5 Terrifying Stories and Lore About the Legendary Black Dogs

Everyone knows about black cats, s.but folklore is also full of "tales" about black dogs. James D'Barnes shares five terrifying stories and lore about them.

A black dog is the name given to a being found primarily in the folklores of the British Isle, often said to be associated with the Devil or a Hellhound. Its appearance was regarded as a portent of death. It is generally supposed to be larger than a normal dog, and often has large, glowing eyes. It is often associated with electrical storms (such as Black Shuck’s appearance at Bungay, Suffolk), and also with crossroads, places of execution and ancient pathways. Throughout European mythology, dogs have been associated with death. Examples of this are the Garmr and Cerberus, who were in some way guardians of the underworld. Read more

The Mythical Lost City of Tenea Has Been Found

Once again, myth has turned out to be based on truth.

It’s time for another edition of “Myth or History?” Today’s question: is the ancient lost city of Tenea, said to have been built by Trojan prisoners of war freed by the Greeks after the Trojan War, myth or history? If you said “Myth,” you were right … until this week. That’s when the Greek Culture Ministry announced that archaeologists “located the first tangible remains” of the real lost city of Tenea. No word on whether they found Helen, her husband King Menelaus or Paris of Troy. Read more

7 Witches From Mythology and Folklore

Witches from mythology and folklore are portrayed much differently than modern witches are in TV shows like Charmed and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

There are plenty of people practicing modern witchcraft, and for most of us, magic is pretty much par for the course. However, not all witches are your next door neighbor or that nice lady who works at the grocery store. In fact, there are plenty of witches who exist only in mythology and folklore from around the world. Read more

The Mysterious Big Grey Man of Scotland

Brent Swancer shares accounts of the Big Grey Man of Scotland.

Towering above the moorland of the southern edge of the Cairn Gorm plateau, in the eastern highlands of the country of Scotland, looms the formidable presence of the mountain known as Ben Macdui. Standing tall with a snow speckled peak soaring up 4296 feet into the grey clouds above, it is the second highest mountain in Scotland, a wild place full of natural grandeur that has inspired legend and adventure, and has generated its share of strange legends as well. Here is a place wreathed in seemingly eternal mists and fog that blanket the area like a thick soup, lending it an otherworldly ambiance, and throughout the ages there has been said to be something from beyond the periphery shifting through that murk, something very large lumbering through the swirling fog to perplex all those who look upon it. This is the Am Fear Liath Mor, the legendary Big Grey Man of Scotland. Read more

Bizarre True Encounters with Fairy Tale Creatures

These bizarre true encounters with fairy tale creatures suggest that folklore may have some basis in reality.

Amongst the many alleged monsters, creatures, phantoms, beasts, and assorted entities within the world of the weird are often those that stand out as being particularly bizarre. These are the creatures that seem to occupy their own realm of high strangeness, lying out on the dark fringes of the unexplained in a territory inhabited by things that that defy easy classification. Surely to be counted among the denizens of this domain are the various creatures allegedly encountered all over the world that can only really be described as being actual beings from fairy tales, as if they have stepped off the page and into the real world. How can his be? Are fairy tales based on these real entities? Are they the product of fanciful imaginations? I do not intend to get too far into the how or why of such things here, but what I am going to do is present to you some damn strange cases of seemingly fairy tale beasts and beings that have wandered in from the furthest reaches of the fringes of the universe of the strange. Read more

Was the Path of Souls Ritual a Worldwide Phenomenon?

 The Path of Souls ritual may be another key to unraveling the hidden history of the human race.

It was in the late 1990s and early 2000s that two Irish researchers began to unravel the mystery of Newgrange, a famous Neolithic tomb mound with stone chambers accessed through a long, narrow, stone-lined passageway. Newgrange is dated to around 3000 BC. The entrance to the interior chambers is aligned to the Winter Solstice sunrise, but it was the unusual, cross-shaped interior passage and chambers that intrigued the researchers, Anthony Murphy and Richard Moore. Through a series of studies done at the site, they concluded that the interior chamber was built to mimic the constellation of Cygnus. They also found that another Neolithic stone chamber mound, found about 9 miles to the southeast, was on the Winter Solstice azimuth from Newgrange. That mound, called Fourknocks, was also constructed around 3000 BC. Using computer software, the researchers found that the entrance of Fourknocks was designed to view Deneb, the brightest star of Cygnus, on the night of the Winter Solstice in 3000 BC. I was privileged to meet with Murphy in the mid-2000s and was impressed with his meticulous research, which can be accessed here. Read more

10 Freaky Urban Legends Based on Real Images

Urban legends usually aren't totally made up. They are often based on something. These ten freaky urban legends are based on real images.

10 Placces Around the World That Are Known as the Gates of Hell

Do you live near one of these ten places around the world that are known as the Gates of Hell?

We live in a world surrounded by mystery and unexplained things the deeper we look into a certain subject the deeper we dig because we find it difficult to stop, especially when we stumble upon something enigmatic and captivating. We can all agree when I say that they’re millions of haunted places around the world ranging from haunted houses to hospitals, highways, cemeteries and the list goes on and on But did you know that among all those places they’re several particular ones around the world known as the gates of hell? Devilish places that are known to be some sort of gateway directly to hell. Let me introduce you to some of these abhorrent locations. Read more

Legends of Giants in the Southeastern United States

Micah Hanks says that legends of giants in the southeastern United States are preserved in petroglyphs.

I have always been fascinated with petroglyphs — carvings of pictures into stone, of which there are many old instances scattered around the United States. In his book Lost!, former National Park Ranger and rescue searcher Dwight McCarter describes finding petroglyphs that dated back to the early nineteenth century, in which a pair of travelers had marked their subsequent visits passing a particular stony outcropping near the present-day Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Read more

The Top 10 Curious Fairy Encounters

Fairies are hardly believed in today, but they have been a major part of folklore for centuries. These are ten of the most curious fairy encounters ever reported.

Think you know about fairies, do you? The twinkly little things on TV are a mostly modern, Disney-inspired invention. In the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, fairies were seen and talked about much in the same sense that Bigfoot is today. Despite modern skepticism regarding fairies, weird, perplexing encounters and sightings continue to be reported. Read more

10 Unexplained Paranormal Events That Changed History

The paranormal is not just personal. These ten paranormal events changed history.

When history reaches a fork in its path, most often its fate is decided by powers beyond the comprehension of most mere mortals. Which is to say that it’s usually the rich people in power, the governments and military leaders, who will affect the course of things. Mainly by waging war on each other, or making great scientific discoveries, or spying on their populace.

All of the biggest events in history – the Moon Landing, two World Wars, the 1966 World Cup win – were decided by forces outside of most people’s reach. Then there are the time when those outside forces aren’t just the establishment who treat the world as their plaything, beholden to their whims. Sometimes, those forces are something…other. Read more

Humanity's Dark Fascination with the Hollow Earth

Mcah Hanks examines humanity's dark fascination with the Hollow Earth legend.

Few of the great fears held by humankind in our path to modernity would rival that of our long dread for the darkness. Fortunately, with the daily cycle of the Earth’s rotation, we are only bathed in that blackness for a few hours at a time. Hence, over the long course of its evolution, humanity has worked mostly by the waking hours, having learned to hide ourselves away as the light recedes, and take our rest during the hours where dangers of the dark become most prevalent. Read more

The Mystery of the Nine Unknown Men

Brent Swancer explores the mystery of the secret society of nine unknown men, who are charged with guarding ancient secrets and protecting society from potentially destructive knowledge.

Humankind has always had a sort of fascination with the idea of secret societies. From the Freemasons to the Illuminati, there is a certain allure to the idea that behind the scenes of our everyday life there are powerful forces at work pulling the strings, privy to knowledge beyond our mainstream understanding, and with access to ancient secrets beyond our wildest dreams. They operate just under the surface of our civilization, their motives and aims enigmatic and inscrutable, working towards ends that we may never fully understand. One such alleged secret society concerns a shadowy group of nine mysterious men, formed in ancient India and charged with guarding ancient secrets and protecting us from the potentially destructive knowledge which we manage to glean from the mysteries of the universe. Operating in secrecy, they are spread throughout the world, silently watching and accruing ever more potent secrets, all the while hidden from our view. These are the Nine Unknown Men. Read more

Fairy Circles Continue to Mystify

Fairy circles continue to mystify science. If fairies don't make them, what does?

A 2,000-kilometer strip of desert stretching across Namibia is pockmarked with mysterious “fairy circles.” From Angola to South Africa, millions of these bare patches of dirt (which can be seen on Google Earth if you know where to look) dot the landscape, each some five to 10 meters across. And they are not static; they grow and shrink and disappear and reappear. Read more

Why Is the Devil's Hour So Terrifying?

Best-selling paranormal author Joni Mayhan explores why the devil's hour is so terrifying.

As the clock approaches the hour of 3AM, something strange happens in the world around us. The veil between the living and the dead grows thinner, allowing free passage between the two dimensions. Demons, ghosts and interdimensional creatures slip into the land of the living, creating havoc and tormenting us as we lay in bed sleeping. They call it the Devil’s Hour.

Some people find themselves waking up every night during the Devil’s Hour, feeling a chill in the air as though they aren’t alone. They might awaken from a nightmare that seems all too real, only to find themselves face to face with their night stalkers. Many believe it’s more than just lost souls wandering our plane of existence, that it’s the work of demons who are mocking the Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Since Jesus Christ died on the cross at 3PM, they use the opposite hour to torment the living in the same manner they might hang crosses upside down. Read more

Is the Legend of Spring Heeled Jack Worth a Second Look?

Spring-heeled Jack is an entity that first appeared during the Victorian era. Is the legend of Spring=heeled Jack worth a second look?

Beginning in the Spring of 1888, a series of grizzly murders would shake the city of London so badly that, even today, they remain among the most famous crimes ever committed. Attempts at bringing the killer to justice have led to numerous theories about the identity of the man who became known to history as Jack the Ripper. Today, despite a number credible leads that have been presented since Jack’s reign of terror, along with new evidence that employs modern science to try and crack the case, a conclusive case for The Ripper’s identity has remained elusive.

The infamous killer of Whitechapel was by no means the first eerie figure to terrorize Londoners by night. Five decades before Jack the Ripper first scrawled his name in red ink on a letter sent to London’s Central News Agency, a less murderous–though far more strange–series of incidents would arouse similar terror among the people of London, and under a similar name that remains one of the most odd and evocative in the annals of Forteana. Read more

Does New Theory Pinpoint Location of Atlantis?

An author's quest leads to a location for the lost city of Atlantis off the coast of Morocco.

Type the word “Atlantis” into Google and 120 million results pop up. Like El Dorado or Shangri-la, the legendary sunken city of Atlantis hovers on the horizon of our imagination, tantalizing, mysterious, unreachable. Meet Me in Atlantis: My Obsessive Quest to Find the Sunken City pulls together the tangled web of conjecture—and sticks a new locator pin in the map. Read more

The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America

Richard J. Dewhurst discusses his research into the extinct race of giants who once ruled America.

Has Dracula's Dungeon Been Found?

Archaeologists believe they have found the dungeon of Vlad the Impaler, on whom the Count Dracula character was based.

Archeologists in Turkey have reportedly made a spooky discovery, just in time for the start of Halloween season: the dungeon where the real-life basis for Count Dracula was held. Read more

Top 10 Tales of Witchcraft in the Midwest

From the Nancy Evans to Molly Crenshaw, Mysterious Heartland lists the top ten tales of witchcraft in th Midwest.

Although belief in witchcraft has persisted in the American Midwest for nearly two centuries, Mysterious Heartland has found it surprisingly difficult to locate stories of witchcraft in the region. Never-the-less, we have scoured newspaper archives and dusty volumes to bring you some of the most exciting and obscure accounts of conjuring, hexes, and mistaken identity. Which story will prove to be the most compelling of them all? Read more