More Prompt Definitions
This post will serve as a second post for defining prompts since the first one is full.
The First 138 Prompts Defined
Most of these prompt definitions come from Wikipedia and Unexplained-Mysteries.com.
Freaky Table continued
139. Faces of Belmez: A case that started in August 1971, when Maria Gomez Pereira discovered a strange expressionistic image of a man's face that had appeared on her kitchen floor. A few days later she had the floor ripped out and relaid, only to find that the face reappeared in exactly the same place within a week.
Before she got the chance to rip out the floor a second time, the slab was removed and preserved by local authorities. Investigations into the site on which the house was built, revealed that the site had once been a graveyard. It was decided that the floor of the house should be excavated to see what lay beneath. After digging down some nine feet, human remains were found, which were soon removed. It was decided that the excavation had been successful, and a new floor was soon installed. Bizarrely, after just two weeks, a variety of new faces had appeared on the new floor.
Over the coming months, the Faces of Belmez attracted a huge amount of attention, but nobody was able to explain why the faces kept returning.
Your story that fulfills this prompt does not necessarily have to be about these particular faces. It can be about some other face(s) appearing on any sort of surface that would allow for spooky ghost face shenanigans, or even a whole body. Your explanation for the appearance of the faces can also be different, though still paranormal.
140. Easter Island: A small island in the South Pacific, off the coast of Chile. The island is a popular tourist destination, and was discovered by a Dutch sailor who found the island on Easter day in 1822.
Mystery surrounds the people who lived on the island previously. Over 100 large carved stone heads still exist on Easter Island, crafted expertly by the lost people who once inhabited it. The heads were placed in locations overlooking the sea, and ranged in size from 3 meters to 12 meters tall. One clue to the disappearance of the people who once inhabited the island is the total lack of trees. It is thought that the people who built the stone heads used up most of the trees in the process, probably using them as rollers to help move the huge blocks of stone to the correct positions. The loss of the island's trees may have spelt the beginning of their demise, though to this day the exact reasons for their disappearance from the island is still not fully understood.
Write something about Easter Island or make up your own similar, mysterious place.
141. The Jersey Devil: The Jersey Devil is a legendary creature or cryptid said to inhabit the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey. The creature is often described as a flying biped with hooves, but there are many variations.
Most accounts of the Jersey Devil legend attribute the creature to a "Mother Leeds", a supposed whore although the tale has many variations. According to one version, she invoked the devil by saying "let it be the devil" while giving birth to her 13th child, and when the baby was born, it either immediately or soon afterward transformed into a devil-like creature and flew off into the surrounding pines.
According to legend, while visiting the Hanover Mill Works to inspect his cannonballs being forged, Commodore Stephen Decatur sighted a flying creature flapping its wings and fired a cannonball directly upon it to no effect. Joseph Bonaparte, eldest brother of Emperor Napoleon, is also said to have witnessed the Jersey Devil while hunting on his Bordentown, New Jersey estate around 1820. Throughout the 19th century, the Jersey Devil was blamed for livestock killings, strange tracks, and reported sounds. In the early 20th century, a number of people in New Jersey and neighboring states claimed to witness the Jersey Devil or see its tracks.
You can read more about the Jersey Devil on this website.
Filling this prompt means writing about the Jersey Devil himself or making up your own similar cryptozoological creature and having it terrorize a particular area.
Prompt suggested by insaneladybug.
142. The Monkey's Paw: "The Monkey's Paw" is a horror short story by author W. W. Jacobs. It was published in England in 1902.
The story is based on the famous "setup" in which three wishes are granted. In the story, the paw of a dead monkey is a talisman that grants its possessor three wishes, but the wishes come with an enormous price for interfering with fate.
To fill this prompt, you'd want to write your own Monkey's Paw scenario. The talisman that grants the wishes doesn't have to be a monkey's paw, but there should be some type of talisman involved. Technically, your wish scenario should bring about misery for tampering with fate, but I've always been a little tired of stories like that; why can't a very clever person find a way to word the wishes so they won't backfire? So I'm going to leave the outcome of the wishes up to you.
Prompt suggested by insaneladybug.
143. Hyakusetsu Monogatari (100 Ghost/Demon Tales): Hyakusetsu Monogatari is a Japanese ritual (or game, depending on the intent of the participants) for summoning ghosts/something supernatural. The basics are that you prepare 100 candles. You need up to 100 people to complete this ritual. If you don't have 100, some people will have to take more than one turn. Sit in a circle, or if you have lots of people, several circles. Light the candles and put them in the center of the circle. The room should have no other source of light save for the candles. One by one, each person tells a ghost story. They blow out a candle when they are done. When 100 stories have been told and all the candles are out, leaving the room in complete darkness, a ghost will appear in the middle of the circle.
The ancient version says that this ritual should be done on the night of a new moon. Instead of candles, you use andon (a lantern with a wooden frame and paper shade), where the paper is blue. A mirror is also involved. When the storyteller is done, he takes his andon into an adjoining room, where he looks at himself in the mirror while blowing out the flame. Then he can return to the circle.
You can probably see the supernatural (and extremely spooky!) possibilities in this prompt. Your characters can perform this ritual for real or for fun, or perform a similar ritual. (Meaning that you can shorten the number of stories if 100 is too many.)
144. Djinn: Jinn (Arabic; variant spelling djinn) or genies are supernatural creatures in Arab folklore and Islamic teachings which occupy a parallel world to that of mankind. Together, jinn, humans and angels make up the three sentient creations of Allah. According to the Qur'an, there are two creations that have free will: humans and jinn. Religious sources say barely anything about them; however, the Qur'an mentions that jinn are made of smokeless flame or "scorching fire." Like human beings, the jinn can also be good, evil, or neutrally benevolent.
The popular conception of a djinn is that of the wish-granting genie who lives in a lamp, but there is an ancient version as well of a powerful, treacherous being most closely identified as a type of elemental spirit.
There's far too much to say about djinn to put it all here; you can read more about them on this website and/or do more searching on the net.
You can write your story about a genie or the more ancient concept of the djinn.
145. Black-eyed Kids: Urban legends referring to Black-Eyed Kids began to appear in 1998, starting with a newsgroup posting by journalist Brian Bethel reporting of a meeting with two unusually confident and eloquent children who attempted to talk him into giving them a ride in his car. Bethel said in his post that he nearly opened the door to admit the children, even though he found them vaguely unsettling, until he realized that their eyes were completely black, with no iris or pupil. He reports that, as soon as he realized this, the children became angry and insistent, and he drove away quickly. His posting implies that the children may have been using some form of low-level mind control to induce him to open the car, perhaps a form of neurolinguistic programming judging by what is reported of their speech patterns and diction.
Since this post, there have been other reports of similar experiences in other parts of the country. These accounts are similar to Bethel's in that they generally involve the children's request that the teller let them inside their car or house, frequently using an excuse such as "I need to get home to my mother," or something that implies the child is in need.
Urban legends involving the Black Eyed Children generally do not explain the cause of the children's eye color or the origins of the children themselves. Some imply they could be ghosts or demons, specifically vampires: the tales frequently emphasize that the children must be admitted or invited into the house or car in question, and in this way are reminiscent of some vampire legends.
More on Black-eyed Kids: Black-eyed Kids on the Black Vault
Who or what are Black-eyed Kids? Either explain them more to us in your story or simply feature an encounter with them.
146. The Multi-verse: One theory of how alternate universes are created is referred to as the Multi-verse. This theory says that basically, any time we are almost killed or nearly die, we create an alternate universe in which our death did occur and one where our death did not occur. In one universe, we skirt death and go on living, and in the other, loved ones mourn our death. Then, the next time we are almost killed, it happens again.
Think about each time you almost slipped and fell in the shower, or narrowly avoided having a car wreck, or had surgery -- what if each of these times, you actually did die in one universe, and lived in the one you are conscious of? This is how the Multi-verse works. An infinite number of alternate universes could be created in which you escaped death and died at different times. This theory can also be applied to the lives of those around your main character, such as a story where your main character's wife dies, but she is still alive in an alternate universe. Essentially, each potential for death creates a new scenario of life.
Fill this prompt by writing something about a Multi-verse (duh). :D
147. Bogeyman: A bogeyman (also spelled bogieman, boogeyman or boogieman) is an amorphous imaginary being used by adults to frighten children into behaving. The monster has no specific appearance, and conceptions about it can vary drastically from household to household within the same community; in many cases, he has no set appearance in the mind of a child, but is simply a non-specific embodiment of terror.
In some Midwestern states of the United States, the bogeyman scratches at the window. In the Pacific Northwest, he may manifest in "green fog". In other places, he hides or appears from under the bed or in the closet.
This site features several different types of Bogeymen from all over the world: The Bogeyman Wiki
To fill this prompt, write a story about any monster that can be considered a Bogeyman.
148. 2012 Phenomena: The 2012 phenomenon comprises a range of eschatological beliefs that cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on December 21, 2012. This date is regarded as the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. Various astronomical alignments and numerological formulae related to this date have been proposed.
A New Age interpretation of this transition postulates that this date marks the start of time in which Earth and its inhabitants may undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation, and that 2012 may mark the beginning of a new era. Others suggest that the 2012 date marks the end of the world or a similar catastrophe. Scenarios suggested for the end of the world include the arrival of the next solar maximum, or Earth's collision with a black hole or a passing planet called "Nibiru".
Scholars from various disciplines have dismissed the idea of such cataclysmic events occurring in 2012. Mainstream Mayanist scholars state that predictions of impending doom are not found in any of the extant classic Maya accounts, and that the idea that the Long Count calendar "ends" in 2012 misrepresents Maya history. The modern Maya do not consider the date significant, and the classical sources on the subject are scarce and contradictory. Astronomers and other scientists have rejected the apocalyptic forecasts as pseudoscience, stating that the anticipated events are contradicted by simple astronomical observations.
December 2012 marks the conclusion of a b'ak'tun - a time period in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar which was used in Central America prior to the arrival of Europeans. Though the Long Count was most likely invented by the Olmec, it has become closely associated with the Maya civilization, whose classic period lasted from 250 to 900 AD. The writing system of the classic Maya has been substantially deciphered, meaning that a corpus of their written and inscribed material has survived from before the European conquest.
Info on the 2012 Phenomena is numerous and can be found all over the internet. Filling this prompt means writing a story that explores it from a supernatural standpoint -- an Apocalypse, a global change of consciousness, whatever, that happens on December 21, 2012. You could also write a story centered in the universe of the movie 2012.
149. The Weavers of Angels: This story was related on a forum I belong to, and I can't find any information on it myself (probably because any websites are in a foreign language and I'm using English to search), so some of the details may be incorrect. The info seems to be okay, though, but I just wanted to note that for anyone who may know more about this story.
An abandoned child in Portugal used to be called an "exposed" child. Starting in the Middle Ages, nunneries had a device on one of the outside walls called "the wheel." The wheel was a revolving door made of wood which could hold a baby no one wanted anymore. The person would put the baby in the device and then turn the door until it faced inward, which would make a bell toll. There was always a nun on duty to monitor the device, and once they heard the bell, they would collect the baby and bring it into the safety of the nunnery. Through this, the parents could remain anonymous. The wheel became illegal in the late 1800's/early 1900's.
People who adopted or fostered exposed children were given a large sum of money and some baby clothes.
Not every foster parent had the best intentions. This is where Luísa de Jesus comes into the story. Not much is known about her prior to 1772, only that she came from the city of Coimbra and was 22 years old when she committed these crimes. In June 1772 she was arrested for the murder of 33 babies, all whom she fostered over the period of less than one year. Luisa used false names and convinced the nuns each time that she'd make the perfect foster mother. Then she took the babies home and fed them poison. None of the victims bodies were ever found. It is thought that she did this for the money. Luisa was put to death in July of 1772.
The following century saw several "copy-cat killers" called the Weavers of Angels. The term was first coined by an author in his 1875 novel The Crime of Father Amaro, about a priest that gets a young woman pregnant. There he said that they had this name because they weaved little angels to go to heaven and because the first and most famous of them was a professional weaver. It's not known whether this part is still fiction, or whether Luísa had indeed been a weaver.
None of the Weavers were as prolific and gruesome as Luísa, nor did they actively search for babies to kill. Instead they would advertise working as full-term nannies or foster mothers and ask the parents to pay one year in advance.
Some sites identify the Weavers as midwives who performed abortions, but this is incorrect.
I cannot link to the original post where I found this story because the comm is members only, so I wanted to note here that I did not write up most of these details.
To fill this prompt, you should simply take some sort of inspiration from this story and give it a supernatural spin. I'm not looking for anything in particular here. The story just seemed so sad and ripe with the possibility of fictionalized spin-offs that I had to use it as a prompt. I'm sure you can see the potential for paranormal possibilities.
150. Headless Horseman: The Headless Horseman is a fictional character from the short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by American author Washington Irving. The story, from Irving's collection of short stories entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, has worked itself into known American folklore/legend through literature and film.
The legend of the Headless Horseman begins in Sleepy Hollow, New York. The Horseman was a Hessian of unknown rank, one of many hired to suppress the American Revolution. During the war, the Horseman was one of 51 Hessians killed in a battle for Chatterton Hill, wherein his head was severed by an American cannonball. He was buried in a graveyard outside a church. Thereafter he appears as a ghost, who presents to nightly travelers an actual danger (rather than the largely harmless fright produced by the majority of ghosts), presumably of decapitation.
Urban legends that have sprung up as a result of this famous tale say that if you see the headless horseman, he will chase you and cut off your head to replace his own. In order to escape him, legends say you must cross a bridge (old wives tales about ghosts say they cannot cross running water) or elude him until the sun comes up (others say ghosts must depart at the rising of the sun).
The headless horsemen legend has been adapted for many movies, books, and TV shows, including a TV movie of Kolchak: The Night Stalker in which the ghost was a headless motorcycle rider! As you can see, you can get creative while writing for this prompt, but it must be about some sort of headless ghost rider.
151. Mass Disappearance (Roanoke Colony): The Roanoke Colony on Roanoke Island in Dare County, present-day North Carolina, United States was a late 16th-century attempt to establish a permanent English settlement in what later became the Virginia Colony. The enterprise was financed and organized by Sir Walter Raleigh and carried out by Ralph Lane and Richard Grenville, Raleigh's distant cousin. The final group of colonists disappeared during the Anglo-Spanish War, three years after the last shipment of supplies from England. The settlement is known as "The Lost Colony," and the fate of the colonists is still unknown.
One of the original colonists, John White, returned to England to try and get more help for the colony and was unable to come back for three years because of the Anglo-Spanish War. When he did return, he found the settlement deserted. His men could not find any trace of the 90 men, 17 women, and 11 children, nor was there any sign of a struggle or battle. The only clue was the word "Croatoan" carved into a post of the fort and "Cro" carved into a nearby tree. All the houses and fortifications had been dismantled, which meant their departure had not been hurried. Before he had left the colony, White had instructed them that if anything happened to them, they should carve a Maltese cross on a tree nearby, indicating that their disappearance had been forced. As there was no cross, White took this to mean they had moved to "Croatoan Island" (now known as Hatteras Island), but he was unable to conduct a search. Croatan was also the name of a tribe of Native-Americans in the area.
There are many theories as to what happened to these colonists; you can read about them here.
Filling this prompt means writing about what happened to the colonists while somehow involving the supernatural. Alternately, you can create your own fictional mass disappearance of a large group of people, an entire town, a whole city, that sort of thing, because of something supernatural.
152. Mass Suicide: It seemed like I had some research to go with this prompt, but I can't find anything, so I'm just going to wing it. :D A mass suicide would be a large group of people all committing suicide at the same time, or relatively close together, as if one suicide sets off others in a domino effect. To fill this prompt, your mass suicide should have a supernatural cause or somehow involve the supernatural. Mass suicides of this type usually do not have any warning signs, notes are often not left to explain why, that sort of thing. Or, if a note is left, it only says cryptic things that don't seem to explain why the person killed themselves. People just mysteriously begin committing suicide. You can also write about a famous mass suicide and give it a paranormal spin.
A famous mass suicide: the Jim Jones "Jonestown" massacre
The movie The Happening was all about people mysteriously committing suicide in mass across the northeast states of the USA.
153. Hollow Earth Theory: The Hollow Earth theory hypothesis proposes that the planet Earth is either wholly hollow or otherwise contains a substantial interior space. The hypothesis has been shown to be wrong by observational evidence, as well as by the modern understanding of planet formation; the scientific community has dismissed the notion since at least the late 18th century.
The concept of a hollow Earth still recurs in folklore and as the premise for subterranean fiction, a subgenre of adventure fiction. It is also featured in some present-day scientific, pseudoscientific and conspiracy theories.
Over the years, many theories have been proposed about the Earth being hollow and that it is also inhabited. Many of these theories say that entrances into this hollow land can be found at the North and South Pole, and expeditions have even been proposed to find them, one that was even approved by President John Quincy Adams. (He left office before this expedition could occur, and the following president, Andrew Jackson, would not approve it.) Other theories state that the inhabitants of hollow Earth are the ones who have built and flown UFO's into our atmosphere, and that they may be the former inhabitants of Atlantis.
The pages of the science fiction pulp magazine Amazing Stories promoted one such idea from 1945 to 1949 as "the Shaver Mystery." The magazine's editor, Ray Palmer, ran a series of stories by Richard Sharpe Shaver supposedly claimed as factual, though presented in the context of fiction. Shaver claimed that a superior pre-historic race had built a honeycomb of caves in the Earth, and that their degenerate descendants, known as "Dero," live there still, using the fantastic machines abandoned by the ancient races to torment those of us living on the surface. As one characteristic of this torment, Shaver described "voices" that purportedly came from no explainable source. Thousands of readers wrote to affirm that they, too, had heard the fiendish voices from inside the Earth.
The Hollow Earth Theory forms the major basis for the Japanese movie Marebito, where sewer-dwelling animalistic vampires (called Dero after Shaver's stories) come up from the center of the Earth to spook the citizens of Tokyo. The TV series Angel also explored the idea of a hollow Earth in its fifth season, where the burial ground of ancient demons called the Old Ones was kept in the center of the Earth.
As you can guess, filling this prompt means writing something about the Earth being hollow, and perhaps inhabited.
154. Self-fulfilling Prophecy: A self-fulfilling prophecy is one in which a prophecy has been made, and knowledge of that prophecy helps bring it about.
Example: Your character goes to a fortune teller, who tells him he will die in a car accident by the end of the week. The character becomes so nervous and tries to avoid having a car wreck so feverently that he winds up causing a huge 10-car pile-up in which he is killed. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The character's knowledge of the prophecy caused the prophecy to come true.
I'd love to give examples of TV shows and movies that featured self-fulfilling prophecies, but to do that would spoil them all, lol. I'm sure you can probably think of some, and think of your own to fill this prompt.
Terrifying Table
155. Blobsquatch: Blobsquatch is the nickname given to any cryptic supernatural animal that has been filmed, like Bigfoot or a chupacabra, and the "animal" is so blurry that you can't conclusively tell what it is. Most Bigfoot sightings that have been filmed feature Blobsquatches. (Term used extensively on Ghost Theory.com; that's where I first heard it.)
Filling this prompt means writing a story in which some cryptic supernatural thing has been filmed and the subject of the film comes out blurry, a hard-to-define blob.
156. Drop Bears: Drop bears are giant, vicious koala bears that drop down out of the trees of Australia onto the heads of unsuspecting people and eat them. I've heard that many Australians like to tell these wild stories to tourists to scare them, hee.
Taking on this prompt does not necessarily mean your story has to take place in Australia. It can if you want it to, but there isn't any reason a drop bear cannot escape or be shipped out of Australia and wreak havoc in another country. The drop bear should probably stay a huge, vicious koala, though, because to change it into a larger/more vicious bear would sort of defeat the purpose of the story being paranormal in nature. A giant, blood-thirsty koala is a bit stranger than a giant, blood-thirsty grizzly bear, wouldn't you say?
157. Slenderman: Slenderman is an urban legend created on the forums of Something Awful. This creature has never actually been sighted anywhere; he is entirely the creation of some very creative people on the internet. Wouldn't you like to join in?
Slenderman is most often portrayed as a malevolent entity that abducts and psychologically traumatizes people, usually starting when they're children, and sometimes continuing until adulthood. The entity was created on the Something Awful forums on June 10, 2009 by a user under the name of Victor Surge, as part of a discussion encouraging users to create paranormal images. He quickly became a favorite among many users, and others began creating their own Slender Man images, using digital editing to place the entity in otherwise ordinary photographs, often those featuring children. Victor Surge cites HP Lovecraft, Stephen King, and survival horror video games as his inspirations when creating the creature.
The unofficial nature of the Slender Man's roots means that he has no definitive origin, but rather a number of differing conceptions on his identity and motives. These remain subjective to the particular adaptation that chooses to portray the entity. Such theories span alien, ghostly, demonic, tulpa, dryad, and inter-dimensional origins.
Due to the community nature of the Slender Man Mythos, the creature himself has generated many different name stylings. Some prefer to call him the Slender Man, some go by Slenderman, and some even call him Slendy. Others have chosen different titles for him, such as Mr. Thin, or the Tall Man in reference to his resemblance to the character of the same name from the movie Phantasm. Still others have created different names for him based on their own interpretations.
Like his origins, the appearance of the Slender Man remains subjective, varying across related media. He is typically depicted as being an abnormally tall (ranging anywhere from seven feet tall to the size of a large tree or house), skinny humanoid figure, with a faceless head, usually lacking several or all of the face's sensory organs. He is usually depicted as wearing a plain black suit and tie, reminiscent of the Men in Black, though this is often implied to be an actual part of the entity's body or a form of shapeshifting. He is often shown to have something of a malleable figure, enabling him to stretch and contort his limbs into a variety of shapes, as well as produce a number of tentacle-like appendages, which are shown as having the ability to ensnare his victims.
The Slender Man is typically depicted as an observant and lurking being, stalking his victims for long periods of time while slowly driving them insane with paranoia and sickness. Other adaptations point to a more violent Slender Man, killing his victims by eviscerating them. Other ways of killing include turning victims into mist and creating the appearance that the deaths of his victims were accidents. Besides the ability to physically grow extra limbs, the Slender Man has a number of psychologically-based powers, typically including the ability to induce amnesia, insomnia, and control the minds of his victims. (Some stories have the Slender Man hypnotizing his victims into walking right into his arms.)
Because Slenderman is a fictional creation of the internet, it is okay to play with these "facts" about him and really get creative. BUT, some aspect(s) of the original creation should remain when you fill this prompt; otherwise, he wouldn't be the Slenderman.
When you post your story on your journal, it might be a good idea to add a disclaimer at the beginning that identifies where Slenderman came from, just so people know he isn't solely your creation. It's totally okay to take credit for what you added to the myth, though.
The original thread on SomethingAwful that spawned Slenderman, which you can link to if you want.
158. Nightcrawlers: Nightcrawlers are strange creatures caught on camera in Fresno, CA by a man named Jose on November 8, 2007. The film was featured on the Sy-Fy Channel TV show Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files in season 1 episode 2. The FoF team tried to recreate the film but could not, although they didn't try very hard. Their results were inconclusive.
The film features two very odd creatures walking across the front yard of Jose's home around 12 at night. I'll include a link to the tape on Youtube because the creatures are very hard to describe. They almost look like a pair of stilt legs wearing pants, walking along with no top half. On top of the stilts there seems to be a small head with hollow eyes, but this is all very hard to see because of the quality of the tape. The creatures were deemed Nightcrawlers by the FoF team.
Frankly, I think it's still possible this could be a hoax; the gait of the creatures strongly reminds me of stilts or some sort of mechanical construct. It didn't seem like the FoF team checked for any signs of hoax or special effects applied to the film. They presented no evidence that they had even checked into the guy's background. However, the film still presents some very unusual and interesting creatures if you accept they are real.
(Another thing that I find suspicious about this case is that the original footage of the Nightcrawlers was "recorded over." Jose says that his surveillance camera runs on a VCR backup, and the system automatically records over the previous night's tape. So, he used his video camera to record this footage off the TV monitor and allowed the original tape to be recorded over. Doesn't that seem odd to anyone else? The FOF team applied digital effects to their tests to erase a person walking a puppet through the yard; who's to say Jose didn't do the same thing, then record his doctored footage off the TV? Or if not him, then someone he knows? People create hoax paranormal videos all the time. All I'm saying is, I'm not convinced that this couldn't be a hoax created with puppets/robotics and digital editing.
That having been said, I also think there's a possibility these creatures are real. There is something authentic about the way they move, especially the second one that walks through the yard. If it's a puppet or a robot, it moves rather quickly! It would take a very skilled puppeteer/controller to make it move so fast. But then again, there's the Herbie Hancock video for "Rockit," with its mechanical robots that move pretty fast! I don't know. I'm really interested and fairly conflicted over this one.)
Footage from Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files
Enhanced video of Nightcrawler #2. Whatever this is, it's pretty spooky-looking. A link in this video suggests the Nightcrawlers are some sort of extraterrestrial being encountered by Aleister Crowley in the early 1900's, a being that called itself Lam. It's interesting that Lam looks a lot like the Nightcrawlers.
Another one - This is supposed to be footage of more Nightcrawlers in Yosemite National Park, which is 45 minutes away from Fresno. Now, the wooden statues are interesting. But the footage? BAHAHAHA. HOAX. So clearly a hoax. I mean, come on. They look like stilts with bedsheets over them. And the way the creatures walk... this is clearly people on stilts. I don't know exactly where they put all of their body parts, but maybe they're contortionists, or little people. Either way, there's no way I'm believing this one is real. Why did I link to it, then? For the LOLs. (And the wooden statues.) How someone can dare to put something this unconvincing before the public, I'll never know. Seeing this one, and comparing it to the original video where the "creatures" move much faster and with more fluidity, it almost lends some credence to the original video.
The point of this prompt is to write a story featuring these creatures in some way. What are they? Where did they come from? What are they like; how do they live? That sort of thing.
159. Dyatlov Pass Incident: This prompt involves a fascinating and disturbing incident that took place in Russia in 1959. The story is far too long and involved to detail here, so you can read all about it at this link. It's one of those stories that seems to have a simple explanation until you delve deeper into the details of what took place.
Taking on this prompt means writing a story with a similar incident and explaining what happened; the explanation must somehow involve the supernatural. You do not have to mirror all the details or location of the original incident, but your story should have many similarities. (You don't have to kill everybody off if you don't want to, heh.)
160. Crop Circles: A crop circle is a sizable pattern created by the flattening of a crop such as wheat, barley, rye, maize, or rapeseed. Crop circles are also referred to as crop formations, because they are not always circular in shape. While the exact date crop circles began to appear is unknown, the documented cases have substantially increased from the 1970s to current times. Twenty-six countries reported approximately ten thousand crop circles in the last third of the 20th century. Ninety percent of those were located in southern England. Many of the formations appearing in that area are positioned near ancient monuments, such as Stonehenge.
In 1991, self-professed pranksters Doug Bower and Dave Chorley made headlines claiming it was they who started the phenomenon in 1978 with the use of simple tools consisting of a plank of wood, rope, and a baseball cap fitted with a loop of wire to help them walk in a straight line. Inspired by Australian crop circle accounts from 1966, Doug and Dave repotedly made more than 200 crop circles from 1978-1991 and claimed to be responsible for most if not all circles made prior to 1987. After their announcement, in a demonstration the two men made a crop circle in one hour. Despite general acceptance of their story, crop circle researchers remain skeptical of many of their claims. Since their revelation, crop formations have continued to appear each year, often in greater number, size, and complexity.
Since appearing in the media in the 1970s, crop circles have become the subject of speculation by various paranormal, ufological, and anomalistic investigators ranging from proposals that they were created by bizarre meteorological phenomena to messages from extraterrestrial beings. Other theories state that the Earth itself created these circles as messages to the human population, that the Earth is alive and sentient.
In 2009, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania stated that Australian wallabies had been found creating crop circles in fields of opium poppies, which are grown legally for medicinal use, after consuming some of the opiate-laden poppies and running in circles. (I just put this one in here because I thought it was funny.)
It's not hard to guess that filling this prompt means writing about crop circles that have a paranormal origin.
161. The Face on Mars: In 1976, NASA's Viking orbiter took numerous photographs of the surface of the planet Mars. In photographs of a region known as Cydonia, there was a strange structure that looked a lot like a human face, and a series of pyramid shaped objects that seemed to have an intelligent layout. Some say the face is a trick of light and shadow. For those who believe it is a face, they feel this is evidence that intelligent life once existed on Mars and that they built this structure.
Writing for this prompt means exploring the origins of the face on Mars, or creating your own similar structure on another planet, or coming up with a previously unknown structure like this here on Earth and giving it meaning. Whatever you come up with, it should be mysterious, ancient, supernatural, whatever is necessary to make it fit in with the theme of this community.
162. The Devil's Highway: U.S. Route 491 (US 491) is a north-south U.S. Highway serving the Four Corners region of the United States. One of the newest designations in the U.S. Highway System, it was created in 2003 as a renumbering of U.S. Route 666 (US 666). With the 666 designation, this road was nicknamed the "Devil's Highway" because of the belief by many Christians that 666 is the Number of the Beast. This Satanic connotation, combined with a high fatality rate along the New Mexico portion, convinced some people the highway was cursed. These factors led to two efforts to renumber the highway, first by officials in Arizona, later in New Mexico. There have been safety improvement projects in recent years, and fatality rates have subsequently decreased. Some believe the accidents have decreased because the highway was renamed, thereby lifting the curse.
The highway runs through Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, as well as the tribal nations of the Navajo Nation and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. The highway passes by two mountains considered sacred by native Americans, Ute Mountain and an extinct volcanic core named Shiprock.
Another good example of a death highway concerns Kilometer Marker 239. In 1930, a new section of highway (aka motorway) was constructed in Germany. The section was a completely straight area of flat roadway, on the side of which was a small stone kilometer marker known as kilometer marker 239. During the first 12 months of the roadway's existence, over 100 cars crashed near the jinxed marker.
On one very clear dry day in September 1930, a total of 9 separate cars left the road right next to the accursed marker. It was only after the stone marker had been completely removed from the ground and the area sprinkled with holy water that the accidents stopped.
Writing for this prompt entails some sort of story about US 666 or another highway that has somehow been cursed, where many fatal accidents occur. Or something of that nature.
Suggested by insaneladybug.
163. Long Trail: The Long Trail is a hiking trail located in Vermont, running the length of the state. It is the oldest long-distance trail in the United States, constructed between 1910 and 1930 by the Green Mountain Club. The Long Trail currently runs 272 miles (438 km) through the state of Vermont. It starts at the Massachusetts border (near Williamstown, Massachusetts), and runs north to the Canadian border (near North Troy, Vermont). It runs along the main ridge of the Green Mountains, coinciding with the Appalachian Trail for 100 miles (160 km) in southern Vermont. Additionally, over 175 miles (282 km) of side trails complete the Long Trail System.
The section of the Long Trail between Woodford (on Vermont State Route 9 just east of Bennington, Vt) and Glastenbury Mountain some 10 miles (16 km) further north has gained notoriety due to the fact that at least four people inexplicably vanished in that area between 1945 and 1950. Only one body was subsequently found and the fate of the other missing persons remains a mystery.
Many say that these disappearances are of no consequence because any hiking trail is bound to have such incidents in its history, covering such a large area with underdeveloped, natural landscapes where people could get lost, abducted, and/or hurt and might not be found for days. But let's pretend it's very unusual, shall we? ;)
Taking on this prompt means writing about the Long Trail, or some other real or made up hiking trail, where people are going missing/have gone missing, and explaining what could be going on. Your explanation should have something to do with the paranormal.
164. The Slit-Mouth Woman: Kuchisake-onna (Slit-Mouth Woman) is a Japanese urban legend that goes a bit like this: Children walking alone at night may encounter a woman wearing a surgical mask - this is not an unusual sight in Japan as people wear them to protect others from their colds or sickness. The woman will stop the child and ask, "Am I beautiful?" Most children will answer yes, in which case the woman asks, "How about now?" and removes her mask to reveal her mouth has been slit from ear to ear. Regardless of whether the child answers yes or no at this point, the woman will kill or disfigure them. The Kuchisake-onna is an enduring legend which began in the Edo period, with the woman initially covering her face with her robes, but this has evolved into a surgical mask (now that robes are less common) to stay in the popular imagination.
Kuchisake-onna does not always go after children, though. Some versions of the legend have her picked up as a hitchhiker and attacking a man in a car after showing him her face, saying over and over again, "Am I beautiful? Am I beautiful? Am I beautiful?"
To fill this prompt, you can write about the Slit-Mouth Woman, giving her a history or just making her a random monster, or create your own similar ghost/monster. A similar ghost legend would concern some sort of disfigured spirit that tries to disfigure or kill the living in a manner that is similar to how they are disfigured.
165. Local Legend: This prompt can be used to write about some other spooky local urban legend that maybe isn't big enough to be known all over the world, but is very well known in your neck of the woods. Examples are the Flatwoods Monster and The Lady of White Rock Lake. You don't have to write about those specific legends, though. What spooky stories are well known where you live?
To those of you who think the Flatwoods Monster is too famous to be considered just a local legend, I'm sorry. I had never heard of the creature until only recently, so it doesn't seem extremely famous to me. Sorry again! :D
166. Reaper/Psychopomp: The concept of death as a sentient entity has existed in many societies since the beginning of history. In English, Death is often given the name Grim Reaper and, from the 15th century onwards, came to be shown as a skeletal figure carrying a large scythe and clothed in a black cloak with a hood. It is also given the name of the Angel of Death or the angel of dark and light (Malach Ha-Mavet) stemming from the Bible.
In some cases, the Grim Reaper is able to actually cause the victim's death, leading to tales that he can be bribed, tricked, or outwitted in order to retain one's life, such as in the case of Sisyphus. Other beliefs hold that the Spectre of Death is only a psychopomp, serving to sever the last ties between the soul and the body and to guide the deceased to the next world without having any control over the fact of the victim's death. In other stories, a Reaper can also give life back.
Psychopomps (from the Greek word psychopompos, literally meaning the "guide of souls") are creatures, spirits, angels, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls to the afterlife. Their role is not to judge the deceased, but simply provide safe passage. Frequently depicted on funerary art, psychopomps have been associated at different times and in different cultures with horses, Whip-poor-wills, ravens, dogs, crows, owls, sparrows, cuckoos, and harts.
Filling this prompt means writing about some form of reaper and/or psychopomp. (Again, duh.)
167. Technological Curse: This prompt concerns all of those "passed from person to person" legends that have become popular in recent years, spawning many horror movies. Examples usually concern a death curse that is passed from one person to another through modern technological means. The story usually goes like this: A girl receives some sort of scary email or phone call, etc. Soon after, she dies. Then, a friend of hers who was in the girl's list of contacts (email address book, cell phone address book, etc) is next to receive the message. She dies too. It goes on like this until someone is able to break the curse.
Another variation of the story concerns a message sent to someone over the internet, via a pop-up window, video, or a website they visit out of curiosity, that somehow causes their death. The Japanese story of "The Red Room" pop-up is a good example. One night, you receive a pop-up on your computer that refuses to go away. It shows you a red door and a voice asks, "Do you like the Red Room?" Later, you are found dead, the walls of your room painted red with your blood. Other stories say that a spooky message may come to you on your television in the middle of the night, on a channel that shouldn't be receiving a broadcast at that time.
This concept seems to be most popular in Japan, with movies like Ringu, One Missed Call, and Kairo.
Writing for this prompt means detailing your own modern technology curse and how it passes itself around. What or who is behind the curse? Or would you rather not explain it, just tell us how it works? Can it be defeated?
168. Recurring Nightmare: A recurring nightmare is a bad dream that a person has repeatedly, with the same events and themes each time. Recurring nightmares are actually quite rare and usually greatly disrupt the waking life of the person experiencing them. The sufferer usually experiences the nightmare several times a week. They are most often caused by stress and anxiety in the person's everyday life, and/or recovering from a traumatic event.
To fill this prompt, you would need to write about a recurring nightmare (they are rare enough to make this paranormal table). However, it would be even better if the cause of the recurring nightmare was paranormal in nature. (Past life memory, psychic vision, repressed memories of missing time, etc.)
Suggested by marie1964.
169. Mental Illness/Disorder: Use this prompt to write about a rare mental illness that is either so rare that it could be considered "paranormal," or one that has symptoms that could be taken for a paranormal experience. This prompt could also cover a story where a character actually is experiencing something paranormal but others think they are "seeing things." Examples of rare mental illnesses and mental illnesses/disorders that would fit this prompt include catatonia, schizophrenia, and dream paralysis. (Catatonia being rare and just plain freaky; schizophrenia being an illness where people "see things" that can be quite scary; and dream paralysis being a condition where you wake up, but you can't move for some time, and you hallucinate nightmarish things carried over from your sleeping life into your waking life.) Those are not the only illnesses you can write about, though, they are just good examples. Your character can either actually have the illness/disorder or instead be plagued by something supernatural that may make others think (s)he has it.
I'm sorry to lump sleep paraylsis in with a prompt called "Mental Illness;" I know it's not quite the same as the other examples, but I didn't want to give it its own prompt, nor did I want the prompt name to go on and on. It is an excellent example of a disorder that can cause you to see things that could be considered paranormal, though.
170. Antikythera Mechanism: The Antikythera Mechanism is a very rare and unusual artifact that was recovered by divers from the Antikythera wreck in 1900 off the coast of an island near Crete. During their expedition, the divers had uncovered a number of bronze and marble statues before coming across a piece of corroded bronze that contained the mechanism. Despite suffering from corrosion, the mechanism was sufficiently intact to determine that it was something special.
Believed to date back to between 80BC-150BC, the mechanism appears to be made up of a series of gears and wheels and demonstrates a level of complexity unheard of for its time - modern equivalents wouldn't appear for another 1,300 years. X-rays of the mechanism revealed a differential gearing system.
It is believed that the device was actually used for calculating the motions of stars and planets and that it was created in the Greek speaking world; however, the specifics of exactly who created it and how widespread such technology was 2000 years ago and beyond remains a mystery.
The Antikythera Mechanism is used prominently in the movie Stonehenge Apocalypse. As is Stonehenge. :)
To fill this prompt, you would want to either write about this mechanism and give it a paranormal use, or make something about its creation paranormal, or that sort of thing. You can alternately come up with your own ancient machine that seems out of place in its time and do something paranormal with it.
171. Area 51: Area 51 is the name given to a famous "secret" military base located in the United States over 80 miles to the north of Las Vegas, Nevada, situated near dried up Groom Lake. Officially the existence of an 'Area 51' has been generally denied; in practice, the area is part of an extenstive training and testing range run by the United States Air Force.
Area 51 is home to a number of buildings, hangars, and an active airstrip. While the ground and airspace around the base is restricted, it hasn't stopped enthusiasts from finding ways to obtain photographs from a distance. Satellite images have also become available showing the layout of the base in more detail.
It is believed that the base has been used as a facility for developing and testing new experimental aircraft and aviation technologies and is famously connected to the UFO phenomenon through conspiracy theories, suggesting that the United States is testing either captured alien spacecraft or new vehicles based on alien technology. The area around Area 51 including the small town of Rachel on the aptly named 'Extraterrestrial Highway' is a popular tourist destination, and is steeped in UFO culture. Tours taking visitors to the famous 'Trespassers will be shot' signs at the very edge of the restricted area have become a popular attraction.
Area 51 has been featured in numerous films, books, and television shows for many years, including blockbuster movies like Independence Day and shows such as "The X-Files." It has become a symbol of government coverups and alien conspiracies in popular culture.
Filling this prompt means writing about Area 51 or your own fictional, similar place. You do not have to involve aliens if you do not want to; give Area 51 a different paranormal use for all I care. :D
172. Nostradamus: Born in France in 1503, Michel de Nostredame originally attended medical college and became a specialist in the Plague. It wasn't until he turned to writing in 1550 however that Nostradamus began to make predictions about the future. He was twice married and had a total of 8 children.
Nostradamus wrote a substantial number of predictions ranging from weather and crop prospects to war and major events. The technique he claimed to use to predict these events was what he called 'comparative horoscopy,' which involved looking at horoscopes and working out when major elements of past events would happen again. It is thought that only 5-10 percent of his predictions have been fulfilled with 100 percent certainty. Most of them have either missed the mark by a wide margin or have been somewhat subjective and open to interpretation.
Writing for this prompt means writing specifically about Nostradamus, his actual prophecies, or fictional prophecies and what happens as a result of them. You could also make up your own soothsayer with a similar book of prophecies.
173. Voynich Manuscript: The Voynich Manuscript is a mysterious manuscript that in 1912 was purchased by a collector of rare books in Italy, Wilfred Voynich. Voynich was unable to decipher the language in the manuscript and later took it back to America with him. The 'Voynich Manuscript' as it became known consists of a total of 234 pages and contains a large number of drawings, mostly of flowers. The book contained a variety of sections including cosmology, biology, astronomy, and pharmaceuticals. The manuscript changed hands many times, but despite much concerted effort, nobody has yet been able to decipher what the mysterious manuscript actually means.
In a recent study by researchers at the University of Arizona, it was found that the Voynich manuscript dated back to the 15th century and is considered to be genuine.
This prompt suggests a story either about the Voynich Manuscript itself or a fictional book written in an unknown language or a code that must be cracked. Paranormal spins are welcome.
174. Earth Noises/Taos Hum: The Earth makes natural noises due to seismic activity, called Ambient Earth Noise. This is like background noise and is not normally audible to the human ear. But some think the Earth is alive, in a way, and sometimes makes louder noises audible to human ears. Some say this is the Earth's way of trying to communicate with us. These noises have been described as strange groans, pops, and rumblings. Sometimes these noises are heard hours prior to an earthquake.
There is also the case of what is referred to as The Hum. The Hum has been heard in several locations across the globe; one of the most famous is the Taos Hum, named for Taos, NM. The Hum is a generic name for a series of phenomena involving a persistent and invasive low-frequency humming noise not audible to all people. Many of its sufferers cannot sleep or concentrate due to The Hum and some have even had to go on disability because they cannot work. The noise is described as sounding like an idling Deisel truck or some other form of machinery working in the background. For some, the source of The Hum has been found and is usually a large piece of machinery in a nearby factory. For others, theories abound but no cause for the noise has been identified. Theories vary from waves crashing into the ocean floor to Earth noise to the military testing experimental, top secret aircraft.
Very recently, a new type of noise has been detected in several countries. It's hard to verify the authenticity of these recorded sounds because they can all only be heard in YouTube videos; the videos have not been professionally analyzed for tampering/signs of a hoax. Basically, people are hearing groaning and mechanical sounds that seem to come from the sky or the ground. The sounds are almost identical every time, even though the recordings come from different countries. And they're very unusual. They almost sound like some sort of siren, but not like any siren I've ever heard before. This page links to several YouTube videos that feature the noises.
Your choices for filling this prompt are varied. You can write about Earth noises, The Hum, or this recent sound and what it means. Where do these noises come from? What do they mean?
175. Picnic at Hanging Rock: Is it a true story, or isn't it?
Picnic at Hanging Rock is only one example of a story/book/movie/TV show that is presented as being based on fact that actually isn't. These types of stories almost always feature paranormal elements and unexplained disappearances. The "found footage" movie genre has become especially popular since The Blair Witch Project, a film about three college students who disappeared while making a documentary. Supposedly their camera footage was found a year later. It detailed what happened to them while also raising more unanswered questions. In the case of Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Blair Witch Project, both were presented as being true stories or based on true stories to the point that many people actually believed they were true stories for some time after their release. Because people have become a bit desensitized to the idea at this point, many do not believe that when a new "found footage" movie comes out that it is really authentic found footage, but the films can still be very successful. In fact, for every person who knows that Paranormal Activity is not real, there is someone who is still asking, "Is this a true story?"
What PAHR and Blair Witch had going for them is time of release and/or excellent advertising campaigns. Both were released at times when something like that hadn't been done for a while. Both were advertised in ways that were very convincing to their authenticity.
Just to clarify, Picnic at Hanging Rock is a book and movie about a group of students who go on a field trip to a park in Australia called Hanging Rock. Several students and one teacher disappear on that trip and are never heard from again. The book and movie came out in the 1970's, but to this day, you can still find this tale told on websites identifying it as a true story.
To fill this prompt, you must write a paranormal story and present it as fact or "based on a true story." Include the sort of details that would make it seem real. You could even create a webpage or two (in addition to or INSTEAD OF writing a full story) detailing something connected with your story. Even create fake newspaper clippings to fill the prompt. Or, you could write in one of these fandoms that is presented as a true story (Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, The Fourth Kind, etc.) but isn't.
176. Déjà vu: An unexpected sense of familiarity when encountering what you believe is actually a new experience, place, person, or object.
If you're at all confused, basically déjà vu refers to that feeling when you go into a house and you know you've never been there before, but it feels like you have. Something is familiar about it, but you don't know why.
Filling this prompt, if you couldn't guess, means writing about a character experiencing déjà vu.
EXTRAS from the Paranormal 200 Table Defined
The First 138 Prompts Defined
The First 138 Prompts Defined
Most of these prompt definitions come from Wikipedia and Unexplained-Mysteries.com.
Freaky Table continued
139. Faces of Belmez: A case that started in August 1971, when Maria Gomez Pereira discovered a strange expressionistic image of a man's face that had appeared on her kitchen floor. A few days later she had the floor ripped out and relaid, only to find that the face reappeared in exactly the same place within a week.
Before she got the chance to rip out the floor a second time, the slab was removed and preserved by local authorities. Investigations into the site on which the house was built, revealed that the site had once been a graveyard. It was decided that the floor of the house should be excavated to see what lay beneath. After digging down some nine feet, human remains were found, which were soon removed. It was decided that the excavation had been successful, and a new floor was soon installed. Bizarrely, after just two weeks, a variety of new faces had appeared on the new floor.
Over the coming months, the Faces of Belmez attracted a huge amount of attention, but nobody was able to explain why the faces kept returning.
Your story that fulfills this prompt does not necessarily have to be about these particular faces. It can be about some other face(s) appearing on any sort of surface that would allow for spooky ghost face shenanigans, or even a whole body. Your explanation for the appearance of the faces can also be different, though still paranormal.
140. Easter Island: A small island in the South Pacific, off the coast of Chile. The island is a popular tourist destination, and was discovered by a Dutch sailor who found the island on Easter day in 1822.
Mystery surrounds the people who lived on the island previously. Over 100 large carved stone heads still exist on Easter Island, crafted expertly by the lost people who once inhabited it. The heads were placed in locations overlooking the sea, and ranged in size from 3 meters to 12 meters tall. One clue to the disappearance of the people who once inhabited the island is the total lack of trees. It is thought that the people who built the stone heads used up most of the trees in the process, probably using them as rollers to help move the huge blocks of stone to the correct positions. The loss of the island's trees may have spelt the beginning of their demise, though to this day the exact reasons for their disappearance from the island is still not fully understood.
Write something about Easter Island or make up your own similar, mysterious place.
141. The Jersey Devil: The Jersey Devil is a legendary creature or cryptid said to inhabit the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey. The creature is often described as a flying biped with hooves, but there are many variations.
Most accounts of the Jersey Devil legend attribute the creature to a "Mother Leeds", a supposed whore although the tale has many variations. According to one version, she invoked the devil by saying "let it be the devil" while giving birth to her 13th child, and when the baby was born, it either immediately or soon afterward transformed into a devil-like creature and flew off into the surrounding pines.
According to legend, while visiting the Hanover Mill Works to inspect his cannonballs being forged, Commodore Stephen Decatur sighted a flying creature flapping its wings and fired a cannonball directly upon it to no effect. Joseph Bonaparte, eldest brother of Emperor Napoleon, is also said to have witnessed the Jersey Devil while hunting on his Bordentown, New Jersey estate around 1820. Throughout the 19th century, the Jersey Devil was blamed for livestock killings, strange tracks, and reported sounds. In the early 20th century, a number of people in New Jersey and neighboring states claimed to witness the Jersey Devil or see its tracks.
You can read more about the Jersey Devil on this website.
Filling this prompt means writing about the Jersey Devil himself or making up your own similar cryptozoological creature and having it terrorize a particular area.
Prompt suggested by insaneladybug.
142. The Monkey's Paw: "The Monkey's Paw" is a horror short story by author W. W. Jacobs. It was published in England in 1902.
The story is based on the famous "setup" in which three wishes are granted. In the story, the paw of a dead monkey is a talisman that grants its possessor three wishes, but the wishes come with an enormous price for interfering with fate.
To fill this prompt, you'd want to write your own Monkey's Paw scenario. The talisman that grants the wishes doesn't have to be a monkey's paw, but there should be some type of talisman involved. Technically, your wish scenario should bring about misery for tampering with fate, but I've always been a little tired of stories like that; why can't a very clever person find a way to word the wishes so they won't backfire? So I'm going to leave the outcome of the wishes up to you.
Prompt suggested by insaneladybug.
143. Hyakusetsu Monogatari (100 Ghost/Demon Tales): Hyakusetsu Monogatari is a Japanese ritual (or game, depending on the intent of the participants) for summoning ghosts/something supernatural. The basics are that you prepare 100 candles. You need up to 100 people to complete this ritual. If you don't have 100, some people will have to take more than one turn. Sit in a circle, or if you have lots of people, several circles. Light the candles and put them in the center of the circle. The room should have no other source of light save for the candles. One by one, each person tells a ghost story. They blow out a candle when they are done. When 100 stories have been told and all the candles are out, leaving the room in complete darkness, a ghost will appear in the middle of the circle.
The ancient version says that this ritual should be done on the night of a new moon. Instead of candles, you use andon (a lantern with a wooden frame and paper shade), where the paper is blue. A mirror is also involved. When the storyteller is done, he takes his andon into an adjoining room, where he looks at himself in the mirror while blowing out the flame. Then he can return to the circle.
You can probably see the supernatural (and extremely spooky!) possibilities in this prompt. Your characters can perform this ritual for real or for fun, or perform a similar ritual. (Meaning that you can shorten the number of stories if 100 is too many.)
144. Djinn: Jinn (Arabic; variant spelling djinn) or genies are supernatural creatures in Arab folklore and Islamic teachings which occupy a parallel world to that of mankind. Together, jinn, humans and angels make up the three sentient creations of Allah. According to the Qur'an, there are two creations that have free will: humans and jinn. Religious sources say barely anything about them; however, the Qur'an mentions that jinn are made of smokeless flame or "scorching fire." Like human beings, the jinn can also be good, evil, or neutrally benevolent.
The popular conception of a djinn is that of the wish-granting genie who lives in a lamp, but there is an ancient version as well of a powerful, treacherous being most closely identified as a type of elemental spirit.
There's far too much to say about djinn to put it all here; you can read more about them on this website and/or do more searching on the net.
You can write your story about a genie or the more ancient concept of the djinn.
145. Black-eyed Kids: Urban legends referring to Black-Eyed Kids began to appear in 1998, starting with a newsgroup posting by journalist Brian Bethel reporting of a meeting with two unusually confident and eloquent children who attempted to talk him into giving them a ride in his car. Bethel said in his post that he nearly opened the door to admit the children, even though he found them vaguely unsettling, until he realized that their eyes were completely black, with no iris or pupil. He reports that, as soon as he realized this, the children became angry and insistent, and he drove away quickly. His posting implies that the children may have been using some form of low-level mind control to induce him to open the car, perhaps a form of neurolinguistic programming judging by what is reported of their speech patterns and diction.
Since this post, there have been other reports of similar experiences in other parts of the country. These accounts are similar to Bethel's in that they generally involve the children's request that the teller let them inside their car or house, frequently using an excuse such as "I need to get home to my mother," or something that implies the child is in need.
Urban legends involving the Black Eyed Children generally do not explain the cause of the children's eye color or the origins of the children themselves. Some imply they could be ghosts or demons, specifically vampires: the tales frequently emphasize that the children must be admitted or invited into the house or car in question, and in this way are reminiscent of some vampire legends.
More on Black-eyed Kids: Black-eyed Kids on the Black Vault
Who or what are Black-eyed Kids? Either explain them more to us in your story or simply feature an encounter with them.
146. The Multi-verse: One theory of how alternate universes are created is referred to as the Multi-verse. This theory says that basically, any time we are almost killed or nearly die, we create an alternate universe in which our death did occur and one where our death did not occur. In one universe, we skirt death and go on living, and in the other, loved ones mourn our death. Then, the next time we are almost killed, it happens again.
Think about each time you almost slipped and fell in the shower, or narrowly avoided having a car wreck, or had surgery -- what if each of these times, you actually did die in one universe, and lived in the one you are conscious of? This is how the Multi-verse works. An infinite number of alternate universes could be created in which you escaped death and died at different times. This theory can also be applied to the lives of those around your main character, such as a story where your main character's wife dies, but she is still alive in an alternate universe. Essentially, each potential for death creates a new scenario of life.
Fill this prompt by writing something about a Multi-verse (duh). :D
147. Bogeyman: A bogeyman (also spelled bogieman, boogeyman or boogieman) is an amorphous imaginary being used by adults to frighten children into behaving. The monster has no specific appearance, and conceptions about it can vary drastically from household to household within the same community; in many cases, he has no set appearance in the mind of a child, but is simply a non-specific embodiment of terror.
In some Midwestern states of the United States, the bogeyman scratches at the window. In the Pacific Northwest, he may manifest in "green fog". In other places, he hides or appears from under the bed or in the closet.
This site features several different types of Bogeymen from all over the world: The Bogeyman Wiki
To fill this prompt, write a story about any monster that can be considered a Bogeyman.
148. 2012 Phenomena: The 2012 phenomenon comprises a range of eschatological beliefs that cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on December 21, 2012. This date is regarded as the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. Various astronomical alignments and numerological formulae related to this date have been proposed.
A New Age interpretation of this transition postulates that this date marks the start of time in which Earth and its inhabitants may undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation, and that 2012 may mark the beginning of a new era. Others suggest that the 2012 date marks the end of the world or a similar catastrophe. Scenarios suggested for the end of the world include the arrival of the next solar maximum, or Earth's collision with a black hole or a passing planet called "Nibiru".
Scholars from various disciplines have dismissed the idea of such cataclysmic events occurring in 2012. Mainstream Mayanist scholars state that predictions of impending doom are not found in any of the extant classic Maya accounts, and that the idea that the Long Count calendar "ends" in 2012 misrepresents Maya history. The modern Maya do not consider the date significant, and the classical sources on the subject are scarce and contradictory. Astronomers and other scientists have rejected the apocalyptic forecasts as pseudoscience, stating that the anticipated events are contradicted by simple astronomical observations.
December 2012 marks the conclusion of a b'ak'tun - a time period in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar which was used in Central America prior to the arrival of Europeans. Though the Long Count was most likely invented by the Olmec, it has become closely associated with the Maya civilization, whose classic period lasted from 250 to 900 AD. The writing system of the classic Maya has been substantially deciphered, meaning that a corpus of their written and inscribed material has survived from before the European conquest.
Info on the 2012 Phenomena is numerous and can be found all over the internet. Filling this prompt means writing a story that explores it from a supernatural standpoint -- an Apocalypse, a global change of consciousness, whatever, that happens on December 21, 2012. You could also write a story centered in the universe of the movie 2012.
149. The Weavers of Angels: This story was related on a forum I belong to, and I can't find any information on it myself (probably because any websites are in a foreign language and I'm using English to search), so some of the details may be incorrect. The info seems to be okay, though, but I just wanted to note that for anyone who may know more about this story.
An abandoned child in Portugal used to be called an "exposed" child. Starting in the Middle Ages, nunneries had a device on one of the outside walls called "the wheel." The wheel was a revolving door made of wood which could hold a baby no one wanted anymore. The person would put the baby in the device and then turn the door until it faced inward, which would make a bell toll. There was always a nun on duty to monitor the device, and once they heard the bell, they would collect the baby and bring it into the safety of the nunnery. Through this, the parents could remain anonymous. The wheel became illegal in the late 1800's/early 1900's.
People who adopted or fostered exposed children were given a large sum of money and some baby clothes.
Not every foster parent had the best intentions. This is where Luísa de Jesus comes into the story. Not much is known about her prior to 1772, only that she came from the city of Coimbra and was 22 years old when she committed these crimes. In June 1772 she was arrested for the murder of 33 babies, all whom she fostered over the period of less than one year. Luisa used false names and convinced the nuns each time that she'd make the perfect foster mother. Then she took the babies home and fed them poison. None of the victims bodies were ever found. It is thought that she did this for the money. Luisa was put to death in July of 1772.
The following century saw several "copy-cat killers" called the Weavers of Angels. The term was first coined by an author in his 1875 novel The Crime of Father Amaro, about a priest that gets a young woman pregnant. There he said that they had this name because they weaved little angels to go to heaven and because the first and most famous of them was a professional weaver. It's not known whether this part is still fiction, or whether Luísa had indeed been a weaver.
None of the Weavers were as prolific and gruesome as Luísa, nor did they actively search for babies to kill. Instead they would advertise working as full-term nannies or foster mothers and ask the parents to pay one year in advance.
Some sites identify the Weavers as midwives who performed abortions, but this is incorrect.
I cannot link to the original post where I found this story because the comm is members only, so I wanted to note here that I did not write up most of these details.
To fill this prompt, you should simply take some sort of inspiration from this story and give it a supernatural spin. I'm not looking for anything in particular here. The story just seemed so sad and ripe with the possibility of fictionalized spin-offs that I had to use it as a prompt. I'm sure you can see the potential for paranormal possibilities.
150. Headless Horseman: The Headless Horseman is a fictional character from the short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by American author Washington Irving. The story, from Irving's collection of short stories entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, has worked itself into known American folklore/legend through literature and film.
The legend of the Headless Horseman begins in Sleepy Hollow, New York. The Horseman was a Hessian of unknown rank, one of many hired to suppress the American Revolution. During the war, the Horseman was one of 51 Hessians killed in a battle for Chatterton Hill, wherein his head was severed by an American cannonball. He was buried in a graveyard outside a church. Thereafter he appears as a ghost, who presents to nightly travelers an actual danger (rather than the largely harmless fright produced by the majority of ghosts), presumably of decapitation.
Urban legends that have sprung up as a result of this famous tale say that if you see the headless horseman, he will chase you and cut off your head to replace his own. In order to escape him, legends say you must cross a bridge (old wives tales about ghosts say they cannot cross running water) or elude him until the sun comes up (others say ghosts must depart at the rising of the sun).
The headless horsemen legend has been adapted for many movies, books, and TV shows, including a TV movie of Kolchak: The Night Stalker in which the ghost was a headless motorcycle rider! As you can see, you can get creative while writing for this prompt, but it must be about some sort of headless ghost rider.
151. Mass Disappearance (Roanoke Colony): The Roanoke Colony on Roanoke Island in Dare County, present-day North Carolina, United States was a late 16th-century attempt to establish a permanent English settlement in what later became the Virginia Colony. The enterprise was financed and organized by Sir Walter Raleigh and carried out by Ralph Lane and Richard Grenville, Raleigh's distant cousin. The final group of colonists disappeared during the Anglo-Spanish War, three years after the last shipment of supplies from England. The settlement is known as "The Lost Colony," and the fate of the colonists is still unknown.
One of the original colonists, John White, returned to England to try and get more help for the colony and was unable to come back for three years because of the Anglo-Spanish War. When he did return, he found the settlement deserted. His men could not find any trace of the 90 men, 17 women, and 11 children, nor was there any sign of a struggle or battle. The only clue was the word "Croatoan" carved into a post of the fort and "Cro" carved into a nearby tree. All the houses and fortifications had been dismantled, which meant their departure had not been hurried. Before he had left the colony, White had instructed them that if anything happened to them, they should carve a Maltese cross on a tree nearby, indicating that their disappearance had been forced. As there was no cross, White took this to mean they had moved to "Croatoan Island" (now known as Hatteras Island), but he was unable to conduct a search. Croatan was also the name of a tribe of Native-Americans in the area.
There are many theories as to what happened to these colonists; you can read about them here.
Filling this prompt means writing about what happened to the colonists while somehow involving the supernatural. Alternately, you can create your own fictional mass disappearance of a large group of people, an entire town, a whole city, that sort of thing, because of something supernatural.
152. Mass Suicide: It seemed like I had some research to go with this prompt, but I can't find anything, so I'm just going to wing it. :D A mass suicide would be a large group of people all committing suicide at the same time, or relatively close together, as if one suicide sets off others in a domino effect. To fill this prompt, your mass suicide should have a supernatural cause or somehow involve the supernatural. Mass suicides of this type usually do not have any warning signs, notes are often not left to explain why, that sort of thing. Or, if a note is left, it only says cryptic things that don't seem to explain why the person killed themselves. People just mysteriously begin committing suicide. You can also write about a famous mass suicide and give it a paranormal spin.
A famous mass suicide: the Jim Jones "Jonestown" massacre
The movie The Happening was all about people mysteriously committing suicide in mass across the northeast states of the USA.
153. Hollow Earth Theory: The Hollow Earth theory hypothesis proposes that the planet Earth is either wholly hollow or otherwise contains a substantial interior space. The hypothesis has been shown to be wrong by observational evidence, as well as by the modern understanding of planet formation; the scientific community has dismissed the notion since at least the late 18th century.
The concept of a hollow Earth still recurs in folklore and as the premise for subterranean fiction, a subgenre of adventure fiction. It is also featured in some present-day scientific, pseudoscientific and conspiracy theories.
Over the years, many theories have been proposed about the Earth being hollow and that it is also inhabited. Many of these theories say that entrances into this hollow land can be found at the North and South Pole, and expeditions have even been proposed to find them, one that was even approved by President John Quincy Adams. (He left office before this expedition could occur, and the following president, Andrew Jackson, would not approve it.) Other theories state that the inhabitants of hollow Earth are the ones who have built and flown UFO's into our atmosphere, and that they may be the former inhabitants of Atlantis.
The pages of the science fiction pulp magazine Amazing Stories promoted one such idea from 1945 to 1949 as "the Shaver Mystery." The magazine's editor, Ray Palmer, ran a series of stories by Richard Sharpe Shaver supposedly claimed as factual, though presented in the context of fiction. Shaver claimed that a superior pre-historic race had built a honeycomb of caves in the Earth, and that their degenerate descendants, known as "Dero," live there still, using the fantastic machines abandoned by the ancient races to torment those of us living on the surface. As one characteristic of this torment, Shaver described "voices" that purportedly came from no explainable source. Thousands of readers wrote to affirm that they, too, had heard the fiendish voices from inside the Earth.
The Hollow Earth Theory forms the major basis for the Japanese movie Marebito, where sewer-dwelling animalistic vampires (called Dero after Shaver's stories) come up from the center of the Earth to spook the citizens of Tokyo. The TV series Angel also explored the idea of a hollow Earth in its fifth season, where the burial ground of ancient demons called the Old Ones was kept in the center of the Earth.
As you can guess, filling this prompt means writing something about the Earth being hollow, and perhaps inhabited.
154. Self-fulfilling Prophecy: A self-fulfilling prophecy is one in which a prophecy has been made, and knowledge of that prophecy helps bring it about.
Example: Your character goes to a fortune teller, who tells him he will die in a car accident by the end of the week. The character becomes so nervous and tries to avoid having a car wreck so feverently that he winds up causing a huge 10-car pile-up in which he is killed. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The character's knowledge of the prophecy caused the prophecy to come true.
I'd love to give examples of TV shows and movies that featured self-fulfilling prophecies, but to do that would spoil them all, lol. I'm sure you can probably think of some, and think of your own to fill this prompt.
Terrifying Table
155. Blobsquatch: Blobsquatch is the nickname given to any cryptic supernatural animal that has been filmed, like Bigfoot or a chupacabra, and the "animal" is so blurry that you can't conclusively tell what it is. Most Bigfoot sightings that have been filmed feature Blobsquatches. (Term used extensively on Ghost Theory.com; that's where I first heard it.)
Filling this prompt means writing a story in which some cryptic supernatural thing has been filmed and the subject of the film comes out blurry, a hard-to-define blob.
156. Drop Bears: Drop bears are giant, vicious koala bears that drop down out of the trees of Australia onto the heads of unsuspecting people and eat them. I've heard that many Australians like to tell these wild stories to tourists to scare them, hee.
Taking on this prompt does not necessarily mean your story has to take place in Australia. It can if you want it to, but there isn't any reason a drop bear cannot escape or be shipped out of Australia and wreak havoc in another country. The drop bear should probably stay a huge, vicious koala, though, because to change it into a larger/more vicious bear would sort of defeat the purpose of the story being paranormal in nature. A giant, blood-thirsty koala is a bit stranger than a giant, blood-thirsty grizzly bear, wouldn't you say?
157. Slenderman: Slenderman is an urban legend created on the forums of Something Awful. This creature has never actually been sighted anywhere; he is entirely the creation of some very creative people on the internet. Wouldn't you like to join in?
Slenderman is most often portrayed as a malevolent entity that abducts and psychologically traumatizes people, usually starting when they're children, and sometimes continuing until adulthood. The entity was created on the Something Awful forums on June 10, 2009 by a user under the name of Victor Surge, as part of a discussion encouraging users to create paranormal images. He quickly became a favorite among many users, and others began creating their own Slender Man images, using digital editing to place the entity in otherwise ordinary photographs, often those featuring children. Victor Surge cites HP Lovecraft, Stephen King, and survival horror video games as his inspirations when creating the creature.
The unofficial nature of the Slender Man's roots means that he has no definitive origin, but rather a number of differing conceptions on his identity and motives. These remain subjective to the particular adaptation that chooses to portray the entity. Such theories span alien, ghostly, demonic, tulpa, dryad, and inter-dimensional origins.
Due to the community nature of the Slender Man Mythos, the creature himself has generated many different name stylings. Some prefer to call him the Slender Man, some go by Slenderman, and some even call him Slendy. Others have chosen different titles for him, such as Mr. Thin, or the Tall Man in reference to his resemblance to the character of the same name from the movie Phantasm. Still others have created different names for him based on their own interpretations.
Like his origins, the appearance of the Slender Man remains subjective, varying across related media. He is typically depicted as being an abnormally tall (ranging anywhere from seven feet tall to the size of a large tree or house), skinny humanoid figure, with a faceless head, usually lacking several or all of the face's sensory organs. He is usually depicted as wearing a plain black suit and tie, reminiscent of the Men in Black, though this is often implied to be an actual part of the entity's body or a form of shapeshifting. He is often shown to have something of a malleable figure, enabling him to stretch and contort his limbs into a variety of shapes, as well as produce a number of tentacle-like appendages, which are shown as having the ability to ensnare his victims.
The Slender Man is typically depicted as an observant and lurking being, stalking his victims for long periods of time while slowly driving them insane with paranoia and sickness. Other adaptations point to a more violent Slender Man, killing his victims by eviscerating them. Other ways of killing include turning victims into mist and creating the appearance that the deaths of his victims were accidents. Besides the ability to physically grow extra limbs, the Slender Man has a number of psychologically-based powers, typically including the ability to induce amnesia, insomnia, and control the minds of his victims. (Some stories have the Slender Man hypnotizing his victims into walking right into his arms.)
Because Slenderman is a fictional creation of the internet, it is okay to play with these "facts" about him and really get creative. BUT, some aspect(s) of the original creation should remain when you fill this prompt; otherwise, he wouldn't be the Slenderman.
When you post your story on your journal, it might be a good idea to add a disclaimer at the beginning that identifies where Slenderman came from, just so people know he isn't solely your creation. It's totally okay to take credit for what you added to the myth, though.
The original thread on SomethingAwful that spawned Slenderman, which you can link to if you want.
158. Nightcrawlers: Nightcrawlers are strange creatures caught on camera in Fresno, CA by a man named Jose on November 8, 2007. The film was featured on the Sy-Fy Channel TV show Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files in season 1 episode 2. The FoF team tried to recreate the film but could not, although they didn't try very hard. Their results were inconclusive.
The film features two very odd creatures walking across the front yard of Jose's home around 12 at night. I'll include a link to the tape on Youtube because the creatures are very hard to describe. They almost look like a pair of stilt legs wearing pants, walking along with no top half. On top of the stilts there seems to be a small head with hollow eyes, but this is all very hard to see because of the quality of the tape. The creatures were deemed Nightcrawlers by the FoF team.
Frankly, I think it's still possible this could be a hoax; the gait of the creatures strongly reminds me of stilts or some sort of mechanical construct. It didn't seem like the FoF team checked for any signs of hoax or special effects applied to the film. They presented no evidence that they had even checked into the guy's background. However, the film still presents some very unusual and interesting creatures if you accept they are real.
(Another thing that I find suspicious about this case is that the original footage of the Nightcrawlers was "recorded over." Jose says that his surveillance camera runs on a VCR backup, and the system automatically records over the previous night's tape. So, he used his video camera to record this footage off the TV monitor and allowed the original tape to be recorded over. Doesn't that seem odd to anyone else? The FOF team applied digital effects to their tests to erase a person walking a puppet through the yard; who's to say Jose didn't do the same thing, then record his doctored footage off the TV? Or if not him, then someone he knows? People create hoax paranormal videos all the time. All I'm saying is, I'm not convinced that this couldn't be a hoax created with puppets/robotics and digital editing.
That having been said, I also think there's a possibility these creatures are real. There is something authentic about the way they move, especially the second one that walks through the yard. If it's a puppet or a robot, it moves rather quickly! It would take a very skilled puppeteer/controller to make it move so fast. But then again, there's the Herbie Hancock video for "Rockit," with its mechanical robots that move pretty fast! I don't know. I'm really interested and fairly conflicted over this one.)
Footage from Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files
Enhanced video of Nightcrawler #2. Whatever this is, it's pretty spooky-looking. A link in this video suggests the Nightcrawlers are some sort of extraterrestrial being encountered by Aleister Crowley in the early 1900's, a being that called itself Lam. It's interesting that Lam looks a lot like the Nightcrawlers.
Another one - This is supposed to be footage of more Nightcrawlers in Yosemite National Park, which is 45 minutes away from Fresno. Now, the wooden statues are interesting. But the footage? BAHAHAHA. HOAX. So clearly a hoax. I mean, come on. They look like stilts with bedsheets over them. And the way the creatures walk... this is clearly people on stilts. I don't know exactly where they put all of their body parts, but maybe they're contortionists, or little people. Either way, there's no way I'm believing this one is real. Why did I link to it, then? For the LOLs. (And the wooden statues.) How someone can dare to put something this unconvincing before the public, I'll never know. Seeing this one, and comparing it to the original video where the "creatures" move much faster and with more fluidity, it almost lends some credence to the original video.
The point of this prompt is to write a story featuring these creatures in some way. What are they? Where did they come from? What are they like; how do they live? That sort of thing.
159. Dyatlov Pass Incident: This prompt involves a fascinating and disturbing incident that took place in Russia in 1959. The story is far too long and involved to detail here, so you can read all about it at this link. It's one of those stories that seems to have a simple explanation until you delve deeper into the details of what took place.
Taking on this prompt means writing a story with a similar incident and explaining what happened; the explanation must somehow involve the supernatural. You do not have to mirror all the details or location of the original incident, but your story should have many similarities. (You don't have to kill everybody off if you don't want to, heh.)
160. Crop Circles: A crop circle is a sizable pattern created by the flattening of a crop such as wheat, barley, rye, maize, or rapeseed. Crop circles are also referred to as crop formations, because they are not always circular in shape. While the exact date crop circles began to appear is unknown, the documented cases have substantially increased from the 1970s to current times. Twenty-six countries reported approximately ten thousand crop circles in the last third of the 20th century. Ninety percent of those were located in southern England. Many of the formations appearing in that area are positioned near ancient monuments, such as Stonehenge.
In 1991, self-professed pranksters Doug Bower and Dave Chorley made headlines claiming it was they who started the phenomenon in 1978 with the use of simple tools consisting of a plank of wood, rope, and a baseball cap fitted with a loop of wire to help them walk in a straight line. Inspired by Australian crop circle accounts from 1966, Doug and Dave repotedly made more than 200 crop circles from 1978-1991 and claimed to be responsible for most if not all circles made prior to 1987. After their announcement, in a demonstration the two men made a crop circle in one hour. Despite general acceptance of their story, crop circle researchers remain skeptical of many of their claims. Since their revelation, crop formations have continued to appear each year, often in greater number, size, and complexity.
Since appearing in the media in the 1970s, crop circles have become the subject of speculation by various paranormal, ufological, and anomalistic investigators ranging from proposals that they were created by bizarre meteorological phenomena to messages from extraterrestrial beings. Other theories state that the Earth itself created these circles as messages to the human population, that the Earth is alive and sentient.
In 2009, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania stated that Australian wallabies had been found creating crop circles in fields of opium poppies, which are grown legally for medicinal use, after consuming some of the opiate-laden poppies and running in circles. (I just put this one in here because I thought it was funny.)
It's not hard to guess that filling this prompt means writing about crop circles that have a paranormal origin.
161. The Face on Mars: In 1976, NASA's Viking orbiter took numerous photographs of the surface of the planet Mars. In photographs of a region known as Cydonia, there was a strange structure that looked a lot like a human face, and a series of pyramid shaped objects that seemed to have an intelligent layout. Some say the face is a trick of light and shadow. For those who believe it is a face, they feel this is evidence that intelligent life once existed on Mars and that they built this structure.
Writing for this prompt means exploring the origins of the face on Mars, or creating your own similar structure on another planet, or coming up with a previously unknown structure like this here on Earth and giving it meaning. Whatever you come up with, it should be mysterious, ancient, supernatural, whatever is necessary to make it fit in with the theme of this community.
162. The Devil's Highway: U.S. Route 491 (US 491) is a north-south U.S. Highway serving the Four Corners region of the United States. One of the newest designations in the U.S. Highway System, it was created in 2003 as a renumbering of U.S. Route 666 (US 666). With the 666 designation, this road was nicknamed the "Devil's Highway" because of the belief by many Christians that 666 is the Number of the Beast. This Satanic connotation, combined with a high fatality rate along the New Mexico portion, convinced some people the highway was cursed. These factors led to two efforts to renumber the highway, first by officials in Arizona, later in New Mexico. There have been safety improvement projects in recent years, and fatality rates have subsequently decreased. Some believe the accidents have decreased because the highway was renamed, thereby lifting the curse.
The highway runs through Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, as well as the tribal nations of the Navajo Nation and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. The highway passes by two mountains considered sacred by native Americans, Ute Mountain and an extinct volcanic core named Shiprock.
Another good example of a death highway concerns Kilometer Marker 239. In 1930, a new section of highway (aka motorway) was constructed in Germany. The section was a completely straight area of flat roadway, on the side of which was a small stone kilometer marker known as kilometer marker 239. During the first 12 months of the roadway's existence, over 100 cars crashed near the jinxed marker.
On one very clear dry day in September 1930, a total of 9 separate cars left the road right next to the accursed marker. It was only after the stone marker had been completely removed from the ground and the area sprinkled with holy water that the accidents stopped.
Writing for this prompt entails some sort of story about US 666 or another highway that has somehow been cursed, where many fatal accidents occur. Or something of that nature.
Suggested by insaneladybug.
163. Long Trail: The Long Trail is a hiking trail located in Vermont, running the length of the state. It is the oldest long-distance trail in the United States, constructed between 1910 and 1930 by the Green Mountain Club. The Long Trail currently runs 272 miles (438 km) through the state of Vermont. It starts at the Massachusetts border (near Williamstown, Massachusetts), and runs north to the Canadian border (near North Troy, Vermont). It runs along the main ridge of the Green Mountains, coinciding with the Appalachian Trail for 100 miles (160 km) in southern Vermont. Additionally, over 175 miles (282 km) of side trails complete the Long Trail System.
The section of the Long Trail between Woodford (on Vermont State Route 9 just east of Bennington, Vt) and Glastenbury Mountain some 10 miles (16 km) further north has gained notoriety due to the fact that at least four people inexplicably vanished in that area between 1945 and 1950. Only one body was subsequently found and the fate of the other missing persons remains a mystery.
Many say that these disappearances are of no consequence because any hiking trail is bound to have such incidents in its history, covering such a large area with underdeveloped, natural landscapes where people could get lost, abducted, and/or hurt and might not be found for days. But let's pretend it's very unusual, shall we? ;)
Taking on this prompt means writing about the Long Trail, or some other real or made up hiking trail, where people are going missing/have gone missing, and explaining what could be going on. Your explanation should have something to do with the paranormal.
164. The Slit-Mouth Woman: Kuchisake-onna (Slit-Mouth Woman) is a Japanese urban legend that goes a bit like this: Children walking alone at night may encounter a woman wearing a surgical mask - this is not an unusual sight in Japan as people wear them to protect others from their colds or sickness. The woman will stop the child and ask, "Am I beautiful?" Most children will answer yes, in which case the woman asks, "How about now?" and removes her mask to reveal her mouth has been slit from ear to ear. Regardless of whether the child answers yes or no at this point, the woman will kill or disfigure them. The Kuchisake-onna is an enduring legend which began in the Edo period, with the woman initially covering her face with her robes, but this has evolved into a surgical mask (now that robes are less common) to stay in the popular imagination.
Kuchisake-onna does not always go after children, though. Some versions of the legend have her picked up as a hitchhiker and attacking a man in a car after showing him her face, saying over and over again, "Am I beautiful? Am I beautiful? Am I beautiful?"
To fill this prompt, you can write about the Slit-Mouth Woman, giving her a history or just making her a random monster, or create your own similar ghost/monster. A similar ghost legend would concern some sort of disfigured spirit that tries to disfigure or kill the living in a manner that is similar to how they are disfigured.
165. Local Legend: This prompt can be used to write about some other spooky local urban legend that maybe isn't big enough to be known all over the world, but is very well known in your neck of the woods. Examples are the Flatwoods Monster and The Lady of White Rock Lake. You don't have to write about those specific legends, though. What spooky stories are well known where you live?
To those of you who think the Flatwoods Monster is too famous to be considered just a local legend, I'm sorry. I had never heard of the creature until only recently, so it doesn't seem extremely famous to me. Sorry again! :D
166. Reaper/Psychopomp: The concept of death as a sentient entity has existed in many societies since the beginning of history. In English, Death is often given the name Grim Reaper and, from the 15th century onwards, came to be shown as a skeletal figure carrying a large scythe and clothed in a black cloak with a hood. It is also given the name of the Angel of Death or the angel of dark and light (Malach Ha-Mavet) stemming from the Bible.
In some cases, the Grim Reaper is able to actually cause the victim's death, leading to tales that he can be bribed, tricked, or outwitted in order to retain one's life, such as in the case of Sisyphus. Other beliefs hold that the Spectre of Death is only a psychopomp, serving to sever the last ties between the soul and the body and to guide the deceased to the next world without having any control over the fact of the victim's death. In other stories, a Reaper can also give life back.
Psychopomps (from the Greek word psychopompos, literally meaning the "guide of souls") are creatures, spirits, angels, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls to the afterlife. Their role is not to judge the deceased, but simply provide safe passage. Frequently depicted on funerary art, psychopomps have been associated at different times and in different cultures with horses, Whip-poor-wills, ravens, dogs, crows, owls, sparrows, cuckoos, and harts.
Filling this prompt means writing about some form of reaper and/or psychopomp. (Again, duh.)
167. Technological Curse: This prompt concerns all of those "passed from person to person" legends that have become popular in recent years, spawning many horror movies. Examples usually concern a death curse that is passed from one person to another through modern technological means. The story usually goes like this: A girl receives some sort of scary email or phone call, etc. Soon after, she dies. Then, a friend of hers who was in the girl's list of contacts (email address book, cell phone address book, etc) is next to receive the message. She dies too. It goes on like this until someone is able to break the curse.
Another variation of the story concerns a message sent to someone over the internet, via a pop-up window, video, or a website they visit out of curiosity, that somehow causes their death. The Japanese story of "The Red Room" pop-up is a good example. One night, you receive a pop-up on your computer that refuses to go away. It shows you a red door and a voice asks, "Do you like the Red Room?" Later, you are found dead, the walls of your room painted red with your blood. Other stories say that a spooky message may come to you on your television in the middle of the night, on a channel that shouldn't be receiving a broadcast at that time.
This concept seems to be most popular in Japan, with movies like Ringu, One Missed Call, and Kairo.
Writing for this prompt means detailing your own modern technology curse and how it passes itself around. What or who is behind the curse? Or would you rather not explain it, just tell us how it works? Can it be defeated?
168. Recurring Nightmare: A recurring nightmare is a bad dream that a person has repeatedly, with the same events and themes each time. Recurring nightmares are actually quite rare and usually greatly disrupt the waking life of the person experiencing them. The sufferer usually experiences the nightmare several times a week. They are most often caused by stress and anxiety in the person's everyday life, and/or recovering from a traumatic event.
To fill this prompt, you would need to write about a recurring nightmare (they are rare enough to make this paranormal table). However, it would be even better if the cause of the recurring nightmare was paranormal in nature. (Past life memory, psychic vision, repressed memories of missing time, etc.)
Suggested by marie1964.
169. Mental Illness/Disorder: Use this prompt to write about a rare mental illness that is either so rare that it could be considered "paranormal," or one that has symptoms that could be taken for a paranormal experience. This prompt could also cover a story where a character actually is experiencing something paranormal but others think they are "seeing things." Examples of rare mental illnesses and mental illnesses/disorders that would fit this prompt include catatonia, schizophrenia, and dream paralysis. (Catatonia being rare and just plain freaky; schizophrenia being an illness where people "see things" that can be quite scary; and dream paralysis being a condition where you wake up, but you can't move for some time, and you hallucinate nightmarish things carried over from your sleeping life into your waking life.) Those are not the only illnesses you can write about, though, they are just good examples. Your character can either actually have the illness/disorder or instead be plagued by something supernatural that may make others think (s)he has it.
I'm sorry to lump sleep paraylsis in with a prompt called "Mental Illness;" I know it's not quite the same as the other examples, but I didn't want to give it its own prompt, nor did I want the prompt name to go on and on. It is an excellent example of a disorder that can cause you to see things that could be considered paranormal, though.
170. Antikythera Mechanism: The Antikythera Mechanism is a very rare and unusual artifact that was recovered by divers from the Antikythera wreck in 1900 off the coast of an island near Crete. During their expedition, the divers had uncovered a number of bronze and marble statues before coming across a piece of corroded bronze that contained the mechanism. Despite suffering from corrosion, the mechanism was sufficiently intact to determine that it was something special.
Believed to date back to between 80BC-150BC, the mechanism appears to be made up of a series of gears and wheels and demonstrates a level of complexity unheard of for its time - modern equivalents wouldn't appear for another 1,300 years. X-rays of the mechanism revealed a differential gearing system.
It is believed that the device was actually used for calculating the motions of stars and planets and that it was created in the Greek speaking world; however, the specifics of exactly who created it and how widespread such technology was 2000 years ago and beyond remains a mystery.
The Antikythera Mechanism is used prominently in the movie Stonehenge Apocalypse. As is Stonehenge. :)
To fill this prompt, you would want to either write about this mechanism and give it a paranormal use, or make something about its creation paranormal, or that sort of thing. You can alternately come up with your own ancient machine that seems out of place in its time and do something paranormal with it.
171. Area 51: Area 51 is the name given to a famous "secret" military base located in the United States over 80 miles to the north of Las Vegas, Nevada, situated near dried up Groom Lake. Officially the existence of an 'Area 51' has been generally denied; in practice, the area is part of an extenstive training and testing range run by the United States Air Force.
Area 51 is home to a number of buildings, hangars, and an active airstrip. While the ground and airspace around the base is restricted, it hasn't stopped enthusiasts from finding ways to obtain photographs from a distance. Satellite images have also become available showing the layout of the base in more detail.
It is believed that the base has been used as a facility for developing and testing new experimental aircraft and aviation technologies and is famously connected to the UFO phenomenon through conspiracy theories, suggesting that the United States is testing either captured alien spacecraft or new vehicles based on alien technology. The area around Area 51 including the small town of Rachel on the aptly named 'Extraterrestrial Highway' is a popular tourist destination, and is steeped in UFO culture. Tours taking visitors to the famous 'Trespassers will be shot' signs at the very edge of the restricted area have become a popular attraction.
Area 51 has been featured in numerous films, books, and television shows for many years, including blockbuster movies like Independence Day and shows such as "The X-Files." It has become a symbol of government coverups and alien conspiracies in popular culture.
Filling this prompt means writing about Area 51 or your own fictional, similar place. You do not have to involve aliens if you do not want to; give Area 51 a different paranormal use for all I care. :D
172. Nostradamus: Born in France in 1503, Michel de Nostredame originally attended medical college and became a specialist in the Plague. It wasn't until he turned to writing in 1550 however that Nostradamus began to make predictions about the future. He was twice married and had a total of 8 children.
Nostradamus wrote a substantial number of predictions ranging from weather and crop prospects to war and major events. The technique he claimed to use to predict these events was what he called 'comparative horoscopy,' which involved looking at horoscopes and working out when major elements of past events would happen again. It is thought that only 5-10 percent of his predictions have been fulfilled with 100 percent certainty. Most of them have either missed the mark by a wide margin or have been somewhat subjective and open to interpretation.
Writing for this prompt means writing specifically about Nostradamus, his actual prophecies, or fictional prophecies and what happens as a result of them. You could also make up your own soothsayer with a similar book of prophecies.
173. Voynich Manuscript: The Voynich Manuscript is a mysterious manuscript that in 1912 was purchased by a collector of rare books in Italy, Wilfred Voynich. Voynich was unable to decipher the language in the manuscript and later took it back to America with him. The 'Voynich Manuscript' as it became known consists of a total of 234 pages and contains a large number of drawings, mostly of flowers. The book contained a variety of sections including cosmology, biology, astronomy, and pharmaceuticals. The manuscript changed hands many times, but despite much concerted effort, nobody has yet been able to decipher what the mysterious manuscript actually means.
In a recent study by researchers at the University of Arizona, it was found that the Voynich manuscript dated back to the 15th century and is considered to be genuine.
This prompt suggests a story either about the Voynich Manuscript itself or a fictional book written in an unknown language or a code that must be cracked. Paranormal spins are welcome.
174. Earth Noises/Taos Hum: The Earth makes natural noises due to seismic activity, called Ambient Earth Noise. This is like background noise and is not normally audible to the human ear. But some think the Earth is alive, in a way, and sometimes makes louder noises audible to human ears. Some say this is the Earth's way of trying to communicate with us. These noises have been described as strange groans, pops, and rumblings. Sometimes these noises are heard hours prior to an earthquake.
There is also the case of what is referred to as The Hum. The Hum has been heard in several locations across the globe; one of the most famous is the Taos Hum, named for Taos, NM. The Hum is a generic name for a series of phenomena involving a persistent and invasive low-frequency humming noise not audible to all people. Many of its sufferers cannot sleep or concentrate due to The Hum and some have even had to go on disability because they cannot work. The noise is described as sounding like an idling Deisel truck or some other form of machinery working in the background. For some, the source of The Hum has been found and is usually a large piece of machinery in a nearby factory. For others, theories abound but no cause for the noise has been identified. Theories vary from waves crashing into the ocean floor to Earth noise to the military testing experimental, top secret aircraft.
Very recently, a new type of noise has been detected in several countries. It's hard to verify the authenticity of these recorded sounds because they can all only be heard in YouTube videos; the videos have not been professionally analyzed for tampering/signs of a hoax. Basically, people are hearing groaning and mechanical sounds that seem to come from the sky or the ground. The sounds are almost identical every time, even though the recordings come from different countries. And they're very unusual. They almost sound like some sort of siren, but not like any siren I've ever heard before. This page links to several YouTube videos that feature the noises.
Your choices for filling this prompt are varied. You can write about Earth noises, The Hum, or this recent sound and what it means. Where do these noises come from? What do they mean?
175. Picnic at Hanging Rock: Is it a true story, or isn't it?
Picnic at Hanging Rock is only one example of a story/book/movie/TV show that is presented as being based on fact that actually isn't. These types of stories almost always feature paranormal elements and unexplained disappearances. The "found footage" movie genre has become especially popular since The Blair Witch Project, a film about three college students who disappeared while making a documentary. Supposedly their camera footage was found a year later. It detailed what happened to them while also raising more unanswered questions. In the case of Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Blair Witch Project, both were presented as being true stories or based on true stories to the point that many people actually believed they were true stories for some time after their release. Because people have become a bit desensitized to the idea at this point, many do not believe that when a new "found footage" movie comes out that it is really authentic found footage, but the films can still be very successful. In fact, for every person who knows that Paranormal Activity is not real, there is someone who is still asking, "Is this a true story?"
What PAHR and Blair Witch had going for them is time of release and/or excellent advertising campaigns. Both were released at times when something like that hadn't been done for a while. Both were advertised in ways that were very convincing to their authenticity.
Just to clarify, Picnic at Hanging Rock is a book and movie about a group of students who go on a field trip to a park in Australia called Hanging Rock. Several students and one teacher disappear on that trip and are never heard from again. The book and movie came out in the 1970's, but to this day, you can still find this tale told on websites identifying it as a true story.
To fill this prompt, you must write a paranormal story and present it as fact or "based on a true story." Include the sort of details that would make it seem real. You could even create a webpage or two (in addition to or INSTEAD OF writing a full story) detailing something connected with your story. Even create fake newspaper clippings to fill the prompt. Or, you could write in one of these fandoms that is presented as a true story (Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, The Fourth Kind, etc.) but isn't.
176. Déjà vu: An unexpected sense of familiarity when encountering what you believe is actually a new experience, place, person, or object.
If you're at all confused, basically déjà vu refers to that feeling when you go into a house and you know you've never been there before, but it feels like you have. Something is familiar about it, but you don't know why.
Filling this prompt, if you couldn't guess, means writing about a character experiencing déjà vu.
EXTRAS from the Paranormal 200 Table Defined
The First 138 Prompts Defined