What the sources do not say
Source checks
Eighteen claims that circulate everywhere — in popular books, on websites, in online encyclopaedias — and that have turned out to be false, inaccurate or attributed to a source that does not contain them. Each check has a page of its own saying what I checked and where: anyone who wants to repeat it has the references to do so, and anyone who finds an error is asked to report it.
Did Saint Galgano drive the sword into the rock?
No: in the primary sources the sword is planted «in terram». The rock is a later elaboration.
How I checked it · in the entry: La spada di San Galgano
Did Henry Callaway really record the tokoloshe?
No: the word does not appear in the full text, and the part on witchcraft was never published.
How I checked it · in the entry: Tokoloshe
Is «Nosferatu» a Romanian word?
No: it does not exist in any documented phase of the Romanian language.
How I checked it · in the entry: Strigoi
Does the wendigo have a deer skull and antlers?
No: that image comes from film and video games, not from Algonquian tradition.
How I checked it · in the entry: Wendigo
Why is the dokkaebi drawn with horns?
Because it is not a Korean image: it is the Japanese oni, which entered the colonial school readers.
How I checked it · in the entry: Dokkaebi
Does the jiangshi move by hopping?
No Qing-era source describes it: the hopping is Hong Kong cinema.
How I checked it · in the entry: Jiangshi
Does the vrykolakas drink blood?
No: it suffocates, and if anything devours organs. It has nothing of the literary vampire.
How I checked it · in the entry: Vrykolakas
Was the Beast of Gévaudan killed with a silver bullet?
In no source from 1767: it originates in an 1858 novel.
How I checked it · in the entry: Bestia del Gévaudan
Is the earliest attestation of the Tarasca the Legenda aurea?
No: the Pseudo-Marcilia precedes it by almost a century.
How I checked it · in the entry: Tarasca
Has the nine-tailed fox always been a demonic figure?
No: in the Shanhaijing it is auspicious. The demonisation is a late layer.
How I checked it · in the entry: Huli jing
Does the «1845 Geelong skull» exist?
It does not exist: they are two separate events, of 1845 and 1846, merged into one.
How I checked it · in the entry: Bunyip
Are the Min Min lights an «inverse mirage»?
The formula is wrong twice over: the phenomenon is a superior mirage.
How I checked it · in the entry: Min Min lights
Is the churel «the Indian vampire»?
No, and it is a category that comes from the English-language vampire encyclopaedias.
How I checked it · in the entry: Churel
Does the kuntilanak have a hole in her back?
It is a trait of the sundel bolong, popularised from 1981. In Skeat the hole is in the nape of the neck.
How I checked it · in the entry: Kuntilanak
Are Curupira and Caipora the same being?
Câmara Cascudo keeps them distinct. The etymology that circulates as settled also falls.
How I checked it · in the entry: Curupira
Is the Saci African folklore brought over by slaves?
The basis is composite, with a Guaraní substratum in the Jasy Jaterê.
How I checked it · in the entry: Saci-Pererê
Is the qarīn a soulmate?
No: it is a homonymy of usage. The qarīn of belief is the invisible double.
How I checked it · in the entry: Qarīn
Did Morris K. Jessup have a doctorate?
No: he broke off his thesis in 1931. But he was a real astronomer, and that makes the affair more interesting.
How I checked it · in the entry: Philadelphia Experiment