RUNE: Whew! After weeks of climbing around the valleys, mountains and beaches of Kaua’i, we finally completed our newest mini-documentary entitled THE WANDERING GHOSTS OF WAILUA KAI. This was the longest and most ambitious film project we’ve done so far, but everyone was pleased with the result. Cipher suggested putting it on YouTube so we’ve started an Outcast Earth page there as well. You can see all our videos (all three of them, ha, ha!) on YouTube or by going to the LIBRARY page and looking up “Videos.” I hope you enjoy it!

A few people have emailed us recently asking for an update on our old pal Jeremy Riposte following our Lost Ruins of Kauai investigation. Honestly, I can’t tell you that I have an update for you. None of us have heard a thing from his since our confrontation with him in Borders Books. He told us then that he was flabbergasted by our findings and would “definitely look into it.” I suspect that that was all appeasement, however. We drove up to the north shore last week and noticed that his storefront was all closed up with still no furniture inside. A lot of the boxes were still there, so I don’t know what that means in terms of Jeremy beginning his “paranormal island tours” business. I think his alleged “lost ruins” were the crux of that enterprise. Knowing Jeremy, however, I suspect he’ll bounce into something else.

We are flying back to the mainland the day after tomorrow to pick up The Camels and head south toward San Diego. Along the way, we’re going to take a few side tours to look into tales about some of the monsters and strange creatures seen around California. That will be an interesting departure for us as we’ve been largely focussed on hauntings lately. Maybe we’ll see a Bigfoot?

MERIDIAN: We were back on the road today, which seemed very liberating to me. We spent a lot of time on Kaua’i recently, and although I think the island is beautiful, I must admit to a sense of claustrophobia. It was nice to take a long road-trip which started in Sacramento (where we had the Camels in temporary storage) and ending up in Oxnard, California, about 400 miles to the south. Why Oxnard you might ask?

En route to San Diego, the team wanted to check out two different locales that we didn’t know about when we were in the area during our Los Angeles investigation during the first half of 2007. The first place we wanted to hit was the Billiwhack Dairy outside of the little town of Saticoy, which is just a brief drive from Oxnard. Why a dairy you might ask?

Well, as strange as it may seem, this dairy is the center of a local legend that has endured for over fifty years. Apparently, there have been multiple sightings of a horned monster that lives among the abandoned building on the property, so I guess we’re going to take our cameras and a big net and see if we can capture it. The story’s a fantastic one to say the least, but we just can’t resist. We’re going to spend the night in Oxnard tonight, and then head out to Saticoy tomorrow morning to find the dairy. We will be posting our findings soon after... if we’re not eaten by the monster!

POLARIS: We spent the better part of today exploring the tiny communities nestled in the rolling hills of Ventura County, which is located north of Los Angeles along the Pacific coast. It is a very affluent area and as we drove through some of the communities, we felt like we were on a Hollywood tour of the homes of the rich and famous. When you think of the lavish Californian lifestyle, you’re probably thinking of Ventura County with its sprawling Spanish estates perched on hillsides overlooking the incoming surf. A very large part of the county is still untouched wilderness, which is surprising this close to L.A., but the proximity of the wilderness may be what prompts the legends of monsters.

As Meridian reported in her journal, our quest was for the Billiwhack Dairy, a now-abandoned property said to be inhabited by a fearsome monster that eats small children. The sprawling dairy sits along the Aliso Canyon Road to the northwest of Saticoy and is surrounded by numerous farms and vineyards. Today, the Billiwhack Dairy, which originally dates back to the 1920s, is a dusty parcel of land with scattered buildings in various stages of degeneration. The old stock yards and watering tanks are still in place, but they don’t look like they’ve been used in many years. Although its certainly not a working dairy anymore, clearly it is being maintained by someone as the buildings have not completely collapsed as you would expect after nearly a century. Not wishing to trespass, and not finding anyone about to answer our questions, we had to satisfy ourselves by standing by the edge of the road and taking photos on full zoom. We’re posting some of those photos here, although as you can see there’s not much to look at and certainly no monster revealed himself to us.

Rumors of the monster began in the 1950s when a small boy returned home covered in bleeding claw marks and claimed to be attacked by a half-man, half-ram colossus while he was exploring the old dairy. The sheriff at the time assumed that the story was a child’s fantasy and frankly [our team has] no reason to dispute that assumption. Still, the “Beast of Billiwhack” is a favorite legend of the locals here, so we felt like it deserved documentation. As we investigated the tale more thoroughly, we finally decided that the Beast deserved his own enewsletter entry, so you can find the results of our inquiry by reading Enewsletter: The Amazing Billiwhack Farm Ram-Man Monster.

RUNE:

“Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
“Relax,” said the night man,
“We are programmed to receive,
“You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave!”

So run the lyrics of probably the Eagle’s most famous song, “Hotel California.” For decades, rumors have persisted that Don Henley and his fellow band members wrote the song as a musical indictment of the Camarillo State Mental Hospital, located in Camarillo, California. The hospital, like all facilities of its type, was a source of controversy since it first opened its doors in 1936. Camarillo was widely lauded for its innovative treatments of seriously mentally ill people, many of whom would have simply been confined to sanitariums for the rest of their lives with no hope of anything better. The development of new drugs and psychiatric counseling at the facility helped thousands of disabled people to lead more normal lives. The facility also had some programs that were novel for the day. The children’s unit, for example, included an elementary school, swimming pool and even a rudimentary animal-assisted therapy program. Conversely, the institution was also accused of abusing residents and participating in procedures like electro-shock therapy and lobotomies which are today considered inhumane. In 1976, allegations of abuse reach their height following a series of suspicious patient deaths. A large number of Camarillo staff were indicted and sweeping changes to how patients were handled, including the types of restraints used and guidelines for dealing with suicidal patients, were put into effect. A more persistent criticism from the public concerned Camarillo’s “release” of mental patients into the community, which was part of their larger program to find residents a less-restrictive, more liberating environment in which to live. Whether this move to a less-restrictive environment benefitted the patients is hard to say. It certainly benefited the state of California as facilities like Camarillo were very expensive to run and allowed them to be phased out.

Regardless of how humane a facility tries to be, mental hospitals always have a specter attached to them... just like graveyards, hospitals, prisons and other venues where misery is especially rife. The hospital was officially shut down in 1997 and large parts, especially the staff housing, were bulldozed. The major buildings, however, were revamped into the University of California, Channel Islands campus. It is a beautiful campus, with architecture reminiscent of the Spanish Colonial style you can find throughout Ventura County including domed towers, trickling fountains, grassy courtyards and elegant arches. Since we were there on a weekday, Meridian and I decided to tour the campus and ask the students about any of their experiences with paranormal phenomenon while the rest of the team traveled down the road to the site known as the “scary dairy.” Some of those we approached acted like we were trying to sell them life insurance, but others were anxious to share tales about figures in white floating through hallways, shadowy bodies creeping through the shadows at night or disembodied voices whispering in your ears. Only a few of the students we spoke to had actually claimed to witness such phenomenon personally. Most of the accounts were third person and could probably be dismissed as campus legends. Surprisingly, a large number of students didn’t seem to know what the campus had been before the university took it over. Of course, most of them would have been in elementary school when the mental hospital was shut down, but as you move toward the south end of the property there are still a large number of abandoned buildings that are clearly “medical” in design. The university seems to downplay the site’s history, although their website acknowledges its original use at least in passing.

When night fell, we lingered on the property in the hopes of experiencing some of the phenomenon said to exist there. I am sorry to report that we had no experiences that could be called paranormal. However, the Camarillo campus’ history does lend itself to this type of activity and it would probably warrant some serious investigation if the university administration was willing to cooperate. Although it’s unclear if the state hospital was the snake pit that critics would have you believe, it’s safe to say that many of the former residents suffered from great emotional turmoil which is often tied to psychic phenomenon including hauntings and poltergeist activity. Let’s hope that some local ghost busters eventually have the chance to do some long-term observations here.

CIPHER: I know it doesn’t seem possible for there to be TWO haunted dairies in close proximity to each other in Ventura County, but just down the road from the Camarillo State Hospital is the remains of the “scary dairy.” This abandoned property, which is a thousand times more frightening than the Billiwhack farm, is said to have provided the mental asylum with milk and meat.

[Webmaster’s Note: The Camarillo State Hospital dairy farm and the Billiwhack Dairy are approximately 22 miles from each other, but otherwise have no connection in terms of the legends that surround them.]

In the internet chat rooms where the “scary dairy” is described, there seems to be some speculation as to the facility’s relationship to the state hospital. However, we found an article in the March 3, 1956, edition of the Oxnard Press-Courier which provides some insight about this:

The dairy, with 220 milking cows, produces 1,100 gallons of milk per day, all of which is used at the 7,000-patient hospital. The plant is operated as part of the hospital's rehabilitation program.

Twenty patients help some 15 employees run the dairy. Besides the milking herd there are 323 calves, heifers and "dry stock" at the plant. All replacement stock is bred and raised in the program.

The herd is purebred holstein and most of the cows are registered. Eleven pure-bred bulls are used to sire new calves.

The dairy Is located about 2 miles east of the hospital's farm headquarters on Lewis road. The milk barn, hay shed, calf pens and corrals are on a 20-acre site. There are 10 acres of permanent pasture and 300 acres of alfalfa, enabling production of a large portion of the feed needed by the herd.

Erwin Machel is dairyman in charge of the operation. All milking is done by machine. The dairy is part of the state's 1,648-acre property that was once part of the large Lewis Ranch. The property was purchased in 1932 and the first units of the hospital were built in 1934. The dairy was established 3 years later.

By the 1960s, the state of California began to phase out these types of operations, citing a variety of reasons including health concerns for the patients. The state was already looking at the area as a campus for the University of California although that wouldn’t actually take place for another three decades. We couldn’t find an exact date in any historical documents for when the dairy actually ceased production, but based on the newspaper articles cited, we suspect it was probably in the late 1960s or early 1970s since that part of the operation appeared to be phased out before the hospital was actually shut down in ’97. The dairy site, like the hospital, is sprawling. There is an L-shaped series of buildings that we assumed were probably the milking barns. The roof has fallen in in places here and there are few remaining windows and doors. It’s mostly a “shell” of inter-connecting rooms heavily decorated in what must be decades of graffiti. Some of the rooms appear to have caught fire in the past as there is charring and smoke damage to some walls and ceilings.

Adjacent to this building complex is a large metal barn covered in corrugated tin. Much of the building has deteriorated, leaving an exposed and rusted skeleton in areas. The floor is overgrown with weeds and grass. Graffiti artists have also heavily tagged this structure, although climbing its walls must be more difficult because it’s not as heavily decorated above ground-level. Standing in the shadow of this building let’s you understand why this place is called “scary dairy.” There are numerous rumors that the dairy is haunted due to satanic activity and several murders which took place on site. We were not able to independently confirm those stories, although the rambling, remotely-located structures would certainly be useful for such purposes. We walked through the entire area but other than the graffiti didn’t notice anything that indicated any recent use by satanists or a criminal element.

We all felt that it was probably unlikely that the “scary dairy” is haunted since, unlike the Camarillo hospital itself, this was probably not an area where any great suffering or death occurred, except for maybe the animals. The area is definitely creepy just for its age and decay... and that certainly lends itself to rumors of ghosts.

MERIDIAN: I had to beg Polaris and Rune to let me write this article, as it had all the hallmarks of the type of story I so enjoy debunking.  Crazy claims of places with colorful names, dubious witnesses, unnamed victims and misty sources.  Several books have published this story about an alleged murder spree undertaken by a Bigfoot (or a family of Bigfoot as the case may be.)  The murder site was a popular watering hole which became known, appropriately, as “Deadman’s Hole.”  Between the years of 1858 and 1922, no less than four people were killed and several others vanished without a trace in this area. Some were said to have been beaten or strangled and these accounts were accompanied by stories of large, shaggy creatures being seen in the treeline nearby.  As with many of these legends, we had difficulty tracking down both the location and legitimate historical references. Our first obstacle was finding out where Deadman’s Hole actually was.  Books and websites that reference this story describe it as being near Oak Grove and approximately ten miles northeast of Warner Springs, but that’s a huge area to cover.  We consulted a place name guide for California and although there were plenty of locations starting with the word “Deadman” (Ranch, Pass, Lake and Gulch just to name a few), there wasn’t a single “Deadman’s Hole” listed anywhere.  In fact, the first mention we found of a place called “Deadman’s Hole” was in a 1974 edition of the Times-Standard newspaper published out of Eureka, which is over seven hundred miles from Oak Grove.  Needless to say, it’s unlikely that the Deadman’s Hole referenced in the Eureka paper is the same one in which the rampaging family of Bigfoot murdered one pioneer after another.  The Eureka story also claims that the place received its colorful name not from the work of a murderous monster, but from a flash flood which killed five men while they slept.

The Deadman’s Hole story is further embellished by the story of Edward Dean and Charles Cox, two daring young men who tracked down the murderous Bigfoot after it killed their close friend.  After shooting the monster dead, the pair put its carcass on display in San Diego where it created a sensation... but apparently never made the papers as we found no mention of it.

The Deadman’s Hole stories seemed to have originated with the Julian Sentinel newspaper.  This periodical only ran for five years between the dates of 1887 and 1892, so we were unable to locate any archives or confirm that this was the origin point for the Bigfoot murder stories.  Newspapers of that era, especially on the frontier, also had a tendency to blend hard news with gossip, innuendo and tall tales.  The ramblings of a drunken prospector could be published alongside historical fact, and to the casual observer it might be difficult to tell one from the other.  There’s also a theory, and not a bad one in my opinion, that the Deadman’s Hole story was a piece of fiction from the get-go.  Apparently it was published in the April 1, 1888, edition of the Julian Sentinel.  That’s April Fool’s Day.  Get it?

Considering the lack of evidence that we found for the legend, I’m inclined to believe that this was an April Fool’s prank that present-day Bigfoot authors took a little too seriously.  

That’s not to say, however, that there aren’t stories of “wild men” in nineteenth century newspapers that have the ring of authenticity to them.  We found one such article entitled “What is it?” in a periodical out of Woodland, California, which is located north of Sacramento and over 500 miles from the alleged “Deadman’s Hole.”  The article read in part:

“Mr. Smith, a well-known citizen of Northern Capay Valley, called on us to-day [sic] and tells us the following strange story which we would be loth to believe if it were not for the fact that he is an old acquaintance of this office, and has always borne a spotless reputation. Several days ago, Mr. Smith together with a party of hungers, were above Rumsey hunting.  One morning Mr. Smith started out early in quest of game, he had not gone far when his attention was attracted by a peculiar noise that seemed to come from an oak tree that stood near by. Looking up Mr. Smith was startled to see gazing at him what was apparently a man clothed in a suit of shaggy fur. Having heard of wild men, Mr. he [sic] naturally placed upon his guard, but thinking that he would see “what virtue [sic] there was in kindness,” he called to the supposed man to come down, as he was filled with nothing but the kindest motives. This speech did not have the desired effect, rather the opposite, for the strange thing gave grunts of unmistakable anger.  Believing that discretion was the better part of valor, our informant stood not upon the order of his going, but went at once to a bee-line for the camp. After placing some distance between himself and the strange creature, the hunter turned around just in time to see it descend the tree. Upon reach the ground, instead of standing upright as a man would, it commenced to trot along the ground as a dog or any other animal would do.

“Smith then realized that it was no hermit he had seen, but some kind of monstrosity, such as he had never heard of, much less seen before...” [Woodland Daily Democrat, April 9, 1891, page 3.]

POLARIS: Why we think Bigfoot is a definite possibility.
One of the “facts” used to provide Bigfoot with an extensive historical background is the creature’s connection to Native Americans.  Man-like super beasts from Indian mythology are often said to be the fanciful representations of the Bigfoot, although this claim is unsatisfying in many respects.  First, the Native American stories are often taken out of context or the magical and more fantastic qualities of the man-beasts are excluded to better fit our modern impression of Bigfoot as a shy, seemingly docile and very non-paranormal animal.  Second, stories of giants and supernatural beasts are common in many Native American mythologies, even among tribes that lived in areas where no Bigfoot activity was ever reported.  Indeed, stories of giant wild-men are common throughout the world and appear to be a universal theme in human folklore and possibly a cultural memory of a time when humanity itself was wilder, shaggier and more “monster-like.”  Finally, if the Native Americans of the northwest shared the woods with the Bigfoot, why would they represent it as anything other than an unusual animal?  There would be no reason to consign Bigfoot to the realm of the supernatural when they could obviously see and experience the creature in the real world.   

What’s more interesting to us is that there are plenty of contemporary accounts of the creature’s activity in the western part of the United States dating back at least to the mid-nineteenth century, long before Bigfoot-mania ever set in. In 1870, for example, a correspondent with Antioch Ledger newspaper reported that he had encountered a “gorilla, or wild man, or whatever you choose to call it” the year before.  Other printed accounts from both the United States and Canada continued to build on the anecdotal evidence for the animal’s existence, relating tales of “monkey-men” who would occasionally surprise prospectors or send homesteaders fleeing for safety.  In most of these cases, the reported behavior of the Bigfoot was non-threatening and even seemed typical of a primate.  One account says that the animal was seen washing roots in a stream, a behavior practiced by apes of all kinds.  Another reported that the animal appeared along a beach at sundown and would howl in “an unearthly fashion.”  Gorillas and other large apes regularly howl and grunt to each other as a form of communication.  Howling is a common vocalization for many animals living in forested areas – wolves for example – as the sounds can carry well in the environment and are used to locate the pack or warn of dangers when members are out of visual contact with each other.

Although all Bigfoot enthusiasts yearn for the Holy Grail of proof – a body, either alive or dead – we shouldn’t conclude that Bigfoot are imaginary simply because we lack corporeal evidence.  Over the decades, researchers have amassed an impressive collection of footprint casts, audio and video recordings, hair and scat samples and other physical evidence. Many of these items have been the subject of rigorous scientific testing, including DNA extraction and microscopic examination. In a huge number of cases, very reputable investigators and organizations had publicized that there would appear to be credible evidence of an undiscovered North American ape. I don’t think anyone’s prepared to say that these items constitute proof, but they do hint strongly that some kind of unknown primate is alive and well in the forests of the western U.S. and Canada.  

It’s important to note that for generations we didn’t have much more evidence to point to the existence of other very real animals, such as the giant squid and snow leopard.  Even the mountain gorilla had Bigfoot-like legends surrounding it until it was finally “discovered” in 1902.

If Bigfoot is out there, they are a scientific revelation waiting to happen.  They should be appreciated as such.

In a rather disconcerting chain of events, Ash has been reporting dreams about Tahiki over the last several nights. If you’ve been a visitor to the Outcast Earth website for any length of time, you are probably familiar with the strange and disturbing story about Tahiki. For those of you who are rather new to the site, however, allow me to recap...

We met Tahiki during our first full expedition to the island of Tahiti in May of 2005. Tahiki was an interesting person from the get go. Very friendly but mysterious from the start. He quickly befriended my sons and spent a lot of time with them. Eventually, both Ash and Coyote came home and started telling us about how Tahiki’s grandmother was a witch and a cannibal. Then, just as quickly as Tahiki had appeared, he vanished. We went looking for him and his home, but were unable to find either. We never saw him again until he appeared to Ash on the beach of Iwo Jima, an event that we were able to document in photos. During that meeting, Tahiki delivered a strange warning to Ash, saying that the OCE team was surrounded by unseen enemies who were trying to sneak into our midst “like flies.” To this day, we don’t really understand what that meant. [See The Black Sands of Iwo Jima for details.] Cipher, our resident conspiracy theorist, has some ideas however.

Cipher claims that Tahiki’s appearance on Iwo Jima is part of the larger “The Outcast Earth Curse Theory.” The origins of the theory began during our visit to the island of Saipan in October through December 2006. While on that island, when some of our members visited the famous Hachiman Jinja shrine and, out of curiosity, participated in a Japanese form of fortune-telling called Omijuki. Cipher and Meridian both received particularly ominous fortunes. Cipher’s warned that he would be battered by a strong wind that would darken him... and just days later he was almost killed when World War II ordinance blew up in the haunted cave we were investigating. The burns he received definitely “darkened him.” Meridian’s fortune was even stranger. It warned that a typhoon that she had once survived was gathering again and would toss her and our other team members “against the rocks,” destroying them. The omijuki fortune, which is a long roll of illustrated paper, also had the image of a fly on it. [See Saipan Spirits for details.] Cipher saw this as fly image as being significant because of what Tahiki had said on the beach in Iwo Jima.

Now, with all due respect to Cipher, putting that much stock into omijuki fortunes may be like planning your life around the daily newspaper horoscope or making a life-changing decision based on a fortune cookie. In retrospect, however, I have to admit that some of the elements of his “curse theory” have seemed to come true. Cipher now thinks that Ash’s current dreams about Tahiki are another link in this chain of events. I’m going to let Cipher and Ash explain themselves on this so check back for their journal entries.

CIPHER: Although most of our fellow team members laugh at my theories, Ash and I are going to record how we think the curse and working and provide our evidence for it. We’ll let you decide if we’re full of shit or not.

What is the origin of the curse? I think that the curse existed prior to the formation of the Outcast Earth team, but was brought into our midst (unknowingly) by Meridian. This is what the omijuki fortune from Saipan would have me believe, as it clearly stated that the curse (which was described in the fortune as a “typhoon”) had battered Meridian once before and the storm clouds were gathering again. I don’t know why Meridian has a curse on her and of course she thinks I’m full of shit so that’s that.

Is there other evidence of the curse? Yes, and lots of it. For example:

Tahiki: The mysterious French-Polynesian boy who was first encountered by the team in Tahiti in May and June 2005, mysteriously appeared in ghost form on the beach of Iwo Jima and told Ash that there were unseen enemies trying to creep into our happy little circle and destroy us. I never met Tahiki, but in a strange sort of way, he appears to be some kind of spirit guide that’s delivering useful information to the team. In the past few nights, Ash has dreamed of Tahiki twice. In both dreams, Tahiki is standing in a large open field and telling Ash to meet him in the “sandy creek.”

Omijuki Fortunes: Polaris did a really good job explaining my theory about how the omijuki fortunes from the Hachiman-Jinja Shrine play into this, so I won’t repeat it again. See above if you need details on this.

“Attacks” on the team: When I refer to “attacks,” I [mean] bizarre events or changes of fortune that are pulling the OCE team apart. The first was when I was blown up in the cave on Saipan. I have always thought that that “accident” was anything but accidental. It seemed much more like an attempt on my life. Following that was the disappearance of Anvil, which has never been resolved. Plus, in September 2007, a freak traffic accident kills Rune's friend Tate on a lonely highway in the middle of the Mojave Desert. The same accident lands Ash in the hospital for several days. Was this a missed attempt on Ash's life? The most recent was the departure of Trespass earlier this year when it was discovered that his long-missing mother had been killed by his stepfather [see Of Myth And Mist: The Mysteries, Legends and Tall Tales of the San Francisco Region.] Think about it... Since late 2006, our team has lost two of its original members and almost lost me as well thanks to the cave explosion. We’re getting smaller and smaller, as if by design.

Ghostly image of Anvil: During our team’s retreat to the Big Basin Redwood Forest Park, we snapped several strange photos of what appeared to be ghostly figures in the woods. One of the most profound appeared to be an image of Anvil, wearing a green hat and brown shirt. We don’t know if these were the same clothes he was wearing when he mysteriously left the hotel in Los Angeles months earlier, but he certainly wore both of those garments frequently. The fact that we captured what appeared to be Anvil’s ghost also indicated that he may be dead. To this day, no one has any idea where Anvil is. He has made no attempt to contact his family or us; and his missing person’s case is still open-ended.

As I indicated, all of us put heavy stock in Ash’s dreams. They have been uncanny in their accuracy in the past, so when he tells us about dreams in which Tahiki appears, we have to sit up and pay attention! Now we just have to correctly interpret the dream and find out where the “sandy creek” is located.

ASH: I have had three more dreams about Tahiki since Cipher wrote last on the website. In all of them, he’s standing in a grassy field in a wide open space and telling me to come and find him. He kept saying in the dreams that I need to come to either the “sandy creek” or the “sand creek.” He weren’t sure what that meant so we just put those words into Google and it pulled up 1,600,000 hits. Most were related to an old battleground in somewhere in Colorado, apparently a place where a [tribe] of Native Americans were killed by the cavalry. I hadn’t heard of it, but dad, Meridian and Rune were all familiar with the story. I don’t know why I would be dreaming about a place in Colorado, which is a place I’ve never been before but dad said we should probably look into it since I’m having the same dream almost every night.




RUNE: As a footnote to Ash’s journal entry, the team has decided to take another side trip from our planned investigation of southern California, this one to Colorado to investigate the rash of “Tahiki dreams” (as they have come to be called.) We are going to drive the 900 miles from Ventura County to southeast Colorado, as the assumption is that the sand creek Tahiki is referring to in the dreams is the famous battleground. The big question for all of us – obviously – is why a French-Polynesian boy we met in Tahiti would be interested in Colorado, USA? Of course, none of us expected him to appear on the beach in Iwo Jima either, but there he was, big as life and documented on film. I do agree with Cipher completely on one of the points of his previous article [See Fortunes, Curses and Spirit Guides]. I totally think that Tahiki is somehow watching out for us. I don’t really know how or why, but our encounter with him was strange and supernatural from day one, so it’s easy for me to believe. What’s baffling me, and everyone else on the team, is how Colorado and the Sand Creek massacre site works into all of this??? We will post additional updates once we’re in Colorado.

RUNE: We arrived at the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Park today at mid-day. The park is located just outside the town of La Junta. The conditions for visiting were horrible. I’ll write that again just to emphasize it. H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E. I know all of us were standing there in this blisteringly cold wind, with storm clouds closing in on all sides and wondering, “Why did we travel for four days and over 900 miles for this?” But perhaps the weather conditions were appropriate for a site of such great misery?

Frankly, it it hadn’t been Ash’s prophetic dreams that led us here, I would’ve have been questioning the sanity of this trip. And how prophetic those dreams turned out to be!

Due to the inclement weather, we were the only people at the massacre site. The area is quite ordinary-looking, basically some gently rolling hills covered in grass and a few scrub-like trees. One-hundred and forty-four years ago, however, this area would have been the home to hundreds of Arapaho and Cheyenne. Tipis would have dotted the hillsides and the smell of wood smoke would have filled the air. From contemporary accounts, we know that this community of Native Americans was peaceful, consisting mostly of women, children, the elderly and the enfeebled. Just days before the massacre, Chief Black Kettle [had] affected a peace treaty with the U.S. military at Ft. Lyon and then settled his followers in the Sand Creek area. He was assured that he was safe from military attack and was even given an American flag to fly over his tipi. Lulled into a sense of security, he sent most of his warriors on a hunting expedition, leaving the Sand Creek community largely undefended.

The attack that was carried out on the Native Americans on November 29, 1864, under the direction of Colonel John Chivington, was done so with full knowledge of these facts and that the community presented no threat to anyone. One of Chivington’s officers, Captain Silas Soule, refused to send his men into battle against the unarmed civilians but was powerless to stop Chivington from dispatching his own troops. (Later, Capt. Soule’s testimony about the massacre helped bring Chivington to justice and probably stopped a general war against the Plains Indians by the U.S. Army. Rock on!)

How many people Chivington and his soldiers actually massacred differs depending on the source. Low estimates put the number at around 150. Other estimates run as high as 600. Once the first attack had ended, Chivington’s men returned to further massacre the wounded. There are numerous tales of atrocities as well, including accounts of the American soldiers using women for “target practice,” scalping children and infants and adorning their rifles with the hacked-off genitalia of both men and women. It’s no wonder that modern Native Americans considered this whole area both haunted and holy. The park service has even erected fences and posted signs encouraging tourists to respect the sanctity of the site.

During the long drive to Colorado from California, we all decided that we would let Ash wander the area alone in the hopes of contacting Tahiki. Tahiki only appeared to Ash when he was alone on the [Iwo Jima] beach, so we hoped to recreate that experience and maybe capture Tahiki’s image on film again. We can honestly say that Ash was successful in both the contact and photography goals, although perhaps not to the same dramatic degree as we saw on Iwo Jima. Ash and Polaris have written the following account of what happened next...


ASH [WITH POLARIS]: When we got to Sand Creek it was very windy and I was freezing my balls off. Everyone’s plan was to spread out and just see what happened. No body else was around. I don’t think Sand Creek [is] probably the most popular tourist spot in Colorado and the bad weather was probably keeping people away too. Dad gave me one of the digital cams and told me to walk around and see what happened. I had to be careful not to go down into the creek itself as that area is off limits because it’s sacred to the Indians. So I just started walking around but the area looked really familiar because I had dreamed about it about 100 times it seemed like so I felt pretty sure I could find the place where I thought Tahiki would be. In fact, my dreams about Tahiki actually increased once we were on the road to Colorado!

As I was walking I came to this [clearing] where none of the ugly little trees were growing and suddenly had such a strong sense of deja vu that I immediately put the camera up and snapped some photos of the area. While I was standing there in the wind, I kept seeing something moving ahead of me like a shape or shadow. The last time I experienced this was when we were all camping in the Redwood forest and felt like there were all these invisible spirits swirling around us. I closed my eyes and I just stood there for like five minutes, and when I opened them again I saw this shape about ten feet away. It wasn’t solid. It looked more like steam rising out of the ground because the ground behind it looked all wavy like how heat [waves] look. [Webmasters Note: Interestingly, Ash’s description of this phenomenon is similar to how the team members described many of the “phantoms” they encountered in the Big Bend Redwood Forest. Click here for details.] I took some more pictures right away. The shape was about six feet tall it seemed to have a head, shoulders and arms. I knew this was Tahiki, even though I didn’t see him as clearly as I did on Iwo Jima. Suddenly, all these images began to flash through my mind. I saw an old building made of wood, stone and adobe sitting alone in the middle of the landscape. It looked like a little house or store or something. I was suddenly very scared. Then, clear as day, I heard someone whisper in my ear: “Find him there.” It was a man’s voice. I am assuming Tahiki’s although honestly I don’t really remember what he sounded like. The voice wasn’t threatening or anything, but I was suddenly so freaked out that I just started running. It took me a while to find the others because everyone was spread out and no one could hear me yelling [because] of all the wind. ENTRY CONTINUED BELOW.

I finally found Rune and dad and told them what happened. We went back to the Camels and started looking at the maps because I knew Tahiki wanted us to go somewhere nearby. We got in the Camels and I told them just to start driving south. So Dad, Rune and I rode in one and Cipher and Meridian rode in the other. The little store looked like it was on a smaller road so I was looking around for a way to get off of the highway were we on. There were several dirt roads that led off into the hills and I was certain that Tahiki wanted me to follow one of these. I just kind of guessed on one and we followed it for many miles. I was just about to give up when we saw a little building sitting by itself on the prairie. Even though I just saw the building in my head in flashes, I knew that this was the right place.

We parked and started to walk around the building. It was an old gas station and store, because you could still see the concrete area where the gas pumps used to stand and there were some old tires lying around. It looked like it had been closed for a really long time, but at one time this must have been a busy road. Rune thought it looked like it had been abandoned for as long as fifty years. We found an open door and the inside was really dark and creepy. There was a lot of dust and grime and it was pretty nasty. We were all looking around and then Cipher started freaking out and screaming for us. We all ran into the room where he was. It was almost completely empty, but in one corner was a human skeleton. When I was standing there looking at it I thought it was fake at first, but then that same sense of fear I felt at Sand Creek hit me again and I just started crying. I don’t know why I was bawling. It was kind of embarrassing but everyone was pretty traumatized by what we were seeing and we just stood there quietly for a long time.

Then dad said, “Everyone needs to be very careful not to touch anything or disturb anything because this is probably a crime scene.”

He and Rune went a little closer to the body, which was sitting upright against the wall like this person had just sat down there and died. The body was dressed in a brown T-shirt and dark blue pants. The fabric of the clothing was all stuck to the bones which probably happened when all the flesh and stuff was rotting away. Surprisingly, it didn’t stink. Meridian said that was probably because the body had been hear for quite a while and all the tissues had already rotted away. The wall and floor around it was all stained and sticky from where all the body tissues and fluids had decomposed. There was still some pieces of skin and other nasty shit stuck to the skull and there was hair too which was cut short and looked like it was either dark blond and light brown. It kind of looked like the person had melted into the wall and floor. Judging from the clothes and the haircut, we assumed that this was a dude. Nearby on the floor was a backpack and some food wrappers and stuff.

As Dad and Rune were looking at it, Rune suddenly started to cry and said, “Oh no, oh no!” She pointed to the skeleton and Dad went around with a flashlight and pointed out the green hat that was sitting next to the body. We all recognized that hat and that brown shirt on which you could barely make out the words “WANNA RIDE?.” It was then that we all realized that this was Anvil’s remains. When we had taken a photo of the “frog boy” in the Redwood forest and later examined that photo closely, we all felt that it was Anvil’s apparition. We even talked about the possibility of him being dead at that time, [because] he had been missing for over a year at that point and no one had heard a thing from him including his family. But the skeleton was wearing the same clothes as were shown in the “frog boy” photo!

Cipher really started to freak out, yelling, “What the fuck is going on? What the fuck is going on? How the fuck is he here? How the fuck did Ash know that?”

I don’t think Cipher was mad at me or anything, but it was kind of stressful and it was more disturbing than I can tell you to have wandered half way across the country and stumble upon the bones of your missing friend in such a strange place. All the other times that I’ve had these feelings and dreams that have come true, they’ve usually been about people I never knew. But it was so different this time and we were all in tears. I don’t think any of us even really stopped to [consider] how or why Anvil ended up in this abandoned gas station in the middle of Colorado. We weren’t able to even think about that right now. Cipher just wanted to get back in the Camels and take off, but Polaris said that we had to call the police so we went back outside and called on the satellite phone. I will let the others write the rest of this.

MERIDIAN: After finding the body in the abandoned gas station, all of us were in a total state of shock. I have to caution that despite what Ash wrote, we don’t actually know that the remains are those of Anvil. Granted, we recognized the clothes but that’s all we could recognize. What we could see of the body itself – the head, arms and feet (covered in rotted socks) – was mostly skeletal with only patches of dried tissue and hair still attached. The color of the hair was not particularly helpful in determining if the body is that of Anvil. Anvil was very blond but the body’s hair appeared to be light brown. It is possible that the hair might have been stained by the natural process of decomposition but we couldn’t really tell that from our observation. The clothing, particularly the brown shirt with the words “Wanna Ride?” on it, was exactly the same to garments we know Anvil possessed at the time of his disappearance. Aside from the heavily-stained shirt and blue pants, the body was accompanied by a pair of high-top athletic shoes which he seemed to have removed prior to death, the green hat recognized by Rune, and a plastic bag containing two bottles of Gatorade, a Cliff bar and some partially-eaten Pop Tarts. The police found no wallet, luggage, money or identification on the corpse.

So is it Anvil? And if so, how did he die? There didn’t appear to be any outward signs of foul play. The body showed no bullet wounds or crushing blows to the head, for example. The very posture of the corpse struck all of us like this individual simply sat down in the corner of this room to rest and passed away. The detective in charge told us that the remains had been in place for well over a year, so it may be difficult to actually ascertain the cause of death after so much time. Considering the environment of southeastern Colorado, and his lack of additional clothing, one obvious cause of death could be exposure. Anvil vanished from his Los Angeles hotel room on February 26, 2007, at the height of winter. If he, for whatever reason, traveled from L.A. to Colorado during that time, the winter cold may have contributed to his death. But then why wasn’t the body curled up like you would expect from someone who’s freezing to death? And why would Anvil remove his shoes if he was cold? Really, all this is speculative. We won’t know anything until the post-mortem examination is completed.

In the meantime, the cynical eye of law enforcement has turned on us. Police-types generally don’t buy the notion that people were led to the desiccated body of their long-missing comrade by a series of prophetic dreams as relayed by a teenage boy. Can you blame them? We’re not worried about the scrutiny, however. After all, our daily movements have been catalogued and publicized in a very accessible forum for the past four years. We can literally show where we were on any particular day at any particular hour thanks to the very nature of Outcast Earth. Plus, we loved Anvil and were as distraught by his disappearance two years ago as we are by the discovery of his body today... if it is his body.

So what does this discovery mean for Outcast Earth? Frankly, I don’t know. Is it indicative of Cipher’s sensational “curse theory,” or is it simply a tragic ending to a very personal story about a young man that we may, in hindsight, never have known particularly well? However this plays out, we all agree that Anvil’s end, seemingly alone in the middle of the Colorado prairie, was not a suitable way for him to leave this world and enter the next. We grieve for him.

MERIDIAN: The detective working on this case called us this morning with sad but not unexpected news: the withered remains we discovered in the abandoned gas station on November 8th are all that remain of Anvil. DNA and dental record analysis apparently made the identification possible. Because the remains had sat for so long in the open air, it was apparently difficult to draw any solid conclusions about how our old friend died. The detective did tell us, however, that there was no evidence of a malicious act leading to his death... in other words, it wasn’t murder. How Anvil actually died could not be determined, although the coroner’s best guess appears to be severe dehydration. Naturally, this is a strange idea considering two unopened bottles of Gatorade were found next to the body. Did Anvil just sit down and allow himself to die of thirst without cracking the seal on those Gatorade bottles? Also as disturbing was the coroner’s estimate that the body had sat in that gas station room since at least eighteen months, which means that Anvil died there within weeks of leaving his hotel room in Los Angeles. So while we were touring the greater L.A. area looking into the hauntings of Bugsy Siegel and Harry Houdini, Anvil was probably already dead. It’s a chilling thought and it’s been keeping all of us awake at night.

POLARIS: It’s interesting to me that both times we’ve encountered Tahiki outside of French Polynesia, it’s been at an old battleground. The first was the invasion beach on Iwo Jima and the second was the massacre site of Sand Creek. Both sites are considered haunted for obvious reasons, so I wonder if Tahiki is able to manifest himself more easily in these areas where paranormal activity is already high? Obviously Sand Creek Massacre National Park did not have a direct connection to where Anvil’s remains were found, so it seems that Tahiki choose a site that was as close to the remains as possible (the abandoned store was about 35-40 miles away). In this way, he is acting like a kind of spirt guide, although I might classify him more correctly as a “crisis apparition,” or a ghost that appears at times of stress or danger to deliver important information to the living. [Webmaster’s Note: For more on the different forms of apparitions, click here.] Documented accounts of crisis apparitions indicate that the ghost doesn’t have to be of a deceased person, just someone with whom the percipient has a close and meaningful relationship. Ash didn’t know Tahiki long while we were on Tahiti, but their connection appears to have lingered.

However you want to classify Tahiki, it seems incontestable that his presence guided [our team] to Colorado and to Anvil’s remains. No one currently associated with Outcast Earth except for myself had ever been to Colorado, and that was thirty years ago while on a family vacation. As far as we know, Anvil did not have any connections to Colorado either. So why here? That’s the one of the biggest questions awaiting an answer. We can only surmise that something or someone unknown lured Anvil to this very remote spot where he was abandoned and perished. We can only assume that he came willingly. In fact, the autopsy report was inconclusive as to the cause of death although murder appears to have been unlikely as no trauma or toxins were identified in the remains. The detective in charge now believes, and this seems reasonable, that Anvil had some break with reality which caused him to abandon his former life completely. The police are now examining the sickness Anvil suffered from prior to his disappearance. At the time, the rest of us thought he had the flu. The police now wonder if the sickness – whatever it was – might have had some devastating psychological effect on him.

We don’t really know how the last days and weeks of his life played out, and Tahiki has remained mute on that, but perhaps he wandered from place to place until fate or design brought him to this abandoned gas station in the middle of a wind-swept prairie. If it had not been for Ash’s dreams about Tahiki, the chances are high that Anvil’s body would not have been discovered for years... if at all. Tahiki gave us a little closure, but just a little.

The police have now told us that their investigation has provided them with enough information to rule out the team as suspects, so we’ve been given the okay to leave the state and resume our lives. Our first order of business is to return Anvil’s remains to his family in New Hampshire where we will also attend his funeral. We plan to undertake that in the next day or so.

POLARIS: No sooner had we left the La Junta en route for Denver to fly Anvil’s remains home, than Cipher announced that he would be leaving the team at the airport and returning home to Chicago. I had to actually ask him why he wanted to do this, since he had mentioned nothing about leaving the team and offered no explanation on his own. I guess he just didn’t want to face us about it. We were all floored, and I must admit, a little hurt. It was not lost on any of us that the recent discovery of Anvil’s body was jarring for Cipher. Clearly, it’s been gnawing away at him ever since and he just swallowed that trauma down. When I spoke to him about it, he didn’t provide much clarification other than to say that recent events, particularly the departure of Trespass from the team in May, made him feel like the team was “unraveling.” Although he didn’t mention it, I know that his belief in the “Outcast Earth curse theory” must have contributed to his decision. He certainly saw Anvil’s death as part of that larger supernatural conspiracy. It may be irrational, but for him the fear is very real.

From the very beginning of his tenure with us, Cipher has also been under pressure from his family to abandon Outcast Earth which they saw as a trivial and useless endeavor. I’m not saying he bowed to that pressure on this decision, but certainly the lack of family support didn’t help. I understand the pressure he’s been under. After all, his father is my cousin so I understand the dynamic there very well. Still, I wish he had been more forthcoming with us.

For those of you keeping track, that now takes our number down to four – myself, Rune, Ash and Meridian. Although we’ve had members come and go over the years (Coyote, Anvil, Trespass and Cipher), this is the smallest the team has ever been in its history. I will have to admit that it does seem like we are “unraveling” for some reason.



ASH: To be frank, Cipher leaving the OCE [team] sucks balls. It sucked when Coyote left, then Anvil, then Trespass and now Cipher. I really don’t understand why Cipher did this. The only thing he said to me was that he had to get out before the curse got him too. He seems to believe that the members are being picked off one by one, like there’s some kind of paranormal sniper out there. I have to admit that I’ve wondered about this too. How Anvil and Trespass left the team was totally weird and disturbing. We hoped Trespass would keep in touch with us, but he’s been gone for over ten months now and we’ve not heard anything from him. He doesn’t return our phone calls or emails. It’s kind of insulting after so many years of friendship but I guess he has his reasons. I was talking to Dad about this after Cipher flew out to Chicago and how much it upset me. I know it bugs him too, but he keeps it to himself. All he said is that people are complex animals and sometimes, as hard as we try, we don’t understand why they do what they do. Good thing we specialize in mysteries, huh?