Creepy Unsolved Mysteries - From unsolved murders to unidentified people to unexplained supernatural events, what are some of the creepiest unsolved mysteries you've ever heard of?

[Lord of the Large Pants]

It goes into a bit of the hotel's history during the first, and second episode, but the series is literally just dedicated to Elisa Lam. The former manager they interview basically just says that while hotel does have a dark history, it was not responsible in any way for Lam's death.

Honestly, the thing is just way, way too dragged out, and starts to feel a bit disrespectful after while with just how much it milks, and pads out the poor girl's death.

Respectfully Disagree, but I Still Love You

There were some overly dramatic, clickbaity parts, but there was also a good chunk of serious investigative work. I'm now a lot more inclined to believe the official story (which is just what (((they))) want!). There was quite a bit of information in it I wasn't aware of before. I'll try to lay out as much as I can here.

They discussed some of the hotel's history. It's right smack on Skid Row in LA, and has housed druggies and serial killers. It does have a dark history. But as the former manager said, that ultimately didn't have anything to do with what happened to Elisa Lam, and most of the focus was on her.

The show also covered some of the crazier conspiracy theories surrounding her death. And when I say crazy, I don't mean "this death seems suspicious and might have involved foul play". I mean Amanda Mullen tier crazy. Things like "there was a tuberculosis outbreak on Skid Row while Elisa Lam was staying there, and there's a tuberculosis test called LAM-ELISA, therefore Elisa Lam was a living biological weapon killed by the government for knowing too much!" (And for what it's worth, I couldn't find any evidence that any such test exists. I could only find the term in connection with this case. I have been told below that the test is a real thing.) Internet detectives ended up severely harassing a Mexican death metal musician because they were absolutely convinced he was responsible, even though he had only stayed at the hotel once A YEAR PRIOR. The show didn't ENDORSE any of this, quite the opposite, but at times it still felt like clickbait.

Okay, now onto the serious part.

First, they did a pretty good job of tearing down the odd behavior of the elevator. Not Elisa IN the elevator, but the elevator itself. A guy actually went and tested it. He figured out that Elisa was most likely on floor 14 at the time, based on the fact that that light immediately went dark after she pressed it. This was the floor right below the roof. He also figured out that the Hold Door button was in the same row of buttons she pressed. He timed it, and it stayed open for two minutes. So that's why the elevator didn't close. He also found an access to the fire escape from the 14th floor, right out an unsecured window. From there, there's a fire escape ladder going to the roof. The regular door to the roof had an alarm, but that would've been easily bypassed through the fire escape.

Now, the door on top of the water tank. This was always the part that seemed most suspicious to me, because it would've been so hard for her to close it behind her. Well, that's because she didn't. The explanation turned out to be fairly mundane. The door was closed when the POLICE got there. But her body was first discovered by a MAINTENANCE WORKER, and he found the door OPEN. Meaning that he most likely closed it when he saw the floating, naked dead chick. I sure as hell would. Further, they showed the roof itself, and demonstrated that it would've been extraordinarily difficult for her to be carried up there by another person without causing obvious damage to her (ladders, tight spaces, etc). No such damage was found on her body.

Now, that being said, why the hell would she jump into a water tank? Well. Elisa wasn't just bipolar, she was EXTREMELY bipolar. She was on multiple meds, including an anti-psychotic.

Okay. Based on what I knew before, I thought the coroner's cause of death (accidental drowning) was just a lazy punt. But after seeing him interviewed, he struck me as a very sober and intelligent guy with sound logic for his conclusions. He reported that the toxicology showed no illicit substances in her body, but DID show her legitimate anti-crazy pills, in abnormally LOW quantities. In other words... she was off her meds. Side note, he also believes she undressed in the tank either to make treading water easier, or paradoxical undressing due to hypothermia.

Leading up to her death, she showed several other instances of extremely erratic behavior. She went to a live show, wrote a letter to one of the people involved, and insisted to security that it be delivered. She shouted weird things in the hotel lobby. She locked her roommates out of her room. She left them physical notes telling them to get out.

About the roommates. Nothing was said about who they were. I assume this was for privacy reasons, but I would've liked to know. In any case, she ended up being moved to a different room shortly before her death because she was being so disruptive to them.

Her family confirmed she had a history of delusions and hallucinations, especially when off her meds. She would often believe she was being chased by something, and look for a place to hide, like under a bed. Or, say... a water tank.

So a fairly plausible course of events is:

1.) Elisa goes off her meds.
2.) On the night of her death, she has some kind of episode.
3.) She goes to the elevator trying to escape something she believed was chasing her.
4.) It doesn't work as expected because she pressed the Door Hold button.
5.) She gives up on that and finds her way to the roof.
6.) She tries to hide in the water tank.
7.) She can't get back out because the water level is too low for her to reach the hatch.

Less spooky and more tragic, but I think it's what happened.

The only remaining bit of fuckery is the elevator video being edited. Nobody seems to know when, who, or why. But I don't think that's enough on its own to call conspiracy. The police investigator said he saw the original, unedited video on the hotel security system, and I don't really see any reason to doubt it.

So... mystery solved, question mark?

 

[LateNightMuffin]

Thank you all for letting me know more about the Elisa Lam program. i watched the first 1.5 episodes, and thought it was dragging, so kind of wanted to quit but also wanted to know what happened, so this is perfect. I'll move on to something else.

 

[Carnavoyeur]

A LAM (lipoarabinomannan) ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) test is a thing. But it would be pretty fucking stupid of the government to kill someone with the same name as a TB test for... reasons? About TB? The conspiracy theories are piss-poor over this.

My first thought over the footage with her appearing to talk to someone (a g-g-g-ghost???) outside the elevator is that she was probably talking to a housekeeper or another resident/guest of the hotel. Or she was just having a full-on psychotic break. I can't remember when/where it was edited, but maybe they identified the person she spoke to and they didn't want to appear in the released footage.

I seem to recall she had a Tumblr where she posted some borderline morbid/typical depressed girl stuff. One of the conspiracy theories latched onto the fact that she had queued posts so she was posting from the grave or some shit.

Anyway, I feel like all the creepy shit and conspiracy theories has been perpetuated by people unfamiliar with severe bipolar disorder and the meds she was on. Trying not to PL, but I've known people with severe bipolar, both unmedicated and who took the same meds she did (and abruptly stopped taking like she is thought to have done) and her behavior is not surprising to me. Psychosis is really fucked up.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

A LAM (lipoarabinomannan) ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) test is a thing. But it would be pretty fucking stupid of the government to kill someone with the same name as a TB test for... reasons? About TB? The conspiracy theories are piss-poor over this.

My first thought over the footage with her appearing to talk to someone (a g-g-g-ghost???) outside the elevator is that she was probably talking to a housekeeper or another resident/guest of the hotel. Or she was just having a full-on psychotic break. I can't remember when/where it was edited, but maybe they identified the person she spoke to and they didn't want to appear in the released footage.

I seem to recall she had a Tumblr where she posted some borderline morbid/typical depressed girl stuff. One of the conspiracy theories latched onto the fact that she had queued posts so she was posting from the grave or some shit.

Anyway, I feel like all the creepy shit and conspiracy theories has been perpetuated by people unfamiliar with severe bipolar disorder and the meds she was on. Trying not to PL, but I've known people with severe bipolar, both unmedicated and who took the same meds she did (and abruptly stopped taking like she is thought to have done) and her behavior is not surprising to me. Psychosis is really fucked up.

Fair enough on the TB test. I may have just been asking the wrong question to my friendly neighborhood search engine.

I forgot to mention, one of the things they pointed out in the elevator video is that it looks like you can see somebody's shoe in the shot for a few seconds. But it's the opposite side of the one she appears to be talking to, and hell... it could be anybody. And yes, a privacy edit is possible, not wanting to show someone who was uninvolved and have the nutbars start stalking them. But ultimately we just don't know.

They actually talk a LOT about her Tumblr in the documentary. It's pretty typical college girl basic bitch bullshit, but some of it was depression related, yeah.

I actually wasn't aware bipolar could be THIS severe, which is one of the reasons I was originally skeptical of the story. But now I know.

 

[Carnavoyeur]

Fair enough on the TB test. I may have just been asking the wrong question to my friendly neighborhood search engine.

I forgot to mention, one of the things they pointed out in the elevator video is that it looks like you can see somebody's shoe in the shot for a few seconds. But it's the opposite side of the one she appears to be talking to, and hell... it could be anybody. And yes, a privacy edit is possible, not wanting to show someone who was uninvolved and have the nutbars start stalking them. But ultimately we just don't know.

They actually talk a LOT about her Tumblr in the documentary. It's pretty typical college girl basic bitch bullshit, but some of it was depression related, yeah.

I actually wasn't aware bipolar could be THIS severe, which is one of the reasons I was originally skeptical of the story. But now I know.

Yeah, most people think of bipolar disorder as just being super happy and energetic some of the time and super depressed other times, but it can cause delusions/psychosis in some people, including straight up hallucinations. I think she was said to have been on like 4 or 5 different medications which is a good sign that it was pretty bad. And if she had stopped taking her meds, the sudden withdrawal can cause severe mental and physical side effects.

 

[glass_houses]

Bipolar is a disorder that has an extended range of symptoms. I won't PL, but it's much more complicated than up/down or happy/sad, and yes, severe psychosis and cognitive impairment can be a part of it. The summary of events offered here is a very reasonable explanation as to what happened to Lam, I think.

 

[Atatata]

I don't think it was as much as a psychotic break more so than a simple bipolar high. She climbed up the water tank to look at the view/for social media cred as people her age tend to do, and fell into the water tank.

I've seen it mentioned that she was an avid Instagram photographer, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for someone like that to try to get a good view of LA by climbing things they shouldn't.

 

[glass_houses]

I don't think it was as much as a psychotic break more so than a simple bipolar high. She climbed up the water tank to look at the view/for social media cred as people her age tend to do, and fell into the water tank.

I've seen it mentioned that she was an avid Instagram photographer, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for someone like that to try to get a good view of LA by climbing things they shouldn't.

Then why would she strip?

 

[Atatata]

Then why would she strip?

I read a theory somewhere that she tried to climb up using the clothes as rope or something. That, or she might've tried ballooning them up with air to use as flotation when she got tired.

 

[stupidpieceofshit]

La Mancha Negra

If the images I saw of it are real it reminds me of Black Oil from XFiles

Then why would she strip?

Paradoxical undressing from hypothermia (water removes heat from the body), and although she had low level of her meds in her body, antipsychotics can cause (although rarely) hypothermia too, I do not know what dosage would be required for such a side effect but it is possible that the two combined and increased any hypothermia she would have experienced just from one or the other.

 

[Haramburger]

Respectfully Disagree, but I Still Love You

There were some overly dramatic, clickbaity parts, but there was also a good chunk of serious investigative work. I'm now a lot more inclined to believe the official story (which is just what (((they))) want!). There was quite a bit of information in it I wasn't aware of before. I'll try to lay out as much as I can here.

They discussed some of the hotel's history. It's right smack on Skid Row in LA, and has housed druggies and serial killers. It does have a dark history. But as the former manager said, that ultimately didn't have anything to do with what happened to Elisa Lam, and most of the focus was on her.

The show also covered some of the crazier conspiracy theories surrounding her death. And when I say crazy, I don't mean "this death seems suspicious and might have involved foul play". I mean Amanda Mullen tier crazy. Things like "there was a tuberculosis outbreak on Skid Row while Elisa Lam was staying there, and there's a tuberculosis test called LAM-ELISA, therefore Elisa Lam was a living biological weapon killed by the government for knowing too much!" (And for what it's worth, I couldn't find any evidence that any such test exists. I could only find the term in connection with this case. I have been told below that the test is a real thing.) Internet detectives ended up severely harassing a Mexican death metal musician because they were absolutely convinced he was responsible, even though he had only stayed at the hotel once A YEAR PRIOR. The show didn't ENDORSE any of this, quite the opposite, but at times it still felt like clickbait.

Okay, now onto the serious part.

First, they did a pretty good job of tearing down the odd behavior of the elevator. Not Elisa IN the elevator, but the elevator itself. A guy actually went and tested it. He figured out that Elisa was most likely on floor 14 at the time, based on the fact that that light immediately went dark after she pressed it. This was the floor right below the roof. He also figured out that the Hold Door button was in the same row of buttons she pressed. He timed it, and it stayed open for two minutes. So that's why the elevator didn't close. He also found an access to the fire escape from the 14th floor, right out an unsecured window. From there, there's a fire escape ladder going to the roof. The regular door to the roof had an alarm, but that would've been easily bypassed through the fire escape.

Now, the door on top of the water tank. This was always the part that seemed most suspicious to me, because it would've been so hard for her to close it behind her. Well, that's because she didn't. The explanation turned out to be fairly mundane. The door was closed when the POLICE got there. But her body was first discovered by a MAINTENANCE WORKER, and he found the door OPEN. Meaning that he most likely closed it when he saw the floating, naked dead chick. I sure as hell would. Further, they showed the roof itself, and demonstrated that it would've been extraordinarily difficult for her to be carried up there by another person without causing obvious damage to her (ladders, tight spaces, etc). No such damage was found on her body.

Now, that being said, why the hell would she jump into a water tank? Well. Elisa wasn't just bipolar, she was EXTREMELY bipolar. She was on multiple meds, including an anti-psychotic.

Okay. Based on what I knew before, I thought the coroner's cause of death (accidental drowning) was just a lazy punt. But after seeing him interviewed, he struck me as a very sober and intelligent guy with sound logic for his conclusions. He reported that the toxicology showed no illicit substances in her body, but DID show her legitimate anti-crazy pills, in abnormally LOW quantities. In other words... she was off her meds. Side note, he also believes she undressed in the tank either to make treading water easier, or paradoxical undressing due to hypothermia.

Leading up to her death, she showed several other instances of extremely erratic behavior. She went to a live show, wrote a letter to one of the people involved, and insisted to security that it be delivered. She shouted weird things in the hotel lobby. She locked her roommates out of her room. She left them physical notes telling them to get out.

About the roommates. Nothing was said about who they were. I assume this was for privacy reasons, but I would've liked to know. In any case, she ended up being moved to a different room shortly before her death because she was being so disruptive to them.

Her family confirmed she had a history of delusions and hallucinations, especially when off her meds. She would often believe she was being chased by something, and look for a place to hide, like under a bed. Or, say... a water tank.

So a fairly plausible course of events is:

1.) Elisa goes off her meds.
2.) On the night of her death, she has some kind of episode.
3.) She goes to the elevator trying to escape something she believed was chasing her.
4.) It doesn't work as expected because she pressed the Door Hold button.
5.) She gives up on that and finds her way to the roof.
6.) She tries to hide in the water tank.
7.) She can't get back out because the water level is too low for her to reach the hatch.

Less spooky and more tragic, but I think it's what happened.

The only remaining bit of fuckery is the elevator video being edited. Nobody seems to know when, who, or why. But I don't think that's enough on its own to call conspiracy. The police investigator said he saw the original, unedited video on the hotel security system, and I don't really see any reason to doubt it.

So... mystery solved, question mark?

how anti-climatic, this now makes the shitty indie RPG YIIK even worse by association.

 

[An Account]

The Ever-Growing Dangerous Filth That Couldn't Be Washed Away; La Mancha Negra: Starting in 1986 in Caracas, Venezuela, a strange, slippery, gummy, greasy, oily, black substance starting oozing up from the roads.

Originally appearing as just a black smear around 50-yards-long, nothing much was thought of it until it began to grow bigger, and bigger, and soon encompassed eight miles of the highway. The strange material appeared to shrink when the weather was cold, and dry, but grow when the weather was hot, and humid. The substance also seemed to preferred sheltered environments like tunnels, or inclines like the uphill slopes near the airports.

Due to the texture of the slime, the roads it covered became death traps as they came exceeding unsafe to drive on, being described the locals a being "slick as ice". By 1992, over 1,800 deaths had allegedly been attributed to the ooze, due to the extremely unsafe conditions it created, although this number is admittedly extremely high and unlikely as it would mean that at least on person would be dying per day on that road.

Efforts to get rid of the substance failed. Originally believing the muck to just be a mixture of dust, and oil, it was initially believed that the rain would just wash it away. When that failed, pressurized hoses were used with no avail. Industrial strength detergents, and solvents were used, but those too also failed. Workers even tried to scrape away the mess, and parts of the road it was on only to watch helplessly as La Mancha Negra just grew back, and continued to expand.

Eventually, tons of powdered limestone was dumped all over the stain in an attempt to dry it out, and while that worked for a while, the resulting dust made the roads still incredibly unsafe, and the air nearly unbreathable.

The filth was thought to have finally been destroyed in 1996 when specialized cleaning equipment was brought in from Germany only for it to return less than a decade later in 2001.

Theories as to what La Mancha Negra is vary. From raw sewage that caused a chemical reaction on the roads that caused them to breakdown, to a mixture of highly corrosive breaker fluid, and engine oil, to the aforementioned mixture of dust, engine oil, and other car fluids that get accidentally sprayed all over the highways by the outdated, broken-down cars a lot of Venezuelans still drive, to the asphalt of the road just simply melting in the intense, humid Venezuelan heat after being improperly applied.

Stranger theories came in in 1992, when former Venezuelan president Carlos Andrés Pérez claimed that people opposed to his rule were purposefully spreading oil on the roads to tarnish his reputation, and that was the actual cause of the mess. In 2001 when the stain appeared again, chavista mayor, Freddy Banal, accused the opposition of hiring homeless people to spread La Mancha Negra, whatever it actually was, back onto the roads.

Whatever it is, the millions of dollars that have allegedly been poured into stopping it have all been in vain. To this day, La Mancha Negra continues to grow, and cause dozens of car accidents a year, and while the filth occasionally does recede back into the ground, and attempts to at least contain, and temporarily get rid of it are partially successful, more than three decades later, no one is still quite sure what it is, why it keeps coming back, why it it grows the way it does, and why it ever appeared in the first place.

Edit: Corrected, and clarified some mistakes, and misinformation. Sorry!

Wait, this stuff is still growing on the road and nobody's thought to send it to a lab?

 

[Flavius Claudius Julianus]

Wait, this stuff is still growing on the road and nobody's thought to send it to a lab?

It's in Venezuela, and we all know how well it's going over there right now. Safe to say common sense and forward thinking probably aren't favoured pursuits.

 

[glass_houses]

Wait, this st'ff is still growing on the road and nobody's thought to send it to a lab?

They have. It's basically dust, oil, and random gunk coming out of badly maintained cars.

 

[Juan But Not Forgotten]

I don't think it was as much as a psychotic break more so than a simple bipolar high. She climbed up the water tank to look at the view/for social media cred as people her age tend to do, and fell into the water tank.

What about her strange behavior in the elevator? I think, this alone destroys the possibility that there were any logic behind her behavior. She barely realized where she was and what she was doing.

I think, she had some other undiagnosed mental disorder, that kicked in when she was in the hotel. I mean, let's take the story of Terry A. Davis. Imagine if during his first break he would just suddenly run away from his job and then disappeared in the desert. I bet, there would be people speculating about "brilliant programmer knowing too much and getting silenced by CIA niggers who glow in the dark".

 

[Baby Jane Hudson]

Want a really creepy unsolved disappearance, Kiwis? Check out the 1949 case of housewife Dorothy Forstein, who was abducted from her Philadelphia home in sinister circumstances, by persons unknown, for reasons God only knows. Apparently recent attempts to publicize the case have been met with cease-and-desist letters from family attorneys, which just add to the mystery.

I wonder if she was involved with any of the Kennedy boys (or Daddy Kennedy)? I'm not trying to be a smartass, but lets face it, the Kennedys are less than stellar people. I know it's been years and all the main Kennedys are dead, but maybe, somehow the Kennedy family is still using their drunken tentacles to keep the family quiet?

Or maybe she was simply involved with the MOB, or her husband or kids were? Although most of the big time gangsters have also died, like the Kennedys, so I don't know. It's an interesting case for sure.

 

[DavidFerrie]

I wonder if she was involved with any of the Kennedy boys (or Daddy Kennedy)? I'm not trying to be a smartass, but lets face it, the Kennedys are less than stellar people. I know it's been years and all the main Kennedys are dead, but maybe, somehow the Kennedy family is still using their drunken tentacles to keep the family quiet?

Or maybe she was simply involved with the MOB, or her husband or kids were? Although most of the big time gangsters have also died, like the Kennedys, so I don't know. It's an interesting case for sure.

The most likely scenario is that her magistrate husband pissed off some powerful figure, and her initial beating was a warning that he didn't -- or couldn't -- heed. Then she was kidnapped, and killed when the abductors realized that a ransom demand was asking for big trouble, and that they'd be safer if she was never seen again.

As for my earlier posting about the Richard Cox disappearance? I'm pretty sure "George" did him in, somehow smuggled his body out of West Point grounds, and dumped his weighted corpse in the nearby Hudson River. Why? Cox probably was involved with, or knew of, seriously bad stuff that "George" was doing in Occupied Germany, and had to be silenced forever.

And the "Yuba County Five"? Your guess is as good as mine.

 

[9263900263]

Diatlov pass is fascinating in it's weirdness. They always say they have some new evidence or at closing to solve it but how would such a thing be possible? I suspect soviets decided to murder a bunch of kids for whatever reason and they all fled as fast as they could. Doubt we'll ever know the truth.

 

[Juan But Not Forgotten]

They always say they have some new evidence

Because they pull it out of their asses to score some free publicity on old sensation. There are plenty of realistic explanations about what happened, but nobody wants to hear them.

 

[9263900263]

Because they pull it out of their asses to score some free publicity on old sensation. There are plenty of realistic explanations about what happened, but nobody wants to hear them.

Care to share a few mine negro?