The index / Paranormal
Careful, contextual coverage of the darker and stranger side of history, crime, culture, and the unexplained.
Lore & Explained · Paranormal Cases
Did a ghost help convict Edward Shue? The 1897 trial reporting separates Mary Heaster’s claimed visions from the murder evidence and later Greenbrier folklore.
Oct 9, 2026
News · Games
The Conjuring: Unspoken pairs Red Lion Inn’s Florrie legend with Vinea. Explore the real Avebury pub, old grimoire name and limits of the haunting claims.
Oct 7, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
Can people move objects with their minds? Explore telekinesis, the history of psychokinesis experiments, and what controlled studies actually found.
Sep 27, 2026
The Index
Edinburgh's South Bridge vaults were built as working spaces, not a hidden medieval city. Explore the history beneath the ghost-tour reputation.
Sep 25, 2026
The Index
Behind Eastern State's haunted reputation is a real experiment in isolation. Explore its prison design, Dickens's visit and the staged scares.
Sep 25, 2026
The Index · Haunted Places
Poveglia has a documented Venetian quarantine history. Its global reputation as a haunted asylum island is largely a much newer media narrative.
Sep 21, 2026
The Index · Haunted Places
Borley Rectory became England's most famous haunting through reports, Harry Price's investigations and a lasting dispute over the evidence.
Sep 21, 2026
The Index · Unsolved Cases
Eight people were killed in Villisca, Iowa in 1912. The historic crime remains unsolved; the house's later paranormal reputation is a separate story.
Sep 21, 2026
Lore & Explained · Urban Legends
Hanako-san is a modern Japanese school ghost, not a documented dead child. Her third-stall ritual, variants and 1990s media boom show how living folklore travels.
Sep 16, 2026
The Index · Haunted Places
The Myrtles Plantation has a real history of slavery, family loss and William Winter's 1871 murder. The Chloe tale and 'ten murders' claim are much less securely documented.
Sep 16, 2026
The Index · Haunted Places
The Queen Mary's wartime service, collision with HMS Curacoa and Long Beach afterlife are documented. Its ghosts and Room B340 reputation belong to a different kind of history.
Sep 16, 2026
Lore & Explained · Modern Folklore
The Men in Black began as UFO-era stories about Albert Bender and Gray Barker, then became a modern paranormal legend. There is no proven organization behind the myth.
Sep 16, 2026
The Index · Occult History
Kate and Maggie Fox's 1848 Hydesville raps helped launch modern Spiritualism. Their 1888 confession matters, but it does not reduce a major movement to one neat sentence.
Sep 16, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
In 1955, families near Kelly, Kentucky reported small figures around a farmhouse. The police response is real; an alien siege is not established.
Sep 16, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
Teke Teke is a modern Japanese school legend about a legless spirit that drags itself on its arms. The railway accident said to have caused it has never been documented -- it's part of the story, not a confirmed event.
Sep 13, 2026
The Index · Unsolved Cases
The Mary Celeste was found abandoned in the Atlantic in December 1872. A 2026 wood-and-ethanol experiment strengthened one old explosion theory, but it still does not prove why the crew left.
Sep 13, 2026
The Index · Cryptids & Legends
Two couples reported a winged, red-eyed creature near Point Pleasant in November 1966. The claim that it predicted the Silver Bridge collapse came later -- the bridge failed from a corroded eyebar, not a curse.
Sep 13, 2026
Lore & Explained · Demons & Occult
Zozo, the entity many Ouija users now claim to encounter, is traceable to a single 2009 internet forum post. The claimed centuries-old precedent for the name is disputed even in its own original source.
Sep 11, 2026
The Index · Unsolved Cases
The CIA confirmed Area 51's existence in 2013 as a Cold War aircraft-testing site. Bob Lazar's alien-technology claims are a separate story with serious credibility problems.
Sep 10, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
Don Julián Santana Barrera really did spend decades hanging dolls on a Xochimilco chinampa. The drowned girl he said he was honoring has never been documented.
Sep 10, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
Stephen King really did stay in Room 217 in 1974 and have a nightmare that became The Shining. Kubrick's film wasn't shot there at all — Timberline Lodge was.
Sep 10, 2026
The Index · Dark History
Anneliese Michel died in 1976 after 67 Catholic exorcism sessions, weighing 68 pounds. Her parents and two priests were later convicted of negligent homicide.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
The Bell Witch story wasn't written down until 1894, seventy-plus years after it supposedly happened. Here's what the earliest sources actually support.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Unsolved Cases
Flight 19, the USS Cyclops, and the rest of the Bermuda Triangle's famous cases have documented, largely mundane explanations. The 'mystery' was built by two writers, not the evidence.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Cryptids & Legends
The word 'Bigfoot' traces to a 1958 California logging site and, per the finder's own family, carved wooden feet. Here's the documented history behind America's most famous cryptid.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
Brian Bethel's 1996 Abilene encounter became the template for the Black-Eyed Children legend. Here's what the earliest record says and what later retellings added.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Cryptids & Legends
The Chupacabra began in Puerto Rico in 1995 as a spiny, bipedal creature. Later U.S. reports often involved hairless canids. Here's what contemporary reporting, animal testing and folklore research actually show.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
The Perron family really did live in a haunted-feeling Rhode Island farmhouse for nine years. Bathsheba Sherman, the film's villain, likely never set foot there.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
The man who created the Dybbuk Box has admitted he made up the story. Here's the real 2003 eBay origin, and what a dybbuk actually is in Jewish folklore.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
William Peter Blatty based The Exorcist on a real 1949 case involving a boy known for decades only as Roland Doe. Here's what's documented, and what the film invented.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Cryptids & Legends
The Jersey Devil legend traces to a real colonial-era Quaker printer, not a cursed 13th child. Here's the documented history behind New Jersey's most famous cryptid.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
Kuchisake-onna, the masked woman who asks 'Am I beautiful?', is a real 1978-1979 rumor panic documented in Japanese newspapers, not an ancient yokai tradition.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Cryptids & Legends
The 1934 'Surgeon's Photograph' was admitted as a hoax in 1994. A 2019 eDNA survey found no evidence of an unknown reptile in the loch, but plenty of eel DNA.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
Who invented the Ouija board, how it got its name, and why the planchette really moves. The documented history behind America's best-selling talking board.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
Poltergeist means noisy ghost in German. Here's the real history of the term, why teenagers keep showing up in these cases, and what investigators actually found.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
Robert the Doll is a real Steiff toy that belonged to Key West painter Robert Eugene Otto. The Bahamian-servant curse story has never been historically confirmed.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Unsolved Cases
A rancher found debris, the Army briefly called it a 'flying disc,' then reversed course within a day. The Air Force's later Project Mogul explanation accounts for the physical evidence.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
"Shadow people" is a modern umbrella term that spread through paranormal radio and internet culture in the early 2000s. Here is what the 2001 record shows, what sleep-paralysis research can explain, and what remains unverified.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
Sleep paralysis happens when REM muscle paralysis persists into waking consciousness. Here's the science behind the sensed presence, chest pressure, and threatening figures people report.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Dark History
Sarah Winchester spent 36 years renovating her San Jose mansion. The story that she did it on a medium's orders to appease rifle victims has no contemporary evidence behind it.
Sep 9, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
1952 produced more UFO reports than any other year of Project Blue Book, including radar and visual sightings over Washington, D.C. Here's the documented history.
Sep 2, 2026
The Index
The Conjuring 2 makes the Warrens central to Amityville from day one. The real chronology is narrower: they arrived after the Lutz family had already left.
Sep 2, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
A barn owl is the leading natural explanation for the 1952 Flatwoods Monster. Here's how well it actually fits the witness descriptions, and where it doesn't.
Sep 2, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
On September 12, 1952, a group in Flatwoods, West Virginia said they saw a towering figure after a light fell from the sky. Here's what's documented and what isn't.
Sep 2, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
The Flatwoods Monster case reached the Air Force's UFO program within months of its creation. Here's what the surviving National Archives record actually shows.
Sep 2, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
William Weber said the Lutz family invented their haunting story. The Lutzes passed a polygraph. Here's what the actual evidence supports, and what it doesn't.
Sep 2, 2026The Index · Paranormal
The DeFeo murders at 112 Ocean Avenue are documented fact. The Lutz family's haunting claims are a separate, disputed story. Here's what the record actually supports.
Aug 30, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
The real Annabelle doll was a Raggedy Ann, not a porcelain monster. What the early reports, Warren claims and Conjuring films actually say about the alleged haunting.
Aug 29, 2026
The Index · Paranormal
What really happened in the Enfield Poltergeist case? A careful look at the witnesses, hoax evidence, famous voice, photos and Warren claims.
Aug 24, 2026