The Crooked Forest
This small clutch of just over 400 pine trees close to the German border and just south of the city of Szczecin on Poland’s extreme eastern haunch has left many locals, hikers and experts collectively scratching their heads at the mysteriously curved, almost scythe shaped, tree trunks that populate this small area of wilderness.
The grove was planted in the village of Nowe Czarnowo in around 1930 and debate has raged for years about how the trunks of these trees could bend to almost 90 degrees, before twisting back into its regular straight shape and growing like a ‘normal’ tree. Stranger still, the oddly shaped pines are enclosed by a surrounding forest of straight pine trees.
Although nothing has ever been definitively proved, most experts believe that some form of, as yet unknown, human tool or technique to encourage the tree to grow this way. Most likely for use in furniture or boat building. Another theory postulates that an extreme snowstorm could have bent the trunks but there is little to no evidence to back that up.
This might be one of the few locations on this list that doesn’t have ‘the aliens did it’ associated with it, but if someone were to suggest the involvement of a witch or a warlock, I wouldn’t dismiss that out of hand.
