If You Read These 6 Unexplained Paranormal Stories, You Won't Sleep Tonight

1. In 1995, a man named Terry Cottle killed himself by firing a .22 round into his brain. As an organ donor, he gave his heart to a 57-year-old man named Sonny Graham. But when Sonny met Terry's widow, something strange happened...

Sonny met with Terry's widow to thank her for the heart and instantly fell in love with her. They were married in 2004. After four years, their relationship followed similar patterns as Terry's, to the point where Sonny also eventually shot himself in the head.

2. In 1976, a man named Allen Showery killed fellow hospital worker Teresita Basa by stabbing her and setting her body on fire. There was little evidence linking Showery to the murder. In fact, the only evidence police had was an account from the only witness—Teresita Basa.

A year after Basa's death, another worker at the same hospital, Remy Chua, claimed she saw an apparition of Basa haunting the lounge. Chua soon began to act uncharacteristically. She started singing songs she never knew and roamed the halls as if in a trance. One evening, she came to her family and spoke to them in Basa's voice, naming Showery as her murderer. Sure enough, when police investigated Showery's home, they found many of Basa's belongings, forcing Showery to confess. To this day, no one can explain how or why this happened to Remy Chua.

3. In 1973, a boy named Greg Garrett was playing in his backyard in Enfield, Illinois, when he was attacked. However, it wasn't by a person, and the description of the attacker fit that of no animal anyone had ever heard of before.

Thus began the legend of the Enfield Horror, Illinois' own mythical monster. Every person who witnessed the beast describes it the same: three legs, five feet tall, taloned arms that curl in the front of the torso like a T-rex, and gleaming red eyes that peer out of the dark with a weird radiance.

4. Nobody believed Doris Bither. She was a constantly drunk mother who abused her children because she herself was once abused. However, everything changed when several paranormal investigators decided to sit in a room to watch her struggle with the "entities" she claimed haunted her.

When Doris asked a few paranormal investigators to observe her, they were skeptical at first but eventually agreed. Sure enough, Doris suddenly began cursing at three unseen entities. Suddenly auras began forming around her. A mysterious green mist began swirling around Doris. One of the investigators fainted. No one knows exactly what happened.

5. While living in England, 18-year-old Carissa Glenn began experiencing a strange ghostly presence in her flat in Cornwall. This feeling wasn't helped by the rumor that the previous tenant hanged himself in that room.

Carissa had a history of sleepwalking and acting out her dreams. This was problematic because she kept dreaming about hanging herself since her move. Sure enough, after an evening of drinking, Carissa went to bed and never quite awoke. She was found hanging from the rafters by her scarf.

6. One night in the '90s, journalist Brian Bethel was parked outside of a movie theater when he was approached by two children. The kids were around 10 years of age, but Bethel somehow experienced a fear unlike any other in their presence.

The children said they wanted to see a particular movie, but they left their money at home. They asked Bethel if they could have a ride home. Still gripped with fear, he refused and started his car. The kids' eyes turned jet black. They told him that they couldn't get in his car unless he invited them, but Brian drove away. He wrote about the experience in an online blog and ever since, people from all over the world have shared their experiences with "The Children."

10 Most Haunted Roads In India – Highways to Hell

1. 2-lane East Coast Road

Although a driver’s delight, the ECR running from Chennai to Pondicherry has a particular stretch which is rumoured to be haunted by ghostly apparitions, generally a lady in a white saree, which has caused many riders and drivers to lose focus and crash. According to local folks the girl died in an accident here before a long time. To avenge her death, she scares drivers in the night.

2. Delhi Cantonment Road

The figure of a ghostly woman in a white saree haunting the Delhi Cantonment Road is a known fear among those who have and have not encountered this apparition while passing through this stretch.

3. Ranchi-Jamshedpur NH-33

The only highway in the country where the number of fatal accidents outnumber the number of non-fatal ones – people are actually so scared of venturing out on this highway that temples have been established on both ends of it for travellers to pray at before venturing out. The quintessential tall white lady is said to be haunting this highway.

4. Marve & Madh Island Road

This 9km long stretch of road, lying between V. Road and Marve beach, is said to be haunted by the spirit of a sobbing lady dressed in bridal wear, along with terrifying sounds like her screams and the noise of her anklets.

5. Mumbai-Nashik Highway – Kasara Ghat

The stretch of the Mumbai-Nashik Highway passing through a place called Kasara Ghat is said to be haunted by several paranormal entities, like an old headless lady, sitting on the trees. The creepy bushes and trees looming up on either sides of the road make it look worse still. The most. 

6. Mumbai-Goa Highway – Kashedi Ghat

Another similar stretch of paranormal activity, the Mumbai-Goa Highway near Kashedi Ghat, which has been the spot for a number of major accidents like trucks toppling over, bus overturning, and a number of people dying. Rumour has it that a mysterious person appears in front of vehicles driving down this road at night, and signals for them to stop the car. On being ignored, the vehicles get into ineplicable accidents.

7. NH-209 – Sathyamangalam Wildlife Sanctuary Corridor

This stretch of the National Highway passes through the forest reserve which used to be the home of legendary Indian bandit – Koose Muniswamy Veerapan. The ghost sightings, loud screams and ghostly lights experienced along this road are said to be Veerapan himseld haunting this stretch.

8. Blue Cross Road

This lane in Chennai has caused an excessive number of inexplicable suicides here, and is said to be haunted by the spirits of those who died here. In the dark, people have often witnessed a white humanoid creature walking along this road.

9. Besant Avenue Road

Although a busy stretch when the sun is up, this road in Chennai turns spookier with every passing hour after sunset. Passers-by have even reported being slapped and overthrown by an unseen force after dark on this road.

10. Delhi Jaipur Highway

The site of India’s most haunted place, the Bhangarh fort, the Delhi Jaipur Highway has also seen its share of haunted incidents along the entire stretch. Drivers have experienced unexplained sights and sounds in this highway, especially the closer one gets to the dreaded fort.

6 Paranormal Travel Destinations

It only takes one UFO ride to turn someone into a believer for life, so it makes sense that there are plenty of folks out there who want to do a little more paranormal travel. Whether they’re ghost hunters, investigators of the unexplained, or just X-Files junkies trying to dull their David Duchovny-induced heartache, these destinations are some of the top places to investigate or experience something from another world or dimension.

Lima, Peru – Markawasi Stone Forest

The Markawasi Stone Forest in Lima, Peru gives new scope to the term “paranormal traveler.” Both a geologic and space-time anomaly, the spiritual sensitivity of the Markawasi’s giant rocks is well known, and it’s thought that the specific kind of sensitivity is conducive to actual inter-dimensional travel.

According to some locals and paranormal investigators, the unique combination of energy produced at Markawasi often opens portals where you can look into the same space in other dimensions, and even walk through to join what some claim to be a 17th century looking village on the other side. It does not seem to work both ways though, so think real hard about this trip before you take it.

Winchester House

In 1884, the widow of William Wirt Winchester–Sarah Winchester–began building her house in California, and did not stop for 38 years. After losing her daughter and husband and feeling the guilt of living off of a fortune amassed by the sale of the deadly guns bearing her family’s name, Winchester consulted a medium for help. She was told that she should move west, to San Jose, and build a house. Once the house was done, she would die. So she never stopped building.

By the end, the house had 52 skylights, 47 fireplaces, and five or six kitchens in the 160 room maze-like building. It’s full of staircases to nowhere, doorways that open to ten foot drops, and rooms built within other rooms around chimneys that did not reach the ceiling.

Ross Castle, Ireland

Castles are great places to find spooks and specters, especially in suits of armor or paintings with moving eyes. Ross Castle, in Killarney, Ireland, is one of the most haunted of them all since the O’Donoghue clan fell to Oliver Cromwell during the Irish Confederate wars. Legend has it that O’Donoghue himself was sucked out of the window and into the lake at the base of the castle along with his horse, writing desk and library when the artillery arrived and the castle fell. He now lives at the bottom of the lake, keeping an eye on the spirits that died during the assault and move about the castle.

An Irish team of ghost hunters studied the castle in 2006 looking for tangible proof or evidence of supernatural activities, but came away empty-handed. Still, it is not recommended that honeymooning couples take a boat ride across the lake.

Roswell, NM

Famous for its weather balloons and little green souvenirs, Roswell, New Mexico has become the archetypal paranormal destination. Although it was inundated with serious truth-seekers after the famous 1947 crash of a flying saucer that was either an experimental surveillance balloon or an interstellar vehicle, the town has become more of a tourist trap in the last few decades. Nevermind that the crash itself was actually about 75 miles away from Roswell.

Information about the crash abounds in museums dedicated to the crash, however, and there is no shortage of people who’ll be happy to tell you all about it. Although there was only one documented witness of the debris recovery effort in 1947, there are now more than 600 people in Roswell who claim to have witnessed the government cover up.

Nevada State Route 375

By definition, it would seem that something called an Extraterrestrial Highway would have to be located on another planet. But this parsing of words didn’t stop the folks of Rachel, Nevada from bestowing that moniker on Route 375, which extends 98 miles from Warm Springs to Crystal Springs. According to Nevada tourism officials, there are more reported UFO sightings on this 98 mile stretch of road than anywhere else in the country. And that’s with a paltry 200 cars a day.

This two-lane road runs near the secret military base Area 51, which explains some of the Unidentified-ness of the Flying Objects, but not the flashes of light, unaccounted for passages of time and green ooze that appears on your windshield.

Mt. St. Helens

The Gifford Pinchot National Forest, surrounding Mt. St. Helens is home to many different species of wild creatures and creepy crawlies, none more useful for our purposes than Gigantopithecus canadensis–Bigfoot. This hairy homonoid is most often sighted in the forest around the Pacific Northwest and Mt. St. Helens is supposedly its home turf. Stories of cannabalistic wild men living around the mountain date back to the mid 1800s, so for many it’s not a stretch to turn those stories into tales of Bigfoot.

Consider hiking through these pristine evergreens with a pork chop on a string for best results, and remember to keep that camera ready. Sasquatch seems to be getting quicker with age.

WORLD’S MOST HAUNTED COUNTRY

The Ruins Of Carscreugh Castle In Scotland Are Said To Be Haunted By The Spirit Of A White Pig. But The Horses Are Real. Photo: David Baird

Britain, the nation that invented both the gothic ghost story and the eccentric pastime of ghost hunting, is the world’s most haunted country, with more ghosts per square mile than anywhere else on earth. This of course is not a provable assertion, but the Brits themselves are sure of it.

In the Introduction to his 2007 book, The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts, writer and academic Owen Davies tells us that in the 1940’s a folklorist in Warwickshire “calculated that there was one ghost to the square mile in his district.” According to Davies, if we assume the same density of disembodied spirits throughout all of England, we’d come of up with a ghostly population of around 50,000. And of course Scotland’s lonely expanses—the setting for Shakespeare’s Macbeth—are no less haunted than England.

“There are more ghosts seen, reported, and accepted in the British Isles than anywhere else on earth,” declares noted British ghost hunter Peter Underwood in his 1971 book, A Gazetteer of British Ghosts.

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung once remarked upon the British predisposition to see and hear ghosts, and over the centuries other writers have made similar observations. Davies provides the following quote about British enthusiasm for ghost stories from the 18th century writer Anthony Hilliar: “If you tell them that a spirit carry’d away the side of a House, or played Football with a half dozen Chairs and as many Pewter Dishes, you win their Hearts and Assent.

. . . Whole Towns and Villages have e’er now been depopulated, upon a white Horse being seen within half a mile of them, and near a Church Yard in the nighttime.”

Underwood says, “I am often asked why this is so and can only suggest that a unique ancestry with Mediterranean, Scandinavian, Celtic and other strains, an intrinsic island detachment, an inquiring nature, and perhaps our readiness to accept a supernormal explanation for curious happenings may all have played their part in bringing about this curious state of affairs.”

Other thinkers on the issue say that prior to the British Reformation, Catholic clerics actively encouraged credence in ghosts—thought to be restless visitors from purgatory—at least in part so that ghost-believers would pay for prayers to sooth the tormented souls of their departed loved ones. The violent Reformation’s victorious Protestants abolished the concept of purgatory and also tried to stamp out open talk of earthbound spirits—but these actions had the counterproductive effect of driving ghosts deeper into the woodwork of British homes and castles, where they seemed to thrive and multiply.

Certainly people in other countries—most notably in Asia—are every bit as conscious of ghosts as are the British. For a couple of examples, people in Thailand and people of Chinese descent throughout Asia set out food and even build houses for spirits. However, the predominant Asian attitude toward ghosts seems quite different from that of the British: Ghosts are their ancestors, relatives, and friends, as well as a ubiquitous element of the environment. Asians seldom see ghosts, but sense and contentedly accept their (usually benign) presence.

In other words, many Asians believe in ghosts, but don’t feel haunted; many British believe in ghosts, and do.

Frederici – The Ghost Of Melbourne’s Iconic Princess Theatre

Princess Theatre an iconic building on the Spring Street in Melbourne, Australia opened in 1857 and was again redesigned in 1886. The theatre has staged the world’s most successful productions like Phantom of the Opera, Cats, The Producers, Les Miserables and Mama Mia! This flamboyantly modeled theatre is haunted by a “theatre ghost”, Frederici.

Frederici, an Italian baritone singer died on the stage at Princess Theatre in 1988. This happened on 3rd March 1988 during the final act of the Gounod’s opera Faust. Frederick Baker or Frederici was playing the role of Mephistopheles. The last scene was that Mephistopheles returns to the fires of hell and smoke. Frederick was lowered through a trap door below the stage to show his journey to hell. When he fell beneath the stage, Frederick suffered a heart attack and he died. He was only thirty eight years old.

That day after the performance, cast took its bows. They were then informed that Frederick had died. The cast was confused as they had seen Frederick take a bow with them. This was the first time the ghost was seen. Many have reported of seeing Frederick’s ghost.

In his remembrance, for many years on every opening night a seat would be left for Frederici in the dress circle. Frederici’s ghost would be considered as a sign of good luck for the play. Some have seen him seating in the dress circle well dressed. Some have seen him on the stage. Some have experienced mysterious lights or something not visible to them touching them and passing through the corridors.


During the dress rehearsals many have seen him in grey shimmering lights. In the early 1970s while the making of a documentary film, photographs were taken of the film set in the Princess Theatre. The picture revealed an ashen-faced transparent figure. No one had seen that figure there that day. Many of them working in the Theatre had some kind of experience of his presence. Everyone has accepted him and doesn’t want him to go away. Frederici is called the most famous and friendly ghost of the world.

Beechworth Lunatic Asylum, Victoria, Australia

Located in the beautiful town of Beechworth, just a few hours from Melbourne is the Beechworth Lunatic Asylum. One of the most seen ghosts is that of Matron Sharpe, her apparition has been seen in several different parts of the hospital.


The Asylum was later renamed the Mayday Hills Hospital, it is the second oldest asylum in Victoria, dating back to 1867. When the asylum opened it stretched half a kilometer from one end to the other. The Beechworth Lunatic Asylum held a total of 1200 patients when full 600 men and 600 women. Over 3000 patients died within its walls in the 128 years the hospital operated. Its doors closed in 1995, and since then has operated as a campus of La Trobe University, run as a hotel and conference center.

In one of the day rooms, the signature of a J. Kelly is scratched in the glass. J Kelly was Ned Kelly's (the famous outlaw) uncle James Kelly. After burning down his sister in laws house in Greta, in which a young Ned was in at the time, Jim was sentenced to 15 years hard. As part of his sentence he was sent to Mayday Hills to help build the hospital. After serving his time, it's said his mind "was broken" and as such spent the rest of his days housed in the hospital until his death in 1903.

The Ghost Tours run at Beechworth Lunatic Asylum have become the most popular ghost tours on mainland Australia. Only the Ghost Tours offered in Port Arthur, in Tasmania, attract more visitors. Tours are offered every evening; on some evenings, as many as twelve tours are conducted. The Beechworth Asylum is now considered to be one of the most haunted buildings in Australia.

One of the ghosts most often seen at Beechworth is that of Matron Sharpe her apparition has been seen in several different parts of the hospital. Matron Sharpe's ghost has been seen in the former dormitory area, which is now part of Latrobe University's computer rooms. Witnesses have seen her walking down the granite staircase and into one of the classrooms. Matron Sharpe was apparently very compassionate toward the patients, which is uncharacteristic of the era.

One patient whose ghost is thought to haunt Beechworth is Tommy Kennedy. Tommy was well liked at the hospital and was given a job as a kitchen hand. Tommy actually died in the kitchen which is now part of the Bijou theatre, it is here that people have said they have felt the sensation of someone tugging at their clothes or poking their ribs.

The Reaction Hall was an area where patients could sing, play music or perform in plays, on Sundays the hall doubled as the chapel. In 1939 the hall became a cinema, where inmates could come in to watch movies. There are two common sightings in the hall, one is of a young girl, who approaches women and desperately tries to communicate with them. The other ghost has been seen in a window that was once part of the Bell Tower; the apparition of an elderly man facing away from the window is often seen.

The Grevillia wing was the section of the hospital all patients feared, it has been closed for 13 years, and now in a derelict state. As medication wasn't introduced until the 1950s, restraints such as straightjackets and even shackles were commonly used as well as electro-shock treatment. Electro shock treatment was widely used in the hospitals early days and there are stories of mass treatments in which almost the entire patient population was shocked in one session. When the shocks were administered the patient's bodies either splayed out backwards with force or contracted inward into a fetal position, which ever position ligaments would snap, bones were often broken and teeth shattered.

There are two common sightings in Grevillia, one is thought to be that of an unknown male doctor, his apparition has been seen wandering the corridors at night. The other is Matron Sharpe whose ghost was often seen in this area by the nurses who worked at Mayday Hills. They would report seeing the Matron sitting with patients who were due to have electro-shock treatment. Those who say they've witnessed this say the room was icy cold, but her presence was comforting, and seemed to bring a sense of reassurance to the patients.

Workmen at the hospital have reported hearing the sound of children laughing and playing; when they investigate the sound they are unable to trace there source. Several years ago on a ghost tour a parent noticed their 10 year old son talking to himself when asked who he was talking to the boy said he was talking to a boy called James who lived there.

A patient, a woman who was a big chain smoker was thrown out of a window to her death by another patient who wanted her cigarettes. Because the woman was Jewish her body was not allowed to be moved until a Rabbi had seen it, so her body was left lying out the front of the hospital dead for 2 days whilst the Rabbi made the trip up from Melbourne. Her ghost has been seen on the spot where she fell, by several witnesses over the last decade. The photo on the right was taken of the window from which she was thrown, an orb is clearly visable in the photo.

The gardens of Beechworth have long been subdivided into allotments; those who live nearby have seen the ghost of a man, wearing a green woolen jacket. The ghost is thought to be of a gardener named Arthur who worked the gardens for many years earning ten shillings a week. He wore his green jacket in winter and summer and no one could persuade him to remove it. After Arthur died, it was discovered why Arthur had been secretly storing his wages in the seam of his jacket. When the nurses opened it, they found 140 pounds, over four years of his wages, hidden inside.

There's one final and grizzly tale of a patient who disappeared, despite efforts by staff to locate him. Several weeks later his location was discovered when the resident dog Max, was found chewing a leg near the gate house at the grounds entry. A second search found the body up in a tree; the body had decomposed so badly that his leg had come off. The ghost of the patient has been seen near the entrance to the Asylum, the sightings have often been in the early hours of the morning.

Bermuda Triangle: Where Facts Disappear

Also sinisterly known as the Devil's Triangle, the Bermuda Triangle consists of a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean, and is defined by points in Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico. It stretches across less than a thousand miles on any one side.

The Bermuda Triangle (also known as the Devil's Triangle) is an area bounded by points in Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico where ships and planes are said to mysteriously vanish into thin air — or deep water.

Recently, some people have wondered if there is a Bermuda Triangle connection in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, even though the jet went missing halfway around the world.

The term "Bermuda Triangle" was coined in 1964 by writer Vincent Gaddis in the men's pulp magazine Argosy. Though Gaddis first came up with the phrase, a much more famous name propelled it into international popularity a decade later. Charles Berlitz, whose family created the popular series of language instruction courses, also had a strong interest in the paranormal. He believed not only that Atlantis was real, but also that it was connected to the triangle in some way, a theory he proposed in his bestselling 1974 book "The Bermuda Triangle." The mystery has since been promoted in thousands of books, magazines, television shows, and websites.

Still others believe that the explanation lies in some sort of extremely rare and little–known — yet perfectly natural — geological or hydrological explanation. For example, perhaps ships and planes are destroyed by pockets of flammable methane gas known to exist in large quantities under the sea — maybe lightning or an electrical spark ignited a huge bubble of methane that came to the surface right next to a ship or plane, causing them to sink without a trace. There are a few obvious logical problems with this theory, including that methane exists naturally around the world and such an incident has never been known to happen. 

Others suggest sudden rogue tidal waves. Or maybe some mysterious geomagnetic anomaly that creates navigational problems confusing pilots and somehow causing them to plunge into the ocean; then again, pilots are trained to fly even with a loss of electronic navigation, and that theory doesn't explain ship disappearances. In fact, the Navy has a web page debunking this idea: "It has been inaccurately claimed that the Bermuda Triangle is one of the two places on earth at which a magnetic compass points towards true north. Normally a compass will point toward magnetic north. The difference between the two is known as compass variation. ... Although in the past this compass variation did affect the Bermuda Triangle region, due to fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field this has apparently not been the case since the nineteenth century."

Mystery of the disappearing facts

A journalist named Larry Kusche asked exactly that question, and came to a surprising answer: there is no mystery about strange disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle. Kusche exhaustively re-examined the "mysterious disappearances" and found that the story was basically created by mistakes, mystery mongering, and in some cases outright fabrication — all being passed along as fact-checked truth.

In his definitive book "The Bermuda Triangle Mystery — Solved," Kusche notes that few writers on the topic bothered to do any real investigation — they mostly collected and repeated other, earlier writers who did the same. Unfortunately, Charles Berlitz's facility with language did not carry over into credible research or scholarship. His books on the paranormal — and on the Bermuda Triangle, specifically — were riddled with errors, mistakes, and unscientific crank theories. In a way, the Bermuda Triangle is largely a creation of Charles Berlitz's mistakes. Kusche would later note that Berlitz's research was so sloppy that "If Berlitz were to report that a boat were red, the chance of it being some other color is almost a certainty."

In some cases there's no record of the ships and planes claimed to have been lost in the aquatic triangular graveyard; they never existed outside of a writer's imagination. In other cases, the ships and planes were real enough — but Berlitz and others neglected to mention that they "mysteriously disappeared" during bad storms. Other times the vessels sank far outside the Bermuda Triangle.

It's also important to note that the area within the Bermuda Triangle is heavily traveled with cruise and cargo ships; logically, just by random chance, more ships will sink there than in less-traveled areas such as the South Pacific.

Despite the fact that the Bermuda Triangle has been definitively debunked for decades, it still appears as an "unsolved mystery" in new books — mostly by authors more interested in a sensational story than the facts. In the end, there's no need to invoke time portals, Atlantis, submerged UFO bases, geomagnetic anomalies, tidal waves, or anything else. The Bermuda Triangle mystery has a much simpler explanation: sloppy research and sensational, mystery-mongering books.


Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and author of six books, including "Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries."