10 Monsters People Claim Are Real (That Totally Don't Exist)

3. Man-Eating Trees

Man Eating Tree This one ought to be obvious, really. However, in it€™s defence, the stories of various man-eating trees have their origins in the late 19th century, a time when there was apparently a lot less scientific knowledge to go around. The original story of a man-eating tree discovered in Madagascar, was published in 1874 in the popular New York World publication. In the story, this mother of all carnivorous plants would eat live Human offerings fed to it by the bloodthirsty (and thankfully fictional) Mkodos tribe of cave-dwelling pygmies. ...And let€™s get one thing straight, these pygmies were not nice people, largely because after they had murdered an innocent woman, they apparently drank the €œblood and oozing viscera of the victim€ and then had an €œindescribably hideous€ orgy. Lovely. Of course, the entire report was a work of fiction sculpted from the fertile (and, frankly, somewhat perverse) imagination of Edward Spencer, one of the paper€™s regular reporters. The hoax was only uncovered 14 years after the initial publication, by which time the story had done whatever the 19th century equivalent of €˜going viral€™ was and had been accepted as scientific fact by more than a few people. The idea of vicious, man-eating trees (and the nightmarish cannibal pygmies who love them) became so popular that numerous expeditions were even mounted to find the damn things throughout the 19th century. In fact, Chase Salmon Osborn, (who was actually the Governor of Michigan at one point) searched exhaustively for the creature and even wrote a book entitled Madagascar: Land of the Man-Eating Tree, in 1924. In 1932, another expedition was planned, but appears to have been quietly forgotten about before being launched (perhaps somebody clued them in?).and into the 20th century. Still, this popular story gave rise to other tales of man-eating trees around the world that persisted for many, many years. Today, these monster plants live on in our fictions, such as the (far less terrifying) kite-eating tree from Peanuts.
 
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I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction. I don't generally read or reply to comments here on What Culture (too many trolls!), but if you follow my Twitter (@heyquicksilver), I'll talk to you all day long! If you are interested in reading more of my stuff, you can find it on http://quicksilverstories.weebly.com/ (my personal site, which has other wrestling/comics/pop culture stuff on it). I also write for FLiCK http://www.flickonline.co.uk/flicktion, which is the best place to read my fiction work. Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that! Finally, I sincerely appreciate every single read I get. So if you're reading this, thank you, you've made me feel like Shakespeare for a day! (see what I mean?) Latcho Drom, - CQ