Tag Archives: surreal

The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga

Arkane Curiosities

Picture a small thatched hut of warped boards, old rusty nails, and decaying thatch. Bizarre symbols and human skulls adorn the walls. You step too close and the hut rises up, perched atop gigantic chicken legs growing out of the foundation. This is the dancing hut of Baba Yaga, one of the most bizarre and bewildering sights in all of Slavic folklore.

The Dancing Hut

The Dancing Hut was originally a simple wooden cabin, built by Baba Yaga as a place to retreat and conduct her sorcery in solitude. Over time, however, the Hut began to take on a life of its own, growing in size and becoming increasingly twisted and malevolent. Perhaps, Baba Yaga cast a powerful enchantment on the Hut, imbuing it with a sinister sentience that allowed it to move and dance of its own accord.

Why chicken legs? Does Baba Yaga have a fondness for poultry? It might be a nod to the ancient Slavic tradition of using chicken feet in various magical rituals. Baba Yaga simply incorporated this imagery into the Hut as a symbol of her power.

One site mentions that Baba Yaga’s hut might not have always resided atop chicken legs (or курьи ножки meaning chicken bones). Instead it might have sat on smoked legs (курные). This is the practice of setting a house up on wooden struts saturated with smoke to avoid rot. This was common in the houses of the dead where Slavic people stored the ashes of their ancestors. 

Ditching the Broomstick

Baba Yaga didn’t use the conventional methods of flying like a broomstick or flying carpet. Picture, if you will, a gigantic wooden mortar, with a pestle as long as a tree trunk jutting out from one end. Baba Yaga sat in the hollowed-out bowl of the mortar, gripping the pestle like a joystick, cackling maniacally as she hurtled through the skies. Yes, you read that right. A mortar and pestle, the kind used for grinding herbs and spices in the kitchen.

She did incorporate a broom in flying. Not for the flying part, but to keep her peregrinations secret. The witch gripped a broom constructed of silver birch and swept away any traces of her passage. 

Be Warned

For those brave enough to seek out Baba Yaga and her dancing hut, the rewards can be great. The witch is known to possess great knowledge and power, and those who approach her with respect and humility may find themselves blessed with her gifts. 

But be warned: Baba Yaga is a creature of chaos and contradiction, and her dancing hut is but one facet of her strange and otherworldly existence. To encounter Baba Yaga is to embark on a journey that is both perilous and profound, a dance with the unknown that may lead to either enlightenment or destruction.

Tim Kane

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The Backrooms — A Surreal Alternate Reality

Arkane Curiosities

The Backrooms are not for the faint of heart. This is a place both alluring and dangerous, a surreal alternate reality that exists just beyond the walls of our everyday world. No one should ever seek out the backrooms. The risk is too great. Both to your life and also your sanity.

No Ordinary Place

Identical yellow-tinted walls. Flickering fluorescent lighting. At first glance, the Backrooms seem utterly mundane. Yet the more you explore, you realize the truly bizarre place you’ve stumbled into. 

There are no windows, no doors, and no clear sense of direction or purpose. The rooms seem to stretch on forever, each one identical to the last. You may feel disoriented or confused — overwhelmed by the relentless hum that permeates the air. Strange entities inhabit these rooms, creatures that exist outside of our normal understanding of reality.

Gaining Entry

But for those who are brave enough to seek out the Backrooms, there are a few things you should know. Firstl, the Backrooms occupy a kind of liminal space between the digital and the physical. Some have reported finding portals to the Backrooms in video games, while others claim to have stumbled upon them in abandoned buildings or other forgotten places.

These entrances, or glitches in reality, have subtle signs. 

  • Doors that appear suddenly
  • Walls a shade darker than those around it
  • Locations with a sense of unease

When you are ready, simply step through to enter the backrooms.

A Different Kind of Time

Time behaves differently within the walls of the Backrooms. Some have reported losing hours or even days while exploring the endless rooms. Others reported feeling as though they have been trapped in the Backrooms for weeks or months, only to emerge and find that only hours have passed.

This temporal strangeness is often compounded by the endless sameness of the rooms themselves. With no discernible landmarks or signs of change, it can be difficult to gauge how much time has passed or how far you have traveled.

Backrooms Origin

It all started with a picture titled “unsettling room” on a 4chan forum about cursed images. A year later, on May 12th, a user replied to the odd yellow room by saying: 

If you’re not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in
God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you

This snowballed into more comments and posts. Eventually “found footage” made its way onto social media — people exploring the Backrooms. 

A Final Warning

In the end, entering the Backrooms is not something to be taken lightly. It is a place of great danger and mystery, and those who enter may never return to the world they once knew. Yet… for those who are willing to take the risk… the Backrooms offer a glimpse into a world of endless possibility and unbridled imagination.

Tim Kane

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