Enchanted forest

[1] Hence, in fairy tales, Hansel and Gretel found a cannibalistic witch in the forest;[2] Vasilissa the Beautiful encountered Baba Yaga herself;[3] Molly Whuppie and her sisters ran into a giant.

[4] It was in a forest that the king of The Grateful Prince lost his way, and rashly promised his child for aid,[5] where the heroines, and their wicked stepsisters, of The Three Little Men in the Wood[6] and The Enchanted Wreath[7] met magical tests, and where Brother and Sister found the streams that their evil stepmother had enchanted.

[18] It is in the forest that the dwarf of Rumpelstiltskin[19] and the fairy of Whuppity Stoorie[20] reveal their true names and therefore the heroines of those tales have a way to free themselves.

In Norse myth and legend, Myrkviðr (or Mirkwood) was dark and dangerous forest that separated various lands; heroes and even gods had to traverse it with difficulty.

Despite many references to its pathlessness, the forest repeatedly confronts knights with forks and crossroads, of a labyrinthine complexity.

[30] The significance of their encounters is often explained to the knights – particularly those searching for the Holy Grail – by hermits acting as wise old men – or women.

"[32] Dante Alighieri used this image in the opening of the Divine Comedy story Inferno, where he depicted his state as allegorically being lost in a dark wood.

In some stories the forest was often described as being almost alive and sapient in some shape or form instinctively protecting itself and its inhabitants whenever it senses danger approaching.

In other stories it appears to be capable of cutting itself off almost entirely from the outside world for long periods of time and preventing anyone from going in or out.

Several horror films, most notably the Wrong Turn franchise, will often depict the forest as being populated by centuries-old cults who respond violently to outsiders who intrude on their self-sufficient civilizations and various families of deformed cannibals who hunt and kill groups of people in horrific ways by using a mixture of traps and weaponry.