license	other
task_categories	feature-extraction
language	en
tags	earth-science geography geospatial natural-disasters archaeology ufo meteorites caves tornadoes earthquakes volcanoes ghost-towns megaliths shipwrecks bigfoot haunted-places
pretty_name	Strange Places v5.2 - Real-World Mysterious Phenomena
size_categories	100K<n<1M
dataset_info	features splits name dtype category string name dtype latitude float64 name dtype longitude float64 name dtype name string name dtype description string name dtype date string name num_examples train 354770

Strange Places v5.2

354,770 georeferenced mysterious phenomena from NASA, NOAA, USGS, BFRO, NUFORC, OpenStreetMap, the Megalithic Portal, and the Shadowlands Haunted Places Index. Every record comes from authoritative databases -- no synthetic data.

Part of the Data Trove collection at dr.eamer.dev.

What's Inside

• 354,770 records across 14 categories
• 99.9% valid coordinates (354,544 georeferenced)
• Balanced: largest category is 20%
• All real data from government and authoritative sources
• Global coverage

Categories

Category	Count	Source
Tornadoes	71,813	NOAA
Caves	70,242	OpenStreetMap
UFO Sightings	60,632	NUFORC
Megalithic Sites	60,028	Megalithic Portal
Meteorite Landings	32,186	NASA
Ghost Towns	18,154	OpenStreetMap
Storm Events	14,770	NOAA
Haunted Places	9,717	Shadowlands Index
Thermal Springs	5,003	NOAA
Bigfoot Sightings	3,797	BFRO
Earthquakes	3,742	USGS
Shipwrecks	3,653	NOAA
Fireballs	863	NASA
Volcanoes	170	USGS

Visualizations

I built several interactive visualizations using this data:

• Keep Looking -- a visual poem about UFO sightings and wonder
• Strange Places Explorer -- interactive map of all phenomena
• Big Foot -- BFRO sighting patterns

Record Format

{
  "category": "bigfoot_sightings",
  "latitude": 47.7511,
  "longitude": -120.7401,
  "name": "Report 637: Campers' encounter in Wrangell - St. Elias",
  "description": "Class A - Witnesses observed a large bipedal figure...",
  "date": "2000-06-16"
}

Usage

import json

with open('strange_places_v5.2.json') as f:
    data = json.load(f)

print(f"Total: {len(data):,} records")

# Filter by category
bigfoot = [r for r in data if r['category'] == 'bigfoot_sightings']
ghosts = [r for r in data if r['category'] == 'haunted_places']

Sources & Licenses

Source	Categories	License
NASA	Meteorites, Fireballs	Public Domain
NOAA	Tornadoes, Storms, Springs, Shipwrecks	Public Domain
USGS	Earthquakes, Volcanoes	Public Domain
OpenStreetMap	Caves, Ghost Towns	ODbL 1.0
Megalithic Portal	Megalithic Sites	Attribution
NUFORC	UFO Sightings	Fair Use
BFRO	Bigfoot Sightings	Fair Use
Shadowlands Index	Haunted Places	Fair Use

Versions

• v5.2 (2026-02): Added bigfoot sightings (BFRO, 3,797) and haunted places (Shadowlands, 9,717). 354K records, 14 categories.
• v5.1 (2026-01): Removed waterfalls (separate dataset), 341K records
• v5.0 (2025-12): Added storm events, thermal springs
• v4.0 (2025-11): Initial release

Related

• Data Trove -- full dataset catalog
• lukesteuber.com -- portfolio
• Kaggle
• HuggingFace

Author

Luke Steuber -- @lukesteuber.com on Bluesky

Structured Data (JSON-LD)

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Dataset",
  "name": "Strange Places v5.2 - Mysterious Phenomena",
  "description": "354,770 mysterious phenomena worldwide including UFO sightings, bigfoot sightings, haunted places, megaliths, caves, ghost towns, meteorites, fireballs, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, and shipwrecks from NASA, NOAA, USGS, BFRO, NUFORC, OpenStreetMap, Shadowlands, and the Megalithic Portal.",
  "url": "https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/lucassteuber/strange-places-mysterious-phenomena",
  "sameAs": "https://huggingface.co/datasets/lukeslp/strange-places-mysterious-phenomena",
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "creator": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Luke Steuber",
    "url": "https://lukesteuber.com"
  },
  "keywords": ["UFO", "bigfoot", "haunted places", "caves", "megaliths", "ghost towns", "meteorites", "earthquakes", "volcanoes", "tornadoes", "geospatial", "mysterious phenomena"],
  "temporalCoverage": "1950/2026",
  "spatialCoverage": {
    "@type": "Place",
    "name": "Global"
  },
  "distribution": [
    {
      "@type": "DataDownload",
      "encodingFormat": "application/json",
      "contentUrl": "https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/lucassteuber/strange-places-mysterious-phenomena"
    }
  ]
}