Wtf is that, you’re probably asking.
Look up monoculture forests.
But there’s a reason we in the town didn’t call it that. That reason is because none of us believe that’s what it is.
I mean yeah, at a glance, that’s what it looked like but anyone that’s been inside it will tell you there’s more to it.
As kids, they would always tell us not to play in the copy and paste forest. People go missing in there. People who make it back just ain’t right. Things like that.
My grandpa once told me a story about how in high school he and a few buddies went camping in there to prove if was all bs.
His friend went to go pee in the middle of the night and got turned around on the way back. No matter how much they kept shouting for him to head back towards their voices, their friends voice just kept getting further away. Nobody saw his friend again for a year.
He stumbled out into the 417 completely disoriented with no recollection of where he’d been, insisting he’d only been walking for a day. When grandpa went to visit him in the hospital, he seemed to have forgotten about all kinds of things from their time in school and had a completely different recollection of other past events.
He told me all that when I was planning to do a trip with my friends.
Of course I made the mistake of not believing him.
I also went on a trip with my friends but we were doing a hike during the day so nobody would get turned around. Like it would even be possible with everything in such a perfect grid pattern. Hell, on a perfect day, you could almost see all the way to the highway with a pair of strong binoculars.
What we saw was different.
We had started at the dead end road next to the dog park.
I don’t know why but the entrance had given me a bad vibe. I should have listened to my gut and went home. But I didn’t want to chicken out in front of my crush, now husband.
I chalked it up to being told scary stories about it all my life.
Nothing was weird at first. We were walking for quite a while before I noticed something. The noises of the forest almost seemed to play on a loop.
I pointed this out to the others and they agreed. We took some recordings and agreed if we ran into any other weird shit, we’d turn back.
We should have just turned back. The next thing was that we couldn’t tell which direction we had come from. And that it was way dark for 3:00PM.
When my husband pointed this out, we decided that, yeah, that counts as more weird shit.
Signal was spotty. We kept jumping all over the map. So we decided to pick a direction and just follow it until we hit the highway and hitch a ride back. The forest was only supposed to be a couple of kilometres across and we’d already been walking a couple hours.
So we did exactly that and things got stranger. Like once in a while, a tree would be dead in the middle of our path. Or the proportions would look …off. Or honesty my favourite, there was one that almost appeared to be upside down.
That and the forest noises cutting in and out. Sometimes playing back distorted, backwards, or double speed. Or cutting out all of a sudden before coming back at twice the volume.
I think we figured out at that point we were going the wrong way. Google maps was now jumping around even more violently than before. Not gonna lie, we were terrified at this point. I was remembering the story grandpa told me. And about the others that never came back.
We doubled back the way we came. Or so we thought. The noises stopped sounding quite so weird but then something worse played.
We heard us.
Word for word the conversation we had earlier about turning back.
We changed direction again. It was getting lighter out.
By the time we made it back it was 6:00PM the next day.
I thought we made it out fine but I’ve noticed a few things. Like when I make references to past events, I get a lot of funny looks and sometimes people correct me. It’s been the same for my friends too.
Last memory I have of before moving for college is when we got run out of a local bar and attacked once when I mentioned a harmless prank we played in high school. People were giving us dirty looks the whole way home. One lady, one of the only people who knew about the trip pulled us aside and gently let us know that accidental fire killed 3 freshmen and it was best not to talk about it.
As far as I’m aware, none of us moved back after college.
Sometimes I swear I pass by an upside down tree on my way to work but it’s never there when I turn back.
The memories (flashbacks?) if that’s even what they are, are getting worse. Recently during a thunderstorm, I swerved around a tree that was inexplicably growing in the middle of the road. A road I take to work daily.
But I guess it could be worse. Grandpas friend was institutionalised. He remembers a completely different history and made the mistake of doubling down and insisting on his version of events.
Anyways, the reason I’m posting this is because we were house hunting and I saw a posting for a house. The one across from the dog park.
God, if you see that posting ignore it. And if you for some reason choose to buy it, never go in the copy and paste forest. The locals aren’t crazy.
We’re looking to move further in the opposite direction. The other night, my husband saw a weirdly proportioned tree in the middle of the courtyard.
I didn’t see it.