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  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6743",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 6743,
    "subject": "Short Story 125*: Sightings at Twin Mounds",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2015-04-27T20:09:29+00:00",
    "last": "2015-04-27T20:09:29+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<CAF1072yDvUVBt4Ro3orWfT+-SKQk483hMKdhGpW7uE1dok+yNg@mail.gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Marc Aramini",
        "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com"
      },
      "date": "2015-04-27T20:09:29+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth)  Short Story 125*: Sightings at Twin Mounds",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
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          "text": "#SIGHTINGS AT TWIN MOUNDS\n\n\n Inverting the usual order of things, “Sightings at Twin Mounds” was first\ncollected in Wolfe's 1988 collection *Storeys from the Old Hotel* — though\nit was reprinted in the 1996 themed anthology *UFOs: The Greatest Stories*.\n\n\n #Summary:\n\n\n The story does not follow a traditional narrative, instead representing a\ncollation of supposedly objective sources to narrate the events in\nquestion: “This puzzling case presents several unique features; because it\nis of more than ordinary interest, I shall quote several of the documents\nin full.”\n\n\n The first article, which attracted the narrator's attention, is a news\nsnippet entitled “UFOs Spotted Over Park” and mentions the brilliant blue\nand white lights over Indian River State Park in Duke County\n(certainly set near\nRochester, New York or possibly New England, conceivably near the Canadian\nborder, though probably entirely fictional) which residents often see after\nmidnight, with several hundred people witnessing the lights. When police\nwere dispatched to investigate the lights, they found an incoherent man\nthere.\n\n\n Then, the narrator includes the description of the (most certainly\nfictional) Indian River area which includes many mounds, including Eagle\nMound, Twin Mounds, and Snake Mounds. “An Algonquin legend has it that the\nsite commemorates a raid on an Algonquin village by Iroquois, in which all\nthe Algonquins perished with the exception of the chiefs daughter, who fled\ninto the forest pursued by the Iroquois warparty. Encountering the wendigo,\nshe begged it to defend her.” The two were killed, and their remains\ninterred under Twin Mounds. The entry ends with, “This legend may arise\nfrom the similarity of the hemispherical mounds to a woman's breasts.”\n\n\n The narrator then includes an encyclopedia entry describing a wendigo, an\nogre in the mythology of some northeastern tribes - “Hunters lost in the\nforest without food are thought to turn cannibal and, through the effects\nof eating human flesh, become wendigo, fearsome enemies of human beings\npossessing great strength and appearing and vanishing at will.”\n\n\n The narrator requests copies of the *Colbyville Courier*, noting “several\ncarried half-jocular stories concerning moving lights and 'giant\nspaceships' hovering over Indian River State Park”, but quoting only\nappropriate parts.\n\n\n One article details the man found unconscious, Stanley J. Robakowski, who\nwas admitted to the hospital and was not truly considered to be responsible\nfor the lights: “Several witnesses stated emphatically that they had\nobserved moving lights above the trees after police departed with Mr.\nRobakowski in custody.”\n\n\n The narrator looks up Robakowski's information and is certain that he is a\n“contactee” of aliens or UFOs. By the time he arrives in Colbyville,\nRobakowski has been discharged from the hospital. The narrator manages to\narrange a meeting with Robakowski over the phone, but cannot find his way\nto the apartment in the rain, calling to arrange another meeting for the\nnext night when he returns to his hotel.\n\n\n “With a day to kill in Colbyville”, the narrator visits the park and talks\nto people who had seen the lights. “They were described as very bright,\nusually white or blue-white, but occasionally yellow. ?One informant stated\nthey proceeded from what she termed a 'wingless airplane' ? that is to say,\na torpedo-shaped flying object.” He drives to find Robakowski's apartment,\nwhich is actually the upper story of an old house, and sees the shadow of\nan embracing couple on the curtains. He decides to wait and telephones from\na nearby cafe. When he returns, he notices that the door was ajar. After\nringing, he enters and finds blood all over the kitchen, bedroom and hall,\nthen calls the police at once, though he states no arrest was ever made.\n\n\n The doctor who treated Robakowski publishes his account of his stay at the\nhospital in *The Journal of the American Psychiatric Society*, using the\npseudonym Stan Roland to identify Robakowski (though both names in the\nvarious objective sources are described as belonging to a man employed at a\npaper mill). Roland is described as exhibiting neither hostility nor\naggression and as having no history of psychopathic or psychoneurotic\ndisturbance. Having come to the park with friends to see if they would\nwitness the lights, he saw a dim blue light moving in the area of the Twin\nMounds, but others did not believe him. Roland climbed the fence of the\npark and claimed that the trails he had known since boyhood had vanished,\nbeing almost free of underbrush. He saw moving blue and white lights but\ncould not approach them."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "At this point, Roland invariably became agitated, and the order of\nsubjective events is unclear. “She ran into me in the dark.” “I thought I\nheard somebody screaming off to my right — there was a lot of yelling, and\nall of a sudden this girl was holding onto me.” “I was just walking along,\ntrying to go fast, you know” And all of a sudden my arms were around her."
        },
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          "text": "There is no objective evidence for the existence of this mysterious young\nwoman, who Roland said could not speak English and seemed terrified.\n\n\n They run, assaulted by invisible beings. Roland claimed he could see the\nyoung woman but could not see their attackers, “who were thus tactile and\nauditory hallucinations only.” He says that they became separated, but\nstill feels as if “they and she were still searching for him.” The young\nwoman called something that sounded like “Where'd he go?”\n\n\n ?He said that neither she nor those who had attacked them could see him\nnow; nor could he see them.\n\n\n The narrator concludes by saying that UFO contactees have often felt that\nthey were shadowed or threatened, “most frequently by *men in black\n(MIBs).* Physical harm at their hands are rare, ?and murder almost\nunheard-of; and yet murder would appear to have taken place in the\nmysterious case of Stanley J. Robakowski.”\n\n\n More sightings have been sparse and difficult to verify, but two years ago\nan archeological excavation of Twin Mounds was begun, but “All activity was\nsuspended indefinitely when it was discovered that the site had been\ncontaminated by ?modern materials.”\n\n\n ##Commentary:\n\n\n ###I. An Incidental Displacement\n\n\n “Sighting at Twin Mounds” is presented as a series of reports and\nsupposedly objective source stories. According to Wolfe's introduction\nto *Storeys\nfrom the Old Hotel, *this framing technique came about in the following\nfashion:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "\"'Sightings at Twin Mounds' was written last year as a sort of experiment\n... From time to time, no reading gives me more pleasure than supposedly\nfactual accounts of UFOs, black dogs, vanishing hitchhikers, and similar\napparitions, although all such accounts are ultimately unsatisfactory. (I\nrecommend *Sasquatch: the Apes Among Us*, by John Green, should you ever\ncome across a copy.) It seems to me that a good, and indeed entirely\nsatisfactory story could be written in that style. It is a framed story, if\nyou like, in which the frame is the whole story; and if you like it, that\nmakes two of us.\""
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": " The concept of John Green's book involves a series of objective reports\nand interviews to get a complete picture of the phenomenon, with the\nevidence presented logically. This is clearly the inspiration for the\nstructure of the short story, which uses small snippets to paint a larger\npicture (from which the narrator and collator seems unable to draw a final\nconclusion which should be fairly obvious.)\n\n\n While some readers assert that Wolfe's narrators lie assiduously, I have\nalways believed that for the most part we are given the truth, unless it\ncontradicts some other bit of information or forms an identifiable, if\nsubtle, pattern. For example, when Marsch says that he could not write\nbecause of the cat bite in *The Fifth Head of Cerberus's* final novella, he\nmight be actually telling the truth, but in a way that we could not have\nanticipated on our first reading before we understand that the Shadow child\ninfection thrives in the saliva of the mouth. When the narrator of many\nportions of *The Book of the Short Sun* denies being Silk, he does so as a\npsychological defense mechanism that is readily ascertainable: Silk would\nnot admit that his student Horn has died to bring him back, and as long as\nhe can hold on to Horn's memories, it is a way to keep his student\nalive. Subsequently,\nI am reluctant to identify information as a red herring or a useless\nlead without\nan extremely compelling narrative hint that this is actually the case. The\nstory features flashing lights, time travel, the corruption of an Indian\nword, and the factual, objective structure inspired by Green's book, in\naddition to descriptions of the alien cylinders by supposedly objective\nwitnesses.\n\n\n The interpretation which uses the most of these features is the standard\nreading: Stan Robakowski is caught by the blue and yellow lights that are\nformed when unidentified flying objects travel at extreme speeds above Twin\nMounds, and, caught in the wake of their super fast displacement through\nspace, is accidentally displaced in time temporarily (when the underbrush\ndisappears), where he forms a deep union with the young Indian girl. He\nseems to be stuck in a kind of phase shift joining the two times together.\nStan and the young girl are attacked by the Indians which they cannot see,\nwhich “Stan Roland” describes as “tactile and auditory hallucinations.” The\nunion they form leads to a joint occupation of past and present, as he\nfeels he is still being hunted. When the pull finally creates another\nconjunction, our narrator sees Stan and the Iroquois girl embracing on the\nwindow before they are pulled inexorably back into the past and are buried\ntogether under Twin Mounds, to become the legend (and the modern\ncontaminants).\n\n  If we assume that the lights represent the movement of alien ships, the\nredshift/blueshift spectrum and doppler effect allows us to guess that\nthese ships actually emit green light: they would appear blue as they are\napproaching at extreme speeds, and appear yellow as they are leaving (green\nis situated between these two in wavelength). Thus, it is their passage\nwhich explains the displacement of space and time and winds up resulting in\nStan's remains buried in the past as the “wendigo” (which he hears as\n?Where'd he go??when the girl says it) and introducing modern material\nunder the hill, such as his clothes or any artifacts of contemporary\nconsumer technology he carried upon him at the time.\n\n\n This reading firmly places the story as a science fiction story in which\nUFOs incidentally create a vortex in time, possibly unintentionally via the\nwake of their passage, but at least one other interpretation favors an\nextremely unreliable narrator bent on cannibalism.\n\n\n ###II. Framing the UFOs\n\n\n Though I do not necessarily endorse the following reading, available on\nthe WolfeWiki, Robert Pirkola's recreation of events involves the concept\nof a murderous narrator who is attracted to Stanley Robakowski as a\n“contactee” and potential victim for his cannibalistic tendencies, and\nthere are at least two metatextual statements that are offhandedly ominous.\nThe first is the narrator's statement that he had “a day to kill in\nColbyville”, which is the kind of double entendre Wolfe enjoys at times.\nThe second is less ominous but conceivably more remorseful: “No doubt I\nshould not have done what I did,” though of course by the surface reading he\nis simply stating he should not have entered someone's house - rather\nthan saying\nthat he should not have eaten them for dinner (or breakfast).\n\n\n Under Pirkola's timeline, the narrator comes across the newspaper clipping\nfrom the United Press Wire Service while Stan Robakowski is still at St.\nJoseph's hospital, and, his interest piqued, orders recent copies of the\n*Colbyville Courier*. After he travels to Colbyville, he arranges a\nmeeting, and rather than being unable to find the apartment, prevents the\nduplex door from locking (open in anticipation of his arrival) and then\nphones Robakowski to say that he could not find it. Pirkola's recreation\ninvolves the narrator returning that night or in the early morning of the\nnext day, killing Robakowski, and dragging him from the bedroom down the\nhallway into the kitchen (where he eats him) to account for the trail of\nblood found there. He also takes Stanley's personal effects to later bury\nat Twin Mounds. The yellow lights the narrator notes as being reported are,\nin this case, the headlights of his car going to the park. Pirkola makes\nthe following claims:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "The narrator only felt safe enough to report the event more than two\nyears later, after he had kept tabs on whether anyone had been arrested for\nthe murder. In a final bid to mislead would-be investigators, he plants the\nidea that MIBs may have been involved. ...The narrator's interest was first\nattracted by the fact that there was an incoherent man found near a site of\npossible supernatural happenings. This opens the door to occult\nexplanations for such a man's disappearance and the opportunity to feed\nwithout notice. Not only are there apparently extraterrestrial/supernatural\ngoings-on near an occult site, but there is an interesting legend attached\nto the area that the cannibal narrator can later appropriate and use to\ndistract future investigators. The narrator only feels sure that Robakowski\nwas a \"contactee\", which is to say a potential meal, after gathering\ninformation about the occult nature of the event and confirming that\nRobakowski had been psychiatrically hospitalized at St. Joseph's for at\nleast 5 days."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}