Earth is… weird. And now, there’s evidence to back it up.

All over the world, thousands of people report weird lights in the sky, lost time, strange creatures in the woods, lake demons, and a whole gambit of other hair-prickly strangeness.

However, a recurring problem has been the disparate nature of personal accounts. Until lately, there’s never really been a global repository to catalog all these personal encounters. If only Google Earth just had a haunted dark mode where we could see where all this weirdness is actually happening.

Well, that’s basically what Liminal Earth have created with their global paranormal map at Liminal.earth. Emerging from the fog of the Pacific Northwest, the Liminal Earth database is open for anyone to catalog their personal encounters with the unknown.

As the data comes in, paranormal researches could visualize trends, validate group sightings and link hotbeds of activity. Liminal Earth could be a step toward validating that we, in fact, live in a liminal plane…

Liminal Earth: A Global Paranormal Archive

Liminal Earth describes itself as “a crowd-sourced map of uncanny experiences.” It’s a database for the creepy incidents that you might not immediately bring up over dinner with the in-laws.

Founded as a side project by Jeremy Puma and Garrett Kelly in 2017, Liminal Seattle first sought to acquire stories from the Pacific Northwest. Soon after opening doors to the dark void, they quickly received local tales on everything from lost time, ghostly manifestations, cryptids, strange lights, murderous crows, and other spectral goodies.

“It basically started as a side-project to a side-project, but almost immediately we started getting tons of submissions and calls from local press,” says Jeremy.

After front-page coverage on The Seattle Times, Liminal Seattle decided to take its “normalizing the paranormal” mission a bit more seriously. Rebranded to Liminal Earth in 2019, they’re becoming a legit paranormal cartographic group.

The crowd-sourced database has received over 230 entrees at time of writing and continues to grow by the day. Now they have entries coming in from Chile, the UK, and more. As Jeremy from Liminal Earth tells us, “the more entries, the better the data.”

How Do You Classify The Strange?

In the past, some paranormal researchers have tried to create classification systems for high strangeness. Liminal Earth organizes things with a handy map legend:

Dark Forces : Lanyard Zombies, Drones, Corporate Death Zones, Cupcake Shops, Etc.

: Lanyard Zombies, Drones, Corporate Death Zones, Cupcake Shops, Etc. Time Distortions : Travelers, Timehunters, “Deja Vu”, “Losing Time,” Etc

: Travelers, Timehunters, “Deja Vu”, “Losing Time,” Etc Mythologies : Pre-Shamanic Deer Cults, Radical Gnostic Animism, Etc.

: Pre-Shamanic Deer Cults, Radical Gnostic Animism, Etc. Cryptoids : Bigfoot, Lycanthrops, Trolls, Ogres, Etc.

: Bigfoot, Lycanthrops, Trolls, Ogres, Etc. Thin Places : Ley Lines, Magic Fountains, Plant Sigils, Portals, Etc.

: Ley Lines, Magic Fountains, Plant Sigils, Portals, Etc. Straight Up Ghosts : Creepy vibes, Poltergeists, EVPs, Stone Tape Theories, Class III Apparitions

: Creepy vibes, Poltergeists, EVPs, Stone Tape Theories, Class III Apparitions High Weirdness : Fortean Phenomena, Floating Toblerone, Things That Just Don’t Make Sense

: Fortean Phenomena, Floating Toblerone, Things That Just Don’t Make Sense Classic UFO: Close Encounters, Sightings, etc.

Close Encounters, Sightings, etc. Strange Animals : Bearing Gifts, Unusual Encounters, Fecal Divination, etc.

: Bearing Gifts, Unusual Encounters, Fecal Divination, etc. Visions: Dreams, Visions, Mystical Experiences, etc.

Categorizing the non-elemental can get hairy, but it seems Liminal Earth segments things well while allowing room for blurry accounts and humorously weird tales. As Liminal Seattle tells us:

“[The legend] kind of happened organically. We wanted to cover the whole spectrum of extraordinary experience, so we came up with this list which we think covers everything we’re interested in capturing. “

Recent Entries of Spooky Encounters

On Liminal Earth, first-hand accounts range in depth, time, and space. Some brief encounters were just had, while others recount deep sagas from the 80s or 90s. Most include exact GPS coordinates; an occult investigator’s absolute dream. Some even include hand-drawn depictions or photo evidence. Here are some examples below.

“…With panic and strangeness he noticed that in one of the treetops something moved, he looked closely at the figure that would be the size of an orangutan, it moved and looked at it and realized that it had bright penetrating red eyes that looked at him in a way, according to him, evil…” Submitted by Vicente Kuntur under Cryptoids, High Weirdness, Strange Animals. -33.035463, -71.641970. Playa Ancha, Valparaiso, Chile

“I noticed three white lights in the sky. They were in a triangle pattern. As we watched on of the lights turned red and then moved to form a straight line. As we watched the light at the end of the line would move up to again form a triangle . Over and over again they did this,. I pulled over to the side of the road at one point to watch. When I got back on the road, A state cop pulled up along side me. Thinking he was going to pull me over I looked up and saw he was watching them too. The lights suddenly disappeared, like just faded out.” Submitted by JanetEB under Classic UFO. 45.082342, -122.950201. Salem, Oregon, U.S.

“On several occasions we have seen and heard the ghost of a small African American girl in a patchwork dress. She hums and sings. We first encountered her when i was young. I came back from playing and told my mom that there was a girl in the woods. I’m not quite sure of the history of my dads 36 acre property or what families owned it prior.” Submitted by Julian Barron under Straight Up Ghosts. 32.67974337912106, -83.37231122075394. Georgia, U.S.

“…I looked to see the far wall of the living room had disappeared and a misty sort of landscape was seen in the distance. Three odd looking creatures stood in the living room and one hissed at me. I just continued walking to the bathroom, shaking like a leaf. I stayed there for a half hour , until I could bring myself to open the door. Walking out , I could see all was back to normal. Weird.” Submitted by Janet B under High Weirdness, Thin Places. 45.572656, -122.679793. Portland, Oregon, U.S.

“I witnessed a large, menacing 8-10 ft kelp monster strutting about on the banks of the Duwamish River, on the beach at 8th Avenue South Park. I think it was the Lufu…It came out of the water, sludging toward me at a slow pace … It had deep red glowing eyes full of revenge and was covered in a horrible swath of litter, mud, and fishing nets.” Submitted by Paul Differentman under Cryptoids, Mythologies. Duwamish River, Seattle WA.

The Power of Liminal Open Data

As more entries come in, we’ll likely see interesting trends emerge in the Liminal Earth data. With a verbose tagging system and GPS coordinates, we’ll have ample metadata to discover hot spots of activity with more submissions.

Imagine if the thousands of Phoenix Lights viewers had a central repository to share their accounts when the phenomenon was occurring. Such a database would have given more credence to the lights and acted as a historical record.

A fantastic blend of technology and weirdness, Liminal Earth could be a leap forward for paranormal research, helping give credence to both personal accounts and large phenomena alike.

Submitting Your Story

As Liminal Earth says, “we welcome submissions from denizens of all realms.” Submitting to the database is pretty easy, and you can keep your identity as transparent or guarded as you like. You can add your story here.

Is This All Real?

Liminal Earth seems to be a mix of humor and seriousness, a playground where reality dissolves, where both devout researchers and distant onlookers are welcome to share their tales, however short or tall.

Like Wikipedia, the accuracy of any crowd-sourced database comes under scrutiny. It’s left in the viewers’ mind to treat it with whatever level of skepticism they want. “What is Truth?” teases the Liminal Earth FAQ.