When it comes to scapegoating, the 10 craziest things people have ever pinned on the Jews read like a fever‑dream catalog of bizarre accusations—ranging from enchanted veggies to engineered Pokémon. Below we count down the most outlandish claims ever recorded.

10 Craziest Things People Have Blamed On The Jews

10 Russians Accused Jews Of Hiding A Magic Vegetable That Keeps You From Getting Drunk

During a tour of Russia, writer Andrew Solomon once asked a man why the people there had such hateful feelings toward the Jews. The man answered him without even pausing for a beat: “It is because the Jews have a secret vegetable they eat so they don’t become alcoholics like the rest of us. And they refuse to share that vegetable with anyone else.”

This wasn’t the rambling of some lone nut. It’s a conspiracy theory that’s come up in a few Russian sources. For hundreds of years, a smattering of Russian voices insisted the same thing: that the Jews are hiding a secret, hairy vegetable that lets them drink all the alcohol they want without getting drunk.

It’s even shown up in Russian folktales, where it’s often listed among the two secrets weapons of those crafty Jews: the magical vegetable that keeps you from getting drunk and the Judas lips that let you get away with lying in court.

9 Hitler Thought Modern Art Was A Jewish Plot To Crush The German Spirit

According to Adolf Hitler, modern art was nothing more than “an act of aesthetic violence by the Jews against the German spirit.”

While writing his daily list of things to blame on the Jews, Hitler apparently reminisced on his failed art career and decided that the Elders of Zion must have been behind the rise of experimental art. He wrote up a paper slamming all modern art as “degenerate” and “Jewish.”

He even put on an exhibit of modern art in Berlin just to show everyone how terrible it was. He called it the “Degenerate Art” exhibition, complete with a whole wing dedicated to “Jewish sculptures.” He filled it with posters explaining how the Jews had created it to mock the German people.

Hitler couldn’t quite find enough Jewish modern artists to back up his point. Only 6 of the 112 artists featured in his exhibition were Jewish. Still, he insisted that Jews were to blame. As he explained in the posters, the other modern artists might not have been Jewish themselves, but they had been “distorted and influenced” by the Jews.

8 Medieval Catholics Accused Jews Of Torturing Bread

In the 13th century, the Catholic Church became convinced that Jews were up to the ultimate evil: torturing bread.

They believed that a group of Christian‑hating Jews were stealing communion wafers just so that they could stab, torment, and burn them. To the Catholics, this was tantamount to torturing Jesus Christ himself. They believed that the communion wafers would actually transform into the physical body of Jesus and that these Jews hated him so much that they felt the need to torture him again in bread form.

Allegedly, the communion wafers would bleed and cry out in pain when their Jewish attackers tormented them. Some wafers would sprout legs and try to run away, but the hateful Jews would chase those wafers down and stab them.

Today, modern historians think the whole panic started with a priest finding red fungus on an overly ripe stash of communion wafers. The church decided that the fungus could only be blood and let insanity take him where it would.

7 Henry Ford Accused Jews Of Making Candy Taste Bad

Henry Ford was a man of a few talents. He was better at selling cars than any other person in the world—and he was even better at finding things to blame on the Jews.

Ford had a whole newspaper called The Dearborn Independent that did nothing but blame Jews for everything under the sun. The paper ran the headline, “The International Jew: The World’s Problem,” and spread so many conspiracy theories that even Adolf Hitler described himself as a fan.

But some were a bit crazier than others. The Dearborn Independent blamed Jews for everything you could imagine. According to the paper, Jews had invented jazz music. They were behind lynchings, which they provoked by poisoning normally sane white men with a secret concoction called “n—r gin.” And they deliberately sabotaged baseball just because they were too lazy to play sports.

It wasn’t just the paper, though. Henry Ford blamed everything imaginable on the Jews. He even blamed them when he bit into a candy bar and didn’t care for the taste. Reportedly, Ford frowned at the candy bar and declared, “The Jews have taken hold of it.”

6 Medieval Germany Accused Jews Of Causing The Black Plague

The Black Plague wiped out up to 200 million individuals in Eurasia, with the worst of it hitting Europe in 1347 to 1351. At that time, the people of Germany decided to get to the bottom of it. They already had a strong hunch they knew what was going on: It was probably those rascally Jews.

They didn’t exactly have any proof or reason to believe that Jews had caused the worst plague in recent history. But they knew that proof wasn’t important when you could torture people into confessing anything you wanted. So they beat and brutalized every Jew they could find until one, pleading for his life, agreed to put in writing that he’d been pouring poison into the wells.

Not everybody believed these stories, of course. Some people saw through the lies and knew that the Jews hadn’t done anything to the wells. These people insisted that the plague was nothing more than a divine curse from a furious God who was mad at them for letting Jews live.

The end result was the same either way. People across Germany—and later, the rest of Europe—slaughtered Jews en masse. In Frankfurt where the massacre was one of the worst, the Jewish population dropped almost overnight from 19,000 people to a mere 10.

5 An Egyptian Governor Accused Jews Of Attacking Them With Remote‑Controlled Sharks

When a shark attacked tourists in Egypt, Governor Abdel‑Fadeel Shosha was sure he knew what was afoot. This was nothing more than a Zionist plot to attack Egypt with remote‑controlled cybersharks.

Shosha wasn’t completely ready to commit to the cybershark theory right away. He kept things balanced and timid, telling the press that it could also be a “specially indoctrinated Zionist shark” or even an “Israeli agent in a shark costume.”

It was just too early to say for sure, Shosha said. He wasn’t saying anything definite. He just wanted time to confirm.

He was pretty certain, though, that Israeli intelligence was behind the shark attacks. After all, he’d heard rumors that there was a GPS on the shark. Although conservationists kept trying to convince him that they used these devices as a way of tracking animal behavior and that a GPS couldn’t be used for mind control, Shosha knew better.

4 Wahhabis Accused Jews Of Conspiring With ‘Jew Trees’

According to a fundamentalist group of Muslims called the Wahhabis, the Jews have already started conspiring with a secret ally: the Gharqad tree, or as the Wahhabis call it, the “Jew tree.”

According to a man who’d grown up in a Saudi Arabian Wahhabi school, he was assigned to read a book in the ninth grade that his teacher told him was a statement from the prophet Muhammad. Inside, it outlined in brutal detail how the Muslims were going to murder every single Jew on the planet:

“The day of judgment will not arrive until Muslims fight Jews, and Muslim will kill Jews until the Jew hides behind a tree or a stone. Then the tree and the stone say, ‘Oh Muslim, oh, servant of God, this is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.’”

According to the book, the Jews would only have one ally in all of nature: the Gharqad tree. The next lines read: “Except one type of a tree, which is a Jew tree. That will not say that.”

The lesson was clear: It wasn’t just that good Wahhabis can’t trust Jews. They can’t even trust their dirty Jew trees.

3 A Palestinian Newspaper Accused Jews Of Breeding Killer Super Rats

According to one Palestinian newspaper, Israel created a race of super rats that grow twice as big as a normal rat, purely to chase the Arabs out of Jerusalem.

The paper claims that the super rats are vicious, trained killers that are big enough to kill a cat. Jews will bring them into town in cages and unleash them on the Arab population. Then they’ll let the rats swarm on the Palestinians who live there and attack Arab children.

The rats spread quickly, too. They’ve been genetically engineered to breed at four times the rate of a normal animal. Most impressively of all, the super rats have been trained to sniff out Arab blood. The rats will leave every Jewish person they find alone and move on to hunt and kill Arabs.

2 The Nation Of Islam Accused Jews Of Tricking People Into Thinking Slavery Exists

According to the Nation of Islam’s Akbar Muhammed, the idea that slavery still exists in our world is nothing but a “big lie” started as part of a “Jewish conspiracy.”

Akbar was responding to news from Amnesty International that slavery and human bondage were still alive and well in places like Sudan, Mauritania, and Libya. He insisted that it was all a Zionist conspiracy, and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan agreed.

“Where is the proof?” Farrakhan asked. “If slavery exists, why don’t you go as a member of the press, and you look inside Sudan, and if you find it, then you come back and tell the American people what you found?”

In response, The Baltimore Sun sent reporters into Sudan, bought two slave boys, ran a report on it, and won a Pulitzer Prize.

Still, even after the article came out, people continued to insist that it’s all made up. The government of Mauritania even released an official statement blaming The Baltimore Sun article on the Jews: “Slavery no longer exists, and talk of it suggests manipulation by the West, an act of enmity toward Islam, or influence from the worldwide Jewish conspiracy.”

1 Iraqi Security Thought Pokemon Was Part Of A Zionist Plot

Perhaps the greatest of all Jewish conspiracies is Pokemon. According to an Iraqi security services report written in 2001, the world’s most popular game was created as nothing more than a Zionist plot to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Iraqi security services claimed that the name “Pokemon” was a Hebrew word that meant “I am a Jew.” Jewish conspirators supposedly created the game to infiltrate the minds of Iraqi children and turn them against Hussein. The report warned that the character Pokemon was already all over Iraqi markets and that the children “love it very much.”

It might seem a little unbelievable. One might cite petty details like “I am a Jew” in Hebrew isn’t pronounced “Pokemon,” Pokemon isn’t the name of a character, and Pokemon is Japanese.

Then again, how do you explain that Pokemon Mystery Dungeon came out in 2006, the very same year that Saddam Hussein was found in a mysterious underground dungeon?

Check and mate.

The night sky’s most familiar companion, the moon, has long been a convenient scapegoat for mysteries we can’t readily explain. In this roundup of 10 things we’ve mistakenly blamed on the moon, we’ll uncover the myths, the science, and the surprising truths behind each claim.

10 Things We Examine

10 Madness

For centuries, the full moon has been linked to bouts of insanity, giving rise to the very word “lunatic,” which stems from Luna, the Latin name for the moon. The ancient Roman thinker Pliny the Elder even argued that a full moon caused extra dew, which supposedly soaked our brains and sparked occasional madness.

This idea was revived in 1978 by Arnold L. Lieber in his book The Lunar Effect: Biological Tides and Human Emotions. Lieber suggested that the moon’s pull on bodily fluids mirrored its effect on ocean tides, causing liquids to shift in our heads and, consequently, driving people mad.

Modern research, however, has cleared the moon of any culpability. Psychologists such as Professor Scott Lilienfeld of Emory University point out that the moon exerts no measurable influence on brain chemistry, debunking the age‑old claim that it makes us irrational.

Lilienfeld offers a more plausible explanation: before electric lighting, people spent more evenings outdoors under bright moons. Those with mental health issues happened to be more visible during those nights, creating a false association between moonlight and madness.

9 The Death Of General Stonewall Jackson

Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson succumbed to pneumonia on May 10, 1863, a week after a friendly‑fire incident on the night of May 2 during the Battle of Chancellorsville. Mistaking his own troops for Union soldiers, the 18th North Carolina infantry opened fire, wounding Jackson with three musket balls that ultimately led to his death.

Researchers Don Olson and Laurie E. Jasinski of Texas State University argue that the full moon that night played a crucial role. While many assume a full moon improves visibility, it can actually backfire when the moon sits directly in front of observers, turning everything ahead into a dark silhouette.

In this case, the moon was positioned right in front of the North Carolina soldiers. Their view of the approaching Confederates was reduced to black shadows, prompting them to fire prematurely and tragically striking General Jackson.

8 2011 Tohoku Earthquake

On March 11, 2011, a devastating magnitude‑9 earthquake shattered northeastern Japan, followed swiftly by a lethal tsunami. The catastrophe claimed nearly 16,000 lives, left thousands missing, and inflicted over $200 billion in damage, making it the costliest natural disaster on record.

The quake’s suddenness baffled scientists, prompting some to blame the moon’s gravitational tug—particularly because the event fell a week after a new moon and a week before a forthcoming supermoon. The timing seemed to fit a popular narrative that lunar forces can jam geological faults.

In reality, the moon’s orbit is elliptical, meaning its distance from Earth varies. When the moon is closest, we experience a “supermoon,” which appears larger and brighter than a typical full moon.

Paradoxically, the moon’s pull was at its weakest during the Tohoku quake, disproving the notion that lunar gravity intensified the seismic activity that day.

7 Childbirth

For centuries, folklore claimed that more babies arrive under a full moon, supposedly because lunar gravity agitates the amniotic fluid in a pregnant woman’s womb, prompting labor to begin.

Extensive studies have repeatedly shown this belief to be unfounded. The most comprehensive analysis, conducted by Daniel Caton in 2001, examined 70 million births over two decades and found no statistical spike in deliveries on full‑moon nights.

Despite the solid evidence, the myth refuses to die, lingering in popular culture and prompting endless debates whenever a bright moon hangs overhead.

6 Positive Stock Market Returns

Several academic investigations have highlighted a curious pattern: stock markets tend to generate higher returns during the 14‑ to 15‑day window surrounding a new moon. One study covering 25 exchanges across the G7 nations reported profits three times larger during new‑moon periods than at other times.

However, savvy investors shouldn’t rush to buy on a new moon and sell on the following full moon. Transaction costs would erode most of the modest gains, and markets also perform well outside these lunar windows; the effect is simply less pronounced.

5 Acute Hemorrhagic Conjunctivitis

Acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis, a painful eye infection caused by enterovirus 70 or coxsackievirus A24, leads to reddened, swollen eyes that often ooze pus. While uncomfortable, the disease rarely proves fatal and usually resolves within a week.

The outbreak gained a quirky nickname in Africa: “Apollo.” The moniker dates back to 1969, the year the Apollo 11 mission landed on the moon. The disease was first observed in Ghana that same year, prompting locals to link it to the historic lunar landing.

Some speculated that astronauts might have unintentionally transported the virus back to Earth, dubbing it “Apollo 11 disease.” Modern science has dismissed this notion, yet the name persists in certain regions.

4 Menstruation

Long‑standing folklore suggests that a woman’s menstrual cycle syncs with the lunar month. The term “menstruation” itself comes from the Latin mensis (month), which traces back to the Greek mēnē for moon, reinforcing the perceived connection.

One modern proponent of the idea was Dr. Eugene Jonas, who observed pregnancies occurring despite timing intercourse away from ovulation. He hypothesized a secondary fertile window governed by a “lunar cycle,” separate from the standard menstrual rhythm.

Jonas’s theory lacked empirical support; his belief rested on astrological assumptions rather than scientific data. Nevertheless, he persisted in promoting the lunar‑cycle hypothesis.

Subsequent research has found no credible link between lunar phases and menstrual timing. Human cycles vary widely, ranging from 21 to 35 days, with the 28‑day average being merely a statistical midpoint.

3 The Great Crypto Crash

January 2018 saw the cryptocurrency market plunge dramatically, with most digital assets shedding roughly 80 % of their value within a month. Bitcoin, for instance, fell from about $20 000 in December 2017 to $10 000 a month later, a drop rivaling the 1970s dot‑com bust.

Investors scrambled for explanations, and one voice pointed skyward. Alexander Wallin, CEO of the Sprinklebit platform, blamed the crash on the Lunar New Year, a two‑week celebration anchored to the lunar calendar that begins on the first new‑moon night and ends on the first full moon.

Wallin argued Chinese investors were cashing out their Bitcoin holdings to fund New Year festivities, flooding the market and driving prices down. While the timing aligns with the lunar calendar, the crash’s root causes were far more complex than a simple moon‑related cash‑out.

2 Vehicle Accidents

Full moons have earned a notorious reputation for upping the odds of traffic mishaps. A joint study by Princeton University and the University of Toronto, spanning 30 years of motorcycle‑related fatalities across the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, identified a 5 % rise in accidents on full‑moon nights compared with other evenings.

The danger spikes even higher during supermoons, with accident rates climbing to 27 %. Researchers suggest that a supermoon checks all the boxes of a visual distraction: it’s large, bright, and can appear suddenly, drawing attention away from the road.

Additionally, people tend to be out later on bright nights, and riders may feel emboldened by the enhanced visibility, further contributing to the uptick in crashes.

1 Crime

For ages, the full moon has been linked to a surge in criminal activity. The British Sussex police, analyzing their 2006 crime logs, reported a higher number of offenses on full‑moon nights than on other evenings.

Other researchers have echoed similar findings, though the evidence remains mixed; several studies have failed to detect a solid correlation between lunar phases and crime rates.

If any increase does occur, it’s not because the moon magically alters human behavior. Instead, the extra illumination encourages people to stay outdoors longer, providing criminals with the light they need to operate while still preserving enough darkness for concealment—a concept known as the illumination hypothesis.

Legends of mythical monsters have been sending shivers down spines for centuries, and sometimes those spooky stories become tangled up with real‑world misfortunes. In fact, the ten tragedies blamed on legendary beings range from missing teens to murderous confessions, showing just how powerful folklore can be when tragedy strikes.

10 tragedies blamed: Mythical Creatures and Their Dark Stories

10 Bigfoot Kidnapping

Ever since the infamous Gimlin footage burst onto the scene in 1967, countless Bigfoot sightings have peppered the United States, even though most scientists dismiss the whole notion as a hoax or pure fantasy.

Fast forward to June 1, 1987, when 16‑year‑old Theresa Ann Bier decided to ditch school and chase the elusive creature in California’s Sierra Nevada range. She was accompanied by 43‑year‑old Russell Welch. After a day of wandering, Welch returned alone, and Theresa was reported missing. When questioned, Welch claimed he last saw her on June 2, saying they had both encountered a Bigfoot, and that the beast had whisked her away after she gave chase. He kept revising his story, adding ever‑more elaborate details each time.

Police, skeptical of his wild tale, arrested Welch on June 11, but released him when they could not produce any concrete evidence. Even a thorough search that employed sniffer dogs around the last known location turned up only a presumed purse and fragments of clothing.

To this day, no one has been charged in connection with Theresa’s disappearance, and her ultimate fate remains an unsettling mystery.

9 Mermaid Drowning

In December 2013, 12‑year‑old Siyabonga Masango left his home to join friends for a game of soccer. After a while, the scorching heat convinced the boys to cool off by swimming in a tributary of the Sabie River in Mpumalanga, South Africa.

A nearby man washing his car witnessed Siyabonga being pulled beneath the surface and rushed to help, but the water proved impenetrable; rescuers could not locate the boy. Police divers scoured the river for two weeks, eventually concluding that a crocodile attack was the most plausible explanation for his disappearance.

However, Siyabonga’s family rejected the crocodile theory, insisting that a mermaid had taken their son. They performed rituals hoping the mermaid would release him in time for school. Despite their fervent belief, the boy was never recovered, and his fate remains unknown.

8 Ghostly Vengeance

In June 2018, two men in the Thai village of Tambon Dong Yai, Nakhon Ratchasima’s Phimai district, were found dead in their sleep. Alarmed villagers consulted a local medium to summon spirits for an explanation. The medium reported that a widow’s ghost claimed she intended to kill four men in the village; having already claimed two lives, she warned that two more would soon follow.

Spooked, several residents hung a bright red shirt in front of their homes, believing the color would repel the ghost. Some even attached notes declaring that no men lived there, only pets.

After the red shirts were displayed, no further male deaths were reported, suggesting the community’s improvised talisman may have deterred the vengeful spirit.

7 Alien Abduction

The disappearance of pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart sparked countless conspiracy theories, even after the U.S. Navy concluded that she and navigator Fred Noonan most likely ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific Ocean, perishing at sea.

Alternative theories have ranged from Earhart and Noonan washing ashore on Nikumaroro and living as castaways, to being captured by Japanese forces, or even being devoured by coconut crabs after a crash near Howland Island.

Among the more outlandish ideas, some claim that aliens seized Earhart on the very day she was to land on Howland Island, transporting her through a wormhole where she was left in suspended animation.

This extraterrestrial angle even found its way into popular culture; the anthology horror series American Horror Story featured a character claiming to be Amelia Earhart, who makes contact with alien entities.

6 Demonic Murder

Demonic entities and evil forces have long populated folklore, mythology, fiction, and religious texts. Alongside these tales, modern crimes have occasionally been blamed on demonic influence.

In 2016, Aljar Swartz admitted to the brutal killing and beheading of 15‑year‑old Lee Adams, later burying the victim’s head in his backyard in Cape Town, South Africa. After his trial, when psychiatrists deemed him mentally stable, Swartz’s lawyer abruptly declared that his client was possessed by a demon and demanded an exorcism be performed in Swartz’s prison cell while he awaited sentencing.

The attorney even sought a retired Methodist minister to conduct the rite, citing Swartz’s claim that a black‑lizard‑shaped demon appeared in his cell, crawling into his chest and taking control. Swartz described himself as a “vessel” for the devil, arguing he could not be held responsible for Lee’s murder.

The court, however, found Swartz had murdered Lee Adams to sell the victim’s head to a sangoma—a traditional healer in South African culture. He received a 22‑year prison sentence.

5 By Order of the Vampire Queen

In 2002, 22‑year‑old Allan Menzies murdered his 21‑year‑old friend Thomas McKendrick, then proceeded to bite off part of the victim’s head, drink his blood, and bury him shallowly. During his trial, Menzies claimed that Akasha, the “Vampire Queen” from the film The Queen of the Damned, had repeatedly ordered him to kill his friend.

Menzies confessed to watching the movie over a hundred times, insisting Akasha promised him immortality if he carried out murders. He said McKendrick had insulted the fictional queen, prompting the lethal act, and that he felt nothing after his friend’s death, believing he had become a vampire.

The court sentenced Menzies to life imprisonment in 2003. He was later found dead in his cell in 2004, with investigators concluding he had taken his own life.

4 Monster Behind the Mystery

Originating from Norwegian folklore, the Kraken is famed as a colossal sea monster capable of swallowing ships whole. Sailors once mistook the creature for an island, only to be dragged beneath the waves.

Even the renowned naturalist Carl von Linné listed the Kraken as a real organism in his seminal work Systema Naturae. Some enthusiasts point to Ichthyosaur fossils arranged in patterns reminiscent of how octopuses discard prey, suggesting the Kraken could have existed.

Modern mystery hunters have also blamed the Kraken for unexplained disappearances within the Bermuda Triangle, proposing that a super‑intelligent cephalopod lurks in the depths, feeding on wayward vessels and aircraft. The monster has even been implicated in the Mary Celeste’s vanishing, despite the ship’s disappearance occurring far from the triangle’s heart.

3 Quota of Lives

The Higginson Highway in Chatsworth, Durban, South Africa, has earned a grim reputation for fatal accidents. Drivers often encounter rocks hurled from overhead bridges, leading to crashes, robberies of injured motorists, loss of vehicle control, and deadly rollovers.

Many of these tragedies are attributed to a resident specter known as Highway Sheila. Folklore holds that Sheila maintains a “quota of lives” each year, manifesting in the middle of the road to cause drivers to swerve, resulting in fatal collisions.

Recently, a Metro police officer and his family were traveling home late at night when they nearly collided with a woman dressed in white standing in the lane. Terrified, they believed divine intervention saved them from harm.

2 Wendigo Psychosis

Algonquian legends describe the Wendigo as a gaunt, antlered cannibal that roams frozen wilderness, preying on humans to survive. According to myth, the first Wendigo emerged when a hunter, lost in a harsh winter, turned to cannibalism and transformed into the monstrous being.

In the 1800s, a Cree man named Swift Runner fell into alcoholism, lost his job as a guide for the North West Mounted Police, and grew increasingly violent. In 1878, he led his wife, six children, mother‑in‑law, and brother into the woods, slaughtered them, and consumed their flesh.

Authorities discovered broken, hollowed‑out bones and a pot of human fat in the forest, leading to Swift Runner’s arrest. He confessed that a Wendigo had possessed him, compelling the gruesome massacre.

The court dismissed his supernatural defense, found him guilty, sentenced him to death, and carried out the execution in December 1879.

1 Lurking Leviathan

Caribbean folklore tells of the lusca, a 75‑foot hybrid of shark and octopus—sometimes dubbed the “lurking Leviathan.” This sea monster is said to haunt the waters around Andros Island in the Bahamas, boasting a shark‑like head and torso with an octopus‑like lower body.

One theory posits that the lusca is the ghost of a drowned woman transformed into a monstrous form. Another suggests the creature is a mermaid or siren, dispatched by nymphs to lure sailors to a watery death.

The television series River Monsters dedicated an episode to the lusca, exploring its possible role in the disappearances of swimmers exploring Andros’s blue holes. Missing individuals include 38‑year‑old Liu Guandong, Wesley Bell, and 72‑year‑old John William Batchelor, whose boat was recovered but whose fate remains unknown.