This is a list of ten mysterious letters tied to different crimes. Solving the identity of the author or cracking the code of the messages would be major breaks in the case. After reading this list have a crack at seeing whether you can solve any.

This is the least deadly entry on the list. The letters were sent from Syracuse in 1997, 1999, 2002, 2010, 2011 and 2012. Each letter contained white powder, which the writer claimed was anthrax. It later proved to be baby powder or laundry detergent. Five letters went to Bishop Ludden High School from 1997 to 2010, three went to Le Moyne College from 1999 to 2002, one went to Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle’s office, one was sent to Gaylord Bros., a library supplies manufacturer in North Syracuse and the other eleven went to military and police associations, non-profit groups, government officials, private businesses and TV celebrities all across the East.

The FBI believes the letters are all written by one deranged man who is over the age of thirty-five. He has probably been in contact with the mental health system. He is probably a loner who has problems functioning in society. He also has a fascination with H.P. Lovecraft because he includes passages from him in his letters. The FBI is currently looking for tips on possible suspects.

After the 9/11 attacks, seven letters were mailed containing actual anthrax spores. Two sets of letters were sent out, the first to ABC, CBS, NBC, AMI and the New York Post. The other set were sent to two Democratic senators—Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Patrick Leahy of Vermont. Altogether five people were killed and seventeen people were infected.

The notes seemed to indicate that the letters were sent by Muslim extremists because of the message—“death to America and to Israel.” Authorities believe this was misdirection employed by the letter writer.

The FBI believes Bruce Edwards Ivins, a bio-weapons defense expert, was responsible for the attacks. When the FBI asked the National Academy of Sciences to review their work they came to the conclusion that—with the information available—they would not be able to prove that Ivins created the anthrax. There have been many people including senior microbiologists and other Senators and Representatives who either believe Ivins’ is not responsible or he did not act alone. Ivins committed suicide in 2008.

On October 20, 2012, thirty-eight year old mother of four, Vindalee Smith was found dead in her Brooklyn home with a gaping wound in her neck. Smith was eight months pregnant and was going to get married the next day. Her fiancé was Anthony Jackman, who was already married. Under her body was a computer printed note saying: “I will kill one pregnant woman a month starting now until Lee Boyd Malvo is set free!” The note was signed “the apprentice” along with a smiley face.

Malvo along with John Allen Muhammad were the D.C. Snipers who were responsible for the death of ten people. Police believe the note was used to throw investigators off. No one has been arrested in connection with the death.

On May 1, 2008 shopping center magnate Harold “Hal” Wenal came home to find his wife of twenty years, Eva Kay, dead in a pool of blood. The sixty year old former model was beaten and had her throat slit. She was apparently attacked as soon as she opened the door to her home. Despite the Wenal’s wealth and home full of valuables, nothing was taken from the house.

In July 2008, a cut-and-pasted letter was delivered to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The letter seemed to be an explanation of why Eva Kay was murdered indicating she may have been having an extramarital affair. Authorities believe the letter is genuine and from the murderer.

The Cindy James case is an unusual crime that took place in Richmond, British Columbia. Forty-four year old Nurse Cindy James was being stalked by a supposedly unknown assailant. Starting four months after her divorce, James was the victim of nearly one hundred incidents of harassment. This included threatening phone calls and notes left on her front porch. When the police got involved, things escalated. James was found bound and gagged outside of her home. Another time she was stabbed through the hand with a paring knife. According to friends and family, the stalker wanted to scare her to death.

The police—on the other hand—believed that James was writing the notes herself and making up the phone calls. She was even committed to a psychiatric hospital.

On May 25, 1989, six years and seven months after the first threatening phone call James went missing. Her car was found in a neighborhood parking lot. Her groceries were still in the car, her wallet was under the car and there was blood on the door. Two weeks later on June 8, 1989 James’ body was found in an abandoned house with her hands and feet tied behind her back and a black nylon stocking tied tightly around her neck. The cause of death was a drug overdose of morphine. Despite being found tied up, Police concluded that James committed suicide. The author of the notes was never discovered.

The bizarre case of JonBenét Ramsey started on December 25, 1996 when the six year old child beauty pageant queen was believed to have gone missing from her home in Boulder, Colorado. Sadly her body was found in the wine cellar of the family home eight hours after she was reported missing. She was found under her favorite blanket with a nylon rope tied around her neck, her hands tied above her head and duct tape on her mouth. There were also indications that she was sexually assaulted. Her skull was fractured from being struck with a blunt object. A tweed cord combined with a paintbrush made a garrote that was used to strangle her.

JonBenét’s mother found a two-and-a-half page handwritten ransom note asking for $118,000 which was almost the exact amount of JonBenét’s father’s bonus from work. The letter is a longer than normal ransom note, and it seemed to indicate that it was from a group of foreigners. The letter contains many threats to the Ramseys telling them not to go to the authorities.

Authorities believe the author of the note is the murderer but have yet to find a match for the handwriting or a match for the DNA left on JonBenét’s body, though some speculated that the writing matched that of JonBenét’s mother.

Circleville is a small city in Ohio that has a population of over 13,000. Its biggest event is the annual Circleville Pumpkin Show. It is also the home of a mysterious letter writer known as the Circleville Letter Writer.

Starting in 1976 residents of Circleville began receiving mysterious, vindictive letters. Thousands of letters, written in block letters were sent to city officials and even normal citizens. One recipient of the letters was school bus driver Mary Gillespie. She received letters accusing her of having an extra-martial affair with a school official. On August 19, 1977 Mary’s husband Ron Gillispie received a phone call seeming to indicate the identity of the writer. He left his house with his gun to confront the writer. He was found dead a short distance from his house. His car was driven off the road and his gun had been fired once. He died as a result of the crash and it is unknown why he fired the gun. It is unclear if it was an accident or murder.

Later, while driving her bus, Mary saw signs along her route harassing her. She went to take one down and discovered a booby-trap meant to fire a gun at her. The gun belonged to her former brother-in-law Paul Freshour.

Freshour was convicted of attempted murder and was thought to be the Circleville writer. However, while incarcerated the letters continued despite him being in solitary confinement without access to letter writing material and his mail being monitored. He was denied parole because of the letters and received one himself after his parole was denied.

The murder of Ricky McCormick is the top unsolved crime from the FBI’s Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit (CRRU). Rick McCormick’s decomposing body was found in a cornfield in St. Charles County, Missouri on June 30, 1999. McCormick was an unemployed, high school drop out with a criminal record.

His body was found fifteen miles from his current address in a place with no public transportation. There was no official cause of death but it was not ruled a homicide at the time because there was no reason for the police to believe he met with foul play.

12 years after his death, the FBI announced that McCormick’s death was a homicide and asked for the public’s help with two encrypted notes found on McCormick’s body. Both the CRRU and American Cryptogram Association have been unable to solve the code. They believe the letter was written three days before his death and even set up a page dedicated to asking for help from the public.

A serial murderer who enjoyed taunting the police and the public, The Zodiac killer operated in California during the late 1960′s and early ’70′s. He claimed five victims in total but injured two as well.

Like our number one entry, the Zodiac created his own nickname in one of his letters—eighteen in all. He also carved messages into a table at a library and a car door at a crime scene. He generally sent the letters to newspapers after the murders. The Zodiac complicated his letters with his use of cryptography. He wrote four coded messages and to this day, only one has been partially solved. It was solved by amateur code crackers Donald and Bettye Harden who read it in the newspaper.

The other ciphers include the 340 Character Cipher sent November 8, 1969, the letter sent April 20, 1970, and the June 26, 1970 cipher both of which were sent to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Throughout the years people have been trying to solve the other ciphers. Some have even claimed to have solved them but there is no confirmation that the codes were broken and the crimes remain unsolved.

The unknown infamous serial killer was active in and around the Whitechapel area in England in 1888. Altogether the Ripper claimed five victims—all prostitutes. There are three different letters that are thought to be written by the Ripper himself: the Dear Boss letter, the Saucy Jacky postcard and the From Hell letter.

The Dear Boss letter was where the name Jack the Ripper came from; it was how the author of the letter signed off. In the letter, he taunted the police and explained the pleasure he got from the murders. He talked about how he would kill more women and how he planned to cut off his next victim’s ear lobe. He even mocked the idea that the police thought he was a doctor. The letter was given credence when three days later two victims were found; one of them missing an ear lobe.

The second correspondence was the Saucy Jacky postcard which referenced the Dear Boss letter before it was made public and the double murder from the previous night. The postcard also appeared to be smeared in blood. These two letters were both sent to the Central News Agency.

The third letter was sent to George Lusk who was the president of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee and was written on a three-inch-square cardboard box. Along with the letter was a piece of kidney soaking in wine. One of the victims was missing their kidney, but it could not be determined whether the piece of the kidney was actually from the victim. While the handwriting was similar to the first two letters, it was filled with blatant spelling mistakes unlike the first two. There have been many suspects in the case, but it remains one of history’s great unsolved murder mysteries.

Rob Grimminck is a crime fiction writer. You can follow him on twitter @RobertGrimminck or on Facebook.

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The bizarre, the unusual, the amazing, the unexplained—these strange subjects continue to fascinate us, don’t they? Since we can’t get enough, in a follow up to a previous list, here are ten more unsolved mysteries we don’t hear about every day.

The Baychimo, a 1,322 ton steam ship owned by the Hudson Bay Trading Company, regularly traveled to Alaska and British Columbia transporting goods and passengers, and fur trading with the Inuit who lived along the Beaufort Sea.

On October 1, 1931, Baychimo was making a return trip to Vancouver. She’d completed a run to Victoria Island, and her hold was stuffed with furs. Unfortunately for captain John Cornwell and the crew, winter arrived sooner than expected with freezing temperatures, strong winds, and the threat of blizzards. Baychimo became stuck fast in the pack-ice, and the crew were helpless to do anything except wait.

Luck seemed to be on the captain’s side since two days later, the ice shifted and Baychimo broke free, but Dame Fortune was fickle. The ship continued to be trapped, then released by the thickening ice. By October 15, the Hudson Bay Company sent airplanes to rescue twenty-two of the crew, but the captain and fourteen other crew members stayed behind, building a shelter on the ice. Imagine their surprise when they awoke on November 25, the morning after a terrible blizzard, to find Baychimo gone.

A few days later, a seal hunter told Cornwell he’d spotted the ship adrift about forty-four miles (71 km) southwest. As time passed, the company continued to receive reports from eyewitnesses who had seen the drifting ghost ship. By 1939, scores of sightings were reported. However, no one was able to catch up to Baychimo, which continued to uncannily elude pursuit. The last sighting occurred in 1969. Despite recent searches, the ship’s ultimate fate remains unknown.

In June 1942, after a population boom brought about by the increased manufacturing of warships in the area, the citizens of Pascagoula, Mississippi were stalked by more than the specter of war—a hair cutting phantom terrorized the night.

The man nicknamed the Phantom Barber by newspapers worked in the darkness made more profound by the Army’s blackout regulations. On Monday or Friday evenings, he slit a window screen to gain access to a house, crept inside, and cut the hair of sleeping occupants, particularly blonde girls. Not necessarily one lock or two, but sometimes shearing as much as a full head of hair. He took nothing else from the home except his prize.

He began with two young girls in the convent of Our Lady of Victories, followed by a six year old female child visiting another family. That time, he left a clue—the print of a man’s bare foot in sand on an unoccupied bed in the room. The police were baffled and offered a $300 reward for information. The public was in a panic. Women refused to go outside at night. Men applied for pistol permits. Bloodhounds were brought in to track the bizarre intruder, but the efforts failed. The Phantom Barber continued his hair cutting incursions.

At last, the phantom broke his pattern, or so it seemed. A window screen was slit in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Terrell Heidelburg, and the intruder came inside their bedroom. However, rather than cutting hair, he brutally assaulted the couple. Mrs. Heidelburg lost her front teeth and was knocked unconscious, while her husband was beaten with a metal bar. Both survived the attack. Two months later, the police chief announced the arrest of a suspect, William A. Dolan, a chemist, who was charged with attempted murder.

A connection between Dolan and the Phantom Barber came with the discovery of human hair allegedly found near his residence. He continued to deny he was the phantom, and while convicted of the attack on the Heidelburgs—he bore a grudge against Terrell’s father, a judge—was never charged with the phantom’s acts. Since the Phantom Barber never touched his victims other than their hair, it would seem no meaningful tie exists between Dolan and the Phantom Barber, whose break-ins ended as mysteriously as they began.

In Atlanta, Georgia, just prior to midnight on September 8, seventy-seven year old Minnie Winston found what appeared to be blood splattered on her bathroom floor and fetched her seventy-nine year old husband, William. Further searching by the couple revealed more spots of red, blood-like fluid on the bathroom’s lower walls, the kitchen, living room, bedroom, hallways, and basement. Blood was also found in a crawlspace and under a television set.

Nothing like this had ever happened in their rented house before and the couple were understandably alarmed. They owned no pets and lived alone together. Unable to come up with a satisfactory explanation, and with blood continuing to come out of the floors and walls, Minnie and William called the police.

At first, their concern wasn’t taken seriously. William regularly underwent dialysis at home, but he and his wife insisted the blood belonged to neither of them. On police investigation, laboratory results showed the liquid was human blood, Type O. Both William and Minnie were Type A. Once detectives ruled out evidence of wrongdoing, they were at a loss to explain the phenomena and dropped the investigation.

Was the “bleeding house” a hoax perpetrated on the Winstons? Or evidence of poltergeist activity? We’ve been unable to discover what happened to the couple following the events in 1987. Current records indicate the house at 1114 Fountain Drive is occupied.

Around April 8, the Bowen family in Guyra, New South Wales, Australia, was terrorized by heavy thumps and bangs on the walls, followed by showers of stones striking the roof and the outside of the house, sometimes breaking windows.

The apparent poltergeist attacks continued every night. Local police investigated, patrolled the area, and even surrounded the house, but stones continued to fly and loud bangs were heard. A team of detectives from Sydney kept the Bowen family under constant surveillance and formed a double cordon around the residence, to no avail. The thumping did not cease, nor did the stone throwing, much to the neighborhood’s consternation and distress. Detectives concluded the family couldn’t be responsible.

At one point, a twelve year old daughter, Minnie, confessed to throwing a few stones and rapping on a wall to scare a sibling, but events proved she couldn’t have been responsible for all the phenomena. Minnie appeared to be the focus of the activity. When she was sent to Glenn Innes to visit her grandmother, violent thumps and bangs began to disrupt the house. Ornaments toppled off shelves. Stones were thrown out of nowhere. In early August 1921, Minnie returned home. The poltergeist activity declined, and finally stopped.

Minnie Bowen eventually married and never spoke to journalists about her past encounters with the unknown. The attacks have never been fully explained.

At the age of twelve, frightening events began to occur to Eleanore Zugun. When she visited her grandmother’s cottage in Romania, stones smashed against the structure. Pins and needles flew across the room to scratch her and bury themselves in her arms. Broken dishes added to the ordeal. A witness reported seeing a water jug float through the air and land several feet away. Her grandmother believed Eleanore was possessed by an evil spirit.

Months later, Eleanore was sent to a monastery where she was given an exorcism with no effect. The priests sent her to a lunatic asylum. By that time, newspapers had reported her story, which came to the attention of Fritz Grunweld, a respected researcher. His observations of Eleanore concluded the supernatural phenomena was genuine.

Next, she was invited to live with Countess Zoë Wassiliko-Serecki in Vienna. The countess became her protector and had thirteen year old Eleanore trained as a hairdresser. The strange events continued, including objects appearing out of nowhere or disappearing into thin air. The attacks on Eleanore escalated. She was knocked to the ground, slapped, bitten, had her hair pulled, and things thrown at her. On a couple of occasions, the countess observed an inexplicable moving shadow in Eleanore’s vicinity shortly before phenomena occurred.

Eleanore was taken to London for more testing by the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, and also to Munich, where she was caught cheating. On her return, the activities began to fade gradually, although the attacks against her continued. By the time she turned fourteen, all phenomena ended and her life returned to normal.

Freak show performer, contortionist, and a man possessing a strange and unique power, Angelo Faticoni’s singular talent was reflected in his nickname—the Human Cork. Faticoni was unsinkable, and he made his living demonstrating that fact.

Faticoni could sleep on his side while floating in water. He could stay afloat for hours with lead weighing twenty pounds fastened to his ankles, and assume any position in the water without danger. He was sewn into a sack with a heavy cannonball chained to his body and tossed into the water. He didn’t sink, but floated up to eight hours in apparent unconcern, now and then peeping his head out of the top of the sack. He is also reported to have crossed the Hudson River fastened to a lead weighted chair.

After testing Faticoni, Harvard University doctors concluded he did not possess abnormal internal organs, but they failed to find an explanation for his amazing buoyancy. Faticoni continued astonishing audiences with his performances in lakes, rivers, and pools. He was investigated numerous times, but no evidence of trickery was ever found.

In 1931, while visiting relatives in Jacksonville, Florida, Faticoni died. Although he promised to reveal the secret of his talent, he never did. He remains a mysterious individual.

New Mexico CB radio operators were shocked and concerned on August 7 to hear transmissions from a young boy pleading for help. His name was Larry, he told them, and he was trapped in a red and white pickup truck with his father, who might be dead.

According to Larry, his father had taken him on a hunting trip. At some point along the way, there was an accident and the truck overturned into a gully, jamming the driver and passenger side doors. He said he couldn’t get out, had no food or water, and no idea where the accident had occurred. He also made matters worse by constantly switching channels in an apparent panic. And he thought his father had suffered a heart attack and died.

Much to the operators’ frustration, Larry’s signal faded in and out. Due to atmospheric conditions, his cries were heard in California, Wyoming, and elsewhere. The authorities were contacted and the search for Larry began in New Mexico, somewhere in the mountains where local and state police believed the signal originated. Thousands of civilian volunteers hit the roads, but not all as part of the official search, leading to confusion.

As the days passed, newspapers and TV stations picked up the story. Larry’s signal grew weaker, a sign the battery was running out of juice. Practical jokers began mimicking his voice over the airwaves, adding to the chaos. By August 12, no sign of an overturned pickup truck had been found, no one reported a missing boy, Larry’s signal disappeared for good, and authorities claimed the broadcasts were a hoax. However, no one has ever come forward to claim responsibility and no suspects were named. Were Larry’s cries for help a fraud? Or did a young boy die, trapped and alone? The mystery remains unsolved.

The Martin family’s ordeal in Methuen, Massachusetts began in October when Francis, his wife, and children first noticed a damp patch on the wall in the den. While they watched, the patch grew larger. A moment later, they heard a popping sound and a drenching spout of extremely cold water began spewing from the wall.

Francis Martin immediately ruled out frozen pipes—temperatures weren’t freezing—and he’d recently had the drains cleaned. The inexplicable water spout continued to stream a few seconds before it stopped. The next day, a second spot in another location began to spew water like a fountain. The spray lasted less than half a minute and ceased. The phenomena continued over several more days, with new icy water streams occurring at fifteen minute intervals in various rooms throughout the house, soaking floors, furniture, and occupants. A deputy witnessed a water jet burst out of a wall and spray two feet into the room.

When the Martins moved into a relative’s house, that place was also inflicted with mysterious water streams from the walls. Returning his family to their own home, Francis Martin had the water turned off at the mains. The next day, water spouts began to explode from the plaster walls, often from several spots simultaneously. Gallons of water poured out in twenty second intervals, but the source remained unknown. The Martins moved away again, but were forced to return to Methuen when the water demon followed them.

Gradually, the phenomena tapered off and stopped altogether. The family never discovered what caused the frightening activity. The official explanation? Moisture build-up.

Beginning just before Halloween, the citizens of Provincetown, Massachusetts were startled by the sudden, eerie appearance of a mysterious Black Flash—an impossibly tall, impossibly fast human-like creature who appeared dressed all in black, with a black face, pointed ears, and silver eyes. According to witnesses, the Black Flash also made a loud buzzing sound. He lurked around Provincetown jumping at people, laughing maniacally, and eluding pursuit with extreme agility and speed.

Witnesses would report seeing the Black Flash in one location, and a minute later, other reports would come in of sightings across town. Some said he was a Peeping Tom. Others thought he was a devil with supernatural powers. The town was in such an uproar, frightened children refused to go trick-or-treating that year.

The police believed the Black Flash was the work of practical jokers. Chief Anthony Tarvers claimed he knew the identity of the hoaxers, but he declined to name them. “The Black Flash is dead and buried,” he said. There were no further appearances of the terrifying phantom fiend who menaced the small town. Who was the Black Flash? No one has ever claimed responsibility, and Tarvers died with his secret intact.

In February, eighteen year old Jacquelyn Cadow of Paradis, Louisiana began hearing wolf whistles outside her bedroom window at night. The home she shared with her mother was also broken into by an intruder. She reported the incidents to the authorities, but nothing came of it. Night after night, she heard the same whistles until she announced her engagement to State Trooper Herbert Belsom. The whistler changed his tune to a menacing funeral dirge.

Around this time, Jacquelyn also received telephone threats, the voice on the other end of the call promising to come to her home and stick a knife in her if she went ahead with her marriage. Her sleep continued to be broken by whistling dirges and bloodcurdling moans. Newspapers picked up the story, and hundreds of curiosity seekers began driving by the house in the hope of catching a glimpse of the phantom whistler or his victim.

Jacquelyn suffered a collapse when she, her mother, her aunt, and a New Orleans States-Item reporter heard the whistler at work. The reporter and Belsom searched the yard, but found no one. Investigations by the State police and the sheriff’s office turned up nothing. The harassed bride-to-be, her nerves shattered, tried staying with relatives. The whistler soon followed. And when she went to the home of Belsom’s parents, the whistler called her mother with a message: “Tell Jackie I know she’s at Herbert’s house.”

On October 1, she and Belsom married. Was the whistler at the wedding as he’d promised? If so, he never spoke up, nor did he carry out his threats. The local sheriff considered the case closed—a hoax by persons he declined to name. Who was the phantom whistler and why did he choose to terrify Jacquelyn Cadow? We’ll never know.

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We are always fascinated and terrified of things we do not understand. Mysteries such as hauntings, murders, monsters, and abductions both creep us out and delight us as we attempt to find a rational explanation for what could be behind these baffling events. Here is a list of some truly strange unsolved occurrences which may never be fully understood or explained.

It’s amazing to think that one of the most mysterious monuments in the United States was built in 1979. After all, people must have had time to consult the man who built the Georgia Guidestones, right? Yet somehow, no one is entirely sure what exactly they mean. That’s probably due—in part—to the fact that this monument, often referred to as America’s Stonehenge, has a cryptic message engraved on it in eight different languages.

The Guidestones, which are in Elbert County, feature a message containing ten guidelines and there is an additional stone placed in the ground just a few feet away that runs down the astronomical features of the Guidestones, and claims that a time capsule is buried beneath the strange monument. However, there is no indication that such a capsule is actually there, or in fact has ever existed, and considering the man who originally commissioned the monument referred to himself simply as “Mr. Christian,” there is no indication as to what prompted the building of the Guidestones, or what their purpose truly is.

Early this year, a woman named Geraldine Vargas and her husband were walking through the desert near their home in Tucson, Arizona, when they came across a phenomenon that, so far, has completely baffled scientists. They discovered a large patch of land covered in strange, purple spheres with no perceivable explanation for what they were or how they came to be.

They appear to be a jelly-like fungus, but botanists in Arizona have so far been completely stumped as to their cause or composition. The spheres ooze a liquid substance and some people have speculated that they must be of an extraterrestrial origin considering nothing like them has ever been seen in the area, and no one has the slightest clue how they came to be there in the first place.

While everyone has heard of the Loch Ness Monster, not many have heard much, if anything, about Ogopogo. Ogopogo is a sea monster that can allegedly be found in Okanagan Lake in British Columbia, Canada, and every year there are reported sightings of the creature. Ogopogo is reported to be anywhere from 20–50 feet (6–15 meters) long, and the first reported sighting was all the way back in 1872.

Unlike other such creatures, Ogopogo is actually based in native folklore, which says that the local tribes would avoid certain areas of the lake, fearing the large monster dwelling there. When white settlers first arrived in the area, they were gradually convinced of the existence of the beast when, among other things, there was a report of horses being mysteriously pulled down into the abyss of the lake.

Back in the World War II era, blimps were a pretty commonly used form of air transportation. Quite often they were used for patrol missions, and while they served a very real and very important purpose chances are pretty good that when you think of blimps, all you think of is the Hindenburg, which crashed in 1937. Well, five years later there was another blimp mishap, only this one was a far more mysterious incident. After taking off with its two man crew, it returned without either pilot on board.

The airship L-8 was on a patrol off the coast of San Francisco one day in 1942 after heading out to investigate a possible oil spill. Not long after the blimp came floating down and finally crashed in Daly City, California, with pilots Ernest Cody and Charles Adams nowhere to be found. The life raft and parachutes were still on board, and while two life vests were missing, the radio was fully functioning yet there had been no radio transmissions indicating anything had gone wrong. So what happened to the pilots? To this day, no one knows, as no sign of either man has ever been found.

In 1976, four men went on a fishing trip in rural Maine at the Allagash Waterway. While attempting some night fishing, they claimed to see an object float toward them. What followed is one of the most famous alien abduction cases in United States history. They claim to have been missing a huge chunk of time from their memories, specifically noting that, after having lit a fire on the shore, it appeared to have burned out in a matter of moments.

The men—two brothers and their two friends—all recounted stories of abduction which, while incomplete on their own, painted a very vivid picture when pieced together. All four men took lie detector tests and passed easily, which would seem to indicate that they were either very good liars or they firmly believed they had indeed been abducted by aliens. Additionally, all four men claimed to have had dreams in the days and weeks that followed, which were all remarkably similar. Each of their nightmares depicted a rather invasive and humiliating experience.

While the Allagash abduction is a mystery that can never truly be verified or debunked, the mysterious Phoenix UFO Lights have been captured on camera. On more than one occasion over the years, mysterious lights have appeared over the city of Phoenix, Arizona, and to date there has been no explanation for the cause of the phenomenon, leading many to believe it is a true alien visitation.

As recently as 2012, traffic lights caught a strange V-shaped formation of lights on the edge of the city, leaving city officials bewildered. Representatives of both the department of transportation and the National Weather Service stated there was neither utility work taking place, nor any weather activity to explain the strange flashes. Considering the American Southwest’s reputation for UFO activity, it was only natural for alien activity to become the prime explanation for those mysterious lights.

We have already talked about Ogopogo, but apart from some scattered sightings, there is not much to back up that creature’s existence. However, the same cannot be said about the Devil which is believed to reside in a lake in Siberia. However, unlike Ogopogo, this creature no longer poses a threat to the people who visit Lake Labynkyr, because scientists believe they have found the bones of the massive creature.

Members of the Russian Geographical Society recently identified bones in the bottom of the lake which they believe match the description of the so-called Devil while exploring the lake’s floor for completely unrelated reasons. Lake Labynkyr itself has always been a mystery, as despite being located in Siberia, it never freezes. That might make it a pretty enticing home for a sea creature like the Devil, which scientists still cannot identify. Was the Devil a remnant of the dinosaurs? No one is quite sure, but sightings of the Devil have been reported for years as people have claimed to have witnessed seeing an animal the size of the whale in the depths of the lake.

If you have ever seen the movie Poltergeist, you’re aware of the idea that building homes on top of cemeteries is probably a horrendous idea. However, that seemingly natural line of thinking apparently never occurred to the people who built a series of upscale homes in a neighborhood outside of Houston, Texas, and what unfolded sounds extremely similar to the movie, to the point where you would think it’s based entirely on this unsolved mystery.

Two families, including the Haney family, found themselves in the midst of what appeared to be a real live haunting after moving into the neighborhood, particularly when, like in Poltergeist, they began to dig a pool only to discover human corpses under the ground. The corpses belonged to former slaves, and soon enough the Haneys began to notice strange things happening on their property, including strange sounds and items mysteriously moving. Another family, the Williams family, also lived in the area and claimed that whenever they attempted to plant anything in the soil, it would almost immediately die. At one point Jean Williams attempted to dig in an effort to find a body to prove they were living over a gravesite, and after becoming ill her daughter took over. Her daughter promptly suffered a heart attack and within two days, she was dead.

The island of St. Croix is a beautiful island getaway in the Caribbean that most people would view as paradise, but in the 1980s it was home to a sinister series of murders in which five people were killed with cyanide in what authorities believe to have been a voodoo ritual. To date, it is not known whether all five deaths were linked, and who carried out the murders. However, all three cases had similarities, including two sets of victims being married couples who had recently taken out loans to expand their businesses.

Two of those victims were Radha Maharaj and her husband Krishnadath, who were found on the same night, sixteen miles apart. Both had been the victims of cyanide poisoning. According to the family of those victims, they had been receiving mysterious phone calls leading up to their deaths, and police believe those calls were coming from a practice of Obia, which is thought to be a dark form of sorcery revolving around potions and curses.

In all three cases—two sets of couples and one solitary man—thousands of dollars had vanished when they met their deaths. Clearly, theft was the real motivation behind these deaths, but who had killed these people, and were the deaths related? The coincidences are too great for them not to have been, but after more than twenty-five years without tracking down the killer, it looks unlikely the perpetrator will ever be found.

Most people think of Eliot Ness and immediately associate him with Al Capone. However, the famous American lawman was also involved in one of the most infamous and brutal serial murder cases in United States history, only this time Ness would not get his man. In fact, to this day the Cleveland Torso Murders, perpetrated by a man known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, remain unsolved. In fact, his inability to find the murderer is said to have been the cause of his descent into alcoholism.

From 1934 to 1938, the Mad Butcher brutally murdered thirteen people, generally leaving only the torsos of the corpses behind. In all, seven men and six women were murdered, with only two victims ever having been identified. Two men were arrested in suspicion of being the Mad Butcher, but they were never convicted. The first suspect, Frank Dolezal, had originally confessed but later recanted, and died in custody. The second suspect, Dr. Francis Sweeney, failed a polygraph test but was released due to a lack of evidence. Ness’s journal hints that he knew who the killer was but could never prove it. And if the untouchable Eliot Ness was unable to prove who the killer was, that’s probably a pretty good indication that these are murders that will go forever unsolved.

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From time to time, we hear of unexplainable events, mysterious creatures and circumstances that are just totally bizarre. Some are unbelievable, while others represent familiar concepts that we think of as fantasy, rather than reality but are far too real. This list explores ten of the least known but most disturbing, mysterious or just plain bizarre events, chilling mysteries, and terrifying cryptids.

On September 15, 2007, residents of Caracas in Southern Peru, near the Bolivian border reported a massive explosion that rocked the village moments after a fireball appeared in the sky. Soon after, boiling water and steam emerged from the crater formed by the meteorite impact, and a strange smell appeared in the area. Over 200 villagers reported illness, and numerous animals in the village died. Government inspectors and police officers arrived in the area of the impact crater, but were taken ill as well, suffering vomiting. A state of emergency was then declared. Speculation points towards a bizarre reaction of Arsenic, Sulfur bearing rocks and groundwater with the meteorite, causing the village to be bathed in a chemical soup of rapidly forming volatile chemicals at the impact site. It has also been suggested that the Earth’s atmosphere failed to provide protection due to the elevation of the impact.

There are some things so weird that we become almost enraged just hearing about it. We wonder how in heaven’s name something so ridiculous and also tragic could have happened. In February 2013, a Nebraska man slipped in his home on a wet floor, and was “kept alive, lying on the floor for four days, being fed liquids by his ten year old son”. The man was unresponsive and unable to speak, according to the boy, who for some bizarre reason did not get help. The man’s death after four days was discovered after the school principle contacted police following the boy’s corresponding absence from classes. We wonder, how on this green Earth could a boy who attends school not get help for a man lying on the floor for four days, but provide “fluids to drink”.

Vancouver Island is the largest Island on the West Coast of North America. Covering an area larger than many nations, Vancouver Island is actually a relict landmass from the South Pacific that moved up to meet southern Canada. Mysteries abound in the vast wilderness that ranges from remote mountains to fringe extents of subtropical woodlands. Interspersed are the lakes. Cameron Lake is extremely deep at over 600 meters. In the shallower sections, an airplane was discovered with bodies preserved inside. Cameron Lake has become the subject of serious investigation by the BC Cryptozoological Society following reports and a short video recording of a mysterious lake creature. Skeptics suggested a large beaver or otter, but something much more unearthly may be at play. Sonar scanners brought out by researchers discovered a large, massive object that moved in the depths, apparently of organic origin. An unknown lake creature has been suggested, along with the possibility of a subterranean river from extending from the nearby sea inlet back to the “landlocked” lake?

Over several recent years, a series of disembodied human feet were discovered on islands, shorelines and the Fraser River in Southwestern British Columbia, Canada. The feet washed up on shorelines, and were seen floating in the water, always in a defined area known as the Georgia Basin. Even more eerily, the feet were inside shoes, and were almost always left feet. A variety of terrifying theories came forward, while some have attempted to explain the mysteries as a function of drowning and decomposition processes. Some suggested that feet might naturally detach from drowning bodies, while others put forward the ridiculous theory that left feet were more likely to show up due to shape. Statistically, it was considered very puzzling for not just 2, but 3, feet to show up. For a total of over 8 feet to appear is completely bizarre and terrifying. None of the theories can adequately explain how Southern BC and Washington were inundated by oceangoing, severed feet.

For a number of years, sightings of an enormous fish have been reported from airplanes flying over Alaska’s 80 mile long Lake Iliamana. The fish has been described as silvery, and up to 30 feet long, occasionally breaking the surface with its shark like form. The famous extreme angler Jeremy Wade attempted to solve the mystery in recent years. A variety of scary hypothesis were put forward, but one of the most plausible is that an aberrant population of giant Sleeper Sharks dwells in the lake. The fish could have been deposited during the ice age, and there is certainly no shortage of food supply for an enormous predator of this nature. The question is whether the sharks could adapt to freshwater. Sleeper Sharks are known to have travelled up rivers…

In Australia, a huge, monstrous lizard over 20 feet in length, known as the Megalania roamed the outback wilderness of the island continent. The dragon was believed to have been extinct for several thousand years, but bones recently discovered dated to only 300 years old. Eerily, Aboriginal Australians have noted that their ancestors hunted Megalania in their historic “dreamtime”, and some claim the lizard still exists. Continued sightings by reliable witnesses have reported beasts that perfectly match the description of Megalania. Farmers have reported giant lizards measuring over 15 feet in length, and in 1979, expert reptile biologist Frank Gordon was returning to his vehicle from a fieldwork expedition in Wattagan Mountains when he saw what he thought was a 20 foot log. When he started his vehicle, the form began to move . . .

The strange deaths of 9 hikers in the Ural Mountains on February 2, 1959 is a disturbing mystery that confounds investigators to this day. The members of the group were connected with the Ural Polytechnic Institute, and were on route to climb a mountain 10 kilometers north of where their bodies were discovered in a bizarre state of condition. The tent was ripped open from the inside. Several bodies bore massive wounds including skull fractures and broken ribs. Some theories suggested an attack by hostile mountain tribes, but investigators found the degree of force inflicted was “beyond that which could be inflicted by a human”. Most disturbingly, one of the members had bit off her own tongue. Massive levels of radioactivity were detected on the clothes of the victims, and some had “browned skin”. Soviet investigators concluded a “compelling natural force” had resulted in the deaths. Just what that force was we can never know.

A strange and terrifying cryptid known as a Dingonek or “Jungle Walrus” has become the subject of several terrifying reports across the African continent. Reported at over 15 feet in length, and capable of killing humans, reptiles and large mammals that invade its wetland habitat, the creature is described as having a squarish head with horns attached to a long, scale covered body, and a poison bearing tail. The sheer strangeness of the creature points to its potential existence as a relative of the Pangolin, which is a much smaller yet scale covered mammal related to anteaters. In addition to eyewitness accounts, cave paintings in South Africa show a bizarre creature resembling a Dingonek. Just as a Pygmy Hippopotamus is related to the standard edition, could the Dingonek could be the Pangolin’s deadly giant cousin?

Pterosaurs have long thought to be extinct. However, like the Coelacanth, could populations have survived the catastrophe that took the dinosaurs, just as crocodiles did? Legends of the Kongomato in Africa describe a large, lizard like flying creature of the rain forests with pointed jaws and long wings. The creatures apparently have a 7 to 9 foot wingspan, and has been the subject of some debate among cryptid researchers, some of whom suggested it might be a bat. However, when the explorer Frank Melland showed photographs of a range of flying creatures to natives on his 1923 visit to the Congo, the feedback was incredible. The natives pointed not to birds or bats, but to the picture of the pterosaur.

South American accounts describe a terrifying subterranean monster with a worm-like form that emerges, snakelike from the Earth. Described as an enormous, slug-like creature reaching over 14, the animal has been reported by horrified eyewitnesses in Uragay and other Amazon region countries of South America. The animal is believed to have a habit of burrowing, and has been reported as having large tentacles emerging from its head. The body form is smooth and dark according to reports, and large trenches have been left by the burrows. Some scientists speculate that the creatures could be giant Caecilians, which are earth dwelling, limbless members of the amphibian group.

Mike Williams is a naturalist, government affairs student and writer with a slightly life disrupting passion for mysteries of the unexplained.

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Some people or events in the world are inexplicable, enigmatic, or just plain weird—which is probably why we continued to find these subjects so fascinating. To go on with our theme of the unusual and occasionally macabre, we present another 10 strange unsolved mysteries for your mystification and delight.

In February 1936, the body of Giuseppe “Pepe” Veraldi was found under a bridge in Catanzaro, Italy. He had apparently jumped off the bridge, gashed his head open on the rocky riverbed thirty feet below, and drowned in shallow water. A police investigation pointed to suicide. His family disagreed, seeing no reason why Giuseppe might want to kill himself.

Three years later in January 1939, a teenager named Maria Talarico happened to walk near the bridge where Veraldi’s body was discovered. She collapsed unconscious and was taken home. When she woke, Maria spoke in a deeper, somewhat harsh voice that sounded male. The seemingly possessed young girl said her name was “Pepe.”

The spirit of Giuseppe Veraldi demanded to speak to his widowed mother. While waiting for Mrs. Catarina Veraldi, Maria asked for wine, cigarettes, and playing cards, inviting neighbors to join her in a game—very atypical behavior according to her own mother. She called some of the men present by the names of four of Giuseppe’s known friends.

When Mrs. Veraldi arrived at the Talarico home, she was amazed to hear her son’s voice coming from the teenage girl. “Pepe” said his friends had murdered him by tossing him off the bridge and beating him to death with an iron bar. As soon as she made the confession, Maria ran out of the house to the bridge and lay down in the exact position of Giuseppe’s body. An appalled Mrs. Veraldi insisted her son stop possessing Maria immediately. The girl awakened without any memory of the evening’s bizarre events.

Nine years later, Mrs. Veraldi received a letter from Luigi “Toto” Marchete, one of her son’s friends who had left Italy shortly after Giuseppe’s death. Luigi confessed he had killed Giuseppe in a jealous rage over a woman. Three other mutual friends—the men named by the possessed Maria—had helped him. The details in the letter were consistent with the story told by “Pepe.” Since one of the men had already died and Luigi was in Argentina, the other two accomplices were arrested by the police, tried for the murder, and sentenced to jail.

Maria didn’t know Giuseppe Veraldi, nor did any of her family, friends, or neighbors. How had she known the truth of his violent death? Some believe she was possessed by the spirit of the murdered man. The enigma has continued to baffle researchers.

In February 1885, John Lee went to the gallows at Exeter Gaol in England. He had been convicted of the murder of Emma Ann Whitehead Keyse at Babbacombe Bay, South Devon and sentenced to hang. Through an astonishing series of events, the condemned man was saved from judicial hanging and eventually became free.

Emma Keyse, a rich and elderly spinster, lived in “The Glen,” a family home she had inherited and occupied alone except for servants. John Lee, the cook’s half-brother, worked as a footman at the Glen prior to joining the Royal Navy, but after a medical discharge and subsequently serving 6 months in prison for theft from another employer, he returned to Babbacombe Bay to resume his old position at the Glen.

In November 1884, Emma Keyse was found dead following a house fire. She had suffered blunt force head trauma and her throat had been violently cut to the vertebrae. It was clear to investigators that the killer had set the fire in an attempt to cover up the crime. John Lee was suspected at once. He was the only male servant and he had an unexplained wound on his arm. Supposedly, his motive derived from a pay cut he’d been given for unsatisfactory work. The evidence was circumstantial, and John continued to protest his innocence. Nevertheless, a jury convicted him of murdering Emma Keyse.

When the time came, John Lee mounted the scaffold. The executioner adjusted the noose around his neck. But when the lever was pulled, the trapdoor failed to open. John waited while the executioner tested the mechanism, which seemed to work. For a second time, the rope was put around John’s neck. Again, the trapdoor didn’t open. The mechanism was tested by workmen and found in order, so a third attempt to hang John was made. For the final time, the trapdoor malfunctioned. John was taken back to his cell.

Later, his sentence was commuted to life in prison. He served 22 years and was released in 1907, already a legend as the “Man They Couldn’t Hang.” Divine intervention or simple mechanical failure and coincidence? We can only conjecture.

On Butler Street in Springfield, Massachusetts in January 1959, 80 year old Mrs. Charles Papineau and her 13 year old grandson, Wayne, were terrified when the house’s windows suddenly started shattering without an apparent cause. Both Mrs. Papineau and Wayne claimed to have heard odd thumping sounds just before windows were smashed to pieces. In a week, 39 windows were broken.

The glazier who installed replacement panes told a reporter that the glass had all fallen inside the house. It appeared the windows were broken from the outside, as if the perpetrator had struck the middle of the panes with violent force.

Despite a police investigation, no culprits or evidence of a crime were found. Enter John C. Parker, an amateur expert on poltergeists. Parker, also an architect, offered to perform a scientific investigation of the phenomenon. He hoped to prove temperature changes hadn’t been responsible by installing a thermometer in the bathroom, where three windows in total had been broken by the unseen force. He also planned to install a strong plastic window in that room to prevent any further breakages.

Apart from frightening the nervous Mrs. Papineau, who suffered windows exploding right in front of her, the most affected victim appeared to be the insurance agent asked to process her claim for $93 in replacement glass. Without a cause other than poltergeist to list on the damage claim form, he had to call his head office for instructions.

The window breakages ended a little less than a week after they began. The responsible party was never positively identified. Speculation continues among students of psychic phenomenon, but it’s worth noting Mrs. Papineau herself didn’t believe in ghosts, and the results of Parker’s independent investigation of the events aren’t known.

Every night at 7:30, Adeline Santos, 16, and her 13 year old brother, John, appeared to enter trance-like comas and claimed to communicate with spirits for 90 minutes to 3 hours at their family home in Santa Clara, California in 1925.

The spirit sessions began in early January, when Adeline said she was visited by a “Lady in White,” the ghost of her mother’s former employer who had died five years earlier in Hawaii, while John believed he was under the spell of an unidentified gray bearded man. It seems no one but the brother and sister actually saw any apparitions, but while in trances, both children spoke in voices other than their own that were assumed to belong to the spirits in question. Their séances caused a local sensation that soon spread.

Hearing about the phenomena, the primarily Portuguese community residents visited to determine the truth for themselves. The children’s parents were understandably alarmed when neighbors gathered at their home to dance in the belief the activity would drive the unwanted spirits away. Psychical researchers believed poltergeists were responsible. And a psychiatrist, though not admitted to the home at first, offered his theory that the apparent possession was caused by a religious frenzy or possible hysterical disorder.

After a week of regular trances and spiritual possession, both children were sent to spend the night at Mission Santa Clare de Asís by their parents in the hope that the priests might prove able to protect Adeline and John from their nightly visitors.

The mother held spiritualist beliefs and thought Adeline and John’s experiences genuine. The father wasn’t certain. We’ve been unable to determine what happened to the children or the Santos family after January 10, 1925. Whether Adeline and John faked their possessions or were genuine trance mediums remains unknown.

In March 1867, passengers and crew including Captain Reeks aboard the Royal Mail steamer Danube were startled to hear strange, baffling noises at sea while the ship was anchored near Greytown (also known as San Juan de Nicaragua) off the coast of Nicaragua in the Caribbean Sea. Similar noises were heard at other times by sailors aboard steamships in the same area. Captain Charles Dennehy of the Shannon was one who spoke about his experience in a letter to Nature magazine.

The phenomenon appeared to occur only in iron hulled vessels, not ships with wooden hulls and only at night, though not every night—heavy swells were seen to prevent the freakish occurrence. The noise was described as a loud, high pitched, metallic, monotonous vibration traveling through the ship’s metal hull. One witness likened the sound to an Aeolian harp and observed the iron plates resonating. The sound could last for several hours before suddenly ceasing. No one on shore reported hearing anything unusual.

Captain Dennehy said the sound had a distinct ¾ time signature like a waltz that turned his ship’s hull into a “great musical sounding board.” According to the unflappable captain, the source couldn’t be determined by listeners as it appeared to be everywhere outside the ship and could also be heard clearly in various places around the vessel.

Following letters posted in Nature and Field magazines by witnesses, speculation ranged from schools of Sciaenidae (a type of fish known for its “drumming”), sharks, alligators, turtles, manatees, currents changed by the silting in the harbor, sea quakes, gas escaping underwater, a previously undiscovered form of electricity, or even a new type of mesmerism. The riddle of the Grey Town noises may never be solved—we can find no mention of it after 1871—but weird noises at sea have been reported in other locations around the world right up to modern times.

Flying saucers, meteorites, experimental military craft, bombs … no one knows for certain, but there’s no doubt the skies over northern European countries like Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland were invaded by unidentifiable fiery objects in 1946.

The collective sightings known as the Scandinavian ghost rockets likely began in February in Sweden. Further reports began to come in regarding spool or cigar shaped lights in the sky. In June in Finland, witnesses saw a blazing light leave a smoky trail in the air. At first, the light was assumed to be a meteor, until a second such object made a U-turn in mid-air and flew back the way it had come. The lights were seen to dive, roll, and perform other aerial acrobatics. They were mainly described in hundreds of reports as having long flaming tails, made little sound, and traveled at great heights and at speeds of 400+ mph.

In August, a Swedish Air Force pilot spotted a torpedo-shaped object—he declared he could see no aircraft features—about a kilometer away. He pursued the clearly visible “rocket” but it maintained such high speed his bomber couldn’t keep up.

The Swedish government took the sightings seriously and created an investigative committee. Speculation by the committee members involved possible captured German weapons or guided missiles sent over the country’s border by the Soviets as an intimidation tactic. The American and British governments showed an interest, but the theory was later proved incorrect. Sightings tapered off from their 1946 high, but continued for years.

What were the so-called ghost rockets? The Swedish government never found any hard evidence to support a theory of UFOs or Russian missiles. Eventually, the committee’s findings put the majority of the incidents down to imagination and meteorites. A definitive answer has continued to elude those seeking the truth.

On March 3, 1876, near Olympian Springs in Bath County, Kentucky, Mrs. Allen Crouch was amazed when her outdoor soap making was interrupted by a sudden shower occurring close to the home she shared with her husband. Not rain, as one might suppose. This shower consisted of fresh, edible meat.

The flakes of what appeared to be boneless raw meat fell from a clear, cloudless, windless sky over an area about 100 yards long (the length of a football field) and fifty yards wide. The pieces on the ground and stuck to the fence ranged in appearance from a “delicate shred as light as a snowflake” to a 3” lump of solid flesh. Mrs. Crouch was mystified. According to some accounts, the Crouch’s cat certainly entertained no doubts as it gorged itself on the mystery substance and presumably came to no harm. At least one witness visited the home the next day and saw the meat covered area.

Two unidentified Kentucky gentlemen (the implicating being men of wealth and standing) tasted the meat and believed it either venison or mutton. By July, samples of the meat began to excite members of the scientific community. Controversy raged as to the shower’s origin and whether the pieces were meat or something else. The hypothetical “something else” included pwdre ser or star jelly—a gelatin believed to fall to Earth during meteor showers, nostock—a gelatinous matter sometimes found in sandy areas after a rainfall, lung tissue from a human baby or a horse, and muscle tissue and cartilage which could belong to many species (human wasn’t ruled out). In the New York Times, journalist William Livingston Alden put for the theory of “cosmic meat” floating in belts around the world.

Area locals came to their own conclusion: they believed the meat—probably from a dead horse—had been vomited by a large flock of buzzards passing overhead.

The true cause of the rain of meat that perplexed Mrs. Crouch and delighted her cat remains a mystery.

In the late 19th century, Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, an amateur psychical researcher, worked with a spiritual medium identified only as Mrs. R., who used a planchette—an early form of the famous Ouija board—to communicate with spirits. He took extensive notes of these sessions, and usually requested the spirits provide evidence of their existence.

Just prior to Wedgwood’s death in June 1891, he sent a batch of notes to his friend, Frederic William Henry Myers, a member of the British Society for Psychical Research. These notes contained details of planchette sessions Wedgwood and Mrs. R. had conducted on March 22-23 of that year.

According to Wedgwood, he and Mrs. R. had made contact with a spirit named Alice Grimbold, a maidservant who had been condemned in 1605 as an accomplice in a robbery and murder, and sentenced to burn at the stake. Alice revealed she’d been the lover of a man named Harrison, who had promised to marry her if she helped him rob her employer, Mrs. Clarke, who ran an inn called the Blue Boar in Leicester. But Harrison burned the inn, killing the old lady, and Alice was caught and eventually executed.

Wedgwood sought confirmation of the facts by researching old books. He found an account of the Blue Boar murder and the execution of Alice Grimbold in the History of Leicester, a rare volume in the British Museum. He found further proof of the story’s veracity in a 1653 volume, also rare. He maintained that neither he nor Mrs. R. had access to these obscure books, and he did not have a reputation as a man who cheated.

Some believe the spirit of Alice Grimbold reached out from beyond the grave to confess her guilt. Others think either Wedgwood or Mrs. R., acquired the knowledge in a moment of clairvoyance. A solution to the mystery has never been discovered.

Around 1890, surreal events began taking place in Japan, mainly in the area of Kamakura, Yamanouchi Ken. While scientists at the time attempted to explain the phenomenon, local villagers were convinced the cause was due to an invisible monster.

Men walking in fields, at home, or in the open would suddenly feel a strong wind and be knocked over. When they stood, the victims found wounds in their legs. The injuries were narrow slits approximately 1”-1½” long and about an inch deep, and had no apparent cause. At first painless and bloodless, after about a half hour the wounds began to bleed and the pain intensified. It was also reported that the injuries were very difficult to heal.

Scientists studying the events theorized the men’s wounds were caused by an inexplicable loss of atmospheric pressure creating a temporary vacuum. However, the stricken men and other locals believed the wounds were the work of a legendary y?kai called kamaitachi, or the “sickle weasel”—a supernatural creature with sharp, sickle-like claws who traveled in a whirlwind (sometimes described as traveling in trios) and attacked humans so quickly, they couldn’t be detected with the naked eye. The kamaitachi was said to use a medicine on the inflicted wounds to temporarily halt bleeding and pain.

The rash of attacks eventually ceased, or at least ceased being reported by newspapers at the time. No absolute explanation has ever been put forward.

The Stockport, Manchester (England) mother’s ordeal began in 1980. Following an argument with her first husband, Ron, Jacqueline shouted, “I hope you break your neck!” Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened. After Ron sped away from the house on his scooter, he was involved in an accident resulting in spine and neck fractures. After a month in the hospital, he died, leaving Jacqueline devastated by guilt.

Not long afterward, a lightbulb in Jacqueline’s bathroom exploded. Her arm was cut by flying glass. She put the cause down to a faulty bulb. When her vacuum cleaner kept burning out—a repairman could find no cause—and another lightbulb exploded, she became convinced her home was haunted by the ghost of her dead husband.

Moving house didn’t help. Electrical appliances continued to go haywire in her presence. The stove and vacuum cleaners she bought kept burning out. The television changed channels on its own or the picture distorted. The radio switched channels without being touched too. She also received and delivered severe electrical shocks. Some grocery stores and appliance shops attempted to ban her. After she married her second husband, an electrician, the strange and frightening phenomena continued to occur.

The depressed woman, who suffered headaches and fainting spells, contemplated suicide. Psychic mediums and investigators failed to find a cause. Once, a visiting reporter accused Jacqueline of fraud, making her so angry, the vacuum cleaner burst into flames.

At last, a visiting professor provided the key to Jacqueline’s dilemma: both he and her second husband, Paul, believed she suffered from an extreme build-up of static electricity—more than 10 times the normal amount—in her body. By sticking to a special diet and daily program which included walking around the house holding onions to discharge the surplus electricity, Jacqueline’s problem gradually diminished. However, in 1985, her fourth child (a daughter) was born and immediately began exhibiting signs of taking after her mother by giving the midwife a static shock.

What was the cause of Jacqueline’s condition, sometimes called High Voltage Syndrome? Why did her symptoms begin after the death of her first husband? The answers to these questions will probably never be known for sure.

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In recent years, there have been a growing number of cases where a group of animals will die en-masse. There are many different explanations for all of these cases, such as illness, pollution, global warming, and the apocalypse. Many of these cases have been solved, and usually with a simple explanation, such as pollution. Others, however, remain a mystery, and with pollution or illness sometimes not being an option, it leaves us wondering what exactly is happening in nature.

In January 2011, hundreds of dead snapper fish washed up on the beaches of the Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand. Fishermen that were out at sea described the water as carpeted with dead fish. What makes this example especially strange is that all of the fish were missing their eyes. While the Department of Conservation said the fish had starved, one witness said “That’s just completely untrue. This was something deliberate”. While most people wouldn’t be so quick to jump to some sort of fish genocide conclusion, the truth remains to be seen.

In January 2005, thousands of Jumbo squid beached beached themselves on California shores. Very little is known about these squid, as they live at depths of up to 2,300 feet (700m), making it much harder for scientists to ascertain why they would suddenly engage in a mass suicide. Toxic poisoning is one theory, although if the water had been contaminated, more than squid alone should have been affected, and if it was something they ate, it is unlikely that so many would have been involved. A similar event occurred in San Diego in 2002, with toxins being the leading (but unconfirmed) suspect in that case too.

Hundreds of pilot whales died in Tasmanian waters in 2009. Over 400 died at sea with no explanation, and almost 200 beached themselves on King Island, along with a number of dolphins. Rescuers hurried to the animals’ aid, but around 140 of the whales were dead by the time they arrived. The rest of the whales were saved, as were 7 of the dolphins. A few months prior to this incident, 150 pilot whales died after beaching themselves on the west coast of Tasmania, and later, 48 sperm whales, near Perkins Island. Disturbance in echolocation is the prevailing theory for why this occurs, but, again, nothing has been confirmed.

In 2005, a number of Turkish shepherds presumably lost their jobs, as the 1,500 sheep they were looking after jumped off a cliff. It all started when one sheep went over the edge, and as the old saying goes, was followed by the rest of them. The first 400 died as a result of the 50 foot (15m) fall, and the other 1,100 survived as they were lovingly cushioned by the bodies of their friends. This incident had an enormous impact on the local village, as many families depended on the sheep for their livelihood.

Sheep all running off a cliff together is one thing; they were all doing it at the same time. The cows and bulls in Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland are a different story though. Over the course of 3 days, 28 cows and bulls died after plunging off a much higher cliff than the sheep. The animals all fell off the same spot, which would be normal had they all gone together. But the fact that the incident was spread out over 3 days makes the whole thing more mysterious.

Just last month, residents of the town of Coronel, Chile, woke up to find that their local beach was now red. The cause: Millions of dead shrimp. Local fisherman have placed the blame on 2 coal-fired power stations located there, which they say has caused the temperature of the water to increase too much for the shrimp to bear. As this example is so recent, it will be a while before any definite explanation is given, if ever.

Last year, the aptly named Lake Erie in Ontario saw tens of thousands of dead fish, and well as seagulls, wash up on its shores. First reports said there was no indication of any pollution in the lake. One of the prevailing theories as to what caused so many fish to die is what is known as inversion, which is a natural phenomenon in which colder, less oxygenated water rises to the surface, and suffocates the fish. But researchers found no evidence of this, nor does this theory account for the dead seagulls.

In 2005, thousands of toads in Northern Germany and Denmark were mysteriously exploding. One minute, they could just be sitting there, and the next, they would explode with enough pressure to launch their insides over 3 feet (1m) away. Proposed explanations include an unknown virus or fungus that causes their bodies to bloat. Another theory is that the toads are having their livers picked out by crows, and then puffing themselves up, which results in the explosion. Worse than the actual exploding (yes, it gets worse) is that the toads don’t immediately die, and can be seen struggling for several minutes.

Overtoun Bridge in Milton, Scotland, has infamously become known as the dog suicide bridge, and with good reason. As early as the 1950s, dogs have been leaping to their deaths off this 50 foot (15m) bridge. At least 50 dogs have done so since the first recorded incident, including 5 dogs within 6 months in 2005. In Celtic mythology, the bridge is said to be the place where heaven meets earth, known as The Thin. Some people believe this supernatural presence to be the cause. Others believe the dogs smell the mink that are prevalent in the area, and that they are jumping off in search of them. However, this theory fails to take into account that dogs aren’t stupid, and this would happen all over the world if it were the case.

Birds have been dropping dead worldwide in recent years, and this is a lot worse than finding your pet canary at the bottom of its cage. In Kentucky, hundreds of sterlings and robins were found on one woman’s property. In Chile, thousands of flamingos, 1,200 penguins and 60 pelicans died over the course of 2 months. Mass bird deaths are happening with alarming frequency in recent years, but one place in particular stands our more than any other: Jatinga, India. Every year in this small village, birds will fly themselves into the ground. There are many mysteries surrounding this case: Why do they do this at all? Why does it affect different types of birds? Why do the birds only do this along a small stretch of the road? Why does it only happen in September? And why do the birds do this after sunset, when they are usually only active in daylight? Many people visit this spot every year to see the phenomenon occur for themselves.

Simon is a twenty-two-year-old university student who likes to adhere to Irish stereotypes, such as drinking and loving the potato. You can follow him on twitter, or like his extremely long tongue on Facebook to see if he can break the world record.

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Prehistory literally means the time “before we had written records” (roughly the time before the 4th Century BC) and ancient history is the time since our recorded history. Our concept of ancient history was originally firmly determined by the bible. Written from an insular point of view, the histories of some ancient cultures were distorted, badly neglected or even omitted. The existence of inexplicable monuments, certain man-made marvels and archaeological finds pertaining to our ancient- and prehistory, are leading more and more archaeologists to believe long forgotten advanced civilizations existed. As most of our ancient records were lost during the destruction of the great libraries, the following genuine mysteries are the only remnants of their existence.

Ancient knowledge was a lot more refined and developed than we have been taught hitherto. From batteries to planispheres, an assortment of gadgets have been excavated and found. Two notable finds were the Nimrud lens and the famous Antikythera Mechanism. The 3,000 year old Nimrud lens was discovered at the palace of Nimrud, in Iraq. Some experts believe the lens was part of an ancient telescope the Babylonians used, hence their advanced knowledge of astronomy. And the famous Antikythera Mechanism (200 BC.) was created to calculate the movements of the sun, moon and planets to predict celestial events. Unfortunately, we can only speculate on the ways many of these devices were created, used and why the ancient knowledge pertaining to them disappeared for millennia afterwards.

Despite wars and several invasions, India’s ancient history was largely preserved. Long believed to date from about 500 BC.; discoveries in the past century have pushed back the origins of Indian civilization thousands of years. In the Indus Valley, the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro were discovered. The cities were so sophisticated and well-planned, that archaeologists believe they were conceived as a whole before construction on them begun. The Harappa culture also remains an enigma. Its origins and deterioration is hidden, its dialect is unknown and the writing is completely indecipherable. At the site no differences in social class can be discerned and there are no temples or religious buildings. No other culture, including those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, has revealed the same degree of planning and development.

Considered by the Chinese to be the “Ninth Wonder of the Ancient World”, the origin of the 24 caves thus far uncovered is an unfathomable mystery. Discovered in 1992, no historical record or evidence of the work involved to excavate the almost million cubic meters of stone exists. The chiseling was done in such a way that it left a consistent pattern throughout the caves which some experts believe to be symbolic. The patterns are similar to those found on pottery that has been dated between 500 and 800 BC. Stone carvings and pillars can be viewed in the cave that has been opened up for public viewing. There is also a rumor that seven of the caves have a distribution pattern that matches the seven stars of the Big Dipper.

Off the island of Pohnpei in Micronesia, lies the ancient city of Nan Madol. Built on a coral reef exclusively from colossal basalt rocks (some weighing up to 50 tons), the city is intercrossed by a multitude of canals and connected via submerged tunnels. Its scale has been compared to the Great Wall of China and the Great Pyramid, even though the Pyramid-stones only weigh about 3 tons each. No records exist as to who built the city, when it was built or for what reason. Radiocarbon dating has placed its construction in 200 BCE. The origin of the basalt rocks that make up the city is unknown, as is the methods used to transport them there and stack them as high as 50 feet, and as thick as 17 feet. Human bones uncovered by archaeologists are remarkably larger than the local Micronesians of the area today.

From Scotland to Turkey, underneath hundreds of Neolithic settlements, archaeologists have uncovered evidence an extensive network of underground tunnels. From almost 2, 300 feet (700 m) in Bavaria Germany to 1, 200 feet (350m) in Austria, the fact that these tunnels survived for 12, 000 years is a testimony to the skill of the builders and of the sheer size the original network must have been. Even though they do not all link up, experts believe people used these tunnels to travel safely regardless of which danger they were facing. Throughout the system there also appears to be storage rooms and seating.

Puma Punku is one of four structural arrangements in the ancient Pre-Inca city of Tiwanaku in South America. The age of the megalithic ruins is extremely controversial as they have been prodded, excavated, and looted since they were discovered and as such, experts say they have been contaminated in every way possible. The consensus is that they are older than the pyramids, with claims of up to 15, 000 years. Even the Incas didn’t know its history. The massive stones used in the construction bear no chisel marks and were finely cut to interlock with the others. A lot of the stones were cut so precisely that the builders clearly had an extremely sophisticated knowledge of stone-cutting, engineering and geometry. The city also had a functioning irrigation system, waterproof sewage lines and hydraulic mechanisms. With no record of its inhabitants or their methods, the technologies and processes used during its construction remains an enigma to experts.

Continuing the mystery of Pumapunku; at this site as well as those of Koricancha, Ollantaytambo, Yuroc Rumi and in ancient Egypt, metal clamps were used in their largest structures. Evidence of the grooves and holes in which they were used can still be observed. At first archaeologists believed that clamps were brought to these grooves to be placed, but recent scans have revealed that metal was poured into these indentations, which means the builders had portable smelters. It is said that the metals used could only be melted at very high temperatures; temperatures the ancients (to our knowledge) were not capable of. One has to wonder why this technology as well as the incredible methods used to build these megalithic ruins became lost in the immediate centuries afterwards. A technology developed continues to fan out, but a less advanced civilization will lose the technology in time if they have not acquired the essentials.

The archaeological site of Baalbek in Lebanon has some of the most well-preserved Roman ruins in the world. Called Heliopolis in ancient times, the temple ruins are truly amazing to behold. What makes this site mysterious though, is the massive megalithic ruin mound upon which the Romans built. Making the their ruins look pale in comparison, these monoliths that can weigh up to 1, 200 tons each are the largest worked slabs of stone in the world. Some archaeologists believe that the history at the site goes back about 9000 years, as excavations have revealed Middle Bronze Age (1900-1600BC) and Early Bronze Age (2900-2300 BC) evidence on top of each other. Apart from the mystery as to how these stones were brought to the site from where they were quarried; given the site’s location and the space available to maneuver, architects and engineers claim that we have no known lifting technologies available to us today, that can lift and position these stones. They are simply beyond the construction capabilities of any accepted ancient or modern-day builders.

Volumes have been written on the mysteries of ancient Egypt. We now know that the Great Pyramid’s construction was so accurate and beyond comprehension that it was probably never meant to house a king’s remains. Furthermore, as it has been proven that the Sphinx’s erosion came mainly from rainfall before the area became a desert, it is at least 7, 000 – 9, 000 years old with some believing it could even be older than that. The sudden rise of the Egyptian civilization in the 3rd millennium BC has lead many experts to believe that theirs were a legacy of an earlier, forgotten civilization. Apart from the Sphinx, further pre-dynastic construction is evident in Khafre’s Mortuary and Valley Temples, and Menkaure’s Mortuary Temple as they were built from limestone blocks excavated during the Sphinx’s construction and has the same evident erosion.

Dating back to the end of the last ice age (12, 000 years ago), the recently discovered temple complex in south-eastern Turkey has been called the most important archaeological discovery of modern times. Predating pottery, writing, the wheel and metallurgy; its construction implies a level of sophistication and complexity thus far not associated with Palaeolithic civilizations. With a construction date thousands of years earlier than Stonehenge, the site consists of 20 round structures (4 have been excavated so far) and elaborately carved pillars up to 18 feet tall and weighing up to 15 tons each. Nobody can say with any certainty who created the site, or why, but one has to wonder how these supposed hunter-gatherers had advanced knowledge of masonry and stonework if they were the first civilization…

Hestie lives in South Africa with her husband, 2 children and various other animals.

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Disappearances make for some of the world’s most fascinating unsolved mysteries, as it’s always baffling when people go missing and no trace of them is ever found. However, it’s even more baffling when multiple people manage to go missing at the same time. In some of these cases, it seems like abduction is the most likely scenario, but you’d think that successfully abducting more than one person would be an insanely difficult task. In other cases, it is nearly impossible to dream up a concrete theory about what happened to these people.

On December 23, 1974, 17-year old Mary Rachel Trlica, 14-year old Lisa Renee Wilson and 9-year old Julie Ann Moseley (a.k.a. the Fort Worth Three) went Christmas shopping together at the Seminary South Shopping Center in Fort Worth, Texas. The girls never returned home and their locked car was discovered in the mall’s parking lot at 6:00 that night. There were Christmas presents inside, indicating that the girls had done their shopping and returned to the vehicle at some point, but what became of them?

The very next day, Rachel’s family received a letter which was supposedly written by her. She claimed the three of them had taken off to Houston for a week, but would be back. However, none of the girls ever returned and there are doubts about whether Rachel actually wrote the letter. Over the years, eyewitnesses have come forward with various accounts of what happened to the Fort Worth Three—one claimed they saw the girls being forced into a vehicle by unidentified males, another supposedly saw them sitting in a mall security guard’s truck at 11:30 that night—but none of the stories have ever been verified and their disappearance remains a mystery.

On March 25, 1975, the Lyon sisters, 12-year old Sheila and 10-year old Katherine, went to Wheaton Plaza Shopping Center in Wheaton, Maryland. When the girls did not come home that night, their parents called the authorities, leading one of the largest police investigations in the area’s history. Over a week-and-a-half later, the Lyon family would receive a phone call from an individual demanding $10,000 for the return of their daughters. Even though this ransom was left in a courthouse restroom, no one ever showed up retrieve it.

The main suspect in the Lyon sisters’ disappearance is a mysterious man carrying a microphone and a tape recorder, who was seen talking to the girls at the mall that day. Two weeks later, a witness came forward to claim he saw Sheila and Katherine bound and gagged in the back of a station wagon being driven by someone who resembled the same man from the mall. However, none of these leads ever panned out, so the identity of this man and the ultimate fate of the Lyon sisters is still unknown.

The “Springfield Three” are 47-year old Sherrill Levitt, her 19-year old daughter Suzanne Streeter, and her friend, 18-year old Stacy McCall. They all mysteriously vanished in the middle of the night from Sherrill’s home in Springfield, Missouri on June 7, 1992. Their vehicles and personal belongings were still there, the television was left on, and the only sign of any struggle was a broken porch light.

There have been a few leads in this case. A witness claims they a terrified-looking woman matching Sherrill’s description driving a van later that day, and heard an unseen male tell her: “Don’t do anything stupid”. A convicted robber named Robert Craig Cox has dropped hints that he was responsible for the abduction and the victims’ bodies would never be found (they are rumored to be buried underneath a parking garage), and a convicted murderer named Gerald Carnahan has also been investigated as possible suspect in the case. However, no conclusive evidence has ever linked either of these men to the disappearance and no trace of the Springfield
Three has ever been found.

Three young female friends, 21-year old Ann Miller, 19-year Patricia Blough and 19-year old Renee Bruhl, went on an outing to Indiana Dunes State Park on July 2, 1966. They would all mysteriously vanish, leaving their belongings behind on the beach. A couple claimed to have seen the three women entering the lake and speaking with an unidentified man in a white boat before climbing aboard. Neither the woman, the mysterious man nor his boat have ever been seen again.

Investigators checked into the women’s backgrounds and discovered that Miller was three months pregnant at the time she went missing. It’s also possible that Blough may have been pregnant as well, and one theory is that the man on the boat was Ralph Largo Jr., whose family was known for performing illegal abortions. All three women also kept horses at Tri Color Stables, which was run by the brother of notorious organized crime figure Silas Jayne. It’s possible that this may have played a role in their disappearance, but none of these leads have ever been substantiated and the case remains unsolved.

Bobby Jamison, his wife Sherilynn, and their 6-year old daughter Madyson all vanished from a dirt road in a rural area of Oklahoma on October 8, 2009. The Jamisons had supposedly gone out there to look at a plot of land. Their locked pickup truck was found abandoned with their belongings still inside, along with their dog, who was nearly dead of starvation. Even though it was cold outside, the entire family left their coats behind and to make things even more mysterious, an envelope containing $32,000 was found under the seat.

The family had reportedly been experiencing financial problems and also displaying odd behavior during the weeks prior to their disappearance, as both Bobby and Sherilynn claimed there were ghosts in their house. There were no signs of any foul play at the crime scene, causing speculation about whether the Jamison family might have disappeared willingly or gone off to commit a murder-suicide somewhere. However, there’s no strong evidence to support any of these theories, making this one of the baffling and frustrating disappearances imaginable.

Joseph and Summer McStay, and their two sons, 4-year old Gianni and 3-year old Joseph Jr., became the subject of the strangest missing persons cases of recent memory on February 4, 2010. A security camera caught the family’s vehicle leaving their home in Fallbrook, California, and it was found abandoned on February 8 at a strip mall a few blocks away from the Mexican border. Authorities eventually checked surveillance footage and saw a family who may have been the McStays crossing the border, but the image quality was too poor to be sure.

Three years later, authorities seem to be leaning towards the possibility that the McStays staged their own disappearance and left willingly. However, they had over $100,000 in their bank account which has never been touched, and if that was really them on the surveillance footage, where did they go during the four-day period since they originally left their home? If they did cross the border into Mexico, what happened to them next? Numerous theories have been presented about this case, but nothing seems to hold up or make any sense at all.

On February 19, 1979, five men from the Hawaiian island of Maui – Benjamin Kalama, Ralph Malaiakini, Scott Moorman, Patrick Woesner, and Peter Hanchett—went on a fishing trip on a vessel called the “Sarah Joe”. The boat and its crew all vanished after a terrible storm hit the area. It would seem obvious that the five men probably got lost at sea and drowned, but things got really weird in 1988 when pieces of the “Sarah Joe” were found on an island over 2000 miles away.

An unmarked shallow grave was also found on the island where the remains of Scott Moorman were buried under a pile of rocks. However, no trace of the other four men was found, so if they were the ones who buried him, what happened to them afterward? And if they didn’t bury him, then who did? To make things even weirder, this island had apparently already been searched a couple years beforehand and no one found the pieces of the Sarah Joe or the grave at that time. The fate of the four other missing men and the mystery of how Scott Moorman was buried remains unsolved.

In rural Oklahoma on the evening of December 30, 1999, 16-year old Lauria Bible decided to spend the night with her best friend, Ashley Freeman. Sometime during the night, the Freeman family’s trailer was burned down. Ashley’s mother, Kathy, was found shot to death, but the two girls and Ashley’s father, Danny, were missing. When Lauria’s family returned to the crime scene to some investigating the next day, they found Danny’s remains. He had also been shot to death, but somehow, the authorities managed to miss finding his body!

They are numerous rumors about who committed the murders. It was initially suspected that the two girls might have done it and taken off. There were rumors that the local people be involved, or that Danny Freeman was targeted because of a drug debt. Convicted serial killers Tommy Lee Sells and Jeremy Jones have each claimed to have abducted and murdered the girls. Jones even told authorities that he disposed of their bodies in a mine shaft, but a search turned up nothing. In spite of all these theories, the ultimate fate of Lauria and Ashley still remains a mystery.

On September 4, 1978, Margaret Fandel went out to dinner in Sterling, Alaska with her two children, 13-year old Scott and 8-year old Amy. Afterwards, she dropped them off at their home, a rural cabin in the woods, and went back out. Margaret did not return until sometime between 2 and 3 AM, where she discovered food on the counter and a pot of boiling water on the stove. Assuming that her children were spending the night at the neighbors, she went to bed and did not realize Scott and Amy were missing until the next day.

At first, Amy’s father, Roger Fandel, was thought to be responsible for their disappearance and a girlfriend of his allegedly asked for $5000 to reveal what happened. As time went on, however, authorities came to believe he wasn’t involved, but no one has any real idea who might be involved. The children may have been abducted by an unknown predator in the middle of the night, but there is no concrete evidence to support any theory. Nearly 35 years later, no trace of Scott or Amy Fandel has ever been found.

It’s horrible enough for a family to have a child go missing, but to have FIVE of them disappear in the same night?! That’s exactly what happened to George and Jenny Sodder on Christmas Eve in 1945. Their family had ten children, but after their Fayetteville, West Virginia home burned to the ground, five of them (Betty, Jennie, Louis, Martha and Maurice) were never seen again. The obvious explanation should be that they died in the fire, but no remains of the children were ever found and it’s extremely unlikely that fire could have completely incinerated them.

While the family did find a few remains in the wreckage, they showed no signs of fire damage and may have been stolen from a cemetery and planted there! It is theorized that the fire was started as a diversion to abduct the children as the house’s phone line had been cut and the family’s ladder was found in an embankment 75 feet away. There were numerous eyewitness sightings of the children over the years, and in 1968, the family were mailed a mysterious photograph of a man who may have been a grown-up Louis Sodder. Sadly, George and Jenny both died without ever finding out the truth about what happened.

Robin Warder is a budding Canadian screenwriter who has used his encyclopedic movie knowledge to publish numerous articles at Cracked.com. I am also the co-owner of a pop culture called The Back Row.

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Who hasn’t heard of the Amityville Horror or Borley Rectory? Some places become famous (or infamous) and their reputations remain prominent in the public consciousness. Other haunted places might be forgotten or remain unknown by many except local inhabitants and die hard ghost enthusiasts like us. Here are 10 less well known locations where the paranormal meets the regular world and gives it the chills.

Between Bangor and Belfast on Maine’s coast lies the small town of Bucksport, whose most famous 18th century citizen was Colonel Jonathan Buck. Buck’s grave in the local cemetery is marked by a large granite monument. The stone bears a curious stain or inclusion in the shape of a partial human leg and foot, supposedly due to a curse placed on Buck by a woman accused of witchcraft and later executed by hanging. After Buck’s death, the foot shape formed on the monument and numerous attempts to clean it off were unsuccessful. Is the “Cursed Tomb” real or just pareidolia? We’ll never know. Over many decades, details have changed, but the legend’s core remains the same: Buck wronged a woman and his memorial stone was marked by the vengeful spirit. The poet Robert Peter Coffin romanticized the Colonel Buck and the witch legend in his poem, The Foot of Tucksport.

Cherry Hill was a neighborhood in the old Fourth Ward of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which became infamous for the worst tenement slum in the city, Gotham Court. However, in 1900, a three-room flat on Cherry Street gained brief notoriety for being haunted. According to reports, for 19 years, even in overcrowded NYC, no tenant had been able to remain within the flat longer than a few hours before terrifying disturbances began: pictures turned upside down on the walls, furniture moved, residents were physical assaults. The poltergeist activity was believed due to the spirit of an old French woman, a widow who committed suicide by hanging herself following her husband’s death. This location shouldn’t be confused with the Cherry Hill estate in Albany, which is also supposed to be haunted.

In 1852, the newly built vessel Good Times was launched from Bristol. In the beginning, superstitious sailors pegged Good Times as a lucky ship: no one was hurt during construction, she launched ahead of schedule, saved 8 days on her maiden voyage, and on the same trip made an $18,000 profit. But soon, always between midnight and 4 A.M., the men aboard began hearing a muffled voice crying “Oh, my” beneath the main hatch. A comprehensive search of the ship revealed no stowaways, but the voice continued to be heard every night. The unnerved sailors threatened mutiny. After several months of the phenomena repeating, the ship was sold, and Good Times’ reputation as haunted was sealed.

Henry David Jardine was rector of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church from 1879 until his death in 1886. During his time at the church, a newspaper printed unsubstantiated accusations alleging Jardine had committed a number of crimes including sexual misconduct with young girls. Jardine sued for libel and lost. His “priesthood” was revoked. His body was found in St. Louis, where he’d traveled to contest the Church’s decision. He held a rag soaked in chloroform and some believed he’d committed suicide. The murky circumstances surrounding his death led to his burial in unconsecrated ground. Years later, his body was exhumed and cremated, and his ashes rest in St. Mary’s, where mysterious footsteps have been heard. People have also claimed the priest’s ghost make an appearance.

In 1982, California newspapers reported on the LeBaron Hotel (now the Wyndham San Jose Hotel and Resort)—specifically Room 538, which was said by employees and visitors to be haunted. The story began with housekeeper Lupe Moncivais, who claimed she first came across the spirit haunting the room in 1979 or 1980 after the death of a young woman from a drug overdose in November of that year. She heard a voice whispering her name and her hair was pulled, but she was alone at the time. Following the report, the hotel was deluged with requests to reserve the haunted room for the night. Guests reported other phenomena such as the elevators stopping on the fifth floor by themselves, faucets in Room 538 turning on and off, and a “woman in white” was seen entering the unoccupied room.

The Burrville Cider Mill (formerly Burr’sMill) located just outside Watertown was built in 1801 and remains in operation today pressing apples into cider. The mill is believed to be haunted by the ghosts of former owners—Captain John Birr (rumored to have pirated on Lake Ontario) and Homer Rebb. Strange phenomena are said to have occurred including the disappearance of a 25-pound bag of sugar from a locked room. The current owners, employees, and visitors have seen apparitions and heard unaccountable noises such as heavy objects dropping, balls bouncing across the floor, the wheels of the old cider press turning, and smelled cigar smoke. Equipment tends to malfunction, but an appeal to Homer Rebb takes care of it. You can watch a video above made by a local television news crew.

The former Cuban consulate, Villa Paula, is located in the Little Haiti district of Miami. Built in 1925, the building ceased to be an official residence a few years later after the death of its namesake, Paula Milord—wife of consul Domingo Milord—following complications during a leg amputation. Villa Paula fell into private hands and gained a reputation as Miami’s most haunted location. The ghost of a one-legged, black haired woman was seen floating down the hall. Witnesses smelled coffee and roses, and heard ghostly piano music. Dishes were thrown on the floor. Three of a former owner’s cats were killed. A visiting Satanist entered and began choking. During a séance, a psychic claimed 5 separate spirits haunted the premises. The current owner has stated the property is peaceful now.

In late June 1896, the house of M. Lebégue at Valence-en-Brie near Paris was suddenly beset by strange, ghostly manifestations. Witnesses heard raps, furniture was overturned, and windows broken. But the strangest and most frightening phenomena to residents, servants, and visitors was a mysterious voice, described as “the hoarse voice of the giant at the fair” that issued from various places in the house including the cellar, the kitchen, the invalid Madame Lebégue’s bedside, the chimneys, under the plates on the dining room table and elsewhere. The voice insulted policemen and doctors and occasionally seemed pleased with itself when something destructive occurred. Many people heard the voice, including reporters. Although it was theorized a servant girl might be responsible for the physical phenomena, the auditory phenomena couldn’t be explained.

Newspapers reported in August 1905 and 1906 that the Big Bull Tunnel in Virginia, part of the Norfolk & Western Railway line, had been the site of paranormal manifestations as reported by a train crew. Local citizens were also disturbed by the phenomena, which included ghastly sounds like a man groaning in pain. A voice made declarations like, “They are drinking my blood.” According to witnesses—respectable railway employees—the tunnel was examined and no evidence of trickery could be found. It was believed at least three men lost their lives in the tunnel. Possible sources of the haunting? We found a report about the tunnel from 1901 indicating Robert Lemon, engineer, had his skull crushed and wasn’t expected to live, and in 1904, a flagman was knocked off a train and fatally injured.

Flaherty near Laporte, Indiana was the location of sightings of a ghost believed to haunt the station on the Lake Erie Railway in 1904-1905. According to reports, the apparition was seen after sundown, terrifying the townspeople—the manifestation of a headless man standing near the station platform close to the water tank. The man held dinner pail and waved his arms. Just before disappearing, the ghost let out hair-raising shrieks. Locals identified the spirit as Columbus Cole, a popular resident of the town, who had been decapitated very near that same spot during a train accident when a boiler exploded. The visitations began shortly after Cole’s death. Many eyewitnesses in the neighborhood and surrounding areas claimed to have seen the ghost. The general theory was that Cole died with some unfinished business.

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Listverse is a place where mysteries are brought to the light to be examined, but usually never solved. Prepare to discover a new set of bizarre, still unexplained aberrations, that may never be satisfactorily explained. In this eerie list, we will look at exceptional cryptids, unexplainable disasters and strange anomalies that do not fit in any standard category. Some accounts are just unsettling, while others may pose a more sinister threat from yet unknown happenings on this planet.

While many cryptid reports suggesting the presence of a reptilian creature of perhaps a yet undiscovered monster fish, the J’ba Fofi anomaly is a unique and even more terrifying occurrence. Throughout the 20th century, travelers in the Congo reported seeing a huge arachnid measuring three feet in diameter along the roads and on trees. In the 2000s, reports from the Southeastern United States reported similar invertebrates, resembling spiders and measuring several feet across. Precise descriptions from natives include the fact that the monstrous creatures “weave webs between two trees and collect leaves”, while reportedly preying on dwarf antelope, birds and large rodents. Dwindling habitats have apparently reduced populations. It is very possible that this is a much larger cousin to the 12 inch Goliath Bird Eating Spider of Brazil.

Georgia is a densely forested region located on the swampy Southeastern US. In the murky, mangrove filled estuaries of Georgia’s wild coastline, a bizarre creature has been reported in waters of the Altamaha River, dating back to the early 18th century. The creature has been described as snake-like, or resembling a giant sturgeon, but with a crocodilian head. Lengths of over 30 feet have been reported by witnesses, who include swimmers claiming to have bumped into the terrifying creature. Historic Tama tribal accounts also describe such an animal. Some cryptozoologists suggest the Altamaha-ha could be an ocean reptile that travels into freshwater to spawn, explaining its associated with river mouths. The Salt Water Crocodile does exactly this in Australia, suggesting Altamaha-ha could be another, yet unknown crocodilian species with a greatly lengthened body to facilitate ocean hunting.

In 1953, US Air Force Pilot Lieutenant Felix Moncla was stationed at Kinross Air Force Base in Michigan when a mysterious airborne object appeared on ground radar. Lt. Moncla scrambled his F-89 Scorpion interceptor to investigate the anomaly, but as he grew nearer, the ground radar reported seeing his aircraft suddenly merge with the object. Both objects immediately vanished from radar vision. Theories centered on a collision with an unreported Canadian aircraft, but aviation authorities north of the border clearly denied that any such aircraft was in the area at the time of “the merging”. Eerily, no confirmed debris or wreckage discoveries were ever made below the merging point, and the mysterious fate of Lt. Moncla and his radio operator remain to this day.

We are familiar with claims of living fossil apes roaming the forests of North America and the Himalayas, known as Sasquatch or the Yeti. Most reports describe brief glimpses, but the story of Albert Ostman is so personal it warrants closer examination. In 1924, 33 year old Ostman was prospecting in the deserted forests near Powell River, British Columbia when he was seized by giant apes while sleeping, according to his account to police in 1957, at age 64.

The investigator was unable to find flaws in his story, shared under affidavit of truthful disclosure, which interestingly, contained peculiar but scientifically significant details that boosted its credibility. He reported three adults and one juvenile, a rather odd number. Interestingly, biologists note some species form groups with young from previous years, which help raise the current offspring. Ostman was offered shoots by the female, who also stacked dry leaves. He did not use his gun, as the creatures did not harm him. He allegedly escaped by offering the patriarch an entire can of snuff, making him “groggy”.

Unlike many regions where cryptids are thought to reside, the state of Arkansas, USA takes its cryptids very seriously, implementing a law and order approach to ensuring these creatures remain undisturbed. The White River monster was reported by a number of residents as being an aquatic or amphibious scaly creature of great length, having a back studded by rows of massive, sharp spines. After the reports of the beast continued in the early 1970s, District official passed the White River Monster Refuge Act, establishing the regions of the sightings as a nature reserve, with the stipulation that “to molest, kill, trample or harm the monster” was a punishable offense. Sightings have not been constant, but tend to occur in rapid series. This monster remains one of the least known, but best protected cryptids on Earth. Scientists have suggested it is a 5,000 pound elephant seal that wandered up the Mississippi, a theory backed up by the bizarre mooing sounds, and the alleged “proboscis” attached to the animals nose.

Certain mysteries are sufficiently bizarre and creepy to forever defy imagination. In 1964, a certain Jim Templeton photographed his daughter of his on a visit to Burgh Marsh in Cumberland, UK. When the shot was developed by Kodak, a strange white figure could be seen standing behind the form of his daughter. While Mr. Templeton saw no one in the vicinity when he took the picture, he noted that the wildlife appeared rather agitated at the time the photo was taken. An investigation by Kodak revealed an absence of tampering. The being, or whatever it could have been resembled a “spaceman”, according to accounts, and Mr. Templeton claimed that “men in black” visited him and tried to intimidate him into admitting that his photograph did not depict anything anomalous. Much public speculation has followed the alleged event. It was claimed Australian missile tests were aborted when the same figure appeared.

While many of the mysteries in the world are recorded events from the past, some of the most bizarre and mysterious happenings continue right up the present time. In March 2013, a mysterious object fell from the sky over Patoi Village and crashed into a suburban yard, causing serious burns when it hit the two women working in the garden. Experts were called in to investigate the remains of the anomalous fireball. Examination determined that it was not of natural origin, and found strange, rubberlike material and a massive formation of grey ash. The fireball had been reported at 1 foot across. Theories in this nearly unprecedented injury from an “alien” object include a UFO accident, the remains of a secretly shot down aircraft, or even the remains from an unknown satellite re-entry. Whatever the truth, this event should destroy any sense of safety as you sit in your home, anywhere in the world.

The African Congo is the most mysterious of Earth’s ecosystems, and is home to the highest number of cryptids. These creatures, described by experienced natives, are also among the most credible and likely, given their resemblance to prehistoric creatures that could still exist in the remote rainforest. The Emela-ntouka is alleged to be the size of an elephant, but with a massive horn protruding from the front. One would suspect a rhinoceros, but the creature has a massive tail, which better fits the description of a triceratops dinosaur. The beast is a herbivore, like Triceratops, but it is greatly feared by natives. In the case of the Famous Moekel Membe, natives pointed to the long necked Apatosaurus, but not any modern animal when asked to match their observations with drawings.

In 1944, terror gripped the Illinois town of Mattoon when a mysterious, even ghostly “serial gasser” was said to dash up to homes and spray petrochemicals through windows, causing widespread illness. Some victims began to vomit, while others were said to suffer bouts of paralysis. Between August and September, twenty five homeowners became victims of the crazed attacker. Only 5 witnesses claimed to have seen him, describing him slender and dressed in black. Local police were baffled and the FBI was called in to investigate. When they could not find a suspect, they claimed the fumes had blown into the house from industrial centers, but the local diesel plant denied these claims. In a bizarre twist, one victim identified the “mad gasser” as a women dressed as a man, and high heeled shoe prints were found. Theories range from a deranged terrorist to a Nazi spy testing chemical weapons.

In the summer of 1947, in the calm straits off the Malaysian coast, several ships received chilling distress from a Dutch transport Ourang Medan stating “the entire crew was dead”, before the caller stated he too was about to die. Upon boarding the ship, a ghastly and up to this day, unexplainable discovery was made. According to official US maritime reports the crew were “lying on their backs, staring towards the sun with expressions of horror, twisted into strange positions with their hands clutching outward.” The investigators hastily evacuated the ship and cut the ropes, just in time before the ship exploded. Theories include a leak of cyanide based nerve gases concocted by Japanese military scientists pardoned in exchange for collaborating with US weapons developers.

Christian Marlberg is a freelance writer and researcher with an interest in travel, weird risks, and the unexplained. He divides his time between investigating North American cryptids and re-capturing escaped exotic animals.

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It’s always frustrating when a person mysteriously disappears and no one ever finds out what happened to them. It’s even more frustrating when the investigation of these disappearances winds up uncovering clues that only raise more questions than they answer. Here are some unsolved disappearances which are much more unusual than your typical missing persons case and feature some very baffling twists and turns. In each of these creepy cases, bizarre clues have been discovered which add a lot of confusion to the mystery and are sure to leave sleuths scratching their heads.

On September 28, 1988, a 19-year old girl named Tara Calico left her home in Belen, New Mexico to go bike riding on Highway 47. Neither Tara nor her bicycle were seen again. Her case went cold until June 15, 1989 when a woman found a Polaroid in a parking spot outside a convenience store in Port St. Joe, Florida. A white van had previously been parked in the spot, and the photo featured a teenage girl and young boy were both bound and gagged in the back of a van.

It was speculated that the girl in the photo might be Tara and that the boy was Michael Henley, a nine-year old who vanished on a New Mexico camping trip the previous year. However, Michael’s remains were soon found in the same area he originally went missing. Two other photographs featuring a gagged girl resembling Tara surfaced over the next few months, though they have never been released to the public. Years later, a Valencia County sheriff publicly stated his belief that Tara was killed the day she disappeared when two local residents accidentally hit her with their truck and disposed of her body, but he had insufficient evidence to make an arrest. But if this theory is true, then what’s the story behind the two kids in the photograph?

On the morning of January 25, 2006, the husband of 35-year old Teresa Butler returned to his home in Risco, Missouri after working the night shift and discovered that his wife was missing and their two young sons were home alone. Her Jeep was still at the house and there were no signs of struggle or forced entry, but her kids could not shed any light on what happened to her. Teresa’s purse and cellular phone were missing, as were a lot of other valuable items from the house, such as a Playstation, video camera and car stereo. However, her wedding rings and jacket were left behind.

Things got even more bizarre when authorities discovered that two calls had been made from Teresa’s cell phone shortly after she disappeared to numbers at two different towns in Missouri. The person at the first number never answered the phone, while the second did answer and claimed they heard nothing on the line. Neither of these people had ever heard of Teresa Butler and don’t have any information about her disappearance. Seven years later, there are still no answers in this baffling case and no trace of Teresa has ever been found.

In March of 1998, Amy Bradley, a 23-year old girl from Virginia, went on vacation with her parents and brother on the Royal Caribbean cruise ship, Rhapsody of the Seas. While they were in the vicinity of Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles, Amy mysteriously vanished from the ship. Amy’s family last saw her on their suite’s balcony in the wee hours of the morning of March 24, and eyewitnesses reported seeing her in an elevator with a member of the ship’s band sometime afterward. The ship docked in Curacao shortly after Amy’s parents reported her missing, but it was not locked down while the crew searched for her. Seven years later, Amy’s parents were E-mailed a photograph from an adult escort website featuring a woman who resembled her.

It is speculated that Amy may have been smuggled off the ship in Curacao and sold into sexual slavery. There have been numerous eyewitness sightings of her over the years. One of them came from an American sailor who visited a brothel in Curacao and claimed that a woman who said her name was “Amy Bradley” asked him for help before she was escorted away. While Amy’s family have launched an extensive investigation to find her, her ultimate fate is still unknown.

On November 21, 1987, Korrina Lynne Sagers Malinoski, a 26-year old woman from Mount Holly, South Carolina, mysteriously disappeared when she did not show up for work and her car was found parked in front of the Mount Holly Plantation. But that’s not even the most bizarre aspect of this story. On October 4, 1988, Korrina’s 8-year old daughter, Annette Sagers, was on her way to school and went to the bus stop in front of the Mount Holly Plantation… and she mysteriously vanished as well!

To make things even stranger, a note was found at the bus stop which read: “Dad, momma come back. Give the boys a hug”. While it looked like it may have been written under duress, handwriting experts determined that Annette likely wrote the note. It’s been speculated that Annette’s mother may have returned to reclaim her daughter so they could disappear together, but she also left two sons behind and no one in their family has heard from either of them in 25 years. In 2000, an anonymous caller claimed that Annette’s body was buried in Sumter County, but that lead never panned out. Overall, this is a truly baffling mystery with no discernible solution.

On the morning of August 4, 1981, a 20-year old woman named Cynthia Anderson went to her job as a legal secretary at a law firm in Toledo, Ohio. When her employers arrived at work later on, Cynthia had vanished. Her purse and car keys were missing, but her vehicle was still parked outside. Eerily, a romance novel she had been reading was at her desk and it was open to the one scene in the story where the heroine is abducted at knifepoint. This clue could be read as a sign that she staged her own disappearance, but there has been no trace of her in over 30 years.

There have been many other theories about what happened to Cynthia. A month after her disappearance, police received an anonymous phone call that Cynthia was being held against her will in the basement of a white house, but this lead never went anywhere. One of the attorneys at Cynthia’s firm was involved in drug dealing and later went to prison, drumming up speculation that she may have overheard incriminating information which led to her murder. However, there is no concrete evidence to support any of these theories and Cynthia Anderson remains missing.

On the morning of February 14, 2000, the parents of 9-year old girl Asha Degree went to wake her up and discovered she was not in her bed. Even though Asha shared a room with her brother, he had no idea what happened to her. Witnesses later reported seeing a girl matching Asha’s description walking down the highway at around 4:00 a.m., so it seems she may have sneaked out on her own. Asha was currently studying a fantasy book in school about children who go on adventures after running away, which could have inspired her actions. Things got even more bizarre once Asha’s belongings started turning up.

Three days after she disappeared, Asha’s pencil, marker and hair bow were found in the doorway of a tool shed approximately one mile from her home. A year-and-a-half later, Asha’s book bag was found 26 miles away. It contained more of her belongings and had been double-wrapped in plastic trash bags. This has led authorities to suspect foul play, but there are still no answers about why Asha would leave her home in the middle of the night, who she might have crossed paths with, or what ultimately happened to her.

Laureen Rahn, a 14-year old girl from Manchester, New Hampshire, was last seen on the evening of April 26, 1980 during a get-together at her apartment with two friends. Laureen’s mother, Judith, came home that night and was baffled to discover that the apartment building’s hallway was dark because all the light bulbs had been unscrewed. Judith assumed Laureen was sleeping in her bed, but in the morning, she discovered that it was actually Laureen’s friend, who had no idea where Laureen was.

The police initially suspected Laureen was a runaway, but things got weird in October of that year when Judith discovered three calls to California on her phone bill which she had never made. Two of the calls were made to motels while the other was made to a teen sexual assistance hotline. The wife of the physician who ran this hotline was known for housing runaways, and at least one of these motels was often used by a notorious child pornographer known as “Dr. Z”. However, authorities could find no evidence to tie Laureen to any of these leads. For the next several years, Judith would also get mysterious phone calls from a caller who never said anything, but in the end, the ultimate fate of Laureen Rahn remains a mystery.

In March of 2000, 23-year old college student Leah Roberts left on a road trip from her home in Raleigh, North Carolina. She took most of her belongings and her cat with her, but did not tell anyone where she was going. On March 18, her jeep was discovered abandoned on a logging road in Whatcom County, Washington. The vehicle had crashed over an embankment and while it’s likely the driver would have been injured in an accident like that, there was no sign of any blood. All of Leah’s belongings (including a pair of pants containing $2500) were scattered throughout the scene, there was no trace of Leah or her cat.

To make things even stranger, blankets had been placed over the vehicle’s windows, indicating that someone had used it as a shelter. One week later, police received a call from a man claiming he saw a woman matching Leah’s description at a gas station many miles away from the crash scene. The caller said she looked disoriented, but he inexplicably hung up before giving any more details. This has been the only known sighting of Leah Roberts since her disappearance, but there’s no other indication about what may have happened to her.

On April 10, 1988, 40-year old Diane Augat left her residence in Odessa, Florida and mysteriously disappeared. Three days later, Diane’s mother received a message on her answering machine from a woman who sounded just like her daughter. She was saying “Help, help, let me out” and “Hey, gimme that” as the sounds of someone trying to grab the phone away could be heard in the background. The caller ID read “Starlight”, but there was no answer when Diane’s mother called the number back.

Things got really morbid on April 15 when the severed tip of Diane’s right middle finger was found in the area where she was last seen. Two weeks later, a bag containing her neatly folded clothing was discovered in a convenience store’s freezer. Two-and-a-half years after Diane went missing, a local paper published a story about her disappearance. The very next day, Diane’s brother’s girlfriend happened to discover a plastic bag in another convenience store. It had the name “Diane” written on it and contained items which may have belonged to her. In spite of these bizarre clues, no other trace of Diane Augat has ever been found.

Mary Shotwell Little, a 25-year old newlywed secretary at a bank in Atlanta, Georgia, mysteriously vanished after having dinner with a friend on the night of October 14, 1965. The next day, her car was found in the same lot where she had parked the night before, but there were indications that it had been driven away from this location and returned. Her undergarments were neatly folded inside and there were traces of blood throughout the vehicle. The car also had a license plate which was not registered to Mary and had been stolen from another vehicle in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The day after she disappeared, Mary’s gasoline credit card wound up being used at two separate stations in Charlotte and Raleigh. The signatures for them read “Mrs. Roy H. Little Jr.” and appeared to be in Mary’s handwriting. Both places reported seeing a disheveled woman matching Mary’s description who seemed to have a minor head injury and was in the company of two domineering men. There have been many theories about her disappearance, ranging from an obsessive secret admirer to a sex scandal at her workplace, but none of them have ever been proven and Mary Little’s fate remains an unsolved mystery.

Robin Warder is a budding Canadian screenwriter who has used his encyclopedic movie knowledge to publish numerous articles at Cracked.com. I am also the co-owner of a pop culture website called The Back Row.

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With amazing advances in technology, one would think every rumor of lost treasure would either be debunked or found. Yet, talk of vast amounts of gold and gems continue to abound even in the 21st century. There have been a few instances where rumors of treasures actually produced real treasure, go figure. In 2007, some of Captain William Kidd’s lost treasure was discovered less than 70 feet off the shores of Columbia. Although entertaining, treasure hunting should require occupational hazard insurance; past treasure hunters have received jail time, injuries and even death.

In Palawan, Philippines, Bacuit Bay is an island that on its own should be considered a treasure. Bacuit Bay is small, yet boasts a legendary story about Tomoyuki Yamashita’s lost treasures. A decorated general for the Japanese Army, it is speculated that Yamashita hid treasure in the caves of Bacuit Bay in the 1940s. Yamashita obtained his treasures by looting many bordering countries during the 30s until World War II. Yamashita’s treasures includes loot from Malaysia, India, Thailand and Burma, which were all shipped to the Philippines prior to their final destination—Japan. Unfortunately for Yamashita, Japan surrendered while he was still in the Philippines. Prior to being captured and hung, Yamashita hid his treasure in 172 different places on the island. He and his crew assumed they would eventually come back for the treasure. Some sources estimate that Yamashita’s treasures could be worth billions today. In the 70s, Rogelio Roxas found part of the treasure. Unfortunately President Ferdinand Marcos confiscated his findings and the remaining treasure located in that particular tunnel. Roxas sued and was awarded $22 billion dollars. Although the Marcos and Roxas family continue to battle in court, based on the story, there are more caves filled with Yamashita’s other treasures.

Four soldiers of the Peruvian Army in the mid-1800s devised a plan to outwit priests after learning about their treasures. Luke Barrett, Arthur Brown, Jack Killorain and Diego Alvarez, gained the confidence of the Pisco Church in Peru and managed to sail away with over 14 tons of gold and other treasures after killing the priests. Unfamiliar with the area, the four drew a map, ditched the loot and headed to Australia; with the hope of eventually returning and recovering their booty. Unfortunately, prior to returning for their treasure, two were killed and the other two were arrested. Only Killorain survived the jail stint. Before he died he told Charles Howe about the Pisco Church heist and where the treasure was stashed. When Howe found the treasure, he was not equipped to move the treasure. He left the treasure hoping to return and collect. Out of money, Howe failed to return to collect the treasure but he had disclosed the location to George Hamilton who eventually went looking for the treasure but never found it because he couldn’t understand the map.

The only legendary treasure to have a map that directs you to 14 tons of gold is the Lue. As mystifying as the code is, it has long been assumed the only tools needed to decode the Lue is a one dollar bill, a key and a sound understanding of Masonic symbolism. Published by Karl Von Mueller, some speculate the “map” consists of various mathematical formulas.

Believed to be in the United States, the legend of the Lue claims the treasure is 14 tons of gold. The gold was brought to the US by the Nazis in a plan to sabotage the US economy and prevent Americans from entering World War II. After hearing the plan, the Gold Act was instituted to circumvent the Nazis’ plan. Failing to prevent the US from entering the war wasn’t the only failure in Nazis’ grand scheme. They also failed to decipher the Lue and the Nazi loyalist that created had died. Ultimately they were unable to retrieve the treasure and returned to Germany.

A rumored city of gold has been the fascination of many for some time. Herman Cortes stumbled upon it in 1526, then Cristobol de Pedraza in 1544. Archeologist William Strong noted ‘archeological mounds’ near Rio Patuca and Rio Conquirre in 1933, providing more fuel for a growing legend where “nobles there ate from plates of gold.” As recently as February this year, archeologists and other researchers from the National Science Foundation and the University of Houston have used advanced technology such as mapping light detection and Light detection and Ranging (LIDaR) to map the ancient ruins. The verdict is still out if this area holds treasures of gold.

There are a variety of legends surrounding Lake Issyk-Kul. From the idea that Templar Knights and Christians buried treasures of the Templar there to lost jewels forming a golden path, many legends persist about the area. One of the most notable legends is of Commander Genghis who is supposedly buried with his treasures. Some legends have his treasure in the lake and others admit the location is unknown. Reports indicate that his soldiers killed everyone that knew the tomb’s location and when they returned from the burial site, they were killed as well.

Commander Genghis amassed his fortune by “capturing most of central Asia and China,” in the 13-century, of which “the booty yielded by his conquests was incalculable.” Digs in the ’20s failed due to the instability of the political environment. Since then there have been more attempts including expeditions by the Japanese and a recent attempt by American researchers who believe they have located Genghis Khan’s tomb, but there is no treasure to date.

Hurricane season in Florida has led to many shipwrecks throughout history. One notable shipwreck that fell prey to the tumultuous southern hurricane season was the shipwreck of Santissima Concepcion or “El Grande.” The record listed 500 people on board, but various reports have identified anywhere between 4 to 190 people who survived to describe their ordeal. Beyond the crew the record also lists 1,800,000 pesos in treasures, “77 chests of pearls and 49 chests of emeralds.” There have been numerous attempts to locate the treasure yet most have proved fruitless. It is believed the Sir William Phipp found about 25% of the treasure during his 1687 expedition.

In a bit of irony the SS Islander that sank in 1901 was recovered in 2012-without any gold. Why is it on the list? Well the Mars Company, the expedition, crew thinks the gold may be on the sea bed as a result of moving the ship. They did find gold dust and pieces of gold on the recovered ship but that’s about it. Mars Company estimates the treasure will be valued at over $250 million therefore they are planning another expedition. You can see part of the ship on the banks of Admiral Island while the rest is in Seattle.

Those seeking the lost treasures of Antilla, the German fighter wreckage, will need to dive along the North Point of Aruba. There’s a tale that claims the Antilla was anchored along the North Shore when authorities rowed out to sea and asked for its surrender. While the skipper contemplated his options on shore, he left the ship’s seacock open, this sank the ship. Instead of surrendering and losing his treasure, the ship exploded and sank. This ghost ship, as the locals call it, remains a tribute to the German soldiers from WWII.

There is an abundance of real lost treasures, some of which belonged to the Apache Indians. Rumor has it that after attacking a wagon train the Apache Indians hid their stolen fortune of silver coins and gold dust in a Dutch oven. This oven, which contains the lost treasure, is hidden behind rocks at a point on Winchester Mountain in Arizona. Those in search of the treasure claim the point is cursed but that has not stopped treasure hunters from trying their luck.

To find a canyon wall that cries tears of gold you will need to map yourself a route to the Lost Adams Diggings in western New Mexico. It was in the early 1860s when Adams made his trek to the area. Guided along the White River and into the White Mountains, Adams and his crew of miners found gold nuggets that hidden “in a corn-grinding basin.” Although Adams left the mine on the second night, the miners stayed when they were brutally attacked and killed by Apache Indians. Tales say that Adams was never able to find his gold canyon again.

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Conspiracy theorists believe in a lot of crackpot ideas and deserve their reputation as an amusing distraction, but once in awhile, they get one right, and just one is all it would have ever taken to keep the rest of the theories going forever. Below are ten American conspiracies that are no longer theories, but proven true, no matter how absurdly unbelievable you may find them.

Theory: The FBI Poisoned Alcohol during Prohibition

Conspiracy theorists like to point out that the government (usually the U. S. government) is poisoning the national populace, which is blissfully unaware, via chemtrails and/or flouridation. How laughable, most of us say, and yet, although there is no proof of these two, the FBI did, in truth, poison liquor stores during Prohibition for the purpose of “dissuading” people from that demon hooch.

Prohibition lasted from 1920 to 1933 in the U. S., and was absolutely unenforceable. Everyone of the public knew perfectly well that a drink now and then was not at all harmful, and refused to accept its absence. Prohibition was impelled by the Temperance Movement, which promoted teetotalism, or utter abstinence from alcohol. Its most prominent activist was Carrie Nation, a 6-foot, 180-pound, blue-haired battle axe, who stormed into bars and smashed their kegs open with a hatchet. Amazingly, no drunks ever beat her up for this.

Once Prohibition went into effect, the FBI saw fit to enforce it as well as possible, since the law is the law, and, by adding potentially fatal impurities to it, endeavored to teach the public that it was going to lose with Mr. Booze. These impurities included methane, formaldehyde, ammonia, and even arsenic and kerosene. But the FBI’s usual method, without informing the populace, of course, was to denature drinkable alcohol, which is called ethanol, by adding rubbing alcohol, which is made of water and propene. Propene is distilled from natural gas and oil; rubbing alcohol does a fine job cleaning wounds and preventing infection, but will destroy your intestines, kidneys, and liver if you drink it. The FBI also added acetone, which is paint thinner.

Not surprisingly, people started dying quite readily from what seemed alcohol intoxication, and this only fueled the Temperance Movement’s assertion that alcohol is the Devil.

Theory: The Incident in the Gulf of Tonkin Is Only Half True

In history books, the Gulf of Tonkin incident is usually cited as the immediate instigation for war between the United States and North Vietnam. The general casus belli was to protect the democracy of South Vietnam from the North’s communist aggression. The straw that was seen in the West as breaking the camel’s back was when, on 2 and 4 August 1964, in the waters between Vietnam and Hainan, China, U. S. naval vessels were attacked by Vietnamese naval vessels and defended themselves, killing some Vietnamese sailors.

American public sentiment called for immediate retaliation, and the Congress resolved that Lyndon Johnson could defend any Southeast Asian nation from Communism. The war was on.

What the public was not told for a long time was that the incident on 4 August did not take place. The first incident was a legitimate naval battle, in which the USS Maddox fought off three Vietnamese torpedo boats and killed 4 Vietnamese sailors. But two days later, the Vietnamese were engaged in salvaging their vessels and no hostilities erupted. Nevertheless, Johnson informed the public that the Maddox and the USS Turner Joy had been attacked in separate battles. The Turner Joy had not been attacked.

In keeping with #3, the CIA was for a time regarded as having deliberately spread this false information among the national public to sway favor toward war against Communism. Dozens of senators and congressmen were calling for land invasions of North Vietnam, and then China, and then Russia if they dared retaliate, nuclear weapons be damned.

Today, we know that the misinformation was spread by the National Security Agency, and not for political reasons, but to cover up genuine mistakes they made during the second incident: their radar showed what they thought were approaching enemy warships, but which were, in truth, tricks of light that confused their equipment.

Theory: The Fascist Plot to Overthrow the U. S. Government

In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt deemed it beneficial to the American economy to abandon the gold standard and operate on a pure American currency basis. This had proven very helpful in Great Britain in lowering the cost of products and boosting the citizens’ buying power. Many conservative businessmen of the time deemed the gold standard essential for a strong economy, since gold does not devalue like a nominative currency.

Major General Smedley Butler testified before a senate subcommittee a year later that he had been approached by Gerald MacGuire and William Doyle of the American Legion veterans’ organization. They confided in Butler whether he would have any part in a military coup d’etat to oust Roosevelt and set up a Fascist government with Butler as its head commander, Secretary of General Affairs. Their motive was money, of course, since they and their friends had their fingers in a lot of business pies.

Butler was pro-Communist in light of what he viewed as Roosevelt’s very foolish ideas on the American economy, but Butler was not about to agree to the impossible. In his opinion, the United States government could not be successfully overthrown. To do so would entail a total military siege of every major city in the nation, especially Washington, D. C. So he ratted on the Fascist businessmen. His testimony earned a mixed reception from the subcommittee, which declared that there probably had been a conspiracy to stage a coup in favor of a Fascist system of government, but that it never left square one, and that most of the public figures Butler implicated, many of them retired generals and millionaire bankers, had nothing to do with it.

Theory: The CIA Had Nayirah al-Sabah Bear False Witness

Nayirah al-Sabah was a woman in Kuwait who, in 1990, testified on the floor of the House of Representatives that she had personally witnessed Iraqi soldiers invade Kuwaiti hospitals and take newborn infants out of their incubators and throw them onto the cold floor to freeze to death. Nayirah was invited primarily by Tom Lantos, who had made no secret of his desire that the U. S. retaliate against Iraq for its offenses against Kuwait.

It was Nayirah’s testimony that provided the largest part of the foundation for American public opinion in favor of military force against Iraq, and the CIA was responsible for organizing the funds and advertisements to disseminate Nayirah’s testimony. They enlisted the help of Hill & Knowlton, a global public relations corporation that specializes in marketing, to reach the masses.

It was not until 1992 that John MacArthur of the New York Times discovered Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador the U. S., and that her story had been utterly fabricated. Thus was it shown that the CIA assisted a few powers-that-were in America in waging war with Iraq for another purpose, and that purpose was oil. The Iraqis did invade Kuwait and should not have done so, but they did not throw babies out of incubators. The nurses and doctors who supposedly witnessed this with Nayirah had already fled, and most of them stated that she was lying. The CIA had paid her to lie, and even paid for her to attend acting classes to appear convincing. It worked.

Theory: Operation Mockingbird

Mockingbird began the same year that the Office of Special Projects was founded by Frank Wisner. In 1951, the OSP, renamed Office of Policy Coordination, merged with the CIA and became the agency’s covert paramilitary branch. Its first and principle assignment was to influence national media toward the hatred and fear of Soviet Communism. The CIA funded the operation with money from the Marshall Plan, and bribed journalists and newspaper editors who grew wise to their ulterior motive. Mockingbird led, directly and immediately, to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s rise to power.

The operation became so widespread that the CIA started influencing international media and even international politics. It was due in large part to Mockingbird that Guatemala staged a coup d’etat against Colonel Jacobo Guzman, whom the CIA deemed communist. Mockingbird was responsible for $300,000 of the funding of the 1954 Animal Farm cartoon. They asked Walt Disney if he wanted to make the film, and he balked at the prospect. He was anti-Communist, but the novel does not end happily, and Disney wanted nothing to do with such a story.

Mockingbird also incited the 1953 Iranian coup d’etat and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. David Bruce, appointed by Dwight Eisenhower to investigate this covert propaganda, stated that Mockingbird is responsible for over 50% of international politics over the last half of the 20th Century.

Theory: Asbestos Manufacturers Have Claimed It Was Perfectly Safe

Asbestos is a natural silicate mineral compound long used for sound-proofing and fire-retardation, among many others. It is extremely resistant to burning, and was used for the majority of the 20th Century as a protective suit for fire fighters, race car drivers, and many other high-risk occupations. Motorcyclist, stuntman, and actor Steve McQueen died from malignant mesothelioma, which is the cancer usually caused by inhaling asbestos fibers.

Asbestos has been in use for about 4,500 years, mined in the form of fibrous, hair-like material on and within rock ore, and the 20th Century companies that mass-produced asbestos were beset from 1900 to 1981 by doctors, insurance companies, and occupational hazard organizations who investigated the adverse health effects of asbestos. It was well known in academic and medical circles since at least the turn of the century that asbestos was very dangerous to be around. Even the Ancient Greeks described asbestos miners as suffering from lung ailments.

Yet the companies that mass-produced found it big business and did everything within their considerable power to cover up the truth about asbestosis, mesothelioma, and pulmonary fibrosis; these companies included Johns-Manville Corp., Amatex, Carey-Canada, Celotex, Unarco, National Gypsum, and Eagle-Pilcher. Every one of these companies attempted to destroy the reputations of any independent medical authorities who sought to disclose the truth about asbestos. Physicians employed by the companies informed their superiors that asbestos does indeed cause severe health problems, but that as long as the workers are able to perform their duties, they should not be told of their medical conditions, since this would cause the companies financial woes.

Johns-Manville was labeled “the greatest corporate mass-murderer in history.” It was not until the 1990s that lawsuits, the first of which cropped up in 1929, finally took their toll on these companies, none of which ever admitted to any wrongdoing, and 25 of them filed for bankruptcy. Many were bought by others, and today, asbestos is still legally produced and used in the United States, and some of the companies still maintain that it causes their employees no medical problems. It is banned in Europe.

Theory: The FBI Sought to Neutralize Civil Rights Activists

The FBI referred to this as COINTELPRO, or Counter Intelligence Programs, specifically those targeted at activists of almost any organization from 1956 to 1971. During those years of turmoil, Martin Luther King was the primary spokesperson for civil rights in America, and the FBI considered him and his movement equivalent to the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, the NAACP, the Congress for Racial Equality, and dozens of others all striving to attain equal rights for all races. COINTELPRO referred to all of these groups and movements as “black hate groups,” even the American Indian Movement, and spent 85% of its money on attempts to subvert them; the remaining 15% it spent on the subversion of “white hate groups” like the KKK.

It is highly possible, albeit very unlikely, that the FBI in some way coerced James Earl Ray into killing Martin Luther King, or simply did the job themselves and pinned it on Ray. King’s family concluded in 1998 that Ray had nothing at all to do with the assassination.

All these domestic political organizations and movements, as the FBI labeled them, were deemed threats to national security. If he had done his thing in America in the 20th Century, it is probable that the FBI would have considered Jesus guilty of the same kind of sedition. In general, COINTELPRO targeted the entire left wing of political thought; anyone liberal was seen as a danger to American society and slandered in print, sued or threatened with imprisonment, imprisoned, and illegally wiretapped.

What may well be the FBI’s most shocking atrocity occurred on 4 December 1969, when the home of Fred Hampton, a Black Panther Party officer, was invaded by the Chicago Police, who used deadly force against him and Mark Clark. Clark was shot first, and Hampton was unable to wake to the sound of gunfire because FBI agent William O’Neal had infiltrated their organization and spiked Hampton’s supper with barbiturates. The police shot him to death while he slept unarmed in bed.

Theory: Scientologists Planned to Have Paulette Cooper Committed

This embarrassing moment in Scientology’s history was called “Operations ‘Daniel,’ ‘Dynamite,’ and ‘Freakout,’ and entailed the Church harassing Cooper with unbelievable intensity. Paulette Cooper is an American author who has written defamatory literature against the Church of Scientology. Scientologists are extremely easy to offend in this way, and undertake legitimate and illegal retaliation whenever they see fit.

Cooper published an article in a British newspaper in 1971 that the Church sued to have withdrawn and won $8,000 from the newspaper. Cooper then promptly expanded this article into an entire book, The Scandal of Scientology. For the next 6 years, the Church ran a covert mission to vilify, defame, ridicule, harass, threaten, and even assassinate Cooper, all with the intent to make her shut up about exposing Scientology’s idiotic beliefs (read: the story of Xenu). Their goal was either to cause Cooper to go insane from the constant stress, or convince the authorities that she was insane, in either event leading to her committal or imprisonment. Over the years, as both sides threatened, pursued, and made good on civil legal actions, the Church held meetings to discuss how they could kill Cooper and not get caught.

A member broke into Cooper’s office in 1972 and stole a bundle of her stationery, then forged bomb threats on it to blackmail her. This worked to a small extent; Cooper was indicted and brought before a grand jury, but there was insufficient evidence to proceed. “Freakout” consisted of a three-point plan to discredit Cooper in the public’s eyes, by having a professionally-trained actress impersonate Cooper on the telephone to Arab Consuls in New York. Then her stationery would be used for another bomb threat to be mailed to one of these Consuls. Then a Scientologist would act as Cooper in person in a New York laundromat, threatening to kill President Ford and Henry Kissinger.

Though “Freakout” was never implemented, Daniel and Dynamite certainly were and the astounding truth of how far the Church of Scientology had gone, and was prepared to go, to protect its false image was revealed in 1977 by a full-scale FBI investigation. L. Ron Hubbard’s third wife, Mary Sue, and a host of other officers in the Church, were imprisoned for up to 4 years. They still did not stop slandering and libeling Cooper, filing suit against her 20 times through the 1970s and 1980s. To Cooper’s credit, she fought right back the whole way, and the spectacle remained tooth-and-nail until 1985 when the Church finally paid Cooper a tidy sum out of court.

Theory: The U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Plan to Terrorize the U. S. Populace

The Joint Chiefs are the 5 generals and admirals in charge of the 5 branches of the U. S military. In 1962, those men were George Decker (Army), David Shoup (Marines), Georg Anderson, Jr. (Navy), Curtis LeMay (Air Force), and Edwin Roland (Coast Guard), along with a few others, all chaired by Lyman Lemnitzer (Army). The entire board of the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed, drafted, and agreed on a plan to concoct a casus belli for war against Communist Cuba, under Fidel Castro. Their collective motive was to reduce the constant threat of Communist encroachment into the Western Hemisphere, per the Monroe Doctrine.

This plan was named Operation Northwoods, and entailed the most impossibly indifferent cruelty ever envisioned by a government against its own people. In order to sway public sentiment in favor of the war, the Joint Chiefs planned to bomb high pedestrian-traffic areas in major American cities, including Miami, New York, Washington, D. C., and possibly Chicago and Los Angeles; to frame U. S. citizens for these bombings; to shoot innocent, unarmed civilians on the streets in full view of hundreds of witnesses; to napalm military and merchant vessels in port, while people were aboard; to sink vessels carrying Cuban refugees bound for Florida; to hijack planes for ransom.

Not only did every single member of the Joint Chiefs sign his approval of this plan, they then sent it to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara for his approval, and then to President Kennedy. McNamara claimed years later never to have seen it, but that he would have rejected it. Kennedy, however, did receive it, and promptly called a meeting of the Joint Chiefs, in which he threatened, with severe profanity, to court martial and incarcerate every one of them. The President cannot actually do this, but can order the Congress and military branches to do so, and in these circumstances, they most certainly would have. But Kennedy decided that it would cause irreparable disrespect around the world for the U. S. military. He did remove Lemnitzer from his position as Chairman and assign him as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, not much of a demotion.

Theorists claim that the military may have had a hand in Kennedy’s assassination because of his blistering rebuke of the Joint Chiefs. This, however, remains unproven.

Theory: The CIA’s Heart Attack Gun

This weapon exists. The CIA actually invented it with taxpayer money in the late 1960s to early 1970s. It was not disclosed until 1975, when Senator Frank Church displayed it to a subcommittee investigating the CIA’s illegal activities. They are specifically forbidden from directly killing anyone in the performance of espionage and intelligence-gathering. The gun was designed to be untraceable. It fires a bullet made of ice, about 0.11 inches wide, less than the diameter of a BB, which has been brushed with a minute amount of shellfish toxin. This toxin induces a myocardial infarction in any human, regardless of size or physical fitness. The bullet then melts leaving no trace of any kind. Autopsies would discover the presence of shellfish toxin in the bloodstream, but if the victim has died of a legitimate heart attack, unnaturally induced or not, an autopsy is unlikely. The entrance wound of the dart would appear about as minor as a mosquito bite.

There is no consensus on who, if anyone, the CIA has assassinated with this gun, but it is most likely that they have used it. Theorists point to Andrew Breitbart, a conservative media mogul who published less than flattering stories and details about President Barack Obama. He had promised in the months prior to his death that he would publish proof that Obama’s presidency was illegitimate. Breitbart collapsed on the sidewalk in a Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles on 1 March 2012 and was taken to a hospital where he died of a massive heart attack at the age of 43, despite being relatively fine health. He was not seriously overweight, but the coroner report states that cardiomegaly caused his heart to fail.

It is possible that the gun was used to assassinate Mark Pittman, the financial journalist who, in 2007, predicted the ongoing American economic recession, which was caused by subprime mortgaging. During the subsequent federal bailouts of major financial companies, Pittman famously sued the Federal Reserve for mishandling taxpayer money. The case is still on appeal. Pittman, however, died on 25 November 2009 in Yonkers, New York, in the very same circumstances as Breitbart. He was walking down the sidewalk and collapsed from a heart attack. He was 52. but possible victims notwithstanding, the heart attack gun does exist, and the CIA invented it. They could have had only one purpose in store for it. The conspiracy theorists got this one right.

FlameHorse is a writer for Listverse. He couldn’t believe some of the revelations he found in his research for this list.

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Science continues to give us a deeper and more convincing knowledge of the universe we live in. But we still only partially understand the mysterious world we inhabit, and many mysteries remain unsolved. Here are ten of the most fascinating of these anomalies:

There are the usual cryptid mysteries that we all wish to resolve, but the implications of some of these are so disturbing that we might rather not know the real answer.

In an unknown year—but likely some time in the early 1900s—land surveyors dropped rope down a cave in Boone County, Arkansas. After the rope had descended two hundred feet into the cave pipes, a horrendous hissing and roaring sound was heard, suggesting that a bizarre and enormous beast had been disturbed. Some believe that the roaring belonged to a cave-dwelling cryptid, or an apparently-extinct or so-far-undiscovered species.

The exact site of the eerie report has not been found, but the explorers of a second Arkansas cave heard a case of a landowner who had apparently gone insane with terror after entering a similar subterranean system and encountering something.

Precognition—including the vague sense of impending doom—is an unexplained phenomenon whereby events are seen before their time. Eerily, Abraham Lincoln reported a dream in which he had seen his own dead body. Only days later, he was fatally shot.

Quantum theorists studying the fourth dimension propose that time can bend, allowing us to glimpse the future. Limiting ourselves to American Presidents alone, we find that John Garfield and William McKinley also “previewed” their own deaths. In a related—albeit slightly different—case of extrasensory perception, John Adams’ last words the moment before he died were simply “Thomas Jefferson.” It was unknown to him, but hours before, his great political rival had indeed passed away…

Hatley Castle was built on Vancouver Island, off Canada’s West Coast, by the Scottish Coal Baron Robert Dunsmuir. He was a famous but controversial figure in his day, known for his swift-handed approach to decisions concerning the use of land.

The castle, which now forms part of the campus of Royal Roads University, has begun to fall prey to a series of unexplained events, which send chills down the spine of those who venture too close. Terrified observers have reported seeing a white figure drifting around the windows, and they’ve also made reference to hearing the clash of pots and pans.

It is rumored that the maid of Robert Dunsmuir—rejected by her lover—leapt from the window and died. SPIRITS, a charity dedicated to investigating the paranormal, claims that one of its staff members actually saw a female figure clothed in white slipping through the castle corridors. Unfortunately, few sources have less credibility in such cases than a charity dedicated to investigating the paranormal.

European culture is extremely diverse; distinct customs and peoples live there side-by-side in relatively small but clearly-defined regions. One would imagine that the development of Europe consisted of historically understandable transitions—but according to research at the Australian Center for Ancient DNA, genetic markers in skeletons sampled for DNA suggest a sudden, drastic change around 4,500 years ago.

According to paleo-anthropologist Dr. Alan Cooper, “Something major happened, and the hunt is now on to find out what that was.” The mysterious event or cataclysm may never be determined, but it’s possible that an unknown plague, or else a mysterious conflict or agreement between ancient tribes, may hold the key to Europe’s anomalous past.

“Alien Abductions” have become fairly widely reported, to the point that most researchers have grown somewhat tired of the subject. However, some accounts are much more difficult to disregard than others.

In 1993, Kelly Cahill and her husband were driving at night in Victoria, Australia, when a bizarre form appeared in front of them, apparently in the process of abducting something. The occupants of a second car behind the Cahills also observed the phenomenon. When the Cahills tracked this second group down, they were able to confirm the fact that they too had witnessed the event. Spooky.

While the previous entry dealt with an event that some might attribute to aliens, other Australian dangers may originate from a primitive source. Since the arrival of early settlers, Aboriginal Australians—many of whom possess an almost instinctive knowledge of the outback—have warned of the existence of giant, primitive ape-like creatures known as Yowies.

Their descriptions are eerily similar to the “Sasquatch” accounts of North American native tribes, and also the notorious Yeti of the Himalayan foothills. The creatures are said to be foul-smelling and elusive, which matches other reports worldwide. Explorer Tony Healy notes in his book “In Search of Australia’s Bigfoot” that the sightings may in fact be real, and represent part of a global occurrence of the supposedly extinct Gigantopethacus ape—whose existence would also explain the Yeti and Bigfoot mysteries.

Spontaneous human combustion ranks near the top of the most bizarre and terrifying mysterious events. While accounts of SHC tend to be historical, evidence suggest that the phenomenon has been seen to occur in recent times.

In February 2013, for instance, authorities in Muldrow, Oklahoma, were perplexed to find the incinerated body of sixty-five-year-old Danny Vanzandt—seemingly burned alive in his nearly undamaged home. The Sheriff was able to determine that foul play was not to blame, but refused to rule out spontaneous human combustion. Coroners found that the body seemed to have burned at a low temperature for more than six hours. The victim was a heavy drinker, which some speculate may literally fuel such episodes of combustion. The human body produces methane-related compounds during metabolism, which some believe could fuel a fire when combined with alcohol.

Reports of long-necked, plesiosaur-like animals have proliferated worldwide, often involving independent reports with a remarkable level of uniformity. The possible explanation is strange and chilling—yet scientifically grounded. According to cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans, many serpent sightings in history actually align with the presence of mysterious, long-necked pinnipeds, measuring up to fifty feet in length.

As dolphins have replaced ichthyosaurs, convergent evolution would allow for a pinniped to take on the form of the extinct plesiosaurs, but avoid being affected by cold waters. The southern elephant seal is currently the world’s largest carnivore at a length of twenty-two feet, lending credibility to such theories. Also adding weight to reports of giant, long-necked seals, is the actual existence of the aptly-named Weddell long-necked seal, which has a somewhat serpentine neck. Clearly, the mystery of cryptid pinnipeds warrants some attention.

The Mary Celeste has gained a somewhat eerie notoriety following its discovery, apparently having been abandoned by its crew, with nobody remaining on board. This ghost vessel phenomenon seems to repeat itself, remarkably, in the modern case of the Kaz II.

In April 2007, the Kaz II was traveling with its three-man crew along the northwest Australian coast, when air surveillance noticed it drifting oddly. Upon boarding, no trace of the crew members could be found. However, no sign of trouble was discovered either. A laptop computer was still running, and the engine was on. Eating utensils were laid out on the table, while life jackets remained in their cases. The bizarre and disturbing mystery of the Kaz II essentially remains unsolved.

According to Jon Hall of the Queensland Emergency Management Office, “What they found was a bit strange in that everything was normal; there was just no sign of the crew.”

The state coroner eventually ruled that “the brothers fell overboard while attending to mechanical problems—however, the ruling is still only speculation.”

On the island of Andros in the Bahamas, descriptions of a mysterious creature known as the “chickcharney” have become embedded in local culture. Described as around one meter tall, the bizarre flightless bird-like creature is described in historic accounts, and also in modern-day sightings around the island.

Reputed to have red eyes and to be capable of turning its head in any direction, the entity seems to border on implausibility. But ornithologists have identified a bizarre, extinct species of giant flightless barn owl, whose continued existence would explain legends of a large predatory bird walking around the island at night (owls are capable of turning their heads one hundred and eighty degrees in order to scan for prey). The owl is thought to be extinct, but the continuing sightings suggest that the bizarre and awesome creature may still stalk the backcountry of Andros, waiting to be rediscovered as more than the mere stuff of folk tales.

Ron Harlan investigates the mysteries of nature, human experience, and the bizarre findings that often crop up on this planet. He is a freelance writer and student of science.

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Everyone has heard of the Bermuda Triangle and the mysteries that surround it. Theories about this area range from reasonable to just plain ridiculous, but whether you believe it’s the site of time warps, alien abductions, or just plain paranoia, it certainly abounds with strangeness. It’s not the only place you can find creepy things happening, however—here are 10 other places on Earth with their fair share of mysteries:

The Superstition Mountains are a mountain range located east of Phoenix, Arizona. Already it’s off to a great start with the name.

According to legend, sometime in the 1800s a man named Jacob Waltz discovered a huge goldmine within the mountains that has since been dubbed the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine (because Waltz was German, and eh, close enough). He kept the location a secret until his deathbed, upon which he may or may not (depending on which version of the story you’re reading) have told a single person the secret. Regardless, the mine has never been found, in spite of many expeditions. Some say the spirits of people who’ve lost their lives in search of the gold still haunt the mountains.

One reportedly Native American legend goes that the treasures of the mountains are guarded by creatures called Tuar-Tums (“Little People”) that live below the mountains in caves and tunnels. Some Apaches believe that the entrance to hell is located in the mountains. This is, of course, ridiculous, as we all know the entrance to hell is in Sunnydale.

Did you ever wonder if there was a Bermuda Triangle in Space? No? Well you’re probably wondering it now, and you’re in luck! Because there totally is, and it’s called the South Atlantic Anomaly. The SAA is the area where the band of radiation known as Earth’s inner Van Allen belt comes closest to the Earth’s surface.

It’s an area centered just a bit off the coast of Brazil, and it’s responsible for numerous problems with satellites and spacecraft, from messing up their programs to actually shutting down their function. The Hubble Telescope is actually turned off from taking observations when passing through the Anomaly, and the International Space Station avoids scheduling spacewalks when passing through it (which happens up to 5 times a day). It’s not just technical problems, either—some astronauts report seeing “shooting stars” in their visual field as they pass through.

The cause of all these problems isn’t fully understood. The main suspect is the high levels of radiation that accumulate at the anomaly, but scientists aren’t sure exactly how or why the effects occur. So let’s just pin this one on aliens.

Not content with just a few individuals disappearing, Lake Anjikuni decided to take things to the next level and provide the locale for the disappearance of an entire village. It all happened in November 1930, when a trapper named Joe Labelle was looking for shelter for the night. Labelle was familiar with the Inuit village, whose population ranges from 30-2000, depending on who you believe. He made his way there and found quite an eerie scene—the villagers were nowhere to be found. Everything else, including food and rifles, had been left behind.

Labelle telegraphed the RCMP and an investigation began. In the Village Burial Ground it was discovered that at least one (sources vary) grave had been opened, clearly not by animals, and emptied. Furthermore, about 300 feet from the village, the bodies of around 7 sled dogs were found, having starved to death despite open stores of food at the village. Some versions of the story even report strange lights being seen above the lake around the time of the disappearance.

So what really happened? There have been all sorts of claims about the cause for the disappearance, including aliens (of course), ghosts, and even vampires. The RCMP’s own website disregards the story as an urban legend, but with so many versions of it floating around from so many years ago, it’s hard to be certain. Except about the vampires, I think we can be certain it wasn’t vampires.

The Devil’s Sea (or Dragon’s Triangle, take your pick of which sounds more ominous) is an area of the Pacific Ocean as riddled with strange happenings as its Atlantic counterpart near Bermuda. Located off the coast of Japan, it’s been the site of countless claims of unexplained phenomena including magnetic anomalies, inexplicable lights and objects, and of course, mysterious disappearances. The area is even considered a danger by Japanese fishing authorities.

One story has it that in 1952 the Japanese government sent out a research vessel, the Kaio Maru No. 5, to investigate the mysteries of the Devil’s Sea. Naturally, of course, the Kaio Maru No. 5 and its crew of 31 people were never seen again. Another story tells of Kublai Khan’s disastrous attempts to invade Japan by crossing the Devil’s Sea, losing at least 40 000 men in the process.

The usual theories abound for what’s really going on: from aliens, to gates to parallel universes, even to Atlantis (because why not). Some suggest that high volcanic activity in the region is responsible for some of the disappearances (the Kaio Maru No. 5 may have been caught in an eruption). Our advice? Just stay out of the ocean, period.

Bigelow Ranch (formerly known as Skinwalker Ranch and Sherman Ranch) is a 480-acre property in northwest Utah that is home to countless UFO sightings, animal mutilations, and other strange occurrences. Though mysterious happenings have been documented since the 50’s, some of the most bizarre stories happened to a pair of ranchers named Terry and Gwen Sherman after they bought it in 1994.

The first day they moved on to the property, they saw a large wolf out in the pasture. They even went to pet the wolf as it seemed tame (to the curious reader, yes, this is always a good idea). It was docile with the Shermans, but ended up grabbing a calf by the snout through the bars of its enclosure. When Terry shot at the wolf with a pistol, the bullets had no effect. It finally left after Terry brought out the shotgun, though even that didn’t do any actual damage. The Shermans tried tracking the wolf, but it’s tracks stopped abruptly as if it had vanished.

And that wasn’t the end of things. The Shermans were constantly plagued by such events as UFO sightings, intelligent floating orbs (reputed to have incinerated three of their dogs), inexplicable cryptids, and gruesome cattle mutilations. It got so bad that the Shermans actually sold their ranch to Robert Bigelow in 1996, the founder of the National Institute for Discovery Science, who wanted to study the mysteries surrounding the ranch. Bigelow owns the ranch to this day and NIDS keeps a tight lid on their findings.

Point Pleasant was probably aptly named at one point, but it is now so shrouded in tales of mysterious and creepy events as to be nothing but an ironic alliteration. The most famous of these events involves a creature known as Mothman, who reputedly terrorized the small West Virginia community from November 1966 to December 1967. Over a hundred different citizens of Point Pleasant are eyewitnesses to this creature, a 7-foot tall broad chested man with hypnotic, glowing red eyes, and wings that stretch 10 feet long and drag behind him on the ground.

The Mothman, who’s been the subject of both a book and a movie (and who has his own statue in Point Pleasant), has many possible explanations. Some believe him to be an extraterrestrial, others a mutant or a cryptid, and some suggest the people of Point Pleasant were actually being scared by owls or a Sandhill Crane. Whatever the case, reports of Mothman stopped after the Silver Bridge collapsed on December 15, 1967, killing 46 people and leading many to believe that the two events were somehow connected.

In addition to Mothman, several other paranormal tales from Point Pleasant include UFO sightings and reports of so-called “Men In Black”—human looking creatures who unnerve others by the sheer abundance of peculiarities in their speech, appearance, and mannerisms. These “men” supposedly appear looking for information about the paranormal (or rather, people who have this information).

The Michigan Triangle is another geographical triangle, located in the middle of Lake Michigan. It, too, is the site of mysterious disappearances of both land and sea craft. Some of the more famous ones include:

Captain Donner: On April 28, 1937, Captain George R. Donner of the O.M. McFarland was on his way from Erie, Pennsylvania, to Port Washington, Wisconsin, and had to pass through the triangle. As the story goes, he was exhausted and retired to his cabin, leaving the second mate to wake him when they neared their destination. About three hours later, when the second mate went to do so, Donner was not in his cabin. Nor was he in the galley. An exhaustive search of the ship was conducted, but he was never found.

Flight 2501: On June 23, 1950, Northwest Airlines Flight 2501 was on its way from New York to Minneapolis at the hands of experienced pilot Robert C. Lind, and was carrying 58 passengers. Due to bad weather, when the flight was near Chicago it changed course and turned over Lake Michigan. Around midnight, Lind requested permission to drop altitude from 3500 ft to 2500 ft, without ever specifying a reason. His request was denied, and that was the last communication Flight 2501 ever had. It’s last known position was supposedly within the Michigan Triangle.

While sources vary as to what amount of wreckage of Flight 2501 has been found (some say nothing, whereas others specify assorted floating debris such as seat cushions and the like), it seems clear that the plane crashed into the water. Mysterious, however, is that the plane was in perfectly good condition and in capable hands at the time of the disappearance. What’s more, despite searches still being conducted annually, neither the body of the plane nor complete human remains have ever been recovered.

San Luis Valley, in southern Colorado, is an area high in inexplicable phenomena including UFO sightings and hundreds of unexplained farm animal mutilations. UFO sightings are so common that a woman named Judy Messoline has even set up a UFO watchtower on her property, which has witnessed over 50 UFO sightings since 2000 alone. Some of these are observed by dozens of people at a time.

For the UFO skeptics out there, far more chilling are the tales of animal mutilations from the region. They began in 1967, with a horse named Snippy. Snippy was found one morning with her brain missing, and her neck bones completely cleaned. Since then, hundreds if not thousands of inexplicable animal mutilations have occurred in the region, sharing several things in common—firstly, there is never a trace of blood around the animals, and secondly, the animals are all damaged with precise cuts, distinctly not the work of predators. Finally, all of the mutilations happen overnight to otherwise healthy creatures.

Investigations into the incidents haven’t wielded any results, yet they continue to this day. Some farmers report seeing strange lights in the sky the nights before finding a carcass, leading some to believe that extraterrestrials are involved. Though it’s hard to imagine aliens caring so much about farm animals in Colorado, the alternative isn’t much more appealing—that humans are the so-called “Phantom Surgeons of the Plains”. Personally, I’d rather it was aliens.

Oh look, another triangle. This one is found in southwestern Vermont, and is the site of a string of 5 mysterious disappearances between 1945-1950, related in no way but geographic location. These include:

Middie Rivers, 75 years old, was out leading a group of hunters on November 12, 1945. On their way back, he got ahead of his group and was never seen again. Only a single rifle shell found in a stream was recovered as evidence.

Paula Welden was an 18 year old sophomore of Bennington College who was out hiking on December 1, 1946. She never returned and no trace of her was ever found.

Exactly 3 years later, on December 1, 1949, a veteran named James E. Tetford was taking a bus back to his home at the Bennington Soldier’s Home, returning from a visit with relatives. Witnesses saw him on the bus the stop before this, but when the bus arrived at his destination he was nowhere to be seen. His luggage was still on the bus.

Eight year old Paul Jepson disappeared on October 12, 1950, while his mother was busy feeding the pigs. Despite having a highly visible red jacket, none of the search parties formed were able to find the boy.

The last disappearance was a woman named Frieda Langer. On October 28, 1950, she was hiking with her cousin on Glastenbury Mountain when she slipped in a stream. She decided to go back quickly and change her clothes, and, if you’ve been paying attention so far, you’ll surmise that she was never seen again. Well, not exactly—she’s the only victim whose body was ever recovered, though it was only found on May 12, 1951 (about 6 months later), in an area that had been thoroughly searched after her disappearance. The body was in such a mangled shape that no cause of death could be determined.

Though many theories abound, including aliens, bigfoot-like monsters, or some unknown serial killer, there’s one thing we know for sure: it’s a good idea to stay the hell away from triangles.

No, seriously—stay away from triangles. Especially this one. The Bridgewater Triangle, an area of about 200 square miles in Southeastern Massachusetts just south of Boston, is like an all you can eat buffet of the supernatural.

Among other things, the area has been subject to numerous cryptozoological sightings. Since the 1970’s there have been several reports of tall, hairy, ape-like creatures roaming the swamp. There have also been numerous sightings of Thunderbirds, giant Pterodactyl-like creatures that have been seen fighting in midair. In 1976 there was a report of a man who saw a giant, ghostly, red-eyed dog rip the throats out of two of his ponies.

Besides these cryptids, there have been numerous reports of mutilated animals (mainly cows and calves) in the region. Some credit these mutilations to satanic cults, but no one has come forward and no one even knows where the animals came from.

As if all this weren’t enough, the Bridgewater Triangle is a hotbed of UFO sightings, dating all the way back to 1760, when a “sphere of fire” was reportedly seen hovering over New England. Since then there have been numerous sightings of unexplained objects in the sky—including mysterious black helicopters. One from 1976 describes two UFOs landing along Route 44 near the city of Taunton, and another from 1994 recounts a strange triangular object with red and white lights seen by a Bridgewater Law Enforcement Officer. In 1908 on Halloween night, two undertakers who were traveling to Bridgewater noticed in the sky what looked like a “giant lantern”. They watched it for almost 40 minutes before it disappeared.

Bermuda isn’t looking so bad anymore.

Michael Alba has a skeptical fascination with the supernatural. He’ll have a skeptical fascination with you, too, if you follow him on twitter @MichaelPaulAlba.

The post 10 Places As Mysterious As The Bermuda Triangle appeared first on Listverse.

From surviving ancient manuscripts it is clear that there has always been a belief that new lands could rise up from the ocean, while old ones could sink into the sea, destroying former civilizations in the process. The most famous of all the lost lands is that of Atlantis, described in great detail by Plato almost 2,500 years ago. During the past century as we developed the technology to fly and with the advent of sonar and better diving equipment, numerous underwater anomalies have been discovered. Sites such as the Bimini Road have been probed and discussed at length by many, but not all of the sites are so close to the surface, and often times the depth of the water limits our investigations to sonar images and samples taken by submersibles.

In 2003, scientists were surprised to discover a massive circular stone structure underneath 30 feet (9 m) of water in the Sea of Galilee. The structure is comprised of basalt rocks, stacked in a cone shape and it is twice the size of Stonehenge in the UK. In their findings that were only recently published, archaeologists have noted that it shares some features of ancient communal burial sites found worldwide, but it may also be a ramp or a ceremonial structure. As they have never come across a structure of this size, with its specific features, they can only speculate as to its exact age, how it was constructed and how it was used.

The circular anomalies that can be seen off the coast of Florida, North Carolina, and Belize have been documented by enthusiasts and archaeologists alike. Even though they are found on a global scale, their true objective hasn’t been discovered so far – many believe they were used as an ancient type of burial mound. They are also very similar to stone structures that have been found in Saudi Arabia that can be seen on this website. It is believed that the underwater structures have been better preserved than those on dry land and may date back to ±8,000 BC. as those in Saudi Arabia have been dated to around 7,000 BC.

Divers discovered proof of Eastern Canada’s ancient past while taking part in a unique submarine project in 2005. They found the very curious stone structure at a depth of 40 feet (12 m) below the surface. It consists of a massive 1,000 lb (453 kg) elongated rock with an almost completely level surface resting on 7 baseball-sized stones, which in turn sits on a huge several thousand pound slab on top of a ledge. It was thought to be a natural formation until geologists and archaeologists looked at the images. The discovery of the man-made “rock cairn”, was deemed to be proven when an underwater archaeologist concluded the existence of three shims was enough proof that the structure was man-made.

Whether it is a UFO, a Nazi anti-submarine defense tool or simply a glacial rock that has been dragged across the sea floor, the discovery of the disc-shaped Baltic Sea anomaly (and its subsequent investigation in 2012) kept all the interested parties on the edge of their seats. Although Swedish explorers generally convinced everyone that it is a rock and not a UFO, their research has raised a lot of questions. Firstly, the rock didn’t have a silt-layer on it, which is usually the case when rocks have been lying still at the bottom of the ocean for any period of time. Furthermore, the 196 feet (60 m) wide rock seems to be covered by construction lines and boxes and it appears to be propped up by a 26 foot (8 m) high pillar.

Lake Baikal in southern Siberia is unique in many regards. It is the oldest, deepest and largest fresh water lake on earth. The sediment deposit on the bottom of the lake is more than 4 miles (7 km) deep and many of the fish species that thrive in its waters can be found nowhere else on earth. As its ice cover normally lasts into June, astronauts on the International Space Station were alarmed to see a very large circular area of thinned ice near the southern end of the lake in April 2009. To their astonishment, there was also another feature above a submarine ridge that divides the lake. Although the origin of the circles is a mystery, the distinct pattern would suggest that warmer water were brought to the surface, but hydrothermal activity has never been observed over the very deep water at the southern tip of the lake.

Even though Stonehenge in the UK is one of the most famous historical stone monuments in the world, it is not unique. Similar stone arrangements have been found worldwide. In 2007 while surveying the bottom of Lake Michigan with sonar, a team of underwater archaeologists discovered a series of stones aligned in a circle 40 feet (12 m) below the surface. One of the stones also seemed to feature a carving of a mastodon, an animal that has been extinct for 10, 000 years. If the site is validated, it would not be completely out of place, as other stone circles and petroglyph sites can be found in the vicinity.

A series of submerged structures discovered off the Cuban coast in 2001 captured the imaginations of archaeologists, researchers and Atlantis-hunters worldwide. Found by a company doing surveying work, the sonar images have shown symmetrical and geometric structures that covers an area of 200 ha (almost 2 square km) at depths between 2,000 and 2,460 feet (± 700 m). Skeptics believe the site is too deep to be manmade as it is estimated that it would have taken the structures 50,000 years to sink to their current depth. If conclusive proof can be found that these structures were indeed manmade, it would back up the Maya and local Yucatecos stories of an ancient island inhabited by their ancestors that vanished beneath the sea.

Since its discovery in 1987, the massive Yonaguni Monument off the coast of Japan has been a subject of debate between scientists, archaeologists and scholars. Many supporters claim that the site is natural but may have been modified by human hands like the rock-hewn terraces of Sacsayhuaman. If proven true, the site would have been modified during the last ice age – around 10,000 BC. Skeptics on the other hand believe the whole structure to be natural; that the drawings and carvings observed are nothing more than natural scratches. The fact remains that although Yonaguni’s features can be seen in many sandstone formations worldwide, the high concentration of questionable formations at one site is unlikely.

During expeditions in 2006 and 2007 the deeper waters to the west of Bimini were mapped using side-scan sonar and sub-bottom profiling. A number of rectangular features were discovered at a depth of 100 feet (30 m). They are all aligned in the same direction in straight, parallel lines. The researchers have claimed that the structures appear to be very much like those found off the coast of Cuba. At a later dive managed by the History Channel, the formations were better observed. There are about 50 stone piles, mainly 10 by 45 feet in size, and all at a depth that would place their age around 10,000 BC.

In May 2001, it was announced the ruins of an ancient city was discovered in the Gulf of Khambhat. The discovery was made with the help of sonar while routine pollution studies were being done. During the announcement, the site was described as evenly spaced dwellings, a drainage system, bath, granary and a citadel that pre-dates the Indus Valley Civilization. During follow-up investigations, the area was dredged and several artifacts were recovered. Among them were wood (dated ± 7,000 BC), stones described as hand tools, fossilized bones, pottery sherds and a tooth. Among the controversies are that all the supposed artifacts are stones of natural origin, that the “sherds” are natural geofacts and that the dredging could have allowed errant artifacts to be dug up along with the site’s, removing all credibility from the finds.

Hestie lives in Pretoria, South Africa. She is amazed by all the mysterious discoveries that dates back to 10,000 years ago

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The world of entertainment has had its fair share of unsolved mysteries, many of which have involved some very prominent figures. For example, the murders of famous rap artists Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. are still unsolved. While the death of Kurt Cobain was ruled to be a suicide, there has always been speculation that he was actually murdered. But on the other side of the coin, there’s the “Black Dahlia”, Elizabeth Short, an aspiring actress who was a complete unknown until she became of one of the most famous murder victims of all time. Here are ten more lesser-known entertainment figures whose careers were cut short by an unsolved mystery, whether it be a murder, an unexplained disappearance, or a suspicious “suicide”. In some cases, the victim’s career never even got the chance to hit its peak and they wound up achieving fame because of the infamous mystery surrounding them.

In 1966, 23-year old Bobby Fuller and his band, The Bobby Fuller Four, were taking the music world by storm as their hit single, “I Fought the Law”, reached #9 on the national charts. However, it all came to an abrupt end when Fuller was found dead on July 18 inside his car, which was parked outside his Los Angeles apartment. The initial ruling was suicide, but no one could understand why a singer on the verge of stardom would take his own life.

Fuller had been doused with gasoline and a gas can was found on the floorboard. However, a witness claimed he saw a detective throw the gas can in a dumpster instead of saving it for evidence. Authorities believed that Fuller had died from inhaling the gasoline fumes, but there were also bruises found on him and blood was on the car seat. His body was also in full rigor mortis, indicating that he had been dead for several hours. Yet his car had only been parked in front of his apartment for a short time before he was found, and one theory is that the perpetrator was in the midst of torching the evidence before they were forced to flee. There have been numerous conspiracy theories about what happened to Bobby Fuller—ranging from an accidental overdose to being murdered by the likes of the mob, his record company, and even Charles Manson—but his death remains clouded in suspicion.

At the age of 17, Christa Helm left her Milwaukee home to pursue a career in modeling and acting in New York City. After garnering a lead role in a low-budget movie called “Let’s Go For Broke”, Helm traveled to Hollywood to further her career and earned a few bit parts on television. She became a prominent figure in the gossip columns because of her rumored escapades with noted Hollywood celebrities. On February 12, 1977, the 27-year old Helm was stabbed 22 times before being bludgeoned to death outside her agent’s home in West Hollywood.

Helm was rumored to have kept a secret diary and recordings of her sexual escapades with her celebrity boyfriends. Since the diary and the recordings mysteriously vanished after her death, some people speculated that they may have been the reason for her murder. It was also theorized that Helm was killed by Lionel Ray Williams, who had murdered Sal Mineo in a similar fashion in the same neighborhood exactly one year before Helm’s murder. However, there has always been a debate about whether Williams was in jail on the night Helm was killed. 30 years later, a DNA sample found under one of Helm’s preserved fingernails was determined to be from a female, and Helm was rumored to have been sexually involved with a female singer shortly before her death. In spite of all these leads, the identity of Christa Helm’s murderer is still unknown.

In 1943, David Bacon was an aspiring 29-year old actor who had just played his most prominent role after being cast as the title character in the film serial, “The Masked Marvel”. However, Bacon’s life came to an end on September 13, when he erratically drove his car off the road in Santa Monica, California. He stumbled out of the car wearing nothing but a swimsuit and after collapsing and dying, a small knife wound was discovered in his back.

The most crucial clue left behind was a camera inside Bacon’s car. The film in the camera was developed to reveal one picture of Bacon nude smiling on the beach and it’s been theorized that the photo was taken by his killer. Prior to his death, Bacon had told his wife—an Austrian cabaret singer named Greta Keller—that he was going for a swim. Shortly before the murder, Bacon was spotted driving around with another man in his car, and it was later discovered that Bacon had recently rented a house for a male friend whose identity was never established. Keller has always alleged that her husband was a closet homosexual and had an affair with Howard Hughes, the man who originally discovered him. However, none of these claims have ever been substantiated and David Bacon’s murder remains an unsolved mystery.

Tammy Lynn Leppert was a model from Rockledge, Florida who spent her childhood competing in over 300 beauty pageants, winning a large percentage of them. She was hoping to transition into an acting career and wound up securing bit parts in a couple of movies, including the 1983 gangster classic, “Scarface”. However, one weekend in July 1982, Leppert attended a party where something seemed to happen which prompted her to start displaying patterns of erratic, paranoid and violent behavior. During the shoot for “Scarface”, Leppert suffered a complete emotional breakdown during the filming of a violent scene and became extremely frightened over the sight of fake blood.

After a violent outburst in June 1983, Leppert had a brief stay in a mental health center. On July 6, she left her family’s home with a friend who dropped her off at Cocoa Beach after an argument. The 18-year Leppert has never been seen again. Police initially suspected that she ran away, but there have been numerous theories about her disappearance. One involves her being the victim of Christopher Wilder, a notorious Florida serial killer who was targeting young models around this time, and there’s also been speculation that Leppert was murdered because of her knowledge of a drug and money-laundering operation. However, none of these theories have ever panned out and Tammy Lynn Leppert remains missing 30 years later.

Barbara Colby was a 36-year old actress who had enjoyed reasonable success on Broadway and in Hollywood. After spending much of the 1970s working in television, her career received a major boost when she was offered a full-time role on the sitcom, “Phyllis”. Colby had filmed three episodes of the series and was teaching an acting class in Venice, California on the evening of July 24, 1975. While walking to her parked car with an acting colleague named James Kiernan, they were both gunned down by two male assailants.

Colby was killed instantly, but Kiernan was able to describe the shooters before he passed away. There had been no attempt at robbery and Kiernan claimed he did not recognize the two men, so no one could figure out the motive for these murders. Approximately 40 minutes before the shooting occurred, three armed men had murdered another woman named Gloria Witte in a robbery attempt in Santa Monica. At the same time, yet another robbery took place in the same vicinity when two other couples were ambushed by six armed men while returning to their homes. The perpetrators were all caught and charged for these crimes, but police could find no evidence that they might also be responsible for the Colby and Kiernan murders. It continues to be a baffling unsolved mystery nearly 40 years later.

Ylenia Carrisi was the daughter of the popular Italian pop music duo, Al Bano & Romina Power, and granddaughter of legendary Hollywood actor Tyrone Power. It seemed like Carrisi was destined to follow in their footsteps and have her own entertainment career, and she became a minor celebrity in Italy after earning a gig as the letter-turner on that country’s version of Wheel of Fortune. After turning 23, she decided she wanted to do some traveling on her own, but after taking a trip to New Orleans, she mysteriously disappeared on January 6, 1994.

Most of Carrisi belongings were left behind in the cheap hotel she was staying at. It was discovered she had been sharing a room with a 54-year old street musician named Alexander Masakela, who had a history of drug use and sexual violence. He was evicted when he attempted to use Carrisi’s passport and traveler’s checks to pay for the room after her disappearance. Masakela was also arrested weeks later after an ex-girlfriend accused him of rape, but he was released for lack of evidence. A security guard also reported seeing a woman matching Carrisi’s description jumping off a bridge the night she vanished, but no body was ever found to verify his story. There have been unconfirmed sightings of Carrisi in the years following her disappearance, but no conclusive evidence about what ultimately happened to her.

For years, Peter Ivers had a cult following as an alternative musician. He recorded numerous albums during the 1970s and was asked to write a memorable song called “In Heaven” for David Lynch’s infamous cult classic, “Eraserhead”. He was probably best known for being the host of a late-night television variety show called “New Wave Theatre”, which featured a unique line-up of punk and New Wave musical performers. However, the show came to an end after the 36-year old Ivers was found dead inside his Los Angeles apartment on March 3, 1983. He had been bludgeoned to death in his bed with a hammer and there were no signs of struggle.

Ivers was very well-liked and had numerous celebrity friends in Hollywood, many of whom showed up at his apartment once word spread about his death. Unfortunately, since police were completely overwhelmed by the large gathering of people, they neglected to seal off the crime scene. Since Ivers’ friends were able to walk through his apartment, potential evidence might have been destroyed. The main theory behind Ivers’ murder is that he was killed by an intruder during a robbery attempt, as the lock appeared to have been jimmied and some pieces of video equipment were missing. However, even after 30 years, authorities have never been able to find a solid suspect for the crime, so Peter Ivers’ senseless murder is still unsolved.

Joe Pichler was a child actor who had prominent roles in such films as “The Fan”, “Varsity Blues” and two direct-to-video “Beethoven” sequels. In 2003, he put his acting career on hold to return to his hometown of Bremerton, Washington and finish high school. The 18-year old Pichler had plans to go back to Los Angeles and resume his career when he mysteriously vanished during the early morning hours of January 5, 2006. After leaving a get-together and talking to one of his friends on his cell phone, no one heard from him again.

When his family went looking for him, the door to his apartment was discovered to be unlocked and the lights and television were left on. Four days later, Pichler’s abandoned car was found with all his possessions inside, except for his wallet and car keys. There was speculation that Pichler was suicidal, as he left behind some poetry which indicated he might be depressed, along with a note where he expressed his wish to be a “stronger brother” and to give his possessions to his younger sibling. Police theorized that Pichler may have taken his own life by jumping off a nearby bridge, but search dogs could not trace his scent there. Since there is no hard evidence that Joe Pichler committed suicide, his ultimate fate is still unknown.

In the late twenties and early thirties, Thelma Todd was one of the most prominent actresses in Hollywood, appearing in nearly 120 films and acting alongside such comedy legends as the Marx Brothers and Laurel & Hardy. However, her life came to a sudden end on the morning of December 16, 1935 when the 29-year old Todd was found dead inside her car of apparent carbon monoxide poisoning. Her vehicle was located inside a Pacific Palisades garage belonging to Jewel Carmen, the wife of director Roland West, whom Todd was romantically involved with.

The death was initially ruled an accident and later changed to suicide, but there was nothing to indicate that Todd was suicidal and there were a lot of suspicious elements to suggest foul play. She appeared to a have a broken nose and other injuries, and blood was also found on her face and dress, leading to the belief that she may have been knocked unconscious and placed in the car before it was started. Roland West was known to be very controlling and possessive of Todd and allegedly gave a deathbed confession implicating himself in her death, but this was never officially confirmed. Mobster Lucky Luciano and an abusive ex-boyfriend of Todd’s were also looked at as possible suspects, but unfortunately, since Todd’s body was cremated, a more thorough autopsy could not be performed. Her suspicious death remains one of Hollywood’s biggest mysteries.

One of the biggest mysteries in Hollywood history occurred on the evening of October 7, 1949 when 26-year old Jean Spangler disappeared. Spangler was a model and aspiring actress who had done bit parts in a handful of films. She left her daughter with her sister-in-law and claimed she was going to meet her ex-husband to talk about child support before going to work on a film shoot. However, there were no film shoots scheduled that night, and Spangler’s ex-husband claimed he never saw her. Spangler’s purse was found in Griffith Park two days later.

Things took a bizarre turn when a note was found in the purse which read: “Kirk, Can’t wait any longer. Going to see Dr. Scott. It will work best this way while mother is away”. Spangler had recently worked as an extra on a Kirk Douglas film and some eyebrows were raised when Douglas contacted police to confirm he wasn’t the “Kirk” in the note before they even considered questioning him. Police also heard rumors of a local man named “Scotty” who was known for performing illegal abortions, leading to speculation that Spangler was pregnant and that he was the aforementioned “Dr. Scott”. Spangler was also rumored to be involved with an organized crime figure named David Ogul, and there was even a sighting of them together in Texas three months after she disappeared. In spite of all these theories, the Jean Spangler saga is still a mystery.

Robin Warder is a budding Canadian screenwriter who has used his encyclopedic movie knowledge to publish numerous articles at Cracked.com. I am also the co-owner of a pop culture website called The Back Row.

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There is a reason Sherlock Holmes is the most portrayed literary character in film and television; everybody loves a good mystery. From simple puzzles to enigmas that run a chill up our spines, we love to wonder. In a world mapped by satellites and rendered into binary code, we relish the idea that there are still things we don’t understand. Below are ten exceedingly strange mysteries, from creepy tales of death and mayhem to the great unknown at the edge of the universe.

We’ll begin the list with something lighthearted on our eventual journey into darkness. Samuel Wilberforce was a British clergyman who rose eventually to become Bishop of Oxford. In 1859, Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species”, advancing the theory of evolution. There was a tremendous backlash from the church, especially Wilberforce, and a debate was staged in 1860, wherein both parties would argue their points. Darwin was too sick to attend, and sent acolyte Thomas Huxley in his place. Wilberforce and Huxley locked horns, and while neither definitely “won” the debate, most would say that Huxley came out on top, even causing a religious woman to faint with this statement: “I am not ashamed to have a monkey for an ancestor but I would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used his great gifts to obscure the truth.”

Besides his career in the service of the church, Wilberforce was fond of writing, and riddles in particular. When he died in 1873, he left this one behind. No one knows the answer.

“Sweetest of sound, in orchestra heard,
Yet in orchestra never have been,
Bird in light plumage, yet less like a bird,
Nothing in nature has ever been seen,
On earth I expire, in water I die,
Yet I run, swim and fly,
If I cannot be guessed by a boy or a man,
A girl or a woman I certainly can!”

The clues are highly intriguing, and several theories have been put forth (perhaps most notably, that he was referring to a whale), but the answer most certainly died with the Bishop. [Note: perhaps the answer is a whistle . . . you heard it first at Listverse!]

In November of 1970, hikers came across the charred, battered body of a woman in Norway’s Isdalen Valley. The body was surrounded by sleeping pills (many of which had been ingested) and bottles of gas. Her fingerprints were sanded off. She was later linked to a pair of suitcases found in a train station in Bergen; police found all the labels in her clothes had been removed. They also found 500 German marks, a prescription bottle for lotion (with the doctor’s name and date torn off), and a diary with coded entries. Her autopsy indicated dental work performed in Latin America. It was eventually discovered that the woman had traveled throughout Europe using different fake names. There were other clues; witnesses reported her in different wigs, changing hotels frequently, and speaking multiple languages.

Information on the case is scant and hard to come by; a witness came forward three decades later, claiming to have seen the woman in the forest followed by two men in black coats, saying the police told him to keep quiet when he initially reported what he’d seen. It is generally assumed that the Isdal woman must have been some sort of spy; 1970 would have been a ripe year for undercover activities in the Cold War. Despite one of the most massive investigations in Norwegian history, the woman’s identity will likely forever remain a mystery. Curiously—and very creepily—this tale bears a striking resemblance to the Taman Shud case in 1948 which also involved an unknown victim (above) with tags removed from his clothes, a coded diary, and a suitcase turning up in a train station abandoned. That case is also still unsolved.

In 2003, a tiny humanoid skeleton was found in near a churchyard in a Chilean ghost town. Barely six inches long, with a terribly malformed skull, the skeleton (nicknamed Ata) was initially thought to be some kind of alien. The specimen was turned over to Stanford University, where a battery of experts studied it. DNA evidence quickly revealed Ata was in fact a human boy, having died within the last few decades. However, the skeleton remains quite mysterious; it seems to show development consistent with a six year old, and only has 10 ribs to the typical human 12. Researchers believe that Ata was either a very tiny dwarf, or that he suffered a disorder like progeria, which caused him to age rapidly while still in the womb. Others posit that Ata was merely stillborn or aborted (the force of which could have distorted the body). Further tests may reveal Ata’s ultimate fate.

In the wake of the Civil War, many Americans headed west, away from the strife of battlefields and burnt cities. If they happened through Kansas and stayed at the inn run by the Bender clan, they were taking their lives into their hands. The Benders were Germanic (the “parents” barely spoke English, and the “children” with an accent), and that is about all that is known of their history. The Benders moved to Kansas in 1870, and established a small inn and general store. There were 4 of them; John Bender Sr., who was 60, Ma Bender, 55, and their children, John Jr., of around 25, and Kate, around 23. What their actual names were, and what their true relationship was to each other (few believe that they were actually blood related), will probably never be revealed.

Travelers often carried with them every dime they had, and the Benders soon realized they could grow rich robbing their guests. They arranged a setup wherein guests would sit at the table beneath a trap door. When they least suspected it, the male Benders would sneak up behind them, bludgeon them, and then slash their throats. A drop through the trap door, and the body could be stripped and robbed. Soon corpses began mounting up in the area. At first, the local Indian tribe was blamed, but the when a man and his infant daughter vanished in 1872, his neighbor launched a full scale investigation, and the focus soon landed on the Benders. Suspicions mounted, but before anything could be done, the Benders vanished.

A search of the cabin revealed the bloody room beneath the trap door, and nine bodies were found buried on the grounds. It is unknown what the true body count was, but it is probably safe to say there were some corpses that were never found. The story was the rage of the day, and souvenir hunters soon claimed pieces of the cabin for their own. The Benders were mentioned in passing by Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of “Little House on the Prairie”. She reported stopping in their store, and claimed her father was involved in the manhunt for the family, although her account has been called into question.

Despite a $3,000 reward (an astronomical sum for the day), the Benders were never found or brought to justice. There are dozens of accounts of their eventual fate, with some saying they were caught by vigilantes or committed suicide, others saying they were caught under different names, and still more saying they escaped completely. The Benders are long since dead now, and where their sinister path took them is lost to history.

In the late 1820s, two men in Edinburgh, Scotland, began a grisly cottage industry. William Hare (who owned a boarding house), and William Burke were Irishmen who became friends. When a tenant at Hare’s house died, the pair sold his body to Ediburgh University. They quickly realized they could make a pretty penny doing this, but unfortunately bodies were in short supply. So they decided to create some of their own. All told, they killed 16 people, mostly by smothering, and sold their wares to a Dr. Knox at the University. One day, a tenant at Hare’s boarding house found a body and went to the police. They managed to dispatch with the corpse before the police arrived, but Burke & Hare’s crime spree was over.

Hare turned over on his accomplice in exchange for his freedom. Burke’s fate would mirror that of his victims; after his execution, he was dissected in public. Hare vanished, never to be seen again.

But the story doesn’t end there. Shortly after the murder spree, a young boy playing in a cave in Edinburgh came across a collection of carved wooden dolls in a cave. There were 17 in all, about the size of a finger, each secreted in its own tiny coffin. It didn’t take long for people to realize that the dolls greatly resembled the victims of Burke & Hare in both number and appearance. DNA tests on the macabre toys against the remains of Burke yielded no results. Only 8 of the 17 are still known to exist; they can be seen at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Just who created these morbid effigies, and what they were meant to represent, will never be known.

Between 1976 and 1977, an unidentified killer stalked the roads of sleepy Oakland County, Michigan, abducting and killing at least four children, two girls and two boys: Mark Stebbins, 12, Jill Robinson, 12, Kristine Mihelich, 10, and Timothy King, 11. Mark was strangled and sexually assaulted with an object. Jill was killed by a shotgun blast to the face, Kristine was smothered, and Timothy suffocated and assaulted in the same fashion as Mark. Each child had been held captive for several days before being murdered, and laid out neatly where they were meant to be found. Jill Robinson was found within view of a police station. The killings resulted in a mass paranoia in the area; children were rarely left alone for a second, and at least one innocent man was beaten for the mistake of talking to a child.

A massive investigation heralded several suspects, but no solid case has ever been built. Recently, some have come to believe noted serial killer John Wayne Gacy has been implicated in the murders, but it seems unlikely, as it did not match his modus operandi of raping and killing older teenage boys. In 1978, the killing stopped cold.

Perhaps the most chilling aspect of the case was a letter written by Timothy King’s mother in the “Detroit News”. Marion King begged her son’s captor to let him go so that he might return home and enjoy his favorite meal, Kentucky Fried Chicken. When the boy’s body was found, an autopsy showed that the killer had fed him fried chicken.

After hearing of the mellified man, you may take your tea with something other than honey for a few days. Ancient Chinese writings tell of an Arabian process wherein elderly men near death would subsist on a diet of nothing but honey. Soon, his excrement and his sweat would be entirely comprised of honey. The man would soon die from this rather unhealthy practice, and his body would be placed in a stone casket full of honey. After a century or so of aging, the substance is gathered up and used as a medicine, particularly for the healing of broken bones.

There are very limited accounts of mellified men, the most notable coming from Chinese pharmacologist Li Shizhen, in his “Bencao Gangmu”. Although honey is known to never go bad (edible honey has been found in the tombs of pharaohs dead thousands of years), and to have noted antimicrobial properties especially a protein dubbed defensin-1, the effectiveness of this medicine is debated. Whether the story is mere legend, or whether this vile medication ever existed, is unknown. Few senior citizens seem willing to come forward and duplicate the experiment.

Most ghostly phenomenon can be divided into two categories: outright deceit and misidentification. The liars will spin all manner of tall tales, manipulate film and video, and generally do anything to create attention. Then there are those who genuinely believe they have experienced something paranormal; but there are so many things which might lead you astray . . . a black shadow in the corner of your eye, the settling of an old house, a mouse scratching in your wall. And once the paranoia starts, everything is suspect. Many so-called “haunted” places feature a prevalence of infrasound, a low frequency sound that the human ears can’t hear, but which we unconsciously detect. Infrasound is often present in the event of catastrophic events, such as volcanos erupting and the growls of carnivorous animals. However, it can also be produced by sources as innocuous as heating ducts or ceiling fans. Sensing infrasound inspires a dread you cannot understand.

However, cameras are not subject to deep-rooted human survival instincts, and there is no shortage of ghost photos in the world. Today, even an amateur understanding of editing software like Photoshop would allow you to create ghost photos more compelling by far than those produced in the past. Even when photography was in its infancy, techniques such as double exposure could allow for some malfeasance. But there are several images that have been captured by photographers that would have no reason to manipulate their shots, that have been examined by experts and deemed genuine, unexplainable depictions of the afterlife. Some, like “The Back Seat Ghost” (top), “Freddy Jackson” (middle), and “The Ghost of Boot Hill Cemetery” (bottom) are truly chilling and without explanation.

Since the general acceptance of the big bang theory, we tend to think of the universe as constantly expanding from a single core, an explosion like a firework. But there are more forces at hand, some far beyond our understanding. Gravity drags us in all directions . . . as the moon is drawn inexorably in orbit around the earth, so too is the earth by the sun. But there is a force far more powerful at work, one beyond the pale of human comprehension.

The Great Attractor is in defiance of everything we have come to understand. It is a gravitational anomaly some 150-250 million light years distant that is drawing the Milky Way galaxy toward it at 14 million miles per hour. To exert that kind of pull, The Great Attractor would have to possess the mass of tens of thousands of galaxies, and yet astronomers have been unable to find anything matching that description. Even an enormous black hole would be a drop in the bucket in comparison. We may never truly know what the Great Attractor is; even at the breakneck velocity in which we’re pulled toward it, it would take many thousands of human lifetimes to arrive.

The Hinterkaifeck murders are one of the most chilling and mysterious crimes in German history. The Gruber family was composed of Andreas, his wife Cazilia, their widowed adult daughter Viktoria, and her children, little Cazilia and Josef. They also had a maid named Maria Baumgartner in their employ (poor Maria only worked one day before she was killed; the previous maid had left because she believed the house was haunted). They lived on a little farmstead called Hinterkaifeck, around 40 miles from Munich.

Andreas reported some mysterious circumstances to neighbors in late March of 1922; he’d seen a set of footprints leading from the forest toward his farm, but none heading back. Even stranger, he heard footsteps in his attic and found a strange newspaper. A set of housekeys went missing. And then, on March 31, the entire family was murdered in the barn, one by one, with a pickaxe. They were found a few days later. It was determined that whoever had done the killing remained on the farm for awhile; the neighbors saw smoke from the chimney, and the animals were fed. While police initially believed the motive was robbery, they dismissed the idea when a large amount of cash was found in the house.

To this day, no one knows who murdered the Grubers. The Munich Police Department investigated for decades, but no suspect was never brought to justice. Some believe the killer was Viktoria’s husband Karl Gabriel, who’d been branded killed in action during trench warfare during World War I. Karl’s body was never found.

Mike Devlin is an aspiring novelist. He advises not to research creepy unsolved murders while you’re home alone at night.

The post 10 More Bizarre Mysteries appeared first on Listverse.

An urban legend is a term used to describe a tale that has been passed down over the years. It is usually presented as a true story and evolves over time. Urban legends follow modern trends and represent current anomalies, such as alien encounters, unexplained animals, botched medical producers, theft, murder, weird pictures, and bizarre videos. Urban legends usually present a cautionary tale and have a specific plot. They provide supporting material and will attempt to make the reader debate the legitimacy of the material. This article is going to examine ten urban legends that are based on video footage. Some of the entries include real clips, while others focus on videos that can’t be found online, but are said to have been created.

The Grifter is an urban legend that began to circulate on the Internet in 2009. The video is said to show horrifying images of people being tortured and killed. Viewers of the movie can experience nausea, trauma, night terrors, clinical depression, and even commit suicide. The content shows the human sacrifice of small babies and images of satanic ritual abuse. In some cases, people have attempted to make a copy of the film, but have failed.

It has been said that the video was recorded in the 1930s and portrays a collection of strange pictures and sounds. In one part of the movie, the words “Your race is the one that is dying” appears while a picture of a plant rotting is seen. The footage displays close up shots of corpses and people who have been possessed by demons. It has been described as the most disturbing video available on the Internet. However, many feel the tape is a hoax and nothing more than an urban legend. The story of The Grifter has spawned an Internet meme in which threads that discuss hoax videos are considered to be trolling for information on bizarre clips.

A few years back a video surfaced on the Internet of a police chase in Garden City, Georgia that has been dubbed the ghost car. In the video, officers can be seen attempting to pull over a white vehicle that is driving erratically. After following the car for a while, the driver swerves and makes a u-turn. The car moves off the highway, hits a dirt road, and comes to a dead end. It then moves to the left and disappears behind a chain-link fence.

The driver was never captured and it was revealed that the area beyond the fence was wooded with no roads. After examining the footage, many people have commented that the car traveled under the fence. However, this doesn’t explain what happened to the driver and why the police ended the pursuit. After the area was searched, the officers recovered the video and were shocked. The clip was featured on the television show Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files, in which a stunt driver recreated the footage by driving through a chain-link fence that was weakened at the base. The stunt showed that a car is capable of traveling through a fence without knocking it over. However, it wasn’t filmed on location. To date, the original Garden City surveillance video continues to baffle watchers.

SpongeBob SquarePants is a television show that is extremely popular around the world and has earned more than $8 billion in merchandising revenue for Nickelodeon. The cartoon features a wide variety of characters that live in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom. One of these characters is named Squidward Tentacles. The show is made for kids, but in 2004 an urban legend emerged surrounding a lost episode of the show that is said to display Squidward’s Suicide.

As the story goes, a disgruntled Scottish animator named Andrew Skinner developed an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants in 2004 named Red Mist. He tried to pass the episode off as the official season 4 premiere and sent it to Hollywood for approval. In California, animators watched the tape and discovered a dark secret. The video starts with the picture of a salesman at Squidward’s house. He knocks on the door and says: “the red mist is coming,” in which Squidward is confused. The tape flashes to a picture of Squidward playing the clarinet in front of a large crowd and Spongebob can be seen violently booing the performance.

The body language of Squidward is depressed. He returns to his house and sits in a chair with a blank look on his face. The audio turns scratchy and trees can be heard in the background. Squidward starts to cry and the tape begins to flash. At this point a series of real pictures come to view. The images show the body of a dead boy with his face mangled and entrails exposed. The shadow of the photographer is visible and the tape shows pictures of a deceased girl. The song Amazing Grace is played and the video goes into a sequence of frames in which the boy is mutilated. The words “Do it” can be heard, while Squidward pulls out a shotgun and commits suicide.

The story suggests the tape was made by Andrew Skinner of Fife, Scotland and delivered to the animators at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, California in November of 2004. The event was so horrifying that three of the animators were hospitalized, including Barry O’Neill, Grant Kirkland, Jr. and Alyssa Simpson. One editor named Fernando de la Peña retired and an intern named Jackie McMullen committed suicide. It was reported that the tape was later tracked to Andrew Skinner who was arrested for nine counts of murder, including the two children seen in the video.

After viewing the tape, a copy of the footage was made by an intern at Paramount Studios and released to the Internet. However, it was quickly removed by police and only a screenshot of Squidward’s red eyes remains. Research on the story doesn’t bring many results. Except for one article from 2002 that briefly mentions a man from Fife, Scotland named Andrew Skinner that was arrested for attempted murder.

The Circus is a silent film that was written and directed by Charlie Chaplin. The film was a box office success and raised $3.8 million in 1928. In 2004, a copy of the movie was released to DVD with bonus footage. The footage shows pictures of the public attending the film, including a premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. After looking over the material, an Irish filmmaker named George Clarke noticed something out of the ordinary in a clip of the public entering the premiere.

The footage shows a woman dressed in a heavy coat and hat holding what looks like a black object to her head. As she walks, it appears the woman is talking on a cell phone, which would be impossible in 1928. Toward the end of the footage, the woman can be seen stopping and chatting in a fashion similar to modern day cell phone users. She is wearing large shoes and has big hands.

After zooming in on the video, it is clear the woman is holding a black object to her head, which caused Clarke to post a video on YouTube questioning whether she might be a time traveler sent back in time to watch Chaplin’s performance. In response, the story made headlines all over the world. It has since been discovered that the woman could be using a pocket sized carbon microphone named the Siemens 1924 hearing aid. Others feel she is holding an ear trumpet. However, the explanation hasn’t addressed why she is talking.

Marilyn Manson (Brian Warner) is a controversial rock star that has sold over 50 million albums worldwide. He gained mainstream attention in the 1990s after media reports surfaced that described his shocking behavior on and off-stage. Over the years, Manson has been the target of multiple attacks by the press who view his music as detrimental to children. Manson has produced some of the most disturbing videos on the Internet. In 2011, he collaborated with actor Shia LaBeouf to make a movie named Born Villain, which is said to contain shocking and violent images.

However, the most controversial video attributed to Marilyn Manson is named Groupie. The legend of the tape says that it was recorded by the band during their Antichrist Superstar Tour (1996-1998) and shows a fan being tortured by Marilyn and Twiggy (Jeordie White). According to the story, the footage was captured on a handheld camcorder and shows Manson ordering the groupie to perform acts. The film starts out with Marilyn informing his guests that the girl will be taped. When she arrives, the party takes a weird turn.

After a short while, the girl is ordered to do a series of acts, including drinking a glass of urine with keyboard player Stephen Bier. The tape then turns dark while Manson ties the woman up and taunts her. As the video progresses, the members of the party become uneasy as they are unclear if the events are staged or not. The video involves torture, weapons and bloodshed.

Officially, there are only three people who have viewed Groupie, which includes Manson, Tony Ciulla, and Andy Dick. However, evidence for the film can be found at the end of the bands Dead to the World video series where an obscured shot of a tied up woman can be viewed. During the scene, Marilyn is heard taunting the girl with the phrase “Jesus loves me because the Bible says so.” The footage might have come from Groupie.

The Chupacabra (goat sucker) is a cryptid that has been identified in certain parts of the Americas. The creature is known for killing livestock and drinking the animal’s blood. The Chupacabra has a wide range of physical characteristics with some having identified them as being a lizard-type creature with long spines, while others say they are smaller animals that look like a bald coyote with sharp fangs, or a type of coyote, wolf, and dog hybrid.

Despite the discrepancy in the creature’s appearance, the Chupacabra is known to kill by inflicting a series of three small puncture wounds to the chest and neck of the victim. The puncture wounds resemble an upside-down triangle and the animal is then drained of blood and killed. The urban legend says the creature will strike its prey with stealth. The death is usually reported because of the bizarre circumstances. Currently, there are no large animals that practice hematophagy or the act of drinking blood for food.

A large number of Chupacabra sightings have been made in Mexico and Texas. In most cases, a coyote-type creature has been blamed for killing livestock. One such example was the Elmendorf Beast, which is a hairless animal that was killed in 2004 and thought to be a wolf-coyote cross. One of the features of the creature was a long snout, which has come to characterize the beast. On August 8, 2008, a police offer in DeWitt County, Texas named Brandon Riedel filmed a strange animal from his dash cam. In the video the creature can be seen running away from the car, and looks like a hairless coyote-type creature with a long snout and big ears. The snout of the creature has baffled many experts.

The footage was featured on the television show Fact or Fiction where experts attempted to recreate the tape with a miniature horse. As you would expect, the horse looked nothing like the creature in the video and the footage has helped grow the legend of the Chupacabra. Many have suggested the animal could be an unknown coyote or a government experiment gone horribly wrong. The legend was potentially developed around the real events of cattle mutilation.

The legend surrounding the Cervine Birth footage started in 2009 with the posting of a bizarre video. The story says the clip was put on YouTube by an unidentified amateur artist studying in the UK. After a short time online, the movie was removed because of the disturbing content. The video starts with the scene of a foggy meadow and zooms in on a sick looking albino deer lying on the ground. After the camera focuses on the deer’s eye, it pans away to a vanity mirror and shows the animals reflection flopping in an unnatural manner.

At this point a dark fluid is excreted from the horse’s tail, which indicates it might be giving birth. After several minutes, a stillborn humanoid infant is dropped from the horse’s body. The creature is covered with a dark tar-like substance, so it is difficult to identify. It has been claimed the artist put together a model of a human-animal hybrid to use in the film. The video then moves to a close-up blurry shot of the creatures face, and shows stock footage of an audience applauding in slow motion. In 2009, a collection of people claimed to have watched the Cervine Birth video. However, the footage has become extremely difficult to locate, which has spawned an urban legend that the video might show an actual humanoid stillborn birth.

One of the most talked about urban legends comes from the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz. The legend says that an actor can be seen hanging himself in the film. The controversial scene appears at the very end of the Tin Woodsman section of the movie when Dorothy, Toto, the Scarecrow, and the Tinman start walking toward the Emerald City. In the sequence, an object can be seen for a brief second between two trees in the forest. The camera is not zoomed in, but it looks like a person swinging in the trees. For this reason, an urban legend was created that suggests a munchkin can be seen committing suicide.

In the 1980s, the suicidal munchkin legend became popular when people started to watch the sequence on VHS tapes. As the Internet expanded, some have taken to posting detailed examinations of the footage online, which includes zoomed in examples of what looks like a hanging human. This has caused workers from The Wizard of Oz to claim the object is a large bird. Apparently, the movie borrowed several birds from the Los Angeles Zoo to make the forest appear more realistic. One of these birds, thought to be an emu or large crane, was captured on film during the Tin Woodsman scene.

The explanation hasn’t stopped the urban legend from spreading and people have wondered why other birds are not visible in the movie. Some have suggested the original footage was edited on DVD to make it look more like a bird. The claim says that there are multiple different copies of the scene available online. The DVD version is widespread and shows the bird more clearly, which has been attributed to advancements in HD TV.

Satan’s Sphinx is an urban legend video that is said to cause the viewer to experience suicidal tendencies, homicidal thoughts, hysteria, insanity, and self abuse. It was uploaded to the Internet in 2006 by government officials who were testing subliminal messaging and human reaction to violent images. Soon after the release of the clip, the experiment spiraled out of control and people complained that the video was making them depressed.

The urban legend says that the Satan’s Sphinx video contains a high pitched audio track that will irritate the viewer. It holds images of blood, death, and murder that are continually run over the screen. The pictures rotate so fast that it becomes impossible for people to individually identify them. At this point, incoherent whispering is heard and the screen begins to flash. People get dizzy, but don’t want to turn the movie off. The footage is said to last 3:49 and will cause the viewer to become depressed and sleepless. After the experiment, the clip was banned by the U.S. government with all traces removed from the Internet.

Some versions of the legend say the video is a satanic ritual with subliminal messaging that was used by the U.S. government to recruit members for mind control projects. Whatever the case, the underlining theme in the urban legend is that those who watch the video will commit suicide. It has been said that a screenshot from the video is available and shows a scared boy being held captive by two people in weird masks. The urban legend holds that if you find yourself watching the Satan’s Sphinx video, you were meant to.

The McPherson Tape is a real movie that has spawned a collection of urban legends. Officially, the film is named UFO Abduction and was created by Dean Alioto in 1989 for $6,500. The movie is one of the first examples of a found footage film and follows the story of a Connecticut family named the Van Heeses who are abducted by extraterrestrials. The movie was made to look like a genuine home video recording that was taken in 1983 and recovered years later.

The film starts out with a birthday party of a 5-year-old child at the Van Heeses house. After a brief period of time, the group experiences a power outage and bright flash of red light is seen. The men go outside to explore the area and find a plane crash over the hill. At the crash site, they witness a collection of extraterrestrials. The aliens scare the group and the men run back to the house in disbelief. Along the way, they use profanity and it becomes clear the movie is not scripted, but rather improvised. In many scenes the actors can be heard yelling over each other.

For over an hour, the family attempts to fight off the creatures, but the movie ends abruptly with the aliens entering the house and abducting the Van Heeses. At one point in the film the men bring the body of one of the aliens into the house, but it soon disappears. Throughout the movie, the actors do a great job showing terror and fear. Some have suggested the appearance of the aliens is quite convincing as they have long and slender limbs. However, others have complained about the unrealistic clothing on the creatures.

It has become extremely hard to find a copy of UFO Abduction. Sections of the movie can be seen on the Internet, but the entire footage from start to end is not available. In 1998, a remake of the movie was created by Dean Alioto and aired on UPN. The footage is much less convincing and clearly scripted. Since its release, the footage has been labeled the McPherson Tape because it is said to show the actual abduction of the McPherson family. It has been added to a collection of videos that claim to show human contact with aliens. Another example is the 5 Hour Video, which shows military personnel from the United States and China fighting underground aliens. Very little information is available on the 5 Hour Video, which is one reason it has not been featured.

The post 10 Mysterious Urban Legends Based on Video Footage appeared first on Listverse.

It’s often seen as a romantic idea for a loving couple to run away and disappear, leaving everything behind in order to start a new life together. However, in real life, it rarely ever works that way. Whenever you hear a story about a couple disappearing together, it usually happens under very sinister, mysterious circumstances and only winds up causing anguish for their loved ones. Here are ten couples of various ages who simply vanished without a trace one day and have not been seen since.

54-year old Michael Sullivan and his 36-year old girlfriend, Camden Sylvia, lived in a loft together in Manhattan when they left to go jogging on the evening of November 7, 1997. When no one heard from them for several days, Camden’s mother came to visit their loft. The couple was not there and aside from their running shoes, a pair of house keys and Camden’s bag, all of their personal items had been left behind. After they were reported missing, suspicion immediately fell on their landlord, Robert Rodriguez, who was reportedly having financial problems at the time and wanted to increase his tenants’ rent by an exorbitant amount.

Rodriguez had threatened to turn off the building’s heat if the tenants did not agree to the rent increase, but on the day she disappeared, Camden presented him with a signed petition. The tenants all stated they would withhold their rent payments if Rodriguez followed through on his threat. Right after Camden and Michael went missing, Rodriguez would himself disappear for two weeks without explanation, and he was later sentenced to six years in prison for larceny, tax fraud and credit card fraud. Rodriguez has since been released and though rumours persist that he may have been responsible for the disappearances, there is no evidence to prove this and he has always maintained his innocence. The whereabouts of Michael Sullivan and Camden Sylvia are still unknown.

Glen and Bessie Hyde were a newlywed couple from Twin Falls, Idaho who decided to spend their honeymoon going on a rafting trip down the Green and Colorado Rivers in October 1928. On November 15, they stopped at the home of a photographer named Emory Kolb to restock supplies. Shortly after leaving Kolb’s property, they disappeared. In December, a rescue party found the Hydes’ abandoned boat on the river. The boat’s tow line had gotten caught on something underwater and while the scow was fully stocked with supplies and all the couple’s personal belongings, there was no sign of Glen or Bessie.

Since Glen had refused to bring any life jackets on the trip, it was theorized that the couple had either drowned or attempted to hike out of the Grand Canyon and died in the woods. Over the years, however, their disappearance has been surrounded with urban legends involving murder. In 1971, a woman named Elizabeth Cutler claimed she was Bessie Hyde and that she had stabbed her husband to death before going off to start a new life. However, she later recanted this story. After Emory Kolb died, skeletal remains were found on his property with a bullet wound in the skull. These remains were initially believed to be Glen, but turned out to be someone else. After nearly 85 years, there is still no conclusive ending to the story of Glen and Bessie Hyde.

On the evening of May 15, 1970, Edward and Stephania Andrews, a couple in their early sixties, were both attending a cocktail party at the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago. Other guests noticed that as the night wore on, Edward appeared to become ill. The manager of the underground parking garage claimed that Edward was staggering to his Oldsmobile before he left and that Stephania was crying and asking him not to drive home. Edward accidentally hit the garage door before exiting and he was last seen driving the wrong way down Michigan Avenue.

Authorities initially theorized that Edward might have become disoriented and drove off a nearby bridge into the Chicago River. However, an extensive search of the water turned up no trace of the couple or their vehicle. In 1980, a full clean-up of the river produced twelve vehicles, but none of them were the Andrewses’ Oldsmobile. The case took a different turn in 1994 when an informant told police that Edward and Stephania had been murdered that night by gang members, who placed the couple’s bodies in their car and submerged it in a pond near Green Oaks. However, a search of the pond turned up nothing. After more than 40 years, it’s still unknown what happened to Edward and Stephania Andrews that night.

On July 27, 2006, Christopher Mittendorf, a 21-year resident of Hardin County, Tennessee, left to go on a shopping trip with his 17-year old fiancee, Kristina Branum. They were both living with Christopher’s mother at the time. When she returned to their apartment later that day, she discovered that the couple had purchased some new clothes, which were laid out on a bed. However, Christopher and Kristina were nowhere to be found.

Five days later, the couple’s car was found abandoned in a rural area about 50-60 miles away. One of their cell phones was left behind inside and a witness claimed to have seen them leaving the vehicle there before they climbed into a white car, which drove away. Christopher’s mother believes that one possible suspect in the disappearance is a career criminal named George Baugus. She claims to have found a lock box inside her apartment containing items which belonged to Baugus and wonders if Christopher and Kristina might have stolen them and made themselves a target. However, Baugus was murdered by his wife in 2010 before any evidence could be found to link him to the disappearances. Since that potential lead has gone cold, no one has any idea what could have happened to the young couple and they remain missing.

37-year old Claude Shelton and his 27-year old wife, Martha Sue, lived with their three children at a residence in a trailer park in Corbin, Kentucky. On the evening of May 21, 1971, the couple put their children to bed and then left the trailer park in their Ford Galaxie. Neither the Sheltons nor their car has ever been seen again. No one believed that the couple would have willingly abandoned their children, so authorities were completely baffled about what might have compelled them to drive away and leave their kids alone in the middle of the night.

One of the Shelton children claimed they overheard Claude asking Sue, “Are you going with me or are you going to stay here?” before hinting that they were going to drive to King’s Truck Stop, which was five miles away. However, authorities could not find anyone from the truck stop who remembered seeing them there that night. The Sheltons had also saved up over $600, which they kept in a bowl in the kitchen, but that money disappeared along with them. Two months after the couple went missing, the body of an unidentified woman was found in Oregon which resembled Sue and in 2009, DNA tests were performed to check for a possible match. However, the body turned out not to be her, so the fate of the Sheltons remains a mystery.

Danielle Imbo & Richard Petrone, a Philadelphia couple in their mid-thirties, spent the evening of February 19, 2005 having drinks with friends. At around 11:30 PM, they left the establishment in Richard’s Dodge Dakota pickup truck. After that, they just seemed to vanish off the face of the Earth. Since then, there has been no activity on their bank accounts or credit cards and their cell phones have remained turned off. Danielle and Richard each had a child from a previous relationship and it seemed unlikely that they would just abandon them.

It was suspected that the couple might have accidentally driven into the nearby Delaware River, but while a search of the water turned up several submerged vehicles, none of them were Richard’s pickup truck. Authorities soon investigated Danielle’s estranged husband, Joe Imbo, who had allegedly exchanged threats with Richard over the phone. In fact, Danielle had also reportedly told Richard she wanted to break up with him, though she still agreed to go out with him on the night they disappeared. All these suspicions have caused a lot of tension between Danielle and Richard’s separate families, though there is no evidence to suggest foul play on anyone’s part. However, after eight years, there is still no trace of Danielle Imbo, Richard Petrone or their vehicle.

In May 2005, Hue Pham and Hue Tran, a retired Vietnamese-American couple who had been together 49 years, embarked on a seven-day Caribbean cruise on the Carnival Cruise Line ship, “Destiny”. They took their daughter, Sharon, and granddaughter along with them. At around midnight on May 8, Sharon received a phone call in her cabin, asking her to retrieve some items from the reception desk. They turned out to be her parents’ flip-flops and her mother’s purse. They had been found on a deck the couple liked to frequent, but there was no sign of them anywhere.

Sharon immediately searched for her parents and informed the crew about their disappearance, but it took them hours to make an official announcement and inform the Coast Guard. The deck where the couple went missing overlooked a 70-foot drop into the ocean, but the ship continued on course and did not turn around to search the area where they could have fallen overboard. The cruise line suggested that they may have committed suicide, but their family did not believe that at all. Days later, the FBI finally conducted an investigation and while they ruled out suicide, they could also find no evidence of foul play. The Pham children have been highly critical of how Carnival Cruise Line has handled the disappearance and even testified before Congress about improving safety measures on cruise ships. However, they have yet to receive any answers about what really happened to their parents.

On July 27, 1973, 16-year old Mitchel Weiser met his 15-year old girlfriend Bonita Bickwit at her workplace in Narrowsburg, New York. They planned to hitchhike to a concert festival 75 miles away in Watkins Glen. They were given a short ride by a truck driver and were last seen hitchhiking on State Route 97, but after that, they disappeared and it’s unknown whether they even made it to the concert. Authorities initially suspected that the young couple ran away together, but their families did not believe this.

The case took an interesting turn in 2000 when a witness named Allyn Smith came forward and claimed that after the concert, he hitched a ride on a Volkswagen bus and interacted with two teenagers who may have been Mitchel and Bonita. Smith said that when they stopped to go swimming in a river, Bonita got into trouble in the water and Mitchel dived in to save her. After they were both swept away, the bus driver apparently told Smith he would call the police at the next available phone, but there is no record of any call being made. While authorities don’t discount Smith’s story, they do find it strange that he made no attempt to help the couple and waited 26 years to come forward. Since there is no evidence to confirm if Smith’s story is true, Mitchel and Bonita are still officially considered missing.

One of the most baffling missing persons cases in the history of Ireland occurred in 1991 when an elderly couple named Conor and Sheila Dwyer mysteriously vanished from the town of Fermoy. The last confirmed sighting of them was when they attended Mass at St. Patrick’s church on April 30. After not hearing from them for weeks, Sheila’s sister decided to visit the couple’s home on May 18. When nobody answered, she decided to notify the police. They arrived and broke down the door, but could find no sign of the Dwyers inside.

The Dwyers’ Toyota Cressida was nowhere to be found, but their home was otherwise completely normal. There were no signs of struggle, robbery or forced entry. The house was secure and all their personal items, including their clothing and glasses, were still there. The couples’ passports and over £1000 in cash were stashed in a tin. Curiously enough, investigators found out that Conor Dwyer had previously gone missing for a couple of years sometime in the 1980s. He eventually returned, but never provided any explanation about where he had been. Unfortunately, history would not repeat itself and Conor didn’t return this time around. Authorities have not found any evidence to suggest what might have happened to the couple and 20 years later, this remains one of Ireland’s strangest unsolved mysteries.

Sometime after the evening of March 5, 1957, 52-year old William Patterson and his 42-year old wife, Margaret, vanished from their home in El Paso, Texas. The couple’s vehicles had been left behind, along with their cat and the house seemed to be in disarray. It was initially believed that they had left for Florida on an extended vacation, but a neighbor finally reported the Pattersons missing five months later. The neighbor had been at the Patterson home on the night of their disappearance and said they seemed very upset.

A mysterious letter from William soon appeared, providing specific instructions about how his businesses and properties were to be distributed to three of his employees. Authorities suspected the note was not actually written by William and one of these employees was seen working on William’s boat at the Patterson home right before they vanished. In 1984, a man who had been hired to clean the Patterson home after their disappearance claimed he found some blood under the water heater and a piece of human scalp on the boat’s propeller. He also saw one of the aforementioned employees removing bloody sheets and putting them in the trunk of his car, but waited 27 years to tell police since he was an illegal immigrant at the time. While there are still no answers in the Pattersons’ disappearance, their old house still remains… and is rumored to be haunted by their ghosts!

Robin Warder is a budding Canadian screenwriter who has used his encyclopedic movie knowledge to publish numerous articles at Cracked.com. He is also the co-owner of a pop culture website called The Back Row and recently worked on a sci-fi short film called “Jet Ranger of Another Tomorrow“.

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