you're not, you're not looking into the past or seeing a ghost from the past. That thing that she saw and her are existing at the same time because time is all at once. It seems like anyway. I mean, what do I know? I'm cursory research. I've only known about this for about two weeks, but it's still very fascinating to me and a very compelling story. And I think it's a very cool experience. Well, some of my final thoughts on this is that I will go with Isla's feeling that this is some kind of guardian spirit of the land, because just looking at this more objectively is that we've heard so many of these other stories, North American, Native American stories and indigenous peoples, that there are guardians of the land, that there's places you should not go. There's reasons that they're sacred. There's mountains and geological features that you leave alone because they're either portal places or just have some spiritual meaning. And you are, you are unclean or unworthy at this stage to venture in, or they're just dangerous or they're meant for some other reason. And, uh, they're an overlay. You don't see anything, but it exists in this invisible world and should not be trodden upon. When we look at what did she experience, especially with the, the feeling that it was male and that it had a spear and that again, like the camper for me is that it might be even older than the aboriginal peoples that, uh, are currently there now. It may have been from somewhere else. Like you said, very far away, which is also a fascinating concept is this is a global thing. A universal thing, a membrane that is just beyond our concept of time and space and, uh, and matter and a plane of existence like that 2d member that was a, uh, was a captain, uh, the, the 2d guy. Remember if you were only familiar with a 2d existence, somebody from the 3d world would seem magical. Oh, you're quoting flatland. Okay. Right, right. So we are experiencing some kind of flat land, but there are ancient powerful beings that exist in the 3d land and the 4d land and maybe a 5d land that we sometimes will get a glimpse of, but they are operating on another level that is unseen and more powerful. Yeah. The surroundings, as she says in her story must be respected. That's what you learn growing up in Australia because next thing you know, you're, you're goofing around and, uh, it could be deadly. The other story that reminded me of, uh, it was a sad report from 2011 while we were living in LA, I think about a, uh, Dutch music executive and promoter that was pretty well known. And Augustinus van Hove, uh, he was 44 at the time, uh, he and his German girlfriend, uh, Helena Neulet 38 were just on like a day trip again at a rental car out Joshua tree. I've been there hundreds of times. Well, not hundreds, but dozens of times I've been out there and they basically just died of heat stroke they found. And so, uh, you know, this, uh, K Cal news nine article from them saying, uh, you know, they were at black Eagle mine road, Riverside County side of it, of Joshua tree. And, um, they were still investigating at this time, but they said, uh, they just entered the park on noon and were found dead hours later around 6 50 PM. And, uh, I think the man was only about five miles from the car. So they were trying to drive their rental car. It was like a Mustang or something, you know, some kind of a muscle car, a charger, something over some rocky terrain. I think either got it stuck or the, the, it failed and quit. So I, sounds like he struck out on his own and probably took a long time. She got worried. She went out after him. Uh, she was only like a mile East of Augustinius van Hove. And she was also found dead by the roadside. And it, and I remember at the time they said, uh, the other reports say like, oh, it was triple digit heat. I remember at the time it wasn't that hot actually like low nineties, which is hot, but you don't respect that. And so my point being is that you think you're out on a day hike here, uh, your car breaks down similar situation. That reminded me of this. You have a little bit of water. I think there was a gallon of water in their car. Maybe it's not enough. You wander out next thing, you know, it's deadly in this case though. It might've been something also to warn them. Yes. It's a, perhaps a warning to respect the land, but also wise up. You're in dangerous territory, get back to the car, go now. And there's one little piece of story that you did not read, which is a bit of an epilogue. And, uh, so she says a few weeks after this experience, she was at a park this time at night, two other friends, and they felt like they were being watched by a figure in a tree a few meters away from them. And once that they recognized it was there, they all took off running. And then one of the friends, she says with me had glanced behind her and seen the thing chasing her. Ooh. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. All right. So it's a nice little hook on that, uh, on that story there, but she says it was another void like being that was slightly human, but slightly not. Yeah. That's interesting. That's, you know, that goes back to the Mothman line. You noticed them and they noticed that you noticed them. And it's going to keep on noticing you for the rest of your life, no matter where you are. You're permanently noticed. Yes. Not a notice you want. Well, Isla, this is an amazing story, but the most important part of it is your respect for the land and the people who were on it before the rest of us. You might be lucky you saw this guardian or whatever this thing was before it saw you, or maybe it doesn't have to see you. Maybe it just has to be seen. Whatever the case, something clearly followed you as you guys were trying to leave. You made the right choice by yielding to its presence. Thank you for sending your story in. 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