The Groaning Tree of Baddesley

Eugène Bléry, "The Elm Tree"

I always enjoy when someone manages to gain fame through unconventional and imaginative methods, so if an elm tree manages to put itself into the history books by moaning and wailing like a maniac, I say, “Congratulations!” and invite the voluble hunk of wood into the hallowed halls of Strange Company.

Our story takes place in the English village of Baddesley.  One day around 1750, a cottager living near the center of the village began frequently hearing an alarming noise behind his house, like that of someone screaming in agony.  The man’s wife, who was then bedridden, was so frightened by the sounds that he tried to persuade her that they were just hearing stags bellowing in the nearby New Forest.  However, eventually all his neighbors began hearing the cries, and all agreed that something extremely odd was going on.  The sounds were soon traced to an elm growing at the end of the man’s garden.  It was a young, healthy tree, seemingly normal in every way.  It really had no business wailing like a banshee, but there you are.

Within a few weeks, the mysteriously mournful tree had become a celebrity.  It attracted visitors from all across England, including the then-Prince and Princess of Wales.  The villagers were convinced that something supernatural was going on--perhaps the Devil had decided to take up residence in the elm--but this theory was, naturally, scoffed at by naturalists and other “experts.”  However, the men of science couldn’t come up with a better explanation for what was going on.  Any possible cause they thought of--water that had collected in the tree, or friction between the roots, or trapped air bubbles--seemed ridiculously inadequate.  All anyone could determine was that the elm seemed to groan the most when the weather was clear and frosty, and the least when it was wet.  The sounds seemed to originate from the roots.

The tree kept up its moans and groans for nearly two years, until the owner of the property where the elm was growing, a man named Forbes, decided to take the direct approach.  In an effort to determine the cause of the sounds, he bored a hole in the elm’s trunk.  Although this act of willful arborcide failed to solve the mystery, it did manage to shut the tree up.  It never made those uncanny wails again.

Eventually the tree was uprooted, in the hope that this would reveal the cause of the unsettling sounds, but this too was a failure.  The famed Groaning Tree of Baddesley, to all appearances, was a perfectly ordinary elm…except it demonstrably was not.