Halloween is on the horizon, which means monsters, ghosts, zombies, werewolves, and more are becoming more prevalent in the neighbourhood!
In this article, we are going to take a look at the spooky side of sport, with some genuinely weird happenings, alongside some more tongue in cheek spooky sporting superstars and teams!
And if you love spooky things then check out bet365 Games, which offers an extensive range of spooky slots, creepy card games and terrifying table games and more! Perfect for Halloween!
So take a look through our list of supernatural sporting venues, strange people and events and more!
Herbert Chapman is one of the greatest managers in English football’s history. He was the first manager to take two different teams to the English First Division title (Huddersfield and Arsenal). He also won the FA Cup and Charity Shield with both of those teams.
Furthermore, his tactical legacy saw him influence the game in England going forward into the 40s, 50s 60s and beyond.
Chapman died from pneumonia in 1934, while still serving as Arsenal manager and his death was a huge loss to the club.
Ever since, there have been numerous stories of Chapman’s ghost haunting Highbury, Arsenal’s former home stadium.
With Arsenal now moved to the Emirates Stadium, Highbury is now a residential area and residents there claim Herbert has been spotted in the gardens, walking on what was once the Arsenal pitch.
The Gunners are not the only team said to have a haunted stadium, Sunderland’s Stadium of Light and Bury’s Gigg Lane were also both reputed to be haunted.
Chester Football Club are a non-league team who used to play in the Football League. Their new ground, the Deva Stadium lies close to open countryside on the Welsh border, close to the River Dee.
Early one morning, just after dawn, a local resident Matty Rodgers was on his daily walk to work which took him past the stadium.
He was stunned to see a ‘massive’ and ‘jet black’ feline creature in the car park of the stadium, so much so he snapped a shot of the creature.
Matty’s story made the news pages of Cheshire Live news website and it was just one of several ‘big cat’ reports in the area around Chester, Ellesmere Port, Warrington and Frodsham at around the same time.
Back in January 2023, several news outlets ran a somewhat spooky story about a photograph taken of a stadium set to host a Mexican Liga soccer game between FC Juarez and Club Tijuana.
As fans gathered for the start of the game, one fan took a snapshot of the stadium with a glorious sunset as the backdrop.
However, when the fan viewed the photo, he noted something else in the picture that he had not seen at the time the picture was taken.
Shown clearly in the sky to the right of the sun, appears to be a classic UFO.
The picture, according to the Daily Star in the UK, has been analysed and is purportedly 100% genuine according to one UFO expert.
What do you think?
Back in 2014, Borussia Dortmund faced Bayern Munich in the German Cup Final, in a game held at a neutral venue, the Olympic Stadium in Berlin.
The game was shown live on TV and eventually ended up in a 2-0 win for Bayern, but the result was perhaps overshadowed by what happened at one point in the game.
Near the end of the first half, Bayern had possession in their own half, when the TV cameras captured what appeared to be a shadowy figure moving close to the player in possession.
The figure remained visible for a second or so, before vanishing.
It is one of a spate of ‘moving figure’ spectres spotted at stadia at around that time with others caught in games in Bolivia and Indonesia amongst others.
Debunkers have claimed that the shadowy figures are related to the pulley cameras that many stadia now have, allowing pictures to be taken above the field.
We’re not so sure, what’s your opinion?
Hearing that teams or individual sports players had been cursed in one way or another are relatively common throughout sports.
Famous older curse stories include the Chicago Cubs “curse of Billy the Goat”, Hawthorns “Kennett Curse” and the Boston Red Sox former Curse of the Bambino, which was finally broken in 2004 when they lifted the World Series.
A more modern curse is the Madden Cover curse, which states that any NFL player that features on the cover of Madden, is sure to have some type of injury, suspension, or big drop off in form as a result of appearing on the cover.
This year, it is Bills QB Josh Allen that is the cover star and, weirdly, he is having his poorest season in the NFL so far.
Some of the other famous Madden Curse victims include:
Since then, the Madden Curse seems to have been broken, although Josh Allen’s struggles this season with the much-fancied Bills does have fans wondering!
I make no apologies for the dreadfulness of some of these puns…
Do you have any other suggestions we can add to the list?
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