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Really Strange Anomalies in the Backcountry?


Guest Firefishe

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quote:
Originally posted by GPS_Brian:

During a business trip to Vegas some years ago, a coworker and I decided that it might be interesting to do some hiking around Area51.

 

<snip middle for brevity>

 

We eventually headed back to our car and on back towards Vegas. That was about all the excitement we needed. Along the way back we stopped by the same convenience store we had stopped at previously. We were going to tell the "old man" about our trip. When we went in there was someone different behind the counter. We asked about the old man and the fellow replied "what old man?". He swore that there was no old man that ever worked there

 

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GPS_Brian

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This one gives me the chills. I wonder if the "cammos" weren't another group of, umm, "observers" out doing the same thing that you were. icon_wink.gif I betcha they were.

 

Warm regards,

 

Firefishe

Caching In on the Journey

 

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The year is 2003.

The name is S.A. Brown.

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quote:
Originally posted by Firefishe:

. I wonder if the "cammos" weren't another group of, umm, "observers" out doing the same thing that you were. icon_wink.gif I betcha they were._


 

The cammos definately weren't other observers. They were armed, definately checking out us and not the site, and definately speed away into the base and not away from it!

 

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GPS_Brian

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Hmm. Makes me wonder if they were actually breaking one of their own rules by being outside of the perimeter--I mean if they ran off like that, kind of strange.

 

Usual documented behavior from others' past encounters with those types is that they approach and detain. Well, I'm just glad that you and yours are all right. Kind of weird behavior though. How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of tootsie pop? The world may never know . . . icon_biggrin.gif LOL

 

Firefishe

Caching In on the Journey

 

Flat_MiGeo_B88.gif

 

The year is 2003.

The name is S.A. Brown.

BrowNAV (Brown Navigation)

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ok, this isn't a 'backcountry' experience, but this weekend Beersnob and I tried the Tamarack Cache in Dundee, MI. Basically, it's in a swath of trees near Cabela's. You can park just over 500' from the cache.

 

No previous finders mentioned any GPS glitches, so I don't think it would be anything like power lines or such (I don't recall seeing any, though they're probably underground somewhere). We headed towards the cache, and were still on the well-exposed grassy area before the woods, when suddenly our GPS thought we were 60+ miles to the south. Checked reception, we were getting strong signals from several sattelites, but no little '3D' or even '2D' note in the corner of the sattelite display to indicate it knew where it was. When we walked back towards our car, it picked up the correct location again. After several attempts, anytime we got closer than 500' (and we never went under tree canopy) it would think we were anywhere from 60+ miles South to 30+ miles east of where we actually were.

 

Gave up trying to find the cache (since there were no obvious trails), and the GPS was working fine after we left the area, and hasn't had a glitch since.

 

Anyone know what this could've been, or is it truly a 'Really Strange Anomaly in the not-really-Backcountry?'

 

I walk the Maze of Moments, but everywhere I turn to, begins a new beginning, but never finds a finish... -Enya, Anywhere Is

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quote:
Originally posted by Sparrowhawk:

Definitely non-geocaching, but THE truly wierdest story of strange things in the back country I ever heard is the rather entertaining http://www.worldofthestrange.com/wots/2001/2001-04-02-03a.htm

 

Prepare to have the thought-strand that holds together your suspension of belief quickly give way like an overcooked spaghetti noodle.

 

-Elana (a.k.a. "Sparrowhawk")


 

Just read the story, Elana, and I have to say it gives one something to think about.

 

Something like: TIME TO KICK SOME !#$!@# BOOTY!

 

My thoughts are like this: Enough is Enough! The guy has this kind of experience and the usual cover-up mechanism goes into place. Having to grow one's own food hydroponically icon_wink.gif to keep from having a "heart attack" is not what this Fishey considers high living <sarcasm hopefully obvious>.

 

If these kinds of things *are* occurring in our forests, We The People have not only the Right To Know, but the Right To Act! Forget the frickin' lasers, if it's organic, Smith and Wesson can take care of it--although I suppose that when the dog latched on to the whatever-it-was, the w-i-w merely responded as a defense mechanism.

 

Methinks the mistake was in this guy *actually calling to tell people about it!* Major DUHHH!*

 

As to the aspect of his constantly being pursued, I know that if I had irrefutable evidence of vehicular shadowing, especially the kind supported by photographs, etc., my response would be entirely different--as well as entirely militant.

 

If I saw a bunch of official-looking-though-unofficial-seeming "miscreants" near my house, I'd be calling whomever I could find with any amount of Courage to confront the nits and find out what the heck was going in. 100 armed civilians with deer rifles, shotguns, and sidearms would've given anybody serious Pause and Reflection--even the nits at his 'ouse icon_wink.gif.

 

My Word to the Wise: If you hever have an encounter like this, PLEASE DON'T BE OVERTLY OPENLY PUBLIC ABOUT IT. Don't call your friends, and for cryin' out loud, if you must use the public phone system, by all means use a spread-spectrum/digital scrambler of the latest technology. Also arm yourself and don't be afraid to use it. Just my .02, but Sheesh! Really people.

 

The power of the citizenry will be retured to it when We The People become the voice we once were. I'm not an extremist, just a person who believes in practical survivability and matters of interaction with others, interaction designed to be beneficial to both parties. But if someone wants to Smash My Vehicle (Body) in the process, it's their funeral.

 

I'm here to learn, love, and learn about love. Love is an energy, and energy must flow. It can't flow if, one day, I have an "unfortunate steam roller accident icon_biggrin.gif " Friends don't let friends drive steamrollers drunk! icon_wink.gificon_biggrin.gif.

 

Oh, and watch out for anything extending a pseudopod as a "gesture of friendship;" that next pseudopod-shake may be your last LOL.

 

Firefishe

Caching In on the Journey

 

Flat_MiGeo_B88.gif

---------------------------

The year is 2003.

The name is S.A. Brown.

BrowNAV (Brown Navigation)

---------------------------

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quote:
Methinks the mistake was in this guy *actually calling to tell people about it!* Major DUHHH!*

 

Yeah, he should have grabbed his floo powder and tried to contact Harry or Dumbledore at Hogwarts instead.

 

Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

Resident Hardcore Skeptic,

Runaround

 

Now where did I park my car??????? monkes.gif

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I found this creepy Reddit thread about missing people in National & State parks and mysterious staircases in the middle of the woods. I'd love to make a geocache based on some of these stories. National Park Search & Rescue No Sleep stories

 

*shivers*

I guess old threads remain in the shadows, waiting to come back in mysterious ways. There were some interesting stories here, similar to those in David Paulides Missing 411.

 

I have never seen strange stairs in the middle of nowhere - but might leave a cache if I came across one. The closest I've come is a park bench that someone carried into a very obscure area, a couple of miles from a trailhead, with no official trails to the location. A friend stumbled upon it and another friend marked it with a cache. But it was not an anomaly in the "no sleep" sense of the word.

 

I put some things into a special "high strangeness" category. There is an area where friends and I sometimes hike and cache in Northern California. The area has an interesting history with a few small caves, beautiful volcanic formations, and stunning views. A friend lives nearby and over breakfast at a restaurant near the trailhead, I mentioned how much I liked hiking up there. My friend said he had been up there many years ago, and saw someone who was looking a little lost or confused - without water or a pack, wearing clean clothes. The man asked wondered what day it was. My friend told him, but the man said he needed to know the date - upon learning it, he said, "I've been gone 31 days. My wife's going to kill me."

 

The man said he lived in the Dakotas, but had been taken into an underworld and lived with the people there until emerging just before my friend came upon him. My friend helped him get back down from the mountain and called his wife. His wife was shocked, stating that her husband had disappeared, search and rescue had been looking for him, but they had given up. My friend borrowed some money and put the man on a bus. A couple of weeks later, he got a note from the wife, paying back the money and sating that everything that her husband sad was true.

 

My friend has always been honest. We were doing some business at the restaurant and he was very trustworthy. I once loaned him some money in an emergency and he paid me back as soon as possible. I had no reason to believe he was lying. The man he met may have been delusional, but that does not account for the time, distance, location, lack of wear and tear, or what his wife said. So I put the story in the "I don't have to account for it " file.

 

I do not believe in the hollow earth theory. Nevertheless, I once cached at the location in Scotland where Thomas the Rhymer met an elf queen (as I recall the story) and disappeared for seven years. So who knows . . . A trip to Magonia?

 

I'll be hiking and earthcaching in that area in the few weeks. I'll keep my eyes open, although do not expect to see anything unusual. But do you ever expect strange encounters? The stories in the linked thread, and those that Paulides have collected were unexpected, assuming they are true accounts.

 

Recently, while caching at an isolated paranormal hotspot in Arizona, we met some hikers with an interesting skinwalker story that made me glad our trip was uneventful. Last fall, we camped on an island in the middle of Mono Lake while earthcaching there and were intrigued by some things we saw with night vision goggles, where nothing should have been. We are planning to camp in Yosemite over the summer and do some hiking for a virtual or two. I might think twice if my wife said she was going off alone to collect some berries.

 

With the way that cachers will go off trail into interesting locations, I am surprised that there are not more strange or unexplained things connected with this game.

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Interesting subject. I think a lot of what we see or experience as humans is affected by our particular mindset and experience in the past. for example, a few months ago I was hiking and camping in the Arivaca area of Arizona with a group of people. On one evening as we were all having dinner around the campfire, I witnessed what looked like and explosion at a very high altitude in the western sky. It plumed out to a perfect blue tinted sphere after the initial flash. Everyone in the party witnessed this event as it was visible for a good ten minutes. The first thing that came to my mind was "meteor", high angle impact with the upper atmosphere and exploded. But there were others in the party that immediately pulled the "alien/ufo" card out. When we asked how likely that explanation of a ufo was, to say, a more likely explanation (but vastly less exciting) of meteor.... it didn't matter to those who said "UFO!".

When we got back to civilization and a wifi connection, we found out we had witnessed a Navy missile test off the coast of California (some of you on the west coast may remember this just a few months ago, November 2015). It was a high altitude explosion, just not one that came from the outer solar system, but from earthly origins.

Conclusion: some people are predisposed to come to more "exotic" explanations because that's what they WANT to believe. I on the other hand am predisposed to say "I don't know" if I witness something I can't immediately explain, but my natural reaction is to search for natural explanations, and if those explanations don't work, I leave it as "I don't know...yet". I've never understood why some people fill their gap in knowledge with "supernatural" explanations almost immediately. Many times these same people will still hold their belief even when evidence to the contrary presents itself. I can only conclude they prefer the supernatural explanation to a natural one. Which is fine. :D No skin off my nose.

Myself, this would never work for me, as those supernatural explanations raise more questions than they answer.

Edited by TheAuthorityFigures
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Prosser is one of many places in the US alone where a small stretch of road APPEARS to run uphill due to the surrounding landscape. It's an optical illusion. The road actually runs slightly downward where people mark the road "start", thus giving the illusion that a car is rolling uphill. It's an interesting illusion, but alas, the road there has no anti gravitational properties. :)

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Prosser is one of many places in the US alone where a small stretch of road APPEARS to run uphill due to the surrounding landscape. It's an optical illusion. The road actually runs slightly downward where people mark the road "start", thus giving the illusion that a car is rolling uphill. It's an interesting illusion, but alas, the road there has no anti gravitational properties. :)

 

But it's more fun to suspend disbelief and assume that vortexes have created an anomaly; that Bigfoot is just around the corner; that the mysterious colors in the fairy fort photos are fairies; and that there is something going on with the distant light in the sky that just changed directions while viewing it with night vision goggles. I enjoy a Fortean experience now and then. And if I ever encounter black eyed children, I might know what to do.

 

It also makes this game more interesting. I own a genuine Bud Flout certified Bigfoot Wherigo cache; the Aura Raines challenge cache (that follows the adventures of the commander of the Clarian space fleet); and letterboxes themed around a lake monster and rumored alien encounters. I have gone out of my way to stop for a cache at the Aztec UFO Crash site (you know it's genuine because there is a plaque there), a Bigfoot investigation center in California, a fairy home in Iceland, and innumerable haunted locations. Not to mention Roswell.

 

It gives me a break from the skeptic web sites I frequent, the skeptical things I write, and the skeptic meetings I attend.

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