TOP 5 Ghosts, Cryptids, Aliens
- Wrenegade Studios
- Jul 31
- 17 min read
Foreword by Janette Jameson
Director, Supernatural & Paranormal Society (S.P.S.)
There are few figures in the field of supernatural investigation as revered as Professor Charles Stephenson. His journals are considered essential reading for any operative working in the unexplained, and with good reason. His wit was sharp, his methods thorough, and his encounters... well, let us simply say he ventured into places where most would not.
The following entries were recovered from his personal collection prior to his disappearance in 1973. Compiled here are fifteen of the professor’s observations covering some of the most iconic and confounding entities ever recorded: ghosts, cryptids, and alien visitors. While many in the academic world dismissed such accounts in their time, history continues to lean in favour of the professor’s instincts.
Read these accounts not as entertainment, but as warning. The unknown does not care if you believe in it.
Stay watchful, Janette Jameson Director, S.P.S.
TOP 5 GHOSTS CRYPTIDS & ALIENS
Top 5 Ghost Sightings
La Llorona
Location: Mexico and Central & South America
“If you ever hear weeping by the riverbank at dusk, don’t go offering tissues. Run.”
Of all the wandering spirits I’ve encountered, La Llorona, The Weeping Woman, has the most mournful song. A tale soaked in sorrow and saltwater, her legend floats like mist along the rivers and lakes of Latin America. It begins with a mother, sometimes noble, sometimes poor, but always betrayed. In a fit of anguish, she drowns her own children. From that moment, she is cursed to walk the waterways forever, searching for them, crying out through the night.
During my travels through Mexico in the late 1950s, I spent a season in Xochimilco, investigating canal-side sightings. More than one local swore they heard her voice on the wind, a soft, tragic wail just out of reach. I spoke with a woman who claimed La Llorona had followed her home. Wet footprints on dry stone. The sound of sobbing from an empty room.
It’s easy for the Western mind to dismiss these tales as ghost stories to frighten children. But I’ve learned that truth often clings to myth like moss to stone. Wherever I found tragedy, I found her. Some claim she is a form of banshee. Others say she’s closer to a cursed revenant. I only know this: her sorrow is deep enough to drown in.
Note to self: Always be wary of rivers that whisper your name.
Bloody Mary
Location: United Kingdom and United States
“It is a brave or foolish soul who willingly invites a ghost to tea through a bathroom mirror.”
The legend of Bloody Mary is a curious one. Unlike many phantoms tethered to a single place or tragic history, this entity seems to follow the story rather than the soil. Speak her name three times into a darkened mirror, and she may appear behind you, eyes red with rage, face streaked with blood. That is the warning, at least. Why one would do this voluntarily is quite beyond me.
Some trace her name to Queen Mary I of England, known for her brutal persecution of Protestants. Others suggest a murdered woman, a childless mother, or a witch wrongly accused. The truth is likely buried beneath layers of folklore and teenage dares. The earliest mention I could find was in a faded pamphlet passed through a London spiritualist circle in 1911, warning against "summoning that which lives in reflection."
What intrigues me most is the method of conjuration. Mirrors have long been regarded as gateways or traps for the soul. In my own investigations, I have seen more than one haunted looking glass, though none with quite the theatrical flair of Miss Mary. During a brief stay in Massachusetts, a schoolteacher recounted a chilling tale. Her pupils had chanted the name in jest, only to find one girl unresponsive, staring at her own reflection for hours with tears streaming down her cheeks. No sign of trauma, just silence.
Whether Mary is a spirit, a tulpa, or something that feeds on belief, I cannot say. But if mirrors are doors, perhaps we ought to stop knocking.
Note to self: Shave with the light on. Always.
The Bell Witch
Location: Tennessee, United States
“If ever a spirit deserved a formal introduction, it was this one. She certainly made herself at home.”
The case of the Bell Witch is one of the few I consider truly unsettling, not because of its bloodshed or theatrics, but because of its persistence. The haunting of the Bell family in early 19th-century Tennessee is among the most thoroughly documented spirit encounters I’ve come across in America. A voice in the dark, a hand unseen, and a wit sharper than most living tongues.
The tale begins with strange knockings and whispers in the Bell household. Soon enough, the entity began speaking clearly, naming itself as “Kate,” though it seemed to know more about the family than any neighbour ought. It tormented John Bell in particular, pinching, slapping, and, in time, poisoning him, if local legend is to be believed.
I travelled to Adams, Tennessee, in the late 1960s, and though the old Bell cabin was long gone, the land still held a charge. Locals spoke of odd sounds in the fields, of animals behaving strangely, and dreams they could not shake. One man, a farmer, told me he’d heard a woman laughing in his cornfield for three nights straight. He no longer plants corn.
What fascinates me is the intelligence attributed to this spirit. Unlike your average door-slammer or wailing shade, the Bell Witch debated theology, predicted deaths, and played favourites. She reportedly admired one of John’s daughters while tormenting the rest of the family. A spirit with opinions, no less.
Note to self: If ever haunted by a literate ghost, do try to stay on its good side.
Okiku’s Ghost
Location: Himeji Castle, Japan
“There are few places as quiet as a Japanese well. Fewer still that echo back with counting.”
Of all the spirits tied to water, Okiku may be the most methodical. Her tale, recounted to me during a brief exchange with a Buddhist scholar in Kyoto, involves a servant girl wrongfully accused of losing a precious plate. One of ten, I believe. When she refused the advances of her master, he punished her by throwing her into a well. Now she haunts the grounds of Himeji Castle, endlessly counting plates… and never reaching ten.
Locals claim she can still be heard counting from the depths. “Ichi... ni... san...” until she reaches nine, and then comes the scream. I was granted access to the site in the early 1970s, under the condition that I showed proper respect, which involved a great deal of bowing and a firm promise not to lean too far over the edge.
What struck me most was the silence. The area around the well was unnaturally still, as if even the wind preferred not to linger. A few brave souls have tried to banish her spirit over the years, but she seems rooted not just in the well, but in the story. In some versions, she was truly guilty. In others, she was entirely innocent. Either way, her ghost remains.
I’ve always found it fascinating how the Japanese see ghosts not just as horrors, but as tragedies that demand honour or closure. Perhaps Okiku is less vengeful spirit, more unpaid debt.
Note to self: When in Japan, do not break dishes. Especially sets of ten.
The Grey Lady of Hampton Court
Location: London, England
“You can feel history in the walls at Hampton Court. Some of it watches you back.”
Hampton Court Palace has no shortage of ghosts. That’s what happens when centuries of royal scandal, death, and heartbreak are neatly packed into one glorious Tudor maze. But of them all, the most enduring, and dare I say most polite, is the Grey Lady. Thought to be the spirit of Sybil Penn, nurse to Prince Edward in the 16th century, she reappeared in reports after the palace underwent renovation in the 1820s. A coincidence? I think not.
Miss Penn was said to be a devoted carer in life, and apparently, she continues to check in on the living. Witnesses describe a pale figure in Tudor garb gliding along the halls, or the distinct sound of spinning wheels in rooms long unused. A palace attendant once told me she heard soft footsteps behind her while locking up, only to turn and find no one there. She left the job the following day.
I visited the palace in 1967 under the guise of a historical consultant. The archivist, a droll man named Percival, led me to the very chamber where Sybil supposedly died. The room was cold. Not the ordinary draughty sort of cold one expects from a royal estate, but the kind that clings to your spine like a wet glove.
Unlike more violent hauntings, the Grey Lady seems to prefer quiet observation. A courteous ghost, if there is such a thing. Perhaps she simply loved the palace too much to leave it. Or perhaps, like many of us, she just wants to make sure the young are looked after.
Note to self: If I ever retire, I hope it’s to somewhere with better heating. And fewer ghosts.
Top 5 Cryptid Sightings
The Loch Ness Monster
Location: Loch Ness, Scotland
“Scotland gave us whisky, bagpipes, and something very large swimming where it ought not to be.”
The first time I visited Loch Ness, I was struck not by the monster, but by the loch itself. Vast, black, and deeper than reason. You could drop a cathedral in and still have room for a choir. It is, without question, the sort of place where something might hide for centuries, surfacing only when it chooses.
Reports of the Loch Ness Monster, or "Nessie" as she is now fondly called, stretch back centuries. The earliest I found was a rather dramatic account from 565 AD involving Saint Columba, a man with a penchant for both miracles and melodrama. Since then, the loch has seen an endless stream of alleged sightings, photographs, and the occasional blurry film clip.
I spent a damp fortnight on its shores in 1964, joined by a very excitable cryptozoologist named Margaret Greaves. She was convinced Nessie was a surviving plesiosaur. I wasn’t so sure. The few glimpses I had, if they were anything at all, suggested something less prehistoric and more... spectral. As though the loch itself had a memory it occasionally let slip.
What fascinates me is not the monster, but the obsession. Scientists, journalists, schoolchildren with binoculars. All of them drawn to the possibility that something impossible might be true. Nessie is more than a creature. She is hope, dressed in scales and mystery.
Note to self: Bring a better thermos next time. And perhaps a harpoon, just in case.
Bigfoot
Location: Pacific Northwest, United States and Canada
“You can walk a mile in those forests and never hear a sound. Which makes it all the more curious when something very large breaks a branch right behind you.”
The legend of Bigfoot, or Sasquatch as he is often called in Canadian circles, is so widespread across North America that I sometimes wonder if he isn’t more resident than legend. Described as a towering, hairy humanoid, somewhere between man and ape, this elusive creature has appeared in folklore from British Columbia to Northern California.
My own interest was piqued in the early 1960s after receiving a letter from an American colleague, Professor George Blanton. He enclosed a plaster cast of an enormous footprint discovered near Bluff Creek. The size was remarkable, but what caught my eye were the dermal ridges. If it was a fake, it was a very clever one. If not... well, I booked a ticket.
I spent several chilly nights in those forests, accompanied by a tracker named Ellis who swore he’d seen the creature just a year prior. We found broken branches at impossible heights and heard something large moving in the undergrowth, always out of reach. One night, I could have sworn I heard low, guttural breathing just beyond the firelight. Ellis claimed it was a bear. I remain unconvinced.
What strikes me most about Bigfoot is the consistency of the reports. Whether from native legends or modern sightings, the description rarely changes. A silent guardian. A woodland shadow. A thing not quite beast and not quite man.
Note to self: If you ever feel watched in the woods, you probably are.
Chupacabra
Location: Puerto Rico and the Southwestern United States
“If you ever find a goat drained of blood and not a single paw print nearby, you are either in the company of a vampire or a very selective predator.”
I first encountered reports of the so-called Chupacabra while passing through San Juan in the late 1960s. A local newspaper ran a string of alarming stories involving livestock found dead with puncture wounds to the neck, blood completely drained. The name, which means "goat sucker," had begun making the rounds in whispers and headlines alike.
Descriptions varied wildly. Some claimed it resembled a reptilian creature with spines down its back, others insisted it was more canine, hairless and grey-skinned, like something that had crawled out of a grave. Whatever it was, it left behind dead animals and frightened farmers. In one case, I visited a small farm where five chickens, two goats, and a very distressed pig had all met the same bloodless end over a single week.
What intrigued me most were the eyewitnesses. They weren’t hysterics. They were tired men and women with calloused hands and sharp eyes. They had no reason to lie. One boy swore he saw the thing leap a fence taller than he was, with glowing eyes and a mouth full of fangs. He would not go near the barn after sunset.
Sceptics point to coyotes, mange, and hysteria. Perhaps they are right. Or perhaps there is something in the dark, clever enough to hide and cruel enough to feed.
Note to self: Avoid farms with unusually quiet goats.
The Jersey Devil
Location: Pine Barrens, New Jersey, USA
“There’s something unsettling about a forest that stays silent after dusk. Especially when the locals refuse to speak its name.”
The Pine Barrens of New Jersey are not what one might call inviting. Thick, tangled woodland, miles of emptiness, and a peculiar sense that you’re never quite alone. It was here, nestled in this strange landscape, that I pursued tales of the Jersey Devil. A creature said to possess the head of a horse, wings of a bat, hooves, claws, and a scream that curdles the blood.
The story, as told to me over lukewarm coffee by a park ranger named Thomas, begins with Mother Leeds. A woman burdened with twelve children who, upon discovering she was pregnant with a thirteenth, cursed the child in frustration. According to legend, it was born monstrous, took to the air, and vanished into the forest. The locals say it never left.
Sightings peaked during a remarkable flap in 1909, when newspapers reported dozens of encounters across New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Schools closed. Hunting parties formed. I examined several of the original reports held in a local archive, and while they were inconsistent in detail, they all agreed on one point: whatever it was, it did not move like anything natural.
When I visited in 1970, I didn’t see the creature myself, though I did hear something screaming in the woods one night. It wasn’t human, and it certainly wasn’t an owl. Thomas simply nodded and said, “That’s him.” He didn’t look amused.
I’ve never been entirely sure what to make of the Jersey Devil. Chimera? Cryptid? Moral parable wrapped in hooves and wings? All I know is that something lurks in the Pine Barrens, and I would advise against camping there alone.
Note to self: Never trust a forest that doesn’t rustle.
Mokele-Mbembe
Location: Congo River Basin, Central Africa
“There are places so remote, so untouched, that even myth may still walk there, though it prefers to wade.”
The name means “one who stops the flow of rivers,” which is a poetic way of describing something very large and very real to the tribes who speak of it. Mokele-Mbembe is often likened to a sauropod, a living dinosaur hidden in the swamps and rivers of the Congo Basin. Though such claims test the patience of any rational mind, I have long learned not to dismiss what I have not seen.
I travelled to Brazzaville in 1965, lured by tales from missionaries and colonial officials who claimed to have heard thunderous splashes in the night and seen strange shapes gliding across the water. More compelling, however, were the local guides. They spoke of the creature not as legend, but as fact. They described a beast with a long neck, a rounded body, and the temperament of a particularly irritable hippo.
During a river expedition, I glimpsed something disturbing. A massive ripple broke the surface ahead of our canoe, followed by a low grunt that echoed across the water. My guide refused to go any farther. He turned us around without a word, his eyes fixed on the trees.
I found no bones, no photographs, no definitive proof. But in the Congo, that means very little. There are regions untouched by science, where maps fade into guesswork and folklore becomes the only compass. Whether Mokele-Mbembe is a surviving relic or a spirit of the river given flesh, I cannot say.
Note to self: When the guide says turn back, you turn back.
Top 5 Extraterrestrial Sightings
The Greys
Location: Global sightings, particularly the United States and United Kingdom
“Small, grey, and entirely too interested in human anatomy. A dreadful houseguest, by all accounts.”
Of all the alleged visitors from beyond our world, none have captured the human imagination or anxiety quite like the Greys. Slender bodies, oversized heads, black almond-shaped eyes, and a silence that seems more invasive than polite. They appear again and again in abduction accounts, reported across America, the UK, and far beyond. Always the same description. Always the same chilling calm.
I first took serious interest in 1961, upon reading of the Hill abduction in New Hampshire. Betty and Barney Hill described being taken aboard a strange craft, examined, and released with fragmented memories and a lingering unease. Their story is not unique. I have since spoken to dozens who claim similar experiences. Missing time. Beams of light. The sensation of being watched through glass.
What intrigues me is the consistency. These reports come from people of different countries, languages, and beliefs. And yet, the figures remain the same. Could the Greys be a species? Or perhaps a projection of something else entirely? Something that takes the shape we expect. A reflection, not a reality.
During a visit to Rendlesham Forest in the early 1970s, I spoke with servicemen who would not go on record, but whispered of lights that moved like no aircraft they had ever seen. One man claimed to have touched the hull of a craft. He could not describe it. Only that it was not made by human hands.
The Greys, if real, are not explorers. They do not come to talk. They come to study. I cannot decide which would be worse: that they are watching us, or that they have already finished.
Note to self: If you wake up with a triangular mark behind your ear, do not look in the mirror straight away.
The Flatwoods Monster
Location: West Virginia, United States
“If it glows, hisses, and floats through the trees wearing a spiked metal skirt, one should probably retreat.”
The Flatwoods case is a fine example of how extraterrestrial encounters are rarely simple affairs. On the evening of 12 September 1952, a group of schoolboys and a pair of adults in the quiet town of Flatwoods, West Virginia, spotted what they believed to be a fiery object streaking across the sky. Naturally, they did what any sensible person would not do. They went to investigate.
What they reportedly found was not a crashed aircraft, but a towering creature, over ten feet tall, gliding toward them. It wore what was described as a dark, metallic dress, had claw-like hands, and a glowing face shaped like the ace of spades. Some said its eyes shone like burning coal. Others, less dramatically, fainted.
I visited Flatwoods in 1968, mostly out of academic curiosity. The original witnesses had grown quiet over the years, but one, now a teacher, told me she still dreamed of that face. It wasn’t a monster, she insisted. It was a machine, or perhaps something inside one. The local sheriff at the time chalked the whole thing up to mass hysteria. I’ve seen mass hysteria. It rarely leaves claw marks.
Some theorists suggest what was seen that night was a misidentified owl, or a meteor paired with rural panic. Perhaps. But I have studied enough reports to know that the strangest details are often the ones repeated. The eyes. The height. The smell of burning metal. And the lingering sense that whatever they saw, it was not meant to be seen.
Note to self: Never follow strange lights into the woods. Especially in America.
The Hopkinsville Goblins
Location: Kentucky, United States
“When a family barricades themselves in a farmhouse with shotguns and swears it was not raccoons, one ought to at least listen.”
The incident at Hopkinsville, Kentucky, in August 1955, is one of the most bizarre alien encounters I’ve come across, and I say that having interviewed a man who believed his cow was telepathic. A family known as the Suttons claimed they were besieged for hours by small, metallic-skinned beings with oversized heads, glowing yellow eyes, and spindly arms. The creatures moved with a peculiar float and displayed an irritating resistance to bullets.
According to the family, the ordeal began after one of them spotted a glowing craft descending into a nearby field. Moments later, the creatures arrived, peering into windows and scuttling across rooftops. The Suttons responded with a commendable, if not entirely successful, display of frontier firepower.
I tracked down one of the younger Sutton boys in 1971. He was a man by then, quiet and practical, not prone to flights of fancy. He still believed what he saw was not of this Earth. What struck me most was his insistence that the beings were not hostile. Curious, perhaps. Mischievous, definitely. But not cruel. In fact, he said they never attempted to harm the family, only observed them. Admittedly, with poor timing and worse manners.
Sceptics blamed alcohol, hysteria, and owls. I’ve never met an owl that could survive a shotgun blast to the face. Let alone ten. And it must be said, the United States Air Force did arrive quietly a day later to make some polite but firm enquiries.
Note to self: If something taps on your window at night, do not open it. Especially in Kentucky.
The Westall Incident
Location: Melbourne, Australia
“If a hundred schoolchildren point to the same patch of sky and agree on what they saw, it might be wise to stop telling them it was nothing.”
The Westall Incident of 1966 is among the most compelling mass sightings of an unidentified flying object I have ever encountered. It occurred in broad daylight, near a school. That alone would be enough to raise eyebrows. But the number of witnesses, including students, teachers, and local residents, makes this case harder to sweep under the rug than most.
Reports describe a large, metallic disc hovering near the school before descending into a nearby field. Some said there were two objects. Others described a purple hue in the sky. When a group of students ran to the field, they found nothing but scorched grass and silence. Within hours, officials arrived. Uniformed men. Trucks. Warnings.
I was not present at the time, but I corresponded with a teacher who had been there. Her account was brief, polite, and utterly shaken. She had seen the object. So had her students. They were told not to speak of it, and most complied. But not all.
Australian newspapers ran small stories. The government said it was a weather balloon. A parachute flare. A case of mass imagination. But I have never known teenagers to agree on anything with such clarity, let alone remain afraid of it years later.
It is the silence that lingers. Not the kind after a lie, but the kind that comes when something inexplicable has brushed too close to the ordinary world, and no one quite knows what to do with it.
Note to self: When children speak in unison, listen. It might be truth trying to slip through the cracks.
Skinwalker Ranch Anomalies
Location: Utah, United States
“A place where the cattle go missing, the lights come without warning, and no one quite agrees what it is they’re afraid of.”
Long before the name Skinwalker Ranch became a whispered fixture in paranormal circles, I had heard strange tales drifting out of the Uintah Basin in northeastern Utah. This was the early 1970s, and the stories were not yet organised into a grand conspiracy. They came piecemeal, in odd letters and awkward conversations. Lights in the sky. Animals vanishing. Voices on the wind.
Locals spoke in hushed tones about creatures that were not quite wolves, orbs that hovered soundlessly above the trees, and visitors who left no footprints. One rancher described a glowing blue sphere that sent his dogs fleeing into the night. They never returned. Another man claimed to have watched a portal open mid-air, revealing a sky that did not match his own.
I visited the region briefly in 1972. What struck me was not the phenomena themselves, but the tension. The silence between neighbours. The way people looked at the horizon, as if waiting for something to emerge from it. I did not stay long. The land had a pressure to it, as though it remembered more than it ought to.
What makes the basin unique is the variety of its strangeness. It defies neat classification. Some say it is a site of extraterrestrial interest. Others believe it to be cursed. Perhaps both are true. Or neither. Whatever the explanation, I left Utah with the distinct impression that the rules of the world grow thin there.
Note to self: Not every haunted place has a ghost. Some have something else entirely.
Step Beyond the Page
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