Creeps, true stories from Reddit (Second book)

The Witch Tree

There is a weird looking tree that is located in the center of my parents backyard that my siblings and I would call the witch tree, it's a very odd looking tree because on the base of it, it make a near perfect circle and with in it is a hole that we have filled in with dirt due to some strange happenings.

Ever since we have moved to that location that tree has always been plagued with dead birds and a dark brown owl that will only show up on full moons. Every morning during the summer I would like to kick a ball and practice kicking penalty shots, when I would smell something rotting. Walking over to the tree I would notice dead birds around the base, 2 or 3 birds at a time. It didn't look like they where attacked by a dog or cat, it just looked like they landed near the tree and just fell over and died. Some weeks we wouldn't see any dead birds and on others we would see them laying on the ground, eyes wide open like they where scared to death. It got to the point where my parents thought the trees roots penetrated a gas line and had an inspector check it out, but didn't see the line was running near there. My parents thought there was an animal living in the hole as well and called in an exterminator, he dropped a can tied to a rope releasing poison to see if an animal would run out but we didn't see anything coming out.

On full moons every month we would hear an owl hooting, when my brother and I would look at the window we notice a fairly large owl on one of the branches. My brother getting irritated from the noise went outside picked up a rock and threw it at the branches. I started hearing a loud screeching outside when suddenly my brother came running in and locking the door. He was babbling saying that it sounded like a woman screaming and when it saw him, its eyes grew wide and began to fly towards him that's when he freaked out and ran. Every month after that we just got used to sleeping with the hooting going on and didn't dare go outside at night.

On some stormy days it was the worst with that damn tree. I felt like I was living next to a lightning rod, on occasions that tree would be struck by lightning. It would scare the hell out of us because it sounded like a bomb going off in our backyard with pieces of bark flying and hitting the house. One year back in 2006 it was the worst the tree was truck 3 times within the year just a couple of months away from each other, at one point the tree was completely charred and on fire only to be extinguished by the rain, luckily my father chopped majority of the branches since it used to hang over the house.

My sister from time to time would look out the kitchen window and would say she would see someone leaning on the tree, and when she would double take and look back only to be gone. Our neighbor would also alert us about some one in our backyard at night when he would be in his garage working on his car projects.

For some reason when my mother was tired of all the dead birds around the tree she decided to get a rosary say a couple of hail Mary prayers, dropped the rosary in the hole and had me cover it with dirt, everything just seemed to stop. The birds stopped dying and the owl was gone, lightning hasn't struck the tree since 2007. After some time I completely forgot about that witch tree, until I brought my kids over to my parents house to play in the back and my daughter told me that's a weird tree. I told her the stories about it and she wouldn't want to go near it. If y'all want to see the tree let me know and I will take a picture of it on a part 2. Its not scary but it is very strange and odd to look at especially with what we had to go through with it.

Posted by u/MrMidenight6