Uncanny Atlas

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Everything in the atlas

Every published entry, A to Z. Each one says what kind of claim it is.

78 entries · page 1 of 2

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

Ajina is a demonic spirit of Central Asian folk belief, especially among Uzbeks and Turkmens and partly among Tajiks. It appears in many shapes, and its name is used to frighten disobedient children.

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Albasty is a female demon in the beliefs of Turkic peoples. Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Siberian Tatar tradition blames it for harm to women in childbirth and to mothers of young babies.

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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

Banchō Sarayashiki

The ghost story of Okiku, tied to a plate and a well, told in a Himeji version and an Edo version and staged as bunraku, kabuki and a 1916 play.

Somewhere You Can GoObscurity 5 of 7

A fort at Bhangarh, India, held by the Archaeological Survey of India as a protected monument. Rana Safvi wrote in The Hindu in 2017 that Bhangarh is ranked India's most haunted fort and that entry is barred between sunset and sunrise.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The div, or dev, is a demon or monster of Persian and wider West Asian lore. In the Shahnameh, divs are the chief enemies of the hero Rostam.

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Korean folk figures known for mischief, first recorded in a Silla-era tale. Folklorist Kim Jong-dae says the horned, club-carrying dokkaebi of modern pictures comes from textbooks printed under Japanese colonial rule.

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Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital

A closed psychiatric hospital in Gonjiam, Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, which drew ghost hunters after CNN listed it among the world's creepiest places and gave its name to a 2018 horror film. The building was demolished in 2018.

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The fox spirit of Korean tales. English Wikipedia says the word first named a magical fox in Joseon dynasty novels, and in modern Korea it covers every fox spirit in traditional sources.

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Hanako-san of the toilet

A ghost said to live in a girls' toilet stall in Japanese schools, called out by knocking and saying her name. Japanese Wikipedia traces the story to about 1950; it spread among children nationwide from about the 1980s.

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Claimed sighting

Hindu statues drinking milk, 1995

In September 1995 worshippers reported that statues of Hindu deities took offerings of milk, first at a temple in New Delhi and then in temples around the world.

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Hitobashira, the human pillar

Hitobashira, or human pillar, is the Japanese legend that people were buried or drowned to make an embankment, bridge or castle hold. The stories attach to real places such as Matsue and Maruoka castles.

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Religious tradition

Hungry Ghost Festival: China, Hong Kong, Taiwan

An observance held during the seventh lunar month, known as Zhongyuan in China and Yu Lan in Hong Kong, with offerings to ancestors and rites for wandering ghosts. It is practised in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Provenance · Religious tradition

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.

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Inunaki Pass and the Inunaki Village legend

The old Inunaki Tunnel, between Hisayama and Miyawaka in Fukuoka Prefecture, is known as a ghost spot and tied to an internet-era legend of a hidden village. Separately, a real murder took place at the tunnel in 1988.

Somewhere You Can GoObscurity 3 of 7

Jangsan beom, the Jangsan tiger

An urban legend from South Korea about a white, tiger-like creature on Mt. Jangsan in Busan that copies human voices. Korean Wikipedia dates the legend to 2009, and it spread widely after a 2013 webtoon.

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Jiangshi, the hopping corpse

A reanimated corpse in Chinese legend and folklore, sometimes called the Chinese hopping vampire. Hong Kong films fixed its modern image: a stiff corpse in the robes of a Qing dynasty official.

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Jikininki, the corpse-eater

A shapeless thing comes in the night and eats a corpse and its offerings, while Musō, keeping watch beside them, can neither move nor speak.

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Jinmenken, the human-faced dog

A Japanese urban legend about a talking dog with a man's face that races cars at night. AERA dot and Japanese Wikipedia both report that the leading theory is that Popteen magazine's editors and a writer planted it.

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A river creature of Japanese folk tales, said to seize people and animals. Old families and temples across Japan keep documents said to be written apologies from captured kappa.

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Kerala's red rain

From 25 July 2001 red rain fell on parts of Kerala. Indian botanists said algae; two physicists proposed cells carried by a comet.

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Religious tradition

Kitsune and Inari

Foxes in Japanese religion and folklore. Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto reveres them as the unseen messengers of Inari Okami, while folk tales tell of fox wives, and of foxes said to haunt houses or to be kept by families.

Provenance · Religious tradition

Kuchisake-onna, the slit-mouthed woman

A rumour about a masked woman whose mouth is split to the ears. It started in Gifu Prefecture late in 1978, reached print in 1979 and frightened schoolchildren across Japan.

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Kuldhara is a Paliwal village in Jaisalmer, long abandoned, with a reputation as a haunted place. One story says the departing villagers cursed Kuldhara to stay empty; a survey of the site suggests its water supply failed.

Somewhere You Can GoObscurity 2 of 7

Religious tradition

Kumari, the living goddess

The Kumari is a Newar religious institution of Nepal's Kathmandu Valley in which a girl who has not reached puberty is worshipped as the goddess Taleju Bhawani. Michael Allen dates the earliest known written references to Kumari to the late 13th century.

Provenance · Religious tradition

Religious tradition

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

Religious tradition

Mae Nak Phra Khanong

Mae Nak is the ghost of a woman who died giving birth while her husband was at war, the most popular Thai ghost story according to the Bangkok Post. Her shrine on Sukhumvit Soi 77 in Bangkok draws devotees who bring offerings and requests.

Provenance · Living tradition

Somewhere You Can Go

Claimed sighting

Magnetic Hill, Ladakh

A stretch of road near Leh where vehicles seem to roll uphill. Wikipedia says the road slopes downhill and the effect is an optical illusion.

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In folk tradition in Sri Lanka, Maha Sona was a warrior named Ritigala Jayasena who was revived after death with a bear's head fitted backwards.

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Manila Film Center

On 17 November 1981, scaffolding collapsed during the Manila Film Center's rushed construction and workers died. The death toll is disputed, and a legend grew that bodies were left in the concrete and haunt the building.

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Maria Makiling of Mount Makiling

Mount Makiling in Laguna is widely held to be the home of Maria Makiling, a diwata of legend. José Rizal wrote her story down in 1890, and people still repeat superstitions about her, such as never carrying the forest's fruit home.

Somewhere You Can GoObscurity 6 of 7

Noppera-bō, the faceless yōkai

The noppera-bō is a Japanese yōkai with no eyes, nose or mouth. Tales of it appear in Kyoto story collections as early as 1663 and in folk reports from many regions.

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Nure-onna is a Japanese yōkai drawn in Edo-period picture scrolls and books as a woman with a snake's body. In a legend from Shimane she comes out of the sea holding a baby that turns to stone.

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The peri, or parī, is a being of Persian tradition. In early beliefs it was probably an evil spirit; by the Islamic period it had become a beautiful figure often translated as fairy.

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Religious tradition

Rakshasas are beings found in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and the folk Islam of Indonesia, according to Wikipedia. A Rigveda hymn to Agni hails him as their slayer, and in the Ramayan Ravan calls himself their king.

Provenance · Religious tradition

Riri Yaka, or Reeri Yakseya, is a figure of Sinhalese belief, called the demon of blood in 19th-century accounts from Ceylon and blamed above all for illnesses that cause bleeding.

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Roopkund, the skeleton lake

A lake in the Himalayas where the remains of more than 300 people have been found. A genetic study published in 2019 found they died in different centuries and came from different places.

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Sathorn Unique Tower

An unfinished 43-storey skyscraper in Bangkok, left incomplete in an economic crisis. People in nearby communities believe it haunted or unlucky, pointing to a former graveyard under it and its shadow on the temple Wat Yan Nawa.

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A female spirit of Bengal, the spirit of a married woman who died with her longing for household life unfulfilled.

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Religious tradition

A hidden kingdom of Tibetan Buddhism, ruled by the future Buddha Maitreya and told of in the Kalachakra tantra.

Provenance · Religious tradition

Shaniwar Wada is a fort in Pune where the ruling Peshwa Narayanrao was murdered in 1773. A popular story says his voice cries out there for help when the moon is full.

Somewhere You Can GoObscurity 4 of 7

Sonjō and the weeping woman of Akanuma

In a dream, a weeping woman stands at Sonjō's pillow and asks why he killed her husband. They were happy together at Akanuma, she tells him.

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A closed school in the Ping Shan area of Yuen Long, Hong Kong, surrounded by graves, that the National Geographic Channel listed among Asia's ten most frightening places. Villagers have said they heard no ghost stories about it.

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A Japanese ghost story about a girl cut in two by a train who moves on her hands. The name comes from the sound she makes.

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Tepegöz is a one-eyed monster in the Book of Dede Korkut, a collection of Turkic epic tales. A. Guseynova says he was born to a shepherd and a peri, and Wikipedia says Basat killed him.

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The 99-Door Mansion (Caledonia House)

Caledonia House, an abandoned mansion in Penang, Malaysia, built for the Ramsden family and rumoured to be haunted since John St Maur Ramsden was shot dead there in 1948.

Somewhere You Can GoObscurity 6 of 7