Black Forest: Trees of Evil

[perciv]

There’s another BL Tales of the Weird collection that might be relevant: Evil Roots. Lots of these, unfortunately, are haunted wisteria or man-eating orchids, which, while delightful, don’t quite fit—but one might:

The Woman of the Wood
Abraham Merritt, 1926, originally Weird Tales
In this one a chap with a touch of shell-shock is recuperating in the French countryside and has a bit of a mystical love-affair with a copse of birches and firs, which assume hallucinogenic and of course very attractive human form. (The birches are female, the firs male and ‘swarthy.’ Why??) A family of peasants are trying to log the coppice, and the coppice urges our man, perhaps with a bit of mind control, to up and murder them in response. 

Also included is The Ash Tree by M. R. James, mentioned upthread and good fun.

[dem]

Dec 1, 2023 10:30:32 GMT perciv said:

There’s another BL Tales of the Weird collection that might be relevant: Evil Roots. Lots of these, unfortunately, are haunted wisteria or man-eating orchids, which, while delightful, don’t quite fit—but one might:

The Woman of the Wood
Abraham Merritt, 1926, originally Weird Tales
In this one a chap with a touch of shell-shock is recuperating in the French countryside and has a bit of a mystical love-affair with a copse of birches and firs, which assume hallucinogenic and of course very attractive human form. (The birches are female, the firs male and ‘swarthy.’ Why??) A family of peasants are trying to log the coppice, and the coppice urges our man, perhaps with a bit of mind control, to up and murder them in response. 

Also included is The Ash Tree by M. R. James, mentioned upthread and good fun.

Thank you! We've a thread for Daisy Butcher Evil Roots. Was sure we had a relatively substantial thread — or part of one — devoted to the exceptional The Women of the Wood, but search engine turned up only a few lines in a Master of Horror stub-post.