Everything in the atlas

A creature somewhere between ape and wild man, reported by shepherds in the mountains of northern Pakistan.

A former Dominican retreat house on Dominican Hill in Baguio City, known as the Diplomat Hotel, which paranormal believers say is haunted because of its Second World War history.

A supposed danger zone near Japan, also called the Devil's Sea, promoted by the writer Berlitz in his 1989 book The Dragon's Triangle. Larry Kusche traced the legend to a 1955 New York Times article and found nothing unusual behind the losses.

On 23 January 1902, 210 soldiers of an Imperial Japanese Army regiment set out on a snow march in the Hakkoda Mountains. 199 died. Ghost stories about the dead soldiers were told in the barracks soon after.

A street-magic feat in which a rope climbs into the sky and a boy follows it out of sight. Some historians trace its fame to a newspaper story printed in 1890.

A Taiwanese urban legend that began with a home video of a family outing in Taichung in March 1998, broadcast on a TV paranormal show. A figure in red at the back of the group later became the subject of a 2015 film.

A large, hairy, ape-like creature said to live in the Garo Hills of Meghalaya. A tourism society was looking into new reports in 2007.

The Mongolian death worm, or olgoi-khorkhoi, is a deadly worm described to the zoologist Roy Chapman Andrews on his Mongolian expedition, in an account first printed in English in 1922. Expeditions to the Gobi have looked for it and found nothing.

In 2001 residents of New Delhi reported a monkey-like attacker roaming at night. Wikipedia counts over 350 reported sightings and about 60 injuries.

In 2002 a rumoured face-scratching prowler caused panic in northern India. Doctors called it mass hysteria, and riots and lynchings followed.

A Qing picture by Wu Youru, titled Chiyan Tengkong, shows crowds on Nanjing's Zhuque Bridge watching a red ball of fire cross the evening sky. Its inscription says several hundred people saw it.

In rural Kerala, Odiyans were people said to shapeshift into animals at night and to scare people to death.

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.

A woman in white said to appear to drivers on Balete Drive in Metro Manila. Accounts date the first stories to 1949 or 1952, and where the story began is disputed.

The almas is a hairy, human-like being described by people in the Gobi. A genetic study that lists the almasty of central Asia among reported unknown primates says no body of such a creature has ever been authenticated.

A village in Assam where birds fly into the lights on dark autumn nights and many die. The place is called a bird suicide spot; ornithologists offer other explanations.

On dark nights pale lights drift over the beach and the sea at Dan-no-ura, and the fishermen call them demon-fires. When the wind rises, a noise like battle comes off the water.

At a ruined fort in Delhi, visitors write letters to the jinn believed to live there, and a crowd gathers every Thursday.

A man tries to comfort a young woman weeping near Kii-no-kuni-zaka hill and finds she has no eyes, nose or mouth. Lafcadio Hearn puts it down to a mujina.

The yeti is a figure of Himalayan legend. Evidence offered for it includes footprints photographed during a 1951 Everest attempt and scalps held by a monastery and a village; a 2017 DNA study and a 2019 account of the 1951 print both point to bears.

The tsuchinoko is a short, thick snake with a big head reported from across Japan. Towns and villages have offered rewards for one caught alive, and the largest, 200 million yen, went unclaimed.

Umm al-Duwais is a figure of Emirati and Gulf folklore: a beautiful woman with a cat's eyes who calls men to follow her, then turns into a frightening old woman and kills them. In Qatar she is called Umm Ghannan.

The vetala is a being known from a Sanskrit cycle of twenty-five tales, the Vetalapanchavimsati, later retold in Braj-bhasha and Hindi as the Baital Pachisi. Wikipedia reports a strong cult of the vetala in the Konkan, under the names Betal, Vetal and Vetoba.

Yakshis are female spirits of nature in Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions. In Kerala the best known is Kalliyankattu Neeli, who in one telling found refuge in a temple.

Two men caught by a snowstorm shelter in a mountain hut. A woman in white breathes on old Mosaku until he freezes, then tells Minokichi she had meant to do the same to him.

Zhalmauyz Kempir is a man-eating old witch of Kazakh folk tales. Forms of her name turn up across many Turkic languages.

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.

The āl is a figure of folk belief in Iran, Armenia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, feared as a danger to women in childbirth. In Persian belief she lives in springs and comes to a new mother left alone.