What we have corrected
A public record of our own errors: what an entry claimed, what is true, and the source that settles it.
Corrections, newest first
473 corrections published: 4 coordinates · 310 facts · 158 sources · 1 pattern
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It said: Daily opening 9:30-17:30 in summer and 10:00-16:00 in winter; child ticket £4.50, family £19.50; the western tower closed because of nesting birds.
It is: HES gives 10am-4.30pm (closed Tuesday) from April to September and 10am-3pm (closed Thursday and Friday) from October to March; child £3.50 online or £4; no family ticket or tower closure is listed.
Source: Historic Environment Scotland, Huntingtower Castle, 'Plan your visit' (read 4 October 2026).
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It said: The chronology attributed the 'first documented sighting' of Lady Greensleeves in the 1930s to Chronicles of Strathearn (1896), and most of its other events to sources that do not contain them.
It is: Chronicles of Strathearn mentions neither Huntingtower nor Greensleeves; each chronology event now cites the source that contains it.
Source: Chronicles of Strathearn (Crieff, 1896), Project Gutenberg 26342, full text.
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It said: The Maiden's Leap narrative bears the hallmarks of a late nineteenth-century literary invention, found in Nigel Tranter's historical novels and Grant Campbell's Scottish Hauntings.
It is: Thomas Pennant printed the story after his 1772 tour (Part II, 1776, p. 108), and magazines reprinted it from July 1776.
Source: Thomas Pennant, A Tour in Scotland, and Voyage to the Hebrides, 1772, Part II, p. 108; The Edinburgh Magazine and Review, July 1776.
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It said: No medieval or early modern source mentions a healing well at Huntingtower; the tradition was probably attached to the site in the Victorian era, when the authors of Chronicles of Strathearn (1896) collected local traditions.
It is: The Kirk Session of Perth recorded on 4 May 1618 women who drank from 'the well in the bank of Huntingtower' and left a pin there. Chronicles of Strathearn does not mention the well.
Source: Kirk-Session Register of Perth, 4 May 1618, in The Spottiswoode Miscellany, vol. II (1844), p. 289; J. M. Mackinlay, Ancient Church Dedications in Scotland (1910), pp. 189-190.
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It said: Historic Environment Scotland's interpretation contains no reference to the Maiden's Leap and the institution does not promote the haunted reputation.
It is: The Statement of Significance and the scheduling record are silent on ghosts, but HES's visitor page calls the Maiden's Leap 'one of our favourite castle stories'.
Source: Historic Environment Scotland, Huntingtower Castle visitor page (read 4 October 2026).
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It said: In September 1584 James VI and Ludovic, Duke of Lennox, stayed in quarantine at Huntingtower for ten days while the rest of the royal household was isolated at Tullibardine and Stirling.
It is: According to Moysie, after ten days at Ruthven the king learned that six houses in Perth were infected and left that night for Tullibardine and Stirling, leaving his whole household shut in at Ruthven.
Source: David Moysie, Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland (1830), p. 51, quoted in Chronicles of Strathearn (1896).
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It said: In August 1582 the 1st Earl of Gowrie seized the fourteen-year-old James VI at Ruthven Castle.
It is: James VI was born on 19 June 1566 and was sixteen at the Raid of Ruthven (22-23 August 1582).
Source: Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed., vol. 15, 'James I.'; David Moysie, Memoirs (1830), pp. 37-38.
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It said: The 1889 opening was attributed to the National Register nomination, with the Baker Brothers as builders for proprietor Louis F Cook.
It is: The nomination (for the Baker Historic District, 1978) gives the date and a cost of $65,000; it does not name the builders or the proprietor.
Source: National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination Form, Baker Historic District, item 18.
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It said: The hotel was designed by the architect John Bennes.
It is: John V. Bennes moved to Baker City in 1900, eleven years after the hotel opened, and modified it that year.
Source: The Oregon Encyclopedia, 'Bennes, John V. (1867-1943)', Larry Landis.
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It said: That the general prisoner exchange foretold in Old Parson Thomas's dream did begin on 13 August 1864.
It is: Handy only wrote that day that the exchange "commences to-day — or at least such is the presumption".
Source: Isaac W. K. Handy, United States Bonds (1874), entry of 13 August 1864.
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It said: The sceptical section called Hampden Pye a younger son whose naval career no list supported.
It is: Hampden Pye was the eldest son, as the family pedigree, Barham's memorandum of 1832 and Charles G. Harper (1910) all record. His naval career rests on the family tradition that Barham wrote down as what 'is traditionally said'.
Source: Barham, note to 'The Legend of Hamilton Tighe' (Ingoldsby Legends, 1894 ed., pp. 165-166); Harper, Thames Valley Villages (1910), vol. 1, pp. 112-113
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It said: Sources included 'Ohio's County Poorhouses: A Social History' (D. L. Miller, Ohio History Connection, 1992) and 'Institutional Care in Rural Ohio, 1840-1930' (Journal of American Social History, 2001).
It is: Neither work exists; they have been replaced by the county history of 1912 and the Ohio Exploration Society's article.
Source: C. C. Miller (ed.), History of Fairfield County (1912); Ohio Exploration Society (2016)
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It said: The 1840 building was of limestone in the Greek Revival style with a portico; it was expanded around 1905; it held about 200 marked graves, the last burial in 1929; it has been vacant since the 1980s, and a 2014 county assessment found it structurally sound.
It is: The building is brick and its listed style is Italianate; the main addition is of 1865. Most of the 400-500 estimated graves are unmarked, and headstones of 1980 and 1981 stand in the cemetery: the 'last burial in 1929' comes from a page about the poor house of Fairfield County, South Carolina. The building held county offices from 1986 to late 2013, and the 2014 assessment recommended $4.29 million of work.
Source: VPL Architects, assessment of 18 March 2014; Ohio Exploration Society (2016); Roots & Recall; NRHP 100005128
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It said: The building's exterior retains its original sandstone facade; it is privately owned by Armscor and some tours are arranged through local heritage organizations; records are kept by a 'Pretoria Institute for Architectural Heritage'.
It is: The house is closed to visitors: since 2022 it has been deteriorated and held up by scaffolding, and in February 2026 Armscor kept it closed behind barricades pending a restoration. No source mentions the 'Pretoria Institute for Architectural Heritage'.
Source: artefacts.co.za update of 2022; Getaway, 18 February 2026
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It said: The house was built c. 1903 for George Dean Erasmus, grandson of the trek leader Daniel Erasmus, who died in 1937; it was sandstone, and its history was documented in Transvaal land records, a University of Pretoria Press book, a SAHRA report and a folklore journal.
It is: The house was commissioned by Jochemus Erasmus and completed in 1903 (Boksburg Historical Association) or 1904 as Bella Vista (restorer Anton Jansen). The name 'George Dean Erasmus' was added to Wikipedia by an anonymous edit in 2020 without a source; the genealogy, the death in 1937 and the four references did not exist.
Source: artefacts.co.za record 7054; BHA News no. 118 (August 2004); Wikipedia revision history of 27 February 2020
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It said: The entry said the white suit, the hat, the departure before dawn and the explained pregnancy came from the tourist synthesis and not from the recorded narratives.
It is: Lima's own analysis says white clothing does run through the narratives, where it marks the boto as a white man. The Pará government text she reprints has the hat, worn because of the smell of fish, the departure before dawn and the boto as father of single mothers' children.
Source: Deborah de Magalhães Lima, Teoria & Sociedade (2014), pp. 174-175.
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It said: The entry said Siciliano and colleagues (2018) found mostly Guiana dolphin in the love charms they tested, and pig in Rio de Janeiro.
It is: Of the 38 charms they sequenced, three were Guiana dolphin, ten were domestic pig and ten contained no animal material. Pig was the commoner of the two species.
Source: Siciliano et al., Frontiers in Marine Science 5: 107 (2018), abstract.
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It said: The history section called Mario, the narrator of the blessed-dagger story, a former mill hand.
It is: Ciolli identifies him as a former worker at the Alpargatas plant, born and raised in one of Santa Ana's colonies.
Source: Karina G. Ciolli, 'Los ladridos de El Familiar', Runa 42(2), 2021
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It said: The tenant reportedly 'chased out' by the ghost is unnamed in any record, and the story appears to be a later embellishment.
It is: The tenant chased out by the ghost appears, unnamed, in the National Register nomination of 1983, in the owner's own account; it is the earliest written version of the story.
Source: NRHP nomination 84001270, section 8
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It said: The house stands at 401 Keokuk Street; its National Register nomination is record 85001672; it can be compared with the 'William H. H. House' in Davenport, and the Keokuk Historical Museum keeps a small exhibit on it.
It is: The house is at 220 North Fourth Street, Keokuk. Its National Register reference is 84001270 (85001672 is Glenwood, in Raleigh, North Carolina). No source supports the Davenport comparison or the museum exhibit, which have been removed.
Source: NRHP nomination 84001270 (James E. Jacobsen, 1983)
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It said: The visiting section said tours ran daily from 9:00 to 16:00, cost US$30 for adults and US$12 for children, and that the property was wheelchair accessible with ADA services; history said the house was sold back to the Rollins family in 2003.
It is: Rose Hall's tour page (4 October 2026) gives Monday to Friday from 10:00 to 15:00, closed at weekends and on public holidays, US$25 for adults and US$10 for children aged 4 to 11, and says the tour is 'Not handicapped accessible'. Michele Rollins bought the house back in 2012.
Source: rosehall.com/cinnamon-hill, read 4 October 2026
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It said: The entry cited 'A New and Accurate Description of Jamaica' by Edward Long and a survey of 1817 recording 323 enslaved people near the house, a Jamaica Land Registry record, and an archivist's confirmation that there was no record of murder or haunting at the property.
It is: Long's book is The History of Jamaica (1774), and Long died in 1813; the land-registry record did not exist. Geoffrey Yates's article is about Rose Hall and Annie Palmer and does not mention Cinnamon Hill. The haunting at Cinnamon Hill is reported by Johnny Cash in his autobiography (1997) and by the Rose Hall tours.
Source: Yates, 'Rose Hall — Death of a Legend' (c. 1965); Cash, Cash: The Autobiography (1997)
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It said: The entry said that the identification of the green-skirted ghost with Cocke's first wife, Ann Blaws Barraud Cocke, had no source and appeared to be Enigma Atlas's own.
It is: The identification has been in the English Wikipedia article on Bremo since 15 December 2010, citing a Fluvanna Review article of 27 October 2010, and a haunted-places website repeats it. Neither names a witness or describes the green skirt; Lee's 1930 chapter, the oldest account, gives the woman no name.
Source: English Wikipedia, "Bremo Historic District" (edit of 15 December 2010); Marguerite du Pont Lee, Virginia Ghosts (1930).
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It said: Ivan Margary was cited as author of 'The Secret History of the Roman Roads of Britain' (1932), linked to Project Gutenberg text 675; the 1965 accident report was linked to a KentOnline address that does not exist.
It is: The Secret History of the Roman Roads of Britain is by M. C. Bishop (2014); Gutenberg 675 is Dickens's American Notes. The KentOnline article on the crash is the one of 19 November 2015.
Source: Wikipedia, A229 road (citing Bishop 2014); KentOnline, 19 November 2015
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It said: The road follows 'Roman Road No. 13 established in 1821'; contemporary newspaper archives show no reports of hauntings before the 1965 accident; Ivan Margary confirmed the route in 1932 and again in 2013; the ruins on the hill are unstable.
It is: The A229 follows a Roman road, numbered 13 by Margary; 1821 has no source. KentOnline (2015) dates one vanishing-passenger report to 1962 and says sightings are said to go back to the 1930s. There are no ruins on the road; the hilltop is a Kent Wildlife Trust grassland reserve.
Source: KentOnline, 19 November 2015; Wikipedia, A229 road; Kent Wildlife Trust
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It said: Two references pointed to archive.org pages for the Hamilton Herald & Lanarkshire Weekly News (1859) and for C. Ladds's EK&DH Archive newsletter.
It is: Those archive.org pages do not exist. Both works are printed sources cited by Wikipedia: the Hamilton Herald of 18 July 1890, p. 6, and the EK&DH Archive newsletter of April 2025, p. 4.
Source: Wikipedia, 'Birkwood Castle', notes
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It said: The sceptical section said the 2013 paranormal investigation found no measurable activity and that the ghost stories could not be traced before the hospital closed in 2005; the visiting section gave the address as 2027 Fairmount Avenue and said the ruin was open for self-guided exploration of its stabilised cellblocks, with parking on site.
It is: The 2013 film crew called the house one of the most active locations in which they had filmed. 2027 Fairmount Avenue does not exist; the site's postcode is ML11 0JP. The Buildings at Risk Register lists the building as vacant, in Very Poor condition and at high risk, with partial demolition carried out by 2018, demolition retaining the porte-cochère approved in 2020, and security measures reinstated in 2023.
Source: The Scotsman, 8 January 2018; Buildings at Risk Register, entry 916481
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It said: The visiting section said ten trains a day stopped, that the station was open 24 hours, and that visitors could view it from platform 2.
It is: In January 2018 the Indian Express found no platform, a ticket counter open from 4:30 a.m. to about 5:30 p.m. and for a few minutes at 9 p.m., and about half a dozen local trains stopping besides the last one.
Source: The Indian Express, 28 January 2018
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It said: The entry said a parliamentary investigation in 2007 confirmed that railway staff had invented the haunting, that railway employee Basudeb Acharia said so, that the stationmaster and his wife died of natural causes, and that the 'haunted' label was formally removed from railway records.
It is: There was no parliamentary investigation. Basudeb Acharia was the MP for Purulia and chaired the parliamentary standing committee on Railways; the statement attributed to him appears in Wikipedia without a source. None of the published accounts gives a cause for the stationmaster's death, and the Indian Express's informant says he left. The haunting was tested by the rationalist group Paschim Banga Bigyan Mancha in December 2017, and in 2018 the Indian Express reported that 'the haunted tag remains'.
Source: PTI in The Hindu, 30 December 2017; The New Indian Express, 31 December 2017; The Indian Express, 28 January 2018
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It said: That the site's first documented fame was cinematic (1896) and that Guilherme de Faria's death in 1929 was its earliest firmly dated fatality.
It is: The Archivo Pittoresco described it in 1862, and Queen Maria Pia's rescue of her sons there in October 1873 was reported in The Illustrated London News; a Portuguese film titled O Suicida da Boca do Inferno opened in Lisbon in June 1923.
Source: Archivo Pittoresco, vol. V (1862); The Illustrated London News, 25 October 1873; Diário de Lisboa, 12 June 1923
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It said: The Arabic reference literature was cited for Umm Al Duwais appearing in Qatar as 'Umm Ghannan' and for her being carried into mass culture by the animated series Freej.
It is: The cited Arabic Wikipedia article mentions neither Umm Ghannan nor Freej; both claims have been withdrawn. It does name two novels titled Umm Al Duwais and the localities whose versions differ (Al Madam, Sohar, Al Salahiya).
Source: Arabic Wikipedia, 'Umm Al Duwais', text as read through the MediaWiki API on 4 October 2026.
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It said: The Khaleej Times account of a handprint at Al Hamra came from a horror film-maker 'unnamed in the article'.
It is: The article names him: the account is signed Faisal Hashmi.
Source: Rohit Nair, 'Dubai residents recount their scariest moments', Khaleej Times, 30 October 2015 (Wayback copy of 27 March 2019).
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It said: The current house was built around 1620 by Alexander Butler.
It is: The Royal Commission dates the original timber-framed house to the late sixteenth century, with a brick addition of 1678; no source in the file gives 1620.
Source: RCHM, Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of Cambridge (1959), monument 270.
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It said: Abbey House is a private residence, not open to the public; no tours or public access are available.
It is: The 2002 sale contract required the house to be opened to the public, and it opens on heritage open days with guided tours (13 September 2025).
Source: Cambridge News, 2002; Heritage Open Days, 'Abbey House Open Day' 2025 (read 4 October 2026).
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It said: Commercial exploitation of the ghost stories began in 1991, when the Buddhist owners opened the house for Halloween events; modern owners report no paranormal activity.
It is: The Buddhist organisation bought the house in 2002. No source for Halloween events in 1991 was found; the latest report in the Society for Psychical Research's account came from the occupants of the 1980s.
Source: Cambridge News, 2002; Andrew MacKenzie, Hauntings and Apparitions (1982), ch. 13.
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It said: Glenluce and Crocketford are between 60 and 100 km west of the Kinmount Straight.
It is: Crocketford is about 31 km and Glenluce about 95 km west of it.
Source: Distance calculated from the coordinates of the villages and of this entry.
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It said: The entry said that in the annotated 1905 edition of Cintra Pinturesca the string 'pente' (comb) appears six times and 'pentea' once, all in the editor's apparatus, and that Leite de Vasconcelos's 1882 collection has 'pente' 28 times.
It is: Five of the six hits in 1905 are inside 'repente' and 'serpente'; the only comb is the verb 'penteam', in the editor's footnote. In Vasconcelos, words for comb and combing occur 12 times; the other hits were 'serpente' and 'repente'. The conclusion stands: the comb reaches Sintra only in that 1905 footnote.
Source: Internet Archive OCR text of Cintra Pinturesca (1905 edition) and of Tradições populares de Portugal (1882), counted on 4 October 2026.
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It said: The entry said the radiocarbon dates from the Almaqah temple of Barʾān at Marib place its earliest temple after the traditional date of Solomon.
It is: The excavators date the END of the occupation of Temple 2 to the terminal 9th century BC; the earlier Temple 1 is undated, and their dating series extend from the 10th century BC.
Source: J. Görsdorf and B. Vogt, Radiocarbon 43(3), 2001
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It said: The entry said that by 2025 the old woman seen on the A541 was being merged with Dorothy Trevor, and that Acton Park, where Judge Jeffreys was born, is about eight kilometres from the house.
It is: The Daily Post (January 2025) makes Dorothy the Woman in White 'occasionally reported by visitors'; neither it nor the auctioneers connect her with the road figure. Acton Park is about nine and a half kilometres south-east of Plas Teg.
Source: Daily Post (North Wales Live), January 2025; OpenStreetMap
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Peer Gynt and the Trolls of Dovre
It said: That four more Norwegian papers printed the word «Dovregubben» within five weeks of Morgenbladet's review of 22 November 1867.
It is: The National Library of Norway's newspaper search gives three more issues in those five weeks, two of them Morgenbladet again, and a fourth issue, of Aftenbladet, on 28 December.
Source: Nasjonalbiblioteket, newspaper full-text search (api.nb.no), 1867-1868
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It said: The entry said Dudleytown was a 17th-century settlement founded by Thomas Dudley in 1651, raided in King Philip's War and depopulated by the 1730s, and cited four sources that do not exist.
It is: Cornwall had no recorded white inhabitant before the township was sold in 1738; the Dudley family reached the hill from the 1740s, and the land has belonged to Dark Entry Forest, Inc. since 1924. The entry has been rewritten against real sources.
Source: Theodore Sedgwick Gold, Historical Records of the Town of Cornwall (2nd ed., 1904); The New York Times, 29 October 1989
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It said: The entry said no institutional, archival or heritage source confirmed that the nurses' home was built in 1916, and that nothing linked the building to the 1918 influenza epidemic.
It is: The Dunedin City Council's heritage assessment records that the first stage was built in 1915-16 and opened on 17 June 1916, and that in 1920 a tablet to nurses who died on active service and in the influenza epidemic was unveiled in its vestibule. The building entered the district plan's heritage schedule in July 2025.
Source: Dunedin City Council, heritage assessment of 490 Cumberland Street (revised 15 April 2025)
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Cantuña and the Church of San Francisco
It said: The sceptical section said the oldest source already presents the devil's pact as false.
It is: The oldest written telling, Juan de Santa Gertrudis's (c. 1757-1767), has Cantuña holding a real pact; it is Juan de Velasco's version of 1789, the one that made him famous, that calls the pact a deliberate fiction. The entry's own history section already said so.
Source: Santa Gertrudis, Maravillas de la naturaleza; Velasco, Historia del Reino de Quito, vol. 3
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It said: The entry said the derivation of 'bunyip' from Wemba-Wemba appeared only in sources that cite nothing.
It is: It is printed in Australian Words and Their Origins (Oxford, 1989), researched at the Australian National Dictionary Centre, which derives the word from the Wergaia dialect of Wemba-Wemba; the Centre's web page derives it from Wathaurong.
Source: J. Hughes (ed.), Australian Words and Their Origins (OUP, 1989); ANDC, Meanings and origins: B
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It said: The entry said the 1847 skull exhibition lasted a matter of months, and that the claim that it drew crowds for two days could not be traced to an authoritative source.
It is: The National Library of Australia's exhibition Bunyips states that the skull was shown at the Australian Museum for two days in July 1847 and that visitors flocked to see it.
Source: National Library of Australia, Bunyips exhibition (capture of 28 February 2006)
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It said: The entry said Crowley printed the story of Lord Lovat's rolling head only as stage dialogue between two characters, not as testimony from anyone he names, and quoted Jimmy Page in 1975 as saying "There were definitely presences there" and that the head could be heard rolling.
It is: After the dialogue, Crowley writes in his own voice that he "certainly used to hear the 'rolling of the head'" until he put in a billiard table. Page's 1975 words, from Rolling Stone, include "I haven't actually heard it, but a friend of mine ... heard it"; the phrase about presences has no source in the entry and has been removed.
Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (Arkana, 1989); Classic Rock / Louder, 23 January 2026
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It said: The entry said the Portuguese Wikisource corpus returns the word boitatá on exactly three pages.
It is: Three is the count of the strict insource search, which reads only each page's source. A plain search returns fourteen pages, five of them printed before 1913 (O Vaqueano, Inocência, Ubirajara, O Selvagem, Ciganinha); none of them tells the plot first printed by Lopes Neto in 1913.
Source: pt.wikisource.org search, 1 October 2026
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It said: The entry attributed to Oviedo (1515) the description of a small, low island 'always covered with clouds' and the naming after Juan Bermúdez and his ship La Garza.
It is: Both are Antonio de Herrera's, printed in 1601; Oviedo gives the group's size and latitude and describes birds and fish hunting flying fish.
Source: J. H. Lefroy, Memorials of the Discovery and Early Settlement of the Bermudas, vol. 1 (1877)
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It said: The entry said the earliest source linking the birds to the islands' devilish reputation was twentieth-century, a modern inference presented as a Tudor fact.
It is: The Council of Virginia's True Declaration of 1610 already says that 'all the Fairies of the rocks were but flocks of birds, and all the Diuels that haunted the woods, were but heards of swine'.
Source: A True Declaration of the Estate of the Colonie in Virginia (1610), reprinted in J. H. Lefroy, Memorials of the Discovery and Early Settlement of the Bermudas, vol. 1 (1877)
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It said: The entry called Richard Williams Bell's narrative, printed by Ingram in 1894, the case's only contemporary source.
It is: By Ingram's own dating it was written in the autumn and winter of 1846, by a man who was six to ten years old in 1817-1821. It was never contemporary, and Joe Nickell (2014) argues that Ingram wrote it.
Source: M. V. Ingram, An Authenticated History of the Famous Bell Witch (1894), p. 13; Skeptical Inquirer 38(1), 2014
Log updated on October 06, 2026.