The Crows of Witch Mountain

There are some places in the world that seem to be a nexus for all sorts of odd activity. One such place, in a valley in Toronto has been nicknamed "Witch Mountain" for as long as I can remember.

Witch Mountain isn't really a mountain, but a high steep hill offering a decent vantage from which to observe a portion of the city. It's festooned by some fairly thick forest, and such, isn't the easiest place to discover, but there have been visitors on this lonely, secret hill.

A long time ago, some friends and I had braved the climb to the summit, only to be encountered with what can only be described as the rank smell of evil when reaching the top. A quick search for the source revealed a half buried military ammunition box, with its lid flung open and some mysterious items within.

Searching the box we uncovered what can only be described as a weird collection of artifacts. Pages of ripped and ancient pornography were present in abundance, in in among their tattered remains we dug out some Polaroid pictures and two wooden sticks we immediately nicknamed 'The Juju Sticks'

The pictures were from a 70's Halloween party, and I had never seen stranger shots in my life. Creepy, mustachioed men cutting cakes and drinking beer with a blond playboy bunny in attendance. There was something incredibly odd about them, and they creeped me out. I refused to even touch The Juju Sticks, and they were snatched up by my friend Jordon who claimed them immediately as his. I had no problem with this, and told him to keep them away from me.

The rest of the night was spent discussing the nature of these objects and the recently uncovered ammunition box. Who could have buried these things here? Had the been there since the 70s? Why such an odd assortment of objects? And why on the mysterious Witch Mountain? We left with these questions unresolved.

A few years later, we returned to Witch Mountain a couple hours before dusk. The smell was long gone, and all evidence of the strange time capsule had been removed. The sun was shining, and Witch Mountain did not seem a threatening place. I was with my friends Lee and Jordon, and we had hiked up to enjoy some cold beers and shoot our homemade slingshots.

We arranged some empty beer cans on the surrounding trees, and proceeded to improve our aim. We had a bit of a competition going to discover which of our slingshots were of the best quality. We had been shooting for awhile when I missed my can. The little stone went hurtling off into the trees and came within a foot of a crow sitting on a branch that I hadn't noticed.

The crow turned his head, looked me right in the eyes, and let out a "Squawk!". The meaning couldn't have been more clear if the crow had spoken in plain English. He was pissed off and he may as well have said "Fuck you!". He lifted his wings and flew off.

A few minutes passed by, we were relaxing in the diminishing sun when suddenly the crow came back, accompanied by about twenty of his friends. It couldn't have been more than five minutes since he left, and how he had managed to amass such an army was beyond me.



We stared at this murder of oncoming crows, frozen on the spot. The crows came rapidly towards us and suddenly started flying in a figure 8 pattern and squawking in a rhythmic chant. Our collective gaze was drawn ever deeper into this unlikely sight. We watched with vapid fascination as the crows continued their strange dance in the air. Some kind of pressure was building up, I felt a radiating thickness in the air, like I was being bathed in some deep throbbing energy. Fear came upon me. I looked over at Jordon "Let's go", I hissed quietly but forcefully. Jordan, his eyes still mesmerized by the dancing crows replied "yeeaaaahhhh" in a slow drawn out fashion.

Lee, who I had long known was a master of evil, seemed unaffected and asked "Why?"

We didn't bother to answer him, we turned, ran grabbed our bikes and ran down Witch Mountain as fast as our legs would carry us. Lee followed at a more leisurely pace. We drove on the forest paths a few kilometers away, and set ourselves up on another hill to continue our festivities.

Our fear had abated by this time, we were working on fresh beers, and our spirits were high. The ominous memory of the crows we all but forgotten. it was twilight, and we could just spot an abandoned bike at the bottom on the cliff's edge we were sitting on. Thinking it could be salvaged and its frame could be made into excellent slingshots, we started to climb down.

About half way down, I started getting pelted with stones that came flying out from the trees to our left. Suddenly remembering the crows, I couldn't help but wonder at this odd inversion of events. We abandoned our salvage of the bike and climbed back to the top. Upon sitting down, about a dozen young and very aggressive young guys came out of the trees to the left. It had been them throwing the stones.

We sat quietly with our legs over the cliff edge as they came out from the trees surrounding us from behind. Tension built up in the air. I could feel their violent aggression and we we each ready to defend ourselves against a dozen large, drunk and violent ruffians.

Eventually, after what seemed like ages, they walked off and disappeared into the trees to our right. After a few minutes, I could hear them shouting and fighting among themselves.

My friends were staring and me. "Did you see that?" They asked.

"No, What?"

One of the largest and most aggressive guys had been standing behind me holding a large heavy rock over my head. His friend had been repeatedly whispering in his ear "Do it! Do it! Do it!" Because of the tension I had been totally oblivious to all of this.

We packed up and got out of there immediately.

I couldn't help but think about the connection between the events of that evening. The crow pissed off at me for nearly hitting him with the rock. The sinister return with his friends. The weird and oppressive energy the crows gave off during their dance. And then myself being the target of rocks later in the evening. It seemed pretty clear.

Those crows had cursed me and had I barely escaped with my life.

Over a decade later, in Korea, I told this story to an older Australian friend over a pint.



"Witches!" was his immediate response.

"Tell me, did you ever find something buried on top of that mountain?"

I was stunned, as I had not told him about the ammunition box, nor mentioned the name "Witch Mountain". I filled him in.

It was his theory that this was the work of a coven of witches in the area, who used that spot for their rituals. It was them who buried the box, and placed a curse at that spot, according to him.

A short time after this I left Korea and returned home to meet up with my old friends.

During our reminiscing we touched upon the events of that night and I brought up what the Australian had told me. Jordon had told me The Juju Sticks had disappeared from his house, and he had searched long and hard for them but couldn't find them. And then he surprised me by asking "Don't you know who buried that stuff on Witch Mountain?"

I looked at him, Gobsmacked. Could the mystery have finally been solved after all this time?

"It was Lee. Lee buried that stuff up there when he was about 7 years old."

I looked over at Lee, Master of Evil, The Witch of Witch Mountain, who sat beside me with a big grin on his face.

Objects over Africa

Takoradi harbour is not the most pleasant place in the world to live. It's a fairly filthy place, and while not the busiest harbour in the world, it still had enough merchant ship traffic that I would be occasionally called upon to move our sailing vessel so that some monstrosity could come in and dock in the spot we were occupying. On occasion, we had to anchor overnight while the ship unloaded her goods, or got loaded up with the produce of Ghana. Mostly cocoa beans, which are some of the best in the world.

It wasn't the most tranquil place to sleep. No matter how much I had drank or how little sleep I had the previous night, I was always awoken sharply at 5:30am. While the Captain was disgusted with any sort of sleep beyond this time, I was often able to force some leeway with him, but there was no arguing with The Gravel Cruncher.

At 5:30 every morning, immediately beside our position on the docks, The Gravel Cruncher would roar to life. After a few minutes of priming its ravenous belly, it would pour about 10 tonnes of gravel into a metal receptacle. The racket this created was impossibly loud and rendered sleep absolutely impossible. Even if I managed to sleep again in the interval between the motion of its insatiable jaws, I would be jarred awake on the next pour. Eventually, I would have to face the fact that I might as well drag myself out of my bunk, and face what the day brought me, no matter how hard my head was pounding.

So it was that I was relieved when we took to sea again. Our mission, sail in a back and forth pattern according to precise co-ordinates while taking depth soundings at regular intervals to create a 3d map of the sea floor. This required some precise handling of our overworked little sailing vessel, and, while the Captain had the last word, I was more or less his equal in matters of authority with regards to navigation.

It was a sunny day when we departed, I manoeuvred our beaten up little tub out of the harbour with care and said goodbye to the Gravel Cruncher and a welcoming hello to the silent West African coast.

We made good time getting to our coordinates taking only a few hours, and set to work immediately. It was monotonous work, but the sea has a way of casting a calming spell over your consciousness making just about anything bearable. In my off moments I would find myself with an empty mind, staring at the motion of the waves, with no memory of how long I had been in that state.

Darkness falls early and with great regularity in the tropics close to the equator, and at dusk we held a meeting to have to The Captain announce we would work daylight hours only. At night we were to "stall" against the current and wind. This involved keeping a night watch, and to raise just enough sail in an attempt to maintain our position. My hopes of getting a good night sleep were dashed, as I would have to stay up half the night with Peter, the Dive Master, showing him the ropes. We were assigned first watch and we were to wake The Captain and Jeff, the Dive Instructor halfway through the night for their turn.

After supper Peter and I sat in the cockpit. I had instructed him on the use of the GPS and our finiky Autohelm 4000, and on the basic handling of the vessel. I was satisfied he knew enough to watch alone the following night. Darkness had fallen and we were stalling well against the mighty Guinea current maintaining a more or less static position.

The unpopulated coast was visible as a dark shadow a few miles away. There were no lights or settlements in this area and we were treated to pitch blackness and utter silence apart from the glimmering stars and the gentle lapping of the waves. It was 9 o'clock pm and we we talking quietly about travel and diving. That's when things took a turn for the weird.

It was sudden and shocking. A blue light descended on us from above, starting gently and growing rapidly in intensity, all the more shocking because the silence remained uninterrupted. Peter had been in the middle of a sentence and cut himself off himself shouting "What the FUUUCCC...!". time seemed to slow down, and I sprang into action.

We could not see directly above. Sailing vessels equipped for bluewater have what's called a bimini over the cockpit. A canvas tarp that shields you from the sun, unfortunately it was blocking our view of the source of the steadily growing light. I glanced in the water to see the shattered reflection of the object and determined that it was directly above.

Peter was frozen in mid curse, and I acted unthinkingly. I dove in to the air towards the gunnel, twisting my body so that I was facing upwards, determined to see whatever it was. Time seemed to slow even more, flying through the air looking upward at the dimishing bimini and expanding view of the sky. I seemed to know exactly where it was and as the last inch or two of bimini retreated I remember thinking "this it it!".

As soon as my eyes came into contact with the source of the light, at that very instant, there was a flash. It was so bright, I remember seeing blue sky and white clouds. The night had turned to day. The next thing I remember I was sitting back in the cockpit facing Peter and seeing the daylight actually retreat over the horizon, as darkness enveloped us again. Apart from Peter's exclaimation, there had been dead silence all this time. I checked my watch, it was 9pm.

Peter was frozen in shock, staring off into space. I broke his trance by saying "What was that!". Peter's eyes rolled in his head, he shook himself back to consciousness, and replied forcefully "Nothing!".

"Nothing!" I replied in utter disbelief, knowing full well he had seen what I had. "What was that light?"

I could see his mind desperately searching for somehow to explain it to himself and remain sane. "It was....probably a helicopter or something" he ventured. Knowing how tightly the mind likes to grip its own version of reality, I didn't want to push him too far, and I was fascinated in watching the process of denying one's own senses in favour of long held beliefs and assumptions about what is possible. I tried one more time. "But Peter, there was no noise..". He didn't answer and the rest of our watch was spent in silence.

I didn't mention the incident to Jeff or the Captain upon waking them up, and took along time to fall asleep myself, thinking I almost preferred The Gravel Cruncher over these presented conundrums of reality.

The rest of the mission proceeded uneventfully, and after a week we had our data, which ended up providing a incredibly boring relief map of the sea floor. It's only feature was gently rolling sand dunes. A few days after landing I brought the incident up with Peter again. He had no memory of it anymore.

He had expunged it from his mind entirely.

I thought about this for a long time.

I still do.

Starving Raccoons

It was just another night, down in the park, drinking with friends. It’s a nice feature of Toronto that there are so many forested areas within the city. We always preferred to have a few beers in the company of nature rather than the awful bar scene.

On the way from the Beer Store, driving by a pet shop, I had noticed a free sample bag of dog food. I thought it might make a nice treat for my old terrier, so I put one in my knapsack.

I drove down the forested path into the valley, the beers clinking in my knapsack. As I descended the air got cooler and the light was fading. I was looking forward to having a few cold beers with some good friends.

We ended up sitting around a picnic table in the gloom at the valley bottom. We were sitting in a clearing surrounded by trees, quietly enjoying conversation. The silence of the valley was suddenly interrupted by terrible screeching and aggressive snarling.

The horrid noise was coming from a pack of raccoons. They were moving through a clearing from one grove of trees to another. I could see them nipping at each other and it instantly came to my mind that they were hungry.

Remembering the dog food, I stood up and brought it out of my bag. Somehow the raccoons were aware of my intentions, and immediately ceased their terrible racket. They approached our group quickly but cautiously, creeping along through the grass in that weird light the moon gives off deep in the forest.

I stood up and started throwing out handfuls of dog food pellets. The raccoons surrounded me, snuffling in the deep grass and making satisfied crunching noises. One of my friends took a handful, knelt down and held out his hand. A raccoon approached slowly, and finally placed a paw on his open hand. With the other paw, he took pellets, one by one, and ate in a dignified manner.

Eventually, my dog food bag was empty, and the crunching ceased. The raccoons started to peacefully disperse, and I turned toward my beer. After a sip or two, I suddenly felt something behind me. It was a sudden, sure feeling and I turned around without thinking.

Behind me was one of the larger raccoons, and for some reason I knew it was the matriarch. She sat alone on the grass, her companions having retreated into the forest. Our eyes met for a long moment and again a strange knowing came over me and it was if I could hear a clear “Thank You” from her. She then turned away and retreated back into the woods.

A few weeks later, we were in the same place on a similar night. I felt the same feeling from behind, and turned again. There in the grass was the same big female raccoon, looking up at me with those expressive eyes of hers. I had brought nothing but beer this time, and I felt badly about it.

“I’m sorry” I said, making an empty hand gesture.

She walked off alone into the woods. I never saw her again.