buaku

"I don't know what the hell's in there, but it's weird and pissed off whatever it is.."

John Carpenter'sThe Thing


I remember seeing this movie when I was a kid and it scared the hell out of me. The last time I watched it was when I was working up in Barrow, Alaska. If you haven't seen the movie, it's about a shape-shifting alien that terrorizes a remote Antarctic station.

I worked with a man named Jim up there in Barrow who had also spent time at Byrd Station in Antarctica in the early 70's. He liked horror movies and loved telling me stories about strange lights he'd seen down there and Admiral Byrd's "little green men." The most interesting story was about Carl Disch. There are many theories as to why this man disappeared, but Jim's favorite was "They got him."

Up in Barrow, Jim told me of stories by Inupiat hunters who have seen strange lights on the ice while hunting. The hunters, thinking that it might be other hunters, went after the lights on their snow machines. But as they would get closer, the lights would move further away, then disappear. The Inupiat said that the lights were the spirits of those who died out on the ice. I think they were mirages or reflections of the lights on their snow machines. Of course, Jim says that the lights are "Them."

More about Carl Disch