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Something Left Behind

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

93 entries · page 2 of 2
Folklore
The Crying Boy painting
Prints of a painting of a weeping child, sold in department stores, that were blamed for house fires in the 1980s, including one in Rotherham reported by The Sun.
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Hoax, proven
The Davenport Tablets
On 10 January 1877 Jacob Gass dug two engraved slate tablets from a mound at Cook Farm near Davenport, Iowa. A later study concluded that Academy members likely planted them as a joke on him.
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Folklore
The Dead Mother by Edvard Munch
A single 1899 version of Edvard Munch's Death and the Child, also titled The Dead Mother, which an urban legend says is cursed.
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Folklore
The Devil's Rocking Chair
A rocking chair tied to a claimed possession case told in The Devil in Connecticut, a book, bought by Zak Bagans in 2019 and shown at his Haunted Museum in Las Vegas. A Glatzel brother has called the possession story phony.
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Hoax, proven
The Dybbuk Box
A small cabinet that Kevin Mannis sold on eBay in 2003, with a long haunting story he later said he wrote himself.
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Folklore
The Fofão doll
A plush doll of Fofão, a character on TV Globo's Balão Mágico, which an urban legend popular in Brazil in the 1980s said hid a knife inside for use in rituals.
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Disputed
The Grave Creek stone
In 1838 A. B. Tomlinson dug into the big mound he owned at Grave Creek, West Virginia, and said he found a small oval stone inscribed with alphabetic characters.
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Folklore
The Graves Supercomplication
A Patek Philippe watch made for Henry Graves Jr. between 1925 and 1932. In 2014 news.com.au ran it as a cursed watch.
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Folklore
The Great Bed of Ware
A large bed made around 1590 to draw visitors to the inns of Ware, Hertfordshire, and now held by the Victoria and Albert Museum. Of its sources, only Wikipedia calls it haunted.
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Folklore
The Hands Resist Him
A Bill Stoneham painting auctioned in February 2000 on eBay by a seller who gave no name and said it was haunted.
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Disputed
The Kentucky meat shower
In March 1876 flakes of what looked like beef fell from a clear sky near Olympian Springs, Bath County, Kentucky, over a strip of ground about 100 yards long.
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Folklore
The Koh-i-Noor diamond
A 105.6-carat diamond in the British Crown Jewels, said to bring bad luck to men who wear it, whose ownership is disputed.
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Folklore
The Lydian Hoard (Karun Treasure)
A treasure dug illegally from burial mounds in Uşak Province, Turkey, bought for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and said by some in Uşak to carry a curse on the men who dug it up.
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Disputed
The Mansi Champ photograph
Sandra Mansi took a photograph on 5 July 1977 that shows what looks like a long-necked animal rising from a lake, the picture behind the Champ story.
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Disputed
The Mary Celeste
A brigantine found drifting in the Atlantic off the Azores on 4 December 1872 with nobody aboard. None of the ten who sailed on her, the captain's wife and two-year-old daughter among them, was seen or heard of again.
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Folklore
The Myrtles Plantation mirror
A mirror at the Myrtles Plantation said to trap Sara Woodruff and two children, part of a poisoning story that Wikipedia and Troy Taylor say the records don't support.
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Disputed
The Naples lapstone fall
A stone of plainly artificial shape was said to have fallen at Naples in November 1885. Two professors treated it as unexplained; Nature's correspondent took it for a shoemaker's lapstone of Vesuvian lava.
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Folklore
The Okiku doll
A Japanese doll kept at Mannenji temple in Hokkaido. In the story told about it, a family came to believe its hair was growing after the young girl it belonged to died.
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Folklore
The Ouija board patent
On 10 February 1891 the US Patent Office issued patent 446,054 to Charles Kennard and Elijah Bond for a lettered board filed under toy or game.
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Claimed sighting
The Rain Woman painting
A painting by Vinnytsia artist Svetlana Telets that Ukrainian newspapers reported was repeatedly bought and returned by owners who said they dreamed about it.
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Documented
The Robertson Panel
In January 1953 a panel of scientists met to review the US Air Force's UFO files for the CIA, and recommended a public education campaign to debunk sightings.
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Folklore
The Roswell incident
In June 1947 rancher W. W. "Mac" Brazel found a field of wreckage on his land northwest of Roswell, New Mexico. Stories of a crashed saucer and its crew grew around it; two later Air Force reports traced the debris to balloon research.
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Disputed
The Skookum cast
On 22 September 2000, members of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization found a large body imprint in mud at Skookum Meadows, Washington. They read it as a Bigfoot; skeptics read it as an elk.
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Disputed
The Stronsay Beast
In September 1808, off Rothiesholm Head on Stronsay in Orkney, a farmer reported a strange carcass at sea. It was driven ashore about ten days later and measured at some 55 feet.
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Disputed
The Tarbes worked stone disk
A small disk of shaped stone fell at Tarbes, France, on 20 June 1887. The French Academy's examiners found it was gypsum and had without doubt been worked.
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Documented
The Twining flying discs letter
On 23 September 1947 General Nathan Twining wrote to the Army Air Forces that the objects were real.
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Documented
The U.S. government UAP reports
Reports by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (2021) and the Department of Defense's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (2024) on unidentified aerial phenomena, mostly seen by military aviators.
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Documented
The UK MoD UFO files
Formerly classified files on UFO sightings from the UK Ministry of Defence, 210 in all, moved to The National Archives at Kew and released between 2008 and 2013. They cover the ministry's UFO desk, which closed in November 2009.
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Folklore
The Uluru rock curse
A belief that taking a rock from Uluṟu brings bad luck, which has led many visitors to post pieces back.
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Disputed
The Wem Town Hall fire photograph
A photograph of Wem Town Hall burning on 19 November 1995 appears to show a girl in the doorway.
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Documented
The Wow! signal
Ohio State University's Big Ear telescope recorded a strong narrowband radio signal on 15 August 1977. Astronomer Jerry Ehman spotted it on a printout days later and wrote "Wow!" beside it.
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Disputed
The burning of Grace Pett
On the morning of 10 April 1744 in Ipswich, the daughter of Grace Pett found her mother burnt on the hearth. A report in the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions describes the scene.
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Documented
The death of Edmund Gurney
Edmund Gurney, psychical researcher and co-author of Phantasms of the Living, was found to have died at the Albion Hotel in Brighton on 23 June 1888, after taking too much chloroform.
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Disputed
The death of Margaret Hogan
Margaret Hogan, an 89-year-old widow living alone on Prussia Street in Dublin, was found dead after a fire in her house on 28 March 1970.
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Documented
The examination of Martha Carrier
Judges examined Martha Carrier on 31 May 1692 over a witchcraft accusation in Salem Village. This was a preliminary hearing, and the accusing girls fell to the floor when she entered, according to Wikipedia.
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Documented
The first Salem witchcraft warrants
On 29 February 1692, warrants were issued in Salem Village for Good, Osborne and Tituba, after a complaint of suspected witchcraft. The complaint named four people of the village as harmed: Elizabeth Hubert, Anna Putnam, Abigail Williams and Elizabeth Parris.
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Documented
The hanging of Alse Young
Windsor resident Alse Young was hanged at Hartford on 26 May 1647 on a witchcraft charge. The Connecticut Witch Trials project calls her the first English colonist put to death on a witchcraft charge in North America.
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Claimed sighting
The haunted Elsa doll of Houston
An Elsa doll that a Houston-area family said kept coming back after they threw it away, reported in 2020.
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Disputed
Tim Dinsdale's Loch Ness film
Tim Dinsdale filmed a humped object crossing Loch Ness on 23 April 1960, the last day of his expedition. Later analysts disagreed about what the film shows.
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Folklore
Tomino's Hell
A poem by Yaso Saijō, published in his 1919 collection Sakin, which an urban legend says will curse and kill anyone who reads it aloud.
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Folklore
Tupilaq
In Greenlandic tradition, a tupilaq was a figure its owner made in secret to cause harm. No real one has ever been found in Greenland; the carved tupilaq figures made in large numbers since 1905 are representations.
Provenance · Living tradition
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Official release
US government UAP file releases (PURSUE)
A rolling programme in which the Department of War publishes government records about unidentified anomalous phenomena in batches called tranches. The programme's own page dates the first tranche to 8 May 2026 and says new tranches are posted every few weeks.
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Folklore
Ötzi the Iceman
The body of a man found in the ice on the Austria-Italy border by two German hikers in September 1991. German and Italian media later wrote of a curse on people linked to the find.
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