The rules, stated in public, so you can hold us to them.
The entire value of this archive rests on one claim: the events recorded here actually happened. That claim is worth nothing unless it is enforced line by line, so the rules are published rather than implied.
1. The admission rule
An event is admitted only if it can be traced to contemporaneous records, primary documents, peer-reviewed literature, or credible reporting. Folklore, creepypasta, and cases whose earliest source is a later retelling do not qualify, however famous they are.
If the only evidence that something happened is that people say it happened, it does not enter the register.
2. Fact and theory are never mixed
Every record keeps two things structurally apart.
What is documented. Facts supported by sources. Nothing in this section is inferred, reconstructed, or assumed. If a claim cannot survive the question who recorded this, and when, it does not belong there.
Leading explanations. Hypotheses, always labelled as hypotheses, always attributed to whoever proposed them, always with their evidentiary standing stated: peer-reviewed, contested, dismissed, or untested.
You should never have to guess which one you are reading.
3. The four statuses
Unsolved
No explanation has achieved acceptance. Hypotheses may exist; none has prevailed.
Partially explained
A substantial part of the case is settled. A material part is not.
Later explained
The case has a widely accepted explanation. It stays in the register because it was genuinely anomalous when it happened.
Debunked
The anomaly does not survive scrutiny. The event, the statistics, or the account is false or misrepresented.
Later explained and Debunked records are not failures of the register. They are the point of it. An archive that keeps only its mysteries is a marketing exercise.
4. Correcting the popular version
Most of these cases are better known through embellishment than through their records. Where the widely repeated version departs from the documented one, the record says so plainly, in its own section, with the specific error named.
That section is the reason to read this site rather than the hundredth listicle.
5. Sourcing
Primary sources wherever they exist: inquest records, case files, published papers, official statements, contemporaneous reporting. Secondary sources must be identifiable and accountable; no content farms, no aggregators citing aggregators.
Where sources conflict, the record states the conflict rather than quietly choosing a side. Where a claim is widely repeated but untraceable, the record says it is untraceable. That is a finding, not a gap.
6. Language
No speculation in the register's own voice. We report what others have proposed; we do not add theories of our own.
No sensational framing. Nothing here is chilling, sinister, or beyond explanation. The facts carry the weight, and the adjectives borrowed from the genre are precisely what you came here to escape.
Length follows the record, never a word count. A thin case gets a short record. Padding a thin case forces speculation, and speculation is the one thing this archive cannot afford.
7. Review
Every record carries a review date. Cases with active investigations, pending forensic work, or a live scientific literature are re-reviewed on a schedule.
The register treats its own records as provisional. When the record changes, the entry changes. An entry that has quietly gone stale is worse than no entry at all.
Found an error in a record? Tell us. Corrections supported by evidence are made promptly. We would rather be corrected than be consistent.