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Someone Who Was There

Witnesses, investigators, mediums, hoaxers, expeditions.

100 entries · page 2 of 2
Disputed
The Gorman dogfight
On 1 October 1948, National Guard pilot George Gorman reported a long aerial chase with a bright light over Fargo, North Dakota.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 4 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Grafton Monster
Reporter Robert Cockrell said he saw a tall, headless creature beside Route 119 near Grafton, West Virginia, late on 16 June 1964. Residents and teenagers searched for it in the following days.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 2 of 7
Disputed
The Great Amherst Mystery
Knocks, thunder-like bangs and flying bedclothes centred on Esther Cox, 18, and her family's house. Walter Hubbell's account dates the start to late August 1878.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 1 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Greenbrier Ghost
Mrs. Shue was found dead at her home in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, on 22 January 1897. Her mother said her daughter's ghost told her how she died, and her husband was later convicted of murder.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 1 of 7
Disputed
The HMS Daedalus sea serpent
The crew of HMS Daedalus reported a huge sea creature on 6 August 1848 off the African coast. Captain Peter M'Quhae's account was printed in The Times after two months.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 7 of 7
Documented
The Heaven's Gate house in Rancho Santa Fe
On 26 March 1997 police found 39 members of Heaven's Gate dead in a house near San Diego, timed to a comet's approach.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 1 of 7
Disputed
The Highgate Vampire
In a letter of 6 February 1970, David Farrant told a London paper he had seen a grey figure at Highgate Cemetery. Reports of a vampire there followed in the press.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 2 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Hillsdale swamp gas sighting
On 21 March 1966, residents of a Hillsdale College dormitory in Michigan reported flashing lights over the campus arboretum, and the sighting drew the interest of Congressman Ford.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 7 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Jersey Devil sightings of 1909
Newspapers reported hundreds of Jersey Devil encounters across South Jersey and around Philadelphia in the week of 16 to 23 January 1909, including one in Camden.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 1 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Kaikōura lights
Lights filmed off Kaikōura, New Zealand, at the end of December 1978 from a newspaper plane carrying a television crew, after earlier sightings from an aircraft that radar also tracked. Officials suggested fishing-boat lights and planets but gave no firm answer.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 7 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Kelly Cahill encounter
Kelly Cahill said she saw a hovering craft and beings on a road near Melbourne on the night of 7-8 August 1993. Sources give both dates.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 4 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter
A report from August 1955, from a farmhouse at Kelly, near Hopkinsville, Kentucky, where the family said small beings attacked them for hours.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 1 of 7
Disputed
The Lakenheath-Bentwaters radar incident
On the night of 13 August 1956, radar operators at RAF Bentwaters and RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk tracked fast targets. Much of the detailed account comes from a later letter by a watch supervisor.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 6 of 7
Folklore
The Mercy Brown exhumations
On 17 March 1892, relatives and neighbours of the Brown family dug up family graves in a church graveyard, looking for a vampire they believed was harming the living.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 2 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Moberly-Jourdain Trianon adventure
Two English women, C. A. E. Moberly and E. F. Jourdain, said that a strange experience befell them on 10 August 1901 in the grounds of the Petit Trianon, Versailles. They published their account in 1911 as An Adventure.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 7 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Moffitt family haunting
A haunting the Moffitt family says they lived with from 1987 to 1992, told publicly by Jessica Moffitt in a 2022 essay and since bought for adaptation by Blumhouse.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 4 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Mothman sightings at Point Pleasant
On 15 November 1966 two couples from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, told police they had seen a large winged creature near a former munitions plant.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 1 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Nash-Fortenberry sighting
Two Pan American pilots reported eight objects flying in formation over Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, on the night of 14 July 1952.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 7 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Nimitz Tic Tac UFO
An object Navy pilots from the USS Nimitz say they saw and filmed off Southern California in November 2004. The Department of Defense officially released the video in 2020.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 2 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Pascagoula abduction
Two shipyard workers, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, said they were taken aboard a craft while fishing on the Pascagoula River in Mississippi on 11 October 1973.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 2 of 7
Disputed
The RB-47 radar encounter
On 17 July 1957 a six-man Air Force crew flying an RB-47 reported an unidentified object that followed the aircraft for over 700 miles from Mississippi to Oklahoma. The Condon Committee listed the case as unidentified.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 7 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Rendlesham Forest incident
In late December 1980, USAF security police at RAF Woodbridge in England reported strange lights and a glowing object in nearby Rendlesham Forest. Astronomers and skeptics have tied the lights to a fireball and a lighthouse.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 1 of 7
Disputed
The Seaford poltergeist
From 3 February 1958, a family in Seaford, Long Island, reported broken objects and bottles opening and spilling in their home. Police, reporters and parapsychologists looked into it.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 5 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Shag Harbour UFO
Witnesses at Shag Harbour, Canada, reported lights they took for a crashing plane and called the RCMP. Searchers later found that no aircraft was missing.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 1 of 7
Disputed
The Smurl haunting
Jack and Janet Smurl said demons tormented their family in a duplex in West Pittston, Pennsylvania. They went public in 1986 and drew in Ed and Lorraine Warren. A critic, Kurtz, called the affair a hoax.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 2 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Socorro UFO (Lonnie Zamora)
Socorro, New Mexico, police officer Lonnie Zamora reported a flame overhead and a landed object outside town on April 24, 1964.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 2 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Spicer road sighting
George Spicer and his wife reported a huge long-necked animal crossing the road ahead of their car beside Loch Ness on 22 July 1933.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 7 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Tehran UFO incident of 1976
Early on 19 September 1976, people in Tehran reported a bright light overhead, and Iranian Air Force F-4 jets were sent up to intercept it.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 3 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Travis Walton abduction
In November 1975 forestry worker Travis Walton was picked up at a phone booth in Heber, Arizona, days after a reported abduction, and later described being aboard a spaceship.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 1 of 7
Disputed
The UB-85 sea monster claim
On 30 April 1918, the captain of the German submarine UB-85 reportedly told British captors that a sea beast had damaged his boat. Other accounts say it flooded during a dive.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 6 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Varginha UFO incident
Three young women in Varginha, Minas Gerais, Brazil, said that on 20 January 1996 they saw a strange creature in the street. The case became known as the ET de Varginha.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 1 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Villas-Boas abduction
Antônio Villas-Boas, a Brazilian farmer, said a craft landed in his field and took him aboard on the night of 15 October 1957. Sources also give 16 October.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 4 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Voronezh park UFO landing
Soviet reports said that on 27 September 1989 children playing in a Voronezh park saw a red ball in the sky, then a three-eyed alien and a robot.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 4 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Wanaque Reservoir sightings
On 11 January 1966 police and residents around the Wanaque Reservoir in New Jersey reported a glowing object that hovered and circled for over an hour.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 6 of 7
Claimed sighting
The chupacabra
The chupacabra is a creature blamed for attacks on animals in Puerto Rico, with later finds in Texas. Researchers have tied its best-known description to the film Species, and carcasses called chupacabras to coyotes and raccoons with mange.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 7 of 7
Documented
The death of Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle's death came on 7 July 1930 at his Sussex home, Windlesham Manor. He was 71.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 7 of 7
Disputed
The death of Daniel Dunglas Home
Medium Daniel Dunglas Home died at Auteuil, France, on 21 June 1886, aged 53, after years of tuberculosis.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 3 of 7
Disputed
The death of Edgar Cayce
Edgar Cayce, the American psychic known as the Sleeping Prophet, died on 3 January 1945 aged 67.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 1 of 7
Disputed
The death of Eusapia Palladino
Eusapia Palladino, an Italian medium, died on 16 May 1918. Investigators reported phenomena at her sittings, while the 1895 Cambridge series found her cheating.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 3 of 7
Disputed
The death of the medium Margery
Mina Crandon, the medium known as Margery, died on 1 November 1941. She said she spoke for her dead brother, and Houdini challenged her.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 5 of 7
Disputed
The death of the medium Rudi Schneider
Rudi Schneider, a medium tested by investigators decades earlier, died suddenly at Weyer on 28 April 1957. By then he worked as a mechanic.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 7 of 7
Documented
The examination of Rebecca Nurse
On 24 March 1692, Rebecca Nurse, aged seventy, was examined on a charge of witchcraft in the Salem Village meeting house before a crowd.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 3 of 7
Claimed sighting
The first Swedish ghost rocket sightings
On 24 May 1946 reports began in Sweden of a cigar-shaped object trailing sparks. Sightings continued through the year.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 7 of 7
Claimed sighting
The flying napkins of Hahn and Kern
With the lights burning, Hahn, Kern and an inspector named Knetsch watched two napkins float up to the ceiling and knives and forks fly across the room.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 4 of 7
Claimed sighting
The ghost of Sergeant Davies
Macpherson, staying in a shepherds' summer hut, said the ghost of Sergeant Davies, killed at Braemar in 1749, pressed him to bury its bones and named two Highlanders as its killers. The two men were tried for the murder.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 3 of 7
Claimed sighting
The haunted Annabelle film set
The director and a producer of the film Annabelle, shot in 2014, said that strange things happened on set in a Los Angeles apartment building. The director told The Hollywood Reporter at the film's after-party.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 4 of 7
Claimed sighting
The radiant boy by the bedside
Fearing something had caught fire, a witness in bed looked out and saw a golden-haired boy in white standing beside the bed.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 3 of 7
Claimed sighting
The yellow light in the Weinsberg prison
In 1835 Madame Mayer spent a night in a cell of the Weinsberg prison and, about midnight, saw a yellow light drift in, felt a cool draught and smelled decay.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 4 of 7
Claimed sighting
Woodward's 1818 sea serpent off Cape Ann
In May 1818 the master of a Hingham schooner swore a statement that he and his crew watched a huge sea creature for hours.
Someone Who Was ThereObscurity 7 of 7
Religious tradition
Zār
Zār is a healing rite of drumming and dance, led and attended mostly by women, practised in Egypt, East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula; on Iran's southern coast, zar is one of the winds people believe in. The leader of Egypt's Mazaher ensemble says the rite has gone public through its music.
Provenance · Living tradition
Someone Who Was There