Dark Thoughts: Sweet Tea and the Skunk Ape
My name is Ted Neatherwood and I live in a darker world. The strange, the unseen, and the bizarre are everywhere here and weigh heavily on my mind. Join me and my. . .
Dark thoughts.
Not Like The Other Boys
The Southern United States is a unique place. It’s being dragged into the 21st Century kicking and screaming with a population rooted in the old ways. It’s not hard to see why. There are places here where a thin line separates civilization from the unknown and it’s often the width of a barbed-wire fence. Stories from the first peoples still echo down the centuries and people avoid some places because they’ve always been avoided. Occasionally a person will see the reason why. The South has its own Bigfoot. We call him the Skunk Ape.
What’s in a Name
The name alone says something about the type of encounters we have. In the Pacific Northwest, Bigfoot is known for leaving mysterious footprints in the soft soil and vanishing without a trace. Here, he gets so close you can smell him. It’s not a pleasant smell. Something like rotting garbage. He’s also more violent than his northern cousin. Campsites destroyed, animals torn apart, and sometimes even the campers themselves grabbed and slung around like a rag doll. When you meet a Skunk Ape, you know it.
While the idea of physical attack is terrifying, it’s not typical. What is typical is the taunting.
Bully of the Woods
Imagine for a moment you’re in the woods, not far from a stream. It’s night. You’ve been out checking your trail cameras. You’ve been finding animal parts but no sign of the culprit. You hear the crickets and the normal sounds of the night. Between one step and the next, all falls silent. That’s when the first pebble hits you. It bounces off the side of your head. You look around in confusion. The second hits you, again, the side of your head. Maybe some of the local kids are out having a laugh.
“Who’s out there?” you shout angrily.
Then the rocks start coming from all sides. Some larger than pebbles. All coming for your head and chest. You cover your head and duck down trying to protect yourself.
“STOP IT!”
The rocks stop. Then you hear a loud chirping whistle. Something positively inhuman. Then the sound of something, SEVERAL somethings, in fact, moving through the woods. Large somethings moving slowly and deliberately back into the unknown blackness of untouched nature. You know it wasn’t the kids from town. No one else does though. And no one’s going to believe you.
Further Reading: Skunkape.info
Join us each week for more of Ted’s dark thoughts about the mysterious and strange, exclusively here at Haunted MTL.
So here is our last installment of our AI journey exploring the idea of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad wolf being one and the same. All of these are based upon the AI generated art and prompts using NightCafe and then created as posters in Canva. Feel free to check out Part 1 and Part 2 of this exploration if you missed them.
A non sequitur I know, but I couldn’t resist. If you picked up where we left off you’ll get it.
Seriously?! Again with the cropped off head cop out…
Finally! That was a journey. And not even worth the result, in my opinion.
Anyway, here is a bonus montage I made out of a bunch of additional Red Riding Hood prompts for an article that never happened…
Prompts for Montage:
1.) What if Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf were one and the same being?
2.) Her wolf face peering out of her red cloak, fangs dripping with the blood of another victim, lost in the forest and never found.
3.) Little Red Riding Hood closes in for the kill, lunging from her red cloak, her wolf fangs dripping with blood.
4.) I am Little Red Riding Hood. I am the Big Bad Wolf. I am coming for you.
5.) Howling within, the rage sears forth from the red cloak, discarded in the deep woods. Red Riding Hood succumbs to the lycanthropy.
6.) Heaving breaths. Dripping blood. Red Riding Hood is not what she appears. She is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
7.) Her red cloak masks the fangs hidden below the surface.
8.) It starts with a long sighing breath. Waiting. The wolf within stirs.
9.) Red Riding Hood trembles. She succumbs to the lycanthropy.
10.) The wolf bursts forth from within. It takes over Little Red Riding Hood’s mind, her body, her being.
11.) Red Riding Hood howls. She is ravenous with hunger for blood. The wolf within has taken over. Mind, spirit, body. She feasts on the blood of the moon.
12.) Big Bad Wolf Red Riding Hood ravenous blood moon feast
13.) Blood moon beckons. I. Little Red Big Bad Riding Hood Wolf. Freedom howling night curse.
14.) Beware. Bewolf. BeRedRidingHood. Betwixt. Beyond.
15.) I pad quietly as the forest dissolves around me. Red Riding Hood and Wolf, one and the same.
16.) Wolf within howling dark recesses of the mind, Red Riding Hood lost
17.) Red Riding Hood HOWL wolf bane true existence polymorph within-and-without.
18.) Red howl Riding Wolf dark existence brooding within
So thank you for joining us on another AI art journey. You can still catch the last AI art journey on Haunted MTL here. To see more such devolutions into AI generated art, check out the Will the Real Jennifer Weigel Please Stand Up? blog.
Continuing our AI journey from last time exploring Little Red Riding Hood herself as the Big Bad Wolf… All of these are based upon the AI generated art and prompts using NightCafe and then created as posters in Canva.
How very… Phantom of the Opera predatory… this is definitely not what I had in mind. Maybe something more cutesy?
Ugh. Maybe not.
Wow, that seems like such a cop out, cropping off the head so you don’t have to depict it. And I don’t want to lose the Little Red Riding Hood reference completely.
So no surprise there, I knew that was too many references to work.
And we continued to devolve, join us again next week for the final installment to see how this ended… And again, if you want to catch the last AI art journey, you can find it on Haunted MTL here. To see more such devolutions into AI generated art, check out the Will the Real Jennifer Weigel Please Stand Up? blog.
And as promised in Big Bad Poetry, we shall embark on our next AI journey, this time looking at Little Red Riding Hood. I had wanted to depict her as the Big Bad Wolf one and the same, although maybe not so big nor bad. But it just wasn’t happening quite as planned. All of these are based upon the AI generated art and prompts using NightCafe and then created as posters in Canva.
So I actually like this even better than my original vision, it is playful and even a bit serene (especially given the Sinister style). The wolf is just being a wolf. It’s quite lovely, really. But it wasn’t what I had in mind, so I revisited the idea later to see if I could get that result…
Well, that’s not quite right…
Yeah more of the same…
And as you can see this is starting to devolve quickly. Join us again next week to see how this continued to develop… And if you want to catch the last AI art journey, you can find it on Haunted MTL here. To see more such devolutions into AI generated art, check out the Will the Real Jennifer Weigel Please Stand Up? blog.
