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It’s easy to imagine scary things in the dark, but something in Brooksville, Florida, bears more than a slight resemblance to the Grim Reaper waiting for a ride.
Debate over the “very creepy” growth began in February, when a photo appeared on the Unseen Florida Facebook page, which has 152,000 followers as of March 14.
It shows a ghostly cloaked figure poised to cross the road, and closer inspection reveals what appears to be legs, spindly arms and a head resembling one of Florida’s invasive pythons.
“The Florida Reaper: One of the creepiest looking dead trees I’ve ever seen and I pass it every night on the way home,” Laura Trumpold wrote in her post of the photo.
Most commenters agreed and their observations show how easy it is for myths and urban legends to germinate from odd things seen in the dark. Diseased bears become Bigfoot, wolves with mange look like the devil dog chupacabra — and twisted trees swaying in the wind become monsters.
“Giant praying mantis,” Cheryl Frisk posted on Facebook.
“Looks like it’s waiting to get you,” Sharon Smith Wesson wrote.
“I’m having flash backs of when I was a kid and I’d ran as fast as I could past the cemetery after dark,” Marie Tradd Rutledge said.
The 25-foot growth stands near the end of a dusty limestone road in Trumpold’s neighborhood. She says daylight reveals it to be “a mangled mess of dead vines” that choked a tree to death.
High winds tend to bring it to life, she says, making it seem as if the limbs and veil of the Greenbrier vines are moving.
“I go down this road every night around midnight with my dog Buddy. It is always startling when we come across this tree even though I know it is there,” she told McClatchy News.
“I always pause for a moment and look at it, expecting it to start walking or reaching out toward me with it’s gnarly branch fingers. It looks like some kind of mythical creature, or the grim reaper about to walk across the road. It still looks creepy during the day, but the effect that the stillness and darkness of nightfall has on it as my headlights light it up is a thing of nightmares.”
Trumpold admits she’d like to see it cut town.
She decided to share a photo on the Unseen Florida page because it “celebrates and embraces” Florida history and Americana, including things that count as “weird and unusual.”
Brooksville is about 50 miles north of Tampa in Hernando County.
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