Volume 041The Unexplained
The Priestess of Death
A painted coffin lid in the British Museum was blamed for deaths, ruin and even the Titanic, though its curse was largely made up in London drawing rooms.
Open the volumeTenebrae Magazine: unsolved mysteries, hidden histories and the unexplained
Issue 01November 2026
Volume 041The Unexplained
The Priestess of Death
A painted coffin lid in the British Museum was blamed for deaths, ruin and even the Titanic, though its curse was largely made up in London drawing rooms.
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Volume 039The Unexplained
A Voice in the Woodshed
A Quebec farmhouse was plagued by fires, flying stones and a foul-mouthed voice that would only talk when an orphan girl was nearby.
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Volume 038Folklore & Monsters
The Leaping Terror of London
Tales of a leaping figure who breathed blue flames spread across Victorian London, and an aristocrat was blamed for the terror.
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Volume 037Hoaxes & Forgeries
Mystery of the Enjuin Mermaid
A Japanese temple’s mermaid, said to have been caught in the eighteenth century, finally gave up its secrets to science.
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Volume 036Crime & Mystery
The Spy in the Bag
The coroner thought an intelligence officer found dead in a padlocked holdall had probably been killed, but the police concluded he died alone.
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Volume 035Ancient Mysteries
The Devil’s Looking Glass
John Dee’s famous spirit mirror turns out to have been made in Mexico, but the evidence that it ever belonged to him is thinner than its reputation.
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Volume 034Space & Beyond
Lights Beyond the Gate
American airmen followed mysterious lights into Rendlesham Forest, venturing into the darkness with a tape recorder to investigate what some believed was a spacecraft.
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Volume 033Crime & Mystery
An Appointment with Nobody
Julia Wallace was killed in her Liverpool parlour while her husband searched for a man who did not exist, and his alibi became the case against him.
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Volume 032Ancient Mysteries
The Devil at the Door
A village priest’s sudden fortune inspired decades of treasure hunting, coded parchments and claims about a secret at the heart of Christianity.
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Volume 031Hoaxes & Forgeries
Alternative 3 - Hoax or Reality?
A television drama about Britain’s scientists escaping to Mars was always fiction, but the hoax outlived every attempt to explain it.
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Volume 030Power & Secrets
Dead Scientists, Secret Wars
A run of strange deaths among scientists working on Britain’s defence projects raised fears of a Cold War killing campaign.
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Volume 029The Unexplained
Death Came for the Fortune Teller
A psychiatrist set out to test whether premonitions could prevent disasters, and found warnings of his own death among the predictions.
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Volume 028Crime & Mystery
Black Magic in Whitechapel
An occult writer claimed to have decoded the Whitechapel murders as black magic, and later writers named him as the Ripper himself.
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Volume 027Hoaxes & Forgeries
Forged Gospels of the Holy Hill
Engraved lead books dug from caves above Granada told of Arab saints and apostles, winning an archbishop's devotion before Rome condemned them as heretical forgeries.
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Volume 026Power & Secrets
Snatched from Soviet Ice
Two American officers parachuted onto a deserted Soviet research camp adrift on the Arctic Ocean, searched it for submarine-hunting secrets and left dangling beneath a wartime bomber.
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Volume 025Hoaxes & Forgeries
Paper Fairies, Glass Plates
Two Yorkshire cousins photographed fairies they had cut from paper, won over the creator of Sherlock Holmes and kept their secret for more than sixty years.
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Volume 024Power & Secrets
Who Really Shot Bobby Kennedy?
Robert Kennedy was shot moments after winning the California primary, but a conviction has never ended the argument over what happened in the hotel pantry.
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Volume 023Power & Secrets
Guy Fawkes - The Fall Guy?
A plan to blow up King James and Parliament was foiled by an anonymous letter, but how much did the government know before it arrived?
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Volume 021Hoaxes & Forgeries
A Wonder from Godalming
Mary Toft’s supposed rabbit births fooled the king’s surgeons and made her a national joke, but the doctors wrote down far more than she ever got to say.
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Volume 020Folklore & Monsters
The Vampire with Iron Teeth
A child-eating vampire with iron teeth sent Glasgow’s children into a graveyard and its newspapers into an argument about American horror comics.
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Volume 019Strange Science
A Light That Wasn’t There
A French physicist’s new rays were soon being reported by other laboratories, until a sceptical American visitor put them to a quiet test.
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Volume 018Crime & Mystery
Mountain of the Dead
Why did nine experienced hikers cut their way out of their tent on a Ural mountainside and walk into the freezing dark?
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Volume 017Culture & Curiosities
Turn Me On Dead Man
A rumour that Paul McCartney had died and been replaced turned Beatles albums into puzzles, with fans scouring lyrics and sleeves for clues.
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Volume 016Forgotten Histories
Last Landing at Lakehurst
Filmed from the ground as it burned, Hindenburg left investigators arguing over sabotage, static and the fabric of its skin.
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Volume 015Power & Secrets
Captives of the Atomic Age
Britain secretly recorded Germany’s leading nuclear scientists at the end of the war, and what they said in private undermined the story they later told about Hitler’s bomb.
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Volume 014Forgotten Histories
Brotherhood of the Eye
Behind the Copiale cipher lay the Oculists, a secret society that staged eye operations on its recruits and set out to expose the Freemasons.
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Volume 013Crime & Mystery
Scandal at Dublin Castle
The theft of Ireland’s crown jewels on the eve of a royal visit ended one official’s career, but neither the jewels nor the thief was ever found.
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Volume 012Space & Beyond
Who Spoke for Ashtar?
Southern Television viewers heard an alien warning in the middle of the news, but nobody has ever proved who delivered it.
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Volume 011Forgotten Histories
The Stone That Wouldn’t Sink
Victorian engineers sealed an ancient obelisk inside an iron cylinder and towed it towards London, but was its disastrous voyage cursed or simply mismanaged?
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Volume 010Hoaxes & Forgeries
The Play That Fooled London
Shakespeare’s supposed lost papers made a young law clerk the talk of literary London, until his newly discovered play faced an audience.
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Volume 009The Unexplained
Knock Once for Philip
A Toronto circle wrote the life story of a Cavalier who never lived, then sat around a table until something claiming to be him knocked back.
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Volume 008Power & Secrets
Sixteen Typewriters That Talked
Soviet technicians hid transmitters inside the IBM typewriters of the American embassy in Moscow, reading diplomats’ drafts as they were typed until an X-ray exposed the trick.
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Volume 007Space & Beyond
Wrong Number from Proxima
Alien hunters found a needle-thin radio tone that seemed to come from the nearest star, then spent a year tracing it back to Earth.
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Volume 002Ancient Mysteries
Mystery of the Crystal Skulls
A crystal skull was said to have come from a Maya temple, but a dealer’s catalogue, a Sotheby’s sale and a microscope told a different story.
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Volume 001Crime & Mystery
Chalk Marks for a Nameless Woman
A skeleton taken from a hollow Worcestershire tree in 1943 has outlasted theories of spies, witches and drunken pranks, and the woman still has no name.
Open the volumeNo published stories in this category yet.
We look through the keyhole carefully, and we tell you what we can see.
Tenebrae Magazine
On this day
12 November
Coming up tomorrow / Volume 036
The Spy in the Bag
Police announce probable accident assessment.
Revisit the case