The willows

The Willows is a horror story written by Algernon Blackwood and first published in 1907.

This supernatural horror classic tells the story of two friends who embark on a canoe trip down the Danube River.

Everything is normal on the trip, so they decide to camp on a small sandy island surrounded by dense willows.

Once camped on the island, they begin to witness increasingly strange and threatening phenomena. The shifting willows, disturbing sounds, and inexplicable marks suggest that the landscape is a threshold for a vast supernatural presence beyond ordinary human perception.

"After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a fluffy blue, growing fainter in color as it leaves the banks, and across it may be seen in large straggling letters the word Sümpfe, meaning marshes."