40 Eerie Mysteries: Unexplained and Unsettling Disappearances

Jennifer Kesse disappeared from her apartment complex on January 24, 2006. No major leads have been discovered since. She was last seen leaving for work one evening. She talked to her boyfriend on the phone that night around 10. Initial investigation theorized that she was abducted either from her apartment or its parking lot shortly before work. They found her car in a nearby parking lot later. There wasn’t much to go on until a security camera caught somebody dropping off her car, and the footage of this person of interest is what makes the case the most chilling. He/she has been called “the luckiest person of interest in history.” They were caught on camera walking past a gate, and despite the camera being pretty close, the camera only took one picture every 3 seconds and his/her face is perfectly obscured in every shot. Even though it’s so close, police still say they can’t confidently say if the suspect is male or female.

In 1994, a 27-year-old housewife named Mayumi Arashi vanished after leaving her family home in Tokyo, leaving behind her 1-year-old daughter. She said she was going to meet her schoolmate. Her older sister, Yoko, later checked with this classmate, who said no such meeting was planned. Her whole family started searching for her but to no avail. Later that day, a memo is found inside Yoko's wardrobe, which reads "I was going out with A, but was betrayed" and "I'm sorry". At the bottom of the memo is A's phone number. Yoko contacts A, who tells her that "I met with Mayumi earlier that day" and "want to be in jail if Mayumi ever turns up dead".

A day later when police tailed "A", they found him entering forest holding two drinks. The police then lost track of him and found no trace of Mayumi. Fast forward to 2011, during an interview about Mayumi’s disappearance, Yoko is interviewed and she tearfully recounted the events above. Her father was then interviewed at a different location and stated that they knew nothing about Mayumi's alleged affair until they found that memo, and on the day she disappeared, it seemed like something was bothering her. But what caught the attention of viewers at home, and ignited speculation across the Japanese internet boards was a piece of paper stuck to a shelf behind the father, which went completely unremarked. On the piece of paper were the words "Don't believe what Yoko says".

Asha Degree was 9 years old when she vanished from Shelby, North Carolina in the early morning hours of February 14, 2000. For reasons unknown, she packed her book bag with multiple sets of clothes, snuck out of her home before 4 am, and began walking south on Highway 18, where she was spotted by at least two motorists. She was last seen running into a wooded area by one of them. Some of her belongings were later discovered in a shed about 600 feet from where she was last sighted. About 1.5 years later, her book bag was found double wrapped in trash bags in a remote area of Burke County, about 26 miles north of her home. She has never been seen again.

In 2004, Garrett Bardsley was fishing with his dad in the Uinta Mountains in Utah. Garrett was there camping with a group of Boy Scouts. He and his dad went fishing together and his socks got wet. His dad told him to go back to camp and get a new pair. The camp was 150 yards from the creek. As Garrett started to head up to camp, his dad pointed out he was going the wrong way. Garrett then went in the correct direction to camp. Moments later he thought he heard someone yell "DAD". The dad returned to camp 15 minutes later to check on Garrett. He found out Garrett never made it to the camp.

In 1995, a girl named Heather Teague was sunbathing on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River near Evansville, Indiana. A witness was watching from across the river through his telescope (probably creeping on her) when, out of the woods behind her, a man walked up, grabbed her by the hair, and dragged her back into the woods. The Peeping Tom waited 45 minutes before calling the police, but after that he was completely involved with the investigation, visiting with cops at the beach, providing a complete statement, and collaborating with a sketch artist. When authorities investigated the beach and woods, they discovered only fragments of Heather's red plaid bathing suit. Nobody knows what happened to her or who kidnapped her to this day.

On June 27, 1995, Jodi Huisentruit, a news anchor at KIMT-TV in Mason City, Iowa, failed to arrive at work. Her car was found abandoned in the parking lot of her apartment, and she was never seen again. Investigators found Jodi's personal belongings strewn in her apartment's parking lot. The ground showed signs of drag marks suggesting she had been forcibly taken away while she was entering her car. The investigation into Jodi Huisentruit’s disappearance has been ongoing for over two decades, but no arrests have been made and no suspects have been identified.

On Christmas Eve, 1945, the Sodder family were at their home in Fayetteville, West Virginia. George Sodder and his wife, Jennie, allowed their nine children to stay up later than the usual bedtime. At 12.30 am, the phone rang and when Jennie answered she heard a voice she didn’t recognize, asking for a name she was not familiar with. She told the caller they had the wrong number and she remembered hearing a “weird laugh” before she hung up.

At 1 am, Jennie woke again to the sound of a large object hitting the top of the roof with a bang. She went back to sleep and thought nothing more of it. Half an hour later, she woke again smelling smoke and found the house was on fire. She woke her husband, and they managed to escape with only four of their children. They could not rescue the other children who were upstairs as the house was now fully in flames. The father tried to get up to them on a ladder, but the ladder was missing. He tried to drive his truck under the window to climb on top, but his car wouldn't start.

The fire station was just 3 miles away, but they did not arrive until 8 hours later. When they sifted through the rubble they found no bones or remains of the children. The children were assumed missing and were never found.

In 2011, Lauren Spierer was a 20-year-old affluent, Jewish, East Coast girl who was studying at University in Bloomington, Indiana. On the night of June 2nd, 2011, she was out with her friends drinking and partying, and never came back home. Her boyfriend reported her missing the next morning. The last guys she was known to be with all lawyered up almost immediately. Her boyfriend packed up and moved home shortly after her disappearance. Several theories have arisen and been investigated but none have shown strong enough links to proceed.

Actress Tammy Lynn Leppert starred in Scarface, Spring Break, and Little Darlings. Critics were predicting that she would become one of the big stars of the 80s. In 1982, she went to a weekend party unchaperoned and came home a different person. She became paranoid. She wouldn’t leave her room or answer the door. She refused to eat from open containers and even had her friend test for poison in her food.

After filming a particularly gruesome gun battle scene for Scarface, she had a breakdown and had to be escorted off the set. She confided to her mother that someone had bragged to her about a large money laundering and drug trading operation involving high-profile citizens in Florida, ranging from police officers to bankers and prominent locals. She also said she had seen something “horrible” that she wasn’t supposed to see, but refused to elaborate. Her mother took Tammy to the County Sheriff’s Office to report the alleged scheme, but when interviewed seven years later, Officer Mike Wong could not recall many specific details about the meeting.

Over months, she became paranoid and became convinced that somebody was out to kill her. In July 1983, she got off from her friend’s car at North Orlando as he had refused to drive her 170-mile to Fort Lauderdale and suggested dropping her off back home instead. Shortly after, she made three urgent calls to her aunt and her friend, both of whom weren’t able to pick up her calls. This is the last known contact from Tammy. Police quickly dismissed her as a runaway case and a private investigator and even Unsolved Mysteries producer Matt Klineman found that the police department did little to help with her case and did not want to share any information or leads with her mother, a request that he said was outside the norm.

Natalee Holloway disappeared on her senior spring break trip from Alabama to Aruba in 2005. Natalee and her friends met Joran Van Der Sloot at a nightclub. She left with him and was never seen again. Van Der Sloot first said he dropped her off at the hotel she was staying, then changed his story saying he took her to a cliff to look at the sharks where he left her, then changed it again to say he sold her into a slave trade. He was also filmed confessing to killing her the night he met her. Van Der Sloot has since been arrested for killing another girl 5 years later in Peru on the anniversary of Natalee’s disappearance. He however has still not been charged with Natalee's murder.