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: The entry said the earliest datable printed appearance of Oscar Fulk's 1898 sighting was a Wikipedia infobox field of 2006.
It is: The claim is in print earlier. John A. Gutowski (1978) writes of a turtle rumoured for fifty years, without a name; Alan Garinger's Water Monsters (1991) names Oscar Fulk as the lake's original owner who saw it fifty years before 1948; Wanda Lou Willis (2002) and Dick Wolfsie (2003) give the year 1898. No 1898 source has been found: the Fort Wayne Sentinel's 1898 run carries no such story.
Source: Gutowski, Journal of the Folklore Institute, 1978; Garinger, Water Monsters, 1991; Wolfsie, Indiana Curiosities, 2003
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It said: That an Encyclopedia Mythica article of 3 March 1997 already described the Grey Man as ten to twenty feet tall, broad-shouldered, long-armed, grey or olive, with pointed ears.
It is: 1997 is only the date the page was created. Its earliest archived copy is from 2019 and lists Eberhart (2002) and MacKillop (2004) as its sources, so the description cannot be dated to 1997.
Source: Encyclopedia Mythica, "Fear Liath", Wayback Machine capture of 22 August 2019
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It said: The entry said the earliest datable printed notices of ghosts at Airth Castle were from 2010.
It is: The ghost was in print by 1999, in Martin Coventry's Haunted Places of Scotland, and again in 2000 and 2001.
Source: M. Coventry, Haunted Places of Scotland (Goblinshead, 1999)
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It said: Every one of Gaddis's errors (254 feet, overdue on 6 February, search abandoned on the 14th, debris fourteen miles south-east of Key West) already appears in Newsweek of 4 March 1963.
It is: Only two are in Newsweek: the radio message on the night of 3 February and '14 miles southeast of Key West'. Newsweek gives 524 feet, not 254, and has neither the 6 nor the 14 February dates.
Source: Newsweek, 4 March 1963, pp. 29-30 (transcription on Debbie Corwin's site); Vincent H. Gaddis, Argosy, February 1964
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It said: The entry said the bird Martius named Sacy in 1867 was the cuckoo that Goeldi identified in 1894.
It is: Martius calls his crow-like Sacy also Ganambuch and places it in the genus Coracina; Goeldi's Saci is a different bird, the striped cuckoo.
Source: Martius, Beiträge zur Ethnographie (1867); Goeldi, As Aves do Brasil (1894).
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Peer Gynt and the Trolls of Dovre
It said: The entry said local guides in Dovre still point out rock formations said to be the troll king's frozen hall, and that church bells rung at dawn from a nearby valley let Peer escape as the hall collapsed.
It is: No source supports the guides or the rocks. In Ibsen the bells ring «far away» with no hour or valley, and they save Peer while he lies pinned under the troll children.
Source: Ibsen, Peer Gynt (1867), act II.
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It said: The backwards feet belonged to the legend, not to the eyewitness reports.
It is: Captain Maier wrote in 1923 that every eyewitness he spoke to confirmed 'with great certainty' that the animal walks with its heels forward.
Source: R. Maier, reprinted in De Sumatra Post, 17 October 1923
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It said: The entry said no press account read for it reported a single death attributed to the scare.
It is: The Quint (6 August 2018), one of its own sources, says that "a number of unexplained murders took place as well". It names no victim, place, date or police case, and the entry now says so.
Source: The Quint, 6 August 2018
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It said: The Museu Goeldi's note of condolence records six bird species described by Oren and one named after him.
It is: The note says neither; it records his work in ornithology, biogeography and conservation and his naturalisation as a Brazilian in the 1990s.
Source: Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, note of condolence, September 2023
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It said: The entry said the only motive stated, in the 1973 decree and in the Coronel Pringles local account alike, was the Russian custom, with no mention of the lobizón.
It is: The 1973 decree states no motive, only that the first applicant was of Russian nationality; the Coronel Pringles account (El Orden, 2020) does tie the tsar's sponsorship to the seventh son turning into a lobizón.
Source: Decree 848/1973 (InfoLEG); Rogelio Gómez, El Orden, 20 October 2020.
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It said: Cargill's Castle appears under that name in the Otago papers from the 1880s.
It is: The earliest use of the name found in the Papers Past full text is in the Otago Witness of 17 March 1898; none turns up in the 1880s.
Source: Otago Witness, 17 March 1898; DigitalNZ search of 28 September 2026
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It said: Described gargantalaollaturismo.es as the municipal tourist information of the Garganta la Olla town council.
It is: Its legal notice names a private owner; it is a privately run tourism website.
Source: gargantalaollaturismo.es, legal notice
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It said: Said that María José Osuna Cabezas concludes that the Serrana is an archetype, not a verifiable historical character.
It is: Osuna's paper does not say that: it records that some scholars have defended a real serrana and treats that possible real background as something that turned into legend.
Source: M. J. Osuna Cabezas, 'Las serranas del Arcipreste de Hita como antecedentes de La serrana de la Vera', Centro Virtual Cervantes
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It said: Attributed to the Ramón Menéndez Pidal Foundation (2015) the judgement that the historical value of the name Don Lucas de Carvajal 'has no foundation'.
It is: The judgement is Ramón Menéndez Pidal and María Goyri's, in the study that closes their 1916 edition of Vélez de Guevara's play; the Foundation publishes it in a digital edition.
Source: Luis Vélez de Guevara, La serrana de la Vera, ed. R. Menéndez Pidal and M. Goyri, Madrid, 1916, 'Observaciones', pp. 125-169
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Hessdalen Valley (Hessdalen Lights)
It said: The entry said that none of the roughly 600,000 photographs taken by Østfold University College captured the phenomenon.
It is: The 2024 survey says that about 600,000 pictures were taken and examined, and describes the lights from them; the null result applies only to the nearly 90,000 fish-eye pictures taken towards the sky.
Source: Vargemezis et al., Journal of Applied Geophysics 226 (2024)
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It said: In George Seton's 1896 family history the single index entry for a ghost belongs to Woodhouselee.
It is: Seton's index also lists a 'Green Lady' at Pinkie House, Musselburgh — a ghost from a portrait in the painted gallery, 'supposed to be a member of the Seton family' (p. 812 n). The Seton green lady of 1896 walks at Pinkie, not at Fyvie.
Source: George Seton, A History of the Family of Seton, vol. II (1896), p. 812 n. and index
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It said: The entry presented the National Trust for Scotland page that tells the piper story as new (first captured in March 2025) and said the Trust's Culzean pages did not mention a ghost.
It is: The story was told inside the Trust's circle at least as early as 18 January 2018, in an article by the Trust photographer Alistair Fenn published by the National Trust for Scotland Foundation USA, with the piper, his dog and the figure on Piper's Brae.
Source: National Trust for Scotland Foundation USA, 18 January 2018
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It said: The entry credited the Shaw Stewarts with enlarging the castle.
It is: The south-east wing is early 16th century and any remodelling was Sempill work; the Stewarts of Ardgowan, later Shaw Stewarts, acquired the castle in 1649 and still owned it in 1887.
Source: MacGibbon and Ross, Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland, I (1887), pp. 295-296.
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It said: The entry said residents and renovators had described unexplained footsteps and cold spots in the older stonework.
It is: The sentence had no source, named no resident and no date, and was shared word for word with another entry.
Source: Removed; no source.
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It said: The entry said local tradition claimed Castle Levan as the true setting of Sleeping Beauty.
It is: No source of any kind attaches Sleeping Beauty to the castle; the tale (ATU 410) is in print from the 14th-century Perceforest to Perrault (1697) and the Grimms (1812), and the castle's legend is the White Lady.
Source: Gazetteer for Scotland; castle-levan.com (Wayback, 2021); Wikipedia, Sleeping Beauty.
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Burford Church (St John the Baptist)
It said: Katharine Briggs records that the people of Burford "had a story of a spectral coach" — the phantom carriage of Sir Lawrence Tanfield.
It is: In Briggs the words 'had a story of a spectral coach' are about Whittington, where an informant's grandparents lived. The Tanfield coach is in the book too, in other words: 'The occupant of it was Sir Laurence Tanfield.'
Source: Katharine M. Briggs, The Folklore of the Cotswolds (1974), Internet Archive full-text search, 28 September 2026
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It said: The entry dated the earliest published ghost claim to Frederick Stonehouse's Haunted Lakes (1997), eleven years after the inn opened.
It is: The ghost is in print by 1992, in Eric Freedman's On the Water, Michigan, six years after the inn opened.
Source: Eric Freedman, On the Water, Michigan (1992).
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It said: Dolores Redondo's Baztán novels sold over 700,000 copies in fifteen languages, citing the author's website.
It is: The author's website gives no sales figure; its rights list for the novel names publishers in thirty-two languages.
Source: doloresredondo.com, The Invisible Guardian (read 28 September 2026)
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It said: Said that Gail E. Haley's A Story, A Story (1970) was the route by which the four-creature version reached English-speaking readers, and that in Rattray's version Aso devises every capture.
It is: The University of Illinois exhibit cited for Haley's book describes three tasks (a jaguar, hornets and an invisible fairy); in Rattray (1930, pp. 54-59) Aso devises three of the four captures.
Source: University of Illinois Library, 'A Story, A Story' exhibit; R. S. Rattray, Akan-Ashanti Folk-Tales, 1930, tale 17
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It said: Elton's 1894 English Saxo shows one coincidence with the Tell story and none of the other four.
It is: Elton's appendix carries three of the five: the apple, the three arrows and Toko's answer. It leaves out the Kullen descent and Harald's death.
Source: Oliver Elton (trans.), The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus (1894), Appendix I
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It said: That Vice withdrew the colourised S-21 portraits on 12 April 2021, and that a museum board has shown the figure of 179 released prisoners since 2011.
It is: The article was published on Friday 9 April 2021 and had been removed by midday GMT on Sunday 11 April. No source was found for the 2011 board, and the statement has been withdrawn.
Source: Al Jazeera, 'Cambodia condemns Vice for altered Khmer Rouge images', 11 April 2021
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It said: Theodor Wagner identified the founder of the Maundy Thursday porridge for the poor with Markéta of Maidburg (d. 1369), a century before Perchta was born.
It is: Sedláček records that Wagner identified the White Lady who supervised the workmen at Hradec and instituted the sweet porridge with Markéta of Maidburg (d. 1369), some sixty years before Perchta was born (1429/1430). The entry does not mention Maundy Thursday or the poor.
Source: August Sedláček, "Bílá paní", Ottův slovník naučný, vol. IV (Prague, 1891), p. 49
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It said: The oldest account of the White Lady read for this file was August Sedláček's of 1891, and the colour-coded gloves could not be dated to any text at all.
It is: The Brothers Grimm printed the legend in 1816, with the black glove, the keys, the nursery visits and the identification with Perchta of Rosenberg "according to some". The white-and-black pair of gloves is given by Czech Wikipedia, citing a 2003 popular guide.
Source: Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsche Sagen, vol. I (Berlin, 1816), no. 267, pp. 357-358
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It said: In 1884 Kaarle Krohn recorded the shout "Näkki elä miestä vie" for when someone is being taken.
It is: What Krohn recorded from Pietari Heinonen at Kinnula is "Näkki huoran poika, Älä minua vie" (näkki, son of a whore, do not take me), said when it starts to take someone.
Source: Suomen Kansan Vanhat Runot IX4, no. 1619 (Krohn 3470 b, 1884)
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It said: Parkman ran to the Alabama River, "which is the opposite direction from Selma"; the two 1867 reports of where the body was found were irreconcilable.
It is: From Cahaba the river lies east and Selma north-east, so the direction claim was withdrawn. White Bluff was a landing 10 river miles below Cahaba, which puts the two reported finding places about six miles apart on the same reach.
Source: Saffold Berney, Handbook of Alabama (1878), table of Alabama River landings
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It said: Alabama's regional tourism service says of Lyon Hall that it was "constructed between 1850-1853 by slaves of George Gaines".
It is: That wording does not appear on the tourism page, which also names the owner as George Gaines Lyon. The Encyclopedia of Alabama states that Lyon Hall "was built with slave labor for its first resident, George Gaines Lyon".
Source: Grace London, "Lyon Hall", Encyclopedia of Alabama; RuralSWAlabama listing (Internet Archive, 13 June 2026)
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It said: The entry said the Smithsonian reward and Theodore Roosevelt's safari had no contemporary source, and that 1909 was a birth date the creature 'may never have had'.
It is: The 1909 series exists on paper, in the Frederick County Public Libraries: its first piece, in the Valley Register of 12 February 1909, is headed 'The Colored People Are in Great Danger', and the Smithsonian reward and Roosevelt's safari are inside that article as part of the hoax. By 5 March 1909 the paper was printing the word 'Snallygaster'.
Source: Jake Seboe, 'The Maryland Snallygaster: Devil of Racist Politics', Boundary Stones (WETA), 4 December 2024.
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It said: That the earliest datable use of the English word skinwalker was Margaret K. Brady's book of 1984, and that the Deseret News called the Sherman property 'the UFO ranch' in its 1996 reports.
It is: The word is in print by 1970 (Shepardson and Hammond, The Navajo Mountain Community). The 1996 articles do not use 'UFO ranch'; the paper's headline with those words is of 22 April 2006.
Source: Shepardson & Hammond (UC Press, 1970); Deseret News, 30 June and 20 October 1996; Deseret Morning News, 22 April 2006
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It said: That San Andrés is 'the second pilgrimage centre in Galicia after Compostela' is repeated everywhere without a source or a stated unit of measurement.
It is: Turismo de Galicia does state a unit — "number of visitors" — though it gives no figure for Santiago or any other sanctuary to compare.
Source: Turismo de Galicia, «Leyendas y mitos de San Andrés de Teixido»
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It said: It is often said that in 2025 the sanctuary passed "half a million pilgrims" in ten months.
It is: The entry gave no source for that figure and none was found; the sentence has been withdrawn. The count with a stated method is Cedeira council's: 94,000 visitors between December 2024 and the end of August 2025.
Source: Ferrol360, 8 October 2025, reporting Cedeira council's visitor sensors
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It said: Matthiessen's In the Spirit of Crazy Horse 'says the opposite of what it is used to prove' about the rugaru and Bigfoot.
It is: The book contains both: its text calls the rugaru the Ojibwe 'hairy man' and quotes Leonard Peltier on Bigfoot, and a chapter note derives the word from loup-garou.
Source: Peter Matthiessen, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (Penguin, 1992)
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It said: From 1776 every vessel arriving in Venice from foreign waters had to stop at Poveglia, the most important inspection point; its twentieth-century hospital was part asylum, from the 1920s.
It is: No source of the file supports either claim. The island passed to the health magistracy in 1776, 1777 or 1782 depending on the source, and its hospital was a home for the elderly that closed in 1968.
Source: Poveglia per tutti, FAQ; Davide Busato (2013)
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It said: Walks of Italy was cited as documented history against the legend, and as the source for twenty plague deaths in 1793 and 1798.
It is: Walks of Italy repeats the legend (about 100,000 victims in plague pits). The twenty deaths — twelve in 1793, eight in 1798/1799 — come from the Venetian historian Davide Busato, now cited.
Source: Davide Busato, 'La vera storia dell'isola maledetta di Poveglia' (2013)
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The Nine-Tailed Fox and the Scholar
It said: That the 1979 KBS episode is the first appearance of the story of a fox who marries a travelling scholar and counts down a number of nights, a number that no source could pin down.
It is: In the one version of Im Chung's script that the folklorist Kim Hwan-hee could read (the 1997 remake), the husband is Chilbok, a poor country bachelor, and the term is ten years. The 1979 script has not been read.
Source: Kim Hwan-hee, 'Im Chung's created old tale, Jeonseol-ui gohyang: Gumiho', Brunch, 27 December 2021
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It said: That Okayama's kibi dango preceded its Momotaro branding by some seventy years.
It is: No source gives that interval. The folklorist Kahara Nahoko dates the sweet's national fame to the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, when soldiers took it home as a souvenir.
Source: Kahara Nahoko, Waseda Shogaku 427 (2011), note 5
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It said: The bath, the spy-hole and the transformation belong to Walter Map, before 1200 and in Brittany and Wales.
It is: Map's tale of Henno cum dentibus is set on the coast of Normandy, where Henno finds the girl "secus oram Normanni litoris".
Source: Walter Map, De nugis curialium, IV.9, ed. Thomas Wright (1850), p. 168
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The Maiden's Tower of Istanbul (Kız Kulesi)
It said: A sweep of De Bosporo Thracio returns 115 for "Bospor-", 22 for "Chrysopol-", 12 for "Hellespont" and 7 for "Damalis".
It is: Counted with the long-s spellings the scan reads as f, the text names the Bosphorus 488 times, Chrysopolis 22 and Damalis 28; the zero for "Leand-" stands.
Source: Gilles, De Bosporo Thracio (Elzevir, 1632), Internet Archive text
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It said: By 1901 nobody living locally remembered the woman.
It is: Both accounts of the exhumation say that no one then living at Manaton remembered her death at the time the grave was opened, around 1861 — forty years earlier than the entry said.
Source: P. F. S. Amery, Devon Notes and Queries, vol. 1 (1901), pp. 251-252; William Crossing, Guide to Dartmoor, Excursion 24
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It said: That every printed version of the Cauld Lad's couplet spells the place Hilton, not Hylton.
It is: Surtees (via Sharp, 1834) and Henderson (1879) print Hilton; the Denham Tracts print "The Cauld Lad o' Hylton" and Longstaffe's 1848 variant "The Cowed Lad of Hylton".
Source: The Denham Tracts, vol. I (1892), pp. 55-57; Archaeologia Aeliana n.s. VII (1876)
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It said: All ten Open Library passages for 'Hill House is haunted' were said to be about Shirley Jackson's novel or Cherry Hill House in Toronto.
It is: Two of the ten are about Virginia Hill's house in Beverly Hills; none is about Helensburgh.
Source: Open Library full-text search, repeated 25 September 2026
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It said: In July 1996 The Virginian-Pilot told readers the site had hosted Virginia's only recorded witch trial.
It is: Neither the July nor the October 1996 article says that. Both say Grace Sherwood was said to have been imprisoned in a jail on the site; the July piece also opens with an imagined scene of her ducking heard from outside the house.
Source: Mary Reid Barrow, The Virginian-Pilot, 26 July and 30 October 1996
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It said: That occupation of the prison vaults peaked in 1812, with more than a thousand men held at once.
It is: The prison seems to have been closed for most of 1812; the worst documented crowding is almost 1,000 men in July 1781.
Source: Chris Tabraham, 'The Prisons of War in Edinburgh Castle', Book of the Old Edinburgh Club NS 7 (2008)
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It said: That Richard Wiseman's 2001 controlled experiment with 240 volunteers took place in Edinburgh Castle's vaults, with 51% reporting unexplained experiences, and that the 'haunted' rooms were colder, lower and darker.
It is: Wiseman's own account and the published paper place the experiment in the South Bridge Vaults, about 800 m east of the castle: April 2001, 218 participants, 43.58% reporting at least one unusual experience; the vaults with the stronger reputation had more light at the entrance, more floorspace and higher ceilings.
Source: Wiseman et al., British Journal of Psychology 94 (2003), 195-211; richardwiseman.wordpress.com
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It said: The full text of the sign beside the Ord skeleton was given as what John Allan's 2006 photograph shows.
It is: Allan's photograph does not show the sign and his caption quotes it only in part; the full text comes from a photograph in Geoff Holder's guide, transcribed by The Faery Folklorist in 2013.
Source: Geograph 218481; The Faery Folklorist, February 2013
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It said: Roderic O'Flaherty had recorded the belief in print by 1684.
It is: O'Flaherty wrote his description of West Connacht in 1684; it was first printed in 1846, edited by James Hardiman.
Source: Roderic O'Flaherty, A Chorographical Description of West or H-Iar Connaught, written A.D. 1684, ed. James Hardiman (Dublin, 1846)
Log updated on October 06, 2026.