Walhalla, Garden of the (Luck) Gods

Walhalla, South Carolina. “Garden of the Gods”, as the city’s tagline goes. And a perfectly accurate tagline too, as we’ve discovered.

Our first visit was sparked by a desire to explore a new tunnel–any tunnel. I’d looked at an online map of the region and merely searched for “tunnel”. Stumphouse Tunnel was the one which caught my eye first. It was an incomplete railroad tunnel from the 1800s and seemed fairly intriguing. So my partner and I packed our bags, made a reservation at a cabin, and left as soon as the weekend arrived.

We arrived at the small southern town of Walhalla soon enough. Quaint, and somewhat typical. We then drove up the mountain road towards our chosen tunnel, and parked. An overwhelming strangeness, standing before the mouth of it. It beckoned us, it pulled us in. Into its darkness. A chorus of water droplets fell around us, the soft sound mixing with echoing human voices. All this combining into a beautiful accidental song, a hazy underground communication. Like those “spirit boxes” which jump rapidly through different radio signals, creating a wall of noise which sometimes opens up into a clear signal, into an otherworldly new vista.

The atmosphere inside was intoxicating. Each step was a step forward into an unknown world, into unknown mental landscapes. The darkness was thick, yet we were amazed we could still see. As though we ourselves were changing, transforming into a creature of the night. Becoming more and more goblin, with each step. Perhaps our teeth were growing longer too, perhaps our ears were growing wide. At the very end, a large grate blocked our path. We would not be allowed to pursue our tunnel’s magnetic pull fully. A distant light flickered far away in the distance, hinting at secret wonders not meant for us. I slipped an offering through the grate; a sticker I’d been carrying in my pocket. One of our magick sigil stickers. My partner put their ear to the grate, and listened intently. They had an overwhelming sensation of someone on the other side of the grate, with their ear to it, too. Listening to us listening to it.

Eventually we left. We tried to walk to a waterfall, but had to cut it short when my sensitive ankle started giving me trouble. So we decided to explore the little town below, instead. My partner snagged their new tights on an ugly metal wreath in front of some shop. Inside another, we purchased an antique autoharp, only to later find out it was broken and overpriced. The day seemed to have shifted. Bad luck seemed a palpable force.

So we stopped at a little bar, attempting to soften the mood with an alcoholic potion. The alcohol worked its mysterious magic, and our moods soon enlivened. Tipsy and giddy, we drove back up the winding mountain road. An inadvisable idea perhaps, but there’s a special kind of exhilaration to be obtained by mixing three beers with a view of a sheer cliff drop off two feet away. We made it back anyway, back luck or no.

In our cabin by the lake, with our moods still rapidly fluctuating from pretty-ok to utter-shit, we decided to take a small dose of mushrooms. We sat next to the lake and watched the sun come down, our heads softly massaged by psychedelics all the while. A hazy mood draped over us both, as the night fell.

We happened to have some starburst candies with us – candy being a minor road tripping vice of ours. Before falling asleep I decided to leave three brightly colored starburst candies on a rock by the lake as an offering to the unseen entities of the forest, whatever they might be. The candies were yellow, pink, and orange. Later, I had a restless night’s sleep, and woke often. A feeling of being watched hovered on the edge of my consciousness. In the early hours I dreamt that three praying mantises the size of a small dog and with the bright coloring of the candies I’d left had landed on my back, in a strange kind of acceptance ritual. I wasn’t scared by them so much as a bit uncomfortable, and nervous. I asked my partner if they could be so kind as to gently remove them from my back, and place them back on solid ground.

We woke up early the next morning, feeling rather odd. We decided to start the day with a second trip to the tunnel. To try and get some voice recordings in it, before all the people arrived. On the way out I noticed that the candies were gone. Taken by the mantis spirits, maybe. We got in the car and turned the key–it wouldn’t start. Shit. Another setback. I felt as though the entities of Walhalla had absolutely everything to do with it, with this weird luck of ours. A hive of tricksters. We walked around the rim of the lake towards the park ranger’s office, my ankle smarting again. We caught the ranger there, thankfully, and he drove us back to our cabin. There, we hooked up some jumper cables, and then got it running again temporarily. The first auto shop we went to downtown had the battery we needed, but no one to install it—just a lone cashier. So we drove to the second shop in town. They had someone who could do the install, but not the right battery. So back we went to the first. We bought the battery there, then drove it over to the second shop once more. We begged the mechanic to put it in. He agreed, that saintly auto-man. The whole long episode was so comically absurd, we couldn’t really help but laugh through the pain. We left Walhalla then, never expecting to return.

But then we did. It was about a year later, and we found ourselves driving down the road towards Walhalla once again. On the way, we came across a homeless man at the crossroads, begging for change. My partner said it would be auspicious for our trip if I gave him something, so I handed him a $5 bill. On the outskirts of the Walhalla, a large wooden bigfoot cut-out stood on the side of the road. We saw it out of the corner of our eye, and it scared the hell out of both of us–as though it were the real thing. Anyhow, we were heading straight to the tunnel again. This time, we were planning to film and record inside her. Part of a visual album which we had been working on called “Land of My Soul”, the climactic scene. We arrived around midday, just as some people were leaving. We reached the mouth of the tunnel, and I began recording. I figured I’d film while I walked in, to at least keep it going until I ran across someone, or until the camera went dark. We entered, and kept walking. No one here. Not a soul in sight. At least, no human ones. I kept walking, my camera kept filming. My partner sang automatic sounds and words. We walked the entire stretch of the tunnel without a single interruption, and the camera never went fully dark. What luck! I couldn’t believe it. We managed to get everything we needed within the first five minutes. As we stood by the grate at the end, groups of people began to arrive, crowds of families. What perfect timing we’d had. We could’ve waited all day and never gotten a fully empty tunnel. Apparently, on this particular visit, our luck would be good.

We left then to walk on a nearby forest trail, one which promised some additional tunnels. Along the way, an unassuming rock terrified me. I’d seen it out of the corner of my eye, and, somehow, my mind had thought it a predatory animal. This was the second time today that I’d been frightened by something inanimate–not a thing that usually happens to me. We mused then that perhaps, on such occasions, there is in fact something real and menacing hiding there. That an unknown cryptid or surnatural entity has camouflaged itself as a non-threatening object, and that what you are sensing below the threshold of consciousness is the reality behind the mask. Ha, and what if the reverse is true too? What if sometimes trees, rocks, and other inanimate objects camouflage themselves as menacing cryptids? A ruse, to chase off or intimidate some ill-mannered, presumptuous human? Yes, it could be. It could.

The first tunnel on the trail was cut into the side of a mountain. The mouth was low and small, so I got down on all fours and scurried in. It was dark inside, and there was a large metal fence further in that prohibited full entry. I touched it, and it felt wet. I listened, and I thought I heard something strange. Did the gate prohibit entry, or did the gate deny exit? Was it a prison, or defence? My partner came in after me. They pulled out their recorder, and read a poem to the darkness, one which they’d written earlier. A sort of hymn, a love letter to our Stumphouse Tunnel:

song turned to ice
turned to liquid
turned to stone
lute under mountain
play me a tune
a tune to bring the bright world
into the dawn
there is a passage
into the dream
and a song of the dream
the water is the word
and the wing
drift slowly
into a new time
hollow house
beauty in the space of you
the air that holds you
is the air you are
our breath becomes the dawn

The first reading was perfect, but I urged a second recording just in case. They refused, saying they’d become filled with an overwhelming feeling the longer they’d stayed in here, a very heavy emotion. They wanted to leave immediately. So we made our exit. As for myself, I felt more or less at home there, and they joked that I was a secret goblin. Between my love of tunnels, and my fascination with crawl spaces, perhaps they were right. In fact, I did once let a goblin crawl in my head and pilot me like a mech during an occult ritual with some Atlanta witches. But that, dear reader, is a story for another time.

We continued walking, eventually reaching the final tunnel, and the end of this branch of the trail. This particular one was fully underwater. We sat down and watched in silence. A frog danced and croaked in the murky stew at its mouth, while the sun shifted merrily across the stones. The patterns of light along its edges were like scales on a great lizard’s back.

Much later, holed up in a rundown motel, we sat staring at the grey cinder block walls, thinking back on our day. I happened to have some tropical mentos candies on the side table next to me. Our roadtripping vice, as I mentioned earlier. I decided to repeat our earlier experiment. I pulled out three of different flavors, went outside, and placed the three round orbs side by side in the parking lot. Offerings to my little goblin friends. I was a bit worried about attracting gremlins to the car again, but then, our luck seemed to be much better this time. So I took a little risk.

We turned on the TV. Leprechaun 2 was playing. The leprechaun in question was seen chasing a man and a woman around a cave, trying to get some special golden coin from them. He was tricking them, using magic to pull the wool over their eyes. Rewriting the rules of reality. A tricker par excellence. And this cave he was hunting in, it was not at all dissimilar to our Walhalla tunnels. Sometimes, the Goddess Chance can offer up her synchronicities through the humble medium of camp.

Another restless night waited for us, a night thick with dreams. For myself, I dreamed of exploring a strange asian strip mall, emptied out and decaying. I ran across a friend there called Raelixe, and she showed me a journal covered in drawings and asemic writing. Then, she showed me a shark plushie she was carrying. It had a creepy set of human teeth in its mouth, and the teeth were covered in blood or possibly lipstick. Lastly, she told me of a new internet discussion board she’d just set up, the topic of which being the occult connections between the show Seinfeld and the apocalypse of the Book of Revelations. Would I be so kind as to join it, she asked? I don’t know if I ever did, because at this point, I woke up. As for my partner, they spent their night dreaming of finding lost items in a ditch. Coins, jewelry, keys. And then, of dropping these little coins everywhere inside a hotel, and of having to meticulously pick them all up again.

In the morning we threw our clothes on, grabbed some dull motel breakfast, and headed for home. We’d considered exploring the local mountain trails more, but after thinking on it, we had decided against the idea. In Walhalla, it’s best not to push your luck.