MERIDIAN: Today marked the official end of our two-year investigation into the paranormal phenomenon and mysterious past of California. Wow, two years. That’s some indication of not only how large California is, but how rich it is in the type of legends and stories that interest us. At exactly 12:41 p.m., we crossed the border into Oregon, traveling north on I-5 through the towns of Ashland and Medford. Is was a welcome change. California was an amazing state to visit, but our experience there was also emotionally exhausting. As we drove across the border, I think all of us were aware of how empty our vehicles seemed. We are officially down by three members and we were all in a melancholy mood as we greeted Oregon.

We have decided to set up our temporary camp in Grants Pass, which is one of the larger towns in the area and is suitably located for a variety of day-trips. The major attraction is the Rogue River, which runs right through the center of town and is a very popular destination point for the outdoorsy-types who like being tossed about on treacherous rapids. I am not one of these people, but I am looking forward to seeing some of the nearby attractions, like the Oregon Caves National Monuments and Crater Lake – both of which have a variety of odd tales to tell.

For the next day or two, however, we will take in the sights of Grants Pass. It has already amused us that the town’s “mascot” is a caveman. The town has a curious fiberglass statue of a caveman erected near a busy intersection. When Ash saw it he cried out, “Look, they have a statue of Bigfoot!” After spending about three weeks in the California mountains looking for the elusive monster, apparently we still have Bigfoot on the mind! I have to admit, however, that the statue does bear a striking resemblance.

POLARIS: There is a very interesting tale attached to Crater Lake that has been published in several books over the years and certainly bares repeating. The tale begins in 1945, just after the conclusion of World War II, when the skies of the northwest were still a highly active training ground for U.S. fighter planes. A newspaper article from 1970 tells the rest of the story:

“It was about 11 a.m. on Dec. 3, 1945, when a flight of Navy Hellcat fighters approached the Crater Lake area.

They belonged to Naval Air Group 5, VF 5, and were on their way from Pasco, Wash., to Brown Field, near San Diego, Calif.

One of these fliers was Ensign Les Farrell, now living in Medford.

Farrell said Friday he remembered approaching the area which was shrouded in heavy clouds. The planes rose to about 22,000 feet to avoid the clouds.

Over the radio, Farrell said, he heard one of the pilots saying that his external belly tank had run dry and that he was switching to a full tank.

That was the last every heard from this pilot...

Twelve of the Hellcats which landed in Klamath Falls searched for several days, but nothing was found of the missing aircraft. After the Navy called off the search, private planes continued, but in vain...”

Twenty-five years later, a National Park Ranger named David Panebaker decided to scout the area around Skell Head on the lake’s east end. Rangers had known for a while that there was an old plane wreck in the area, but recently park visitors had begun to loot wreckage for souvenirs and Panebaker was concerned about preserving the site. After spending several hours hiking around the area, Panebaker sat down to rest and had the eerie feeling that he was being watched. When he turned to look around him, he was startled to see a human skull, perched on top of a nearby log, staring back at him. The skull would turn out to be the only surviving remains of the missing Hellcat’s pilot, 22-year old Frank Lupo. The identification was made by the Federal Bureau of Investigation based on Lupo’s dental records.

So what happened to Frank Lupo that caused his plane to crash into a hillside above Crater Lake? The answer to that remains a mystery, but based on the recollections of Les Ferrell and others, it seems likely that Lupo’s plane simply ran out of gas after fighting strong Gulf Stream winds en route down the coast. Missing airplanes were not a rarity in the United States during this era when avionics and navigation were still relatively primitive. In the same year that Lupo’s skull was found, the extraction of a long-missing Hellcat from 3,400 feet of water offshore from San Diego made headlines around the country. That aircraft had been missing since January 12, 1944. It should also be noted that two days after Frank Lupo’s plane vanished, a squadron of TMB Avenger bombers – commonly known as “Flight 19” – vanished over the “Bermuda Triangle” in perhaps that area’s most famous case of missing aircraft. Maybe 1944 and 1945 were just bad years to fly?

ASH: We spent a lot of time over the last few days hiking around the Crater Lake area [because] it’s a very large area. I guess you’d think that we’d be tired of the great outdoors after spending so much time in Bluff Creek, but the lake is really beautiful and you don’t get tired of looking at the scenery. Two things that we all really wanted to see before we left the lake was Wizard Island and the “Old Man.”

Wizard Island is the cinder cone that sits in the middle of the lake. Because Crater Lake is actually a volcanic crater, the cinder cone is the pile of debris that forms near the volcanic vent. I know this because Meridian decided that our visit here would be a good opportunity for a school lesson on geology. So, while everyone gets to enjoy the view, I get to study. Before there was a crater, there was a mountain here called Mt. Mazama but it blew itself up about 4,600 BC. The Native Americans in the area said that the mountain was the portal into the underworld and the volcanic eruption was a huge battle between two rival gods. These gods were Llao, the god of the underworld, and Skell, the god of the sky. Llao ripped out Skell’s heart, so Skell got even by chopping up Llao’s body and throwing all the pieces in the lake. A lake monster ate all of Llao except his head, which is where all his power was stored. If angered, Llao can transform himself into a giant crayfish which will attack people on the shore of the lake and eat them. A lot of places around the lake are named after these gods. For example, the place where the ranger found the skull of the pilot was near an area called Skell [Head]. Considering the gory story about a severed head, it’s kind of weird that a ranger would find an old skull in this particular place! [See Polaris’s April 7th journal entry on Crater Lake for more on this incident.]

We really wanted to go to Wizard Island because the Indians thought this was a haunted place. Apparently rangers and guests sometimes report seeing campfires on the island when no one is there or see phantoms among the trees. We had to go over on a tourist boat which mostly sucks because you don’t get to look around freely like we like to do. We had about 45 minutes to walk around on the cinder cone then we got back on the boat. No one in our party really had any psychic impressions of the place but there wasn’t any real time to do a detailed study either. Meridian had a good point in that most of the stories about Wizard Island are just word-of-mouth or someone’s interpretation of old Indian legend. There’s no real proof that anything paranormal ever happened here.

After leaving Wizard Island we sailed passed a much smaller island called the Phantom Ship. This was a very cool island. It was all craggy and pointed and looked like something out of the Lord of the Rings. We weren’t able to climb it though. Too dangerous. Finally we paused alongside what is called the “Old Man.” This is an old log that apparently fell into the lake at least 100 years ago. It floats along vertically so the only part of it you see is the top which bobs along like a cork. Underneath the water, however, is the rest of the tree. Because the lake is so cold, the wood has been preserved and its likely that the Old Man will be around for a long, long time. There is an interesting superstition connected with the Old Man. Apparently in the 1960s some scientists captured the log and tied it to a dock while they were doing their research. The weather turned bad right away. As soon as the Old Man was released, the weather went back to nice.

MERIDIAN: After several days exploring the wilderness to the east of Grants Pass, today we headed south to the Oregon Caves National Monument. After being emotional engaged by the beauty of Crater Lake, but disappointed by the lack of documentable hauntings or paranormal phenomenon, it was nice to head to the Caves where phantoms are alleged to be more active! Our source material for this trip was Andrea Lankford’s book, Haunted Hikes: Spine-Tingling Tales and Trails from North America’s National Parks. According to Lankford, the Oregon Caves Chalet, the monument’s largest accommodation for tourists, is also the site of exceptional poltergeist activity. Lankford wrote:

“They say Elizabeth, the source of the poltergeist, killed herself at the Chalet sometime in 1937, after she returned early from her hike and discovered her husband’s infidelity with a housekeeper. The National Park Service has no documentation of such an event occurring. Nevertheless, several members of the staff have seen things that have turned them into believers. If something suddenly falls off a shelf and breaks, if folded laundry inexplicably becomes unfolded, if water faucets come on after being turned off, if the grand piano in the lobby starts to play by itself, if the guests in Suite 309-310 complain that they woke up in the middle of the night because they felt an invisible entity sitting on their bed, Elizabeth is the first to be blamed.” [pp. 328-329]

Okay, color us intrigued. Although Lankford acknowledges that the NPS has no documentation on any historic event of this kind, we were interested in the amount of detail that went along with the story, including a specific name, guest room and date. Most of the discredited hotel haunting legends that we come across usually lack this kind of details. The ghost invariably is a woman in white seen floating through hallways with little backstory. So could Elizabeth have been a real person? We decided to do some of our own research.

When it opened, there was a fair amount of excitement in the press about the chalet as it was unique in all of the park system. It is a breathtaking piece of architecture with a classic 1930s feel. The hotel spans an entire ravine and a natural stream runs through the dining room. Pretty cool. It is a tall structure – six stories – but the use of natural woods and stone allows it to blend beautifully with the wooded hills around it.

“The chateau is a most inviting structure,” stated a 1936 article in the Oakland Tribune, “and it incorporates many novel features. The view from different landings is most inspiriting, as it affords a magnificent panorama of the surrounding hills and valley...”

The death of Elizabeth would have occurred shortly after the chalet opened to the public. The mode of death changes depending on which version of the story you hear. Some say Elizabeth slashed her wrists in the bathtub in Room 309. Others say she threw herself out the room’s window and plunged into the creek below. Naturally, the first thing we would have assumed is that if a young woman had killed herself over a cheating husband within a year of the chateau’s opening, that would have made the headlines. (Consider the death of Kate Morgan at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego for comparison.) But we couldn’t find any articles or references to any deaths at the Oregon Caves National Monument between the years of 1936 and 1938.

Undaunted by the research, we decided to conduct interviews on site. As with other tourist attractions with a ghost legend behind them, the seasonal help didn’t seem to know anything and we quickly decided that we really needed to speak to a ranger or someone else who had a lot of personal and professional knowledge about the lodge. Before we sought out on the quest for a ranger, however, we decided to go find the suite in which Elizabeth was said to have killed herself. As we were walking down the hallway, we happened to bump into the occupants of that room as they were exiting for the day and asked them about any experiences. This was a young couple with a daughter and none of them claimed to have noticed anything unusual. They were very nice (to our faces) but apparently went and complained about us at the front desk after our meeting in the hallway. The next thing we know, the Day Manager is telling us we need to leave if we’re not guests of the chalet. We argued with him that since we were tourist and the chalet’s haunted reputation was common knowledge, we didn’t see how we were bothering anyone just by asking questions. If a person didn’t want to answer our questions, they didn’t have to. He got real “butt hurt” – as Ash described it – with us and said we either needed to leave or he’d call a ranger.

Rune immediately chimed up with: “That’s great! We need a ranger! Where can we find one?”

The poor man looked dumbfounded. I guess that wasn’t the reaction he was expecting? Maybe he thought we were going to file a complaint against him, but really neither Rune nor anyone else was interested in wasting any more time with him. We left promptly and set out to find said ranger.

We finally found a nice lady ranger who was willing to talk to us. It was her opinion that the Elizabeth story was little more than an invention from some creative minds. To her knowledge, the construction of the chalet had been a smooth operation (no dead workmen or disturbed Indian burial grounds, for example) and there had been no serious incidents of violence there either. All of this would seem to correspond with our own research, which turned up absolutely no independent corroboration that the chalet is haunted. Our conclusion? The Oregon Caves Chalet is probably not haunted by a suicidal woman named Elizabeth. The story, however, is harmless and probably even adds an element of mystery and fun to those who visit there!

VISITOR COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE, POSTED ON APRIL 19, 2009: My family and I stayed at the Oregon Caves Chalet in 2004 and were surprised to see how many of the employees there knew about the legend of Elizabeth the ghost. In fact, the guy who checked us in told us right off that [we] were staying doen [sic] the hall from the 'haunted room.' We really didn't think much about it at the time, figuring it was probably just a tale they told everyone. I thought your story on the haunting was interesting because it kind of reinforced that thought. Thanks for the great website! –SachaK.

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RUNE: After coming to the reluctant conclusion that there probably is NOT a ghost in the haunted Oregon Caves chalet (or at least no historical precedence for one), it was time to take our tour into the caves themselves. (This is a bit of a misnomer, as our guide was quick to point out that the “caves” are actually all actually a single subterranean complex – therefore a “cave.”) It was easy to see why early visitors here may have thought otherwise. The passages are a crazy hodgepodge of tunnels, tubes, chambers and crevices. It is hard to imagine the raw power of Nature carving so large of an area. Perhaps it’s easier for us to imagine it as being smaller chambers that over the eons simply began to interconnect.

I have been [in] quite a few caves over the years, but the Oregon Caves are some of the most beautiful I have seen. This may be due to their relatively late discovery. The official discoverer of the caves was Elijah Davidson, who stumbled upon the entrance during a hunting trip in 1874. It was several years before Davidson returned with others to share his discovery, and although several people attempted to exploit the caves for tourism or mineral rights, they were only marginally successful. This may have helped to preserve the integrity of the caves until 1909 when President Taft declared them a national monument. Interestingly, the local Native Americans either didn’t know about the cave or did not bother to use it. Archaeological studies have found no evidence of early native people anywhere inside!

As with most cave tours, the National Park Service utilizes a variety of protocols to keep the cave as pristine as possible. The interior is quite breathtaking as a result. There was nothing paranormal per say about the caves, other than the natural mystique and power of such an impressive natural formation. Still, it does the soul good to venture into such places. Even if it’s just to remind ourselves about the power and scope of Nature!

RUNE: Never let it be said that the Outcast Earth team isn’t open to absorbing some of the local flavor of the areas we visit. We are not all about ghosts, monsters and strange disappearances... although experience would indicate that even the most innocuous venue can hold some surprises. So it was with today’s outing to a local Renaissance Festival, which was intended to be a pleasant diversion and ended up as a rather disturbing experience.

The faire was held in a beautiful “Medieval village” set in a tree-lined glen, complete with storefronts, amusements, games and a jousting arena. Neither Meridian or Ash had been to a Ren Faire, so I think it was a particularly amusing spectacle for them... especially if you are not used to the colorful personalities who stroll the avenues in full costume and behave, well, oddly. When Ash was approached by a strolling jester who offered to insult him for 1 pound, I think he wasn’t sure if he should run or punch the man. Fortunately, he politely declined and kept on walking.

We spent several hours strolling through the shops and sampling the somewhat-authentic foods, and then Meridian and I stopped at a booth run by a fortune-teller calling herself The Lady of the Mist. Colorful, right? Now, some of our former OCE members (Cipher) might have told me that I was tempting fate by asking to have our fortunes read after our experience on Saipan. But I guess that’s why I did it. I really wanted to see if our fortune had changed from three years ago, when a Saipanese fortune seemed to forecast all the bad luck that’s befallen us over the last few years [See “Outcast Earth Curse” for more information.]

The Lady of the Mist gave us the option of either a palm reading or a Tarot card reading. I chose the former and Meridian chose the latter. The Lady, who was an effusive and talkative woman dressed in full Renaissance regalia, told me that I would be blessed with long life, many adventures and a deep spiritual awakening that was yet to happen. She also noted that I had suffered the loss of someone very close to me. She stated that this man hadn’t died, but had left my life and had never returned. She described him as being a deeply-tormented person who had endured great hardship in his life, including the recent loss of a parent. When I asked if this person would ever return, she answered with a resounding “no.” Naturally, my mind immediately turned to Trespass, our former team member who returned home to Louisiana in 2007 following the discovery that his mother had been murdered. We haven’t heard from Trespass since his departure and our attempts to contact him have all failed. I think of all the members, I felt particularly close to Trespass. We really bonded during our shared trip to his hometown in 2006 [See Trespass’s Return to the Bayou] and I have felt his absence acutely. What’s become of him may be one of those mysteries I will just have to endure, especially since we seem to trade in mysteries and strange disappearances.

But my illuminating experience with The Lady was nothing compared to Meridian’s. As you may recall, Meridian received a rather chilling fortune on Saipan that seemed to prophesize a series of disasters that would befall the team. The fortune described this “curse” as being like a “typhoon which had once before battered her against the rocks.” This fortune was the crux of Cipher’s curse theory, and ultimately the reason he left the team last year [See Cipher’s biography for more information.] The Lady’s Tarot card reading of Meridian – which went on for over an hour – had some stunning similarities to the Saipanese fortune. First, The Lady told Meridian directly that there was an old evil that was hunting her, that it had assaulted her once before and was returning to finish the job. Her exact words were: “You can think of this like a storm on the horizon. You can see the clouds gathering and feel the wind beginning to blow. You have time to find shelter, but you must do it soon because nothing can stop the storm from reaching you.”

More storm analogies! Yikes!

When asked to describe the “old evil,” The Lady said that this was a sentient force that Meridian had inadvertently riled years before. The Lady seemed to be quite emotional about the reading, although I am careful to remind everyone that she is a trained and experienced performer. She did not do what I expected a Renaissance fortune teller to do, which was give a rather cheery reading filled with promises of love and riches. In fact, Meridian’s fortune was almost freaking gloomy. I was also impressed that I didn’t catch The Lady trying to cold-read us. That’s usually how these things work. Instead, she just imparted knowledge without any of the expected parlor tricks.

Just as startling however, was The Lady’s insistence that Meridian fully understand and appreciate her prophecy. Meridian is not someone prone to superstition, and when she guffawed at The Lady’s prophecy the woman and her daughter pursued us through the Ren Faire. She seemed genuinely concerned and upset by her own reading. Meridian finally got a little brusk with her and she backed off, but I just can’t get the experience out of my head. And considering how uncannily accurate my own reading was, I’m now concerned that Meridian’s may have some truth to it.

MERIDIAN: Rune did a good job summarizing our regrettable experience at the Renaissance Faire we went to a few days ago. She did not, being the tactful person she is, fully describe the crazy bitch Tarot Card reader who pursued us through the crowds like a beggar child in Calcutta. Does that sound harsh? Oh, well. Screw it. I’m leaving it in.

So today was part two of this drama, which I thought was quite over and done with once we left the faire. Imagine our surprise today when this lady, with her poor daughter in tow, arrived at our campsite to further impress upon me how her simple parlor tricks are not to be taken lightly. I caused me to recall an investigative news program I saw years ago on professional wrestling. The reporter did a very thorough job uncovering all the tricks of that trade that render it part stunt show, part sport, and part melodrama. Toward the end of the report, he was confronted by one of the wrestlers.

“You think it’s all fake?” the wrestler growled.

“Yes,” the reporter replied calmly, “I think it’s fake.”

At this point the wrestler, who was about three times the reporter’s size, belted him across the face. The reporter dropped like a bag of wet cement.

“Was that fake?!?” the wrestler bellowed at the dazed man.

By engaging in anger and violence, the wrestler did nothing to prove his point. All he did was engage in the time-tried method of the liar and con-artist – if your veracity is called into question, become more aggressive. I’ve [always] felt that truthful people do the opposite. If someone doesn’t believe what I say, they don’t have to. I can turn and walk away and not pay another second’s notice to them. So today, when the towering “Lady of the Mist” materialized at our campsite, my mind immediately flashed on the wrestler-reporter story. She was clearly engaging in the same thing – upset that I walked away from her at the Renaissance Faire with no concern for her ridiculous prophecy. Imagine what a driven person she must be to actually show up in person to try and convince me of her truthfulness.

But the fact remains that I don’t believe in prophecy. I didn’t believe in it when Cipher tried for two years to convince me. He believed in it so much that he actually left the team in fear of what the future would hold for those of us living under his so-called “curse.” [For more on the “Outcast Earth Curse,” click here.] That was his decision. I accept it, even though I don’t agree with it. I hope it made him happier.

As for the Lady in the Mist, she spent 45 minutes babbling on in rapid-fire nonsense about how she had never, in all her years, given a reading as powerful and disturbing as mine. Great. It will make a nice story for you to tell others. I finally told her to leave me alone and I walked away. My compatriots continued to entertain her, which I found annoying. I guess they too can believe whatever they want.

VISITOR COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE, POSTED ON APRIL 23, 2009: It's probably unfair of Meridian to assume that [the] Lady of the Mist is a fake cause she works at a Renaisance [sic] fair. Plenty of people with legit psychic talents work in the field trying to help others using their gifts. Sometimes labeling them as fortune tellers is unfair cause it makes them seem like they are just entertainers rather than people with a true gift. The [proof] is in the putting. If what the Lady of the Mist is saying rings true, then it probably is. –TKE3836

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POLARIS: I need to add a few things to this debate over the Lady of the Mist and her fortune telling abilities. After her rather ugly confrontation with Meridian at our campsite, Rune, Ash and I had a chance to speak to her alone. She’s an unusual woman. Very driven, very opinionated and very sure that her Tarot card reading of Meridian was absolutely correct. I don’t think she’s crazy. There’s definitely something to what she was saying. For example:

She was able to find our campsite by “asking the cards.” Now one could argue that she might be able to figure out who we were just through a simple Google search, but that wouldn’t lead her to our campsite.

Rune already detailed the reading she got from the Lady of the Mist at the Renaissance Faire, a reading that appeared to be about Trespass. Again, that might be something she could have read online... had she known that we would be coming to her booth that day. But she didn’t.

She told us that what Cipher called a "curse" has actually been something else – more of an entity, an intelligence. She didn’t have a name for this entity, but said that it knew Meridian and had once before nearly killed her. Years before Meridian joined OCE, she was living and working in the Portland area. While working as a security guard, she had been attacked and stabbed several times in an abandoned warehouse in the waterfront area. Meridian remembers very little about the attack, but naturally no one assumed that the culprit was anything but human. Whoever did this to her was never caught. Now we have the Lady of the Mist insisting that this life-changing event was not the doing of a strung-out vagrant, but rather of a supernatural and malicious intelligence.

And then there was the biggest kicker of all... She claimed that this entity was the one who killed Anvil. Anvil’s departure from the team in 2007 has been the most bothersome event of our history together. He was missing for over a year and then a series of dreams by my son led us to his skeletal remains in an abandoned gas station in the middle of rural Colorado. No one has been able to explain why Anvil disappeared and how he got to such a remote place, seemingly just to sit down and die. [Click here for additional information on the discovery of Anvil's corpse.] The Lady of the Mist was the first to offer an explanation; and as bizarre as it sounds she claims that the young man was “bewitched” by the entity. She admitted that she didn’t have complete information yet, but did invite us to her motel room for an additional reading. She’s not asking for any money or recognition. She just seems genuinely concerned for our safety.

POLARIS: With some nagging, we were able to convince Meridian to join us at The Lady of the Mist’s motel room in Grants Pass. She and her daughter are cut from the same cloth as the rest of us. They are professional wanderers, with no place to call home other than the patch of ground under their feet. She was very welcoming, and even seemed thankful that we came. We sat on the floor in a big circle and The Lady of the Mist began to lay down the cards. All of us were watching her carefully for any trickery. And since she was of our skepticism, she provided information to shore up her credibility. If she is a trickster, I will give her credit for being the most skilled one I have ever met. As Rune noted previously, we did not catch her in any cold-reading or ruse usually employed by professional psychics. She told us a variety of things, of which about 75% were right on the money. We have noted the areas where the information she provided synched up with our experiences.

I started the session by asking her about Anvil and the circumstances around his death. Because he posted a variety of materials about Anvil’s demise on the website, we were careful only to ask for information that was NOT made public. She let us tape-record the meeting, so the following are excerpts from the transcript:

LOTM: You want to know how he came to be where he was?

POLARIS: Yes.

LOTM: He was sick when he disappeared. He had been sick for several days. [Note: Prior to Anvil’s disappearance, he was confined to a Los Angeles hotel room and appeared to be suffering from flu.]

POLARIS: Okay. And?

LOTM: It wasn’t just a physical illness. He was mentally ill. Did you know that?

POLARIS: No. What do you mean?

LOTM: He had always struggled to find himself. His life at home was terrible so he ran as far and fast as he could once he was an adult. His illness was undiagnosed, because he never wanted to admit to himself that something about him just wasn’t right. He compensated with alcohol. His sickness in the hotel room wasn’t because he caught some bug. He was drinking. He was at his lowest point. [Note: It was true that Anvil had battled alcoholism in his past. However, during his time with the team he seemed to have this problem well under control.]

MERIDIAN: We would have noticed if he was a heavy drinker. I remember him having some beers from time to time, but that was it.

RUNE: He could have hidden it. He came down with an illness that none of the rest of us caught. I always thought that was weird, but I guess at the time I just thought I was lucky.

LOTM: Once he was that low, he was vulnerable.

[Team members briefly discuss Anvil.]

POLARIS: [to the other Outcast Earth team members] I think we need to hold our comments until she finishes her reading.

RUNE: Yup. You’re right. We’ll shut up.

POLARIS: [to LOTM] Please continue.

LOTM: As I said, he was vulnerable. His mind became weak and that made him easy prey. The entity that is following you, in particular you [points to Meridian], is a trickster. It can bewitch your mind, make you see people and things that aren’t really there, build your trust and then have you walk off a building or step in front of a speeding bus. It has greater access to you when you enter certain areas where the world of the living overlaps with the world of the dead.

ASH: That’s an awful lot of places.

LOTM: In your business, yes, you’re right. But is can also access a person who is weak, sick. It found your friend Anvil and fooled him. That’s why he left. He did so willingly, but without knowing what he was really doing. For all I know, it could have appeared at the window looking just like one of you. The more this creature can divide you, the more vulnerable the rest of you become.

RUNE: What do you mean ‘appeared at the window.’

LOTM: When it took Anvil, it gained access to him through a window. [Note: One of the strange circumstances behind Anvil’s disappearance was the state of his hotel room which had an open window but no signs of struggle. Ash had had a premonition that some malevolent personality had entered Anvil’s room through the window. At the time, no one knew what to make of this information as Anvil was on the hotel’s sixth floor and his room was only accessible by rooftop maintenance ladders. It would have been a very precarious climb for any human being to attempt. Click here for additional information on this incident.]

POLARIS: You keep referring to it as an entity or a creature. Can you be more specific?

LOTM: I cannot. But what I see points to a conscious life-force, something very old and very ruthless. I can tell you that it is not from this place. I feel that it became separated somehow from its home and it now wanders as you do. It has been tracking you for several years and has brought about both chaos and death before. The fire in the cave that nearly killed your team members... it was responsible. [Note: Here the LOTM appears to be referring to the freak munitions blast in the cave on Saipan that landed both Cipher and Trespass in the hospital.] It was also responsible for the death of a young woman [Note: This would appear to be Rune’s love interest, Tate, who was killed in a traffic accident that also injured Ash. Click here for additional information on this incident], but its target was actually you [points to Ash].

RUNE: I have a question...

LOTM: Of course.

RUNE: You told me at the Renaissance faire about a man [Trespass] who I was close to but who has now left my life.

LOTM: Yes.

RUNE: Was he a victim of this creature as well?

LOTM: No. He had his own demons to battle, but this life-force was not one of them. His departure from your team was well-timed, however. It thinned your ranks again. Just how many people have you lost over the last two years or so?

[The team discusses this briefly among themselves.]

POLARIS: Three of our original members have left the team [Coyote, Anvil, Trespass]. Plus one of our replacement members, Cipher. So four altogether.

LOTM: Your eldest son [Coyote] left for personal reasons, however. His departure is not related. The young man [Trespass] that Rune was close to left for personal reasons. The one found dead was a victim of the entity, and Cipher was in the sense that he was frightened away. And, as I said, this entity has attempted to kill Ash as well, but instead it was the young woman [Tate] who died. [Note:

MERIDIAN: The one thing you haven’t told us is why. Why is this invisible monster after us, if it really exists?

LOTM: It’s not after everyone. It’s only after you. But as I said, it has easier access if it can make you weak, isolated. After your original encounter with this entity, you surrounded yourself with these people. Powerful people. All of you are more powerful than you imagine. That has kept it at bay for the most part, but if it can eliminate your friends, you become an easier target.

MERIDIAN: And when was my original encounter?

LOTM: Years ago. You were attacked, almost killed. It happened in a dark place near the water. [Note: On December 20, 2002, Meridian was attacked and almost killed while working as a night security officer in Portland, Oregon. Her assailant, who stabbed her multiple times, was never identified. The assault happened in a waterfront warehouse. Click here to view Meridian's biography and more information on this incident]

MERIDIAN: And why was I attacked?

LOTM: This entity is a predator. You were prey who happened to walk into its territory. It was that simple. You were supposed to die but you didn’t. But the predator is still on the hunt, it is ready to finish the job.

MERIDIAN: By killing me or anyone who stands between me and ‘it.’

LOTM: Yes.

RUNE: So I guess the obvious question is, what do we do? It doesn’t seem like we can outrun it. So what do we do?

ASH: Yeah, there’s got to be a way to fight it.

LOTM: You’ve had some protectors and help along the way.

POLARIS: What does that mean?

LOTM: There is another force, a powerful entity who has protected you over the years. [Note: The team assumed that the LOTM was here referring to Tahiki, the enigmatic young man they first encountered on Tahiti in 2005 and who has mysteriously appeared to various members in photographs or in person ever since.]

POLARIS: Who is that?

LOTM: You know his name, I think. He is unseen, but can be seen when he chooses. He has protected you, but if you mean to destroy the creature that threatens you, you must learn more about it.

POLARIS: And this unseen person who has helped us, he can tell us more?

LOTM: I don’t know that, but you might wish to try. Understand what the threat is and you can find a way to protect yourselves. I will continue to consult the cards.

VISITOR COMMENTS ON THIS ARTICLE, POSTED ON MAY 1, 2009: Visit the BULLETINS page to view all recent visitor comments and stories about the mysterious and paranormal from all over the world!

POLARIS: After our last meeting with the Lady of the Mist [in] her motel room, the team was stymied about how to act on the information she gave us. Although she was very precise on the type of intelligence she said was stalking Meridian – it was not native to North America but was trapped here, it was very old, it could assume any shape it wanted, it could bewitch the human mind, it is predatory – she did not have a name for the creature. Nor do we. We felt very out of our league, and although none of us fully believe what the Lady [told] us, we were interested enough to suspend our haunting investigations to look into it.

Toward that end, I had to swallow an ocean of pride and telephone Jeremy Riposte. As you may recall, last August the team returned to Kaua’i after receiving an invitation from Jeremy to investigate some previously unknown ancient Hawai’ian ruins on that island. Long story short, it turned out to be an elaborate hoax. Jeremy and some associates had constructed the ruins to bolster the former’s “paranormal island tour” business. Our team members were the guinea pigs in this experiment, with Jeremy assuming that if he could fool us he could fool tourists. Needless to say, after we figured out what he was up to, we refused to participate any further and haven’t spoken to him since. We did learn that he restarted his tour business about three months ago, but the “lost ruins” are not on his itinerary. [See the Lost Ruins of Kaua'i for additional information.] Apparently he is sticking to more established paranormal sites on Kaua’i, such as the heiaus and old graveyards.

Regardless, I had very mixed emotions about contacting him after this last experience. Our relationship has been tenuous at best, and frankly, I didn’t relish asking him for any favors. But, he’s also the most knowledgeable person we know on issues relating to supernatural creatures from myth and folklore.

I expected him to be rather insufferable, but he was actually quite polite and cooperative with me. He didn’t mention the “lost ruins” fiasco at all. I explained to him what the Lady of the Mist had told us and invited him to visit the website for additional information. He said he had some ideas about the nature of the entity described, but said he would have to do some research and get back to us. In the meantime, the Lady of the Mist is continuing to feed us new information. We’ll post more as soon as we hear back from Jeremy.

[Webmaster's Note: The follow is the text from a email from Jeremy Riposte to our team member, Polaris. This is Jeremy's reply to Polaris's questions as outlined in his journal entry from above.]

Dude, I did some cogitating on your dilemma and I may have an idea as to the identity of your evil entity. From what you told me, I was looking for a creature from mythology with the following characteristics:

1. It is not native to the U.S. or North America, but somehow ended up here.
2. It is very old, ancient even.
3. It is a shapeshifter.
4. It can make a person see or feel whatever it wants by manipulating your senses.
5. It is predatory, but prefers to prey on the weak and vulnerable. Weak-minded or emotionally isolated people are good targets.
6. It can attack either using conventional means (such as Meridian being physically attacked and stabbed) or through trickery (such as Anvil being led to Colorado where he apparently just sat down and died.)

Taking all these traits into account, there was one mythological creature that immediately jumped out at me: the Rakshasa. These are beings from Hindu and Buddhist myth where they are described as supernatural humanoids who prey on human beings. They are shape-shifters, magicians and illusionists who feed on human flesh, rotting food and corpses. They also seems to gain some kind of energy or sustenance off of human suffering. This would indicate to me that they can feed both psychically and physically off a victim. The Hindus and Buddhists believe that Rakshasas were particularly evil humans in former incarnations, and they are being punished for their bad karma. Unfortunately, their punishment also becomes ours as we are they primary food source, one way or the other.

I will send you additional information on them, but right now this may be something you want talk about among yourselves. If a Rakshasa is in fact stalking Meridian, you are in for a shit storm.

According to what Meridian told me, the first alleged encounter with the Rakshasa was in a waterfront warehouse in Portland years ago. That might be a good place to start. If the Lady of the Mist is correct and this creature is displaced from its original home, perhaps it came to the U.S. on a seagoing vessel... kind of the same way that the bubonic plague was transmitted during the Middle Ages. I’d take a closer look at the warehouse. Good luck! J.

RUNE: We decided to take Jeremy’s [Riposte] suggestion and made the long drive yesterday from Grant’s Pass to Portland to check out the warehouse district where Meridian was stabbed and nearly killed in 2002. In order to gather more information, I did a complete interview with Meridian about the incident, a part of her life which she does not generally talk about. Here the how she described the incident:

“I had been working as a dispatcher for a private security company, but we had had a bunch of budget cuts and people were laid off. As a result, they made me start driving these circuits through parts of town, making sure that none of these building were being broken into. I was supposed to chase away anyone I found trespassing, who was usually homeless people. Naturally, that was a bunch of bullshit since I only had a flashlight, so all I would do is sit in the car and call the cops. I really hated that job and was putting in applications in other places but I still had to eat so I was kind of stuck at the time. My boss finally put me on this circuit through the waterfront area, where all these old warehouses are located. This is a huge shipping area, because it’s where the Columbia and Willamette Rivers intersect. So, you have vessels coming in from the Pacific and down the Columbia, and you have others bringing lumber out of the Oregon interior via the Columbia and Willamette. Busy, busy, busy. The whole area is a just a hodgepodge of docks and warehouses. Huge, huge buildings. And it was my job to drive around some of these facilities and make sure everything was secure. One night, I’m driving my circuit in this terrible little car they gave me, and I notice some light coming from a warehouse window. It looks like a flashlight or maybe a lantern or something. I call it in and my boss tells me I need to go inside and check it out in case it’s a fire. Good idea, right? If it’s a fire, let’s order our staff to run into the burning building. What an asshole. Anyway, I foolishly went in but I couldn’t find the source of the light. When I’m wandering around, I suddenly feel something hit me from behind. I go flying across the floor and the last thing I remember there’s this tremendous weight sitting on me and this excruciating pain in my back. Whoever attacked me stabbed me six times in the back and upper arms. I would have certainly bled to death, but some Port of Portland Police officers happened to come by and saw my little car outside the warehouse door. It was those two officers who saved my life. This was all right before Christmas 2002, so I spent the holidays in a hospital bed but at least I was alive. The cops never found the suspect or the knife, so the case is still officially open and unsolved. I quit the security firm of course, and then sued them. They settled out of court for $50,000, which I donated to Outcast Earth once I joined the team, just like the other members pooled their finances. I really don’t remember anything about the attacker as I passed out very quickly.”

Armed with this new and disturbing knowledge, we decided that the first thing we needed to do was find the warehouse where Meridian was attacked in ’02. Ash suggested that we should invite the Lady of the Mist and her daughter to accompany us, as maybe the LOTM would be able to gather more information if she was actually in the place where the ’02 attack happened. To my delight, Meridian was okay with this. Maybe she’s opened her mind a little bit?

It was about a five hour drive with traffic from Grants Pass to Portland, but we all felt that this was definitely worth the detour. With all the Homeland Security measures, we weren’t sure how close we were going to get to the property. But as luck would have it, the warehouse is currently vacant and up for sale.

The six of us parked nearby and walked around the perimeter of the building. The building itself is roughly L-shaped, with loading docks for trucks in the back and the Willamette River in the front. It’s hard to find, lost among all the terminals, warehouses and railroad tracks in the area. But Meridian’s recollection of the area was crystal-clear and she was a good guide, even pointing out the window in which she saw the mysterious light. It’s a pretty run-down place. It was originally constructed of red brick, but over the years this once-beautiful facade has begun to crumble. Grass and weeds are beginning to crack their way through the cement sidewalks and ramps. Many of the doors and windows are boarded up, and the entire loading dock area is fenced off with chain link and barbed wire. As a result, we were able to get inside.

The LOTM was adamant that this was the place where the entity who has been stalking the team first encountered Meridian. She referred to it as “the nest.” She was quite insistent that we needed to prepare ourselves, return and confront this entity, which Jeremy Riposte identified as a Rakshasa. If Jeremy’s analysis is correct, then all of us have to spend some time learning about these mythical creatures. We also have to find a way INSIDE the warehouse, which may prove trickier still. I think we’re going to be in Portland for a while.

RUNE: Polaris received a phone call this afternoon from Jeremy Riposte who announced that he had just landed at the Portland airport and wanted to meet up with us. Polaris was speechless. I was amused, as this is sooooooo in character for Jeremy. The moment Polaris called him to ask his advise about the Rakshasa, I’m sure Jeremy felt a sense of ownership for this investigation.

We’ve noted on the website that Jeremy was originally considered as a [member] of the Outcast Earth team, but was rejected due to some personality issues. Well, it is this opportunistic nature of his which made him such a poor candidate for OCE. I don’t mean to sound like a bitch when I write this, but the team has always strived to include people whose motivations go beyond fame or money. And, frankly, that’s just not Jeremy.

Regardless, he does have some unique insight on our current investigation so we agreed to meet with him and briefed him over lunch. It was kind of weird considering our last encounter with him [See “The Lost Ruins of Kaua’i] ended on such a sour note. He was very pleasant however.

He had prepared an impressive dossier on Rakshasas which he presented to us over his shrimp and avocado salad. These materials greatly expanded on what he previously wrote to Polaris [See Email from Jeremy Riposte to Polaris for more information], but the gist is that Rakshasas are powerful, tenacious and very hard to kill. According to Jeremy, Hindu legend tells of a mythic weapon called a Brahmastra which was used during ancient times to destroy these demons. However, there are no instructions on how to locate or build such a device, and because the Brahmastra is said to cause incalculable environmental and collateral damage, it’s not something we would use anyway. Even if it was real. I have to keep reminding myself that we are taking about myth here... even though most myth has a basis in fact. The rest of the lunch was spent discussing our options. Jeremy spoke at length with both Meridian and the Lady of the Mist, as they are our primary sources of information on this.

At the end of the meeting, it was still quite clear that we needed more information before we could pursue any further action.

RUNE: I spent two nights pouring over my newly acquired copy of the Ramayana, which is the Indian epic equivalent of The Iliad. The version I read is the popular modern version, written by Krishna Dharma, but the story is said to be exceedingly old. According to some sources, it is said to have been originally written by a poet named Valmiki in 880,000 BC. Of course, this would mean that Valmiki was probably the most literate Homo erectus in his tribe, wiling away his days on the African savanna writing fantasy stories rather than chipping on stone tools. Regardless, I think we can all agree that the Ramayana is a very, very, very old book.

The information that Jeremy gave us on Rakshasas was pretty comprehensive, but I was really interested in understanding these malevolent demons from the mythological context in which they widely appear. The Ramayana literally contains hoards of Rakshasas, led by their warrior-king named Ravana. Ravana unfolds in the text as the main opponent to the heroic Rama, and ultimately this culminates is a great battle. The Rakshasa hoard is a fearsome sight, butchering hundreds of humans and feeding on their warm flesh. At one point during the book, Rama attempts to negotiate with the monsters:

Rama stood up and strung his bow in an instant. He called out to the Rakshasas, “Halt! Why do you seek to injure us? We live here peacefully, harming no one. Armed with my bow I aim to make this forest free from the likes of you. If you have any love of life, then flee now and never return. Otherwise stand on the battlefield and witness my show of strength.”

The Rakshasas looked at Rama and laughed. Each of them was twice as tall as Rama. Their bodies were hugely powerful and they were equipped with fierce weapons. They considered Rama’s threat comical. It was a rare human who could face even on Rakshasa in battle, and they were fourteen. Their leader replied harshly to Rama.

“Foolish human! What power do you have to face us in battle?” he said, his voice resounding around Rama’s hermitage like a great drum. “You have angered our master Khara and thereby brought death upon your head. HIt by our iron clubs and swords, you will soon succumb to our might. Boast while you can, for in a moment you will give up your valor and indeed your life.”

The book also supported many of the things Jeremy and the Lady of the Mist told us. For example, the Rakshasas were adept at sorcery and could use it to bewitch minds. Toward the middle of the book, a female Rakshashi named Shurpanakha is wandering the forest when she comes upon the very handsome Rama...

...Her mind filled with lust, she assumed the form of a beautiful woman and walked slowly before him...

Rama looked guilelessly at the Rakshasi... Shurpanakha moved her hips and glanced down coyly.

“Know me to be Shurpanakha, sister of the unconquerable Ravana. Living here with my other brothers, Khara and Dushana, I range these woods devouring ascetics and causing fear to all. However, upon seeing you I long to embrace you as my husband.”

...Hearing that she was a Rakshashi, Rama... looked at her in surprise. In her fine silks and ornaments she appeared exactly like a celestial maiden... [pages 180-181]

This passage tells me several things about the Rakshasas that explains some of the experiences we’ve had. First, the Rakshasas can move about freely while they stalk their prey. Second, they can feel more than simple malevolence and will often “toy” with their victims. Here, the female feels lust for Rama and this emotion usurps her need to kill. Finally, it is clear that the Rakshasa have the ability to disguise themselves however they see fit, and this magical camouflage is very, very convincing. If a Rakshasa somehow made it into our friend Anvil’s hotel room years two years ago, who knows what it could have disguised itself as. A beautiful woman? A lost child? His own mother?

We may never know conclusively if one of these mythical phantoms was responsible for Anvil’s death or any of the other examples of bad luck we’ve had over the years. But, the more I have read about them the more they seem like reasonable suspects.

MERIDIAN: I volunteered to research the warehouse where I was attacked in 2002. It seemed only appropriate. I have tried not to think about this place since I almost died on its dusty floor seven years ago, but since Fate has pulled me slowly back to this place, it seemed necessary for me to confront the building itself. Toward this end, off I went to the Oregon Historical Society.

It’s hard to explain exactly how much trade comes through this area, but consider these statistics I found online:

Port of Portland's marine terminals export the largest amount of wheat from the United States and third largest amount in the world. [3] It is also the fifth largest port for tonnage, third largest auto import gateway in the country, the largest mineral bulk port on the U.S. west coast, and the 17th largest port for cargo containers in the United States. [www.wapedia.com: Port of Portland, Oregon]

The area in which the warehouse is located dates back to the late 19th century when the Port of Portland was a very different place... a seedy waterfront filled with crime and the hustle and bustle of people seeking their fortune. Although the area certainly didn’t move as much cargo as it does today, it was the major source of commerce for the state, servicing vessels from all over the world. Ocean-going ships could sail right down the Columbia river and dock in Portland to take on supplies of fuel, lumber and grain. Certainly the entire area would have seen visitors from all over the world.

I mention this as Jeremy and the Lady of the Mist (LOTM) both noted that the Rakshasa myths do not originate in North America. The LOTM even noted that this creature became “trapped here.” If that’s the case, then it is reasonable to assume that it may have arrived in Portland via a large commercial vessel that had previously visited the Asian subcontinent where the stories of Rakshasas are common. But still, something must have motivated the entity to disembark and take up residence in this now-abandoned warehouse. As I continued my research, I came up with a theory...

Throughout the history of the United States, yellow fever had ravaged the human populations that sprang up around rivers and seaports. There are many famous epidemics throughout U.S. history, especially in the east and south, but the disease was also a chronic problem in the Pacific Northwest, including the Portland area. Prior to Major Walter Reed, an Army physician, conclusively establishing that the disease was transmitted by mosquitoes that inhabited these areas, there was little hope of even preventing these epidemics. As a result, thousands of people would perish from outbreaks. Yellow Fever was a yearly health crisis for Oregonians throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Often, the bodies of dead sailors, settlers, lumberjacks, etc. would be stored in makeshift morgues in warehouses along the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. Although I wasn’t able to find any history on the warehouse where I was attacked, what if the building was used in this way during one of these yearly epidemics? Jeremy noted that Rakshasas are cannibals who are attracted to rotting corpses and will frequently materialize on battlefields or during times of plague. If a Rakshasa was aboard a foreign vessel that docked at the Port of Portland during a Yellow Fever epidemic, it may have been an irresistible temptation for the creature to disembark. The waterfront would also provide such an entity with a rich hunting ground, even if there was no epidemic. A violent death on the waterfront, even one that involved extreme mutilation as would be expected from a Rakshasa, would probably raise few eyebrows during this period when Oregon was still a rugged and often brutal frontier.

MERIDIAN: I volunteered to do the write up on our investigation of the warehouse since this is, in a very personal way, my story.

We arrived to meet the the man from the property management office at the warehouse at a little before 2:00 p.m PST. Our team consisted of myself, Polaris, Rune, Ash, Jeremy Riposte, the Lady of the Mist and her teenage daughter. We took taxis so we wouldn’t have to explain the Camels or answer any awkward questions about who we were and what our real interest in the property was. The property manager, whose name was Wes, seemed irritated that he had to drive down to show us the property – which was kind of an unusual response from someone who makes their living doing this. Regardless, it worked out for the best because he had no interest in walking us through the place. He basically unlocked the front door, told us to watch out for rats and feral cats, [announced that] he’d be back in an hour and drove off. At this point, we had free run of the place.

The warehouse was L-shaped and divided into two major parts. The shorter part of the L, where we entered, was designed for offices and workspaces. Most of the rooms were in terrible shape. The walls and ceilings had caved in, revealing old insulation and wiring inside. To our surprise, a lot of equipment – including desks, chairs, lockers, filing cabinets, etc. – had been left behind. The longer part of the L was the actual warehouse... and the area where I was attacked in 2002. This was an immense space, but over the years it had been subdivided in to small parcels with wooden and tin walls. In some places there were lofts, blind corners and dead-ends. All in all, it was like a giant rat’s maze.

The fact that so much equipment had been left behind prompted some of the team members to wonder if the warehouse had been hurriedly abandoned, perhaps to escape an unseen force? However, when I was doing my research on the property [see Meridian’s journal entry of May 13, 2009 for details], I found no documented reports of any strange activity at the site other than the attack that landed me in the hospital. I would have loved to have interviewed any staff who had worked at the site prior to 2002. Maybe we would have found some anecdotal reports of strange occurrences, but I suspect not. After all, the Rakshasa is a trickster with human-like intelligence. If it was residing in that warehouse, it could have easily beguiled the minds of anyone working there to mask its own presence. It probably wouldn’t have killed there either unless it absolutely had too. After all, you don’t pollute your own nest, right? My experience may have been the exception to this rule, as I probably surprised the creature with my late-night visit.

The idea that a Rakshasa could beguile our minds as we walked through the warehouse was troubling, so it was Jeremy who suggested using the cameras and camcorders as much as possible, hoping our electronics could not be tricked. Despite what the property manager said, as we moved through the warehouse we found it strangely devoid of any life. We did not see a cat, a rodent or even an insect. There were a few signs that people, probably the homeless, had found their way into the building. There were some empty food cans, old clothing, and one place on the concrete floor where it looked like someone had built a campfire. It was Jeremy who warned that all these items could have been “leftovers” from either the Rakshasa or its victims. Even more disturbed, we continued on...

We were just about to end our search of the office / workspace area when we found our first and only cat, or what was left of it. The animal appeared to have been dead for several days. Its innards had been devoured, leaving only its head, legs and tail intact. This is the type of [injury] you would expect to see on cats attacked by a canine, but what kind of predator like that would exist on the Portland waterfront? Cats made sense. There was plenty of places for them to hide and hunt. But a larger predator that fed on cats – surely that would be noticed by someone?

Ash Disappears.

Once we cleared the office space, there were few windows and the cavernous warehouse was nearly pitch black. There was no electricity, so we had to rely on flashlights or the night-vision tech on the camcorders. Both the Lady of the Mist and Jeremy had also brought candles and matches, but most of us preferred not to use them due to the obvious fire risk. Moving through the warehouse reminded me of those blind mazes you can find at Halloween haunted houses. You know the ones I’m talking about? They are pitch black inside, and you have to make your way through by shuffling along behind the person in front of you, feeling your way around every corner? Considering what had happened to me here seven years ago, I was surprised how calm I felt. In fact, I felt almost empowered. I think a lot of it was being surrounded by my friends and compatriots. It was like their strength was becoming mine.

Everyone was being very quiet. We were listening to the creeks and groans of the old building, feeling the damp, cool air and letting our sixth senses detect anything our eyes could not. The only interruption was the occasional soft light of someone’s iPhone as they made an update to our Twitter page. We passed by empty storerooms and wound our way through narrow hallways.

Then, about ten minutes in, Polaris asked no one in particular: “Where’s my son?”

We all began to look around the chamber, but Ash was nowhere to be found. We started calling for him, but with no reply. Let me say categorically that there was no way Ash could have or would have wandered off. While doing our investigation, everyone was in arm’s length of everyone else. And we never broke visual contact with the person in front of us. Ash was right behind Polaris and right in front of Rune, yet suddenly he wasn’t and neither of them could explain how.

You could see the panic building in Polaris’s face. According to the Lady of the Mist’s second Tarot card reading, the Rakshasa had made numerous attempts on various team member’s lives over the years. Ash landed in a hospital bed after a freak car accident killed Tate in September 2007. The Lady of the Mist told us that Ash was the intended victim. Now we were in the Rakshasa’s suspected lair and he was suddenly gone! Polaris immediately wanted to run off into the maze of rooms and search, but it was the Lady of the Mist who pulled him back.

She gathered everyone around her and said very softly but firmly: “Everyone of us needs to remember that what we see may not be what we see. If this entity is bewitching us, Ash could be standing right in front of us and none of us would even notice him. Running off to search the warehouse will divide us, make the rest more vulnerable. That is how this creature has attempted to destroy you right from the beginning. We must not panic. Our unity is our strength.”

They were inspiring words but so very hard for Polaris to follow. His parental instincts were crying out to him. It was at this point that the Lady of the Mist and Jeremy suggested that we employ our plan to banish the Rakshasa. Although ancient Hindu text did speak of a mythical weapon called a Brahmastra that could kill these demons, we did not have one and all of us were in agreement that we were not killers. It was [never] the goal of Outcast Earth to travel the highways and byways of the world wiping out supernatural beings. The goal was to understand the supernatural and paranormal... not destroy it. Jeremy had suggested early on that if we could not destroy the Rakshasa, the best we could do was make it flee and never return. The Hindu legend told us that the Rakshasas revile priests, prayer and the faithful. So the goal became to chase away the Rakshasa through our collective and individual strength. It was something that the Lady of the Mist has been talking to us about since we met her. Now that we look back, it’s something that seems to be connected with the visions of Tahiki, the rumors of curses, the strange disappearances of our members... All this kept pointing to one inescapable conclusion: that individually we are each more powerful than we thought and that together we are stronger than we can imagine.

Everyone formed into a circle and the LOTM lit one of the candles she had brought with her. It was almost like she was convening a seance, but rather than inviting the unseen spirits into our midst, we were attempting to shove them out. As we stood there staring into that tiny flame, the LOTM encouraged us all to reach out with our senses and find Ash.

“During your travels,” she said, “all of you have experienced the unseen world in one way or the other. Ash is here, but only veiled from our sight. He too is now unseen. But we can reject this creature’s trickery and find him...”

The warehouse had become a very quiet place. But as we all concentrated on the candle, I felt a movement in the room, as though someone was walking around the edge of our circle. There was a heat against my back and I heard [feet] dragging against the dirty cement floor. But I couldn’t bring myself to look, or perhaps knew it was better that I did not. Had I turned, what would I have seen there in the dark? If a Rakshasa was responsible for all the misfortune that had befallen the team over the last three years, what trick would it have tried on me? Would it have appeared to be as Tahiki and offered some false advice? Would it appeared as Anvil and tried to convince me that he wasn’t really dead? By not looking, I felt as though I rejected its power over me. I may have almost lost my life in this warehouse in 2002. But this time it was going to be different!

The presence stood behind me for a long time, but I refocussed my attention on the candle and the flame began to jump. The little orange tendril then disconnected itself from the candle wick, floated into the air and dissolved in a puff of smoke. The presence behind me was gone. The heat was gone and the interior of the warehouse felt cool and moist again. We began to hear groaning from the darkness, so we broke the circle, clicked on the flashlights and started our search of the warehouse.

Ash is found.

We found Ash about five minutes later, slumped against the wall inside one of the empty storerooms. He had a cut to his head right above his hairline so the left side of his face was bloody, but it looked a lot more dramatic than it actually was. He was disoriented at first, but told us that he had walked into a low-hanging beam which had nearly knocked him unconscious. I believe that this is his honest memory of what happened. I don’t believe it is the truth, however. As I noted [earlier], Ash was walking right between Polaris and Rune when he vanished. Had he hit his head on a low-hanging beam (of which there are none as the warehouse had relatively high ceilings), then surely they would have noticed. Or, more likely, Polaris and Rune would have cracked their skulls on that same beam. Additionally, the storeroom he was found in was in the far end of the warehouse, a section we hadn’t even explored yet when Ash disappeared. Certainly he didn’t crack his head and then crawl unseen to the far end of the building... something carried him there. We helped him out of the warehouse. Polaris later called the property manager and told him the place was too old and dangerous to purchase. It should probably be torn down. If they do so, that will destroy the Rakshasa’s haven.

However the Rakshasa befuddles minds, perhaps Ash was a victim here. It probably also explains why I don’t remember anything about the attack on me in 2002; why Anvil left his hotel room and ended up starving himself to death in Colorado; how a truck driver on a lonely desert road managed to slam into Tate’s parked car but couldn’t explain how he hit her; and how sixty-year old munitions just happened to detonate as Cipher and Trespass were walking by.

Was Tahiki warning us about the Rakshasa all along?

I now understand Tahiki’s warning to Ash when he appeared on the beach of Iwo Jima. As you may recall, he told Ash that there were unseen enemies who would creep into our midst “like flies.” I later received an Omijuki fortune on Saipan that warned of a typhoon that had once battered me and was forming again. That Omijuki fortune had an image of a fly on it. The presence of flies in an area inhabited by a Rakshasa makes sense. Rakshasas are both predators and carrion-eaters who revel in filth and decay. This means maggots, worms, rodents, parasites... and flies. I think Tahiki was warning us about the Rakshasa right from the beginning, but we didn’t understand the message.

When we first met Tahiki on the island of Tahiti in 2005, he told Ash and Coyote about how he needed to watch over his grandmother, as she was a witch and a cannibal. Ash later had a dream about the grandmother snatching a surfer off the Tahitian beach and drowning him in her bathtub before devouring him. Ash even drew a picture of the grandmother as a fearsome creature with wild hair, sharp teeth and crooked eyes. When we later went to look for Tahiki, the house which the boys claim he took them to was abandoned and in total disrepair. Were our minds bewitched then? Did we see an abandoned house so we wouldn’t see Tahiki’s grandmother? Was the grandmother a Rakshasa? She certainly shared a lot of the same qualities, and perhaps it was Tahiki’s mission to keep her in check so she wouldn’t hurt others. Does this also explain why he has continued to help us over the years?

Is this the end of the “Outcast Earth curse?”

When I think back on all that’s happened to us over the last three years, my mind reels. It’s partly from self-recrimination. I have been the solid skeptic all along. I was the last to believe that something this strange could happen to me, even though I deal with “strange” every day. My eyes have opened a little. I’m sure I’ll still be the OCE skeptic, but perhaps more gently in the future.

I also believe that whatever plagued us – call it a Rakshasa or a curse or both – has now been cast away. We may have to remain vigilant in case it tries to return, but at least we’ll know what to look for and we’ll be ready!

POLARIS: Maybe it won’t come as a huge surprise to some of our visitors – after all, some of you have actually emailed us with this suggestion – but the Lady of the Mist and her daughter have officially joined the Outcast Earth team as of today. They will be calling themselves Mist and Echo.

The events of the last several weeks, particularly our joint-venture at ferreting out the Rakshasa that Mist and Jeremy [Riposte] were certain was stalking Meridian, solidified this decision. Our illustrious webmasters noted that they joined the team more quickly than anyone else – with the possible exception of Trespass who literally showed up on my doorstep one day and asked to join. While this is true, we discussed their joining extensively and everyone was on board with it. After a rocky start, both Mist and Echo has demonstrated that they are truly “one of us.”

We will be posting their biographies shortly on the “Outcasts” page, so check back for updates.

One other benefit of their joining – at least one noted by Meridian – is that the lady folk outnumber the men for the first time in the team’s history. I wonder what that means for Ash and me???