Dead Man’s Fingers Can Scare the Hell Out of Anyone. If You See Them in the Woods, Just Keep Walking

While strolling in the woods some of us come across mysterious fingers sticking out of the grass. And the way they look gives everyone shivers.

Mother nature knows how to play tricks. One of them is definitely the mushroom called dead man's fingers (Xylaria polymorpha). It does look like human fingers. As they stick out of the ground, no wonder that someone gave it this particular name. I bet the person was so petrified to see the mushroom that there was no option for anything else.

Dead man's fingers in fact come in a variety of shapes. Of course the most popular ones are those looking like fingers. The young mushroom is grayish (with white tips). As they grow older, their surface darkens until eventually it gets black and wrinkled.

These extraordinary mushrooms grow on most continents, excluding Africa and Antarctica. They grow on dead deciduous trees (also those burried beneath the forest cover. And that is why they sometimes look like fingers of the dead.