Journal of the Bizarre

History remembers John Wilkes Booth as the actor-turned-Southern sympathizer who shot and killed Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. While the fate of Booth, along with that of co-conspirators Lewis Powell, David Herold, George Atzerodt and Mary Surratt, is well documented, less widely known are the bizarre fates of several other individuals who played a role in the drama of Lincoln's assassination.

One such example are the fates of the man and woman who accompanied President Lincoln to Ford's Theatre on that fateful night-- Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris. That these two individuals even ended up at Ford's Theatre in the first place is a strange twist of fate; Lincoln's invitation to attend the theatre that evening was rejected by several other people. Ulysses S. Grant and his wife Julia were originally invited, but Mrs. Grant (who was not fond of Mary Todd Lincoln), refused the invitation.
In the years following Lincoln's …

We invite readers to share their most bizarre experiences and encounters, and so far we have received a few humdingers-- from the New England woman who had a strange experience with a shape-shifting dining room table to the man who was chased by a shadow being in upstate New York. Since we don't know these contributors personally it's impossible to vouch for their authenticity (although we strive to publish only those stories we believe to be true). Today's tale of the macabre, however, is different because it comes from a mutual friend of ours who, from our experience, is such an honest fellow that he makes Abe Lincoln seem like a pathological liar (come to think of it, we've uncovered convincing proof that Honest Abe wasn't as honest as he claimed to be). We've known Mark and his wife, Tamara, for several years, having first met them in 2006, about a year after the following series of incidents occurred in their apartment, housed in a Victorian home on Louisa…

In November of 1890, the Rolling Mill Hill section of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, was thrust into the spotlight, thanks to a bizarre haunting which attracted crowds of hundreds to a plain wooden house on Loomis Street. According to one of the house's residents, Sophia Stiebel, she was upstairs making beds when she saw a ghostly black coffin lower itself through the ceiling, before the apparition of a beautiful young woman appeared and instructed Sophia to dig up the floorboards in the basement.

While many neighbors provided their own "evidence" supporting the haunted condition of the house, others insisted that Mrs. Stiebel wasn't in her right mind. Still others said that the Stiebel family was guilty of perpetrating a hoax, in the hopes of scaring away other prospective tenants so that they could obtain the property dirt cheap from the landlord. According to the landlord, the Stiebels were several months behind on their rent when Sophia first began to s…

Many strange books have been published on the topic of the supernatural, but one of the most remarkable is "From India to the Planet Mars", published in 1899 by Theodore Flournoy, a psychology professor at the University of Geneva. The book examined the claims made by Hélène Smith (born Catherine-Elise Müller), a 19th-century French medium and spiritualist who claimed to be the reincarnation of a Hindu princess and Marie Antoinette, and who also claimed the ability to communicate with Martians.

Throughout her seances, Smith was often visited by a spirit named Leopold. Smith believed this to be a pseudonym for Cagliostro, the alchemist who was madly in love with Marie Antoinette. Through Leopold, Smith came to the realization that she was Antoinette in a former life; the discarnate spirit of Cagliostro, lost in time and space, attached itself to Smith to serve as a sort of "guardian angel" to the object of his unhappy passion.

Hélène Smith was a saleswoman in a sto…

September came in with a bang... at least for Elon Musk and his ill-fated SpaceX Falcon 9 spacecraft, which burst into flames on its Cape Canaveral launchpad during a routine check, taking a $200 million Facebook satellite along with it. Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, stated that the explosion originated around the upper stage oxygen tank of the 604-ton rocket. Musk is still scratching his head over the cause.

Conspiracy theorists, however, have speculated that there may be a connection between the explosion and a strange "anomaly" which appeared to fly over the rocket before, during and after the explosion. This unidentified flying object has led many to believe that the explosion was caused by an alien air strike.

While one individual claims to have seen the UFO hover over Falcon 9 with their own eyes, others insist that the anomaly in question is a bird. However, a man claiming to be one of the welders at Kennedy Space Center claims that he observed "strange lights" a…