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?

[chalkyresidue]

Is she still missing? Was he ever charged?

He appears to have gotten away with it unless someone stumbles across the bones one day.

It's fucking insane that an idiot like JFG actually managed to get away with murder.

It’s really quite something. I personally suspect he’ll eventually get pinched for doing something else that’s unignorable, like the Lake Tahoe bomber whose wife also “disappeared.”

 

[BelUwUga]

He was kind of sneaking into the cave but the shop owners were tolerating it. The cave diving community calls in the cavalry and searches this cave extensively, they find nothing, not even scuffs on the walls. World’s best cave divers essentially state that they don’t think he’s in there. (Except for Jill Heinerth, who says years later that it’s *possible* he’s in there but still isn’t conclusive.) Police tested the water for quite a while and didn’t find traces of decomposition, which would have occurred at the temperatures in the cave.

A few things from this article which doesn't archive well: There's a gate to that section of the cave. Eduardo Taran, who worked there, opened the gate for Ben as he had been jimmying the gate. It's hard to know why they didn't simply ban him from diving there but it seems like an ill-advised decision to minimize possible harm from a damaged gate requiring repairs or Ben getting stuck/damaging his equipment. For whatever it's worth Taran later passed a polygraph.

Lowell, the owner, did have pending charges at the time. These had not been settled. I personally don't see how someone who clumsily commits one crime like that suddenly gets the expertise to get away with murder. A lot of effort was put into the search and investigations and these charges pretty much guarantee Lowell would have gotten an extreme level of scrutiny.

One thing I think you're underestimating is the complexity of Florida cave systems. Vortex Springs is limestone which is incredibly soft. You're not going to get transfers from gear that will make clear scuff marks. Any diver is also going to avoid contact as it can silt out the cave and destroy visibility. The nature of these systems makes it practically impossible to search them entirely. Attempts to comprehensively search are more likely to kill additional people than find Ben. If you check out Cave Atlas (Archive) you can see that mapping is incomplete and based on reports conditions within the cave are variable. Just because the spring is the primary place water exits does not mean it is the only path water can go.

It isn't Vortex Springs but I think Water's Journey is an interesting documentary. A diver has someone track him along the surface and you can get a good idea of just how complex these caves are. Part one (A) Part two (A) Part three (A)

 

[Sam Losco]

One I always think about is the Kenny Vietch one. Something about the M Cave and that it's likely he just committed suicide in the desert is something.

Yeah if I remember correctly, anytime he went out there he would take his camera, but this time he left it at home and I believe left his phone in his car? Suicide in the desert is most likely especially in one of those unstable old mine shafts.

 

[Clyde Cash's Left Teste]

Yeah if I remember correctly, anytime he went out there he would take his camera, but this time he left it at home and I believe left his phone in his car? Suicide in the desert is most likely especially in one of those unstable old mine shafts.

I profess that a part of me wonders if he was murdered at home because I don't think there is any direct proof that he was out there when he went missing.

Suicide just makes more sense

 

[Spergerella Junior]

It’s really quite something. I personally suspect he’ll eventually get pinched for doing something else that’s unignorable, like the Lake Tahoe bomber whose wife also “disappeared.”

I am not super familiar. Does she have family to look for her or just autistic kiwis? Unfortunately if she has no one else pressuring police on her behalf, I wouldn’t expect much to happen.

 

[whiterock]

If you check out Cave Atlas (Archive) you can see that mapping is incomplete and based on reports conditions within the cave are variable

One thing that makes me inclined towards Ben being in the cave is anecdotal reports that he had marked passages that didn’t appear on other maps. Then again, a lot of divers describe Vortex as particularly straightforward as caves go, hard to get lost in but easy to get stuck in. My view of this swings back and forth every time I think about it and as I’m typing I’m now on the side of Ben being in the cave.

Decomposition could have been confined to a high passage with inflow and gotten mixed in with silt, the searchers were not exactly probing for tiny gaps, if Ben took off his tanks to squeeze through it’s unlikely the searchers would do the same in zero visibility… etc. Edd Sorenson’s statement of “he’s not in there” seems more about the fourth/fifth restriction than about the whole cave, when taken in context.

What prevents me from completely giving over to the most reasonable theory is the dive shop owner. He didn’t try to kill the former employee, he was trying to get money from him- he was clearly capable of violence, flying off the handle, etc. I do see a possibility that Ben got out of that cave, got confronted by the shop owner, and things went south- weigh him down with dive weights and throw him in another body of water, a swamp, anywhere.

It’s probably true that he’s in the cave. Somebody will probably find his body on the ceiling of a tiny passage and we’ll have an answer. Maybe all the searching piled silt and sand over an entrance. It’s freaky either way, freakier if he’s in there- people dive it still and to think he’s in there with them creeps you out.

 

[downloads]

Someone compiled a lot of information about Ben on Reddit. I don't think she had any special knowledge or anything, but she does appear to have crippling autism, just like us, and seems to have spent hours researching it. It's an enjoyable read, with lots of information.

Part 1, an introduction, and information about the start of the expert divers' search.

Part 2, timeline, goes into the different theories about what happened, search continues.

Part 3, talks about Bens history of caving, more information about the theories, cadaver dogs, search continues. Information about what a dummy Ben was with regards to diving in general (falsified certificates, the fact that he was only certified to open water dive up to 100 feet)

Part 4A, an exhaustive amount of information about cave diving equipment

Part 4B information about the found scuba tanks

And here's a map of the cave system made around the time of the search.

 

[Spergerella Junior]

Have we Zodiac killer or LISK sperged yet?

@downloads Just looking at that map gives me anxiety. Caving of any kind that includes tight spaces is terrifying to me. The Descent was a horror movie even in without the monsters.

 

[Turquoise]

Have we Zodiac killer or LISK sperged yet?

Copy and pasted from another thread:

Ted Kaczynski as the Zodiac killer

The timeline:

- In 1966 Ted went to see a psychiatrist about the possibility of trooning out but lost his nerve at the last moment. Feeling ashamed at what his sexual urges had almost led him to do, he would record in his diary that he had risen from the ashes like a pheonix and pondered if he really could start to kill the people he wanted to kill. His diary entries would also reveal a hatred for couples in love and the torture he felt from "acute sexual starvation".

- There are several murders which occurred in the weeks after Ted wrote about this in his diary for which we might consider him a suspect (admittedly with not too much evidence) but we'll focus on the Zodiac killings here. Anyway, young Ted heads off to work at Berkeley College in 1967 full of frustration and murderous desire.

- In late June, 1968, the Robison Family are murdered in a cabin in Michigan. After the murder, the police receive a letter from the alleged killer with a cipher to be a solved. He asks to be called Zodius. Was Zodiac in the mid-west before he started killing in California? Perhaps Zodiac wasn't the killer of the Robison family but first conceived the idea of messing with the police at this time? (Ted was from Illinois)

- October 1968. The new academic semester is one month underway and the first canonical Zodiac murder takes place. However, the first letter from Mr Z himself will not be received by police until August 1969.

- Ted leaves his job at Berkeley college in the summer of 1969. The canonical Zodiac killings end in December 1969. (I can't find a date for when Ted actually left California for good but I believe he was there until December at least).


Some of the circumstantial evidence / coincidences (the parts I can remember)

- First, let us remember that Ted the unambomber was obsessed with codes, riddles and cat and mouse games.

- Ted signed off all his letters from prison with a Z under his name (ostensibly a double underline).

- The Zodiac's symbol was a circle with a cross through it. Ted signed his high school yearbook with a cross in a circle (although different to the Zodiac symbol). The unabomber used as his symbol the Anglo-Saxon rune for 'Z' placed inside a circle. Ted also studied the boundary functions of circles for his PhD. His life was lines in circles.

- Both men showed an interest in/knowledge of Norse runes.

- All the letters that comprise "This is the Zodiac" are found in Theodore Kaczynki's name.

- Ted and Z are an excellent handwriting match, although both liked to change their style from time to time.

- The Zodiac referenced radians (a section of the arc of a circle to be measured).

- They both seemingly had a taste for the opera. Zodiac referenced Gilbert and Sullivan. Ted was known to be a Wagner fan.

- In both Ted and Z's ciphers we find the same trick of deliberately misspelling words by placing an e at the end. (E being the most common letter helps add to the confusion). Oh yeah, and both men are knowledgeable about codes and ciphers.

- There is good reason to believe that both Ted and Z sought to hide their power level in their correspondence with police by misspelling words and affecting a blue collar communication style despite showing obvious signs of high intelligence elsewhere. In Ted's case, he was wise to do this. As soon as he released his academic standard manifesto, he was recognized instantly.

- In Ted's cabin they found a dark homemade hood, very similar to the one Zodiac was said to have worn for one of his murders.

- The victims of the Lake Berryessa attack learned from Z that he had escaped from prison up Montana somewhere. Guess who had been scoping out land in Montana. Could it have been on his mind?

- Both the unabomber and Zodiac killer exhibit an obsession with wood and nature related language when choosing victims and places.

- People mistakenly think that the unabomber's attacks were a practical matter but that's not quite the case. Ted noted in his diary how he got off on killing people. He loved it.

Main objections to the theory

- "Z was described by witnesses as bulky." True, but Ted Kaczynski is known to have taken pleasure in the art of disguise. In his cabin the FBI found a hood (very similar to the description of the one Z wore at Lake Berryessa), and some size 7 soles attached to his size 10 shoes. Ted also wrote in his diary about how he would put wax in his gums to plumpen the appearance of his face. Would it have been beyond the mad bastard to make a few amendments to his clothes?

- "It's not Ted's MO. He was a distance killer." Ted is known to have committed arson, industrial sabotage, burglary, assault with a deadly weapon (someone shot and injured) and tompeepery. He was criminally diverse and expressed a desire to kill 10 years before his first known unabomber crime. Furthermore, Zodiac teased police by suggesting he had been using, or perhaps would use, different methods to kill and specifically threatened to upgrade to bomb-making.

- "Why not just admit to the Zodiac crimes?" The Zodiac is widely regarded to be an incel loser who shot and stabbed kids in the back. The unabomber by contrast became a sort of antihero to many. Ted wrote in his diary that he had committed other crimes before but stated that common knowledge of them would be bad for public relations.

- "What about Arthur Leigh Allen?" He was a fat sack of shit who liked the attention he got from being a Zodiac suspect and went out of his way to attract more suspicion.


I'll add this too. I've read all of Ted's publicly available writing. I think he had a brilliant mind and made excellent logical critiques of modernity and the industrial/tech system. I'd really rather he wasn't a maniacal sexually frustrated transvestite serial killer... but I think he most likely was.

 

[Spergerella Junior]

@Turquoise I’d love to see the hood they found at Uncle Ted’s cabin.

Edited: found it. http://www.richardbarnes.net/unabomber-1

That’s upsetting to look upon.

 

[Turquoise]

Ted's terrifying hood vs Zodiac's hood as per surviving witness' description.

 

[FedPostalService]

Ted's terrifying hood vs Zodiac's hood as per surviving witness' description.

I refuse to believe that a soul as pure as Uncle Ted could be the Zodiac Killer.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

There's a Netflix documentary about Amy Bradley. I knew about her case because it was famously covered on Unsolved Mysteries. They theorized she could have been sold into slavery because of these pictures of her dressed up looking zonked out. Didn't know she was a lesbian. They certainly spared no expense making her look like a dyke in the reenactment, granted it aired almost 25 years ago.

This also reminds me of not only the Rebecca Coriam case but also there was that case where Olivia Newton John's boyfriend had evidently gone overboard or something and resurfaced in like....Mexico or something and declined all interviews or whatever it was....

 

[Turquoise]

I refuse to believe that a soul as pure as Uncle Ted could be the Zodiac Killer.

Understandable. He was one of the postal service's best customers.

 

[chaosmaid_99]

There's a Netflix documentary about Amy Bradley. I knew about her case because it was famously covered on Unsolved Mysteries. They theorized she could have been sold into slavery because of these pictures of her dressed up looking zonked out. Didn't know she was a lesbian. They certainly spared no expense making her look like a dyke in the reenactment, granted it aired almost 25 years ago.

Funnily enough, I watched some of that yesterday. I haven’t finished it yet, but I think the most likely answer is that she fell overboard. I know there were all those sightings, but were they ever proven to be her? We know that people love to get attention any way they can. Her brother said she was feeling sick, she’d been drinking… what if she leaned over the rail to be sick and toppled in? That’s what I think, anyway.

 

[Twix Eatr]

When he was arrested I literally jumped around and yelled like a tard, but it felt like a victory for women especially, even though he did victimize men too. The length of time he operated and terrorizing victims years later with phone calls…those crimes are why I hate sliding glass doors.

When I read that he was captured, I screamed out, "OH MY FUCKING GOD!" while my girl at the time was driving. She must've thought someone had died or something, haha. I reassured her everything was fine, then calmed down enough after a minute to explain what was up. She got into the case after and understood how insane it was to finally catch that POS. She totally understood why I reacted that way as someone who'd also been reading up on him for a bit. Thank Christ Paul Holes preserved the DNA samples they were going to throw out!

 

[glass_houses]

I'm not a Ramsey defender, so if you can point me towards anything that would dispute this I would be interested in reading it.

I suggest that you watch the Lore Lodge's series on the case. I was on the side of "protecting their remaining child" but the big "Ah ha!" moment for me was the comparison between the ransom note and the notes Ramesy snr made on his Bible.

 

[Contra Pozz]

- They both seemingly had a taste for the opera. Zodiac referenced Gilbert and Sullivan. Ted was known to be a Wagner fan.

To me this proves these are different people. It's like one guy likes U2 and the other is a fan of Morbid Angel, so Temu Sherlock concludes they both like rock music.

 

[glass_houses]

To me this proves these are different people. It's like one guy likes U2 and the other is a fan of Morbid Angel, so Temu Sherlock concludes they both like rock music.

Yes, that's bothering me, too. It's certainly possible to enjoy a wide range of music, but the type of hardcore purist who listens to the full Ring Cycle iisn't someone you'd expect to hum along toWith Cat-like Tread.

 

[Turquoise]

To me this proves these are different people. It's like one guy likes U2 and the other is a fan of Morbid Angel, so Temu Sherlock concludes they both like rock music.

The Mikado was quite mainstream at the time to be fair. I think Groucho Marx had done it a few years earlier. Maybe Z liked it; maybe he was trying to throw them off with some random nonsense.

In any case, runes, radians and ciphers are a bit more niche.