There are countless holes in the ground. Some have water. Some are just open void and darkness. When we can’t readily discern the depth, the hole begets additional legendary characteristics, including that of being bottomless. Let’s check out the legends of bottomless holes.
Ringing rocks, rocks that make a bell-like sound when hit with a hammer, are rare but occur across the world. They are seen as magical, mysterious, and scientifically curious.
A megaslump is affecting the villagers of Batagay in Yakutia, Siberia. Local legend is that it’s a mouth to hell. The area of land continues to slump and sink, changing the landscape and creating a hazard for the village.
Police in the Steyning area of West Sussex, England, were called to a public park on the evening of July 23, 2020 to respond to a report of a big cat on the loose. The Horsham police were likely familiar with the popular idea that large, non-native, “alien big cats” are roaming the UK. Hundreds… Read More: Fake tiger tales and other plush hoaxes »
Pic de Bugarach in Aude, France, is a place that effortlessly combines natural wonder and legends. Add to its history a heaping portion of serious scientific misunderstandings, flavor with rumors and imaginative speculation, then bake for centuries, and the result is a bizarre mashup of fact and fiction that satisfies in our modern spooky times.
The photo of a mint-green, pristine pool in Lechuguilla cave circulating on social media resulted in expressions of speculation, wonder, and a desire to visit. For many reasons, the cave area must remain off-limits and isolated.
Eye agate is formed from water-deposited mineral inside rock voids. The result can be the creation of a very spooky specimen that attains legendary properties.
Rock formations that look like faces are called “mimetoliths”. Faces in rock can accrue great cultural significance as land marks. Societies place spiritual meaning into features that appear meaningful because they resemble a human form.
Long ago, my interest in paranormal topics became jaded because popular books were repetitive, full of the same information and stories as the last one. For decades, books written on cryptozoology and ufology advanced no closer to definitively documenting or explaining these phenomena. Some advocates are persuaded that the many similar stories and imaginative speculation,… Read More: Ghost Studies and Lightforms: A review of two paranormal research… »
I collaborated on a new paper now online for Cornell Hospitality Quarterly about paranormal tourism called “Paranormal Tourism: Market Study of a Novel and Interactive Approach to Space Activation and Monetization”. Abstract We review the premise, popularity, and profitability of paranormal tourism, which involves visits to any setting or locale for the explicit purpose of encountering… Read More: Paranormal tourism paper shows themed tourism is popular and profitable »
A review of Chasing American Monsters: Over 250 Creatures, Cryptids, and Hairy Beasts by Jason Offutt (2019). I’ve been thinking a lot about cryptozoology lately. While consuming content about many other subjects, I see excellent examples in cryptozoology to illustrate public attitudes towards and understanding of science, paranormal thinking, colonialist themes, misperceptions about evidence, media… Read More: Copy-paste cryptozoology »
Mystery spots, magnetic hills, or gravity hills are local places named for their unusual characteristic of making the observer confused or unbalanced. Exploited as tourist spots, they have been explained as mysteries of nature. But they have a more complex and interesting cause.
A sci-fi trope, some people actually believed that there is substantial space inside the earth’s sphere where curious things occur. The history of the hollow earth idea is complex and far more serious than you might guess. It definitely qualifies as some spooky alternative to geology.
In the late 19th century, settlers came across bizarre, giant “stone screws” vertically embedded in the ground. Flummoxed as to what could cause such structures, the locals named them the “devil’s corkscrews”. Paleontologists would argue for over nearly a century about what they really were.
For a long while, there was a popular mystery surrounding how moderately-sized rocks moved on their own across a dead flat surface in Death Valley leaving a trail behind them. That mystery is solved.
News outlets have picked up and run with the story of five bulls (Hereford bovines) that have died under mysterious circumstances near Salem, Oregon last July. I’m not sure why this is getting attention again now except for the obvious – that ideas about aliens are back in the public consciousness thanks to a whole… Read More: Dead bulls generate media BS »
Bigfoots and their other monstrous cohorts were presented to U.S. audience in a serious television documentary for the first time in 1974. The outing was so successful that it still is notable today. This documentary, its remixes, and a few other pieces of media gold from that decade paved the way for ideas of Bigfoot/Sasquatch… Read More: The Mysterious Monster Mash of the Mid 1970s: Bigfoot hits… »
Every once in a while, I remember one of the books from my childhood that I recall with great fondness. Thanks to the Internet, I can usually find a blurb on what I had long discarded or gave away. I have been trying for a while to locate a kids activity book about monsters that… Read More: My three favorite vintage books on monsters and the paranormal »
Most people react to flat-earthers by labeling them as stupid or scientifically illiterate. A moderate effort to examine what they say will reveal that is not so. On the contrary, those who embrace conspiratorial beliefs seem to be bored with the conventional. Their active, creative brains spin more intriguing, complicated, and colorful trappings around mundane… Read More: Flat-earthers as scientifical Americans: One message from ‘Behind the Curve’ »
A review of The Monster Book: Creatures, Beasts and Fiends of Nature by Nick Redfern. Cryptozoology literature has a problem.