10 People Mistaken for Imaginary Creatures

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

10 Andrew Swofford

Apparently, some spirits of the dead are transvestites. Perhaps too embarrassed to buy clothes of their own (or too poor—most ghosts, it seems, have little or no need, as a rule, for cash, checks, credit cards, or bank accounts), one apparition decided to raid the closet Maddie, of a University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Maddie and her roommates live off-campus, in the Edge Apartments on Oakland Avenue, but it was Maddie whose shirts and pants went missing. The ghost proved more tangible than most, leaving its handprints on the apartment's bathroom wall.

 

When she heard “rattling” in her closet on February 4, 2019, Maddie went to investigate, thinking maybe a raccoon had been trapped inside. That's when she caught the ghost red-handed (so to speak). He was wearing her socks and shoes and had heisted a bag of her clothes. He tried on one of Maddie's hats, before inspecting himself in her bathroom mirror and, after complimenting her appearance, asked for a hug, but never touched her.

The ghost turned out to be 30-year-old Andrew Swofford. He was arrested on fourteen felony counts, including larceny and identity theft, and held on a $26,000 bond. Maddie and her roomies have since moved out of the apartment, having found their flesh-and-blood intruder more unnerving than the ghost they'd believed was haunting their abode.

9 Krushna Chandra Nayak

In August, 2018, forty-five-year-old Nakula Nayak and his brother Shyam Nayak, both of whom lived out of town, in Chhelianala, India, came to the village of Angikala to notify a relative, Sahadev Nayak, that their mother had died. Due to the lateness of the hour, the brothers stayed overnight with Sahadev.

Around midnight, Nakula went outside, to a field close by, to relieve himself. Coincidentally, Sahadev's cousin, Krushna Nayak, was working outdoors. The night was quite dark, and when Krushna saw  Nakula, Krushna mistook the visitor for a ghost.

 

Terrified, Krushna began beating Nakula with a lathi, a heavy, iron-bound bamboo stick. During the struggle, Nakula managed to wrest the weapon from Krushna and began to strike his assailant, believing his attacker to be a ghost, just as Krushna had mistaken Nakula for a spirit. Nakula's assault on Krushna proved fatal, and Nakula was arrested by the Turumunga police after Krushna's family lodged a complaint against him.

8 Unidentified Helena, Montana, Man

Was the shooter's reason for shooting at a 27-year-old Helena man nothing more than a lame excuse, or did the gunman really believe that his quarry, who was setting up targets on public land, a Bigfoot?

The victim told police bullets came flying at him, left and right, as he positioned the targets. When additional rounds were fired at him, he sought cover among trees. Later, he emerged to “confront” the shooter, who drove a black Ford F-150 full-size pickup truck.

The Helena man said the man who targeted him in December, 2018, had mistaken him for Bigfoot. “I don’t target practice,” he explained, “but if I see something that looks like Bigfoot, I just shoot at it.” To prevent others from making a similar mistake, the shooter suggested that his victim wear an orange vest.

Initially, police were skeptical of the man's report, because he was unable to describe the alleged shooter, did not want to file charges, and was reluctant to speak to deputies. Authorities were unable to locate a truck in the area that fit the description of the Ford F-150 pickup.

Then, a woman reported a similar incident involving a man who drove a vehicle of the same color, make, and model and had shot at her. She was able to provide a solid description of her assailant.

“We’re working to find this person,” Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton said. “It is of great concern that this individual might think it’s okay to shoot at anything he thinks is Bigfoot.” If apprehended, the shooter could be charged with attempted negligent homicide.

7 Wendy Thinnamay Masuka

In April, 2018, thirty-seven-year-old Zimbabwe pastor Masimba Chirayi killed Wendy Thinnamay Masuka while baptizing her. The adult congregant had reacted violently to the baptism, he said.

 

Her violence indicated to him that she was a “vampire possessed by demons,” and he believed that she might “kill people.” To prevent this possibility, Chirayi deliberately “kept her submerged in water until [he] overpowered her.”

Following his appearance in a magistrate's court in Zimbabwe, the pastor was granted bail.

6 Helaria Montepon Gumilid

Mistaking Helaria Montepon Gumilid, a 79-year-old widow, for an aswang (a carnivorous shape-shifter that may appear to be an ordinary person, despite “reclusive habits or magical abilities,” Helaria's daughter-in-law, Myrna Damason Gumilid, age 49, and Myrna's two sons, Rene Boy Gumilid, age 28, and Joseph Damason Gumilid, age 23, hacked her to death.

 In April, 2014, the victim had been visiting her mentally-ill grandson in Zamboanga City, Philippines, when she was attacked and killed.  Myrna, Rene Boy, and Joseph bound Helaria, “slit her armpits,” hacked her to death, and removed one of her organs to prevent her from “regenerating.”

Authorities arrested the suspects, whom they planned to charge in the horrific crime.

5 African Man

In October, 2010, firefighters responding to a report that people had jumped from the third-story balcony of a housing unit in the village of La Verriere, France, discovered seriously injured relatives among the eleven family members who'd made the leap. They also found a two-year-old survivor, a baby, and a nude African man with a knife wound to his hand. The baby later died at a hospital in Paris. (La Verriere is located on the edge of the city.)

Thirteen people were watching television in the apartment when the naked man, hearing the baby cry, rose to prepare a bottle for the child. His wife screamed, “It's the devil! It's the devil!” His sister-in-law stabbed him in the hand, and he was thrown out of the apartment.

 

When he tried to return, the others panicked, leaping from through the window, one man with the two-year-old girl in his arms. The man crawled away, hiding in bushes tow blocks away. “I had to defend myself,” he screamed. Seven of the jumpers required medical treatment for multiple injuries.

No hallucinogenics and no indication of the practice of any occult rituals were found. The assistant prosecutor from Versailles, Odile Faivre, admitted, “A number of points remain to be cleared up.”

4 James Velasco

Hacked, bitten, and beaten, James Velasco was killed by his grandfather, Orak Mantawil, during a December, 2015, power outage at their family-owned residence in Bliss, Barangay Nituran, Parang, Maguindanao.

Mantawil was carrying his four-year-old grandson in his arms when he mistook James for a tiyana, a vampire who assumes the form of a child or a newborn infant. He apologized to his family and the boy's parents, saying that he was drunk and cannot recall what happened after he saw James as a tiyana. He told investigators that he does not “use drugs.”

 James's parents brought charges of parricide against Mantawil. “He could no longer bring back my child’s life even though he asked forgiveness,” said Fatima Velasco, James's mother and Mantawil's daughter. She also said, “My child sustained human bites. It appeared like his blood was sucked.”

Mantawil has been arrested and will be subjected to a psychological examination and a drug test.

3 Stella

After Stella was caught tiptoeing on graves at Luveve Cemetery in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, in 2018, a crowd meted out vigilante justice, beating the woman, who they regarded as a witch searching for corpses she could cannibalize.

A Luveve resident said, “I was on my way to work when I saw a woman with torn, dirty clothes talking to herself while tiptoeing on the graves. I quickly called out to other people passing by.” When asked her name, the woman repeatedly replied “Stella.”

 The crowd set upon her, whipping her until she wailed in pain. Police rescued her when they arrived on the scene, and Stella was taken to the police station, where, Bulawayo police spokesperson Inspector Abednico Ncube said, she was found to be “mentally unstable” and to be guilty of nothing more than of having been “at the wrong place at the wrong time.” A family who'd reported the woman missing identified her as a relative.

2 Zana

Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at the University of Oxford, said a West African DNA strain might belong to a human subspecies.

The DNA sample was taken from a hirsute, auburn-haired, 6'6”-tall, mid-19-century African slave named Zana who lived in mid-19th-century Russia proves she was 100-percent African, despite the fact that she didn't look like any modern African group of people.

In fact, according to a Russian zoologist, “her expression . . . was pure animal.”

 

 Sykes suggests that she and her ancestors left Africa 100,000 years ago to dwell in the region of the Caucasus Mountains. His most astonishing claim, however, is that Zana might have been a yeti, or so-called abominable snowman.

Several critics are more than a bit skeptical of Sykes's claims. For example, Jason Colavito points out that, by Sykes's own admission, the geneticist “has found no genetic evidence that yet points conclusively to a pre-modern origin for Zana” and suggests that the characterization of her as being more “animal” than human might have a racist origin: “As best I can tell, there are no nineteenth century primary sources related to Zana, and all of the accounts of her large, apelike appearance derive from local lore recorded more than a hundred years after the fact, and during a time when Black Africans were routinely described as apelike, particularly by isolated rural populations with little or no contact with other races.”

It seems possible that Sykes has mistaken Zana for a yeti, when, in fact, she was actually a 19th-century African slave.

1 Horseman (Centaur)

Ancient people also sometimes mistook people for imaginary creatures.

Imagine the shock that ancient Greeks and other Mediterranean peoples experienced when they first witnessed mounted Eurasian soldiers invading their lands. The cavalry was unknown to them. The horsemen must have seemed a perfect union of man and horse, a hybrid fusion of the human and the equine. Such warriors would have been terrifying, and warriors wielding shields and striking with swords must have seemed invincible.

As Bjarke Rink observes in his book, The Rise of the Centaurs, “The impact of cavalry action upon farming societies was shattering”—and this sight was the origin of the mythical creature known as the centaur, a presumed hybrid of man and beast that the ancient Greeks mistook for true monsters: “The weird creature that captured the world's imagination for thousands of years was not a myth at all, but the first sighting of fighting horsemen by the peasant farmers of Greece.”

What's So Monstrous About Monsters?

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

What makes a creature monstrous?

That's a question with which artists and writers) have contended for centuries. As a result, there are quite a few visions, visual and literary, of the monstrous. In this post, we'll consider a few examples of the former, as we examine a few ancient, medieval, and modern examples of monsters, as artists have envisioned them.

Since ancient times, the unknown has been one source of the idea of the monstrous. Many of these monsters, the likenesses of which are passed down to us in pictures, sculptures, and poetry, from ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and elsewhere, are hybrids, mixing characteristics of both human beings and the so-called lower animals. Included among these creatures are such monsters as centaurs, hermaphrodites, lamia, minotaurs, and sirens, to mention but a few.

Other monsters are of gigantic scale, are missing an organ, an appendage, or another feature: the cyclops is a prime example, both of a gargantuan figure and of one who is missing an organ, having, as he or she does, only one eye. Another well-known specimen is the monopod, which was also known as the sciapod, skiapod, or skiapode, who appear in Aristophanes's The Birds (414 BC), in Pliny the Elder's Natural History (79), and St. Augustine's City of God (426).

In a few monsters, traits or organs were multiplied. Cerberus had three heads; hydra, many.

Often, ancient monsters inhabited remote places. The fact that they lived far away made an encounter with one of them unlikely, because long-distance travel was rare for ordinary people, except, in some cases, soldiers. For the same reason, oceans were often represented the homes of mysterious creatures, many of whom were of gigantic size and strange appearance. Examples include the the biblical Behemoth, the Norse Midgard Serpent, and Scylla and Charybdis.

Our brief survey of ancient monsters suggests many often exhibit these one or more of these characteristics:

• Mix human and animal characteristics
• Are gigantic in size
• Are missing one or more organs or traits
• Have one or more extra organs or traits
• Reside in distant locations

In Judaism and, later, in Christianity, monsters were no longer simply natural phenomena; they were created by God, for divine purposes. For example, hermaphrodites were tokens of his wrath; their births were warnings of God's fury concerning the conduct of particular communities and of the divine punishment that would occur if such behavior continued. Likewise, the gods of earlier religions were subsumed by Christianity, pagan deities becoming demons in Christian theology.

Throughout the Middle Ages, many monsters were drawn from the same sources: ancient and Christian accounts of these fascinating, terrible creatures, although, now, all familiar monsters were interpreted from the Christian perspective, with pagan monsters assuming demonic significance.

New additions to the ranks of the monstrous came from travels abroad or from pagan European tribes, before their conversions to the Christian faith. Of course, Christianity also supplied several monsters of its own, most significantly, Satan and the Antichrist.

Once Christianity became the religion of most, if not all, of the Western world, it united peoples from various tribes and cultures, becoming the unum round which e pluribus found its center. As polytheism gave way to monotheism and pagan faiths were replaced by one catholic, or universal faith (at least as the Western world is concerned), ideas about the nature of the monstrous changed, even as they merged under the authority and direction of Christian belief, authority, doctrine, and practice. Satan, demons, witches and sorcerers, heretics, and others who became victims of the Inquisition were the new monsters, common to all.

In modern times, the monstrous, as a concept, has taken on psychological significance, as the demons of hell become inner, or personal, demons, which is to say, personifications of individual human beings' unbridled impulses and animal instincts: aggression, lust, and the like. Especially in the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, the monstrous becomes primarily psychological, rather than cultural or theological per se. Alongside ancient and medieval monsters, we now have the narrator-protagonist of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the vengeance-minded jester of “Hop-Frog,” and the obsessive-compulsive protagonist of “Berenice.”

Monsters are of only two origins: natural or supernatural. (“Paranormal” is merely a term designating natural phenomena which are, as yet, scientifically inexplicable, and psychological monsters, like extraterrestrial monstrosities, are of natural origin.)

But what makes monsters monstrous?

There are a number of theories. Some say monsters are monstrous because they represent actual, existential threats. The werewolf, for example, symbolizes the beast within the human; the madman a person whose behavior is unrestrained by reason. Such monsters are the bane of the rationalist's existence (and aren't we all, at least occasionally, rationalists?) They suggest the Enlightenment, though it undoubtedly happened, might have occurred in vain.

Others contend that monsters are monstrous because they suggest the threat of the unknown and, perhaps, the unfathomable. According to this view, monsters are only monstrous as long as they origin or nature remains unknown. Once the nature of the creature in Ambrose Bierce's “The Damned Thing” is understood (it is of a color outside the range of human perception and, therefore, invisible), it is no longer monstrous (although it remains both terrible and dangerous). Such monsters are epistemological threats or, at least, insecurities. If knowledge is power, ignorance is impotence (and, often, impotence is helplessness).

Monsters who occupy a rung higher in The Great Chain of Being than our own rung on the celestial ladder are theological threats. God defeated Satan, casting him and his followers out of heaven, but, even if we are created in God's image, we don't have his omnipotence; our fight with the devil or with demons, as both The Exorcist and The Exorcism of Emily Rose show us, is not an even match, nor is it one that we, by ourselves, without divine aid, are able to win.

Christianity, it seems, is in abeyance; its influence over the multitudes of the western world appears to have diminished. As a result, paganism has resurfaced, and with it, the old monsters are, once again, venturing out of the darkness to which they were banished by reason and faith, as the current popularity of vampires, witches, demons, and other such ancient monsters attests. Side by side with them, though, the monsters of Christian faith continue to exist. The psychological monster, the madman, in his (or her) various guises, including those of the serial killer (Ben Willis, of I Know What You Did Last Summer), the sadistic sociopath (Jigsaw, of the Saw franchise), the psychotic murderer (Norman Bates, of Psycho), the mad scientist (Dr. Moreau, of The Island of Dr. Moreau), and the overzealous fan (Annie Wilkes, of Misery) has, more recently, joined them.

What monsters might the future spawn? What fears will they embody? What means shall overcome them? These, alas, are questions only time will answer, if they turn out to be answerable at all.

The Horror of Hybrid Creatures

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) remake starring Donald Sutherland takes an eerie turn when a dog with a man's face makes its—his?—appearance on the screen. Offhand, I don't remember what accounts for this strange human-bestial hybrid, but, according to a synopsis of the film, “Matthew and Elizabeth are exposed as human when” Elizabeth screams “upon seeing a mutant dog with a human face, the result of . . . . a mutagenic effect” which caused the assimilation of “both Harry and the dog into a composite organism.”

Such special effects were relatively new at the time, and the human-canine “composite organism” looked especially bizarre on film. Of course, such hybrids have a long history. Ancient mythology, Egyptian, Greek, Chinese, and otherwise, frequently includes such creatures as the sirens (bird women and, later, fish women), lamias (snake men and women), harpies (women with eagles' wings), gorgons (women with snakes for hair), satyrs (goat men), centaurs (horse men), sphinxes (lions with human heads), and many others.

Some hybrids consist of human bodies with animal heads (the jackal-headed Anubis, the cat-headed Bastet, the elephant-headed Ganesha, the frog-headed Hequet, the falcon-headed Horus and Monthu, the ram-headed Khnum, the cobra-headed Meretseger, the crocodile-headed Sobek, the ibis-headed Thoth, and the boar-headed Varaha, to name but a few).

Other hybrids are anthropomorphic creatures with added animal parts, including the wings of birds (angels), insects (fairies), or bats (the dragon Hatuibwari); birds' legs (Lilitu) dogs' legs (Adlet), or other animals' legs; and cows' horns (Hathor) or stags' antlers Pashupati). To their anthropomorphic forms, some hybrids add even more animal parts, as many as three, four, five, or even more, from diverse species. For example, the Japanese Baku has an elephant's head, a rhinoceros's eyes, a tiger's legs, a bear's body, and an ox's tail.

One reason such creatures are horrific is that they represent exceptions to the taxonomy, or classification system, scientists use to classify organisms. For scientists (and the vast majority of laypersons), there is a clear-cut demarcation, or boundary line, between human beings (the only extant members of the subtribe Hominina) and non-human animals. When such boundaries are crossed, as they are, or would be, with human-animal hybrids, not only confusion results, but so does the idea that humans are somehow superior to “lesser” (non-human) animals. To insist on a difference between human beings and non-human animals is to maintain the superiority of the former over the latter. If humans are nothing more than an animal, every non-human animal is equal to humans in status and importance. There can be no hierarchy, such as that which was established by medieval Christianity's doctrine of the divinely established “great chain of being,” the basis, like God's decree, in Genesis 1:26, that “man” should “have dominion” over the earth and its fauna:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

Rather than being the image of God, and “the crown of creation,” humans would be just another member of the animal kingdom.

The taboo against bestiality is probably intended to safeguard the qualitative difference between humans and nonhuman animals. The fact that, although not universal, this taboo is widely in effect across the globe, with offenders subject to death or incarceration in some cases, suggests how insistent the separation between the categories of human and nonhuman continue to be. In horror fiction, it is the violation of this separation, the boundary between human and nonhuman animals that the violation represents, that is horrific, which is why the dog-faced hybrid in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers is eerie, even today, despite the less-than-spectacular (by today's standards) special effects that produced it.

Other movies (and novels) that mix both science fiction and horror, as they do man (or woman) and nonhuman animals, include H. G. Wells's novel 1896 The Island of Dr. Moreau, the 1932 movie Island of Lost Souls, the 1986 movie The Fly, the 2009 film Splice, and the 2001 movie Dagon.

The Horror of the Incongruous

copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

When something is deemed incongruous, it is (if not amusing) often horrifying. We are not shocked or appalled by the sight of a centaur, a mermaid, a minotaur, or a satyr, largely because, although grotesque, they have become familiar to us. However, the dog with the human head that appears briefly in the remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a truly horrifying image. We’ve never been confronted with such a sight; consequently, we are shocked and repulsed by the sight of the canine body with the human head--and face. At one time, of course, the centaur, the mermaid, the minotaur, and the satyr were, likewise, horrifying creatures.

That which we deem to be unseemly, indecorous, unsuitable, inappropriate, or incongruous, we consider unfitting--but unfit for what? For our neat existential categories, in which all things must be either mineral, plant, or animal. In a world in which a plant must be a plant and an animal must be an animal, there’s no room for a Swamp-Thing. In a world in which an animal must be an animal and a human being must be a human being, there’s no place for a dog with a human head. We want our categories neat and tight. When they’re not, we react with shock and revulsion, with fear and trembling, preparing to fight or to take flight. Often, when we are in the presence of the incongruous, we are in the presence of the horrible, the terrible, the disgusting, and the fearsome.

There are many such intersections. Adolescents intersect childhood and adulthood. If they are female, they intersect girlhood and womanhood; if male, boyhood and manhood. As anyone who’s survived this period knows, adolescence--the teenage years--is fraught with horror. Many horror films capitalize on teen angst, setting their stories in high schools. Another intersection (point of incongruity) is that of the animal-human, as we have seen, which gives rise not only to the fantastic half-animal, half-human creatures of ancient mythology, Greek, Egyptian, and otherwise, but also to such horror staples as werewolves. Once-beautiful, disfigured women intersect beauty and ugliness. Cripples, especially amputees, intersect wholeness and injury, just as victims of plagues intersect health and sickness. Ghosts and other revenants, including vampires and zombies, intersect the worlds of the living and the dead. Seemingly normal men, such as Ted Bundy, Ed Gein, or John Wayne Gacy, like Norman Bates, intersect sanity and madness.

Like Bifrost, the rainbow Bridge of Norse mythology, such points of incongruity unite two worlds, or polar opposites. One is normal or acceptable; the other is abnormal or improper. Unlike Bifrost, however, these points of intersection are themselves considered undesirable, repelling rather than attracting travelers. Why? They upset the applecart. They blur the categories we’ve established that divide and subdivide our world and our experience, thereby calling into question our understanding of both our environment and ourselves--in short, nature itself. If we don’t know as much as we thought we knew about the universe, maybe we don’t really comprehend it at all. If there are “more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of” in our “philosophy,” as Hamlet tells Horatio, perhaps the cosmos is an alien place. It may indifferent to human beings and their fate, as H. P. Lovecraft suggests, or it may even be hostile to us, as H. G. Wells and others have implied.

If we understand the universe, we are at home in it. If we don’t understand it, we are less at home in it. Maybe we are not at all at home in it. It’s hard to feel at ease and comfortable when one is always looking over one’s shoulder for a lamia or an alien life form that might not be recognizable to us as intelligent, or even as alive--until it’s too late. That’s the horror of the incongruous, of that which doesn’t quite fit our view of things, our understanding of how things are and are ‘sposed to be.

A Dictionary of the Paranormal, the Supernatural, and the Otherworldly (A - C)

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Note: Unless otherwise noted, definitions are courtesy of dictionary.die.net, an Internet dictionary in the public domain.

A

The Alchemist

Abracadabra--A mystical word or collocation of letters. . . . worn on an amulet. It was supposed to ward off fever. At present the word is used chiefly in jest to denote something without meaning; jargon.

Abominable Snowman (Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti)--a large hairy humanoid creature said to live in the Himalayas.

Acupuncture--The insertion of needles into the living tissues for remedial purposes.

Ad hoc hypothesis--an interpretation of facts that explains away evidence that contradicts a favored idea or belief (the author).

Akashic record--a spiritual or incorporeal plane upon which all knowledge is stored (the author).

Alchemy--An imaginary art which aimed to transmute the baser metals into gold, to find the panacea, or universal remedy for diseases, etc. It led the way to modern chemistry.
Alien (Extraterrestrial Biological Entities, EBEs)--a form of life assumed to exist outside the Earth or its atmosphere.

Allopathy--That system of medical practice which aims to combat disease by the use of remedies which produce effects different from those produced by the special disease treated; -- a term invented by Hahnemann to designate the ordinary practice, as opposed to homeopathy.

Alpha wave--the normal brainwave in the electroencephalogram of a person who is awake but relaxed; occurs with a frequency of 8-12 hertz.

Altered state of consciousness--a trance or trance-like state of mind (the author)

Amityville (New York) haunting--a hoax; the Lutz family, owners of a Dutch Colonial house in Amityville, NY, claimed their residence was haunted; prior to their purchase and residence in the house, Ronald DeFeo, Jr., killed six of his family members in the same house (the author).

Amulet--An ornament, gem, or scroll, or a package containing a relic, etc., worn as a charm or preservative against evils or mischief, such as diseases and witchcraft, and generally inscribed with mystic forms or characters.

Angel--spiritual being attendant upon God.

Animal ghost--the ghost of an animal.

Animism--the doctrine that all natural objects and the universe itself have souls.

Anomaly--deviation from the normal or common order or form or rule.

Appeal to authority fallacy: the idea or belief that the credibility or authority of an expert is sufficient cause to accept the claims of an argument (the author).

Apollo--Greek god of light; god of prophesy and poetry and music and healing; son of Zeus and Leto; twin brother of Artemis.

Apparition--the appearance of a ghostlike figure.

Apport--the transference of an article from an unknown source, to you, or another place by unknown means (Wikipedia).

Argo--The name of the ship which carried Jason and his fifty-four companions to Colchis, in quest of the Golden Fleece.

Argonaut--one of the heroes who sailed with Jason on the Argo in search of the Golden Fleece

Argument from design (teleological argument)--the argument that the order the universe and the inetraction of its myriad parts necessitates the belief in God as a ominscient and omnipotent designer (the author).

Argument from incredulity--see "Divine fallacy."

Artemis--the virgin goddess of the hunt and the moon; daughter of Leto and twin sister of Apollo; identified with Roman Diana.

Astarte--a Phoenician goddess; counterpart of Ashtoreth and Ishtar.

Astral plane--an otherworldly plane of existence or one in a parallel dimension (the author).

Astral projection--the spiritual body’s travel from the physical body (the author).

Astronauts, ancient--extraterrestrial visitors to earth (sometimes mistaken for gods) during prehistoric times to manipulate or control human evolution or culture (the author).

Aura--a distinctive but intangible quality surrounding a person or thing.

Aural hallucination--hearing things (that aren’t there) (the author).

Autism--an abnormal absorption with the self; marked by communication disorders and short attention span and inability to treat others as people.

Autokinetic effect--the apparent movement of a stationary light in an otherwise dark environment (the author).

Automatic writing--writing produced without conscious thought; often considered a means of channeling (the author).

B

Baal--any of numerous local fertility and nature deities worshipped by ancient Semitic peoples; the Hebrews considered Baal a false god.

Backward Satanic messages--supposedly diabolical communications created by backmasking (the author).

Ball lightning

Ball lightning--a rare form of lightning sometimes seen as a globe of fire moving from the clouds to the earth.

Banshee--In Irish folklore, a female spirit who wails to warn of impending death.

Begging the question--circular reasoning (the author).

“Believe It Or Not” strip--a comic strip in which the artist-writer Robert Ripley recounted strange and mysterious incidents and recorded odd facts and trivia.

Benzene molecule--a ring-shaped chemical molecule the structure of which was perceived by Friedrich August Kekulé, a German chemist, during a dream in which he saw a snake biting its own tail (the author),

Bermuda Triangle--an area in the western Atlantic Ocean where many ships and planes are spposed to have been mysteriously lost.

Bible Code--information patterns said to exist in encrypted or coded form in the text of the Bible, or, more specifically, in the Hebrew Torah, the first five books of Old Testament (Wikipedia).

Biorhythm--a hypothetical cycle in physiological, emotional, or intellectual well-being or prowess (Wikipedia).

Blavatsky, Madame Helene Petrovna--founder of the Theosophy Society (the author).

Book of shadows--a witch's personal collection of spells and incantations (the author).

Brainwashing--forcible indoctrination into a new set of attitudes and beliefs.

C

Cardiff giant--a hoax perpetuated by P. T. Barnum in which it was claimed that a giant “petrified man” had been dug up on Cardiff, NY, by laborers digging a well (the author); this alleged giant is the basis of “A Ghost Story” by Mark Twain (the author).

Cartomancy--the art of telling fortunes with cards.

Castenada, Carlos--a Peruvian mystic (the author).

Cayce, Edgar--an American psychic who claimed to channel messages from the dead concerning health, reincarnation, Atlantis, and other matters (the author).

Cattle mutilation--the evisceration of cattle, often on isolated farms, allegedly by extraterrestrials, presumably for research purposes (the author).

Celestine Prophecy--a 1993 novel by James Redfield which discusses various psychological and spiritual ideas which are rooted in many ancient Eastern Traditions (Wikipedia) .

Centaur--a mythical being that is half man and half horse.

Cerberus--three-headed dog guarding the entrance to Hades; son of Typhon.

Chakra--a anatomical energy center (the author).

Channeling--opening oneself as a medium for the receipt of messages from spirits, often during séances (the author).

Chariot of the Gods--book by Erich von Daniken in which the author claims ancient humans were visited by extraterrestrial beings (ancient astronauts) (the author).

Chemtrail--gaseous trails released by aircraft; they are believed to consist of dangerous, but unidentified, chemicals sprayed by the government as part of a nationwide (possibly worldwide) clandestine mission (the author).

Chiropractic--a method of treatment that manipulates body structures (especially the spine) to relieve low back pain or even headache or high blood pressure.

Chopra, Deepak--Indian mystic and author who influenced the New Thought movement in America and elsewhere (the author).

Christ, foreskin of--a holy relic.

Chupacabra--a legendary beast that roams North, Central, and South America, attacking goats and other animals, from which it sucks blood; also known as a “goatsucker” (the author).

Close Encounters of the Second Kind (CE2)--an observation of a UFO and associated physical effects (heat, radiation, damaged terrain, human paralysis, frightened animals, interference with engines or TV or radio reception, and/or crop circles found in the vicinity of the UFO (Wikipedia).

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (CE3)--an observation of. . . “animate beings” in association with a UFO sighting (Wikipedia).

Coelacanth--a supposedly extinct fish caught (several times) by Japanese fishermen and others (the author).

Cold reading--a medium or other’s use of people’s innate need and tendency to make sense of experiences by imposing order and cause upon otherwise random or seemingly random incidents as a means by which to ascertain information and to seem credible as fortunetellers or others who are adept in the use of allegedly paranormal or supernatural abilities (the author).

Collective hallucination (mass hallucination)--the same hallucination, shared by several (often many) people (the author).

Conspiracy theory--the belief that many individuals or organizations are involved in an attempt to conceal evidence, mislead the public, discredit individuals, secure power, promote a hidden agenda, or otherwise extend influence and socio-economic and political power over the unsuspecting masses (the author).

Cosmobiology--the metaphysical study of the universe; the astronomical study of the universe (the author).

Course in Miracles, A--a book that Helen Schucman (1909-1981) claims was dictated to her by Jesus Christ (the author).

Crop circle

Crop circle--geometrical patterns cut into the crops or grass of a field, allegedly by extraterrestrials, possibly as messages or navigational aids; some have been revealed as elaborate hoaxes (the author).

Crowley, Aleister--author of several books of occult mysticism, including Magick in Theory and Practice and The Book of the Law (the author).

Cryptomnesia--forgotten or repressed memories (the author).

Cryptozoology--the study of legendary, mythical, or unknown animals (the author).

Crystal skull--skulls carved in quartz or other stone and sometimes alleged to be endowed with magical powers of various kinds (the author).

Cult--adherents of an exclusive system of religious beliefs and practices.

Cupping--a treatment in which evacuated cups are applied to the skin to draw blood through the surface.

Curse--an evil spell.

Cyclops--In Greek mythology, one of a race of giants having a single eye in the middle of their forehead.