Can't See The Forest For The Beings

Can't See the Forest for the Beings

By Tillie Treadwell

If you read my last post, you know I promised you a follow up. If you haven't read it yet, I'd encourage you to head back to "Leshy Forget..." before continuing here, because what I'm about to share is a direct continuation of that encounter, and it will make considerably more sense with the full context of who I met in that northern forest in September of 2016, and how that meeting changed the way I think about the woods, the people in them, and the people who go missing from them.

I'll wait.

Good. You're back. Let's talk about the rules.

As I mentioned in the last post, my friend— the entity I believe to be the Leshy, a woodland spirit known across Russian, Slavic, and Appalachian folklore as a trickster, guardian, and keeper of the forest— shared with me a series of warnings and principles near the end of our walk together. He communicated these to me directly, calmly, and without any ambiguity, as though he had been waiting for someone willing to listen and to pass the information along when the time was right. I've sat with these rules for the better part of a decade now, turning them over and applying them to case after case as I've continued my work in the paranormal, and in the Missing 411 research space specifically. And what I can tell you, with as much confidence as I'm comfortable expressing publicly, is that everything he told me has been corroborated by the data, the folklore, and the experiences of people who have never met me or each other.

So, here's what he said. I'm paraphrasing, of course; as I mentioned in the last post, exact quotes aren't really my strong suit when it comes to recounting conversations from years past, with the exception of certain phrases and names that burned themselves permanently into my memory.

THE ONES WHO ARE LEFT ALONE

He told me that not everyone who enters the forest is treated equally by the beings who live there. This was not presented as a threat, but as a fact of the environment, the same way you might tell someone that not everyone who enters the ocean is treated equally by the current. It's not personal. It's physics. Or, in this case, something adjacent to physics that we don't have a good word for yet... but it's there, and it's formulaic.

According to him, there are certain humans who are regarded more highly by the nonhuman people of the forest. These individuals are often left unharmed, and in some cases, they are actively aided, protected, and guided. The categories he described to me were young children, human people with pure intentions who enter the forest with genuine respect, and people who have done deep personal work on themselves— what I would describe in modern language as shadow work— and who walk through the world with integrity as their standard, as much as humanly possible. These people, he indicated, are seen. They are recognized. And they are, in most cases, safe. Allegedly, some have even been invited to join the nonhuman world as a reward for their judged loveliness... and some have taken the deal.

I think this is worth sitting with for a moment, because it reframes the entire conversation around forest disappearances. The question most people ask is "what is taking these people?" But perhaps the more useful question, the one my friend seemed to be pointing me toward, is "what is it about certain people that keeps them from being taken?" The answer, if I understood him correctly, lives in the quality of a person's character, their relationship to the living world, and the degree to which they approach the forest as a guest rather than an owner, or invader.

THE ONES WHO ARE NOT

On the other hand, he was very clear about the categories of human behavior that draw negative attention in the woods. And I want to be perfectly precise here, because this is the part that I think has the most direct, practical application for anyone who spends time in wild places.

The people who are most frequently targeted for harassment, harm, abduction, or worse, he said, are the ones who enter the forest to take from it without asking. Specifically, he described people who come in to pick berries, fruits, branches, stones, or mushrooms, or to hunt, without requesting permission from the forest or its inhabitants first. This was not framed as a metaphor. He meant it literally. You are supposed to ask, and you are supposed to listen and observe for the answer.

He also told me that timing matters enormously. He said the risk increases significantly on electrically charged days or nights— during storms, before storms, in the heavy atmospheric pressure that precedes lightning. He indicated that outside of a calm, sunny afternoon, the forest becomes an increasingly volatile place for human beings who are not paying attention to the energetic climate around them. The further you go in, the higher the risk climbs. And certain behaviors compound that risk dramatically: wearing bright, vivid colors; bringing a dog; littering; playing music etc on one's devices; and being rude or dismissive to nonhuman people who approach you in the forest. All of these things, he told me directly, deeply displease and offend them.

At the time, in 2016, I had very little context for Missing 411 research. I knew people went missing in the woods. I didn't yet understand the patterns. It wasn't until several years later, when I immersed myself in this body of work, that I began to see just how clearly his warnings mapped onto the documented cases.

BERRIES, BUSHES, AND BODIES

David Paulides, the retired law enforcement officer and investigator behind the Missing 411 series, has documented well over a thousand cases of people who have vanished under highly unusual circumstances in national parks and wilderness areas across North America. While Paulides has never attributed the disappearances to any single cause, far as I'm aware, he has identified a set of recurring profile points that appear across cases with a consistency that is, I think, difficult to dismiss.

One of the most striking of these profile points is the connection to berry picking and berry bushes. Paulides himself has written that berries and berry bushes play a recurring role in many of the disappearances he's cataloged. People vanish while picking berries. People are found in the middle of berry bushes. People are found alive, sometimes after days or weeks missing, eating berries. The connection appears again and again across cases spanning decades and geography. Paulides even published a volume specifically subtitled Berry Pickers, Sheepherders, Farmers, addressing disappearances among people who were engaged in exactly the kind of harvesting activity my friend warned me about.

Interestingly, this concern about harvesting without permission is not unique to my encounter. In Slavic folklore, it is customary to leave the first mushroom found in the forest as an offering to Veles, the god who holds dominion over woodland. Among west Slavic traditions, berry foraging was historically not considered safe before a specific date in early July, and violating this timing was believed to carry consequences. Across Germanic, Celtic, and Scandinavian folk traditions, the practice of requesting permission before cutting branches, gathering herbs, or harvesting from wild plants is well documented. Grimm's Teutonic Mythology records a specific invocation for the elder tree: "Lady Ellhorn, give me some of thy wood, and I will give thee some of mine when it grows in the forest." The Leshy, specifically, is noted across multiple folklore sources as requiring offerings from those who enter the forest to hunt or forage, and as punishing those who take without acknowledgment. Icy Sedgwick's research on forest protectors notes that leaving offerings showed the Leshy that you understood the rules of the forest and wouldn't overstep the boundaries.

In other words, what my friend told me in 2016 is exactly what folklore across multiple continents and centuries has been saying all along. Take without asking, and you may not come back. I've written about this for a book soon to be released by my friend Malcolm Robinson of the SPI across the pond. If you're fascinated by the berry connection, you will certainly want to keep your eyes open for my coming posts about this title!

STORM WARNING

The second major thread of his warning— the role of electrical storms— has an equally striking body of supporting evidence. As well, electrical mishaps are commonly occurring in my own homes and life. They have been a steady staple for decades for me, and on our YouTube channel, The Weird Walk Home, my husband and paranormal apprentice/ companion Artemaeus has an entire episode all about this.

In the Missing 411 cases, one of Paulides' most consistent profile points is the arrival of sudden, severe weather shortly after or during a disappearance. Large storms sweeping in within twenty-four hours of the onset of a search is a pattern that repeats across cases with startling regularity. The weather doesn't just complicate search efforts; it seems, in many cases, to be part of the event itself, arriving too quickly and too precisely to feel entirely coincidental.

From a different angle entirely, the scientific study of anomalous aerial phenomena has repeatedly demonstrated a connection between electromagnetic activity and the appearance of exotic beings and objects. The Hessdalen Valley in Norway, where unexplained luminous phenomena have been documented since at least the 1940s, is one of the most thoroughly studied examples. Researchers from multiple universities have recorded unusual magnetic field variations coinciding with the appearance of these lights, which travel along paths that match local magnetic anomalies. The phenomena are associated with piezoelectric activity in rock strata and ionized atmospheric conditions— in other words, with the same kind of electrical charge that builds during and around storms.

My friend told me, very plainly, that electrically charged conditions in and around the forest make the environment more active, more volatile, and more dangerous for human beings who are not attuned to what is happening around them. I think the data supports this, from both the paranormal and the scientific sides of the conversation, and I think the folklore has been saying the same thing in its own language for a very long time. Storms are not just weather. They are openings.

THE COLOR PROBLEM

His warning about bright colors initially struck me as the most unusual of the group, but it turned out to have one of the deepest folkloric roots, and upon reflection it did match much of what other nonhuman people had told me over the years. It is still entirely accurate and relevant. Regarding history...

In Celtic and specifically Scottish tradition, the color green was so thoroughly associated with the Fair Folk that many Scottish families refused to wear it at all, for fear of giving offense. Sir Walter Scott referenced this directly, asking in Alice Brand, "who may dare on wold to wear the faeries' fatal green?" Folklorist James Bowker recorded that faeries in Lancashire were called "The Greenies" outright. In Cornwall, green was seldom worn and considered deeply unlucky as late as the mid-twentieth century. The concern was not simply superstition; it was understood as a boundary issue. Certain colors belong to certain peoples, and wearing them without understanding or permission was seen as an act of trespass— one that could provoke retaliation.

Red, too, carries complex associations in faerie folklore. It appears as both a ward against the Fair Folk and a color claimed by them. The Redcaps of the Scottish-English border are some of the most dangerous entities in British folklore. And across European traditions, the interplay of green, red, and white was understood to signal faerie presence or faerie allegiance.

My friend didn't specify which colors, exactly, were the problem. He said bright colors, broadly. But the message was clear: you are entering someone's home. Dressing loudly is not a sign of respect.

LEAVE THE DOG AT HOME

Of all the warnings, the one about dogs hit me the hardest, because I love dogs and because the folklore on this subject is genuinely harrowing.

In Scottish Highland and Island tradition, dogs that encounter faeries often don't survive the experience. There are multiple accounts of dogs pursuing faerie hosts and returning completely hairless, their skin bare and white except for torn and bloody spots, and dying shortly afterward. On the Isle of Tiree, a dog chased a sound on the road described as the trampling of a herd of sheep— likely the sluagh, the faerie host— and returned stripped of all its fur. It lay down and died. On the Isle of Mull, a man traveling after midnight saw a light in the hills and heard music. His dog ran off toward it. When it returned, it was completely hairless. It lay at his feet and died.

Joshua Cutchin, whose work I reference frequently and with enormous respect, wrote a piece called "Missing Fae-1-1" in which he examined the overlap between Missing 411 profile points and faerie folklore. In it, he noted that in both the Missing 411 cases and faerie lore, dogs frequently refuse to enter certain areas of the forest. Trained bloodhounds brought to search for missing persons will sometimes simply lie down at the forest's edge and refuse to go further. He connects this directly to faerie encounter literature, in which dogs are described as having an instinctive and often fatal aversion to nonhuman presences.

My friend insisted that bringing a dog into the woods and or around the forest displeases them. I think, based on everything I've encountered and studied, that it goes further than displeasure. I think dogs perceive what most humans cannot, and I think the reaction is mutual. The beings of the forest do not want your dog there, and your dog, if it is paying attention, does not want to be there either. For the dog's sake, if nothing else, I would listen.

Why do most nonhuman people despise dogs..? Perhaps I shall expound on that another time, for those who are ready to get their paws truly dirty.

RESPECT IS NOT OPTIONAL

The final category of behavior he warned against— littering, playing noise, music, or otherwise on electronic devices, and being rude to nonhuman people who approach you in the forest— might seem obvious to anyone with basic manners, but I think it deserves saying plainly, because the modern human relationship to wild spaces has become, in many cases, profoundly disrespectful. People enter forests with bluetooth speakers blaring. They leave trash on trails. They treat the woods as a backdrop for content creation rather than a living, inhabited space, and when something or someone approaches them that doesn't fit their understanding of reality, the most common responses are fear, dismissal, or aggression— none of which, I can tell you from extensive personal experience, go over well with the people who actually live there.

My friend was not subtle about this. These behaviors offend them. Not mildly. Not abstractly. They are experienced as acts of disrespect by beings who have been in these places for longer than human civilization has existed in its current form, I'm told often, and who have, I believe, been remarkably patient about sharing their home with a species that largely refuses to acknowledge they're there, or who would gladly harm them otherwise, if observing how human beings treat each other is any indication...

WHAT THE FOLKLORE HAS BEEN TRYING TO TELL US

When I step back and look at the full picture of what was communicated to me that afternoon in 2016, and then lay it over the Missing 411 data, the faerie encounter literature, the Slavic and Celtic and Germanic folklore about forest spirits, and my own decades of experience with nonhuman peoples, the consistency is almost overwhelming. Berry pickers go missing. People who enter storms go missing. Dogs are harmed or killed. Colors carry weight. Asking permission matters. Going too deep, too loud, too entitled, without respect for what already lives there, carries consequences.

None of this is new information. It has been encoded in folklore for centuries, passed down in grandmother's warnings, embedded in faerie tales that we have, with spectacular arrogance, reclassified as children's stories. The Missing 411 data didn't discover this pattern. It rediscovered it, in the language of modern case files and statistical profiles, because the old language had been forgotten.

My friend in the forest was, I believe, doing what forest guardians have always done: trying to explain the rules, in hopes that this time, someone might actually listen long enough to share them.

So, I'm sharing them. For whatever my word may be worth to you, and for whatever his word may be worth beyond that, the forest is not empty. If you enter it with respect, with quiet, with genuine intention, and with the humility to ask before you take— you may find that it is one of the safest, most beautiful, and most profoundly inhabited places you will ever experience.

I suppose now the question is, How will it experience you..?

Tillie Treadwell