50 Bizarre Unsolved Mysteries That’ll Weird You Out – Part 3

“The Bloody Benders” were America’s first serial killer family. In the wake of the Civil War, many Americans headed west, away from the battlefields. If they happened through Kansas and stayed at the inn run by the Bender clan, they were killed. Travelers often carried with them every dime they had, and the Benders soon realized they could grow rich robbing their guests. The family is known to have at least 11 people between 1868 and 1872, luring each of them into their hotel in Cherryvale, Kansas. They disappeared before their crimes were discovered and were never seen again.

In 1622, the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha was heading back to Spain carrying a precious cargo of gold, silver, and gems that would be valued at around $700 million today. It was caught in a hurricane off the coast of Key West and perished. Most of its cargo has already been found. In 1985, a treasure hunter found $500 million worth of the buried treasure less than 100 miles off the coast of Key West. Experts believe there is still plenty of treasure to be found. According to its captain’s original manifest, there are still about 17 tons of silver bars, 128,000 coins of different values, 27 kilos of emeralds, and 35 boxes of gold to be found.

The Fort Worth Missing Trio refers to the disappearance of Rachel Trlica, Renee Wilson, and Julie Ann Moseley (9 years old) after they went Christmas shopping in 1974. They wanted to be home by 4 pm, but when the girls didn't come home, the families became concerned and traveled to the shopping center to search for them. Their car was still in the mall parking lot, with some purchased gifts in the car, indicating they had made it back to the car to drop them off. Rachel’s husband received a letter in the mail the day after they disappeared that said “I know I’m going to catch it, but we had to get away. We’re going to Houston. See you in about a week. The car is in Sears’ upper lot. Love Rachel.” When the letter was analyzed, the handwriting was deemed inconclusive. Rachel appeared to be misspelled and the letter was addressed to “Thomas,” and not “Tommy,” as Rachel called him, and the letter was written in pen, while the address was in pencil. All three girls have still not been found.

Beginning in the 1990s, a deadly epidemic began sweeping the Central American nations of Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Thousands of men working on sugarcane plantations suddenly began dropping dead of kidney failure. On further research, it was found that young farm laborers who were perfectly healthy just a few years before were turning up at clinics with end-stage kidney disease. They were not found to have diabetes or hypertension which might explain why their kidneys were failing. Though a lot of researchers agree that it's related to hard physical labor in intense tropical heat, the exact mechanism or underlying reason behind the sudden onset of Chronic Kidney Disease in such a young population still remains unsolved.

Albert Einstein proved through mathematics, the existence of black holes, which were later observed and confirmed to physically exist. Einstein also proved through his equations that white holes existed. White Hole is a hypothetical region of space-time that cannot be entered from the outside, although matter and light can escape from it. In this sense, it is the reverse of a black hole. Some believe Big Bang might have been produced by a supermassive white hole explosion. It is still a mystery if white holes can exist as none have been observed so far.

The London Stone is a landmark in London, which consists of a block of limestone, enclosed within the walls of a building, yet nobody knows its original purpose. It has been recorded in literature and maps since 1100 A.D. English folklore deems it to be necessary to London’s very survival. It’s been moved many times and survived disasters including the Great Fire and the Blitz.

Heinrich Müller, chief of the Gestapo, is the most senior Nazi unaccounted for. CIA files reveal an exhaustive search to find him in the months after the war. They were unable to track him after World War 2 because of his incredibly generic name (which translates to Henry Miller) and the fact that, unlike Heydrich and Himmler, he had remained anonymous to the public. The uncertainty of Müller's ultimate end and/or whereabouts has only served to nourish the “mysterious power” that the Gestapo elicits even to the present.

Drawn into a high plateau in Peru’s Nazca Desert, ancient designs (dating back to 500 B.C. to 500 A.D.) stretching more than 50 miles have astounded archaeologists for decades. Along with simple lines and geometric shapes, drawings of animals, birds, and humans have also been made, some measuring 600 feet across. The drawings can only be viewed and appreciated from way up in the air and there is no evidence that the Nazca people invented flying machines. Theories behind its usefulness range from them being used for an ancient form of flight to them pointing to an underground water source. Still, there isn’t any concrete consensus about the purpose of the lines.

According to one legend, the funeral escort of Genghis Khan killed anyone and anything that crossed their path in order to conceal where he was finally buried. After the tomb was completed, the slaves who built it were massacred, and then the soldiers who killed them were also killed. The location of his tomb has been an object of much speculation and research. The site remains undiscovered, although it is strongly implicated that the most likely location is somewhere in the vicinity of the Mongol sacred mountain of Burkhan Khaldun.

How placebos work is still not quite understood. It is a remarkable phenomenon wherein a fake treatment with an inactive substance leads to real improvement in an individual’s health. Studies have found that it works even when the participants are told that they are taking a placebo. It has also been observed that the placebo effect of ADHD drugs is quite large. You feel more focused just because you tell yourself that’s supposed to be the effect. In the U.S. (unlike other countries), the placebo effect is so strong that new painkillers have trouble beating it in clinical trials. Then there is the “Nocebo Effect.” It is the opposite of the placebo effect, wherein a harmless substance can cause patients to feel worse due to their negative expectations about it.