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?

[Steam Deck Verified]

Evelyn Hartley - Teenager abducted while babysitting and never seen again. Some suspects may have bragged about it, but the leads were never investigated. Gave me the creeps the first time I heard it -- imagine being distracted by studying while listening to music, looking up, and realizing that a stranger is in the house, and they were probably watching you from outside.

Oakland County Child Killer - This persists in the memory of my (born-and-raised) state of Michigan, though it's been a long time since it's been in the paper or had any new developments. Four young children are abducted and killed over a 1-year period, with no perpetrator ever identified. Creepiest of all was the death of Timothy King, who was fed his favorite food, cleaned, and groomed prior to his death. One of the most popular suspects was the son of a General Motors executive who committed suicide under suspicious circumstances, with a hand drawn photo of a boy (resembling one of the victims) screaming, pinned to a wall nearby. Another suspect ran a little-remembered local pedophile sex ring.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

I was thinking of Zeb Quinn

 

[Lithuophile]

How many Brazilians actually died in the huelohoax huelocaust?

 

[Cnut]

The Sandown Clown is intriguing.

Some kids had a very weird experience and there are very weird people out there. But maybe they are liars, were hallucinating, or someone made it all up.

Here's a blog with some context/editorializing but there's a link to a PDF of the original magazine article at the bottom.

 

[The Taco Santo!]

The general belief is that a polar bear got him. Many predatory attacks on humans leave little to no sign of what actually happened, and a polar bear is more than powerful enough to carry a human body for kilometres until it finds a suitable place to dine. The same bear would have got the dog too, when the dog was out trying to find its boss.

No Polar Bears in Antarctica. That's a North Pole thing. Maybe the penguins got him, or the Nazis over in New Schwabenland. Sounds like them, they probably took him to their moon base.

 

[Orange Rhymer]

There was a guy who disappeared after working at Walmart in 2000
Found a car with a live puppy in it. Puppy was fine.

I think someone got arrested for murder but as to where the body is.....

How about the girl who worked for Disney Cruise who up and vanished completely?

I've heard cruise ship employees have an abnormally high rate of that.
Especially women.

My bet is trafficking.

 

[Cnut]

Something

I'd like to see the videos your promised of the warehouse apparitions.

 

[Orange Rhymer]

I'd like to see the videos your promised of the warehouse apparitions.

I promised nothing

edit- An explanation

TL;DR- Factory ghosts are fucking weird because of the _people_ and the position. Not the ghosts.

I never saw nor experienced Industrial Ghosts first-hand.

My ONLY experience was the disturbing levels of 'workmen noise' present above me, in a factory that had been abandoned for months.
How do I explain that? Can't really. I have theories, though:
-Removing miles of cable and pipework causes structural issues, leading to creaking/settling
-It was winter, heat was reduced to low levels. Maybe water/ice intrusion
-water was killed in the facility, some fixtures were removed. Hydraulic balance issues. Air in pipes.


I have been told my previous accounts by parties that "swear to god, I saw the tape! and/or "My ex-wife's sister saw it with her OWN 2 EYES".
to be clear. I do not believe in the 'supernatural'.

I find the juxtaposition of a workplace plagued with tedium, boredom, and stagnation suddenly enlivened with the spirits of the dead...
...ironic
I find the sincerity and earnestness in the telling of these tales _fascinating_.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

How many Brazilians actually died in the huelohoax huelocaust?

I know you are just joking, but at least one Brazilian died on the Holocaust. Technically. Olga Gutmann Benário Prestes.

She was born in Germany, Jewish and a Communist (lmao the stereotype writes itself) and moved to the USSR in the late 1920s. She knew Portuguese because of her Dad believe and had experience from Weimar Germany brawls on being a communist rebel so the Comintern sent her to Brazil to help the commies here, where she married the commie leader Luís Carlos Prestes. The PCB then pulled out one of the most hilariously bad coup attempts in history with the Communist the Intentona Comunista, and after the 4 day fiasco she got deported to Germany in 1936 where you can guess what happened. She was pregnant at the time and gave birth, but the Germans sent the kid to go live with her mother-in-law in Brazil and kept her there. Eventually she got spicy air in 1942.

Apparently she got in the DDR after WW2. They liked showing her off as a example of a mom and good communist in propaganda. Brazilian commies also whitewash her history and even made a movie about her.

 

[MadStan]

There was this lady I knew that worked as a public psychiatrist -you know when the crazies got arrested they would send her in to evaluate them. anyways one night they get this guy in there and he's screaming this and that and claiming he was from the future so they drug his ass up and put him inside this maximum security room with the jacket and straps on - the work - everything. They go check on him and he totally vanished, the straps were still attached to the jacket and it was as if he just vanished into thin air. They never solved it; and the guy was never seen again.

Years later she wrote a book about it and ON THE NIGHT of its release...she totally vanished without a trace.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

I've heard cruise ship employees have an abnormally high rate of that.
Especially women.

My bet is trafficking.

You just reminded me of the infamous Amy Bradley story

 

[DavidFerrie]

Trow Ghyll skeleton

Unidentified skeleton found in a cave in England in 1947. Death was estimated between 2-6 years previously. None of the bones were broken and there was no obvious signs of foul play or accident. He was found with many small incidental belongings but most notably a small ampule and bottle of cyanide. The ampule was unbroken and the bottle was "full to the shoulder" but it's still possible he could have had a fatal dose. It's often speculated he was a German spy, but it's really just a complete mystery.

This one reminds me of the "Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?" mystery of WWII Britain, which is also suspected to be spook-related.

Ricky McCormick

Ricky McCormick was a 41 year old with chronic heart and lung problems and a minor criminal history of statutory rape, but with no obvious enemies. He was found dead in a corn field one day in 1999, partially decomposed and last seen 5 days prior. In his pockets he had two pieces of paper with unidentified writing on them which several cryptographic institutions have tried and failed to decipher. Cause of death was never established and the FBI considers it a homicide and the notes as having something to do with his death. His family rejects this view and say basically that Ricky would write gibberish down and he was too stupid for any kind of coded writing. I'm inclined to believe it was just a hillbilly who had a heart attack and a habit of writing nonsense, but then again what was he doing in a cornfield 15 miles away from his home when he didn't even own a car?

That's a weird one. The most common theory seems to be that he was doing low-level drug dealing, and the coded notes were related to the work.

You just reminded me of the infamous Amy Bradley story

Which was discussed earlier in this thread. I'm certain she wasn't the only female on a cruise ship who met this fate.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Which was discussed earlier in this thread. I'm certain she wasn't the only female on a cruise ship who met this fate.

The whole thing about the picture supposedly being of her reminds me of the infamous Tara Calico picture.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

I don't know if that's creepy but we will never know about like 90% of creatures that existed before us. There could have been intelligent creatures that walked upright and had their own language millions of years ago but we will never know because there is nothing left.

 

[Orange Rhymer]

You just reminded me of the infamous Amy Bradley story

TL;DR

Disappeared while sleeping on a cruise ship balcony.
-PE college grad
-strong swimmer
-celebrating graduation (not suicide)
-Off the coast of Curacao

Several sightings and personal confrontations in Curacao were attributed to her being in sexual slavery.
-Brothel sighting
-Beach sighting
-Bar toliet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Amy_Lynn_Bradley

 

[Big Miss Steak]

As to living next door to a corpse that's been rotting for over two years, it's shockingly not that uncommon. There's been cases where bodies have been left rotting in their houses for decades, sometimes even with other living people still residing with them.

One of the most horrifying cases of this was of Rita Wolfensohn, a blind hoarder who's thought to have unknowingly lived with the corpse of her own son for over twenty years.

There was once an animal that got stuck in the chimney at my family home and began to rot. Due to the design of the chimney, you couldn't see the animal, so it took us about a week/week and a half to figure out where the horrific stench was coming from. The whole time, my dad couldn't smell anything. I hope my dad would be able to smell a human-sized corpse, but maybe not.

 

[Foltest]

The killing of Henryik Siwaik.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Henryk_Siwiak

He is notable for being the only homicide on 9/11 that was not part of the attack (NYPD don't the attack as one).
It is suspected that he got killed because of his poor english and that he was wearing camo, which made people suspected he was a terrorist.
It has never been solved as all personal were needed at the twins towers and in the chaos that followed, it became a cold case.

 

[Maricón de Mierda]

The killing of Henryik Siwaik.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Henryk_Siwiak

He is notable for being the only homicide on 9/11 that was not part of the attack (NYPD don't the attack as one).
It is suspected that he got killed because of his poor english and that he was wearing camo, which made people suspected he was a terrorist.
It has never been solved as all personal were needed at the twins towers and in the chaos that followed, it became a cold case.

Poor guy. That is probably the worst combination of time and place to ever be murdered in American history. I'm not sure about the "confused him with a terrorist" theory although it is interesting. Regardless of the date, he was a lost foreigner in a bad neighborhood and could barely speak the language, which makes him basically the perfect victim. According to his wife and sister, he was chronically ignorant of just how dangerous NYC really is. But it still is a tragedy, especially since it seems like a routine case that was simply buried under 9/11 and could have easily been solved if there were adequate resources available.

The most common theory seems to be that he was doing low-level drug dealing, and the coded notes were related to the work.

I'm skeptical such an uneducated and unremarkable man could create such a complex code that multiple agencies couldn't crack it, especially when there's so much text to pull from. I am curious about what his family said when they mentioned that Ricky would write gibberish. According to them, they never even heard about the notes in his pocket until years later and not even from law enforcement. One solid interview with them on the topic could shine a lot of light. I'm baffled the cops never even asked his family about it. They took it to the FBI and American Cryptogram Association before they even asked his mom if Ricky could actually write anything other than his own name. Seems like sloppy police work to me.

My personal guess was he died from his chronic health issues in a compromising situation with others and they simply dumped his body to not get in trouble. And Ricky McCormick had an odd habit of writing nonsense.

 

[Steam Deck Verified]

When parents think of their biggest fears about their kids going missing, they follow a few common narratives:

"They were right behind me. I looked away for one minute, and when I turned back, they were gone."
"I let them travel somewhere unsupervised for the first time, and they never came home."
"They were taken from me when I was just a few feet away, and I didn't even notice. I couldn't help them or protect them and I was right there."

Fortunately almost all parents will never have to worry about these situations actually happening. Most will tell you that you're paranoid for even imagining it, because the odds of something happening are so low that it's unbelievable. But each of these nightmares DID happen:


Katrice Lee - The stereotypical "parent's worst fear" becomes real. In Germany, a British girl is taken shopping by her mother and aunt. She's left at the checkout with her aunt so that her mother can run back to grab an item she'd forgotten. When the mother returns, she realizes that her daughter is missing -- she'd walked off, and the aunt had assumed she was following her mother. The store is searched, but she's never seen again, and no trace of her has ever been found. An arrest was made in 2019 but produced no results. Even sadder, she was kidnapped on her 2nd birthday, and was at the store so her mother could buy items for her birthday party later that day.

The Beaumont Children - One of the cases responsible for ending Australia's "age of innocence." During a time when nobody would think twice about letting kids go off unsupervised, three children under 10 take a short trip to the nearby beach and fail to return home. They are witnessed several times, including in the company of unidentified man, but vanish without a trace. Multiple leads (including ties to the social elite) and a gargantuan monetary reward fail to provide a conclusion. Both parents have passed away within the last few years, both in their 90s, without resolution for what happened to their children.

Michael Dunahee - Most Kiwis probably attended an elementary school where a big soccer/football field is flanked by a playscape or playground. In Victoria, Canada, a 4-year-old boy is permitted to walk to such a playground while his mother attends sports practice. The playground was within eyesight and with no visual obstructions. His father, who had been on the sidelines spectating, walked over to check on him, a mere ten minutes after Michael left to play; but by then, he had already disappeared, and has never been seen again. Despite thousands of tips, no viable or credible leads were ever developed and no progress has ever been made with the case.

 

[AnsemSoD1]

The whole Finders thing was fucking spooky.