Cannibal Trees

 Ancient legends tell stories about atrocious cannibal trees that ate people. In 1878 Carl Liche, a German explorer, “witnessed” a “horrendous ceremony” in Madagascar, where according to him, he watched how a carnivorous tree ate a young girl. “The atrocious cannibal tree, that had been so inert and dead, came to sudden savage life. The slender delicate palpi, with the fury of starved serpents, quivered a moment over her head, then as if instinct with demoniac intelligence fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her neck and arms; then while her awful screams and yet more awful laughter rose wildly to be instantly strangled down again into a gurgling moan,  the tendrils one after another, like great green serpents, with brutal energy and infernal rapidity, rose, retracted themselves, and wrapped her about in fold after fold, ever tightening with cruel swiftness and savage tenacity of anacondas fastening upon their prey.” Very vivid story, however, research has shown that Liche’s story is entirely fabricated and cannibal trees never have existed in Magadascar.