There are thousands of mysteries being investigated around the world right now. Some of those will never be solved. Unsolved mysteries continue to baffle top experts and majorly creep out everyone else. Whether it’s a missing person case, a tragic murder, or an entire disappearing village, the only thing harder than solving these mysteries is keeping your spine from tingling while reading about them. Here is a collection of the creepiest unsolved mysteries shared by curious Reddit users.
1. The Watcher House
The Watcher is a pretty creepy one. Basically, this family bought their dream home and started receiving creepy, threatening, anonymous letters. Some would even include details about the family that whoever was sending the letters shouldn't have been able to know. Last I read, they still have no idea who is sending the letters.
2. The Beaumont Children Go Missing
There were these three kids in Adelaide, South Australia who went down to the beach in 1966 and never came back. They were seen talking to a man and then walking around the suburb, but that’s it. Never came home, never found, nobody ever arrested, police still following tips and digging for bodies, and it’s more than 50 years later.
The kids were like nine, seven, and four years old. All three just vanished. Parents refused to move from the house for a very long time, in case they ever came home. Does my head in.
3. The Body in Boiler Stack 9
Some maintenance workers found a well-cooked body in the stack of a boiler in the steam plant at a paper mill. Nobody knows who it was, but there are chilling signs. He died very slowly. He was found with his clothes off and wrapped around his feet and hands as if to protect himself from the searing hot metal.
The theory is that he was exploring during the weekend when the boiler was off, got stuck, and was unable to alert anyone before they started the boilers back up the following week. The body had been in there for months by the time he was found.
4. What Happened to Flight MH370?
A massive airliner en route from one heavily populated city to another suddenly hangs a hard left before quietly disappearing from radar. No distress signal, no emergency call, just gone. Only one piece of debris ever found, washed up on a beach thousands of miles away. What happened?
5. Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon
A few years ago, two Dutch girls went traveling to South, North, and Central America (Panama, specifically) and they went missing. The phone records were weird. They called 9-1-1 multiple times throughout the next few nights. Their camera was found with dozens of random photos taken in the middle of the night as if they were trying to see using the flash.
Then I think they found some body parts, a boot with a foot still inside and a pelvis bone or something. Really creepy.
6. The Ice Box
Basically, the police visited this old couple every once in a while. One day, they came there and the couple wasn’t there. They looked around, checked the rooms, etc. Eventually, they checked the freezer. The old couple had been dismembered and neatly packed away into the freezer. Their murderer was never discovered, though the top suspect was their son, who had been mentally abused by them.
7. The Mystery of the Mutilated Cows
In the 90s in northern California, we had some cows get completely mutilated with "laser-like cuts". Their sex organs were cut out. People have strange ideas about the culprit. Everyone says it was aliens because of substance found on them; it was really complex and could only really be created in an advanced lab.
8. Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?
There’s a story from near where I grew up called “Who put Bella in the Wych Elm.” Some lads discovered the body of a woman hidden inside an elm. Nobody knows who she was, but graffiti appeared reading: "Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?" It seems to appear every so often around the area, with no one knowing who does it.
9. The Dyatlov Pass Incident
10 experienced hikers set out on an expedition in the Ural Mountains in the Soviet Union. Their trip is well documented, both with camera shots and writings, because they were testing for an elite mountaineering instructor license. One member named Yuri Yudin has to turn back because he starts to suffer from a flare-up of old health issues.
He leaves and agrees to meet them in the town they were supposed to arrive at on February 12. On February 20, there’s still no sign of them. Rescuers send out a party and find an utterly chilling sight. The tent was abandoned with all of their shoes in it. Keep in mind, this is a Russian winter and they were very experienced travelers.
Their tent had a large slash on the back as if it was made from the inside—like there had been something blocking the front of the tent. The nine bodies were scattered, with six appearing to have died of hypothermia, and three from apparent physical trauma. One victim had a fractured skull, two others had major chest trauma.
According to the doctor who examined them, the force required to cause the damage sustained would have been extremely high, comparable to the force of a car crash. One of the victims, perhaps most disturbingly, was missing her tongue and eyes. None were wearing shoes. Two of the victims were dressed only in their underwear.
Again, I cannot stress to you enough how experienced these people are. One was a WWII vet with four medals, from a division with 80% fatality. It was a running joke in his division that you only got one to two medals because then you either were unfit for duty or dead. And he had four. It was documented that some "compelling force" must have made the nine hikers flee their tents.
No one knows what that force could have been. There are many intriguing theories, but all seem to have some bit of contradicting evidence making them seem implausible.
10. Crew Overboard
The story of the Mary Celeste is one of my favorite unsolved mysteries. In November of 1872, the American brigantine Mary Celeste set off from New York for Genoa, Italy, with 10 people aboard. Nearly a month later, a British ship spotted the Celeste adrift some 400 miles east of the Azores, an archipelago off the coast of Portugal.
Save for a few feet of water in the hold, the ship was perfectly undamaged and still contained six months' worth of food and water. The cargo was untouched, and the crew's belongings were still in their quarters. However, not a single soul could be found onboard. One of the lifeboats was missing, but the crew was never seen again.
Multitudes of explanations have been offered, particularly after an investigation at the time found no evidence of foul play. Today, the fate of the Mary Celeste remains largely a mystery. Pirates probably would have left the ship in a worse state, and mutiny seems unlikely to historians. I don't know about you, but my money is on sea monsters.
11. The Disappearance of Anthonette Cayedito
Anthonette Cayedito let her kidnapper in after he said that he was her "Uncle Joe." The kidnapper threw her into a van and she disappeared. A year later someone called 9-1-1, claiming to be Anthonette. Someone shouts in the background of the call, "Who said you could use the phone!?" and a struggle is heard before the call cuts off.
Anthonette's mom said that she was sure it was her daughter's voice. Then four years later, a girl matching Anthonette's description was acting strangely in a diner, and left a note on a napkin that said, "Please help, call police." She went missing in 1986 and the case has never been solved.
12. Andrew Gosden Catches a Bus, Never Disembarks
Andrew Gosden. A smart boy who had a perfect attendance record skips school, goes to a train station, and buys a one-way ticket to King’s Cross in London on his own. As soon as he leaves the station, he seemingly vanishes in an area crawling with CCTV cameras. None of the CCTV cameras in the entirety of London had saved footage of him as the police waited two weeks before asking local businesses if there was any footage of him saved.
There’s no evidence of him ever leaving the city. He had a PSP on him when he disappeared, but Sony confirmed no PSN account had ever been made on his account. He had no access to the internet at home and didn’t even have a mobile phone. Strangely, he left the charger for the PSP at home, suggesting he possibly intended to come back.
13. The Mad Trapper of Rat River
It happened in 1930 when said trapper—nicknamed Albert Johnson, though no one knows his real name—was the target of a huge manhunt in Northern Canada after opening fire and hurting an officer. A hunting posse was made of dozens of hounds, numerous police officers, local natives and even an aviator who scouted the area from the air.
The manhunt lasted 33 days, during which Johnson traveled 85 miles through a blizzard, hostile terrain, and cold weather (down to -40°F), even managing to climb a 7,000 feet peak. It is estimated that he burned approximately 10,000 kcal a day. In the final firefight, Johnson managed to shoot an officer dead.
After he killed the officer, his response was utterly disturbing. He laughed. It was the only sound the other officers heard from him during the whole hunt. Then, he was eventually killed. The authorities never discovered who he was or how he acquired the skills to survive in such a hostile environment. A forensics expert recently found that he had an asymmetrical tailbone that was a foot longer than the other.
14. Lost in the Wild
The unexplained disappearance of Everett Ruess. He was a young artist and writer who roamed the American southwest with just his mules, living in the wilderness and recording his travels and views on life while exploring ancient Indian ruins. He disappeared in Davis Gulch, camp still intact and burros grazing nearby.
And although there were multiple search parties for years and years after his death, even today, nothing has ever been found.He was a remarkable person with a unique lifestyle and mindset.
15. The Girl on Church Hill
This girl was found on a hillside by a guy and his son driving around Bristol Township in Bucks County. First, they tried to investigate her father, then her friends. For a while they suspected her roommate Richard Wheeler until his alibi was confirmed—they had gone to the club together, where he got trashed and blacked out and was kicked out of the club.
The last strong "lead" they had was her uncle Harry, who passed away recently. They tried for ages to prove it was him, but every avenue led to a dead end. After he died, they tried to match his DNA to the DNA they found at the scene. No match. The case has gone completely cold, with no possible way to solve it now. It happened in 1977, and the case has been open for 42 years.
16. Kept in Isolation
Kaspar Hauser was a young boy who, one day, stumbled out into the streets of a village in Germany in the early-mid 1800s. When people asked about who he was, he claimed he had lived in total isolation up until this point and had lived in a very, very small room. I forget the dimensions he said but I want to say it was like 4’x6’, and he could only lay down because of how short the ceiling was.
He claimed someone would come and feed him every day but that was the only contact he would ever have, and he did not know who it was. For a while, he hung around the village—until his past caught up to him. He was found dead from a stabbing. The mystery is still unsolved.
17. 50 Missing U-Boats
I can't remember exactly, but something like 50 German U-Boats remain unaccounted for after the end of WWII. No one knows where they went or with who/what. I believe two turned up in Argentina several months after the end of the war. Both had been modified to transport unknown cargo and had dropped off this cargo—somewhere.
They surrendered in Argentina. The crews were interrogated and gave conflicting and obviously untrue stories of where they had been for months. Makes you think of all the treasure the Nazis stole which hasn't been found. Maybe some of it was loaded onto U-Boats and hidden away.
18. The Ourang Medan
The story goes that a ship in either 1947 or 1948 lets out a distress call. The man giving the call mentions that everyone is dead. Sure enough, a ship arrived to help them and finds everyone died in place all looking up with terror on their face. Rigor mortis kept most of them pretty much standing, too. They examined the ship and couldn't find anyone alive.
They start to tow it back, but then it gets worse. The ship catches fire and starts sinking so they cut it loose. Some theorize that some Japanese elite chemical warfare group was involved and that one of their weapons was used by accident. In 1959, a CIA agent writes a letter to the head of the CIA and mentions the Ourang Medan and believes that it holds the answer to a lot of airplane accidents and unsolved sea mysteries.
19. Mystery at Mastic Beach
The plane that crashed off of Mastic Beach in Long Island, NY shortly after the Pentagon was attacked and the Towers went down. Fox News aired footage of the plane being shot down, a person on the beach at the time had amateur footage. The video clearly showed a missile coming out of the water and hitting the undercarriage of the plane.
The very next day, the whole part of Mastic Beach for miles and miles was surrounded by NAVY battleships and everything else. I was living in Mastic when it happened and I’ll be tripped out if somehow this is seen by another resident of Mastic beach to confirm it. They never aired that footage again. You can’t find it online.
The only evidence of it ever happening is the memorial they built in Mastic for the people.
20. The Bodom Lake Mystery
In 1960 in Finland, a group of four teenagers went camping near Lake Bodom. Two girls, both aged 15, and two guys, both aged 18. At night three of them were killed and only one of the boys survived. Their bodies and the horribly injured boy were found a few hours before noon. The badly injured boy was laying on top of the tent.
The boy was not fully conscious and had several fractures in his skull. He survived and is still alive today, but with no memory of what happened. The police tried everything to find out what happened. Later in 2005, the survivor was accused of being the murderer. But many people think there is another, darker explanation.
I, however, do not believe this to be true. Some of the teens' possessions were taken, like wallets, shoes, etc. Some were later found in the forest, 500 meters away. With the injuries he had, walking that distance would have been impossible. Also, why come back to the crime scene? There was also no way this boy could have caused himself injuries to the back of the head.
Also, some items like the leather jacket from the boy that died still haven't been found. The search for the murderer is the largest manhunt in Finland's history. 88 criminals were found in the forests of Espoo as a result, but not the murderer. There were multiple sightings of a light-haired man walking nearby the crime scene before and after the crime. He was never found.
21. The Vanishing Village of Roanoke
In 1585, there was a small village named Roanoke. It was settled by early pilgrims. It was a good town early on, but many had starved and died in the years Captain John Smith lead the village. After being injured, John Smith was forced to return home and had to stay longer after war broke out. A few years later, he returned to Roanoke to an extremely eerie sight.
The village was gone. Not abandoned, but GONE. The houses had been taken down, and the materials had been moved. There was no trace of the pilgrims that had been there earlier. The only clue was the word "Croatoan" carved into a nearby tree. Some say that they joined a nearby Indian tribe or moved inland, while some think that witchery or magic was the cause of their disappearance.
Even today people search for clues but not a single thing has ever been found. Really makes you wonder what could have possibly happened.
22. Beware the Bloody Benders
There was a family in the late 1800s that immigrated to America from Germany, The Benders. They built their own home in the woods. The family consisted of four people: an older husband, a wife, and two younger adults. No one knows if the younger two were a couple or they were brother and sister. They built their cabin specifically to lure people in.
They had a trap door underneath the table and would lure in unsuspecting victims. The house also had a "fake wall" of some kind. One day in a nearby town, the carriage for a traveler came in without its owner. A few days prior, a man passed through that town and headed towards the direction of the Benders' family home.
The town got together and invited the locals to discuss the missing owner of the carriage. Eventually, it was determined that this family had something to do with it. The story goes that the two younger people in the Bender family were at that town meeting, and by the next morning, the whole family was gone. The town dug up a number of bodies over the next couple weeks on their land.
I think the body count was 13 or 14. For several years after this, there were several sightings of the family but it ended up not being the same people. No one knows what happened to them.
23. The Lighthouse of Flanning Isles
Three people were manning a lighthouse station: James Ducat, Thomas Marshall, and Donald McArthur. They all disappeared sometime before a boat bringing supplies came on December 26. They did not find them when they searched the lighthouse. They ended up searching their diaries and found a number of diary entries recalling a big storm.
The creepy part about it is that each of them had a reputation for being tough, but one of the diary entries on December 12 or 13 said that McArthur had been crying and all of them had been praying. Ducat said that it was the worst storm he had seen in 20 years. The bodies were never found.
24. Missing at Sea
Amy Bradley was on a cruise with her family when she went missing. They only have some ideas about when exactly she disappeared, but it was on the ship since the last time she was seen alive was when the ship was en-route to the Antilles. One of the theories is that she was sold in human trafficking. But the details of her disappearance are really creepy.
The fact she was taken in an enclosed space and nobody saw or found anything is baffling. Also, the ship's crew were quite uncooperative, first with the family and then the FBI. Amy had told her parents the night prior to her disappearance that she was creeped out by some cruise members who were insistent for her to go with them onshore in Curacao.
I'm not sure about that, but the fact is her case is really sad. Some tourists have claimed to have seen her on the shore months later, malnourished and terrified with two men next to her. As of right now, it's been 21 years and she's still missing.
25. D.B. Cooper’s Perfect Crime
A man supposedly named Dan or D.B. Cooper hijacked a 727 plane and landed it. He then extorted the FBI to the tune of $200,000 dollars in order to keep the passengers safe. Once the money was loaded, the plane took off again. Around a rural area of Oregon, he parachuted out via the rear stairwell. He was never seen again.
The money was provided in bills that were serialized. None of the cash was ever recovered or spent and tracked. We have no idea who he was and what happened to the money. The creepiest part? Never raised his voice. Calm as a whistle, according to the passengers. Even creepier? No one was hurt. Everyone survived.
26. Mystery at 177MpH
The semi-legendary 40RA. On November 26, 1993, a dark green Vauxhall Lotus Carlton with the plates reading 40RA was stolen. In the following weeks, that car was used for ram raids (ramming a storefront and stealing display items), stealing approximately £20,000 in goods. The Vauxhall Lotus Carlton has a top speed of 177mph, leaving most supercars of that time in its dust.
Obviously, the Rover Metros of the police, with a top speed of 90mph, couldn’t catch up. It got to the point where the thieves used 40RA to commit a ram raid only 25 meters from a police station—and got away with it. Some legends even state that 40RA outran the West Midlands chopper along the M6. After those few weeks, 40RA disappeared completely, along with the thieves who were unable to be identified.
26 years later and the legendary car is still missing, and the thieves still not caught. Here’s the thing though: The majority of the stolen goods were tobacco and alcohol. £20,000 of tobacco and alcohol would be pretty hard to fence. Hiding a car is fairly easy, but keeping it hidden is a whole different kettle of fish. Some people think that it ended up at the bottom of a lake or crushed into a cube at a scrapyard, but surely the police would’ve found some trace of it?
Regardless, it’s still rather creepy that both the thieves and the car disappeared without a trace.
27. The Tragedy of Elisa Lam
Elisa Lam is the creepiest mystery for me. She was a Canadian student who went to L.A., where she stayed in a hotel. Her last moments are chilling. She was seen alive for the last time from the hotel elevator’s camera. You could see her panicking, getting in the elevator, pressing all the buttons, looking like she is hiding from someone, and making weird gestures.
She then leaves the elevator. Its doors started opening and closing. Two days after she stopped responding to her parents, they called the police to investigate. Some days passed and the other people in the hotel started complaining about the water. It smelled bad and it was murky. The hotel employees checked the water tank on the roof, where they found Elisa's body, along with her clothes next to her.
It was impossible for it to be a suicide because she was in a water tank with a heavy and locked cover, but there were also no signs of anybody assisting her.
28. The Hinterkaifeck Case
The family saw tracks leading to their farm, and not away again. They found a newspaper, and other clues indicating that somebody was nearby, but when they searched, they couldn’t find anybody. One of the family members went to the barn and was suddenly killed with a hatchet. This is where things get really twisted.
The later investigation established that screams from the barn couldn’t be heard from the house, but the others presumably went looking for the missing woman, and they were killed one-by-one as they entered the barn. Nobody was ever charged, although more recently it’s been noticed that the pattern matches some killings that occurred elsewhere in the US at a similar time.
29. The Strange Death of Missy Bevers
In 2016, Missy Bevers was found in a church in Midlothian, TX. She was a fitness instructor and was there early in the morning setting up for a fitness class that she hosted at the church. Security footage revealed strange findings. It showed what they believed to be a woman on the larger side dressed head to toe in police-like tactical gear, holding a hammer.
No leads or much info has come about since the killing. Only thing law enforcement has to go off of is that the suspect had a very distinct limp/stride. There were rumors that she was having an affair of some kind and a jealous partner took revenge.
30. 600 Vanish at Hoer Verde
Hoer Verde was an entire town of 600 people in Brazil in the 1920s that vanished. The only things found were a gun that had been fired, and writing that said, "There is no salvation." There was no sign of conflict—no bullet holes, no blood puddles, nothing that indicated the village was attacked. It was suggested they evacuated fearing militia, as Brazil was unstable at the time.
However, there were nearby towns, and not a single one of the 600 ever turned up. Even if they all evacuated, and were ambushed on the way, disposing of 600 corpses and hiding all signs of conflict is no easy feat. Nor did the various guerrilla groups have any strong motive to do that. No one ever confessed or said they were present at a massacre or anything like that.
No mass grave has ever been found. 600 people just vanished, leaving behind what might have just been part of a bible quote and a fired gun.
31. Frauk Liebs
It happened during the 2006 football championship in Germany. A girl named Frauke Liebs was watching a game with friends and texting her roommates not to worry, and that she would come home late. After leaving the pub at around 11:00 p.m., no one ever saw her alive again. Now the strange part: In the following week, she texted and called a friend and her parents stating that she was all right and will come back soon, although with an unusually sleepy voice.
During her last call, she accidentally said, “Yes” when her sister was asking if she was being held against her will, and instantly corrected it to a “No.” This was the last time someone heard from her. Her body was found in the woods close to where she disappeared three months later, with no indication of who her killer was.
32. The Disappearance of the Sodder Children
Christmas Eve, 1945. The Sodder family home in Fayetteville, West Virginia, burned to the ground. There's the father, George, the mother, Jennie, and nine children. Four of the children escaped, but five were believed to have died in the fire. Then, during the search of the burned house, none of the children's remains were found.
The fire was nowhere near hot enough to burn through bone, but not a trace of them were found. Here's the freaky stuff: Two months before, a visiting salesman told George his house would "go up in smoke...and your children are going to be destroyed." The salesman attributed this to George's "dirty remarks against Mussolini."
George, an Italian immigrant, had been outspoken against Mussolini, which angered some in his Italian-American community. Another visitor later told George that his fuse boxes would "cause a fire someday." This was after George just had his electricity rewired and inspected to be safe. In the weeks before Christmas, the older Sodder children noticed a car following them through the main town as they walked home from school.
During the night of the fire, Jennie was awoken by a strange phone call after midnight, asking for a name she did not know. At 1:00 am, Jeannie heard a loud banging on the house's roof but went back to sleep when she did not hear anything further. Half an hour later, she smelled smoke. The fire seemed to start near the fuse box.
George, Jennie, and four of the children who had been sleeping downstairs escaped the house. They yelled to the children upstairs but heard no response. The fire had already been engulfing the staircase, so they could not rescue them. George tried to go outside, around the house, to use a ladder to climb the window to the attic and rescue the children.
But the ladder was not in its usual place. It would be found 75 feet away in an embankment. Then George tried to drive both his trucks to the window, then climb them. But neither truck would start, despite both having worked the previous day. Later, a telephone repairman told the Sodders that the house's phone line had not been burned through in the fire as they had initially thought, but cut by someone.
The driver of a bus that passed through Fayetteville late Christmas Eve said he had seen some people throwing "balls of fire" at the house. Other witnesses claimed to have seen the children themselves. One woman who had been watching the fire from the road said she had seen some of them peering out of a passing car while the house was burning.
Years later, in the 60s, Jeannie found a disturbing clue. A letter came addressed to her, postmarked in Central City, Kentucky, with no return address. Inside was a picture of a young man around 30 with features strongly resembling their son Louis, who would have been in his 30s if he had survived. On the back was written: “Louis Sodder I love brother Frankie Ilil boys A90132 or 35.”
The Sodders never stopped believing their children were alive, and Jeannie wore black in mourning every day for the rest of her life.
33. The Harassment of Bill and Dorothy Wacker
Bill and Dorothy Wacker were an elderly couple from Ohio. Their house had been ransacked a couple of times between 1984 and 1985. Then, in July of 1985, a stranger knocked on their door whilst Dorothy was home alone. She was recovering from heart surgery and he asked to use their phone, saying his car had apparently broken down.
She thought he'd left after making the call, but she was so wrong. She was knocked unconscious by a blow to the head. Dorothy woke up bound and gagged on the kitchen floor but thankfully managed to crawl to an open window to get help from her neighbors, who called the police. Bill then returned home to find his revolver, among a few other things, had been stolen.
This was accompanied by the message, "CHEAPER, BUT WILL DO" scrawled in crayon on one of their walls. Four months later, the revolver turned up on their porch in a bag. The harasser repeatedly phoned the couple, sometimes threatening them and sometimes just breathing deeply down the phone like a creep, saying nothing.
After this, they installed security lights. The harasser responded with a note saying, "YOUR LIGHTZ ARE A LAUGH." They were frequently left other mocking and scary notes. Dorothy was then attacked once more in 1993, a full EIGHT years after the original attack, this time being sent to the hospital with skull lacerations.
The Wackers staked out their own house after this in an attempt to find the person who had been harassing them, however, they didn't find anything. After the stakeout had been called off, they heard banging at the side of their house and found a note simply saying, "GET THE MESSAGE". After this, as far as I can recall, the harassment abruptly stopped.
34. The Suspicious Death of John Lang
My favorite is probably John Lang’s case. Basically a local activist posts regularly about the Fresno Police Department and about how they were plotting against him. People thought he was crazy until he showed them his disturbing camera footage. Among other things, it showed a bunch of cops parking across the street from his house and staring at him in the middle of the night.
There was also a van that would pull up with a large camera that people theorized took thermal pictures through walls to see if anyone was inside. He posted that that weekend, the police were going to murder him. He accurately predicted his death. The police then released a report saying that he was stabbed repeatedly in the back.
They later recanted, saying it was supposedly a suicide of a crazy man.
35. The Sudden Disappearance of Shafiq Visram
Shafiq was a teenager who went to South Carleton High School in Richmond, a little town within the city of Ottawa. One day he came home to his house in Manotick. His parents were away, leaving only his sister, who wasn’t home at the time, in a rural part of town. Shafiq made a cup of tea and went out for a walk. He was last seen sitting down by the local creek, and never seen again.
It was the last day of May 1994. The largest manhunt in the history of Eastern Ontario turned up no results, except for one thing: his empty backpack sitting by the creek. What’s more is that there may have been other leads. There were eyewitness accounts of seeing him looking dazed and confused on a side road at night, but the police apparently declined to pursue them.
Shafiq Visram was from Kenya, although I think his family was Indian, and he’d only been living in Canada for two years at the time. The police assumed he wasn’t able to cope with his new life—although everyone who knew him said he was very happy in Canada—so he hopped a bus to Toronto or somewhere to start a new life.
Furthermore, the attention of the community was diverted weeks later to another student, a white student, who died in a car crash. Thus, Shafiq’s strange disappearance fell by the wayside. It didn’t end there, though. In 2016, when digging up backfill for new development in Manotick, construction workers found a jawbone and a spinal cord quickly determined by DNA testing to be Shafiq’s.
The fact that his bones were found in backfill (basically dirt collected from various places to fill holes in the ground) suggests that the rest of his skeleton is strewn across Manotick, some parts possibly buried in a shallow grave, and others deep in the ground. The confirmation of Shafiq’s body disproved the OPP’s assumption that he ran away.
It also confirmed the worst fears of his best friends at school, all of whom had insisted, 25 years ago, that the bright, happy computer nerd would never willingly walk off and disappear. He was never involved in drugs, gangs or criminal activities. This part of Ottawa has a very low crime rate, and it’s unlikely that any wild animals attacked him in an open and tread-upon area like the creek.
So what happened? No one was ever arrested or charged, and despite the new evidence in 2016 proving his death, there has been little info that’s come out since then.
36. The Springfield Three
The only one I can think of is the Springfield Three. I don’t know a whole lot about it, but my mother went to school with Stacy McCall and told me about this massive search going on for this woman and her daughter, and one of the daughter’s friends. Basically these girls were having a sleepover after graduating high school and are believed to have been abducted in the middle of the night.
There were a few disturbing clues. A broken porch light and a message on the answering machine that was accidentally deleted. But other than that, nothing. There wasn’t really any sign of struggle, all of their personal belongings were left behind, their dog was locked in the bathroom I believe, and their cars were all still parked outside.
The way my mom described it, the police were going house to house throughout the entire town searching for these girls. They were declared legally dead back in 1997. There’s been a lot of speculation as to what happened to them over the years. I guess some guy who can talk to ghosts or whatever claims that he has communicated with one of them and said they are buried beneath the parking garage at the Cox hospital, but to this day nobody knows what happened to them.
37. Without a Trace
When I was five, my dad didn’t come to pick me up on the weekend as usual—my parents had been divorced for a few years but were on relatively good terms and co-parenting well, by all accounts. The next day, my mom took me around because I was upset and she was pissed off. No answer at the door but his car and work van were on the drive.
She still had a key to the house so let us in to find everything in place. His wallet and keys on the kitchen table, dog in his bed. She fed the dog and went back home. After a couple of days still no contact, so she went back around, everything was just as she found it last time. All belongings and clothes there, his bags and suitcase still in the cupboard, just a hungry dog.
She took the dog back with her and spoke to his side of the family. No one had heard from him for about a week, but nothing out of the ordinary. A mutual friend at his work said he hadn’t been in for a week either and their boss was furious. She called the police and reported him missing. They found no clues, his wallet, keys, and cars all at the house.
His passport was in the drawer, his “petty cash” stash of about £500 was where it was always kept, with no signs of struggle. His bank accounts hadn’t been touched for a week and no out of the ordinary or large transactions or withdrawals were made over the previous months. Long story short, they found nothing and eventually shelved the case.
23 years later, still no contact with any friends or family. His parents and brother have all since passed away, never knowing what happened.
38. Who Were the Poe Toasters?
No one knows how Edgar Allan Poe died. At least, those who did know are long since dead, and all firm records of his death have been lost. Poe was found on Baltimore’s streets on October 3, 1849. Eerily, he was wearing someone else's clothes. He was in pretty bad shape, and died in hospital just four days later, delirious.
He was never coherent enough to explain what had happened, and he kept shouting "Reynolds" the night before his death. There’s nothing left from his medical records, including even his death certificate. Speculation about the cause of his death ranges anywhere from suicide, cholera, heart disease, epilepsy, and even murder. He was only 40 years old.
It gets even creepier. For 75 years, someone had gone to Edgar Allan Poe's grave at night on October 7, the night Poe died. Dressed all in black and face obscured by a large hat, he or she drinks a glass of Cognac and leaves the bottle and three roses on the grave. The toasting stopped in 2010 for some reason.
39. Lost in the Woods
13-year-old Jared Negrete was a boy scout in California who disappeared while hiking with his troop in 1991. He was a little overweight, so the hike was too hard for him. The scout leader decided to leave him behind and then reunite with him on the way back to camp. It was a huge mistake. He was never seen again, except for a camera he must have dropped.
The pictures made it seem like he was trying to use the flash to see in the dark. One of the pictures he took was of himself looking scared. The search continues.
40. Lead Masks & Strange Pills
These two guys were found dead on a hill, lying side-by-side and wearing lead masks. Both were wearing fancy suits and waterproof jackets, and neither showed any sign of violence. A note was found at the scene that said, "16:30 be at the agreed place. 18:30 swallow capsules, after effect protect metals wait for the mask sign."
Presumably these "capsules" are what killed them—unfortunately, their organs were not properly preserved, and toxicology could not be performed, so we'll never know for sure. The weirdest part is that note. It implies they were waiting on something to take effect after ingesting the capsules. If the capsules are indeed what killed them, it's unlikely they knew anything about it beforehand.
There was also an empty bottle of water nearby that they'd gotten from a bar three days prior. Witnesses say one of the men looked very nervous and kept checking his watch.
41. The Unsolvable Tamam Shud Code
On December 1, 1948, a man’s body is discovered on Somerton Beach, Australia. The man was around 40 years old, and wore a green sweater and a raincoat, despite the high heat. No pieces of identification were found, and all the labels on his clothes were cut out. Oddly enough, his fingerprints and dental records didn’t match any of the registered profiles.
The autopsy did not reveal any trace of poison in his system and did not reach any conclusion as to the cause of his death. The man's picture then gets spread around the world, but nobody seems to recognize him. A month later a suitcase is found, likely belonging to the victim, full of clothes...with the labels cut out.
One day, the police discover in a hidden pocket in the man's pants a paper with the words "Tamam Shud" printed on it. Turns out that those words are from a rare edition of a collection of poems from Omar Khayyam. After a photo of the piece of paper and information about the book was publicly released, a man ends up contacting the police and telling them a disturbing piece of evidence.
On November 30, 1948m The day before the body was discovered, he found a very rare edition of the book on the back seat of his car on the night of November 30, 1948.The police discovered a coded message in the back of the book: Five lines of seemingly random letters, one of which is crossed. The code was never decrypted. Even today, we have no idea of who he is, or what happened.
42. A Not-So-Quick Drink
In 2006, an Ohio State student went into a bar and never came out. He was out with two friends one night and they went to a bar. This bar had a front main entrance and a back entrance for staff/entertainment, both of which had cameras on them. Brian is seen on camera entering the bar, and then later stepping out of the bar to talk to a couple of girls before going back in.
Minutes before the bar closed and they were preparing to leave, Brian told his friends he was going to go talk to the band. Brian walked away out of sight and his friends waited for him, but he was never seen again. This was not a large bar, and the band doesn't remember talking to him, and the cameras never caught him exiting the bar.
No one knows what happened to Brian after he walked away from his friends and how—or if—he left the bar.
Sources: Reddit
