Hello there.
I am Hermann. A German Phd student from Düsseldorf. My specialty: Ethnography. My thesis is ”The survival of ancient myths” in folklore mythologies. Yeah, that is a fancy one. No, I can not be modest about this, I am really proud of my endeavor. Very few people actually work on this enormous, but fascinating domain.
I need a lot of determination. Because, trust me, you need to work really hard to get what you want. You see, on first sight, with my tall stature, bushy beard I look like your typical lumberjack guy. Outdoors guy you shall say, on first sight. And, indeed, outdoors is part of who I am since childhood. Always loved field trips, forests, unspoiled nature. But, you see, my love for nature meant not just for the nature itself, but also for other dimensions of it. Like how people related to it and what nature makes people feel. And fairy tales, legends, myths about the old world and what is still around us were part of my love for ”outdoors” just as much as the sky, the forest and the pure water springs. This is why I became a folklorist.
I love to find out more and more, like a type of greed. First, I loved Western and Northern European folklore then, gradually, my view extended to other parts of the world. So, without realizing, I become a Phd student. Although this kept me a lot from actually ”going out”, I feel that my work, in the end. helps me and others to better see and feel the fascinating reality we live in. Also, this means a lot of field trips in different parts of the world, as much as I can afford, to collect from real people real testimonies of mythology.
Comparative folklore means, as I said, a lot of travel, but also a lot of effort to select and put things together. I admit, I travel mostly to Europe, not all the world, but I find it easier, being closer to my homeland and culture and, in the end, I am one person and I can only do so much.
The story I want to share happened as I came to Romania last week, on a conference, but I also had planned a field trip into the Carpathians to collect some testimonies. You see, in folklore, we can see some typologies, some connections between related cultures. There are myths that spread around different ethnic groups, some even around different continents. For example, across most of Europe we can see a general typology of beings we shall call them Elves. Their profile is not the same in the same country, sometimes not even for the same regions of a country. Yet, things connect and add up, hard to explain it in a few words. These beings look and feel, not just look, like very beautiful and powerful humanoid beings, usually female, dressed in white. Actually, their very name of ”Elf” comes from an old word meaning white. They also seem to be connected with a typology of beings called the ”swan maidens”, women who shapeshifted into white swans, but the two typologies do not match in some aspects.
The great J.R.R. Tolkien does a wonderful depiction of Elves in his works, yet there is something he tends to avoid, meaning the dimension called the ”Dark Elf”. This means the Elves who are ”dark” in their attitude towards Humans and in ”dark moods”. People in Iceland, as well as in the Balkans seem to have a deep fear for the Dark Elf typology, in some parts of Ireland we see this as well. But no, I do not share paragraphs from my thesis now, but a personal experience. So, please, bear with me for a little.
There is also another type of mythological creature sometimes included in the Dark Elf type, the such called ”Alder Girl”. This female being behaves, in many aspects, like a Dark Elf, meaning it is feared by the people, being very dangerous, lives in the woods and has siren-like abilities. Yet, she seems to be a different kind of being. More like a predator on Human males, draining them of life, sometimes, or taking away their hearts. She is called in Romania (and in the Macedonian Romanian ethnic group as well) ”Fata Pădurii”, meaning Forest Girl or the Girl of the Forest. The Alder Girl is, seen, from behind, having her trunk as hollow, like a wooden trough. This is one her characteristics found across Europe. In Romania, she has always long and dark hair, comes out of the forest to allure human males. Often, she shows her supposed true face, that is of a wooden humanoid, like a tree hag, with branches, that looks horrifying.
She often has sex with men, disguised as their lover, sometimes after several meetings with her, the man realized he had sex not with his lover, but with a wooden, hollow-back monster.
In Romania, her foe or her frenemy, perhaps, seems to be the Night Man who, although dangerous for humans as well, keeps the Forest Girl in control and punishes her for her intergressions in human affairs. He used to burn her after he caught her. Also, in here, she seems not to be able to exit the forest, more or less. But that does not seem consistent with some testimonies.
So, I was already in Bucharest, waiting for the conference the next day. I met Robert, an assistant professor at the ethnography department of the University of Bucharest, who showed me around the campus and the city itself. Bucharest is a very composite city, like a mosaic or a collage made of different cities from different parts of the world and from different eras. There are few old buildings in here, because the local mindset seems to be erase the past and build according to what the Romanians consider to be fashionable in the world. Downtown Bucharest is filled with French-like neoclassical buildings, build over the sites of older, more historically valuable buildings in the late XIXth century. Also, there are a lot of Soviet styled apartment blocks buildings, some build as well on the place where older buildings stood before. So, on the first hand, there seems to be slightly anything ”mythical” about Bucharest itself, as I looked forward for my trip to the ancestral world of the Carpathians.
Robert showed me a little around, we went to a pub, we got a little friendly and we talked on many things, from taxes to old testimonies of mythological beings from Bucharest. He told me there were testimonies, even in the XIXth century, of the present of Dark Elves and the Forest Girl even in downtown Bucharest. This was a big surprise for me and made see this city very differently.
At some point, he proposed that we go for a walk on the outskirts of Bucharest, on an area famous for the prostitutes that give their services to passing drivers. I was a little reluctant but, since I had not a girlfriend at the time and I was a little drunk, I agreed. So, we went to the north-west of Bucharest, where one of the last patches of forest still existed in the area of the city, in Băneasa.
We arrived when the night was already upon us. We took an Uber car to the edge of the forest, where some of the girls were. Robert had a favorite in the area, this is why he insisted going there. He found her pretty quickly, she was a blonde with her hair in a top knot. Unfortunately, none of her peers was available for me, so Robert did something a little rude, he excused himself and went with her, and left me in the open. I could have felt offended, but I was going for paid sex, so I said ”Fair enough” and went to get another girl of my own.
I went to the edge of the forest, and I soon found one. She looked not as much a street prostitute, but more like a polished escort type who likes to publish photos on Instagram. She had long, dyed black hair, lush to her hips, long eyelash extensions and pump up lips. Also her clothes looked quite expensive. What on Earth was this chick doing on the streets, if she could afford those things. Yeah, it was suppose to ring a bell, you probably already are thinking of something, but I was not, at the time. She looked too gorgeous at the moment.
”Hello there, speak English?” She smiled alluring at me and answered like a whispered balm: ”Of course, darling.” Her voice tickled something in my head, I knew that I had to go on with this. Up to this point, I still felt a little odd for being there and doing what I was about to do, but her voice made feel very differently. I do not know, was I suppose to realize what was going on, especially me, who knew some things? Perhaps. She asked for quite a small fee, that made the lust get stronger in me. She took my hand and we started to walk towards her place, on a small road inside the forest. I kept looking at her hot pants, then at her eyes, she had something in them, how shall I say… She tickled my palm with her long, acrylic nails. That was it, I was going for it.
She told me her name is Ramona, that she had a long professional experience and that she had a surprise for me no other of her peers from around can offer me. And she had that smile, I was melted for her, as Romanians have an expression. Not long after, we reached a two level house, that seemed pretty new, on an edge of the forest. It looked pretty well kept, and pretty expensive, for Romanian average standards. Middle class, at least. We got in, the interior matched the exterior, looked western and polished. With lots of new electronics. Pretty kitsch for my taste but I did not mind, I was not thinking of the house, but of sex. We went upstairs.
I shall not describe the bedroom and the rest, nothing extraordinary. Just that the room itself was quite small. We went to ”business” pretty fast. It was probably a matter of seconds before I would undress her, if something did not happened. Something that made my heart stop. Something you suspect already: As I touched her back, to remove her shirt, I discovered she was hollow in there. And woody. My heart stopped and I froze. I know who she was. Or what she was.
I need to think fast. Not to show her I know. Not to panic. In a matter of seconds, I recalled what I knew about the Alder Girl from Scandinavia to Greece. What works against her, how and when. And I had to get different folkloric traditions fit and get along fast. Things I usually need months, even years of research. And act as fast as I could because I knew, better then most men, that my doom was very close, at hand. For example, Romanian traditions said that talking to the Forest Girl gave her power over you, allowing her to turn you crippled, disabled, in a lobotomy-like state or even dead. But I already talked to her, without knowing what I was doing. Was it safe to speak, now that I knew? I was not willing to find out.
In the moment I realized what was going on, I had a bed on my right, a door on my left, and a window on the back, but the creature was a little closer to the door then me. The moment I backed out from her, to think at my situation, she gave me a weird look. I probably looked quite frightened, so I guess she realized I knew. So she moved slowly towards the door, probably to block my exit.
Then I saw something I only read in libraries and heard in conferences about and never thought to ever see with my own eyes (although I admit I desired for it): a shift of a mythological monster from human shape to their real shape. Her skin and hair changed appearance , and her body started to grow, filling the room. The skin looked like tree bark and her hair like weed. Her face and torso became elongated. Her mouth opened pretty wide. Her legs and arms turned into branches, her finger grew long and, perhaps the most terrifying of all what that, from her arms and torso more, smaller, branches grew, branches that came towards me, trying to trap me onto the bed.
As she made a shriek I can not describe, I remembered something. Something Robert told me a few hours ago: That, in Romanian folklore, she seems not to stand knives. I had on me, out of habit, a pocket knife, that I found very useful in my outdoor activities, like hiking on a forested mountain. Perhaps this would work. So, I went to my pocket in a matter of seconds, almost skipping the pocket, as the branches grew and engulfed me.
She shrieked even higher, and stronger, at the sight of the knife. Would this work or not? I had no time to think too much, but to act. I start hitting the small branches, starting a weird dance that seemed to last for a long time, but probably took a minute the most. I was pointing the knife at her, trying to slash the edges of the branches, she seemed to back down a bit, but not giving up. In fact, she seemed to be getting ahead of me, in engulfing me in branches. Eventually, I fell to the ground and she pinned me with some stronger ends of branches to the floor. One of them pierced a bit of skin on my left shoulder. One a bit on the abdomen. She turned her long, wooden claws to my chest. But the knife was still in my right hand and managed to make some a few cuts on what suppose to be her chest. After a loud shriek, she shut up.
For a few seconds of silence, she opened her mouth widely and came towards my mouth. Her right arm came close to my chest, and I remembered then that Romanians say that she aims for the heart, to remove it from the chest. My chances of escape seemed really slim at this point, and a lot of silly thoughts came to my mind. Like trying to talk to her, to reason with her. Tell her that I am academic, that I knew about her kind, that I appreciated them, that I was glad to meet her, that I could make her famous, if she wanted (Yeah, I was loosing it, at this point…). Soon I realized I probably had no real chance now, looking in those black, apparently hollow, eye sockets. In a way, it seems all my life work, all my quest, all my inner longing had prepared me for this moment. For this meeting. Death was upon me, but I could not escape the feeling I was living my dream. I felt fulfilled, in a way. And one last silly thought, as she was getting close, was to thank her. Thank her for all this. I was mad, I know. But who cared?
Yet, something happened. A strong blast came from down stairs. She stopped in her tracks, turned her head towards the door and shrieked. As she stared at the door, do not ask me how, I manage to break free and get up. My only chance was the window. It was opened. She turned her head back towards me, trying to grab me once again. But loud footsteps were heard on the stairs. She seemed to panic a bit, trying to keep me in her grip, but also to defend herself from whoever who coming from the door. A thought in my head whispered who was coming. Someone dangerous for me, but for her as well. The door opened and, for a second before I jump from the window frame, I saw a short, dark figure.
I landed up though, on the pavement, it seems one ankle was hit, a sharp pain got my leg, but I knew I had to run and see later, worry later on the ankle. I grabbed my knife from the pavement and placed it back in my pocket. I might well needed it again. As I was limping towards the gate, I so a small fire on the window and heard the screams of a woman. I knew what was happening: The Night Man was burning the Forest Girl. Yet, folklore from northern Romania mostly described this, from Transylvania. Not from the south. But, of course, there was no time to think and made my way out. Fortunately, the gate was open and I did my way towards the highway.
Robert was waiting for me, as I arrived, and he looked a bit shocked of my state. ”What happened?” he asked. ”Let me help you.” He allowed me to grab his shoulder, to put less stress on my damage ankle. He called an Uber, considering to be faster then an ambulance and, as we waited, he asked me what happened. I told him: ”I think you shall not believe me if I tell you.” I looked back to the forest and I saw a man and a woman. The man was shorter then the woman, wearing a black parka with the hood on his head, he had somewhat angry expression, but not towards me, look, he looked about 35-40 of age, a somehow reddish beard, and felt like some sort of angry paternal authority. And the woman was Ramona, as I first saw her in Human form. She looked with hatred at me, and I could noticed some scratches on her chest. Soon, they turned their back on us and went inside the forest, on another path.
In seems I had some bone fissure, but not really broken. A splint was necessary, nonetheless. As I stayed in the hospital bed, I started to feel a longing for Ramona. Probably not just for Ramona, but for what she was: a part of reality we forget, that we suppressed. Out of fear? Because this side of reality was getting thinner and thinner, soon to be lost forever? I wondered how the life of those beings was, perhaps they live among humans, they have their own fake, human identities, perhaps they even have jobs. At least some of them, who can. And, as life is hard for humans, life is hard for them. I fell the need to talk to her and tell that. Perhaps our races could re-establish contact with them. Because, no matter how dangerous and scary are many of them, the world would be less beautiful without them.
So, I am thinking in going back to that house, to that area of forest. Perhaps not alone, perhaps prepared, but go there nonetheless. Perhaps I am mad, perhaps my mind is poisoned by her siren-like abilities. Yet, the longing is still there and I may find no other chance during my lifetime. And this longing to stay with me for the long decades of the life to come. Yes, I may have a horrific death. I am willing to take the risk. So, what do you think? Shall I go for it? What would you do, if you were in my shoes?
Update: I met Ramona again. First part of the new contact with her is in here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/wv48es/be_careful_on_prostitutes_in_bucharest_they_might/
The second part of the new contact
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/wxrg6h/be_careful_on_prostitutes_in_bucharest_they_might/