Monsters, Ghosts, & Mysteries

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
Strictly, the claimed ability to see things which are not normally visible. However, the term is more generally used to include any form of discerning information that is beyond the normal range of sense or perception.

From The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science
Awareness of information that occurs independently of known sensory channels such as sight, hearing, taste, smell, or touch, is referred to as extrasensory perception (ESP).

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
The lifting into the air of people or objects without any visible physical means.

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
The supposedly direct mental accessing of thoughts within the minds of other individuals.

Prophecy has played a significant role in world religions, laying the groundwork for fulfillment of both religious and secular expectations of the future.

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
The healing of one person by another by psychic means, without the use of any conventional curative agents such as drugs.

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
The movement of material objects, or the influencing of mechanical systems, using only the power of the mind.

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
A process involving attempts at ‘seeing’ places from a distance, using psychic powers.

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
The movement of objects through paranormal or psychic powers.

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
Direct mind-to-mind contact with another individual so that thoughts and images can be shared.

From the Encyclopedia of Consciousness
In altered states of consciousness (ASCs), the patterns of conscious experience are different from usual, and the contents of consciousness do not reliably reflect the immediately surrounding world.

From the Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
Known to the American public as the “sleeping prophet”, Edgar Cayce became an influential forerunner of New Age spirituality [ New Age Movement] through the voluminous body of clairvoyant “readings” he left behind at his death in 1945.

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
French physician and astrologer, also known as Michel de Nostredame. His enigmatic predictions, written in rhymed quatrains, have established him as one of the most famous prophets in history.

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
A shrine in ancient Greece where prophecies were made.

From Conspiracy Theories in American History
Named after the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, Holland, where the first meeting took place in May 1954, the Bilderbergers form an unofficial, secretive group set up in the first years of the cold war to foster communication and cooperation between Europe and the United States.

Teachings and practices of the secret fraternal order officially known as the Free and Accepted Masons, or Ancient Free and Accepted Masons.

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
An occult society founded in 1888, which incorporated elements of Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry and the kabbalah, and focused on both practical and ritual magic; although short-lived, it was probably the most influential Western magical order of modern times.

From Conspiracy Theories in American History
The Order of the Illuminati was a short-lived secret society in eighteenth-century Germany that became the linchpin of countless conspiracy theories and works of historical and religious speculation, ranging from reactionary attacks on the French Revolution to the countercultural writings of the 1960s and 1970s and through to the religious Right in the present.

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
A religious and military order founded by Crusaders in c.1119 for the protection of the Holy Sepulchre and pilgrims visiting it; suppressed 1307–14.

Members of an esoteric society or group of societies, who claim that their order has been in existence since the days of ancient Egypt and has over the course of time included many of the world's sages.

Organization of initiated persons whose members, purposes, and rituals are kept secret.

From Conspiracy Theories in American History
Known as “the Order” to its initiates and housed in a windowless crypt known as “the Tomb,” the Skull and Bones is the oldest and most prestigious of Yale’s secret societies.

From Conspiracy Theories in American History
Made famous by the movie Independence Day, Area 51 is a classified military base in Nevada near Groom Lake that is the home to the most advanced aircraft and weapons testing by the United States.

From The Classical Tradition
Legendary submerged island-continent. Plato introduced the Atlantis legend in two of his dialogues, composed in the mid-4th century BCE.

An area in the Atlantic where ships and aircraft are alleged to have disappeared.

Locality in Phocis, Greece, near the foot of the south slope of Mt. Parnassós, c.6 mi (10 km) northeast of the port of Cirrha. It was the seat of the Delphic oracle, the most famous and most powerful of ancient Greece. The oracle originated in the worship of an earth-goddess, and later legend ascribed it to Gaea.

Easter Island has long been famous for its hieroglyphs and for hundreds of remarkable monolithic stone heads (moais) whose origin and meaning have been widely debated. Carved from soft volcanic tufa, the statues are from 10 to 40 ft (3-12 m) high, some weighing over 50 tons.

One of the great cultures of mesoamerica, Maya civilization extended throughout southern mexico and northern Central America. The Maya territory included what are now the southernmost Mexican states of Yucatán, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, and Chiapas, as well as all of belize and guatemala and the westernmost parts of Honduras and el salvador.

... A number of explanations have been put forward for the building of megaliths during the Neolithic period in areas including Denmark, Ireland, northeastern Scotland, England, western France, and Spain. These range from economic reasons to expressions of dominance (neo-Marxist) and symbolism.

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
The Nazca lines is the name given to a series of ground markings discovered in the Nazca Desert, a high, arid plain in coastal Peru.

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
The largest of the Egyptian pyramids, built by Cheops.

From Conspiracy Theories in American History
After mysterious events in 1947, a small town in New Mexico became synonymous with visitors from outer space, UFOs, alien autopsies, and government cover-ups. The “Roswell Crash” and ensuing “government cover-up” have become a staple in modern conspiracy theories and have moved almost to the level of a modern myth.

The intriguing mysterious prehistoric stone circle known as Stonehenge is one of the world’s oldest and most famous holy sites. While much about Stonehenge remains unknown, it is best understood as the culminating product of the stone-building culture that produced these many monuments across the British Isles.

Ancient commercial and religious center in the central valley of Mexico, c.30 mi (48 km) NE of Mexico City. Once thought to be the great religious center of the Toltec, it is now held to be the relic of an earlier civilization.

From Encyclopedia of Social Networks
Gossip, rumors, conspiracy theories, and urban legends—these are all forms of unproven knowledge that circulate through social networks.

From Encyclopedia of Urban Legends
"Contemporary legend" is the term preferred by some folklorists instead of "urban legend," "modern legend," or the combined term "modern urban legend."

From Encyclopedia of Anthropology
... Though the motives behind anthropological hoaxes have varied, the element underlying their success has always been the same: an audience predisposed to believe the implications of the fabricated data.

From Movies in American History ... Although in each of the films, [Indiana Jones] encounters something mysterious, he never really pauses to consider what that something might be.

Science fiction is the literature of the scientific age. Born in adventure pulp magazines during the first half of the twentieth century, the science fiction genre began to mature in the 1940s and 1950s.

From Encyclopedia of Urban Legends
Television series based on suspense, ranging from yesterday’s Twilight Zone to today’s Unsolved Mysteries and X-Files series, have from time to time borrowed material from urban legends of crime and horror.

From Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature
To understand the origins of the supernatural in American literature we must consider the widespread interest in the occult or unseen world during the very inception of the colonies.

From Conspiracy Theories in American History
The X-Files is a long-running television series, renowned for its atmosphere of suspicion and convoluted conspiracies.

From Encyclopedia of Urban Legends
... Set on a fictional New England college campus, [the film] Urban Legend depicts members of a folklore class who suspect, after their study of contemporary legends, that a series of disappearances and murders have been following urban-legend plots.

From Encyclopedia of Urban Legends
Few of the stories classified by contemporary folklorists as "urban legends" involve the supernatural, although most of them certainly contain bizarre, unusual, and generally unnatural aspects.