In the last 200 years or so, humanity has made great strides in the development of medicine and medical technology. Though a great many diseases and infections are still incurable, we know far more about the science of sickness—the true nature of illness—than at any other time in our history.

Despite this, there are still many plagues and pandemics, both from centuries ago and from the modern era, that confuse or frustrate our understanding of medicine. Some can only be explained as outbreaks of hysteria or mass hallucinations brought on by intense social pressures. Others are even more mysterious, lacking any sort of logic or reason. Here is a list of 10 such plagues, which have baffled and bewildered the doctors of the past and present alike.

10 The Carancas Meteorite Sickness

Close to midnight on a September night in 2007, a meteorite crashed to Earth near the Peruvian border with Bolivia. Named after the town of Carancas, the closest settlement to the impact site, the meteorite terrified those who were close enough to see it.

One man was thrown from his bicycle by the impact, while those farther away witnessed a plume of fire 1,000 meters (3,300 ft) high that followed the meteorite down. But once the dust had settled and the boiling water seeping from the crater had dried up, everyone nearby seemed to be unscathed. Nobody had been truly injured in the impact. Little did they realize that the real hardship was yet to come.

In the aftermath of the crash, hundreds of locals traipsed out to witness the smoldering remains of the meteorite. Within days, as many as 200 of those locals were sick. The symptoms of headaches, nausea and vomiting, and diarrhea spread so fast that local doctors were forced to build makeshift tents around the town’s medical center to cope with the influx of suffering patients.

Working out of buildings whose windows had been shattered by the force of the falling meteorite, the doctors toiled for days, trying to establish a cause or an origin for the mysterious plague. No clear answer has ever presented itself. Some scientists, such as Luisa Macedo, have argued that the water unearthed by the impact was contaminated with arsenic and that the “steam” rolling from the crater was actually poisonous gas.

But others, such as the Peruvian Geophysics Institute’s Jose Ishitsuka, have pointed out that it would be highly unlikely that a meteorite would be hot enough to create such a large amount of boiling steam. As it is, we may never know the truth of the Carancas meteorite sickness.

9 The June Bug Epidemic

Here’s an odd one. The June bug epidemic refers to an incident in summer 1962 when a worker in a textile mill in the USA claimed to have been bitten by some sort of dangerous insect. Convinced that the latest batch of fabric that the mill had received from England was infested with creepy critters, the woman refused to go back to work. She complained of headaches, dizziness, and a painful rash. Before long, more than 50 of her colleagues were also insisting that they had been bitten by the elusive “June bug.”

Understandably, the mill was closed down for inspection, and officials from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta were dispatched to deal with the outbreak. But to their surprise, they could find zero evidence that such a creature even existed. The health inspectors found only two biting insects in the entire plant, neither of which could have caused the symptoms described by the workers.

Despite this dumbfounding discovery, they decided to have the mill sprayed for insects anyway. After all, there was nothing else they could do. But the most incredible part of the story is this: After the mill had been sprayed and reopened, not a single person complained of June bug bites again. Was there really something hiding in the fabric?

8 The Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic

As it turned out, 1962 was a bad year for mystifying outbreaks. Months earlier, in the tiny village of Kashasha in Tanzania (then known as Tanganyika), an epidemic of laughing attacks struck an all-girls’ boarding school.

It started with just three people and seemed like an ordinary fit of giggling among teenagers. But by the end of the day, a staggering 95 of the school’s pupils were affected, more than half the entire student body. It was January 30, the day the laughing started. By March 30, the school had been shut down completely out of medical concern for its students.

The scariest part of the outbreak was that all of this was only the beginning. After the boarding school was closed, the girls affected were sent away to be housed in different villages. Perhaps the staff thought that by separating those suffering from the laughing attacks, they could stymie the spread of the epidemic. Instead, it multiplied.

By May, 200 people in the nearby settlement of Nshamba were suffering from fits of hysterical laughter, and in June, another 50 in a middle school near Bukoba were stricken. By the time the laughter died down—having infected some people for as long as 16 days—1,000 people or more had been affected, and a total of 14 schools had been closed down. To this day, no true explanation has been offered for this unsettling series of events.

7 The Kalachi Sleeping Sickness

Speaking of tiny villages beset by inexplicable epidemics, let’s talk about Kalachi, a town in the north of Kazakhstan that was plagued by nothing other than contagious tiredness. Starting in 2013, residents of the town began to slip into a state of deep sleep, almost comatose, where they would remain for days at a time.

About one-quarter of the residents of this tiny settlement have suffered at least one bout of sleeping sickness in the last three years, and scientists are no closer to pinning down a definite explanation.

Many potential causes have been considered and cast aside. Professor Leonid Rikhvanov, a Russian scientist specializing in geochemistry, stated in an interview that he believed the answer could be found in an abandoned, Soviet-era uranium mine that lies near the village.

When speaking of the radon gas which fills the mine, Rikhvanov said that it “could be operating as a narcotic substance or an anesthetic. Currently, the underground space of the mine is flooded and gases are being squeezed to the surface.” However, the Kazakh government was far from convinced by such theories. As recently as last year, they began evacuating citizens from Kalachi, having found no other way to combat the sickness.

6 The West Bank Fainting Epidemic

Bad luck if you’re a student—mass hysteria epidemics seem to have a habit of choosing you as their victim. In 1983, a schoolgirl in the Palestinian town of Arrabah found herself coughing uncontrollably and unable to breath. Shortly afterward, she collapsed, unconscious.

Within hours, other girls in the school were following suit, and within weeks, more than 900 people across several different villages on the West Bank were suffering from identical symptoms. But what was the cause?

Wahid Hamdallah, a former mayor hailing from one of the affected towns, believed he had the answer. He announced publicly that the outbreak was a result of poisoning, a deliberate and malicious attack against Palestine that was orchestrated by the Israeli government.

Of course, in the taut atmosphere of the West Bank, this supposed revelation threw the panic into overdrive. Almost 250 people in Jenin began to suffer from the illness after seeing a car drive through the streets emitting thick clouds of black smoke. They were convinced that they were being poisoned.

But when the CDC investigated the school grounds where the disease had originated, they found only a trace amount of hydrogen sulfide, a gas often produced by poorly kept latrines. Could an unclean lavatory in a girls’ school have caused an outbreak which hit hundreds of people? Or was there something else in Arrabah that day?

5 The Kolbigk Dance Of Sin

Though many of the outbreaks on this list have been from the last few decades, the more distant past was by no means free of strange and inexplicable epidemics. For example, you may have heard of the Dancing Plague of 1518. The events took place in 16th-century Strasbourg, a French city then ruled by the Roman Empire.

On a narrow city street, a woman known as Frau Troffea began to dance fervently and without pause. She carried on for almost six days, unable to stop. But when she finally did, the dancing had spread. Within a week, nearly 40 people were uncontrollably dancing in the street. By the end of the month, as many as 400 people were taking part in this remarkable outbreak and dozens had died from exhaustion or exposure.

However, what you may not have realized is that this famous incident is far from a unique case. Plagues of this nature have been recorded as far back as 1021. That’s when a group of 18 people in the German town of Kolbigk began to dance and chant uncontrollably outside of their church, preventing the local priest from performing his duties.

Furious at their behavior, the priest reportedly cursed the afflicted villagers, claiming that they performed “the dance of sin.” Though fewer people were affected by this outbreak, it lasted far longer—almost an entire year! The scariest thing is that we still don’t really know what caused these dancing plagues.

4 The Pokemon Shock

This is a weird one. In 1997, nearly 700 Japanese children were rushed to hospitals after the broadcast of “Denno Senshi Porygon,” an episode of the popular Pokemon cartoon. This particular event—now referred to in Japan as “Pokemon Shock”—was believed to have been caused by flashing lights and repetitive patterns that were shown during the episode. Experts suspected that this caused epileptic fits in many of the suffering children.

Though it seems ridiculous to claim that a television program could have made people sick, this is actually more common than many people realize. Another example would be the Portuguese soap opera Morangos com Acucar (“Strawberries with Sugar”). In 2006, the show aired an episode in which a potentially deadly virus spread through the characters’ school.

Not long after, viewers of the show began to exhibit symptoms matching those of the fictional virus in the show. This baffled medical experts because it was almost as if the disease had spread from Morangos com Acucar into the real world. These two cases demonstrate how television can be much more dangerous than we realize, especially when science struggles to explain those dangers.

3 The Picardy Sweat

You may have already heard of sweating sickness (aka sudor anglicus in France), a peculiar disease found in Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. A great many symptoms were attributed to this outbreak, which affected thousands of individuals.

Everything from paranoia to paralysis was considered a sign of this mysterious illness, which physicians of the time believed had been brought to England by French mercenaries during the War of the Roses. Unlike some of the epidemics mentioned in this list, the sweating sickness was truly deadly, with a mortality rate of almost 50 percent.

What you may not know about this outbreak, however, was that it disappeared and was later resurrected. After a series of prominent sicknesses in the late 1500s, the virus began to vanish rapidly. By 1578, it was completely absent everywhere, having left no trace and no evidence as to what had caused it.

And yet, well over 100 years later, in the Picardy region of France, the sweating sickness returned in earnest. It was immediately apparent that it was the same disease. Medical expert Henry Tidy said that he could find “no substantial reason to doubt the identity of sudor anglicus and Picardy sweat.”

This time, the sickness stuck around until the end of World War I, with a particularly nasty outbreak infecting 6,000 people in 1906. After that, it disappeared from the world once again. With this sickness still a mystery, we had better hope it stays vanished.

2 The Nodding Syndrome

Capable of causing both physical and mental disabilities, the nodding disease is a fearsome epidemic characterized by the seizures suffered by its victims. They are forced to nod their heads convulsively, the spasms so severe that it prevents the infected person from eating or sleeping.

First identified in 1962—of course—the syndrome is currently present in South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda, where serious outbreaks have occurred as recently as 2012. Such was the extent of the problem that Doctor Anthony Mbonye, Uganda’s commissioner for health services, opened a series of clinics designed specifically to deal with sufferers of this odd illness.

Though the seizures are uncomfortable and frightening, the true damage of nodding syndrome comes from the stunting of growth. Once victims are infected, they are permanently and completely stunted, both in body and mind. As the disease primarily affects children between the ages of five and 15, this can lead to truly life-altering handicaps for the sufferers.

Though doctors are still far from understanding the cause of the disease, there is some hope. Scientists believe that a link between the syndrome and a species of parasitic worm that is common in the affected areas may provide a possible answer. For now, however, there is no real evidence—and no real cure.

1 Dromomania

In 1886, a man named Jean-Albert Dadas was admitted to a hospital in Bordeaux, physically exhausted and with no memory of how he had gotten there. For most people, it would have been a terrifying event, but for Dadas, this was more or less ordinary.

He often found himself waking up from a fugue, having walked hundreds of miles without realizing it. Once in 1881, he awoke to find that he had walked from France to Russia. Dadas, you see, was a sufferer of dromomania—an inexplicable disease classified as “an uncontrollable desire to travel or wander.”

Sometimes referred to as “pathological tourism” in more recent years, dromomania was a brief and inexplicable epidemic that struck France in the late 19th century. Fascinatingly, the disease vanished just as medical professionals were preparing to study it.

At a psychiatric conference in Nantes in 1909, various academics tried to rationalize the sickness, presenting six or seven different conditions that they believed were the cause of dromomania. The last case of the disease was reported mere months later despite the fact that no actual explanation or cure had been found at the conference. This is a mystery which remains unresolved to this day.

Alex Smith is currently studying English literature and creative writing at Lancaster University in England. He hopes to use the skills acquired during his studies to write excessive amounts of listicles.

Sometimes things just happen and other times they happen for sinister reasons. Freak accidents occur all the time, but so do well-planned tragedies. The problem is that one cannot always distinguish between the two and the more time passes after a mysterious incident, the more difficult it becomes to determine whether it happened out of spite or just bad luck. Was the object or person just at the wrong place at the wrong time, or did someone make sure they would be? Also, some mysteries are more ‘obvious’ than others, but often their causes remain obscure.

See Also: 10 Unsolved Crimes That Were Caught On Video

10Greensboro hit and run

What was supposed to be a fun last-minute Christmas shopping trip, turned into a nightmare for a group of teenagers on 23 December 1988. Kenneth Lynn Dungee, Lavern Allen, Kenneth Newkirk and Darius Bannerman set off in a Plymouth Duster and planned to drive from Greensboro to Raleigh.

Allen was driving and they were all laughing and talking while travelling along Interstate 40. At some point during the drive, they passed a car that would later be revealed to have been driven by Grady Alexander. Mere seconds after passing the car, a blue Monte Carlo bore down on them after speeding past Alexander. Allen noticed the car getting very close to their Plymouth and tried to speed up a bit. However, the man in the Monte Carlo kept close and eventually bumped into them from behind.

The four teenagers were terrified, and Allen tried swerving through traffic to get away from the Monte Carlo. Unfortunately, the car caught up to them and side-swiped them. The driver then fell back a bit only to hit the Plymouth from behind again and again.

Allen tried to hold the Plymouth steady, but eventually lost control of the car and it ended up rolling several times and landing in a field.

Kenneth Dungee died on impact. Kenneth Newkirk suffered a broken leg and skull fracture. Darius Bannerman suffered a broken wrist and multiple injuries to his face. Lavern Allen was freed from the mangled wreck after 30 minutes and later had his leg amputated.

The unknown man who had run them off the road, got out of his car at the accident site, briefly stared at the wreck and was then called back to his own car by a female companion who had been riding with him.

Police never found the man who caused the death of Kenneth Dungee and the terrible injuries of the other three men in what was initially suspected to be a hate crime. The case was featured on Unsolved Mysteries and is still talked about on internet forums but seems unlikely to ever be solved.

9Rietbok plane crash

It seemed a bad omen preceded a plane crash more than 50 years ago. On 13 March 1967, South African Airways Flight 406, also known as ‘Rietbok’, set off from Jan Smuts Airport in Johannesburg but had to return shortly after take-off due to a faulty front nosewheel. This however didn’t deter anyone from letting the plane complete its journey shortly after being repaired. It landed in East London in the afternoon and took off again shortly after. The plane was hardly airborne before it struck a bird. Upon landing in Port Elizabeth, the plane was inspected, and it was decided it could continue flying.

The plane had to then return from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg and the pilot took on more fuel to ensure that predicted bad weather in East London didn’t cause any problems. Passengers who needed to disembark at the East London airport were warned they may not be able to do so. The plane took off from Port Elizabeth at 4:41 GMT and the pilot received a weather update at 4:58 GMT. When the plane passed the Port Elizabeth tower at 5:06, the pilot radioed that he was 20 miles from landing. Three minutes later, the pilot communicated for the last time, saying he was at 2,000 feet and could see the coast. Only one minute after this communication, the ‘Rietbok’ crashed into the sea killing all 25 people on board. Eyewitnesses on a nearby beach, who saw the plane go down, immediately notified police.

There was minimal wreckage to work with for the subsequent investigation into the crash and no bodies were ever recovered. Theories ranged from the pilot suffering a heart attack to sabotage. Others believed the plane crashed due to structural failure as the wing may have separated from the body of the aircraft. However, the true cause of the crash has never been established.

8Disappearance of David Guerrero

13-year old David Guerrero was something of a prodigy. He had a considerable talent for painting and attended an art academy in Spain. He was a shy boy who preferred to hang out with his brother or parents.

David received a wonderful opportunity in 1987 when he was invited to unveil his first artwork in the La Maison art gallery. In addition to his, a local radio host wanted to interview him about it. David and the radio station agreed to meet in La Maison after school and before David had to be at the art academy. David’s father couldn’t drive him to the interview and instead told him to remain in La Maison after the interview if it ran late and he would pick him up afterwards.
David felt a little under the weather on 6 April 1987, the day of the interview.

He left for the radio station at 18:30. At some point during the 10-minute walk to the bus stop, David disappeared. When his father arrived at the academy at 21:00, he couldn’t find David anywhere. Upon approaching the gallery, he was informed that they hadn’t seen the teenager that day. He drove home to check whether David was there and seeing that he wasn’t, he went to the police station to report his son missing.

The police interviewed many people over the course of their investigation, including all bus drivers that travelled the route David would have taken. Hundreds of anonymous tips were investigated without success. So baffled were the authorities they even followed up on a claim from a psychic that the boy was living in a remote shrine. This too proved to be a dead end. Years passed and the trail as well as the case grew cold.
To date David Guerrero remains missing.

7Eric Wone murder

In 2006, Joseph Price, Victor Zaborsky and Dylan Ward lived as a polyamorous family in Washington. Robert Eric Wone was acquainted with and visited them on 2 August 2006 with the aim of staying overnight. Within an hour of Wone arriving at the Swann Street residence, neighbours heard a terrified scream. This would later be confirmed to have been uttered by Wone.

Victor Zaborsky called 9-1-1 just before midnight and a string of police officers and paramedics arrived within 5 minutes. Upon their arrival, they were astonished to find the body of Robert Eric Wone lying prone on a bed, fully dressed, with three stab wounds to his chest. The bedding beneath him was folded neatly and there were no signs of a struggle. It also seemed that the body had been washed down after being stabbed. The three occupants of the house were all wearing white bathrobes and looked rather unperturbed by the dead man in their midst. Later, during the autopsy, a pathologist discovered seven needle prick marks on Wone’s body that could not be explained.

Afterwards it was revealed that Zaborsky told the 9-1-1 operator that there was an intruder in their house and that he stabbed Wone. This did not convince police. Price, Zaborsky and Ward were arrested and charged with Wone’s murder. Prosecutors stated that the men cleaned up the crime scene before calling for help. However, the three men’s defence team retorted that they were suspected of the crime merely out of prejudice of their lifestyle.

The accused were all acquitted in 2010 and no one else has ever been charged with Wone’s murder. The mystery of what happened that terrible night, remains.

6Stolen Boeing 727-223

25 May 2003 was just another day in Luanda, Angola. That is until a Boeing 727-223 was stolen from Quatro de Fevereiro Airport. It is alleged that just before sunset American pilot, Ben C. Padilla and a mechanic from the Congo, John M. Matantu, boarded the plane. Shortly after, the aircraft started moving without any communication reaching the control tower. The plane took off without any lights and disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean.

Padilla’s sister told a newspaper in 2004 that she and her family believed Ben flew the plane against his will and that he may have crashed somewhere over Africa. Other theories include a business feud gone wrong or that the plane was to be used in a terror attack.

The US authorised a search for the aircraft in several countries without success. Several sightings were reported but nothing panned out. The plane as well as the two men remain missing to this day.

5Utah family stalker

From 2018 through August 2019, a woman and her father had more than 500 people pitch up at their Utah home. They included repairmen, delivery drivers, food deliveries etc. These people were all sent to the house by Loren Okamura who was behind a chilling cyberstalking campaign against the woman.

Okamura even revealed the house address on Craigslist and sent over drug dealers and prostitutes. He also contacted the woman via email and threatened her by writing that she should sleep with one eye open and that “they were coming for her and her parents”. He went on to say that she “should just kill herself and do her family a favor already”.

Okamura didn’t desist from the stalking and harassment even after a civil stalking injunction was obtained against him. The family eventually had to put up a sign at their home to avoid having to open the door for all the strangers that pitched up there. The sign asked that anyone who was sent to their address call the police.

The stalker was eventually arrested in Hawaii in November 2019. However, the motive for his deplorable actions remains unknown.

4Sneha Anne Philip’s disappearance

31-year old medical intern, Sneha Anne Philip, had a rare day off on 10 September 2001. She used the day to tidy up the apartment she shared with her husband Ron and then had a two-hour instant messaging conversation with her mother between 2 and 4pm. She then changed into different clothes and headed out to buy bedding, underwear, pantyhose, a dress and three pairs of shoes.

When Ron returned home just before midnight, Sneha wasn’t there. He wasn’t worried because she frequently stayed over at her cousin Annu’s or at her brother John’s place. He also wasn’t worried the next morning when he headed back to work in the Bronx.

However, when the news broke that a plane had struck the north tower of the World Trade Centre, he called home immediately. His wife didn’t pick up. He phoned several times more, each time leaving a message. He then started worrying that Sneha may have got caught up in the WTC attack. He set off looking for his wife. The panic that struck Manhattan caused traffic pileups and he reached Tribeca at nine in the evening. He spent the night at a friend’s house and returned home in the morning, only to find Sneha still wasn’t there.

Sadly, Sneha’s name ended up on the 9/11 victims list. Her family believes that she died a hero; that she ran into the inferno caused by the planes crashing into the towers to help those who were hurt and dying. This story was helped along with a lie told by Sneha’s brother who told WABC that he spoke to his sister on 11 September and she told him she was helping people inside the towers.

Officials do not share this belief. Sneha’s name was removed from the list in 2004 when it was alleged that Sneha led a double life and died the night before 9/11. Another theory says that Sneha used the 9/11 tragedy to disappear and start a new life someplace else.

Either way, Ron Philip never saw his wife again and her true fate remains a mystery.

3Otto Warmbier’s mysterious injury

On 2 January 2016 American college student, Otto Frederick Warmbier was arrested in North Korea. The charge: allegedly stealing a propaganda poster from his hotel. The sentence: 15 years in jail including hard labor.

In March 2016 Warmbier suffered a brain injury which caused him to lapse into a coma. It took North Korean authorities over a year to disclose Warmbier’s medical situation which they tried to explain away by saying he had contracted botulism which had been worsened by Warmbier’s ingestion of a sleeping pill. The young man was released in June 2017, while still in a coma, and transported to a medical centre in the US for treatment.

Sadly, Warmbier never woke up and died six days after being admitted at the medical facility. It was revealed that he died of a lack of oxygen to the brain caused by an unknown neurological injury.

A U.S. federal court ruled that the North Korean government should be held liable for Warmbier’s torture and death. To date, it remains unknown how Warmbier received the injury that ultimately killed him. There has been no evidence to support the botulism and sleeping pill theory, but there also was no physical evidence of torture on Warmbier’s body.

Otto Warmbier’s parents have decided to sue the North Korean government over the death of their son.

2Disappearance of Claudia Kirschhoch

29-year old New Yorker, Claudia Kirschhoch, was offered a paid work trip to the new Sandals resort in Cuba in 2000. The travel writer met up with other travel writers and arrived in Montego Bay on 24 May 2000. Unfortunately, visa problems led to them being stranded in Jamaica and unable to fly back to New York since flights were fully booked for the next week.

Claudia and a fellow writer, Tania Grossinger, then went to the Sandals resort in Negril instead. They stayed at the resort for three days before managing to book a flight out of Jamaica. However, Claudia wasn’t ready to leave. She and Tania had breakfast together before Tania’s flight. That afternoon, Claudia took a stroll on the beach and disappeared.

Claudia’s parents called the company she worked for after a couple of days of struggling to get in touch with their daughter. They received the shocking news that Claudia never returned to work. When Claudia’s hotel room was searched her passport, phone and flight ticket to New York were all there. Management at the hotel seemingly didn’t care that the room might contain clues to Claudia’s disappearance and they simply rented it out to other visitors. It wasn’t long before Claudia’s phone disappeared as well as the logbook that recorded all license plate numbers of cars entering and exiting the resort.

It was discovered that Claudia spent time with a bartender named Anthony Grant who called in sick the day after Claudia vanished. He stayed away from work for four days and when police finally got hold of him, he admitted that he and Claudia saw each other on 26 May. He denied any involvement in her disappearance even though sniffer dogs traced Claudia’s scent to the trunk and back seat of his car. He was never named as a suspect or arrested on any charges.

Claudia’s parents searched non-stop for their daughter, but she was officially declared dead in 2002. Her fate remains unknown.

1Patrick Erhabor’s murder

In September 2001, a pedestrian walking along the River Thames spotted something bright orange in the water. When police investigated, they found that the orange object was a pair of shorts draped over the torso of a young boy.

When the torso was removed from the river, police saw that the legs, arms and head had been cleanly removed with a very sharp knife. Tests on the torso revealed that the young boy had been poisoned before being murdered. Plant extracts were found in his intestines which were traced to West Africa. The shorts found with the torso were likely bought in either Germany or Austria.

This terrible crime uncovered a network of child traffickers who kidnapped children in Africa and brought them to the UK. Many traffickers were jailed, but the boy’s murderer was still free. Police named the boy ‘Adam’ and had his remains buried in a Southwark cemetery.

During their investigation, police questioned a woman named Joyce Osagiede after a similar pair of orange pants were discovered in her house. A lack of further evidence led to her never being charge with the murder and she was eventually deported to Nigeria. 10 years later, Joyce appeared in a BBC interview during which she said the boy’s name was Patrick Erhabor. She claimed to have given him to a man named Kingsley Ojo. Ojo was arrested for trafficking in 2004 but could not be linked to Adam’s murder.

To date, no arrests in this horrific murder have been made. And even though a ritual sacrifice was suspected, this motive was never confirmed.

Murder. The word alone is enough to send cold shivers down your spine. Just the thought that some people out there kill for pleasure could be enough to make you never want to step outside again. No one wants to fall victim to a psycho’s fantasies. No one wants to be shot, stabbed, strangled, poisoned, or pushed off a bridge. Terrifyingly, however, people are killed like this around the world every single day. They are shot in a fit of rage, stabbed out of jealousy, strangled in a moment of insanity, or pushed off a bridge when no one is looking. The aftermath of terrible incidents like this leaves family and friends devastated and keeps harried detectives working around the clock to find the killer. Some murder cases are solved within days, some within decades. Some are never solved.

See Also: Top 10 Murder Mysteries Finally Solved Using Forensics

10 Arthur “Buddy” Schumacher

Eight-year old Arthur Louis “Buddy” Schumacher was a lively, happy child. He attended Lincoln Elementary School in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin and had many friends. On July 24, 1925 he and some boys from his neighborhood jumped on a freight train to hitch a ride to the local swimming hole. That was the last time Buddy was seen alive.

When he failed to return home later that day, he was reported missing by his family. Police, together with the community, searched the surrounding area non-stop for seven weeks. Then, a mere mile from his home, Buddy’s remains were found partially hidden underneath some bushes. His clothing had been torn and a handkerchief protruded from his throat. He had also been sexually assaulted and mutilated.

Police investigations eventually led to the arrest of a drifter in the Wauwatosa area, but when witnesses later retracted their statements, he was released. No one else was ever arrested in connected with the brutal murder. The mystery remains unsolved and the Schumacher family never got closure regarding the loss of their only son.

9 Elaine Nix

Being a typical teenager in 1999, 18-year old Elaine Nix called her boyfriend Billy just about every day. Since she lived in Georgia and he in Cleveland, the phone charges quickly racked up to $75 in a single month. Soon Elaine’s mother blocked long-distance calls from their line and told her daughter she would have to make another plan to get in touch with Billy.

Unperturbed, Elaine started driving to Zack’s Food Rack to use their payphone which cost her only 35 cents for unlimited talk time. The couple got into a routine whereby Elaine would call around 11pm and they would talk for around an hour, after which she would drive back home. On September 20, 1999, Elaine and Billy spoke for an hour about an upcoming camping trip. When they hung up, Billy assumed Elaine would drive back home as per usual. Unfortunately, Elaine never made it home.

Her parents weren’t overly concerned at first, since Elaine frequently stayed over with friends and family instead of driving home. However, when their daughter didn’t show up for work the following day, they knew something was wrong. Driving past Zack’s Food Rack, they spied her car in the parking lot; key still in the ignition, driver’s window rolled down. On the passenger seat sat Elaine’s purse and a packet of cigarettes. Elaine’s mother drove the car home, unknowingly destroying potential evidence.

After the teenager was reported missing by her parents, roadblocks were set up while her family searched the area around the restaurant. Nine days after her disappearance, an unnamed person cutting the grass behind a park made a tragic discovery: Elaine’s body, naked and badly decomposed, lying just inside the tree line. She had been killed and dumped 17 miles from the payphone she frequented.

An official cause of death was never established due to the advanced decomposition of the remains, yet theories surfaced that Elaine Nix had been strangled or smothered. A murder investigation was opened, but a lack of leads and evidence led to the case running cold within a few years. To date, no arrests have been made and Elaine’s killer may still be on the loose.

8 Jenny Low Chang

Nineteen-year old Jenny Low Chang was a student at San Francisco State University in 1977. She took her studies seriously and booked a study session in the library basement to which she headed at 6pm on September 11, 1977.

When her roommate awoke the following morning and saw that Jenny hadn’t returned to the dorm room and her bed had not been slept in, she reported her missing. Only three hours had passed when one of the professors at the university discovered Jenny’s naked body in the reading room on the fourth floor. Her head showed signs of a severe beating, she had multiple stab wounds and there was evidence of sexual assault. Several pieces of furniture in the room were broken, which pointed to a struggle, and her clothes and books were placed next to her body.

It was pointed out during investigations that someone would have had to open the door to the reading room for Jenny as it would have been locked at around 5pm on a Sunday. Over 200 school staff members and 1,200 faculty members possessed keys and coded cards that could unlock that particular door.

Despite the number of potential suspects, only two were ever questioned: a campus security guard and a faculty member. Some people were convinced the “Zodiac Killer” was the culprit. Nothing ever came of police investigations and over 40 years later, Jenny’s murder remains a mystery.

7 Don Henry and Kevin Ives

On August 23, 1987, a cargo train was traveling through Alexander, Arkansas when the driver saw something on the tracks ahead. As the train closed in on the object, he could see it was a body. He then realized that there were in fact two bodies lying across the tracks, in the way of his oncoming train. Attempting desperately to stop and blowing the horn incessantly, the driver almost succeeded in avoiding hitting the bodies, but unfortunately the train’s momentum caused it to roll over them.

An investigation revealed that the bodies were those of 16-year old Don Henry and 17-year old Kevin Ives. Initially it was suspected that the boys had fallen asleep on the tracks due to heavy use of marijuana. However, both sets of parents insisted that a second autopsy be conducted. Eventually a pathologist realized that the marks on Don Henry’s shirt were consistent with a stabbing injury, and that Kevin Ives’ skull had been crushed possibly by the rifle he used to hunt with.

Some witnesses claimed to have seen a man dressed in military attire a week before the train incident as well as the same day the train hit the boys. One theory had it that the boys may have stumbled across a drug dealing operation and had been murdered for it.

Police investigated all possible leads but they all led to a dead-end. To date, the boys’ killer remains unknown.

6 Zigmund Adamski

Zigmund Adamski, 56, left his home in Tingley, near Wakefield, England in June 1980 and set off on a walk to the local store to do some shopping. He never returned.

A search effort ensued and Zigmund’s body was located five days later at a coal yard in Todmorden. Lying on top of a heap of coal, the body was dressed in a suit but no shirt. His wallet and watch were also missing. The coroner inspected several burns on the back of Zigmund’s head, neck and shoulders, but could not determine the cause thereof. The coroner was also puzzled by the fact that Zigmund barely had a 5 o’clock shadow even though he had been missing for five days. Furthermore, forensic experts determined that a type of ointment had been rubbed onto the burn wounds, but could not establish the exact kind.

In a very strange turn of events, a well-known UFOlogist in the area claimed that Zigmund had been abducted by aliens. This speculation was fueled by the policeman who found Zigmund’s body, Alan Godfrey. Godfrey claimed to have personally encountered a UFO. Shortly after this revelation, he quit his job and started a new career as a motivational speaker.

Godfrey also claimed that Zigmund died of a heart attack, but this did not explain how he got on top of a coal pile nor why he was lying face down, as his positioning meant he would have had to have been deposited from above. Despite a thorough police investigation, Zigmund’s killer was never found and what exactly happened to him remains a mystery.

See Also: Top 10 Creative Ways Someone Has Committed Murder

5 Frauke Liebs

Excitement hung in the air in the city of Paderborn, Germany in June 2006 as the FIFA World Cup tournament was in full swing. Frauke Liebs, 21,  joined a friend at a local pub to watch a match between England and Sweden. At some point during the night, she borrowed another friend’s cellphone battery as hers was just about dead. Before she left at 11pm she put her own battery back in her phone and set off on a walk to her house, 1.5 kilometers away.

Just before 1am, Liebs still hadn’t arrived home. Her roommate received a text from her, saying she would be back later that morning. However, Liebs never returned home and didn’t arrive at work either. Her mother reported her missing the same day.

In the days that followed, Liebs called her roommate five times from five different locations within Paderborn. She didn’t answer the multiple questions her roommate had and would only repeat that she would be home soon. During the last phone call, Frauke’s sister spoke to her and later told police that Liebs had answered ‘yes’ when asked whether she was being held captive. The phone calls then abruptly stopped.

Liebs’s remains were found near Lichtenau almost four months later. Her bag and possessions were missing. Her body was severely decomposed, and a cause of death could not be established. Police later concluded that Liebs had been held captive for a while in Nieheim before being killed and her body dumped. There were five initial suspects, but all were released without being charged due to a lack of conclusive evidence.

Frauke Liebs’ murder remains unsolved.

4 Diao Aiqing

On January 19, 1996, a street cleaner in Nanjing thought she had received a belated Christmas gift when she found a bag of meat sitting in a clump of snow next to the road. She took it home but was horrified when she started cleaning the meat and discovered three human fingers inside the bag.

The woman notified the police, and officers found more human remains in two other areas. The body parts totaled over 2,000 pieces and a boiled head and limbs were also found. It was eventually established that the remains were those of 19-year old university student, Diao Aiqing. Diao went missing on January 10, 1996 after getting into a fight with other students at the university over the use of electrical appliances. She was never seen again.

Police launched a massive investigation but to date, Diao’s killer is still unknown and the motive for her gruesome murder remains elusive.

3 Terry Sutter

Terry Sutter was looking forward to spending some time with his friends at the movies and the local bowling alley on September 1, 1973. But before he could do that, he had to finish his chores for the day, which included mowing someone’s lawn. When he was done, he waited in vain for his mother to pick him up; when she didn’t show up, he walked home. That evening he joined his friends in Frankfort, Michigan with strict instructions from his parents to be at his grandmother’s house no later than 11pm. The next day Terry’s grandmother informed them that the 15-year-old never arrived at her house and she still hadn’t heard anything from him.

Terry’s parents immediately informed the police that he was missing, but officers weren’t especially worried and voiced their opinion that he was probably just hiding somewhere to avoid having to go to school. However, they soon regretted thinking this. That afternoon a tourist stumbled upon Terry’s body on a beach in Michigan. It soon became apparent that someone had held him down in the sand until he suffocated; his lungs and eyes were filled with sand. He also had multiple bruises on his head and neck.

The teenager’s parents were devastated, but requested minimal media coverage of the murder. They had their son buried in the Lake Township cemetery, but their trauma was far from over. For some reason, Terry’s grave kept being vandalized. Flowerpots would be broken and plants ripped out. Things got so bad that Terry’s parents eventually had his remains moved to an unmarked grave.

It remains unknown who was responsible for Terry Sutter’s death and whether his killer and the person who vandalized his grave were one and the same.

2 Ida Lowry

Edwin Smith was tired and grateful to be heading home just after midnight on April 23, 1960. As he passed between Clybourn and St. Paul avenues in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he thought he heard someone screaming. He stopped his car and listened. Sure enough, he heard cries for help coming from an alleyway. Running to it, he couldn’t believe what he saw. An elderly woman, later identified as 76-year-old Ida Lowry, was lying in the alley covered in blood and bruises. When he tried to help her up, she screamed in pain, so he left to call the police instead. Unfortunately, an hour after police arrived and transported Ida to a hospital, she died.

Before she drew her last breath however, Ida was able to tell officers that a big white man who ‘worked at the bridge’ grabbed her and hit her with a heavy object. He then raped her. When he was done, he simply left her to die in the alley.

An investigation into Ida’s life revealed that she was somewhat of an eccentric loner who loved rifling through garbage cans. She had two sisters, both of whom hadn’t seen her in a while. Police ramped up their search for suspects and identified six men of interest within just a few days. None of them were ever charged. A 24-year-old man falsely confessed to the murder and over the next few weeks many others were questioned. However, Ida Lowry’s murderer is yet to be found.

1 Tristan Brübach

Tristan Brübach was an only child to his parents. The family lived in Frankfurt, Austria and Tristan attended Walter Kolk Primary school up until the 5th grade after which he moved to a school in Sindlingen. Tragically Tristan’s mother, who was a drug addict, committed suicide when her son was only 10.

Tristan’s grandmother soon moved in with him and his father to help look after the young boy. Tristan, being bored with his grandmother’s company, took to hanging around outside and walking around the neighborhood until late in the evening. When he wasn’t outside, he was playing video games and tending to his pet rabbit. Soon however, Tristan started to rebel because he wanted to fit in with older kids. He started smoking in a bid to appear “cool,” but this didn’t prevent other children from bullying him.

On March 26, 1998, Tristan didn’t want to go to school. He asked his father if he could go to the doctor instead, claiming that his back was sore. His father didn’t fall for this story and told his son to go to school. Tristan eventually showed up to school at 9am after hanging out with a friend outside the school premises. Later in the day he asked the teacher if he could leave early to go to the doctor and was granted permission. He was last seen alive at a park in front of the Frankfurt-Höchst railway station.

Some of his fellow school mates found Tristan’s lifeless body on their way home from school. They ran back to the school building to alert the teachers and the police arrived at the scene just after 5pm. Tristan’s body was lying in a pedestrian tunnel. He had been severely beaten, strangled and his neck had a deep cut. Upon further inspection, police found that the young boy’s testicles had been removed and that flesh from his thighs and buttocks had been cut out. The murder weapon was found close to the scene.

Three teenagers claimed to have seen the murder take place from a distance and gave police a description of the killer. However, after a large-scale fingerprint operation, the identification of several persons of interest and the offering of a monetary reward for information, the case remains unsolved.

2020 brings with it the start of not only a new year but a brand-new decade. There is a whisper of better things to come and a hint of hope. However, for some, it just means another year and possibly another decade stuck with an unsolved mystery that keeps them from finding closure.

See Also: 10 Truly Bizarre And Chilling Cases Of Mass Disappearances

Many have lost loved ones in inexplicable ways, while others wait for word on missing family members that never comes. On this list are 10 disappearances to be debated and mulled over. But all the while, we should not forget those left behind who are praying for their missing loved ones to return unharmed.

10 Boris Weisfeiler

Forty-three-year-old Boris Weisfeiler had just about had it with all the snow in Pennsylvania in December 1984. Craving sunshine, he booked a trip to Chile and was looking forward to hiking several trails in the Andes Mountains.

It is believed that Weisfeiler tried to cross a river at one point during a hike. The only sign that he was ever there was a backpack found on the riverbank. Weisfeiler never returned home and was never seen again. Authorities in Chile concluded that he had drowned while trying to cross the river, but his body was never recovered.^[1]

Fast-forward 16 years, and Boris Weisfeiler’s mysterious disappearance takes a sinister turn. Declassified US documents reveal that the Penn State University professor may have been murdered in Chile. The documents allege that a witness saw Weisfeiler being interrogated at an agricultural commune before being shot point-blank.

This revelation led to a new investigation. In 2012, eight men, including police and military officers, were charged with the kidnapping of Weisfeiler. However, the case was closed in 2016 and the men were all freed.

Boris Weisfeiler’s sister was devastated at this turn of events. To date, a body has not been recovered in Chile and Boris Weisfeiler’s ultimate fate remains a mystery.

9 Patricia Meehan

On April 20, 1989, 37-year-old Patricia Meehan was driving on the wrong side of the road on Montana Highway 200 when she crashed into another vehicle. The driver of the other car was Carol Heitz, an off-duty police dispatcher.

After Heitz exited her car, Meehan walked up to Heitz and stared silently at her. After a few seconds, Meehan turned around, climbed over a nearby fence, stared again at the scene, and then walked away. She was never heard from again.^[2]

After the incident, thousands of sightings of Meehan were reported: She was either hitching rides or having low-key meals at diners. These sightings all allegedly took place in the states of Montana and Washington. It was revealed that Meehan had suffered from depression and worked odd jobs at a ranch in Montana before her disappearance.

In conjunction with police efforts, Meehan’s family launched a personal search for Patricia. The family distributed 2,000 missing person flyers and made use of horses and a helicopter to search rough terrain. Despite this huge effort, Patricia Meehan remains missing.

8 Mayumi Arashi

Twenty-seven-year-old Mayumi Arashi left her home in Tokyo on September 2, 1994, after telling her sister, Yoko, that she was going out to meet a friend. When Mayumi failed to return by September 3, Yoko phoned that friend to find out where her sister was. The friend said that she hadn’t had plans to meet Mayumi the previous day.

Later the same day, a note was found in Yoko’s wardrobe. The note read: “I was going out with A but was betrayed. [ . . . ] I’m sorry.” A’s phone number was written at the bottom of the note.

Yoko dialed the number and spoke with “A.” He said that he had met with Mayumi the previous day. If Mayumi was dead, he hoped that the punishment would be prison. Yoko got hold of a private detective who tracked the movements of “A” for months. But the detective could only come back with the information that “A” had gone into the woods on March 9, 1995, carrying two drinks. A police investigation of the area turned up nothing.

Years went by with no news of Mayumi. Yoko and her father eventually did an TV interview about Mayumi’s disappearance. On a shelf behind the father was a piece of paper stuck to the wood that read: “Don’t believe what Yoko says.”^[3]

This sent viewers into a frenzy. But despite this weird turn of events, Mayumi Arashi remains missing. There are no new clues as to what may have happened to her.

7 Hannah Upp

It is not often that you hear of a person disappearing multiple times. However, this is exactly the case with Hannah Upp. She disappeared for the first time on August 28, 2008, after going for a jog on Riverside Drive near Hamilton Heights where she lived.

Nearly three weeks later, she was found floating in New York Harbor. She could not recall how she got to the harbor or what happened in the weeks she had been missing. While undergoing tests in a hospital, Upp was diagnosed with dissociative fugue, which is a rare form of amnesia. This disorder causes sufferers to forget their own identities and can last for years.

Upp disappeared again for two days in September 2013 and then again on September 14, 2017, a week after Hurricane Irma hit the Caribbean. She was working at a school in the Virgin Islands at the time.^[4]

On September 16, 2017, construction workers found her car at a beach. The vehicle contained clothes and her keys. The same day, Hurricane Maria was forming in the Atlantic and brought more devastation across the northeastern Caribbean.

Unfortunately, Hannah wasn’t found and remains missing to this day.

6 Patrick Warren And David Spencer

After celebrating a great Christmas Day with their families in 1996, best friends Patrick Warren, 11, and David Spencer, 13, spent Boxing Day lazing about in their homes in Chelmsley Wood. In the afternoon, they played with a group of children in Meriden Park. When the two boys finally returned home, they asked their parents if they could visit one of Patrick’s brothers that evening.

Patrick set off on the new bicycle he had received for Christmas, and David walked beside him. They made it as far as the local gas station where an attendant saw them head toward a shopping center.

The next day, another of Patrick’s brothers went looking for the boys when it was learned that they had never arrived at their destination the previous day. Much later, Patrick’s bicycle was found behind the gas station. The boys’ faces were plastered on milk cartons in an effort to find them.^[5]

It was only in 2003 that a suspect was arrested. However, the man was released without being charged. Child killer Brian Field was also a suspect because he had killed and raped a child in 1968 and imprisoned two teens in 1986.

In 2006, the area where Field used to dump waste was searched in the hopes that the remains of the boys would be found. The search was unsuccessful.

Patrick and David remain missing in early 2020. There is little hope that the case will ever be solved.

5 Ireland’s Vanishing Triangle

On March 26, 1993, 26-year-old native New Yorker Annie McCarrick went missing from Sandymount. She was last seen outside a post office in Enniskerry. Her parents arrived after being contacted by their daughter’s friends. The parents stayed in Ireland for six months while searching unsuccessfully for their daughter.

On July 25, 1993, 39-year-old Eva Brennan left her parents’ house in Rathgar but never made it back to her apartment. After two days of not hearing from his daughter, her father went to investigate. Inside Eva’s apartment, he found the jacket she’d been wearing the day she disappeared. Eva was never seen again.

On January 3, 1994, 22-year-old Imelda Keenan told her boyfriend that she was going to the post office. She left their apartment in Waterford City at 1:30 PM. The local doctor’s secretary was the last person to see Keenan as she crossed a road in town and seemingly vanished into thin air.

On November 9, 1995, 21-year-old Josephine Dollard was spotted using a pay phone in the Moone area of Kildare. After she ended the call, she was seen getting into a car with an unknown person. Dollard never made it back home.

On August 23, 1996, 25-year-old Fiona Pender vanished after leaving her apartment in Tullamore. On February 13, 1997, 17-year-old Ciara Breen disappeared from her home in Dundalk. On February 8, 1998, 19-year-old Fiona Sinnott went missing after leaving a pub in Broadway. On July 28, 1998, 18-year-old Deirdre Jacob went missing mere meters from her parents’ home.

None of these young women have ever been found.^[6]

The tie that binds them together? They all disappeared in what has come to be known as Ireland’s Vanishing Triangle within the boundaries of Leinster. Police decided that the missing women were most likely murdered and focused their investigation on convicted rapist Larry Murphy. He was charged with an unrelated rape and attempted murder case in 2000.

With Murphy in prison, the vanishings abruptly stopped, giving authorities even more reason to suspect him. Unfortunately, a lack of evidence and staunch denials on Murphy’s part mean that he was never charged for any of the disappearances. The fate of those who vanished remains unknown.

4 Lauren Spierer

On June 3, 2011, 20-year-old Indiana University student Lauren Spierer was enjoying an evening out at a bar with a bunch of friends. Her boyfriend, Jesse Wolff, hadn’t joined her. But he texted back and forth with her before eventually heading to bed.

Surveillance footage captured Spierer leaving the Bloomington bar just before 2:30 AM. She was accompanied by a friend named Cory Rossman. Several witnesses who had seen Spierer at the bar claimed that both she and Rossman were very intoxicated when they left.

Rossman and Spierer reached her apartment complex but left again shortly afterward. They walked through an alley just before 3:00 AM. They arrived at Rossman’s apartment, and his roommate, Michael Beth, escorted the young man to his room.

Spierer refused to stay and said that she wanted to return to her own home. She ended up at the apartment of Beth’s neighbor, Jay Rosenbaum. He claimed that Spierer left at 4:30 AM and that he saw her for the last time as she was heading south on College Avenue.

Boyfriend Jesse Wolff sent Spierer a text several hours later. But he received a reply from a bar employee indicating that Spierer had forgotten her phone at the establishment. Lauren Spierer was never seen again.^[7]

In 2015, 22-year-old Hannah Wilson was found murdered and dumped in a vacant lot 10 miles from the Bloomington campus after being reported missing. Daniel Messel was charged and convicted for the crime. Police investigated any possible links between the Spierer disappearance and the Wilson murder, but nothing came of their efforts. To date, no suspects have been named and no new clues have emerged.

3 Ben McDaniel

Thirty-year-old scuba diver Ben McDaniel was diving in the underwater cave at Vortex Springs on August 18, 2010. He tried to access a dangerous part of the cave by tampering with the gate that barred uncertified divers. Two employees of Vortex Springs were diving at the same time and noticed what McDaniel was doing. One of the men decided to let McDaniel into the cave to minimize the risk of him hurting himself or accidentally drowning by getting himself stuck inside the gate.

It took two days for the same employee to realize that McDaniel’s truck had never left his parking spot on the day he went diving. Fearing that McDaniel had drowned, the employee immediately called the police. Recovery divers searched every possible corner of the cave but came up empty-handed. A veteran diver came back with the news that Ben’s stature made it impossible for him to have become confined deeper in the cave.^[8]

McDaniel’s parents offered a $30,000 reward for any diver who would risk his own life to go even further into the depths of the cave to try to find their son. One diver may have taken up the challenge, though no one is sure. That diver was found dead in the cavern.

Conspiracy theories began flying. One claimed that McDaniel had faked his own death to escape personal troubles. Another maintained that someone had murdered McDaniel and hidden his body where it would be impossible to find. According to other theories, McDaniel had drowned and his body was covered with sand or he had committed suicide and squeezed himself into a tight space beforehand, making sure that no one could get him out.

Ben McDaniel remains missing, and the truth of his disappearance still evades his loved ones.

2 Anthonette Cayedito

On April 6, 1986, Penny Cayedito arrived at her apartment in Gallup, New Mexico, after a hard day’s work. Her three daughters were sound asleep, and the babysitter left as soon as Penny got there. Penny still had a few things to do around the house and only got to bed around 3:00 AM.

She had barely fallen asleep when a knock sounded at the door. Penny didn’t hear it. But her eldest daughter, Anthonette, did and went to answer the door. Penny’s two youngest daughters didn’t think anything of this and went right back to sleep. When the family awoke later that morning, nine-year-old Anthonette was gone.^[9]

Penny immediately called the police and reported her daughter missing. One of Anthonette’s sisters believed that their uncle may have been the one who had knocked on the door. But he was soon ruled out as a suspect due to a lack of evidence.

Neighbors reported seeing a brown van outside the Cayedito residence and a man walking toward the house. Police never found this van. A whole year had gone by without any leads when police received a phone call out of the blue from a young girl.

She told police that her name was Anthonette. She claimed to have been abducted and held in Albuquerque. In the background, a male voice could be heard asking, “Who said you could use the phone?” After that, the line went dead. Police were unable to trace the call.

A few years later, a waitress in Carson City, Nevada, contacted police after a teenager left a note under her plate that read, “Help me! Call police.” Despite this, the police never found Anthonette. Penny Cayedito died in 1999 without seeing her daughter again. The case remains open.

1 Mikelle Biggs

On January 2, 1999, nine-year-old Kimber Biggs and 11-year-old Mikelle Biggs were impatiently waiting outside their house in Mesa, Arizona, for an ice cream truck to arrive. Mikelle was riding her younger sister’s bike. Kimber was feeling very cold, so she told Mikelle that she was going inside. Kimber came back outside 90 seconds later and saw her bike lying in the road with the front wheel spinning. There was no sign of Mikelle.

Within 30 minutes, more than 1,000 people were walking the streets looking for Mikelle. But with no witnesses and no leads, the case quickly ran cold. The only people questioned were neighbors of the Biggses and Mikelle’s own father, who was quickly cleared of any suspicion.

Years passed without any sign of Mikelle. Then on March 14, 2018, a reporter phoned the police in Mesa. He told an officer that a man had handed in a dollar bill with writing on it that read: “My name is Mikel Biggs. Kidnapped from Mesa. I’m alive.”^[10]

Kimber Biggs was not convinced that the note was authentic because her sister’s name had been misspelled. This, too, was a dead end.

As of early 2020, Mikelle Biggs remains missing. Her sister now has her own son, and not a day goes by that she doesn’t hope and pray for Mikelle’s safe return.

People love mystery, and they usually get their dose of the unknown through movies or books. Others might become fans of a particular YouTube channel that delves into unsolved mysteries, both old and recent. Or some may even search the dark corners of the web for something strange, almost forbidden, to feed their quest to know. Regardless, we continue to seek the answers to one mystery after another.

Some mysteries are cool. Others are creepy. And then there are the decidedly shady ones that could be solved if only those who know the truth would emerge from the shadows and speak up. Here are ten of those.

Related: 8 Science Mysteries That Got Even More Baffling Recently

10 Ghost Gunshot

It was a beautiful day in Frauenfeld, Switzerland, in February 2022, and a 38-year-old man and his two children decided to take a leisurely walk. Accompanying them was an acquaintance of the family.

As they strolled along, the unnamed man suddenly experienced a sharp pain in his lower body. He couldn’t find the source of it, and the group headed to the emergency room of the nearest hospital. There, doctors informed him that he had suffered a gunshot wound. But neither the patient nor the doctors could figure out how the bullet entered his body. The bullet was removed, and the man was discharged.

Police initiated an investigation, but since there was no firearm to examine and no witnesses who heard a gunshot or saw a gunman, it seems like this strange case might never be solved. The working theory at the moment is that the man may have been accidentally hit by a stray bullet shot from a long distance.^[1]

9 Unexpected Discovery

In July 2022, a woman picked up a rental car from a GoCar depot and drove toward the village of Mullinavat in south County Kilkenny, Ireland. It was only a five-mile drive, but a strange smell permeated the car soon after she set off. Opening the windows didn’t help, so she stopped to investigate.

Opening the trunk, to her absolute shock and horror, she found a decomposing body inside. The matter was reported to the police, and it was soon discovered that the body belonged to a 40-year-old man from Waterford. He had been reported missing two weeks earlier. It was also believed that the man had rented the vehicle immediately before the woman who’d found his body.

An investigation into the tragedy is ongoing.^[2]

8 Masked Slender Man

Photo Credit: Tanawit Sabprasan / Shutterstock

Imagine going over your CCTV footage and seeing a character straight out of an episode of Black Mirror staring back at you.

In March 2021, a person wearing a white mask with holes for the eyes and nose showed up at a house in South Carolina. He was captured on CCTV footage, and the family inside was incredibly spooked by the image. The photo was posted on social media. Almost immediately, there were comparisons between this creepy person and the infamous Slender Man—the tall, pale, suit-wearing individual from popular urban legend.

Police investigated the incident, but nothing has come of the investigation yet.^[3]

7 Jetpack Man Is at It Again

The so-called jetpack man was first spotted by pilots near the Los Angeles International Airport in 2020. Since then, there have been multiple sightings, one of them a mere 300 feet (91 meters) away from the wing of a commercial plane.

No one has ever come forward to claim responsibility, and in June 2022, there was yet another sighting of a figure flying a jetpack near LAX. Air traffic control has been quoted as saying, “We heard that the jetpack man is back. I have a report of a jet pack 4,500 feet [1,371 meters] over a gate in the section, which is about six miles east of your present position right here.”

There are previously released images that depict an inflatable balloon in the shape of Jack Skellington, which has been touted as a possible explanation for the jetpack man sightings. This theory has yet to be confirmed.^[4]

6 Who would do something like this?

It’s an unfortunate fact that some people find it funny to talk loudly about planes crashing while traveling in an airplane. Someone took things to a whole new level, however, when they sent several passengers on an AnadoluJet plane images of crashing planes on their cell phones.

The plane was on the verge of taking off for Turkey, but the captain made the decision to return to the gate out of fear for the passengers’ safety. The incident was reported to airport security, who took the necessary measures to ensure everyone on board was safe. This included a re-inspection of passengers and luggage.

The photos were apparently sent using the AirDrop function available on Apple smartphones and were likely sent by one of the passengers. The identity of this person is still unknown.^[5]

5 Original Clown Sighting

Before the clown-sighting hysteria of 2016, creepy images of a clown on a hiking trail made the headlines in 2010. The clown, dressed in a two-tone clown suit and wearing a strange expression on his painted face, is seemingly peering at the camera snapping a picture of him, trying to get a closer look. In a second photograph, the clown is almost right up against the lens.

It is believed that the two photos of this scary clown were taken by a trail camera in the thick of a forest, and even though it is highly likely that the whole thing was staged, it remains unclear why exactly someone would go to all that trouble. Also, nothing that would solidify this theory has ever been confirmed.^[6]

4 Swarms of Drones

In 2019, unidentified swarms of drones seemingly “stalked” U.S. Navy vessels off the coast of Southern California on more than one occasion. The Navy investigated the incidents but was unable to identify the drones or who may have operated them.

Documents released at the end of 2021 revealed that the drones kept coming even after the start of the Navy investigation and continued throughout July 2019. At one point, three different ships reported seeing multiple drones at the same time. There was no option to shoot down these drones because the onboard weapons would not be able to hit targets as small as these objects.

It still remains a mystery as to what the drones were after and who was behind the incident.^[7]

3 The End of the Georgia Guidestones

Known as the American Stonehenge, the Georgia Guidestones stood in Elbert County, Georgia, from 1980 to 2022. Those who created the monument were of the belief that the stones would serve as a guide to the survivors who would inhabit the world after calamity struck, possibly in the form of nuclear or economic destruction. Some of the inscriptions on the stones were instructions to maintain the population under five billion to keep in balance with nature.

The Guidestones soon became the center of wacky conspiracies, the craziest of which suggested that it was somehow connected to dark rituals performed by Satanists.

On July 6, 2022, the monument was severely damaged in a bombing. Later that day, it was completely dismantled. At the time of this writing, it remains unknown who bombed the Georgia Guidestones, and there is already a debate about whether the structure should be rebuilt.^[8]

2 Will we ever know the truth?

On March 8, 2014, Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 lost contact with ground control less than an hour after takeoff, after which it was manually diverted from the scheduled flight plan. The waters of the South China Sea were fine-combed in the ensuing search before the attention of the investigators turned to the Indian Ocean.

In 2015 and 2016, large pieces of debris washed ashore on Reunion Island and off the coast of Mozambique. Finally, at the beginning of 2017, the official search for the aircraft ended. Despite multiple theories, including conspiracies and questionable eyewitnesses, we still don’t know exactly what happened to the plane.

Retired British aerospace engineer, Richard Godfrey, is widely credited with having the most credible theory about the tragedy—namely that it was hijacked by the captain. Godfrey also believes that the Malaysian government is still withholding key pieces of information that could solve the mystery once and for all. Furthermore, he claimed to know exactly where the missing plane is but stated that there are those who “don’t want it found.”

Ocean Infinity, a marine robotics company, announced in 2022 that they will launch a new search starting in early 2023 with the help of Godfrey in the hopes of finally locating what’s left of the plane.^[9]

1 Who did it?

On March 4, 2022, a rocket body, first observed by astronomers late in 2021, collided with the moon. Shortly after, NASA’s Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the crash site on the surface of the moon, which consists of a double crater more than 90 feet (27.4 meters) wide. These craters are thought to be evidence that the rocket body had large masses at each end.

There was some speculation at the time that the rocket had been launched from China, but the country’s officials denied this.

Rocket bodies hitting the moon is nothing new, considering that at least 47 NASA rockets have done so already. However, the double crater is what is still puzzling scientists because no other rocket body has left such a crater behind before.

The bigger question remains, though—who launched the rocket?^[10]