Poland’s Mystical Crooked Forest

Poland has a crazy forest of trees, located outside of Nowe Czarnowo, West Pomerania. There lies a pine forest called “Crooked Forest.” It is one of the most wonderful forests in Central Europe. What makes this grove of about 400 trees so unusual is that instead of growing naturally. Each tree is bent near the base at 90 degrees, a shape that could be effective in a boat or furniture making. Stranger still, all stems are bent in the same direction: due North. The pines were planted around 1930, and to this day there is no definite answer as to why the trees are so oddly shaped.

The theories are that somebody did it to design bent wood to make furniture or barrel making easier. Others blame magic, magnetic fields, and all sorts of things. Whatever the cause, the forest makes for an apocalyptic spectacle, captured in all its mysterious glory by Kilian Schönberger architecture photographer from Cologne, Germany.