In the United States and other Western nations, children are often taught about the Salem witch trials that saw 19 men and women executed by hanging for practicing witchcraft. These trials fell out of favor as society developed, but that’s not the case in other parts of the world.

Across much of sub-Saharan Africa and other places, the hunting and purging of witches and practitioners of the dark arts continues. Not only is it a pervasive problem, but the scale of these operations has only worsened with thousands of people falling victim to accusations of sorcery.

Here are 10 examples of modern witch hunts that you won’t believe happened so recently.

SEE ALSO: 10 Infamous Witch-Hunters From History

10 Ghana

Much like people in 17th-century Salem, Massachusetts, modern-day Ghanaians sometimes settle disputes by simply accusing someone of practicing witchcraft. An accusation can be all that is needed to remove a potential rival from a situation, and it happens far more often in Ghana than seems logical.

As witchcraft is such a perceived threat in the country, the nation has established eight sanctuaries for the victims/prisoners of witch hunts. Many of these sanctuaries are hundreds of years old; they’re also commonly known as witch camps.

In 2014, it was reported that over 1,100 people languished in these makeshift prisons/sanctuaries across Ghana. Hunts vary throughout the north and south of the country. But they often are instigated by supposed “penis-theft” hysteria, resulting in the accusation and rounding up of purported witches. Usually, these people are killed, though some make their way to the sanctuaries to live out their lives as outcasts.^[1]

9 The Gambia

Following an order by President Yahya Jammeh in March 2009, a group of government “witch hunters” went out into the nation of The Gambia and rounded up approximately 1,000 villagers. They were taken to secret government detention centers where they were forced to drink an unidentified hallucinogenic substance.

According to Amnesty International, “a lot of these people who were forced to drink these poisonous herbs developed instant diarrhea and vomiting while they lay helpless.” They were then beaten and forced to confess to being practitioners of witchcraft.

Those captured were rounded up over a five-day period and consisted of young men and women as well as the elderly. Fortunately, of the 1,000 captured and tortured, only two succumbed to the violence, but the violation of human rights is a serious problem throughout the country.

The incident was reported through Amnesty International, but this wasn’t the first time that Jammeh said or did something controversial. In 2007, he claimed to have found an herbal cure for HIV and ordered the execution of any homosexuals found in his country.^[2]

8 Kenya

The people of Kenya are no stranger to witch hunts, but they seem to come and go in spurts. The history of Kenyan witch hunts dates back centuries, but random acts of intense violence occur somewhat randomly.

In May 2008, it was reported that a mob rounded up and burned to death as many as 11 people accused of practicing witchcraft in the western region of Kisii. In total, eight women and three men between 80 to 96 years old were dragged from their houses into the street and individually burned.

The mob then burned down each of the victims’ houses with everything they owned still inside. That particular hunt began after someone found an exercise book at a local school containing the minutes of a so-called “witches’ meeting.” It had an accompanying list of people who were to be bewitched in the near future.^[3]

All of the victims’ families were forced into hiding. This attack was by no means an isolated incident. Kenyans have long suffered under the threat of witch hunts with no indication that it will end anytime soon.

7 India

You might not think India would fall on a list like this one, but certain regions of the country remain deeply enshrouded in a fear of mysticism. From 2001 to 2006, approximately 300 people were rounded up and killed in the northeast state of Assam.

The majority of those rounded up were women, which resulted in an increase in the number of homeless children in the region. The remaining children are often a major issue when it comes to the aftermath of a modern-day witch hunt, but the problem seems to be exacerbated in India.^[4]

Further killings took place throughout the country in various regions, usually resulting in as many as 5 to 35 deaths in each case. A report from 2010 estimated that 150 to 200 women are hunted down and killed each year throughout India. The estimate included accounts between 1995 and 2009. This puts the total number of women slaughtered in India due to a perceived practice of witchcraft during that period at over 2,500.

6 Nepal

A strong belief in witchcraft is common throughout Nepal, which is why hunting people suspected of practicing witchcraft isn’t as rare as it probably should be. The majority of people targeted in these hunts are low-caste women who are rounded up, beaten, tortured, humiliated in a public forum, and often murdered.

When these hunts occur, the families of the victims are often accused and dealt with in much the same way. In one instance in 2010, a woman was captured, beaten, and tortured for two days while she was forced to ingest human excrement until she “confessed” to being a witch.

She was targeted by a mob of around 35 people who showed up at her home and took her away. This kind of practice happens almost regularly to low-caste women throughout the country. But unlike other examples, the victim is often released after she confesses.^[5]

Murders do occur. But in many cases, the victim is released after being tortured for an extended period of time. That isn’t to say that the practice isn’t brutal and needs to be stopped, but the death toll in Nepal is significantly lower than some of the other examples on this list.

5 Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia may be one of the richest nations on the planet, but its society still lives in fear of sorcery. The majority of Muslims believe in the practice of sorcery and witchcraft, which may be why the country defines its practice as a legitimate criminal offense.

Not only can someone accuse another person of practicing witchcraft in Saudi Arabia, they can then be tried by the government for committing said crime. If the person is found guilty, the punishment is death.

Reporting on the total number of these cases doesn’t get outside the country often. But several high-profile cases resulted in imprisonment and death at the hands of the Saudi government, which was accused by Human Rights Watch in 2009 of “sanctioning a literal witch hunt by the religious police.”

Numerous cases indicate that the punishment is beheading. In fact, that sentence was carried out as recently as June 19, 2012, on Muree bin Ali bin Issa al-Asiri, a man accused of practicing witchcraft and sorcery in the Najran province of southern Saudi Arabia.^[6]

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Bizarre Witch Burials

4 Indonesia

For 31 years, the people of Indonesia suffered under the rule of Suharto. But that all came to an end in 1998 when the militaristic dictator resigned.

On the surface, Suharto’s resignation was a positive move forward for the country. But his leaving office caused widespread unrest, a severe financial crisis, and for some reason, an intense witch hunt resulting in the deaths of some 400 people. These hunts consisted of a series of brutal killings throughout many parts of the island nation, though many were likely called witch hunts to cover up murders.

In September 2000, a mob in West Java rounded up a 70-year-old woman who was accused of casting spells that made local residents ill. She was decapitated, her eyes were gouged out, and her limbs were torn from her body and tossed into the street.^[7]

The anger and hatred toward purported witches in the country often led to the brutal death and dismemberment of anyone accused of witchcraft. This is why Indonesia’s post-Suharto witch purge is one of the more brutal examples on this list.

3 Papua New Guinea

Interestingly, Papua New Guinea allows a legal practice called “white” magic, which is used for faith healing and other benign practices. In the 1970s, the nation passed a law called the Sorcery Act, which imposed a two-year prison sentence on anyone found engaging in “black” magic. As the country outlawed the negative aspect of using magic, the nation saw a rise in violence and extrajudicial torture committed against alleged practitioners of “black” magic.

As recently as 2013, four women were accused of witchcraft because their familial home was made of wood. All four women were tortured, and one was beheaded. That incident occurred not because the women were practicing magic, but because they were economically better off than their accusers.^[8]

Similar crimes have been committed throughout the country, typically against young women who are tortured and often beaten to death. Fortunately, the country repealed the Sorcery Act in 2013 and defined the killing of accused witches as murder.

2 Cameroon

Fortunately, not all witch hunts end in the brutal deaths of purported practitioners. When it came time for the mob to launch a witch hunt in the city of Buea, Cameroon, in January 2014, the unleashed fury only resulted in property damage.

Residents of the southern Cameroonian town rioted and destroyed the homes and vehicles of several people identified as witches. The rioters claimed that the victims were members of a cult responsible for some recent deaths in the region. Blogger and reporter Mathias Mouende Ngamo said, “16 homes and 10 shops were destroyed. There were also the shells of burned-out cars on the streets.”^[9]

In another incident in the 1970s, a child witchcraft scare spread throughout part of the country which resulted in the rounding up of several children believed to be witches. Fortunately, the children were not terribly harmed. After they were forced to confess, they were “rewarded” with large amounts of meat meant to induce a purifying vomit and were released to their families.

1 Tanzania

Of every example on this list, Tanzania is by far the worst. In the 21st century alone, it’s believed that an estimated 20,000 people have been rounded up and slaughtered for practicing witchcraft.

But these witch hunts aren’t strictly limited to the practice of the dark arts. In addition to denouncing people for witchcraft, Tanzania has targeted and slaughtered homosexuals or people accused of being homosexual.

Between January and June 2017, the Legal and Human Rights Center reported 479 deaths from so-called “mob justice” throughout the country. These deaths included mainly elderly women accused of witchcraft as well as government-sanctioned murders of homosexuals.^[10]

Many murders have been carried out under the direction of local governors, while others were the result of a mob frenzy. Regardless of their reasoning, Tanzania is the deadliest place to live for anyone accused of practicing witchcraft in the 21st century.

Are we alone in the universe? This is a question that has been asked for quite a long time. Many believe that there is other intelligent life in the universe and that these aliens have visited us, but this claim has proven to be one of the most controversial to present and defend.

Many individuals who have reported encounters with UFOs and extraterrestrial beings have claimed to have physical proof that otherworldly life is, in fact, real. Experts, however, claim that this evidence had been either doctored, falsified, or is nothing but a flat out lie. Here are ten UFO encounters that have occurred but were then quickly “swept under the rug.”

10 US Navy Pilots Encounter UFO Mid-Flight

In 2004, two United States Navy pilots, Commander David Fravor and Lieutenant Commander Jim Slaight, were both conducting a military training exercise off the coast of San Diego. During their training, the pilots received a message from an operator located on the nearby base informing them of the presence of a strange aircraft within their airspace. According to the operator, the military had been tracking this unidentified aircraft for weeks, and the UFO sometimes performed strategic movements, such as a sudden dive or even a hovering motion. Both pilots were then asked to investigate and attempt to obtain a visual of the unidentified aircraft.

After searching for quite a while, Slaight and Fravor spotted the aircraft. According to their reports, it was 12 meters (40 ft) long. Fravor stated that the UFO hovered about 15 meters (50 ft) above the ocean and appeared to disturb the water beneath it. Fravor attempted to move closer to the UFO, but while he was making his descent, the object rose from its hover to meet Fravor and then took off at an unimaginable speed! In his statement, Fravor told reporters, “I can tell you, I think it was not from this world!”^[1]

9 Two Commercial Airline Pilots Encounter A UFO Over Arizona

On February 24, 2018, a UFO was spotted above Arizona by two pilots who were in the middle of their flights when they encountered the aircraft. The pilot of a Learjet 36 spotted an aircraft flying over and above his plane. He then asked the controller on duty if any other plane had passed by him, and the controller said no, even going on to joke that the aircraft might have been a UFO. Little did they both know that the joke was about to become very real.

Shortly after speaking to the Learjet pilot, the controller contacted another pilot flying an American Airlines plane and asked the pilot to inform him if an aircraft passes over the airplane. A while later, the American Airlines pilot radioed in and reported that an unknown aircraft had just flown past his plane at a great speed. He also reported that the UFO had lights that illuminated the entire object. Although both pilots had seen balloons at that altitude, the Learjet pilot stated, “The only thing different about this was that it was too bright.”

There’s an old saying that states that you should be careful what you wish for. In the case of these pilots and the controller, you should also be careful what you joke about, because your joke just might come flying over you at high speed!^[2]

8 UFO Hovers Above East Mountain

In case you were wondering, this UFO sighting was not reported by pilots.

During the Cold War, the US Air Force had a radar base on the foot of Vermont’s East Mountain. Over 175 men were stationed at this base and lived about 1.6 kilometers (1 mi) down from the mountain. In 1961, a strange object suddenly appeared in the sky above East Mountain. According to the military reports, the UFO held its position in the sky for 18 minutes.^[3]

7 The Hill Family Abduction

This encounter occurred in 1961, the same year as the UFO sighting above East Mountain in Vermont. It was also one of the earliest publicized reports of abduction by beings from another planet. Betty and Barney Hill claim to have been abducted by extraterrestrial beings on the night of September 19 during their journey home to New Hampshire. While on the road, they saw a light flash in the sky. They initially thought that it was a shooting star but quickly changed their minds when they saw the light begin to change direction. They then decided to pull over in hopes of getting a better view of this unusual light. Using binoculars, they discovered that the light was actually an unusual ship flashing lights of all colors.

After seeing this, the couple drove off and continued to head home. As they traveled, the couple noticed that the aircraft was descending closer to their vehicle. They estimated that the aircraft was about 12 meters (40 ft) long. The UFO dropped so close to their car that they stopped. This time, Barney was able to see humanlike or humanoid figures in black uniforms through the windows of the ship. Startled, the couple took off again, this time at much faster pace! They then began to hear noises emanating from the UFO while experiencing a tingling sensation throughout their bodies. The couple then blacked out and awoke nearly 56 kilometers (35 mi) away from where they originally were.^[4]

After enduring this frightening experience, both Barney and Betty Hill later gave statements (under hypnosis) that they were taken onto the UFO and were examined by the extraterrestrial beings that occupied it. Today, there is sign near the area where the Hills were abducted, describing the event that reportedly took place that night in 1961.

6 Multiple Sightings In Exeter, New Hampshire

Another monumental New England UFO encounter happened on September 3, 1965, in Exeter, New Hampshire. According to author John G. Fuller, a policeman on patrol just after midnight approached a woman who was parked beside the road. The woman was attempting to catch her breath as she told the officer that a UFO had been chasing her down the road.

After a few hours had passed, a young man came to the police station and claimed that he saw a line of five bright lights over a house while he was hitchhiking on a nearby highway. He also stated that the lights continued to appear and reappear behind a line of trees while moving over a field. The young man then led several police officers to the exact location where he saw the lights. Sure enough, the officers witnessed everything that the young man had told them at the station earlier.

As weeks passed, officers continued to get reports of UFO sightings in the city of Exeter, receiving a total of 60 in all!^[5]

5 The Flying Saucer In Rhode Island

On June 10, 1967, Harold Trudel was able to capture some of the most groundbreaking photos of a UFO during that time. Trudel claimed to have seen UFOs many times before but decided that June 10 would be the day that he would obtain documentation of what he had seen. Around midday, Trudel waited patiently on West Wrentham Road near the city of East Woonsocket, Rhode Island.

According to Trudel, after he’d sat for a few minutes, a UFO descended from the clouds above and hovered over a nearby power line. It was then that Trudel was able to capture his photos of the craft. His images show an unusual object floating in the sky. The UFO remained in its hovering state, allowing Trudel to capture seven separate pictures of it.^[6] (They had slow cameras back then.)

4 Strange Lights In Newtown, Connecticut

On May 26, 1987, a man named Randy Etting was taking an evening stroll in his hometown of Newtown, Connecticut. After walking for a while, he noticed that there were orange and red lights present in the sky which were moving in a western direction! Being a commercial airline pilot (aliens must really love pilots), Etting often observed the sky and knew that these lights were unlike anything that he had ever seen. He then took out his binoculars and ushered his neighbors to come outside and see what he was looking at. In a later statement, Etting said that even cars on the highway pulled over to watch as the lights passed over Interstate 84. Police reports confirm Etting’s statement, showing that between 9:30 and 10:15 PM, over 200 people reported seeing a UFO in the area.^[7]

Etting was also able to capture a picture of the lights as they continued to move. His image depicts a multicolored semicircle composed of various colors. Witnesses also claimed that their vehicles completely lost power while the UFO was above them! Minutes later, calls came in from the nearby town of New Milford, detailing reports similar to those that came in from Newtown. After a while, the lights simply vanished, and it was never confirmed whether or not they came from a man-made aircraft or if they were truly not of this world. What do you think?

3 Square Aircraft Spotted In North Carolina

This particular sighting occurred on August 18, 2018. Javion Hill was driving on US 74 just southwest of Charlotte, North Carolina. While on the phone with his wife, Hill spotted unusual lights in the nearby clouds; they were shaped in the form of a square. Hill took several pictures of the lights while driving and even took the next exit in hopes of capturing a video.

When he attempted to do so, the lights suddenly vanished, and Hill recalls that a huge storm followed immediately afterward. Hill, who, before seeing the lights, did not believe in UFOs, said that he could barely sleep that night. “I was worried for my safety,” he said. “I did not believe in UFOs until that moment.”^[8]

2 UFO In Jerusalem?

In 2011, two videos surfaced of a strange object descending and hovering over the Dome of the Rock in the city of Jerusalem. The videos sparked a huge Internet debate over their credibility. (Note that many now consider the videos to be fake.) In one of the videos, a round object can be seen floating above the Islamic shrine. The object remains for a while. Then a bright light suddenly emanates from the ship, and it ascends into the sky rapidly.^[9]

The second video was taken at a distance from a nearby mountain, but the distance did not take away from what many people saw that morning. The video again showed the object hover, flash a bright light, and then rise at a rapid pace. Although the individuals who filmed the encounter spoke a different language, the sound of awe and mystery was easy to interpret as they stood and observed the object.

1 Chicago Airline Employees Spot a UFO Above the Tarmac

In November 2006, a commercial airliner was preparing to take flight from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport to North Carolina. While working on the tarmac, a United Airlines employee noticed that there was a gray craft hovering over gate C17. A few other United employees along with a couple of witnesses outside the airport spotted the exact same aircraft.

According to reports, witnesses say that the unidentified aircraft hovered over the gate for a few minutes before shooting upward into the sky. The witnesses also reported that the aircraft left a hole in the clouds big enough for them to see the blue of the sky above. After receiving the reports, the FAA called the encounter a “weather phenomenon” and declined to investigate.^[10] The unidentified craft was not seen on radar.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson tells the story of several people in one of the most haunted houses in the country. The novel has recently been reworked as a hit series on Netflix; reports of viewers passing out with fear from watching the show have circulated.

SEE ALSO: 10 Truly Creepy Demonic Hauntings

The horror Jackson’s characters witnessed is a work of fiction. However, the following families all experienced something that felt very much real to them. These families were driven from their own homes, leaving behind a legacy of pure fear.

10 The Smurl Family

When Janet and Jack Smurl first moved into their family home on Chase Street in West Pittson, Pennsylvania, they knew it was a fixer-upper. The property needed repainting and refixing, but what they didn’t know was that the renovations would be the least of their problems.

Over a period of 13 years, they were tormented by the ghosts that haunted the place. Janet also believed she was molested in her sleep by a demon, and Jack said he was sexually attacked by an unknown force as he watched a baseball game on TV. They also witnessed the family dog being thrown violently against the wall.

Demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren identified four ghosts at the property—a harmless old lady, a violent young girl, a man who had died in the home, and a demon who controlled the other three spirits. In 1987, the Smurl family had had enough of the attacks, and they fled their home with no intention to return.^[1]

9 The Perron Family

The real-life haunting of the Perron family was so terrifying it inspired the 2013 horror film The Conjuring. In 1970, Carolyn and Roger Perron, along with their five young children, moved into a farmhouse in Rhode Island known as the Old Arnold Estate, built in 1736. The previous occupant issued them a cold warning: “For the sake of your family, leave the lights on at night!”

The disturbances began almost immediately. Carolyn was awoken in the middle of the night by the ghost of an old, gray lady named Bathsheba, whose head hung loosely. The apparition warned the family to leave. The children also bonded with the spirit of a little boy they affectionately named “Manny,” who watched them through the windows as they played outside. Then there were the malevolent spirits that tossed them out of bed, pulled at their legs, and filled the house with the smell of rotting flesh many mornings at 5:15 AM.

To this day, the Perron family struggle to talk about what happened. Andrea Perron, now a grown woman, said, “Let’s just say there was a very bad male spirit in the home—with five little girls.”^[2]

8 The Enfield Poltergeist

Between 1977 and 1979, there was one ghost story that gripped the world—the Enfield Poltergeist. At 284 Green Street in Enfield, England, sat a suburban family home on a quiet street. Within this home, single mother Peggy Hodgson and her two young daughters were tormented by a violent poltergeist.

Sisters 13-year-old Margaret and 11-year-old Janet complained of menacing voices, loud banging, and chairs being overturned in the house. Janet would also become possessed and speak in a deep, demon-like voice belonging to 72-year-old Bill Wilkins, who had previously died at the house.

Press photographer Graham Morris, who was asked to report on the disturbances, recalled, “I thought it was an ordinary job until I walked into the house.” Morris managed to capture a famous photograph of young Janet purportedly levitating out of her bed as her face twists in horror.^[3]

7 The Lemp Family Curse

Built in 1868, the Lemp Mansion in Benton Park, St. Louis, Missouri, boasted a cave where the Lamp family brewed their own beer. In 1901, William J. Lemp was left devastated when his fourth son Frederick Lemp died of ill health. In 1904, William committed suicide by gunshot, and William J. “Billy” Lemp, Jr. took over the family business.

In 1920, Elsa Lemp Wright, the youngest Lemp child, shot herself following her divorce. As a result of Prohibition, the family brewery was sold at auction after hitting hard times, and Billy Jr. also shot himself in 1922. Years later, in 1949, Charles Lemp, the third son, shot himself in the head after killing the dog. The only surviving son, Edwin Lemp, died of natural causes, and his dying wish was for every family heirloom to be destroyed.

Not surprisingly, the Lemp Mansion, now a restaurant and inn, is said to be haunted.^[4] One legend is that there was another Lemp son who was born deformed and hidden away in the attic—his spirit is believed to haunt and torment the house.

6 The Snedeker Family

The Snedeker House inspired the book and horror film The Haunting in Connecticut due to its chilling legacy. In 1986, the Snedeker family—Allen and Carmen, their three sons and daughter, and two nieces—moved into the house on Meriden Avenue, Southington, Connecticut. While exploring their new home, Carmen found mortician’s tools in the basement, and she soon discovered that the property was once a funeral home.

It wasn’t long before their eldest son experienced visions of evil spirits, and both parents claimed to have been sexually attacked by demons. Demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren agreed that the Snedeker house was infested with demons. Since the family moved from the home, there have been no further reports of any paranormal activity; it is believed that the evil within was drawn to the family rather than the house itself.^[5]

5 The McPike Mansion

Alton in Madison County, Illinois, is considered one of the most haunted places in the United States, as many ghost stories plague this town. However, one building stands out among the rest—the McPike Mansion. Businessman Henry McPike built the 16-bedroom mansion on Alby Street for his family in 1869.

In the 1900s, the mansion was sold to Paul Laichinger, who rented the rooms to boarders. However, those who did stay here soon began to hear strange noises, including children talking and laughing together, although children weren’t on the grounds.

Following the death of Laichinger in 1945, the mansion sat vacant until 1994, when Sharyn and George Luedke purchased the property as a restoration project. Sharyn soon noticed that a ghost-like man would stare at her from the window as she was gardening. Other disturbances included orbs being caught on camera and heavy metal doors opening on their own. Ghost hunters have confirmed that the most paranormally active room in the house is the wine cellar.^[6]

4 The Sprague Mansion

In the mid-1800s, Lucy Chase Sprague lost her fortune and died penniless at the Sprague Mansion on Cranston Street in Cranston, Rhode Island. The property has stood with a dark cloud over it ever since. In 1967, Robert and Viola Lynch moved into the 28-bedrooom mansion that featured its very own creepy Doll Room.

In the late 1960s, night watchman Bob Lynch Jr. and a few of his friends had the blankets thrown off their beds. Using a makeshift Ouija board, they contacted a ghost that spelled out: “Tell my story!” Another entity that haunts the place is a ghost by the name of Amasa Sprague, whose body was discovered bludgeoned to death close to the house in 1843.

Since the Lynch family moved away, paranormal experts who have visited the mansion captured the dolls’ eyes in the Doll Room moving on camera. The wine cellar is also a place of much paranormal activity, including orbs and unexplained lights.^[7]

3 The Danny LaPlante Killings

In January 1987, teenagers Annie and Jessica Andrews heard loud knocking sounds coming from their bedroom walls. They also found blood-red writing on the walls: “I’m back. Find me if you can.” The girls had recently lost their mother and believed there was a spirit trying to make contact. When the girl’s father found a young boy standing in the house wearing a dress belonging to his deceased wife and holding a hatchet, he chased him from the house. Police later found a crawl space in the house and that the “ghost” was 17-year-old Daniel LaPlante.

Following a short sentence in a juvenile detention center, La Plante was released, and he turned his attention to a different family. On December 1, 1987, he assaulted and shot 33-year-old Priscilla Gustafson and then drowned her children, seven-year-old Abigail and five-year-old William, in their family home in Townsend, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. He was sentenced to life behind bars for his horrendous, deplorable actions.^[8]

2 The Lutz Family

On November 13, 1974, at 112 Ocean Drive, Amityville, Long Island, Ronald “Butch” DeFeo Jr. murdered his parents, two brothers, and two sisters with a .35-caliber rifle while they slept peacefully in their beds. Butch claimed he was tormented by voices that ordered him to kill his family.

A year later, George and Kathleen Lutz moved into the Amityville house with their three children after purchasing the five-bedroom property for a low price. George reportedly then began to awaken at 3:15 AM every day—around the time Butch was known to have massacred his family. They also saw a pig-like creature with red eyes staring from the windows of the house, and the young children would levitate from their beds.

Both George and Kathleen passed lie detector tests about what they experienced in the home, and eventually, they fled from the property. 112 Ocean Drive is still known as one of the most haunted houses in America.^[9]

1 The Winchester Mystery House

Located at 525 South Winchester Boulevard in San Jose, California, is the Winchester House, which was first built in 1884. Following the death of her husband, William Wirt Winchester, and with a $1,000-a-day inheritance at hand (the average daily wage at the time was $1.50), Sarah Winchester sought the help of a spiritualist to deal with her grief. Sarah had also lost her only daughter when she was just six weeks old.

The spiritualist warned Sarah that she was cursed and advised her to “build a home for [herself] and for the spirits.” The spirits in question were said to be those killed by Winchester rifles. Sarah sold her home in New Haven, Connecticut, and began work on the Winchester House. “If you continue building, you will live. Stop and you will die,” advised the spiritualist.

Every day for 38 years, Sarah continued building.^[10] The property ended up with 160 rooms, 47 fireplaces, trap doors, secret passages, and staircases that lead to nowhere. The labyrinth-like mansion attracts paranormal experts from all around the world.

Cheish Merryweather is a true crime fan and an oddities fanatic. Can either be found at house parties telling everyone Charles Manson was only 5’2″ or at home reading true crime magazines.
Twitter: @thecheish

Deep under the waves, the ocean is not just a dark place. The underwater landscapes hold ancient events, mysterious animal behavior, and vast gardens of glass and octopuses.

Each contributes new facts and riddles to this incredible aquatic world. However, the ocean also has a scary side—from wrecking the weather on land to blowing giant holes in the seafloor and countries.

10 The Loudest Fish

One can be forgiven for not associating fish with noise. More often than not, they are mute. One species, however, can be very vocal during reproduction. The Gulf corvina is a large, silver fish about the size of a snowboard.

During spring, when the tides and lunar phases are perfect, shoals migrate to the Colorado River Delta. The event is an unforgettable one and worth seeing. When corvinas gather, they pack together in a sheet that can span for miles.

In 2014, scientists followed the spawning shoal and used underwater equipment to record their sounds. The loudest noise captured during the study hit a deafening 150 decibels, which is a record among fish.

Additionally, the sound also rated among the loudest ever recorded underwater—and very capable of damaging the hearing of other creatures, including sea mammals. Researchers believe that male corvinas are responsible for the chorus. Similar to frogs and crickets, the boys produce a throaty croak to attract females.^[1]

9 Return Of The Blob

“The blob” is not as adorable as it sounds. This massive anomaly—a patch of hot water in the Northeast Pacific—affects the weather in extreme ways. The blob was blamed for the persistent California drought (2013–2015), Seattle’s hottest year (2015), and the freakish polar vortex intrusions of two winters (2013–2014 and 2014–2015).

In 2018, the return of the oceanic hot spot was caused by unusually warm weather in Alaska during the fall. Though the blob is famously crabby, it remains hard to predict the phenomenon’s moods.

When it made another appearance in 2016, the spot showed many signs of troubling times ahead but faded away before anything could go wrong. The latest manifestation leans toward weakening in the same way, but even the experts admit that nothing is certain when it comes to the blob.

Either way, Alaska has already suffered notable damage. The southeastern rain forest is in the grip of a persistent drought, and snowfall showed a record delay.^[2]

8 Rectangular Iceberg

In 2018, an unusual photo turned an iceberg into a social media star. A far cry from the usual mountain-shaped behemoths, this icy wonder was almost perfectly rectangular and flat.

As it turns out, this shape is not unknown to scientists. Called “tabular icebergs,” they form during calving (when pieces dislodge from a parent iceberg). The rectangles commonly occur after an ice shelf extends too far and then breaks off at the tip. This gives them a geometric shape.^[3]

A whopping 90 percent of the tabular iceberg remains hidden underwater. This unseen part is usually perfectly angular, too. In this case, the sheet came from the Larsen C ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula.

Even though these floating tabletops are known to science, this one was unusual. For once, it was almost short enough to be a square. The size of the object remains unknown. But judging from the image, it could be as long as 1.6 kilometers (1 mi).

7 Largest Octopus Nursery

Most octopuses live solitary lives. This made the discovery of about 100 nesting together near Costa Rica a sensational find. However, this nursery paled in comparison to another found by accident in 2018.

Off the coast of California, marine biologists steered a remotely operated vehicle at a depth of 3.2 kilometers (2 mi). The goal was to study an underwater volcano called the Davidson Seamount.

As the vehicle turned a corner, it happened across the world’s biggest deep-sea octopus garden. The species was Muusoctopus robustus, and over 1,000 huddled together. Nearly 99 percent were females guarding eggs between the volcano’s cracks.^[4]

Their unprecedented conglomeration is not the only unanswered question about the Davidson group. Researchers do not know why the water appears to shimmer around the octopuses.

One theory suggests that heat is behind the glitter, which could explain why the creatures gathered at Davidson to successfully incubate their eggs. Since the volcano is extinct, the heat could be coming from an unknown source.

6 Canyon That Removes CO₂

The Porcupine Bank Canyon is an underwater trench marking the border of Ireland’s continental shelf. In 2018, an effort was made to map the sheer cliffs and contours. Near the canyon’s edge, the research drone discovered something amazing: The underwater trench removed carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere using two species and death.

Porcupine Bank came fringed with corals snacking on dead plankton. While dwelling near the surface, living plankton grow by packing their bodies with CO₂ from the atmosphere. When they die, they sink down into the ocean, taking the CO₂ with them.

In turn, the corals eat the plankton and use that carbon to build their own structures. When the coral perishes, it tumbles deeper into the canyon. Researchers found a massive amount of dead coral inside the canyon, all with CO₂ locked up inside them.^[5]

Sadly, this process cannot stop climate change. But at least, it showed that nature has ways to remove some of the greenhouse gas from the air.

5 Garden Of Glass

When the deepest volcano was found in 2015, it was not just a cone-shaped mountain lower than the rest. It was anything but plain—and very unexpected. A deep-sea submersible was investigating the Mariana Trough in the Pacific Ocean when it reached a depth of 4,500 meters (14,700 ft). There, it encountered an environment straight out of a Gothic novel.

An underwater volcano had released intertwined and blackened lava tendrils, which scientists likened to “a nightmarish garden of glass.” Inside a 4.5-kilometer-deep (3 mi) trench, cold water had rapidly cooled the lava into a glassy substance. The frozen twists and turns covered an area 7.3 kilometers (4.5 mi) long.

The visuals are heart-stopping, but something else turned the discovery into a scientific gem. The deepest volcanic eruption on Earth was also fresh. Only a few months old, the undamaged site can advance knowledge about volcanoes on land, how eruptions affect ocean chemistry, and when different species colonize a lava field.^[6]

4 White Shark Cafe

Once a year, a group of sharks confused biologists. Known as the northeastern Pacific great whites, they normally cruise California’s coast, a region rich with prey.

In December, the sharks journey into the Pacific and stop about halfway to Hawaii. Satellite studies suggested that the place, nicknamed “White Shark Cafe,” was a marine desert without prey. Despite this, the predators gathered in droves and stayed for winter and spring.

In 2018, scientists wanted to know how the sharks survived and why they found the location so attractive. They followed the whites and also tagged a few. When the research boat arrived at the cafe, they found the place teeming with fish, squid, phytoplankton, and jellyfish.^[7]

These critters took daily trips up and down from the depths. The tagged sharks showed that the predators did the same thing. During the day, they hunted up to 450 meters (1,500 ft) down. At night, they kept to shallow dives, about 200 meters (650 ft).

An unusual gender mystery turned up. During April, the males dramatically stepped up their activity to around 140 dives a day. Researchers do not understand why this behavior is displayed by only one gender.

3 Methane Craters

Recently, scientists visited craters lining the seafloor between the archipelago of Svalbard and Norway. First discovered in the 1990s, they were huge but few. Upon arrival, the team was shocked to find hundreds of previously unrecorded holes.

In a single area near one of Svalbard’s islands, the floor was pockmarked with more than 100. Astoundingly, they had been blown from solid bedrock. The sheer force created craters that measured up to 1,000 meters (3,280 ft) in diameter. The culprit was methane gas from the last ice age.

In the past, enormous ice layers kept the trapped methane in place. Once these melted, the gas exploded. The largest pockets blew 12,000 to 15,000 years ago, but some remain intact and could punch large holes south of Svalbard.^[8]

Satellite images showed that pingos, hills with ice cores, preceded most of the craters. Researchers suspect that the Norwegian pingos had frozen gas instead of normal ice and were possibly instrumental in an explosion. Incredibly, once scientists knew what to look for, they found 7,000 gas-filled pingos in thawing permafrost.

2 Lost Volcanic World

In 2018, scientists investigated something that would not raise many eyebrows—the link between the East Australian Current’s nutrient levels and how phytoplankton behaved. Part of this study included mapping the seafloor. A stunning discovery followed—a lost world dominated by dramatic volcanic peaks.

Some were sharp, while others resembled immense plateaus. Smaller cones made up the rest. Located near the east coast of Australia, the extinct volcanoes towered 3 kilometers (1.9 mi) high.

The depth of the valleys likely contributed to how this underwater wonderland avoided detection for so long. The highest parts of the mountains were still 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) below the surface.

Years of research are required to understand a large geographical area that is seen for the first time. However, researchers are positive about one exciting suspicion—this was the spot that helped Australia and Antarctica to separate 30 million years ago.^[9]

The birth of the volcano chain was pivotal to crumble the Earth’s crust in preparation for continental division. The landscape also hosts a breathtaking ecosystem, including a huge pod of at least 60 pilot whales.

1 Brewing Eruption Underneath Japan

Researchers are well aware that an ancient, underwater volcano lurks underneath Japan. The Kikai Caldera is prone to super-eruptions and, in the past, experienced three devastating episodes. The last time was 7,000 years ago. The eruption was one of history’s biggest and destroyed a vast area of the Japanese archipelago.

In 2018, several expeditions using a wide array of equipment all came to the same conclusion. Underneath the Kikai Caldera was a massive lava dome. The giant bubble held over 32 cubic kilometers (8 mi³) of magma.

Analysis showed that the dome contained lava chemically different from the last eruption. This meant that the giant structure was not a leftover of the event that razed the Japanese archipelago but a completely new formation.

For thousands of years, the magma continued building up inside this new reservoir—something scientists view as a preparation for the next super-eruption. Earlier research indicated that the probability of a caldera catastrophe in the next 100 years was about 1 percent.

The discovery of the active dome was not so comforting. Should Kikai erupt, 110 million people would be in danger.^[10]

With thoughts of sugarplums dancing in your head, you may not be worried about what goes bump in the night during these long winter months. However, Santa Claus and Jack Frost aren’t the only characters that come with the cold, dark winter.

Throughout history, several mythical creatures and monsters have scared generations of people who were getting into the Christmas spirit. Winter brings not only cheer and happiness but fright and terror to those who still believe in ancient myths of ice monsters and wicked snow creatures.

While most of us are getting ready for winter with holiday preparations and hand warmers, others are anxiously awaiting the arrival of a wild assortment of monsters. Here is a collection of evil winter creatures you definitely don’t want to run into this holiday season.

10 Yuki-onna

Just because she’s pretty doesn’t mean you should ask her in for a drink. Yuki-onna (“snow woman”) is a myth with apparent sightings documented as far back as the 14th century. The Yuki-onna is said to be an evil being taking the form of a beautiful woman.

With long, dark hair and skin so pale that it appears transparent, she is a beautiful woman at first sight. Many say that she does not even have feet as she glides around during harsh snowstorms and blizzards. She appears to travelers who are lost or stranded in bad weather and kills them with her frigid breath, leaving behind nothing but frost-coated corpses.

Some say that she is able to manifest as a woman holding a baby, enticing well-intentioned strangers to help her and her poor child out of the storm. As soon as a mortal touches her baby, that human being is frozen on the spot. While her beauty is enticing, it is known that she can be identified by her eyes, which strike fear into the heart of any mortal if he is unfortunate enough to gaze into them.^[1]

9 Chenoo

Chenoos also take a humanlike form, and yet they are much more frightening. Of course, this may be because they are human-eating giants. Maybe the most terrifying thing is that they were once mere humans, which essentially makes them really tall, overweight cannibals with a lack of proper hygiene.

Occasionally, an evil spirit will possess a human, turning him into a Chenoo. More often, however, a human is turned into a Chenoo as a result of such a heinous crime that it is believed one cannot remain human after it is committed.^[2]

This crime?

Cannibalism. Yes, almost every Chenoo was once just a man-eating human. Due to this crime, it is said that the heart turns to pure ice, triggering the change from human to monster.

Unlike most other evil creatures, though, a Chenoo can return to its human form. To do this, the heart must either be extracted or thrown up by the Chenoo itself. Then the icy heart must be destroyed by being completely melted. When the Chenoo has its heart replaced by a human heart, it turns back into a human.

The lesson here? Don’t eat other people!

8 Ijiraq

An Inuit shape-shifter, the Ijiraq preys on small children and those with naive hearts. No one knows what an Ijiraq looks like in true form as it is invisible when not shape-shifting into its decided form. As a result, they are very hard to spot.

They can appear as any sentient being they desire, making their tactic similar to guerrilla warfare. It is said that they live in a world between the living and dead. This world cannot be reached by mortals.

If a human were to be near their home, the human is suddenly confused and gets turned around, ensuring their evil stomping grounds are never discovered. However, these beasts can take children with them and then feast on the kids with their shape-shifting friends.

Ijiraqs lure children far away from their villages where these monsters will abandon, hide, or eat the children. If the child is spared as a meal, he still will never be able to find his way home, making his death drawn-out and cruel.^[3]

The only hope for surviving such an encounter is listening closely. When an Ijiraq arrives, a humanlike whistle is heard. Yet there is no source. If you hear this upon meeting someone, it is a good sign to run as it’s probably a shape-shifter looking for its next tasty meal.

7 Nuckelavee

This creature is the centaur from your worst nightmares. A crude depiction of a creature similar to a centaur yet much more sinister is what people typically believe that a nuckelavee looks like. They have two heads with one giant red eye that resembles flames.

Most disturbing, perhaps, is the fact that they have no skin and you can see their black blood coursing through their twisted veins. A demon that roams the snow-laden grounds of Scotland’s uppermost northern isles is confined during the summer months, which only makes it more eager to cause pain and suffering during the winter.

During the summer, the Sea Mither, or spirit of summer, is able to keep these demons at bay because they live underwater then and only emerge when the Sea Mither can no longer control them. It is said that the breath of the nuckelavee is toxic, and just one faint breath can kill even the strongest of men.^[4]

The nuckelavee has been blamed for past famines and droughts within the surrounding villages. The villagers used to say a prayer each time its name was uttered as they were terrified that the nuckelavee would torment them for speaking such taboo.

6 Mahaha

The Mahaha is another Inuit demon that terrorizes the Canadian Arctic. They are extremely gaunt yet muscular, with strength unimaginable. They have ice-blue skin that appears to be stretched so tightly around their bodies that their bones are visibly protruding. The creature’s head hangs low as its large, sullen eyes peer at its victims from behind the stringy hair falling over its face.

The Mahaha is always smiling and giggling as it thoroughly enjoys the torture of its victims and becomes giddy upon having a new one. This monster has inhumanly long fingernails that resemble knives. With these nails, the Mahaha “tickles” its victims to death. This tickling is merely shredding the victim bit by bit.^[5]

The mark of the Mahaha is just as unsettling as the sight of the creature itself. Every last victim of the Mahaha is left with a twisted, evil smile bared as the corpse lay frozen after the attack. The sight of a victim alone was enough to strike fear into the hearts of generations lost long ago.

5 Pal-Rai-Yuk

Yet another Inuit creature, the pal-rai-yuk is purportedly a giant sea monster that resides in the bays of the Alaska Key Islands. This sea creature has a snakelike head that protrudes from the water almost 3 meters (10 ft). Although its upper body resembles a snake, it is said to have thick fur, six legs, three dorsal fins, and two heads. Each head has a long, slimy tongue ready to eat up.

Despite its size, the pal-rai-yuk is known for being able to whisk its human victims right off docks and piers so quickly that no one but the victim even notices. If one is crazy enough to try to set up a playdate with this monster, it is rumored that the creature can also be summoned.

To call the pal-rai-yuk, one must tap on the bottom of a wooden pier. If you’re feeling a little crazy, you can even summon it via the bottom of a wooden kayak. While this monster stays in the water throughout most of the year, it is able to “swim through the earth” with the aid of snow during the winter months.^[6]

4 Kogukhpak

One of the oldest Yupik mythological tales is the story of the Kogukhpak. Over 40,000 years ago, it was believed that mammoth carcasses were actually the corpses of these subterranean monsters. These massive creatures were said to have large tusks like a mammoth. Yet, they had bulbous bodies and legs like frogs.

As the Sun was the only thing that could kill them, they lived underground for most of the year. The winter solstice is the only time that they can emerge from the earth to hunt and ignite the fear of the locals.^[7]

Those mammoth skeletons were rumored to be from the foolish Kogukhpak that stayed out a little too long during their solstice solitude and were evaporated as soon as the smallest bit of sunlight touched their round, bulging bodies.

3 Qiqirn

While some believe it to be a vampire dog or a hellhound, the Qiqirn is typically known as a large, evil, spirit dog. It is very easily distinguished from a regular dog as it is completely bald with the exception of its paws, the tip of its tail, and the area around its mouth.

These spirit dogs approach travelers during the winter months when they are alone at night in unknown lands. When the beasts get close enough to the traveler, he will suffer endless fits until liberated from the pain by death.

While this may seem awful, it is easy to ward off a Qiqirn as they are known for being just as skittish as they are fierce. As long as you can identify the beast, you can escape its wrath. Simply shouting the name of the being sends it running with fear.^[8]

A Qiqirn feeds off the unwitting and feels threatened when its intended victim knows its intentions.

2 Wendigo

Native to the northern forests of the Atlantic coast, wendigos are humanlike, man-eating monsters from Algonquian folklore. Known for its striking height of 5 meters (15 ft), this creature is typically associated with famine and hunger as well as the disappearances of many villagers long ago.

Wendigos have an ash-gray skin tone with inhumanly sullen eyes. Their lips are said to be dried out and always covered in blood. While they have a humanlike torso, they have unnaturally long limbs with razor-sharp claws at each end. Their heads are a human-wolf hybrid with horns above the forehead.

Known as “the spirits of lonely places,” wendigos lure lone victims away from others with an imitation of a human voice. The creatures offer warmth and shelter. Once a human is successfully trapped, the wendigos continue to feast on the victim’s flesh. It is said that the putrid smell of their breath reeks of death and decay.^[9]

These creatures can also possess humans. If a person is too greedy, he could be susceptible to wendigo possession and develop an insatiable craving for human flesh himself.

1 Kallikantzaroi

Ever met someone who tried extremely hard to be the best at something, but he could never seem to achieve his goal?

In the mythical world, that is a kallikantzaros of Greek mythology. No matter how hard they try at being evil, they are just no good at it.

These tiny, gnomelike creatures spend their lives working from home, which just happens to be the center of the Earth. They spend the year hacking down the tree of life, which holds up the Earth, in an attempt to end mankind.

They have one flaw, though. During the 12 days of winter solstice, kallikantzaroi can come to the Earth’s surface, something they cannot resist. While they are not inherently evil, they do wreak havoc on humans’ homes and villages when let out.^[10]

People would ward them off by setting colanders on their doorsteps before nighttime. Kallikantzaroi are known for being incredibly dumb, so much so that they cannot even count to three. It is believed that they will waste away in front of the colander trying to count all the holes until sunrise, when they are forced back into the Earth.

When these annoying creatures finally return to their home, they will find that the tree of life has completely restored itself. They spend the rest of the year trying to hack it down again until they can come to the surface once more.

Many researchers, mainstream and otherwise, believe that we are not the first advanced civilization to have existed on Earth. Furthermore, they postulate that in prehistory, unrecorded history, one or more advanced civilizations just might have existed, thrived, declined, and perished before us.

While this is an outlandish notion for most people, when broken down, it isn’t as crazy as it first seems, not least when you consider what might become of ourselves should a sudden end announce itself without warning. Chances are, should life begin again, nobody would remember that we had even existed. If that’s the case, then, who’s to say that advanced civilizations didn’t exist thousands of years before our own recorded history?

10 Power Stations Would Shut Down Fast

Let’s say that something happened to wipe out the vast majority of human life on planet Earth. Be it a sudden super-contagious virus, a meteorite, a solar flare, a nuclear war, or even (you know it’s coming) an alien invasion, if it was to happen, life would disappear with alacrity.

Seriously, though, many of us don’t realize just how precarious our existence is here on Earth. Let’s say the vast majority of human life is wiped out by any of the hypothetical situations mentioned above; surely there’d be survivors, right? The thing is, where would the power come from? With no one to run them, the power stations, and with them, the world’s electricity supply, would shut down relatively quickly. In fact, many of them would switch into safety mode to avoid any disasters.

However, eventually, with nobody to oversee these procedures, nuclear power plants, their cooling waters having boiled off, would go into meltdown. Chernobyl-type scenarios would unfold all around the planet.^[1] In short, you really wouldn’t want to be around, and if you were, you would want to be completely out of the way somewhere. We’ll talk more about the survivors in entry number five.

9 Man-Made Objects

Most man-made objects, whether comprised of wood, plastic, metal, or anything other than stone (which we will look at later also) will simply disappear, even down to the roads and streets, which will be completely overcome with vegetation within only several decades at the very most.^[2] Just to take that a stage further, within “only” a few centuries, the metal frameworks of the buildings and the bridges around the world will simply rust, break down, and collapse. All that will be left will be the crumpled and piled ruins.

Within only 10,000 years, which is but a snapshot in terms of geological time, just about all that remains will be the stone. And even then, only that which was built purely from stone will survive in any recognizable form (and still might be buried). As mentioned, bridges and buildings will have collapsed due to their rusted and decaying metal parts and will lie in ruins. Over the course of time, much like our ancient sites today, these ruins will be lucky to be pieced together in the future, if ever.

8 Only Stone Will Survive

Is it any wonder that the structures we have left of the ancient world are the buildings, monuments, and statues carved from stone? And make no mistake, there was much, much more than just stonework at one time.

As we have mentioned above, only true stone structures will survive any type of annihilation of humanity for any significant amount of time,^[3] and even then, the remains would then be subject to any future civilizations and explorers stripping such monuments of what they see as valuable and leaving the rest, much like was done with the Egyptian pyramids (and, who knows, maybe the Sphinx) over course of history.

With that in mind, then, how many of our modern structures might survive thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of years, into the future? Ironically, it would mostly be the buildings from antiquity that would still survive. And again, with that in mind, how long have such structures really been there, and who did they once belong to?

7 Myths And Legends

Although they are certainly not the same as solid stone monuments by any stretch of the imagination, should we perhaps pay more attention to certain types of myths and legends that persist across many cultures over thousands of years?^[4] For example, was there really a great flood, even if only in the form of several episodes of localized but substantial flooding that just might have wiped out entire communities? Such calamities would have surely seemed like the end of the world to those civilizations that experienced them.

And what about the tales of “the gods”—higher beings with advanced technology that ruled over mankind? Are these really just legends? Or might there be some truth to such stories? Shortly, we will look at the possibility of survivors from such an “end of the world” situation. What if “the gods” of the past were the survivors of an even older advanced civilization? Might that explain the powers (or advanced technology) of the gods? Or the advanced knowledge of the gods? It is certainly an interesting notion.

6 Ancient Egypt

While we have looked in our previous points at what might happen if our civilization was to face a sudden, life-ending disaster in order to prove, at least in theory, that other civilizations very much could have existed before our recorded history, it is also worth looking back at known ancient civilizations. If we look at the ancient Egyptians, for example, it is perfectly obvious, and even accepted by mainstream scholars, that they appear to have begun their civilization already at the height of their power and then went into permanent decline.^[5]

To some researchers, who are very much shunned by most mainstream experts, this suggests that the Egyptians “took over” the remnants of an ancient, “lost” civilization. From these types of theories generally spring the further claims that such ancient structures as the Pyramids of Giza are more likely monuments and buildings of an Atlantean-type society as opposed to the work of the Egyptians themselves.

5 Survivors Would Be Reduced To Cavemen

Now, let’s say that some people have survived our hypothetical modern-world-ending disaster. What would become of them, realistically? For a start, they would very likely not be concerned with searching out technology or things of that nature. Chances are, once the system has gone down, and the power is off, they will be concerned with their survival more than anything else.^[6] They will no longer be on top of the food chain. Without the aid of our modern plethora of technological gadgets and advanced buildings, many remaining humans will be easy picking for hungry wild animals.

Any survivors would be preoccupied with hunting and gathering whatever food they could and finding some kind of shelter. As the generations go on, humanity’s connection to the “old” world would return. By the third and forth generation, chances are all that would be remembered of pre-disaster Earth would be no different than what myths and legends are to us now. In short, life would be starting again, from scratch.

4 Discoveries Of Mysterious Ancient Objects

As a further point of interest, and perhaps evidence, there have been numerous discoveries of ancient objects, apparently the result of intelligent design, dating to far before such objects should have existed. And what’s more, they’ve been found all over the planet. For example, in 1912, in the small town of Wilburton, Oklahoma, two employees at the Municipal Electrical Plant reportedly discovered a particularly oversized piece of coal that they couldn’t fit into the furnace, which they were stocking to keep the plant ticking over.

They would proceed to smash the coal to smaller pieces so that they could toss the remains into the flames. When they did, though, a perfectly formed and recognizable iron pot fell to the floor. It was allegedly examined and found to be authentic. Why was it there, in a piece of coal that was millions of years of old?

Even more bizarre are the strange spheres, made of some very hard substance, purportedly brought up from the mines of South Africa on multiple occasions by miners.^[7] These spheres have bizarre grooves in them and are of obvious purposeful design. What they might be and, more importantly, why they are there is open to debate.

3 Discoveries Of Tools

As well as mysterious objects that may or may not have a use, many very purposeful and obvious tools have been discovered in pieces of rock that, if we accept what science tells us, are millions of years old.

One particularly intriguing case occurred in London, Texas, in 1936, when the head of a hammer was discovered in a piece of rock believed by some to be as old as 400 million years. (Others say only 700 years.) In 1944, a ten-year-old boy, Newton Anderson, would find a handmade bell in a piece of coal. The lump of coal was reportedly 300 million years old.^[8]

Numerous other purported discoveries of strange, seemingly ancient, objects are on record, many of them from the 1800s and before. The book Forbidden Archaeology lists example after example.

2 Advanced Ancient Technology

Many mainstream historians simply do not accept the notion that many of the ancient civilizations, including the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians, had, at one point in the distant past, advanced technology.^[9] However, many reasons are put forward for this notion, not least the obviously advanced knowledge of the cosmos and the workings of the universe that so many ancient civilizations possessed. Even the placement of many of their famous structures mirrors the arrangement of the stars and the planets to such an accuracy that such knowledge cannot be denied.

We could also look to such devices as the “Baghdad Battery” or the traces of acids in the passageways of the Giza Pyramid that suggest some kind of generation of electricity. And what of the many sites around the world that reportedly show signs of nuclear explosions in the distant past? A prominent example is Mohenjo-Daro, which some researchers, most notably David Davenport in his book Atomic Destruction 2000 BC, have postulated was the site of intentionally made nuclear weapons being purposefully deployed long ago. This, of course, would suggest, as Davenport agreed, that a highly advanced civilization existed.

1 Historians Have A ‘Myopic’ View

At the end of the day, no matter the interesting, valid, and, to varying degrees, legitimate views and claims on either side of the argument, the sad fact is that for many mainstream historians, much like mainstream scientists, archaeologists, and most other specialties ending in “ist,” the view is generally, in the words of Graham Hancock, “very myopic.”^[10]

The reasons for this are numerous. Firstly, amid the constant jockeying for limited funding, nobody wishes to put their head above the parapets. So, as a result, the “status quo” opinion is maintained. Those who do discover things of interest that go against the established paradigm and then, more to the point, attempt to tell the world about them, face a sudden cutting of their funding and, even worse, the wrath of their contemporaries. Perhaps a good example would be the case of Dr. Virginia Steen-McIntyre, who, after discovering ruins in Mexico that suggested civilization in the Americas going back 250,000 years—using accepted, tested methods no less—was suddenly and universally shut out by the “accepted” scientific and archaeological communities.

Most people who go missing turn up safe and well, within a few hours or days. Some, unfortunately, are found dead. When people do leave, the reason is often obvious, too—because they are running away from something (debt or the police, for example) or to something (a new partner or a fresh start).

It is very rare for people to disappear entirely completely and forever, but occasionally, even prominent figures seem to vanish without a trace for no reason at all. Here, we look at some very cold cases indeed.

10 John Lansing Jr.

In 1829, John Lansing Jr., former chief justice of the New York State Supreme Court, popped out to mail a letter and was never seen again. Lansing had had a glittering legal career. He was a member of the Congress of the Confederation in 1785 and was part of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Lansing was said to have suffered from a stammer, which hindered his political career, but he still managed to become the chancellor of New York in 1801. In 1800, Lansing presided over People v. Weeks, the first formally documented murder trial in American history.

On the night of his disappearance, December 12, 1829, John Lansing left his hotel in Manhattan to mail a letter via boat. It was the last anyone saw of him. A number of theories were proposed at the time of the disappearance: that he had tripped and fallen off the dock, that he was mugged and killed, and his body was hidden somewhere, or that he was murdered by political enemies. The last theory gained some weight when the grandson of the publisher Thurlow Weed maintained that his grandfather had evidence that Lansing was murdered by powerful political enemies, though he refused to name them.^[1]

It is unlikely that we will ever know the truth, and Lansing’s body has never been found. If it were to be found, there is an empty tomb in his hometown of Albany, New York, with Lansing’s name on it, just waiting for him to come home.

9 Solomon Northup

Solomon Northup, the author of the famous book Twelve Years a Slave, disappeared without trace in 1857. His book, made into an Oscar winning-film in 2013, recounts the true story of his kidnapping and subsequent sale into slavery. His treatment under the brutal Edwin Epps makes especially difficult reading. Northup’s book was an immediate success, selling 30,000 copies in the first two years.

After his escape, Northup was said to have worked on the Underground Railroad, aiding other slaves to escape, and spent much time unsuccessfully trying to bring a suit against his kidnappers. In Washington, DC, Northup was not allowed to testify in the case because he was black. He was later allowed to file the suit in New York, but after a number of delays, the case was dropped.

He embarked upon a speaking tour in Canada in 1857 and never returned home. He was never heard from again, though a letter written in 1863 claimed he was alive. A number of theories have been proposed as to what happened to him: that he became a spy for the Union Army and was captured and killed, that he was kidnapped and made a slave again, or that he had just wandered away and died where no one knew him and is buried in an unmarked grave somewhere.^[2]

Whatever happened to Solomon Northup, he made a contribution to the abolition of slavery and the conscience of the United States and the rest of the world that lived long after him.

8 James William Boyd

In 1865, Captain James William Boyd, an officer of the Confederacy, was released after having been captured by the Union. He was due to meet his son and travel to Mexico when he vanished without trace. Boyd’s disappearance is the subject of a conspiracy theory that he was killed after being mistaken for John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.^[3] Boyd was said to somewhat resemble Booth and shared the same initials, none of which seems to be hard evidence, and the theory has been proposed, discounted, ridiculed, and fictionalized by a whole host of historians and writers, most of whom relegate Captain Boyd to a subplot in someone else’s drama.

What is known is that Boyd was held as a prisoner of war by the Union until February 1865, when he was released so that he could return home to take care of his seven children, his wife having died while he was incarcerated. His son is said to have received a letter telling him to meet Boyd in Brownsville, Texas, but Boyd never showed up for the rendezvous, and no further word was ever received from him.

7 Charley Ross

Charley Ross was only four years old in 1874, when he and his older brother Walter were enticed into a horse-drawn carriage while they were playing in their garden in Philadelphia. Five-year-old Walter was able to get out further down the street, but Charley was driven away and was never seen again.

The kidnapping of Charley Ross is notable for two reasons. It was the first well-documented instance of a ransom note being sent in American history, and it also led to a change in the law. Until that time, kidnapping had been a misdemeanor offense. In 1875, in Pennsylvania, this was changed to a felony.

In all, 23 ransom letters were sent to the Ross family, demanding $20,000. The authorities were inexperienced at dealing with kidnapping, and the mayor’s office foolishly offered a reward of, coincidentally, $20,000 for his return. This unleashed an unending wave of sightings, tip-offs, and outright fabrications from people desperate to collect the reward and made the job of finding the boy that much harder. People claiming to be Charley turned up regularly at the Ross family home even years later.

When two men were shot by police officers in the process of committing a robbery, one of them, Joseph Douglas, confessed to the kidnapping. Both men died at the scene before they could say anything more. One of their associates was also tried and convicted of complicity in the kidnapping, but he never revealed the whereabouts of Charley or his remains.

In 2012, 22 of the ransom letters were found. The next year, they were auctioned, ironically, for $20,000.^[4]

6 William Cantelo

William Cantelo (possibly pictured above) was the inventor of an early form of machine gun. Cantelo kept a laboratory in the basement of the pub he ran in Southampton, England, and neighbors would often hear sounds like rapid gunfire coming from below. Sometime in the 1880s, Cantelo told his sons he was going on a business trip to try to sell his new invention and was never seen again.

It was first assumed that Cantelo had met with an accident on his travels, until his sons saw a newspaper photograph of another inventor named Hiram Maxim. Maxim is credited with creating the Maxim Gun, a type of machine gun. And he bore an uncanny resemblance to William Cantelo.

Cantelo’s sons certainly believed that Maxim was their father and hired a private investigator to establish the truth, without success. There is also some evidence that Maxim visited Southampton and may have met Cantelo, if, indeed, he wasn’t Cantelo. Whatever the truth, Hiram Maxim died an extremely rich man, while William Cantelo’s sons inherited a pub with bullet holes all over the basement.^[5]

5 Louis Le Prince

Louis Le Prince was a pioneer of the motion picture industry, along with the Lumiere Brothers and, of course, Thomas Edison. As a young man, Le Prince had frequented the studio of Jacques Daguerre (of Daguerreotype picture fame) and became fascinated with first images and then moving pictures, receiving a patent for his Le Prince Single-lens Cine Camera in 1888, ahead of Edison.^[6]

However, before Le Prince could get the recognition that he deserved, he disappeared suddenly and mysteriously in 1890 after boarding a train at Dijon, bound for Paris. There are a number of theories about what happened to Le Prince after he boarded the train, some of them mundane, others slightly more outlandish. It has been suggested that he killed himself because he was on the verge of bankruptcy or disappeared deliberately to avoid being exposed as homosexual. It has also been suggested that his brother murdered him in a row over his mother’s will. Le Prince’s widow even maintained that Thomas Edison ordered a hit on him in order to get him out of the way and prevent him from taking the credit for his invention.

Whatever you may choose to believe about his fate, what is certain is that Le Prince’s Cine Camera recorded the world’s first moving images with the Roundhay Garden Scene in 1888.

4 Flannan Isles Lighthouse Keepers

All three of the keepers of the Flannan Isles Lighthouse, located in Scotland’s Flannan Isles, were found to be missing on December 26, 1900, and were never seen again. It was against the regulations for all three keepers to leave their posts at any one time, particularly during a storm, when the lighthouse would have been a godsend to any ships caught in the rough seas. So why did they all leave their posts?

What is known is that when the relief keeper landed on the island, he found the lighthouse deserted. Further investigations showed that the men had certainly been working up until December 15, as their logs showed, and a vessel reported passing the lighthouse that night and noticing that the lamp was not lit, a fact not known at the time.

On inspection, the light was found to be in good working order.

We’ll probably never know what happened to them, although a number of theories have been put forward. One was that, after having previously been fined for not tying down equipment, the three keepers went together to ensure that everything was made safe ahead of the storm and were either swept off the rocks by a large wave or blown off the side of the cliff in a gale. Another theory suggested that two keepers had gone out to check ropes, and when they didn’t return, the third went out to find them, only to perish himself.^[7] In 1912, the English poet Wilfred Wilson Gibson published a poem, “Flannan Isle,” which suggested a much more mysterious end, dwelling on overturned chairs and untouched meals and supernatural misgivings, for which there was never any basis in fact.

3 Belle Gunness

Belle Gunness was a Norwegian-American serial killer who vanished from her farm in Indiana on April 28, 1908, after having killed as many as 40 people. By means which would today be called catfishing, Belle struck up pen-pal relationships with men who responded to her personal advertisements for investors looking for possible relationships. She corresponded with her victims for a number of months before convincing them to visit, bringing with them their life savings in cash while telling no one where they were going.

The ruse worked surprisingly well, and a number of men, most of them homesick for their native Norway, would turn up at her door with a $1,000 or more wrapped in paper parcels, after which they would never be seen in one piece again.^[8]

Belle was believed at one time to have died in a fire at her home, where the remains of three charred bodies, thought to be her children, and an equally burned female torso were found. Belle’s sometime boyfriend, Ray Lamphere, was arrested and questioned and charged with arson. However, when police began to excavate the farmhouse, they found a number of bodies, and body parts, that clearly had nothing to do with him.

It was later believed that the headless torso was not that of Gunness at all but rather her housekeeper, who had mysteriously disappeared. It is certainly true that Gunness had withdrawn large amounts of money from the bank immediately prior to the fire. Lamphere is said to have confessed before his death that he helped Gunness to set the fire and drove her to the train station to make good her escape. Despite numerous sightings in the years following, her whereabouts have never been determined.

2 Bobby Dunbar

Bobby Dunbar was only four years old in 1912, when he disappeared while on a family holiday in Louisiana.

Hundreds of volunteers joined in the search for Bobby, combing the riverbanks, slicing open the bellies of alligators, and even dynamiting the lake, thinking that the blast might dislodge the child’s corpse. Bobby appeared to have vanished into thin air until, eight months later, he was found alive and well in the care of William Cantwell Walters from Mississippi.

Walters was found guilty of kidnapping, despite his vehement protests that the child was, in fact, his nephew. The child was taken home to his mother, who is said to have exclaimed, “Thank God, it is my boy,” before fainting.

William Walters was convicted of child abduction and sentenced to life in prison, though he only served two years. However, in 2004, DNA tests proved that the boy (pictured above) who was “rescued” from Walters was not Bobby Dunbar and was in all probability the nephew that Walters had claimed.^[9] What happened to Bobby is unclear, but the most likely explanation is that he drowned in the river on the same day he disappeared.

1 Ambrose Small

Canadian millionaire and theater impresario Ambrose Small disappeared from his office at the Grand Opera House in Toronto, Ontario, on December 2, 1919, the same day that the sale of his theaters was due to go through. Small was certainly in a hurry for the transaction to be completed and was instrumental in moving the signing date up by two weeks.

However, although the sale netted Small over $1 million, he never withdrew a penny of the money, all of which was still in the bank when his disappearance was discovered. Nor was he reported missing by his wife, who assumed him to be “in the arms of a designing woman,” and it was only on January 3, a month later, that his disappearance was reported in the press.^[10]

A number of theories abounded at the time, including that he had been killed by his wife and burned in the furnace at the Grand Theatre or that the police had helped Small disappear.

Ward Hazell is a writer who travels, and an occasional travel writer.

The period soon after death can seem like a strange thing. During this time, the body undergoes various changes, shifting from living to being completely dead. While some of these changes—such as stiffening and changing color—are seen on crime TV shows, others seem a bit far-fetched for even the human body.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Ways To Dispose Of Your Body After Death

Still, the things corpses can do are shocking and a bit creepy. From giving birth to an awareness that it’s dead, the changes that occur in the body after death seem almost too unrealistic to be true. The following list is not for the faint of heart—or stomach.

10 Move

Stories of dead bodies sitting straight up have been told for many years—yet the probability of such drastic movement occurring is slim to none. The body can, however, make slight movements after death. Though the movements do not resemble ones that a person would do while alive, they can still be startling for those around them.

Cadavers can do such things as twitch, move, and even clench muscles. This occurs because the body’s muscles are still receiving nerve signals to contract or even relax, causing the corpse to appear as if it is moving despite being dead.^[1] Once the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is depleted, the body will make its final movements, which can be seen in fingers clenching, hands moving, toes wiggling, and muscles twitching. Another factor in strange movements is how the person died. If there is excess calcium, a temperature change, or, in some cases, violent death or even electrocution, the body can demonstrate such movements.

This process normally occurs between the time of death and rigor mortis, so if anyone tells you they’ve seen a body sit up, they’re probably just trying to get a rise out of you.

9 Give Birth

Unfortunately, death does not have a moral compass, and anyone, even those who are pregnant, can fall victim to its embrace.

Giving birth while alive is a beautiful experience; giving birth after one has died is the complete opposite, especially for those dealing with the dead body. These “births” are referred to as “coffin births” due to them happening inside coffins. Basically, the pressure of gases building up within the deceased pushes the fetus out. The fetus has to be positioned in just the right (or wrong) way for this to occur.^[2]

Even though most of these cases of coffin birth occurred during times without the benefits of modern medicine, they still happen to this day. In January 2018, a woman in South Africa, who had died suddenly ten days prior, shocked people at the funeral home when they saw that she had given birth inside her coffin. The woman had been nine months pregnant at the time of her death, and all arrangements for her funeral had been made when the staff made the spine-chilling discovery that her body had expelled the fetus after death.

8 Eliminate

During the process of death, the body goes through various changes. One of these is the relaxation of every muscle, including those which control certain bodily functions, such as the elimination of urine and feces.

Postmortem elimination is due to the sphincter muscles in the body relaxing. As the brain dies, it no longer sends the signals to keep these muscles contracted, and the contents left in the bowels and bladder will end up being released. ^[3]

These bodily functions do not always happen after death; it depends on how you die and how much food and liquid are in your bladder and bowels before death. In the case of ill patients, there may not be as much food in their system due to the lack of appetite that can accompany illness. However, in cases of sudden death, bodies are more likely to release whatever was left in their system.

The process can take a few hours, though, so it’s best to let nature take its course on this one.

7 Make Noise

Most depictions of dead bodies moaning and groaning focus on zombies rather than the actual dead. However, while corpses aren’t likely to scream or yell, they are likely to make noises such as moans, groans, hisses, and grunts.^[4]

These bodies aren’t making this noise voluntarily, of course. When cadavers are moved after death, the air still left inside the windpipe will escape and vibrate the vocal cords, making noises similar to grunts and moans. These sounds have spurred the horror stories of dead bodies making noise, though the reality is less horrifying. The sounds can often happen when coroners or morticians are prepping or turning the body over; the air will escape, causing what appears similar to human sounds but are just the simple result of the rest of the lungs’ contents leaving.

Another way these noises can occur is when the gases in the body begin to build up. They can escape through the windpipe, causing squeaks, hisses, and sometimes lower groaning.

6 Illusions Of Growth

Even though someone has been ruled dead, it may take time for the body to fully cease functioning. Once the brain shuts down, the body follows, but some have claimed that though the body is no longer alive, the hair and nails continue to grow.

As horrifying as that sounds, the truth is that the hair and nails only appear to have grown. When a body dies, it no longer has a supply of oxygen, making it impossible for glucose, which stimulates nail and hair growth, to be produced. What actually occurs is that the skin around the nails and hair begins to retract due to dehydration, making it appear that the nails and hair have grown longer, when in reality, they’re the same as they were before death. This also applies to men with stubble and hair on their chest; as the skin shrinks, the hair looks more prominent, making it seem as if the body has developed more stubble after death.

Goosebumps after death due to contractions of the muscles in the skin can also impact how hair can appear.^[5] In some circumstances, it will give the effect that the hair has grown longer, but once the contractions end, the hair will return back to its normal state.

Those of you with hair, such as men with beards, shouldn’t worry. Funeral staff will moisturize bodies to decrease the look of dry skin.

5 Self-Digestion

After death, the body begins to decompose. It goes through a process in which it begins to digest itself—yes, essentially feeding on itself to aid in decomposition—through a process called autolysis. We still know very little about human decay, but the growth of forensic research facilities, or “body farms,” together with the availability and ever-decreasing cost of techniques such as DNA sequencing, now enables researchers to study the process in ways that were not possible just a few years ago.

Soon after the heart stops beating, cells become deprived of oxygen, and their acidity increases as the toxic by-products of chemical reactions begin to accumulate inside them. Enzymes start to digest cell membranes and then leak out as the cells break down. This usually starts in the liver, which is enriched in enzymes, and in the brain, which has high water content; eventually, though, all other tissues and organs begin to break down in this way. Damaged blood cells spill out of broken vessels and, aided by gravity, settle in the capillaries and small veins, discoloring the skin.

This is when the bacteria in our bodies come into play. Our bodies host huge numbers of bacteria, with by far, most residing in the gut, which is home to trillions of bacteria of hundreds or perhaps thousands of different species. Most internal organs are devoid of these microbes when we are alive. Soon after death, however, the immune system stops working, leaving them to spread throughout the body freely. This usually begins in the gut, at the junction between the small and large intestines. Left unchecked, our gut bacteria begin to digest the intestines and then the surrounding tissues from the inside out, using the chemical cocktail that leaks out of damaged cells as a food source.^[6]

4 Explode

Tall tales have been told of bodies exploding from the inside out. Though this may seem a bit far-fetched, it isn’t too far from the truth—in a way.

Spontaneous human combustion has been an explanation for many of these tales, but the reality is a bit different. When a body dies, its temperature usually drops. In some cases, the temperature actually increases, which is referred to as “postmortem hyperthermia.” This continuous increase in temperature can be caused by different things, from drugs to trauma to even signals in the brain before death. The body can continue to grow hotter, but the likelihood of actual combustion is low, as the temperature will begin to drop back down as the corpse goes into the regular stages of decomposition.

Still, there have been cases of bodies exploding—although spontaneous human combustion isn’t responsible. What happens is that, as a body begins to break down after death, the gases inside (the same ones that can cause moaning and groaning) have to escape. The gases’ continuous buildup can lead to an “explosion” of bodily remains.

This rarely happens. In January 2013, however, a corpse did explode in a mausoleum in Melbourne.^[7] Those visiting the mausoleum bore witness to the event—and the smell. The experience was enough to traumatize witnesses and ensure that better precautions were taken to avoid another such incident.

3 Appear Aroused

Responding to certain stimuli when alive is natural and occurs even in the most inopportune of times. While it can be embarrassing if the moment isn’t right, it’s nothing near as creepy as a dead man getting an erection.

Once the heart stops beating, all of the blood that was previously circulating begins to trickle down and collect at the lowest part of the body available. In some cases, depending on how the man died, such as those who have suffered a spinal injury or passed facedown, this can be in the genital area. The continuous pooling of blood is only natural, as is the reaction it causes in the dead man’s penis, referred to as priapism.^[8]

While this is uncommonly seen now, it can also happen with women. When a woman dies similarly, her labia can become enlarged, and her clitoris can swell.

2 Orgasm

Even though this sounds a lot like necrophilia, it thankfully isn’t. In corpses that no longer have oxygen pumping through them, this is unlikely ever to happen, but for those that are clinically dead but being used as beating-heart cadavers or as organ donors, the possibility of the body having an orgasm is there.

This isn’t done on purpose. Doctors who work with these bodies sometimes have to trigger parts of the spine electrically. In some cases, when the sacral nerve root in the base of one’s spine is stimulated, it causes a reflexive reaction by the autonomic nervous system. Again, this only works because the bodies are still receiving oxygen, despite being clinically dead. When the doctors trigger this part of the spine, the reflex it causes in the system can result in an orgasm.

However, because the body is clinically dead, no actual enjoyment or pleasure comes from this experience. The brain is no longer sending out signals, and while the body may react, it’s only doing so out of pure reflex.^[9]

1 Know They’re Dead

There are countless stories of those who have come back from near-death experiences and have given their interpretation of what they believe the afterlife is like. While many are left to wonder what happens after we die, scientists may have at least part of an answer.

Scientists have found that after death, the brain can retain some semblance of awareness. This means that after one has passed, they might actually be aware they’re dead. In a study of 2,060 cardiac arrest survivors who had been declared legally dead, meaning that they no longer had identifiable brain function, around 40 percent claimed they were still aware of their surroundings and conversations going on around them.^[10]

The period doesn’t seem to last long, research has found. As death is a process, the time between oxygen leaving the system and the brain sending its last signals can leave room for awareness. Scientists believe that there is an average time of 10–20 seconds of awareness after death. A severed head, for example, still produces EEG waves even after death, though a portion of these seconds have lead scientists to believe the brain enters a stage of unconsciousness.

Still, the idea that a body may be aware that it’s dead is nothing short of unsettling.

The events that occurred in the Ural Mountains at the beginning of February 1959, what would become known as the Dyatlov Pass incident, remain one of the 20th century’s most mysterious encounters—not least because we still don’t have a satisfactory or widely accepted explanation for why nine experienced hikers lost their lives in brutal ways.

Their tent was found in ruins, cut from the inside. Several of the hikers were discovered barefoot and almost naked near the original campsite around a month after their disappearance. What is interesting is that a trail of footprints—some barefoot—led from the tent and then simply stopped. The rest were discovered almost three months later, buried under snow in a ravine.

Just what happened to them? Why did they leave their tent, some barefoot, in the middle of the night in brutally cold temperatures, an act that would certainly guarantee their deaths? Here are ten theories as to just what happened.

10 It Was An Avalanche, Right?

The most obvious explanation would be that the group, for all their experience, were the unfortunate victims of a freak avalanche. Case solved, right? Well, not quite. First of all, the area has absolutely no history of avalanches, certainly none that would cause outright death.^[1] Secondly, even if this was a freak occurrence that just happened to hit on the night when hikers just happened to be on that part of the mountainside, there was simply no evidence of an avalanche when searchers eventually combed the area in search of the missing hikers.

Aside from there being no evidence of an avalanche, the injuries eventually discovered on the recovered bodies didn’t line up with such an incident. Although this explanation was very much promoted at one time—and even now, some people insist this is what happened—it simply does not add up. Furthermore, such insistence, against the obvious facts, could be argued to suggest a cover-up of sorts.

9 It Was A UFO

Okay, let’s get this one out of way. It was a UFO! That is certainly the theory of some researchers.^[2] And while there is no evidence to suggest they are correct, there are some interesting details to examine that might suggest involvement of a highly advanced craft from another world.

For example, where two of the hikers were discovered, next to the burned-out remains of a campfire, there was substantial damage to the trees that overlooked their makeshift base. The damage was around 4.6 meters (15 ft) high. Some researchers have theorized that this was the result of a UFO hovering just above the treetops.

Furthermore, some of the group who would be discovered months after they disappeared were found with pieces of skin, lips, and eyes apparently surgically removed. While some claim these “injuries” were merely the result of decomposition, others say the seemingly precise cuts suggest intelligent action.

8 The Yeti Claims

Perhaps one of the most interesting claims is that the group met their grisly end at the hands—or should that be claws—of a Yeti or Bigfoot-like creature that inhabits the remote regions of the Ural Mountains.^[3] The local Mansi tribe has legends of a Yeti-like creature called the Menk, and furthermore, it is said to roam the area of the incident.

There is a famous picture recovered from the belongings of the group on Nikolai Thibeaux-Brignolle’s camera. On a shot known as “Frame 17,” there is a strange picture that seems to show a figure that bears a resemblance to a Bigfoot-type creature.

Some people believe that this “figure” was actually one of the hikers returning from a raised piece of land, probably looking to get their bearings. The fact that it was the last picture Thibeaux-Brignolle took, though, leads to some people perhaps reading more into what there actually is. Or perhaps it wasn’t a Bigfoot or one of the group? Perhaps, as our next entry looks at, it was something potentially more menacing.

7 Escaped Prisoners

Less talked-about is the claim that the hikers were the unfortunate victims of escaped prisoners from the gulags in the region.^[4] Many such prisoners, who very well may have been incarcerated since World War II and wouldn’t be at all up to speed with world events, would have been imprisoned in these facilities. To them, the conflict could very much have still been taking place unless they had other, inside knowledge.

Furthermore, being spotted by strangers could result in an attack from these desperate people—themselves potentially hardened from the war and untold time behind bars with no freedom whatsoever. They would, one would imagine, weigh up the options of attacking a (relatively) small group against the risk of being reported to the Soviet authorities, which would lead to many years back in the brutal gulags.

6 The Gulag Authorities Killed Them By Mistake

In addition to the potential threats from escaped gulag prisoners, the gulag authorities themselves were likely to shoot first and ask questions later, particularly in the region the hikers were.^[5] We should bear in mind that they were off-course and somewhere they had not planned to be.

Might the gulag authorities, perhaps conducting a standard patrol of the area or maybe looking for an escaped prisoner, have been a little eager for a potential apprehension and killed the hikers in error? Imagine the anger from the local population if this was to become known. Perhaps, then, a cover-up was decided upon? Note, however, that a potential hole in this theory and the one above is that the nearest gulag was reportedly about 100 kilometers (60 mi) from where the incident took place.

While there is no proof that gulag guards killed the hikers and covered it up, there is certainly enough murkiness around the incident for people to be suspicious. Also, it was the Cold War, a time when distrust, even among a country’s citizens, ran deep. In fact, the notion that the Cold War played a major part in this mysterious incident carries over into our next entry.

5 American Intelligence Involvement

There are some claims that the incident was a result of a CIA/KGB meeting involving the handing over of radioactive materials which ultimately resulted in the deaths of nine Soviet citizens.^[6] There is no real proof to these claims, and they rely heavily on the simple fact that the Cold War was in its heyday at the time. And, if there was any chance at all that the United States could have been placed in a negative light, the Soviets would have taken it.

However, there is reason to believe there could have been a type of “entrapment” scenario unfolding. For example, there were considerable indications of radiation, both in the area itself and on some of the dead hikers.

Rumors would surface that the incident was an attempt to plant radioactive materials on CIA agents “caught” behind Soviet lines. Somehow, the operation went wrong, and the hikers were killed. If this theory was true, then that would mean that at least one of the hikers was a KGB operative. And that is the subject of our next entry. What’s more, there is sufficient reason to believe that there really could have been a KGB presence in the Ural Mountains.

4 A KGB Plant?

There are several theories that the “hike” into the mountains was secretly, and against the majority of the hikers’ knowledge, a KGB operation.^[7] Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of these claims is the fact that the oldest member of the group, 37-year-old Semyon (aka Alexander) Zolotaryov (second from right above), was not only a last-minute addition but also reportedly had extensive military and combat training. Why, exactly, was he there?

Perhaps the tattoo on his body is worth paying more attention to by researchers into this most mysterious case? The tattoo read “DAERMMUAZUAYA.” According to those who have researched the word, there is no translation in any known language. Many assume it to be either a secret military tag or some kind of secret society moniker.

If there is any truth to Zolotaryov, or any of the Dyatlov crew, being KGB agents, what their mission might have been is still anyone’s guess.

3 Local Tribes

Some theories would persist that the deaths were the result of attacks from local tribes in the area, most notably the Mansi tribe.^[8] There is no real evidence of this; the Mansi were largely peaceful and uninterested in the outside world.

Furthermore, much like the details already mentioned when examining the apparent “escape” from their tent, there was no evidence in the surrounding snow—which was largely undisturbed—of such an approach by a tribe, who wouldn’t have been thinking at all of covering their tracks, certainly not after an attack. And for an attack to happen at night in the middle of an apparent blizzard is even more unlikely.

While they certainly make a convenient scapegoat, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the Mansi, or any other tribe in the area, were responsible for these most sudden and strange deaths. It perhaps should be noted, tough, that the local tribes did refer to the mountain where the incident took place as the “Mountain of the Dead.”

2 The Gravity Fluctuation Theory

Perhaps one of the most bizarre theories, albeit one that is grounded in scientific thought, is the gravity fluctuation theory.^[9] What this theory essentially argues is that there was a sudden drop in gravity in a “corridor” that the hikers were unfortunately camped in. This is a little-known (and unproven) phenomenon, but it does, at least in theory, explain the eventual location of the campers’ bodies.

For example, it is argued that those who first rushed outside the camp were essentially placed into a non-gravitational situation where they died instantly—as if they were in a vacuum. The others were dragged from the tent, which would explain the “tears from the inside.” They were literally ripped from the tent due to the sudden and dramatic drop in gravity. It is argued that this unusual phenomenon occurs more than people realize but rarely results in such a drastic situation, as people aren’t usually caught in the event. Some researchers even claim that if the hikers had simply kept their tent shut, they would have survived the rare incident.

1 Secret Weapon Tests

This theory could explain the mysterious deaths, reports of strange lights, and the air of secrecy with which the Soviet authorities handled the incident.

Many rumors persisted in the area that the Soviets would regularly test secret weapons. Some have even claimed that “neutron weapons” were in use.^[10] The injuries of some of the campers—who had severe internal trauma but little external damage—would certainly suggest some sort of advanced and secretive technology.

Might it be possible that the Soviet military were testing weapons designed to “scare” the United States, for example, only to kill nine of its own citizens? Much like the gulag theories, this scenario would result in an instant and deep cover-up.

+ The One That Got Away

Perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of the whole dire and terrible situation is that of Yuri Yudin.^[11] Only 24 hours into the ill-fated excursion, Yudin (pictured above being hugged) would come down with an illness, severe enough that he had to return to their set-off point. Knowing what we now know of the group’s situation, it was perhaps the most well-timed illness in the entirety of the 20th century.

Whatever the sickness was, it ultimately saved his life. Indeed, it perhaps makes one ponder the precariousness of our existence, where one circumstance seemingly as innocent and trivial as being too ill to participate can ultimately result in saving one’s life. Regardless, the decision would allow Yudin to live to old age, which he did, although he never had anything of significance to add to the investigations into the deaths of his colleagues.

Nature can be so serious. Most of the time, an intense survival game plays out. Yet, it is the more indirect side of the natural world—the quirks—that keep scientists on their toes. From the biggest organisms on the planet that nobody ever sees to the Sun setting off explosives, nature seems to have a strange sense of humor.

There are plenty of other cases. But as intriguing as they may be, this weirdness can get destructive. Sometimes, it not only tears apart human constructions but also the scientific community.

10 Haiting Hall

In 2017, an expedition from Hong Kong found a gigantic sinkhole. Located in the forest of Guangxi, it was named the Hong Kong Haiting Hall. A second expedition in 2018 scanned the inner dimensions and revealed a world-class wonder.

Haiting Hall is far from being a hole in the ground. After researchers lowered themselves into the pit, they found an epic cave complex hidden beneath the ground. The sheer size made the site very rare. In volume, it measured 6.7 million cubic meters (236 million ft³).

While 3-D mapping the interior, the team found halls, collapsed structures, craters, stone pillars, and water-polished rocks called cave pearls. The equipment also revealed that the sinkhole itself was 100 meters (328 ft) wide, around 118 meters (387 ft) deep, and almost 200 meters (656 ft) long.^[1]

The 3-D scanning was not just for measuring the standard stuff. It could also help with the reconstruction of the signs suggesting that the sinkhole had suffered a collapse. This could throw light on its formation. Similar sinkholes are usually the result of collapse brought on by the erosion of underground rivers.

9 Antarctica’s Hot Spot

Antarctica has its fair share of mysteries. One of them is rather ironic—the icy continent has a hot spot.

In 2018, a radar survey found the anomaly in East Antarctica. This region is the last place where any kind of heat should appear. East Antarctica is a craton, or a massive piece of Earth’s crust. Magma is shallow in some regions of Antarctica, but not with this craton. The solid interior, as well as its thickness, should prevent warmth within the planet from seeping back to the surface.

Yet the ice sheet closest to the crust is melting, another sign of something hot down there. Analysis showed that global warming cannot be blamed in this case. The bizarre spot is insulated away from the atmosphere and is also quite old.

The truth remains elusive, but hydrothermal energy could be responsible. If there is a fault in the crust filled with water shuttling up and down between the hot lower depths to the ice sheet, it could cause melting.^[2]

8 Woodleigh’s True Size

Woodleigh Crater is an ancient impact site near Shark Bay in Australia. The crater’s size remains a hotly debated issue. Since the crater is buried, an accurate assessment is difficult, although past research placed the diameter at around 60–120 kilometers (37–75 mi).

In 2018, two researchers had no desire to join the controversy. When they examined a core sample from Woodleigh, it was to see how the common mineral zircon behaved during the high pressures of an impact. They were amazed to find reidite instead.

To be fair, reidite is zircon. However, it is an exceptionally rare transformation of zircon. Created during the high-pressure moment when space rocks slam into Earth’s surface, reidite has only been found six times. The discovery could swing the Woodleigh debate.^[3]

To amass the kind of pressure needed to create reidite, only certain size craters can produce this priceless mineral. They must be over 100 kilometers (62 mi) in diameter, which would make Woodleigh the biggest meteorite hit in Australia. Some suggest the crater could dwarf the one in Mexico (thought to be the rock that killed the dinosaurs), which measured 180 kilometers (112 mi) across.

7 The Tree Fight

There is a battle going on in the scientific community. An undeniable amount of evidence suggests that trees are not just wood soaking up sunshine. Studies have identified behaviors that include pain reaction, chemical warning signals to other trees, and the nourishment of saplings and other adults through a subterranean fungal network. They also recognize “family,” or genetically related trees.

This is a far cry from how scientists used to view a forest. The fact that trees are organized, almost like an insect colony, is not really the issue. Both sides agree that these plants show remarkable abilities. However, one question turns things ugly. Are trees doing it on purpose?

Those who support sentient trees believe that these entities operate with intelligence, although it is misunderstood by humans. This is appalling to critics, who feel that chemical reactions to stimuli such as damage, predators, and nutritional needs dictate how trees respond.^[4]

Whether trees have free will or automatically react to their environment, they still behave in ways that scientists are just beginning to understand.

6 Earth Consumes Its Oceans

Earth has several tectonic plates. Often, when one is forced to slide underneath the other, this causes earthquakes. The process also pulls a huge amount of seawater down into the deeper layers of the planet.

Recently, scientists listened to seismic sounds at the Marianas trench where the Pacific plate is dipping under the Philippine plate. They wanted to use the rumblings to calculate just how much water got swallowed this way. Sensors tracked the velocity of earthquake echoes and especially listened for those slowing down as they passed through waterlogged material.

The result was shocking. Every million years, diving plates drag three billion teragrams of water into the Earth’s interior. A teragram equals a billion kilograms. This is three times more than previously thought.

The surprise did not end there. Earth’s deep water cycle should expel an equal amount, but not enough is being spouted by volcanoes or any other means. This inequality plus the fact that the oceans are not losing water volume means that science is missing something about how the planet shuttles water through its deepest plumbing.^[5]

5 Creeping Mud Blob

The Niland Geyser was born in 1953. The mud pool appeared in California’s Imperial County and bubbled placidly for decades. This changed 11 years ago when Niland’s mud began to creep over dry soil.

At first, the pace was so slow that nobody cared. However, in 2018, the flow picked up and became unstoppable. This was a huge problem since the mud’s direction threatened a state highway, train tracks, fiber optic telecommunications lines, and a petroleum pipeline.^[6]

All attempts to stop the mud failed, including an ambitious steel wall that was 22.9 meters (75 ft) deep and 36.6 meters (120 ft) long. The blob merely slipped underneath the barrier and sludged forth. A new railway line was built to circumnavigate the remorseless mud, but the flow could eventually close down state route 111 and force engineers to build a bridge instead.

The geyser, which had been declared an emergency, not only poses a threat to things in its path but also leaves behind a damaged trail. Similar to a bog, a large amount of moisture softens everything up to 12 meters (40 ft) down, ruining the land for future construction.

4 Frankenstein Worms

In 2018, Russian scientists extracted 300 soil samples from the Arctic. The frozen cores were recovered at different locations and represented various geological eras. Back in the laboratory, several 42,000-year-old samples contained worms.

Called nematodes, they had been frozen solid inside the permafrost for all that time. The tiny creatures were moved to a petri dish and left to thaw at 20 degrees Celsius (68 °F). It took the worms a few weeks, but they came back to life.

The dish was filled with a nutrient medium. Appearing unaware that they had stopped living for thousands of years, the nematodes started feeding. This amazing feat set the record for successful cryogenic suspension in animals.^[7]

Naturally, this piqued the interest of researchers trying to freeze humans for posterity. The fact that Pleistocene-era nematodes can survive having their entire bodies frozen, especially without side effects, is remarkable. Something protects them from the ravages of ice and oxidation. This mysterious mechanism can prove invaluable to several medical fields, including astrobiology and cryomedicine.

3 Brazil’s Termite Mounds

A few decades ago, a strange thing emerged from Brazil’s forest. As people cleared land for farming in the northeast, termite hills began to appear. Their sheer size was noteworthy. But in 2018, a study revealed the true magnificence of what the creatures had accomplished.

Thus far, about 200 million have been found and they are enormous. Visible from space, each contains around 50 cubic meters (1,800 ft³) of soil. Most measure 2.5 meters (8 ft) high with a diameter of 9 meters (30 ft).

Together, the hills cover an area as big as Great Britain and have an excavated volume of 10 cubic kilometers (2.4 mi³). This equals about 4,000 Great Pyramids of Giza. Speaking of which, the hills roughly dated back to the time when the Egyptians built the pyramids.

For 4,000 thousand years, termites have constructed the mounds as tunnels—not nests—to reach food on the forest floor. Incredibly, the termites have never gone. They still occupy what researchers are calling the “greatest known example of ecosystem engineering by a single insect species.”^[8]

2 Earth’s Biggest Organisms

The blue whale may be the biggest animal in history, but it is dwarfed by a mushroom. At first glance, the sweetly named honey mushroom resembles a field of small shrooms. However, since it was found 25 years ago in Michigan, scientists suspected that the real “creature” lurked underground. Those caps belong to a single 1,500-year-old fungus spread across 91 acres.^[9]

In 2018, new samples were taken and genetic tests confirmed the whole thing was indeed a single organism. The DNA also revealed a twist. The rate at which the mushroom evolved was slower than previously thought. This made everything bigger.

Calculations determined the fungus was 2,500 years old, covered four times its original territory, and weighed around 440 tons (the same as three blue whales). The Michigan mushroom was the first of its species to reveal how large they could grow, but another honey mushroom in Oregon now holds the record. That 8,000-year-old specimen hugs an area of 7.8 square kilometers (3 mi²).

1 Solar Storm Detonated Bombs

In 1972, a US military plane flew over a minefield off the coast of Hon La in Vietnam. The crew noticed up to 25 bombs detonate in the water, all within 30 seconds. Another 25 to 30 mud splats suggested earlier explosions. The incident was reported, classified, and filed away.

In 2018, the document became public and revealed an extraordinary incident—a solar storm had triggered the mines. As much as people in the 1970s understood that solar activity manipulated Earth’s magnetic field, it could not be proven that the Sun messed with the mines. (The bombs were designed to destruct during magnetic shifts.)

A solid clue was the intense solar activity recorded around the time the detonations took place. This was the main reason the navy suspected a space storm.^[10]

Modern scientists agree. In particular, one coronal mass ejection was identified as the culprit. It behaved like a whip and struck at Earth with unusual speed. Researchers believe earlier flares cleared the planet’s magnetosphere, which added power to the coronal slash.