Amazing Stories

The Waco siege, also known as the Waco massacre, was the siege by U.S. federal government and Texas state law enforcement officials of a compound belonging to the religious cult known as the Branch Davidians between February 28 and April 19, 1993. The Branch Davidians, led by David Koresh, were headquartered at Mount Carmel Center ranch in the community of Axtell, Texas, 13 miles (21 kilometers) northeast of Waco. Suspecting the group of stockpiling illegal weapons, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) obtained a search warrant for the compound and arrest warrants for Koresh and several of the group's members. The ATF had planned a sudden daylight raid of the ranch in order to serve these warrants, intending to quickly control the situation and reduce the risk to all parties that was associated with the large cache of modified weapons and explosive devices the Davidians had available. Any advantage of surprise was lost when a KWTX-TV reporter who had been tipped off

Gary Leon Ridgway (born February 18, 1949) is an American serial killer known as the Green River Killer. He was initially convicted of 48 separate murders committed between the early 1980s and late 1990s. As part of his plea bargain, another conviction was added, bringing the total number of convictions to 49, making him the second most prolific serial killer in United States history according to confirmed murders. Most of Ridgway's victims were alleged to be sex workers and other women in vulnerable circumstances, including underage runaways. The press gave him his nickname after the first five victims were found in the Green River before his identity was known. He strangled his victims, usually by hand but sometimes using ligatures. After strangling them, he would dump their bodies in forested and overgrown areas in King County, often returning to the bodies to have sexual intercourse with them. Ridgway had been a suspect in the murders since 1982 when he was arrested for pros

The Bridgewater Triangle is an area of about 200 square miles (520 km2) within southeastern Massachusetts in the United States, claimed to be a site of alleged paranormal phenomena, ranging from UFOs to poltergeists, and other spectral phenomena, various bigfoot-like sightings, giant snakes and thunderbirds. The term was coined by New England based cryptozoologist Loren Coleman.

Ricardo "Richard" Leyva Muñoz Ramirez (February 29, 1960 – June 7, 2013), dubbed the Night Stalker, the Walk-In Killer, and the Valley Intruder since his attacks were first clustered in the San Gabriel Valley, was an American serial killer and sex offender whose crime spree took place in California between June 1984 and August 1985. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1989. He died in 2013 while awaiting execution. Ramirez's childhood is considered an influence on his crimes. Frequently abused by his father, Ramirez began developing gruesome and macabre interests in his early and mid-teens from his older cousin who also taught him some of the military skills that he would go on to use during his year-long killing spree. Ramirez also cultivated a strong interest in Satanism and the occult. By the time he had left his home in Texas and moved to California at the age of 22, he had begun frequently using cocaine. Ramirez would often commit burglaries to support his d

The Flatwoods monster (also known as the Braxton County monster, Braxie, or the Phantom of Flatwoods), in West Virginia folklore, is an entity reported to have been sighted in the town of Flatwoods in Braxton County, West Virginia, United States, on September 12, 1952, after a bright object crossed the night sky. Over 50 years later, some investigators have stated that they believe the light was a meteor and the creature was a barn owl perched in a tree with shadows making it appear to be a large humanoid.

The Gettysburg Battlefield is the area of the July 1–3, 1863, military engagements of the Battle of Gettysburg within and around the borough of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Locations of military engagements extend from the 4-acre (1.6 ha) site of the first shot[G 1] at Knoxlyn Ridge[1] on the west of the borough, to East Cavalry Field on the east. A military engagement prior to the battle was conducted at the Gettysburg Railroad trestle over Rock Creek, which was burned on June 27.  

John Wayne Gacy (March 17, 1942 – May 10, 1994) was an American serial killer and sex offender who raped, tortured, and murdered at least 33 young men and boys in Norwood Park Township, near Chicago, Illinois. He became known as the Killer Clown due to his public performances as a clown prior to the discovery of his crimes. Gacy committed all of his murders in his ranch-style house. Typically, he would lure a victim to his home and dupe them into donning handcuffs on the pretext of demonstrating a magic trick. He would then rape and torture his captive before killing them by either asphyxiation or strangulation with a garrote. Twenty-six victims were buried in the crawl space of his home, and three were buried elsewhere on his property; four were discarded in the Des Plaines River. Gacy had previously been convicted in 1968 of the sodomy of a teenage boy in Waterloo, Iowa, and was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, but served eighteen months. He murdered his first victim in 1

Theodore Robert Bundy (November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped and murdered dozens of young women and girls during the 1970s and possibly earlier. After more than a decade of denials, he confessed to 30 murders committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978. His true victim total is unknown. Bundy often employed charm to disguise his murderous intent when kidnapping victims, and extended this tactic vis-a-vis law enforcement, the media and the criminal justice system to maintain his claims of innocence. His usual technique involved approaching a female in public and luring her to a vehicle parked in a more secluded area, at which point she would be beaten unconscious, restrained with handcuffs and taken elsewhere to be sexually assaulted and killed. To this end, Bundy typically simulated having a physical impairment such as an injury in order to convince his target that he was in need of assistance with something, or would dupe her i

The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is an urban legend focused on a loosely defined region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The idea of the area as uniquely prone to disappearances arose in the mid-20th century, but most reputable sources dismiss the idea that there is any mystery.

Charles Joseph Whitman (June 24, 1941 – August 1, 1966) was an American mass murderer who became known as the "Texas Tower Sniper". On August 1, 1966, Whitman used knives to kill his mother and his wife in their respective homes, then went to the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) with multiple firearms and began indiscriminately shooting at people. He fatally shot three people inside UT Austin's Main Building, then accessed the 28th-floor observation deck on the building's clock tower. There, he fired at random people for 96 minutes, killing an additional eleven people and wounding 31 others before he was shot dead by Austin police officers. Whitman killed a total of sixteen people; the 16th victim died 35 years later from injuries sustained in the attack.

Witchcraft, as most commonly understood in both historical and present-day communities, is the use of alleged supernatural powers of magic. A witch (from Old English wicce f. / wicca m.) is a practitioner of witchcraft. Traditionally, "witchcraft" means the use of magic or supernatural powers to inflict harm or misfortune on others, and this remains the most common and widespread meaning.: According to Encyclopedia Britannica, "Witchcraft thus defined exists more in the imagination of contemporaries than in any objective reality. Yet this stereotype has a long history and has constituted for many cultures a viable explanation of evil in the world." The belief in witchcraft has been found in a great number of societies worldwide. Anthropologists have applied the English term "witchcraft" to similar beliefs in occult practices in many different cultures, and societies that have adopted the English language have often internalised the term. In medieval and

In folklore, a werewolf (from Old English werwulf 'man-wolf'), or occasionally lycanthrope (from Ancient Greek λυκάνθρωπος, lukánthrōpos, 'wolf-human') is an individual who can shape-shift into a wolf (or, especially in modern film, a therianthropic hybrid wolf-like creature), either purposely or after being placed under a curse or affliction (often a bite or the occasional scratch from another werewolf), with the transformations occurring on the night of a full moon. Early sources for belief in this ability or affliction, called lycanthropy, are Petronius (27–66) and Gervase of Tilbury (1150–1228). In Indian folklore, a Yapum is a shape-shifting werewolf, who wants to protect the jungle, even if he/she has to kill somebody. The creature acts like a virus, that can turn anybody into a werewolf by biting them, and then that person (if alive) will have to protect a particular jungle all his/her life. The werewolf is a widespread concept in European folklore, existing i

The Zodiac Killer is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer, who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s. The case has been described as the most famous unsolved murder case in American history. It became a fixture of popular culture and has inspired numerous amateur detectives to attempt to solve it. The Zodiac murdered five known victims in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 1968 and October 1969, operating in rural, urban and suburban settings. He targeted young couples and a lone male cab driver. His known attacks took place in Benicia, Vallejo, unincorporated Napa County, and the city of San Francisco proper. Two of his wounded victims survived. The Zodiac claimed to have murdered 37 victims. He has been linked to several other cold cases, some in Southern California or outside the state. The Zodiac coined this name in a series of taunting letters and cards that he mailed to regional newspapers, in which he threatened killing sprees and bombings if the

Bigfoot, also commonly referred to as Sasquatch, is a large and hairy human-like mythical creature purported to inhabit forests in North America, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. Enthusiasts of the subject have offered various forms of dubious evidence to prove Bigfoot's existence, including anecdotal claims of sightings, as well as alleged photographs, video and audio recordings, hair samples, and casts of large footprints. Most of this evidence has since been identified as hoaxes or misidentification. The majority of scientists do not find any of the remaining evidence compelling, and instead generally consider it to be the result of a combination of folklore, misidentification, and hoax, rather than a living animal. Folklorists trace the phenomenon of Bigfoot to a combination of factors and sources, including indigenous cultures, the European wild man figure, and folk tales. Wishful thinking, a cultural increase in environmental concerns, and overall societal awareness of

The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, better known by its informal name "Jonestown", was a remote settlement in Guyana established by the Peoples Temple, an American cult under the leadership of Jim Jones. Jonestown became internationally infamous when, on November 18, 1978, a total of 918 people died at the settlement, at the nearby airstrip in Port Kaituma, and at a Temple-run building in Georgetown, Guyana's capital city. The name of the settlement became synonymous with the incidents at those locations. In total, 909 individuals died in Jonestown itself, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning, a significant number of whom were injected against their will, in an event termed "revolutionary suicide" by Jones and some Peoples Temple members on an audio tape of the event, and in prior recorded discussions. The poisonings in Jonestown followed the murder of five others by Temple members at Port Kaituma, including U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan, an act that Jo

Dennis Lynn Rader (born March 9, 1945), also known as BTK (an abbreviation he gave himself, for "bind, torture, kill"), is an American serial killer who murdered at least ten people in Wichita and Park City, Kansas, between 1974 and 1991. Although Rader occasionally killed or attempted to kill men and children, he typically targeted women. His victims were often bound, sometimes with objects from their homes, and either suffocated with a plastic bag or manually strangled with a ligature. In addition, Rader stole keepsakes from his female victims, including underwear, licenses, and personal items. He often sent taunting letters to police and media outlets describing the details of his crimes. After a thirteen-year hiatus, Rader resumed sending letters in 2004, leading to his 2005 arrest and subsequent guilty plea. He is currently serving ten consecutive life sentences at the El Dorado Correctional Facility.  

David Parker Ray (November 6, 1939 – May 28, 2002), also known as the Toy-Box Killer, was an American kidnapper, torturer, serial rapist and suspected serial killer. Though no bodies were found, Ray was accused by his accomplices of killing several women, and was suspected by the police to have murdered as many as sixty people from Arizona and New Mexico while living in Elephant Butte, New Mexico, approximately seven miles north of Truth or Consequences. Ray was convicted of kidnapping and torture in 2001, for which he received a lengthy sentence, but he was never convicted of murder. He died of a heart attack about one year after his convictions in two cases, the second of which resulted in a plea deal. Ray used soundproofing methods on a semi-trailer, which he called his "Toy Box", and equipped it with items used for sexual torture. He would kidnap between five and six women a year, holding each of them captive for around three to four months. During this period he would s

Aleister Crowley (born Edward Alexander Crowley; 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English occultist, philosopher, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist and mountaineer. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century. A prolific writer, he published widely over the course of his life. Born to a wealthy family in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, Crowley rejected his parents' fundamentalist Christian Plymouth Brethren faith to pursue an interest in Western esotericism. He was educated at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, where he focused his attentions on mountaineering and poetry, resulting in several publications. Some biographers allege that here he was recruited into a British intelligence agency, further suggesting that he remained a spy throughout his life. In 1898, he joined the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he was trained

The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is a University of Alaska Fairbanks program which researches the ionosphere — the highest, ionized part of Earth's atmosphere. The most prominent instrument at HAARP is the Ionospheric Research Instrument (IRI), a high-power radio frequency transmitter facility operating in the high frequency (HF) band. The IRI is used to temporarily excite a limited area of the ionosphere. Other instruments, such as a VHF and a UHF radar, a fluxgate magnetometer, a digisonde (an ionospheric sounding device), and an induction magnetometer, are used to study the physical processes that occur in the excited region. Initially HAARP was jointly funded by the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It was designed and built by BAE Advanced Technologies. Its original purpose was to analyze the ionosphere and investigate the potential for developing ionospheric

The curse of the pharaohs or the mummy's curse is a curse alleged to be cast upon anyone who disturbs the mummy of an ancient Egyptian, especially a pharaoh. This curse, which does not differentiate between thieves and archaeologists, is claimed to cause bad luck, illness, or death. Since the mid-20th century, many authors and documentaries have argued that the curse is 'real' in the sense of having scientifically explicable causes such as bacteria or radiation. However, the modern origins of Egyptian mummy curse tales, their development primarily in European cultures, the shift from magic to science to explain curses, and their changing uses—from condemning disturbance of the dead to entertaining horror film audiences—suggest that Egyptian curses are primarily a cultural, not scientific, phenomenon. There are occasional instances of genuine ancient curses appearing inside or on the façade of a tomb, as in the case of the mastaba of Khentika Ikhekhi of the 6th Dynasty at S

The Egyptian pyramids are ancient masonry structures located in Egypt. Sources cite at least 118 identified "Egyptian" pyramids. Approximately 80 pyramids were built within the Kingdom of Kush, now located in the modern country of Sudan. Of those located in modern Egypt, most were built as tombs for the country's pharaohs and their consorts during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods. The earliest known Egyptian pyramids are found at Saqqara, northwest of Memphis, although at least one step-pyramid-like structure has been found at Saqqara, dating to the First Dynasty: Mastaba 3808, which has been attributed to the reign of Pharaoh Anedjib, with inscriptions, and other archaeological remains of the period, suggesting there may have been others. The otherwise earliest among these is the Pyramid of Djoser built c. 2630–2610 BCE during the Third Dynasty. This pyramid and its surrounding complex are generally considered to be the world's oldest monumental structures constru

Satanism is a group of ideological and philosophical beliefs based on Satan. Although several historical precedents exist, the contemporary religious practice of Satanism began with the founding of the atheistic Church of Satan by Anton LaVey in the United States in 1966. Prior to that time, Satanism existed primarily as the subject of accusations by various Christian groups toward perceived ideological opponents rather than a self-identity or expressed religious belief. Satanism, and the concept of Satan, has also been used by artists and entertainers for symbolic expression. Accusations that various groups have been practicing Satanism (in a 'Devil-worship' interpretation) have been made throughout much of Christian history. During the Middle Ages, the Inquisition led by the Catholic Church alleged that various heretical Christian sects and groups, such as the Knights Templar and the Cathars, performed secret Satanic rituals. In the subsequent Early Modern period, belief in

Jeffrey Robert MacDonald (born October 12, 1943) is an American former medical doctor and United States Army captain who was convicted in August 1979 of murdering his pregnant wife and two daughters in February 1970 while serving as an Army Special Forces physician. MacDonald has always proclaimed his innocence of the murders, which he claims were committed by four intruders—three male and one female—who had entered the unlocked rear door of his apartment at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and attacked him, his wife, and his children with instruments such as knives, clubs and ice picks. Prosecutors and appellate courts have pointed to strong physical evidence attesting to his guilt. He is currently incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland. The MacDonald murder case remains one of the most litigated murder cases in American criminal history.

The Dybbuk box, or Dibbuk box, is a paranormal hoax consisting of an antique wine-cabinet claimed to be haunted by a dybbuk, a concept from Judaism. The box gained notoriety when it was auctioned off on eBay by owner Kevin Mannis, who created a story featuring Jewish Holocaust survivors and paranormal claims as part of his eBay item description. Mannis' story was the inspiration for the 2012 horror film The Possession. In 2021, Mannis told Input magazine that the Dybbuk Box story was entirely fictional.

The "curse" of James Dean's car, the "Little Bastard", has become part of America's cultural mythology. The story of the "curse" begins before the car itself had been involved in any crash; in his 1985 autobiography Blessings in Disguise, British actor Alec Guinness relates that on his first night in Los Angeles on September 23, 1955, after leaving a restaurant with no table available and starting to look elsewhere, he and his friend Thelma Moss met Dean, who invited them to dine with him at his table at the place that they had just left. Dean showed them his silver Porsche and said: "It's just been delivered." Guinness allegedly warned Dean to never enter the car: "Please, never get in it. It is now ten o'clock, Friday the 23rd of September, 1955. If you get in that car you will be found dead in it by this time next week." The following Friday, his prediction came true. After the fatal crash, Warren Beath, a James De

Zachary Alexander Bagans (born April 5, 1977) is an American paranormal investigator, actor, television personality, museum operator, and author. He is the principal host of the Travel Channel series Ghost Adventures. On April 2, 2016, Deadly Possessions premiered on the Travel Channel; the show featured Bagans finding items for a prospective "haunted museum" in Las Vegas, Nevada. The museum opened to the public in October 2017. It consists of 33 rooms with various artifacts on display. Visitors are given guided tours of the rooms. Some of the items on display include Bela Lugosi's mirror, the Dybbuk box, Peggy the Doll, and Jack Kevorkian's "Death Van". Some of the claims attached to the artifacts have been criticised. Both the Lugosi mirror and Captain Smith mirror kept in the museum have been claimed to have dubious provenance. In 2018, the museum received Las Vegas Mayor's award for historic preservation and adaptive reuse. In 2021, the transaxl

Heaven's Gate was an American new religious movement (often described as a cult) whose members committed mass suicide in 1997. It was founded in 1974 and led by Bonnie Nettles (1927–1985) and Marshall Applewhite (1931–1997), known within the movement as Ti and Do, respectively. Nettles and Applewhite first met in 1972 and went on a journey of spiritual discovery, identifying themselves as the two witnesses of Revelation, attracting a following of several hundred people in the mid-1970s. In 1976, a core group of a few dozen members stopped recruiting and instituted a monastic lifestyle. Scholars have described the theology of Heaven's Gate as a mixture of Christian millenarianism, New Age, and ufology, and as such it has been characterized as a UFO religion. The central belief of the group was that followers could transform themselves into immortal extraterrestrial beings by rejecting their human nature, and they would ascend to heaven, referred to as the "Next Level"

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994), also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster, was an American serial killer and sex offender who killed and dismembered seventeen males between 1978 and 1991. Many of his later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of body parts—typically all or part of the skeleton. Although he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD), schizotypal personality disorder (StPD), and a psychotic disorder, Dahmer was found to be legally sane at his trial. He was convicted of fifteen of the sixteen homicides he had committed in Wisconsin and was sentenced to fifteen terms of life imprisonment on February 17, 1992. Dahmer was later sentenced to a sixteenth term of life imprisonment for an additional homicide committed in Ohio in 1978. On November 28, 1994, Dahmer was beaten to death by Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wiscon