Prepare to be thoroughly creeped out by this series of hauntingly scary mysteries. Life is alarmingly unpredictable, one second we could be going about our business as usual and the next we could disappear, never to be seen or heard from again. Whether we're on a cruise, a plane, or just on our morning jog, no one is safe. Scroll through some truly gruesome tales and prepare to be shocked. Who knows, we might even be sharp enough to piece some information together and crack these cases wide open!
1. What killed Don Henry and Kevin Ives?
On August 23, 1987, a train ran over Don Henry and Kevin Ives, 16 and 17, respectively. The train didn’t kill them – they were dead prior to the incident, as a second autopsy on which the boys' parents insisted, revealed.
A grand jury ruled their death a homicide – but by who? That question was never answered. These boys were apparently murdered and left dead on the railroad track.
2. What Was Elisa Lam Doing in that Water Tank and How Did She Get There?
On February 2013, guests at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles complained that the hotel's water pressure is too low and that the water's taste is unusual, their color a grimy black. It was during the search after Elisa Lam, a foreign exchange student that stayed at the hotel, and had gone missing three weeks prior that the source was found. She was discovered in the hotel's water tank on the roof. The doors and stairs to the roof were locked, without any fixed access to the tank.
The police dogs couldn’t find any trace of her on that roof. Things got creepier due to a surveillance video from the hotel's elevator, which was her last documented sighting, that became viral. She is seen behaving strangely in that video – some suggested she was escaping someone, some thought she was having a psychotic episode or under the influence of drugs. Her death was ruled as an accidental drowning.
3. The Rockefeller who was Allegedly Eaten by Cannibals
Michael Rockefeller was the son of Nelson Rockefeller, the governor of New York. In 1961 when he was 23, he was on a boat, sailing from the Netherlands to New Guinea. Suddenly, his boat was captured!
He presumably swam ashore, but officials claimed he drowned and his remains were never found. A Netflix documentary "The Search for Michael Rockefeller", claims that he made it ashore, but was found by the Asmat People of New Guinea, and then ceremonially killed and eaten.
4. The City Bonds Robbery
An innocent messenger walks the streets of London in 1990, casually carrying a briefcase containing 291 Million Pounds worth of treasury bonds. As one does... The man was mugged at knifepoint and had to wave his briefcase goodbye. The British Government, the legal owner of the aforementioned bonds, investigated and discovered that the mugger was a part of a largescale operation.
But here lies the rub, as The Bard would say – him, and another key witness was murdered before they could be charged. Out of twenty-five arrests made surrounding the robbery, only four of them went to trial and were all acquitted due to lack of evidence. Nobody knows who was responsible for the murders, or the initial robbery – one of the biggest in UK history.
5. Who Murdered the Miyazawa's?
They were a family of four – a father, Mikio, a mother, Yasuko, and two children, Niina and Rey. Yasuko's mother found them all dead in their home in Setagaya, a suburb of Tokyo. Tokyo police concluded that the murderer intruded the premises, killed the entire family, and then stayed in the house for a few hours.
He drank some tea, used the computer, ate some of the family's ice-cream, napped on the couch. He even used the bathroom – AND DIDN'T FLUSH – a fact that could have assisted the Tokyo police in finding him, because he left his DNA all over the Miyazawa's residence, but the killer is yet to be found. 20 years later, and the investigation is still pending. The killer is yet to be found.
6. Who Shot Down That Plane?
In 1994, April 6, President Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda and President Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi boarded an airplane... that never landed. The plane was shot down by surface-to-air missiles, thus killing the two presidents, along with government and army officials from Burundi and Rwanda, and the entire aircraft crew on board.
That assassination triggered the Rwandan Genocide, one of the deadliest events of the late 20th Century, with nearly 800 thousand casualties. To this day, it is unknown who ordered the attack of those two presidents.
7. The Disappearance of the Sodder Five
It was The Night Before Christmas, 1945, Fayetteville, West Virginia. The Sodder family was a big one –they had nine children! It was 01:00 AM when the fire broke out. Jennie and George managed to escape, along with four of their children.
They tried rescuing the rest of them, but the staircase leading to the top floor where they slept was already ablaze. ven after the fire department searched the premises, they couldn’t even find the remains of the other Sodder Five. They might as well have evaporated. Were they kidnapped by the Sicilian Mafia, or had they just died due to that awful fire? The question is still unanswered, and the Sodder Five, dead or alive, are yet to be found.
8. Where is the Malaysian Plane?
It was the most talked-about plane crash around the world, yet the plane itself is nowhere to be found. The plane departed on March 8, 2014, from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, but never reached Beijing. No signal of distress was made, and debris of the plane itself was found only in late 2015.
Was the plane abducted by terrorists? Perhaps – arrests were made, but not a single terrorist organization claimed responsibility. The Malaysian government announced that the plane had probably crashed with no survivors. The obvious questions of why and how are yet to be answered.
9. Where is Vladimir Alexandrov?
Vladimir Alexandrov had the time of his life in Spain. He spent three days there, all of them, reportedly, drunk. Alexandrov was the first to learn the risk of the USSR's nuclear ability, warning everyone of the risk of The Nuclear Winter. He was an advocate against the use of nuclear weapons and was quite appreciated for it in the West.
After March 31st, 1985, when he came from Cordoba, Spain to Madrid, Alexandrov was never to be seen again. Perhaps it was the KGB, worrying that he was about the defect to the west. Perhaps, the CIA, maybe because he knew too much. Perhaps, he was drunkenly robbed and killed. But the man is nowhere to be found, to this day.
10. Was Gloria Ramirez Toxic?
Gloria Ramirez was admitted on February 19th, 1994, to Riverside, California's General Hospital, due to advanced Cervical Cancer. She seemed confused and disoriented, so the hospital crew had to sedate her. The thing is – as a few nurses described it, she had an "oily sheen" covering her body, bad odor from her breath, and Susan, a nurse who drew Gloria's blood claimed her blood had an ammonia-like smell.
After handling Gloria's blood vial, Susan fainted. A doctor examining Gloria's blood saw small manila-colored particles floating in Gloria's blood vile. After noticing it, that doctor, like Susan, fainted. Maureen, the on-call respiration therapist, also fainted after treating Gloria. Gloria herself died that day. The doctors were in the ICU for two weeks afterward. What was it? Mass hysteria? Sheer dumb luck? Or was Gloria Ramirez a literal toxic lady? Research claims that Gloria used a home remedy which caused a poisonous chemical reaction – but that's just one theory, some dispute it to this day.
11. What Happened to the USS Cyclops?
"All Well, Weather Fair", was the last known message from the USS Cyclops, an enormous ship that served as an integral part of the US Navy effort in World War I. After that message, the ship basically vanished. The ship had a crew of 306 men, 550 feet long, and on its voyage to Barbados it simply disappeared, no one heard or saw from it since 1918. Was it devoured by a sea monster?
Probably not, but being the victim of a German destroyer is similarly unlikely, as its debris was never found, nor was any proof of a German sea vehicle. The Bermuda Triangle is the region by Bermuda, Mexico and Puerto Rico, where 100 planes and ships allegedly disappeared, and the USS Cyclops is one of its most famous victims.
12. The Anonymous and Documented Death of the Four Alleged Pirates
In 2014 a 10-minutes video depicting the murder of four men, presumably on a boat broke the news. The video shows the four men being shot to death at sea while a man yells instructions in Mandarin to shoot them. The shooter is unseen in the video, and the identity of the men being shot in the video is unknown.
Fiji Police claims the video depicts a confrontation between an Asian fishing crew and pirates. This year, a man was arrested as a suspect regarding the gruesome crime.
13. Who Murdered the Black Dahlia?
This is the tale of Elizabeth Short, the woman who wanted to be an actress but gained fame only in death. The aspiring but failing actress was found dead and dreadfully disfigured on a vacant lot. Letters claiming to be written by Elizabeth's murderer, containing her birth certificate, her business card, and a few of her photographs, were sent to the LA Times.
Although hundreds of investigators worked on the case, it turned cold by the spring of 1947, and her death remains one of Hollywood's most gruesome unsolved mysteries. The case was nicknamed "The Black Dahlia" after a popular Film-Noir from those years, "The Blue Dahlia".
14. Who is Responsible for the Lake Bodom Murders?
Two teen couples went camping at the Finnish Bodom Lake: Nils, Maila, Seppo, and Anja. It was in June 1960. In the middle of the night, an unknown assailant attacks them all, killing three of them and severely injuring Nils.
After arresting two suspects, the case was closed – yet, reopened over 40 years later, when modern forensic analysis indicated that perhaps Nils is the murderer. He was trialed and acquitted of all charges – which means that the real murderer was never caught.
15. What Was DB Cooper Doing on that Plane?
A man calling himself Dan Cooper boarded a flight to Seattle in November 1971. Midflight, he handed the Flight-Attendant a note saying he had a bomb in his briefcase and asked for four parachutes and 200,000$. When the plane landed Cooper let the passengers depart safely and told the few crew members to stay and fly him to Mexico-City.
The plane took off when between Seattle and Reno the unthinkable happened and Cooper leaped from the plane, parachute and ransom money in hand. The plane landed safely, sans Cooper. In 1980, A briefcase full of 20$ bills that match the ransom money's serial numbers was found. Cooper was never to be found again.
16. What Occurred in the Tunguska Event?
The Tunguska River is a remote area in Russia. It is not very populated, which turned out to be a good thing back on June 30, 1908, because that was the day the whole place exploded to high heavens.
Officially, no one knows of any casualties – furthermore, no one knows the cause of the explosion. We know that the said explosion flattened 770 square miles of forest (2000 km), and most scientists now presume that the explosion was in fact due to a meteorite explosion.
17. What Happened to the Mary Celeste?
It was 1872. The Mary Celeste was a merchant brigantine and it set sail to Europe. On board were its renowned captain, Benjamin Briggs, his family, and seven crewmembers. But the Mary Celeste never made its destination – at least, not as planned. On December 4th, 1872, the Mary Celest was found sailing as if no man was sailing it, stranded, by the Canadian ship De Gratia.
The crew that searched the Mary Celeste found no activity, there was not a living soul on it. However, it's cargo and food supply were intact. There was no logical reason to believe it was raided by pirates because the ship was perfectly fine, excluding the fact that had been abandoned entirely; and to this day, no one knows why.
18. What Happened to Miguel Jose Viana and Manuel Pereira de Cruz?
A young boy in Rio-De-Janeiro flys a kite and comes across two bodies. It was 1966. They lay there, resting one next to the other, partly covered in grass, both wore lead eye masks, suits, and a waterproof coat. There were no signs of struggle – only a notebook, in which the following message was written: "16:30 be at the specified location. 18:30 ingest capsules after the effect protect metals await signal mask"
The men were Miguel Jose Viana and Manuel Pereira de Cruz. The bodies were not searched for toxic substances. What caused their deaths? Aliens? Satanic Cult? Good Old-Fashioned Over-Dose? Your guess is as good as ours.
19. Where is Cindy Song?
Cindy was a student at State College, Pennsylvania. She went to a Halloween party with her friends, dressed as a Playboy bunny. She had fun there, and as her friends and family can testify, she was happy and upbeat – which is why the fact that she was never seen again after this party is even more upsetting.
A few days after Cindy's disappearance woman matching her description was seen being forced into a car in San Francisco while crying for help. Police couldn’t identify the man forcing the woman, nor were they able to confirm the woman is indeed Cindy.
20. What Were the Oakville Blobs?
When it rains it pours, but nothing pours like what happened in Oakville, Washington in August 1994. It wasn't raining, at least not in a conventional sense; they were Blobs. Not bigger than a grain of rice, mushy and gelatin textured. Some of the residents reported feeling very ill after the peculiar act of nature.
Was it a coincidence? Perhaps so. After the blobs were examined, they were found containing living cells – which meant they were part of something alive at some point. We just yet to have found out what were they – jellyfish falling from the sky? Remains of an airplane toilet (ew)? Results of military experiments in bioweaponry? To this day, no one knows.
21. What's "Tamam Shud" Got to Do with it?
Somerton Park Beach, Australia, 1948. A body is washed ashore. On the collar of the dead man's coat, an unlit cigarette. No official cause of death was ever declared, nor was there an official confirmation of the man's identity. He was likely poisoned, but still, no one knows how and why.
We only know one eerily undisputed fact: in a pocket sewn within the Anonymous man's trouser pocket was a rolled-up piece of paper, printed on it were the words "Tamam Shud" – "Finished" in Persian. What does it all mean? To this day, it remains a mystery.
22. Who Was the Oakland County Child Killer?
Mark and Jill were 12 years old. Timothy was 11, Kristine was 10. They were murdered by The Oakland County Child Killer, between 1976-1977. They were all from Oakland County, Michigan. It is too gruesome to discuss in detail but these children were hurt badly.
A man once sent a letter to a psychiatrist, claiming he is a "slave" to the "OCCK", that he is traumatized by his time in the Vietnam War, having to kill children. The psychiatrist arranged a meeting with the man in a bar, but the man never showed up. The Oakland County Killer was never found.
23. Where is Tara Calico and is she in that Polaroid Picture?
Tara went on a bike ride along a New Mexico road 47 on September 20th, 1988. She was never to be seen again. Police found her Walkman and the tape she listened to. Eight months later, a woman found, a polaroid picture underneath a cargo van. The driver of the van was never found, but the picture was terrifying – it showed a woman and a child tied and gagged in a padded van. Patty, Tara's mom, was convinced that the woman in the picture is Tara.
The Scotland Yard, who analyzed the picture, agreed. A few other photos of a woman resembling Tara have resurfaced. The case is still open.
24. Who Put Bella in the Witch Elm?
Four boys from Worcestershire, England went to collect bird-nests. They came across a wych elm and thought that it was a prime spot for nests. Turns out it wasn’t. Instead, they found a human skull inside the elm's hollowed trunk. Police retrieved an entire skeleton of a woman, found along with it articles of clothing and a wedding ring.
The skeleton was never identified. Was she a sex worker from Birmingham? A witch murdered by gypsies? Probably not – but an iconic graffiti appeared on a wall in Upper Dean street in Birmingham asked the question WHO PUT BELLA IN THE WITCH ELM, thus giving the anonymous woman a name, and rendering the mystery – immortal.
25. What Happened to the Dyatlov Hikers?
They were nine hikers. They were preparing for a skiing trip in the Ural Mountains in Russia. They camped on the mountain due to a snow blizzard. They were supposed to return to the town of Vizhai, the last populated settlement in the north, by February 12. When they didn’t return, a rescue team was sent to retrieve them. They found the hikers' tent, torn from the inside, with all the hikers' belongings left behind. They found nine sets of footprints, left by socks-wearing feet, some of them barefoot. And eventually – five of the hikers' corpses.
The other four were found over the two months afterward. The investigation conducted regarding the deaths of the first five hikers whose bodies were found ruled that they died of hypothermia. The four last bodies indicated fatal injuries. To this day, no one knows precisely what killed them – was it an avalanche? A hurricane? Russian authorities discounted the possibility of a crime but have yet determined what took their lives. The area where the hikers disappeared is now named The Dyatlov Pass, in honor of Alexander Dyatlov, the group's deceased leader.
26. Where is Amy Lean Bradley?
Amy Lean Bradley was 24 when she and her family went on a Caribbean Cruise from which she allegedly never came back. It was 1998. She was last seen by her father, sleeping on their balcony's cabin, on March 24, 5 AM. By 6 AM, she vanished. Investigators said there is no evidence that she had fallen overboard or committed suicide.
A few people claimed to have seen her – later that year, two Canadian tourists claimed to have seen a woman with tattoos identical to Amy's on a Curacao beach. A member of the US Navy said that he met her in a brothel – she told him that her name is Amy Bradley, that she is kept there against her will, and begged for his help. In 2005, A man sent Amy's parents an email with a picture of a woman who is, perhaps, Amy, and suggests that she may have been sold to sexual slavery. She was declared dead in absentia in 2010.
27. The Unidentified Leg from the Oklahoma City Bombing
The Oklahoma City bombing was a tragic, unimaginable terrorist attack. It took the lives of 168 men and women. But there is another unknown person who most probably died in this attack. It was the owner of the unidentified leg. Among the ruins and the deaths was a leg, unattached, unclaimed.
It was probably a woman's leg, considering its hairlessness, but there was no body to attach it to. To this day, the owner of the leg is still unknown.
28. Hannah Upp Disappeared Three Times
Hannah was a New York schoolteacher. When she was 23, she went on a jog and disappeared. She was found in Southern Manhattan, face down in the water by two ferry workers who rescued her. Hannah knew nothing about the time of her disappearance. She was diagnosed with dissociative fugue, a condition in which a person loses all memory and identity and often engages in unexpected travel. Five years later, living in Maryland, it happened again: she went missing for two days until she regained memory and resurfaced in a creek in Maryland, a shopping trolley next to her
A year later, living in St. Thomas (US Virgin Islands), she went to work and never came back. Her car keys and her folded clothes were found on a nearby beach the following day. Her first disappearance occurred 12 years ago, and it's been three years since she was last seen.
29. Who is the Woman from Isdal?
Her real name remains unknown. More mysterious than that is what she was doing. She was found dead in the Isdal Valley in Norway. She had a few clues with her – a purse, a passport container, nylon stockings, earrings. All identifying markers were removed from those items. Two suitcases linked to the anonymous woman were found at a railway station. The suitcases' content was wiped out of any clues to the woman's identity.
The woman was presumed to be a guest in the hotel St. Swithun. The investigators concluded that the woman had been traveling regularly to Norway, and always checked in to a new hotel under a new name. She was apparently staying in hotels in Paris and Oslo. But what killed her? Was it an accident? Suicide? Murder? And most importantly – who was she? All these questions have remained unknown for over 50 years.
30. What Happened to Josh Maddux?
Joshua Maddox of Teller County, Colorado was 18 went he went on a walk from which he never came back. He was missing for seven years. In 2005, an abandoned cabin was set to be demolished. Before demolishing it, they found human remains in the cabin's stone chimney. It was Josh, in a fetal position, wearing only a shirt. It was a quarter of a mile from his parents' home.
Things get creepier learning that the chimney was installed with rebar atop of it, to keep animals from going in: Josh couldn’t have crawled into the chimney from the outside in, and with the position he was found in, he couldn’t have climbed into the chimney. Josh had no injuries, no fatal traumas – the coroner stated his cause of death is unknown. How did it happen, and why?
31. What Happened in the Eilean Mor Lighthouse?
A crew of three had taken up posts in the Lighthouse at Eilean Mor Lighthouse of Flannan Islands: Thomas Marshall, James Ducat, and William McArthur. Their replacement crew came by at Christmas, only to find that no one was in the lighthouse. The island was remote and unpopulated.
The crew's meals were left half-eaten. The kitchen clock had stopped. The missing crew's last logs reported severe winds, one of the crewmen crying, and the end of said storm, last words being "God is over all". The men or their remains were never found.
32. What Happened to Lars Mittank?
He was a handsome 28-years-old German who vacationed in Varna, Bulgaria, where he has gotten himself into a fight. The injuries of which prevented him from boarding a flight home. The CCTV from the hotel he was staying in showed he was acting erratically, behaving very paranoid. He was last seen at the Varna Airport.
Lars spoke with the airport doctor when a construction worker interrupted them. Lars fled the airport. He reportedly climbed a fence, ran into a meadow, and disappeared into a sunflower field. Lars was never to be seen since then.
33. Can 200 Roman-Era Jars Redefine History?
A few lobster divers found a couple of barnacles-soaked jars in the Guanabara Bay near Rio De Janeiro. The jars turned out to be an Amphorae, a type of jar used in Roman times. Which is bizarre, because the Roman Empire had never been in Brazil. The first European presence in Brazil is dated to 1500, long after the days of the Roman empire.
What does it all mean? They were in too good of a shape to be washed ashore to Guanabara – does that mean that the Romans came to Brazil an entire Millenia before the Europeans? Because Brazil Government banned all underwater exploration, we'll probably never know.
34. Where is Genghis Khan Buried?
Genghis Khan was, perhaps, the greatest conqueror to ever live. He died a natural death, probably (obituaries were highly underdeveloped in the 1100s). Yet the location of his burial remains unknown – which he had requested prior to his death.
Legend has it that 2000 men attended his funeral, and they were all massacred afterward, all so the details of his burial would remain unknown. True or false, the fact is that while his memorial site is the Genghis Khan mausoleum, his burial site is one of history's best-kept secrets.
35. Where on Earth is Juan Pedro Martinez Gomez?
It was a tragic, gruesome accident in Spain, 1986, when Andres Martinez, a truck driver, drove with his wife, Carmen, to Bilbao. He hauled a load of approximately 5,200 gallons of pure Sulphuric Acid. His wife occasionally accompanied him to such errands. Andres's truck was seen driving erratically, reaching 86 mph, and crashed on its side. The acid began flowing, causing flames, small explosions, and a toxic cloud above the truck. Carmen and Andres' remains were extracted after hours.
When Carmen's mother was notified, she only asked to know if their son, her grandson, is okay. Apparently, Andres and Carmen took their son, Juan Pedro, with them, used the father's job as an excuse for a road trip as a reward for good grades. This baffled the authorities because remains from a third passenger were nowhere to be found. No articles of clothing, nothing indicated that their son was in the truck during the accident. He couldn't, scientifically, been dissolved entirely by the acid, and even though the authorities searched for Juan Pedro for days, but he remained missing, to this very day, and to this day – no one knows what happened to him.