Folklore
81 Chaoyangmen (Chaonei No. 81)
A French-style mansion on Chaoyangmen Inner Street in Beijing, which the New York Times called perhaps the city's best-known haunted house. Its ghost story drew crowds after a 2014 film, though English Wikipedia says it is accepted that no Kuomintang officer ever owned the house.
Somewhere You Can GoObscurity 7 of 7
Folklore
Adze
A being in the beliefs of the Ewe people of West Africa, said to possess people, who are then treated as witches.
Before you read on. Among the Ewe, saying someone is possessed by an adze is a witchcraft accusation. It falls mostly on women, including women without children or thought to envy co-wives, and also on old and poor people (Atlas Obscura, 2020; Wikipedia).
Something ToldObscurity 7 of 7
Folklore
Anna Baker's wedding dress
A ghost story attached to the Baker Mansion, a museum of the Blair County Historical Society, about a wedding dress that Anna Baker is said to have bought for a marriage her father stopped.
Somewhere You Can GoObscurity 3 of 7
Folklore
Anne Boleyn's ghost
The ghost of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, beheaded in the Tower of London in 1536, is reported at the Tower and at Hever Castle, Blickling Hall, Salle Church and Marwell Hall.
Somewhere You Can GoObscurity 3 of 7
Folklore
Aokigahara forest
Aokigahara is a forest below Mount Fuji in Japan, with the Narusawa Ice Cave, a tourist site, at its edge. Japanese literature has tied it to suicide, and Wikipedia says it is reputed to be haunted.
Somewhere You Can GoObscurity 3 of 7
Disputed
Arne Cheyenne Johnson's possession defence
The 1981 killing of Alan Bono in Brookfield, Connecticut, and the murder trial in which Arne Cheyenne Johnson's lawyer tried to argue demonic possession.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 5 of 7
Folklore
Aswang
Aswang is a Filipino umbrella name for a range of flesh-eating night beings. The oldest record here, from 1589, places the belief in the Visayas and says it was absent among the Tagalogs.
Before you read on. Kentaro Azuma (Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, 2012) found that aswang rumours can be used to justify discriminating against and excluding particular people. A 2015 Rappler essay by Wel Mendoza says people with X-linked dystonia parkinsonism in Capiz have been linked to aswang, and that the stigma led some families to hide them, leaving them with little or no medical care.
Something ToldObscurity 1 of 7
Claimed sighting
Betty and Barney Hill abduction
Betty and Barney Hill, a couple from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, said aliens abducted them in the White Mountains in September 1961. The New York Times credits their story with a national fixation on alien abduction.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 1 of 7
Folklore
Buda, the Ethiopian evil eye
The evil eye in Ethiopian belief. Others pin the buda label on artisan and manual-labour castes and on Beta Israel, Ethiopian Jews.
Before you read on. In Ethiopia others put the buda label on artisan and manual-labour castes, including ironworkers, and on Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews). Finneran (Folklore, 2003) writes that landless artisans are widely looked down on by farming groups although only economic status sets them apart, and Wikipedia says mixing with them is treated as sinful.
Something ToldObscurity 7 of 7
Folklore
Catherine Howard and the Haunted Gallery
Catherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII, died on 13 February 1542. A story about her running down a gallery at Hampton Court Palace gave the Haunted Gallery its name, and visitors and staff there report chills and sightings.
Somewhere You Can GoObscurity 7 of 7
Folklore
Cheonyeo gwisin, the maiden ghost
In Korean folk belief, the ghost of a young woman who died before she could marry. She is one of several kinds of gwisin, the ghosts of Korean folklore.
Something ToldObscurity 7 of 7
Folklore
Churel
The churel is a female ghost of northern Indian belief: a woman who died while pregnant, on the day she gave birth, or within the set period of ritual impurity, as William Crooke recorded in 1896.
Before you read on. The Guardian reported in 2015 frequent fatal attacks in Jharkhand on women whom villagers blame for curses, and the Indian Express reported an estimate that more than nine in ten women in one state's 1,500 police cases from 2001 to 2015 were widows, separated from their husbands or childless. Neither report uses the word churel, so the link to this belief is indirect: it runs only through the word's loose use for a witch.
Something ToldObscurity 4 of 7
Claimed sighting
Colonel Shaw's encounter near Lodi
The Stockton Evening Mail of 27 November 1896 printed Colonel H. G. Shaw's first-person account of meeting three tall, slender beings on a road near Lodi, California. Guinness World Records says writers broadly regard it as the first published account of its kind.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 7 of 7
Folklore
Dayan and witch accusations in India
Some women in rural India are believed to be dayans, or witches, and are tortured and killed for it. Official figures count more than 2,500 such deaths between 2000 and 2016.
Before you read on. Women, especially widows, accused of being witches are tortured and killed in Jharkhand, Odisha and other states of India. The National Crime Records Bureau counted more than 2,500 such deaths, mainly of women, between 2000 and 2016.
Something ToldObscurity 6 of 7