The Superstition Mountains – don’t read at night

First off, a cute baby pic, just because.

So, I freaked myself out the other night. It was late, and my hubby hadn’t come to bed yet, so I was lying in bed, not falling asleep. There was a thunderstorm outside, and through the cracks in the blinds, I could see raindrops on the window, and see distant flashes of lightning. No thunder, though. Our window faces east, toward the Arizona Superstition Mountains, and I was thinking that the lightning must be up there.

That got me thinking about the weird stories I’ve heard about those mountains, and their weird name. So I whipped out my ipod and started reading about the myths and legends.

First, I found lots of stuff about the Lost Dutchman Mine. That, at least, is based on more or less historical fact. From Wikipedia, that bastion of reliability:

The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine (also known by similar names) is, according to legend, a rich gold mine hidden in the southwestern United States. The location is generally believed to be in the Superstition Mountains, near Apache Junction, east of Phoenix, Arizona. There have been many stories about how to find the mine, and each year people search for the mine. Some have died on the search.

The mine is named after German immigrant Jacob Waltz (c. 1810–1891), who purportedly discovered it in the 19th century and kept its location a secret. (“Dutchman” was a common American term for “German”, for example Pennsylvania Dutch; “Dutch” is the English cognate to the German demonym, “Deutsch”.)

The Lost Dutchman’s is perhaps the most famous lost mine in American history. Arizona place-name expert Byrd Granger wrote, as of 1977, the Lost Dutchman’s story had been printed or cited at least six times more often than two other fairly well-known tales, the story of Captain Kidd’s lost treasure, and the story of the Lost Pegleg mine in California. People have been seeking the Lost Dutchman’s mine since at least 1892,[1] while according to one estimate, 8,000 people annually made some effort to locate the Lost Dutchman’s mine.[2] Former Arizona Attorney General Bob Corbin is among those who have looked for the mine.[3] Some argue that there is little or no evidence for the mine’s existence, but others say that the main components of the story have at least some basis in fact.

All you have to do is google “Lost Dutchman Mine” to find news reports of people who died trying to find it. Like this guy who died in 2012. The paranormal sites have a field day, like this one or this one. This site has a nice list of a ton of people who have been found shot or had their heads cut off while looking for the mine.

My theory is, somebody’s already found it and is killing anybody who gets close.

Not weird enough? Here’s an overview of more weirdness:

From About.com:

This mountainous area in south central Arizona didn’t get its name for nothing. And white men weren’t the first to note its bad vibrations; the Apache Indians called it the Devil’s playground.

Among the reported strangeness are:

An entry into a subterranean world. Those who claim to have penetrated the tunnel tell of the remains of ancient structures and a spiral staircase that leads down into the bowels of earth. Some say Reptilian humanoids have come out of these portals.
Time and dimensional shifts. Mary Sutherland relates her weird experience of “apportaton” at Apache Junction.
Spirit faces in the rocks.
A legend that the mountains were once guarded by a race of pygmies.
Location of the famous “Lost Dutchman” mine.
Site of the Circlestone medicine wheel, 6,000 feet up in the mountains – “an artifact that could be as important as England’s Stonehenge,” according to some researchers.
During the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, numerous UFOs were sighted around Flat Iron and Bluff Springs Mountain, which is adjacent to Circlestone. In 1973, two campers reported seeing a UFO land and then take off from the Circlestone area.

All that stuff is intriguing enough, but then I clicked over to the Bigelow Ranch stuff in Utah.

This 480-acre cattle ranch in central Utah was so plagued by UFOs and other strange phenomena that its one-time owners, Terry and Gwen Sherman, were eager to get rid of it. A willing buyer was found in Las Vegas real estate tycoon Robert T. Bigelow because he was intrigued by the mysterious goings-on. He brought in a team of investigators and set up arrays of surveillance equipment to find out what was taking place.

Some have dubbed the ranch “the strangest place on Earth.”

Here’s just some of what was going on:

Unexplained cattle mutilations, and cattle that just disappeared. Ten of the Sherman’s cows reportedly vanished.
UFOs “the size of football fields.” And in 1980, a rancher claimed to have seen a 40-foot silver sphere on the ground of what later became the Sherman ranch.
Terry Sherman claimed to have actually seen aliens come out of one UFO. “It was a human type, over seven feet tall, decked out in a totally black uniform and very huge, very heavyset,” he reported.
Interdimensional portals that were seen to open in mid-air. The Shermans said they saw lights emerging from these doorways.
Floating balls of light, one of which might have toasted the family dogs. The Sherman’s three dogs vanished after chasing a ball of light. A circular burn mark was found on the ground near where the dogs were last seen.
Gwen Sherman was supposedly chased by several red balls of light while driving home one night.

Interested and getting slightly freaked out, I searched for alien abduction stories in the Superstitions. I wound up with this humdinger of a site.

This guy got mixed up with “aliens”, which then kept coming to his house and harassing his wife. This paragraph, in particular, freaked me out the worst.

Steiger continued: “Tim Beckley asked Scott about the Host. ‘There is one entity that comes through that calls itself the Host, whatever that
means,’ Scott attempted to explain. ‘It speaks in what sounds like some kind of computerized language. The voice seems to come out of me, an
inner voice that is not mine. The entity says that I am one with it. It says, “I am; I am” or “You are one with me.” When asked if it has a name, it
will just come back and say, “I am; I am.” (Note: According to Judeo-Christian teaching, as we read in the events surrounding Moses’ ascent of
Mt. Sinai, Almighty God alone can honestly profess that ‘I Am that I Am’, which in the original Hebrew means that He alone is self-existence and
not dependent on an outside force, as all other created beings are, and therefore is ‘God’. The events of molestation which took place against
Scott’s wife would indicate that ‘the Host’ IS NOT God, and therefore, as is the nature of the Infernals and the Serpent Races, it irreverently
seems to blaspheme Almighty God with such statements as ‘I AM’ – Branton)

These aliens start to sound like straight-up demons.

So, not having been freaked out enough, I looked up Vortexes.

Vortexes are areas of high energy concentrations, originating from magnetic, spiritual, or sometimes unknown sources. Additionally they are considered to be gateways or portals to other realms, both spiritual and dimensional. Vortexes typically exist where there are strong concentrations of gravitational anomalies, inturn creating an environment that can defy gravity, bend light, scare animals, twist plant life into contorted shapes, and cause humans to feel strange. Many vortexes have been shown to be associated with Ley Lines and have been found to be extremely strong at node points where the lines cross.

…because that’s all scientific and stuff. That particular site had a link to something else that mentioned ectoplasm. Thinking of slime and Ghostbusters, I clicked on it.

I wound up at this freaky-deaky story about two new-ager campers who used certains dates, etc. to find a certain vortex spot in the Superstitions, and camped there for the night.

For the next three hours they stared in awe at several life-size black figures circling the glow within the canyon. Some would circle the area in ever increasing circles, others would stay in the center of the glow. There were too many to count. The intensity of the glow increased almost to the intensity of daylight – a green eerie daylight. Not a sound was heard. Not a breeze was blowing. It was cool, but not cold. They could smell a strong odor of hyacinth and other flowers.

By 1:30am, their bodies were forced against the slope. Not a disabling force, but a powerful force. They could not move at all. They were almost helpless.

Off in the distance they observed one of the black shadowy figures coming in their direction. It appeared to be going its own way and then, it turned toward them. As it got closer they could see that it was neither climbing or flying. It was going through the motions of climbing, hand over hand, but it was a few feet off the ground.

It was moving toward them. Not a sound was heard except the pounding hearts of two individuals – instinctively wanting to run.

But run where? The slope was treacherous and they were precariously perched on it. The glow of the canyon provided enough light to visibly make out some form of a being – the likes of which neither one of them had ever seen before.

As it came closer, Katrina, although visibly shaken, felt safe within the sacred circle. Robert was more skeptical. He was afraid it was going to eat them and would have rather had a gun.

With every ounce of energy he could muster up, Robert took his camera and aimed it at the entity. When it was about 6 feet away, he took a picture of it. The flash of the camera illuminated the entity – then it disappeared.

This was the point where I turned off my ipod and remained freaked out for quite a while.

How much of this is true? Heck, I don’t know. People sure believe it, though. What I pull out of all this: If you go searching for evil things, you’ll find them.