Most of us grew up watching and loving Unsolved Mysteries, our jaws on the floor and our brains trying to figure out what in the heck happened.
Now there’s a new series, which is also crazy good (or bad, depending on your point of view), but I’m not sure any of those stories hold a candle to these 17 unsolved mysteries.
17. Isn’t there DNA in poop?
The Miyazawa family.
Just listened to the Casefile podcast on this and it has my mind blown. Someone entered the family home around 11:30 pm, killed everyone, ate some ice cream, took a nap, pooped and didn’t flush, changed clothes and left like 8 hours after the crime.
20 years on and we don’t know who or why
16. I sure hope we never see that thing again.
The lost A-bomb off the coast of America, which the US government said not to worry about in the 50’s and tried to cover up. Was dumped in the ocean in an aviation accident and it’s still lost to this day.
100x more powerful then what was dropped in Japan.
15. This sh*t infuriates me.
The ” suicide” of LaVena Johnson a black female US Army private who was found shot to death inside a burning tent with a broken nose, black eyes, broken teeth, raped and acid burns on her genitals in July 2005.
US Army ruled her death a suicide.
14. What in god’s name is happening?
THE CIRCLEVILLE LETTERS
In 1976, residents of the small city south of Columbus Ohio began receiving handwritten sinister and graphic letters. Each letter included secret and dark details about their personal lives.
One resident received a ton of letters, accusing her of various unsavory acts. The author warned the resident that he had been keeping an eye on her home, as well as her comings and goings. The resident was horrified and tried to keep the letters a secret until her husband began receiving them.
The attacks on the family continued, with large posters appearing around town spreading rumors about their 12 year old child. One day in 1977, the husband left the house after receiving a call from who he thought was writing the letters. A few minutes later, the husband was found dead at the end of the street dead behind the wheel. The sheriff had ruled it a homicide when he realized that a single shot had been fired before the accident, but there was no evidence that the husband was shot at the site. The sheriff found the husband was twice the legal limit and ruled it a drunk driving accident.
The letters began once again, this time accusing the sheriff of covering up the true nature of the death. The letters also accused the sheriff of mishandling an investigation into the county coroner who had been accused of other grotesque acts.
The harassment continued, this time with signs along the road and in 1983, the original resident who had been accused of having an affair pulled over to remove a sign. During the effort to remove the sign, she discovered a box was attached and inside of it was a small pistol. The gun was part of a booby trap designed to fire when the sign was removed.
Paul Freshour was arrested and given 25 years…but one small problem. The letter writing continued even after Freshour was put in jail.
In a new batch of letters, the author had promised to dig up the grave of a deceased baby and mail the bones to the police in the case of another potential affair turned murder.
Hundreds of residents continued to receive personal letters until 1994 when everything stopped.
13. History really can be interesting.
But my favorite is Chauvet cave. (If you have a chance, watch Werner Herzog’s documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams. I think it’s still on Netflix.) It has some of the most stunning cave art in the world, which almost certainly had some kind of profound significance, and we don’t – and will likely never – know what it is. Moreover, there’s evidence that the cave was abandoned for thousands of years and later returned to, only for the returnees to continue to make paintings in the exact same style and, possibly, for the exact same reasons.
There is so much to be seen in these figures. There’s a portrait of an animal tossing its head that looks like one of the world’s earliest explorations of stop motion or sequential art. When I look at it I can feel the will of the painter, who wanted so much to convey this sort of motion…
There are also the footprints of a boy, who arrived much later to the cave than its original users, whose marks appear to be contemporary with the pawprints of a wolf. It’s hard to say now, according to Cave of Forgotten Dreams, whether they walked together, whether they walked 20 years apart, whether they were friends or whether the wolf was stalking the boy. But I read a blog post by a professional hunter and tracker, who looked at the footage of the prints from the film and said that they likely walked together. I wonder what they were thinking. If the boy had some knowledge of what he would find there, or if he was simply exploring a cave and found some of the greatest art in human history.
In Chauvet there is also the solution to a mystery. Until the discovery of Chauvet cave paleontologists were unsure as to whether cave lions had manes. On the cave walls there is an illustration of a cave lion with visible testicles and no mane, settling that debate.
12. The death of Cindy James.
I remember seeing a video about a woman that after getting divorced started getting stalked and assaulted in her own house. Everytime police would arrive no one more than her was at the scene, sometimes she would appear with bruises, once she appeared with a screwdriver through her hand. This happened so many times that police started ignoring her calls after the investigation on her husband and on the case left no suspects.
Three months later she disappeared just to reappear next to a highway in the middle of the desert, miles away from her house, with her hands tied, dead. Autopsy later confirmed she was beaten to death. Creepiest shit I know.
11. I need to know more about this immediately.
The toxic death of Gloria Ramirez. 23 people became ill due to her mere presence and 5 were hospitalised. We have never worked out what happened. There’s an episode of the “Stuff you should know” podcast that talks about it.
About 8:15 p.m. on the evening of February 19, 1994, Ramirez, suffering from severe heart palpitations, was brought into the emergency department of Riverside General Hospital by paramedics. She was extremely confused and was suffering from tachycardia and Cheyne–Stokes respiration.
The medical staff injected her with diazepam, midazolam, and lorazepam to sedate her. When it became clear that Ramirez was responding poorly to treatment, the staff tried to defibrillate her heart; at that point several people saw an oily sheen covering Ramirez’s body, and some noticed a fruity, garlic-like odor that they thought was coming from her mouth. A registered nurse named Susan Kane attempted to draw blood from Ramirez’s arm and noticed an ammonia-like smell coming from the tube.
She passed the syringe to Julie Gorchynski, a medical resident, who noticed manila-colored particles floating in the blood. At this point, Kane fainted and was removed from the room. Shortly thereafter, Gorchynski began to feel nauseated. Complaining that she was lightheaded, she left the trauma room and sat at a nurse’s desk. A staff member asked her if she was okay, but before she could respond she also fainted. Maureen Welch, a respiratory therapist who was assisting in the trauma room was the third to pass out. The staff was then ordered to evacuate all emergency department patients to the parking lot outside the hospital. Overall, 23 people became ill and five were hospitalized. A skeleton crew stayed behind to stabilize Ramirez. At 8:50 p.m., after 45 minutes of CPR and defibrillation, Ramirez was pronounced dead from kidney failure related to her cancer.
10. I’d say we all need to know what happened.
The Oakville Blob.
In 1994, there was a rainstorm in Oakville, WA–only the “raindrops” were a strange clear substance that had the consistency of Jello. Lots of people experienced flu-like symptoms after coming into contact with it, and peoples’ dogs and cats all over the city were dying.
When a local hospital ran a lab test on the substance after one of the patients suggested it, it was found that whatever this mysterious “rain” was, it had human white blood cells in it. Some time after that, a sample was also sent to the Washington State Health Laboratory, where it was being researched by epidemiologist Mike McDowell. After he determined that it was man-made and speculated that it was some sort of matrix for transporting viruses/bacteria, the samples suddenly went missing from the containment facility and his supervisor told him not to ask any questions. There are no known samples of the stuff anywhere today, despite being sent to several different facilities by various Oakville residents.
So yeah, I’d personally say that this was clearly some sort of bio-weapon test run, but by whom? I’d like to give the US Government the benefit of the doubt here and assume it wasn’t us testing something like that on our own citizens, but if it wasn’t, why would it have been covered up like that? And you’d think an event like this would be a lot less obscure. Also, even if it being a bio-weapon seems super obvious, how the heck did whoever dispersed it manage to make it rain over an entire city for several days??
9. This story always raises my hackles.
3 lighthouse workers with impeccable mustaches traveled to a remote island on December 7th, 1900 for a lighthouse shift that should have lasted for two weeks. When a boat arrived to pick them up, they were gone. No trace of the bodies, and the lighthouse was strangely locked.
Not only was the setting normal (meal ready to be served), but there was no fire in the fireplace, and the clock stopped. One of the men kept a log in a diary, and he said that the seas were rough one day, but when monitored, it was actually calm. No one knows what happened to them.
8. When you find a rogue leg.
On April 19, 1995, a truck bomb detonated outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The explosion killed 168 in what was the deadliest terrorist attack on the United States until 9/11 – to date, it still remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in the country.
One of the lesser known things about this is the case of the missing leg. Investigators discovered the leg laying among the rubble and identified it belonging to Lakesha Levy, the only problem was, she’d already been buried with both her legs.
She was exhumed, her severed leg was placed in her coffin while the other leg was taken to the F.B.I laboratory for identification. Since it had been embalmed, a DNA sample was unable to be obtained. The extra left leg, which had been mistakenly buried with Levy, is suspected to belong to an unidentified 169th victim, whose body had mostly disintegrated in the blast.
This has lead people to suspect there was an additional terrorist involved even though perpetrators Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols had been convicted, with two others later identified as accomplices.
so who was the possible additional bomber? they still remain unidentified now 25 years after the attack.
7. Why do people still walk their dogs there?
The Overtoun Bridge.
It’s a bridge in Scotland where dogs always unexplainably jump off. It’s very strange and nobody knows for certain why they do this. Dogs who survived reportedly walked back up and jumped off again. They even had to put up a warning sign to keep your dog on a leash and to watch them. A lot of theories say maybe it’s because of certain scents or animals down below, but most people have disagreed with this theory. It’s fuckin weird.
6. The mystery of the human brain.
A strange but not creepy mystery: The disappearance and reappearance of Lawrence Joseph Bader: he was a cookware salesman from Akron, Ohio who went missing in 1957. He went fishing, a storm hit, and his boat was found the next day with some damage. He was in debt and in trouble with the IRS and his wife was about to have their third child.
Four days later, John “Fritz” Johnson appeared in a bar in Omaha, Nebraska (spoiler: it’s Larry Bader). “Fritz” was known for his wild personality, he attracted local attention for sitting atop a flag pole for 30 days to raise money for polio, he became a radio announcer and a TV sports director. He drove around in a hearse with a bar and became a minor celebrity in Omaha… by no means was avoiding attention. In 1964, a cancerous tumor was found behind his left eye and it had to be removed.
In 1965, Fritz was in Chicago for a tournament and an acquaintance from Akron recognized him (despite the eyepatch) and confronted him, and then brought Bader’s niece to take a look. She agreed it was her uncle and confronted him about it as well. Fritz denied it but found it humorous. Fritz’s fingerprints were then matched to Larry Bader’s military records and it was confirmed.
Fritz Johnson always maintained he had no memory of his former life as Larry Bader. Psychiatrists examined him and believed he was telling the truth even though he had financial reasons to assume a new identity and the concept of someone forgetting their past and entirely constructing a different one with false memories is hard to fathom. It is also considered a possibility that the eye tumor had something to do with it. He ultimately died in 1966 from the eye tumor and it was never determined conclusively whether he was lying or not.
I am fascinated by this case especially because he had an entire change in personality, an entire life backstory as Fritz, and he made no effort to live a low profile to avoid discovery…. I found this case while looking through the Wikipedia category of people who have faked their own deaths (though it’s debatable if this guy should even be on there…), all of which are great stories
5. More proof that you can’t trust people who like jazz.
The Salish Sea Feet or the Mad Axeman of New Orleans.
The Salish Sea Feet are the approximately twenty dismembered feet found in or around British Columbia or Washington, USA. The feet sometimes are found still inside of shoes. No one knows how they got there or where they came from. Over the course of the last thirteen years, the authorities have ruled out foul play.
The Mad Axeman of New Orleans ran rampant in 1918 and 1919. He murdered six people (usually those of Italian descent) with axes or straight razors. In March of 1919, he sent a lengthy letter from “Hottest Hell” that was pretty nonsensical. But the most relevant paragraphs read:
“Now, to be exact, at 12:15 (earthly time) on next Tuesday night, I am going to pass over New Orleans. In my infinite mercy, I am going to make a little proposition to you people. Here it is:
I am very fond of jazz music, and I swear by all the devils in the nether regions that every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have just mentioned. If everyone has a jazz band going, well, then, so much the better for you people. One thing is certain and that is that some of your people who do not jazz it out on that specific Tuesday night (if there be any) will get the axe.”
There were no murders that night because every dance hall in NOLA was filled to capacity.
4. Nothing good happens underground.
This dude got lost in the catacombs, and they found camera footage of his journey, but at some point he drops the camera and just starts to run.
As far as I know, nobody has found out wtf happened to him
3. He probably killed himself.
The whereabouts of the last Gestapo Chief Heinrich Mueller.
The last verified sighting of him was in Berlin roughly 3 days before it fell, he had stated he knew full well what the Russians did to prisoners and he had no intentions of being captured. As chief of the Gestapo he more than likely had access to foreign documents as well as ways to replicate them.
Both the CIA and the KGB spent time looking for him but no trace has ever been found
2. In what world is this a suicide?
Another one is Colonel Philip Shue’s death:
“On April 16, 2003, 54-year-old Colonel Philip Shue left his Texas home and headed to work. Two hours later, he was found dead in his car, an apparent victim of a car crash. The car was caved in on the driver’s side and Philip suffered major head trauma as a result. He was killed instantly.”
This is where it gets weird:
“Philip had a tear in his T-shirt under his fatigues. There, they could see a 6-inch vertical gash in his chest. Above the entrance to the 6″ gash were at least five scratch marks, which the autopsy report said were consistent with hesitant marks. Both his nipples had been removed with surgical precision. The fifth digit on his left hand had been amputated and his left ear had been lacerated down to the bone. Duct tape was dangling from both of his wrists and the top of his boots.”
It was ruled a suicide….
1. I feel like this could be an episode on the show.
Where is Kimberly Langwell?
She disappeared in 1999 in Beaumont, Texas. Her car was found in the parking lot of an Eckerd’s Drug Store, but her purse and keys were missing. Her cell phone was inside.
We all know she wouldn’t have left her daughter, Tiffani, just like that. She loved her and loved life and those who surrounded her. Everyone who knew Kimberly loved her. She was the shining star on a dark night.
If you have seen her alive, please call the police. I have posted her case below.
Y’all there are so many insane stories in the world. I need all of them in my brain.
What’s your “favorite” unsolved mystery? If it’s not here, share it with us in the comments!
