Paranormal
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50 free Paranormal trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Ghost stories, strange lights in the sky and monsters at the edge of the map have fascinated people for centuries. The paranormal is where folklore, hoaxes, honest mistakes and real unsolved puzzles all meet, which makes it rich ground for a quiz. These questions cover the best-known hauntings and ghost legends, famous UFO cases and the official studies that followed them, creatures that have never quite been caught on camera, psychics and mediums, and the magicians and scientists who put their claims to the test. A few of the films and television series that grew out of these stories are here too. It is written for curious sceptics and true believers alike, and it works for a Halloween party, a pub quiz round or a quiet night in. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will find out what happened next, and who finally owned up.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which New Mexico town became a UFO landmark after its Army air field announced recovering a 'disc' in 1947?
Roswell
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.
Q 02Which firearms dynasty's widow, Sarah, built a San Jose 'Mystery House' that legend says was meant for ghosts?
Winchester
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.
Q 03Which American rock band took its name from the slang Allied pilots used for mysterious aerial lights in World War II?
Foo Fighters
Foo Fighters comes from 'foo fighter', a nickname that itself borrowed the nonsense word 'foo' from the 1930s firefighter comic strip Smokey Stover.
Q 04The famous 1934 'Surgeon's Photograph' of the Loch Ness Monster actually showed a sculpted head mounted on what?
A toy submarine
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.
Q 05Which Stephen King novel was inspired by a 1974 night he spent at Colorado's reputedly haunted Stanley Hotel?
The Shining
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.
Q 06Which assassinated US president's ghost is the most famous apparition said to haunt the White House?
Abraham Lincoln
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.
Q 07Which stretch of the Atlantic gained a sinister reputation after Flight 19, five US Navy bombers, vanished in 1945?
The Bermuda Triangle
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.
Q 08Which Ghostbusters star and co-writer inherited his belief in ghosts from a spiritualist great-grandfather?
Dan Aykroyd
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.
Q 09Which heart-shaped Ouija board pointer began as a Victorian séance device that held a pencil for automatic writing?
A planchette
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.
Q 10The real doll behind the Annabelle horror films is which soft toy, not the porcelain figure seen on screen?
Raggedy Ann
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.
Q 11Which US state contains Area 51, the secret Air Force base beside the dry bed of Groom Lake?
Nevada
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.
Q 12Which Long Island village gave its name to a 1977 book about a family who fled their haunted home after 28 days?
Amityville
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.
Q 13The 1977 Enfield case, in which furniture reportedly moved around a London council house, is a famous example of what?
A poltergeist
Q 21Which magician spent the 1920s exposing fake mediums and agreed a secret code with his wife to test the afterlife?
Harry Houdini
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.
Q 22Which stage magician's foundation offered a million dollars for proof of any paranormal power under test conditions?
James Randi
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.
Q 23Which French astrologer published Les Prophéties in 1555, a book of poetic quatrains said to foretell world events?
Nostradamus
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.
Q 14Which wife of Henry VIII, beheaded in 1536, is said to haunt the Tower of London with her head under her arm?
Anne Boleyn
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.
Q 15Which legendary ghost ship, the subject of an 1843 Wagner opera, is doomed to sail forever without making port?
The Flying Dutchman
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.
Q 16Which other name for Bigfoot was adapted from a Salishan-language word that roughly translates as 'hairy man'?
Sasquatch
Sasquatch reached print through J. W. Burns, who collected Sts'ailes stories of 'hairy giants' for Maclean's magazine.
Q 17Which West Virginia town, where the Silver Bridge collapsed in 1967, holds a yearly festival for the winged Mothman?
Point Pleasant
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.
Q 18Which claimed psychic power does the bullied title character of Stephen King's Carrie unleash at her high school prom?
Telekinesis
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.
Q 19Which Israeli showman became famous in the 1970s for apparently bending spoons using only the power of his mind?
Uri Geller
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.
Q 20Which 1999 film stars Haley Joel Osment as a troubled boy who tells his psychologist that he can see ghosts?
The Sixth Sense
The Sixth Sense earned six Oscar nominations, including Best Supporting Actor for Osment, and was the second-highest-grossing film of 1999.
Nostradamus was the Latinised name of Michel de Nostredame, who also worked as an apothecary and physician. His book contains 942 four-line verses.
Q 24Which word did Nobel laureate Charles Richet coin for the substance mediums claimed to produce during séances?
Ectoplasm
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.
Q 25Which siblings' reports of spirit 'rappings' at Hydesville, New York, in 1848 helped create the Spiritualist movement?
The Fox sisters
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.
Q 26Which female spirit of Irish folklore is said to foretell a death in the family by wailing or keening?
The banshee
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.
Q 27Which vengeful ghost of Hispanic American folklore is said to roam near rivers mourning the children she drowned?
La Llorona
La Llorona means 'the weeping woman'. Ghostly beings who cry beside rivers are a recurring feature of the older mythology of Mesoamerican peoples.
Q 28Which legendary ghost is said to appear in a mirror when her name is chanted repeatedly in a darkened room?
Bloody Mary
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.
Q 29Which Massachusetts town gave its name to the witch trials of 1692, in which nineteen people were hanged?
Salem
Salem's courts hanged fourteen women and five men, and one more man, Giles Corey, died under torture for refusing to enter a plea.
Q 30Which Gaelic festival at the start of winter, when spirits were thought to cross over, helped shape modern Halloween?
Samhain
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.