17 Shocking and Bizarre Mysteries Of The World That Will Send Chills Down Your Spine

There are certain things/events that are beyond human explanation. Mysteries that have gripped the public and left everyone dumbfounded for years. The curiosity just elevates inch after inch as these creepy incidences remain unsolved and beyond rational answers. From, bizarre, gruesome murders to accidental time travelers, given below is a list of high profile mysteries that have left the world dumbstruck and confused.

1. The Hinterkaifeck Murders

1a. Hinterkaifeck Murders1

Crime Scene Photo

Call it the gruesome nature of the murders or the bizarre events that followed, the Hinterkaifeck massacre is one of the most creepy and mysterious deaths that Germany has ever witnessed. On the evening of March 31st 1922, a family on a farm near Munich was murdered. A family that consisted of an elderly couple, their adult daughter with her two small children and a new maid who had arrive only hours before the murders took place.

The creepy part is that the previous maid had quit six months ago, claiming that the house was haunted. The events from that day are unclear but it appears that the family members have somehow been lured into the barn one by one where they were killed with a pickaxe. Over 100 people were interviewed in the murder, but no one was ever arrested. No motive was ever established as to explain the murders.

It is believed that the perpetrator(s) remained at the farm for several days – someone had fed the cattle, and eaten food in the kitchen: the neighbours had also seen smoke from the chimney during the weekend. As creepy as it sounds, the killer was never found.

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Former farmstead Hinterkaifeck from southeast

2. The SS Ourang Medan Ghost Ship

2a. SS Ourang Medan1

You’ve heard about ships disappearing into the mist without clue. Well, this ghost ship has a slightly different story to tell. SS Ourang Medan was a ship that sank in Indonesian waters, but before it sank there had been a horrible and inexplicable incident on board.

In 1947, two American vessels started receiving strange messages in Morse code from the Dutch merchant ship. The first message being – “”S.O.S. from Ourang Medan * * * we float. All officers, including the Captain, dead in chartroom and on the bridge. Probably whole crew dead.” There was something unclear following the message but the last two words that came through were very clear; they were “I die.” There were no messages after that.

The ship that received the message approached Ourang Medan in a rescue mission but what they were about to encounter was beyond their wildest dreams.

As they entered the ship in hopes of finding an answer and possible survivors, they discovered the whole crew freakishly lying around dead, (including the carcass of a dog) sprawled on their backs, the frozen faces upturned to the sun with mouths gaping open and eyes staring and their mouths open. There were no visible injuries on them. Suddenly, a fire broke out on the ship, forcing the American crew to evacuate it which then suddenly exploded and sank, thus remaining a mystery forever.

2b. SS Ourang Medan2

3. The Cooper Family Falling Body

3. The Cooper Family Falling Body

Actual Photo

As scary as it looks, this picture has been shrouded in mystery for years now and it is probably the most peculiar ghosts caught on camera. The story goes back to the mid 1950’s taking place in Texas. The Cooper family had just moved into an old house that they bought and were really excited about it. So, they thought of preserving this memory by taking a picture of the whole family in their new home. But little did they know that there was someone else joining in on their celebration – a spooky figure hanging upside down from the ceiling. There are perhaps other stories that state that an actual body did fall off from the ceiling exactly at the time the photograph was being taken. Why the face of the body remains darkened is another mystery – a faceless body or a paranormal activity? Who knows which part is true!

4. The Black Knight Satellite

 4. black knight satellite

Pic released by NASA

Legend has it that in orbit around the Earth is a mysterious, dark object which dates back perhaps 13,000 years. Its origin and purpose are a mystery till date. Dubbed the “Black Knight”, this elusive satellite has allegedly been beaming strange signals towards the Earth for over 50 years, and its orbit is known to be unlike any other object orbiting the Earth.

It is believed that this satellite has been orbiting earth for more than a thousand years, far longer than any space program, and its origins are not of this world. Astronomers and scientists have calculated the satellite’s weight to be over 10 tons which would be at that time the Heaviest Artificial Satellite to orbit our Planet. However, it was the Ham Radio operator who apparently decoded a series of signals received from the UFO Satellite. According to the decoded message, the Black Knight satellite originated from the Epsilon Bootes Star System 13.000 years ago. NASA has released official images which apparently show the Black Knight Satellite in clear picture, orbiting the Earth.

What are the true origins of the satellite and how it got there is still a lurking mystery. Alien activity? Well, we’ll leave that to you to decide.

5. The Villisca Axe Murders

5a. The Villisca Axe Murders2

The Moore Family Victims

On the evening of June 9, 1912 in Villisca, Iowa, a family of 6 went to church. They came back around 10 pm together with two other house guests, two girls. In the morning, their neighbors became worried when nobody from the house came out to do their usual chores. They found the door locked, but upon breaking in, they found the whole family and the two guests bludgeoned to death in their beds.

The killer supposedly hid in the attic and waited for them to go to sleep. Then he started from the parents, to the kids and finished with the two girls in the guest room. He smashed each victim’s head with an axe.

The father of the family was so butchered that his eyes were missing. A terrifying detail is that nobody except one of the visiting girls was awake when they got killed. The 12-year-old girl was the only one with signs of defense wounds on her body. Investigators thought that she was awake and tried to fight back, as she was found lying crosswise on the bed, and with a defensive wound on her arm. Lena’s nightgown was pushed up to her waist and she was wearing no undergarments, leading to law enforcement speculation that the killer(s) sexually molested her or attempted to do so.

And another scary thing – all the mirrors in the house were covered with sheets. There were several suspects, but nobody was ever convicted. Many psychics believe there to be a presence of spirits dwelling in the home where the family was murdered. Spirits of the dead family? Who knows….the mystery still remains unsolved till date.

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Villisca Axe Murder House

6. The Taos Hum

6. Taos Hum

The town of Taos, in north-central New Mexico, has been home to an unusual mystery: a resident hum of unknown origin, also known as the “Taos Hum.” Surprisingly, only about 2 percent of the people living in any given Hum-prone area can hear the sound.

Most of the people who’ve heard the Hum, describe the sound as similar to a diesel engine idling nearby. And the Hum has driven virtually every one of them to the point of despair. Some describe it as a kind of torture that sometimes makes them just want to scream. It is told to be the worst at night. As bizarre as its nature sounds, the hum seems to have an odd effect on the sufferers – complain of headaches, nausea, dizziness, nosebleeds and sleep disturbances. The hum has however been heard in several areas across the world including United Kingdom and the United States.

The hum seems to have first been reported in the early 1990s.  Several peculators believe it to be an extraterrestrial activity, beaming signals to Earth from their spaceships. Others believe it to be the result of low-frequency electromagnetic radiation, audible only to some people. Whatever be the true cause, up to this day, no one still knows what creates such a sound and thus the source of this hum remains shrouded in mystery.

7. The Voynich Manuscript

voynich

The Voynich manuscript is a document that is notable for its strange text, that to date hasn’t been deciphered. It was written in a language that men through the centuries have tried to decode to no avail.

The only idea anyone has of its origin are the drawings found on various pages. The book has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438) It is a handwritten book of 246 pages containing numerous illustrations and approximately 170,000 characters. The text is written from left to right, and most of the pages have illustrations or diagrams. What is special about it? The script employed is utterly unknown and therefore illegible.

The manuscript is named after Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish book dealer who purchased it in 1912. Not many historic facts are known about the Voynich manuscript. In particular, it is unclear who wrote the book, what it contains, and what its purpose was.

Many people have suggested different theories for deciphering the text, while some believe it’s just pure nonsense and might be a hoax. But the lengths to which things have been illustrated and described through detailed pictures and texts, it seems highly improbable  that someone would have gone through such a pain for a mere joke. Whatever it may be, the manuscript remains a confusing mystery to this day.

7a. Voynich Manuscript2

7b. Voynich Manuscript1

8. The Tamam Shud Case

8. Tamam Shud Case

In the early hours of December 1, 1948, the body of an unidentified man was found dead in Somerton Beach, located in Adelaide, Australia, close to a major Atomic Testing ground. Nothing different about it right? But found in a secret pocket in the man’s clothing was a scrap of paper with the words “Taman Shud” printed on it. The words were translated to “finished” or “ended” based on excerpts found in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Following a police appeal, the actual book was handed in – around the time the body was found, a man found it on the seat of his car. Written in the book was something looking like a secret code as well as a telephone number of a former nurse who, while serving in World War II, gave a copy of The Rubaiyat to an army officer. No connections could be found linking the unknown man to the nurse or the army officer.

There has been speculation over the years that the man was a spy, but none of it has remotely been proven. Autopsy reports revealed that the man was killed by an unknown poison.Who was this man? Who wanted him dead? And what was the meaning of his cryptic last message? Although governments around the world have tried to identify the man, his identity still remains a mystery.

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Police photo of the corpse, 1948

9. DB Cooper – The Mysterious Hijacker

9. DB Cooper

Police Sketch of the famous hijacker

D. B. Cooper is a media epithet popularly used to refer to an unidentified man who hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft in the airspace between Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, on November 24, 1971, extorted $200,000 in ransom, and proceeded to jump out of the plane with a parachute.

Despite an extensive manhunt and an ongoing FBI investigation, he was never found, however, and this remains the only unsolved case in US aviation history.

The man was described as a business-executive type, wearing a dark suit and a black tie. While in the air, he opened his brief case showing a bomb to the flight attendant and hijacked the plane. The plane landed in Seattle where he demanded 200K in cash, four parachutes and food for the crew before releasing all the passengers. With only the pilots and one flight attendant on board, they took off from Seattle. In the 45 minutes after takeoff, Cooper sent the flight attendant to the cockpit while donning the parachute, tied the bank bag full of twenty dollar bills to himself, lowered the rear stairs and somewhere north of Portland jumped into the night. When the plane landed with the stairs down, they found the two remaining parachutes and on the seat Cooper was sitting in, a black tie. Who was he and how he managed to vanish into thin air has been a mystery till date.

10. The Zodiac Killer

10. The Zodiac killer1

The only deciphered letter from the Zodiac Killer. Disturbing indeed.

Zodiac killer is the name given to a serial killer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s and early ’70s. The self-proclaimed Zodiac Killer was directly linked to at least seven murders in Northern California in 1968 and 1969, although he claimed to be responsible for 37 victims.

The Zodiac usually targeted young couples in secluded areas. He used both guns and knives as weapons. On at least one occasion he wore an unusual costume. On two occasions he telephoned the police afterwards to report his murders.

After he taunted the police and press with his mind-boggling letters from 1969 to 1974, further communication from him abruptly stopped. Although one of the four letters were cracked, which contained a very disturbing message, the other three have never been deciphered, till date. Despite an intensive search for the killer and the investigation into numerous suspects, no one was ever arrested for the crimes and the case remains open.

10b. The Zodiac killer2

Sketch of the Zodiac Killer as he appeared during the attack at Lake Berryesa, based on an eye-witness account.

11. The Dyatlov Pass Incident

11. DYATLOV PASS INCIDENT

A view of the tent as the rescuers found it on February 26, 1959. The tent had been cut open from inside, and most of the skiers had fled in socks or barefoot.

On February 2, 1959, nine ski-hikers were found dead high in the Ural Mountains. This sounds like nothing unusual considering the severe weather conditions there, but the details of the incident will make your skin crawl. Nobody knows exactly what happened since there were no survivors, but the known facts give us a horrific picture of what could have happened that night.

It all started when the hikers slit open their tent from the inside for unknown reasons and ran out. They were all experienced hikers so this couldn’t have been a mistake. They had obviously left the tent in such a hurry that they didn’t even have time to put on shoes. The first five that were found had frozen to death near the tent, but the remaining four bodies were found only two months later.

The second group of hikers were found naked and had severe injuries such as broken ribs and fractured skulls, and one woman had her eyes and tongues ripped out. Soviet authorities found no explanation. Theorists suspect paranoia, government experimentation or that even supernatural creatures may have been involved. However, no external causes were discovered. It is still a mystery what made them break camp and run into certain death.

12. The Hessdalen Lights

12. Hessdalen Light

Hessdalen lights over Norway’s skies.

A series of unusual lights have been reported in the Hessdalen valley, Norway, since 1940s or earlier. Especially high activity of Hessdalen lights took place from December 1981 until the summer of 1984 when lights were observed 15–20 times per week. Since then, the activity has decreased and now the lights are observed only 10–20 times per year. The Hessdalen light most often is a bright, white or yellow light of unknown origin standing or floating above the ground level. These strange balls has baffled scientists for years and have even attracted attention from ufologists. They show up, they gleam at around ground level, and then they disappear, leaving no sign of what they are or where they came from. Whether they are ghosts sending messages from beyond or some kind of extraterrestrial signal, remains a mystery.

13. The Solway Firth Astronaut

13. Solway Firth Astronaut

Actual photo

On a warm day in Cumbria, a man named Jim Templeton, his wife and his daughter were picnicking on the grass above the Solway Firth. He was in a marsh taking photos of his young daughter. But little did he know that he was about to make a shocking and bizarre realization. When the man got his pictures developed, he got the chilling realization that they were not alone that sunny day. In the middle of nowhere, appeared to have been a Spaceman in full astronaut gear standing behind Jim’s daughter. Except there wasn’t anyone else around while they were there. Even Kodak verified that it was not tampered with. Though none of the three people had any idea that they had company. Who is this fourth person? The mystery remains unsolved.

14. Jack The Ripper

14. Jack The Ripper

The name Jack the Ripper pertains to the widely popular and talked about serial killer who thrived in the late 1800’s murdering 11 women in London’s east end. Most of his victims were prostitutes, whose bodies were mutilated beyond recognition and their throats slashed. The crime scenes were a gory tableau; the brutalized bodies were perversions of the human form.

The killer was never found but it was speculated from his ways of murder that he was a collector who took organs as trophies. The signature of a letter that arrived during the murders gave this monster a name: Jack the Ripper. The city was whipped into a froth of suspicion and fear. Wide dragnets snagged scores of suspects, but the police were unable to catch the killer. Vigilante committees formed, and mobs routinely chased people through the streets. And then, suddenly, the murders stopped. Despite three more years of investigation, the police never uncovered the true identity of Jack the Ripper. The unsolved case was officially closed in 1892, though interest in the killings has never dwindled.

15. The Black Dahlia Murder

15. Black Dahlia Murder

Arrest photo of Elizabeth Short from 1943 for underage drinking

“The Black Dahlia” was a nickname given to Elizabeth Short, an American woman who was the victim of a much-publicized murder in 1947. Short was a 22 year old, aspiring actress who acquired the moniker of The Black Dahlia posthumously from newspapers.

On January 15, 1947, Short was found mutilated, her body sliced in half at the waist, in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, California. Short’s severely mutilated body was completely severed at the waist and drained entirely of its blood. The body had obviously been washed by the killer. Her face had been slashed from the corners of her mouth to her ears, creating an effect called the Glasgow smile. Short also had multiple cuts on her thigh and breasts, where entire portions of flesh had been sliced away. The corpse had been “posed”, with her hands over her head, her elbows bent at right angles, and her legs spread.

Short’s unsolved murder has been the source of widespread speculation, leading to many suspects, but no one was ever caught. Her murder happens to be one of the oldest unsolved murder cases in Los Angeles history. However, no one knew of the killer or who actually did the murder and the much-hyped murder mystery remains unsolved till date.

16. The Bizarre Death of Elisa Lam

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File photo of Elisa Lam

There happen to be so many unsolved mysteries in the world, but the death of Elisa Lam is one bizarre story. On February 2013, twenty-one year old Elisa Lam who had been staying at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, went missing for two weeks.

One day, the hotel guests started complaining about a foul taste in the water. When hotel authorities investigated into the matter, they found the body of Elisa Lam, naked and dead inside a covered water tank of the hotel. Autopsy reports stated that she died due to accidental drowning and that no traces of drugs or alcohol were found in her body. But the question still remained – how did she die and how did her body end up naked in the water tank of the hotel?

But that is not the creepiest part of the story. Hotel security camera footage, located above the elevator, was able to capture Elisa’s last moments. But what the camera captured was beyond bizarre.

The footage shows Elisa engaging in mysterious activities. She first pressed all the buttons and then proceeded to wait. But strangely, the door of the elevator did not open. Elisa went out of the elevator and started to look around but suddenly went back inside, peeking quietly through the elevator door as if she saw something or someone, and she was seen trying to hide from whoever she saw outside the elevator. She then suddenly started speaking and moving in fast and in a weird way. It isn’t clear in the video what or whom she was talking to. After that she suddenly proceeded to walk out of the elevator like nothing happened and then the elevator door closed and started working again. Shortly after the elevator incident, Elisa happened to walk towards the water tank and drown herself.

The creepy thing was that the hotel guests were able to taste and see the color of the water in which Elisa’s body lay dead. The mystery remains unsolved and creepy till date.

16. The Bizarre case of Elisa Lam

Snapshots from the CCTV footage of the security camera near the elevator of Cecil Hotel showing Elisa depicting unusual behavior.

17. The Accidental Time Traveler

17. Curious Case of Rudolph Fentz

Rudolph Fentz is a known accidental time traveler. Believe it or not, Rudolph lived in New York City, and disappeared without clue on Sunday, August 27th, 1876. The 29 year old had left home after dinner to go for an evening stroll only to never return back. A lone drunk at the time claimed he saw Rudolph disappear as he crossed a street in Times Square known as Longacre Square at the time. One second he was there, and the next he just vanished in the blink of an eye. Due to being a known drunk the witness was discounted, and Rudolph’s family reported him missing.

But, in 1950, a man with mutton chop sideburns and Victorian-era duds popped up in Times Square. Witnesses said he looked startled, and then a minute later, he was hit by a car and killed. The officials at the morgue searched his body and found the items in his pockets that were not of that time at all:

A copper token for a beer worth 5 cents, bearing the name of a saloon, which was unknown, even to older residents of the area, A bill for the care of a horse and the washing of a carriage, drawn by a livery stable on Lexington Avenue that was not listed in any address book. About 70 dollars in old banknotes, Business cards with the name Rudolph Fentz and an address on Fifth Avenue. Surprisingly, none of these objects found on the dead man, showed any signs of aging.

NYPD tried using this information to identify the man. It was found that the address on Fifth Avenue was part of a business; its current owner did not know Rudolph Fentz. Fentz’s name was not listed in the address book, his fingerprints were not recorded anywhere.

The investigation continued and finally Rudolph Fentz Jr. was found in a telephone book of 1939. Upon contact with the bank, it was told that Fentz Jr. died five years before, but his widow was still alive but lived in Florida. Upon contacting her, the NYPD learned that her husband’s father had disappeared in 1876 aged 29. He had left the house for an evening walk but never returned. Accidental time travel or something out of the paranormal? We’ll leave that to you to decide.

Rudolph-Fentz

Actual photo of Rudolph Fentz

 

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