Mr. Brograve, of Hamel, near Puckridge in Hertfordshire, when he was a young man, riding in a lane in that county, had a blow given him on his cheek: (or head) he looked back and saw that nobody was near behind him; anon he had such another blow, I have forgot if a third. He turned back, and fell to the study of the law; and was afterwards a Judge. This account I had from Sir John Penruddocke of Compton-Chamberlain, (our neighbour) whose Lady was Judge Brograve’s niece.

— John Aubrey, Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects, 1696

The Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal isn’t known for its romance. But one 1896 article has become famous for its account of a bizarre episode in Southeast Asia. Ethelbert Skertchley describes the Berbalangs, a species of ghoul in the folklore of Cagayan de Sulu, an island in the southwestern Philippines. These creatures, he explains, can adopt an astral form when seeking human flesh. It’s all pretty scholarly until the end, when Skertchley describes his own encounter near a Berbalang village:

There was not a breath of air stirring, and we were in the middle of an open valley with no trees about when we heard a loud moaning noise like someone in pain. … Presently the sound died away to a faint wail and the sound of wings became audible, while a lot of little dancing lights, like fire-flies, only reddish, passed over us.

On leaving the village, Skertchley passed an isolated house, where his native companion indicated the ghouls must have gone. The next day the writer returned to the scene:

I entered the house and looked round, but could see no one; going farther in, I suddenly started back, for huddled up on the bed, with hands clenched, face distorted, and eyes staring as in horror, lay my friend Hassan–dead.

Nothing more is said. Skertchley concludes simply by writing, “I have stated above the facts just as they occurred, and am quite unable to give any explanation of them.” If the editors received any further information, they never published it.

Jean-Paul Marat’s correspondence mentions one Bottineau, born in France around 1740, who founded a science he called nauscopie, “the art of discovering vessels and lands at a considerable distance.” Stationed on the Isle of France, reportedly he was soon winning wagers by predicting arrivals up to three days in advance.

The commissary-general of the navy swore that “he has announced to us within six months, one hundred and nine vessels, one, two, three, or four days before the signals were made from the mountains, and in this number he only was twice mistaken.” The island’s governor affirmed: “What we can certify is, that M. Bottineau was almost always right.”

Bottineau explained that he observed an effect in the atmosphere, but he refused to sell his method, claiming the offers were too low. Unfortunately, Europe was distracted by the political upheaval in France, and in 1802 he was reported to have “died lately in great misery at Pondicherry.” His secret, if he had one, went with him.

In April 1851, sailing in clear weather off the Newfoundland Banks, the English brig Renovation encountered an enormous ice floe bearing two black three-masted ships, one heeled over and the other upright.

The crew observed them for about an hour, until they were lost to sight. No explanation has ever been found.

Playing whist at a Suffolk club in January 1998, Hazel Ruffles shuffled the deck and dealt a full suit to each player.

The odds of this happening are 2,235,197,406,895,366,368,301,599,999 to 1.

John Lewis Candiac … was born at Candiac, in the diocese of Nismes, in France, in 1719. In the cradle he distinguished his letters; at thirteen months he knew them perfectly; at three years of age he read Latin, either printed or in manuscript; at four, he translated from that tongue; at six, he read Greek and Hebrew, was master of the principles of arithmetic, history, geography, heraldry, and the science of medals; and had read the best authors on almost every branch of literature. He died of a complication of disorders, at Paris, in 1726.

— John Platts, Encyclopedia of Natural and Artificial Wonders and Curiosities, 1876

A thrill passed through London in January 1762, when a 12-year-old girl reported that she was visited nightly by a dead woman.

Elizabeth Parsons, daughter of the parish clerk of St. Sepulchre’s, said that she heard knockings and scratchings and witnessed the apparition of a woman surrounded by a blazing light. The girl said the ghost resembled Fanny Kent, a lodger in her house who had died recently of smallpox.

Witnesses too heard the knockings, which attended the girl wherever she slept. They learned to communicate with “Fanny” through a system of knocks — and learned that her husband had poisoned her.

The whole thing reached a climax when the ghost agreed to attend a gentleman into the vault where Fanny’s body lay, and to knock upon the coffin there. Unfortunately, no knock came, and the girl asked to return to her father.

She had been using a simple wooden clapper to produce the sounds; her father, who had owed money to the “poisoner,” had invented the whole scheme.