S2 Ep6: The Smiling Pillar of Avoca

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Because we believe where you get your medicine matters. So visit us at CVS.com or just come by our store. We can't wait to meet you. Store hours vary by location. 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 Smiling Pillar of Avoka. There is a specific kind of quiet that took over the world in May of 2020. You remember it. The roads were empty. The woods felt deeper. And for a second there, the thin veneer of civilization felt like it was peeling back. Well, some folks certainly felt it was apocalyptic, but in a very weirdly domestic way. For myself, when it started to become all over the news, you could say, my gut feeling was that there was something not right about this. In that, you talk about a veneer way, that there's something about all this that was not very straightforward. There was something about it that we all didn't know. That's all I can say, but it just gave me a weird feeling, too. And then we're all forced into our bubbles. And so all this stuff made us feel very odd. And a lot of people, if you could, retreated to nature to get outside. Some things were closed off, but talking about having comfort and some sense of normalcy in your daily walk here. So you do this a lot. It's become your safe space where you walk the same trail, you look at the same trees, and then you start to notice the things that shouldn't be there because there's nothing else around to distract you. There's certainly no other people, no planes overhead, no distant highway hum, just you and the landscape. Additionally, the other thing that was happening is with everything that was going on in the news, with COVID and all of that, everybody's brain was on high alert. Everyone was out of their element. You're on edge. There's a global pandemic. What do we need to worry about? What shouldn't we worry about? All that kind of stuff. People are sick and dying. It's scary. So you have a heightened sense of awareness already. So when you see something weird or out of place, you're more likely to like catalog it in your mind. Right. And that's what others and especially our friend Lori Williams will say, if you want to notice the paranormal, is start to pay attention to what's different in every space you walk into, indoors and out. Just in your mind, consciously set that purpose. What's different about this time? And when you start to set that intention of noticing what's changed, then it's very likely you may notice something is off or odd. And that's what you're talking about, Scott, is that things were shook up enough that people got out of their daily reverie. That keeps them in that road hypnosis of driving the same path every day. You do the same thing. And so now, talking about this walk in the woods, you are paying extra special attention. But what's fascinating about the story from our listener, Zed's dead baby, is just that it's not about just the sighting. It's an emotional download. It's that instantaneous paralyzing dread that bypasses, is that a bear, is that a stump? It goes straight into that, I'm in imminent danger, get out now, which is what he heard and has saved so many people from perilous situations when you listen to that voice. But whatever that's coming from, something's different, something's off, you need to pay attention, is essentially what that is. And so that, I think, is what's different about this story, is that we've all taken walks out in the woods, and even if they're unfamiliar, you see something odd. Well, first of all, how many times have you been out in the woods or on your favorite trail, especially, and you saw something out of the ordinary? Nature usually doesn't change that much. It's people that you are afraid of. Like, you certainly notice, like, I never see anybody on this trail, and suddenly there's somebody there. You really notice them, or you should. Generally, not much else changes. Sometimes there's animals out there, and you notice them, or you see some movement in the bushes. But even with rustling in the bushes, you know, you figure, like, oh, it's a raccoon, it's some squirrels playing, it's this and that. Rarely have I been on that kind of on-edge or awareness setting, other than hiking out in Glacier Park, where there's tons of grizz, and you are wearing jingle bells on your boots. Right. And you are purposely making noise. Yeah, they don't like a surprise. They do not like a surprise, it turns out. Yeah. And you're also eyeing trees, and this is no joke, but the rangers will tell you, like, you got to start looking at trees you could scamper up to in an emergency. And you don't find one that's too small, because they will knock it over. And you don't find one that's too big, because they'll come up after you. So, that's different. And what we're going to hear tonight is the difference that we've heard so many other times between a regular outing with something a little odd and something that's truly odd. Well, tonight, we're heading to the Wadhams to Avoca Trail in Michigan to look for something that wasn't there, then was, and then simply wasn't again. Good day to you, comrades. Happy Sabbath to you and your kin. I converse with you folks on Patreon under Zed's Dead, baby. I just listened to the Hannum Files number two, and speaking of how quickly you see something and recognize it as being pareidolia. I used to go hiking all the time. There's a stretch of a Bannon Railroad track near Avoca, Michigan, that got turned into a bike path in the middle of bumf**k nowhere. This is the Wadhams to Avoca Trail. If you'd like to check it out on Google Maps slash Earth, I would ride my bike and just walk this all the time. Nothing but farms, corn, beans, and woods. Right at the beginning of COVID, when everything seemed apocalyptic, my partner and I went hiking. In this clearing with a pond that I'd been by a thousand times, and with her quite a few as well, I see a large brown object standing about 50 feet out from the woods, right out in the open. It immediately freaked me out, which I thought was quite odd because of how quickly I tried telling myself that it must be a tree I hadn't noticed before. But a random tree in the middle of a perfect clearing, sandwiched between two stretches of woods? Also, it was about eight feet tall and perfectly straight, no offshoot branches. I'm pretty good at height estimations. Wait, not so much. So that means they left a random tree, but lopped the top off and just left it. It was also super strange that I immediately got terrified. It was instantaneous and paralyzing. I look at my partner and say, do you see that? I see that she's staring at it too, and I hadn't said anything about it yet. She says, without taking her eyes from it, yeah, what is that? I said, I don't know, but it must be a tree. She says, weird. I then decided I was going to walk out into this clearing and just get close enough to positively identify. We were about 100 to 120 yards out. I start walking towards it, and the fear immediately intensified. Once I'd gotten about 20 feet closer, I legitimately felt like I was in imminent danger, danger, and I'm getting a clear impression in my head of, leave now. Leave now. Also, one of the strangest things about it was I got the clear impression that whatever this was, it was smiling at me. I don't know why I thought this, but my immediate impression looking at it was that it had a face, and it was smiling. I stop, and my partner says quite urgently, but trying to be calm, let's just walk to the trestle bridge and forget about it. I said, okay, and started walking away. And as soon as I started walking back towards the path and away from this, the fear immediately started lifting. So, we continue our hike, and we're talking about how weird it was, etc. And she says she was scared, too, and doesn't remember a tree being there. So, on the way back, I say, well, if it's gone when we come back, we'll know it was a Bigfoot. Kind of joking, but neither of us laughed or even questioned it. We pass by there to get back to the car, and it was still there. Though this time, it seemed to be slightly swaying back and forth. Like an antsy swaying, not wind swaying, is the only way I can describe it. So, we decide that next time we come back, no matter what, I'm walking out there and seeing what it is or was. This is the beginning of the height of COVID. May sometime, and my work was deemed essential, so I was working a lot. Like 70 hours a week for quite a while. So, we came back on the following Saturday, and we get to the spot, and I swear, on my eternal soul, it was gone. Completely gone. Nothing there. We were both stunned, and I'm completely flummoxed, so I just start walking out into the clearing. I get to exactly where this thing was, and this is next to a pond, and there's a dock for sitting slash fishing and whatnot. So, with that, as a landmark, I can tell right where this thing was, and there's nothing. Not a sign of a tree at all. It had rained in the interim, but I did look for signs, such as tracks, or disturbed grass, or brush, etc. And there was definitely some flattened flora around, but nothing I could say for certain pointed to this being what my partner and I both thought this thing had to be. And I'll come right out and say it, we thought Bigfoot. We're both pretty level-headed and empirical about things. And I'm very open-minded to the spiritual, the paranormal, and strange lore. Her, however, absolutely not. Not even a little bit. She's the type of person that will see a shadow person walking down a path in broad daylight, acknowledge it, admit out loud it's impossible, and this really happened, but then still shut down the idea of it being paranormal. Just refuses to even entertain it. This, however, is the one experience five years on when I ask, even she says, yeah, I don't know what else it could be. Five years out, I still have no question in my mind that I saw something completely out of the ordinary and completely bonkers. But I know what I saw, and never have I, or she, thought it was anything other than something unexplainable or, I'll just say it again, Bigfoot. Any questions, feel free to reach out. Love you folks, have fun, and be safe. After these messages, we'll be right back. We'll be right back. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. And now, back to tonight's dead letter. So, Forrest, I found this spot on Google Earth, which hilariously, inadvertently freaked me out for some reason. Even when I, like, zoomed in. Sometimes I love to go to Google Earth pretty much with all of our shows, all of our topics for the main show, for these. If there's a location provided, which there isn't always, but if there is, or you think you can figure it out, I was like this. I think I can figure this out because of the details in the story. Well, of course you went looking for it, as you said, as you always do. There's no feeling about it at all for me anyway. Even visiting a spot where something supposedly happened, other than I had a kind of a cool vibe because it was such a fun story for us. And that's Orfeo Angelucci and parts of it happened in my neighborhood in Los Angeles and being there at the exact spot where he said something happened. It's like, that's cool, but I didn't, I didn't get any residual past life feeling from it. But for example, sometimes that changes and talk about things that are different and noticing them. When we looked at the map coordinates of the Van Meter monster and in our research found somebody on YouTube who thought they found the exact spot where there used to be a cave or a mine shaft where supposedly the monster, the creature was, you know, backed into and dynamited shut. And that had a weird vibe just looking at the Google coordinates for that. So talk about the coordinates for this one. This is roughly where I think it was, I don't know where the exact sighting of the pillar was of the thing, but this trail, which is really long, it's easy to find on Google Earth, the Wadhams to a Boca Trail, and the Trestle Bridge, which Zed mentions in the story. You can find that clear as a bell right on the map just by zooming in there once you find that trail. And then not too far from there where they talk about walking is a little pond with a dock. So I think I put a pen marker there and maybe Zed will get in touch with me because we actually talk all the time about movies on our Patreon. Right, right. But yeah, the coordinates that where I think it was is 43 degrees, 2 minutes, 53.85 seconds north. That's the latitude. So that's 43 degrees, 2 minutes, 53.85 seconds north. And then longitude is 82 degrees, 40 minutes, 21.68 seconds west. Again, 82 degrees, 40 minutes, 21.68 seconds west longitude. That's where the little pond is with the dock. And if you zoom into that or go to those coordinates and then you go east a little bit, you'll see the trail. And if you go south a little bit on the trail, you'll see the Trestle Bridge. So somewhere in that area is where this happened. Right, and did you use Google Earth to get a slanted view of it kind of peeking down from an angle? Usually I do that to check out the topography, but I didn't. This time I just stayed flat above it. So I did not do that yet. Did you get any kind of impression other than it seems thickly rushed? Well, it creeped me out, but it was probably just because of Zed's story. I mean, I don't know if I'd have zoomed in in general. I'd be, ooh, that's a spooky lake. You know, I don't think. Yeah, yeah. But once I heard the story, I was like, oh, what if it? And then, of course, the next thought I had was like all the satellite images that still, Stitch, Google Earth together. Right. There's crap like that in all of them. We just don't know it's there, you know? Oh, of course, yeah. Then there's weird artifacts that the stitching together does and creates. But the point is, Zed knows this trail like the back of his hand. He's been there a thousand times. He sees an eight-foot-tall, branchless, vertical brown object in a spot where he knows no tree exists. And his first instinct, and it's a good one, is pareidolia. He tries to convince himself it's a stump. He simply missed it every other time. It's some weird thing. He's kind of like, you know, I don't know. That must have been there. I just must have overlooked it. Again, if it is a tree stump or, you know, a limbed tree, that's a pretty common sight. Like how many people will get freaked out or mistake that for something else? Yeah, that's true. And, you know, I'm saying that it's a very common thing and normally you wouldn't have that kind of feeling if that really is what it is. I guess I'm making this point rather clumsily. But like I said, if it was just, well, I hadn't noticed that dead tree there before. And, yeah, it's old and the branches are off of it. But it's an eight-foot-tall, broken-off tree out in a clear patch by itself. And weird that I hadn't noticed it. Now, that happens all the time to folks. That happens to me. It's like, I never noticed that being there. Yeah, yeah. Before, but it's not a bad feeling. You know, it's not a creeped out feeling. It's just like, oh, I hadn't noticed that. And, again, that's a pretty natural thing. But here, his partner sees it too. That's right. And people would poo-poo this, but I would give some more credence to stories when you have an independent person with you who unknowingly at first at least gets the same feeling that you do. That's right. Not that it's a huge coincidence. But, like, is it any coincidence at all that they're both feeling this same kind of unease and unknowing and something out of this world? And she's staring at it before he even says a word. That's right. And that's the observer anchor, as it's sometimes called. It takes this from something playing different tricks on each of them to an objective shared reality. So, if it were just him, we could talk about the stress or, you know, the apocalyptic mindset of the COVID era. But here, they are both triangulating the same anomaly. And that's a thing, the apocalyptic stress or whatever, which we don't know. Zed may have been totally mellow about what was going on with COVID. Maybe not. I know that for me, I always think about I was shooting a documentary for my family when my wife and I were about to move from Los Angeles to New York in 2001. And 9-11 happened as we were about to move from LA to New York. And so, this would have been on 9-11. We were living at the time at an apartment in LA in Playa del Rey, right next to LAX, the airport. Yeah, I remember. And, I mean, really close to it. We always just heard planes. And it was really, really loud. And we couldn't even open our windows. And so, then they stopped all the flights that day. And LAX went dead silent. It was truly, truly surreal. But I remember, like, I was in this just total nutso prepper mindset. By the way, I'm not a prepper. Like, the only prepping I had in LA was for earthquakes. I'm not putting down preppers. I'm just saying I was like, I had gone into this mode. It was, you know, like Red Dawn. I'm tying a bandana around my head. And, you know. And I remember thinking, like, that my stress level was really high. And every car that went down the alley, because I was also like, oh, we're close to the airport. What's that person? Why are they parking outside my window? So, this is a mindset that you get into. And it's kind of the same thing with the pandemic. You're just like, oh, am I too close to people? Am I going to get sick? Should I'm not getting sick? What's going to happen to my grandma? All this stuff. So, there was a lot of things going on. So, my very much belabored point there was that if it had been me during this time period and I was out on that trail, I might have been like, what's around me? What's happening? Is COVID everywhere? What do I need to do? Okay, yes. And that was my point earlier in that the refuge is to escape into the woods where there's no other people not going into a crowded grocery store. Like, oh, the things we did. So, getting to nature is where that's a reset. It's a refuge. Yeah. And, you know, where you didn't normally see a little bunch of people anyway. You know, yeah. Yeah. Like in LA, everybody goes up the same trail in the Hollywood Hills where it's actually crowded. Yeah, that's like a highway. Yeah, you're passing people on the way. Or Fryman Canyon. That's another one I used to hike. So, it's not that. And as far as noticing things, again, it's a reset or a refuge from all that and the onslaught of TV news and this and that and social media and, again, crowded places where you have to go. So, maybe you're on edge. But like I said, you know, you're out in the woods where you're more fine-tuned to notice what's different and paying attention to other people that are out there, maybe hoping to see a like-minded soul. That's right. And then on the other hand, you maybe feel a little safer because you are out where not a lot of people are because people are the threat. But what do you think about this thing that we're talking about here, 50 feet from the tree line? Well, it's in the middle of an open clearing, which is not where a hidden predator would stand. Right. So, that's one thought I have. Unless it has reason to believe, it's invisible or at least maybe indistinguishable, which brings us to the moment that Zed moves closer. He gets like within a little closer range and he hits like a wall of terror. I think it's interesting that he's basically saying it was instantaneous and kind of paralyzing that fear. Right. That's what I'm saying is a paranormal aspect of that. That changes the game. This, though, is utter fear, which we often talk about in all these paranormal encounters where it reaches your core. And even thinking back, like I said, I had very few, but in the one where we're out in the desert, Joshua Tree with my good friend, Marty from the Queen Mary story, and we hear that lion growl out in the middle of nowhere. I don't know what exactly he was feeling, but I knew, you know, we both responded like we heard that, right? And he's like, yeah, yeah, we heard that. I wasn't so much fear, even though I'm convinced that's a paranormal happening, not supernatural, but just something odd, some odd physics are going on there. The feeling I got was uncertainty, which turned into extreme caution. So it wasn't deep down fear. It was like, okay, where's this thing coming from? Like, where do we run to if we get charged? And first of all, it's like, there's no place for this thing to be coming from. An animal that large, like I said, being out in nature where it's kind of peaceful, that's what we were having a very peaceful moment there, looking at the sunset over Joshua Tree. And we're in a parking lot. We're not stranded out in the middle of nowhere. And so it was a very enjoyable moment, interfused with like, what was that? You know, like, and where's that coming from? And logically, where could it be coming from? And then second, it was, what do we do? And the thought was, we get out of here. That's what we do. And it's like, we just turned to each other and said, it's time to go. He's like, yep. And we got in the car. And then there was a little bit before, I think we were processing it and we tried to talk about it. So that leave now command, I think can come in different ways. I didn't feel that deep down, like in your core psyche soul of like, you are in danger now, sir, leave immediately. So it's a bit of a psychic broadcast. And we talk about infrasound a lot, but this feels more like direct data transfer. Yeah. As you might say. There's a little bit of the, the, the smile also. Which, you know, he doesn't see the face clearly, but he gets a distinct impression that this thing is grinning at him, whatever this is. And to me, now we're heading in a little bit different direction. And I'll just say this right now. I read the story. I read his impressions. I would always give more or the most weight to the person experiencing it and what they thought it was. But I didn't get the sense it was like a Bigfoot. Part of it was that grin, that smile. Also the nature of it just standing there. That's usually not how people describe Bigfoots, but maybe this one is just friendly. And he's like, you know, I haven't seen anybody since the pandemic happened. I thought I'd make some new friends. Right. Yeah. So that is the point here where the tree facade, this thing you're telling yourself so you don't flip out totally is starting to slip. Also grinning man, anyone? Grinning man or the, or the, uh, the flashy guy, the clown pants dude. Yeah. There's something about the smiling and then, and then we had the return trip, right? So they're coming back. They've hiked to their, whatever point they're going to, now they got to get back to the car. They're coming back. They've gone to the trestle bridge and the object is still there, but now they describe it as antsy, like swaying with some, and with a muscular type of movement, like a, like a tree or a biological being might blow in the wind, but there's no wind that day. That's the smoking gun for something that maybe draws breath like we do. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. A dead tree doesn't get restless. Right. It doesn't just go away a week from then. Yeah. Yeah. There's no, right. So nobody felled it. There's no, a stump, no sawdust, no tractor ruts, uh, no sign of any kind of professional, uh, crew removing, uh, clearing a hazard. Or again, most likely thing is this thing just fell down. It's just flattened grass. So it didn't just disappear. It went somewhere else. It relocated. Yeah. So this is where we have to pivot. Cause if we, if we rule out a mundane tree, we rule out a prank, we're left with something that can stand in broad daylight and mimic a natural object well enough to fool a local until they get too close. So this is where we're getting into that whole like screen memory thing that we've talked about on astonishing legends and other episodes of the dead letter office, even the mantis men episode we did on astonishing legends back in 2023, where in that story, there was a part of it where some, this being seemed to have some kind of cloaking failure. That's right. That's right. I love that concept. I don't know if I want to see that on the story of the fly fisherman and what happened to him in his pants, uh, seeing that. And then of course there's a long car ride back from that. But in all seriousness, it's like, that's why I'm saying like, perhaps an interesting thought about this is if this thing was something, another worldly creature, another interdimensional weirdo just hanging out and, uh, joshing people, bit of a prank or unknowingly, you know, it's that sheepish smile. Like, Oh, I guess you see me. Hi folks. Where you're just standing there and you didn't mean to be seen or you did it purposely to get it a reaction. And why wouldn't you, if I had that power, I might do that too. But is it something, I mean, this is the interesting thought to me. If this thing wasn't a Bigfoot, maybe it does that power that it has to enter your mind and, and scanning through, it's going through the Rolodex of like a plausible images. Like, let's see, we got a Christmas store, a helicopter with no blades. I always think about when the T-1000 is dying in the big bag of molten metal, just going through everything in the, in the, uh, hard drive. Right. It's just like, and that is so metaphorical for so many things, but I was thinking about that the other day about people and, uh, beings or creatures flipping through and like trying to find something. And if you're talking about, again, I don't, it was, if it's all connected, is this some kind of alien thing? Who knows? Or if it's just a weird cryptid kind of a thing or a being like the grinning man, where it is more bipedal, more kind of a human consciousness, uh, realm where, you know, it's something that we can understand. It can understand us. Is it picking like, uh, I, these folks are coming up. I really didn't want to be seen here. So I'm going to choose Bigfoot to project onto them. Yeah. And it didn't quite take, it didn't quite gel. So it's not really like seeing a giant eight foot tall ape, like man, like beast. It's just something that's malformed in a sense in your minds. Sure. It's like, that's what I got. You folks are getting Bigfoot. And then when you come back, I won't be here. Right. Anyway, so yeah, it's that idea that the world we perceive is a user interface. Something prints over the top of that, whatever this Bigfoot or whatever it was, is projecting a low resolution tree also into the landscape as a file. Like I said, it's the blank floppy disk. Like, let me just give you this. It's not taking quite well. It's like really bad Photoshop. And it's just like, it's the outlines there and like, it doesn't look real. It's just got that uncanny valley feeling to it. And then, you know, when the writer challenged that file by walking toward it, it gets better judgment. The system glitches, perhaps it's like, oh, you, you were, no, you're supposed to run the other way. No, the smile. And then the terror, those security protocols of that projection, trying to force the observer back into a safe distance where the, the illusion can, uh, can write itself and start working again. Oh yeah. That's scary, dude. Did you just come up with that? I didn't actually think of the, um, of something, like I said, it sounds crazy to us, but it is maybe a bit of Jose Chung where it's just like, we think Bigfoot is crazy, but why isn't that a good choice for something that is even weirder than Bigfoot where it's like, uh, you're going to be left with a feeling of unease and you won't know exactly what I was or saw me correctly as I am and all that's projected. I just recently heard, uh, somebody explaining the interdimensional, somebody channeling aliens. Okay. But they were saying, uh, you know, there was 300,000 species of, of different aliens in an interdimensional, endless, infinite, uh, existence of, of infinite universes, all that kind of stuff. And basically how you perceive them is also based on your expectations and what your mind is willing to create or accept. Yeah. So you may not exactly be seeing them how they really are. Take, for example, Christopher Walken in, uh, communion in the movie, at least, because I'm, I'm adding that part because it's visual where he, you know, he says, what are you really any, the thing, you know, the alien peels back its face and there's some kind of half monster and he knows immediately, like, that's not you. He said, but, but, but that's smart. That's smart because it's like, it's a good choice of like, you give me the monster thing. Like, you don't want to see this man. You don't want us to show you who are you really are. You'd be frightened. And he's like, yeah, that's not you. That's not real. That's not who you really are. But, but he applauds him for the choice. Like, okay, God, fine. You want to go to the monster route under here? That's fine. None of this makes sense. But I did think about the idea of, uh, your mind going to also, if you're a fan of the show, it's like, why wouldn't it go if you're just doing it yourself? I think about this concept a lot too. What happens when you see something that is not in or a possibility of your realm of reality? It is so far out of your reality. Like you, no one has ever, no human has ever seen that before. Or you are not equipped physically or psychologically to handle that. What does your brain do? Does it go to like, eh, we're, tree or Bigfoot, pick one. Right. And then that's the best you can do. Right. That's a really good point. I mean, now you're getting into the whole like holographic universe and stuff. There's this idea that reality, our reality is like rendered. It's rendered around us. And that maybe these things know how to hack the signal. But the other thing that's interesting about this too is with Zed's partner who is a skeptic. Right. And still can't figure it out five years later what that was. I applaud them for that. Even though I may not agree with that assessment. I think generally it's just a way of like, let's move on from this. Shall we do it more? Yeah. Again, let's get back to regular reality where I can handle that. Even if we're all sequestered and, you know, sanitizing our mail. Yeah. That I can handle. It's not easy, but I can handle that a lot better than this. Yeah. Whatever this was. And so you're talking about being hacked. Well, speaking of trees specifically, I love this anecdote. I think I just saw this as just a post from our friend, John E. L. Tenney. I think it was a discussion. Maybe it was probably on. It was on the old Twitter. Where he was talking about strange things that happened. And then his elderly parents, his father is a game cam. And just for fun, he'll, he'll go by every week or when he goes to visit them. And he goes through images and there could be a hundred, a couple of hundred. And it's just a fun thing to see what's changed on the game cam in their, on their property. And he was just clicking through, hitting the, uh, probably the right arrow button, just like click, click, click, click. Okay. These are all the same. Oh, there's a squirrel, you know, there's a, there's a possum. And then I trust that he was being serious about this and truthful. He said in one frame, there was a tree that's in the landscape that was not there. And then the next shot, it popped back in. Oh, right. Right. You know, he was sounding pretty serious about this. Like, is that a glitch in the matrix? Is that a, was it, what do you call that in gaming? A non-specific player? NPC. NPC. So is that just like, oh yeah, we forgot. We, we ran out of RAM. So we just, that tree is not going to be on that shot. Then it comes back in. As it free, yeah. As your RAM frees up. Okay. But all of this aside, maybe in May of 2020, when the world went quiet, the entities that usually stay on the periphery of our reality decided, they didn't have to try quite so hard to blend in. It does make you wonder when you're out in the woods and you see a tree that looks just a little too perfect or a shadow that stays a little too still. Is it a part of the scenery or is it just waiting for you to look away so it can finally stop smiling? The Astonishing Dead Letter Office is hosted by Scott Philbrook and Forrest Burgess and is executive produced by Tess Feifel. The show is edited and mixed by Sarah Voorhees-Wendell at VW Sound. The theme is based on the Astonishing Legends theme by Judson Crane at Founder Music, arranged by Alan Carissia, who composes all the other music in the show. Tommy Beaver Design created the logo. The announcer is John Bolton. That's me. Stories are lightly edited for length, content, and readability, but otherwise presented as they're sent to us. We're always looking for more Dead Letters. So if you have a story of your own you'd like to share, email it to deadletteroffice at astonishinglegends.com. 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