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Something Left Behind

Objects, footage, documents, sonar shapes, cover-ups.

93 entries · page 1 of 2
Folklore
Archduke Franz Ferdinand's limousine
The Gräf & Stift car in which Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were murdered on 28 June 1914, now in the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna.
Something Left BehindObscurity 5 of 7
Folklore
Asanbosam (sasabonsam)
The asanbosam, or sasabonsam, is a forest being of Akan belief in Ghana, said to live in the tallest trees and seize people from above. The British Museum holds a figure of one.
Something Left BehindObscurity 7 of 7
Folklore
Bela Lugosi's mirror
A mirror in Zak Bagans' The Haunted Museum that Bagans says hung in a house once lived in by Bela Lugosi and later by Frank Saletri. Skeptical Inquirer reports that Saletri's body was found in his master bedroom in 1982.
Something Left BehindObscurity 2 of 7
Folklore
Drake's Drum
A story says Francis Drake, dying off Panama in January 1596, told his men to send his drum home to be beaten in England's hour of need.
Something Left BehindObscurity 5 of 7
Folklore
Ed Gein's cauldron
A cauldron that Zak Bagans' The Haunted Museum in Las Vegas lists among its exhibits, calling it cursed and linking it to Ed Gein.
Something Left BehindObscurity 3 of 7
Claimed sighting
Elizabeth the doll
A bridal doll at the Museum of Haunted Objects in Rotherham, which its owner Lee Steer calls the most haunted doll in the world.
Something Left BehindObscurity 2 of 7
Documented
Examination of Cloyce and Proctor
On 11 April 1692 Sarah Cloyce and Elizabeth Proctor were examined at Salem. Several accusers described being hurt by the two women.
Something Left BehindObscurity 6 of 7
Documented
Examination of Mary Warren
On 19 April 1692 Mary Warren, until then one of the afflicted accusers at Salem Village, was examined as an accused person herself.
Something Left BehindObscurity 1 of 7
Hoax, proven
Francis Ward Monck's Huddersfield séances
The medium Francis Ward Monck gave two séances in Huddersfield in October 1876 and was charged with deceiving his sitters. Wikipedia records that he was convicted and jailed for three months.
Something Left BehindObscurity 7 of 7
Disputed
Franklin's lost expedition
The 1845 Franklin Expedition went looking for the Northwest Passage through Canada's Arctic, and CBC News says close to 130 sailors died. Inuit accounts, recorded by John Rae in 1854 and later by Charles Francis Hall, describe what became of some of the men.
Something Left BehindObscurity 7 of 7
Folklore
Heron-Allen's Cursed Amethyst
A stone at the Natural History Museum in London, known from Edward Heron-Allen's story as the purple sapphire, which the museum calls a cursed amethyst. The museum repeats a rumour that Heron-Allen made up the curse himself.
Something Left BehindObscurity 6 of 7
Disputed
Hugh Gray's Loch Ness photograph
On 12 November 1933 Hugh Gray photographed something in Loch Ness at Foyers, the first picture said to show the monster.
Something Left BehindObscurity 7 of 7
Folklore
I Can't Be a Bride Anymore
A 1999 painting by the artist Yuko Tatsushima that internet creepypasta paired with the poem Tomino's Hell and called cursed.
Something Left BehindObscurity 5 of 7
Documented
Isobel Gowdie's first confession
Isobel Gowdie of Auldearn made four confessions over six weeks in 1662, the first on 13 April. Her confessions describe meetings with the Devil.
Something Left BehindObscurity 3 of 7
Claimed sighting
Jack Kevorkian's Volkswagen van
The 1968 Volkswagen van in which Mrs. Adkins died in 1990 using Dr. Jack Kevorkian's suicide device, now shown as a haunted object in Zak Bagans' museum in Las Vegas.
Something Left BehindObscurity 3 of 7
Folklore
James Dean's Porsche 550 Spyder
The Porsche 550 Spyder in which the actor James Dean died, and the curse story that grew around its wreck, which Dean archivist Warren Beath traces to the car customiser George Barris.
Something Left BehindObscurity 3 of 7
Hoax, proven
Jenglot
The jenglot is a creature that Wikipedia calls an actively believed myth, one many people hold to be real. A 2009 study in the Malaysian Journal of Medical Sciences found jenglot hair unlikely to come from any animal species.
Something Left BehindObscurity 4 of 7
Disputed
John White's return to Roanoke
On 18 August 1590 John White came back to Roanoke Island and found the colony he had left in 1587 abandoned, with the word CROATOAN carved on a post.
Something Left BehindObscurity 5 of 7
Folklore
La Corriveau
Marie-Josephte Corriveau was hanged in 1763 for the murder of her second husband, and her body was displayed in an iron cage. Ghost stories about her followed.
Something Left BehindObscurity 3 of 7
Folklore
La Pascualita
A lifelike mannequin that has stood in the window of La Popular, a bridal shop in Mexico, since 1930. A story told by Ripley's Believe It or Not! says she is the embalmed body of the 1930 owner's daughter.
Something Left BehindObscurity 5 of 7
Claimed sighting
Letta Me Out
A wooden, child-sized doll that Kerry Walton says he found under a house in Wagga Wagga, Australia, and named Letta Me Out.
Something Left BehindObscurity 3 of 7
Religious tradition
Lilith
Lilith is a female figure of Jewish texts and practice, feared as a threat to childbirth and newborns and, in a medieval telling, Adam's first wife. Childbirth amulets tied to her story are still used by women today.
Provenance · Religious tradition
Something Left Behind
Hoax, proven
Majestic 12
Documents that surfaced in 1984 describing a secret committee called Majestic 12, said by ufologists to prove a hidden UFO group. The FBI called the document bogus.
Something Left BehindObscurity 1 of 7
Folklore
Man Proposes, God Disposes
An 1864 Edwin Landseer painting at Royal Holloway, University of London, which students have long believed makes them fail exams. The college covers it with a Union Flag during exams.
Something Left BehindObscurity 4 of 7
Claimed sighting
Mandy the doll
A porcelain baby doll made between 1910 and 1920, given to the Quesnel & District Museum in British Columbia in 1991, whose staff say odd things happened around it.
Something Left BehindObscurity 5 of 7
Documented
Marichgen Ariaensdr. of Schoonhoven
Marichgen Ariaensdr., a herbalist of Schoonhoven, was arrested on 4 October 1591 after a crowd gathered over a boy said to be bewitched. Court officials sentenced her on 18 December 1591.
Something Left BehindObscurity 7 of 7
Folklore
Mi Novia by Juan Luna
A painting by Juan Luna that Wikipedia says is rumoured to be cursed, though Esquire Philippines tells its curse story about a Luna work titled Portrait of a Lady.
Something Left BehindObscurity 7 of 7
Claimed sighting
Peggy the Doll
A doll that Shrewsbury paranormal investigator Jayne Harris said made people ill when they watched videos of it, now shown in Zak Bagans' Haunted Museum in Las Vegas.
Something Left BehindObscurity 2 of 7
Folklore
Pele's curse
Pele's curse is the story that anyone who takes rocks or other natural items from Pele's island will suffer for it. Every year visitors post such items back to Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, blaming them for bad luck.
Provenance · Living tradition
Something Left BehindObscurity 7 of 7
Folklore
Portrait of Henrietta Nelson
A portrait of Henrietta Nelson, who died at Yaxley Hall in Suffolk in 1816, said to carry her ghost wherever it goes.
Something Left BehindObscurity 7 of 7
Documented
Project Blue Book
The Air Force's long-running study of UFO reports, run from its Wright-Patterson base. The National Archives counts 12,618 sightings reported to it from 1947 to 1969.
Something Left BehindObscurity 1 of 7
Folklore
Robert the Doll
A Harlequin doll made for a Key West boy in the early 20th century and donated in 1994 to Key West's Fort East Martello Museum by an owner who said it moved about her house by itself.
Something Left BehindObscurity 1 of 7
Folklore
Rudolph Valentino's ring
A ring once owned by the film star Rudolph Valentino, which The Guardian says became Hollywood legend through a string of deaths blamed on it.
Something Left BehindObscurity 7 of 7
Documented
Salem's court of Oyer and Terminer ends
On 29 October 1692, Governor Phips dissolved the court that had tried the Salem witchcraft cases.
Something Left BehindObscurity 7 of 7
Claimed sighting
The 1561 Nuremberg sky broadsheet
A printed broadsheet describes a clash of globes, crosses and cylinders in the sky over Nuremberg at dawn on 14 April 1561.
Something Left BehindObscurity 6 of 7
Claimed sighting
The Anguished Man
A painting kept by a man from Cumbria named Robinson, who says he met paranormal activity after it came into his possession and has posted videos of it on YouTube.
Something Left BehindObscurity 3 of 7
Folklore
The Annabelle doll
A Raggedy Ann doll that Ed and Lorraine Warren said was haunted, kept for decades in their Connecticut museum and later the model for a horror film character.
Something Left BehindObscurity 1 of 7
Disputed
The Arnold Paole vampire report
An Austrian army commission's report, dated Belgrade, 26 January 1732, recorded exhumations of villagers at Medveđa and was reprinted across Europe.
Something Left BehindObscurity 4 of 7
Disputed
The Big Lake Park fireball
On 17 December 1977 three people in Council Bluffs, Iowa, saw a reddish fireball fall into Big Lake Park, where firefighters found molten metal.
Something Left BehindObscurity 7 of 7
Folklore
The Black Prince's Ruby
A large red spinel, long called a ruby, set in the Imperial State Crown of England at the Tower of London, which Wikipedia's list of allegedly cursed objects says brings misfortune to its owners.
Something Left BehindObscurity 5 of 7
Disputed
The Bloop
A loud underwater sound picked up by underwater sensors in the South Pacific in 1997. NOAA now attributes it to an icequake, the noise of a large iceberg cracking apart.
Something Left BehindObscurity 7 of 7
Disputed
The Bluff Creek footprints
On 27 August 1958 a bulldozer operator named Jerry Crew found oversized footprints beside his machine on a logging road in California's Six Rivers National Forest. In 2002 Wallace's family said Wallace had made them.
Something Left BehindObscurity 4 of 7
Disputed
The Brixton iron spheroid
After a violent thunderstorm on 17 August 1887, a round lump of iron about two inches across turned up in a Brixton garden. The chemist who tested it could not match it to meteorites.
Something Left BehindObscurity 5 of 7
Documented
The Brown v. Spofford mesmerism trial
In Salem, Massachusetts, in May 1878, a court heard a complaint that Spofford was using mesmerism to harm Lucretia Brown. Mary Baker Eddy and 21 followers came to testify.
Something Left BehindObscurity 7 of 7
Folklore
The Busby Stoop chair
A chair shown at Thirsk Museum and linked by legend to Thomas Busby, who was hanged for murder in 1702, though a furniture historian dated it to 1840.
Something Left BehindObscurity 2 of 7
Hoax, proven
The Cardiff Giant confession
On 10 December 1869 Hull told the press that the Cardiff Giant was a fake. Yale's Othniel C. Marsh had already denounced it, but visitors still turned up.
Something Left BehindObscurity 3 of 7
Disputed
The Carroll A. Deering
A five-masted schooner found aground on Diamond Shoals, off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, in January 1921 with her sails set and no one aboard. Five U.S. government departments investigated and reached no official explanation.
Something Left BehindObscurity 7 of 7
Disputed
The Chinese seals of Ireland
J. Huband Smith described to the Royal Irish Academy a set of Chinese seals found in Ireland, all alike, each a cube with a seated animal on top.
Something Left BehindObscurity 4 of 7
Documented
The Condon Report
A University of Colorado study of UFOs, paid for by the Air Force and led by the physicist Edward Condon, with results out by 1968. It found that UFO research had added nothing to science.
Something Left BehindObscurity 4 of 7
Folklore
The Conjured Chest
A hand-carved chest held by the Kentucky Historical Society since 1976, which one family said carried a curse laid after the enslaved man who made it was beaten to death.
Something Left BehindObscurity 4 of 7