They aren’t a curse, and nothing sinister is hunting your garden from below. Those unnerving black clusters are a fungus known as Dead Man’s Fingers, feeding on decaying wood you can’t see—old roots, forgotten stumps, or buried branches. Where you see a horror prop, nature is quietly running a recycling program, turning the past life of a tree into tomorrow’s fertile soil.
They don’t spread like a disease, don’t harm living plants, and don’t threaten pets or people. You can remove them if their presence unsettles you, but they’ll often reappear as long as their hidden food source remains. Over time, as the buried wood is used up, they fade on their own. Or you can let them stay, a strange, gothic reminder that not everything that looks frightening is against you—some of it is working, silently, on your side.
