In the tales of the supernatural, cats have always played a prominent role. If a black cat crosses your path, it is a sign of bad luck. And stories about witches and witchcraft usually center around a black cat also.

Here in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, we have the legend of the Wampus Cat. This fearsome creature has been talked about for hundreds of years. It was a part of Cherokee Indian mythology that was later passed on to the white settlers and included in their folklore.

The legendary beast that is today called the Wampus Cat was once known as Ewah by the Cherokees. Just the sight of this creature was enough to drive people insane, they said. The ancient tale about the Wampus Cat maintained that it was actually a Cherokee woman who did not trust her...

Myths, mysteries and urban legends are plentifull just about everywhere, and some pieces of the country are particularly odd - like Nevada housing Area 51. Few paranormal cases are three dimensional or physical by description, as opposed to the more common apparition sightings and EVP captures. West Virginia has its Mothman creature from 1966 to 1967, something looking like a man, but with moth-like wings and large reflective red eyes. Arkansas has the Fouke Monster, a Bigfoot type creature seen in and around Fouke, Arkansas, since the 1950s - immortalized in the 1972 docudrama, Legend of Boggy Creek.

More paranormal cases involving seemingly physical things include what we commonly know as cattle mutilations - possibly traced back to the Snippy the Horse mutilation from Sept....

THROUGHOUT the past 100 years, the myths surrounding John 'Babbacombe' Lee's story have taken on a life of their own. Urban legends, ghostly sightings and tales of supernatural intervention have grown far beyond what anybody in 19th century South Devon could have imagined for the lowly manservant.

Lee, nicknamed The Man They Could Not Hang, came to prominence when he was convicted of murdering his employer, Emma Keyse, and setting fire to her Babbacombe home, called The Glen. Mike Holgate, of Torquay, an expert on John Lee, said: "During his trial, the prosecution portrayed Lee as a depraved lunatic capable of smashing an old lady's head with an axe, then slashing her throat with a knife.

"The judge, in passing sentence of death, remarked...

A 150-year-old mystery has reared its head after a woman woke to find 'Satan's hoofprints' dotted across freshly fallen snow in her back garden. The single track of cloven-like prints - which appear to have been made by a two-legged creature - precisely resemble footprints recorded in the area in 1855.

The phenomenon, which has never been explained, became known as the 'Devil's foot prints' in a local legend. Grandmother Jill, 76, of Woolsery, Devon, said: 'I looked in the garden and it really intrigued me. 'I couldn't believe it - the footprints were in the shape of a cloven hoof. There were no other marks at all in the snow.

'I was quite surprised by it and I hadn't got a clue what it was, but I thought I would love to...

Ghost and all that is evil is brought forth to haunt the world. From New Orleans to Haiti this day is feared! New Orleans Voodooist hold this day very holy in some secret society's. This is the day that the most evil of Ghede are released when some fool stumbles upon the Gate of Guinee. In some cultures, Friday is considered unlucky, especially regarding Friday the 13th.

This is particularly so in maritime circles; perhaps the most enduring sailing superstition is that it is unlucky to begin a voyage on a Friday. In one story a Royal Navy ship (HMS Friday) was laid down on a Friday, launched on a Friday, captained by a Captain Friday, and was never heard of again. As told by comedian Dave Allen on the BBC in the 1970s, however, this superstition is not universal,...

Mina Dos Estrellas (Mee-nah Dose Eh-stray-us) "Mine Two Stars", an abandoned gold mining complex tucked into the mountains near the small farming village of Tlalpujahua (Tuh-LAL-poo-HA-wah), Michoacán, Mexico. At its peak, this mine employed over 5,000 workers and was one of the largest producers of gold in Mexico. In 1903, European settlers invaded Tlalpujahua (Tuh-LAL-poo-HA-wah). When the settlers learned the surrounding mountains held a fortune in gold, local villagers warned against any excavation plans. They believed that the mountain's gold was guarded by a Nahaul (Nuh-wall (proper spelling is "Nagual")) an ancient Mexican sorcerer controlled by El Diablo, the devil. The Nahaul is one of the most feared creatures in all of Mexican folklore. The...

Bram Stoker's Dracula, published in 1897, continues to send shivers down the spine of anyone who reads it. It is dark Gothic at its best, a brilliant, imaginative and can't-put-down work of art. The atmosphere it creates is, in this writer's opinion, spookier than any Stephen King novel.But...many people who have read the book are not aware that the character Dracula the vampire is based on was a highborn member of a Romanian court, prominent in European history – and much more terrifying than his fictional descendant. While not the black-cloaked, centuries-old, fanged bloodsucker of literary fame, the infamy of the historical figure outperforms that of Stoker's creation.Prince Vlad, or as he was called even in his own time, Dracula (which means "Son of the...

They lure children into dank swamps and devour them. They live in caves or among high rocks or deep in dense forests. They are covered with scales or thick fur. They have hands at the ends of their tails or a single glaring eye. They exhale fire, cause hurricanes with their wings or feast on human eyes, teeth and nails. They might also whimsically help the unwitting, but they are almost all mercurial, unreliable, tricksters. Such are the mythic creatures of our earth. Their dwelling places are the journals of sea captains, the legends of native peoples, the myths of the Greeks, the folk tales of the Chinese. And it was a brilliant curatorial idea to devote an exhibition to them — “Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids” — which is opening at the American Museum...

Arctic whales whose long, spiraled tusks created the myth of the unicorn seem to call out with individual voices, according to a new study. Researchers think the vocalizations help narwhals to recognize each other or reunite with distant pods, just as our relatives can identify us over the phone, for instance. Scientists have known that marine mammals rely on acoustic signaling for underwater communication. Whales speak in dialects, a recent study found. But few studies have looked at individual animal voices. The scientists eavesdropped on three narwhals in Admiralty Bay on Baffin Island, Canada, using digital-recording devices that they suction-cupped to the whales' bodies. "For the first time, we could really 'ride' with the animals as they were vocalizing and...

A Chatsworth couple returning home in the early hours of Saturday morning are still reeling from shock after their hair-raising experience with a "mysterious Indian woman dressed in black" in Havenside Drive, off Bayview. According to Nirvana Rupnarain, 30, of Moorton, they were on their way to Havenside to drop off a friend at about 2.30am when "sheeee" appeared out of the blue. Rupnarain said they were passing Protea Secondary when they spotted a tall woman, dressed in black pants and shirt, standing in the middle of the road. "My first thought was that we were going to be hijacked. She was just standing there and looked frightening with her long black hair hanging on her shoulders and her arms outstretched, almost beckoning for us to stop." She...