Discussing - Ola88

Legio IX Hispana: a Roman legion lost in Britain, or posted east?

08/09/2026
4,923

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - Legio IX Hispana was once stationed at York and fought through ferocious uprisings in Britain. After the early second century its name disappears from the surviving lists of Roman legions. Novels an ..

The Green Children of Woolpit: legend, or a memory of refugees?

06/09/2026
5,155

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - Two chronicles from the late twelfth century relate that villagers at Woolpit in Suffolk found two children with green-tinged skin beside a wolf pit. They wore strange clothes, spoke a language nobo ..

The Man in the Iron Mask: which prisoner made Louis XIV hide a name?

05/09/2026
4,977

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - In 1669 the war minister Louvois instructed the jailer Saint-Mars to receive a prisoner named Eustache Dauger and hold him in absolute secrecy. The man followed Saint-Mars through several fortresses ..

The Loch Ness Monster: what is left after the blurry photo, sonar and eDNA?

04/09/2026
4,741

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - Loch Ness holds water so dark, so deep and so long that a ripple in the distance easily turns into the back of an enormous creature. Nessie is famous not because of a bone or a carcass, but because ..

Bigfoot: giant footprints, the Patterson-Gimlin film and the FBI's hair sample

03/09/2026
5,140

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - Bigfoot - or Sasquatch - is described as a tall, hair-covered primate living in the forests of north-western North America. Thousands of reports, plaster casts of footprints and a piece of film shot ..

The Yeti: footprints on the Himalaya and the answer from bear DNA

02/09/2026
4,679

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - The Yeti usually appears at the edge of a snow slope: a few large footprints, a dark shape, and then a storm that wipes the trail away. The image of the "abominable snowman" was popularised in the W ..

The Chupacabra: blood-sucking monster, or a coyote with mange?

01/09/2026
4,716

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - The Chupacabra is an unusually young legend. It flared up in Puerto Rico in the mid-1990s, described at first as a two-legged creature with spines along its back; by the time it reached Texas the im ..

Mothman at Point Pleasant: did the red-eyed creature really foretell a disaster?

31/08/2026
5,123

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - In November 1966, Point Pleasant in West Virginia became the centre of reports about a winged creature with red eyes. A year later the Silver Bridge collapsed, killing 46 people. Popular culture joi ..

The Jersey Devil: a thirteenth child, the Pine Barrens and 300 years of legend

30/08/2026
4,776

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - The Jersey Devil is described as a creature with a horse's head, bat wings and hooves, born as Mother Leeds's thirteenth child and flying straight up the chimney. The story looks like a colonial tal ..

The Beast of Gevaudan: what animal terrified France in the 18th century?

29/08/2026
5,014

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - Between 1764 and 1767, the Gevaudan region of south-central France recorded a series of fatal attacks, mostly on women and child herders. "La Bete" - the Beast - was described as larger than a wolf, ..

The Mongolian death worm: does Olgoi-khorkhoi really hide beneath the Gobi sand?

28/08/2026
5,060

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - Olgoi-khorkhoi - usually translated as "intestine worm" - is said to live beneath the sand of the Gobi desert, thick and red, able to kill from a distance with venom or electricity. The story reache ..

Mapinguari: guardian of the Amazon, or a memory of the giant ground sloth?

27/08/2026
4,774

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - In many Amazonian stories, Mapinguari is a creature or an entity that protects the forest, with a terrifying cry, a powerful smell, skin that is hard to pierce and sometimes feet that point backward ..

The Kraken: from ship-swallowing tentacles to a giant squid filmed in the deep

26/08/2026
5,138

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - The Kraken is a rare case of a "monster" with a relative made of flesh and bone. Giant squid of the genus Architeuthis, metres long, really do live in the deep sea, leaving drifting carcasses, beaks ..

The Beast of Bodmin Moor: what did the British government report find in the Cornish mist?

25/08/2026
4,965

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - Since the early 1980s, people in Cornwall have described a large black cat slipping across Bodmin Moor, and flocks of sheep being attacked. In 1995 the British Ministry of Agriculture sent experts t ..

Orang Pendek: is the "short person" of the Sumatran forest an unknown primate?

24/08/2026
4,957

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - Orang Pendek means "short person" in Indonesian, and describes a creature that walks on two legs, stands about a metre tall, is covered in reddish-brown hair and lives around the mountain forests of ..

The Tasmanian tiger: do sightings after 1936 prove the thylacine survived?

23/08/2026
5,048

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - The thylacine is not a legendary creature: museums hold skins, bones, preserved specimens and film of living animals. The mystery begins after the last known individual died at Hobart Zoo on 7 Septe ..

The ivory-billed woodpecker: the "kent" call, blurry video and a bird that refuses to vanish

22/08/2026
4,910

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - The ivory-billed woodpecker was once the largest woodpecker north of Mexico, living in the old-growth forests and swamps of the south-eastern United States. The last widely accepted sighting in the ..

Is megalodon still alive in the deep sea? What the fossil tooth record answers

21/08/2026
4,735

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - Megalodon really was a colossal predatory shark, with serrated teeth up to about 18 cm long and a history spanning millions of years. It is precisely that reality which makes the idea of it hiding i ..

The Thunderbird: a sacred bringer of storms, or a memory of giant wings?

20/08/2026
5,026

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - "Thunderbird" is the English name used for many powerful bird beings in the traditions of Indigenous peoples across North America, usually connected with thunder, lightning, water and the order of t ..

The Flatwoods Monster: a meteor, a barn owl and the terrifying night of 1952

19/08/2026
4,709

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - On the evening of 12 September 1952, a streak of fire crossed the sky over the eastern United States. At Flatwoods in West Virginia, a group climbed a hill to find where the object seemed to have fa ..

The Skunk Ape: Florida's Bigfoot, or a black bear standing in the swamp?

18/08/2026
5,057

World - Mysteries & the bizarre - The Skunk Ape is called "Florida's Bigfoot": a hair-covered, bipedal creature with a powerful smell, living in the Everglades and the swamps of the south. Reports increased through the 1960s and 197 ..