We've all experienced odd occurrences that have happened without any explainable reason. As much as we try to find answers to them, we somehow always come up empty—perhaps there aren't enough clues or the trail simply leads to a dead end. These unsolved mysteries often leave an impact on us because we have no way to get closure from them. They just persist in our minds, day to night, haunting us with their enigmatic layers. People from around the world shared the unsolved mysteries that have no plausible explanations. Some of these stories are personal experiences, while others are relatively high-profile events that have happened in the past or recent history. Are you a lover of the unknown? Read on for some mindboggling tales:
Don't forget to check the comment section below the article for more interesting stories!
#1 The Cat's Army
My cat likes to bury little green army men in his litter box. There are none in the house and he’s an indoor cat. The house was destroyed by a tornado in the '50s and had to be totally rebuilt. It has had the same owner since—my grandfather. I currently live with him. At the time this started, he was having issues with mobility (hence why I live with him. I doubt he has the strength left to get to the litter box.
#2 What Goes Around...
My fake ID was confiscated by a police officer in Maryland. About a year later, I ran into an acquaintance and his friend, and the acquaintance tells me his friend has my ID. The dude pulled it out. He said he found it on the ground. In New York.
#3 Free Food For All
My husband and I were once on a MAX train in Portland when some teenagers got on and sat across from us. They were all loudly bored and hungry, and one of them was scrounging around under the seats.
As we watched, he pulled a McDonald’s bag out from under a seat a few sections behind him. That bag was full of food. He began distributing burgers to his buddies until the last guy said, “No thanks. I don’t like burgers.” Then the guy reached into the bag and said, “That’s okay. Here’s a chicken sandwich.” And he handed his buddy the last item.
The bag had exactly enough for them to each have a sandwich, and adequately fed the guy who didn't eat burgers. I still think about it.
#4 Olive Thieves
In Australia 2008, an olive grove of 400 trees was stripped of every single olive OVERNIGHT by hand. The owner (who lives in the grove, by the way) says it usually would have taken a team of six three full days to harvest the grove. He heard nothing overnight, no machinery, and found not a single olive on a tree nor the ground the next day. None! I can’t imagine the size of a team of silent thieves picking and hauling four tonnes of olives in a single night! The owner says he knows of five other similar raids in the area cumulating in 7.5 tonnes being heisted at a value of $10,000.
#5 The Possessed Watch
I had a wristwatch that my dad bought me back in the '90s. It was one of those kinetic watches that would wind itself when you walk. Anyway, for some reason it kept stopping at around 1:30 a.m., never 1:30 in the afternoon. Sometimes it would keep going, but three times out of five it would stop at the exact time.
We sent it to the Swatch company to get repaired and a month or two later we got a catalog of watches with a handwritten note basically saying, "We don't know what the heck is wrong with your watch. We're stumped, pick a watch out of this catalog and have it as a replacement." So that's my possessed watch story.
#6 Where's My Ice Cream?
I had one of those Incredible Hulk face ice creams you get from the ice cream truck. I took a bite and watched as the rest of it fell off the stick, only to look down and see nothing on the ground. I still don't know what happened to my ice cream. I want my money back. Maybe all the particles lined up just right and it fell through the floor.
#7 A Disappearing Act
My uncle's best friend and coworker just disappeared one day. My uncle came to his job site one day and his coworker never showed up. He went to his house and found his truck parked outside with the door and tailgate open—keys in the ignition with uncashed checks on the dashboard and a rifle in the passenger seat. He went over to the house and found the garage door open and front door unlocked.
My uncle went in and found his place was filled with junk along with more rifles, more uncashed checks, and a full uneaten meal! My uncle searched all around the house (which was up against a hill) and searched the surrounding area and worksite. Then he locked everything and went to his boss who couldn't have cared less about the matter. My uncle ended up having to call the police himself but since the coworker didn't have any immediate family who cared about him, the police didn't bother doing an extensive search.
#8 A Ghostly Occurrence
My mom inherited a watch from her grandmother. It was the old fashioned kind that needed to be wound all the time, obviously. Anyway, one day it went missing, and despite turning the house upside down, she couldn’t find it anywhere. In the end, she just accepted it had gone.
Cut to a few years later, and we had moved houses. We’d been in the new place for about six months. One night, she woke up and turned the light on, and the watch was sitting on her bedside table, wound and showing the correct time. She totally believes in ghosts and is confident her grandmother found it and brought it back to her.
#9 How Do You Know My Name?
A personal mystery: I was at a Taco Bell, waiting on an order. There were five people in the room: me (Daniel), a security guard, two kids, and the cashier. Suddenly, a child said, "Look at Daniel" and I looked over at them. They were both staring at me. The security guard and cashier both had name tags, so I know they weren't Daniels. The two kids had said each other's name so I knew they weren't Daniels. I felt kind of spooked, but I just moved on from it.
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#10 Speaking Korean
I was in high school waiting for my bus to pull up and I was kind of just zoned out. There were kids talking, and I was just absorbing the noise from it all. There was a group of kids talking close to me, and I heard one of them say that they didn’t understand something about a game that I was familiar with. So I butted in and answered the question.
He and his buddy were Asian, and they were just staring at me in disbelief. I apologized because I felt like I had been kind of rude to listen in on their conversation. The one who had been talking said that it was fine but he didn’t expect me to understand Korean. He and his friend were foreign exchange students from South Korea, and at that moment he had been speaking in his native language. I heard him as if he had spoken plain English and when he did speak in English, it wasn’t as plain as what I had heard.
I still have no idea how I understood him in that brief moment.
#11 A Bloody Mystery
Years ago, I went to bed just like any other day only to wake up with blood everywhere... On the sheets, on my clothes, my body. It was like a scene from a horror movie. I extensively checked my body for cuts or anything but there were none. Also no sign of nose bleeding. My mother also checked for an explanation but she couldn't find any.
#12 The Pictureless Man
When I was a little child, we went on a holiday trip to Barbados along with another couple. In the resort, there was an old gardener who’d always wear a yellow rain jacket. He had an interesting face, so my father asked if he could take a picture. The man said: “Yes, but let me warn you, I can’t be captured in a photo.”
My dad didn’t believe him but got his friend to take a picture with his camera as well. He pretty much forgot about this incident, even when some of the holiday pictures turned out just grey (this happened in the late ’70s, so they still had to be developed). The friends of my parents lived in another city; different lab and all. They also had some grey pictures, but there was none of the old man.
#13 The Odd Potato
I was given a potato in school, and I was having a weirdly good time playing with it. I went into my room, started throwing it up in the air and catching it, but one time I threw it up, and it just seemed to inexplicably curve backward over my head. I heard it thump on the ground, but when I turned around to pick it up it was gone. I spent ten minutes looking everywhere for it and it just wasn’t there. When we moved house a year later and I was emptying my room, I fully expected to find a gross, rotting potato somewhere, but still, it was nowhere to be found. I asked my parents and even my sister if they’d found a potato in my room, but nobody had any idea about it. I’m going to spend the rest of my life wondering where that potato went.
#14 Canine Reincarnation
I went to visit my mom’s house to say goodbye before my dog was going to be put to sleep since he was really sick. I didn’t want that to happen yet, so I was arguing with her about it for a while. At one point, my dog wandered off, and I didn’t see him for a while. I couldn’t find him—I figured he was out chilling in the horse pasture. It was dark, and he wasn’t coming in when I called, so I just thought he was doing his thing. I was sad I couldn’t say one last goodbye, but I had to get going.
I walked to the front of the house where I was parked, and my little dog was in my car, sitting in the driver seat, looking at me with that stupid look he always got on his face when it was time for a car ride. I started crying right then. My windows were up; my doors were locked, I had the only key. To this day, I have no earthly idea how he got in there.
#15 The McCann Case
As much as I think it was the parents, the Madeleine McCann disappearance just has gaps in every theory. None of the forensic or crime scene information suggests a break-in, and it would have to have been opportunism of the highest order. Similarly, the parents may well have had something to do with it, but it does seem unlikely they'd have had the time to hide her body, or it would have been unlikely they'd have arranged such a massive search.
#16 The Magic Ring
I lost my class ring when I was 20. About eight months later, I moved 1,000 miles away. Only brought a few clothes and my car. Someone hit me and totaled my car while I was there… twice. I bought a new car, lived there for a year, then moved again about 200 miles away. A month after moving to the new town, I got a call from a church. They received a donation of clothes. While sorting them out, they found a class ring with my name etched inside the band. My new home number came up when they searched my name. The church was about two miles from where we just moved. My wife didn’t donate any clothes. I thought it must be a mistake, but I decided to take a look. Sure enough, it was mine. I looked through the clothes they found it in, and they weren’t mine or my wife’s. I still no idea how it could have ended up 1,100 miles from where I lost it.
#17 A Turkish Mystery
The Voynich manuscript. It's a script of around 240 pages, believed to be from the 1400s and possibly from northern Italy. It is written in an unknown language and nobody, not even expert cryptographers, have been able to decipher it yet. I had heard it was written by a guy who never learned to write his language, so it's the phonetic spelling of that spoken old Turkish dialect.
#18 Dream To Reality
When I was about 20, I had a bunch of dreams featuring a man. He had long, very straight black hair, very tan, really bright blue eyes, and eyebrows like Micheal Keaton. He always had this calmly threatening demeanor, even when he was furious. And he had an air of evil to him. He was the main antagonist in any nightmare I had for about a year.
Anyway, one night, I had a dream that I was walking down the street. It was a bright day, but all the light was almost dark if that makes any sense, which is also a common theme in my nightmares. There was a woman walking about half a block in front of me with really curly hair. she was crossing a side street, when "the man" appeared around the corner and started following her. I freaked out, knowing he was a threat to her and tried to yell a warning. Nothing came out other than squeaks. I tried to run and help her, but could barely move. The man slowly looked back to me and very calmly said "this one's mine". He caught up to her, and I watched helplessly as he decapitated her before waking up. I usually talked about my nightmares with a friend, but this one I kept to myself.
About a week later, I was hanging out with a group of my friends, and there was a girl there with really curly hair I had never met. Eventually, someone starting talking about dreams, and she told us about a nightmare she had had about a week before. She dang near-perfectly described the dream I had, only from the point of view of the woman in mine. Even describing the man in detail, knowing there was someone else about a half a block behind her, and being confused when the man said, "This one's mine." I would've dismissed this had I told anyone of the dream I had, but as I said, I kept this one to myself.
#19 The Psychic Kid
I’m a soccer coach and each year we have a couple of open practices where parents bring their kids to see if they like soccer, etc. After one of these practices, a kid walks up to me and says: “I’m sorry that you lost your grandma.” I was a bit confused, and I said, “Oh no, you must be thinking of someone else,” and I just shrugged it off. The next day I woke up for school and my parents told me my grandma died in her sleep and that her nurse found her in bed that morning. The kid might have mistaken me for someone else, but it still bugs me. Also, he never showed up at practice again.
#20 Cue The Eerie Music
Personal mystery. When I was a kid, eight or nine years old, I was coloring in the doorway of my room while listening to music. I could see anyone coming from the hallway or the stairs. The whole family was downstairs when suddenly a gust of wind blows by me. My music turned off, and the music player got pushed back. I freaked out and screamed. My parents came running and found nothing that could have pushed the music player or caused the wind. Still weirds me out.
#21 The Man From Taured
In 1950, a man arrived at Tokyo, Japan's, main airport, he was dressed like a businessman, when he handed his passport to immigration officials they looked puzzled. They asked what country he was from and he stated Taured. They asked where that was as the officials had never heard of it. The man stated it was a country between Spain and France. The officials examined his passport which showed he had visited Japan previously but decided to detain him until they could work out his story. He was put up in a hotel but disappeared before he could be questioned any further.
#22 Creepy Ringtone
There were three of us living in an apartment together: my best friend, myself, and another dude who needed a place (a pretty cool guy at the time). After the winter semester, my best friend had to go back home to take care of his dad since he had recently become disabled and couldn’t watch one of the autistic brothers anymore.
He would occasionally come back to our apartment, and we would go out to party and stuff. One day, while hanging out in my roommate’s room, (his room is directly next to my best friend's old room) we heard my best friend's ringtone go off. Mind you, we just woke up from a nap and it was around 1:00 a.m.
I look towards the room and then to my roommate and asked, “Is he sleeping in the room?” My roommate had no idea. We both opened the door to see it completely dark and devoid of any life. We were spooked by that. Of course, I called my best friend immediately afterward and he picked up. It cleared some things up, but we never found out what that was or where it came from.
#23 Where'd The Milk Go?
In college, I was eating breakfast with three friends. All of us were having cereal with milk. One friend, K, also had a glass of milk. He was seated directly across from me. I watched him pick up the glass and drop it onto his lap. It disappeared from my view as it struck the table. No reaction from him. We asked K if he was good. K has no recollection of the glass of milk. We searched the immediate area, and there was no milk anywhere, no glass anywhere. Three of us remember the glass of milk. K has no recollection to this day.
#24 Goodbye, Grades
I lost one of those mini SanDisk flash-drives about five to seven years ago. I saw it fall off the kitchen table and it just disappeared. I searched within a 20-foot radius and even took apart the baseboard heater. Even after a full upstairs remodel three years ago, I still haven’t found it. It had my homework on it at the time… My teacher didn’t believe me.
#25 A Possible UFO
The Battle of LA. I’m not one to give any credence to alien stories with zero evidence whatsoever, but this story just makes me confused. Radar detects an incoming object, assumed to be Japanese planes. However, it was moving much too slow to be a plane. They fire thousands of rounds of ammo and flak at it, to no effect. Then they claim it was a weather balloon. So essentially, the official story is the US Military was unable to shoot down a weather balloon with an immense amount of firepower. Hard to believe that’s true.
#26 Gone Without A Trace
I was cooking in my small studio apartment last year and went to grab my colander from the only place in my kitchen that I ever kept it. It was not there, but no big deal. While I ate the meal I had just cooked, I started thinking about it. Where the heck could it be? My house is not big, and there is only one place it should ever be! Then, I tried to justify that perhaps it was at my mom’s house…
The next day, I asked mom about it, as she has the bigger, identical colander. She confirmed that she has hers, so where is mine? That afternoon, I tore my place apart searching for this thing… but to no avail. I have moved on now, but still, I wonder about the case of the missing colander.
#27 The Duplicating Shirt
When I was in high school, my aunt gave me a t-shirt for my birthday. It was kind of sparkly and not something I ever would buy for myself, but I sometimes wore it. One day, I realized I had two of these shirts in my closet. No idea how that happened. I could never think of a good explanation, although there must be one. Still seems strange.
#28 Tater Tot Simulation
We lived in a split-level house with a chest freezer in the basement and the kitchen on the second floor. When I was a teenager, I was asked to bring tater tots upstairs so my mom could make a casserole. I went and grabbed them, then came upstairs. When I got upstairs, the tater tots were no longer in my hands, and my mom asked where they were.
I thought I had just spaced out and forgot them. So I went back downstairs, and they weren’t in the freezer anymore. I searched every square inch between the chest freezer and the kitchen and they were not anywhere. They never turned up. To this day, my mom thinks I was playing a dumb prank on her. My most plausible explanation is that we live in a computer simulation and they got accidentally glitched out of it.
#29 The Mysterious Extra
I came home from work with a 12-pack of drinks. I was walking up to my door when I dropped the 12-pack. A bunch of cans rolled out of one end, so I stopped to pick them up and put them back in the box. For some reason, there were now 13 cans. No matter what, one of the cans wouldn’t fit. When I got inside, I counted 13 cans in the box. I have no idea how that happened.
#30 I Didn't Steal It, I Swear
My cousin came over with his Xbox. When he left my house later that day, he said that he couldn't find his power cable. Not the brick, the cable that goes to the wall. I looked everywhere, and parents didn't believe me. They looked everywhere, and now we're convinced that it's no longer in our house. But something tells me it's just been in front of our eyes.
#31 Shattering Glass
This story still makes me sleep with the lights on whenever I think of it. My sister and I were upstairs at my grandparents’ house where we lived. We were playing some Disney princess game on our TV. All of a sudden, we heard a loud piece of glass shatter. It seriously sounded like someone dropped a chandelier. My uncle, who was visiting at the time, came sprinting up the stairs because he thought there was a break-in. He checked in the next room that the sound came from and nothing had fallen. There were no glass shards anywhere. Kind of creeped him out as well.
#32 Casting A Patronus
I was on the porch with my dad looking at the forest at night. We were talking when all of a sudden we see a ball of light in the forest, pure white. It stayed like that just long enough for us to point. It started expanding towards us quickly but slowly enough that we had a second before the whole area was in almost daylight.
Picture Harry Potter’s Patronus from the third movie—it was a whole lot like that. Then, after a split second, all returned to darkness. This was a very rural place, so it couldn’t have been a plane or anything, or other people as we would have seen them. Some people think it could have been ball lightning, but if it was, then it took up an area at least a couple hundred meters in diameter.
#33 Coincidence Or More?
Two days before the space shuttle Challenger blew up, I dreamt I was at the launch. The shuttle took off and caught the gantry. It started to veer off and I could hear the occupants screaming. Two days later, I was having a home haircut and my daughter came in to tell me the news on the TV. It sent shivers down my spine. Of course, it was a coincidence, but very creepy.
#34 A Near Miss
I was late for an appointment one day and was speeding up a hill with a big curve to the right. Almost as soon as I got around the curve, I saw there was an accident in front of me, blocking both lanes on my side. Since there were only one or two other cars stuck behind it, it must’ve just happened because there were no emergency vehicles there yet.
To the right of me was a sidewalk where people were standing by, and to my left was oncoming traffic in the other two lanes so that I couldn’t go around it, and I was going too fast to be able to stop in time. I knew if I relaxed I was less likely to be as severely injured, so I quickly shut my eyes and relaxed as much as I could. And absolutely nothing happened. When I opened my eyes, I could see the crash behind me in my rearview mirror, and I was continuing along an empty road.
#35 Spiders Paying Rent
I was showering home alone one day when out nowhere, a penny flew over the curtain into the shower with me. Then it happened again like, two years later. I checked the dates on them and they didn't seem to be anything significant to me. And now I’m just waiting for it to happen again.
#36 Memory Wipe
My girlfriend’s cousin suddenly disappeared one day after she’d taken the bus to her university to change something around with her courses. She’s a huge homebody and has been through some trauma in the past so it was extremely unlike her to up and leave with no warning. All of the immediate family search for her, including me for two days. We even got the police involved.
Absolutely no sign of her. Her mom was able to get ahold of her cell signal and it placed her in a city about 40 minutes over, so we search frantically there and again, nothing. A day after this while my girlfriend's parents were out they just found her walking down the road, by herself.
They took her in—I’m guessing she was on her way home because it was about a twenty-minute walk from her house, but she just couldn't give an explanation for why she’d disappeared or who she’d been with. She couldn’t remember anything. I’m assuming there was some sort of trauma involved because her brain completely wiped it out, but we actually have no idea why she went missing and what happened... Just that she turned up three days later on the side of the road.
#37 A Really Big Bird
I grew up in an extremely rural place, so this maybe has something to do with it. One morning when I was going to high school, I was driving out of the driveway on the embankment between the road and the driveway (it was the side of a mountain, so imagine a sort of a small cliff). There was a GIANT bird of prey just sitting there.
I mean this thing was maybe six feet tall, kind of had the general shape of an owl, and when I went past it, it flew off, and its wingspan was bigger than the length of my truck. It was super cool to see but freaked me out a little. I have never been able to figure out what this thing was and it’s a little freaky thinking there’s a dinosaur that lived somewhere near my mom’s backyard. I never saw it again. My family is Native American, and when I told grandma, she said I saw a Thunderbird. To my best knowledge of both biology and stories, she’s right.
#38 Fredrick Valentich
The disappearance of Fredrick Valentich. He was out piloting an aircraft when he reported to radio control he saw another flying object in the sky described as having a metallic body surface and green light on it while orbiting above him.
“Asked to identify the aircraft, Valentich radioed, 'It isn't an aircraft.' His transmission was then interrupted by unidentified noise described as being "metallic, scraping sounds" before all contact was lost.”
He was never found.
#39 Sudden Knowledge
When I was little we were at a friend's house and there was another child who was older. We watched a movie and I remember telling my mom about it—what the movie was about, all that stuff. Turns out, the movie was in English, a language I didn’t know at the time, and there’s no way I could have understood it. Really weird.
#40 Ghostly Visions
This happened a few years ago to my brother and my mom. It was a parent-teacher conference at my brother’s high school (literally the largest high school in the US with about 6,000 students), and after waiting forever to finally meet with the teacher, they walked in and sat down. The teacher then said that our father was just in there right before them.
My mom was shocked and told him that there was no way. The teacher insisted that he just walked out and even gave his name and a perfect description of my father (a very tall man with a lot of freckles, brown hair, and a thick mustache). My mom then informed him that my father has been dead for over ten years.
#41 The Vanishing Of Brian Shaffer
There's got to be a reasonable explanation for the disappearance of Brian Shaffer. He was the medical student who walked back into a Columbus bar just before closing and was never seen again. There is only a single entrance patrons and staff use to enter and exit, plus one emergency exit. Both have surveillance cameras pointed at them.
There was a dark construction site underneath the bar that led to the backside of the building which had a CCTV camera pointing at it as well. Bloodhounds couldn't place him anywhere and he was not seen on any CCTV footage around Columbus or Ohio State University. He was supposed to go on vacation with his significant other days after he disappeared. I don't buy that he disappeared on his own accord. This case still baffles Columbus Police and I don't know if we'll ever find out what happened.
#42 Listening In On The Russians
When I was a child, I got a speaker system for Christmas. Every evening after we set it up, we would hear Russians speaking. Even turned off, and the cables pulled. Had to take it down. Couldn’t sleep.
#43 Nowhere To Be Found
Jayme Closs. A 13-year-old girl disappears off the face of the planet in the four minutes it takes the police to respond to a 911 call from the mother's cellphone. When they get to the house, the mom and dad have been injured, with the dad dying as he opens the door. There was no sign of the assailants or Jayme.
#44 Best Day Ever
When I was in second or third grade, I had a lot of homework to do when I got home. I opened up the notebook, and all my homework was done. A full page was filled with exactly the thing I was about to write. I freaked out and asked my mom if she had done it, but she said no because she couldn’t have known. To this day, I freak out about it. My homework magically did itself.
#45 Am I A Soviet Agent?
My wife usually wakes up before me, even on the weekends. One morning at around 5 a.m., in my sleep I ask her "where are the documents" in what was apparently a very thick and genuine sounding Russian accent. Except, 1) I'm not Russian, nor any other kind of Eastern European, 2) I can't even do that accent IRL, and 3) it's the only time before or since that I've been known to talk in my sleep. Am I a Soviet sleeper agent?
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