Paranormal 200 Prompt Definitions
These definitions are very general in most cases. If you need more information on a prompt, please feel free to Google it. Also feel free to write beyond a definition (for example, a story about a séance does not necessarily need a medium in it; just the séance is enough). (Another example is that seeing a radiant boy does not have to signal death for someone in your story unless you want it to.) As long as you still fulfill the prompt and the way you handle it is still paranormal, it works.
These definitions come from the following sources:
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ghosts and Hauntings by Tom Ogden
Alternative Realities by Leonard George, Ph.D.
The Occultopedia
Unexplained Mysteries
A couple of miscellaneous places I Googled.
My own knowledge.
These are numbered according to how they are numbered on the Paranormal 200 chart, but the actual place each prompt falls on your table may be different if you are only doing 25 prompts.
Classic Chart
1. Séance: A gathering of individuals, usually led by a medium, for the purpose of receiving communication from the dead. (Examples: On "Supernatural" episode 4.01, Dean, Sam, Pamela, and Bobby seated around the table with candles in an attempt to contact Castiel was a séance. They held a séance with a spirit horn, even, in the movie The Changeling ((the one with George C. Scott)). The first scene of The Amityville Horror 3 features a séance. The scene with the creepy old lady writing on the chalkboard in The Ghost of Mae Nak is a séance. ((Her writing on the chalkboard is Automatic Writing.)) Etc.)
2. Ouija Board: A board preprinted with letters, numerals, and words used to receive spirit communications. (Used in The Exorcist, Witchboard, episode 2.01 of "Supernatural," and a ton of other examples.)
3. Mothman: A being seen around the city of Pt. Pleasant, West Virginia in the late 1960s that resembled a giant half man, half moth.
4. Incubus/Succubus: A male demon that seeks intercourse with human women, often while they are asleep. Mythological lore says that incubi can induce intense sexual desires only they can satisfy. Its female counterpart would be the succubus.
5. Exorcism: The expulsion of a ghost, spirit, demon, or other entity thought to be possessing or haunting a human being or location.
6. Possession: When the body of a person is thought to be taken over and under the control of an entity, such as a demon or other supernatural being, or perhaps another personality.
7. Haunting: The return of a ghost to the same location over and over. Some hauntings have multiple ghosts.
8. Necromancer: A person with the power to raise or call upon the dead to foretell the future, often thought to have the power to control/enslave them.
9. Crisis Apparition: A specific type of out-of-body experience in which the agent projects his or her astral body at a time of crisis or death to a particular person, usually a loved one.
10. Phantom Hitchhiker: A ghost who haunts a specific roadway or other location (such as a lake, cemetery, wooded area, etc.) and requests a ride from passing motorists. The hitchhiker usually disappears from the vehicle just as the motorist reaches the address given by the ghost.
11. Radiant Boys: The ghosts of boys who have been murdered by their mothers. These spirits glow in the dark, and sightings of them are thought to be omens of violent death or bad luck.
12. Hell: Traditionally, the place where bad souls go after death to be punished for their sins.
13. Medium: Someone who can communicate with spirits, especially of the dead.
14. Automatic Writing: Communication from a spirit in written form. A person, often a medium, holds a pen or other writing instrument against paper and allows a spirit to take control of their hand to write out a message.
15. Doppelganger: A German term that literally means "double-walker." It refers to an apparition of a living person, an exact physical double.
16. Amulet: Any object thought to have the power to ward off evil spirits and/or bad luck.
17. Amityville: This story is really too involved to summarize, but who hasn't heard of the Amityville Horror? The case should either be discussed or revisited. Send your characters there if you want. It is also okay to create your own Amityville Horror-inspired house if it fits in better with your claim. (Such as, a house where something horrible happened that influences everyone who lives in it to act out the same horrible acts. A house that is very haunted that has a creepy basement and was supposedly built on ancient burial ground. You know, just something similar. Truthfully, from the reports I've seen, I believe that Amityville was a hoax, so you could also work that in to your story if you are so inspired.)
18. EVP/DVP/RVP: Electronic Voice Phenomena - The capture of spirit voices on magnetic tape as an audio recording. Many times, the voices are not heard until the tape is played back. / Direct Voice Phenomena - The voice of a spirit spoken directly to the sitters at a séance. The voice seems to come from a spot near the medium's head or an apparatus made for such a thing, like a spirit horn. It does not come from the mouth of the medium; that would be channeling. / Radio Voice Phenomena - Receiving the voice of a spirit over a regular radio. A story that fits this prompt should include at least one of these, or all three if you want.
19. Famous Haunted Location: Pick a famous haunted location and include it in your story somehow, even if that means the characters just discuss it, or actually go there. You can also make up your own famous haunted location, where it is famous in the world of your story.
20. Retrocognition: A sudden time warp in which you find yourself in the past, seeing and experiencing events of which you had no prior knowledge. This more involves seeing the past rather than interacting with it. Physically entering the past would be a timeslip/time travel.
21. Cemetery/Mausoleum: This prompt is all about writing a spooky story that centers around a cemetery and/or mausoleum.
22. Near-Death Experience: A person clinically dies or comes very close to death and is revived. Afterward, they recall extraordinary visions of an afterlife.
Spooky Chart
23. Psychokinesis: The ability to move objects and influence matter with the power of the mind. It is also known as telekinesis, but that is an antiquated term.
24. Adept: A person who possesses almost total occult knowledge and is thought to be proficiently skilled in its lore. They could also possess magickal skill because of this knowledge.
25. Pyrokinesis: The ability to create and nurture fires with only the power of the mind.
26. Poltergeist: A poltergeist is present when objects fly about the room by themselves, often on a trajectory that seems influenced by intelligent forces. (Objects turn corners, for example.) Sometimes, matter will even pass through other matter. (Example: In the case of Tina Resch, eggs passed through a closed refrigerator door.) These incidents were originally thought to be the work of mischievous spirits, but current theory holds that poltergeist activity is caused by people with psychokinesis. A psychokinetic undergoing stress and turmoil in his or her life unconsciously causes the mayhem to work out this inner conflict. Once the problem is resolved, the poltergeist activity ceases. (If you're writing in the "Supernatural" fandom, yes, it is okay to use their incorrect version of a poltergeist for this prompt.)
27. Haunted Prison: Write a fic featuring a haunted prison.
28. Banshee: A Scottish or Irish female spirit who hangs around a particular dwelling and wails at or before the death of a family member inside that dwelling.
29. Screaming Skull: A human skull inhabited by a ghost that makes the skull scream whenever anyone tries to remove it from its chosen resting place (like a house) or to bury it. Sometimes the screaming is accompanied by thumping noises typical of a haunting. Often the skull belonged to a person who was attached to the house and died by violent means.
30. Ghost Lights: Recurrent nocturnal luminosities. In other words, recurring balls of light that appear at night in a particular location. Some ghost lights are so widely known that they have become local legends and tourist attractions.
31. Oracle: A person who can talk to gods or spirits for the purpose of divining prophecies (telling the future).
32. Collective Apparition: An incident in which more than one person sees the same ghost phenomena at the same time.
33. Gray Lady: The ghost of a woman whose death has been caused by a loved one or who died while waiting for her lover to return, possibly from war.
34. Astral Projection/Out of Body Experience (OBE): Phenomenon in which a spirit double (AKA astral body) leaves your body and travels to another location.
35. Thoughtography: The power to project images of thought and imagination onto recording media, such as photographic film, and into the minds of others. It is also known as psychic photography and, in Japan, "nensha." Example: Sadako from the film Ringu and Samara from The Ring possessed the power of thoughtography - it's how they made their respective cursed videotapes.
36. Other Haunted Location: Write a fic about another location that could be haunted, such as a hospital, theatre, amusement park, school, etc.
37. Fairy Tale: Write a story that somehow deals with a fairy tale in a paranormal fashion. Maybe mix this fairy tale with your favorite fandom. Many fairy tales already contain paranormal elements.
38. Dragon: A giant reptile of legend, usually represented as a winged, fire-breathing creature.
39. Apport/Asport: An apport is a solid object which seemingly appears from nowhere in the presence of a medium, usually at a séance. It doesn't always happen in this fashion, but this is the general circumstance in which they occur. Basically, an apport is an object that materializes out of thin air that purportedly comes from the spirit world. Apports are also objects that are teleported from one location to another by a spirit. The spirits assemble some apports from invisible matter. The opposite would be an asport - an object that disappears from a location, a feat also performed by spirits. In one incidence, a person has even served as an apport!
40. Channeling: A form of spirit communication where an unseen entity takes possession of a medium or other person and speaks through them.
41. Control/Spirit Guide: A spirit or non-human entity who acts as a medium's guide and intermediary to the world of the dead and/or other dimensions. Many psychics have at least one spirit guide.
42. Skinwalker: Native American legend of a person with the ability to change into any animal they want.
43. Direct Writing: A paranormal occurrence usually seen at a séance in which spirit handwriting appears directly on a previously unmarked surface without the use of the medium's or anyone else's hand. All those movies and tv shows where words appear out of nowhere in the condensation on a bathroom mirror, where only a ghost/spirit could have written it? (Like What Lies Beneath.) That's direct writing.
44. Drop-in Communicator: An unwanted spirit that suddenly makes its presence known at a séance to have its say. Its identity is often unknown to the people present. This prompt would also apply to a situation where ghost hunters were trying to make contact with one spirit and instead or also got a surprise spirit. That sort of thing.
Ghostly Chart
45. Ghost Hunt: An informal attempt to simply see or record a ghost in a location known to be haunted. Ghost hunts often use typical equipment for such an activity, like cameras, tape recorders, and EMF detectors.
46. EMF Meter/EMF Detector: A device used to measure the presence of a magnetic field as well as its strength, direction, and fluctuation. It is used by paranormal researchers to try to detect a ghost's magnetic energy.
47. Reciprocal Apparition: A rare type of spirit phenomena where a ghost and the person who spots it see and respond to each other.
48. Angels: An immortal spiritual being which acts as an intermediary between God and man. They are often depicted as having wings.
49. Demons: A low-level spirit or non-human intelligence that interacts with the human world and is concerned with lower plane activities. They are usually thought of as having evil intentions.
50. Wild Hunt: A group of ghost huntsmen, horses, and hounds in procession, always seen at night. (In other words, ghosts out on a hunt.) Many wild hunts are led by gods and goddesses.
51. Halloween: Write a story that somehow centers around Halloween or uses it as a theme.
52. Tarot: A deck of playing cards used for fortunetelling. There is a large variety of Tarot decks for sale, many of them designed to be a work of art in every card.
53. Ritual: Certain patterns of activity a person must follow to produce a desired result, often used for magick/spells.
54. Incantation: The words spoken during a ritual, either a hymn or prayer invoking or praising a deity, or in magic, occultism, or witchcraft with the intention of casting a spell.
55. Apocalypse: Current, most popular definition is the destruction of the world and/or civilization.
56. Megalith/Monolith: A huge stone or rock slab used in prehistoric monuments and constructions. A monolith would be one of these stones by itself, while a megalith would be a group of these stones. Stonehenge is a megalith. It is thought that many megaliths were once used for religious rituals.
57. Ark of the Covenant: The sacred Biblical box made of shittim wood covered with gold that contained the tablets of the Law, a pot of manna, and Aaron's rod. It was believed to be the literal manifestation of God on Earth. Its lid was made of solid gold and had two cherubs with outstretched wings engraved into it. The Ark was one of the most terrifying artifacts in Biblical history, at least to evildoers. It was thought of as a weapon of God with the power to strike men dead.
58. Werewolf: A person who can take on the form of a wolf or a human/wolf hybrid creature on the night of a full moon. They often attack humans, and most werewolf lore says that their bite turns you into one of them.
59. Afterworld: The world/dimension where the dead reside.
60. Grimoire: A sort of magickal textbook with instructions for raising spirits and demons and/or performing other types of rituals. The Key of Solomon is a grimoire.
61. Atlantis: A vast island-continent of legend and its civilizations, eventually destroyed in a cataclysm. The civilization was thought to be highly advanced. Some philosophers have said that the people of Atlantis may have even been godlike. Most theories hold that Atlantis was located in the Atlantic Ocean and sank beneath the sea because of an earthquake. This prompt would also apply to other Atlantis-like civilizations (Thule, Lemuria, etc) or an Atlantis-like place that you create.
62. Ghoul: A demon or evil spirit that haunts graveyards and feeds on corpses.
63. Bermuda Triangle: An area in the Atlantic Ocean where paranormal events and unexplained disappearances occur. It is bound by Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. You can also apply this prompt to other areas where similar disappearances occur, which are often referred to as "displaced Bermuda Triangles," or your own fictional Bermuda Triangle-like area.
64. Ganzfield Stimulation (aka Ganzfeld Stimulation): The use of sensory deprivation to stimulate psychic powers (just one use for this technique).
65. Black Magick: The sum of all knowledge about spells, magick, and rituals with evil intent.
66. Fortean Rain: Any rain that contains bizarre objects that normally do not fall from the sky, such as frogs, stones, blood, etc.
Scary Chart
67. Charm: A magickal formula intended to be sung or recited to achieve a desired effect. Charms are often used as part of the ritual to make amulets or talismans. Or, you can write from the popular definition of a charm being something worn or carried (like jewelry) for good luck, to cast a spell over someone, etc. Similar to an amulet, except amulets usually have a more powerful, religious, and ancient feel to them.
68. Stigmata: Eruptions on the skin that most often represent the wounds suffered by Christ during the crucifixion - whip marks on the back from the flogging, nail wounds on the hands and feet, pricks on the head from the crown of thorns, and the spear wound in the side. The marks can take a variety of forms: a reddening of the skin, the appearance of blisters or welts, and the oozing of blood or clear serum from unbroken skin.
69. Evil Eye: The evil eye is a kind of curse put on a child, livestock, crops, etc., by someone who has the power of the "evil eye." Most of these superstitions involve, for example, staring too long, often in envy, at a person, and later they turn up sick. Amulets can be obtained to ward off the evil eye.
70. Chichevache: A monster that lives by eating virtuous, virginal, or ill-treated women.
71. Precognition: Direct knowledge of the future obtained through abnormal, psychic means, like visions or dreams.
72. Chupacabra: From the Spanish for "goat sucker," a creature that drains the blood of livestock, including mammals (like goats) and birds. It has been seen in lower North America, Central, and South America, and also islands like Puerto Rico.
73. Curse: A prayer for harm to befall someone, to call evil down upon them.
74. Clairvoyance: The ability to obtain information about events or objects without the use of any known senses. This paranormal knowledge often centers around occurrences in the present happening at the same time, many miles away, that can be "seen" by the clairvoyant through visions. Usually, when a psychic is taken to a crime scene and gets impressions of what happened there just by being near the place where the crime happened, it is called clairvoyance. A great deal of Alison's visions (when she's awake) on "Medium" are clairvoyant visions. (Her psychic dreams probably have their own classification. Most of them are precognitive or retrocognitive.)
75. Divination: A means of foretelling the future and sometimes the past using various methods and interpretations. Some types of divination are necromancy, scrying, feng-shui, casting runes, astrology, dream interpretation, Tarot reading, etc.
76. Death Prayer: A prayer aimed at causing the death of one person. Also, a prayer that protects someone from death.
77. Mermaid: A female creature that is human from the waist up and fish from the waist down. You can also write about mermen.
78. Demonology: The study and classification of the hierarchy of demons, their powers and weaknesses, attributes, names, and derivations.
79. Omen: A supernatural sign or event foretelling the future.
80. Poppet: A magickal doll made for the purpose of spell-casting and rituals. Often the doll represents a person and is acted upon in a symbol of what the spell-caster desires should happen to that person (symbolically bound, hung, stuck with pins, etc.).
81. Closet/Under the Bed Monster: Monsters living in the closet or under the bed are a common childhood fear. Write a story that somehow explores this.
82. Psychometry: A method of psychic reading by touching physical objects. When the object is touched, the psychic can "see" its history and the history of people associated with that object.
83. Revenant: Animate corpses which rise from the grave to haunt the living. Thought to be a bit more animated than a zombie.
84. Quantum Mechanics: A theory of physics that says that side by side with this world, another world exists - a parallel universe that is somehow slightly different and yet the same. An infinite number of parallel universes exist for every possible variant.
85. Lake/Loch Ness Monster: Known also as Nessie, this is an aquatic or amphibious creature which resides in Loch Ness in Scotland. This creature is supposed to be so large that people doubt its existence in the lake, but witnesses swear they have seen Nessie. Some think it may be a dinosaur that somehow survived the extinction of its species. Other lake monsters include Champ in Lake Champlain.
You may also make up your own aquatic monster for this prompt, including seamonsters.
86. Zodiac: Write a paranormal story that has something to do with the signs of the zodiac. You could also write something dealing with the serial killer who called himself The Zodiac as long as the subject matter is still paranormal in nature.
87. Famous Paranormal Case: Write a story about a famous, true paranormal case besides any already covered on this chart. The case should be experienced, discussed, revisited, etc. Examples include the Smurl haunting, the case dramatized in The Entity, Tina Resch, the case dramatized in The Exorcism of Emily Rose, etc. You can also use a true well-known case as inspiration for a fictional account.
88. Rappings: A method of communicating with spirits or demons by asking them to knock on a solid surface a predetermined number of times in answer to questions. For example, a spirit may be asked to knock once if their answer is yes and twice if their answer is no. Similar noises made in answer to such questions can also be considered rappings.
Eerie Chart
89. Shrine: A tomb or altar for a venerated person, especially a saint.
90. Runes: An ancient Norse and Germanic alphabet ascribed magickal properties and used mainly for amulets inscribed on wood, stone, metal, or bone. The symbolic alphabet is used to foretell the future and shed light on present concerns by casting the runes in a particular arrangement and reading their meaning in relation to each other.
91. Cult: Obsessive and faddish devotion to the leader of a religious sect. Also refers to the system of religious worship where this kind of devotion takes place.
92. Pareidolia: Finding meaning in random patterns. Pareidolia is what is produced by the mind's need to find coherent order in random stimulus. Examples of pareidolia include...
Visual pareidolia: Seeing recognizable objects and/or faces in the shapes of clouds, rust stains, inkblots, reflections, water stains, dust swirling in a sunbeam, burns, the shapes of potato chips, smoke, fire, etc.
Auditory pareidolia: Hearing recognizable sounds, such as voices, in random noises like water hitting a shower curtain, bird song, radio or television static, the electronic hum of an open phone line, crackle of a bad phone connection, a record played backwards, etc.
93. Windshield Pitting Epidemic: In Seattle in 1954, there was a rash of damaged car windshields that was never fully explained. Windshields all over the city were suddenly covered in small pits. Some thought it was sand flea eggs hatching in the glass, others blamed mass hysteria, while still others thought it was somehow related to space aliens. The problem even went as high as President Eisenhower, who was asked by the mayor of Seattle to take emergency action to solve the mystery. Thousands of cars were affected.
You can write about this particular WPE, or make up your own. Just keep it paranormal. You can also write about other types of damage that may be done to cars by "real" or fictional paranormal creatures. A good example would be cars that have allegedly been damaged by the Lizard Man of Lee County, SC.
94. Fugue State: A psychological disorder with four main characteristics -
1.) The person suddenly and unexpectedly departs from the conditions of one's ordinary lifestyle, such as job, home, and family.
2.) Assumption of a new identity, which might include a new name and vocation.
3.) Inability to recall one's previous identity.
4.) The absence of causes such as an organic mental disorder.
Victims of fugue states have often suffered great mental trauma, and the fugue manifests in an attempt to escape from that trauma. Often the fugue state will end when the perceived threat is removed or the trauma is dealt with. Sometimes a fugue state just spontaneously ends for unknown reasons. It is similar to amnesia but is not exactly the same thing. With amnesia, the person knows they had a previous identity, but have forgotten it. They also do not assume a new identity as if the other one never existed. Amnesia victims may choose a new name and career out of necessity, but they are aware they had a different one at some point. With a fugue state, the person is unaware they had a previous identity.
95. Imaginary Companion: A companion/friend that does not exist, cannot be seen, and/or only exists in the mind of the person who interacts with them.
96. Bigfoot aka Abominable Snowman/Yeti/Sasquatch: A hair-covered humanoid creature that wanders wooded areas or mountains in various parts of the world. Usually very tall, with large feet and powerful strength.
97. Mass Possession: The possession of more than one person at a time, usually in succession, who bear some association with each other. The possession can be by a creature(s) of evil intent, positive intent, or simply a mass state of overwrought feelings, like a religious rapture. Usually one person is overcome, which triggers a domino effect, spreading the possession to other members of the group. Congregations of nuns seem to be popular targets of mass possession.
98. Alchemy: The "science" of changing a base substance into a precious one. This frequently involved the attempt to transmute metals (turning lead into gold) or the human soul into a state of spiritual purity.
99. Amnesia: The inability to retrieve information from memory. Amnesia is caused by disease of or injury to the head/brain or psychological trauma.
Localized amnesia: Forgetting everything from a particular time period.
Selective amnesia: Only certain details from a period of localized amnesia cannot be recalled.
Retrograde amnesia: Inability to remember events immediately prior to a point in time.
Anterograde amnesia: Inability to remember events immediately after a specific point in time.
Continuous amnesia: Anterograde amnesia that persists from this specific point to the present.
Source amnesia: One can remember something, but cannot recall how that information was learned.
Infantile amnesia: The inability to remember the first three years of life.
Generalized amnesia: The complete inability to remember anything.
Because amnesia is such an uncommon thing to happen in real life, at least on a large scale, just the amnesia will be paranormal enough to fulfill this prompt.
100. Angel Hair: Mysterious threads and tangles of white filament that fall from the sky. The substance tends to disappear when handled and vanishes even after being scooped into containers. Angel hair has been attributed to certain species of spiders that spin very delicate webs and use them as gliders. Although, some samples of angel hair have endured and been subjected to laboratory analysis. They were similar to borosilicate glass, made up of boron, silicon, calcium, and magnesium. The origin of these samples is unknown.
The filaments falling from the sky that you write about do not have to be white and do not have to be the hair of angels unless you want them to. They just have to be paranormal in nature.
101. Auditory Driving: Rhythmic sounds used in rituals to elicit unusual experiences/visions. Examples include drum beats, chants, and singing.
102. Spontaneous Human Combustion: People being incinerated by flames that seem to come from within their own body. Often, the heat of the fire can be so great as to rapidly reduce the human body to ash, but nearby furniture is just singed. Some theories say that a person's clothes and body fat act as a wick, like a candle, when they somehow wind up unconscious and catch on fire from some incendiary object, which accounts for why other things around the body do not catch on fire.
103. Berserk/Berserkr: To be seized by a trance-like, uncontrollable rage characterized by incredible strength and a frightening lust for carnage. The term is derived from the Old Norse word for a common type of mercenary warrior among the Vikings.
104. Deathbed Vision: Amazing, striking visual displays a person describes just prior to the moment of their death. It is different from the NDE in that an NDE is described after a person is revived from temporary death. A person having a deathbed vision may see deceased family members and/or supernatural beings who come to take them to the afterworld. They may also see the Afterworld itself. Sometimes, people caring for the dying will see some version of the deathbed vision as well.
105. Hemography: The appearance of words, phrases, and other messages in blood. The blood will be pooled on a surface or soaked into bandages or other fabric and will form itself into these messages without any human intervention. A person using their finger or a writing instrument to write on something with blood is not hemography, so keep that in mind. Let me repeat, the blood forms itself into words with no human intervention. (I'm sorry, I just think it's freakin' bizarre that this has actually happened to people.)
Hemography was a major plot point in the TV series "Miracles," where blood had formed itself into the messages "God is Nowhere" and "God is Now Here," as well as "Help Us," and one of the male leads was keeping tabs on who had seen each message.
106. Telepathy: The ability to read the thoughts of other people.
107. Glossolalia: Speaking in a language unknown to the speaker, often while in some sort of trance. Also known as speaking in tongues.
108. Illusion des Sosies: A condition in which a person becomes convinced that a family member or other close personal associate has been replaced with an exact replica. Because this is a paranormal challenge, the origin of the replacement should be supernatural in nature, or the reason behind this assumption.
109. Levitation: The act of material bodies (people) or objects hovering and flying through the air without ordinary means of propulsion.
110. Locutions: The experience of divine illumination in the form of words or statements heard only from within. In other words, hearing the "voice of God" or some other divine being.
Frightening Chart
111. Four Frenzies: The four classifications of divine madness, as believed by the Greeks to be a way to communicate with the gods.
Prophetic madness: The wisdom of Apollo, a way of predicting the future, as divined by his oracles who would receive it.
Telestic madness: Possession of the spirit by Dionysus, god of wildness. Devotees would congregate in the countryside and partake of drinking and dancing, giving themselves to spontaneous joy.
Poetic madness: Induced by the Muses. A poet would sing to the Muses in an attempt to gain creative inspiration. Many creative people describe inspiration as being gripped by an idea so strongly that it is similar to madness.
Erotic madness: Eros and Aphrodite are responsible for erotic madness. This is the grip of love and being in love, which often doesn't seem driven by rational thought but by impulse.
I know this one isn't incredibly clear, but basically I want you to pick a frenzy and give it a paranormal treatment.
112. Marian Apparition: Appearances of and visitations by the Blessed Virgin Mary. At times, the regular appearance of the Virgin Mary to a specific group of people and/or in a particular place has sent entire villages into a religious furvor. And no, you cannot use the ghostly appearance of some random chick named Mary for this prompt (unless she's really the Virgin Mary).
113. Metachoric Experience: An experience in which your entire environment is replaced by a hallucination. Metachoric experiences can occur while one is awake or in an altered state of consciousness.
114. Missing Time: The inability to remember the events of a specific period of time. Often, missing time is attributed to supernatural events or alien abductions.
115. New Jersey Vegetable Monster: A humanoid resembling a giant stalk of broccoli, seen one night by a drunk in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. The case has come to represent a case in which there is the least amount of evidence of unusual phenomena.
116. Preaching Sickness: The onset of a sleep or trance-like state in which a person proclaims known or unknown religious doctrines. So far, this phenomena has only happened in Finland and Sweden. (Gives whole new meaning to the phrase, "Bork bork bork!" And I can make that joke because I am part Swedish. ;D) You do not have to limit your story to those countries, though.
117. Reincarnation Memory: The memory of something that happened to you in a past life, often recalled during hypnosis or in dreams.
118. Springheel Jack: A mysterious humanoid seen in London in 1837 and '38. Sightings have spread to other parts of the UK, the United States, and Argentina in the years since and continue to this day. Meetings with Springheel Jack always occur at night, often in alleyways or on doorsteps. I'm going to quote from the site http://www.unknown-creatures.com on the rest of this because whenever I try to type it, it all sounds so ridiculous that I can't stop laughing long enough to get it done. (I'm sorry, the description of this thing is just so funny.)
Springheel Jack is described as being a tall, thin man wearing a dark cape and a close fitting cloth helmet or hat. The creatures hands have large claws, and his eyes glow bright red at times.
In one of the 1837 sightings, a woman heard a loud knocking on her door. She opened the door to see a man she thought was a police officer standing there. The officer shouted 'for gods sake, bring me a light, we have caught springheel jack in the lane'. The woman returned with a candle, but the man at the door was gone, she ventured outside to find a man standing by her gate. As the woman gave the man the candle, he removed his cloak, and spew out blue and white flames from his mouth. (XD XD) The man then tore at the woman's dress, and scratched her stomach and face. While the attack was happening, the woman noticed the man's eyes were glowing like red coals of fire. The woman's sister heard her screams for help and ran out into the street as the creature fled away.
The creature is able to cross the streets by leaping from one rooftop to the next, taking acrobatic leaps that can be of up to five meters high and ten meters long.
One resident shot at the creature at close range, and said the bullets did nothing to even slow him.
Reports also said that he had a lamp strapped to his chest. Springheel Jack could also leap over fences. In a typical encounter, he might leap in the way of a passing pedestrian, screech at them, and scratch their face before bounding away. Don't let my cynicism sway how you write your story. Feel free to interpret it in a scary manner if you want.
119. Theomania: The belief that one is possessed by a good spirit, angel, or deity.
120. Psychic Vision: The viewing of something not obtained through normal sensory information, like a mind's eye view of a future event, or a dream where you receive verifiable information you would not normally know. (These are just two examples.)
Alison's dreams on Medium can be classified as psychic visions, as can Johnny's visions on The Dead Zone.
121. Will o' the Wisp: Luminous bubbles and flames seen in marshy regions at night, thought to be beings attempting to lure people into the marshes and to their deaths.
122. Take-away Apparitions: Apparitions that come at the time of death of a loved one to lead them to the afterworld. They are sometimes accompanied by angels and other supernatural beings.
123. Vampire: A folkloric revenant who subsists by feeding on the blood of the living. For more information, you can check out the Wikipedia article here: Vampire
124. Siren: Sirens are half-woman, half-bird creatures with bewitching singing voices. Their voices lured mariners to shipwreck on the rocky islands where they lived. Some sources say that sirens are half-seamonster instead of half-bird.
125. Lamia: A lamia is a half-woman, half-serpent creature that eats children. They have also been depicted as seductresses and daughters of Lilith. Greek mythology says that Zeus gave lamia the power of prophecy and the ability to remove her eyes and put them back in again.
126. Batsquatch: A giant bat that is said to inhabit the same area as Bigfoot. They weren't going for a serious name when they christened this thing, were they? XD Feel free to put Batsquatch in any geographic area you please.
127. Scrying: A form of divination involving gazing into a reflective surface (like a crystal ball) to see psychic visions. The tv show "Charmed" incorrectly identified scrying as using a crystal to find things on a map, but that is not scrying; it's dowsing.
128. Dowsing: The ancient art of being able to locate things that are hidden underground, such as water or gold, through the use of a Divining Rod, often a Y-shaped stick, held at the forked end with the single end as a pointer.
Dowsing is still used today in many countries, especially for the search for underground streams and other water sources. In the past, a Dowser would have been consulted before the construction of a building began, so that it could be known whether or not they were building on top of an underground stream.
Dowsing is also supposed to be useful in locating other things besides water, using a pendulum/crystal dangled over a map.
129. Eltanin Antenna: A mysterious structure that was discovered at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 1964, by the NSF Polar Research Vessel Eltanin. The object was described as being a pole rising from the ocean floor with a series of twelve spokes radiating from it. Each spoke had a sphere shape on the end of it, and were at an angle of 15 degress from one another. The 'Eltanin Antenna' as it was called, is some 1000 miles south of Cape Horn. There has been a lot of speculation regarding the origins and purpose of the object.
Some marine biologists think that it may be a type of life form, although no form of marine life is known to be of such a peculiar shape. Others have suggested that the object was intentionally put there, possibly by an ancient civilization, or even by beings from another world.
This website (http://www.waterufo.net/things.php) identifies it as a very peculiar type of marine sponge, a Cladorhiza, but feel free to have fun making it into something more supernatural. Or, create your own out of place, eerie paranormal antenna.
130. Amanojaku: No, not the character from "Urotsuki Doji." (Although I'm sure he was named for this demon.) An amanojaku is a Japanese demon capable of instigating a person's darkest desires, encouraging them to commit wicked deeds.
131. Black Agnes: While Black Agnes does refer to several actual statues, this legend can refer to any statue used as a grave marker that has the supposed ability to kill. Usually, Black Agnes is a seated statue that marks the grave of a woman who died grief-stricken, and anyone who sits in her lap overnight is supposed to be found dead in the morning. In other regional stories, just meeting Agnes's gaze will strike you dead. You can also use this prompt for any story featuring a similar killer statue.
132. The Vanishing Room: An urban legend about a room, such as a hotel room, that seems to vanish into thin air. The story usually goes like this: Two people check into a hotel room together. One goes out to get something at the store, and when they return, they find that their companion has disappeared without a trace, their hotel room does not exist, and no one remembers ever having seen or heard of their companion. The story usually takes place in a foreign country to make it even more scary, with the diminished ability of communication. What happened to the room and the person within it? You decide. (Your explanation should involve the supernatural, of course.)
Freaky Table
133. Gaki: A gaki (Japanese) or preta (Sanskrit) is the ghost of a greedy or jealous person who cannot find peace in the afterworld. They wander the earth, experiencing an unsatisfiable craving for something they couldn't get enough of in life, like love, food, sex, money, etc. Some legends say that glimpsing the true face of the preta will strike a man dead.
134. Spectral Dogs: A being that looks like a very large, menacing, black dog, usually with glowing eyes. They are often associated with the devil/Hell and can be portents of death. If you're writing in the "Supernatural" fandom, you can use the Black Dogs/Hell Hounds for this prompt. (The invisible dogs that came after people who made deals at the crossroads, not the stupid ghost hunting dudes.)
135. Baku: A Japanese creature said to devour bad dreams. You write the name of the Baku on a piece of paper, put it under your pillow, and ask it to take away your nightmares, or put a statue of the Baku next to your bed. They are almost always seen as benevolent creatures, although some fiction has colored them as evil just for variety.
136. Shadow People: Supernatural shadow-like creatures that can usually be seen moving in the peripheries of your vision and disintegrate or move out of sight when noticed. The most common shadow people look like hooded figures or a man wearing a fedora hat (the "hat man") with no discernable mouth, nose, or other features. Sometimes they have glowing eyes. Humanoid shadow people with no cloak and child-size shadows have also been reported.
137. Circle of 13 Skulls: A Native American legend that told of a collection of 13 Crystal Skulls that were said to hold the details of mankind's true purpose and destiny. A variety of Crystal Skulls have been discovered over the years, some dating back thousands of years. Despite efforts to combine 13 of these skulls in one place, no evidence of the knowledge said to be contained within them has ever been found.
138. Ley Lines: Ley Lines are thought to be alignments of ancient and sacred sites, such as Stone Circles, churches, burial grounds and megaliths, and are considered to be sources of powerful earth energies.
The points where Ley Lines cross are often found to be the subject of various ghost phenomena, as well as sightings of UFOs and mysterious lights. It has been suggested that spirits of the deceased draw energy from Ley Lines in order to help them manifest.
The intersections of ley lines are thought to be places of great spiritual energy, which could explain why paranormal things seem to happen there. Basically, it is thought that anywhere you can draw a relatively straight line through these ancient and sacred sites across the Earth, there is a ley line within the Earth. (Of course, since the Earth is round, the line wouldn't be *truly* straight, but you get my point.)
MORE PROMPT DEFINITIONS that would not fit in this post
These definitions come from the following sources:
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ghosts and Hauntings by Tom Ogden
Alternative Realities by Leonard George, Ph.D.
The Occultopedia
Unexplained Mysteries
A couple of miscellaneous places I Googled.
My own knowledge.
These are numbered according to how they are numbered on the Paranormal 200 chart, but the actual place each prompt falls on your table may be different if you are only doing 25 prompts.
Classic Chart
1. Séance: A gathering of individuals, usually led by a medium, for the purpose of receiving communication from the dead. (Examples: On "Supernatural" episode 4.01, Dean, Sam, Pamela, and Bobby seated around the table with candles in an attempt to contact Castiel was a séance. They held a séance with a spirit horn, even, in the movie The Changeling ((the one with George C. Scott)). The first scene of The Amityville Horror 3 features a séance. The scene with the creepy old lady writing on the chalkboard in The Ghost of Mae Nak is a séance. ((Her writing on the chalkboard is Automatic Writing.)) Etc.)
2. Ouija Board: A board preprinted with letters, numerals, and words used to receive spirit communications. (Used in The Exorcist, Witchboard, episode 2.01 of "Supernatural," and a ton of other examples.)
3. Mothman: A being seen around the city of Pt. Pleasant, West Virginia in the late 1960s that resembled a giant half man, half moth.
4. Incubus/Succubus: A male demon that seeks intercourse with human women, often while they are asleep. Mythological lore says that incubi can induce intense sexual desires only they can satisfy. Its female counterpart would be the succubus.
5. Exorcism: The expulsion of a ghost, spirit, demon, or other entity thought to be possessing or haunting a human being or location.
6. Possession: When the body of a person is thought to be taken over and under the control of an entity, such as a demon or other supernatural being, or perhaps another personality.
7. Haunting: The return of a ghost to the same location over and over. Some hauntings have multiple ghosts.
8. Necromancer: A person with the power to raise or call upon the dead to foretell the future, often thought to have the power to control/enslave them.
9. Crisis Apparition: A specific type of out-of-body experience in which the agent projects his or her astral body at a time of crisis or death to a particular person, usually a loved one.
10. Phantom Hitchhiker: A ghost who haunts a specific roadway or other location (such as a lake, cemetery, wooded area, etc.) and requests a ride from passing motorists. The hitchhiker usually disappears from the vehicle just as the motorist reaches the address given by the ghost.
11. Radiant Boys: The ghosts of boys who have been murdered by their mothers. These spirits glow in the dark, and sightings of them are thought to be omens of violent death or bad luck.
12. Hell: Traditionally, the place where bad souls go after death to be punished for their sins.
13. Medium: Someone who can communicate with spirits, especially of the dead.
14. Automatic Writing: Communication from a spirit in written form. A person, often a medium, holds a pen or other writing instrument against paper and allows a spirit to take control of their hand to write out a message.
15. Doppelganger: A German term that literally means "double-walker." It refers to an apparition of a living person, an exact physical double.
16. Amulet: Any object thought to have the power to ward off evil spirits and/or bad luck.
17. Amityville: This story is really too involved to summarize, but who hasn't heard of the Amityville Horror? The case should either be discussed or revisited. Send your characters there if you want. It is also okay to create your own Amityville Horror-inspired house if it fits in better with your claim. (Such as, a house where something horrible happened that influences everyone who lives in it to act out the same horrible acts. A house that is very haunted that has a creepy basement and was supposedly built on ancient burial ground. You know, just something similar. Truthfully, from the reports I've seen, I believe that Amityville was a hoax, so you could also work that in to your story if you are so inspired.)
18. EVP/DVP/RVP: Electronic Voice Phenomena - The capture of spirit voices on magnetic tape as an audio recording. Many times, the voices are not heard until the tape is played back. / Direct Voice Phenomena - The voice of a spirit spoken directly to the sitters at a séance. The voice seems to come from a spot near the medium's head or an apparatus made for such a thing, like a spirit horn. It does not come from the mouth of the medium; that would be channeling. / Radio Voice Phenomena - Receiving the voice of a spirit over a regular radio. A story that fits this prompt should include at least one of these, or all three if you want.
19. Famous Haunted Location: Pick a famous haunted location and include it in your story somehow, even if that means the characters just discuss it, or actually go there. You can also make up your own famous haunted location, where it is famous in the world of your story.
20. Retrocognition: A sudden time warp in which you find yourself in the past, seeing and experiencing events of which you had no prior knowledge. This more involves seeing the past rather than interacting with it. Physically entering the past would be a timeslip/time travel.
21. Cemetery/Mausoleum: This prompt is all about writing a spooky story that centers around a cemetery and/or mausoleum.
22. Near-Death Experience: A person clinically dies or comes very close to death and is revived. Afterward, they recall extraordinary visions of an afterlife.
Spooky Chart
23. Psychokinesis: The ability to move objects and influence matter with the power of the mind. It is also known as telekinesis, but that is an antiquated term.
24. Adept: A person who possesses almost total occult knowledge and is thought to be proficiently skilled in its lore. They could also possess magickal skill because of this knowledge.
25. Pyrokinesis: The ability to create and nurture fires with only the power of the mind.
26. Poltergeist: A poltergeist is present when objects fly about the room by themselves, often on a trajectory that seems influenced by intelligent forces. (Objects turn corners, for example.) Sometimes, matter will even pass through other matter. (Example: In the case of Tina Resch, eggs passed through a closed refrigerator door.) These incidents were originally thought to be the work of mischievous spirits, but current theory holds that poltergeist activity is caused by people with psychokinesis. A psychokinetic undergoing stress and turmoil in his or her life unconsciously causes the mayhem to work out this inner conflict. Once the problem is resolved, the poltergeist activity ceases. (If you're writing in the "Supernatural" fandom, yes, it is okay to use their incorrect version of a poltergeist for this prompt.)
27. Haunted Prison: Write a fic featuring a haunted prison.
28. Banshee: A Scottish or Irish female spirit who hangs around a particular dwelling and wails at or before the death of a family member inside that dwelling.
29. Screaming Skull: A human skull inhabited by a ghost that makes the skull scream whenever anyone tries to remove it from its chosen resting place (like a house) or to bury it. Sometimes the screaming is accompanied by thumping noises typical of a haunting. Often the skull belonged to a person who was attached to the house and died by violent means.
30. Ghost Lights: Recurrent nocturnal luminosities. In other words, recurring balls of light that appear at night in a particular location. Some ghost lights are so widely known that they have become local legends and tourist attractions.
31. Oracle: A person who can talk to gods or spirits for the purpose of divining prophecies (telling the future).
32. Collective Apparition: An incident in which more than one person sees the same ghost phenomena at the same time.
33. Gray Lady: The ghost of a woman whose death has been caused by a loved one or who died while waiting for her lover to return, possibly from war.
34. Astral Projection/Out of Body Experience (OBE): Phenomenon in which a spirit double (AKA astral body) leaves your body and travels to another location.
35. Thoughtography: The power to project images of thought and imagination onto recording media, such as photographic film, and into the minds of others. It is also known as psychic photography and, in Japan, "nensha." Example: Sadako from the film Ringu and Samara from The Ring possessed the power of thoughtography - it's how they made their respective cursed videotapes.
36. Other Haunted Location: Write a fic about another location that could be haunted, such as a hospital, theatre, amusement park, school, etc.
37. Fairy Tale: Write a story that somehow deals with a fairy tale in a paranormal fashion. Maybe mix this fairy tale with your favorite fandom. Many fairy tales already contain paranormal elements.
38. Dragon: A giant reptile of legend, usually represented as a winged, fire-breathing creature.
39. Apport/Asport: An apport is a solid object which seemingly appears from nowhere in the presence of a medium, usually at a séance. It doesn't always happen in this fashion, but this is the general circumstance in which they occur. Basically, an apport is an object that materializes out of thin air that purportedly comes from the spirit world. Apports are also objects that are teleported from one location to another by a spirit. The spirits assemble some apports from invisible matter. The opposite would be an asport - an object that disappears from a location, a feat also performed by spirits. In one incidence, a person has even served as an apport!
40. Channeling: A form of spirit communication where an unseen entity takes possession of a medium or other person and speaks through them.
41. Control/Spirit Guide: A spirit or non-human entity who acts as a medium's guide and intermediary to the world of the dead and/or other dimensions. Many psychics have at least one spirit guide.
42. Skinwalker: Native American legend of a person with the ability to change into any animal they want.
43. Direct Writing: A paranormal occurrence usually seen at a séance in which spirit handwriting appears directly on a previously unmarked surface without the use of the medium's or anyone else's hand. All those movies and tv shows where words appear out of nowhere in the condensation on a bathroom mirror, where only a ghost/spirit could have written it? (Like What Lies Beneath.) That's direct writing.
44. Drop-in Communicator: An unwanted spirit that suddenly makes its presence known at a séance to have its say. Its identity is often unknown to the people present. This prompt would also apply to a situation where ghost hunters were trying to make contact with one spirit and instead or also got a surprise spirit. That sort of thing.
Ghostly Chart
45. Ghost Hunt: An informal attempt to simply see or record a ghost in a location known to be haunted. Ghost hunts often use typical equipment for such an activity, like cameras, tape recorders, and EMF detectors.
46. EMF Meter/EMF Detector: A device used to measure the presence of a magnetic field as well as its strength, direction, and fluctuation. It is used by paranormal researchers to try to detect a ghost's magnetic energy.
47. Reciprocal Apparition: A rare type of spirit phenomena where a ghost and the person who spots it see and respond to each other.
48. Angels: An immortal spiritual being which acts as an intermediary between God and man. They are often depicted as having wings.
49. Demons: A low-level spirit or non-human intelligence that interacts with the human world and is concerned with lower plane activities. They are usually thought of as having evil intentions.
50. Wild Hunt: A group of ghost huntsmen, horses, and hounds in procession, always seen at night. (In other words, ghosts out on a hunt.) Many wild hunts are led by gods and goddesses.
51. Halloween: Write a story that somehow centers around Halloween or uses it as a theme.
52. Tarot: A deck of playing cards used for fortunetelling. There is a large variety of Tarot decks for sale, many of them designed to be a work of art in every card.
53. Ritual: Certain patterns of activity a person must follow to produce a desired result, often used for magick/spells.
54. Incantation: The words spoken during a ritual, either a hymn or prayer invoking or praising a deity, or in magic, occultism, or witchcraft with the intention of casting a spell.
55. Apocalypse: Current, most popular definition is the destruction of the world and/or civilization.
56. Megalith/Monolith: A huge stone or rock slab used in prehistoric monuments and constructions. A monolith would be one of these stones by itself, while a megalith would be a group of these stones. Stonehenge is a megalith. It is thought that many megaliths were once used for religious rituals.
57. Ark of the Covenant: The sacred Biblical box made of shittim wood covered with gold that contained the tablets of the Law, a pot of manna, and Aaron's rod. It was believed to be the literal manifestation of God on Earth. Its lid was made of solid gold and had two cherubs with outstretched wings engraved into it. The Ark was one of the most terrifying artifacts in Biblical history, at least to evildoers. It was thought of as a weapon of God with the power to strike men dead.
58. Werewolf: A person who can take on the form of a wolf or a human/wolf hybrid creature on the night of a full moon. They often attack humans, and most werewolf lore says that their bite turns you into one of them.
59. Afterworld: The world/dimension where the dead reside.
60. Grimoire: A sort of magickal textbook with instructions for raising spirits and demons and/or performing other types of rituals. The Key of Solomon is a grimoire.
61. Atlantis: A vast island-continent of legend and its civilizations, eventually destroyed in a cataclysm. The civilization was thought to be highly advanced. Some philosophers have said that the people of Atlantis may have even been godlike. Most theories hold that Atlantis was located in the Atlantic Ocean and sank beneath the sea because of an earthquake. This prompt would also apply to other Atlantis-like civilizations (Thule, Lemuria, etc) or an Atlantis-like place that you create.
62. Ghoul: A demon or evil spirit that haunts graveyards and feeds on corpses.
63. Bermuda Triangle: An area in the Atlantic Ocean where paranormal events and unexplained disappearances occur. It is bound by Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. You can also apply this prompt to other areas where similar disappearances occur, which are often referred to as "displaced Bermuda Triangles," or your own fictional Bermuda Triangle-like area.
64. Ganzfield Stimulation (aka Ganzfeld Stimulation): The use of sensory deprivation to stimulate psychic powers (just one use for this technique).
65. Black Magick: The sum of all knowledge about spells, magick, and rituals with evil intent.
66. Fortean Rain: Any rain that contains bizarre objects that normally do not fall from the sky, such as frogs, stones, blood, etc.
Scary Chart
67. Charm: A magickal formula intended to be sung or recited to achieve a desired effect. Charms are often used as part of the ritual to make amulets or talismans. Or, you can write from the popular definition of a charm being something worn or carried (like jewelry) for good luck, to cast a spell over someone, etc. Similar to an amulet, except amulets usually have a more powerful, religious, and ancient feel to them.
68. Stigmata: Eruptions on the skin that most often represent the wounds suffered by Christ during the crucifixion - whip marks on the back from the flogging, nail wounds on the hands and feet, pricks on the head from the crown of thorns, and the spear wound in the side. The marks can take a variety of forms: a reddening of the skin, the appearance of blisters or welts, and the oozing of blood or clear serum from unbroken skin.
69. Evil Eye: The evil eye is a kind of curse put on a child, livestock, crops, etc., by someone who has the power of the "evil eye." Most of these superstitions involve, for example, staring too long, often in envy, at a person, and later they turn up sick. Amulets can be obtained to ward off the evil eye.
70. Chichevache: A monster that lives by eating virtuous, virginal, or ill-treated women.
71. Precognition: Direct knowledge of the future obtained through abnormal, psychic means, like visions or dreams.
72. Chupacabra: From the Spanish for "goat sucker," a creature that drains the blood of livestock, including mammals (like goats) and birds. It has been seen in lower North America, Central, and South America, and also islands like Puerto Rico.
73. Curse: A prayer for harm to befall someone, to call evil down upon them.
74. Clairvoyance: The ability to obtain information about events or objects without the use of any known senses. This paranormal knowledge often centers around occurrences in the present happening at the same time, many miles away, that can be "seen" by the clairvoyant through visions. Usually, when a psychic is taken to a crime scene and gets impressions of what happened there just by being near the place where the crime happened, it is called clairvoyance. A great deal of Alison's visions (when she's awake) on "Medium" are clairvoyant visions. (Her psychic dreams probably have their own classification. Most of them are precognitive or retrocognitive.)
75. Divination: A means of foretelling the future and sometimes the past using various methods and interpretations. Some types of divination are necromancy, scrying, feng-shui, casting runes, astrology, dream interpretation, Tarot reading, etc.
76. Death Prayer: A prayer aimed at causing the death of one person. Also, a prayer that protects someone from death.
77. Mermaid: A female creature that is human from the waist up and fish from the waist down. You can also write about mermen.
78. Demonology: The study and classification of the hierarchy of demons, their powers and weaknesses, attributes, names, and derivations.
79. Omen: A supernatural sign or event foretelling the future.
80. Poppet: A magickal doll made for the purpose of spell-casting and rituals. Often the doll represents a person and is acted upon in a symbol of what the spell-caster desires should happen to that person (symbolically bound, hung, stuck with pins, etc.).
81. Closet/Under the Bed Monster: Monsters living in the closet or under the bed are a common childhood fear. Write a story that somehow explores this.
82. Psychometry: A method of psychic reading by touching physical objects. When the object is touched, the psychic can "see" its history and the history of people associated with that object.
83. Revenant: Animate corpses which rise from the grave to haunt the living. Thought to be a bit more animated than a zombie.
84. Quantum Mechanics: A theory of physics that says that side by side with this world, another world exists - a parallel universe that is somehow slightly different and yet the same. An infinite number of parallel universes exist for every possible variant.
85. Lake/Loch Ness Monster: Known also as Nessie, this is an aquatic or amphibious creature which resides in Loch Ness in Scotland. This creature is supposed to be so large that people doubt its existence in the lake, but witnesses swear they have seen Nessie. Some think it may be a dinosaur that somehow survived the extinction of its species. Other lake monsters include Champ in Lake Champlain.
You may also make up your own aquatic monster for this prompt, including seamonsters.
86. Zodiac: Write a paranormal story that has something to do with the signs of the zodiac. You could also write something dealing with the serial killer who called himself The Zodiac as long as the subject matter is still paranormal in nature.
87. Famous Paranormal Case: Write a story about a famous, true paranormal case besides any already covered on this chart. The case should be experienced, discussed, revisited, etc. Examples include the Smurl haunting, the case dramatized in The Entity, Tina Resch, the case dramatized in The Exorcism of Emily Rose, etc. You can also use a true well-known case as inspiration for a fictional account.
88. Rappings: A method of communicating with spirits or demons by asking them to knock on a solid surface a predetermined number of times in answer to questions. For example, a spirit may be asked to knock once if their answer is yes and twice if their answer is no. Similar noises made in answer to such questions can also be considered rappings.
Eerie Chart
89. Shrine: A tomb or altar for a venerated person, especially a saint.
90. Runes: An ancient Norse and Germanic alphabet ascribed magickal properties and used mainly for amulets inscribed on wood, stone, metal, or bone. The symbolic alphabet is used to foretell the future and shed light on present concerns by casting the runes in a particular arrangement and reading their meaning in relation to each other.
91. Cult: Obsessive and faddish devotion to the leader of a religious sect. Also refers to the system of religious worship where this kind of devotion takes place.
92. Pareidolia: Finding meaning in random patterns. Pareidolia is what is produced by the mind's need to find coherent order in random stimulus. Examples of pareidolia include...
Visual pareidolia: Seeing recognizable objects and/or faces in the shapes of clouds, rust stains, inkblots, reflections, water stains, dust swirling in a sunbeam, burns, the shapes of potato chips, smoke, fire, etc.
Auditory pareidolia: Hearing recognizable sounds, such as voices, in random noises like water hitting a shower curtain, bird song, radio or television static, the electronic hum of an open phone line, crackle of a bad phone connection, a record played backwards, etc.
93. Windshield Pitting Epidemic: In Seattle in 1954, there was a rash of damaged car windshields that was never fully explained. Windshields all over the city were suddenly covered in small pits. Some thought it was sand flea eggs hatching in the glass, others blamed mass hysteria, while still others thought it was somehow related to space aliens. The problem even went as high as President Eisenhower, who was asked by the mayor of Seattle to take emergency action to solve the mystery. Thousands of cars were affected.
You can write about this particular WPE, or make up your own. Just keep it paranormal. You can also write about other types of damage that may be done to cars by "real" or fictional paranormal creatures. A good example would be cars that have allegedly been damaged by the Lizard Man of Lee County, SC.
94. Fugue State: A psychological disorder with four main characteristics -
1.) The person suddenly and unexpectedly departs from the conditions of one's ordinary lifestyle, such as job, home, and family.
2.) Assumption of a new identity, which might include a new name and vocation.
3.) Inability to recall one's previous identity.
4.) The absence of causes such as an organic mental disorder.
Victims of fugue states have often suffered great mental trauma, and the fugue manifests in an attempt to escape from that trauma. Often the fugue state will end when the perceived threat is removed or the trauma is dealt with. Sometimes a fugue state just spontaneously ends for unknown reasons. It is similar to amnesia but is not exactly the same thing. With amnesia, the person knows they had a previous identity, but have forgotten it. They also do not assume a new identity as if the other one never existed. Amnesia victims may choose a new name and career out of necessity, but they are aware they had a different one at some point. With a fugue state, the person is unaware they had a previous identity.
95. Imaginary Companion: A companion/friend that does not exist, cannot be seen, and/or only exists in the mind of the person who interacts with them.
96. Bigfoot aka Abominable Snowman/Yeti/Sasquatch: A hair-covered humanoid creature that wanders wooded areas or mountains in various parts of the world. Usually very tall, with large feet and powerful strength.
97. Mass Possession: The possession of more than one person at a time, usually in succession, who bear some association with each other. The possession can be by a creature(s) of evil intent, positive intent, or simply a mass state of overwrought feelings, like a religious rapture. Usually one person is overcome, which triggers a domino effect, spreading the possession to other members of the group. Congregations of nuns seem to be popular targets of mass possession.
98. Alchemy: The "science" of changing a base substance into a precious one. This frequently involved the attempt to transmute metals (turning lead into gold) or the human soul into a state of spiritual purity.
99. Amnesia: The inability to retrieve information from memory. Amnesia is caused by disease of or injury to the head/brain or psychological trauma.
Localized amnesia: Forgetting everything from a particular time period.
Selective amnesia: Only certain details from a period of localized amnesia cannot be recalled.
Retrograde amnesia: Inability to remember events immediately prior to a point in time.
Anterograde amnesia: Inability to remember events immediately after a specific point in time.
Continuous amnesia: Anterograde amnesia that persists from this specific point to the present.
Source amnesia: One can remember something, but cannot recall how that information was learned.
Infantile amnesia: The inability to remember the first three years of life.
Generalized amnesia: The complete inability to remember anything.
Because amnesia is such an uncommon thing to happen in real life, at least on a large scale, just the amnesia will be paranormal enough to fulfill this prompt.
100. Angel Hair: Mysterious threads and tangles of white filament that fall from the sky. The substance tends to disappear when handled and vanishes even after being scooped into containers. Angel hair has been attributed to certain species of spiders that spin very delicate webs and use them as gliders. Although, some samples of angel hair have endured and been subjected to laboratory analysis. They were similar to borosilicate glass, made up of boron, silicon, calcium, and magnesium. The origin of these samples is unknown.
The filaments falling from the sky that you write about do not have to be white and do not have to be the hair of angels unless you want them to. They just have to be paranormal in nature.
101. Auditory Driving: Rhythmic sounds used in rituals to elicit unusual experiences/visions. Examples include drum beats, chants, and singing.
102. Spontaneous Human Combustion: People being incinerated by flames that seem to come from within their own body. Often, the heat of the fire can be so great as to rapidly reduce the human body to ash, but nearby furniture is just singed. Some theories say that a person's clothes and body fat act as a wick, like a candle, when they somehow wind up unconscious and catch on fire from some incendiary object, which accounts for why other things around the body do not catch on fire.
103. Berserk/Berserkr: To be seized by a trance-like, uncontrollable rage characterized by incredible strength and a frightening lust for carnage. The term is derived from the Old Norse word for a common type of mercenary warrior among the Vikings.
104. Deathbed Vision: Amazing, striking visual displays a person describes just prior to the moment of their death. It is different from the NDE in that an NDE is described after a person is revived from temporary death. A person having a deathbed vision may see deceased family members and/or supernatural beings who come to take them to the afterworld. They may also see the Afterworld itself. Sometimes, people caring for the dying will see some version of the deathbed vision as well.
105. Hemography: The appearance of words, phrases, and other messages in blood. The blood will be pooled on a surface or soaked into bandages or other fabric and will form itself into these messages without any human intervention. A person using their finger or a writing instrument to write on something with blood is not hemography, so keep that in mind. Let me repeat, the blood forms itself into words with no human intervention. (I'm sorry, I just think it's freakin' bizarre that this has actually happened to people.)
Hemography was a major plot point in the TV series "Miracles," where blood had formed itself into the messages "God is Nowhere" and "God is Now Here," as well as "Help Us," and one of the male leads was keeping tabs on who had seen each message.
106. Telepathy: The ability to read the thoughts of other people.
107. Glossolalia: Speaking in a language unknown to the speaker, often while in some sort of trance. Also known as speaking in tongues.
108. Illusion des Sosies: A condition in which a person becomes convinced that a family member or other close personal associate has been replaced with an exact replica. Because this is a paranormal challenge, the origin of the replacement should be supernatural in nature, or the reason behind this assumption.
109. Levitation: The act of material bodies (people) or objects hovering and flying through the air without ordinary means of propulsion.
110. Locutions: The experience of divine illumination in the form of words or statements heard only from within. In other words, hearing the "voice of God" or some other divine being.
Frightening Chart
111. Four Frenzies: The four classifications of divine madness, as believed by the Greeks to be a way to communicate with the gods.
Prophetic madness: The wisdom of Apollo, a way of predicting the future, as divined by his oracles who would receive it.
Telestic madness: Possession of the spirit by Dionysus, god of wildness. Devotees would congregate in the countryside and partake of drinking and dancing, giving themselves to spontaneous joy.
Poetic madness: Induced by the Muses. A poet would sing to the Muses in an attempt to gain creative inspiration. Many creative people describe inspiration as being gripped by an idea so strongly that it is similar to madness.
Erotic madness: Eros and Aphrodite are responsible for erotic madness. This is the grip of love and being in love, which often doesn't seem driven by rational thought but by impulse.
I know this one isn't incredibly clear, but basically I want you to pick a frenzy and give it a paranormal treatment.
112. Marian Apparition: Appearances of and visitations by the Blessed Virgin Mary. At times, the regular appearance of the Virgin Mary to a specific group of people and/or in a particular place has sent entire villages into a religious furvor. And no, you cannot use the ghostly appearance of some random chick named Mary for this prompt (unless she's really the Virgin Mary).
113. Metachoric Experience: An experience in which your entire environment is replaced by a hallucination. Metachoric experiences can occur while one is awake or in an altered state of consciousness.
114. Missing Time: The inability to remember the events of a specific period of time. Often, missing time is attributed to supernatural events or alien abductions.
115. New Jersey Vegetable Monster: A humanoid resembling a giant stalk of broccoli, seen one night by a drunk in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. The case has come to represent a case in which there is the least amount of evidence of unusual phenomena.
116. Preaching Sickness: The onset of a sleep or trance-like state in which a person proclaims known or unknown religious doctrines. So far, this phenomena has only happened in Finland and Sweden. (Gives whole new meaning to the phrase, "Bork bork bork!" And I can make that joke because I am part Swedish. ;D) You do not have to limit your story to those countries, though.
117. Reincarnation Memory: The memory of something that happened to you in a past life, often recalled during hypnosis or in dreams.
118. Springheel Jack: A mysterious humanoid seen in London in 1837 and '38. Sightings have spread to other parts of the UK, the United States, and Argentina in the years since and continue to this day. Meetings with Springheel Jack always occur at night, often in alleyways or on doorsteps. I'm going to quote from the site http://www.unknown-creatures.com on the rest of this because whenever I try to type it, it all sounds so ridiculous that I can't stop laughing long enough to get it done. (I'm sorry, the description of this thing is just so funny.)
Springheel Jack is described as being a tall, thin man wearing a dark cape and a close fitting cloth helmet or hat. The creatures hands have large claws, and his eyes glow bright red at times.
In one of the 1837 sightings, a woman heard a loud knocking on her door. She opened the door to see a man she thought was a police officer standing there. The officer shouted 'for gods sake, bring me a light, we have caught springheel jack in the lane'. The woman returned with a candle, but the man at the door was gone, she ventured outside to find a man standing by her gate. As the woman gave the man the candle, he removed his cloak, and spew out blue and white flames from his mouth. (XD XD) The man then tore at the woman's dress, and scratched her stomach and face. While the attack was happening, the woman noticed the man's eyes were glowing like red coals of fire. The woman's sister heard her screams for help and ran out into the street as the creature fled away.
The creature is able to cross the streets by leaping from one rooftop to the next, taking acrobatic leaps that can be of up to five meters high and ten meters long.
One resident shot at the creature at close range, and said the bullets did nothing to even slow him.
Reports also said that he had a lamp strapped to his chest. Springheel Jack could also leap over fences. In a typical encounter, he might leap in the way of a passing pedestrian, screech at them, and scratch their face before bounding away. Don't let my cynicism sway how you write your story. Feel free to interpret it in a scary manner if you want.
119. Theomania: The belief that one is possessed by a good spirit, angel, or deity.
120. Psychic Vision: The viewing of something not obtained through normal sensory information, like a mind's eye view of a future event, or a dream where you receive verifiable information you would not normally know. (These are just two examples.)
Alison's dreams on Medium can be classified as psychic visions, as can Johnny's visions on The Dead Zone.
121. Will o' the Wisp: Luminous bubbles and flames seen in marshy regions at night, thought to be beings attempting to lure people into the marshes and to their deaths.
122. Take-away Apparitions: Apparitions that come at the time of death of a loved one to lead them to the afterworld. They are sometimes accompanied by angels and other supernatural beings.
123. Vampire: A folkloric revenant who subsists by feeding on the blood of the living. For more information, you can check out the Wikipedia article here: Vampire
124. Siren: Sirens are half-woman, half-bird creatures with bewitching singing voices. Their voices lured mariners to shipwreck on the rocky islands where they lived. Some sources say that sirens are half-seamonster instead of half-bird.
125. Lamia: A lamia is a half-woman, half-serpent creature that eats children. They have also been depicted as seductresses and daughters of Lilith. Greek mythology says that Zeus gave lamia the power of prophecy and the ability to remove her eyes and put them back in again.
126. Batsquatch: A giant bat that is said to inhabit the same area as Bigfoot. They weren't going for a serious name when they christened this thing, were they? XD Feel free to put Batsquatch in any geographic area you please.
127. Scrying: A form of divination involving gazing into a reflective surface (like a crystal ball) to see psychic visions. The tv show "Charmed" incorrectly identified scrying as using a crystal to find things on a map, but that is not scrying; it's dowsing.
128. Dowsing: The ancient art of being able to locate things that are hidden underground, such as water or gold, through the use of a Divining Rod, often a Y-shaped stick, held at the forked end with the single end as a pointer.
Dowsing is still used today in many countries, especially for the search for underground streams and other water sources. In the past, a Dowser would have been consulted before the construction of a building began, so that it could be known whether or not they were building on top of an underground stream.
Dowsing is also supposed to be useful in locating other things besides water, using a pendulum/crystal dangled over a map.
129. Eltanin Antenna: A mysterious structure that was discovered at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 1964, by the NSF Polar Research Vessel Eltanin. The object was described as being a pole rising from the ocean floor with a series of twelve spokes radiating from it. Each spoke had a sphere shape on the end of it, and were at an angle of 15 degress from one another. The 'Eltanin Antenna' as it was called, is some 1000 miles south of Cape Horn. There has been a lot of speculation regarding the origins and purpose of the object.
Some marine biologists think that it may be a type of life form, although no form of marine life is known to be of such a peculiar shape. Others have suggested that the object was intentionally put there, possibly by an ancient civilization, or even by beings from another world.
This website (http://www.waterufo.net/things.php) identifies it as a very peculiar type of marine sponge, a Cladorhiza, but feel free to have fun making it into something more supernatural. Or, create your own out of place, eerie paranormal antenna.
130. Amanojaku: No, not the character from "Urotsuki Doji." (Although I'm sure he was named for this demon.) An amanojaku is a Japanese demon capable of instigating a person's darkest desires, encouraging them to commit wicked deeds.
131. Black Agnes: While Black Agnes does refer to several actual statues, this legend can refer to any statue used as a grave marker that has the supposed ability to kill. Usually, Black Agnes is a seated statue that marks the grave of a woman who died grief-stricken, and anyone who sits in her lap overnight is supposed to be found dead in the morning. In other regional stories, just meeting Agnes's gaze will strike you dead. You can also use this prompt for any story featuring a similar killer statue.
132. The Vanishing Room: An urban legend about a room, such as a hotel room, that seems to vanish into thin air. The story usually goes like this: Two people check into a hotel room together. One goes out to get something at the store, and when they return, they find that their companion has disappeared without a trace, their hotel room does not exist, and no one remembers ever having seen or heard of their companion. The story usually takes place in a foreign country to make it even more scary, with the diminished ability of communication. What happened to the room and the person within it? You decide. (Your explanation should involve the supernatural, of course.)
Freaky Table
133. Gaki: A gaki (Japanese) or preta (Sanskrit) is the ghost of a greedy or jealous person who cannot find peace in the afterworld. They wander the earth, experiencing an unsatisfiable craving for something they couldn't get enough of in life, like love, food, sex, money, etc. Some legends say that glimpsing the true face of the preta will strike a man dead.
134. Spectral Dogs: A being that looks like a very large, menacing, black dog, usually with glowing eyes. They are often associated with the devil/Hell and can be portents of death. If you're writing in the "Supernatural" fandom, you can use the Black Dogs/Hell Hounds for this prompt. (The invisible dogs that came after people who made deals at the crossroads, not the stupid ghost hunting dudes.)
135. Baku: A Japanese creature said to devour bad dreams. You write the name of the Baku on a piece of paper, put it under your pillow, and ask it to take away your nightmares, or put a statue of the Baku next to your bed. They are almost always seen as benevolent creatures, although some fiction has colored them as evil just for variety.
136. Shadow People: Supernatural shadow-like creatures that can usually be seen moving in the peripheries of your vision and disintegrate or move out of sight when noticed. The most common shadow people look like hooded figures or a man wearing a fedora hat (the "hat man") with no discernable mouth, nose, or other features. Sometimes they have glowing eyes. Humanoid shadow people with no cloak and child-size shadows have also been reported.
137. Circle of 13 Skulls: A Native American legend that told of a collection of 13 Crystal Skulls that were said to hold the details of mankind's true purpose and destiny. A variety of Crystal Skulls have been discovered over the years, some dating back thousands of years. Despite efforts to combine 13 of these skulls in one place, no evidence of the knowledge said to be contained within them has ever been found.
138. Ley Lines: Ley Lines are thought to be alignments of ancient and sacred sites, such as Stone Circles, churches, burial grounds and megaliths, and are considered to be sources of powerful earth energies.
The points where Ley Lines cross are often found to be the subject of various ghost phenomena, as well as sightings of UFOs and mysterious lights. It has been suggested that spirits of the deceased draw energy from Ley Lines in order to help them manifest.
The intersections of ley lines are thought to be places of great spiritual energy, which could explain why paranormal things seem to happen there. Basically, it is thought that anywhere you can draw a relatively straight line through these ancient and sacred sites across the Earth, there is a ley line within the Earth. (Of course, since the Earth is round, the line wouldn't be *truly* straight, but you get my point.)
MORE PROMPT DEFINITIONS that would not fit in this post