35 Spooky Facts about All Things Supernatural

Witches in parts of medieval Europe were weighed. A witch had to be almost weightless to fly on a broom. Therefore nobody was found guilty of witchcraft at the weigh house in Oudewater.

2. Wolfgang Pauli was an Austrian theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of quantum physics. Curiously enough his colleagues found that when he was around scientific equipment constantly broke. Once, he was absent and a piece of machinery still broke, seemingly disproving the jinx, until his colleagues discovered Pauli had been passing right by the laboratory on a train the exact moment the machine broke down.

3. Racing Club of Argentina had a curse put on their stadium by their fierce rivals by burying 7 dead cats under the pitch in 1967, and oddly enough they stopped winning. It took them 34 years to find all 7, after which they won the championship the same year the last cat was found.

4. Anyone who removes Hawaiian rocks from the islands is said to be cursed. Every year people mail back thousands of pounds of rock, sand, and shells to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, many with reports of how their lives were ruined by the curse.

5. A "curse" was apparently placed on the Hanshin Tigers baseball team when they threw a Colonel Sanders statue into a Dotonbori River to celebrate their 1985 Japan Championship Series win, causing them to lose every championship after that from 1985 to present.

There is a Portuguese messianic mystic belief called Sebastianism, according to which a child King from the 16th century that vanished in battle will come back to save Portugal in its darkest hour.

7. There was a form of Icelandic witchcraft involving "Necropants" where someone would flay the skin off the legs of a friend's corpse, steal a coin from a widow, and then wear the skin with the coin in the scrotum. The ritual was supposed to bring wealth.

8. There is a large blobby mass called the ‘North Carolina Sewer Monster’ found to be living in the sewers of Raleigh, North Carolina. No one knows exactly what it is composed of and it reacts to light and heat by pulsating and retracting.

9. “The Curse of Tippecanoe” is a pattern that has been observed since 1840 where all US presidents have died in the office if they were elected in a year divisible by 20. The only exceptions to this curse have been Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush, both of whom survived assassination attempts.

10. In 1942, residents of Pascagoula, Mississippi lived in fear of the "phantom barber": a criminal who would sneak into homes at night only to steal locks of hair from his victims. Though an arrest was made, many believe it to be a setup, and the identity of the phantom barber remains a mystery.

The ‘Oscar Love Curse’ is a strong superstition that is believed to be true in Hollywood circles. According to it, a woman who is awarded the Academy Award for Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress is doomed to have her relationship fail, where her boyfriend or husband will cheat on her or divorce her soon after.

12. Traditional Chinese roofs are curved to ward off evil spirits, which apparently can only travel in straight lines.

13. In German folklore, Frau Perchta is a witch who roams the German countryside for 12 days leading up to Christmas, leaving silver coins to good children and cutting open the bellies and replacing the organs of bad children with straw and pebbles.

14. In Arthurian legend, the Questing Beast was a creature with the head of a serpent, body of a leopard, haunches of a lion, and feet of a deer. It may have inspired by third-hand descriptions of giraffes from merchants.

15. Hy-Brasil is a phantom island that is said to lie in the Atlantic Ocean west of Ireland. Irish myths described it as cloaked in mist except for one day every seven years when it becomes visible. It is listed on several early maps, but still cannot be reached.

Hoia baciu forest, the most haunted forest in the world is often referred to as the Bermuda Triangle of Romania. It's been known for intense paranormal activity and unexplained events: intense feelings of being watched, ghost sightings, bizarre-looking vegetation, UFO sightings, hundreds of missing persons, etc.

17. The Snallygaster is a legendary half-reptile, half-bird, dragon-like beast with a metallic beak lined with razor-sharp teeth that inhabits the hills surrounding Washington, D.C. and Frederick County, Maryland.

18. A girl named Anneliese Michel went through 67 Exorcisms, 1-2 per week lasting up to 4 hours. The exorcisms spanned over 10 months between 1975 and 76, at the end of which she died. Her autopsy revealed she had died of malnutrition/dehydration due to being in a semi-starvation state for almost a year while the rites of exorcism were performed.

19. The Fomorians are a supernatural race in Irish mythology who represent chaos, darkness, death, blight, and drought, often coming from the sea or underground.

20. During construction of the new Yankee Stadium, a construction worker and avid Boston Red Sox fan buried a replica jersey of Red Sox player David Ortiz underneath the visitors' dugout with the objective of placing a "hex" on the Yankees, much like the "Curse of the Bambino."

Every year, half a million Italians claim they are possessed, demanding an exorcism. Demands for exorcisms are also growing globally. In response to the rise, the Vatican even held a week-long exorcism course for 200 priests in 2018.

22. The Beast of Gevaudan is an unidentified creature that killed over 100 people in France during the 1700s.

23. In Serbian tradition, a Zduhać was a man who had the supernatural ability to defend their village from bad weather. While asleep, the soul of a Zduhać would leave their body to battle demonic beings who brought bad weather. The Zduhać would wake up tired the next day.

24. There is a Voodoo superstition that involves a woman putting her own menstrual blood in a man's food so that he will fall in love with her.

25. The superstition of the rabbit’s foot being “lucky” originates from the African-American folk spirituality known as hoodoo. It’s said that the rabbit’s feet are lucky because of their reproductive habits, so carrying a rabbit’s foot was thought to help with fertility.