Horror stories thrill just about everyone. From monsters to demons and from serial killers to stalkers, nothing gets the blood curdling like a good scary story. But one aspect of horror that churns the stomachs of most people is cannibalism. The thought of eating another human drives fear into nearly everyone.

Throughout history, though, cannibalism wasn’t just a thing from the cinema. It was something that happened in many different ways. One scenario comes straight from the minds of the greatest horror fanatics: The legend of Sawney Bean is one of Scotland’s most disturbing tales and has stood the test of time, having made its mark in history.

Some claim that the story of Sawney Bean is hearsay and myth, while others say that it’s a tale of true horror. Was this legend a dig at the Scots, or was there really a raving, cave-dwelling, incestuous cannibal living in Scotland?

Either way, Sawney Bean is a disturbing figure in the realm of horror.

10 Sawney Bean As A Family Man

Very little is known about the early years of Alexander “Sawney” Bean. Information about his youth is vague until the time of his marriage. Supposedly, Bean was born in the county of East Lothian on the outskirts of the Scottish city of Edinburgh during the reign of James I of Scotland.

His father was a hard worker—a hedger and ditcher—and raised Sawney to be the same. However, Sawney did not care for work. Early on, he took off into the deserted part of the country.

On his way out of Lothian, Sawney took a wife, who would prove to be as rancid as he was. His wife was named Agnes Douglas. Accused of being a witch in her hometown, she supposedly conjured demons and sacrificed humans.

The lovely couple then set up a modest yet useful home in Bennane Cave, located by Ballantrae in Ayrshire, Scotland. The cave was wonderful for the newlyweds as it contained many side passages and hideaways.

Each day, the cave’s entrance would flood for several hundred meters, isolating the couple. The Sawneys decided to have children and, boy, did they proliferate. Fourteen children were born out of the loving relationship of Sawney and Agnes. But that’s about as lovely as their family life gets.^[1]

9 A Family Built On Love And Incest

The Sawney parents had 14 children. During this time in 15th-century Scotland, it’s unbelievable that they were able to bear and keep alive that many children. Diseases like typhus, smallpox, and tuberculosis killed many kids. Child mortality rates averaged 14 percent in the first year of life.

The Sawney clan beat the odds and successfully raised eight sons and six daughters. Cave living meant that the Sawneys weren’t out courting, so love found a way. The clan was rampantly incestuous. The Sawney children had sex with each other as well as their parents, producing 18 grandsons and 14 granddaughters.^[2]

All these offspring needed to be fed. So what is a derelict, cave-dwelling family of outcasts supposed to do? The first and best solution was obviously cannibalism.

8 The Family That Slays Together Stays Together

To stay fed, the clan began preying on travelers who passed by the Sawney cave. Sawney himself would ambush and rob them, taking their goods and money. Not wanting to let fresh meat go to waste, Sawney began to drag the bodies home to be butchered and eaten. This tradition of cannibalism lasted 25 years within the clan.

As the clan grew and more bodies were needed to provide sustenance for the 48 family members, an increasing number of people were murdered and eaten. The cannibal cuisine nearly became an art form as generations of Beans learned to save body parts, pickling and salting the human meat for later consumption.

The Beans murdered so many people that there was sometimes too much human meat around for eating. So the many rooms of their cave dwelling became storage facilities stacked full of human limbs and skulls. When the rooms were full and food was too plentiful, the Beans just kept murdering and threw the body parts in the ocean. They would wash up on the shores of local beaches and scare the inhabitants.^[3]

7 Suspicious Locals Are Spooked

For nearly 25 years, the Bean clan killed and ate nearly 1,000 people. When that many individuals go missing, people notice and rumors start to fly. Many townsfolk in local cities began to turn on each other, accusing their neighbors, friends, and often family members of being murderers.

The stories of what happened to these people ranged from the ordinary to the extraordinary. One of the most common rumors was that innkeepers in the area were robbing and killing all the individuals who had gone missing. This led to many innkeepers just up and leaving the profession to prove their innocence and stay out of the murderous limelight.

On the wilder side of the rumor mill, locals claimed that evil beasts of various sorts were roaming the area villages. The most common monster was the redcap, an evil, goblin-like creature that lived in old castles where blood was said to have been shed.^[4]

Redcaps were known for preying on travelers who were passing through their areas, killing them, and then dragging their bodies away to the redcaps’ abodes. Though a monster of lore, the redcap fit all the suspicions of the locals. Still, some had their doubts.

Over the years, the missing persons list continued to grow without anyone knowing that the bodies of those missing people were being eaten by the Bean clan only a cave away. Although mass searches were conducted frequently, the locals were not concerned with what was in the cave because daily flooding made it inaccessible.

6 All Good Things Must End

Sawney Bean and his clan of cannibal love children went on a killing spree for nearly 25 years. Like all good things, however, it came to an end. The Sawney army was finally busted thanks to a slew of witnesses and a failed attack.

One fateful night, the Sawney army tried to kill a husband and wife who were on their way back from a local fair. The Sawney women jumped the woman, pulled her from her horse, and then stripped and disemboweled her. As the husband was being attacked by the Sawney men, he watched in horror as his wife was murdered and eaten before his eyes.

Fueled by rage, the man was able to evade his attackers long enough to drive his horse over some of his foes. Luckily, at the apex of the fight, a group of 20–30 fairgoers arrived on the scene. The Beans had been caught in the act, and knowing they had been busted, they returned to their beloved cave.^[5]

The testimony of the witnesses along with the desecrated corpse of the wife provided the needed evidence to go after the Bean clan.

5 King James I To The Rescue

The witnesses to the attack and the husband of the slain woman were quickly brought in to inform the local authorities of the horrors that were seen on that infamous night. The chief magistrate of Glasgow listened to their tale and created the longest missing persons list ever.

Shocked by the attack and the number of missing persons, the magistrate took the list to the top of Scottish parliament, King James I. After gathering information about the infamous clan, King James I was out for revenge. He arrived in the area of the attack with an army of 400 men, bloodhounds, and local volunteers who were ready to end the reign of the clan.

At the time, it was one of the biggest manhunts ever conducted in Scotland. They searched for days until the dogs picked up the scent of decay in the entrance to the cave of the clan. The reign of Bean terror was ending.^[6]

4 A Cave Of Horrors

Finally, the clan was apprehended. But nothing could have prepared the searchers for what they would discover within the cave. Beyond the stench of decay and blood, mutilations were found in every nook and cranny.

The limbs of men, women, and children were hung and dried throughout the cave like dried beef. Limbs, fingers, and other pieces of victims were pickled in various corners of the cave. Masses of gold and silver, watches, rings, swords, and pistols were discovered in various locations within the cave.^[7]

Clothes from the victims were hung about the cave, covering openings and decorating the walls of the Bean clan’s humble abode in a macabre fashion.

3 The Execution Of A Cannibalistic Dynasty

After the raid of their cave, the Bean clan, who had been hiding in the woods, gave up without a fight. Knowing they were out of action, they willingly surrendered with all members of the family accounted for.

Bound in chains, the clan was brought to Edinburgh to be executed. Having been terrorized by the Beans for so long, the public demanded a grand punishment. There was no forgiveness for the clan’s heinous deeds, and all family members were treated as the monsters they were.

The men of the Bean clan were slowly dismembered and disemboweled. This was to emphasize the cruelty of the lives they had lived. Hung on stakes while the men were executed, the women and children were forced to watch as their men were killed. When the executioners were satisfied with their staking, they set the women and children on fire.

During the entire process of execution, none of the Bean clan showed remorse for that they had done. Instead, they heckled and shouted obscenities at their captors. Legend states that, until his final breath, the patriarch of the family, Alexander “Sawney” Bean, continually shouted, “It isn’t over, it will never be over.”^[8]

2 The Sawney Bean Vacation

Centuries have passed since the infamous Bean clan ravaged Scotland with their cannibalism, but it doesn’t mean that people have forgotten. Though the story is now part legend and part history, the Beans are still intriguing people as they and their story have become a tourist attraction.

In Edinburgh, you can take a tour of the infamous cave of the Bean clan and discover all the remains of humans and other various leftovers. Known as the Edinburgh Dungeon, this tourist attraction puts visitors right in the Sawney Bean action by using actors, theatrical effects, stages, scenes, and rides to recreate the Sawney Bean experience (as well as many other dark tales of Scotland).^[9]

If going to a theatrical Sawney Bean recreation isn’t your thing, you can visit the actual cannibal cave! Though the cave is off the beaten path, adventurous souls can take a treacherous climb down a rock face near the waterline to reach the Bennane Cave and explore the hideout of the notorious family. The place is marked by a sign dedicated to Snib Scott, a recent inhabitant who lived in the cave until 1983.

1 Sawney Bean In Cinema

Sawney’s story has also become a cinematic tale. In 1977, director Wes Craven was seeking to make another movie. He heard the tale of Sawney Bean and adapted it into the horror classic The Hills Have Eyes. Though based on the story in Scotland, Craven changed the location of the tale to the American West.^[10]

The Hills Have Eyes was so popular that it was remade in 2006 and was still shocking audiences. In 2013, Sawney: Flesh of Man was released. In this new take on the Sawney clan, a long-lost relative is carrying on the tradition of murder and cannibalism. The film is noted as being “gruesome, visceral, and blackly funny.”

Sawney and his family will continue to intrigue well into the future.

Hi! I’m Theta! I am a full-time librarian with a penchant for writing, animals, and all things obscure.

The world is full of derelict buildings, many of which are in a truly dismal state of disrepair and give off an eerie, desolate vibe. Most of us will pass structures of this sort in the town or city we live in on a regular basis without even giving them a second thought, let alone wondering what events led them into their current dilapidated state.

Of course, lots of these buildings have been abandoned for fairly mundane reasons, but in some cases, the stories that lie behind them are darker and sadder. The following are ten derelict buildings with stories that ensure nobody will want to use them in the future.

10 Chateau Miranda

This neo-Gothic building in Celles, Belgium, was also known as Chateau de Noisy and was constructed between 1886 and 1907. The original plan was for the wealthy Liederkerke-De Beaufort family to use it as their summer home. However, the building was claimed for use as a base by the Nazis during World War II, and at one time, a number of German soldiers were living in it.^[1] There is nothing particularly creepy about this, apart from the inherent creepiness of Nazis, but the chateau became one of the places where the Battle of the Bulge was fought, which meant that a number of men died there.

If the thought of the spirits of all of those dead soldiers roaming around a Gothic-looking building in the middle of nowhere isn’t unsettling enough, this chateau went on to be used as a place for sick children to stay after the war ended. It was referred to as a “holiday camp,” although it does not seem like a place that many kids would want to spend their holidays at. Inevitably, not all of the children who stayed there recovered from their illnesses, so the chateau became even more associated with death. Sadly, Chateau Miranda was demolished in 2017, meaning all of its ghosts had to find somewhere else to haunt.

9 Sanzhi UFO Houses

These futuristic pod-shaped buildings in New Tapei, Taiwan, were proof that modernism offers us no defense against creepiness. The Sanzhi UFO Houses looked like something we might expect to see in a 1950s sci-fi movie. Work on building them began in 1978, with the intention being for the site to be a resort once the houses were complete.^[2] The idea was that officers in the US military who had been posted to the area would use the finished development, but nobody ever got to take a vacation there because work on it was scrapped two years after it began following a series of mysterious deaths among the construction crew.

It has been reported that some of the workers died in car accidents, while others committed suicide, but the precise reason for the seemingly cursed nature of the development has been a source of debate ever since. Some believe that the decision to split a sculpture of a Chinese dragon that was situated near the gates led to a curse, while others think that it was built on a site haunted by Dutch soldiers. The buildings were demolished at the end of the 2000s.

8 Willard Asylum

An abandoned asylum is always likely to have a fairly eerie atmosphere, but the Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane takes it to a whole other level. Situated in Willard, New York, it was originally built in the 1860s to be a place of safety for the mentally ill at a time when “treatments” such as imprisoning them in cells or leaving them chained up in poorhouses were common. The idea came from Dr. Sylvester D. Willard, and the asylum was organized in a way that was typical for the period, with men and women kept apart, but with a cinema, gym, and bowling alley among the facilities, there was clearly an effort being made to make its residents happy.^[3]

Despite the attempts to make Willard Asylum a more progressive place for treating the mentally ill, the presence of a graveyard full of thousands of unnamed markers for those who died there is grim reminder that it was still essentially a prison. However, what really gave Willard Asylum its unsettling reputation are the suitcases that were discovered in an attic after the facility was shut down in 1995. Numbering more than 400, these suitcases contained personal items that had been brought to the asylum by new inmates. They provide a melancholy glimpse into the lives of its residents, many of whom never left and are among those buried anonymously in its cemetery. Among the possessions found in these suitcases were everything from children’s toys and books to family photos.

7 The Murder House

The Scottish city of Dundee has known its fair share of violent crime, but the events that took place at its infamous “murder house” have earned a place in local folklore. The large three-story house is located in the wealthy Roseangle area of the city, and it is a place that most of us would be happy to live in—but it remained derelict for decades. It was the home of a retired doctor named Alexander Wood and his wife Dorothy, both of whom were in their late seventies when their lives were brutally ended in May 1980. The frail elderly couple were attacked by an intruder, who beat them to death using a hammer. The scene of the killings was so gruesome that Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Cameron, who was in charge of investigating the crime, said at the time that the degree of violence involved was “not normal.”^[4]

The killer turned out to be a local man named Henry John Gallagher, who committed a further two horrific killings in Kent before being captured. Gallagher was judged to be insane and went to Broadmoor Hospital instead of prison, which seems reasonable, given that the scene he left behind at the house in Roseangle was described as looking like an abattoir. Meanwhile, the murder house became a bleak feature of the landscape in the center of Dundee and part of the Dark Dundee visitor tour. As of August 2018, plans had been made to turn the murder house into a bar and restaurant.

6 Fort Douaumont

This fort is situated not far from Verdun, France, and it was designed to prevent the Germans from invading that region in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War. It did not actually come into play until World War I, but by this time, the French had abandoned the use of fixed fortifications as a military defense, and the small garrison left at the fort were easily overpowered by the Germans when the latter staged a surprise strike at the start of the Battle of Verdun.

The French army eventually regained control of it in October 1916, with the public in France demanding that all energy be put into reclaiming a building they saw as a symbol of their nation as a whole. The battle to win it back was bloody and involved intensive shell attacks, which hit the supplies of ammunition and grenades that were kept in the center of the fort. Some 800 Germans were killed by the mix of toxic smoke and explosions.

With the fort under assault, the dead could not be buried outside and had to be put into one of the fort galleries and sealed in.^[5] Some of the skeletal remains are now buried in the fort cemetery and ossuary, but others remain forever walled in within the building itself.

5 St. Gerard’s Hospital

Abandoned hospitals have the same potential as asylums for creepiness, and St. Gerard’s certainly fit that particular bill. It was located in Birmingham in the UK and was built by a local charity called the Father Hudson Society as a facility for poor children who were suffering from tuberculosis and other illnesses caused by poverty. It was originally constructed back in the 1890s and remained in use for almost a century before closing its doors for the last time in 1988. It lingered for roughly 30 years before it was finally knocked down.

What made St. Gerard’s such an unnerving place to walk around was the fact that the contents of the building weren’t removed. These included beds, wheelchairs, hospital equipment, syringes coated in blood, X-rays and medical charts of children who were treated there, and the toys and coloring books that they amused themselves with.^[6] Most of these items had been damaged by weather conditions over the years since the hospital shut down but remained intact, making the presence of those who once worked and received treatment there feel almost tangible for anyone exploring the derelict building.

4 Church Of The Nine Ghosts

The actual name of this 14th-century church is St. George’s Church, and it is in Lukova in the Czech Republic, where it was consecrated in 1352. From the very beginning, it developed an association with darkness, as it was ravaged by fires on more occasions than anyone would expect of a church. However, despite this spate of strange events, the church was continually rebuilt and repaired until one final disaster in 1968 proved the last straw for residents of the village. During a funeral service that year, the roof of the church caved in, which led many local people to believe that it was haunted, so the church was finally abandoned.^[7]

That’s creepy enough, but it wasn’t the end of the story. After it stopped being used as a church, the inside of the building started to fall into disrepair, and Jacob Hadrava, an artist from the local area, decided to save it from being knocked down by turning it into an art installation. He created nine shrouded figures made of plaster that sit in the pews—hence the nickname “Church of the Nine Ghosts.” Hadrava called his finished work My Mind, and it has become a popular tourist attraction among the sort of people who listen to Joy Division on their summer holidays. More ghostly figures have since been added to the original nine.

3 Hulme Hippodrome

This abandoned theater is located in Manchester, England, and opened its doors in 1901, staging music hall performances for years before being given the new name of the Second Manchester Repertory Theater in the 1940s. It later went on to play host to legendary artists like Nina Simone, but after a period when it was used as a venue for bingo during the 1970s, it was closed down and went on to become a source of fascination for many people living in Manchester.

While any derelict theater has an element of eeriness about it because it was once full of life, laughter, and people, the connection Hulme Hippodrome has with the strange Gilbert Deya Ministries is what really makes it creepy. This organization bought the building and used it to hold church meetings, at which Deya allegedly told infertile couples that he could provide them with what he called “miracle babies.” Deya and his church were investigated by the BBC in 2004 over suspicions that these babies were being kidnapped from families in Nairobi, Kenya. The investigation found that the babies that he claimed had been born to couples in the UK did not have the same DNA as the people who were supposed to be their parents, and Deya was eventually sent back to Kenya to face charges of child trafficking in 2017.^[8]

2 Hirta

This entry is actually several buildings that make up a settlement on the Scottish island of Hirta. Hirta is part of the St Kilda archipelago and is one of the most remote places in the whole of the UK—as well as being empty since the residents left in 1930. At one time, Hirta was the place on St Kilda where the majority of people lived, with the residents of the island growing potatoes and barley, catching fish, and eating eggs and meat from seabirds.

Life in this detached location was surely never easy, but the story behind the final abandonment of it is very bleak. The settlement had survived a number of tough experiences, including an epidemic of smallpox in 1727, but the winter of 1929 proved to be so brutal that it led to multiple deaths, decimating the community and leaving only 36 remaining. Grief and desperation led those who had survived the harsh winter weather to plead with the government for a move away from the island to the mainland. Although the island was evacuated almost 90 years ago, buildings such as houses and the school hall are still there and are now sometimes visited by tourists.^[9]

1 Red Dress Manor

The actual name of this abandoned farmhouse in Powys, Wales, is Calcott Hall, and it was originally built back in 1725. The last person to live there was a woman named Ellen Jones, who died during the 1970s. Everything in the house has remained exactly as she left it since her death, making it appear as if she is still alive and has simply gone out. The house still has the food that she left in the fridge, as well as paperwork with her personal details on it and photographs from different parts of her life.

The odd nickname that the building has been given by local people stems from the presence of a red dress that belonged to Jones and that she left hanging over a door, where it has remained for over 40 years. Just in case there is any doubt that she was the owner of this dress, there is also a framed photograph of her wearing it hanging on one of the walls.^[10] Little is known about Jones, her life, or what she died of, but it would be hard to walk around her home without feeling her ghost haunting the place.

I am a freelance writer based in Dundee who has previously written sketches and jokes for BBC radio shows. I also make short films as a member of Wardlaw Films.

Scores of people go missing every day. An overwhelming majority of such cases end up resolved, often quite promptly. Still, far too many families of missing persons never know closure, be it reuniting with their lost loved ones or finally learning of their fate.

When someone vanishes without a trace, it’s not uncommon for that person’s last words to others to stand out in their memories. These final words can be ominous, poignant, or quite unremarkable. They may offer disturbing hints as to the missing person’s fate, or they may be innocuous statements which in no way foreshadowed what was to come. The following are accounts of ten people who disappeared, as well as the last things they said to 911 operators, coworkers, friends, or family.

SEE ALSO: 10 Unsettling Cases Of Famous People Who Disappeared

10 ‘They’re After Me. More Than One.’

Michael “Mike” McClain spent the evening of April 20, 2019, at the Tropical Lounge nightclub in Nashua, New Hampshire. The 29-year-old resident of nearby Manchester was at the club with friends and, by all accounts, had no reason to abandon his life.

That night, a dispute occurred between two women at the club. They stepped outside, at which point the situation escalated. A crowd formed. Mike, who knew one of the women, broke the fight up, but the police had been called. They dispersed the onlookers, and it was at this point that Mike’s friends lost track of him. A bit before 2:00 AM the next morning, Mike called his boss and said, “They’re after me. More than one.” This ominous statement prompted her to call him back, but there was no answer. Mike hasn’t been seen since that night.

Mike’s family knew something was amiss when he didn’t return calls on Easter or call his sister on her birthday. It is believed that he left the nightclub on foot. His phone was last pinged at a McDonald’s a few blocks down the street from the Tropical Lounge at around the time he called his boss, but there are few other clues for investigators to go on. His credit cards have shown no activity, and he hasn’t posted anything on social media. He remains missing as of this writing.^[1]

9 ‘I’m Putting Dinner On.’

Will Cierzan, 58 years old, was a longtime employee at Six Flags Magic Mountain and enjoyed watching sports, collecting Coca-Cola bottles, and cooking. He spent the afternoon of January 26, 2017, at his home in Santa Clarita, California, watching golf on TV with his nephew. After the nephew left, Will began to make dinner. At around 4:30 PM, his wife, Linda, called him, and Will said, “I’m putting dinner on.” When she called again at roughly 5:00 PM, Will was in a good mood and said that the chicken was cooked.

However, when Linda arrived home at around 6:00 PM, Will was nowhere to be seen. Dinner was cooked, the oven was turned off, and Will’s coat, keys, and wallet were all present. Nothing had been taken from the wallet. The family’s dog was at home, and Will’s truck was parked outside.

A few cryptic clues would emerge. In February 2017, it was revealed that some of Will’s blood had been found in the house. Surveillance footage from a neighbor’s house showed that a white SUV backed up to Will’s garage a bit after 5:00 PM. It left only a few minutes later. Police stated that this vehicle belonged to a family member. Neither of these leads panned out.

In May 2017, detectives named Will’s nephew as a person of interest. However, he cooperated with investigators, and no arrests were made. In December 2018, a human skull was found not far from Valencia, Will’s neighborhood. This skull has not been linked with Will, though, and may very well be unrelated. Will’s fate is still unknown.^[2]

8 ‘I’m Scared.’ / ’Never Mind.’

June 21, 2013, was a busy day for Brookelyn Farthing of Madison County, Kentucky. The 18-year-old and her younger sister, Paige, took their driver’s license tests that day. Afterward, they attended their grandfather’s 70th birthday party. That evening, Brookelyn, Paige, and a cousin went to a second birthday party, this one held out in a field.

Paige and Brookelyn’s cousin decided to leave the party early on. This was fine with Brookelyn, who had made plans to sleep over at the home of a friend who was also at the party. Plans changed, however, when Brookelyn’s friend decided she wanted to spend the night at a boy’s house. The two argued, and the friend left.

Toward the end of the party, Brookelyn was seen leaving with two young men (names withheld). One of the men was dropped off, and the other man took Brookelyn to his house in Berea. It was from here, at around 4:00 AM on June 22, that Brookelyn called Paige and asked if their cousin could come pick her up. However, the cousin had had too many drinks and was in no condition to drive. Brookelyn didn’t want her mother to have to come get her, so she called her ex-boyfriend, who worked third shift. He agreed to give her a ride home when he got off work. It was at this point that the man who’d brought Brookelyn to the house left.

Before long, Brookelyn’s ex-boyfriend received several texts from her:

“Can you hurry,” “Please hurry,” and then “I’m scared.” However, another text came in, telling the ex to “never mind” and that Brookelyn was going to a party in neighboring Rockcastle County, the edge of which Berea is near. He asked who she was going with, but there was no response. Brookelyn hasn’t been heard from since.^[3]

The owner of the house later returned to find it on fire, and firefighters would find some of Brookelyn’s belongings still inside. The man speculated that the fire could have been started by a cigarette she was smoking when he left. He said he left her there because he was friends with her ex-boyfriend and did not feel comfortable being there when he arrived. He also confirmed that Brookelyn had spoken of a party in Rockcastle County. Brookelyn’s whereabouts remain unknown, and no arrests have been made in the case.

7 ‘I’ll Call You Back.’

Marion Barter, a primary school teacher in Australia’s Gold Coast, lived a seemingly normal, happy life. Things changed, however, when her third marriage ended in the mid-1990s. A few years later, in 1997, Marion abruptly sold her home and went on a trip to England.

Her family received no further word from her until July 31, when a message from Marion appeared on the answering machine of her daughter, Sally Leydon. Marion later called again from a pay phone. Marion said she was in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and was having tea and scones with some old women and that she was having a good time. The conversation played out in several chunks, as Marion had to add money to the phone. Finally, Marion ran out of coins, and the phone call had to end. Her last words to Sally were, “I’ll call you back.” Marion, 51 years old at the time, hasn’t been seen or heard from since.^[4]

Sally believes her mother truly was in England, due to the delay effect on the calls. The case became stranger in October 1997, however, when thousands of dollars were withdrawn from Marion’s bank account. Sally learned from a bank worker that the money was withdrawn in Byron Bay, New South Wales. Police in Byron Bay never found any sign of Marion.

Marion remains unaccounted for.

6 ‘Can You Send Me A Picture Of My Son In The Movies?’

At 9:30 PM on July 13, 2019, Erika Gaytan of El Paso, Texas, sent a text message to the father of her seven-year-old son: “Can you send me a picture of my son in the movies?” Erika, 29, was attending a concert at the El Paso County Coliseum, so this request didn’t seem too strange. What is strange, if not outright unacceptable, to Erika’s family and friends is the notion that she would have just abandoned her son.

Erika was at the concert with a date, her attendance confirmed by social media posts. According to the date, after the concert had ended, she was waiting for an Uber to pick her up. The date left at this point.

It is worth noting that at the time of her disappearance, Erika was facing criminal charges, both for credit card abuse and criminal mischief. Her next court date was July 26. However, El Paso detectives do not believe this is why she vanished. They do, however, consider her disappearance suspicious and have asked anyone with information to come forward.^[5]

5 ‘I Love You, Pop.’

Chase Allen Lackey, age 25, was a member of a recreational softball league. On June 30, 2017, he played a game, watched by his father, Craig. Craig will never forget Chase’s last words to him that day: “I love you, Pop.”

The next day, Chase was seen walking his dog outside his Houston-area apartment. Neither he nor his dog have been seen since. Nothing was stolen from Chase’s apartment, and his truck remained untouched.

Although investigators characterized Chase has having lived “a normal life,” foul play is suspected in his disappearance. Few details have been publicly released, but apparently some of Chase’s friends had been involved in illegal doings.^[6] However, no arrests have been made in the case, and two years on, both Chase and his dog remain missing.

4 ‘I Just Want To Talk While I Have The Chance.’

Matthew Weaver moved from his parents’ home in Simi Valley, California, to his own apartment in Granada Hills, Los Angeles, in the summer of 2018. Things were looking good for the 21-year-old power line worker, and he had plans to travel the world. These aspirations were seemingly not meant to be.

On August 9, Matthew told his father that he was going out with a new a female acquaintance. Matthew picked her up at around 9:30 PM and dropped her off during the early morning hours of August 10. During this time, they reportedly “had a private talk.” Matthew then drove to Topanga, an area in the Santa Monica Mountains. Near sunrise, he posted a Snapchat picture of a scenic view and is believed to have entered a hiking trail. A few hours later, Matthew’s female friend received some strange text messages. They read: “Like some crazy is going onsh— is going on” and “I jusst to talk while i have the chance.” There was no further communication from Matthew.^[7]

Matthew’s last known location, according to Snapchat and cell phone records, was near Rosas Outlook. At 1:30 AM on August 11, several hikers in the area called 911 after hearing cries for help. At around that time, California Highway Patrol officers reportedly also heard screams and possibly someone yelling, “He’s got a gun!” Matthew’s car was found near a hiking trail, but the keys weren’t located until January 2019, when hikers found them a mere 25 feet (7.6 m) from where the car had been. That same month, high-resolution drone photos of the area enabled Matthew’s family to find a baseball cap and a torn T-shirt which they believe were Matthew’s. Despite these strange clues, Matthew remains missing.

3 ‘Don’t Ever Say Goodbye.’

During the summer of 2013, Candice L’hommecourt of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, celebrated her daughter’s first birthday. Among those in attendance was Candice’s older sister, 25-year-old Shelly Dene. Not long after that, in August, Shelly vanished without a trace. Shelly’s last words to Candice were, “Don’t ever say goodbye.”

Shelly was known known for her adventurous spirit and love of travel and had spoken of a taking a trip to the Yukon. Over the next several months, calls and texts to Shelly went unreturned. Concern greatly increased in November, when Shelly’s phone was disconnected.

Shelly was finally reported as missing. A clue came in the form of a witness report that a man was seen taking suitcases from Shelly’s apartment around the time that she went missing. However, by the end of 2014, police had exhausted all leads.

Candice has expressed her frustration with the police, who she says are reticent to work on Shelly’s case because of her First Nations heritage and her “high-risk” lifestyle. While Shelly’s family acknowledge that she had dealt with drug and alcohol addictions, Candice noted that:

[Police] label every First Nations person that is missing or murdered [as having] a high-risk lifestyle or a high-risk profile. They keep blaming the victim for what has happened to them. They don’t blame society and what’s wrong with society . . . these things shouldn’t be happening to innocent people, no matter what type of lifestyle they live.^[8]

Shelly Dene has not been found.

2 ‘Things Are Going To Get Better.’

Olivia Medel didn’t have much, but she had her two children, Enrique and Delfina. The single mother worked hard to support them, and things were good until Olivia lost her job. After this, the family had to move from Kansas City, Missouri, back to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the children had originally been born. Though it wasn’t easy at first, Olivia found work in Albuquerque. Enrique, however, began to fall in with the wrong crowd.

It started when Enrique, then 13, began to hang out with a teenager named Andy, who was around six years older. Olivia had a bad feeling about Andy, but now that she was working again, she couldn’t keep an eye on her son all the time. Sometimes, Enrique would disappear in the middle of the night. Eventually, he was expelled from school for having a gun. Olivia believes the firearm was Andy’s idea.

On March 16, 2011, Enrique, now 14, spoke to his mother. He said, “Mom, I know you’re going through a hard time, but things are going to get better.” Olivia never saw her son again. Enrique’s uncle spotted him that night outside an Allsup’s (a convenience store). The uncle told Enrique to go home, but the latter said he was going to stay with some friends. He stopped answering his phone later that night and has been missing ever since.^[9]

Olivia felt that the police didn’t take her seriously when she reported her son missing, taking Enrique for a runaway. Ultimately, investigators did question Andy several times. The shady youngster gave inconsistent answers and was also found to be in possession of some of Enrique’s belongings. So far, however, no arrests have been made, and the case seems to have gone cold.

1 ‘No, I Need The Cops.’

In 2013, Brandon Lawson, 26, was living in San Angelo, Texas, with his longtime girlfriend and their four children. The oil field worker had found a new, more stable job with better hours and was set to start soon. But then Brandon didn’t come home on the night of August 7. This led to an argument with Ladessa, his girlfriend, on the evening of August 8. He had dealt with drug issues in the past and had recently relapsed, so Brandon staying out all night was cause for concern. At around 11:53 PM, Brandon grabbed his cell phone, a charger, his keys, and his wallet and left. His pickup truck was low on gas.

Before long, Brandon called his father, Brad, and asked to stay with him for the night. Brad said Brandon was welcome, but since the former lived three hours away in Crowley, he advised Brandon to go back home and work things out with Ladessa. A few minutes later, Ladessa called Brandon and suggested that he go stay with his brother, Kyle, if he was still angry and didn’t want to come back home. Kyle lived only five minutes away. Brandon must not have been into the idea, because Ladessa then called Kyle, saying she was worried about Brandon.

At 12:34 and 12:36 AM, Brandon tried to call Ladessa, but she didn’t answer either time. At 12:38, he called Kyle and said he’d run out of gas on Highway 277, not far from Bronte. Kyle called Ladessa, who left a gas can on the porch for Kyle before going to take a bath. Kyle and his girlfriend, Audrey, left to pick up the gas can at 12:45. At 12:48, Brandon tried to call Ladessa again but got no response.

Here’s where things become really strange. At 12:54 AM, Brandon made a disconcerting 911 call. Parts of the 43-second call were unintelligible. Brandon spoke of running out of gas and being in a field. He said he “accidently ran into” some people before there was background noise that may have been gunshots. The operator asked Brandon if he needed an ambulance. Amid indeterminate background noise, Brandon first replied in the affirmative but then changed his mind and said, “No, I need the cops.” Brandon did not respond to the operator after this, though the unidentified background noise seemed to get closer to him before the call ended.

Four minutes later, a passing trucker spotted Brandon’s pickup truck parked awkwardly on the highway and called 911 about it. At 1:10 AM, Kyle and Audrey found Brandon’s truck and were surprised to see a Coke County sheriff’s deputy there, too. There was no damage to Brandon’s truck. Kyle and Audrey initially assumed that Brandon was hiding in the field since he had an outstanding warrant in Johnson County. They surreptitiously called Brandon and managed to reach him one last time. Brandon said he was ten minutes into the field and bleeding and implored his brother to get to him quickly. The call ended, and Brandon responded to no further calls or texts.

Multiple searches for Brandon yielded nothing. Neither his bank account nor his cell phone showed any activity after that night. A few months after Brandon’s disappearance, investigators decided that Kyle was a suspect. They questioned him, and Kyle volunteered to take a polygraph test. He passed. Brandon is still missing.^[10]

Animal parks and zoos are supposed to be a source of happiness and entertainment. Ideally, they’re places for people to be educated and enriched, witnessing animal species they normally would not encounter. It doesn’t always work out that way, however.

Lack of funding, opposition by activists, and severity of elements are all reasons that animal parks have closed. The once-thriving locales are left empty, their structures and cages abandoned and overgrown.

10 Warner Brothers Jungle Habitat

One would think an animal park run by Warner Brothers would be an instant success, but animal attacks, escapes, and opposition from locals would eventually lead to the park being shut down within four years of it opening.

Designed in two parts, the Warner Bros. Jungle Habitat contained a zoo which families could walk through, including a petting zoo, reptile house, camel rides, and snack area, as well as a safari area they could drive through. The safari area featured free-roaming elephants, llamas, lions, and tigers, giving guests an up close and personal view of the animals as they frequently stopped next to the cars and sometimes even climbed on top of them.

Shortly after the park opened in 1972, an Isreali tourist was attacked by two lions after he stuck his hand out of the car window and taunted them while driving through the safari attraction of the park. Two wolves escaped their enclosure and wandered into the local town of West Milford, New Jersey. A local television host was scratched by a six-month-old tiger cub while filming a television special. Then, a couple of years later, a woman was bitten by a baby elephant. Finally, a rhino mounted a gray Mercedes-Benz, believing it to be a mate, causing great damage to the car’s rear end.^[1]

Jungle Habitat did not have any rides, and when Warner Brothers tried to expand the park to include a wooden roller coaster, a carousel, and various other rides for adults and kids, they were met with opposition from locals, who did not care for the noise and traffic, and narrowly missed the vote for the expansion. Warner Brothers decided to shut the park down when they were denied the expansion, realizing that without a way to expand, they would not be able to build revenue.

The year after the park closed, all but 400 of the original 1,500 animals in the park had been sold. Unfortunately, nine of the animals contracted tuberculosis and had to be euthanized, leading an investigation into why 19 other dead animals on the property were not buried or disposed of.

The park grounds are now a popular place for people to hike and bike through, with many of the old cages and structures still standing.

9 Catskill Game Farm

Though it opened after World War II as a fun zoo for families to connect with wildlife by petting and feeding the animals, the Catskill Game Farm would quickly get a dark reputation.

Started in 1933 as a private animal farm and first opened to the public in 1945 in Catskill, New York, the Catskill Game Farm was the first privately owned zoo in the United States and was the biggest zoo for some time. It consisted of deer, bison, yaks, llamas, camels, zebras, and antelopes, with an area guests could walk through and hand-feed the animals.

The zoo was a great success when it opened, as the Catskill Mountains were a popular tourist destination, and the zoo’s founder, Roland Lindemann, spent much of his time expanding the zoo to include rare and endangered animals, growing its population to 600 wild animals and 200 tame animal species.

But in the early 1990s, the zoo would receive bad publicity when a news article reported that animals there were being sold to game hunters for “canned hunts,” when an animal is put into an enclosed area, giving the hunter a sure chance of killing it. Inspection records from the Texas Animal Health Commission stated that over 150 animals were shipped to Texas, and no one knows what happened to them after they entered the state. Before the park closed in 2006, protestors swarmed the gates of the zoo to try to get the owners to donate the animals to sanctuaries. When it came time to auction off the animals after the park’s closure, activists tried to buy as many animals as possible, but many still went to the highest-bidding game hunter.^[2]

In 2012, the property was purchased by Ben and Cathy Ballone, with hope to restore the grounds and turn the buildings into an inn and campsite. Recently, they opened the Long Neck Inn in the renovated remains of the old giraffe enclosure, giving the abandoned park a new life and a, hopefully, brighter future.

8 Alligatorland

One would think that in the land of Disney World and Universal Studios, attraction parks in Florida would be of the highest standard, but such was not the case for the Alligatorland Safari Zoo.

Sitting just behind the Gator Motel and a 38-meter-long (126 ft) alligator statue, Alligatorland was home to over 1,600 exotic animals and birds of various species. Guests could walk through the nearly 7 acres of land and view the animals up close.

But the trouble for Alligatorland started in 1982, when Gatorland filed a suit against them for having a very similar entryway to their park. The giant alligator jaws were too similar, Gatorland claimed, to their entry, which had been erected since the 1960s. (Alligatorland opened in the 1970s.)

Then, the whole state of Florida came under scrutiny for the way animals were treated. This led to Alligatorland getting a surprise inspection, during which it was found that enclosures were not up to standards, cages had an abundance of old animal feces, and animals were not being cared for properly. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued Darren Browning, the owner of Alligatorland, a $1,500 fine, which he refused to pay and instead decided to represent himself in court.^[3] During the two-day trial, he questioned the competency of the USDA inspectors and ultimately lost his case. For the next three years, he would continue to lose more court battles against the USDA, and he would eventually sell the property in 1995.

The zoo would reopen shortly afterward under the name of Jungleland Zoo, but after flooding, an escaped lioness, more failed USDA inspections, and the economic turn of the early 2000s, the zoo closed its doors in 2002.

The alligator statue in front of Alligatorland was destroyed in 2014, but the structures and walkways of the park still stand, with hopes to one day be renovated and turned back into an animal attraction.

7 Stanley Park Zoo

How the Stanley Park Zoo in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, was founded is quite an interesting story: The superintendent for Stanley Park, Henry Avison, discovered an orphaned black bear cub on the grounds, so he chained the bear, like a dog, to a stump to keep him contained and safe.^[4] Over the coming years, he captured more animals on the grounds that needed help and treatment. By the time the zoo officially opened in the early 1900s, there were over 50 animals, both native and exotic, that Avison had taken in or discovered abandoned, and people kept donating animals to the zoo’s collection, even after Avison’s death.

In 1956, the zoo’s aquarium opened with penguins and otters, and in 1962, polar bears were donated to the zoo and quickly became the main attraction.

In the 1990s, animal activists picketed against the zoo, stating that many of the cages were too small and that Vancouver’s weather was too harsh for many of the animals. To resolve this, the City of Vancouver decided to expand the zoo, but citizens voted against the expansion and called for the zoo to be shut down, so it did in 1996.

Most of the animals were sent to the Greater Vancouver Zoo or relocated to the Stanley Park Children’s Farmyard (which was closed in 2011), but one animal was allowed to stay in the park—Tuk, the 36-year-old polar bear whose health was too poor to be moved. He died in 1997, and the zoo was officially closed.

To this day, the polar bear pit still stands on the grounds and is currently repurposed as a salmon hatchery. Guests can still walk through the overgrown vegetation of where the zoo once was.

6 Belle Isle Zoo

Though Detroit is in the midst of a citywide rehabilitation, there are still many remnants of the years of government corruption and economic depression the city has witnessed.

One such victim to the city’s troubles was the Belle Isle Zoo, closed in 2002 by then-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who cited declining attendance and budget constraints as his reasons for closing the zoo, though locals overwhelmingly objected to the closure.

Belle Isle, located in the Detroit River between Detroit and Canada, was once a prominent attraction for locals and tourists, drawing them to the park’s beaches, nature paths, and stunning views, as well as its main attraction, the zoo.

Opened in 1895 with just a bear den and a deer pack, the zoo would grow to over 150 animals in just 15 years and would include tigers, seals, elephants, and exotic birds. When the Detroit Zoo opened, most of the animals were rehomed there, and the Belle Isle Zoo was turned into a children’s zoo before getting a full renovation in the 1980s and being renamed “Safariland.”

The renovation to the park would include the various hut-like structures, wooden paths and bridges, and metal cages that currently stand abandoned on the island, overgrown and graffitied, with fallen trees blocking the paths and vines growing around the metal. Currently, there are no plans to reopen the zoo,^[5] though the state is working on restoring other areas of Belle Isle.

5 Groote Schuur Zoo

Imagine being given a couple of lions and leopards. What would you do with them? If you were Cecil John Rhodes, you would create a zoo to house them.

In 1897, Rhodes created a private menagerie in Cape Town, South Africa, for his large cats, as well as other animals he received as gifts throughout the years. After his death, the state would inherit Rhodes’s estate and his collection of animals. New enclosures were built, and the site was called the Groote Schuur Zoo. Lions, emus, mountain goats, crocodiles, and other animals were kept in enclosures, and the zoo became a popular attraction.

The lions would always be the focus of the zoo, however, having the prominent spot and best enclosure at the back of the zoo. Zookeeper George Booker would be infamous at the zoo for having a special connection with the lions, being able to go into their cages and hand-feed them and even get them to do tricks for guests.^[6] Ironically, he died when he contracted tetanus after being bitten on the finger by a lion.

Sometime between 1975 and 1985, the zoo would close due to an increase in animal welfare standards and financial issues, but people can still roam the overgrown grounds, see the remnants of the concrete pools, pose with the cement lion statues, and view the infamous lion enclosure.

Interestingly, two tahrs, a breed of Himalayan mountain goat, escaped to Table Mountain and bred a large herd, and there is still a population of the goats on the mountain, though they are considered pests to the area, and measures have been taken to control the population, keeping Rhodes’s legacy alive.

4 Wildlife Wonderland

Rosie the Shark became a viral sensation when YouTuber and urban explorer Luke McPherson discovered her decaying remains in a large tank in 2018. The question many raised, however, was why was Rosie there, and who had forgotten about her?

Rosie was part of the Wildlife Wonderland in Bass, Victoria, Australia, a zoo and animal rehabilitation center for Australia’s native species, such as wombats, kangaroos, koalas, and various birds.

Unlike many of the other zoos and parks on this list, which were shut down for alleged animal cruelty, Wildlife Wonderland was shut down because they violated Wildlife Act 1975 and did not have a license to display native animals, meaning that they could not operate as a zoo, causing the owners to give away the animals and close down the park in 2012.^[7]

As to how Rosie ended up in the abandoned zoo, an artist preserved her body after she was caught in a fishing net and donated her to the museum. In 2019, due to vandals causing damage to Rosie’s tank, the shark was finally moved to another establishment in Victoria called Crystal World.

3 Walt Disney World’s Discovery Island

We discussed a failed park by Warner Brothers, but one might be surprised to find Disney on this list.

Discovery Island was a wildlife and nature attraction in Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, that included many native and exotic birds and vegetation, as well as a sandy beach for guests to walk on. It operated from April 1974 to April 1999.

Walt Disney scouted the island while buying the land that would become Disney World and had big plans for its 11.5 acres. First named Blackbeard’s Island, he wanted it to be a pirate-themed attraction, complete with shipwrecks, forts, and an inn, but as construction on the park began, he decided to make it more tropical, introducing exotic birds and plants to the island and renaming it Treasure Island.

As the years went on, the island became more focused on the animal wildlife. An aviary was built on the grounds that would breed exotic birds, and the island was once again renamed to Discovery Island.^[8]

Controversy would hit Discovery Island in 1989, when a two-month investigation by state and federal officials led to charges being filed against Disney and five employees for firing rifles at hawks, beating vultures to death with sticks, and destroying nests and eggs. The state report indicated that many of the employees thought they were acting within Disney World’s permits and were carrying out the illegal activities under the direction of the park’s curator, Charlie Cook. Disney settled out of court.

After the bad publicity and with the opening of Animal Kingdom, Disney decided to close Discovery Island in April 1999, relocating the animals to the Animal Kingdom resort and letting the vegetation grow and take over the island.

In 2009, urban explorer Shane Perez and some friends swam, under the cover of darkness, to the island and took pictures of the abandoned buildings and overgrown greenery. They found leftover office paraphernalia and various specimens in jars. Though they did not press charges against the crew for trespassing, Disney did threaten to ban them from all of their parks.

Currently, there are no plans to rehabilitate Discovery Island, making it one of two abandoned parks at Disney World.

2 Southport Zoo

The official reason the Southport Zoo in Southport, Merseyside, England, was closed was because the city council did not allow the owners, Carol and Douglas Petrie, to renew their lease on the zoo, therefore allowing Pleasureland, a theme park attraction that abutted the zoo, to expand and create more attractions.

The more likely reason the city council didn’t renew the Petries’ lease was because they were tired of dealing with the protestors and picketers who opposed the zoo.

Though it was a smaller zoo, holding only 154 species, most of which were birds and invertebrates, the negative attention the zoo received was monumental, with it being listed as one of Britain’s worst zoos by the Captive Animals Protection Society (CAPS). Opposers to the zoo claimed they had recorded comments from hundreds of zoo visitors and former keepers that the animals suffered ill treatment, isolation, and understimulation.^[9] The Petries denied these claims, and investigation of the zoo also found no evidence, bringing more scrutiny of how the government picks inspectors, as most of them have ties to the zoo industry.

At the forefront of the campaign against the zoo were chimpanzees Jackie and Jason, whose faces were plastered on pamphlets and posters to attract attention. It was stated that they lived in cramped, isolated cages with no interaction or enrichment. The animals were offered a home at a primate sanctuary in Dorset, but the Petries would not permit them being relocated, saying it was not in the chimps’ best interest.

The Petries would eventually lose their fight defending their zoo in 2004, and the animals would be rehomed to various zoos across England and Wales. The site was reopened in 2010 as “Battlefield Live Southport,” a venue for outdoor combat gaming using guns that fire infrared beams.

1 Nay Aug Park Zoo

The Nay Aug Park Zoo in Scranton, Pennsylvania, was once a source of pride for the community, with children raising money to purchase elephants for the zoo in 1924 and 1935, but before the century’s close, it would be a source of scrutiny and disgrace.

Though the zoo once saw up to 500 visitors in a day, bad upkeep to the animal houses would cause people to question the establishment’s operations. In 1963, the heating system for the zoo would fail, causing four monkeys to die from exposure. The same year, a faulty door in the lion cages allowed a lioness to enter the cage of two cubs, resulting in their death. Other incidents throughout the years included a monkey escaping and biting a zoo attendant, an elephant choking on a stuffed toy that had been thrown into her cage and having to have it removed, and, at different times, an alligator, a monkey, and two black bears escaping from their cages, resulting in all being shot and killed. Parade magazine would call Nay Aug Park Zoo one of the ten worst zoos in the nation.

Citing financial struggles, the zoo closed in 1988, with Toni the elephant being the last animal to be relocated.^[10] In 2003, the zoo would reopen as the Genesis Wildlife Center, but public outcry over animal abuse and the lack of changes to the structures would force the zoo to close again in 2009.

Though it no longer holds exotic animals, the main building of Nay Aug Zoo has been renovated and reopened by the charity Street Cats as a low-cost spay and neuter clinic for cats and dogs, with many cats living in the building while waiting to be adopted.

Tracy lives with her dog in a tourist town where she writes and creates.

Just over 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by ocean. Thus far in 2020, humans have only explored around 5% of it. Imagine what may lie just beyond our reach: species of the deep we have yet to come across or a lost Megalodon from prehistoric times. Perhaps a long since vanished shipwreck thought to be gone forever, or the lost city of Atlantis. Maybe something dark and disturbing, who knows? While we wait for the experts to explore the unknown, below are some mysteries to ponder.

See Also: 10 Dark Mysteries Involving Strange Cults

8 19th Century Shipwreck

On 16 May 2019, researchers aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Okeanos Explorer were in the Gulf of Mexico when a remotely operated vehicle they were testing stumbled across what looked like a 200-year-old shipwreck.

Upon closer inspection, it was revealed the ship was built with wood that includes copper sheathing and would have been about 124 feet in length before it sank. At this point however, more questions than answers arose. Archaeologists still don’t know where the ship came from, exactly how old it is, what happened to the crew or even what type of vessel the ship was.

The only clue spotted at the time of discovery was the number 2109 on the rudder and iron and copper items scattered nearby. Burnt pieces of timber suggested that the ship may have caught fire before sinking. After the discovery was made public, Frank Cantelas from NOAA expressed hope that other expeditions would be undertaken to try and uncover the mysteries surrounding the shipwreck.^[1]

7 Mysteries Of The Black Sea

Previously known as both the Inhospitable Sea and the Hospitable Sea, the Black Sea is a treasure trove of oddity and mystery. Like the Bermuda Triangle, the Black Sea is the centre of strange creature sightings, unexplained phenomena and bizarre disappearances. In 2000, Robert Ballard announced the discovery of evidence that people perished in a huge flood of the Black Sea. This discovery was linked to the story of the biblical flood as explained in the book of Genesis and naturally stirred up a whole lot of controversy.

In the Middle Ages, Turks and Russians reported seeing whirlpools in the Black Sea that swallowed up ships and islands. These whirlpools would apparently appear on calm waters without any kind of warning. This led to fishermen avoiding the area as they considered it to be cursed.

Five Soviet bombers disappeared over the Black Sea in December 1945, never to be seen again. In 1990 a Greek plane vanished as well. This gave rise to the theory that there may be a magnetic anomaly present that causes electrical malfunctions. It is said that in 1991, a Russian oil platform broke free from its moorings and drifted out to into the Black Sea. Investigations allegedly revealed that all 80 workers were missing. Their abandoned possessions and half-eaten meals were the only evidence that they were ever on the platform. ^[2]

6 Namse Bangdzod

On 27 December 2018 the Namse Bangdzod, a 1,950-ton oil tanker with 11 crew and a captain onboard, set off towards Tanjung Priok Port in Jakarta from Sampit, Central Kalimantan. Its arrival was expected the following day. However, on 28 December, all contact was lost with the vessel in Ujung Karawang waters. The last data input tracked by officials was on 3 January 2019.

The National Search and Rescue Agency, Basarnas, believed that the tanker may have been hijacked by pirates. The Navy disagreed, saying that the route travelled by the tanker was deemed to be very safe and there had been no ransom demand. The Navy also claimed that the ship had been recorded changing position several times, moving from Jakarta Bay to Sunda Kelapa Port, but was not found in either place.

Maritime expert, Oloan Saut Gurning, said that an accident was highly unlikely as no distress signal had been sent and he didn’t believe the tanker was adrift at sea as the Navy would have found it in that case. Basarnas was to continue searching the ocean for 4 days whereafter the police and Navy would take over the search. To date, the tanker remains missing.^[3]

5 Death Island

Koh Tao is an idyllic island which lies on the western shore of the Gulf of Thailand. Koh Tao means “Turtle Island” and its coral reefs are inhabited by beautiful sea creatures including turtles. There is variety of accommodation options here catering for the budget conscious as well as those who want to spurge on luxuries. This place is a truly amazing holiday destination… on the surface at least.

Its beauty and luxury cover a dark and disturbing core of criminal activity. Shady rumors of body parts floating in shallow waters and the island being controlled by the local mafia were thrust into the spotlight after a series of unexplained deaths. People are now wary of travelling to Koh Tao, or ‘Death Island’ as it has been dubbed, and with good reason. In 2012, Ben Harrington died after his motorcycle hit an electricity pylon. He was the only one on the bike at the time and his wallet and watch were nowhere to be found after the accident. His mother believed he was the victim of a crime involving a trip wire, especially after the coroner was reluctant to state that the cause of death was “accidental.”

In September 2014 two backpackers, Hannah Witheridge and David Miller, were found murdered on the same beach Ben Harrington had stayed before he died. It was revealed afterwards that Hannah had been raped before she was killed. Local police failed to secure the crime scene or monitor the island’s port. Instead they focused on grilling two Myanmar migrants who were eventually found guilty and handed the death sentence for the murders. However, officers allegedly failed to collect DNA samples and test the victims’ clothing. Two weeks after the murders, another body was found on the very same beach; 24-year old Luke Miller was found at the bottom of a swimming pool.

Then 23-year old Valentina Novozhyonova vanished from a Koh Tao hostel, never to be seen again. Six weeks later, the body of a young girl was discovered, but it was not Valentina. Instead it was the remains of Belgian tourist, Elise Dallemagne; her body had been burnt and wrapped in T-shirts.
Christina Marian Annesley, 23, was found dead in a Koh Tao bungalow in January 2015. Her remains were kept inside a temple for days before a post-mortem was done, leading to a UK coroner rejecting the Thai results due to incompetence.

All these unexplained deaths led to rumors of a serial killer family on the island, or involvement by the local mafia. Either way, there is yet to be any kind of closure for the families left distraught and devastated.^[4]

4 A Shipwreck And A Curse

The HMS Wasp was built in 1880 for fishery purposes as well as lighthouse inspections. She also ferried bailiffs around who would carry out evictions at several locations. The Wasp was very popular in Derry and frequented the port here along with her sister ship HMS Valiant. On 21 September 1884 the Wasp was set to sail to Moville to collect bailiffs and other staff who were to carry out evictions on Innistrahull Island. The route was a well-travelled one, and spirits were high.

Unfortunately, tragedy struck soon after. At 3:45 am the Wasp struck the rocks at Tory Island. It sank within 30 minutes. 50 crew members lost their lives, with a mere 6 surviving the accident.

Afterwards, an account from one of the survivors indicated that as the Wasp neared Tory Island, she was going only by sail and her boilers were off. She was aimed to sail between the Tory light and the mainland instead of going around the island which would have been safer. Also, the survivor claimed that all the senior officers were fast asleep leaving junior crew members in charge.

Even so, most agreed that the accident was very strange, especially since the ship hit the rocks right below the lighthouse. The water was calm and the weather good. The Tory light shone brightly after the sinking, but opinions differ on whether the light was on during the time the Wasp approached the island. Some believe that the light was extinguished on purpose, to prevent the Wasp from bringing bailiffs to the island. Others claim that the Tory’s Cursing Stone had been unleashed upon the vessel, which ultimately led to the disaster. An Admiralty enquiry did not provide any clues as to what exactly went wrong and the sinking of the HMS Wasp remains shrouded in mystery.^[5]

3 Mysterious Divers

Divers are not exempt from paranormal experiences while they are exploring the depths of the ocean. Not only have divers heard the sound of boat engines starting up while the ocean surface above them was clear of boats, but they have also heard strange grinding noises coming from the engine room of the Japan Hoki Maru ship that sank in Truk Lagoon in 1944.

In 2007, a group of divers were exploring the ocean surrounding Grenada. After tiring themselves out underwater, the group returned to their ship to go over each another’s notes of what they had seen below the ocean surface. One group member asked if his mates had seen another diver in a white shirt waving at their group. No one else had seen this mysterious diver and a head count was done to ensure no one was missing. Everyone was accounted for and there were no other boats or ships in the area. The group never found out who the diver in the white shirt was.

In 2012, scuba instructors were diving in Santa Rosa, California when they spotted an unknown diver with a pink tank diving and floating near a blue hole. They swam closer to check whether the diver was in trouble, but just before they could reach the hole, the diver disappeared. Shook up, the scuba instructors immediately notified the police who in turn told them that the figure at the blue hole has appeared to other divers as well before disappearing.^[6]

2 Utsuro-Bune

A strange tale that has long since dissolved into folklore with several add-ons, is the one that tells of a strange boat that washed ashore in Japan on 22 February 1803. Fishermen who saw the boat, claimed that it was roundly shaped with top windows and strips of metal at the bottom. They boarded the vessel only to find a lone passenger sitting beside a wall that had been scrawled over with strange writing. The passenger, a young woman with red hair, held a box in her lap and couldn’t understand the language of the fishermen. She also refused to let go of the box.

The incident was given the name utsuro-bune/hollow ship and at the time the fishermen thought the woman may have been a princess who carried the head of her dead lover in the box she held so tightly. Not knowing what to do with her, they set the boat adrift at sea with the woman inside it. They had never seen glass windows and metal strips such as appeared on the boat, and therefore eventually arrived at the theory that the woman may have been an alien.

Others didn’t have any use for the alien theory, and instead believed that the red-headed woman was a spy from Russia. In modern times, experts are of the opinion that the boat may have been covered with a dome to improve its seaworthiness hence its rounded shape, but there has to date been no explanation or further theories on who the woman may have been, what she carried in the box and what the writing on the walls of the boat meant.^[7]

1 Sea Monsters

Sea monsters in all shapes and sizes are the stuff of legends. It’s hard not to feel a little thrill at the mention of the Kraken or colossal squids or cannibal sharks. Stories of sea monster encounters have been around for hundreds of years. One of the more famous tales tell of G. H. Hight and a companion traveling to Madagascar in 1889 only to have villagers tell them of a huge green sea serpent that had attacked a fishing boat and ate one of its four occupants. It then chased the three survivors all the way onto the beach before disappearing back into the sea. Hight too witnessed the serpent after organizing a search party to look for the unfortunate fisherman that had been attacked by the monster. He and other men shot at it, but to no avail. Naturally there is no proof to back up this tale and the only account of it appeared in The Washington Herald in March 1909.

Another unsettling story saw the light in Fate Magazine in 1965. 16-year old Edward Brian McCleary set off on a day out at sea in the Gulf of Mexico with four friends in 1962: Warren Felly, Eric Ruyle, Larry Bill and Brad Rice. McCleary returned home alone, exhausted and terrified. He proceeded to tell police that a sea monster/dragon had appeared in the water and proceeded to attack and kill his friends. He described the monster as having a neck that was 12 feet long, green scales and an elongated head that resembled that of a turtle.

McCleary refuted claims that he had mistaken a submarine for a terrible sea beast, and he went on to say that news outlets refused to publish his story unless he omitted the story of the sea monster. Larry Bill’s body was allegedly found (he had drowned) but the other three boys never were. Naturally very few believed the story of a sea creature coming up from the depths to attack teenagers. It remains a mystery what exactly happened that fateful day.^[8]

It’s common practice to refer to horror films where there were significant problems during production as “cursed.” The streaming service Shudder has an entire series devoted to this concept. As it happens, focusing on events surrounding horror movies exclusively is unnecessary. You can find uncanny occurrences across all genres. 

We’ll be looking both behind the curtain and at the content of programming released for public consumption. Whether it be the private lives of actors or the names in a script, there are plenty of occurrences on both the small and big screen that will make you wonder if there’s something very strange at work behind our understanding of reality. More than a few will make you wonder if that thing is sinister indeed. 

10. Roundhay Garden

Our first stop is at the very birth of cinema, if not sooner. The first piece of motion picture film ever shot from a single camera (so early in the process that it was printed on paper instead of celluloid film) Roundhay Garden was a two second long sequence by inventor Louis Le Prince, shot in the front yard of his in-laws in 1888 in Leeds, England. Louis’s mother-in-law Sarah Whitely and son Adolphe Le Prince are on screen, with Adolphe walking parallel to the camera and Sarah and her husband dancing. To watch it today, you wouldn’t suspect that the first motion picture seemed to bestow a sort of curse upon its cinematographer and stars. 

Within ten days, Sarah Whitely died. Indeed, she had collapsed from the heat during the process of shooting the film, and spent her last ten days trying to recover from it. Within two years, Louis Le Prince disappeared from a train on September 16, 1890, while on a trip to arrange a screening in New York City which would have been the first public exhibition of his invention. As if that weren’t enough tragedy for a home movie, eleven years after that, Adolphe died very suspiciously while out hunting. Even at the time, there was considerable speculation that no less than Thomas Edison had done in Louis Le Prince to get rid of a competitor for his own cinematic inventions and then his rival’s son to put a stop to investigations, but no conclusive evidence has ever been brought to public attention. 

9. The Tall Target

John Kennedy has to save newly-elected president Abraham Lincoln from assassination. Sounds like a wacky time travel comedy? It’s not, it’s the premise of Anthony Mann’s historical crime thriller The Tall Target, starring Dick Powell as Police Sergeant John Kennedy. If it seems like ridiculous pandering, consider that the movie was released in 1951, back when Kennedy was a representative in the US House and before the publication of Profiles in Courage which would do so much to increase his national prominence. 

The events of the film are loosely based on a real event. Specifically the process of moving Lincoln to Washington DC for his 1861 inauguration under heightened alert because the Pinkerton Agency had caught word that there was an attempt planned on the extremely polarizing president’s life. It became known as the Baltimore Plot, for the period of the journey on February 22, 1861 spent on the Baltimore rail line. There was no Police Sergeant John Kennedy involved, though there was a H. F. Kenney who accompanied the Pinkertons during the escort mission. Part of Kenney’s contribution was giving a carriage driver intentionally bad directions in case the driver was intending to bring them into an ambush, which would have potential for the setup to a wacky comedy instead of the taut thriller Mann intended. 

8. All My Children

With more than 10,700 episodes of melodrama over its run from 1970 to 2011, there was plenty of room for morbidness both on and off camera to happen. Unquestionably the most morbid began in August 1997. During an episode that month, actress Eva LaRue’s character Maria Santos was on a plane. It crashed, and she did not survive. In a moment that probably would not be included today, her significant other Edmund was reassured that at least she would live on through her children, which were “the greatest gift she could have given.” 

Fast forward to September 10, 2001. Eva LaRue was booked for a flight on American Airlines Flight 11. Because she was eight months pregnant with her daughter Kaya (she’d been in New York City for a baby shower) she wanted to sleep in and rescheduled her flight at the last moment. As a result, she rescheduled her way out of being one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, as she later tweeted about and confirmed in an interview. If this sounds familiar, it’s because a similar narrow miss happened to Seth McFarlane. For her part, LaRue claimed that the brush with death was the kind of experience that “took the fear out of you.”  

7. Poltergeist

While the intro said the list wouldn’t focus on horror movies exclusively, there was nothing about excluding them, and the events relating to this 1982 classic are very harrowing. Shortly after the first film’s release in 1982, Dominique Dunne, who played the teenage character Dana, was strangled to death by boyfriend John Thomas Sweeney on the driveway of her home in West Hollywood. Specifically the killing took place on October 30, and in 1986 became a subject of public outcry again when in 1986 he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, and it didn’t even prevent him from returning to his old job as head chef at The Chronicle restaurant. As many pointed out at the time, strangulation was nearly the cause of death for Robbie, Dana’s younger brother in the film, and Oliver Robbins, the actor who reportedly was only prevented from asphyxiating by Steven Spielberg’s intervention. 

Arguably even more disturbing was the fate of Heather O’Rourke, who played the character if Carol when she was only seven years old. She would star in all three original Poltergeist movies and become perhaps the most iconic character (if not her then definitely her line “they’re here”). And in 1988, when she was only twelve years old, she passed away during an emergency surgery for an ailment induced by tainted well water. She and her costar were buried in the same cemetery, adding to the sense there was some grim curse on the Poltergeist films.     

6. The West Wing

In the final season of this Aaron Sorkin-created drama, the character Leo McGarry, a war criminal and advisor to President Josiah Bartlett, had two heart attacks. One at Camp David where he was left in the woods for several hours, and another on the night of an election where he was the running mate for Matthew Santos, the second one proving fatal for the character. Actor John Spencer was not featured in the scene where his character’s dead body is discovered, because he had passed away before the episode was produced.  

John Spencer was just shy of 59 years old at the time of his passing, so he was still relatively young as far as average life expectancy went in 2005. To add to the discomfort of fans giving that final season a rewatch, McGarry says of his campaign staff that they’re going to kill him in an episode that aired days before his passing. According to Martin Sheen, after Spencer passed away, the entire season was rewritten to change the outcome of the season-long election arc. 

5. Troy

This 2004 film from Das Boot director Wolfgang Petersen is not very celebrated today. Commercially it was only a success due to worldwide box office, critically it was at best a modest success. I was widely criticized for being a wildly unfaithful adaptation of Homer’s The Iliad by people who never would have read the ancient epic in their lives. Yet there was a curious form of verisimilitude, or maybe if you were a form of method acting, that occurred during the shoot. 

During one of the stunts, star Brad Pitt injured his achilles tendon in what he referred to as a “bout of stupid irony,” as a major development in the original Iliad is the character Achilles being brought down by a vulnerability in the same body part. This was no trifling occurrence for the production, as there was shutdown for weeks as he healed. The delay caused even more headaches for Petersen when it kept the crew in place for a hurricane to strike and destroy much of their equipment and sets. It’s surprising that Troy isn’t more remembered for being a cursed movie shoot.    

4. Above Suspicion

Christopher Reeve was of course best known for playing all-American hero Superman for four films over a decade. Behind the scenes he bolstered his good guy image through activism such as for Amnesty International and leading a protest march against Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Still throughout his career he would be cast in roles that subverted that image such as in 1982’s dark comedy Deathtrap, 1991’s Bump in the Night where he played a child predator, and 1995’s Above Suspicion, where he played a man who married his wife and brother and tried to fake paralysis as an alibi. In what might have been stunt casting, Reeve’s real life wife, Dana Reeve, played a detective investigating his character. 

Those with the least familiarity with Reeve’s later life know of his 1995 horse riding accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down. What takes it from the realm of what Brad Pitt called stupid irony to viciously cruel irony is that the injury occurred within days of Above Suspicion’s premiere. For what it’s worth, Dana Reeve said in interviews that she disliked sentimental depictions of Reeve’s misfortune while he was doing charity work for the disabled, so during their time, they seemingly didn’t want anyone’s pity.    

3. McMillan & Wife

This police procedural about the married couple Commissioner Stewart McMillan and his wife Sally solving crimes is little discussed today, yet considering it ran from 1971 to 1977 it enjoyed a decently long run. It’s not hard to see why. The fact its episodes were 60-90 minutes meant it was a bit more difficult to syndicate than concurrent police procedurals like Columbo. It also doesn’t help that the movie had Susan St. James’s character Sally and her son killed off over a contract dispute did not reflect too well on the artistic integrity of the production. This decision took on a horribly grim note decades later. 

By 2004, Susan St. James had married NBC executive Dick Ebersol and had a fourteen year-old son with him named Teddy. On Thanksgiving weekend that year, St. James’s husband and son were in a plane crash. Dick Ebersol survived, but their son did not. St. James said of the ordeal that her way of dealing with it was to remind herself and her family that they should move past it, and “resentment is like taking poison and hoping the other guy dies.”  

2. The Omen

Similar to the hype surrounding The Exorcist during production, there were many stories of how so many things went wrong during the production of The Omen that it seemed as if the forces of Satan were working to sabotage the shoot. As pointed out by Screenrant regarding The Exorcist, many of these supposedly uncanny occurrences were more the result of irresponsible filmmaking and salacious marketing and promotion, and that of course a process that lasts more than nine months is going to have some problems. So it is with The Omen as well, though there is one anecdote that requires no participation by the Devil or anything supernatural to be bloodchilling. 

A year after the release of The Omen, special effects artist John Richardson was driving through Belgium with his assistant Elizabeth Moore while they were working on A Bridge Too Far, the World War II film about Operation Market Gardens, a failed Allied effort to capture a number of Dutch bridges in late 1944. There was a grievous car accident, and as a result, Elizabeth Moore was decapitated. Richardson himself reported how the accident was uncannily similar to a decapitation effect he had taken part in during the shoot for the Omen, and reportedly the accident occurred near the town of Ommen.  

1. The China Syndrome 

This 1979 film starring Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas, and Jack Lemmon centered around an attempt to smuggle footage out of a nuclear power plant showing that a nuclear meltdown had very narrowly been avoided was one of the big hits of its year. It was condemned by many in the nuclear energy industry as alarmist, and received a form of vindication that surely brought cold comfort to its makers when the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, a disaster which cost more than a billion dollars in clean up and which certain (heavily disputed) studies claim caused a 64% increase of some local cancer rates, occurred within 12 days of its premiere.

Unlike The Omen and The Exorcist, reportedly the studio did not try to cash in on real life tragedy, and the word from studio executives and stars like Michael Douglas was to tell any news outlet who asked “no comment.” Despite that, Michael Gray, who wrote the original script for The China Syndrome, accepted a job writing an article covering the Three Mile Island disaster for Rolling Stone Magazine, which became typical of the way other news outlets would try to spread the story of how The China Syndrome and Three Mile Island were comparable. 

Dustin Koski also cowrote Return of the Living with Jonathan “Bogleech” Wojcik, a horror comedy about the first sighting of a living creature centuries after all Earth died and became ghosts. 

There likely isn’t a country, city, town, or village in the world that does not have some sort of scary legend that makes up part of its history. Whether loosely based on fact or a story from an imaginative mind, urban legends have been around for a long time.

They will probably continue to be told for generations. On this list are some lesser-known urban legends that may have the potential to raise the neck hairs of even the most fearless readers.

10 Creepy And Outrageous Urban Legends That Turned Out To Be Completely True

8 The Drowned Boy Of Hawaii

A small village on the Big Island of Hawaii is the center of paradise living as well as a tragedy that haunts its residents to this day. It is said that a group of children were playing alongside a pond in the village in 1947 when one boy lost his footing and fell into the water. His friends ran to get help immediately, and rescue divers were on the scene within minutes.^[1]

When the divers located the boy at the bottom of the pond, they were shocked to see his lifeless body propped up on a rock. It was as though the boy was sitting calmly while waiting to be rescued. His eyes and mouth were wide open, and his body swayed along with the movement of the water. The divers shook off the chills creeping down their spines and brought the body back to the surface.

While the villagers tried to forget about the tragedy and move on with their lives, it seemed that the drowned boy refused to let them. Reports soon surfaced of unseen fingers tugging at the pants of those who walked alongside the pond. People became convinced that the spirit of the dead boy had remained in the water. They believed that he wanted to drag the living into the pond to join him in his watery grave.

Years passed without further incident. Then, one day, a young boy was strolling along the shore of the pond when something dragged him in. His father, who was walking ahead of the boy, turned to see his son disappearing into the water. When divers found the youngster, he was also perched on a rock with his eyes and mouth open. Fortunately, the boy was resuscitated once the divers brought him back to the surface.

After this incident, villagers started hearing a plaintive cry from the pond in the darkness of night. It is rumored that the crying will continue until the boy finds a substitute to replace his spirit in the depths of the pond.

7 Beware Of Long Ear

Somalia is famous for crime, piracy, kidnapping, and terrorist attacks. The country is one of the least developed in the world, and over 70 percent of its citizens live in poverty.

Mothers who raise children there go to extremes to keep their kids safe from the threats surrounding them. Hence, these ladies sometimes use the legend of Long Ear to dissuade children and teenagers from exploring the forests in Somalia, especially if they live nearby.

Long Ear (aka Dhegdheer) is a cannibalistic woman who is said to prefer lost children. She hangs around forests, keeping her one long ear on the ground to hear the sound of youngsters who can’t find their way out.^[2]

Should she happen upon a lost young soul, she will eat that child alive in a matter of minutes. To make the story even more terrifying for Somali kids who are thinking of disobeying their parents’ warnings, it is said that Long Ear has a special penchant for eating children who have no manners and do not listen to their parents.

6 The Rolling Calves Of Jamaica

Jamaica is an island in the Caribbean well known for its lush rain forests, fantastic beaches, pungent rum, and world-class coffee. People come from all over the world to experience all Jamaica has to offer, whether it is the breathtaking views or activities such as water sports and hikes in the beautiful greenery.

However, if you find yourself yearning for a nighttime stroll while in Jamaica, keep an eye out for rolling calves. They are said to be the spirits of people who were evil in life (for some reason, butchers in particular).

A rolling calf is exactly what it sounds like—a creature that resembles a calf and rolls along the road. One of its eyes is red and can spew fire. You’ll know a rolling calf is behind you when you hear the rattling of its chains.^[3]

According to other versions of the legend, both eyes are red and fire spews from the creature’s nostrils. Sometimes, its hind legs are those of a goat while one foreleg is human and the other is that of a horse.

Rolling calves block the way of walking travelers. Once a traveler starts running away, the creature will chase the person down with the intent to torture him.

If you come face-to-face with a rolling calf, you can distract it by throwing objects on the ground for it to count. Or you can start running to the nearest crossroads and get there ahead of it.

Alternatively, you can find a tarred whip and keep it handy on those nighttime walks. Beating a rolling calf with a tarred whip held in your left hand will send it running (or rolling) for the hills.

5 ‘The Price Is Three Sacks’

According to legend, a long time ago in an unnamed village in Scotland, a witch appeared from the surrounding forest to warn the villagers to stop cutting down the trees to make way for more farmland. She threatened to make all their land—as well as all the women in the village—infertile if they ignored her warning.

A deal was struck between the villagers and the witch that only a small part of the forest could be cleared. In return, the villagers had to leave one sack of produce at the edge of the forest after each harvest.^[4]

Things remained peaceful for centuries. Then, one day, a new generation of villagers tore down almost the entire forest to build a mill.

The witch returned to promise suffering because of the broken treaty. The villagers grabbed the witch and hanged her. With her last breath, she exclaimed that the price was now three sacks of produce.

The owner of the mill was terrified of the witch even after her death and dutifully placed three sacks of produce at the edge of the forest after each harvest. His crops grew abundantly, and in time, he became a father to three beautiful daughters.

Eventually, however, the mill owner grew complacent and greedy. He stopped paying his due. The very next morning after he failed to pay the three sacks of produce for his harvest, his youngest daughter went missing.

While the village rallied to look for the girl, the mill started running. Suddenly, the workers cried out in alarm. Between the millstones ran rivulets of blood. The mill owner’s daughter was discovered caught and crushed between them.

By the 1960s, an old crumbling silo stood in place of the mill. A young boy was dared to stay in the silo overnight to determine if it was haunted by the witch or the young girl who had died in the mill.

When his friends found him the next morning, they were shocked to see that the boy had broken both his ankles when he jumped from the silo loft. Asked why he had done that, he said that several empty grain bags inside the mill had “come to life” and were dragging themselves toward him to overpower him.

Top 10 Bizarre American Urban Legends

4 Eight Feet Tall

Japan is the center of many creepy legends. Who can forget the Slit-Mouthed Woman or Teke Teke, the ghost of a young woman who fell onto a railway line and had her body cut in half by a train?

She drags the upper half of her body around on her elbows, all the while making a teke teke sound. She chases unwitting victims, and when she catches them, cuts them in half to make them suffer in the same way she did.

Children are seemingly not safe in Japan, either, especially since a demon named Eight Feet Tall uses a masculine voice to call out “Po . . . Po . . . Po” in an attempt to lure kids between the ages of 9 and 11.^[5]

Eight Feet Tall (aka Hachishakusama) often takes the form of a 244-centimeter-tall (8’0”) woman with long black hair. She wears all white and no shoes.

Much like Slender Man, she stalks children for several days or even months. When she spots a gap, she grabs the child to torture and kill him. Sometimes, Eight Feet Tall takes the form of a trusted family member to lure a child away faster.

3 Seven Sisters Road

In the early 1900s, a young man became enraged during a massive argument with his parents inside the house he shared with them and seven sisters. He stormed out without resolving the issue and paced the woods close to home.

A plan formed in his mind, and he waited until his parents left the house. He went back inside and led his sisters out one at a time, hanging each one by the neck from separate trees that stood in a perfect row.

Many years later, the seven trees had to be cut down to make way for a road just a few miles south of Nebraska City. This road became known as the Seven Sisters Road after reports emerged of screams echoing through the night and car headlights dimming on their own as motorists traveled along.

Some drivers claim to have heard bells ringing in the darkness. Others say they have seen red eyes staring at them from the shadows.^[6]

Another version of the legend says that the father is the one who hanged his seven daughters from the trees to get back at his wife for allegedly cheating on him.

2 Check Behind You

It seems like something straight out of a horror movie. Apparently, a legend from Sydney tries to teach drivers to check their rearview mirrors to see if any unwanted passengers have slipped into their back seats without the motorists knowing.

Along Wakehurst Parkway, which connects Seaforth to Narrabeen, lies Deep Creek Reserve. The reserve is known for unexplained murders and paranormal activity.

Several motorists who travel this road have reported their car radios suddenly malfunctioning or car doors locking for no apparent reason. One of the unexplained tales tells the story of Kelly, a girl who was attacked and murdered along Wakehurst Parkway in the 1970s.^[7]

Kelly appears in the back seat of an unsuspecting driver’s vehicle and runs the car off the road if the driver does not notice her. If he does see her, he should yell “Get out, Kelly” to avoid becoming another road accident statistic.

During the filming of the movie The Parkway Hauntings, the cast and crew were left terrified after an encounter with Kelly. A deep glow appeared behind the actor portraying Kelly and remained even after all camera lights were switched off.

The actor started feeling extremely cold and said afterward that she felt frozen to the spot. Producer Bianca Biasi found the experience so disturbing that she vowed never to return to Deep Creek Reserve or drive along Wakehurst Parkway again.

1 The Vanishing Hotel Room

In 1889, a mother and daughter were traveling through Europe when the mother suddenly fell ill. After arriving in Paris, the duo booked a room in a luxury hotel and the mother went to bed immediately.

Her daughter was concerned and sent for the resident doctor. The physician gave the mother a prescription, and the daughter set off on a frustrating journey. She walked around the city, struggling to find an apothecary or anyone who spoke English as she did not speak French.

After finally returning to the hotel with the medicine, the daughter was astonished to find that the hotel room was empty and her mother was gone. What’s more, the room looked completely different.

The curtains, carpet, and wallpaper all sported different patterns. The daughter looked around for their luggage to confirm that she was in the right room. But it was nowhere to be found.

Finding a cleaning lady outside the room, the daughter asked if the woman had seen her mother. The cleaning lady simply stared at her and then turned around and walked away. Approaching other hotel staff elicited the same response. All the staff as well as the hotel manager denied ever having seen the mother and daughter before.

The daughter ran off to the embassy. She hoped that someone would be able to help her, but the officials there decided she was insane and sent her to a mental institution. Being trapped in the asylum with no one who would listen to her story, the daughter went insane for real and died a few years later.^[8]

10 Famous Urban Legends Come To Life

On December 23, 2016 actress Debbie Reynolds had just set up a Christmas table as she was expecting her daughter, Carrie Fisher, who at that point was on a plane on her way to Reynolds’ home. 60-year-old Carrie suffered a medical emergency on the plane and stopped breathing. A passenger performed CPR on the beloved Star Wars actress and she was rushed to hospital upon landing. She died four days later. 84-year-old Debbie was devastated after the loss of her daughter and died one day after Fisher.

On December 20, 2016, Reynolds had told a close friend that she’d had a ‘vision’ and that something bad was going to happen to her daughter. In the vision she saw a dark cloud which moved over and settled on the side of the bed her daughter usually sat on when she visited. She also told her caretaker that “Carrie is not coming home.”

Several other celebrities have had premonitions of their own deaths or of the death of a celebrity friend. On this list are just a few of the eerie predictions that preceded shocking deaths.

10 Wealthy Heirs Whose Lucky Lives Disintegrated Into Tragedy

10 “I will never live long enough for you to write a story about me.”

Hank Williams is widely considered to be one of the first country music superstars. He conquered the music world with hit songs including “Your Cheatin’ Heart”, “Hey, Good Lookin’”, and “I Saw The Light.”

Williams’ personal life was one of strife however. He suffered from a spinal condition, spina bifida, and started abusing drugs and alcohol as an adult to try and relieve his constant back pain.
During a series of interviews with H.B. Teeter, Williams once said “I will never live long enough for you to write a story about me.” These chilling words rang true when the singer was found dead in the back of his Cadillac on 2 January 1953, while he was being driven to a scheduled performance in Canton, Ohio. He was 29 years old.

9 “I’m gonna go see Jesus.”

Whitney Houston became one of the first African American models to appear on the cover of Seventeen magazine, when she was a teenager. At age 19, she was discovered by Clive Davis after which her career as a pop, R&B and soul music icon skyrocketed. Houston became the only artist to have seven consecutive number one hits on the US Billboard chart and soon made her acting debut in the film, The Bodyguard.

Unfortunately the bright shine of her stardom was eventually overshadowed by her excessive drug use and a tumultuous marriage to Bobby Brown. At the start of 2012, Houston returned to her gospel roots, singing hymns and having deep conversations about Jesus, Christianity and the afterlife. She sang “Yes Jesus Loves Me” at a Hollywood nightclub on February 9, 2012, and told a friend afterwards, “I’m gonna go see Jesus… I want to see Jesus.” Two days later, on the morning of the 2012 Grammy Awards ceremony, Houston quoted Matthew 3:13 to 17 which speaks of the baptism of Jesus.

While a Grammy party was being held by Clive Davis that night, Houston was found dead in a bathtub in her Beverly Hilton hotel room. Her death was confirmed to have been an accidental drowning with contributing factors being heart disease and cocaine use.

8 “Kobe is going to end up dying in a helicopter crash.”

Kobe Bryant was a phenomenal basketball player and became one of the best NBA players of all time. He was also adept at creating and writing animated films and fantasy books and dearly loved his family. In 2016, following his retirement, Bryant was honored with his own day, namely “Kobe Bryant Day” or “Mamba Day” to commemorate his impact on the game of basketball.

On January 26, 2020 the unthinkable happened. Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven other people died after the helicopter they were flying in crashed in Calabasas, California. They had been on their way to watch a basketball game at the Mamba Sports Academy.

In the days after Bryant and his daughter’s death, several rumors started making the rounds including that Bryant’s death had been predicted by an animated kids’ show. The episode of “Legends of Chamberlain Heights” was quickly pulled from the Comedy Central website.

Also making the rounds was a tweet by Twitter user @dotNoso who posted a single line on the popular social media platform on November 13, 2012: “Kobe is going to end up dying in a helicopter crash.”

7 “Do you think they’ll do that to me?”

As soon as it was announced on August 31, 1997 that Diana, Princess of Wales, had died after a car crash in Paris, the rumors and conspiracies began to fly. There was talk of the royal family planning the crash because they didn’t approve of Diana’s boyfriend, Dodi Fayed. Other rumors said that Diana had been pregnant with his baby and that the royal family would never have allowed her to marry Fayed or have the baby. Some still believe Diana’s bodyguard was in on the plan to cause the car crash, while others are convinced that the paparazzi created an unsafe scenario which would lead to the accident.

However, it does seem that Diana herself feared for her own life in one way or another. After her friend Gianni Versace’s murder in 1997, she became introspective and once asked Fayed’s bodyguard, “Do you think they’ll do that to me?” It has also been claimed by Diana’s fashion designer friend, Roberto Devorik, that she had feared she would be murdered and that the murder would be covered up, saying: “They will do it when I am in a small plane, in a car when I am driving, or in a helicopter.”

6 He’s going to join the 27 Club.

Tim Bergling, known as Avicii, was a hugely popular Swedish DJ. He was 16 when he began using electronic music forums to create a hype around his remixes and this saw him getting his first record deal. Between 2011 and 2015 he released many successful singles including “Wake Me Up”, “Hey Brother”, The Nights”, and “Waiting for Love.”

By 2016 Bergling suffered from burn out after excessive drinking and a hectic touring schedule left its mark on him. He retired from touring that year, citing stress and it was also revealed that he was struggling with poor mental health. Fellow DJ Laidback Luke, who was friends with Bergling, said in 2015 that he had had a vision of the star joining the group of famous musicians who all died at the age of 27. It was around the same time that Bergling had made the decision to stop touring.

Luke’s vision was only off by a few months. Tim Bergling committed suicide on April 20, 2018 at the age of 28.

5 “Was this some kind of omen?”

Having risen to fame as a member of the band Wham! and later embarking on a successful solo career, George Michael was eventually named one of the Greatest Hot 100 Artists of All Time. He was also one of the best-selling singers of all time, winning a host of music awards. Michael came out in 1998 and before his personal life and legal issues made headlines during the early 2000s, he was an active campaigner for LGBT rights. He also performed at The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992 will all the proceeds going to AIDS research.

Michael struggled with drug abuse and was addicted to sleeping pills. At one point it was reported that he battled a crack cocaine and heroin addiction and smoked around 25 spliffs every day. George Michael died in bed on December 25, 2016 and most people, including family members, suspected that drugs were to blame. The coroner eventually attributed his death to myocarditis and fatty liver disease.

Two days prior to Michael’s death record producer, Nile Rodgers, was on his way to the singer’s home to meet with him about a new album. He was about to turn into the road where Michael stayed when a funeral procession cut him off. He took a photo of the scene and when Michael died, he remembered this and believed it to have been an omen. After watching a documentary on Michael’s life the following year, he posted the image on Twitter alongside a message: “This (is) a photo I snapped whilst waiting to turn on the street to go to @GeorgeMichael house on Dec 23 2016. Was this some kind of omen? #tears.”

4 “I don’t want to die.”

Amy Winehouse will forever be known for great songs like “Back to Black”, “Rehab”, and “Valerie”. In 2008 she won five Grammy awards and her album Back to Black became one of the best-selling albums in UK history. Before the success of this album, she went through a period of heavy drinking, excessive drug use and by 2007 she was hospitalized for an overdose of a variety of drugs. It was revealed that the singer suffered from depression and eating disorders and that she was engaging in self-harm. She also had run-ins with the law because of violent behaviour.

Winehouse’s drug habit caused several other health problems, including an irregular heartbeat. As her drug addiction worsened, Winehouse told friends and family that she knew she would join the 27 Club. On July 22, 2011 Winehouse’s GP visited her at home and she admitted to the doctor that she had started drinking again after a period of abstinence. She also told Dr. Christina Romete, “I don’t want to die.”

The following day, Amy Winehouse was found dead at her home in Camden, north London. She was 27 years old.

3 I’m going to die young, just like my dad.

During the early nineties, celebrities weren’t much different from today’s famous people. They partied whenever they got the chance and they partied hard. It was during these years that a young Brad Pitt and Brandon Lee would often be at the same party and indulge in strange conversations after having one too many.

One morning, Pitt and Lee ended up at Lee’s house after a night of partying and Lee said something to Pitt that would continue to haunt the famous actor years later. Lee told Pitt that he believed he would die young, just like his famous father Bruce Lee had. Pitt didn’t think much of it at the time. Life went on and Brandon Lee got the lead role in The Crow the following year. During filming a defective blank went off, killing Lee instantly. He was 28 years old, 4 years younger than Bruce Lee who died at the age of 32 in 1973.

2 “It is dark in my favorite dream.”

In July 2001, 22-year-old R&B singer Aaliyah had a recurring dream about being scared, someone following her and then lifting off from the ground, swimming in the air and feeling weightless. She told a German newspaper about the dream in an interview a month before she was due to fly to the Bahamas to shoot a music video.

After a great four days in the Bahamas in August 2001, Aaliyah boarded a twin-engine Cessna plane along with a number of other colleagues. The plane was hardly airborne when it crashed near the runway and caught fire. Aaliyah and eight others died. It was revealed afterwards that the plane had been overloaded and that the pilot, who wasn’t certified to fly the aircraft, had traces of alcohol and cocaine in his blood.

Aaliyah’s dream was later thought to have been a foreshadowing of the tragedy and her own fate, especially since it was known that she had a fear of small planes. In the years after her untimely death, Aaliyah’s music was posthumously released and led to 32 million album sales worldwide.

1 “If you get in that car, you will be found dead in it by this time next week.”

James Dean was a handsome young actor who starred in the famous film, Rebel Without a Cause, in 1955. His first television appearance came in the form of a Pepsi Cola commercial which inspired him to quit college and become a full-time actor. He went on to play several roles in television shows before landing his infamous role as Jim Stark. In 1954, Dean became interested in motorsport and competed in his first professional event just before filming commenced on Rebel Without a Cause.

After finishing the filming of his scenes for another movie, Giant, Dean took up racing again after being barred by Warner Brothers from doing so during filming. He traded in his Speedster for a 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder and entered the Salinas Road Race event that was due to take place on 1 and 2 October, 1955. While driving the Porsche to Salinas, Dean was involved in an accident with another car. He sustained fatal injuries including a broken neck and was pronounced dead on arrival after being taken to a nearby hospital.

James Dean and actor, Alec Guinness, had a chance encounter at a Los Angeles restaurant in September 1955. Dean showed Guinness his Porsche Spyder and Guinness immediately had a terrible feeling. He told Dean: “Please, never get in it. It is now ten o’clock, Friday the 23rd of September, 1955. If you get in that car, you will be found dead in it by this time next week.”

Dean died in the car crash a week later on September 30, 1955.

10 Absurd Ads That Tried To Cash In On Tragedy

How would you react if your young child suddenly pointed at a picture of an early 20th-century home and exclaimed, “That was my house?” Or if they happened to catch a glimpse of a WWI documentary on TV and shouted: “That’s where they killed me!”

Would you want to investigate their claims or simply push it far from your mind, pretending it never happened?

There are well-known cases of children remembering past lives, including two-year-old James Leininger, who had nightmares about being a WWII pilot, and four-year-old Ryan Hammons, who remembered being Marty Martyn (a dance director and manager of motion-picture actors) in a past life. And of course, stories of reincarnation are not limited to children. Several adults claim to have been someone else in a past life.

Are these stories legit, or are there people pulling the strings behind the scenes for the sake of fame? Read the eerie stories on this list and decide for yourself.

Related: 10 Fascinating Theories To Explain Déjà Vu

10 “This Is My Ship”

When William Barnes was four years old, he drew a ship with four smokestacks. He showed the drawing to his parents and told them, “This is my ship, but she died.”

Soon he started insisting that his family call him “Tommy”’ instead of William, and he wouldn’t stop talking about two brothers and other family members. None of what he was saying made any sense to his parents, and the situation escalated when William started having non-stop nightmares about a huge ship, freezing water, and steel slabs falling on top of him.

The nightmares continued, and it was only at the age of 25 that William sought help. He underwent hypnosis, and during the session, he could hear himself arguing about “the ship’s design.” As soon as he awoke from the hypnotic trance, he told the counselor, “My name is Tommy Andrews.”

Soon the fragmented pieces of William’s nightmares started forming a complete picture. He became increasingly convinced that he was the reincarnation of Titanic designer Thomas Andrews. William Barnes was born on the date the Titanic sank, and during hypnotic age regression sessions later in his life, he spoke with a heavy Irish accent while detailing the sinking of the ship and how he died on the deck.^[1]

William now has his own website on which he details his experiences and presents proof of his claim to reincarnation fame.

9 Two Past Lives

A three-year-old Thai boy named Dalawong became the focus of many studies and articles after he claimed to have had two past lives, one in which he was a deer killed by a hunter and then another one as a cobra when he was reincarnated after his death.

While he was a snake, Dalawong found himself in a life-or-death fight with two dogs. The dogs’ owner intervened and killed the snake—aka Dalawong—but not before the slithery reptile bit him on the shoulder. The dog owner, Mr. Hiew, took the dead snake home, cooked and ate it, and shared some of the meat with a friend. That friend would become Dalawong’s father.

Fast forward to three years after Dalawong’s birth, the young boy recognized Mr. Hiew at a party taking place next door to his own house. He became instantly angry and tried to find a weapon to attack the man. Dalawong’s mother was stunned at her child’s anger and forced him to tell her what was happening. He related the snake tale to her, and when she confronted Mr. Hiew, he confirmed that he had indeed killed a snake a few years prior and that he had a mark from where the snake had bitten him on the shoulder.^[2]

Before this incident, human Dalawong and his family had never met Mr. Hiew.

8 “Why Did You Let Me Die in That Fire?

In 2014, the parents of four-year-old Andrew Lucas began suspecting that their beloved boy may be possessed or have some kind of ghost inside of him. This happened after Andrew started crying almost non-stop and asking why his parents let him die in a fire. When his mother, Michelle, asked him what fire he was talking about, Andrew started telling her little details of what was his past life as a U.S. Marine. Eventually, Michelle used these details to uncover the story of U.S. Marine Sergeant Val Lewis, who died in a bomb attack in Lebanon in 1983.

Because the details of what happened to Lewis and the story Andrew told her were so similar, Michelle decided to take the issue to the reality TV show Ghost Inside My Child. During the show, Andrew was given several photographs of military men to look at, and he immediately zoomed in on an image of Lewis.^[3]

Afterward, Michelle took her son to Lewis’s gravesite in Georgia, where Andrew laid flowers in front of it. He also ran to another grave and pointed to the name on it, saying, “That’s my friend.” It turned out that grave also belonged to a Marine.

7 Toddler Recalls Past Life Murder

A very unnerving story caused an uproar in 2014 when it was reported that a three-year-old Syrian boy had pointed out where his past life’s body had been buried after he was murdered. He also pointed out the murder weapon.

The boy, who belongs to the Druze ethnic group, has a long red birthmark on his forehead, which according to Druze beliefs, is related to how a person died in a previous life. This belief was seemingly substantiated by the boy, who told his parents that he had been killed by an ax to the head in his previous life, hence the birthmark.

The elders of the village the boy stayed in took him to the home he lived in during his past life, getting the location from the details the boy gave. Eventually, standing in front of the house, the boy remembered the house, the village, and his old name. The man whose house it was, had gone missing four years earlier, according to locals. When the elders quizzed the boy about this turn of events, he told them the full name of the person who had killed him when he was the man who lived in the house. He then led the elders to the spot where the body was buried, and sure enough, they uncovered a skeleton with a headwound that correlated to the boy’s birthmark as well as an ax.

When confronted by the elders and locals, the killer confessed to the crime soon after.^[4]

6 Past Life During WWII

During her pregnancy, When Daw Aye Tin had a recurring dream about a Japanese soldier who told her he would be coming to stay with her and her husband in their Upper Burma (Myanmar) home.

She gave birth to her daughter, Ma Tin Aung Myo, on December 26, 1953. When her daughter turned four, she started talking about her “real home of Japan” and how much she missed it. She also made it known that she was afraid of planes and didn’t like English and American people.

Eventually, it became clear to When Daw Aye Tin that her daughter had lived before. Details provided by Ma Tin Aung Mao as she grew older included being a male soldier stationed in Nathul during WWII and running a small shop to provide for her children. She was killed when the Allies attacked, and a soldier shot at her from a plane.^[5]

5 Reincarnated Lama

In 1996, four-year-old Sonam Wangdu was just another happy boy who loved watching Batman and Spiderman cartoons as well as Power Rangers. However, Sonam was anything but an ordinary child. He was recognized and revered by the Buddhist community in Nepal and Tibet as a reincarnated lama.

At the time, the boy was living in Seattle, but it was decided that the boy would travel to Katmandu for his formal education and that afterward, he would live in a monastery. He was given the name Trulku-la which means reincarnation in Tibetan. He was believed to be the reincarnation of the beloved lama, Deshung Rinpoche III, who taught at the University of Washington and co-founded the Sakya Monastery in Seattle.

Rinpoche was believed to have been the third reincarnation of the original lama, Deshung Rinpoche I, who lived in Tibet. Deshung Rinpoche III also told two of his students that he would be reborn in the Seattle area after his death.

Trulku-la had already had his enthronement ceremony two years before leaving for Katmandu and would be separated from his mother for the first eight years of his education. His mother, Carolyn Lama, had no qualms about seeing her son go off without her because she knew that he was special, and she only wanted the best for him.^[6]

4 A City of Dreams

When James Arthur Flowerdew was 12 years old, he began having strange dreams. These dreams were blurry and vague when they first started, but over time they became clear pictures. As he continued to dream, he saw a stone city carved into a cliff and various temples inside the city. He also saw a rock shaped like a volcano situated on the fringes of the stone city. Arthur didn’t know what to make of these dreams and tried to ignore them.

On one particular day, Arthur visited the beach with his family. As he was playing around with pebbles and bent down to pick them up, a vision slammed into his head. It was the city of his dreams. So intense was the vision that he could smell dry desert air. Dropping the pebbles made the image dissipate, leaving Arthur at a loss for words. He revisited the beach a short time later to see if the vision would happen again, and as soon as he picked up the pebbles, it did.

He saw more details the second time, such as a stone passage and military barracks. For the first time, Arthur started thinking that he may have been a soldier in this dream city and had been killed there by a spear. Arthur never had any explanation for his experiences. Many years later, when he was an old man, Arthur watched a documentary about the ancient city of Petra in Jordan. He instantly realized that this was his city of dreams, and he became convinced that he had lived there in a past life.

He contacted the BBC, who arranged an interview between Arthur and an archaeologist. The archaeologist was flabbergasted when he discovered how much knowledge Arthur had of the ancient city without ever having been there in his current life.

Eventually, the Jordanian government invited Arthur to visit Petra. Arthur found his way around the city without the help of a guide or map and pointed out sites that hadn’t been excavated yet. He talked about a military barrack where he worked with a check-in system for guards, and even provided facts about the area that experts were not aware of.^[7]

3 My Life as a Monk

In 1987, three-year-old Duminda Bandara Ratnayake started talking about the Asgiriya temple and monastery in Kandy, saying that he used to be an abbot there. Duminda was born in 1984 to Sinhalese Buddhist parents and was the second youngest of three brothers. He talked about the temple non-stop and also told his mother that he had owned a red car, taught other monks, and died in a hospital where he was taken after experiencing sudden sharp pain in his chest. He also “recalled” having had a pet elephant.

The little boy soon started wearing his clothes in the way of a monk and visited a Buddhist temple twice a day. He also began reciting stanzas in the Pali language. His mother began fearing that her son would want to leave his family to become a monk.

By age five, Duminda’s interest in going to the temple waned somewhat, but by age six, his mother had permitted him to go to the monastery when he turned seven. At this point, he also didn’t want to go to a school with girls and didn’t want women, including his mother, to touch his hands. When the abbot of the Malwatta Temple died in 1990, Duminda randomly exclaimed that he had known him well.

It seemed that Ven. Mahanayaka Gunnepana, who died of a heart attack and owned a red car, could have been Duminda in a past life.^[8]

Gunnepana also had an elephant.

2 “I Am Anne Frank”

Barbro Karlen was born nine years after Anne Frank died. From a young age, she insisted that Barbro wasn’t her real name and that her family should call her Anne instead. She also told her parents that she knew they weren’t her real mom and dad. At that point, Barbro’s family wasn’t up to date with the Anne Frank story and thought that Barbro was losing her mind. They carted her off to a psychiatrist, thinking that she was somehow lost in a fantasy.

By age twelve, Barbro wrote a book of poetry that would become one of the most popular books in her native Sweden. She went on to write nine more volumes. However, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t who everyone thought she was. But she stopped talking about it after she realized who Anne Frank was and that people likely thought she was insane.

This was despite the trip to Amsterdam with her parents at age 10, during which they visited the house of Anne Frank. Barbro knew exactly how to get to the house and that the steps outside it had been changed. Her parents were stunned. Once Barbro entered Anne’s room, she felt an overwhelming fear but refused to leave. She knew that there had once been pictures on the wall, placed there by Anne, and when she told her mother this, the older woman finally understood what her daughter had been trying to tell them for years. She was Anne Frank in a past life.^[9]

Barbro met Anne’s cousin Buddy Elias years later, and he told reporters he believed that she was the reincarnation of Anne.

1 “The Floor Got Really Hot”

In March 2021, Tik Toker Riss White gave her account of what her daughter told her a few years ago. It was September 11, 2018, and Riss was looking at 9/11 memorial posts on social media. One of the posts had a striking image of the Twin Towers, and when her then-four-year-old daughter saw it, she said to Riss, “Hey mom, I used to work there.”

Riss, feeling slightly uneasy, asked her daughter when this was, to which the young girl simply replied “before.” She went on to tell her mother that during one morning at work she had to get up on her desk because the floor got really hot. She and her friends had tried to escape the hot floor by leaving through the door, but the door wouldn’t open. She then jumped out of the window and “flew like a bird.”

Riss was shaken and still can’t make sense of what her daughter told her. She also confirmed that the young girl had never been told about 9/11.^[10]

Traveling is fun. You get to meet new people, experience diverse cultures, enjoy a variety of cuisine, and take in breathtaking sights. That is if those are the reasons you travel, of course. Some people prefer places where history collides with the here and now. Places where the dead whisper from the rolling mist and cold fingers brush the back of your neck.

If you’re one of those types of people, the travel destinations on this list might just be perfect for your next trip.

Related: 10 Eerie Derelict Buildings Where Horrible Things Happened

10 Hike to Your Ultimate Fate

Yosemite is one of the world’s most well-known and popular national parks. Here you can gaze up at the giant wonder of the ancient sequoia, explore deep valleys, and take picturesque hiking trails that lead to stunning waterfalls.

One of these trails is the Chilnualna Falls Trail— pronounced “Chil-noo-al-na”—which is 13.2 kilometers (8.2 miles) long (round trip) and includes amazing views of the Chilnualna Falls waterfall. It is a truly spectacular trail and also one of the scariest in the U.S. A Native American legend has it that where the trail passes by Grouse Lake, hikers can hear the cries of a young boy who drowned long ago. Anyone who jumps in to try and save what they think is a child drowning at that moment will disappear below the water’s surface, never to be found again.

If you happen to make it past Lake Grouse without incident, just ensure you stay away from the edge of the waterfall when you get to the top. Getting too close might conjure up an evil spirit behind you that will push you over the edge.^[1]

9 Even the Devil Couldn’t Stand It

In the south-central region of Poland, Polish Jura, stand the ruins of Ogrodzieniec Castle. It was built in the 14th century and has been rebuilt many times. Renaissance frescos of lilies can still be seen here, and the chapel that sits close to the castle still sports some original elements.

It is said that the 17th-century owner of the castle, Stanislaw Warszycki, made a fortune during his time at the castle. However, he refused to spread the wealth and wouldn’t even give any money to his own children. Warszycki was apparently also a hard and cruel man. He built his own torture chamber, where he gleefully inflicted pain on anyone who “wronged” him.

Warszycki became so evil that not even the devil could bear to look at him. He dragged Warszycki to hell, but the eternal flames couldn’t stop this evil man from coming back. Visitors have reported seeing a huge, black dog roaming the grounds, sporting a heavy chain around its neck. The dog’s glowing red eyes never stop searching for more victims, just as Warszycki had in life.^[2]

3 The Night is Alive

The Presbitero Maestro Cemetery was the first municipal cemetery in Latin America, built between 1805 and 1808. It sits on the outskirts of Lima, Peru, and covers an area of around 25,000 square meters (269,000 square feet). More than 220 000 people have been buried here, including Peruvian war heroes, and it is said that not all of them stay in their graves when night falls.

Six-year-old Ricardo Espiell died of a “pernicious disease” in 1893, and his body was entombed in a mausoleum inside the Presbitero Maestro. It didn’t take long for whispered rumors to start making the rounds that Ricardo wasn’t resting peacefully. Instead, he appeared at night, ran around, and came to a halt behind the caretakers’ backs, giggling at their efforts to contain him. Sometimes the giggling morphed into a demonic cackle.

These rumors grew to the extent that, to this day, visitors to the cemetery leave food, flowers, and toys around Ricardo’s mausoleum.^[3]

7 A City of Souls

Rome seems to have as many ghosts, ghouls, and scary places, as it has historic sites and statues. In the Museum of the Holy Souls in Purgatory is a collection of objects with handprints allegedly singed into them by the hands of those burning in purgatory. They did this to implore their loved ones in desperation to pray harder for their souls while they were stranded in limbo.

Over the Ponte Sisto, you might catch a glimpse of Olimpia Maidalchini’s ghostly carriage, speeding toward the edge of town. At Campo de’ Fiori, philosopher Giordano Bruno wanders around the area where his hooded statue has been erected.

Another Roman ghost is that of a young woman, Beatrice Cenci, whose story has inspired countless paintings, poems, and plays. She was the daughter of the tyrannical aristocrat Francesco Cenci, who famously abused his wife and daughter. After plotting to have him killed, Beatrice, her stepmother, and her brothers were later sentenced to death. Even with public sympathy on her side, Beatrice was killed—decapitated on the scaffold in front of a younger stepbrother. On the anniversary of her death, Beatrice can be seen carrying her severed head as she walks across Ponte Sant’Angelo.^[4]

6 Underwater Melody

In 1895, a family living near the shore of Gardner Lake in Connecticut decided that they wanted to move their house to the other side of the lake. They came up with what seemed to be a fool-proof plan. They would wait until the lake froze and then slide their house onto sleds and pull it across the ice. Because of the sheer size of the lake, they couldn’t complete the move in a single day, and the house was left on the ice until the following morning.

Sadly, when they returned, some of the ice had cracked below the house, and a part of it had already sunk below the thick surface. The family tried to salvage as much as possible, but a couch, a stove, and a piano couldn’t be saved.

Today, many visitors who have tried their hand at fishing on Gardner Lake have reported hearing piano music rising from below the surface. Not just random notes either, but intricate melodies…^[5]

5 Screams of the Tortured

In 1937, brothers Aw Boon Haw and Aw Boon Par opened the Haw Par Villa theme park in the Queenstown district of Singapore. The park included more than 1,000 statues, and scattered throughout were 150 massive dioramas that depicted scenes from Chinese culture, including folklore, history, mythology, and philosophy.

One of these dioramas was the eerie 10 Courts of Hell display, which parents often used to keep their children from running wild. The display depicted in detail the terrible punishment that awaited sinners. While 10 Courts of Hell was closed, along with the entire theme park, when visitor numbers dwindled, it was reopened in October 2021.

Hopefully, once people are allowed inside again, they won’t encounter the statues that come to life at night or disappear via the Gate to Hell that is rumored to exist somewhere on the grounds. And perhaps the theme park will close early enough so that visitors won’t hear the chilling screams that several security guards have heard emanate from the 10 Courts of Hells display over the years.^[6]

4 Freezing and Frightening

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

It isn’t cold enough in the polar regions to keep the ghosts at bay.

Disembodied voices have been heard echoing through the thick ice. A figure has been seen walking along some ruins, and orbs have been spotted over Whalers Bay, located in the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica.

In 1918, the Arctic Circle Hot Springs Resort was built near the town of Central, Alaska. It lasted until 2002, undergoing several ownership changes over the years. Finally, it was officially announced that financial difficulties had sunk the resort. However, some were of the opinion that the strange goings-on at the place had more than a little to do with it.

Staff and visitors alike have reported hearing whistling noises coming from outside the resort and in the hallways. Several of the cleaning staff claimed to have seen the ghost of a woman in the library on the third floor. Some have seen the chandelier in the main hall moving on its own accord, and others have stood transfixed in front of large paintings as the characters in them came to life before their eyes.^[7]

3 Screaming into the Afterlife

The historic country of Egypt is most well-known for the giant pyramids of Giza and the majestic Sphinx. Here, dry desert winds sweep the Sahara, and the Nile flows unabated into the Mediterranean Sea.

Egypt, too, has its fair share of ghosts. The specter of the monarch, Akhenaten, has been spotted floating around in the Farafra Desert, while far-off gunshots have been heard from what used to be a military training base at Dashour.

One of the creepiest places in Egypt is the Roshdy Building, located in Alexandria. After a series of hair-raising incidents, the building was evacuated and locked. It remains locked more than five decades later. Several of the previous residents claimed to have seen blood leaking from their taps and heard screams travel through the corridors.

It is believed that several laborers died on site while the building was being constructed and that their spirits are doomed to forever haunted the completed structure.^[8]

2 The Spirit(s) of Mother Russia

And we’re not talking about the vodka.

St. Michael’s Castle in St. Petersburg was the royal residence of Tsar Paul I. The tsar was murdered by a group of conspirators on March 21, 1801, but his spirit has remained on the premises ever since. He has been seen floating around in the corridors carrying a burning candle.

The tsar has also been seen in his other residence, Gatchina Palace, where workers have witnessed him walking around in the park surrounding the palace. It is said that if anyone meets the ghost of the tsar, they should nod at him politely and step aside to let him pass by, lest they be harmed.

The tsar is not the only restless specter in Russia. After Emperor Peter III was assassinated, he began roaming the Palace of Ropsha and the Palace of Oranienbaum. Workers at the palaces became so accustomed to the emperor’s presence that they made a ritual out of greeting him each morning as they entered the various rooms and apologized for disturbing him.^[9]

1 Ship of Ghosts

Between 1936 and 1967, the RMS Queen Mary sailed the North Atlantic. She ferried troops during WWII and became the ocean liner of choice for the rich after the war ended. The Queen Mary was retired at the end of 1967 and is now moored at the Port of Long Beach in California. Unfortunately—or fortunately, if that’s your thing—the ship also happens to be one of the most haunted sites in America.

The Queen Mary, which is now a hotel, has been investigated by more than one group of paranormal investigators who have reported much the same as visitors and staff. A woman dressed in a white evening gown has been seen floating at the end of the first-class lounge. The ghost of a young girl named Jackie has been heard splashing around where the ship’s second-class pool used to be. Jackie Torin drowned in that pool when she was about six years old.

A growling ghost nicknamed Grumpy lurks in a room underneath a set of stairs, and the spirit of John Henry, who died in the boiler room, still lingers there.

It is also alleged that a woman named Dana and her family were murdered on board and that Dana has been found with Jackie at the swimming pool. She also sometimes visits both Grumpy and John Henry, all of them hanging out in the boiler room.^[10]