From the Bermuda Triangle to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, there are many conundrums that boggle our minds and leave us scratching our heads, scavenging the internet for rabbit holes of information to dive down.
Some of these infamous mysteries have been flat-out debunked, but others sort of linger on. New pieces of evidence come out over time and give us a whole new set of questions we puzzle over for ages. Whatever the case, there are some real-life mysteries so mind-boggling that no one could make them up.
Here, we focused on a list of questions that even seasoned detectives could not answer.
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#35 A Treasure Hunt Waiting To Be Solved
The Beale Ciphers. Basically, a rich cowboy created ciphers which have the location of his buried riches, worth millions today. One cipher was cracked, but the other two remain a mystery. There is debate on whether the ciphers are real, but the first cipher seems to not be made of random characters which would indicate the story being truthful. Many cryptographers have spent years trying to break them.
#34 Dorothy, We Aren't In Kansas Anymore
The Green Children of Woolpit. It’s from the 12th century. Two green-skinned children appeared at the bottom of a wolf trap near a town. They spoke no known language and would eat nothing but peas still in the pod. They were a boy and a girl. Eventually, the boy died, but the girl flourished and learned English. She claimed that they had come from somewhere underground called Saint Martin where the sun never shone.
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#33 Ohio Medical Student Vanishes
The disappearance of Brian Shaffer drives me bonkers! He was videotaped entering a bar but there's no video footage of him leaving. Nobody has a clue what happened to him.
#32 Decoding The Unsolvable
The mystery of the Voynich Manuscript is interesting.
Basically, it's an old folio/codex written during the Renaissance that, while clearly written in some language or code, is not only completely unique to that one book but also still has not been cracked to this day.
It's also got a lot of pretty bizarre illustrations that actually make the decoding more confusing, as they seem to have little to no bearing on the text. Plus, there are random bits of text that seem to be doodle-like notes, unconnected with the rest of the work.
What's also confusing is that while it is not a known language, the manuscript is far too long for it to make sense as a code. After all, codes are usually used to hide information. Why you would want to hide 37,000 words worth of information in code, but at the same time provide illustrations (albeit not helpful ones) for your secret code is just baffling.
Most historians, cryptographers, and linguists agree that at least the first part of the book appears to contain recipes for herbal medicines, which may mean the book is a medical textbook/guide, and thus is coded to help keep the secrets of the doctors who made it, but that only provides an explanation for the first part of the book, ignoring the rest, and does nothing to explain the weird illustrations that seemingly have nothing to do with medicine or science, and would be more fitting in a religious text--except for the illustrations of plants used in medicines. But wait, because even those are wrong! Most of the plant illustrations are fusions of multiple different plants, taking the roots from one plant, drawing the stem of a totally different one onto it, and finishing it off with yet a third plant's flower.
Really, really weird.
#31 A Golden Statue Waits To Be Claimed
On the Trail of the Golden Owl, a book published in 1993, has clues to a treasure hunt. The golden owl is real and a bronze replica is buried somewhere in France. Whoever can work out the puzzle will be able to decipher where it is buried and collect the golden statuette.
#30 A Real-Life 'Lost' Mystery
MH370. We have a rough idea where it crashed, but no explanation why.
#29 The Actual Butterfly Effect
The Monarch Butterfly migrates to Mexico and back every year (starting from as far north as Canada). During the year there are a full four generations of butterflies that live and die during the journey. Upon returning back from Mexico, the butterfly manages to find the same trees its relative started out at despite never having been there.
#28 A Real Shocker
Ball Lightning.
Sometimes a ball of energy or atmospheric electricity will just appear for apparently no reason, floats around, can go through solid objects/walls and then dissipate or explode leaving a sulfurous smell. Depending on the size, it can be fatal.
Nobody, not even scientists, can explain it. They have theories like that it may have a connection to thunderstorms and they have made similar experiments in a laboratory but don't understand how it happens naturally.
It's been an unsolved mystery since at least the 1600's.
#27 From The Mouths Of Aliens?
The Wow! signal. It's a radio signal received on August 15, 1977, by the Big Ear radio telescope that lasts 72 seconds. The mysterious thing about it is that there is not a single natural phenomenon that can currently explain it. It's called the Wow! signal because the Big Ear radio telescope transcripts every signal it receives by printing a series of numbers and letters depending on the intensity of said signal. And this one was so strong that the analyst in charge at the moment circled it in red and wrote "Wow!" next to it. Its origin remains unsolved.
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#26 The Search For Dr. Frankenstein
Who created Piltdown Man? In the late 1800's and early 1900's, researchers became obsessed with finding the "missing link" between humans and apes. In 1912, archaeologist Charles Dawson finds a skull that seems to have an exact mix of human and ape features, right there in England. Its legitimacy was questioned from the start, but many English scientists wanted so badly for it to be real that they ignored that evidence for a long time. It wasn't fully exposed as a fake until 41 years later. But who created the fake? Charles Dawson is the obvious suspect, but many believe that other people were in on it, or that someone else did it on their own. Arthur Conan Doyle (author of Sherlock) is my favorite of the suspects, though I rather doubt that he did it. Still, I want it to be true!
#25 It's Raining Phlegm?!
In 1994 in Oakville, Washington, one night it “rained” white blobs of gel that possibly contained blood cells and apparently made people in the town sick.
#24 Dancing Yourself To Death
I would say the dancing plague. The dancing plague (or dance epidemic) of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace, in the Holy Roman Empire 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.
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#23 It's A Bird... It's A Plane...
As of lately, the Pentagon UFO deal. The testimonial from the pilots is crazy. The craft flew in and out of the water at lightning speeds then stopped and just hovered above the water. Either some country has lapped us over hundreds of years in technology or we're being visited by someone.
#22 A Historical Hiccup
The Battle of Los Angeles. Back after Pearl Harbor was bombed, America declared war on Japan. Radars picked up an unidentified aircraft near Los Angeles. The whole city was in blackout throughout the night. Over 10,000 anti-aircraft bullets were shot, but no plane shrapnel was found the following morning. There was a picture released showing what looked to be a UFO. There were theories that it could’ve been weather balloons or just a civilian aircraft flying over. Still, to this day we aren’t really sure what it was.
#21 Croatoan Confusion
This dude, John White, built a colony on an island on the east coast with other hundreds of people including his wife and baby in 1587. He later went back to England for more supplies. England was currently at war and needed every ship to fight. He came back three years later to find that his colony has been carefully dismantled and every colonist was gone. He found the word "Croatoan" written on a nearby tree. There was no sign of violence or a symbol that indicates that the colony is under attack (like four GPS arrows pointing to the middle). A theory suggests that they ran out of fresh water and dismantled buildings to build a boat. There is an Indian tribe called Croatoan too, but there was no evidence that they attacked the colony. That was from my U.S. history teacher.
#20 A Corn-y Concept
Corn. It comes from a plant called teosinte, which is a wild grass. The strange thing about teosinte is that you need a pretty big amount of it to get a decent amount of nutrients, something that most of the time wasn't worth the effort. Basically, you would burn up more calories gathering it than you would gain eating it. But still, we bred it for hundreds of years before we got something useful out of it. Just... why?
#19 The Tragedy Of The Lindbergh Baby
The story of the Lindbergh kidnapping! Charles Lindbergh and his wife lost their child supposedly for ransom? Someone was arrested, but I'm not 100% certain it's him.
#18 The Mysterious Case Of Selective Hearing
Why can my children not hear me when I ask/tell/scream at them to do something, but let me open a wrapper a few rooms away and they hear it loud and clear and come to see what I have?
#17 The Scariest Haunted House
The Great Amherst Mystery.
In the latter half of the 19th century, in a little town called Amherst in Nova Scotia, a woman named Esther Cox was beset by what she claimed were poltergeists. Esther lived in a house with her sister and her family. After Esther had been nearly killed by a male friend of hers, who may have suffered a psychotic break, her house began to be haunted. After spending some time at another sister’s house in a nearby province because of her failing health, Esther returned to Amherst, whereupon the hauntings began again.
After the poltergeists threatened to burn down the house, Esther moved in with another family, whose house became haunted as well. Part-time actor Walter Hubbell moved in with Esther, as he was also an occasional paranormal investigator. He investigated the house for a number of weeks, eventually writing a popular book about his experiences, in which he claimed to have seen floating objects as well as attacks on Esther by unseen forces. To date, no explanation has been given, though some who’ve investigated the stories believe it was all a hoax by Esther.
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#16 The Longest Voyage
The SS Baychimo.
Built 1914. Abandoned 1931. Last boarded 1939. Last confirmed sighting 1962.
#15 Lost In The Arctic
In the mid-sixties, Carl Disch, a researcher working at a science station in Antarctica, walked out of the radio building to make the mile-long journey back to the main base. He never made it.
The base and the radio building, 7,000 feet apart, were connected by a handline, and Disch had walked the distance dozens of times before. When he hadn't arrived, his colleagues set out a search party. What they found was a single line of footprints running miles away in the wrong direction, off into the Antarctic wilderness.
The footsteps were evenly spaced, as though whoever made them was walking with the confidence of knowing where he was going. The party followed the tracks for nearly 10 miles and searched over 30 square miles in the area, but never found any trace of Disch. Days later, his husky disappeared as well.
The leading theory is that the monotony and isolation tag-teamed his sanity. According to a colleague who was one of the last people to see him alive, Disch's last words upon exiting the building were, "I'm going to go visit some friends at the pole."
It's widely claimed that in the '80s a radio message was received by a research base in Antarctica, allegedly sent by Disch himself. In the message, he claimed to have intentionally been driven insane by his fellow researchers, and his disappearance was according to some plan. He claimed to be still alive in the wastes, angrily biding his time until he could have his revenge. The message is widely regarded as a hoax.
#14 Do Water Elves Go Camping?
My family went camping and left an empty cooler outside. We forgot about it for a couple days, then I opened it to see if we had any drinks. It was full of water (like 10+ liters) and none of us had filled it, because that would be difficult and pointless. Also, it was obviously not the water from the campground taps because it was not chlorinated. So what happened? None of us have any idea.
#13 The Truth Behind An American Horror Story
Roanoke Colony.
An entire colony of people vanished without a trace, and to this day we still don't know where they went.
You would think that the true first American colony would have some sort of explanation. Like, so many settlers just gone like that, and the only thing that remained was a few scratch marks on some trees. I mean, was it a ruse by the British government to instead create Jamestown as the first? Or maybe the Indians just did a raid on the place and did a really good job at hiding the evidence. And, although unorthodox, aliens are still in the running here, I'm just saying.
#12 The Creepiest Commercial Break
The Max Headroom Incident.
The gist is that during a WGN broadcast, the channel was hijacked by an unknown person who was dressed up as Max Headroom, a character from a TV show. The recording of the incidents are really weird and unsettling, yet nobody has figured out who hijacked the station.
#11 Heart-Breaking Wildfires
Who started the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfires which lead to 80,000+ people being evacuated and the loss of a bunch of homes?
#10 Granny David Blaine?
One time my grandma put a computer mouse on her lap and covered it with a blanket when I was little and when she took the blanket off, it was gone. Her hands were visible, wasn’t in between her legs or in her chair. No clue where it went and no clue how she did it either still to this day.
#9 The Evasive Mr. Cooper
The mystery behind D.B. Cooper.
In 1971, an unidentified man under the name “Dan Cooper” hijacked a plane, claiming to have a bomb in his suitcase. He asked for $200,000 dollars and a truck full of fuel in return for the passengers being freed. He landed the plane, took the money, and refueled the plane and let all the passengers out. He then took off and parachuted out mid-flight and was never identified or caught.
#8 The Darkest Web
Mortis.com. It was a mysterious website that simply showed a login page, prompting members to type a username and password. Nobody knew what the site was for, and hackers and decoders on 4chan attempted to crack the password/username to no avail. They did, however, find out the website hosted a HUGE amount of data, and traced its origins to a man named Tom Ling, who hosted other bizarre sites, such as "cthulhu.net" which simply said "Dead but dreaming..." For reasons unknown, the FBI took Mortis.com down, and the question still remains what the website hosted, and why it was so important that the feds got involved.
#7 A Child Missing In South Yorkshire
The disappearance of Andrew Gosden. I want to know why he left and if he's still alive today. I see posters of him all around my town, I feel so sorry for his family.
#6 Aliens Don't Know How To Put On Pants
The abduction of Zigmund Adamski. A seriously scary dude who went missing for two days and was found dropped on top of a pile of coal with an unidentifiable gel-like substance and his clothes on completely wrong like whoever redressed him didn't know how to put on clothes. Still unexplained to this day.
#5 Acapella Whales
The 52-hertz whale is a modern one that I'm personally interested in, though it's not the weirdest unsolved mystery. This is a baleen whale who has never been seen, but its sounds have been recorded for years. It calls at a much higher frequency than other baleen whales. No one knows if it's a malformed whale, or some kind of hybrid. He may not be able to communicate with other whales, so he's often described as the loneliest whale.
#4 Laughing Children Can Be Creepy
The Jamison Family case, the picture of the little girl gets me, some people say she looks like she is crying some say she is laughing. Dude, creepy stuff!!
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#3 Up And Vanished
Not necessarily the weirdest unsolved mystery, but definitely weird and unsolved. And also one that hits close to home for me. The disappearance of Lauren Spierer.
Young, white, blonde girl who disappeared one night in Bloomington, Indiana back in summer 2011. Police couldn't figure out what happened to her because she literally just appeared to vanish. No one could find her when the state's National Guard Reserves combed the surrounding counties (they were getting really freaked out though because they found a few other corpses that they weren't looking for). I was the same age as her at the time and living in town, and liked to go out to places in the same area as where she vanished.
#2 Gone, But Never Forgotten
It’s so old school, but I’d love to know what happened to Amelia Earhart. Definitely not the weirdest, but still.
#1 Einstein, We've Got One More Question...
Virtually everything we know of the laws of physics falls into either general relativity or quantum mechanics. Both theories appear to be internally consistent. If they're both right, they should be compatible with one another.
It appears they're not. It seems that something's wrong. Scientists don't know what that something is.
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