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Enfield, North London. Late August 1977. In a council house at 284 Green Street, a chest of drawers slid about 18 inches across a bedroom floor. Nobody was touching it. Peggy Hodgson pushed it back and felt it resist.

1817. A cornfield on the Red River in Robertson County, Tennessee. John Bell raised his gun at an animal that looked like a dog with the head of a rabbit. He fired several times. It vanished. That evening, the knocking began.

24 June 1981. About 6 pm, on a hillside above Medjugorje in Herzegovina. Ivanka Ivanković, 15, saw the shimmering silhouette of a woman bathed in a brilliant light. She held a little child in her arms. She said nothing. She beckoned the young people closer.

Thursday, 11 February 1858. Bernadette Soubirous, 14, the daughter of a poor miller's family, stood by the Gave de Pau outside Lourdes. She heard a sound like a gust of wind. The trees were quite still. In the grotto of Massabielle she saw a lady dressed in white, with a blue sash and a yellow rose on each foot.

March 31, 1848. A rented cottage in Hydesville, New York. For about two weeks the Fox family had been hearing knocking. That evening Kate Fox, about twelve, clapped her hands. "Mr. Splitfoot, do as I do." The raps answered with the same number of knocks.

Tepeyac hill. December 1531. Very early in the morning. A Nahua convert named Juan Diego was walking to religious instruction. Then he heard singing from the hilltop, "like the song of many fine birds." At the summit a Maiden was standing. "Her dress shone like the sun." The rock beneath her seemed to send forth beams of light.

Paris. The night of 18 July 1830. A novice of 24 hears her name in the dark. A child of four or five, dressed in white, tells her to come to the chapel. He spreads rays of brightness wherever he passes. The chapel is brilliantly illuminated. Then comes a sound like the rustling of a silk dress. A very beautiful lady sits down in the director's chair.

Thursday, 21 August 1879. Knock, County Mayo. Heavy rain falls on a small parish church. Then, on its south gable wall, three life-size figures appear in a clear, white light. The Virgin Mary, crowned, eyes raised to heaven. St Joseph, head bent towards her. St John the Evangelist, holding a book. Beside them stand an altar, a lamb and a cross.

10 August 1901. Two women from St Hugh's College, Oxford, went walking in the gardens of Versailles, looking for the Petit Trianon. The sky was a little overcast. The sun was shaded. Then something changed. Men in long greyish-green coats and small three-cornered hats gave directions. A cloaked man sat by a garden kiosk, his face "most repulsive." The trees looked "flat and lifeless, like a wood worked in tapestry." No wind stirred them. It was all intensely still.

Saturday, 19 September 1936. About four in the afternoon. Two photographers from Country Life were working on the main staircase of Raynham Hall in Norfolk. Captain Hubert C. Provand was under the focusing cloth. His assistant, Indre Shira, stood beside the camera with the flash pistol. Then Shira saw it. An ethereal veiled form, coming slowly down the stairs. A shout. A flash. Provand looked up and saw nothing at all.

June 18, 1961. Evening. Four girls in a mountain village in Cantabria had taken apples that were not theirs. In a sunken lane at the edge of San Sebastián de Garabandal, they threw stones at the spot where they thought the devil stood. Then came a sound like thunder. A brilliant figure appeared before them. They said it was the Archangel Michael.

August 1914. The British are falling back from Mons, and the men have gone days without sleep. A lance-corporal sees a strange light above the German line. Inside it, three shapes. The one in the centre appears to have outspread wings. Three officers, riding at night, watch a very large body of horsemen keep pace in the fields beside them. When a party goes to look, there is no one there.

Essex. 28 July 1900. Four sisters watch a nun move along a garden path, head bowed, telling her beads. When one of them goes to meet her, the nun turns and comes toward her.

January 17, 1871. France is losing a war. Prussian troops have entered Mayenne. In the hamlet of Pontmain, 12-year-old Eugène Barbedette steps out of his family's barn into the freezing evening. Above a neighbouring house, in a patch of sky empty of stars, he sees a smiling Beautiful Lady. A deep blue robe. Gold stars. A gold crown.

London, January 1762. A narrow lane near Smithfield is so packed with people that nobody can pass. Inside a parish clerk's house, a girl of about twelve lies in bed. Around her come scratches and knocks, like a cat scratching a chair. The knocks answer questions. One for yes. Two for no.

August 23, 1971. Bélmez de la Moraleda, a village of about 2,000 people in the Sierra Mágina. In the kitchen at Calle Real 5, María Gómez Cámara saw a face forming in the concrete floor. Human features. A gaze that seemed to follow whoever looked at it.

Cottage City, Maryland. January 1949. A 14-year-old boy and his grandmother heard a dripping noise in her bedroom. Then came scratching under the floorboards. Within weeks, fruit flew across rooms, a heavy armchair tilted slowly and fell over, and words appeared on the boy's skin. His Lutheran pastor watched him through the night and wrote to the parapsychologist J. B. Rhine at Duke.

January 1971. Roger and Carolyn Perron moved their five daughters into an old farmhouse on Round Top Road in Harrisville, Rhode Island. What followed, the family says, lasted nearly a decade. Beds lifted at 5:15 most mornings. A stench of rotting flesh. Children crying or wailing. A very tall woman in an old gray dress, her head hanging to the side.

Saturday 19 September 1846. Around 3 p.m. Two young cowherds were watching cattle on a high pasture above La Salette, in the French Alps. Mélanie Calvat was 14. Maximin Giraud was 11.

Akita, Japan. June 1973. In a convent chapel on the edge of the city, a deaf novice named Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa saw brilliant rays pour from the tabernacle. Weeks later, she said, the wooden statue of Mary spoke to her. A wound in the form of a cross appeared in the statue's right hand. It bled. Then it began to sweat, spreading a sweet perfume.

Christmas Eve, 1969. Around midnight. David Farrant was passing Highgate Cemetery in north London. He glimpsed a grey figure. He later described it as about seven feet tall, floating just above the ground. The air turned icy cold.

Edinburgh. 1998. A homeless man looking for shelter broke the lock on a domed tomb in Greyfriars Kirkyard. Inside lay Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, the Lord Advocate remembered as "Bluidy Mackenzie". The floor gave way. He fell into a pit of plague victims' bones, and he fled.

December 18, 1975. George and Kathy Lutz moved their three children into a Dutch Colonial at 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville. In November 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. had shot six members of his family in that house as they slept.

Rosenheim, Bavaria. Autumn 1967. In the law office of attorney Sigmund Adam, the lights would not stay on. Fluorescent tubes went dark and were found twisted in their holders. Bulbs exploded. Fuses tripped with no cause anyone could find. And the telephones kept calling the speaking clock, with nobody at the dial.

December 29, 1972. Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 went down in the Florida Everglades. 101 people died. Captain Bob Loft was among them. Flight engineer Don Repo was pulled out alive and died later.

2 April 1968. Zeitoun, a district of Cairo. Across the street from St. Mary's Coptic Orthodox Church, Muslim workers at a public-transport garage saw a woman dressed in white on the church roof. One man thought she was a nun about to jump.

November 28, 1981. Kibeho College, a girls' boarding school in southern Rwanda. A young student named Alphonsine Mumureke saw a Lady of incomparable beauty, dressed in white. She called herself "Nyina wa Jambo". The Mother of the Word.

Gary, Indiana. A rented cottage at 3860 Carolina Street. Late in 2011, Latoya Ammons moved in with her mother, Rosa Campbell, and her three children. Then the flies came. Large black flies, swarming the porch in December. Footsteps climbed the basement stairs. Wet bootprints appeared on the floor.

Tuesday, 29 November 1932. Around six in the evening, five children stood outside a convent school in Beauraing, Belgium. Albert Voisin, eleven years old, looked up at the railway viaduct. "Look! the Virgin walking on that bridge!" The girls saw her too. A lady in white, walking in the air. Clouds hid her feet. They were frightened. They ran.

23 October 1642. The first great battle of the English Civil War was fought beneath Edge Hill in Warwickshire. About two months later, around Christmas, shepherds near Kineton heard drums in the dark, far off. Then soldiers appeared in the air. There were two armies, one under the King's colours and one under Parliament's. Muskets. Cannon. Horses neighing. The fight went on until two or three in the morning. It came back on the nights that followed.

North Tedworth, Wiltshire. 1662. A vagrant drummer named William Drury was caught with a forged licence, and his drum ended up in the house of John Mompesson. Then the knocking started.

December 1, 1716. Epworth Rectory, Lincolnshire. A maid hears groans at the dining-room door. Susanna Wesley would describe them as "several dismal groans, like a person in extremes, at the point of death."

Barbados. A family vault built partly into the ground in the churchyard of Christ Church Parish Church, its door a massive stone that took six or seven men to move. Each time it was opened for a new burial, the heavy lead coffins inside had shifted. Scattered. Piled on one another. Some with their heads down.

Amherst, Nova Scotia. September 4, 1878. In a yellow cottage on Princess Street, 18-year-old Esther Cox cried out that she was swelling up and would burst. Then three terrific reports sounded beneath her bed. The whole room shook.

January 1897. In a log house in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, Zona Heaster Shue was found dead. She had been married only a few months. The local doctor recorded a natural death. She was buried the next day.

Monday 22 July 1985. Evening. A small group stopped to pray at the roadside grotto outside Ballinspittle, County Cork. Above them stood a life-size concrete Virgin Mary in a halo of 11 electric lights. Then, they said, she seemed to breathe. Her head moved. Her hands moved.

October 2003. Hampton Court Palace, on the River Thames west of London. A fire door near Clock Court kept flying open, three nights in a row. Security staff went to the CCTV to find out who was leaving it open.

August 1966. A council house at 30 East Drive, Pontefract. Joe and Jean Pritchard were on holiday in Devon with Diane. Phillip stayed behind with grandmother Sarah Scholes. Then a cool gust of wind blew through the house. Chalk-like dust fell from just below the ceiling. Pools of water appeared on the kitchen floor.

Stratford, Connecticut. Sunday, 10 March 1850. The Reverend Eliakim Phelps came home from church to find his nursery in disorder. Chairs on the bed. Shovel, tongs and poker in unusual positions. The next day, clothing lay on a sheet with its arms folded across the breast. Like a corpse laid out for the coffin.

September 1889. A farmhouse seven miles from Shawville, in Clarendon Township, Quebec. Money vanished from a drawer. Then the fires began. Eight in a single day. Stones crashed through the windows, thrown by invisible hands. At the centre of it all stood Dinah Burden McLean, an eleven-year-old orphan from Scotland.

Thornton Heath, south London. Friday 18 February 1938, around midnight. A glass flew past and splintered against the wall. A light bulb vanished from its socket and turned up on a chair, unbroken and still hot.

Columbus, Ohio. March 1984. In a foster home on the city's North Side, things would not stay still. A clock radio's numbers raced. Lights and televisions switched themselves on and off. Taps opened all over the house at once. Eggs, butter, plates and a knife moved, and it all seemed to centre on one person. Fourteen-year-old Tina Resch.

West Pittston, Pennsylvania. A double-block house on Chase Street. Jack and Janet Smurl lived in one half with their four daughters. Jack's parents lived in the other. For years, the family said, something lived there with them.

February 3, 1958. Mid-afternoon in Seaford, Long Island. The Herrmann children found a bottle of holy water on their mother's dresser. It stood open, its contents spilled. Then the shampoo. Then the starch. Then the bleach in the basement.

April 1921. A four-room weatherboard cottage on the outskirts of Guyra, in the New England district of New South Wales. Stones began to fall on the tin roof. Thumps struck the walls hard enough to be heard 100 yards away. One by one, the windows broke, until almost none were left.

February 1897. A woman who signed herself "X" arrived at Ballechin House in Perthshire, Scotland. Her name was Ada Goodrich-Freer. She had come to find out whether the house was haunted.

Tuesday, 23 May 1995. An open field outside the village of Donglü, in Hebei province, China. About 30,000 Catholics from the underground Church had gathered for an open-air Mass on the eve of the feast of Mary Help of Christians. Four bishops and nearly 100 priests stood at the altar.

Winter, 1803. Hammersmith was still a village on the western edge of London. And something was walking in the churchyard of St Paul's. Witnesses described a very tall figure dressed all in white. Some said it wore a calf-skin dress, with horns on its head and glass eyes. It rose from the tombstones. It seized a man by the throat.

November 24, 1974. Bridgeport, Connecticut. For years, a small bungalow on Lindley Street had been knocking. That weekend, it turned violent. The Goodin family called the police. Officers, firefighters, priests and reporters went inside. Many later said they watched a refrigerator rise off the floor, a television float and turn, and a crucifix burst from the wall. Outside, thousands of onlookers filled the street.

Miami, January 1967. In the storeroom of Tropication Arts, a wholesaler of Florida souvenirs, the stock would not stay on the shelves. Beer mugs fell. Glasses shattered. Alligator ashtrays crashed to the floor.

November 1960. Sauchie, a mining village in Clackmannanshire. In a small house on Park Crescent, an 11-year-old girl named Virginia Campbell lies awake while the house refuses to stay still. Something thunks like a bouncing ball, first in the bedroom, then on the stairs. A heavy linen chest rocks, lifts and glides across the floor. Her pillow turns beneath her head.

Late January 1956. A small silver key appeared on Shirley Hitchings's bed at 63 Wycliffe Road, Battersea. It fitted no lock in the house. Her father left it in the kitchen. The next morning it was on her bed again.

Galloway, Scotland. 1695. On a farm called Ring-Croft of Stocking, near Auchencairn, cattle were found loose with their ropes cut. Then the stones began to fly. No one could see who threw them.

June 1882. Cheltenham. Rosina Despard, aged 19, heard someone at her bedroom door. She opened it. No one was there. A few steps along the passage, she saw her. A tall lady dressed in black, standing at the head of the stairs, her face hidden in a handkerchief.

August 17, 2000. Assiut, Upper Egypt. Above the Church of St. Mark the Apostle, residents reported an exceptionally bright light. Over the weeks that followed, thousands crowded the streets and rooftops in the hours before dawn. They saw dazzling lights and blue-green flashes over the church. Large white doves flew around the towers, shining in a light no one could explain. And between the two towers, many said, stood the Virgin Mary. A halo of light around her. Hands outstretched.

December 11, 2009. One o'clock in the morning. Above the middle dome of a Coptic church in Warraq al-Hadar, on the edge of Giza, a light took shape. Witnesses said it was the Virgin Mary. Full height. Luminous robes. A pure white dress and a royal blue belt.

December 1924. The oil tanker SS Watertown is steaming through the Pacific off the Mexican coast. Two seamen, James Courtney and Michael Meehan, have been overcome by fumes while cleaning a cargo tank. They are buried at sea.

April 26, 1987. One year to the day after Chernobyl. In the village of Hrushiv, in Soviet Ukraine, a 12-year-old girl looked from her family's yard toward the old wooden church of the Holy Trinity. On its balcony stood a woman in dark clothing. The girl called her mother. Her mother and the neighbours came. They saw her too.

Runcorn, Cheshire. August 1952. In a bedroom at No. 1 Byron Street, something began to scratch inside a dresser drawer. Soon the dressing-table was rattling and slamming its drawers. Its mirror swung on its pivots.