Homeowner leaves people 'terrified' after finding disturbing black growth underneath floorboards
A homeowner discovered a bizarre black growth underneath her floorboards.
Australia is a weird, wild and wonderful place, but it also has some things that send shivers down peoples' spines.
Forget spiders, snakes and blue-ringed octopus, the country also has something that looks like its straight out of Stranger Things.
Hannah Sycamore posted a photo of her Melbourne home after removing the floorboards.
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The floorboards had been wet and needed to be taken off and it's clear something was enjoying the damp environment.
She uploaded photos of the growth to the Australia & New Zealand Fungus Identification Facebook page to see if anyone knew what it was.
The page is usually filled with images of mushrooms and other such things, but this was certainly a standout.
However, the comments were filled with Stranger Things references and people being equally disturbed.
One said: "The veins of 'nooope'."
Another added: "I'm genuinely terrified."
A third wrote: "You’ve opened the upside down."
Thankfully, there were some people in the group who offered up genuine advice on what it could be.
One suggested it could be slime mould whereas others suggested it could be tree roots.
"These look like the bootlace rhizomorphs of Armillaria," said the moderator.
"Do you have trees outside this house? Suggest the melanised hyphae have run along roots under the house and then up into the structure.
"It’s probably something you need to get a structural engineer to look at."
Dr. Patricia Kaishian, the Curator of Mycology at the New York State Museum, told The New York Post that it's difficult to tell from just pictures.
“Without examining the fungus in person (looking at it microscopically and looking for other signatures in the structure) I can’t be 100% sure,” Dr Kaishian said.
“But this looks like the mycelium of ‘wet rot’ fungus called Coniophora puteana, sometimes also called ‘cellar rot’ or ‘kellerschwam’ in German.
“This would be my guess, going off these photos alone.”
Stewart Perrie