text: What I am about to relate may come across as the ravings of a madman. At the very least, it might seem like the whimsy of a lonely daydreamer. In all fairness, I wouldn’t ordinarily believe it myself but I swear, every single word of this earnest account is true. While reading my testimony, you may feel it is a farcical fantasy or mischievous hoax. It is not. I am trapped in a place ‘neither here nor there’. I simply ask that you consider all of the details with an open mind. Scientists have long believed other dimensions and parallel universes could exist. What I stumbled across floating high in the sky above a local mountain deserves no less logic or consideration. Driving home a few nights ago, I was stunned to see a rugged mountain range, up ahead in the distance. It was incredibly high in elevation and covered in alpine snow caps. While I know of several quaint ‘mountains’ in the area, none of them are nearly as majestic as the one that loomed right in front of me. It was massive and had breathtaking peaks and glacial-carved valleys, down below. Honestly, it was so surprising I did a double take. It didn’t seem possible for such an epic wonder of nature to be so close to my home, unbeknown to me. I’d made the same drive a hundred times before and never saw it. Upon closer inspection however, I realized it was really just an optical illusion. A nebulous cluster of clouds were perched relatively low in the horizon. They tricked my eyes into believing the real mountain beneath it was infinitely taller than it actually was. The top of the ridge-line was so obscured by a thick blanket of fog that it appeared there was a frosty snowcap, perched thousands of feet higher up in altitude. I smiled at the coincidental camouflage that initial misled me and continued on home. The thought of such magnificent terrain nestled way up in the clouds started me to thinking. ‘What if?’ It was a wonderful, albeit temporary escape from my mundane personal life. I spent a few more moments on the grandiose idea of scaling the ice-shrouded behemoth and then moved on to more practical matters. Admittedly, I didn’t give it another thought until my routine commute back home the following night. The stunning topographical illusion was back again and if anything, it looked even more breathtaking than the first time. I marveled at how alluring and charismatic it appeared but obviously I knew it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be; yet it looked as solid as the pavement beneath my tires. There were no mountains of that splendor for over a thousand miles but I was still hypnotized by it’s deceptive lure. Nightfall was still two hours away. I entertained the fanciful notion of driving toward it, just to see when the mirage would fade. I had nothing better to do. Back and forth I went in my mind ‘for’ and ‘against’ the idea. When I approached the crossroads of my planned destination and the route to the mountain, I made the whimsical (and regretful) decision to change course and head straight toward the seductive ‘peak’. Of course I was driving toward an actually mountain a few miles away but the difference in height of what I saw was ‘night and day’. I’d been to the top of John’s Mountain many times but honestly, it was little more than a ‘molehill’ in comparison to the stunning phantom monolith I was drawn to. The imaginary extension dwarfed the modest real mountain below that I was used to seeing. At some point I knew the blacktop would end and the rocky illusion would fade away. I guess I just had to see it for myself. I knew the road well enough leading to the top but the extra heavy cloud-cover present created an additional level of confusion. Some curves in the highway were less familiar than others. Many of the caution signs seemed new. Once I reached the true summit of John’s Mountain, I expected the winding roadway to continue back down to the other side. Surprisingly, the rugged asphalt just kept going upward. From that pivotal point forward, everything I saw was completely new. The sensation of driving on a road I knew didn’t exist was absolutely terrifying. It felt like my car was going to careen off a jagged cliff at any second. I expected to plummet to my death but I still kept going anyway. It was a bit like descending down an endless flight of stairs in total darkness. Each moment forward into the journey required a substantial level of faith that I didn’t possess. Despite my reluctance, I elected to trust what my eyes saw over what I knew to be true. The full juxtaposition of truth and fantasy was mind-numbing. Amazingly, I drove up a mountain incline I knew had actually ended many miles back. My car continued up the winding lane and I took in the phantom scenery as if it were real. Slowly as I climbed in altitude, the lush vegetation gave way to frost and then heavy snowfall. My car didn’t have winter tires installed but in light of the total lack of reality I was experiencing, I didn’t believe it mattered. Everything was a stark-raving hallucination as far as I was concerned. It had to be. I was almost tempted to sit back and let the mirage take me where it wanted to go but I also felt a gnawing need to maintain some semblance of control. Steering the wheel offered me that illusion. The scenery going forward was fantastically picturesque but what I saw in my rearview mirror turned my blood to ice. The road behind me slowly dissolved into a misty haze of nothingness! There was nowhere to turn the car around, and no place left to return to, apparently. I was on a one-way excursion to the top of a phantom peak in the foggy realm of unexplained fantasy. Of course I could have just stopped the vehicle but that wasn’t going to be a long-term solution. I was in the middle of a postcard-like fairy-tale odyssey. I kept weaving around the mountain road through the frigid wilderness, hoping it eventually led back down to reality at some point. It didn’t. Then I reached the end of the line. The narrow wheel ruts I’d been straddling in the virgin snow for the past few minutes ended. I judged myself to be at least a thousand feet from the summit. I watched in horror as the clouds completely sanitized my path. The entire road and all evidence of my trek ‘evaporated’. It was as if I’d always been in this frozen wasteland. I was ill prepared to travel on foot in permafrost but I did have a blanket to wrap around me and some hiking boots in the trunk. It made survival at least temporarily possible. I don’t know what fantasy dimension of Hell this is, but I still have hope it intersects with the real world at some point. I’m sending this urgent plea for help via my cell phone. I have the modest shelter of my car and some food and basic supplies. Perhaps a rescue helicopter can fly up here and free me from this icy hell before I become permanently entombed.