the 7 scariest forests on the planet

The forest often seems to be something eerie and mysterious. No wonder the world folklore is full of stories about how poor children and young girls were brought and thrown into the forest wilderness, how robbers, predators and various evil spirits operated there. Today we will tell you about the forests that can inspire fear due to anomalies, legends, historical facts and dangerous inhabitants.

On the bank of the Oka River near the village of Tarnovo in the Ryazan region, there is a so — called Drunken Forest-a rectangle of crooked coniferous trees. Curiously, only the coniferous trees are bent and intertwined in this place, and the deciduous ones are straight, as usual. Researchers and scientists have repeatedly tried to solve the mystery of the Drunken Forest and agreed that there is a geomagnetic anomaly.

Crooked forest is found in some places on the planet, including on the Curonian Spit on the Baltic Sea coast. There, the coniferous trees look as if they were bent and twisted by a giant, which is why the forest got the name Dancing.

According to one of the scientific versions, the cause of the curvature could be the reaction of the trees to the vortex magnetic field: it twisted the axes of the trees and created an extraordinary landscape.

Also, the anomalous krivolesye can be seen in the vicinity of the village of Nowe Tsarnovo in Western Poland. About 400 twisted trees, facing north, were planted by the Germans during the occupation in 1930. According to scientists, the Germans were going to make furniture, ship hulls and plow tools from bent wood, but how exactly they achieved the amazing bending of the trunks is unknown.

In Japan, there is a sinister place-Aokigahara. This is a dense forest at the foot of Mount Fuji on Honshu Island, which has been popular with local suicides for more than half a century. Since 1970, police have been conducting regular body searches in Aokigahara, and each year they find between 70 and 100 bodies. The most common ways to escape from life in the forest are hanging or poisoning with medication.

Of course, the authorities and social organizations are trying to break the tradition and prevent new deaths. There is a sign at the entrance: "Your life is a priceless gift from your parents" - and a helpline number. However, suicide has not yet ceased to be popular in Japan: in 2014, 25,374 cases of suicide were registered (in 2003, there were 34,427).

Aokigahara is the second most popular place in the world to say goodbye to life after the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and, if not for the tourists scurrying back and forth, it might have broken this mournful record. Books have been written about the suicide forest, films have been made, and songs have been sung that romanticize and popularize this place. For example, in Japanese writer Wataru Tsurumi's book The Complete Guide to Suicide, Aokigahara is touted as the best place to die — and is sometimes found near bodies.

The Romanian forest of Hoya Bacu is known as the paranormal zone. Local residents and some scientists, according to them, observed unidentified flying objects here, heard voices, saw vague figures and outlines. People call the forest the Bermuda Triangle and try to avoid it, and those who do visit complain of headaches, dizziness, nausea and other ailments.

There are legends about the forest: a shepherd with two hundred sheep disappeared here, a woman lost her memory, and once a five-year-old girl disappeared and appeared five years later, without growing up at all.

In the 1960s, biology teacher Alexander Sift settled here: he took a large number of photos of possible UFOs, unidentified glows and silhouettes, and also studied the phenomenon of the "bald" glade — an absolutely round, vegetation-free plot of land in the forest, which the locals consider a portal to another dimension. A comparative analysis of the soil showed that the land in the clearing and from other parts of the forest is no different, which means that there is no scientific explanation for the phenomenon.

Sift noted that, according to local residents, UFOs are more common in this area. In the future, the research was continued by the military engineer Emil Barney. He took a picture that was later considered by some to be the clearest and most reliable image of a UFO in Europe. The anomalies of the forest were also described by the scientist Adrian Petrut in the book "Phenomena of the Hoya-Bachu Forest".

Near the English village of Plakely in Kent, there is a Screaming forest, which is considered a place of ghosts. According to legend, in the XVIII century, local residents killed a robber in this forest and he still wanders and wants revenge. In addition to him, in these places there is allegedly a poltergeist and the spirits of other dead people wander, including the colonel and the teacher who hanged themselves from the trees. Local residents claim that in the early morning, screams can be heard from the forest. They are believed by numerous ghostbusters: tourists come to tickle their nerves and wander through the trees at night, trying to hear something unusual. For example, The Visual Paranormal Investigation team claims that they managed to talk to the spirits of the Screaming Forest.

In the US, in the state of Vermont, there is a forest with a bad reputation: people disappeared without a trace in it. There were also reports of unexplained sounds, unusual atmospheric phenomena, and unseen animals in the forest. The writer and folklorist Joseph Sitrow called this place the Bennington Triangle — by analogy with the Bermuda Triangle. In his books, he claimed that this place has been considered cursed since the time of the Indians: they tried to avoid it long before the arrival of the colonists.

Stories about the bad forest have been present in local folklore since the late 19th century. According to popular belief, more than ten people have disappeared here, but only five cases have been documented: all of them occurred between 1945 and 1950. Among the missing: a 74-year‑old hunter and fisherman who knew the area well, an 18-year-old student, an 8-year-old boy, an elderly veteran and a 53-year-old hiker. The body of the latter was found seven months later, the rest were not found, despite a long search.

Another abnormal forest in the United States is the Freetown Fall River Reserve in southeastern Massachusetts, also called the Bridgewater Triangle: it is believed to be the territory of Satanists, bandits and suicides. According to legends, this region has long served as a place of religious rites, including sacrifices and ritual killing of animals. There is evidence of ball lightning, giant snakes, mutilated animals, UFOs and other unusual phenomena seen here.

According to popular belief, these places were cursed by the Indians who were angry at the colonists. Their graves were left in the forest. It is said that the spirits of the buried aborigines roam the forest and seek revenge.

The police also have a "dossier" on the bad forest: there have been several murders and accidents. In 1998, for example, the police found here the mutilated carcasses of calves and cows, which, apparently, were sacrificed.

The Red (Red) forest is a notorious section of forest around Chernobyl, which has turned a reddish-brown color from the release of radioactive dust. Many trees were knocked down by the blast wave and died. Because of the radioactive decay, it was still possible to observe the glow of the trunks at night for a long time.

Almost 30 years have passed since the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, but, according to experts, the forest still remains radioactive. Last spring, scientists from the United States and France published the results of a study of the Red Forest ecosystem and pointed out an anomaly: dead trees do not decompose, they seem to have been preserved at the time of the accident. Scientists conducted an experiment: they collected several bags with leaves that were not affected by radiation, and put them in different parts of the forest. The guess was confirmed: in places with high radiation, the foliage rotted 40% slower than in normal forest areas. This is because the bacteria and fungi that cause rotting are less active when exposed to radiation.

According to scientists, the Red forest is potentially dangerous by the fire of accumulated vegetation — if it catches fire, the radiation will spread more widely.