Mysteries & Folklore

Long before paleontology emerged as a science, cultures across the world encountered fossils.

Ancient people may have been crafting an archetypal villain.

These five deities influenced rituals, social roles and conceptions of womanhood.

Beginning in the late 19th century, around a dozen carved skulls made of clear or milky white quartz—also known as rock crystal—made their way into private and public collections around the globe.

Atlantis has been an object of fascination for thousands of years. Explore six theories behind Plato's account of the great, but doomed civilization.

A look back at eight times when commercial airliners suffered unexplained catastrophes—and sometimes seemed to vanish into thin air.

Unexplained livestock mutilations have been reported for centuries. Explanations range from common predators to UFOs.

Some speculate they are super-secret US spy craft. Others question whether they might be from elsewhere, conducting some kind of surveillance.

Crashed UFOs, alien autopsies and government cover-ups—untangling the legend surrounding Ohio’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Reports persist of UFOs, crop circles, cattle mutilation—and shapeshifting creatures impervious to bullets.

The incidents interrupted Exercise Mainbrace, a massive set of NATO war-game maneuvers.

One of the most shocking cases involved an Air Force sargeant allegedly abducted by a saucer-like aircraft.

He claimed to have conversed with Venusians using hand gestures and mental telepathy.

The Air Force offered the pilot's widow conflicting explanations.

The 11 witnesses who arrived at the Hopkinsville police station were genuinely terror-struck.

Behind the rumors of America's most infamous UFO incident.

It was in HISTORY’s series 'Unidentified' that the active-duty Navy pilots who encountered the crafts first came forward to share their stories.

Rabbits—and their feet—are often associated with good luck. Here are some theories behind the superstition.

It started in the 1940s, near A-bomb development sites. More recently, something has been stalking nuclear carrier strike groups.

In 2019, the FBI released its four-decade-old file on Bigfoot including an analysis conducted on hair that allegedly belonged to the sasquatch. The results? Deer hair.

Chris Mellon believes the government should more aggressively gather intel on military UFO sightings, some of which were captured on video.

Called the '5 observables' by a former Pentagon investigator, they include hypersonic speed, erratic movement and the ability to fly without wings.

Fighter pilots and radar operators from the USS Nimitz describe their terrifying—and still inexplicable—2004 encounter.

The Navy is formalizing its process for reporting “unexplained aerial phenomena."

When the U.S. government tapped the academic to help investigate UFOs, he was initially a skeptic. But not for long.

Theories range from high-tech Soviet death rays to extraterrestrials studying human combat to combat-stress-induced hallucinations.

When a slew of saucer-like sightings was reported over Washington, D.C. in 1952, the Air Force blocked its own investigator from checking them out.

Their account, recovered with the help of hypnosis, detailed extensive medical exams, including a crude pregnancy test.

Hundreds of people, including several university scientists, witnessed the flying blue-green lights in August 1951. One person even took photos.

Investigators noted the hair on the alleged victim's arms was singed, and the skin burned. The grass where he claimed to have had the encounter was also scorched.

The sightings were concentrated around the Los Alamos and Sandia atomic-weapons laboratories, and other highly sensitive military installations.

Some believed the July 1948 sighting revealed the presence of secret Soviet spy craft in American airspace.

They were cigar-shaped, glowed red and could turn on a dime. Which ruled out even the most sophisticated rockets of the time.

One of the largest ships in the U.S. Navy disappeared without a trace. More than 100 years later, its fate remains unknown.

A small news item in 1958 led to the modern version of the mythical wild man.

It prompted a U.S. Air Force UFO inquiry, part of an initiative called Project Blue Book.

The government explained the rapidly maneuvering lights as a weather balloon. Experts say there are holes to that theory.

Zachary Quinto looks into the plausibility of interplanetary life, otherworldly strength and robotics with the capacity for reasoning.

Zachary Quinto explores everything from aliens to Atlantis in the new series.

Scientists are using the legend to draw attention to their research project. And why not?

What do a saucer, a wingless Tic Tac-shaped craft and mile-long strobe lights have in common? They all defy explanation.

The Department of Defense vs. The Walking Dead

Long considered a harbinger of bad luck, Friday the 13th has inspired countless superstitions—as well as a late 19th-century secret society, an early 20th-century novel and a horror film franchise. Here's its history, and why it's considered unlucky.

Loch Ness expert Adrian Shine discusses his involvement with the Loch Ness Project and recaps his decades spent working to uncover the truth behind the Loch Ness monster.

Vampires are mythological beings who roam the world at night searching for people whose blood they feed upon.

Unlike many other monsters—which are mostly a product of superstition, religion and fear— zombies have a basis in fact, and several verified cases of zombies have been reported from Haitian voodoo culture.

The Devil, also known as Satan, Lucifer or Baphomet, is a mythic figure who embodies evil. He has appeared in different forms in many cultures throughout history.

Witches were perceived as evil beings by early Christians in Europe, inspiring the iconic Halloween figure.

Early Werewolf Legends It’s unclear exactly when and where the werewolf legend originated. Some scholars believe the werewolf made its debut in The Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest known Western prose, when Gilgamesh jilted a potential lover because she ha...

Still-unexplained phenomena, from Roswell to the 'Belgium Wave.'

Think UFO sightings are just a modern phenomenon? Think again. The Puritans were the first to record strange shining lights in American skies.

There are a few possible explanations for the superstition, but little agreement on which may be the true origin.

If you’ve ever visited the Old Granary Burying Ground in Boston, Massachusetts, you may have stumbled upon the tombstone of Mary Goose, a woman believed by some to be the infamous author of countless cherished nursery rhymes: Mother Goose. Visitors toss coins at her tombstone, presumably to garner a bit of good luck, but the […]

Explore a few little-known facts about this wildly popular seer.

The famed “sword of Damocles” dates back to an ancient moral parable popularized by the Roman philosopher Cicero.

It remains one of the most perplexing mysteries in aviation history. Some blame the Bermuda Triangle.

As the legend goes, it took five huge storks to deliver the infant (already gigantic) Paul Bunyan to his parents in Bangor, Maine. When he grew older, one drag of the mighty lumberjack’s massive ax created the Grand Canyon, while the giant footprints of his trusty companion, Babe the Blue Ox, filled with water and […]

Of the three postwar government investigations into 'unidentified flying objects,' Project Blue Book was the most long-lived. Was its mission to investigate—or debunk?

The grisly vampire hysteria that gripped a New England town in 1892 sounds like a Halloween legend, but it is a true tale of the macabre.

You might associate the name “Godiva” with a brand of Belgian chocolates, but it was first popularized as part of a 900-year-old English legend. The original Lady Godiva was an 11th century noblewoman married to Leofric, the powerful Earl of Mercia and Lord of Coventry. As the story goes, Godiva was troubled by the crippling […]

From a fabled Christian empire in Asia to a supposed lost kingdom in Canada, find out more about six of the most influential lands that never were.

From birds of prey with fearsome strength to rooster-snake hybrids capable of killing with their eyes, find out more about six legendary beasts from history.

It's been the site of mysterious disappearances and other bizarre activity.

The 5,300-year-old body of Ötzi the Iceman was discovered in the Italian Alps in 1991. Now, scientists have discovered he has at least 19 living Austrian descendants.

Unexplained fears surrounding the number 13 can be traced to ancient times.

Count Dracula was inspired by Central European folktales as well as historical accounts of the 15th-century Romanian prince Vlad Tepes, or Vlad the Impaler.

For several centuries, people have debated whether human beings can spontaneously combust, or burst into flames without being ignited by an external source. Though the first known accounts of spontaneous human combustion (SHC) date all the way back to 1641, the phenomenon gained wider exposure in the 19th century after popular author Charles Dickens used […]

Some have connected the site with the alleged government coverup of an alien spacecraft crash. Others claim the moon landing was filmed there. If that's not true, what is?

Plato’s Atlantis Plato (through the character Critias in his dialogues) describes Atlantis as an island larger than Libya and Asia Minor put together, located in the Atlantic just beyond the Pillars of Hercules—generally assumed to mean the Strait of Gi...

The Bermuda Triangle is a section of the Atlantic Ocean roughly bounded by Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico where dozens of ships and airplanes have disappeared.

From The Day the Earth Stood Still and War of the Worlds to E.T. and Independence Day, movies about visitors from space have reflected our fears and dreams.

Project Blue Book, a long-running U.S. government investigation into UFOs, produced reports on more than 12,000 sightings or related events from 1952 to 1969.

Kenneth Arnold was a pilot whose sighting of nine airborne objects in 1947 gave rise to the term flying saucer and sparked a government investigation into UFOs.

The Roswell UFO incident took place in the summer of 1947, when a rancher discovered unidentifiable debris in his sheep pasture outside Roswell, New Mexico. Officials from the local Air Force base claimed that it was a crashed weather balloon, but many people believed it was the remains of an alien spaceship. To this day, many people continue to embrace the UFO theory, and hundreds of curiosity-seekers visit Roswell and the crash site every year.

UFO sightings have been reported throughout history from various parts of the world, raising questions about life on other planets and whether extraterrestrials have visited Earth.