34 More Outlandish Unsolved Mysteries You Didn’t Know – Part 3

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1Mad Gasser of Mattoon

Mad Gasser of Mattoon

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon was an alleged maniac who may have attempted to covertly gas over 20 peoples’ homes for unknown reasons in the 1940s. Victims reported smelling a strong, sweet odor and immediately began to feel weak and nauseated. Police often found a hole made somewhere in the house where the gas was most concentrated and presumed to have been used to inject gas into the houses. One witness claimed to have seen the gasser and described “him” as a tall thin woman dressed as a man and footprints belonging to a woman were discovered at some of the scenes. The perpetrator was never caught.


2. In 1944, Nazis ran a train to Berlin to transport the valuables plundered from some 800,000 Hungarian Jews. Gold, gems, diamonds, pearls, watches, about 200 paintings, Persian and Oriental rugs, silverware, chinaware, furniture, fine clothing, linens, porcelains, cameras, stamp collections, and currency were filled on a 42 car freight train. Estimated to be worth $350 million ($4 billion in 2007), the train was seized by Allied troops and that’s where most the most notable objects started disappearing. US Army auctioned the assets it received for just $152,850 in 1948. US government kept details of this train a secret until 1998 when President Bill Clinton prepared a report detailing the handling of the train's assets by the US and cited a multitude of “shortcomings” of the US restitution efforts. In 2001, a lawsuit against the US government was filed by Hungarian Holocaust survivors in Florida over the mishandling of assets on the Hungarian Gold Train. In 2005, the government reached a settlement worth $25.5 million. It is still a mystery what happened to most of the valuables on the train.


3. In 1907, Ireland’s crown jewels (worth several million euros) were stolen from a safe in a strong room at Bedford Tower in Dublin Castle, under the eyes of 4 men assigned to guard them. A long investigation by Scotland Yard produced a report that was never released. It is said to have named the culprit and to have been suppressed by the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). Francis Shackleton, brother of renowned Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, was one of the main suspects behind the robbery. The whereabouts of the treasure and the identity of the thief are still unknown.


4. In 1900, three lighthouse keepers mysteriously disappeared from the lighthouse on Eilean Mor, an island north of Scotland. The door to the lighthouse was unlocked, coats were missing and half-eaten food was left behind. The last entries on the log described a storm on December 12th of severe winds, but all other reports in the area stated the weather was clear that day.


5. Gef the Mongoose a.ka. the Darby Spook was an alleged talking mongoose that inhabited a farmhouse on the Isle of Man in the 1930s. The Irvings, the family that lived there said he would throw stones, ride the bus for the gossip and sing bawdy renditions of “Home on the Range.” It claimed to have been born in New Delhi, India, in 1852 and described himself as “the fifth dimension...the eighth wonder of the world!” The story was given extensive coverage by the tabloid press in Britain at the time. Voirrey Irving, who took Gef under her wing, died in 2005. In an interview published later in her life, she maintained that Gef was not her creation.


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6Ghost Blimp

Ghost Blimp

On August 16, 1942, an L-8 military blimp left San Francisco bay to investigate a possible oil spill. A few hours later, the airship wandered back over land and crashed with nobody aboard. Life rafts and other gear had not been touched. The radio was fully functioning yet there had been no radio transmissions indicating anything had gone wrong. To this day the two-man crew has never been found.


7. A failed businessman named William Morgan was rejected from being inducted into the Freemasons Society of Batavia, New York in the 1800s. In retaliation, he planned to publish a book revealing their secrets. The angered local Freemasons took out newspaper ads denouncing Morgan and even attempted to burn his newspaper office down. Morgan was eventually arrested on charges that he owed money and was jailed. That same night an unknown man came to the jail offering to pay his debt and have him released. Morgan left the jail with the man and was never seen again. Three Masons were eventually convicted of kidnapping Morgan, but his body was never found


8. In 1942, residents of Pascagoula, Mississippi lived in fear of the “phantom barber,” a criminal who would sneak into homes at night only to steal locks of hair from his victims. He worked in the darkness made more profound by the Army’s blackout regulations due to World War 2. Though an arrest was made, many believe it to be a setup, and the identity of the phantom barber still remains a mystery.


9. Freak show performer Angelo Faticoni’s singular talent was reflected in his nickname, the Human Cork. He was unsinkable, and he made his living demonstrating that fact. He could stay afloat for hours with lead weighing twenty pounds fastened to his ankles and assume any position in the water without danger. Harvard University doctors assessed him and concluded he did not possess abnormal internal organs but failed to find any explanation for his buoyancy. He promised to reveal his secret, but he died in 1931, taking his secret with him.


10. On February 12, 1979, in Southampton, U.K., Roland Moody heard repeated sounds outside his observatory and discovered the glass roof to be covered with thousands of mustard seeds and cress seeds coated with jelly. Seeds continued to fall all day. Eight pails of cress seeds were collected and planted, and the plants eventually harvested. Moody learned that the garden of his neighbor, Airs Stockley, had been hit with seeds the previous year as well. The next day Moody and his two immediate neighbors were rained upon by haricot beans, broad beans, maize, and peas. Police were called in, but the seeds’ origin remained a mystery. Those three houses were the only ones targeted, and no “rain” fell on the sidewalk in front of them.


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11Phantom Stabber

Phantom Stabber

In 1925, women in Bridgeport, Connecticut started reporting “Phantom Stabber” who would use a sharp, pointed weapon to jab their buttocks or breasts before fleeing the scene. Victims described him as being unusually fast on his feet, disappearing while they screamed in pain. By June 1928, the Jabber’s victims numbered 26. Despite a continuous police investigation, the jabber was never identified.


12. In 1960, a man named William Foos claimed that his 15-year-old daughter Margaret Foos was skilled at “blind reading.” Though she wasn’t blind, she could read books through touch alone while being blindfolded. He even took his daughter to Veterans Administration Center in Washington, D.C. to be subjected to scientific tests by psychiatrists. She was blindfold by the doctors and she used her hands to read sections of the Bible, identify objects and colors, trace lines, and play checkers. Her father occasionally left the room and did not appear to be giving her signals. Though she passed the tests, VA psychiatrists couldn’t explain how she’d done it. Even the FBI investigated William Foos and his claims.


13. Katherine FitzGerald, the Countess of Desmond was a 17th-century noblewoman who was rumored to have lived up to the age of 140. She is said to have died of a fall when climbing a tree to gather nuts - not due to old age. She was so very well known that she was mentioned by Francis Bacon and Sir Walter Raleigh who nicknamed her “the old Countess of Desmond.” She reportedly walked every week to her local market town, a distance of 4–5 miles. She was also said to have grown teeth twice or thrice in her lifetime; casting her old teeth, and others coming in their place.


14. The South Atlantic Anomaly is a region of space that has reduced magnetosphere coverage, with higher-than-usual levels of radiation because Earth’s inner Van Allen belt comes closest to the Earth’s surface here. It’s an area centered just a bit off the coast of Brazil, and it has caused computers in satellites to crash, astronauts have reported seeing “shooting stars” in their visual field and a space telescope was destroyed by a guidance computer’s fault. The Hubble Telescope is turned off from taking observations when passing through the Anomaly and the International Space Station avoids scheduling spacewalks when passing through it. The anomaly is known to be caused by the high levels of radiation that accumulates here, but scientists aren’t sure exactly how or why.


15. John Brisker was an American basketball player who played in the ABA and NBA in the early 1970s. Brisker averaged over 20 points per game and was considered a solid defensive player too. Due to his volatile personality and penchant for fighting he was cut at the end of the 1975 season. In 1978 John Brisker, flew to Uganda to allegedly start an import/export business but was never heard from again. The prevailing theory is that he went there as a guest of Ugandan strongman Idi Amin. When Amin was overthrown in 1979, Brisker was allegedly executed by a firing squad.


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16British Library Ciphers

British Library Ciphers

British Library has at least three books/manuscripts that are written entirely in cipher. “The Subtlety of Witches,” authored by Ben Ezra Aseph, from 1657, “Order of the Altar, Ancient Mysteries to Which Females Were Alone Admissible: Being Part the First of the Secrets Preserved in the Association of Maiden Unity and Attachment,” from 1835 and “Mysteries of Vesta,” from 1850.


17. In 2018, during a New York Times interview with Glitterex, the interviewer asked Manager Lauren Dyer a simple question. She was asked if she could tell which industry served as Glitterex’s biggest market and her answer was instant: “No, I absolutely know that I can’t.” She knew which industry it was and said “you would never guess it.” She even added that if you looked at it you would never guess its glitter. She even declined to give an answer off record. Speculations on internet forums range from glitter being used by the U.S. Department of Defense, its use in stealth tech, to it being used in space applications, but the mystery remains which industry is the largest buyer of glitter in the USA.


18. Out of over 2000+ nuclear test detonations that have taken place on earth, only one has an unknown nationality. On September 22, 1979, the Vela satellite reported the characteristic double flash (a very fast and very bright flash, then a longer and less-bright one) of an atmospheric nuclear explosion of two to three kilotons, in the Indian Ocean between Bouvet Island (Norwegian dependency) and the Prince Edward Islands (South African dependencies). US Airforce planes flew into the area shortly but could find no signs of a detonation or radiation.


19. Over 2000 large Medieval-era man-made tunnels, known as “Erdstall”, have been discovered all across Europe, with the largest number being discovered in Germany and Austria. Nobody knows who made them or why. The tunnels are incredibly narrow (around 24 inches in width) and short (3’3” to 4’7” feet in height). A number of tunnels include a “slip” which is a point where the tunnel becomes even more narrow as it goes to a deeper level. Some of these tunnels are quite complex, with multiple layers like that of a modern subway system with different chambers and numerous offshoot tunnels. Some of them are adjacent to cemeteries, while others can be found in the middle of the woods. Most of these tunnels have absolutely nothing inside them. There is no evidence of tire tracks or human remains or waste from day to day life. Millstones and a plowshare have been found, but they are very uncommon. Charcoal has been found in a few tunnels, which has been dated to 950 to late 1100s. The diggers have left no recorded trace of why they made these.


20. Mary Celeste was an American brig with a crew of eight and two passengers, the master's wife and infant daughter, which embarked on her fatal voyage, from New York to Genoa, in the autumn of 1872. The master, Benjamin Briggs, was highly experienced and highly respected, a man of good character and strong religious beliefs. The ship was found adrift in the Atlantic Ocean a few days later, totally deserted, but in totally seaworthy conditions and with the crew’s belongings perfectly intact. The crew was never seen or heard from again.


21English Sweating Sickness

English Sweating Sickness

English sweating sickness was a disease of unknown cause that appeared in England as an epidemic on five occasions - in 1485, 1508, 1517, 1528, and 1551. It was confined to England, except in 1528–29, when it spread to the European continent. The disease was very contagious. It caused profuse sweating and those that caught it often died within hours. After raging for more than 60 years, the last major outbreak of the disease in England was recorded in 1551. The disease claimed the lives of tens of thousands before mysteriously vanishing. Just as quickly as it came, it left the continent, and the exact cause behind it still remains unidentified by epidemiologists today.


22. In 1968, a fishing boat from the Canary Islands named Fausto was on its way back to port after picking up a father who was trying to visit his sick kid. They never arrived. A British ship ran into them 4 days later and hundreds of miles away from the islands. Its crew looked dehydrated but only asked for gas to get back home. British crew insisted on helping them back home, but they refused and said everything was fine. The crew’s families heard of this and expected to see them see soon but Fausto never arrived. Two months later, out in the middle of the Atlantic, an Italian boat found the Fausto drifting at sea. They found no one on board and the boat’s condition was fine, but they made a startling discovery - a naked, partially mummified corpse. Next to the body was a journal. Several of its pages were ripped out and but the last page read “Don't tell anyone what happened on this boat, God forgive us.” The Italian boat attempted to tow Fausto to South America but in the middle of the night, it started to sink and they had to cut the line.


23. In 1953, the United States Air Force pilot Felix Moncla was stationed at Kinross Air Force Base in Michigan when a mysterious airborne object appeared on ground radar. Lt. Moncla scrambled his F-89 Scorpion interceptor to investigate the anomaly, but as he grew nearer, the ground radar reported seeing his aircraft suddenly merge with the object. Both objects immediately vanished from radar vision. Theories centered on a collision with an unreported Canadian aircraft, but Canadian authorities denied any such aircraft being in the area. No confirmed debris or wreckage was discovered and it still remains a mystery what happened to Felix Moncla.


24. From about 1867-1871, there were reports of a strange noise reverberating through iron-hulled ships outside of Grey Town in Nicaragua. The noise did not affect wood-hulled ships, only those made of iron, and consisted of a loud, long, high-pitched, steady vibration. It was “musical” in its likeness, and its source could not be determined. One captain said that the sound had a distinct ¾ time signature like a waltz that turned his ship’s hull into a “great musical sounding board.” The source of the vibrations is still undetermined to this day, and no mention of anything similar around Grey Town has been reported since 1871.


25. Just after the end of World War 2 people in Sweden reported thousands of sightings of UFOs that were named Ghost Rockets. Witnesses reported seeing a blazing light leave a smoky trail in the air. The lights were seen to dive, roll, and perform other aerial acrobatics. They had long flaming tails, made little sound, and traveled at speeds in excess of 400+ mph. One Swedish Air Force pilot pursued it and reported to spot a torpedo-shaped object which had no aircraft features, but his bomber couldn’t keep up with it due to its high speed. US government took them seriously enough that President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent war hero Gen. Jimmy Doolittle to Sweden to investigate in 1946. It’s still a mystery what these actually were.

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