50 Fun Facts About Paranormal

Which New Mexico town became a UFO landmark after its Army air field announced recovering a 'disc' in 1947?

Roswell's debris actually came from Project Mogul, a top-secret balloon programme built to detect Soviet nuclear tests. The Army quickly dropped the disc story and passed it off as an ordinary weather balloon.

Which firearms dynasty's widow, Sarah, built a San Jose 'Mystery House' that legend says was meant for ghosts?

Winchester widow Sarah supposedly built the house to appease people killed by the family's rifles. Researchers have found no trace of the Boston medium said to have told her to.

Which American rock band took its name from the slang Allied pilots used for mysterious aerial lights in World War II?

Foo Fighters comes from 'foo fighter', a nickname that itself borrowed the nonsense word 'foo' from the 1930s firefighter comic strip Smokey Stover.

The famous 1934 'Surgeon's Photograph' of the Loch Ness Monster actually showed a sculpted head mounted on what?

A toy submarine bought from Woolworths carried the wood-putty neck. The hoax was big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell's revenge on the Daily Mail, which had ridiculed him over fake monster footprints.

Which Stephen King novel was inspired by a 1974 night he spent at Colorado's reputedly haunted Stanley Hotel?

The Shining took shape after King and his wife checked in just as the Stanley was shutting for the winter, leaving them almost alone in the building.

Which assassinated US president's ghost is the most famous apparition said to haunt the White House?

Abraham Lincoln was first reported as a ghost by First Lady Grace Coolidge in 1927. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands is said to have fainted on meeting him at her bedroom door in 1942.

Which stretch of the Atlantic gained a sinister reputation after Flight 19, five US Navy bombers, vanished in 1945?

The Bermuda Triangle got its name from a 1964 Argosy magazine article by Vincent Gaddis, who put its corners at Miami, San Juan and Bermuda.

Which Ghostbusters star and co-writer inherited his belief in ghosts from a spiritualist great-grandfather?

Dan Aykroyd grew up with the subject: his father wrote a book called A History of Ghosts, and his grandfather experimented with radios to contact the dead.

Which heart-shaped Ouija board pointer began as a Victorian séance device that held a pencil for automatic writing?

A planchette takes its name from the French for 'little plank'. The pencil-holding originals were a craze in the late 1860s, before the simpler pointing version took over.

The real doll behind the Annabelle horror films is which soft toy, not the porcelain figure seen on screen?

Raggedy Ann was swapped for a menacing porcelain doll partly because of trademark worries. The original was kept in a display box at an occult museum in Monroe, Connecticut.

Which US state contains Area 51, the secret Air Force base beside the dry bed of Groom Lake?

Nevada hid the site so well that the CIA only publicly acknowledged the base in 2013, after a Freedom of Information request. Its official name is Homey Airport.

Which Long Island village gave its name to a 1977 book about a family who fled their haunted home after 28 days?

Amityville's house had a real tragedy behind it: just over a year before the new owners moved in, Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot six members of his own family there.

The 1977 Enfield case, in which furniture reportedly moved around a London council house, is a famous example of what?

A poltergeist was blamed for the knocking and sliding furniture, which centred on two sisters aged 11 and 13. The case was dramatised in the 2016 film The Conjuring 2.

Which wife of Henry VIII, beheaded in 1536, is said to haunt the Tower of London with her head under her arm?

Anne Boleyn lies buried in the Tower's Church of St Peter ad Vincula, the spot her ghost supposedly haunts. The legend even inspired a 1934 comic song.

Which legendary ghost ship, the subject of an 1843 Wagner opera, is doomed to sail forever without making port?

The Flying Dutchman probably grew out of the 17th-century heyday of the Dutch East India Company. In sailors' lore, sighting the phantom ship is an omen of doom.

Which other name for Bigfoot was adapted from a Salishan-language word that roughly translates as 'hairy man'?

Sasquatch reached print through J. W. Burns, who collected Sts'ailes stories of 'hairy giants' for Maclean's magazine.

Which West Virginia town, where the Silver Bridge collapsed in 1967, holds a yearly festival for the winged Mothman?

Point Pleasant reported the creature for thirteen months from November 1966. After the bridge fell, killing 46 people, legend recast the sightings as a warning of the disaster.

Which claimed psychic power does the bullied title character of Stephen King's Carrie unleash at her high school prom?

Telekinesis comes from Greek words for 'far off' and 'motion'. Experiments claiming to prove it have long been criticised for poor controls and results nobody could repeat.

Which Israeli showman became famous in the 1970s for apparently bending spoons using only the power of his mind?

Uri Geller famously came unstuck on The Tonight Show in 1973, when Johnny Carson's staff secretly supplied their own props and he could not perform.

Which 1999 film stars Haley Joel Osment as a troubled boy who tells his psychologist that he can see ghosts?

The Sixth Sense earned six Oscar nominations, including Best Supporting Actor for Osment, and was the second-highest-grossing film of 1999.

Which magician spent the 1920s exposing fake mediums and agreed a secret code with his wife to test the afterlife?

Harry Houdini's widow Bess held a séance every Halloween for ten years after his death, waiting for the agreed message. After a last unsuccessful attempt in 1936, she gave up.

Which stage magician's foundation offered a million dollars for proof of any paranormal power under test conditions?

James Randi first put up $1,000 in 1964. More than a thousand people applied over the years, but none succeeded before the challenge ended in 2015.

Which French astrologer published Les Prophéties in 1555, a book of poetic quatrains said to foretell world events?

Nostradamus was the Latinised name of Michel de Nostredame, who also worked as an apothecary and physician. His book contains 942 four-line verses.

Which word did Nobel laureate Charles Richet coin for the substance mediums claimed to produce during séances?

Ectoplasm was supposedly a gauze-like material that flowed from a medium's body. Samples that were exposed turned out to be cheesecloth, gauze or other everyday substances.

Which siblings' reports of spirit 'rappings' at Hydesville, New York, in 1848 helped create the Spiritualist movement?

The Fox sisters turned the raps into careers as mediums. In 1888 Margaretta confessed that they had made the sounds by cracking their joints, though she later took it back.

Which female spirit of Irish folklore is said to foretell a death in the family by wailing or keening?

The banshee takes her name from the Irish for 'woman of the fairy mound'. Some legends say she can only keen while combing her long, streaming hair.

Which vengeful ghost of Hispanic American folklore is said to roam near rivers mourning the children she drowned?

La Llorona means 'the weeping woman'. Ghostly beings who cry beside rivers are a recurring feature of the older mythology of Mesoamerican peoples.

Which legendary ghost is said to appear in a mirror when her name is chanted repeatedly in a darkened room?

Bloody Mary shares her mirror with an older ritual, in which a young woman carried a candle through a dark house hoping to glimpse her future husband's face in the glass.

Which Massachusetts town gave its name to the witch trials of 1692, in which nineteen people were hanged?

Salem's courts hanged fourteen women and five men, and one more man, Giles Corey, died under torture for refusing to enter a plea.

Which Gaelic festival at the start of winter, when spirits were thought to cross over, helped shape modern Halloween?

Samhain may also lie behind dressing up: costumes may have been a way of disguising oneself from the aos sí, the spirits thought to be abroad that night.

Which married investigators' case files, including the Annabelle doll, inspired the films of The Conjuring Universe?

Ed and Lorraine Warren claimed to have investigated well over 10,000 cases. Ed was a self-taught demonologist, while Lorraine professed to be a clairvoyant and trance medium.

Which term for a UFO was coined when newspapers reported pilot Kenneth Arnold's 1947 sighting near Mount Rainier?

Flying saucer first appeared in print within days of the sighting. Arnold later insisted he had only said the nine objects moved like a saucer skipped across water.

On astronomer J. Allen Hynek's scale, which class of close encounter involves seeing a UFO's occupants?

The third kind covers reports of beings such as humanoids or robots. Hynek's 1972 scale stopped at three levels, and the top one gave a 1977 science-fiction film its title.

Which US Air Force study of UFO reports, based at Wright-Patterson in Ohio, ran from 1952 until 1969?

Project Blue Book collected thousands of reports. It closed after concluding that nothing it had classed as 'unidentified' showed evidence of being an extraterrestrial vehicle.

Which New Hampshire couple's 1961 account became the first widely publicised alien abduction claim?

Betty and Barney Hill recovered the details under hypnosis. Their story became the bestselling 1966 book The Interrupted Journey and a 1975 television film.

On which Caribbean island were the first livestock attacks blamed on the blood-draining chupacabra reported in 1995?

Puerto Rico's first case involved eight sheep found dead with puncture wounds in March 1995. The creature's Spanish name literally means 'goat-sucker'.

Which region of southern New Jersey is the legendary home of the winged, hoofed Jersey Devil?

The Pine Barrens legend says a Mrs Leeds cursed her thirteenth child in 1735. In a single week of January 1909, newspapers printed hundreds of claimed sightings.

In which US state did the Bell Witch legend arise, in which an unseen entity tormented a farming family from 1817?

Tennessee's legend ends with farmer John Bell being poisoned by the spirit. Several accounts claim Andrew Jackson's men were frightened away when they came to investigate.

Which horror film drew on the 1949 case of a supposedly possessed boy known by the pseudonym Roland Doe?

The Exorcist became the first horror film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and William Peter Blatty won an Oscar for adapting his own novel.

Which village near Bradford gave its name to the fairy photographs Arthur Conan Doyle used in a 1920 magazine article?

Cottingley cousins Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths admitted in the early 1980s that the fairies were cardboard cutouts copied from a popular children's book.

Which condition is believed to lie behind many alien abduction and demon stories?

Sleep paralysis leaves a waking person unable to move and can bring hallucinations of things seen, heard or felt in the room. Samuel Johnson's dictionary recorded the experience under the word 'nightmare'.

Which deck of five symbols, including a star and three wavy lines, was designed in the 1930s to test for ESP?

Zener cards are named after perceptual psychologist Karl Zener, who designed the 25-card deck for experiments run with parapsychologist J. B. Rhine.

Which Essex house did psychic researcher Harry Price call 'the most haunted house in England' before a 1939 fire?

Borley Rectory had been built in 1862 on the site of an earlier rectory that also burned down. After the 1939 fire it was demolished in 1944.

Which English forest beside RAF Woodbridge, then a US Air Force base, gave its name to a famous 1980 UFO incident?

Rendlesham servicemen, including the deputy base commander, reported unexplained lights. Sceptics blame a fireball, bright stars and the beam of the Orfordness Lighthouse.

Which American writer's 1919 Book of the Damned collected reports of strange phenomena that science could not explain?

Charles Fort gave his name to 'Fortean' phenomena. His title referred to 'damned' data: facts that he said science had rejected or ignored.

Which secret US Army programme tested psychic 'remote viewing' for spying until a CIA review shut it down in 1995?

The Stargate Project closed after the review concluded it had never been useful in any intelligence operation. It later featured, unnamed, in The Men Who Stare at Goats.

Which American clairvoyant, subject of the biography The Sleeping Prophet, claimed to diagnose illnesses while asleep?

Edgar Cayce drew national attention in 1910, when a description of his readings was widely reprinted from The New York Times. In 1931 he founded the Association for Research and Enlightenment.

Which found-footage horror film about a haunted San Diego couple was shot by director Oren Peli for only $15,000?

Paranormal Activity is often cited as the most profitable film ever made, measured by return on investment. It was filmed in a private house in San Diego.

Which mountain range is the legendary home of the Yeti, the hairy giant also known as the Abominable Snowman?

The Himalayas gave rise to the legend through Sherpa folklore, folklorists say, mixed with glimpses of misidentified animals such as bears and yaks.

What is the name for the search for animals whose existence is unproven, such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster?

Cryptozoology was founded in the 1950s by zoologists Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan T. Sanderson. Mainstream science classes it as a pseudoscience.