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Classic Archive Merged: Pani(ic) In The Woods

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Jim Colquhoun, Glasgow

I was around 10 years old when I had my one and only encounter with The Great God Pan. I was walking alone through a place known locally as the 'Witches Wood' in Pollok Estate (now Pollok Country Park) on the south side of Glasgow. It was a bright summers day and the wood was well known to me. All I can really remember is a sudden and shocking increase in the insect noise in the wood. As is appropriate in these situations I panicked and legged it right out of there! It's one of those instances that has stayed with me all these years (I am 41).

It was as if that ordinary summers day had somehow suddenly 'intensified'.


and that's it... stu

Archived text here
 
Please excuse my ignorance, but how does that qualify as an encounter with Pan?
 
Pan is supposed to inhabit untouched, wooded and wild areas, when he is near, and one is alone or in a certain susseptable state, the precense of his animalstic and primal energy can instill a PAN{IC} in said individual.

I have experienced this once in my life as well,
in the hills of connecticutt......being a city girl I was already scared of hiking on large rocks in the woods,
we got lost for five hours! It was as if pan was playing a trick on us.........
 
I once spent a year doing vegetation and breeding bird surveys on my University's field studies station. They had a variety of habitats but one particular woodland area always made me uneasy. I was constantly looking behind me and felt quite scared whilst working there. In fact I occasionally rushed the survey work just to get out of there faster. This didn't happen in the other two woodland locations on the site, or in any other woodland I've walked through.
 
As I've related on another thread under er, a previous name, I once got utterly lost in the woods for most of one day, but was annoyed and damp rather than scared. Then I came across a landmark I recognised, and realised that if I traversed it I'd find a quick and relatively unmuddy route home. As I did so, however, I was overcome with a palpable and totally incongruous sense of dread which sent me scurrying back into the woods, where I remained lost for a good couple of hours but, as far as I was concerned, "safe".

Ever since then I've been fascinated by the concept of "landscapes of panic".
 
I've had this a couple of times. Once or twice it's happened in spite of being quite heavily armed.
 
This has happened to me - in fact, it happened to a group of us when I was a young lad. It's odd that the "increase in insect noise" appears to be a constant - I read about another such instance in the FT Letters Page following Patrick Harpur's "Landscape of Panic" article a couple of years ago (and was gobsmacked that someone else had experienced the same fear as me). For me it was just kind of a dull buzzing sound like a whole bunch of wasps - the air also became quite "thick" and we were rather disoriented.

So what do we reckon this is, other than manifestation of an old god? Something to do with all the life in the woods? The mind reacting to the sublimity of the environment? Burke writes a lot about this in the Philosophical Enquiry (something I've gone on about on this board before, I think). Or is it to do with the impressions we already have of woodland? Of course, the usual "mass hysteria/weather balloon" clause applies, perhaps supplemented in this instance with "accidental inhalation of hallucinogenic spores".

Interestingly, a couple of years back the govt. was proposing to make woodlands a little bit less foreboding as part of the UK-OK campaign (or whatever they called it) - plans involved planting of bluebells and creation of glades to encourage people to make the most of their natural environment. Muddle-headedness aside, it's proof that "pan(ic)" is a commonly-held concept among the British public (or proof that all focus groups should be instantly dissolved)

Matt
 
The Great God Pan and woodland legends

The Ancient Greeks believed that there was a (Great) God (Pan) because of their firsthand experience of panic attacks in the woods, mountains or other deserted areas. It's significant that the first Greek atheists were city-dwellers (Athens being Atheism Central, if you'll pardon the pun) who were too civilised and urbanised (or molly-cuddled) to go a-philosophising into the woods. Still, for the majority of Greeks, the woods were peopled with mysterious werewolves, elementals or shape-shifting gods and goddesses. To this day, the central part of the great majority of fairy tales is set in some mysterious forest. The sense of mystery, the thrill of fear they induce are still capable of putting the fear of God in most people, and this source of horror was a predecessor of modern-day horrors, which are closer to home, i.e. the crypt, the old dark house, the haunted castle - which are a kind of intramural forest - and the fear of the raving, unsuspected maniac - who can turn any setting into a barbaric wilderness (viz. The Blair Witch Project). Even UFOs are for the most part sighted in some kind of wilderness.
 
Agreed. But why do we think this is? What inspires this fear?
 
What inspires this fear?

Here, we enter the domain of Jungian archetypes (another dense thicket, if you ask me). I would say, as another participant has, awe at the strangeness of nature and the universe, the sublimity of the whole shebang, racial memory, the walk of Eric Idle and the housewife around the galaxy in Monthy Python's "The Meaning of Life", the sense of exposure to the elements and of being totally vulnerable and losing control, the demolition of all false pretenses, the confrontation of the ego with the id. God only knows!

All mystery writers and quite a few film directors have made a career of figuring out this problem.

I would suggest reading late American scholar Walter Kendrick's rambling but oh so informative account of the history of horror called "The Thrill of Fear", Grove Press, New York, 1991, except that his pet theory is that all modern horror was born from the poems of a group of religious XVIIIth century British moralists collectively called "the Graveyard Poets" reflecting on the corruption of all flesh... and the book almost never mentions the forest as a primeval source of horror, despite a long analysis of Weber's 1821 opera, "Der Freïschutz" and its famous bucolic horror scene. (Just like an American to blame everything on the British.)
 
Re: What inspires this fear?

baracine said:
..the sense of exposure to the elements and of being totally vulnerable and losing control, the demolition of all false pretenses, the confrontation of the ego with the id..
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Interesting. But then, in my case, why would the panic strike me when I entered the landmark (a relatively known place which promised home and shelter) and subside when I re-entered the forest (an unknown quantity in which I was lost)? That's always puzzled me.

The buzzing is interesting too. I'm not a huge fan of insects; one summer a previous boyfriend and I were about to take a walk in the woods when the air was filled with a very loud insectile buzzing and I refused to take a step into the woods, despite his coaxing. Thinking back, though, he couldn't hear it.

Hmm.
 
To Little My

the landmark (a relatively known place which promised home and shelter)
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Can you be more specific about this landmark and how it made you feel, please? Was your fear completely irrational, in your own opinion?
 
Here's a transcript of the original post (which is here ):

A few years ago I found myself utterly lost while walking the dog in some local woods. After some time I came upon a preserved Bronze Age barrow called (somewhat misleadingly) Caesar's Camp. It was a local landmark and I realised that if I cut through it, I could be home within the hour.

At this point I was a bit muddy and miserable from being lost, but in a good enough mood to take a look around the barrow. So I peeked at the plaque which tells you where the dwellings would have been, and so on, then climbed to the top of a small mound to survey the area.

Just then my dog (whom I'd left by the plaque) started whimpering and as I stood there, I began to feel as though something very large was coming towards me from the opposite end of the site, like a crowd of people or (this sounds silly) the hull of a large ship. Either way, my gut reaction was to leave quickly the way I came, which I did, feeling faintly ridiculous knowing I'd be lost again once I got back into the woods.

Although that was the case (and it took me a subsequent two hours to get home!) the atmosphere felt immeasurably less oppressive once I left the barrow, and even the dog seemed to cheer up.
 
That sort of reminds me of something that happened to me in my reckless youth.
I was camping on the beach with some friends, and while they all went to sleep, I stayed up and drank all the beer. A bit before the others began to stir next morning, I was sitting on a sort of ledge where the sand had eroded from under the grass, staring out to sea. I became aware of a shrill buzzing that quickly increased until it was intensely loud, then it cut out abruptly, and I found myself falling backward. I didn't feel any sense of panic, and I haven't experienced anything like that before or since.
I'm pretty sure this had more to do with excessive drinking and sleep deprivation than the supernatural, and I only mention it because of the simmilar buzzing.

As for why people always have the Pan encounters in the forest, I suppose there is a strong concentration of life that isn't us, and few people. Our version of reality might not hold as strongly in the forest.
 
To Little My

Well, your landmark wasn't exactly Piccadilly Circus at rush hour, was it?

Seriously, panic is associated not only with wooded areas but also mountains, heights and deserted areas. I think this landmark certainly qualifies, as for centuries or longer, it was singled out as a privileged face to face meeting place with the divine, religious ceremonies, ancestor worship, racial memory and what have you. You were dealing not only with the mysterious cycle of life, as you would come across it in the woods, where a myriad lifeforms are born, die and are recycled, but with its human sacred aspect, in the form of burial mounds.

You were alone, exposed to it all, in a central position and you felt this fear as irrational.

You were in a cemetary, for God's sake!!!
 
I was always a little disappointed by my failure to be suitably terrified of cemeteries. :(
 
Re: To Little My

baracine said:
...it was singled out as a privileged face to face meeting place with the divine, religious ceremonies, ancestor worship, racial memory and what have you....

You were in a cemetary, for God's sake!!!
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Actually it's not a cemetary. No human remains have ever been excavated -- it was a settlement, not a burial ground. As for religious ceremonies and so on, I can't say.
 
To Mr. Jones

You're not supposed to be. For centuries, they were part of normal English life, huddled next to the parish church, the religious centre of the town, a natural part of existence. According to Walter Kendrick (see preceding post where I mention his essay "The Thrill of Fear", 1991 ), this fear was drummed into our western consciousness by the moralising, Christian, Bible-thumping British "Graveyard Poets" of the XVIIIth century, and subsequently taken over by writers of penny-dreadfuls and other creators of horrors, for fun and profit.

Now they are a cliché and part of Halloween paraphernalia. A cheap way of establishing a horrific mood is to juxtapose the silhouette of barren trees and of tombstones with a grey sky and the sound of thunder. Even if you are not truly scared by this, something in you tells you that you should be. It's cultural conditioning, pure and simple. Whereas true panic is induced by more mysterious causes and an as yet misunderstood set of circumstances.

To Little My: Hey, it was ancient and creepy. We have (almost) nothing like this in America, except for those fabled "ancient Indian burial grounds".
 
originally posted by Jim Colquhoun All I can really remember is a sudden and shocking increase in the insect noise in the wood. As is appropriate in these situations I panicked and legged it right out of there!
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There was a type of creature in the movie Flight of Dragons that made a sort of insect buzzing sound that drove anyone who heard it to panic and, eventually, insanity unless they could resist focusing on it.
 
Why should grave yards/burial grounds/plague pits be haunted anyway - I mean, who ever died in one of them?
 
Are there any saunas in NJ?

Bannik,

I've got a question for you: Do you know that you nick actually means a scary creature inhabiting saunas in remote Siberian villages? This mythological creature is widely feared by villagers there because it is known for strangling lone steam lovers on late nights - if he takes a dislike to them... I've got a book of folk stories collected by a group of ethnographers over several decades and boy, this is the scariest read you can imagine... ours is a totally different culture rooted in the dark Middle Ages.

Getting back on the thread, feeling wild panic in the woods, as well as being "fooled' and led in circles for hours or even days, is a very common theme in the Russian folklore - the Wood Man is the usual culprit.:eek!!!!:
 
I've got a question for you: Do you know that you nick actually means a scary creature inhabiting saunas in remote Siberian villages? This mythological creature is widely feared by villagers there because it is known for strangling lone steam lovers on late nights - if he takes a dislike to them...
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Yes I do. And, to link this with the subject of this thread, the Leshy was basically a Slavic/Siberian Pan. He would lead anyone who ventured to far into the woods astray, and the only way to appease him was (is?) to take off your clothes and put them on again backwards, not forgetting to switch your shoe onto the opposite foot.

I've got a book of folk stories collected by a group of ethnographers over several decades and boy, this is the scariest read you can imagine...
Click to expand...
Is the book The Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology? Excellent book.

ours is a totally different culture rooted in the dark Middle Ages.
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By "ours" do you mean Siberian or Western European.
 
<<<Is the book The Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology?>>>

No, it's a pretty rare book called Mythological Tales of Population of Eastern Siberia. It's a huge collection of real stories gathered by a team of ethnographers from old people in a number of Siberian regions about things that either happened to the story tellers or someone they knew in their village.

<<<...and the only way to appease him was (is?) to take off your clothes and put them on again backwards>>>

Doesn't this remind you of the only way to break the spell of elves in Irish / British tales of getting "lost" within a very limited space? You have to put on your clothes inside out to be able to SEE where you actually are.

<<<By "ours" do you mean Siberian or Western European?>>>

Russian, of course. Siberian culture is a very picturesque local relection of general Slavic ideas and myths.

Re Pan: I'm attaching a file with a vision of Pan by the famous Russian painter Mikhail Vrubel (late 19th-early 20th c.)
 
Other forest inhabitants

I deliberately translated the Leshy as the Wood Man (Forest Man) to link it up with the topic. From what I know, the Leshy - the protective forest spirit - has been part of Slavic/Finno-Ugric folklore for at least 2,000 years. Other legendary figures, like Baba Yaga, the flying old hag, who is still an object of fear among Russian toddlers due to parental "efforts", has been proven to date from the Scythian-Sarmatian period of nation building. Impressive depth of national memory, isn't it? The attached file a picture of this venerable old lady by Ivan Bilibin, a great Russian painter, who did a marvellous job of depicting many fairy tale characters and mythological images (same period as Vrubel).
 
It's a huge collection of real stories gathered by a team of ethnographers from old people in a number of Siberian regions about things that either happened to the story tellers or someone they knew in their village.
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:D This sounds like the perfect book for me as I a)love mystical/paranormal anectdotes and b) am fascinated by Siberia. :wow:

Is it in English?

I just got done reading a very good book about modern day Siberians called The Shaman's Coat by Anna Reid. Delightfully quirky (as anything that takes place in Siberia should be;)).
 
Other legendary figures, like Baba Yaga, the flying old hag,


I saw a great movie years ago called "Lawn Dogs" which was kind of super natural and made references to Baba Yaga.

As for getting the fear, surely it is an irrational state of mind prompted by an over active immagination.
I get the fear in the back yard if its dark enough, its all the horror movies I have watched over the years.
If you have no immagination it would be difficult to be affraid of anything non tangible. I am not saying there are not mysterious elements at work, I have heard the voices of dead sailors in the rigging of a yacht while sailing the Med, it was 3am and I had been at sea for weeks. Whether it was immagination or supernatural it is still an interesting experience.
 
Some of the things in this thread sound similar to the panic I experienced in Chanctonbury Ring. Maybe Pan was offering me some of his warm hospitality.

:)

On a similar vein, an old friend of mine recounted a tale about when he was a young child living in the Coventry suburbs.

He and his dad were taking a walk in their local woods when they stumbled upon a clearing with a small freshly dug ditch in the center. Apparently they were feeling slightly apprehensive about the area, but his dad ambled over to the ditch to investigate. When suddenly the wind picked up creating a small twister or dust devil within the hole and the sound of a crying baby could clearly be heard emanating from it, despite it visibly being empty.

The father was so overcome with panic that he promptly bolted back into the woods, leaving his small son behind to fend for himself. My friend has no recollection of what happened after his dad ran off, but remembers being deeply distressed and crying, emerging from the woods into a housing estate where his dad, still clearly shaken, was waiting.

Apparently his dad was so terrified to re-enter woods to find his son, he asked some passers-by for help.

To this day his father is still unsure why he felt so scared, but he has an overwhelming feeling that the hole in the ground was the disturbed grave of a small child and that some supernatural force was protecting it.
 
by Gloria <<<...and the only way to appease him was (is?) to take off your clothes and put them on again backwards>>>

Doesn't this remind you of the only way to break the spell of elves in Irish / British tales of getting "lost" within a very limited space? You have to put on your clothes inside out to be able to SEE where you actually are.
Click to expand...

I'm not familiar with that one, but I guess if you were ever lost in the woods and didn't know which one was having there way with you you could put your clothes on inside out and backwards for extra points.
 
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