The anthropologist is a cultural relativist. He or she recognizes others in our midst who are no so very different than the rest of us, even those who “search”, “hunt”, “survey”, and “dig” for those past remains that actively linger today at certain locations. The eyes of the anthropologist “speak” of presences that walk through the accumulated dust of “ruin”. Today, our tech-oriented society has become “blinded” by overuse (and dependency), and merely records a “deviation”, without context, agency, or understanding. This is not the “human” element of what “survives”. The idea that perhaps we are not alone remains an anomaly in this perspective.

Too often, it is called a “paranormal” event, or something from a parallel universe. These lingering remains are something that comes from our world, not another reality that occasionally merges with our own. If parallel universes (rather than symmetrical spaces) are the agencies of these manifestations, why is so much human cultural context contained in these phenomenon?

Those who investigate the darkness of the unknown are told to “ground” the witness. We should “ground”, instead, the investigation in an excavation context of multi-symmetrical space of unfolding time and various levels of past presence.

“Now in the night

the dark walker came

sliding in shadow”

-Beowulf

To “see” in a relative, ethnographic way, is to be open, to take it all in without being taken in, to be aware of the diverse possibilities of the world during the day, and at night. What more could one want as a field investigator? To excavate with that anthropological eye, is to be among those elite who have re-discovered “something” more than a measured anomaly. It is an encounter of the “human” kind. It is the unearthing of the “culture” of the night.