The night I got The Fear.

A giant cockroach had me pinned against the bathroom wall and even though the little monster was at a safe distance away in the shower, I felt its tiny legs and tentacles crawl up my leg. Katie peered in through the doorway using the wall to shield her body in case the infestation decided to miraculously fly onto her face. Helpless, we just stared at the beast and tried to coax one another to rise above their squeamishness and squash the colossal bug. Finally, we agreed on a plan and Katie trapped the roach under the garbage can, its contents dumped on the floor, and I draped a towel over that to imprison our little intruder. We ran out of the bathroom arms flailing with the sound of my distinctively unman-like screaming reverberating in the room.

Glowing from our triumph over the insect, we valiantly agree to spend the next night camping out in the nearby rainforest at Kakum National Park. Late afternoon, we strut into the park and sit down at the aptly named Rain Forest Café to stuff ourselves full of yam balls before the restaurant and the park close at 5. The tourists clear out of the park with the setting sun and soon it’s just a Jew and a girl from the North Shore of Chicago facing the elements of the forest. Now the only patrons in the park, doubts begin to cloud my mind as the ranger points us to a dark path that leads to our campsite. He tells us that we are the only ones spending the night and hauntingly wishes us ‘good luck’.

We pause at the base of the trail before getting swallowed into the depths of the vines and trees and I gave Katie a look of encouragement that masked my desire to turn around. As I try to keep our sprits high by telling Katie how amazing it is to have the whole rainforest to ourselves tonight, a bearded man wearing a soiled shirt and tattered green shorts strode past us through the entrance. With swelling determination he walked up to a tree and began callously hacking at it with a machete with undeniable passion and no discernable purpose. I tried to ignore the ominous sight and pushed the thoughts of machete man out of my mind as we began our 15 minute hike into the forest to our camp sight. We didn’t speak of the hardhearted machete wielding man and I clung to the hope that Katie didn’t see him.

We raced the setting sun to set up our campsite. Three slim mattresses sitting on a platform six inches off the ground and covered with a mosquito net (with holes in it ineffectively patched with band-aids from past campers) awaited us. It was my idea to spend the night at the park, but as I was shaking the mattress off of all its dirt and animal droppings the best I could do was feign excitement for ‘roughing it’. The darker it became the louder the forest grew to be and when the canopy consumed the dying sun the noise was deafening.

There’s not much to do in the rainforest at night and we tried to pass the time by drinking from a flask of vodka. I make another comment about how fun this is and Katie doesn’t even humor me with a response. After passing the flask back and forth with no words spoken between us, I shed any notion that we are drinking socially. We are now just taking sips to dull our senses and rid ourselves from the paranoia that is beginning to mercilessly set in. It didn’t work, and Katie took solace underneath our sheets. It was so dark I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face but I remained perched upright at the foot of our platform, face pressed up against the mosquito net, eyes crazily fixated on the emptiness of night.

I thought I’d be plagued by thoughts of spiders biting me and centipedes using all their tiny legs to march on my face or at least afraid of a warthog running through our camp or a Jaguar devouring us. But instead, with great intensity, I focused on even greater irrationalities. Katie and I seldom spoke and although there was no one around us for miles we communicated via cautious whispers. I continued my blind stare out our platform scrutinizing the darkness. The thoughts of the machete man paralyzed me. Every branch falling became his footsteps getting nearer, every gust of wind that rustled the trees was his mad search for us, and every move I made was potential to give away our position in the woods.

Refusing to turn on my flashlight I fumbled around for my bag in search of my Swiss Army knife. Machete man was out there dammit, and he is used to navigating around the forest in the darkness! With intense concentration I unzipped my bag one agonizing notch at a time. Katie broke our silence by asking what I was looking for and I was relieved that her question barely came across as a murmur. Unable to admit that I was searching for a knife to protect us from the imminent attack from a machete wielding maniac that she may have not even seen in the first place I lied and said I was looking for some mints.

She pleaded for me to lie down next to her and I reluctantly left my watching-post and curled up next to her. She didn’t say a word, only grabbed my hand and led it to her violently beating heart. She understands! I wanted to reveal my enduring torture. I wanted to tell her that we need a plan. I fought the urge to advise her that if something should happen we don’t think twice and leave our things behind to run through the forest towards the nearest road. That help would certainly arrive if we could just make it to the road. I wanted to ask if we should leave, if she had heard something or someone circling our bed. Did she see the crazy man when we entered the forest? Instead, I just rested my hand on her heart again and resented being put in a position of consoling when I was quite literally about to shit myself – too scared to venture out to the toilet 20 meters away.

Still, I tried to snap out of my downward spiral into insanity and assuage our fears with rational thought. “Katie, this is a government run park” I told her. “They wouldn’t let tourist sleep her if it wasn’t safe.” Shifting the attention away from murder, I added ‘there are no animals in here that can hurt us’.

Katie replied by pressing that we were in a rainforest in Africa and not Yellowstone National Park in Montana. “There aren’t exactly the same safety regulations, you see” she explained. She went on to point out that we were allowed a self guided tour at the government protected Ussher fort where we climbed crumbling stairs and walked along narrow balconies with the banisters long ago ripped off. She reminded me about looking through the abandoned fort’s kitchen and only upon our exit being warned not to enter that area because they are waiting for the roof to cave-in. “Besides, wasn’t that a government operated bus we were riding with no seatbelts and the cabin filled in with smoke and we nearly crashed.” Damn….she had a point.

It was unmistakable now. Something or someone was definitely slowly and calculatingly walking over the woodchips around our tent. I kept silent, thinking that if I didn’t confirm it with words than whatever was out there would remain some intangible harmless thought within my paranoid brain. Katie finally whispered, “Did you hear that?” I held her tighter with one arm and gripped my knife with the other. I tried to rationalize our situation with her by talking about war and how unjustifiably scared we were right now. I tried to philosophize about the stars and night to change the subject. Nothing worked to subdue the fear and I forced myself to sit up to resume my watch at the base of our bed.

And then it happened. In an instant, the depth of the forest illuminated with a greenish glow and after a brief moment the light collapsed on itself somewhere in the immeasurable distance. But for that fleeting moment, I could see everything surrounding us with great clarity. There was no machete man in the vicinity and the forest actually looked quite serene. With a dropped jaw, I concentrated my focus back out into the forest to try to fathom an explanation for the mysterious light. I turned to Katie and asked if she saw the strange sight, but she was burrowed underneath our sheets hiding from whatever was lurking around. She got up and like two crazed predators we stalked the night looking for the source of the light.

Moments later, we both see a contained glow in the near distance effortlessly and silently flying amongst the trees. The light seemed to be about the size of a large bird and a freakish glowing bird was just what I thought it was. And then the light flickered and disappeared.

We grabbed each other’s arm and helplessly sat there. We didn’t dare move. After a few endless minutes the light came back and maneuvered around right in front of us! It changed directions back and forth so much that I ruled out any chance of it being a bird. Soon after, the bastard began circling our campsite and Katie insists that it rested right on top of our roof. For some reason I can terrify myself with far fetched ideas of murdering jungle men but when a mysterious and unidentifiable glowing orb is circling me in the middle of the rainforest I just find it oddly peaceful.

When we were confident it had finally left I softly exclaimed to Katie, “Wow! We just saw an alien!” unnecessarily adding a new element of horror into our evening. With an almost fanatical conviction, Katie contended that it wasn’t an alien but was in fact a spirit. She explained that the spirit was most likely from the two slave castles we had visited that weekend no more than 30 miles away. If anywhere was to be possessed with lost spirits it would be those damn slave castles and the long treacherous trail it took to get there.

Slowly the forest turned on me once again and any incongruent sound enraptured me. Orbs of light and machetes were too much to handle in the rainforest alone. I reached into my bag of tricks and fed Xanax to me and Katie that I had to knock myself out on the plane and we finally submitted to sleep. We woke up early the next morning and I checked to see if I was wearing the same clothes or if my butt hurt and any other signs of alien abduction. Sure enough the ranger came for our 7am appointment for our guided hike confirming at least that time has elapsed as it should. I asked him if there was any animal in the forest that could produce such a glow and he just shrugged and showed me what a cocoa plant looks like.

One of the perks of sleeping in Kakum is that you get private access to the famed canopy walk before the park even opens. The walk consists of several long bridges suspended high above the forest canopy allowing a unique view of the woods from above. I had done the tour months earlier with Liz and Laura and the ranger then gave a long speech about safety. He reassured the group by enumerating all the regulations and explained that a ranger inspects the bridges first thing every

morning to ensure everyone’s safety.

Well, our guide had to unlock the entrance to the canopy so we knew we were the first ones there. Then, he tells us he has to go unlock the exit and he’ll meet us on one of the suspended platforms in the middle. I just laughed and took the responsibility of checking for the bridges durability by jumping up and down on each walkway. It was secure. We stood on platform number 3 and watched for monkeys. Our frustrated guide told us that he knew they were around, but they were being stubborn. ‘Look, you’re standing in their feces right now’, he cheerfully pointed out.

We never did see any monkeys and I was just happy to have survived. Katie and I gratefully left the park and visited an alligator sanctuary where we had breakfast and talked about how crazy and pathetic we had been the night before.

We continued on our trip heading further west along the coast and were back in Accra on January 6th to celebrate Aaron’s birthday with his family who were visiting. Sitting at the dinner table we try to explain to Marta and Rob how terrifying our ordeal was since they had recently recommended it to us and billed it as the best sleep they had in Ghana. The table seemed interested in our forest episode and after a series of prodding we reluctantly revealed our sighting of the mysterious orb of light. Aaron, who had visited the park a couple of weekends prior, passed around a picture he had taken which gave us the chills. The picture was of a plaque that was displayed in the small children museum in the ranger station.

It reads: The mysterious mmoatia


A flickering light in the distance or a whistling sound may signal the presence of the mmoatia, one of the best-known forest spirits. With their black, red, or white coloring, and feet pointing backward, these foot-tall dwarfs will make mischief with unwary travelers.

Be it light, aliens, spirits, or foot-tall dwarfs – I am never going back to Kakum National Park.