This one was a challenge before I even finished this year’s list. Going over various lists of suggestions I first came across “Vampire Trees” Tree’s that grew around battlefields thriving on the blood soaked dirt and getting a taste for more. The problem with that is that it’s rather how to spell it out that this rather creepy tree also drinks blood. I quickly changed it to a hangman’s tree (assuming that the tree might get something out of this like a much darker version of the Kite Eating Tree). This also got me thinking of the sacred grove of Gamla Uppsalla where Vikings supposedly hung animals of every species in sacrifice. It always gave me the creeps since the image was way too easy to visualize. I tried to drown that out with a more whimsical note by thinking of the more friendly Hangman’s tree that was a background monster in Nightmare Before Christmas but any amusement was quickly brushed away as this stream of thought finally took me to Billy Holliday’s “Strange Fruit.
