The Strangest Things People Found In the Forest

Location: Indonesia 
Year Discovered: 2020  
Est. Value: N/A

This massive, rare flower was discovered within the rainforest of Indonesia, and it’s like nothing you’ve probably ever seen before. Known as Rafflesia arnoldii, this rare flower is three feet in length and weighs around fifteen pounds. Its largest specimen ever was found by scientists in 2020.

World’s Largest Flower Found in Jungle ©Colin + Meg/unsplash.com

This flower isn’t exactly something you’d want to buy from Lowes garden center, as, when it blooms, Rafflesia smells like rotting meat. The odor attracts bugs that pollinate its plant, ensuring its survival; that’s why this beautiful, gross plant is often nicknamed “The Corpse Flower.” 

Location: Chesterfield, New Hampshire 
Year Discovered: 1962 
Est. Value: $45 for a guided tour* 

This staircase to nowhere once belonged to a woman known as Madame Sherri, an eccentric widow who lived a life of luxury and opulence within the forests of Chesterfield, New Hampshire. These rock ruins are what remains of the castle, which burned to the ground in 1962.

Stairs To Nowhere Found In New Hampshire @Bluekingo226/Pinterest

Madame Sherri’s life was full of scandal and eccentricity, and she definitely is deserving of her own Netflix documentary. The widow was born in Paris, coming to the States to start her own successful costume business. She was famous for not only her theatrical talent but also for the massive parties she threw in her once-whole mansion.  

Location: A Forest Somewhere 
Year Discovered: 2010s/2020s 
Est. Value: $50-$250* 

This find is strangely beautiful, even though it is just a moss-covered boot. Found a few years ago by someone walking through the woods in late fall, this boot has been totally retaken by nature.

A Moss Covered Boot @Bluekingo226/Pinterest

It makes us wonder if that will be the fate of everything when humans are gone. National Geographic would probably agree, as the channel has run quite a few eye-opening documentaries about what would happen if humans suddenly disappeared. Nature would, according to their theory, take over the world like the moss took over this boot.

Location: A Forest Somewhere 
Year Discovered: 2010s/2020s 
Est. Value: $1,500 worth of toilets, possibly* 

Why someone would hang $1,500 worth of toilets from trees at the forest line is a mystery to us, as well as everyone who drove by this unexpected art installation. Who put it here? What was their purpose?

Hanging Toilets @r/WTF/Reddit

How did they manage to amass such a large collection of toilets? Perhaps there was a sale at Home Depot or Lowes. Of all of the odd, potentially alien-created finds on this list, this forest discovery is one of the—if not the—strangest.

Location: Tay Tra, Quang Ngai, Vietnam 
Year Discovered: 2021 
Est. Value: N/A 

In 1972, a man named Ho Van Lang fled civilization with his father after his mother and siblings were killed during the Vietnam War in the 1970s. Lang absconded into the jungle where he was raised from a young age, cut off from the rest of the world like a modern-day Tarzan.

Real-life Tarzan @TheSunOnline/Pinterest

After his father passed, Van Lang spent more than four decades in isolation in the forests of Tay Tra, Quang Ngai, surviving totally off the land. When the modern-day SONY was discovered, he had no idea about modern society, and he had never even seen a woman before.

Location: Undisclosed 
Year Discovered: 2018 
Est. Value: N/A 

Is this photo giving you a headache? As someone commented on social media, their eyes “refuse” to see this image correctly. The photo features a sunken pond during a dry season. Here’s a hint: this is one photo, not two.

Sunken Pond During Dry Season @r/interestingasfuck/Pinterest

The waterline on the trees is what is making this image look so split in half. It made the rounds on social media sites like Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram as people marveled at how perfectly-straight this pond once was before it dried up. 

Location: Bolivian and Brazilian Amazon 
Year Discovered: 2014 
Est. Value: N/A

Found in the Brazilian and Bolivian Amazon, these earthen, ringlike ditches have remained a mystery, though scientists do believe they were made by humans. Their purposes could have been defensive, for drainage, or even ceremonial or religious.

Mysterious Earthen Rings Found in the Amazon @ancientorigins/Pinterest

According to a report by NBC, these rings predate the rainforest’s very existence, providing that we humans have been impacting the environment for thousands of years in one way or another. 

Location: A Forest Somewhere 
Year Discovered: Undisclosed 
Est. Value: $1,000-$5,000*

Someone must have hated washing the dishes so much that they chose to dump the lot in a forest. Posted on Reddit is this gigantic pile of porcelain, no doubt worth anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000, if not more.

A Mountain Of Ceramic Dishes And Tea Cups @timdetmer/Pinterest

Found in a random forest, this massive load of porcelain was just dumped, no explanation given. Perhaps a Wayfair factory shut down or a hoarder finally gave up their collection. This mysterious pile of dishes is, to this day, unexplained. 

Location: A Forest Somewhere 
Year Discovered: 2010s 
Est. Value: $50-$80 to build* 

Winnie the Pooh lived in a forest with his friends, as the legend by A.A. Milne goes. Winnie the Pooh is one of the most popular children’s tales of all time, and it has been a huge success for Disney, as people can’t get enough of the rotund, honey-loving bear.

Pooh-Bear's House @boredpanda/Pinterest

The beloved Disney character has even inspired art like this, found in a forest in the U.S. This tree has been decorated to look like Winnie the Pooh’s “house,” resulting in an adorable, much-photographed art installation.

Location: A Forest Somewhere 
Year Discovered: Undisclosed 
Est. Value: Your Soul

Imagine going on a hike and finding this in the forest—that would be terrifying. This Halloween-like image, which someone described as a “Tree Demon,” was found by someone hiking through the woods.

A Forest Monster Watching Over You @r/Pareidolia/Pinterest

It’s unclear whether this tree monster formed naturally or was arranged as such—both options are rather terrifying. This forest find is one of the strangest on this list, surely giving anyone who passed a serious fright. Perhaps we’ll see a new “Tree Demon” horror movie playing at AMC theaters one day.

Location: Podubravlje Forest, Bosnia 
Year Discovered: 2016 
Est. Value: Unconfirmed 

Sam Osmanagich, a Bosnian archaeologist, was exploring the Podubravlje Forest when he stumbled upon a discovery that would puzzle the scientific community. He found a half-buried, almost perfectly-round sphere within the forest.

Giant Stone Sphere Discovered in Bosnian Forest @ErtanOzyigit/Twitter

The sphere weighed 30 tons, measuring 1.5 meters in diameter. It was made of gabbro, a volcanic rock that would not have naturally formed a sphere. There are other spheres like it around the world, but not necessarily in the middle of a forest. So far, scientists believe that the sphere is a concretion formed millions of years ago, rather than a talisman from an unknown civilization. 

Location: The Rocky Mountains 
Year Discovered: 2020
Est. Value: $1 million* 

The Forrest Fenn Treasure was the stuff of legends, as it was a treasure hidden by a wealthy art dealer who created a series of clues that would lead the most intrepid of treasure hunters to the stash. Reportedly, the Fenn Treasure was worth $1 million, if not more.

Medical Student Finds the Fabled Forrest Fenn Treasure @Artnet News/Twitter.com

Though many searched, only one person, a medical student named Jack Stuef, found the hoard of gold and jewels after cracking a twenty-four-line poem that led him to his location. Stuef later sold the treasure in a “private transaction,” no doubt setting himself up for life with Fenn’s nest egg. 

Location: Montignanc, France 
Year Discovered: 1940 
Est. Value: Unconfirmed 

Four teenagers walking through a forest in the Vezere River Valley in Montignanc, France stumbled upon an ancient cavern that contained a vast, priceless collection of prehistoric cave paintings.

Four Teenagers and a Dog Stumble Upon a Prehistoric Cave ©Prof saxx/Wikimedia

They made this amazing discovery thanks to their dog, Robot, who led them down into the cavern, no doubt after smelling something curious. The cave was discovered because a pine tree had fallen, revealing the opening to a piece of history that would become the Lascaux Grotto.  

Location: Kew, England 
Year Discovered: 2022 
Est. Value: Undisclosed 

The largest water lily in the world hid in plain sight for nearly two hundred years. Victoria boliviana, as it would be named, wasn’t discovered until 2022, when scientists found it lurking in the waters of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, England.

World’s Largest Water Lily Hid in Plain Sight for 177 Years @natalia_chirps/Twitter

Victoria boliviana had been living in the forest-like herbarium after being transferred from South America. It was misidentified, which was how it was able to hide in plain sight for so long, even though its leaves are an unmissable ten-and-a-half feet in width.