The Crooked Forest (Polish: Krzywy Las) is a grove of oddly-shaped pine trees located in the village of Nowe Czarnowo near the town of Gryfino, West Pomerania, in north-western Poland. It is a protected natural monument of Poland.
This grove of 400 pines was planted in around 1930. Each pine tree bends sharply to the north, just above ground level, then curves back upright after a sideways excursion of one to three meters (3–9 feet). The curved pines are enclosed by a surrounding forest of straight pine trees.
It is generally believed that some form of human tool or technique was used to make the trees grow or bend this way, but the method has never been determined, and remains a mystery to this day. It has been speculated that the trees may have been deformed to create naturally curved timber for use in furniture or boat building. Others surmise that a snowstorm could have bent the trunks, but there is little evidence of that.
Many people have been trying to find an answer to this mystery, but since the town of Gryfino was largely abandoned between the early stages of World War II until the 1970s, the people who were there before the war and probably had the answer to the mystery of the Crooked Forest are now likely gone forever.
No matter how many times I see this phenomenon it always tickles my brain.