thecarpetmatches Thread

This will definitely be buried but I can assure you it was real, and I have a photo to prove it.

Back in college some friends and I went to camp on one of the many small islands off the coast of Savannah, GA. We had originally planned on camping on what is called "Little Tybee," but the water wasn't cooperating that day and we couldn't get around to the front of the island where you could camp from the inlet where we were, so our boat driver gave us another option - go camp on a small, further inland island that didn't really have a beach. We're bummed, but decide to just go along with it since we have all of our gear and all of our guy friends are gung-ho about getting fucked up around a campfire.

We finally get to the island and it's almost dark, so we immediately pitch our tents and then go explore a bit of the island. It was a long island, very thin probably not more than 20 ft across, and was mostly occupied by an equally long line of trees. When I say line I mean that literally - one tree, then another 3 ft away, then another 3 ft away, so on and so forth. We're following this very specific line of trees when we come to a very big, dead one. It is the only dead tree on the island, so far as we can see, and we're very humbled by its majesty. Obviously this tree did not die in a pleasant way - it was covered in termites and bugs and the overall feeling my friend and I got as we sat next to it was sadness and longing. We both decided this was a good place to sit down, meditate, and smoke a bowl in honor of the tree. I'm no hippy-dippy mother fucker either, I just love nature and I knew this tree was somehow significant. Anyway, here is the picture of the tree, complete with moon that is rising.

After a while we felt we'd paid enough time to the tree and it was getting dark anyway so we headed back to camp. On the way back to camp we found some small animal skulls, probably raccoon, and since we're weirdos who collect that type of shit we kept them and put them outside of our tent which was away from everyone else. Eventually we all did get very drunk and at one point my friend started to get sad - she really missed her boyfriend who had broken her heart and originally planned the entire trip. I told her hey let's go talk about it, make you feel better, etc, so we go back to the tent and chat.

We're both sitting indian style facing each other, talking about our shared sorrows. She tears up talking about her loss and how empty she feels and I was equally as empty, myself having just lost a good friend. At that moment I feel like our hearts were open - I'm not sure how to describe this except that it's based on energy. Most of our lives we are closed off to others so in this moment we were both very open and vulnerable. I'm looking her in the eyes when all of the sudden I feel a hand rubbing my hand in a comforting way. Y'know, how someone will use their thumb to roll in circles on top of your hand? Anyway, I think that's sweet, she's trying to comfort me, when I suddenly get the feeling 'wait, is this really her?' and the grip tightened immensely in a way no person has ever touched me, and then suddenly it was gone. During this I had obviously looked down at my hand but when I snapped back up she was white, looking at me so confused - "Were you just rubbing my knee?" she asks, and I say - "No, were you just rubbing my hand?" Obviously we weren't. We both look at each other for a while longer and decide it's time to go rejoin everyone else. When we left the tent we noticed the skulls were gone, and knowing how our friends are we thought someone just saw them and picked them up. Fast forward to the evening and we're all taking pictures, messing with long exposures with the fire for cool effects, getting drunk out of our minds and eventually passing out back in the tent. We wake up and take a look at the camera to see how last night really was (we'd blacked out at some point) and found THIS on the camera. None of the other photos we took that night ended up getting the desired "long exposure" effect we wanted except this one. I realize at this point you're probably thinking "this chick just caught some particles and some light," but what we didn't know is that this island was actually recently excavated for an indian burial ground. One of the figures looks like he's lighting his peace pipe on our fire.

Back to the skulls, none of our friends took them. We grilled them super hard about it too because after seeing that photo we felt that some spirits must have visited us while in that tent. Perhaps they took them upon their departure - honestly we'll never know, but I'll never forget that night. None of our other friends had anything weird happen to them, so our thinking was that we paid homage to a tree that meant a lot more than we realized, and that's why the spirits chose to show themselves to us.

Anyway, that's my story.

Edit: a word