There are some things in life that simply can’t be explained. And while this can be both interesting and exciting, it can also be slightly creepy and even unsettling.
We’re not talking about the mysteries that we just don’t have the science or technology to figure out yet, but the other kind of mystery — not a mystery of science or the supernatural, but an unsolved crime or historical anomaly we’ll never have enough evidence to settle conclusively.
Leave the lights on if you’re reading this one!
49. The Eilean Mor Lighthouse Mystery
Probably my favorite unsolved mystery is the Eilean Mor Lighthouse Mystery. Basically, the three lighthouse keepers disappeared from the island. Inside the lighthouse, they found uneaten meals on the table and missing coats among other weird things.
The creepy part is the log book. It’s supposed to be used strictly for logging work related entries, but they started using it as a sort of journal/diary.
It was explained in the log book how there was a terrible storm that was lasting for many days and that one of the keepers, an old, weathered seaman, was crying in fear.
The last entry said that the storm had ended and everything was calm and fine. A neighboring island reported that there was never a storm.
48. The Missing Crewe Murderer
The Crewe murders is a pretty good one.
A farming couple was murdered and their bodies were dumped in a river. After they were missing for a week, their home was searched and their still-living baby daughter was found there.
The wife’s father was convicted of the crime, but later released when it was discovered that the detective inspectors in charge of investigating had falsified evidence to implicate him.
The actual murderer has never been identified.
What makes it interesting is that doctors believe that during the week her parents were at the bottom of the river weighted down with car parts, someone was regularly feeding the baby.
47. The Door Behind A Door
The hidden shafts in the Queen’s Chamber of the great pyramid. Since the shafts are too small for a person to fit through, there have been two separate attempts to send in specialized robots.
The first time they sent up a robot they reached a dead end and what appeared to be a sealed door, complete with metal handles.
A decade later they came back with a new robot equipped with a drill, only to find that behind the door lay… another door. And no one knows what’s behind it or why the original builders would go through all of the effort and expense of constructing these shafts and doors.
46. Brandon Swanson And The City That Didn’t Exist
The disappearance of Brandon Swanson. In 2008, a teenager in Minnesota was driving to a friend’s party when he crashed into a ditch. He called his dad to come pick him up, but his dad was unable to find him, despite being a long-time resident of the area.
Eventually, Brandon started walking and described what he saw as a city up the road that he was heading to. Abruptly, Brandon cussed and his phone went silent.
His car was later found abandoned in the ditch as he had described, but no city could have been in the area where he was walking.
To this day he is still missing, with little evidence found since.
45. The Valley Of Headless Men
The legends of Nahanni Valley. It’s a valley in Nahanni National Park in the Northwest Territory in Canada.
Very isolated and remote. Largely unexplored. Also known as “Valley of the Headless Men”. Many of the tribes in the area avoided it for thousands of years, believing it was an evil haunted place, inhabited by strange beings, spirits, etc.
A violent tribe called the Naha were said to inhabit it, with large men and strange weapons. They liked to remove their victims heads. They mysteriously disappeared one day, never to be seen again.
When the frontier men, miners, etc. started coming in, many mysteriously ended up decapitated. Others just disappeared. It’s long had reports of strange lights, UFOs, cryptids, living fossils.
Overall a strange place, and interesting to read about.
44. The Strange Case Of Dad’s Coworker
I have a personal experience, sort of. My father had a coworker who was a great guy.
Good at his work, fun to talk to, nobody had any complaints about him. He lived in an apartment right next to work so the night watchman at the workplace would see him whenever he went out.
So one night, he went out in his pajamas, talking on his cell phone, nodded at the watchman. The watchman didn’t think much of it, after all, it’s not all that weird to take a walk even though it was quite late.
He didn’t think much of it. The watchman didn’t see him come back, but he figured he missed him when he went on his bathroom break.
But the guy didn’t show up at work the next day. Someone from work went to check up and he wasn’t there. Nothing was disturbed, he was just gone.
Everyone thought he had dropped dead, killed by thugs or an accident or some medical condition. The workplace filed a police report. Here’s when it gets weird.
It turns out, the guy had created a fake identity. Any credentials he had given were fake. The references he had given had never heard of him.
The family address he’d given didn’t exist. The police didn’t find anything illegal in the apartment, but they didn’t find anything that would give a clue as to who he was, either.
We moved away a few years ago, but I don’t think the case was ever solved. It’s definitely the best unexplained mystery that I’ve personally come across.
43. The Haunting Tales Of The Houska Castle
Houska Castle creeps me out.
Basically, this Bohemian fortress was constructed on top of an ancient Slavo-Germanic pagan ritual site which was a very deep hole.
Nothing too weird about that except for the way the castle was built.
For one, it’s built in a useless position and served no strategic purpose, so it was not desirable for medieval lords of Bohemia or any invaders to control.
Then people realized that the castle was actually inverted! The fortifications were on the inside (arrow slits, turrets, thick fortress walls slanting into the castle etc).
as if they were trying to keep something inside. There’s a legend that a Bohemian king lowered a prisoner into the hole that the castle was built on and he began screaming so they pulled him back up and he had aged 60 years and died.
Then during WWII, the Nazis did actually occupy the castle for a time, but they reported some strange sounds and when Allied forces stormed the castle, the Nazis were dead or abandoned the place.
For sure there’s some folklore involved with the place, but the fact that the castle was built clearly to keep something inside opposed to out and even the Nazis had issues with it, it definitely makes it seem like some ancient horror lies within that hole.
42. The Massive Man Who Disappeared Twice
Rico Harris. He was a massive 6′ 9″ former Harlem Globetrotter basketball player who had drug issues earlier in his life, but had made a full recovery and was getting his life back on track.
He was driving along California’s Interstate I-5, from his home in Southern California to Seattle, to live with his girlfriend. He was somewhere just north of Sacramento, exhausted, and told his girlfriend over the phone that he wanted to check out the mountains.
All calls stopped since then.
His car was found a couple days later by a patrolman near a rest stop in the mountains. A massive search was launched.
No signs of him. The strangest part? A driver later reported seeing a massive 6′ 9″ individual wandering down the highway, just a mile from where the car was found a week later.
A search was re-launched, massive size-17 footprints were found in the ground that were not there before, they were getting very close, and then… nothing.
No trace, no body, nothing.
Where did Rico go the first time he disappeared? Where was he for an entire week? And where did he disappear to again?
The fact that someone could disappear twice is what makes this so mystifying to me.
41. The Unidentified Suicide
A local suicide. She’s known as the Annandale Jane Doe.
December 1996.
Under the cover of the night, she walked into a small cemetery and sat up against a mausoleum overlooking the section where children were buried.
She put on headphones, sipped the last of her brandy, and then slipped a plastic bag over her head. Next to her was a small Christmas tree, a backpack, and a Minnie Mouse fanny pack.
She left a note, saying she was deceased by her own hand, along with two $50 bills for her cremation.
Her ashes sit in the local police department and to this day no one here in the DC metro area knows who she was.
40. The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser
I find the story of Kaspar Hauser, an anonymous teenager found wandering the streets of Nuremberg in the early 19th century, fascinating.
He appeared out of nowhere with no family, friends or anyone who could confirm his identity.
He claimed to have been kept in almost total isolation for his whole life up until that point. His linguistic skills were severely limited, consistent with someone who had grown up with very little human contact.
Rumors began to circulate that he was actually a German prince who had been swapped at birth with a dead baby to prevent his succession to the throne by scheming relatives.
Rather than kill him, they locked him up in complete isolation and left him there to be forgotten until somehow he was freed or managed to escape.
He attracted several wealthy sponsors over the course of his short life, but none were successful at solving the mystery of his origins. He died under suspicious circumstances (stabbed by an unknown assailant) five years after being found.
Of course, he may have just been a deranged fantasist or attention seeker. Who knows?
39. The Tiny Man With Great Strength
Coral Castle and Ed Leedskalnin. There’s a little 25-minute documentary on YouTube that shows what this guy did.
He was 5′ 2″, under 100 pounds, and claimed he knew the secrets of the pyramids and Machu Picchu. This guy was lifting 20-ton blocks, and they say he had a 6th sense; anytime someone tried to spy on him, he would know and stop working, and they’d only be able to see him just putzing around, not working.
He died with his secrets, and Coral Castle is still in Florida for people to visit.
He made a door out of an 11-ton boulder that was perfectly balanced on a pivot point that was so perfect a child could open it by pushing it with a finger.
When they went to repair this door, it took six men and a 20-ton crane (I may have the weight of the crane wrong) to take it down, and they could not get the balance perfect again once they took it apart.
38. The Disappearance Of Asha Degree
She was a shy nine-year-old girl who randomly left her house around 2 am on Valentine’s Day, 2000, in the pouring rain. Her backpack was found later, but she never was.
It’s even stranger because some of the more common explanations for child disappearances don’t apply here. For example, there was no computer in her house, so she couldn’t have met some stranger who lured her out.
She did well in school and she had a supportive family, so none of the typical reasons children run away. She was also extremely afraid of dogs, so it was out of character for her to go walking around alone.
There were never any real clues to her disappearance, and the trail went cold basically the day it happened.
37. The Sodder House Fire
To summarize: a fire starts in the Sodder house, and the parents and four of the nine children there get out.
The other five are never seen again, and the parents suspect that they were alive and had been taken somewhere else, because no bones or other human remains were found in the ashes.
There are many theories and explanations to support them. I would just like to know what happened that night.
36. Starved To Death In A Cabin
Five guys take a bizarre detour home from a basketball game.
They end up inside and near a cabin in the woods. They end up starving to death and dying of exposure despite ample supplies in the cabin.
A lot of people point to the fact that these people were “slow” adults as an excuse for the behavior, but nothing explains all of the weird events that seemed to have occurred.
35. Dancing To Their Death
The Dancing Plague of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg in July 1518. Around 400 people took to dancing for days without rest and, over the period of about one month, some of those affected collapsed or even died of heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion.
Historical documents, including “physician notes, cathedral sermons, local, and regional chronicles, and even notes issued by the Strasbourg city council” are clear that the victims danced.
It is not known why these people danced, some even to their deaths.
34. The Disappearance Of Maura Murray
Disappeared after crashing her car into a snow bank in the middle of the night in the Kancamagus region of New Hampshire.
Some witnesses saw the crash and even spoke to her, but by the time the police arrived minutes later, she was gone, her personal effects strewn around the car and a rag stuffed in the tailpipe.
K9s were used to track her scent, but it ended a few yards away from where she crashed. It’s presumed that’s where she was picked up or abducted by someone.
Later that year, a man approached her parents and claimed his brother had kidnapped and killed her, but it was never proven.
33. The Zodiac Killer
I vote for the Zodiac Killer.
He left multiple cryptic messages, some of which never got decoded, but they never identified him. There’s much debate as to what happened to him, and even how extensive the scope of his killings were.
I believe the FBI still has a reward for information leading to his arrest, but nobody has heard anything in decades.
32. The Killing Of Missy Bevers
The death of Missy Bevers in April 2016.
She was a church gym instructor who was killed in the very early hours in the morning. She was doing fitness prep work when a guy in a full police uniform murdered her with a hammer.
She had a lot of creepers on social media and had fallen out with her husband’s side of the family. The suspect pool is incredibly large and there are tons of theories that the guy in the police uniform is a woman and her father in law carried out the murder.
31. The Codex Gigas
Supposedly the Devil’s bible. It’s been mysteriously saved multiple times from burning buildings. For example, it was once chucked out of burning building from the fourth floor or something, but the catch is that a single person can’t carry it.
It weighs several hundred pounds and no one was in the building. Nobody knows where it originated. Also, it’s reported that there’s evidence in the handwriting and ink that the entire book was written within a very short period of time, (like a week or something) but the book is huge, should’ve taken years to write.
Really interesting stuff.
30. The Fourth Part of the CIA Kryptos Sculpture
This is significantly less creepy than the other things here, but I’m going to go with the Kryptos sculpture at the CIA headquarters.
The sculpture was created in 1990 by Jim Sanborn and consists of four parts.
The first three parts were decrypted in 1993, but the fourth part remains a mystery 25 years later. It’s gotten worldwide attention from cryptoanalysts, but it still hasn’t been solved.
The odd thing is that Sanborn doesn’t have much of a background in codebreaking or cryptoanalytics, yet he still created a code that has stumped the best experts in the world.
29. Holding the Plane For Ransom
D.B. Cooper. In 1971, some guy nobody knew walked into an airport, gave fake identification and proceeded to board the plane. Mid-flight, he revealed he had a bomb and asked for a ransom.
When the plane landed, he was given $50,000 cash, three parachutes and a flight to Mexico. Just between Oregon and Washington, he jumped out, deployed the parachutes and was never seen again.
28. The Butcher Knife Imprint
An 18-year-old named Evan Jones was acting out at home and his mom called the cops. What ensued was an unfortunate use of lethal force wherein the teen was killed at the hands of police.
What nobody has been able to explain, however, is just how exactly a literal imprint of the butcher’s knife the teen was holding ended up in the wall of the living room. Mom straight up cut out that section of wall and kept it because that’s seriously distracting when you’re trying to watch TV.
27. The Unexplainable Stabbing
In 1994, a woman was stabbed in her home. Her apartment, which needed to be buzzed in to access, was literally in between a church and a police station.
They found her body two weeks later because someone complained of the smell. Nothing on cameras and no DNA evidence was ever found.
It’s the best-unexplained mystery to me because it was my mother.
26. A UFO Or No UFO
The UFO phenomenon being real. As recently confirmed by the Pentagon’s AATIP program.
They told the public that aircraft of unknown origins with capabilities that are incomprehensible to known physics are regularly infringing on our airspace and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Operating with no apparent means of lift or thrust, even underwater. And they seem to turn off our nukes whenever they want.
Also, I guess they’re storing material recovered from UFOs at some building owned by Bigelow Aerospace.
25. The Death Of Edgar Allan Poe
Poe was found wandering the streets of Baltimore on October 3rd, 1849. He was brought to a hospital, where he died four days later on the 7th.
He was never lucid enough to tell anyone what had happened to him. Even the cause of his death isn’t known for sure. The last reliable sighting of Poe before October 3rd was on September 27th, when he left his home to go to New York.
I recommend reading the Wikipedia article, it is truly interesting.
24. Wow!
Astronomer here! In my field, the Wow! signal is probably the most famous unexplained mystery. It was basically detected in 1977 by a telescope that was just pointed overhead, and looked very similar to what a SETI signal is expected to look like.
It was first noted the next morning by an astronomer (who wrote “Wow”! in the log margins) and was never seen again despite extensive follow up over the years.
There have been various suggestions on what the Wow! signal was (but no, it probably wasn’t comets). Personally, based on my experience with man made interference (RFI) in radio astronomy (I wrote a paper on distinguishing a real transient signal from that stuff), it was most likely RFI from a satellite or similar.
But until we see another signal like it, we just don’t know for sure, and that’s very fun to think about!
23. A Massive Stolen Plane
The 2003 Theft, then disappearance of a Boeing 727. Always been interesting to me because of how big of an airplane it is, like yeah small GA planes have gone missing over the years and never found, but something as big as a 727 is just weird.
The most reasonable explanation is that the plane probably crashed into the ocean hence why it hasn’t been found, but there have been massive resources put into the incident and they’ve literally found no trace of it at all.
Generally if a plane that large were to crash in the ocean they’d at least have some idea, but it’s just as likely based on the evidence they’ve found (quite literally nothing) that it landed in the desert as it did in the ocean.
Also while it’s feasible to figure out how to fly one with just basic flying skills, looking at guides, videos and knowing the basic limits of the airplane, starting up a plane like that and successfully getting it into the air with one person (the other guy who stole the plane had zero flying experience) who from what I’ve read had only flown small single props, makes it even more interesting.
22. The Booby-Trapped Oak Island Shaft
The Mystery of Oak Island. Island off the east coast of Canada that has a large hole or shaft presumed to be many things. Templar Treasure, lost works of Shakespeare, etc.
No one has ever gotten to the bottom of the pit and it is booby-trapped. Its crazy to me that something can be there for decades and known but never fully analyzed.
21. Pied Piper
Whatever happened that developed into the Pied Piper myth. The earliest entry in the Hamelin town chronicles in 1384 which states: “It is 100 years since our children left”.
But other than that, there is no consistent agreement on what happened that caused the children to ‘leave’, whether its a metaphor for a plague or something else.
20. A Missing Empire
The Lost Empire of Yam. Existing at the same time as the old kingdom of Egypt, we have records of merchants who visited it, but no consensus on where it was located!
It was rich, powerful, and well known to the neighboring kingdoms. Here’s my research that I did into this mystery: https://youtu.be/_k9nD8GLDUs
19. Disappearances That Don’t Add Up
Two men (unrelated, who didn’t know each other) disappeared from Naples, Florida three months apart under the exact same circumstances.
Both men were last spotted being arrested by deputy Steve Calkins for driving without a license. Neither men were taken to the jail. They just disappeared.
His story is that he dropped both men off at Circle K convenience stores and drove away. There isn’t as much evidence to go on with Santos’ disappearance, but his story was actively disputed by the available evidence when it comes to Terrance’s disappearance.
For instance, he had Terrance’s car towed and told the tow operator that the car was abandoned. But there were witnesses who saw him pull over Terrance and arrest him.
What did he do with these men???
18. The Dutch SS Ourang Medan
Ghost ships have always fascinated me. They’re not necessarily that unsettling if you consider people might just have left the ships.
Taken hostage by pirates or something.
But this is the story of the Dutch SS Ourang Medan
Ships of the coast of Malaysia received some S.O.S messages from SS Ourang Medan.
“All officers including captain are dead lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead”.
Before anyone could get to the ship, another S.O.S message was sent from the ship:
“I Die”.
The American merchant ship Silver Star was first on scene, quickly boarding the now drifting ship. They found the whole crew dead, eye’s wide open with terrified expression on their faces and arms stretching out in front of them as to shield themselves from something.
The radio operator was found dead siting by the Morse sending key, eye’s wide open as well. No one on the ship looked physically hurt.
As the Silver Star tried to tow the ship back to port, the SS Ourang Medan started smoldering and sunk shortly thereafter.
17. The Green Children Of Woolpit
Basically, 2 greenish-colored children, who spoke an unknown language and only ate beans for months, were found by farmers.
One is dead after a few months but the other one, girl, learned how to speak English and her greenish skin turned into normal color, and married with an ambassador.
She later told that she and her brother were trying to find their father’s flock, and went into a cave, then they came out to the place where the farmers found them.
16. The Legend Of The Attic
Another one that has always perplexed me is No. 50 Berkeley Square in London. A historical house where basically every bit of its history until it was purchased by the current owner (an antique book dealer) is a mystery.
Basically, the “legend” is that there is a room upstairs that causes anyone who tries to sleep in it to die of fright-related conditions. It is said to have a few verifiable deaths in this manner.
Some of the stories like the two sailors and Robert Warboys can’t be verified AFAIK, though a former British prime minister did live there.
The most persistent legend is that the people are frightened to death by the ghost of the brother of a former owner named Myers. Myers’ brother was said to be insane and very violent, and Myers locked him in the upstairs bedroom and fed him through a hole in the door.
The ghost is described repeatedly as being tall, lanky and with a massive, gaping jaw.
Another story is that some sort of octopus-like creature lived in the house, which somehow got there via old London sewers.
Either way, nobody has really ever been able to adequately investigate it, and it’s kind of frustrating.
15. JFK’s Assassination
I know JFK assassination is too typical, but I still think about it and it’s goddamn crazy.
You can say it was a setup, FBI and USA government were involved… but we’ll never know the truth.
14. The Taman Shud Case
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A man is found dead on a beach in Australia in 1948.
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His spleen was three times its normal size and there was internal damage to various of his organs. However none of these things were necessarily fatal and cause of death was unclear
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poisoning is suspected but his stomach only contained half a pastie. There was also no evidence of vomiting or convulsions.
AdvertisementSo it’s not just that the poison would have to have left no trace, it also left no understanding of the mechanism.
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His dental records match no living person, all the labels have been cut off of his clothes and to this day we have no idea who he was.
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Witnesses suggest the man got a train and then a bus from Adelaide to the vicinity of the beach. It then appears he walked to the beach although his shoes looked freshly polished and had no signs of the dust one would expect if this was the case
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Retracing his steps investigators found a suitcase in the left luggage office of Adelaide station. The suitcase contained several fresh changes of clothes but no socks all with the name T Keane sown in to them.
AdvertisementNo man by the name of T Keane has ever been identified in connection to this case.
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A further investigation found that someone had sewn a tiny rolled up piece of paper into the hem of the dead man’s trousers.
AdvertisementThe rolled up piece of paper said “tamam shud”
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Tamam shud are the final words of the poem “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” and mean “it is ended” in Persian. Forensic investigation demonstrates that this piece of paper was cut from a very rare copy of the Rubiyat of which there were only known to be six copies in Australia
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The copy from which these words were cut then turns up having been thrown into the back seat of a man’s car. Police took out a court order to hide the man’s identity and would only reveal that he was a doctor.
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That copy had these words impressed into the back cover, as though they had been written on the sheet torn out
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The copy also had a phone number in the front. The phone number belonged to a woman named Jessica Thomson, who owned one of the other only six copies of the Rubiyat.
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Thompson had given her copy to a man, who may or may not have been a spy, called Alf Boxall. Police therefore assumed Boxall to be the missing man but when they went to look for him they found him alive and well and his copy of the Rubiyat intact
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In something like 70 years of trying police have been unable to find any link between the dead man and Boxall or Thomson.
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However Thomson’s grandson was born with a rare genetic ear deformity which the missing man also had
13. The Geneva Swamp In Pennsylvania
Its PA’s largest swamp and has no confirmed bottom.
The swamp has exceeded depths of 200 feet strait down, swallowed an entire locomotive, and a bulldozer/crane. I-79 runs through it on a floating bridge because there is no bottom to affix stable structures.
Countless dive teams have tried to locate it and have even sent robots to find it, only to lose contact with the robots and then never resurface.
Countless bodies are rumored to be dumped in the swamp, never to be found again.
12. The Gobekli Tepe
I think the world’s greatest mystery today is Göbekli Tepe. It’s not even fully excavated, and is thought to contain 50x more ruins underground than has been uncovered.
No one really knows who built it, how old it is, its purpose, really we know next to nothing about it. As it stands, it could be the first religious temple in human history, it could change our understanding of hunter-gatherers, and it could change our very understanding of the history of our species. Incredible stuff, and, in my opinion, more interesting because it’s real.
It’s literally a new frontier.
11. Pre Human civilizations on earth?
We may think we have a good idea about earth‘s past, but the truth is that fossilisation is actually a really rare event because it requires a lot of special conditions. It‘s estimated that 99% of all species that ever lived on earth are already extinct and of those only about 1% had the chance to be preserved as fossils (and of those only a tiny percentage has actually been discovered by scientists). Add to that various gaps in the fossil record, like Romer’s Gap and the fact that the fossil records of two entire continents, Antarctica and Zealandia, are largely unknown to us and it becomes apparent that the majority of lifeforms that ever lived on earth will forever be unknown to us. Now, an industrialised civilization like us today would leave rather obvious global signs in the geologic record, so it seems unlikely that something like that existed in prehistory without us noticing, but there‘s still somewhat of a possibility that some species, perhaps from the Mesozoic or Cenozoic, were able to reach their versions of paleolithic, neolithic or maybe even medieval-level technology without us ever noticing. Only time and research will tell.
10. Sleep
Why do sleep? All we know so far is “because we’re tired”, but all else is a mystery
9. The Innocent Man Who Confessed
The Campden Wonder In England. In 1660, a 70-year-old man named William Harrison was walking a few miles to the next village when he disappeared.
Later, they found his clothes covered in blood, including his hat which looked like it had been slashed open. Harrison’s servant, John Perry, pleads guilty to the act and is executed along with his brother and their mother.
Two years later, William Harrison returns to his village alive, having found his way back to England on a ship from Portugal.
The guy claims to have been sold into slavery in Turkey, but the story makes no sense because how would Turkish slavers get to England?
And even then, why would they capture a frail old man to do slave labor? To this day, nobody has any idea why the servant confessed to a murder they didn’t commit, or what actually happened to Harrison.
8. The Stone Face
Since it’s local. The “face” that appeared at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. It appeared on one of the stone panels on the outside of the building.
UT maintenance power blasted the panel, and the face reappeared in another location on the facade. They literally cannot get rid of it. I’ve seen it and it’s kinda unnerving.
7. The Man Who Entered But Never Left
In Columbus, Ohio, the disappearance of Brian Shaffer. Security cameras showed him entering Ugly Tuna 10 years ago and never showed him leaving.
6. A Disappearing Man And Different Colored Eyes
The disappearance of Nicolas Barclay/Frederic Bourdin.
In 1994, San Antonio, Texas, 13-year-old Nicolas Barclay disappeared from his home. Three years later, Barclay was found huddled next to a phone booth halfway across the world in Linares, Spain.
Authorities picked him up and reunited him with his family.
However, certain things didn’t add up. Barclay had very little memory of what happened to him, and couldn’t give police a real answer as to how he ended up in Spain. Plus, his English was terrible, and when he did speak English it was with a heavy accent.
This doesn’t make sense for someone who spent the first 13 years of his life in the United States, but these discrepancies were explained away by the fact that Barclay was probably just coping with the emotional trauma of being kidnapped to a foreign country and kept away from his family for three years. One thing no one could explain though was that when Nicolas returned to the United States, his eyes were a different color than when he originally disappeared.
Barclay tried to resume a normal life, enrolling back into his old school, moving back in with his family, etc.
About four months after reuniting with his family, a private investigator discovered that Nicolas Barclay actually wasn’t Barclay, but a con artist named Frederic Bourdin. Bourdin was wanted by Interpol because he had a habit of stealing the identity of missing youths.
Bourdin was arrested, but this brought about even more disturbing questions about Nicolas’s disappearance.
Apparently, Nicolas was a very unruly and problematic child. He was always getting into trouble at school, and there were several police reports from his family’s house about domestic disturbances and arguments that worsened in the months before he went missing. Nicolas’s mom moved her brother into their house (Nicolas’s uncle) shortly before he disappeared to help give Nicolas some structure. It is rumored that he couldn’t handle Nicolas and instead killed him. This would explain why the family was so willing to accept someone who wasn’t their son as their lost boy. If it was believed that Nicolas was alive, any murder investigation would come to a halt.
Even more interesting? After Bourdin was arrested and police began re-opening and investigating the case, Nicolas’s uncle promptly killed himself.
5. On The Run With A Ruptured Ear Drum
The disappearance of Lars Mittank.
He got into a fight with some friends over a soccer game, ruptured an eardrum, then started to act oddly. Eventually, at the airport, he is seen walking into the bathroom, then a few seconds later running out and out of the airport.
He hopped over a fence and hasn’t been seen since.
4. The Teen On The Train
Andrew Gosden is a really sad one. At 14-years-old he left for school only to come back home, change his clothes, and grab his PSP.
He withdrew some money from his bank account, got on the train, and was never heard from again.
Every year I hope it gets solved.
3. Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey?
The circumstantial evidence points to a family member, likely her mother or brother. But all family members were conclusively cleared by DNA testing. So many things in the investigation were botched that we’ll probably never know.
The deeper you look at the case the more theories you can come up with. Usually more evidence narrows the suspects but in this case the volume of evidence expands the pool of possibilities.
2. Just Plane Weird
The disappearance of flight MH370.
1. The Pentagon Papers
The Pentagon Papers. What happened to the missing trillions that were discovered on September 10th, 2001?
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