#vampire tree

The stories we tell about nature often suggest that there is something more than what we see every day. In Japan, one of the most creepy examples of this is the legend of the Jubokko, the vampire tree. It looks like a normal tree at first, but folklore says it’s not safe at all.

[Greenwich Park, May 2018]

A Jubokko Tree looks much like the trees around it. From a distance, there is no way to know that a tree is a Jubokko… but as one draws closer to the tree, close enough to see branches that are mangled in a way that they appear to be grasping for something… and close enough to see the pile of skulls and human remains on which the tree has grown, it is too late, because the tree is now close enough to feed. 

Another attraction of the cemetery is the tree of the vampire that grew right in the tomb of the Count of Baldón. This man was very unsociable and because he only left his house at night, he was charged with several deaths. They say that several animal and human corpses were found, all bled. The settlers began to doubt the Count, who was always silent, pale and elegant. Then they decided to kill him. They prepared a stake with the branch of a tree and fulfilled the ritual of murdering it as if it were a vampire. But the story would not end there, because from his grave grew a leafy tree that, mysteriously, bleeding every time they tried to cut it. It was so they began to fear that "the vampire" would wake up if the tree fell, and that is why they decided to build a perimeter grid that protects it.