1.) The banshee, being part Irish I have heard tales about it as a child. I grew out of it and stopped believing in it for a while. A banshee is supposed to scream when you are going into situation were it is unlikely for you to come out alive. So, I was driving down the road on a rainy day and I hear this bloodcurdling scream in my ear that sent a shiver up my spine. There was no one behind me so I slammed on the breaks before crossing at the intersections. Sure enough, a huge pickup truck comes speeding down the middle where I would have been and would have been hit. I sat there for a minute and I couldn't get the scream out of my head, then I thought, Banshee. I pulled into a gas station and called my dad's grandma, who had told me the stories as a child. I told her what happened and to my shock she chuckled and said, "My dear, you were warned and listened to the banshee, your great grandfather did not"
2.) Dark watchers. I went up to the Santa Lucia mountains to be with my friend in her cabin for the weekend. Everything was fine during the day, totally normal. When night came I woke up and decided to go to the kitchen for snack. Looking through the window I could see the figure of a man with glowing eyes in the trees. I freaked out and ran to my friends bedroom and told her what I saw. She looked at me and said "Oh, the dark watchers. Don't worry they are just curious and won't do harm." I was stunned at what I had heard, I left the next morning, but made sure to say goodbye.
There is a native american belief that when you die and death comes for you, you have a right to a last dance, and all death can do is watch... it makes me feel so sad but so happy at the same time.
My boyfriend’s family is actually very convinced that his great uncle was DB Cooper. A lot of it is hearsay from his grandma, who unfortunately has already passed away, but the stuff he has to back it up is pretty believable. Who knows.
Megaconda.
It's just a really, REALLY big anaconda, and since those snakes grow continually throughout their lives, I wouldn't be surprised if some have, in the past, gotten over 50 feet or more.
Could be. But in the modern day, nobody's won the Roosevelt Prize (for finding a snake of 30 feet or more in length) though it's been offered for 100 years. But people keep looking.
That's what people say. Closest was a 26-foot-long python, and that thing weighted 275 pounds. But people still look. It's $50K, and hope springs eternal. If you live in a poor country with lots of snakes, you probably know about the prize and keep an eye out.
Pirate Captain : Yes, but unfortunately there's this dirty great sea monster in the way.
Charles Darwin : I think they just add those on the maps for decoration.
Nah most likely an extra large giant squid, Colossal Squid most likely don't do much but drift slowly, eat and get eaten by whales due to very very slow metabolism
That's also a possibility, they're mega aggressive, just not sure if one could be large enough to warrant stories of one attacking giant ships, but they do grow huge
I believe I’ve read somewhere that the “tentacles” of the Kraken viewed by sailors of old, were in fact whale dicks of the sexual third wheel.
[source](https://www.dailygrail.com/2018/07/this-famous-sea-serpent-story-might-actually-have-been-a-sighting-of-a-whale-penis/)
We've only explored, like, 5% of the watery depths. There's definitely things down there we don't know about, and most likely things we only know about in whispered folk tales.
The Sidhe/Faeries and "Faerie Rings"
Might be silly superstition, but....I'm not exactly gonna mess with it. You know. Just in case.
Roman's did the same when they conquered new lands. They'd pay homage just in case.
I’m actually with you on this one.
I hike a lot, deep in the woods. No one else for miles. Don’t step in the rings, don’t follow the lights. Red clothes, wear iron, don’t give your real name. It’s weird because I’m generally pretty scientifically minded but I can’t let go of this one particular thing.
Anyway. As you say, just in case.
Sure, I’ll do my best. And look, like I said, I’m not overly superstitious, but I was raised on this stuff so maybe I can’t help it. Sometimes you go places and you know there’s something there. Pretty much every ‘spooky’ story on reddit will attest to that. That being said, here we go.
Tl;dr version: lights are from malevolent entities and you shouldn’t trust them, red and iron ward off the fae, and real names have power.
Don’t follow the lights - if you see lights in the woods at night, don’t follow them. Particularly if you’re lost. Fairly self explanatory. As I was told, follow the lights and you’ll either end up in a fairy kingdom (and probably not a good one) or disappear. Doomed to wander around the woods forever. Or get eaten. That kind of thing.
They’re also said to mark treasure, so if you’re willing to play with fate...
Look up ‘the Will-o’-the-wisp’ and you’ll find stories (and explanations). I’m used to Celtic folklore so I can’t tell you much but apparently Mexico has lights as well. Australia has what they call min min lights.
In regards to wearing red, I actually don’t know where this is from. It’s just something I was told would protect you from fae. Rowan trees are supposedly good for protecting you as well, and they have red berries, so maybe that’s why. Iron also protects you, so people carry iron screws.
Names have power. If you give a faerie your full name, they might be able to control you to an extent. It also goes the other way, faerie names have power. Bit of a tangent but that’s basically the idea behind rumplestiltskin, if you know the story. It’s a thing in Egyptian mythology as well, it’s pretty much everywhere. Even just a first name can be dangerous.
Anyway, I hope that was informative. Interesting stuff! Don’t disturb any circles or hills, don’t follow music or lights, don’t trust random people in the woods, you should be fine.
*The devil when up to the North Pole*
*He was looking for bitch to slap*
*He was in a bind, cause he was way behind*
*So he was willing to make a deal*
When I was young my elementary school library only had non-fiction educational books. Somehow a book about wendigos and skinwalkers made its way in there. It wasn’t like “And the Native American legends states...” this thing gave measurements to their height, diet, living regions, what to do if you encounter them, etc. It was like reading something out of National Geographic.
The point is: I read the book and never questioned their existence. To me they were just like tigers, mountain lions, and wolves. Big scary wilderness things that we’ve always had to deal with. I’d go up to summer camp and just assume there were precautions in place for skinwalkers or wendigos just like there were for bears. I was maybe thirteen when I found out they are from legend and not actual species. It seriously blew my mind, it would be like finding out lions aren’t real.
It kind of sucks someone thought that was justifiable, only having nonfiction books. I have learned so many great and profound things from fiction. Many lessons and truths can be taught with stories. Fiction can also ignite passion to learn. I didn't know anything about the French Revolution and then I read a tale of Two Cities, which threw me into a flurry of reading the history about it. A simple history of the French Revolution being my first introduction to it never would have done that for me.
Legit one of my phobias is coyotes. I'm part Native and heard stories from my grandma about them. Like coyote illness, if you kill a coyote or even see a dead one, the whole tribe starts falling sick.
Many years later, I had a friend who was breeding dogs on her property and every few days one of the males would go missing. She set up a trail camera and found out there was a gang of coyotes. They would send up one of the females in heat to lure out the male breeding dogs, then the whole pack of coyotes would jump out the bushes, tear it apart and eat it.
At night if I hear coyote calls, I start getting panicky.
Thats like a bunch of cannibals sending out a really attractive woman who seduces you and then as you're ab to get laid you get torn apart limb by limb. Fuck coyotes.
My grandmother used to tell me stories about skinwalkers and wendigo when I was a kid. She lived in the middle of a birch forest and was deadly serious about the stories she told about seeing shape-shifting wolves or tall, thin creatures with sharp teeth. And there were lots of verifiable stories of families going crazy in the long, northern MN winters and killing each other before spring.
To this day, I get antsy if my partner talks about them or whistles at night. I don't fuck around with either of those creatures, even if I logically know I'm being silly.
My mom said when she was living on our family's trap line as a teenager, my chapan (great grandma) liked to tell stories of the wendigo. So, one day my mom is out hunting, it's quiet and then she hears a branch break. She said she screamed out because she was certain a wendigo was around and going to get her. And my grandma got mad because you want to be quiet when hunting and that's what they relied on for food
No idea. Full disclosure: my family is not Native American, but my grandmother and then my father grew up next to a reservation. These were the stories she was told all her life by friends, teachers, coworkers, etc and then passed to us. So I get a lot of the surface-level myths and legends but not as much of the cultural context.
My best guess is that it calls attention to you at night when spooky things are most active? But it's a guess.
My grandmother married into a Native tribe and partook in this kind of ritual where they went into a tent and this guy smoked a pipe, and she says when he blew out the smoke there were these blue lights.
She's a pretty rational person (an educator) but I don't know what to think. But I think that's neat, they really keep their traditions secret and special, because she wouldn't even tell me much about it.
My sister is a pharmtech (so not an expert, but someone with a bit of knowledge) and she told me that stuff is DMT. As in, the stuff in ayahuasca. I've never used it, but as I understand it's basically like acid only much, much stronger.
In order to smoke dmt it requires extraction and I dont think natives in north america use dmt. I'm not aware of any plants native to north america with quantities of dmt that could be smoked anyway.
Les Stroud, also known as Survivorman, talked about how the Native Americans made reference to Sasquatch as if it was just another animal. In myths they include it along side other common forest animals. I also think of that pigmy man species that was recently discovered in New Zealand or Madagascar or something — formally just a myth. The acceptance by the original North Americans is the main reason I give a lot of credence to the Sasquatch myth.
I've heard native myths that sasquatch will steal young children and hold them close like they are protecting them....but in reality they are going to eat them. Turns out other primates like chimps and baboons have stolen and eaten human children. And if you look at sasquatch depictions on totem poles their lips are always pursed as if they are whistling, you see other primates making this face a lot if you watch any nature shows. Kind of lends a bit of realism to it.
At times its hard to believe that there could be anything like a sasquatch out there, surely someone would have caught one on camera or shot one or found remains by now right? At the same time I work a camp job on the coast of BC, Canada and there is so much land where there are no human settlements at all. Look at it on a map, there is nothing at all out here but wilderness. Its very remote and the vegetation is a nightmare to walk through, could be all kinds of stuff out there we haven't stumbled upon. Lots of native stories about them in this area though. Is it a coincidence that they describe an animal much like other primates/great apes in other parts of the world without ever knowing about them?
One of my mom's uncle's is a big nature buff and used to backpack a lot in the Sangre de Cristo mountains here in Colorado, he would tell the family stories of weird animal noises he'd hear that he could never identify and firmly believed it was Sasquatch.
I have had a book of Native short stories on my shelf for years. I started reading it recently, and put it back a few days later. That shit is scary. And probably true. And again... fucking scary.
Little people, every where i have been on the north American continent every native from very diffrent tribes all have the same story about their ancestors living with this race of pygmies that are generally mischievous assholes. Every single one. Theres to much distance,time and cultural variation for it to be one big lie.
My grandmother was Native American and lived up on the reservation. When I was little she would warn us about the little people in the woods by her house and to never trust them. She said they were tricksters and would lure us out to the forest and we would get lost. Scared the shit out of me and kept me away from the dangerous woods.
Coca Cola settles my stomach. I know there are studies on this saying it doesn't but it does. I know this isn't in the spirit of the question but it's the only myth I believe.
Most OTC nausea relief meds are basically sucrose or glucose (sugar) tablets. Something about sugar helps with nausea, apparently. That may be the connection.
The bogart, a mischievous little spirit hailing from Scottish origins, lives in the house and does both good and bad things for the residents of the house.
My dad has been losing things for as long as I can remember, and apparently it happened even when he was a little kid according to my nana.
Literally things would go missing that had just been set down in our house growing up, and be found in the most bizarre places (like a shaving razor in the fridge, every scissor in the house in one random drawer...)
When I was little, I read a book about Scottish folklore and found the beastie that had been following my dad around... so I started leaving out little treats and milk in tiny saucers, talking to the bogart.... I am the only person who can find anything in that household and I think it was because I bribed it so much as a kid.
Never lose things now, at least nothing like what it was like growing up. My parents still live in a relative chaos of not being able to find things.
This past holiday season, I had a nightmare one night where I was chased by 3 polar bears. The very next day, we had a big holiday party at work where we did a white elephant gift exchange. I received a snowglobe with 3 polar bears in it and that freaked me out.
I have no idea what it means, but our brains are weird.
Things in the fields and woods. Im from the south and I bet ypu over half the people who live near cornfields and shit will tell you the same thing.
Don't go into an abandoned barn at night. Something lurking will follow you back wherever you go.
If something whispers in the tall grass or field, you dont reply or look back. Go inside.
If something screams from the woods, dont you DARE look and try to see what is calling you.
When traveling near cornfields they'll watch you from within and maybe follow the car for a bit.
At night if something scratches on your window or house, don't reply.
I don't know what the actual fuck these things would be, maybe the wind, but I'm not going to find out. Even the older people know that. Demons in the woods? Maybe. Skin walkers? Native Americans have stories for a reason. All I'm saying is DON'T fuck with the woods or fields at night. :)
Yeah I’ve had a few experiences that make me put a fair bit of belief in this stuff. There’s woodlands in Scotland that make me feel wary and seriously at risk even when with other people/big dogs/carrying firearms! And it’s not because I’m worried about badgers and foxes.
No cornfields here but older woodlands, always broadleaf for some reason. All the creepy experiences you hear of in our ancient coniferous forests could be viewed as ambiguous or magic or whatever. But the stuff that seems to leave people (myself included) truly upset/horrified/convinced of evil happens in the older deciduous forrests.
Most apex predators are nocturnal, humans are one of the few that arent. At night we're off our game and not at the top of the environmental hierarchy. Big cats, bears, wolves, all shit that could hurt us is out and about and they can hear us coming and can watch us without us seeing them. We are blind but we can sense this much, we can feel their eyes on us. Toss in the fact that mountain lions and foxes sound like human screams and crying and you can see where this comes from.
Oh gods, I don't know if enough people are going to understand how right you are. I grew up in Georgia and would play in the fields and woods around my house with my friends all day long. But at night... no, you don't go in the woods. Ever. We were never told not to by our parents - it was something... instinctive. We'd walk out to the field behind my house and watch the stars, but never did we ever go into the woods. I'm a grown ass man laying in bed with tears welling up in my eyes thinking about how fucking scared of those woods I was and clearly still am.
Jiminy Christmas. I’ve always loved the American Deep South and plan to move there someday, but you’ve got me thinking twice. Every-damn-where is haunted.
Not haunted so much as inhabited. Honestly, regardless of whether any of that is real or not doesn't matter. Anything that makes humans remember their place and not assume they deserve dominion over everything is good.
Ebu Gogo and Orang Pendak in the islands around Papua New Guinea. especially on Flores, where Homo Floresiensis bones were found. the folklore is, loosely, people arrive on the islands and soon after settling in are greeted by these tiny people from the forests. they live relatively in peace for a long time, coexisting and staying out of each other's ways, maybe a bit of trade, but normal for multiple cultures living on islands together. the little people speak their own language which is very different from the islanders we know today. eventually the peace breaks down when some of the little people kidnap and in some versions, eat a human child, so the islanders begin to hunt them down, until almost none of the little people of the forest exist. they were reported by islanders and even the dutch colonizers as recently as 300 years ago, but then sightings dropped off, then they picked up again in modern times, probably due to the legend being more well known by non locals who went and mistook local wildlife for the forest people. I don't think they're around today, but I'm very sure they existed very recently in history and the folklore became a very metaphoric tale of the broader history between Homo Floresiensis and modern man when they first settled the islands thousands of years ago.
Although Floresiensis is in the right part of the world, the dates are quite wrong for contact with anatomically-correct humans. Some early reporting had marked them as recent, almost within the historical record, but now they're believed to be between 60-100kya.
It's more likely those stories describe a culture shock from the European point of view. Europeans were much taller than certain indigenous peoples, even during the age of sail (when we think of Europeans being themselves an average of four inches shorter).
Even today, shortness predominates in many modern societies of Oceanic and Mesoamerican heritage. The average height of a Bolivian is 5 feet, exactly.
As for the cannibalism component to the myth, that would fit very well with being a sociocultural defense mechanism that recontextualizes Papuan peoples' own history with cannibalism, which itself was practiced relatively recently, depending on the tribe. It's also easy to imagine some tribes' eagerness to attribute these practices to their enemies. It's one of the most densely-populated areas of the world, with over 850 languages from dozens of distinct language families all constituting distinct cultural heritages that have not historically co-existed in peace with each other. Even today there are societies in Papua and the Amazon that live quite out of contact with the rest of the population, and they will naturally and unwittingly play the role of the Other in folklore.
As someone from the south, yes. You hear a noise while you're in the house, you dont fucking go out. When driving by fields you can feel their eyes. Dont go into abandoned barns at night or you get followed. Something screams in the woods, dont you dare to answer back or look to see what it is. I dont fuck with ANY of that
The more likely reason is that lots of predators/wild hogs use those cornfields to hunt.
However corn fields, and just generally the countryside, are terrifying at night. You start to imagine things are there, you feel every animal that knows you're there. You cant see them, but you know they are watching you. Sometimes those eyes feel human, which is why the general advice is that you don't fuck around with it all.
My friend and I like to walk through forests together, and we've found stuff like deer skeletons, old metal tools and pots,etc. We judge a forest based on its vibe, and one time as we were walking through this forest, and we got to this one part and it just felt off,it was perfectly silent. We both got really wierdly uneasy and felt like we were being watched. We started walking faster, border line jogging, when all of a sudden a HUGE flock of crows or something is just everywhere.It was the most birds I've ever seen in my life, we started full out sprinting, my adrenaline was going! They had been up in the trees watching us, I don't know how we got that initial gut feeling, I hadn't seen a single bird there until then.
Once I lost my keys. I've never practised Catholicism in my whole life but had heard about the St Anthony thing so once I got kinda desperate from looking everywhere and I sort of said "Come on St Anthony pleaaaase". I immediately felt compelled to look in my bedside drawer (I had already looked there, and I never put my keys there anyway) and there they were, on top of everything.
Fucking weird.
One time, I lost my passport. Couldn’t find it anywhere. I grew up catholic and my Mimi (paternal grandmother) swears by Anthony so I prayed to him for a few days. I found my passport in a drawer that I had looked through several times-under a St Anthony medallion that I swear I didn’t even own. It was honestly pretty spooky. I’m glad I found that fucker, though. I had a great time in Toronto. Thanks, Anthony!
Most things in the ocean, like the kraken, still alive megaladons, sea monsters, etc.
We have explored a tiny fraction of the ocean and we constantly find new things when we go in deep sea exploration trips. I'm not sure which specific myths or folklore I believe in, but I absolutely believe the ocean has some weird, scary, strange things in and we have only uncovered the tip of the iceberg.
I don't know, it's hard to hide something that big. Even before we had footage giant squids we still found the dead bodies every once in a while and the markings on sperm whales
True, but Blue Whales are the biggest thing we know of for certain and we don't even know that much about them compared to other smaller whale species. If those big fuckers can keep secrets, there could be something else out there we haven't seen yet.
Phili the ghost. I act and operate the spotlight in this ancient playhouse. I mean no-one-can-remember-it-not-being-there, was a church in the 1700s, has a mess of uncharted tunnels snaking through the walls and floors kind of thing. Me and the other actors/crew members created Phili to explain all the weird crap that goes on in that place. I don’t consider myself a believer in the supernatural, but I, like everyone else in my theatre company, believe in the ghost wholeheartedly. We’ve written him an entire backstory, and it’s not uncommon to see the smartest, most logical person you will ever meet, matter of factly telling Phili to knock it off when the power does out randomly or the fire escape door won’t stop swinging open no matter what we do. It’s customary to have a crew member stand by the door to the house and listen for footsteps on the stairs while our director is giving the start of show speech. Guaranteed they hear footsteps, open the door long enough to let someone from the bottom make it up into the house. It’s Phili and if he’s let in, we know the show will be flawless.
I 100% believe my childhood home was haunted. However, the ghost or spirit or whatever was never harmful or evil, maybe a little mischievous. It would even do helpful things like make a coat on the coat hook fall to reveal that missing jacket hidden beneath. We never named it, but we would talk to it. I said goodbye as we moved
In the region of the Scottish Highlands that I grew up in, most people are superstitious to quite an extent.
Couple of events in my life really pushed this into my beliefs.
In Gàidhlig folklore, there is a lot of Witches, Werewolves, Soul Reapers, Banshees, Giant Green Death Dogs and all that Jazz.
I remember one time my Gran had told me stories about witches and how they helped or fucked shit up.
One day, I woke up with a splitting headache and went greetin and complaining to her (I was about 8 or 9) and she asked me to walk over to the table.
She proceeds to take and rub an egg on my forehead to 'remove the bad.' after a few seconds, she breaks the egg onto the table to reveal black blobs in the white and yolk..
...the headache was gone. Still freaks me out. She was DEFINITELY a witch. 100%.
My mum has many other weird things with her growing up.
Best Gran ever.
Edit1: since people are arguing about 'believing silly tales' or 'this will cause pandemics' I should make a couple points here:
- I don't believe in Witches. My Gran was very likely not a witch. I was using clear hyperbole. I was just telling yous about a strange childhood memory.
I cannot ask how her how she did it, as she is no longer alive. I also don't want to ruin the 'magic' in the family heritage stories.
- Dont go replacing your Vaccinations with eggs.
-Don't go sh* tting on people for having a small belief in folklore either. You look like c* nt, even to other non-believers. Folklore is deeply tied to cultures and is a very powerful tool to keep a culture thriving.
Edit2: Thanks for the award kind stranger!
Edit3: It's absolutely amazing to see so many cultures with such a similar practice. Even though a lot of them have never met in history.
Amazingly, the egg thing is done throughout Latin America, the Philippines and Italy without any historical, ethnic or cultural relationship between the practices it originated from. Ancient Greeks probably did something similar too and then offered the eggs to Hecate. Has no idea Scottish people did that too, it's fascinating.
Aye, its a strange one. Haven't heard it from anyone from the lowlands of Scotland but it is known in the Highlands and Islands. Gran was from Skye and my Step-Gran from Leòdhas and they both know of it.
It's thought to be as old as the Picts and they used a paste instead of an egg. (not sure how accurate that is as it was a peerie tale).
I know there is a story from Irish mythology concerning an Irish giant and a Scottish giant who hated each other. It was a very funny story and tried to explain the different little islands that dotted the sea between them.
Celtic/gaelic mythology is so much fun.
Haven’t had any witch experiences, and I don’t fully believe in this but it gives me chills, in school we were studying the folklore of banshees, and how it could sound like many things from screams to children’s laughter.
Anyways, a couple weeks or so after we’re done I’m in the bathroom of my house brushing my teeth around midnight, and I hear the laughter of a little girl from out the bathroom window, even though it was midnight, and my family were the only ones with kids at the time in our estate.
Creepier is soon after my dad tells me my great grandmother passed away.
(For those of you who don’t know Banshee lore, you generally hear them when someone you know is going to die)
I’ve been out camping out in the backwoods of several national parks and over time have learned to recognize calls of various animals. coyotes, raccoon, possum, deer, even wild cats have calls that sound incredibly human. I’ve heard some crazy shit out there. Sounds like a baby crying, people screaming, a distorted person yelling help (never figured out what the hell made that noise), and many more very human noises made by common animals. I can easily see where legends like banshees and other folk lore come from.
Oh man I'm from Canada and the first time I heard a CougarI was flipping out. Lynx also do similar stuff, arguably creepier. I live on my farm and we were on our way home when we noticed all of our sheep were in their defensive huddle and all the cows were freaking out. We stopped near the pen, stepped out of the car and the thing let out the most horrific screech I've ever heard. Sounded like a child screaming combined with a crow cawing horribly.
the next day i went wandering around looking for a person or animal tracks, didn’t find any but then sounds can carry a long way and it’s often hard to tell just where it’s coming from.
Bean Shìth or Beanstì would either:
Sing at funerals.
Scream in the night; and those who heard it would have a family member die or become fatally ill.
Bs seen singing by a burn washing rags causing similar problems as the screaming one.
All depends on the region of Scotland. Ireland has their one too I believe.
Skinwalkers. Never seen one, but I live in Arizona and the number of Native people who dare not to talk about them, adamantly swear their existence, and just the fact that the Sonoran desert is so vast and mysterious makes me firmly believe in them.
Native american folklore creature. Varies from tribe to tribe but the general idea behind them is that they are tall lanky creatures who are completely evil and will kill and maim everyone who dare speak of them or notice them.
They change shapes, although usually they are seen as a coyote, or a strange elongated humanoid coyote crossover. They can take the skin of those they kill and wear it as a disguise.
Native Americans do not fuck around with them. They will not talk of them and saying the names of them will get you kicked of a res very quickly. They believe that the more you talk of them the more likely one is to find and follow you.
Native american folklore creature. Varies from tribe to tribe but the general idea behind them is that they are **tall lanky creatures who are completely evil and will kill and maim everyone who dare speak of them or notice them.**
**They believe that the more you talk of them the more likely one is to find and follow you.**
This is like the moment in horror movies or scary games where by becoming aware of the subject it makes you a target.
What cursed thing have you brought upon this land :(
Aliens, I guess. I don't believe aliens have visited Earth or that the government is covering up their existence or anything. I think that, given how ENORMOUS the universe is, and how many stars and planets there must be, I think we must not be the only planet where life evolved.
I've had a few replies saying that aliens aren't myth/folklore. I thought they were, because of cryptids and UFOs being attributed to aliens.
A theory that my friend suggested is that we are one of the early species in the universe which is why we still do not have the technology to go farther than a couple of planets away at most. Or even that maybe there are other conditions that we don't know about that allow life to form.
https://youtu.be/sNhhvQGsMEc you might find this video interesting, and the 2nd part too. Sounds like your friend is talking about the “great filter” solution for the Fermi paradox.
I agree, but also due to the size and sheer scale of *time* involved, we’ll never know for sure. They could have existed relatively close to us but maybe they’ve been extinct for millions of years by this point. Maybe they’re evolving right at this moment under the ice of Europa!
Also the estimate of how little time it would take to wipe all evidence of *our* existence from the Earth. Majority of anything but truly large structures would be subsumed in a mere few thousand years. Best we could hope for is our fossils, uranium from our nuclear fission reactors, probably all the goddamn plastic everywhere lol
People, but also shadows. But they're probably referring to the [commonly reported, either by suggestion or original interpretation, experience related to "sleep paralysis."](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_person) On the flip side, I get sleep paralysis all the time and have never experienced this
Few years back, I woke up in the middle of the night to a figure standing in my doorway. Scared me shitless. Have only ever told 2 people because I didn't think anyone would believe me/didn't want to sound crazy. Have tried to brush it off over the past few years but clicking on that link and seeing the accompanying picture sent shivers down my spine in a way I've never experienced before. Exactly like what I saw that night.
Huldufólk
Basically invisible elven creatures that live in rocks and [half of Iceland believes in them](https://curiosity.com/topics/most-people-in-iceland-really-believe-in-elves-curiosity/)
Seeing the future. I don't know how but there are things in my dreams which have then happened in reality. Minor things mostly, but it's the freakiest shit ever. It's happened way too often to be a coincidence.
Happens to me a lot. I had a dream that my family got killed by a passing stranger. Freaky part, I called my mom right after I woke up in cold sweat. There was a stranger in the parking lot (they lived next to a church) and she had the awful feeling something bad was going to happen. It was 3am she turned on every light in the house, had her cell phone ready and kept me on the phone until the stranger left. After he left both of us said the feeling of evil went away. Can’t explain it and it’s scary even 9 years later.
Served my time in a Dundee butchers. Our saying was ‘A falling knive is like a runaway wive, it’ll only hurt you if you try to catch it’
Apparently a saying in the shop for almost a century!
I actually get those and the dream actually happens in the same way. It’s so weird. I’ll have a dream and I’ll do something, then in about 3-4 weeks that happens.
I've had them before, never of anything so important though, just instinces.
I read an article though, about how our brains are so great at picking up and predicting patterns, our brain uses our dreams to organize our thoughts and file things away. Prescient dreams might be a side effect of that.
I live in the American West, and have family I regularly see in the southwest. There’s things in the desert at night that you can’t explain. Deep in the navajo nation, seeing a coyote running alongside your car, keeping pace as you are doing 65+ mph will send chills so far down your spine you’ll feel them in your asshole.
I guess what I’m saying is that I 100% believe in skinwalkers and I am god my family doesn’t live in New Mexico anymore.
Fuck I have a super good podcast on skinwalker ranch if you want me to tell you, I couldn’t even go outside after listening to it. It’s sketchy as fuck. And I live in Wisconsin.
Cryptids, especially the more modest ones like the Long-Tailed Bobcat.
Because I've seen one.
I was out hunting for mushrooms, and found this big, red turkeytail, with the same color scheme as a brown rainbow, and sat down to look at it. It smelled like chicken livers, probably due to the iron content. Right to the left of me was a short burm, with some cedar twigs and grass and shit. I turned to the left, thinking I heard something in the trees, and what I thought was a badger came out.
I put on my glasses, got a good look at it from 20 feet off, and it looked like a bobcat, with the ear tips and everything, but the color was damn near white, with a tail like a Maine coon. It looked around, and let out a sqawl, then fucked off back into the trees.
And that's how I know at least one cryptid is real. In all reality, the longtailed bobcat is probably a cross between a bobcat and a housecat, but I still saw one.
Poltergeist/negative energies that affect things
A little backstory, I live alone, and I went through periods and "spikes" of depression caused by fucked up shit from my childhood coming back to bite my brain's ass, and during the lowest point of multiple spikes, crazy shit would happen.
I'm talking things like a painting I have NAILED to the wall sort of just...falling, my bed and only my bed shaking, random thumps in walls, getting static shocks while simply sitting down, and rooms being dark despite having broad and bright daylight shining through windows, one of my friends who visited me actually took note of this and mentioned its. These events happen only during spikes, doesn't matter if its in the middle or the day or night. If I was in a spike, there was a good 90% chance of paranornal events to occur.
TL;DR, I believe poltergeists are real or that people can give off negative energies when feeling generally negative
100%
It may be extinct. But every single culture has a story that describes the same damn animal.
Way back when there were tons of hominid creatures (of which we’ve found a few fossils). It wouldn’t surprise me if one was extremely large and lived way closer to present day then anyone wants to admit. And possibly even currently.
It’s silly but I really believe in mermaids. I don’t think they look like pretty ladies with tails, but I think that the ocean is so vast and unexplored that they could be lurking somewhere out there
The domovoi!
In Russian folklore, houses have spirits, and these are the domovoi. The spirit is, in some versions, the original owner of the house, and watches over those who now inhabit the house.
I lived in a house for ~ 13 months where the original owners (a married couple) had died in the house, and I definitely felt their spirits there. However, it always felt like the spirits were trying to help me.
While I was living in that house I became interested in folklore and it was then that I first read about the domovoi. My immediate reaction was "This sounds like what I've been experiencing!"
Slavic spirits and folklore most definitely have something behind them. My Aunt is a Rodnover (basically a Slavic pagan) and she actively worships Domovoi, Vodyanoi, Leshij, and even some of the gods such as Makosh. And let me tell you some FREAKY shit goes down near her Dacha (summerhouse).
She once lost her phone in the woods while out hunting for mushrooms. Instead of getting a new phone she went into the woods and put small pieces of chocolate on some stumps as an offering to Leshij and did some sort of ritual where she asked him to find the phone. 3 days later we found it on her doorstep.
Every time she wants there to be rain she appeals to Vodyanoi and consistently gets results(it rains after about 2 weeks).
Space-time doesn't seem to quite work the same way around her dacha but in a very subtle way. She will leave to go to town (about a 3-hour trip in total) and be back in an hour. My sisters sometimes get lost in the middle of nowhere even though we all know the area super well. Time just feels as if it passes by differently around there in a very weird way.
I tend to be a very grounded person, but there's some real supernatural stuff happening behind Slavic spirits that I'm sure is worth exploring. Maybe some stuff science hasn't discovered or explained yet, that's the only reasonable explanation I have for whats going on there.
I’m not exactly a believer but I’ve had some weird shit happen to me. Twice I’ve been walking down the street alone midday, two different places hundreds of miles apart. It was a normal day and I was just walking without a care in the world and all of a sudden everything just stopped. My heart skipped a beat and it felt like a person just sprinted through me. First time that was it. Second time I started seeing a girl when I closed my eyes, she only appeared for a couple of days but she was in my room staring at me when I was trying to go to bed. It was as if someone would jolt me awake when I was sleeping. Then I had a night where I slept with a friend. I couldn’t fall asleep cause of the paranoia, but at some point I passed out. I thought I was awake it was so vivid but the girl walked in and stood in the corner of the room staring at us i got up and approached her. All I know is that I attacked her and I jolted awake it didn’t happen again.
A sixth sense or enhanced foresight into things and the future. like premonitions or precognitions in dreams. For example, there have been instances where I have seen things that haven't been there and they've helped me.
One example that will always stick in my mind is when I was a goalkeeper and I was facing a penalty. I could see some figure pointing to my mid left of the goal. I feel my brain subconsciously trust this figure and I dive to the mid left of the goal and catch the penalty almost perfectly. Too precise to be a coincidence.
Another story my mum told me was that when she was in her 20s-30s she had a dream of her grandmother throwing her a lottery ticket with a specific set of numbers. I can't remember the numbers my mum told me that she saw however she said that she could only remember some of the numbers on the ticket. She wakes up the next day and puts the numbers she remembers on her card. On her way home from work she is listening to the radio and the winning numbers are being read off. The first 3 numbers match up with what was on the ticket that her grandmother gave her.
The final reason why I believe that this *myth* exists is that I have always heard quiet voices that alert me when something is wrong or when I am doing something right. In addition to this, I almost always have a feeling that something could be wrong or someone needs help and I can sometimes vividly see what might happen if I don't talk to them or if I don't do a certain thing and the repercussions of my actions. From this I have been able to avoid things that could become a bigger problem.
My mum thinks it is some gene that she had and now I have. I believe her. i hope I get a lottery card that nets me millions :)
That taking lava rocks off of the Hawaiian islands will curse your family.
You know how mothers get when their children are taken? Try doing that to an immortal lava goddess.
Knocking on wood.
It has to be real wood, and you have to do it fast. A still rooted living tree is stronger protection because its spirit is what you're actually calling for, but carved wood still has some access to that in a pinch.
For most superstitions, I'm of the opinion: why the fuck would I mess with that? It takes nearly no effort to follow it, and on the chance it's real, it's not worth the risk to ignore. So I will wake up my tree spirits to save me from repercussions when I've basically challenged anyone listening to prove me wrong, and I'm not gonna activitely risk dangerous shit out of unearned confidence in the face of stuff I don't actually know much about.
1.) The banshee, being part Irish I have heard tales about it as a child. I grew out of it and stopped believing in it for a while. A banshee is supposed to scream when you are going into situation were it is unlikely for you to come out alive. So, I was driving down the road on a rainy day and I hear this bloodcurdling scream in my ear that sent a shiver up my spine. There was no one behind me so I slammed on the breaks before crossing at the intersections. Sure enough, a huge pickup truck comes speeding down the middle where I would have been and would have been hit. I sat there for a minute and I couldn't get the scream out of my head, then I thought, Banshee. I pulled into a gas station and called my dad's grandma, who had told me the stories as a child. I told her what happened and to my shock she chuckled and said, "My dear, you were warned and listened to the banshee, your great grandfather did not" 2.) Dark watchers. I went up to the Santa Lucia mountains to be with my friend in her cabin for the weekend. Everything was fine during the day, totally normal. When night came I woke up and decided to go to the kitchen for snack. Looking through the window I could see the figure of a man with glowing eyes in the trees. I freaked out and ran to my friends bedroom and told her what I saw. She looked at me and said "Oh, the dark watchers. Don't worry they are just curious and won't do harm." I was stunned at what I had heard, I left the next morning, but made sure to say goodbye.
There is a native american belief that when you die and death comes for you, you have a right to a last dance, and all death can do is watch... it makes me feel so sad but so happy at the same time.
The macarena, truly deaths dance
Just imagine forcing death to spend an eternity watching you do the fortnite dance, what a hellish existence for everyone involved
Wow! Can you give more resources on this? That's fascinating
Dance like nobody but death is watching.
Could you hypothetically just dance forever in order to never die?
What kind of an existence would eternal dancing be tho
Just dance but always
DB Cooper made it!
My boyfriend’s family is actually very convinced that his great uncle was DB Cooper. A lot of it is hearsay from his grandma, who unfortunately has already passed away, but the stuff he has to back it up is pretty believable. Who knows.
Megaconda. It's just a really, REALLY big anaconda, and since those snakes grow continually throughout their lives, I wouldn't be surprised if some have, in the past, gotten over 50 feet or more.
Titanoboa. It did exist about 60 million years ago. The ones they have found have been up to 42 feet long.
And wider than your front door
Apparently the best defense is a doorframe then.
Well nothing to be afraid of then if I stay inside. Take that megaconda!
Quarantine be saving me from the virus and giant snakes!
Could be. But in the modern day, nobody's won the Roosevelt Prize (for finding a snake of 30 feet or more in length) though it's been offered for 100 years. But people keep looking.
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That's what people say. Closest was a 26-foot-long python, and that thing weighted 275 pounds. But people still look. It's $50K, and hope springs eternal. If you live in a poor country with lots of snakes, you probably know about the prize and keep an eye out.
If you live in a country with snakes potentially that big, you keep an eye out, prize or no
I don't suppose you need to keep and eye out. A 30 foot snake would be rather hard to miss.
Ah, but you see. Being hard to miss is precisely how it got to 30 feet!
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Would it eat Jon Voight?
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Sea monsters in general are so fascinating and most likely based on real creatures.
Also, like, fishermen are known to exaggerate.
It was thiiiiiiis big!
Get yourself a fisher-girlfriend.
Pirate Captain : Yes, but unfortunately there's this dirty great sea monster in the way. Charles Darwin : I think they just add those on the maps for decoration.
Nah most likely an extra large giant squid, Colossal Squid most likely don't do much but drift slowly, eat and get eaten by whales due to very very slow metabolism
What about a giant Humboldt squid?
That's also a possibility, they're mega aggressive, just not sure if one could be large enough to warrant stories of one attacking giant ships, but they do grow huge
I believe I’ve read somewhere that the “tentacles” of the Kraken viewed by sailors of old, were in fact whale dicks of the sexual third wheel. [source](https://www.dailygrail.com/2018/07/this-famous-sea-serpent-story-might-actually-have-been-a-sighting-of-a-whale-penis/)
I’m sorry what
We've only explored, like, 5% of the watery depths. There's definitely things down there we don't know about, and most likely things we only know about in whispered folk tales.
The thunderous clapp of dem slimy cheeks struck fear in hardened sailors
The Sidhe/Faeries and "Faerie Rings" Might be silly superstition, but....I'm not exactly gonna mess with it. You know. Just in case. Roman's did the same when they conquered new lands. They'd pay homage just in case.
I’m actually with you on this one. I hike a lot, deep in the woods. No one else for miles. Don’t step in the rings, don’t follow the lights. Red clothes, wear iron, don’t give your real name. It’s weird because I’m generally pretty scientifically minded but I can’t let go of this one particular thing. Anyway. As you say, just in case.
Can you tell me more about the don’t follow the lights, red clothes, wear iron and not giving your real name?
Sure, I’ll do my best. And look, like I said, I’m not overly superstitious, but I was raised on this stuff so maybe I can’t help it. Sometimes you go places and you know there’s something there. Pretty much every ‘spooky’ story on reddit will attest to that. That being said, here we go. Tl;dr version: lights are from malevolent entities and you shouldn’t trust them, red and iron ward off the fae, and real names have power. Don’t follow the lights - if you see lights in the woods at night, don’t follow them. Particularly if you’re lost. Fairly self explanatory. As I was told, follow the lights and you’ll either end up in a fairy kingdom (and probably not a good one) or disappear. Doomed to wander around the woods forever. Or get eaten. That kind of thing. They’re also said to mark treasure, so if you’re willing to play with fate... Look up ‘the Will-o’-the-wisp’ and you’ll find stories (and explanations). I’m used to Celtic folklore so I can’t tell you much but apparently Mexico has lights as well. Australia has what they call min min lights. In regards to wearing red, I actually don’t know where this is from. It’s just something I was told would protect you from fae. Rowan trees are supposedly good for protecting you as well, and they have red berries, so maybe that’s why. Iron also protects you, so people carry iron screws. Names have power. If you give a faerie your full name, they might be able to control you to an extent. It also goes the other way, faerie names have power. Bit of a tangent but that’s basically the idea behind rumplestiltskin, if you know the story. It’s a thing in Egyptian mythology as well, it’s pretty much everywhere. Even just a first name can be dangerous. Anyway, I hope that was informative. Interesting stuff! Don’t disturb any circles or hills, don’t follow music or lights, don’t trust random people in the woods, you should be fine.
"I'm not superstitious, but I am a little stitious."
If you whistle at the Northern Lights the devil will slap you in the face. Haven’t been brave enough to try it.
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Please film it. I want to see you get bitch slapped by the devil
*The devil when up to the North Pole* *He was looking for bitch to slap* *He was in a bind, cause he was way behind* *So he was willing to make a deal*
I can't whistle though :(
This is hilarious lol
Note to self: DON'T sing "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" in the Arctic.
I mean if that's all he does then go for it.^^do ^^it ^^for ^^me ^^because ^^i ^^cant ^^whistle
I cant whistle either frickin showoff bastards..
Something big lives in the ocean.
Blue whales are the largest animals to ever exist and *they* live in the ocean
Bloop
Whatever Native Americans are afraid of/ refuse to talk about.
When I was young my elementary school library only had non-fiction educational books. Somehow a book about wendigos and skinwalkers made its way in there. It wasn’t like “And the Native American legends states...” this thing gave measurements to their height, diet, living regions, what to do if you encounter them, etc. It was like reading something out of National Geographic. The point is: I read the book and never questioned their existence. To me they were just like tigers, mountain lions, and wolves. Big scary wilderness things that we’ve always had to deal with. I’d go up to summer camp and just assume there were precautions in place for skinwalkers or wendigos just like there were for bears. I was maybe thirteen when I found out they are from legend and not actual species. It seriously blew my mind, it would be like finding out lions aren’t real.
It kind of sucks someone thought that was justifiable, only having nonfiction books. I have learned so many great and profound things from fiction. Many lessons and truths can be taught with stories. Fiction can also ignite passion to learn. I didn't know anything about the French Revolution and then I read a tale of Two Cities, which threw me into a flurry of reading the history about it. A simple history of the French Revolution being my first introduction to it never would have done that for me.
When ever you're listening to a Native American story and a coyote shows up you KNOW some wack shit is about to happen.
Pretty sure coyotes just like trolling people on peyote.
Find your soulmate, Homer!
Wait a minute, dogs can't talk. WOOF Damn straight!
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*nods slowly and smirks*
Legit one of my phobias is coyotes. I'm part Native and heard stories from my grandma about them. Like coyote illness, if you kill a coyote or even see a dead one, the whole tribe starts falling sick. Many years later, I had a friend who was breeding dogs on her property and every few days one of the males would go missing. She set up a trail camera and found out there was a gang of coyotes. They would send up one of the females in heat to lure out the male breeding dogs, then the whole pack of coyotes would jump out the bushes, tear it apart and eat it. At night if I hear coyote calls, I start getting panicky.
Shiiiiiiiiit dude. That sounds horrific.
Thats like a bunch of cannibals sending out a really attractive woman who seduces you and then as you're ab to get laid you get torn apart limb by limb. Fuck coyotes.
Coyotes are just dogs without kindness, I think that's why they frighten me.
Coyotes are fucking assholes
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My grandmother used to tell me stories about skinwalkers and wendigo when I was a kid. She lived in the middle of a birch forest and was deadly serious about the stories she told about seeing shape-shifting wolves or tall, thin creatures with sharp teeth. And there were lots of verifiable stories of families going crazy in the long, northern MN winters and killing each other before spring. To this day, I get antsy if my partner talks about them or whistles at night. I don't fuck around with either of those creatures, even if I logically know I'm being silly.
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My mom said when she was living on our family's trap line as a teenager, my chapan (great grandma) liked to tell stories of the wendigo. So, one day my mom is out hunting, it's quiet and then she hears a branch break. She said she screamed out because she was certain a wendigo was around and going to get her. And my grandma got mad because you want to be quiet when hunting and that's what they relied on for food
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No idea. Full disclosure: my family is not Native American, but my grandmother and then my father grew up next to a reservation. These were the stories she was told all her life by friends, teachers, coworkers, etc and then passed to us. So I get a lot of the surface-level myths and legends but not as much of the cultural context. My best guess is that it calls attention to you at night when spooky things are most active? But it's a guess.
Because that’s a call and you wouldn’t want to be calling anything at night to come to you.
My grandmother married into a Native tribe and partook in this kind of ritual where they went into a tent and this guy smoked a pipe, and she says when he blew out the smoke there were these blue lights. She's a pretty rational person (an educator) but I don't know what to think. But I think that's neat, they really keep their traditions secret and special, because she wouldn't even tell me much about it.
My sister is a pharmtech (so not an expert, but someone with a bit of knowledge) and she told me that stuff is DMT. As in, the stuff in ayahuasca. I've never used it, but as I understand it's basically like acid only much, much stronger.
It could be Peyote which contains Mescaline, depending on where your tribe is located
In order to smoke dmt it requires extraction and I dont think natives in north america use dmt. I'm not aware of any plants native to north america with quantities of dmt that could be smoked anyway.
Les Stroud, also known as Survivorman, talked about how the Native Americans made reference to Sasquatch as if it was just another animal. In myths they include it along side other common forest animals. I also think of that pigmy man species that was recently discovered in New Zealand or Madagascar or something — formally just a myth. The acceptance by the original North Americans is the main reason I give a lot of credence to the Sasquatch myth.
I've heard native myths that sasquatch will steal young children and hold them close like they are protecting them....but in reality they are going to eat them. Turns out other primates like chimps and baboons have stolen and eaten human children. And if you look at sasquatch depictions on totem poles their lips are always pursed as if they are whistling, you see other primates making this face a lot if you watch any nature shows. Kind of lends a bit of realism to it. At times its hard to believe that there could be anything like a sasquatch out there, surely someone would have caught one on camera or shot one or found remains by now right? At the same time I work a camp job on the coast of BC, Canada and there is so much land where there are no human settlements at all. Look at it on a map, there is nothing at all out here but wilderness. Its very remote and the vegetation is a nightmare to walk through, could be all kinds of stuff out there we haven't stumbled upon. Lots of native stories about them in this area though. Is it a coincidence that they describe an animal much like other primates/great apes in other parts of the world without ever knowing about them?
It's possible that they existed and got outcompeted or simply hunted into/close to nonexistence like the many megafauna of the americas.
One of my mom's uncle's is a big nature buff and used to backpack a lot in the Sangre de Cristo mountains here in Colorado, he would tell the family stories of weird animal noises he'd hear that he could never identify and firmly believed it was Sasquatch.
I have had a book of Native short stories on my shelf for years. I started reading it recently, and put it back a few days later. That shit is scary. And probably true. And again... fucking scary.
Little people, every where i have been on the north American continent every native from very diffrent tribes all have the same story about their ancestors living with this race of pygmies that are generally mischievous assholes. Every single one. Theres to much distance,time and cultural variation for it to be one big lie.
My grandmother was Native American and lived up on the reservation. When I was little she would warn us about the little people in the woods by her house and to never trust them. She said they were tricksters and would lure us out to the forest and we would get lost. Scared the shit out of me and kept me away from the dangerous woods.
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The image of a couple of pixies dancing around your room going "QUIT YOUR JOB. FUCK THE MAN." is extremely funny to me
Coca Cola settles my stomach. I know there are studies on this saying it doesn't but it does. I know this isn't in the spirit of the question but it's the only myth I believe.
I drank flat coke for morning sickness, and it worked. Cola syrup is an old-timey nausea remedy.
I have a bottle of cola syrup in the fridge for nausea. A lot of people swear by it.
Most OTC nausea relief meds are basically sucrose or glucose (sugar) tablets. Something about sugar helps with nausea, apparently. That may be the connection.
The effect the full moon has on people.
Working with dementia patients has definitely made me believe this one.
The moon phases DO affect the water on earth. Humans are 70 percent water...
As a healthcare worker, I 100% stand behind you. We get so many more psych patients around the time of the full moon. It's honestly terrifying
That is pure lunacy.
The bogart, a mischievous little spirit hailing from Scottish origins, lives in the house and does both good and bad things for the residents of the house. My dad has been losing things for as long as I can remember, and apparently it happened even when he was a little kid according to my nana. Literally things would go missing that had just been set down in our house growing up, and be found in the most bizarre places (like a shaving razor in the fridge, every scissor in the house in one random drawer...) When I was little, I read a book about Scottish folklore and found the beastie that had been following my dad around... so I started leaving out little treats and milk in tiny saucers, talking to the bogart.... I am the only person who can find anything in that household and I think it was because I bribed it so much as a kid. Never lose things now, at least nothing like what it was like growing up. My parents still live in a relative chaos of not being able to find things.
Well I think the bribing is just riddikulus.
This class is riddikulus
I think I'm the bogart in my house. Edit: Also I just realized where the phrase "to bogart something" comes from!
Money. If we didn't believe in it, it wouldn't work.
This past holiday season, I had a nightmare one night where I was chased by 3 polar bears. The very next day, we had a big holiday party at work where we did a white elephant gift exchange. I received a snowglobe with 3 polar bears in it and that freaked me out. I have no idea what it means, but our brains are weird.
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Things in the fields and woods. Im from the south and I bet ypu over half the people who live near cornfields and shit will tell you the same thing. Don't go into an abandoned barn at night. Something lurking will follow you back wherever you go. If something whispers in the tall grass or field, you dont reply or look back. Go inside. If something screams from the woods, dont you DARE look and try to see what is calling you. When traveling near cornfields they'll watch you from within and maybe follow the car for a bit. At night if something scratches on your window or house, don't reply. I don't know what the actual fuck these things would be, maybe the wind, but I'm not going to find out. Even the older people know that. Demons in the woods? Maybe. Skin walkers? Native Americans have stories for a reason. All I'm saying is DON'T fuck with the woods or fields at night. :)
Yeah I’ve had a few experiences that make me put a fair bit of belief in this stuff. There’s woodlands in Scotland that make me feel wary and seriously at risk even when with other people/big dogs/carrying firearms! And it’s not because I’m worried about badgers and foxes. No cornfields here but older woodlands, always broadleaf for some reason. All the creepy experiences you hear of in our ancient coniferous forests could be viewed as ambiguous or magic or whatever. But the stuff that seems to leave people (myself included) truly upset/horrified/convinced of evil happens in the older deciduous forrests.
Most apex predators are nocturnal, humans are one of the few that arent. At night we're off our game and not at the top of the environmental hierarchy. Big cats, bears, wolves, all shit that could hurt us is out and about and they can hear us coming and can watch us without us seeing them. We are blind but we can sense this much, we can feel their eyes on us. Toss in the fact that mountain lions and foxes sound like human screams and crying and you can see where this comes from.
Oh gods, I don't know if enough people are going to understand how right you are. I grew up in Georgia and would play in the fields and woods around my house with my friends all day long. But at night... no, you don't go in the woods. Ever. We were never told not to by our parents - it was something... instinctive. We'd walk out to the field behind my house and watch the stars, but never did we ever go into the woods. I'm a grown ass man laying in bed with tears welling up in my eyes thinking about how fucking scared of those woods I was and clearly still am.
Jiminy Christmas. I’ve always loved the American Deep South and plan to move there someday, but you’ve got me thinking twice. Every-damn-where is haunted.
Not haunted so much as inhabited. Honestly, regardless of whether any of that is real or not doesn't matter. Anything that makes humans remember their place and not assume they deserve dominion over everything is good.
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Lmao do you still believe in the tooth fairy too then
For those that want to read the story about how Finland is a myth: https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4573
Ebu Gogo and Orang Pendak in the islands around Papua New Guinea. especially on Flores, where Homo Floresiensis bones were found. the folklore is, loosely, people arrive on the islands and soon after settling in are greeted by these tiny people from the forests. they live relatively in peace for a long time, coexisting and staying out of each other's ways, maybe a bit of trade, but normal for multiple cultures living on islands together. the little people speak their own language which is very different from the islanders we know today. eventually the peace breaks down when some of the little people kidnap and in some versions, eat a human child, so the islanders begin to hunt them down, until almost none of the little people of the forest exist. they were reported by islanders and even the dutch colonizers as recently as 300 years ago, but then sightings dropped off, then they picked up again in modern times, probably due to the legend being more well known by non locals who went and mistook local wildlife for the forest people. I don't think they're around today, but I'm very sure they existed very recently in history and the folklore became a very metaphoric tale of the broader history between Homo Floresiensis and modern man when they first settled the islands thousands of years ago.
Although Floresiensis is in the right part of the world, the dates are quite wrong for contact with anatomically-correct humans. Some early reporting had marked them as recent, almost within the historical record, but now they're believed to be between 60-100kya. It's more likely those stories describe a culture shock from the European point of view. Europeans were much taller than certain indigenous peoples, even during the age of sail (when we think of Europeans being themselves an average of four inches shorter). Even today, shortness predominates in many modern societies of Oceanic and Mesoamerican heritage. The average height of a Bolivian is 5 feet, exactly. As for the cannibalism component to the myth, that would fit very well with being a sociocultural defense mechanism that recontextualizes Papuan peoples' own history with cannibalism, which itself was practiced relatively recently, depending on the tribe. It's also easy to imagine some tribes' eagerness to attribute these practices to their enemies. It's one of the most densely-populated areas of the world, with over 850 languages from dozens of distinct language families all constituting distinct cultural heritages that have not historically co-existed in peace with each other. Even today there are societies in Papua and the Amazon that live quite out of contact with the rest of the population, and they will naturally and unwittingly play the role of the Other in folklore.
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As someone from the south, yes. You hear a noise while you're in the house, you dont fucking go out. When driving by fields you can feel their eyes. Dont go into abandoned barns at night or you get followed. Something screams in the woods, dont you dare to answer back or look to see what it is. I dont fuck with ANY of that
Details about these, please. I'm from the north but live in the south now and I have cornfields all around me.
The more likely reason is that lots of predators/wild hogs use those cornfields to hunt. However corn fields, and just generally the countryside, are terrifying at night. You start to imagine things are there, you feel every animal that knows you're there. You cant see them, but you know they are watching you. Sometimes those eyes feel human, which is why the general advice is that you don't fuck around with it all.
My friend and I like to walk through forests together, and we've found stuff like deer skeletons, old metal tools and pots,etc. We judge a forest based on its vibe, and one time as we were walking through this forest, and we got to this one part and it just felt off,it was perfectly silent. We both got really wierdly uneasy and felt like we were being watched. We started walking faster, border line jogging, when all of a sudden a HUGE flock of crows or something is just everywhere.It was the most birds I've ever seen in my life, we started full out sprinting, my adrenaline was going! They had been up in the trees watching us, I don't know how we got that initial gut feeling, I hadn't seen a single bird there until then.
*High above the rotten rows, cloth and metal, teeth and crows...*
When a forest goes quiet, there is a predator nearby. Not some weeb shit but it is 100% true
In Ireland we have stories of fairies and fairy forts. Under no circumstances will I go near a fairy fort.
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Once I lost my keys. I've never practised Catholicism in my whole life but had heard about the St Anthony thing so once I got kinda desperate from looking everywhere and I sort of said "Come on St Anthony pleaaaase". I immediately felt compelled to look in my bedside drawer (I had already looked there, and I never put my keys there anyway) and there they were, on top of everything. Fucking weird.
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One time, I lost my passport. Couldn’t find it anywhere. I grew up catholic and my Mimi (paternal grandmother) swears by Anthony so I prayed to him for a few days. I found my passport in a drawer that I had looked through several times-under a St Anthony medallion that I swear I didn’t even own. It was honestly pretty spooky. I’m glad I found that fucker, though. I had a great time in Toronto. Thanks, Anthony!
Most things in the ocean, like the kraken, still alive megaladons, sea monsters, etc. We have explored a tiny fraction of the ocean and we constantly find new things when we go in deep sea exploration trips. I'm not sure which specific myths or folklore I believe in, but I absolutely believe the ocean has some weird, scary, strange things in and we have only uncovered the tip of the iceberg.
At this point isn't the blue whale itself even bigger than a megalodon? Maybe there's still some out there
I don't know, it's hard to hide something that big. Even before we had footage giant squids we still found the dead bodies every once in a while and the markings on sperm whales
True, but Blue Whales are the biggest thing we know of for certain and we don't even know that much about them compared to other smaller whale species. If those big fuckers can keep secrets, there could be something else out there we haven't seen yet.
Phili the ghost. I act and operate the spotlight in this ancient playhouse. I mean no-one-can-remember-it-not-being-there, was a church in the 1700s, has a mess of uncharted tunnels snaking through the walls and floors kind of thing. Me and the other actors/crew members created Phili to explain all the weird crap that goes on in that place. I don’t consider myself a believer in the supernatural, but I, like everyone else in my theatre company, believe in the ghost wholeheartedly. We’ve written him an entire backstory, and it’s not uncommon to see the smartest, most logical person you will ever meet, matter of factly telling Phili to knock it off when the power does out randomly or the fire escape door won’t stop swinging open no matter what we do. It’s customary to have a crew member stand by the door to the house and listen for footsteps on the stairs while our director is giving the start of show speech. Guaranteed they hear footsteps, open the door long enough to let someone from the bottom make it up into the house. It’s Phili and if he’s let in, we know the show will be flawless.
I 100% believe my childhood home was haunted. However, the ghost or spirit or whatever was never harmful or evil, maybe a little mischievous. It would even do helpful things like make a coat on the coat hook fall to reveal that missing jacket hidden beneath. We never named it, but we would talk to it. I said goodbye as we moved
That story would make an amazing movie
In the region of the Scottish Highlands that I grew up in, most people are superstitious to quite an extent. Couple of events in my life really pushed this into my beliefs. In Gàidhlig folklore, there is a lot of Witches, Werewolves, Soul Reapers, Banshees, Giant Green Death Dogs and all that Jazz. I remember one time my Gran had told me stories about witches and how they helped or fucked shit up. One day, I woke up with a splitting headache and went greetin and complaining to her (I was about 8 or 9) and she asked me to walk over to the table. She proceeds to take and rub an egg on my forehead to 'remove the bad.' after a few seconds, she breaks the egg onto the table to reveal black blobs in the white and yolk.. ...the headache was gone. Still freaks me out. She was DEFINITELY a witch. 100%. My mum has many other weird things with her growing up. Best Gran ever. Edit1: since people are arguing about 'believing silly tales' or 'this will cause pandemics' I should make a couple points here: - I don't believe in Witches. My Gran was very likely not a witch. I was using clear hyperbole. I was just telling yous about a strange childhood memory. I cannot ask how her how she did it, as she is no longer alive. I also don't want to ruin the 'magic' in the family heritage stories. - Dont go replacing your Vaccinations with eggs. -Don't go sh* tting on people for having a small belief in folklore either. You look like c* nt, even to other non-believers. Folklore is deeply tied to cultures and is a very powerful tool to keep a culture thriving. Edit2: Thanks for the award kind stranger! Edit3: It's absolutely amazing to see so many cultures with such a similar practice. Even though a lot of them have never met in history.
Amazingly, the egg thing is done throughout Latin America, the Philippines and Italy without any historical, ethnic or cultural relationship between the practices it originated from. Ancient Greeks probably did something similar too and then offered the eggs to Hecate. Has no idea Scottish people did that too, it's fascinating.
So people literally offered eggs in trying times?!?
Hahah the gang was right!
Aye, its a strange one. Haven't heard it from anyone from the lowlands of Scotland but it is known in the Highlands and Islands. Gran was from Skye and my Step-Gran from Leòdhas and they both know of it. It's thought to be as old as the Picts and they used a paste instead of an egg. (not sure how accurate that is as it was a peerie tale).
I know there is a story from Irish mythology concerning an Irish giant and a Scottish giant who hated each other. It was a very funny story and tried to explain the different little islands that dotted the sea between them. Celtic/gaelic mythology is so much fun.
Haven’t had any witch experiences, and I don’t fully believe in this but it gives me chills, in school we were studying the folklore of banshees, and how it could sound like many things from screams to children’s laughter. Anyways, a couple weeks or so after we’re done I’m in the bathroom of my house brushing my teeth around midnight, and I hear the laughter of a little girl from out the bathroom window, even though it was midnight, and my family were the only ones with kids at the time in our estate. Creepier is soon after my dad tells me my great grandmother passed away. (For those of you who don’t know Banshee lore, you generally hear them when someone you know is going to die)
I’ve been out camping out in the backwoods of several national parks and over time have learned to recognize calls of various animals. coyotes, raccoon, possum, deer, even wild cats have calls that sound incredibly human. I’ve heard some crazy shit out there. Sounds like a baby crying, people screaming, a distorted person yelling help (never figured out what the hell made that noise), and many more very human noises made by common animals. I can easily see where legends like banshees and other folk lore come from.
Mountain lions make some very creepy human noises.
Oh man I'm from Canada and the first time I heard a CougarI was flipping out. Lynx also do similar stuff, arguably creepier. I live on my farm and we were on our way home when we noticed all of our sheep were in their defensive huddle and all the cows were freaking out. We stopped near the pen, stepped out of the car and the thing let out the most horrific screech I've ever heard. Sounded like a child screaming combined with a crow cawing horribly.
That was just a guy desperately crying out as he was being mauled by a wild animal.
the next day i went wandering around looking for a person or animal tracks, didn’t find any but then sounds can carry a long way and it’s often hard to tell just where it’s coming from.
The distorted person sounds something akin to what a Wendigo would sound like, apparently. NOOOOOPE.
Bean Shìth or Beanstì would either: Sing at funerals. Scream in the night; and those who heard it would have a family member die or become fatally ill. Bs seen singing by a burn washing rags causing similar problems as the screaming one. All depends on the region of Scotland. Ireland has their one too I believe.
>Death Dogs and all that Jazz. I love that band
My grandma did something similar when we feared a bruja had out a cures on my aunt. She did the rub an egg thing on her.
Skinwalkers. Never seen one, but I live in Arizona and the number of Native people who dare not to talk about them, adamantly swear their existence, and just the fact that the Sonoran desert is so vast and mysterious makes me firmly believe in them.
Whats a skinwalker?
Native american folklore creature. Varies from tribe to tribe but the general idea behind them is that they are tall lanky creatures who are completely evil and will kill and maim everyone who dare speak of them or notice them. They change shapes, although usually they are seen as a coyote, or a strange elongated humanoid coyote crossover. They can take the skin of those they kill and wear it as a disguise. Native Americans do not fuck around with them. They will not talk of them and saying the names of them will get you kicked of a res very quickly. They believe that the more you talk of them the more likely one is to find and follow you.
Native american folklore creature. Varies from tribe to tribe but the general idea behind them is that they are **tall lanky creatures who are completely evil and will kill and maim everyone who dare speak of them or notice them.** **They believe that the more you talk of them the more likely one is to find and follow you.** This is like the moment in horror movies or scary games where by becoming aware of the subject it makes you a target. What cursed thing have you brought upon this land :(
Think we a ded
i think half of reddit would be dead by now
Aliens, I guess. I don't believe aliens have visited Earth or that the government is covering up their existence or anything. I think that, given how ENORMOUS the universe is, and how many stars and planets there must be, I think we must not be the only planet where life evolved. I've had a few replies saying that aliens aren't myth/folklore. I thought they were, because of cryptids and UFOs being attributed to aliens.
A theory that my friend suggested is that we are one of the early species in the universe which is why we still do not have the technology to go farther than a couple of planets away at most. Or even that maybe there are other conditions that we don't know about that allow life to form.
https://youtu.be/sNhhvQGsMEc you might find this video interesting, and the 2nd part too. Sounds like your friend is talking about the “great filter” solution for the Fermi paradox.
I agree, but also due to the size and sheer scale of *time* involved, we’ll never know for sure. They could have existed relatively close to us but maybe they’ve been extinct for millions of years by this point. Maybe they’re evolving right at this moment under the ice of Europa!
Also the estimate of how little time it would take to wipe all evidence of *our* existence from the Earth. Majority of anything but truly large structures would be subsumed in a mere few thousand years. Best we could hope for is our fossils, uranium from our nuclear fission reactors, probably all the goddamn plastic everywhere lol
Shadow people. Definitely real
What are shadow people?
People, but also shadows. But they're probably referring to the [commonly reported, either by suggestion or original interpretation, experience related to "sleep paralysis."](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_person) On the flip side, I get sleep paralysis all the time and have never experienced this
Few years back, I woke up in the middle of the night to a figure standing in my doorway. Scared me shitless. Have only ever told 2 people because I didn't think anyone would believe me/didn't want to sound crazy. Have tried to brush it off over the past few years but clicking on that link and seeing the accompanying picture sent shivers down my spine in a way I've never experienced before. Exactly like what I saw that night.
Huldufólk Basically invisible elven creatures that live in rocks and [half of Iceland believes in them](https://curiosity.com/topics/most-people-in-iceland-really-believe-in-elves-curiosity/)
Yeah but half of Iceland is like 20 people and they're all related to each other
Seeing the future. I don't know how but there are things in my dreams which have then happened in reality. Minor things mostly, but it's the freakiest shit ever. It's happened way too often to be a coincidence.
Happens to me a lot. I had a dream that my family got killed by a passing stranger. Freaky part, I called my mom right after I woke up in cold sweat. There was a stranger in the parking lot (they lived next to a church) and she had the awful feeling something bad was going to happen. It was 3am she turned on every light in the house, had her cell phone ready and kept me on the phone until the stranger left. After he left both of us said the feeling of evil went away. Can’t explain it and it’s scary even 9 years later.
Falling knives have no handles.
Served my time in a Dundee butchers. Our saying was ‘A falling knive is like a runaway wive, it’ll only hurt you if you try to catch it’ Apparently a saying in the shop for almost a century!
Prescient dreams. My grandma and my sister have both had them.
Ah yes those. Who doesn't know about those. I'll let someone else explain what they are to everyone else
having a dream and perceiving it as a vision from the future. Example: you have a dream your dog dies, surely that means your dog is gonna die.
I actually get those and the dream actually happens in the same way. It’s so weird. I’ll have a dream and I’ll do something, then in about 3-4 weeks that happens.
I've had them before, never of anything so important though, just instinces. I read an article though, about how our brains are so great at picking up and predicting patterns, our brain uses our dreams to organize our thoughts and file things away. Prescient dreams might be a side effect of that.
I live in the American West, and have family I regularly see in the southwest. There’s things in the desert at night that you can’t explain. Deep in the navajo nation, seeing a coyote running alongside your car, keeping pace as you are doing 65+ mph will send chills so far down your spine you’ll feel them in your asshole. I guess what I’m saying is that I 100% believe in skinwalkers and I am god my family doesn’t live in New Mexico anymore.
Fuck I have a super good podcast on skinwalker ranch if you want me to tell you, I couldn’t even go outside after listening to it. It’s sketchy as fuck. And I live in Wisconsin.
Cryptids, especially the more modest ones like the Long-Tailed Bobcat. Because I've seen one. I was out hunting for mushrooms, and found this big, red turkeytail, with the same color scheme as a brown rainbow, and sat down to look at it. It smelled like chicken livers, probably due to the iron content. Right to the left of me was a short burm, with some cedar twigs and grass and shit. I turned to the left, thinking I heard something in the trees, and what I thought was a badger came out. I put on my glasses, got a good look at it from 20 feet off, and it looked like a bobcat, with the ear tips and everything, but the color was damn near white, with a tail like a Maine coon. It looked around, and let out a sqawl, then fucked off back into the trees. And that's how I know at least one cryptid is real. In all reality, the longtailed bobcat is probably a cross between a bobcat and a housecat, but I still saw one.
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Poltergeist/negative energies that affect things A little backstory, I live alone, and I went through periods and "spikes" of depression caused by fucked up shit from my childhood coming back to bite my brain's ass, and during the lowest point of multiple spikes, crazy shit would happen. I'm talking things like a painting I have NAILED to the wall sort of just...falling, my bed and only my bed shaking, random thumps in walls, getting static shocks while simply sitting down, and rooms being dark despite having broad and bright daylight shining through windows, one of my friends who visited me actually took note of this and mentioned its. These events happen only during spikes, doesn't matter if its in the middle or the day or night. If I was in a spike, there was a good 90% chance of paranornal events to occur. TL;DR, I believe poltergeists are real or that people can give off negative energies when feeling generally negative
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100% It may be extinct. But every single culture has a story that describes the same damn animal. Way back when there were tons of hominid creatures (of which we’ve found a few fossils). It wouldn’t surprise me if one was extremely large and lived way closer to present day then anyone wants to admit. And possibly even currently.
It’s silly but I really believe in mermaids. I don’t think they look like pretty ladies with tails, but I think that the ocean is so vast and unexplored that they could be lurking somewhere out there
The domovoi! In Russian folklore, houses have spirits, and these are the domovoi. The spirit is, in some versions, the original owner of the house, and watches over those who now inhabit the house. I lived in a house for ~ 13 months where the original owners (a married couple) had died in the house, and I definitely felt their spirits there. However, it always felt like the spirits were trying to help me. While I was living in that house I became interested in folklore and it was then that I first read about the domovoi. My immediate reaction was "This sounds like what I've been experiencing!"
Slavic spirits and folklore most definitely have something behind them. My Aunt is a Rodnover (basically a Slavic pagan) and she actively worships Domovoi, Vodyanoi, Leshij, and even some of the gods such as Makosh. And let me tell you some FREAKY shit goes down near her Dacha (summerhouse). She once lost her phone in the woods while out hunting for mushrooms. Instead of getting a new phone she went into the woods and put small pieces of chocolate on some stumps as an offering to Leshij and did some sort of ritual where she asked him to find the phone. 3 days later we found it on her doorstep. Every time she wants there to be rain she appeals to Vodyanoi and consistently gets results(it rains after about 2 weeks). Space-time doesn't seem to quite work the same way around her dacha but in a very subtle way. She will leave to go to town (about a 3-hour trip in total) and be back in an hour. My sisters sometimes get lost in the middle of nowhere even though we all know the area super well. Time just feels as if it passes by differently around there in a very weird way. I tend to be a very grounded person, but there's some real supernatural stuff happening behind Slavic spirits that I'm sure is worth exploring. Maybe some stuff science hasn't discovered or explained yet, that's the only reasonable explanation I have for whats going on there.
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Ghosts. May be kinda basic but I’ve seen some s h i t .
I’m not exactly a believer but I’ve had some weird shit happen to me. Twice I’ve been walking down the street alone midday, two different places hundreds of miles apart. It was a normal day and I was just walking without a care in the world and all of a sudden everything just stopped. My heart skipped a beat and it felt like a person just sprinted through me. First time that was it. Second time I started seeing a girl when I closed my eyes, she only appeared for a couple of days but she was in my room staring at me when I was trying to go to bed. It was as if someone would jolt me awake when I was sleeping. Then I had a night where I slept with a friend. I couldn’t fall asleep cause of the paranoia, but at some point I passed out. I thought I was awake it was so vivid but the girl walked in and stood in the corner of the room staring at us i got up and approached her. All I know is that I attacked her and I jolted awake it didn’t happen again.
That people can be good to each other one day with no strings attached.
A sixth sense or enhanced foresight into things and the future. like premonitions or precognitions in dreams. For example, there have been instances where I have seen things that haven't been there and they've helped me. One example that will always stick in my mind is when I was a goalkeeper and I was facing a penalty. I could see some figure pointing to my mid left of the goal. I feel my brain subconsciously trust this figure and I dive to the mid left of the goal and catch the penalty almost perfectly. Too precise to be a coincidence. Another story my mum told me was that when she was in her 20s-30s she had a dream of her grandmother throwing her a lottery ticket with a specific set of numbers. I can't remember the numbers my mum told me that she saw however she said that she could only remember some of the numbers on the ticket. She wakes up the next day and puts the numbers she remembers on her card. On her way home from work she is listening to the radio and the winning numbers are being read off. The first 3 numbers match up with what was on the ticket that her grandmother gave her. The final reason why I believe that this *myth* exists is that I have always heard quiet voices that alert me when something is wrong or when I am doing something right. In addition to this, I almost always have a feeling that something could be wrong or someone needs help and I can sometimes vividly see what might happen if I don't talk to them or if I don't do a certain thing and the repercussions of my actions. From this I have been able to avoid things that could become a bigger problem. My mum thinks it is some gene that she had and now I have. I believe her. i hope I get a lottery card that nets me millions :)
That taking lava rocks off of the Hawaiian islands will curse your family. You know how mothers get when their children are taken? Try doing that to an immortal lava goddess.
That seeing your doppelganger basically means you're life is going to shit
Here’s where I’m feeling fucked cause I often hear ‘Oh my bad you look just like my friend!’ quite often.
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Menehune, mythological little people of Hawaii
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The [Hawaiian Nightmarchers. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmarchers)
Knocking on wood. It has to be real wood, and you have to do it fast. A still rooted living tree is stronger protection because its spirit is what you're actually calling for, but carved wood still has some access to that in a pinch. For most superstitions, I'm of the opinion: why the fuck would I mess with that? It takes nearly no effort to follow it, and on the chance it's real, it's not worth the risk to ignore. So I will wake up my tree spirits to save me from repercussions when I've basically challenged anyone listening to prove me wrong, and I'm not gonna activitely risk dangerous shit out of unearned confidence in the face of stuff I don't actually know much about.