Delays and resistance [Research 2.1]

Research Update, 2.1

Solid leads:
-the baubau (its own entry to come soon).
-Pagan and Early Christian sacrifice and appeasement rituals. (Horrific doesn't come close.)

Reminders:
-Respond to my advisor's email about initial compilation of the interviews and narratives. (Side note: remember not to agree to everything she asked for.)

-Start sifting through the historical perspectives and start matching them with the modern perspectives I've been gathering. (This corpus is so overwhelming, oh god. I have enough material for a series of papers. Maybe even a book.)

-Go through the Smith's Mills footage from over the summer. I know I have the field work logs somewhere, and the photos and videos. Now it's just a matter of seeing if any of it is usable.

And something else weird, and extraordinarily frustrating. So much of my data between the beginning of last Spring and the end of this Summer has been so irrevocably fucked. I have no idea how. Pictures are thoroughly distorted, text files can't be read.

I have a feeling it's just improper data storage methods, but holy shit is this a setback.

(Personal note:)It's been quite a while since I last came through here. And to be honest, trying to comb through what's here is pretty hard; trying to sift out what is research and what is crap will be almost impossible.

So, an update. I'm not dead. I am medicated, to some varying level of success. I am coherent, which is just short of miraculous. Brief ER trip last month. Which at this point is not unexpected, but necessary to note.

Progress of a sort

I've been to Smith's Mills. Video coming soon.

Started doing some preliminary research yesterday. Started to see some patterns emerging. Why these folk figures hundreds of miles apart seem so similar. It's eerie.

I plan on unpacking those stored rar files pretty soon. See what kind of things I was leaving for myself.

Housekeeping

I'm going to try to wrest this back in the direction of using this blog for its intended purpose, namely that of a research blog. It's helpful to sort of have an autoethnographic account of my experience while I'm researching this, but let's be real, it's not exactly helping me with my studies.

Speaking of which, I got an email from my advisor today asking me about progress on my topic, and I kind of want to light myself on fire. It's doesn't help that I haven't disclosed any of the... problems I'd been having. I mean, it's hard to be seen as credible when you admit to being so paranoid that you move your living situation every few months in any field, let alone academia. 

Aside from going through all of that paranoid locked up bullshit from those .rar files, I need to recollect all of the leads I'd been going through.

So far, for this project, I've looked into the folklore figures of Old Nick and Old Scratch, and how they originated from the ancient European folk figures of the water demons (nykyr/nicors, from which Nick is derived), and the wood demons (skratta, or skrat, from where Scratch comes from).

I feel stupid for missing it in the first place, but my advisor also pointed something out to me.

What about boogeymen?

Both Old Nick and Old Scratch had cultural connotations that hovered between the actual form of the Christian devil, but also more pagan and just as feared figures of nature gods. And there's another constant theme: the idea of taking children.

And what is the biggest threat of the boogeyman in any culture? Stealing children. There's definitely a link here to be explored. I'm going to hit up the library today, see what I can find.

Maybe I can find something to link The Man in the Woods to these boogeymen figures. It's pretty clear that the Millpond Man was considered to be a child-stealer. Maybe I can find some kind of regional or cultural link.

Unfortunate circumstances

I can't believe it's been over a month since I came here. 

I wasn't entirely forthcoming, in my previous posts. At least now, I think I can offer up a little more information.

Partly the reason why I've been so scarce lately is that within the past year, I've up and moved my entire life half a dozen times. Each time partly fueled by the fear that I've been followed. Stalked, I guess you could say, if that doesn't sound cliche or overly dramatic.

So I guess it would be understandable that my focus is a bit fractured. I thought I was being followed, I was under a heavy work burden, and dealing with personal issues.

Except no one was following me. At least, no person has been following me.

I really don't see how I could have been so willfully blind.

I'm continuing on, anyway. With my research, with my life. I've got a new change coming, and I want to be able to be equal to it.

I plan on doing maybe a findings meeting soon. Last time was pretty informative, for me anyway, and maybe this time I can get some perspective again.

Stay in touch, guys.

Archived files

Alright, so here we are. I've needed a chunk of time to sit down and sift through all this stuff.

There's actually not too much on the archive. Two pictures, a transcript of some kind, another archived file. The legend on the side says "the time has come". Okay.

The two pictures are somewhat more disturbing. Both are corrupted. One looks to be a picture of a
handwritten passage, and the other is another handwritten poem.

The second is my research journal, and it's my handwriting.

While this should surprise no one by now, I don't remember either of these. It's still disturbing to me, especially as I've apparently written something that I can't remember. I definitely don't know the handwriting in the first one.

Apologies and a data dump

I suppose I could extend apologies to myself as well, but mostly I'm offering apologies to anybody who's been following this.

I didn't drop into another fugue state or anything, I've just been kind of run ragged by life. In between school and other life things, I've barely had time to tease at this problem.

Anyway, the USB, and the numbers string. I misspoke earlier, when I said all the files were password protected, which would have been a neat trick for someone who's experiencing clouded thinking and insight to be able to hack a way into Windows and password protect individual files.

Unfortunately, my [edit] does not come equipped with fancy new computer skills. Just chunks of lost memory, and weird wounds on my body.

What I should have said was that there's a password protected archive on the USB drive.

I did a cursory check on the file-- the password, "thetime" does work on it, but I haven't had the chance to comb through it.

For now, I'm just going to upload it somewhere, and leave the link here, just so that I have it backed up.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B54jZHiorZmqdjJFMGROZE5CeG8/view?usp=sharing