The files the record can't close

How the ranking works

The formula is stated because it should be arguable: open field disputes count triple, contested claims and competing report dates count double, a dossier already classified Disputed adds four, and documentation depth — claims, legends, sourced facts — adds a fraction as tiebreaker. More paper means more surface for disagreement, so famous files tend to rank. That is a property of the record, not of the places.

Three kinds of trouble count. Field disputes are merge casualties: two registries disagree on the noun, the year, or the door. Contested claims are filings whose own evidence class admits dispute, or that carry a conflict note. Competing report dates mean sources cannot agree on when the phenomenon supposedly began — the smallest and strangest category.

Unresolved is not debunked

A contested file is not a failed one. Brown Mountain leads this table precisely because it is heavily documented — enough sources filed that some of them disagree, and the archive keeps both versions on the page. The thin dossiers are not here because nobody argued; a file with one source has no way to be wrong yet.

What the ranking cannot measure is which version is true — only that the record, honestly kept, sometimes refuses to close. Read a row as "the sources differ" and never as "the ghost won." The archive preserves the disagreement; it does not adjudicate it.