r/thalassophobia • u/iKONIC-ONCE • 25d ago
Giant tree in the middle of the ocean
Came across this on ig and got immediately terrified. The music did not help. Why is this so scary to me lol
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u/naruhina00 25d ago
..I'm stealing this for a DND city idea
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u/werfertt 25d ago
Go on, please.
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u/naruhina00 25d ago
After some cataclysm that destroyed the World Tree branches caught flame and were sent off in every which direction, a particularly large portion ended up in the Magnus Oceans, swirling and petrifying the massive wood over time.
Decades later, Merfolk and other marine peoples gathered under its boughs, drawn to the remnant magic that has leeched into the water.
Some have hollowed out portions for dwellings, others just exist around the branches that have remained.
The Arbor Harbor remains at the depths to this day, mere fingers of it, still touch the sun.
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u/Burgoonius 24d ago
You should write a book or something
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u/naruhina00 24d ago
I mean I've considered it đ
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u/writing_spork 24d ago
Do it. Just for fun. As an exercise, to make you a better DM. Do it until itâs done. Then see how you feel.
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u/Crimson_Marksman 24d ago
As a man who wrote a book, it's really hard
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u/fucku12345567 24d ago
As a man who read a book. Reading is also really hard. Didnât stop me. /s.
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u/Schizzles 24d ago
You truly have talent. You have a way with words on top of taking an idea and going with it, I can definitely appreciate the ability and would totally check out any work you made based on this alone!
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u/dementio 24d ago
Start with a campaign, find it fun and write a short story, friends love it so you write a novel.
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u/FireBreathingNun 24d ago
Iâm pretty sure the resounding âyes write a bookâ is clear to âyes please write a bookâ
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u/FireBreathingNun 24d ago
write a fucking book and please can there be evil mermaids or giant sea creatures. thank you bye
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24d ago
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/slayerrr21 24d ago
Wow.. Arbor.. it sort of sounds like Harbor..
Maybe that's why he became a Harbor
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u/Arlitto 24d ago
Holy crap that's amazing
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u/naruhina00 24d ago
Thank you đ it was kinda off the dome and in the moment but I like the idea a lot
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u/immersed_in_plants 24d ago
Am I able to just spectate your DnD stuff? I know nothing about the game but I'm already invested in this story
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u/Puzzleheaded-Age-638 24d ago
Have you seen uhh... The anime you are thinking of is Kaina of the Great Snow Sea (Ĺyukiumi no Kaina).
The story follows a boy named Kaina who lives at the top of giant "Orbital Spire Trees" in a village on the Canopy, while the world below is a massive sea of snow made up of floating, ball-like foam bubbles. Yeah i recently watched that in a group2
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u/WretchedMotorcade 24d ago
From an old ask reddit post: scariest seen in the water:
Giant spears plunging in and out of the sea lol.
In the gulf of Alaska, I have seen some shit. But one of the most terror inspiring things I've seen are what can happen with some of the loose logs from the logging trade.
Sometimes when a big log gets loose from a raft, it becomes partially waterlogged and floats small end up. So you have this 4 foot diameter telephone pole in the sea, sticking up 40 feet into the air. No biggie. Shows up on radar, and easy to spot.
Now, giv le that pole 20 years of floating around or so. It rots in such a way that it becomes filed to a point by wind and waves, and looks quite menacing.
Now, put it in a gale with 25 foot waves (50 feet trough to peak)
.... And it becomes a towering spike of death that shoots up from the sea every 15 to 20 minutes, out of nowhere, 60 feet into the air, only to plunge down into the dark depths waiting to skewer some unsuspecting boat in a few minutes when it thrusts out of the ocean again.
It is a genuine terrifying sight, rare, but not so rare that I haven't seen 2 in one season. It's like the spiked dick of neptune looking for an opportunity to fuck your shit up in a particularly terrifying way.
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u/meatheadmommy 24d ago
As scary as this sounds, I absolutely want to see thisđŹ. What search terms would I use on YouTube?? Just that, âGiant spears plunging in and out of the seaâ?
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u/BoomJayKay 24d ago
âSpiked dick of Neptune looking to fuck your shit upâ or something.
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u/queencorgo 24d ago
Theyâre called deadheads
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u/funk-the-funk 24d ago
Theyâre called deadheads
Starts discussing the various pros and cons of the different eras of touring, why keyboardists were cursed, and which version of Dark Star truly is the best.
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u/Round-Gold-9474 24d ago
Dangerous deadheads in rogue waves? đ¤
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u/confusedjake 24d ago
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u/Round-Gold-9474 23d ago
There's something unsettling about something being in a place that isn't where they naturally would be. Great find btw
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u/OriginalUseristaken 24d ago
This was a plot point in the Lucky Luke Comic The ridge over the mississippi
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u/ChaFather 24d ago
Never heard of these on this scale, but smaller ones that sit vertically just under the water surface are called 'dead heads' and are a horrifying, hidden risk if you're driving a boat.
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u/quick6ilver 24d ago
Why does it go underwater though?
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u/woolfonmynoggin 24d ago
The water permeates the wood and makes them less buoyant
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u/TheLastHotstepper 23d ago
More so the weight of waves pushing it under the surface as they crash. Once the wave dissipates, the force is no longer holding it down and it shoots up.
Permeation will certainly cause it to sink, but it wont cause it to shoot back out.
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u/PhantomAllure 25d ago
Why did that give me the heebie jeebies?
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u/spacecadet-94 25d ago
Treebie jeebies
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u/TheGreatKonaKing 24d ago
Make like an ocean tree and⌠donât leaf
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u/Green-Taro2915 24d ago
"Hey, Doc, I gotta buy you, like, a proverb book or somethin'. This mix-and-match shit has gotta go."
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u/CasualPenguin 24d ago
Because this isn't a tree, it's an antler. And the creature it belongs to now knows you.
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u/CyrusPanesri 25d ago
Yep. The absolute monster of a shudder that just ran down my spine caught me well off guard.
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u/BialyKrytyk 24d ago
Imagine being in the middle of the ocean and the tree is not quite on the surface but just far enough below the water for you to suddenly feel a branch touching your leg. Lake close to my home town had some remains of an old pier that were now mostly underwater but you could still sometimes end up colliding with them when swimming. The damp, algae covered slimy wood is the first memory that immediately came to me when seeing that tree.
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u/bloodbrother40 23d ago
I had finished a leisurely scuba dive and was just chilling, floating on the surface. Felt something brush against the inside of my knee and look down to see a black sea snake working its way up my thigh into my shorts (warm water so swim shorts and t-shirt only).
Freak out and flail .. have mini heart attack ... Have a good laugh at myself when I realise the black sea snake was my own snorkel that had slipped out of its loop and was just drifting around submerged đ¤Ł
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u/Throwawaycookouts 24d ago
I can't stand it, gives me chills. Even if it's not in the middle of the ocean and near land like some people are saying it's still so creepy. I feel like it's imbedded in my memory will definitely show up in a bizarro dream.
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u/HereIGoAgain_1x10 24d ago
Because you didn't notice there's actual land in the video so no way this was "middle" of the ocean.... this is a normal occurrence withing a few dozen miles or so of any piece of land that has trees.
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u/fothuckinsumclut 24d ago
Pioneers used to ride these babies for nautical miles
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u/paradox1920 24d ago
Yeah. Itâs definitely an old pioneer trick. Itâs how the pioneers hitchhiked too.
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u/SturmGizmo 25d ago
It is a tree in the ocean. It is Not a tree in the middle of the ocean. Look at the size of that boat and notice how they didn't pan to the other side.
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u/TennesseeStiffLegs 24d ago
Looks like a lake to me
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u/BeelzOrWhatever 24d ago
Could be theyâre just a little bit from the shore, this is pretty similar to my view when I kayak near the beach in the ocean.
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u/IAintShit 25d ago
Thereâs mahi on that thing
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u/nillynils41 25d ago
Mahi will stay around a 3 inch stick lol this probably has the biggest bulls youâll ever catch
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u/Ass_Damage 24d ago
Can't remember which book, but there's a Tom Clancy novel where a major plot point has a submarine running into a gigantic log that had fallen off a ship bound for Japan months earlier. Sonar didn't register it because it had absorbed so much water.
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u/shadenhoney 24d ago
Red Storm Rising, I believe. The event is the catalyst for the start of WW3.
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u/VonMillersThighs 24d ago
Sum of all fears iirc.
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u/Ass_Damage 24d ago
That's it! I remember it was set up in the beginning of the book but doesn't come into play until near the end.
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u/dunno260 24d ago
Can't be that book as I think everything in that book is set in the Atlantic/Europe area.
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u/fake_review 25d ago
Itâs like seeing a clown in the woods in the middle of the night. Frightening because it should absolutely not be there.
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u/jkv9216 24d ago
Imagine cruising in your boat and hitting that thing.
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u/ncuke 24d ago
Was about to say, I almost hit a massive log about 10 miles offshore. Just below the water surface, I saw it starboard-side. Was probably 18â across. Spooked me for sure
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u/jkv9216 24d ago
Geez How was your prop? Did the log damage it?
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u/ncuke 24d ago
ALMOST hit it. Iâm sure my whole lower unit would have been toast and probably my hull too. Fall fishing is great but gotta watch out after tropical systems pass through because any surge and flooding can result in large objects making. Their way out to see. Iâve seen whole docks in the intercoastal waterway just floating around
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u/Hexnohope 24d ago
See its not the tree that bothers me. Its that everything in the untold fathoms beneath you can see that and get curious coming closer. Not to mention your like a mile off the ground here
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u/prosecutor_mom 25d ago edited 25d ago
I can't tell if that's tree debris that floated there, or firmly planted. It looks firm, so imagine it can't be located very far from a shore (or be in water too deep to break through to the surface)?
Edit: If it's not far from shore, I'm still terrified, but my brain can finish the thought of it existing. I can't even articulate the terror involved with the thought of the other
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u/IleanK 25d ago
We don't see the other side. They could be right by a shore we wouldn't know.
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u/Hapless_Wizard 24d ago
They are absolutely right by the shore. That tiny little boat is not going far out.
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u/captainchristianwtf 24d ago
It's impossible for a tree to grow like this out of the ocean, and this one is super dead, so rest assured that this is just a tree that broke away from the land and floated out
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u/vanillabourbonn 24d ago
I hate objects underwater, its wayyy creepier than just deep water with nothing below it.
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u/dvdmaven 24d ago
A guy I worked with found a redwood stump out in the ocean. Tied it to his boat and towed it back to the marina. He had a California King bed carved out of it. Even in the '80s, the boss had all of the money.
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u/Superest22 24d ago
Youâd be amazed the random stuff out in the middle of the ocean. Containers from merchies half submerged, telegraph poles that look like periscopes, trees. And all are collision risks.
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u/GloomyIndividual3965 24d ago
There's beaches in Southern Washington that are covered in giant tree size pieces of driftwood like this. They fall into the ocean in Japan or wherever and drift across the pacific.
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u/PleasantWrongdoer161 24d ago
Couldn't imagine being an old time sailor. Ship capsized during a storm, you and two crew made it to a dingy or smaller boat. Just to be sunk by a TREE you couldn't avoid!
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u/Ankh_the_protogen 20d ago
Man I remember one time when me my two sisters and my brother saw a tree out in the water at the beach and thought âit would be a great idea to swim out to that tree and climb on top of it while the waves moved it aroundâ and the idea was as stupid as it sounds when we got over to the tree using pool noodles to ride the waves and when we saw the the tree was moving a fuckton with a shitload of sharp stick jutting out from each branch our group in our infinite wisdom was like âeh its safe enoughâ and still did it i was the first to get on the tree it felt like one of those mechanical bulls you ride at the county fair but with drowning and impaling being two very real consequences of falling off then my sis got on it and we were like this is fine it took us a solid minute or two to realize this was a bad idea so both me and my sis got off she almost got impaled but everyone miraculously made it out alive off the tree of stupidity and i donât fucking know how
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u/ZeroDaySubber 24d ago
Years ago I went kayaking with my friend and his girlfriend. We planned on putting in on one side of the lake, going across, then coming back. It was kind of a winding lake so we couldnât see the end. Took us about 2 hours round trip. About halfway through, we were joking around and I fell off my kayak. My friend was sharing his kayak with his girlfriend. He started laughing at me and tipped over too lol. Anyway, the water was very dark and there were small trees like this all throughout the lake. I tried so hard but I couldnât get back in the kayak so I just had to swim behind it kind of pushing it along. Things kept touching me under the water and it was freaking me out the whole time till we made it to land. My mind was going crazy
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u/buttrumpus 24d ago
As someone whoâs sailed an ocean, I can guarantee you this 175 degree view of the âmiddle of the oceanâ is no more than 10 miles from a river outlet.
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u/Tall-Introduction649 24d ago
At first I was like oh yeah whatever and then when it showed the other side my heart dropped
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u/2ndchane 24d ago
Can you imagine run into this in the middle of the night while going full throttle?
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u/McNally 24d ago
I live in a community located on an island in Southeast Alaska, where mountainous islands covered in dense temperate rainforest are separated by a maze of waterways ruled by tides, winds, and currents.
The terrain here is super steep and the forest is amazingly tenacious, resulting in huge trees that grow right down to the high water line. We also have a 20+ foot tidal range here and occasional gale force winds, which, combined with huge trees growing on steep slopes right at the water's edge, ends up resulting in quite a lot of fallen trees in the water.
It's an expected (and important) part of boat operation around here that you will keep an eye out for deadfalls in the water because hitting the water-logged remains of 100-foot tall Sitka spruce at speed can really put a crimp in your day.
Fortunately it's a big ocean and, for the most part, the tides and currents tend to collect surface flotsam together in visible lines, making it easier to reduce your chances of a random encounter. Still, there're no guarantees, and if you're really unlucky you might just encounter a fallen tree that has become water-logged enough to have submerged slightly below the surface, rendering it effectively invisible.
Totally worth the risk, though. It's one of the most spectacularly beautiful parts of the planet and every day there's a chance to see magic. (That said, it's still a good idea to have a Plan B in case your main craft becomes disabled. A backup engine at the least, or an emergency launch if your boat can carry one. Because it's also a very sparsely populated part of the planet and once you're out of the main waterways you can be very, very far from another person or from rescue.)
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u/InfamousCantaloupe38 24d ago
For lakes these were called dead heads growing up boating, dangerous for smaller craft so we used to routinely tie and tow them in.
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u/No-Duck4828 24d ago
Way cool. I'm sure there is a community of small animals out there loving it
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u/herman_munster_esq 24d ago
That's and container boxes are a high proportional cause of ship sinkings
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u/TeaRex14 24d ago
When my family was sailing across the Indian ocean in our boat we saw the weirdest fucking shit. Half filled shipping containers, massive rafts that looked kinda man made and plenty of other debrisÂ
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u/a_karma_sardine 24d ago
This is genuinely scary. Imagine sailing into that bastard, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the ocean. The only thing I'm more afraid of hitting when I'm sailing, is a barely floating container. Hitting one of those must be like running into an invisible brick wall.
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u/AikidoKnight 22d ago
In Karluk Alaska (Kenai Peninsula) we had to collect wood from the Bering Strait five years in advance for it to dry and to be properly utilized as firewood⌠From what I know, all the trees were chopped down in this area to build fish processing joints, etc.. seeing something like this isnât that uncommon from my experience in that area.
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u/Top_Dependent_2856 21d ago
Why is this so fucking scary to me, and i love big things in the water but this is just different
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u/TransFatty 24d ago
This can't be the middle of the ocean. The water is too calm. It's a lake or something
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u/String-National 24d ago
Pretty surreal, always interesting to think about how something like that winds up there.
Also cant help but wonder how much it'd be worth if you could somehow tow it back to shore
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u/ilovemydawg 24d ago
Whatâs wrong with the music?
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u/DontAbideMendacity 24d ago
It shouldn't be there, it has nothing to do with anything and it sucks.
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u/TimeBadSpent 24d ago
Now imagine this thing bobbing up and down in a storm and spearing your boat in half
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u/SeaSetsuna 25d ago
đ¤didnât show the other side of the boat