Stories about giants are a staple of ancient myths.

We’re not talking friendly souls who dabble in professional wrestling or star in a movie about a princess engaged to marry a cowardly, evil prince. We’re also not discussing pro athletes playing baseball in San Francisco or football in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Giants populating mythology and folklore are onery and nasty creatures who would rather eat a person than look at one.

If there were an FBI most-wanted list devoted to hostile giants, you can bet the farm that the Si-Te-Cah tribe would reside near the top.

Red-Headed Monsters

Various Paiute legends describe the Si-Te-Cah tribe (also known as the Saiduka tribe) as a tall, red-haired people. Their name means "tule-eaters" in the Northern Paiute language. Tule is a fibrous aquatic plant that, along with eating, Si-Te-Cahs also used to make rafts that served as their homes in marshes and on lakes.

Si-Te-Cahs did not stick to a tule-based diet for long.

Paiute legends described them as mean, foolish, and degraded cannibals who ate people from rival tribes. They were said to decorate their red hair with elaborate bone or shell ornaments while also dressing in simple robes made out of skin and feathers stripped from mud hens.

According to Paiute oral history, the Si-Te-Cah tribe was exterminated by the Paiutes and driven out of Paiute land in a final battle near Lovelock Cave in Nevada.

Digging up Giants

Artifacts, along with alleged mummified remains, attributed to the Si-Te-Cahs were first unearthed in Lovelock Cave in 1911. These discoveries became associated with what is known as the Lovelock Culture. Among the notable artifacts found in the cave were baskets woven from willow trees and tule plants, sagebrush sandals, beads made from sea shells, and 2,000 year old duck decoys.

Archeologists believe Northern Paiute tribes replaced the Lovelock Culture approximately 1000 years ago. This likely gave rise to later oral traditions of the Si-Te-Cah tribe that described the military defeat of a dangerous race of giants.

Not all early tales of Si-Te-Cahs described them as giants. That description likely gained greater popularity in later years when fossilized mammoth bones and cave bear bones discovered near the Lovelock region were mistakenly credited as being giant human bones.

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Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who is the most frightening creature of them all?

Students of folklore will tell you the mirror itself offers the most frightening creature. It is, after all, the home of the infamous Bloody Mary.

If you can’t walk past a mirror without feeling a chill run down your spine, it could be a sign that something more frightening than your own reflection is staring back at you. Bloody Mary is purported to be a menacing ghost that inhabits mirrors and will manifest herself to anyone foolish enough to summon her by name.

Who is Bloody Mary?

Bloody Mary is a nickname bestowed on Mary I of England, who reigned from 1553 to 1558. The daughter of King Henry VIII, Mary severely persecuted Protestants while undertaking a failed bid to restore her kingdom to Catholicism after her father broke with Rome and formed the Anglican Church. Approximately 300 Protestants were burned at the stake during her reign. Her gruesome deeds allegedly led Mary being condemned, after her death, to haunt mirrors as a restless spirit.

Mary in the Bloody Mary legend has also been associated with Mary Worth, a woman who killed slaves trying to escape via the Underground Railroad in the antebellum Southern United States.

Summoning Mary

The Bloody Mary ritual is straightforward and most often done in small groups. Participants stand inside a dimly lit or darkened room and face a mirror. While staring into the mirror, they chant “Bloody Mary” at least three times. What happens next? According to the legend, the fools who do the chant will see either a ghost, a witch, or a demonic apparition. Whatever form of the apparation they see will also be covered in blood (hence the nickname).

Mary will attack once summoned and show how she got her nickname. The apparation will attack the summoner in multiple ways, based on her whims. This can include screaming at the summoner, inflicting a curse on them, stealing their soul, strangling them, drinking their blood, or scratching their eyes out.

Bloody Mary Origins

Like many urban legends, the Bloody Mary ritual has roots in ancient mythology. It likely evolved from older divination rituals involving women before being tied to a violent and cruel English queen or a sadistic murderer of slaves.

One such ritual involved young women using mirrors to reveal their future husbands. They were supposed to walk up a flight stairs backward while holding a mirror in their hand. If they saw a skull instead of their future husband’s face, it was an omen fortelling they would die as an unmarried woman.

The Bloody Mary ritual has become a fixture in modern popular culture and a staple of the horror genre, being featured in multiple movies, TV shows, and video games.

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Humanity hasn't visited the Moon since NASA pulled the plug on the Apollo program in 1972. Planning return trips to the Moon, for US Government officials, has turned into the equivalent of making and keeping New Year’s resolutions. The prospect of setting foot on the Moon again seems to lie farther into the future than the distance between the Earth and the lunar body itself.

Or maybe Moon landings never stopped — if you believe Solar Warden is real.

Solar Warden refers to a clandestine space program allegedly run by a multinational organization. This program is said to exist to defend Earth from alien incursions. Conspiracy theorists claim that the Solar Warden program operates a secret fleet of advanced spacecraft designed and built using reverse-engineered alien technology.

If you think this all sounds like a tale pulled straight out of a science fiction novel, you’re not wrong. Still, proponents of Solar Warden and other similar theories claim secret space programs are operating right under our collective noses.

From Cold War to Star Wars

The idea of a secret space program traces its roots back to the Cold War era and the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) — nicknamed “Star Wars” — proposed by US President Ronald Reagan in 1983. Reagan wanted to create a ground and space-based missile defense system.

Proponents of secret space program theories say Reagan’s SDI was a smokescreen for an expanded military presence throughout the solar system.

Secret space program tales all present multiple common claims:

• Hidden bases housing military and intelligence officials are located on Mars and various moons. (You know, like the Moon base in Independance Day: Resurgence.)

• The United States — and other leading nations on Earth — have brokered treaties and made economic agreements with advanced alien civilizations.

• Reverse-engineered alien technological designs are supplying secret space fleets with tons of futuristic technology ranging from artificial gravity generators to warp drives. (You know, like the Tau’ri ships in late seasons of Stargate SG-1)

• Many people are recruited to enlist in these secret space programs and then, after their tour of duty ends, are returned to Earth at an earlier point in time before their service through age regression and/or time travel.

No credible evidence exists to verify any of these outlandish claims. Even if they were somehow true, the astronomical costs associated with running a secret space program would mean it couldn’t stay hidden from public knowledge for very long.

Secret Costs of Secret Space Programs

A cost analysis done in 2016 on an imperial star destroyer from Star Wars found that the parts of a single star destroyer would cost $636 billion (USD) to build on Earth and an additional $44.4 trillion to launch into space and assemble there.

Can you imagine how many tax dollars would be required for the United States to raise enough funds just to build one advanced spacecraft? The costs to manufacture an entire fleet would multiply exponentially.

Without developing cost-effective technology to mine and transport building materials from nearby asteroids, there’s no possible way to finance mass construction of advanced spacecraft. Our current level of technology and all of Earth’s resources aren’t enough to do the job.

Advanced space fleets and hidden bases will just have to stay limited to the realm of science fiction for now.

(FYI: a hidden base on an alien moon and a fleet of alien spacecraft are both featured prominently in Among Hidden Stars, the third novel in my Alien People Chronicles trilogy. Check it out. You’ll love it.)

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Obscure geography and limited population can make some small towns tough to pinpoint on a map. Don't bother consulting a map of Wisconsin, however, the next time you’re aching to plan a sightseeing trip to Doveland.

You can't find a town that doesn’t exist.

This little fact hasn't stopped some Wisconsin residents from insisting Doveland once existed. Tales chronicling the town all claim it vanished from the heart of Wisconsin during the 1990s without leaving behind any meaningful trace it ever existed. That’s a significant step beyond an abandoned ghost town. No physical evidence of Doveland lingers in the form of abandoned buildings, old cemeteries, historical records, or maps.

A dearth of historical proof is no obstacle when it comes to spinning tales about Doveland. Some Wisconsin residents claim they own souvenirs culled from the town. Others claim they remember Doveland, visited the town back in the day, or even had relatives who lived there.

Fall of Doveland

Stories about Doveland typically agree that the town sprang up during the 1960s as a destination for military families involved in a secret military project. Determining the town’s fate has invited a host of theories ranging from a natural disaster to terrifying paranormal circumstances.

Trust me when I say some of these Doveland theories get wild.

One theory suggests an earthquake created a massive sinkhole that swallowed the entire town. A second theory claims Doveland was destroyed from flooding as a result of either a dam being created or a dam bursting and the debris was swept away. A third theory posits that the town was destroyed by a military science experiment gone wrong and all surviving residents moved to parts unknown.

The craziest theory of all claims Doveland either vanished or shifted to a different dimension after being cursed by a vengeful spirit. Residents of the town are still hanging around. We simply can’t see them in our reality. They are like ghosts to us.

Doveland Origins

Stories of Doveland, Wisconsin first gained steam on message board sites like Reddit and 4Chan in the late 2010s after Google searches allegedly autocompleted the search term Doveland to read “Doveland, Wisconsin.” These tales all bear the hallmarks of vanishing town folklore.

Legends of missing towns date back many centuries. The most famous example being the Roanoke Colony that disappeared by 1590 — five years after being founded by Sir Walter Raleigh. These places always fall victim to some sort of sinister fate and vanish without a trace left behind.

Modern iterations of the vanishing town urban legend usually contain an added twist of government or military officials orchestrating coverups designed to prevent knowledge of the town and its fate from spreading to the public. Such accounts are entertaining X-Files style stories but have no basis in reality.

The irony behind Doveland, Wisconsin is hundreds of genuine ghost towns are scattered throughout the United States. These places exist as real artifacts of history. Many offer fascinating stories connected to their past. Doveland, on the other hand, is nothing more than a digital age urban legend — a town that grew from a scary story repeatedly shared on social media channels and message boards.

Check out the Strange New Worlds archives for previous Folklore Friday features. If you have a specific urban legend, myth, or piece of folklore you want me to explore in the future, feel free to let me know in the comments.

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Nautical folklore has always captured my interest. And there's definitely some odd urban legends littering that category related to the United States Navy.

I come from a family with extensive naval ties. My maternal grandfather served in the Pacific theater during World War II. My dad enlisted twice in the US Navy as a Seabee — serving his first tour from 1959 to 1963 and then re-enlisting in 1968, three years after he married my mom. A year into Dad's second tour, he was scheduled to ship out to South Vietnam from Okinawa during the height of the Vietnam War. A few days before his departure date, my dad broke his back. He was sent home instead with a medical discharge.

Dad always shared interesting stories from his time in the service. One of the coolest things I learned about his time as a Seabee is that he served aboard the USS Lake Champlain — an aircraft carrier — when it retrieved Alan Shepard and the Freedom 7 capsule in 1961 after Shepard became the first American to travel into space. Dad once showed me a photo in his possession of Shepard and his capsule being brought to the aircraft carrier.

With that background, you can see why a tale like The Philadelphia Experiment would pique my curiosity.

What is the Philadelphia Experiment?

The US Navy allegedly conducted a series of experiments during World War II to make their ships invisible by bending light around the ship through refraction created by large electrical generators. Stories claim that a newly commissioned destroyer, the USS Eldridge, became the first test subject in late 1943.

Naval crews outfitted the USS Eldridge with all the necessary equipment for the experiment and carried out tests at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Initial tests were deemed successful, with eyewitnesses reporting a greenish fog taking the place of the destroyer for a short time. Sailors on board complained of severe nausea afterward.

The experiment soon took a disastrous turn. On October 28, 1943, the USS Eldridge allegedly disappeared from Philadelphia and was teleported to Norfolk, Virginia more than 200 miles away. It remained in Norfolk for only a few minutes before returning to Philadelphia. When the ship rematerialized, the crew were said to have suffered severe and gruesome side effects. Some sailors were fused to bulkheads and a few re-materialized with their bodies inside out. Other sailors went insane. A small number vanished without a trace.

Naval officials, the tale alleges, covered up evidence of The Philadelphia Experiment and pursued stealth technology as a safer alternative to invisibility.

Origins of The Philadelphia Experiment

The tale of a naval ship disappearing, teleporting, and reappearing sounds like it was ripped straight from the pages of a science fiction novel. Makes sense because nothing about The Philadelphia Experiment is grounded in fact or even possible with what we know about real science.

It falls completely in the realm of urban legend and folklore.

The earliest known recounting of the alleged experiment came from letters sent by Carl M. Allen to Morris K. Jessup in the late 1950s. Allen claimed to be an eyewitness to the experiment and its aftermath. These letters served as foundational material for popular books in the 1970s recounting the same events and a 1984 time travel film titled The Philadelphia Experiment.

One curious footnote about the whole tall tale is the fact the USS Eldridge wasn’t commissioned until August 1943 and remained in port at New York City until September. The ship was on a shakedown cruise in The Bahamas during the time the alleged events took place in Philadelphia.

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Imagine a simple game that envelops your eyes with vibrant shapes and colors and fills your ears with a catchy tune. You feel compelled to try your hand at the game, see if you can become a winner. Your heart races as you advance from level to level. A smile crosses your lips. This is fun. Hey, maybe you not only will win, but you'll also set the high score.

You can’t rip yourself away until you realize minutes have turned into hours while your hands grow numb from playing. When you finally force yourself to quit and leave the arcade, strange things began to unfold around you.

Sleep eludes you that night. Colors within your room swirl together. Walls melt and eerie noises rip through an otherwise unnerving silence. Soon, horrible and indescribable images stalk you and bombard your senses. Each one paralyzes you with fear and turns you into a babbling mess when morning returns.

This hypothetical scenario forms the crux of an urban legend surrounding Polybius, an arcade game doubling as a clandestine mass psychology experiment done by the US Government.

Origins of Polybius

According to the legend, Polybius was a new arcade game that debuted in 1981 in Portland, Oregon. The game showed up at malls and other places in multiple Portland suburbs. It proved an instant hit. Long lines formed around the arcade machines and fights often broke out between gamers over who would play next. People who played Polybius regularly started reporting dangerous side effects. These included amnesia, insomnia, night terrors and hallucinations.

Then, one month after its 1981 release, Polybius disappeared without a trace never to be seen again.

Eyewitnesses claimed the arcade machines were visited by government agents during the month they were available to the public. These agents collected data from each machine that allegedly measured responses to various psychoactive effects resulting from playing Polybius.

No contemporary accounts of Polybius from the early 1980s exist nor is there any compelling evidence this game ever existed. First widespread reports of this mind-altering video game did not show up within the gaming community until the early 2000s.

Mind controlling media

Polybius fits snugly with a host of other urban legends and conspiracy theories related to mind control. These stories always feature the CIA, or military intelligence, doing clandestine psychological experiments that have unforeseen dangerous side effects on the subjects and are subsequently shut down.

These types of urban legends stem partially from a latent fear of being controlled by popular media relentlessly bombarding us. You can’t visit most websites these days without tons of pop-up ads greeting you. Snoopy algorithms shadow your movements and try to influence everything you see and hear based on a handful of past choices. Topics of discussion with a spouse or friend turn into suggested searches and ads on your phone.

Video games serving as a conduit for other shadowy purposes crops up in the science fiction and horror realms. A classic example of this trope is The Last Starfighter, one of the few sci-fi movies my dad likes to watch. The Last Starfighter follows Alex Rogan, a teenager recruited from a trailer park to fight in an interstellar war after he earns the highest score on a new arcade game. Rogan learns the game actually simulated a real conflict and was designed as a training vehicle to identify new starfighters to join the battle against the Ko-Dan Armada.

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Hidden continents and lost civilizations formed a staple of science fiction and fantasy stories in the late 19th and early 20th century. One famous example The Lost World, a novel penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1912 that details an expedition to a basin in the Amazon rainforest where prehistoric animals survive and thrive. These sorts of tales had common threads. Lands existed that were untouched by the modern world These places often had races of people using previously unknown advanced technologies and animals belonging to species once thought to be extinct. Such tales are appealing because of the thrill of solving a mystery or rewriting history.

Such tales of lost continents and lost civilizations seemingly vanished as the 20th century progressed. Advances in technology allowed us to make more accurate maps that torpedoed the idea an advanced race of people could exist in an untouched land hidden from the outside world. Those tales simply adapted and have reemerged in new forms in the digital age.

A prime example of modern lost or hidden advanced civilization folklore thriving in the digital age is the story of Tartaria or the Tartarian Empire.

A Lost Empire

The Tartarian Empire was an alleged technologically advanced nation claimed to have existed in Central Asia until the early 20th century. This Tartatia was allegedly responsible for influencing Western architecture up through World War I. Proponents of Tartaria's existence point to ornate buildings as evidence. Buildings ranging from the original New York Penn Station to the White House were allegedly constructed by Tartarians using Tartarian designs.

Conspiracy theorists allege that the Tartarian Empire was destroyed by a mud flood and that evidence of its existence was wiped out through bombing campaigns carried out in World War I and World War II. Then history books were altered around the world, erasing knowledge of Tartarians and their advanced technology out of jealousy of their accomplishments that exceeded those of rival nations.

Proponents of these theories point to similarities in popular 19th century architectural designs found throughout the world. They also cite photographs from the early 20th century which allegedly show deserted city streets in many capital cities across the world as evidence of the global mud flood that destroyed Tartaria.

Tartaria Lives

The true origin of Tartaria comes from 20th century Russian nationalist propaganda. Great Tartaria was, according to these nationalist screeds, Russia’s true name that had been ignored and suppressed outside of Russia by the West. The Russian Geographical Society debunked claims that Russia was ever called Tartaria or Great Tartaria in its history.

That hasn't stopped folklore of Tartaria from persisting well into the 21^st century. Videos on YouTube and Tik Tok have popularized the notion Tartaria once existed, despite a pointed lack of historical evidence ever supporting the claims that any such advanced civilization existed in Central Asia in recorded history. In a way, the Tartarian Empire is a repackaging of and modern successor to the myth of the lost city of Atlantis from Greek history.

Our fascination with uncovering lost or hidden civilizations means that Tartaria will continue to live on in some form for future generations.

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Socks and underwear are shorthand for disappointing Christmas gifts.

We all have that clueless relative who zeroed in on giving you practical gifts as a child instead of the newest toys you crave. Well, if you grew up in Iceland, you might have a better appreciation of finding clothing inside that wrapped box under your Christmas tree. That simple gift may have saved you from experiencing the horrors of the Yule Cat firsthand.

Beware the Yule Cat!

The Yule Cat, also known as Jólakötturinn, is a creature of Icelandic folklore traced back to the dark ages. It embodies the term house cat literally since this giant black cat is indeed the size of a house. Stalking rural Iceland on Christmas eve, the Yule Cat roams the countryside searching for prey. Children who fail to receive new clothes for Christmas top the hungry feline’s menu.

The Yule Cat will go from house to house peering through windows. If it sees children in a particular home have been given new clothing, the giant black cat will move on to the next home. When the Yule Cat arrives at a home where children have not received new clothes, their fate is sealed. It steals their food for an appetizer and then devours the children afterward for the main course. Later versions of the legend frame the monstrous feline as a pet of the ogress Grýla — a twisted version of Santa Claus — and her sons, the Yule Lads.

Yule Cat origins

The earliest written account of the Yule Cat first appeared in a collection of folklore from Icelandic writer Jón Árnason published in 1862. Legends detailing the ferocious feline became a staple of Icelandic Christmas folklore after Jóhannes úr Kötlum published a poetry collection in 1932 that included a popular poem titled Jólakötturinn chronicling the Yule Cat.

The Yule Cat may have been inspired by stories of troll cats in Scandanavian folklore. Troll cats were felines conjured by witches and wizards from ingredients like the fingernails and bones of a dead human for the sole purpose of doing their bidding.

As with other Christmas folklore, the Yule Cat serves as a cautionary figure meant to inspire children to be good instead of naughty. Children who finished their chores before Christmas got new clothing as a reward. Lazy and disobedient children were left to face the Yule Cat’s wrath.

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Can you trust what you see or hear?

That's a fundamental question underpinning a phenomenon popularly known as The Mandela Effect. This bit of modern folklore has gained significant traction in the digital age. You can find countless videos on YouTube, TikTok, and other social media platforms devoted to offering evidence of why The Mandela Effect exists.

The Mandela Effect belongs to a growing family of modern conspiracy theories that exist on the assumption that our history has been altered by sinister, shadowy forces who don't want real events to become public knowledge. You'll find other examples of this type of folklore embodied in stories of lost advanced ancient civilizations, suppressed technology, suppressed archaeological discoveries, destruction of ancient written records, and so forth.

Ultimately, the Mandela Effect — like other conspiracy theories in general — is rooted in a deep fear that politicians, religious leaders, corporate executives, and Hollywood are colluding to hide the true nature of our world from the public.

Mandela Effect origins

The Mandela Effect derives its name from an odd claim that became popular on message boards and social media platforms in the 21st century. Several people insist they have memories of former South African president and anti-Apartheid leader Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s. These folks recall TV and newspaper reports of his death from this time. Some also claim they watched his funeral on TV.

Mandela, of course, was released from prison in 1990 after spending 27 years behind bars as a political prisoner and helped bring an end to Apartheid in South Africa. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and was elected as President of South Africa soon after. Mandela served one five-year term from 1994 to 1999 before retiring from public office. He died in 2013 at 95 years old.

These are well-known facts concerning Mandela. Believers in the Mandela Effect insist the timeline was changed and history altered from what originally happened.

Mandela Effect causes

You could devote enough words to fill a college term paper chronicling all the purported examples of The Mandela Effect you’ll see outlined in other articles and videos on the topic. Generally, these alterations fall into a few basic categories.

• Corporate logos and brand names.

• Book, movie, and TV show dialogue/scenes

• Book, movie, and TV show titles

Theories explaining why these changes occur are truly out-of-this-world. One popular theory proposes the world actually ended in 2012 when scientists discovered the subatomic Higgs boson particle (aka “The God Particle”) during experiments with the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. Their discovery, the theory claims, caused an apocalyptic explosion and shifted remnants of humanity into a parallel timeline with subtle alterations from the world those survivors once knew. Another popular theory says evidence of The Mandela Effect is a byproduct of glitches in a worldwide simulation that mimics the real world, and we are all part of that simulation.

Whether you claim ancient aliens are manipulating history and tampering with our memories or you believe a primordial monster like The Suff swallowed legions of souls and trapped them in a state of temporal purgatory, you'll likely find devoted believers in The Mandela Effect who will embrace your theory. Still, Occam's Razor offers a solution to inconsistencies in mundane details of daily life. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

What is the simplest explanation for The Mandela Effect?

People have faulty memories.

Can we honestly expect the average adult who struggles to remember where they put their car keys to have perfect recall of movie lines and corporate logos from their childhood? There's a reason why eyewitness testimony is sometimes unreliable in court cases. Two people can witness the same event or hear the same speech and their memories of it will vary significantly from what was actually said or done only a few hours afterward.

That in a nutshell is The Mandela Effect: misremembering details from the past.

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Encounters with ghosts or phantom vehicles on isolated roads are a staple of modern folklore. These campfire tales are found in every part of the world where automobiles are a prevalent mode of transportation.

Many stories of phantom vehicles or roadside ghosts follow a similar basic template:

• Travelers see a mysterious person or vehicle while traveling at night on an isolated road.

• Travelers interact with them in some fashion only for said person or vehicle to unexpectedly vanish without a trace, thus revealing their ghostly nature.

One notable urban legend falling into the phantom vehicle category is The Ghost Bus of Highway 93.

Highway to the Danger Zone

Stories concerning The Ghost Bus of Highway 93 — also known as The Ghost Bus of Union Pass — began circulating on the internet in the early 2000s. Encounters with the phantom bus are said to occur on a stretch of Highway 93 running between Phoenix, Arizona and Laughlin, Nevada.

According to the legend, Bus 777 disappeared along this stretch of highway while transporting 48 passengers on a gambling excursion to some Nevada casinos. Some retellings place the incident in the early 1990s. Others claim it happened in the early 2000s. The story goes that Bus 777 overheated as they neared Union Pass. The bus driver wanted to stop and wait for another bus to take the travel party into Nevada. Passengers vetoed that plan and urged the bus driver to keep going. The bus finally broke down before climbing the summit at Union Pass. The bus driver refused to go any further. Angry passengers stole his shoes and kicked him off his own bus. They pushed Bus 777 up and over and climbed aboard again before it started down the hill. Nobody saw the bus passengers alive again and the bus never reached its destination. The driver was later found wandering along the highway shoulder without shoes, in an incoherent state.

In the years since Bus 777 disappeared, eyewitnesses claim to have seen a phantom bus wandering that stretch of Highway 93. It will suddenly emerge from the darkness and tailgate the motorist who sees the bus. When the bus draws close enough, it reveals silver chrome tears dripping from its headlights. Then the bus passes over or through the other vehicle and quickly melts into a silvery pool on the road ahead. The pool soon vanishes, but the motorist is left with an unshakable eerie sensation that bus passengers are now riding in their vehicle.

Origins of the Bus

The legend of the Ghost Bus of Highway 93 is a relatively modern tale compared to many urban legends. It can be traced back to a October 2003 article published by Jim Cook, a former journalist who once worked for the Arizona Republic.

Cook earned a reputation for spinning tall tales after retiring from journalism. He wrote a newsletter called The Journal of Prevarication as a vehicle for these colorful stories and posted it at a now-defunct website. His original article on The Ghost Bus of Highway 93 has been reproduced and circulated numerous times since 2003 until earning urban legend status.

If you’re an author, isn’t that the dream — to see a story you create transform into a part of popular folklore?

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Skeletons are often associated with darkness and death in folklore. That’s why the skull and crossbones doubles as a common symbol warning for everything from poison to pirates. If you live in England, or pay a visit there, you’ll soon discover skulls also play a prominent role in poltergeist folklore.

Tales concerning screaming skulls date back many centuries in England. Screaming skulls earned their name because they are said to cause all sorts of poltergeist activity — with emitting unearthly blood-curdling screams being their chief claim to fame. These skulls are said to wreak tons of supernatural havoc when they are removed from their preferred abode.

Screaming skull activity seems to not have spread beyond England’s borders. It’s been suggested stories revolving around these haunted skulls are rooted in ancient Celtic myths concerning the head.

Here are a few notable places where screaming skulls can allegedly be found:

Bettiscombe Manor

The most famous screaming skull can be found at this manor, which is not open to the public. A popular legend suggests this skull belonged to a slave of Azariah Pinney. He had been brought from the West Indies by Pinney and lived a short miserable life at Bettiscombe Manor. Pinney’s slave had a dying wish for his body to be returned to the West Indies. Pinney ignored his request and buried the body in a local churchyard. Incessant screams and groans from the grave, coupled with poltergeist activity in the manor, forced Pinney to dig the slave’s corpse up and store the dead body in his attic. The body eventually crumbled away until only the skull remained. Attempts to remove the skull through the years are said to have triggered renewed unearthly screams and other poltergeist activity throughout the manor.

Tests done on the skull have dated it to the Iron Age and revealed it came from a European woman who lived between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago. That means we can definitively mark down the Pinney tale as spooky folklore.

Wardley Hall

This hall houses the skull of Ambrose Barlow, a Catholic priest who was martyred in 1641. Barlow was hanged, drawn, and quartered. His head was then put on display at Lancaster Castle. It was eventually taken to Wardley Hall and is preserved in a niche at the top of the main staircase. One legend claims a servant threw the skull into a moat. A terrible storm arose soon after, convincing the owner of the hall that skull was exacting revenge for being removed. He drained the moat and returned the skull to the hall. The hall’s owner placed it out of reach of anyone else who wished to toss out the relic.

Burton Agnes Hall

Built during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Burton Agnes Hall was constructed by three daughters of Sir Henry Griffiths. Before the hall was completed, one sister named Anne was fatally stabbed in an attack. Anne made her other two sisters promise to remove her head from her body and keep it in the hall forever. Anne's sisters ignored her request. Once the new hall was finished, it became plagued with strange moans and other ghostly sounds. When the surviving sisters could no longer bear the noise, they went to the family vault determined to carry out Anne's final wishes. They found their sister's head now separated from the torso. Peace returned when they took the skull back to the hall. A disbelieving servant later tossed the skull onto a passing wagon. The horses immediately reared up in fear at an unseen menace, the hall trembled, and pictures fell off the walls. Anne's skull was quickly restored to its former place on the wall and eventually bricked up inside the house to prevent anyone from ever removing it again.

You can read about stories of other screaming skulls at Real British Ghosts and Occultopedia. Screaming skulls are truly a fascinating slice of paranormal folklore.

If you want to nominate specific folklore or urban legends to be covered in a future Folklore Friday article, feel free to leave a comment below.

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Stories of ghost ships are found throughout modern folklore. These legends usually center on a ship and its passengers disappearing without a trace and later returning from beyond the grave to haunt the same body of water where they first vanished. Wyoming is home to a different variety of ghost ship legend that is much creepier.

The Death Ship of the Platte River details a legend of a ghostly vessel that reportedly appears every 25 years on the North Platte River in Wyoming where it is cursed to sail forever. The ship is said to be an omen of doom, foretelling a death on the same day when the ship is seen.

The Death Ship Arrives

Witnesses of the death ship report that it rises from a thick mist or rolling fog bank. As the ship draws closer, things take a horrifying turn. Sails, masts, and the deck are coated with a sparkling frost. The ship's crew stands on the deck also coated with the same frost. Crew members huddle around a corpse as the ship approaches.

The corpse’s identity is the most startling part of this legend. When the crew steps back from the body, it is always revealed to be a person known and loved by the witness or the witness themselves. This turns out to foreshadow the death of that person later that same day.

Famous sightings

Alleged sightings of the Death Ship of the Platte River were first reported in the 19th century. Each sighting occurred on an autumn day during the afternoon. Reports of these sightings were supposedly collected by an organization known as the Cheyenne Bureau of Psychological Research.

A trapper named Leon Webber claimed to have seen the ship in 1862. Webber reported it carried the body of his fiancée. When he returned home a month later, Webber learned his fiancée tragically died on the same day he saw the apparition.

Gene Wilson, a Wyoming cattleman, reported another sighting in 1887. Wilson witnessed the ship’s captain order a piece of frost covered canvas lowered to the deck. Laying on the canvas was his dead wife, her face burnt from a fire. He raced home only to find his house burned to the ground and his wife lying dead about 100 yards from the smoldering ashes.

A third sighting in 1903, from a homesteader named Victor Hiebe, reported gallows on the ship when it appeared while he chopped down a tree on his riverfront property. A man’s body swung from a noose on the gallows and Hiebe recognized it as his best friend who had been convicted of murder. The same friend reportedly escaped from prison earlier, but Hiebe soon learned he had been captured and executed on the same day the ship appeared.

Each account of a ghost ship carrying the body of a soon-to-be deceased person is heavily inspired by an ancient Greek myth detailing how Charon ferried souls of the dead across the river Styx surrounding the underworld.

Want to nominate folklore or an urban legend to explore in a future Folklore Friday feature? Comment below.

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In Hell’s Shadow Goes Wide

Exciting news! My short story, In Hell's Shadow, is now available at major booksellers outside of Amazon. If you enjoy ghost stories and campfire tales, I highly recommend checking out In Hell’s Shadow today. You won’t be disappointed.

I originally published In Hell’s Shadow to Kindle Unlimited but pulled the story after three years. I accumulated less than 500 total page reads during that time, so keeping my story in KU no longer made sense. The successes of Hiding from Shadows and Hollow Planet — my other short stories — outside of KU made distributing all my stories wide an easy decision.

You can buy In Hell’s Shadow direct from my Samak Press store. It’s available in your choice of epub, mobi, or pdf format for 99 cents (USD). (Hiding from Shadows and Hollow Planet are also available direct from Samak Press in the same eBook formats).

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A paperback edition is also available on Amazon. I’m also working on offering an audiobook version in the near future.

Petrified resides in that class of quirky words which pepper the English language. Two wildly different meanings are attached to this word. Science uses it as a descriptor for organic matter that turned to stone during the fossilization process. A second definition turns petrified into a synonym of terrified, describing a person so scared they are unable to move.

One Utah-based urban legend combines the science and terror components in an ominous way.

Escalante Petrified Forest State Park is ground zero for extreme bad luck. The ancient trees are fun to check out if you take a day trip to that part of Utah. Local legends also warn these remnants from millions of years ago can be harbingers of doom for hapless souvenir seekers.

Pure bad luck

Escalante Petrified Forest State Park is a popular destination for hiking and camping. Visitors also can enjoy kayaking, canoeing, and paddleboarding along the shores of Wide Hollow Reservoir in the park. There are tons of fun things to do there if you're an outdoor enthusiast.

The fun ends if you abscond with a piece of petrified wood from the forest. It isn't a harmless souvenir according to legend. A curse on the park states anyone who steals petrified wood from the state park becomes a magnet for bad luck. They will experience nothing except misfortune for the rest of their life until they break the curse by returning the petrified wood is returned to its home.

What form does this streak of bad luck take? Everything from public embarrassment to serious accidents and illnesses. The curse is powerful and knows no boundaries in punishing souvenir seekers.

Packages of misfortune

A testament to the petrified wood curse can be found in the park’s visitor center. Letters from dozens of past state park visitors chronicle their bouts with bad luck after pilfering samples from the petrified forest. Some letter writers claim their luck only turned good again after they returned the petrified wood where they found it.

Other past visitors take it a step further and mail packages of stolen petrified wood back to the state park. Some returned samples weighed as much as 30 pounds and were mailed to Utah from all over the world. Anywhere from six to 12 such packages are shipped to the state park each year.

One letter accompanying a returned piece of petrified wood detailed how letter writer suffered multiple broken bones, a fire in his motor home, and a car engine failure after the warranty expired in the span of a single year after stealing petrified wood from the forest.

Origins for the curse

No solid evidence exists for when stories of the curse at Escalante Petrified Forest State Park first started. Stories surrounding the curse date back to the 1930s. It appears the curse isn’t limited to the state park in Garfield County. Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona also carries tales of a similar curse inflicted on petrified wood thieves.

This bit of modern folklore serves a singular purpose of deterring people from stealing. Folklore where thieves meet with misfortune isn’t uncommon since these types of stories often double as cautionary tales against dishonesty. Superstitions aside, petrified wood thieves do risk suffering one specific real-world consequence. If they are caught in the act, they can expect to pay a stiff fine since it’s against Utah state law to steal petrified wood from the Escalante Petrified Forest State Park.

Is there specific folklore or urban legends you would like to see featured in a future Folklore Friday feature? Let me know in the comments below.

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Smashwords Sale

This weekend only at Smashwords you can get 50% off the regular list price for Alien People Chronicles trilogy and Hollow Planet. This is an exclusive offer for readers of this newsletter that lasts until Sunday.

Use code JVP6N for the Alien People Chronicles and use code E6QJL for Hollow Planet at checkout. Happy reading!

I enjoy a good time travel story.

Back to the Future is one of my all-time favorite movies. Imagine hopping inside a DeLorean and going backward or forward in time once your car reaches 88 miles per hour. The idea captures my imagination and a compelling story populated with well-rounded characters makes it work.

One central theme Back to the Future explores is changing our past to improve our future. Early in the movie, Marty McFly is in a poor working-class family stuck in a miserable situation. Biff Tannen — a lifelong bully of Marty’s father George McFly — is a major instigator of their problems. When Marty is inadvertently sent back to 1955, he helps his teenage father learn how to stand up for himself against Biff. Once Marty returns to 1985, his life and the lives of his family have changed for the better.

Time travel stories have been a staple of film and literature from the beginning. It’s only natural for this storytelling device to also infiltrate modern folklore and urban legends.

Time slips

Imagine walking along a busy street. Without warning, your surroundings change. Unfamiliar buildings and vehicles greet your eyes. People around you are dressed in strange clothing. The whole scene appears as though someone ripped it straight from a black-and-white photograph dating to the early 20th century.

You have experienced a time slip.

Time slips are a common phenomenon in modern time travel folklore. These moments describe how one person – or multiple people – inexplicably enter a time and place different from their own. Such journeys are usually brief. These accidental time travelers stick around only long enough to take in their unfamiliar surroundings before returning to their own time as if nothing ever happened. Each time slip story describes seeing out-of-place buildings and vehicles, strangely dressed people, and an acute sense of disorientation for the traveler.

Evidence of time slips will occasionally be presented in the form of early photographs or video clips to try to bolster claims of being factual events. One such photograph purports to depict a hipster traveler at a 1941 bridge opening in British Columbia who is dressed in clothing and sunglasses seemingly more modern than other people in the photo. A video clip of the 1928 premiere of a Charlie Chaplin film called The Circus shows a woman going to the premiere who is allegedly holding a cell phone to her ear as she passes by the video camera.

Accidental travelers

Several time slip tales will depict travelers from the past or the future — or even parallel timelines — who journey to the present time of the story. Travelers from the future will share warnings about upcoming cataclysmic events and vanish once more. People who pop up from the past — or a parallel timeline — generally act disoriented before disappearing again.

One popular example of this time slip variation is the tale of The Man from Taured. According to the story, a traveler was detained in a Tokyo airport in 1954 after presenting a passport from a European country named Taured. He subsequently vanished from the high-security room where airport officials detained him, never to be seen again. (Snopes has a good breakdown on where this particular urban legend originated, if you want to check it out.)

The Man of Taured and other such stories are usually rooted in embellished newspaper accounts of specific boring events or variations on sci-fi stories from the mid 20th century. This tracks with how ancient myths and folklore grew out of stories orally transmitted from one generation to the next.

Bottom line: Your chances of slipping through a crack in time are about the same as getting struck by lightning on your living room couch while an asteroid simultaneously lands on your house — just as you win the jackpot in the Powerball lottery.

Hollow Planet update

My forthcoming novella, Hollow Planet, is now available to pre-order at several major retailers. You can reserve your ebook at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play, and Smashwords. The release date is scheduled for April 11th. I plan to also release a paperback edition the same week.

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Snipes are imaginary animals who form the basis of a popular practical joke and maintain an enduring presence in North American camping folklore.

If you've ever spent time at a summer camp or gone camping with a troop of boy scouts in the United States or Canada, chances are good you've participated in a snipe hunt – either willingly as a perpetrator or unwillingly as a victim. Snipe hunts are simple pranks pulled on unsuspecting newcomers to drum up cheap scares and laughs.

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Going on a Snipe Hunt

Snipe hunts begin when a group leads a hunter to a spot in the woods at night and gives them a large bag or pillowcase. The hunter receives instructions to make odd noises to draw a snipe from its hiding place. Other group members retreat, promising to flush out the snipe and chase it toward the hunter. The rest of the group merely returns to camp, leaving the hunter alone in the dark to eventually figure out they have been tricked and left holding an empty bag or pillowcase.

Wild descriptions of a snipe are shared with the would-be hunter to set the stage for the prank. Snipes can take any shape or form that suits the purposes of the prank. Descriptions can include creatures who resemble variations of birds, snakes, rabbits, squirrels, and other small animals. Sometimes, a snape can take the form of a deer-like creature or other larger animals. The goal is to drum up fear and get adrenaline pumping before turning the victim of the prank loose in the woods.

Snipe hunts can include a variation that targets multiple victims instead of a single hapless individual. In this variation, pranksters return to the campsite with a bag or pillowcase containing a captured snipe after a successful group hunt. The hunters play up the danger posed by the captured snipe and then it manages to escape unseen from the bag – sparking fearful reactions from victims of the prank huddled around a campfire.

Snipe Hunt origins

Evidences of snipe hunts in North America date back to the 1840s. Snipe hunts gained popularity with boy scout troops and at summer camps in the early 20^th century. This activity functions as a rite of passage where older campers mock newcomers before accepting them into the wider group. The central idea driving a snipe hunt is a desire to trick a victim into going on a fool's errand or wild goose chase. It is ultimately designed to embarrass or ridicule them over their naivety.

Variations of the snipe hunt exist outside North America. In France, Hunting the Dahut is a popular practical joke. Participants hunt a dahu – a legendary creature said to resemble a mountain goat that allegedly inhabits France as well as parts of Switzerland and Italy. Spain has gamusino hunts. The gamusino is an imaginary animal with no defined description.

Ironically, snipe is a term for a genus of 26 bird species that inhabit marshlands and can be found throughout the world. Hunting these types of birds is quite difficult because of their erratic flight patterns and ability to camouflage in marshland. The military term sniper arose originally to describe hunters skilled in marksmanship in regards to bagging species of snipe birds.

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Many people are familiar with the Loch Ness Monster. Stories involving Scotland’s most famous resident are a fixture in popular culture. Still, the Scottish highlands do not have a monopoly on sightings of alleged sea serpents or prehistoric dinosaurs.

Payette Lake — located near McCall, Idaho — is home to Sharlie. Also known as Slimy Slim or the Twilight Dragon of Payette Lake, Sharlie is name of a sea serpent who allegedly lives in the freshwater mountain lake. This cryptid is one of multiple famous Idaho lake monsters. (The Bear Lake monster is another prominent example).

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First reported sightings

Payette Lake is a natural lake in central Idaho originally formed by retreating glaciers after the end of the last ice age. The lake is surrounded by pine and fir trees and plunges to a depth of 392 feet at its deepest point near the northwest shore. It spans nearly eight square miles.

Native American tribes who spent summers in Long Valley steered clear of Payette Lake. The tribes feared the calm waters of the deep alpine lake, believing an evil spirit lurked below the surface.

The first documented sighting of Sharlie did not occur until 1920. A crew of railroad workers cutting logs to use for railroad ties spotted what appeared to be a huge log floating in the waters of the lake’s upper end. Then the “log” moved forward in a wave-like motion and created a wake before rapidly disappearing from the area.

Another sighting of Sharlie occurred in 1944. A group of people claimed to have seen the creature around the Narrows — a rocky passage between the north and south side of the lake near Ponderosa Park. What these witnesses described evokes images of a Loch Ness Monster-type creature. According to their accounts, Sharlie was at least 35 feet long and possessed a dinosaur-type reptilian head with a pronounced jaw, camel-like humps, and shell-like skin.

By August 1944, 30 people had seen the lake creature that year alone according to an article in a national magazine. A reported sighting in 1946 pegged Sharlie as being 40 feet long and leaving a wake akin to a small motor boat after diving into deeper waters.

Sharlie is Born

Before 1954, Sharlie was popularly known as Slimy Slim. Local residents decided their creature needed a better name. The editor of the McCall Star News held a national contest to choose a new name. Sharlie, the eventual winning selection, referenced a line from a popular radio show starring Jack Pearl.

Sharlie is celebrated in McCall each year. Everything from floats at the McCall Winter Carnival parade to ice sculptures celebrate this mysterious sea creature. Her name adorns several area businesses.

One theory accounting for the reported Sharlie sightings is that witnesses actually saw occurrences of a seiche (a standing oscillating wave that naturally occurs in lakes or bays) in the lake’s waters or misidentified sturgeons that routinely migrated into Payette Lake before dams were built on the Snake River in the 1970s.

Lake monsters like Sharlie can also be tied to a cultural fascination with dinosaurs and other extinct animals that lived millions of years ago. Many people embrace the idea that these ancient creatures somehow survived mass extinction events and are living in the modern world hidden among us.

Sharlie is also a modern descendent of ancient sea or lake-based folklore. Tales of sea serpents and sea monsters became a staple among virtually any ancient civilization that dwelt near a large body of water. These tales usually arose as an explanation for strange real animals like squids or unusual weather phenomenon. Stories of Sharlie and other lake monsters show those folkloric traditions live on in the 21st Century.

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If you’re a superstitious type of person, then Friday the 13th is traditionally ground zero for sending bad luck and misfortune out into the world. Why is this one specific day singled out as the mother of all bad days?

Turns out that our cultural fears of this specific date on our calendar are rooted in ancient mythology and religious folklore. Long before it became synonymous with an undead murderer in a hockey mask, Friday the 13th earned a reputation as an omen foretelling death and chaos.

Friday the 13th origins

Biblical legends helped shaped our negative perception of Friday the 13th with their negative view of both Friday and the number 13.

Western culture and middle eastern culture have long viewed 12 to be a sacred number. 12 signifies completeness or wholeness. That’s why you have 12 Olympian gods in ancient Greece, 12 tribes of Israel, 12 months in a year, and so forth. 13 is considered an imperfect number in this context and seen as a harbinger of doom.

Christian tradition holds that 13 guests attended the Last Supper — Jesus and his twelve apostles. Judas Iscariot was the 13th guest to arrive according to tradition and he later betrayed Jesus, leading to his eventual crucifixion on Friday of that week. This event helped shaped Friday as a day filled with bad luck. Earlier biblical legends specify that Adam and Eve consumed the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden on a Friday, Cain killed his brother Abel on a Friday, and the Temple of Solomon fell to Babylonian invaders on a Friday.

A mediaeval historical event contributed to fostering the fear of Friday the 13th. Officers of Phillip IV, King of France, arrested hundreds among the ranks of the Knights Templar on October 13, 1307 — a Friday. The religious order formed in the 12th century to defend Jerusalem during the crusades. The Knights Templar had acquired considerable power and wealth by the 14th century and Phillip IV wanted to curb their influence. He had many of the imprisoned Templars executed for various trumped up crimes and confiscated their treasure, cementing the perception of Friday the 13th as a cursed day down through subsequent centuries.

Even now in the digital age, you have many people who avoid doing certain activities like traveling, starting a job, buying a house, or getting married on Friday the 13th for fear of inviting bad luck. An estimated 60 million people worldwide actually suffer from friggatriskaidekaphobia — a fear of Friday the 13th.

13 is the loneliest number

Friday the 13th superstitions are an outgrowth of early propaganda against Pagan traditions in areas where Nordic and Germanic tribes converted to the Christian faith. Christians sought to decrease Pagan influence by coloring their beliefs and festivals in an unholy and ominous light.

Before Christianity took root in ancient Scandinavian and Germanic lands, pagan traditions encapsulated a much different view of both Friday and the number 13. Pagans associated Friday with the divine feminine. Our word Friday has roots in Frigga, the name of the Norse sky goddess associated with love, marriage, and motherhood. Frigga protected homes and families, bestowed fertility, and maintained social order. Marrying on a Friday, in Norse culture, invited good fortune to bless the holy union. 13 represented the number of yearly lunar cycles and was also connected to fertility — both powerful feminine symbols.

Christian leaders sought to discourage traditions celebrating these beliefs to stamp out competition from paganism. Thus they branded worshippers of Frigga and other goddesses associated with love, fertility, and magic as witches who indulged in unholy practices. The sky goddesses themselves were also branded as witches and unholy beings connected to Satan. Soon, Fridays and the number 13 became popularly associated with bad luck rather than good fortune.

The persistence of Friday the 13th superstitions in modern times attests to the success of this middle ages propaganda.

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I have a Friday the 13th surprise for readers of Strange New Worlds!

Hiding From Shadows can be purchased from major booksellers worldwide starting today. You may recall I first released this ghost story as a four-part serialized tale to readers of this newsletter back in October, 2021. Now I’ve brought this short haunting tale together in a single volume.

The eBook edition of Hiding From Shadows is available at all major booksellers and a paperback edition is also available through Amazon. I plan to create an audiobook edition in the near future. I’ll keep you all posted when it becomes available.

Hiding From Shadows will also remain here on Strange New Worlds in serialized form. You can read part one for free. The rest of the story — part two, part three, and part four — remains exclusive to paid subscribers.

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Riding an empty elevator alone at 3 am is not an activity reserved exclusively for sleepwalkers. If you believe in the legend inspiring The Elevator Game, taking a solitary ride at an hour when most people are sleeping will open a door for you to visit a disturbing new world.

The Elevator Game Origins

Social media has given rise to a new generation of urban legends spread like wildfire through the likes of Reddit and YouTube. The Elevator Game is one such legend.

The Elevator Game is said to have originated in South Korea. Accounts of the legend were shared online as early as 2014. Some stories were from people who insisted they witnessed frightening and disorienting images from another parallel world after playing the game. Other stories recounted unfortunate souls who vanished without a trace or were endlessly haunted by otherworldly beings after failing to obey rules governing the game.

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Playing the Game

If you accept the risks and choose to play The Elevator Game, you need to be inside a building with at least 10 floors. Playing at 3 am isn’t required, but it is preferrable to minimize risk of disruption. You need to ride alone and must terminate the game if anyone (other than the mysterious woman) boards the elevator before you reach your final destination.

Follow these steps to enter the other world:

• Get on the elevator alone. If anyone else enters the elevator (besides the mysterious woman) at any point, you'll need to start over once they depart.

• Ride the elevator in the following sequence:

  Fourth floor

  Second floor

  Sixth floor

  Second floor

  Tenth floor

  Fifth floor

  First floor

• Do not exit the elevator before reaching your final destination.

When you reach the fifth floor, a mysterious young woman will reportedly enter the elevator. You must not speak to her or look at her under any circumstances. She will try to spark a conversation or ask for help. Ignore her at all costs.

The Other World

Once you press the button for the first floor, one of two things will happen.

If the elevator descends, it means you’ve been denied entrance to the other world. At this point, you must exit at the first floor without looking back or speaking and try the game again at a future time.

If the elevator ascends, then you will be taken to the creepy parallel world. When the doors open at the tenth floor, you will find the entire building shrouded in darkness. You’ll find no signs of other life beyond yourself. Outside the windows, you’ll see a red cross in the distance.

Venturing outside the elevator can leave you disoriented. Phones and other electronic devices often malfunction in the other realm. You must stay focused and remember which elevator you took, so you are able to return home.

If you choose to stay in the elevator, returning to your world is as simple as pressing the button for the first floor. You made need to press it multiple times to get it to work properly.

If you exit the elevator, you will need to return in the same elevator that brought you to the alternate dimension or else you become trapped in that realm. Follow the same floor sequence you used to get to this point. (Some variations of the legends say you need to punch in the floor numbers in reverse order.)

When you reach the fifth floor again, do not let the elevator return you to the tenth floor. Press a button to any other floor to stop it and proceed to the first floor again. Check your surroundings when you’ve returned to the first floor and make sure everything is back to normal before exiting the elevator for good. You will have to repeat the floor sequence if even the smallest details seem out of place.

Once you’re assured you’re back to your world, exit the elevator. Do not look back or speak. Leave the building and return home as soon as possible.

The Mysterious Woman

Ignoring the young woman who hitches a ride with you is emphasized repeatedly in The Elevator Game legend. Do not answer her questions. Say nothing to her. Do not make eye contact. Simply acknowledging her presence can put you at risk.

If you speak to the woman or look at her, the legend warns that she will be revealed to be a ghost or demonic being who can abduct you or follow you home and endlessly torment you. This part of the lore obviously sprang from a deep-rooted cultural fear of talking to strangers.

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Think twice about journeying past a random hollow tree the next time you decide to explore your local forest. You may inadvertently disturb an agropelter — a fearsome, rarely seen cryptid prone to exacting vengeance on unsuspecting humans.

Agropelters are not as commonly known as Sasquatches (aka Bigfoot) but they still occupy a fascinating little niche in North American forest folklore.

What is an agropelter?

Agropelters are creatures said to inhabit dense forests from Maine to Oregon. They make their homes inside hollowed out dead trees and are rarely seen because of their natural quickness. One eyewitness account described an agropelter as a creature possessing a slender, wiry body with an ape’s face and long, muscular whiplike arms.

Agropelters are said to subsist on a diet of hoot-owls and woodpeckers. Scarce food supply prevents them from breeding in large numbers and, according to legend, their population only increases during leap years. Agropelter pups are always born on February 29th and the litter always arrives in odd numbers.

Agropelter attacks

Anyone who enters an agropelter’s territory will soon regret it. Agropelters are extremely vengeful creatures who will attack intruders once they venture too close to the wrong hollow tree.

With its long whiplike arms, an agropelter can snap off dead tree branches and hurl the wooden projectiles at targets with pinpoint accuracy. The branches will strike their victim with speed and force of a bullet. Such attacks will leave the target of an agropelter with a bloodied and broken body and then the creature flees in search of a new home in a different hollow tree.

Agropelter origins

Tales of agropelters first emerged from 19th century lumberjack folklore. These creatures were invented to explain why large dead tree branches snapped off without warning and struck fatal blow to any unlucky lumberjack passing underneath the impact zone. Agropelter stories were meant to be cautionary tales, alerting lumberjacks to exercise caution and to always be aware of their surroundings when chopping down trees in a dense forest.

Agropelters also served as a folkloric explanation for why some people disappear without a trace in forests and wilderness areas. Again, the underlying purpose of agropelter tales seems to be a warning for hikers and campers against exploring unfamiliar trails. The reality is careless exploration can lead to getting lost or injured, increasing the risk of dying from exposure to the elements or becoming an evening meal for a hungry wild animal.

Sleep paralysis is a common condition that occurs when a person is unable to move or speak while their body transitions between states of wakefulness and sleep. It’s a condition that’s inspired folklore through the centuries. Before modern medical science shed more light on what causes sleep paralysis, shadowy evil creatures were often blamed for the occurrences of this condition.

One such shadowy creature is the boo hag. Stories of boo hags first originated in the Gullah cultural region covering parts of the coastal plain extending through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

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What is a Boo Hag?

Boo hags are a blend of a witch and a vampire. These creatures differ from a vampire in one key aspect. They draw their power and gain sustenance from stealing their victim’s breath rather than their blood.

A boo hag has no skin in their natural state. They are red from head to toe. They will steal a victim’s skin to conceal their true appearance, wearing it as a person wears clothing. The boo hag will remove and hide this skin in a safe place before they go on the prowl at night.

When a boo hag identifies a suitable victim, they will enter the victim’s home through a small crack, crevice, or hole. The creature will position themselves over their victim and ride them. They will draw out their breath as they ride, rendering their victim unable to move or speak. Soon they force them to sink into a deep sleep filled with unpleasant dreams.

The boo hag prefers to leave their victim alive, so they can feed on their breath and gain additional energy later. If their victim struggles, the boo hag will steal their skin and leave them to suffer a painful death in their bed. If they don’t resist, the victim will awaken short of breath and feeling drowsy but otherwise have no memory of what transpired during the night.

How do you defeat a Boo Hag?

Boo hags have a specific vulnerability. These creatures must be back in their skin by dawn after feeding during the night. If they are outside their skin when the sun rises, they will remain trapped in that state forever. Boo hags fly off to their home after feeding and their skin so they aren’t caught in this position.

Much like a vampire, boo hags are compelled to count certain objects. Boo hag legends say a person can protect themselves when they sleep at night by placing a straw broom beside their bed or across the floor in front of their door. When the boo hag sees the broom, it will become distracted. They will feel compelled to count the straw in the broom and are unable to complete the task before sunrise. This deprives them of a chance to ride their victim and steal their breath.

If you find a boo hag’s hidden skin, you can prevent that specific hag from slipping back into their skin by coating it with salt and pepper. The boo hag will be repelled by the salt and pepper and will be unable to don their skin again before sunrise, thus trapping them in their raw red natural state forever.