As someone who has always been interested in crime and weird history, reading about unsolved mysteries has long been a hobby of mine.
There are so many out there to dive into and get lost in that it can be overwhelming. But I’m gonna try to get to the bottom of all of them! If I have the time, I mean…
Until then, here are some good ones to whet your appetite.
Let’s dive into some interesting mysteries that really intrigue folks on AskReddit.
1. Roanoke.
“The fate of the Roanoke Colony
For those unfamiliar, it was one of the first settlements on one of the barrier islands of the Outer Banks of what is now North Carolina. A little over 100 people had established it from England in the spot where a previous colony had been abandoned.
It was pretty much doomed from the start, since there was a fair amount of harassment from the native population (including one death within days of arrival) and I think some interest from nearby Spaniards in taking it over (I maybe misremembering that, I dunno, it’s been literal decades since I took that history class), but, despite all this, it lasted a few years.
When the governor of the colony had to leave it for some reason or another (like I said, literal decades), he came back to find it abandoned save for the word CROATOAN carved into the fence post of the gate and the word CRO into a nearby tree.
The governor and the group he was with had hoped to confirm the colony’s need to flee to the nearby native tribe, but a hurricane put a stop to their expedition and they returned to England.”
2. DB Cooper.
“The mystery of DB Cooper that happened in the 1970s.
He got on a plane with a fake bomb and demanded 200k in ransom money and a parachute. When the pilot landed the plane, they gave him the money and the parachute and he demanded the pilot take off again.
During this second flight, he jumped off the plane with the money and the parachute, never to be seen again.
To this day no one knows who he was or where he went.”
3. A man on a bus.
“In 1949, a man got on a bus.
The man fell asleep after the second stop. It was a long drive, multiple hours. But when they got to the stop the man was mysteriously not there. The man didn’t get off at the previous stops.
And the bus never stopped, making it impossible for him to get off. His luggage was still in the compartment, and even the news paper he had was still in his seat.
After that nobody had ever seen him since. So trace of his body, nothing.
He just vanished.”
4. Lost in the triangle.
“The Bermuda Triangle
Is it ghosts, is it aliens?
Is it a build up of methane gas”
Who the f*ck knows!”
5. Lost at sea.
“I wanna know what happened to the crew of the USS Cyclops.
The boat was lost at sea, came back about 4 years later with most of it’s cargo still onboard and every single one of the crew missing.
Heck, most of the ship’s rations remained untouched when it came back.”
6. UNSOLVED.
“Who killed Tupac?
Who killed Biggie?
Who killed Jon Benet?
Where is Madeleine McCann?”
7. Murder mystery.
“The Hinterkaifeck Murders in Bavaria in 1922.
Six people, including two young children, brutally murdered one by one with a pickaxe on an isolated farmstead, with signs that the unknown murderer had actually lived hidden at the house both before and after the murders.
Could the murderer be the lost husband of the younger adult woman on the farm, or a neighbour with something to hide, or simply a drifter taking up residence in the barn? No one knows.
And then there is the suspected incestuous relationship between the aforementioned woman and her father the farm owner.
So much weird and creepy in this tragic story.”
8. A strange disappearance.
“The strange disappear of Louis Le Prince.
The actual first person who made the movie camera but never got to show it to the world”
9. Very eerie.
“What was Stephen Paddock’s motive for the Las Vegas Shooting?
Why did he own so many weapons?
Was his professional gambling career legitimate, or was it money laundering?”
10. Axe murders.
“The Villisca axe murders.
An entire family (and two guests) murdered in the middle of the night with an axe (metal riff goes here.)
Eight people butchered in the middle of a June night in 1912, and there’s no definitive answer as to who killed them or why.”
11. What really happened?
“Jon Benet Ramsey
She was murdered Christmas night and no one ever figured out who did it. There was a two page ransom note with scraped drafts in the trash. No footprints around the house and not many examples of DNA found.
However due to botched police work and carelessness, the crime has multiple dead ends, but most theorists believe the family accidentally killed her and used a cover up.”
12. From Japan.
“The Setagaya Family Murder.
A family of four was murdered in Setagaya, a Japanese district south from Tokyo. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence but the identity of the killer is still unknown.
After the fact, the murdered made himself comfortable and stayed overnight, ate some snacks, cleaned his wounds, went to the bathroom, watched TV, napped for a while, went online, changed clothes, all while the corpses of the family were still laying around the house.”
13. The big one.
“JFK assassination.
I know the Warren report said Oswald acted alone and I agree with that. But that doesn’t account for the inconsistencies in the event. The explanation I’ve read that makes the most sense is the one from the book Fatal Error. Which concludes that Oswald acted alone and that his shot was the one that hit Kennedy in the neck.
But it wasn’t Oswald who did the head shot. That one came from a secret service agent in the car behind Kennedys limo who had an m-16 and stood up in the convertible when he heard Oswalds shots, then he lost his balance when the car sped up and accidentally fired off a round that hit Kennedy in the back of the head.
The theory concludes that JFK would likely have died from Oswalds shot anyway.”
14. Max Headroom.
“The Max Headroom incident.
I really wanna know who did it and why. And I really hope the answer is:”because I could”.
Who would intrude a television signal to broadcast such nonsense instead of something “useful”?
It’s amazing.”
15. A personal mystery.
“I have a very large family, especially on my mother’s side. A few weeks ago, we were talking about how large my maternal family is, and she brought up her cousin Patricia.
When Patricia was seven, she went to daycare during the day while her parents were at work. The daycare was only two miles away from her home, this comes in to play a little later. Patty’s mom was at home cooking dinner, and her dad was going to be working late.
Her mom got a call from the daycare worker, and told her to have Patty walk home, since it was only two miles away, and she didn’t want to leave the house unattended while dinner was still cooking. Patty never came home.
Search groups were put together that night, but to no avail. The following Sunday, a group of boys were playing in a field after church, where they stumbled upon Patty’s corpse, naked, battered, and broken.
Her murder hasn’t been solved, but there was speculation that it could have been the Zodiac Killer or the Golden State Killer, as Patty lived in California with her family at the time of her death.
If it was truly the Golden State Killer who r*ped and killed my mother’s 7 y/o cousin, then I hope he rots in his prison cell, and then in hell.
I know this isn’t a well known mystery, since it’s a very personal story, but I thought I would share.”
Now we want to hear from you!
What unsolved mysteries really fascinate you?
Talk to us in the comments!
