Forteana

Figure caught on camera at Chester Castle among accounts of eerie goings on at historic properties

The dubious paperback

It was 27 October 1954, a typically crisp autumn day in Tuscany. The mighty Fiorentina club was playing against its local rival Pistoiese.

Something was wrong with the squirrels of Appalachia. It was the fall of 1968, and they appeared to be making a sudden pilgrimage: attempting improbable swims across lakes, sprinting over highways and bursting into buildings. One squirrel, while fleeing, climbed into a critical piece of infrastructure and reportedly short-circuited power to much of Clarkesville, Georgia. “The squirrel,” the wire services reported, “was also extinguished.” The highways were lined with hundreds of dead squirrels. One scientist spotted 13 squirrels swimming due north across the reservoirs of North Carolina. Nothing could make them turn around. Assuming the squirrels must be starving, concerned citizens began sending boxes of acorns and hickory nuts to the afflicted areas, and grocery stores put up signs encouraging shoppers to feed the squirrels.

An underwater camera set up 55 years ago to try and photograph the Loch Ness Monster has been found by accident by a robot submarine.

Declassified CIA documents claim that the mystical Ark of the Covenant was located by a psychic decades ago in the Middle East as part of one of the intelligence agency’s experimental, secret projects in the 1980s.

Claims that researchers discovered previously unknown structures beneath the Pyramid of Khafre — the pyramid situated in the center of the Great Pyramids of Giza — using radar technology circulated online in March 2025.

Something lurks in the shadows of our rural . Similar incidents play out in farms, stables, rural estates, golf courses, utility holdings, landfill sites and even nature reserves across the country. Large cats, mainly resembling black leopards (also known as panthers), but also sometimes mountain lions, and, very occasionally, lynx, are reported across such locations.

A photograph of an animal at the edge of a field in Bausley Hill, near Crew Green, sparked speculation that a “panther” or “big cat” was prowling around the countryside.

A Baldock resident is "convinced" that a big cat is roaming the fields and countryside near the town, after revealing he has seen a "big black animal" on a number of occasions.

Thousands of children in England have been accused of witchcraft over the past decade, according to new figures that come alongside a film released on Monday.

Bald men in Mozambique could be targets of ritual attacks, police have warned, after the recent killing of five men for their body parts.

KANO  -  Five men have been sentenced to death by hanging in Nigeria’s Kano state for the 2023 murder of a woman they accused of witchcraft. The convicted men attacked Dahare Abubakar, 67, as she was working on her farm, beating and stabbing her to death. 

A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood could face trial after a DNA test indicated the blood was hers.

The truth is out there and Canadians think they should know about it — but they don't want to pay for research into reports of strange objects spotted in the night sky.

All eyes are on the Red Planet once again after a bizarre ‘square structure’ on the Martian surface caused a cosmic commotion online.

A man’s ongoing efforts to track down the elusive sasquatch in remote areas of British Columbia suggest he’s capable of working, and therefore not entitled to spousal support, a judge has ruled.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said Wednesday he believes aliens have underwater bases on Earth.

A podcast promoting claims that non-verbal autistic children can read minds briefly knocked Joe Rogan off the top of the charts this month, which made the Science Weekly team wonder, how has science attempted to prove or disprove the existence of mind reading? To find out, Ian Sample speaks to Chris French, emeritus professor of psychology at Goldsmiths University. They discuss how scientists have tested this phenomenon, what else could be behind the apparent ability of some people to read minds, and why the idea is still so popular

A thatcher has shared his most "unusual" find made while working on a roof - a pair of shoes believed to date back two centuries.

Reported sightings of a panther or puma in Wiltshire in the last few months could well be genuine, according to a big cat expert.

For a brief moment this week, lynx have been roaming the Scottish Highlands once again. But this was not the way conservationists had hoped to end their 1,000-year absence.

There is fury tonight, even from conservationists, about the confirmed release of controversial lynx onto land near Insh Marshes by Kingussie.

Two Oregon men were found dead in a Washington state forest after they failed to return from a trip to look for Sasquatch, authorities said Saturday.

When we think about Christmas, we probably picture mangers, glowing fireplaces, carol singers and snow-covered hills. But behind all this, there’s something much darker lurking in the shadows.

Horror fan Reece Shearsmith joins Danny to discuss some brand-new listener cases, recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall at UncannyCon.

Christmas 1973, and two young climbers experienced the most terrifying night of their lives in a bothy in the Scottish mountains. The events that took place that night would haunt one of those young men, Phil, for the rest of his life.

Two men have been arrested in Zambia accused of being "witchdoctors" who had been tasked with trying to bewitch the president.

“The Amityville Horror” house may still be “haunted” 50 years after the real-life massacre that inspired the book and movies, neighbors and a paranormal expert close to the case claim.

Over time, Fort’s readings expanded from what was known to what was not, from the lawed to the lawless. He kept uncovering anomalies, reports of raining frogs, mysterious disappearances, baffling objects in the sky. These fascinated him, and he started taking notes on them too, worrying over their meaning. Setting aside fiction, Fort now concerned himself with the nature of existence. “I see this all as a travail”, he said, “of emerging more or less a metaphysician from a story writer.”13 He arranged the tens of thousands of notes hoarded about his apartment according to some thirteen hundred categories. Compelled “orthogenetically”, he turned in November 1915 to synthesizing his notes, his thoughts on the anomalous.

A Buddhist monastery in Thailand is under investigation after authorities discovered more than 40 bodies on site which were allegedly used for meditation practices, police said Sunday.

The Pentagon's latest report on UFOs has revealed hundreds of new reports of unidentified and unexplained aerial phenomena but no indications suggesting an extraterrestrial origin.

A woman accused of being a vampire has been brought ‘back from the dead’.

President Javier Milei’s drastic austerity measures aimed at improving Argentina’s flailing economy have shown better results in recent months.

A brand new case for Halloween. Helen, her husband and baby son move into a 200 year-old house in the Lake District. At first all is fine, but one October morning they open their front door to find a pile of small stones on their doorstep.

... very credible sources have reported seeing UFOs — unidentified flying objects. Now they’re called Unexplained Aerial Phenomena, or UAP. But whatever you call them, the U.S. government has lately begun taking these mystery objects seriously. Very seriously. And it’s recruited a lot of scientists to investigate what’s behind them (albeit quietly).

Every country has its ghost stories, its mythical monsters and its ghoulish urban legends. But the United Kingdom – the home of the Gothic novel and the birthplace of paranormal investigation – may stake a claim to being the most haunted country on Earth.

It’s witching hour deep in the Nevada desert. The time of night when ghosts and demons are most likely to appear. I’m standing with a torch in an eerie, dark bedroom of the self-proclaimed “most haunted motel in America” to try and glimpse the paranormal in action.

A special Halloween episode full of new cases to investigate. Danny is joined by Evelyn Hollow and guest expert, celebrated writer and comedian Stewart Lee, a lover of ghost stories and weird folklore. Can they explain these strange real-life stories of the paranormal?

... The belief in ghosts is a funny thing. Despite there being no evidence to support their existence, ghosts have haunted humanity wherever they have settled across the planet. Every age and every culture has its own type of ghost and ghost stories, each shaped by its own peculiar context. And despite the rise of scientific thinking in the 20th and 21st centuries, the belief in unquiet spirits is still very much alive...

Activist Leo Igwe is at the forefront of efforts to help people accused of witchcraft in Nigeria, as it can destroy their lives - and even lead to them being lynched.

Most people imagine philosophers as rational thinkers who spend their time developing abstract logical theories and strongly reject superstitious beliefs. But several 20th-century philosophers actively investigated spooky topics such as clairvoyance, telepathy – even ghosts.

Halloween’s roots lie in the ancient festival Samhain. Celebrated on the evening of 31 October and into 1 November, Celts believed this was when the boundary between the living and the dead was at its thinnest. They would make offerings to their gods around a bonfire, and dress in costumes to confuse the malevolent spirits that might wander the earth.

Paranormal researcher Brian J. Cano has been investigating ghosts for 22 years now, visiting locations all across the globe.

The childhood home of the late Queen Mother, Glamis Castle, has been declared one of the most haunted places to visit in the UK this Halloween.

In 1964, two young academics clambered into a red Mini and, armed with a mountain of printed slips, set out to conduct what would become the definitive survey of English folklore and traditions for the next 60 years.

Have you ever heard of the Hexham Heads or Wolf of Allendale?

In October 1964, a young man was driving to a dance in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, when his radio began to pick up a strange frequency. At first he thought it was just tuning in to a local channel, but then voices came through discussing some kind of nuclear war – and issuing bomb reports.

We live in times where Mark Robinson and the Nude Africa porn forums are threatening to become one of the most consequential stories in American history, so you’ll excuse me if I roll my eyes at the folks who believe our reality is not absurd enough to accommodate the potential notion of visitors from another realm. If you want to know why I feel this way, I wrote 6,500 words across two articles explaining why both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and I think there’s something to UFOs (Here is part 1 and part 2).

An aristocrat 'fainted' after being visited by the ghost of his dead mother, according to an unearthed 239-year-old manuscript.

With its gray, scaley skin, protruding dorsal spines, menacing fangs and proclivity for small livestock, the mythical chupacabra has stoked both curiosity and fear across portions of the Americas for decades.

The US government is keeping tabs on any and all claims of UFO sightings as part of an ‘above top-secret’ programme, a whistleblower has alleged.

We don’t want to put you off taking the Tube, but according to legend London’s historic network and its stations are home to a whole variety of ghosts.

'Big cats' were spotted near a farm but the animals ran off before the witness could take a photo to prove once and for all the legends of 'leopards on the loose'.

'Big cats' were spotted near a farm but the animals ran off before the witness could take a photo to prove once and for all the legends of 'leopards on the loose'.

The people of Newfoundland post all kinds of photos online of the captivating things they find washed up along the island’s 17,000 kilometres of coastline. Most of the time it’s run-of-the-mill flotsam from the Atlantic. Random boat parts. A giant fish head. Sea glass. Lots of sea glass.

Nearly two-thirds of American homeowners believe that their house is haunted, according to a new survey.

A British academic believes he has stumbled on the most world-changing piece of news in recorded history.

Recently, independent journalist and author Michael Shellenberger published an article on his subscription news site, Public, alleging that a new, unnamed government whistleblower had come forward.

A recent revelation by a Pentagon whistleblower has disclosed the existence of a highly classified government program called “Immaculate Constellation.”

(ANALYSIS) Earlier this year, “God Versus Aliens” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. The documentary, directed by award-winning filmmaker Mark Christopher Lee, shines a light on the Vatican's secretive investigations into UFOs. It suggests, in no uncertain terms, that the Vatican has been quietly exploring extraterrestrial phenomena for years. Lee, to his credit, raises some fascinating questions about how the church views the unknown.

This map shows the high volume of big cat sightings across Worcestershire for the first time and suggests the powerful predators may be nearer than you think.

"We were on a camping holiday in Coleford for a week in August last year. It is the perfect location to watch deer and see the wild boar and the humbugs. One of the days we were there, we had been out for a good couple of hours and had seen deer and the wild boar and little humbugs, and it got to about 9pm and we decided to head back to the camp site.

Now conspiracy theories are the mainstream’s forte, there’s only one way a magazine on the paranormal can go: rational

A house once called Britain’s most haunted is up for sale just four years after going off the market.

The late Queen dispatched her chief scientific advisor in the dead of night to investigate the latest crop circle formation, claims a new documentary.

Online searches for big cats in Wales have surged following an increase in alleged sightings.

Libraries are usually quiet, secluded spots. But not all are as peaceful as they may seem. These six supposedly haunted libraries are said to see more than just readers and scholars perusing their stacks of books...

Skeletons are believed to dance beneath an old haunted Sussex oak tree once a year.

‘We have a demonic doll called Esther’: Kymmi Jeffrey & the Occult Family, ghost hunters

Charlie Cooper is best known for creating the sitcom This Country with his sister, Daisy May.

An office in the Pentagon investigated UFOs—and the paranormal—over a decade ago, segueing into a long saga leading to Congressional hearings and breathless news stories today. But the real story looks more like former defense officials pushing their personal mythology, rather than any cover-up of aliens.

An unassuming field next to a housing estate in Stoke-on-Trent is taking centre stage in the latest alien blockbuster - and it’s inspired by true events.