D.B. Cooper
Let’s start with the most infamous. On November 24, 1971, a man hijacked a plane flying between Portland, OR and Seattle, WA. Telling everyone he had a bomb, he demanded $200,000, 4 parachutes, and a fuel truck in Seattle. After landing and letting the passengers go, the plane took off again.
Once back in the air, Cooper put on the parachute, opened a door and jumped out of the plane with his ransom, never to be seen again. Some of the money was recovered in 1980, but the bulk of it was still awol.
The FBI investigated the case without success until 2016, when they suspended the case. In that time, there’re been several theories, but for the most part, the case of D.B. Cooper remains inconclusive and unsolved.
The Voynich Manuscript
Throughout history, most linguists and historians have been able to decipher a lot of the texts they come across, but not this one. It still eludes scholars and leaves questions behind.
The manuscript is from the 15th century, handwritten, and filled with diagrams and notes. Many have theorized that the book is a codex of early medicine and natural practices, but most medical historians and botanists can’t even identify the plants and materials inscribed on the pages.
Because none of it makes sense, most believe that this is a medieval hoax, but why go through all the trouble of making a book like this by hand, if it’s not vitally important?
The Green Children of Woolpit
During the 12th century, two children with green skin appeared in the English village of Woolpit. They were brother and sister, spoke a completely unknown language and only ate broad beans.
Eventually, they were coerced to eat other foods and learn English and they began to lose their green hue and explained that they were from Saint Martin’s Land; a subterranean community full of green people. The boy soon died and the girl became a servant in a household, but was shunned for her loose morals and wonton nature.
Normally, I’d say this is a tall tale, but plenty of writers have mentioned this story in separate accounts, with no link to each other. So, something funky must have happened in Woolpit.
The Dance Plague of 1518
Some people love to dance, non-stop. But what if you start and you can’t stop, no matter what? That happened to 400 people in Strasbourg, Alsace in 1518. It started off with one woman, who began dancing for 5 days straight. Within the week, 34 people joined her. By the end of the month, 400 were dancing like crazy and couldn’t stop themselves.
Eventually, they did though. Heart attacks, strokes and exhaustion killed them. Today, scientists and historians suspect a psychoactive fungus started it, or perhaps mass hysteria. Others suspect supernatural causes.
I can’t imagine starting to dance, and not being able to remain in control.
The strange case of SM U-28
This U-boat was a German menace in WWI. On one July day, it shot a torpedo at the British steamer SS Iberian. The ship sunk under the waves and then her boiler exploded, shooting debris everywhere. Including a strange animal.
The U-28’s captain, chief engineer, navigator, helmsmen, and plenty of other officers and seamen reported seeing a giant, crocodile-like sea creature shoot into the sky with the debris. It was estimated to be over 65 feet long, with four limbs, webbed feet, long tail and a pointed head. It was only airborne for a few seconds, then was gone.
Maybe the British won the war with weaponized dinosaurs?
The Oakville Blobs
In 1994, a resident of Oakville, WA noticed that some gelatinous blobs had rained down overnight. Within the next 3 weeks, it happened 5 more times. Within a day or so of these blobs falling, people in proximity started to get ill.
When doctors collected samples of the blobs, they discovered that they were made up of human white blood cells, but had no nuclei. They also had two strains of bacteria that can be found in our guts. Authorities tried to either blame it on airplane waste or perhaps pieces of jellyfish that had been blown into the air by military test bombing recently, but that doesn’t explain the consistency and human dna.
The WOW Signal
In August of 1977, Ohio State’s Big Ear radio telescope received an insanely strong signal that came from the constellation sagittarius. A signal this strong could only mean that we were definitely not alone in the universe. When he saw the data, Astronomer Jerry R. Ehman wrote “Wow!” on the sheet, hence its name.
The signal lasted for 72 seconds, and has not been detected since. Many have tried to prove that the signal had come from Earth, but so far, no one can replicate the parameters the wow signal.
Therefore, aliens.
The Bagdad Battery
This is a set of three artifacts that were found together in modern-day Iraq. According to historical record, if you combine a ceramic pot, a tube of copper and an iron rod, you get a rudimentary galvanic cell, a.k.a a battery.
Dating back to the Parthian period (250 BC – 224AD), it was assumed that this was used for electroplating or electrotherapy, millennia before we even thought it was possible.
Then again, there’s a different set of scholars that think this is BS, and the artifacts are just a fancy way to store scrolls.
The Tamám Should Case
In 1948, a dead man was found on a beach in Australia. In his pockets were several bus and train tickets, a comb, gum and a piece of paper that said “Tamám Shud.” Oddly enough, his clothing had no labels, he carried no id and his dental records didn’t match any living person.
When looking for a cause of death, authorities found that his spleen was insanely large, his kidneys and liver were congested and there was excess blood in his liver. But there was no sign of poison or trauma. No one knew how he died.
The piece of paper was tracked to a specific copy of a specific book, called The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and in it, they found a number of a woman who claimed she didn’t know who the man was.
The Mothman
This urban legend started back in 1966, when 5 men were digging a grave in a cemetery in West Virginia, and they saw a figure with wings and glowing eyes fly over them. Moments later, two couples from Point Pleasant said they saw a grey figure with the same kind of eyes. From then, sightings began to increase.
The accounts of the mothman came to a head in December 1967, when the Silver Bridge collapsed and killed 46 people. Then the tragedy and the urban legend/mystery were intertwined.
Whether the sightings were a hoax or not, people believe that he still roams West Virginia, waiting for his next attack.
The Escape from Alcatraz
In 1962, inmates Frank Morris and Allen West hatched a plan with the Anglin brothers to get out of their cells and off the island, using the ventilation shafts under their sinks. They’d crawl into the shaft, up behind the cell walls and onto the roof.
After 8 months, their escape plan was ready. They placed dummy heads made of sop and concrete in their beds, and made it outside. Then they inflated a raft made up of raincoats and headed out into the SF Bay. Authorities began a manhunt, and found personal effects, but never the missing men. The case was closed in 1979, with no sign of any of them. They just… disappeared.
The reincarnation of the Pollock sisters
In 1957, two young English sisters died in a tragic car accident. A year later, their mother gave birth to twin girls. When they were old enough to talk, they began to request toys that had belonged to their younger sisters and pointed out landmarks only their dead sisters would have known. They also had an irrational fear of cars.
By the time the twins turned 5, the incidences were few and far in-between, but a psychologist who specialized in reincarnation studied their case, and spoke the authenticity of their experience.
The Sodder Children
On Christmas Eve, 1945, the Sodder home burned to the ground. Both the parents and 5 of the 10 children made it out. As for the remaining 5, no evidence was found that they were in the house when it burned down. But that wasn’t all about that night that makes no sense.
The father, George, tried to use his coal truck to get them out, but it was inoperable during the fire, but not before or after. Their phone lines were also cut. Then, there was a woman in the neighbourhood claimed to have seen them in a passing car leaving the scene, while a hotel worker in Charleston, SC said that 4 of the 5 kids were checked into her hotel a week after the fire.
There are rumours abound on what really happened, but the last remaining Sodder child, Sylvia, knows in her heart that her brothers and sisters survived the fire and are still out there somewhere.
The lost colony of Roanoke
This is one of the more spooky ones. Back in 1587, John White founded an English colony on Roanoke Island in North Carolina. He left the colony shortly after for more supplies. Three years later, he returned, only to find the colony meticulously abandoned with all the homes and fortifications dismantled. There was no sign or clue of where his people had gone, other than the word “Croatoan” carved into a tree.
Whether the colonists were slain by the local natives, or wandered away into the wilderness, no one knows. There was never any archeological or historical sign of the people ever again.
Like I said, spooky.
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