In what could come straight out of horror movie, a man was left mortified after he made the horrifying discovery of a ‘zombie hand’ stretching out from an overgrown grave.
It sounds terrifying, of course, but thankfully, the reality is far less disturbing as it turns out that the 'zombie hand' was, in fact, a rare fungus aptly called 'dead man’s fingers'.
Chef Mike Roberts spotted the ‘horrifying’ formation on a work break as he took a stroll through Pwllycrochan Woods in the north Wales town of Colwyn Bay back in May 2021.
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The images are truly something to behold, with the white-tipped fingers clearly visible through the greenery.
"I was shocked when I first saw it. It really looked like a zombie hand reaching out of the ground,” he said.
"You do see [the mushroom] in groups of five pretty often but this one was shaped like a hand with a thumb. It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
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"It's a mushroom I've seen hundreds of times but to see it in that particular formation was pretty special.
"I feel lucky to have spotted it. When I got back to work I showed it to people, then I sent it to my mum too."
The plant is a funghi called xylaria polymorpha, and was pictured at its asexual stage when the ‘fingers’ or stomata have white tips. This is because it was not firing out spores.
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This mushroom is commonly found throughout the UK and Ireland, but the realistic nature of this particular specimen stunned plenty on social media, with the images having recently gone viral on Facebook.
One user said: "That's horrifying! Imagine coming across that while walking in the woods!!" while another said: "Ok, that would freak me out, even knowing what it was!!"
A third added: "That's the kind of stuff horror stories are written of. If I saw that, I'd never go walking in the woods again!"
A fourth said: "Wow I thought it was a hand. It is freaky, but amazing."
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In more fungi-related news, a man from Nebraska, US, was rushed to hospital last year after he decided to inject himself with 'magic mushrooms', which caused fungi to grow in his blood and his organs to fail.
The man, who had bipolar disorder type one, began feeling extremely tired and started vomiting blood, suffering from diarrhoea, and developed jaundice just days after injecting the fungi.
Doctors found that the mushrooms had started to grow in his bloodstream, which had damaged his liver and kidneys, and caused his organs to start failing.
Thankfully, the man went on to make a full recovery... but his story serves as a grave reminder to never consume - or inject - these types of fungi.
James Hilsum