Category: Mysterious

For those of you who believe, or are at least open minded about the existence of ghosts, we’ve compiled a short list of the rumoured to be 5 of the most haunted places in the United Kingdom. Have you visited any of these places?

5. Culloden Moor, near Inverness, Scotland

On the 16 April 1746 the last ever battle to take place on British soil was fought on Culloden Moor. Here the Jacobite rebellion, vastly outnumber, was massacred there on the moor. This was the grim start to the repression of Highland customs and traditions. And as you might think, any battle as bloody as this is bound to leave a few tormented souls.

On the anniversary of the Battle of Culloden Moor, ghosts of soldiers fallen are said to rise again, and the cries of the wounded and clanking of steel weapons are heard.

4. Tower of London

Not only is the Tower of London one of London’s favourite visitor attractions, it’s also home to many inhabitants of the undead variety. And it’s no surprise really when you consider the number of beheadings, hangings and tortures that have gone on there. Some of the most sighted ghouls include the Princess in the Tower, allegedly murdered by their uncle Richard III, Anne Boleyn and the White Lady, who apparently brings a strange perfume smell with her on her hauntings.

3. Glamis Castle, Scotland

Nothing, it seems, guarantees centuries of an angry haunting like a lifetime of secret incarceration. The imposing home of the current Earl and Countess of Strathmore is supposedly riddled with secret rooms. Ghostly residents include the so-called Monster of Glamis Castle (an unkind moniker for a deformed child held here in the 19th century), a tongueless woman running around the garden, and a wicked aristocrat who loudly bemoans a lost card game.

There’s also the mysterious Grey Lady. This isn’t the late Queen Mother, born at Glamis in 1900, but rather Janet Douglas, executed on a trumped-up charge of witchcraft in 1537.

2. Highgate Cemetery, London

By night, Highgate Cemetery in London is like something out of a horror movie. Eerie crooked gravestones, headless angles covered in ivy, dark overgrown passages between the tombs, it’s no wonder this is one of Britain’s hottest ghost spot. Despite it’s chilling atmosphere, by day Highgate Cemetery showcases some of Britain’s most spectacular Gothic architecture, offering fascinating guided tours. It’s also the burial place of Karl Marx.

1. Borley Rectory

Borley Rectory is not a place for the faint hearted. Built in 1863 in Borley, Essex, UK, it’s said to be the most haunted house in England. The enormous amount of eye witness sightings suggest that even though many can be explained away as natural phenomina, a number still remain a mystery. There have been sightings of a nun patrolling the so-called ‘Nun’s walk’ with the story that she fell in love with a monk but before their plan of running away together could happen, he was executed and the nun was bricked up in the cellars. I think that’s what they call ‘tough love’!

Related: Some of the scariest places in England

When it comes to paranormal activities, most people would have a laugh and quickly dismiss it. I mean, after all there is no such thing as ghosts, aliens, demons and spirits right? In recent times, there have been quite a few discoveries that were made via science which explains that our universe may not be as simple as we think of it to be. There is a lot of phenomena that us humans, even with the help of science, cannot fully comprehend. Listed below are the examples of 6 such events.

1. Disappearing Houses

In 1971, two men in Oklahoma were working for a live feedstock company when they were called to pick up a dispenser from a certain area. When they reached the place, they saw the dispenser half full and decided to pick it up later. Before leaving, they noticed a large house sitting on a hill nearby. It seemed to be abandoned. The next day when they came back to pick up the dispenser, they found the house gone. There was no debris or any sign of it ever being there.

2. Changing Hangars

In 1935, Royal Air Force Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard was flying from Edinburgh, Scotland to Andover, England. On his way, he passed over an abandoned airfield, with overgrown vegetation and an almost collapsing hangar. Soon, there was a big storm which caused Goddard to nearly lose control of his flight. After the storm had passed, Goddard realized that his plane was going in the reverse direction. He came across the same airfield once again but this time it was lively, filled with working planes and mechanics on duty.

3. Century Old Dancing

This might not be as weird as the other points, but a 30-year-old woman who suffered from paralysis had once visited Marakhuasi in Peru. She and her friends went exploring in the woods and came across a stone cabin. She heard some strange music being played from the cabin and upon a closer look she saw that there were people dancing inside, all dressed in 17th-century dress. Before she could investigate further, she was pulled away by her friends. Nobody ever found out what was actually going on in that cabin or how the woman ended up being paralyzed after that.

4. Road Trip

In 1969, two men were driving on an empty Louisiana Route 167 en route to Lafayette from Abbeville. On their journey, they encountered an antique automobile traveling in the same direction. The vehicle was something from the 15th century, it was in pristine condition and had 1940 written on the license tag. They were even more surprised to find a lady behind the wheels who was dressed in 14th-century clothes as well as a little boy behind her. The two guys asked if she needed any help and as they pulled over in front of her, they looked back to see the lady had vanished into thin air. Apparently, the same thing happened to another traveler who was a few miles behind the two men.

5. Inhuman Pursuers

In 1972, a group of girls was on a road trip but somehow got lost. They found themselves on the edge of a cliff with no familiar surroundings. They got scared and managed to drive back in the hope of getting onto known territory. They came across a tavern and saw two men leaving. One of the girls opened her window to ask for help and the men started to shout all of a sudden and the girls quickly sped away. The two men were apparently chasing the girls in a futuristic egg-shaped vehicle. The girls managed to lose their pursuers and get back on a familiar track. The girl who shouted later reported that the two men did not look human at all.

6. War Story

German journalist J. Bernard Hutton and his colleague, photographer Joachim Brandt were sent to do a story at the Hamburg-Altona shipyards. While they were checking out the area, the sound of an air raid could be heard from above them. There were lots of plane flying above and the bombs were being dropped from the sky, exploding all around them. The two gentlemen rushed into their car and fled the scene. As they left the area, they looked back to see the sky all clear with no noise at all. Their pictures showed no abnormality either. However, eleven years later, that very same place was bombed by the British Royal Air Force. Was it possible that the two journalists somehow zoomed into the future for a brief moment?

It can be tough to get up in the mornings. Now imagine that you wake up, and you go to rise but you can’t move. Your chest is tight and your breathing is labored. You realize that you’re not alone in your room, maybe not even alone in your bed but you can’t turn to look or to defend yourself. All you can do is stare blankly at the ceiling while panic rises in your stiff body, and your voice stays locked in your throat.

The accounts that are related here are often first hand, though due to the nature of sleep paralysis and the fact that they are the product of waking dream state, readers should bear in mind that while these people may have believed this was happening at the time, science tells us otherwise.

10. Turn off the Light

Adam, a student, dozed off on the open pages of his textbook. As he nodded off, he remembered that he could hear the faint sounds of a TV downstairs. He awoke to find the room as he had left it; the light on his nightstand still on and his textbook in his hands. The first thing that seemed out of place was the fact that the room was freezing cold.

Adam was sure he could feel someone’s eyes on him, though he was alone in the room. He attempted to rise but his limbs were lead and his locked legs kept him in place. He began to panic, unsure of what was happening. The feeling of being watched grew stronger until it reached a crescendo of silence and stillness when the lamp clicked off next to his bed.

Still paralyzed he struggled internally to rise. Out of the blackness in his frigid room, Adam saw an old man floating toward his bed. The man’s eyes were nothing but bloody sockets and he was screaming and grabbing at Adam as he raged towards him.

When he again awoke, Adam recognized his nightmarish attacker as his deceased grandfather.

Murders alone are enough to send shivers down anybody’s spine, but when a murder goes unsolved and the suspect is still out there somewhere, it will leave you wanting to sleep with the lights on. Despite advances in technology, there are still a number of cases that police have simply been unable to solve for one reason of another. Here is a list of the top 10 terrifying unsolved murders.

1. Jamie Santos

On October 28, 1991, a Wheeling, Illinois emergency line operator took a strange call. A mysterious man reported that there was an unconscious woman but after giving the address, he hung up the phone.When paramedics arrived, they found Jamie Santos barely alive. She died later, and the cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation by pillow, although evidence suggested that she had struggled with her murderer.

What makes this case especially odd is the fact that on the previous day, Jamie had cancelled some of her appointments, as though she knew that she wasn’t going to make them. She was an exotic dancer, and the police suspected that one of her previous customers had committed the crime, but they weren’t able to get enough evidence to narrow down the suspects.

2. Dick Hansen

Dick Hansen, a football player, was sitting in his car and talking with a woman named Jean one night. A third car joined them, but at first they didn’t pay any attention to it. Then, as Jean, who was unfamiliar with the area, began following Dick, the third car also followed them. At first, they attempted to lose the stranger by driving sporadically on the highway, but Dick finally decided to stop and confront them.

As he approached the car, he was shot and mortally wounded. Although Jean saw the licence plate which read “49R HUGS” and believed that the murderer was from a rival team, the crime was never solved.

3. Jack Davis Jr.

In 1987, the body of Jack Davis Jr. was found in a stairwell of his Indiana University of Pennsylvania stairwell. The police determined the death accidental, claiming that he had passed out and then choked on his own vomit. However, several years later the family hired a pathologist who discovered a lack of food in his lungs which meant he had not choked. He also discovered three skull fractures.

The case was re-opened, but without any further information being discovered, it was closed again and remains a mystery to this day. Some people suspect that he had gotten into a fight and after realizing how badly they had wounded him, his attacker panicked and left him in the stairwell.

4. Blair Adams

Shortly before his death, the young construction worker from Canada displayed obvious signs that he was in fear of his life. He first withdrew all of the money from his savings account and then tried diligently to cross into America. He was initially denied because of the large amount of cash on him, so he then bought a plane ticket to Germany. However, he then returned the ticket and was able to cross into America through Seattle by using a rental car.

From there, he took a one-way plane trip to Washington D.C. and picked up another rental car to drive to Kentucky. When he reached Knoxville, a gas station attendant reported that he had trouble starting his car due to the fact that he apparently had the wrong key. He then hitchhiked to a hotel, checked in, and then left, seemingly on his own volition. 12 hours later, his body was discovered in a parking lot, half-naked and surrounded by Canadian, American, and German currencies.

5. Wil Hendrick

In 1999, this University of Idaho student was at a friend’s party when he suddenly disappeared. Initially, people suspected that he was murdered after a confrontation he had about his sexuality with people from a different party. However, the next evening his car was seen parked outside a friend’s house. The next day, it was found downtown, unlocked and without any signs of tampering or theft.

Jerry, Wil’s partner, suspected that his disappearance had something to do with a man in a refrigerated truck who had yelled homosexual slurs at Wil. The suspect was never found, but Wil’s body turned up three years later in an open field not too far from the college town.

6. Aileen Conway

In 1986, a woman by the name of Aileen Conway was found dead in her car which had been engulfed in flames. Her death was declared an accident initially, but her husband Pat discovered pieces of evidence that suggested it was murder. First of all, the car had been smothered in gasoline before the fire had started. Secondly, he found several things in the house that did not make sense: the iron had been left on, the hose was also on and filling the pool, and her purse had been left behind.

It is believed that she interrupted burglars who kidnapped her, murdered her, and made her death appear like an accident, but there are still no definite answers as to what happened to Aileen Conway on that day.

7. Angie Housman

In the midst of a cold St. Louis, Missouri winter, the little fourth-grader was last seen just eight houses from her own as she waited for the bus to arrive in the morning. It was from there that she vanished. Nine days later, her body was found, duct-taped to a tree. The discoveries that the medical examiner uncovered were gruesome and shocking. Not only had the girl died from exposure to the elements after having been duct-taped to a tree while still alive, but during the week that she was missing, her kidnapper had both tortured and raped her.

Police were able to find both fingerprint and DNA evidence on her body, but the owner of them has never been found, leaving the case unsolved.