As The Raven Dreams Podcast - 5 Of The Most Cursed Places On Earth | Strange & Scary Around The World (Vol. 02)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, my friends. It's time for another trip around the world some of the most cursed and or haunted places. As a heads up, we're going to spend some time in the woods, hang out by an alkaline lake, and then just because nature isn't quite creepy or scary enough, we're going to have a look at some more man-made places that are creepy, unsettling, or just downright, cursed. Today, we have our cursed places collection number two. Enjoy. Hoyabashu, the forest of wrongness in Romania. The stretch of road between towns, the shaded forest path, thresholds, liminal spaces, places of transition one passes through on their way to their destination, serene places that often let you feel as if the world is allowing you to catch your breath.

Starting point is 00:01:07 The Hoyabashu seems like one of those places. It's not some untouched primordial forest. In fact, as far as such things go, the forest could be considered quite civilized, as it butts right up against the Romanian city of Klujna Poka. It doesn't announce itself as some kind of ominous or evil place. Nothing about it seems outwardly threatening. It seems peaceful, even. A broad swath of green with trees dense enough to muffle the sound of the city behind you, but not quite imposing enough to make you feel claustrophobic.

Starting point is 00:01:45 And sunlight still filters down through the canopy in those thin and gentle bands. It feels transitional. Like it's a place meant for quiet reflection rather than heart-pounding fear. But the longer you stay in Hoya Basu, the more that initial sense of peace begins to fray. It's not a sudden shift nor a dramatic moment of, oh, I'm not safe. No, it's way more subtle than that. The little things start to stand out.

Starting point is 00:02:18 Things that would be true in any other forest but aren't here. Little things that don't line up with our perception of what is normal or natural in such places. Nothing really jumps out as wrong. Either, though. It's just a profound sense of unease that burrows deeper the longer you stay. You try to just convince yourself that the forest is quiet. Then you realize that it's not that the forest is quiet, really, it's that the forest is selectively quiet.

Starting point is 00:02:52 Some places, there are sound, if it might seem a bit muted. Other places, not even the chirp of the normally ever-present insect can be heard. The forest itself just seems to swallow up what sound does try to trespass on its grounds. Then you start to notice the trees. Trees that are twisted in their appearance. Literally twisted, up in ways that defy logic, or the environment. They bend in ways that defy the wind. The trees that are twisted are so in defiance to their neighbors who appear completely normal.

Starting point is 00:03:32 Everything about them would suggest struggle, disease, or age, and yet none of those appear to play any real part in the state of these twisted trees. In all ways, they appear to just be trees. Trees that maybe weren't told that trees aren't supposed to grow like that. And then there's the clearing. Commonly called Poiana Rotanda, or the Round Meadow, it is a place that, as we all know I love, has tremendous honesty in its naming, because it is, in fact, a nearly perfect circle where nothing seems to grow. Often estimated at anywhere between 25 to 30 meters in diameter, it's not a perfect circle, but close enough that most people who see it describe it the same way. This alone is extremely

Starting point is 00:04:22 curious, namely because humans rarely agree about the shapes of things in nature, yet here, well, Not the case. Now it's important to establish that this isn't some scorched patch of earth. It's not been salted and left barren. It's certainly not contaminated by some kind of Zerg blight. Now, while that's true, it doesn't mean that the grass that does grow isn't incredibly thin and sparse. There's nothing obviously wrong with the ground or the soil. Just very simply, the ground here doesn't support growth in the way other parts the forest do.

Starting point is 00:05:01 Tree saplings just don't establish. The uncanny part is the very forest itself pushes right up to the edge. You go from thick, lush forest and undergrowth to thin, mossy grass, with zero buffer or transitional ground. There's absolutely no evidence of a historic cause, and over the years many tests have been taken of the soil, both academic and informal, and none of them have shown any toxins in any amount that would explain the lack of growth. There are no abnormal amounts of radiation, and not a single chemical culprit anywhere can be found.

Starting point is 00:05:42 The soil itself isn't dead, but it's certainly as if something is very, very wrong with it. Now, I know you're all saying, all right, this is great and creepy, but... I know. You want stories. surely there's more to this place than vibes in some unsettling scenery. And there is. So, let's talk about some creepy goings on inside Hoya Bashou, such as the missing shepherd in his flock. Now, this is probably the origin story for our lovely little spit of woods as far as being cursed or haunted kind of place.

Starting point is 00:06:24 According to local sources, a shepherd in his flock of around 200,000, sheep went into the forest one day and never came out again. No bodies, no stray wandering animals, no evidence, just absence. And this is probably why Hoyabashu isn't really considered a place of death, but a place of erasure. Now, there is, of course, no real way of telling whether this story is literal, exaggerated, or apocryphal. But it has persisted for a very long time.

Starting point is 00:06:58 time. And we like the stories that have been around for a very long time. And as unsettling as an old folklore-style story such as this is, there are even more uncanny stories surrounding Hoia Bashi. They are quieter and even more disturbing for it. There are stories about children who have wandered in a bit too deep into the forest and emerged to find that they had been gone for hours. While they insist it was only minutes, and that they had not even gone that far. Disappearing sheep and time-displaced children taken into account, it's no small wonder that the forest began to gain a reputation as that place.

Starting point is 00:07:43 That place that you don't let your flock graze near. That place that you don't linger too close to when the sun starts to go down. That place where things just don't go right. There's no moniker. There are monsters lurking under the forest canopy, no scary witch woman living in the depths of the treebows, not even some mischievous fairies to blame. Just a quieter kind of wrongness that makes it home among the mangled trees and the mysterious clearing. The forest itself isn't outwardly hostile. It doesn't have a foreboding aura. It's not even particularly dark or scary at a glance.

Starting point is 00:08:28 It's just a place, a place that seems to defy how we expect a place like this to behave. Perhaps that's why it is truly so unsettling to us. Poveglia Island, the island that no one wanted in Italy. When we think of creepy or unwelcoming places, I doubt somewhere within a stone's throw of Venice is anywhere on your radar. Why would it be? Venice is one of the most beautiful and romantic living cities on the planet. You think of Renaissance architecture and moody novels pretending to be of high-concept stories. But so it is, my friends, that just a short boat ride from this wonderful city lies an island that even the gondoliers don't talk about,

Starting point is 00:09:30 and refuse to row anywhere near. Even fishermen don't dare to tempt fate. into our modern times, it is far easier to find myths about the place than a volunteer willing to set foot there. That island is Pveglia Island, and for centuries it had but one use, to take the sick, the dying, and the unwanted, and make sure they never came back. It sits well within the Venetian lagoon, and is only a few short miles from the city. In fact, you can even see the city on a clear day. Gondolas glide, the tourists laugh and life hums right along as it always has. But the very proximity to this gem of the Renaissance makes this island even more unsettling.

Starting point is 00:10:20 The island everyone just pretends isn't there. But you could argue that by existing so close to what is one of the most romanticized and mythologized cities, such a symbol of beauty makes its existence. existence inevitable. With so much beauty, it would only seem the natural course for a place to exist to absorb the things that beauty rejects. And such was Pavaglia's function for so very long. The island itself has been occupied off and on since Roman times, but we don't see it begin to build its dark reputation in earnest until the plague outbreaks of the late Middle Ages. Venice, as a trading city, was uniquely voluntary.

Starting point is 00:11:03 to such outbreaks of disease. Thus, they did the grimly practical thing of creating quarantine islands. Pavaglia was one such island. If someone was even suspected of having the plague, either just sick or having been exposed to it, they were dumped on the shores of Pavaglia, or one of the other islands. Many people reached its shores alive, but very few would ever leave. In the days following the plague outbreaks, Pavaglia would never recover. While other islands were reclaimed and redeveloped, Paglia fell through the administrative cracks, so to speak. Over the centuries, it served as a Lazareto, plague quarantine. It was also the site of many mass burials, with bodies being burned in huge pits.

Starting point is 00:11:53 It was also a holding area for the dying, not of the plague. With the burn pits being so widespread during the height of their use on the island, the ash would mix with soil over time. And while the estimates vary widely, it's commonly agreed upon that a significant portion of Pavaglia soil is composed of human remains. Whether the exact numbers are exaggerated or not almost doesn't matter. Poveglia is an island saturated in death. During the 20th century, the island was repurposed once more as a psychiatric hospital was established on the island, which alone conjures many dark scenarios. However, the verified facts are simple and bleak.

Starting point is 00:12:40 The place existed, operated, and eventually was abandoned. There's no dramatic official explanation, just closure and neglect. Since then, the island has largely lain forgotten. or at least abandoned. Buildings rot while bell towers crumble and vegetation reclaims the corridors that once housed the most vulnerable people in society until they didn't. People still won't live on the island. The gondoliers won't dock there.

Starting point is 00:13:14 The fishermen still cast their lines and nets away from Paveglia. It's not out of superstition or fear of ghosts, but a residual moral weight that people just aren't ready or willing to face. They don't avoid it because something might happen there, but because too much already has. We don't have names of survivors or their harrowing stories. Quite frankly, it wasn't people of note who were sent to places like Pavaglia. And if they were, then socially speaking, they were already dead.

Starting point is 00:13:50 Even if such people survived, they would have returned to a world that had already adjusted to and compensated for their absence. But with places like Poveglia, that's kind of the entire point to make the undesirables go away. On the island of Poveglia, the silence as well as the amnesia is institutional. Lake Nitron, the Lake of Acid, in Tanzania. Not all places need the mystique of twisted trees or the cold brush of institutional callousness to be creepy or even downright deadly. Some places just feel oppressive by what doesn't exist. Others feel ominous because of what happened there. But then some places feel hostile because they are.

Starting point is 00:14:51 Everything about them rejects life as a whole. We touched on it before in Delina Smarity, the Russian Valley of Death. In northern Tanzania, on the fringe of Africa's Rift Valley, lies another place that all on its own has developed a deadly reputation. No hand or man required. If you look at pictures of the place, it looks completely unreal. The water can glow shades of red to rust. The shorelines glimmer and mineral crusts and flamingos gather in such huge numbers that they tinge the entire horizon. pink. It's a beautiful sight. It's also one of the most lethal bodies of water on the planet.

Starting point is 00:15:38 Lake Nitron is what's known as an alkaline lake. What that means is that the lake itself is fed by mineral-rich hot springs and rivers that flow from nearby volcanic terrain. Under the relentless heat from the African sun, water evaporates more quickly than it can be replenished. What gets left behind is a concentrated chemical soup dominated by sodium carbonate and other salts. In practical terms, the water's pH level stays roughly consistent with household ammonia. The water itself becomes caustic. It burns exposed skin and causes damage to eyes. For most organisms, it makes survival impossible.

Starting point is 00:16:23 The temperatures of Lake Natron can reach as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit, Combined with its alkalinity, the environment it creates doesn't just discourage life, it actively excludes it. Animals that stumble into the lake don't always die immediately. Birds that misjudge the water's surface while trying to land. Bats that skim too low while hunting insects. And even small mammals drawn in by thirst can find themselves partially submerged. And that is when Lake Natron becomes... Well, outright terrifying.

Starting point is 00:17:01 The lake doesn't rot bodies the way most water does. Instead, the high mineral content causes a kind of calcification. Over time, calcium carbonate and other salts begin to coat the remains, hardening them. Feathers will stiffen, skin tightens and limbs all lock into place. The animals are preserved in eerie, almost statue-like forms, forever frozen in the shapes they held at the moment of their death. They're not posed, they're just arrested. That's the truly unsettling thing about it.

Starting point is 00:17:41 It violates our natural understanding that death is messy and transitory. To us, Lake Natron doesn't kill, it interrupts. But don't think that all life is unwelcome here. Life, as always, persists in the margin. Or, as Jeff Goldblum once said, life finds a way. The flamingos in particular thrive here. Their hardened skin makes them uniquely suited for the lake's conditions. Thanks to their specialized physiology, the flamingos can tolerate water that would burn most other birds.

Starting point is 00:18:18 And the truly miraculous part, predators can't follow them. Lake Nitron is a kind of safe haven for them, making it one of the absolute safest breeding grounds on the planet. The same water that calcifies one species becomes a bastion of safety to another. There's no lesson to be learned in its chemistry. There's not a warning carved into the sand at the shore. The lake doesn't care whether something lives or dies within it. It doesn't lure victims.

Starting point is 00:18:48 It doesn't even punish things deliberately. It doesn't even react. It just continues being what it is, and perhaps that is why it unsettles us. Places like Oyabashu disturb us by resisting explanation. Places like Pavaglia disturb us because of what we chose to do there. Lake Natron, though, it offers no mystery, no absolution, not even any guilt. The one thing the lake offers is a silent reminder that the world doesn't need intention to be deadly. and that beauty and death are never very far removed.

Starting point is 00:19:36 A Bengar Fort, India's forbidden city in India. There are a lot of places that seem creepy because of what might be there. Far fewer are the places where fears formalized, actually posted on the premises. A Bengar Fort in India's state of Rajasthan is one such place. The government of India has stepped in here. It actually proclaimed loudly and officially, Do not enter after dark. No camping, no staying past sunset,

Starting point is 00:20:11 no overnight presence of any kind. That alone sets Bangar apart from every other haunted place on earth. Bangar was founded late in the 16th century by one Madhoss Singh, a ruler of the Kachwaha dynasty. Mato was also the younger brother of Monsing I of Mughal General Fame. In short, this was not some remote frontier outpost. It was a planned city that was designed with care, prosperity, and permanence in mind. During its height, Bangar was a thriving city, home to thousands of people.

Starting point is 00:20:49 It hosted temples, markets, and palaces for the ruling elite. There were residential corridors for the normal citizens tucked safely behind very defensive. wall. Even today, walking through these streets, it feels less like wandering some ancient fort and more like exploring the skeleton of an entire town that expected to grow old, not just disappear. And yet, by the 18th century, Vengar was largely abandoned, not slowly and gracefully, but abruptly enough that its ruins feel more like life paused than it does of life decayed. Bengar's reputation rests largely on two beautifully interwoven legends, braided together by time and both curses that are deeply embedded in local belief.

Starting point is 00:21:36 The Guru of the Hills is the first one. This legend centers on the Guru Balunath. Balinoth was a holy man who was said to have lived in quiet meditation near the site where the fort was constructed. According to the legend, the holy man was said to have permitted the construction. on the caveat that no structure ever cast its shadow on his home. The warning was explicit. If the shadow of the palace ever touched Balunath's dwelling,

Starting point is 00:22:08 the city would fall. Of course, as the city prospered, the walls were built up, and the shadow inevitably crossed the forbidden boundary. From that day on, it's said that the city of Bangar's fate was sealed. Then there's the sorcerer and the princess. The second legend is darker, more intimate, and far more endearing. The second story centers around Princess Ratnavari, who was held in renown for her beauty and intellect. The legends say that suitors from all across the country sought her hand only to be rejected.

Starting point is 00:22:45 Enter Shingya, a practitioner of the dark arts. He was aware that he could never win her affection. And in his obsession with Ratnavati, he decided that he would ensnare her through his sorcery. So the tales say that Shingya enchanted a vial of perfume intended for Princess Ratnavati. His hope being that its spell would cause her to fall helplessly in love with him. But the princess, being the clever woman she was, saw through the deception. She threw the vial of perfume away where it shattered on a boulder killing the sorcerer. In his dying moments, Sengia is said to have curses.

Starting point is 00:23:22 the princess and the city as a whole. The city will fall and no one will ever live there again. Shortly afterward, disaster would strike. The princess would die, her city collapsed into ruin, and Bangar was left to rot in the heap of history. The really cool thing about these myths and the way they can alternately explain the fate of a city based on your own personal preference, ascetics, curse, or sorcery, is that regardless of which you choose, the end result is this. A city left in ruin. And a taboo reputation that refuses to fade with time. And this is where we get into the really creepy stuff.

Starting point is 00:24:06 From the historical standpoint, the abandonment can be explained, sure. There were wars, invasions, economic stresses put on the city, shifting trade routes, all of it. Any two of these together would give you a strategic reason to abandon the place. However, what no combination of the above can explain is just how complete the abandonment was. I mean, an entire city worth of infrastructure invested in, constructed, and still completely viable, never reclaimed. It was never repurposed. It was just left there baking in the sun. Meanwhile, all around the site, small villages grew up, flourished, even.

Starting point is 00:24:51 But no one ever tried to resettle the ruins of Bangar. Not once. Not even a little bit. And over time, the old legends just cemented themselves into, well, fact. In modern times, Bangar Fort is maintained by the archaeological survey of India, which is the institution that has installed warning. signs at the site that forbid entry between sunset to sunrise. Clearly, the signage doesn't reference ghosts, nor doesn't mention curses. It just simply says entry after dark is prohibited. But why? Officially speaking, the list is completely understandable. Lack of light, dangerous

Starting point is 00:25:36 terrain and wildlife. Locals, however, they'll tell you that those explanations are only part of the truth. The stories about disembodied footsteps, whispers echoing down empty corridors, the feeling of being watched, and sudden sensation of pure dread run deep and rich in the countryside and villages around Bangar. People will claim that those that have disobeyed and stayed past dark have been found injured or mentally disturbed, if they were ever found at all. And at this point, whether those stories are real or just part of the folklore of the place, it doesn't really matter. The belief they inspire has its own kind of weight. Bangar isn't just creepy because of what might be there.

Starting point is 00:26:23 It's creepy because nobody argues about it. In Romania, people debate about Hoibachi. In Venice, they avoid Paveglia out of guilt. In Tanzania, the nature is just built a little different. But in India, fear has become part of food. policy and belief that has become infrastructure. Enforced curfews, regulated entry, fear itself, codified. It just shows how much influence folklore, myth, and belief can have when they survive long enough to become written policy. Humans are very interesting creatures, and were deeply

Starting point is 00:27:03 unsettled by places that are accessible but forbidden, and Bongar sits right at that intersection. You can walk its streets, explore its mysteries, and study its ruins, but only until the sun goes down. That's when the rules change. Accessible shifts to forbidden and therein lies the sense of unease. Bangar is haunted in the societal sense as much as it is the folkloric one. The rules surrounding it are reinforced, not for fear of punishment so much as they are by the fear of consequence.

Starting point is 00:27:39 No one wants to become that person in the story that proves the legends are true. Today, Bangar exists much as it always has since it was abandoned. The structures crumbled and trees reclaiming, the silence replacing the sounds that once filled the busy streets and crowded markets. No candles are left burning, no offerings placed after dark, not a ritual to be performed overnight. Here, even reverence stops at sundown. But in this place, even belief isn't about worship as much as it is about restraint. Bangar isn't India's most haunted place because of ghosts or curses. It earns that title because it shows just what happens when fear outlives the events that caused it.

Starting point is 00:28:31 It turned into a city where history, legend, and policy overlap just enough that no one really wants to push the boundaries. and see what might happen. It's a reminder that sometimes the most powerful curses aren't supernatural at all. Instead, there's social agreements and contracts that exist long after their origins are forgotten. And, once it's agreed that a place is dangerous, it becomes dangerous, whether there's actually anything to it or not. Al-Kihihara, a forest misunderstood in Japan. Northwest of Mount Fuji. Across the cooled and hardened lava flows,

Starting point is 00:29:26 laid down in the 864 eruption, there is a forest. Dense, green, and quiet in the way only volcanic landscapes truly can be. The ground underfoot is porous and uneven. Ancient tree roots sprawl over the surface as opposed to drilling down into topsoil that is almost non-existent. Moss blankets, black stones, caverns, and hollows open beneath the forest floor, all formed when molten rock cooled and collapsed in on itself. That forest, dear friends, is Al-Kigahara, and commonly known as the Sea of Trees.

Starting point is 00:30:07 Although, if we look at it mechanically, it would be something closer to green tree plain. Ow is blue or green, key being tree in hara or gahara equals field, plain, expanse, or wide area. That's the etymology for you. The forest is not an easy place to walk. Its sound behaves strangely there, as the dense canopy absorbs it. Even the wind rarely blows through the trees with any kind of real force. Footsteps seem muted as if the forest itself is listening more than it's talking. compasses are notorious for spinning uselessly thrown off by the iron-rich volcanic rock below.

Starting point is 00:30:47 And it's easy, oh, so dangerously, easy to lose your direction if you stray from the marked paths. But none of this really makes Aokigahara sinister. If anything, it makes it liminal in all the truest ways. For centuries, the forest has existed as a place of transition, A boundary between the sacred mountains and the mundane, the plains. A line between the cultivated land and wild growth. In the Japanese cultural contexts, forests have never really been empty places. They're inhabited.

Starting point is 00:31:24 Maybe not by people, but spirits, memory, the kinds of creatures we would call fay, but they call yukai. Sometimes it's just the forest's own presence that inhabits the space. and they're not threatening by default, just very aware. Long before the modern stigma became attached to it, Al-Kigahara was just a place of stillness. The nickname most people know Al-Kigahara by is not an ancient name, not a traditional one, and it's not even a folkloric one passed down through generations.

Starting point is 00:31:59 It's a modern label applied from the outside, shaped by media repetition and cultural misunderstandings. And most of all, it's demeaning. There is a time and place to use that word, and it's not here. It's not when talking about the amazing natural beauty that this forest embodies. If anything, this forest is a testament to life, not some omen of death. Life there has flourished far more often than it had any right to considering the fleeting topsoil. Reducing it to one single function completely overrights and discounts its own true history,

Starting point is 00:32:38 its ecology, and even its humanity. And worse, it flattens human suffering into spectacle, and it's just not fair. Al-Khikahara should not be defined by death. It should be defined by its quiet, and quiet places tend to attract things the world has no room for. Unlike Lake Natron, Al-Kigahara does not actively reject life. Plants grow in abundance. Wildlife moves through the underbrush, birds nest in the canopy, unlike Delina Smati. In spring and summer, the forest is green, vibrant, and very much alive. The smell of damp earth and leaves dances in the air. In autumn, it positively glows with color.

Starting point is 00:33:25 In winter, the snow softens its contours and deepens its silence. This is not a barren place. It doesn't interrupt you, and that's important to remember. Alkiahara does not guide. It does not correct or redirect. If you're lost, it does not announce that fact to you, and if you're struggling, it will not demand an answer. It merely remains what it is, and to some people, as we've discussed in other sections, that can be dangerous.

Starting point is 00:33:56 In Japanese culture, there is a long and complicated history around notions of endurance, shame, obligation, and silence. Emotional restraint is often more highly valued. Burdens are expected to be carried quietly. Asking for help isn't always as culturally reinforced as it might be in some places. That's not to say that anyone is weaker or stronger than anyone else. Merely that cultural differences do exist, and too often get portrayed out of context. and in this case, that tends to take the form of struggle and suffering being internalized.

Starting point is 00:34:39 Alki Kahara has become associated with tragedy, not because the forest encourages harm, but because it exists at that intersection of silence, privacy, and social pressure. It is secluded, but not inaccessible. It's adjacent to civilization and not fully removed from it. It's just a place where one can be alone without being immediately discovered. It's not culpable, just openly available. The global fixation on Alki-Gahara has actually caused a lot of cultural harm.

Starting point is 00:35:13 It's caused sensational tourism. It has invited a ton of disrespectful behavior, and it's actually overshadowed a lot of conservation efforts. And maybe most importantly of all, it has reduced complex mental health crisis to location-based mythologies. And, perhaps the worst thing, is that it reinforces the false idea that these places create despair, rather than reflecting the conditions that people are living under. Hoyabashu is not evil, it's simply a very strange liminal space that challenges our natural understanding of such places.

Starting point is 00:35:52 Pavaglia isn't cursed. It's merely a place with a very long memory of what happened. happened there, and people perhaps respectfully keep their distance. Lake Natron isn't malicious, just a bit salty. Aukihara doesn't lull people into dark places. It merely offers them a still place to reflect, and sometimes stillness is, itself, overwhelming. The framing isn't just inaccurate, it's also pretty dangerous. Because, when a forest becomes the villain of a story, then the systems that failed people in the first place

Starting point is 00:36:32 go unexamined. Language shapes behavior. Calling Al-Kihara by a reductive sensationalist label turns it into an object, a mere spectacle. It's shorthand, and it strips people associated with the place of their dignity, and it absolves society of its shortcomings. Al-Kahara is what it is. A forest, a place of stillness, beauty, history, and deep cultural meaning. It's an entire living ecosystem. It deserves to be spoken of with care, because how we talk about places teaches us how to talk about people and about situations. The people who have walked Aokigahara respectfully would probably tell you similar accounts.

Starting point is 00:37:23 Not sensations of fear, but of awareness. The sensation of of being surrounded by something old and patient. That feeling that sound doesn't carry far, and that time itself moves differently beneath the canopy. Most people won't tell you that it's oppressive, that it's threatening. They would tell you that it's introspective. And introspection is only dangerous to someone already carrying more than they can handle. Al-Kigahara shouldn't be remembered as a destination of despair.

Starting point is 00:37:55 It deserves better than that. that. It should be remembered as teaching the world a hard lesson about how easily suffering can be romanticized when it's distant and how quickly empathy can erode when tragedy becomes shorthand. The forest itself is not cursed. It's simply a quiet place in a loud world, and that quiet has been misunderstood. So, maybe it's the meaning of the forest that has become cursed. to some extent. If we want to honor the lives associated with Alki Gahara, then the answer isn't to mythologize the forest. It's to challenge the conditions that make silence feel safer than speaking. The most dangerous idea in Alki Gahara has never been the trees. It's the idea that suffering

Starting point is 00:38:50 must be carried alone and must be carried silently. So, my friends, this has been our second little tour of some of the strangest and creepiest places on earth. I know the final section may have been a little bit heavy, but we love telling stories for people in places that can't really speak for themselves. It's kind of what we do, and it's why we do what we do. So, thank you all for giving me the chance to do it. Much love, signed Tom. That's Tom's part of the outro.

Starting point is 00:39:36 And now it's time for my part of the outro. These are some very interesting, and again, I'm going to use the word harrowing because it's a fun word, harrowing write-ups on some of the most cursed places on the planet. Yeah, just, I didn't know a lot of this. Tom always educates me as he writes these as well, so it's kind of nice being able to read them. Our world is definitely a strange one. And hopefully you, my dear listeners, enjoy walking this world with us. If you do, and you're on YouTube, consider hitting the like button, subscribing to the channel, and leaving a comment down below. If you're on the podcast side, specifically Spotify,

Starting point is 00:40:23 consider leaving us a comment and also consider rating the content, not the content, the podcast. Sorry, my words fumbled there. Consider rating the podcast. Honest ratings, help the podcast grow. comments, help the podcast grow. And of course, it's nice to just talk to you guys and hear what you guys think about the stuff that we do. You can send your scary stories into as the ravendreams.com or As the Raven Dreams at

Starting point is 00:40:46 Gmail.com, if you want to email them. If you go over to the website, you'll find other things such as info about my book, info about the podcast and places it's hosted, my social media links, stories I've written, fiction stories, accolades to the podcast, just various things. You can also go to patreon.com slash as the Raven Dreams or if you're on YouTube with the join button down below the video

Starting point is 00:41:11 to get early access to content like this and other things depending on which one you sign up for. Patreon gets you more, but YouTube memberships are also valid. All it said, friends, I hope you have a beautiful day. I hope I see you again here soon, but until then please remember that you are loved, you are valid, you are important.

Starting point is 00:41:28 The best that you can be in the world is a better place with you in it. Until next time, my friends, much love. and sleep well.

As The Raven Dreams Podcast - 5 Of The Most Cursed Places On Earth | Strange & Scary Around The World (Vol. 02)

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