Random Mysteries That We Wish We Knew The Answers To (12 items)

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  (#1) The Boys Of Yuba County Never Came Home

  In 1978, five California men with varying intellectual and mental disabilities went to watch a basketball game and never came home. They all lived with their families. Their mental state was such that they were often called “boys” rather than men, although they were in their 20s and 30s.

  Inexplicably, the men drove 70 miles east from the basketball game. Instead of going home, they drove to a mountainous, snow-covered road. There, they abandoned their car and disappeared into the night. Later, a snowstorm caused authorities to call off the search.

  In the thaw, authorities found the bodies of Bill Sterling, 29; Jackie Huett, 24; Ted Weiher, 32; and Jack Madruga, 30. The fifth man, Gary Mathias, 25, was still missing. Strangely, Weiher had starved to death in a trailer full of food and with an unlit propane tank heater. The other three bodies were outside. Two of their families were only able to recover bones.

  No one knows what happened to the boys of Yuba County and why they perished in the snow. Mathias remains missing.
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  (#2) The First Person To Record Motion Images On Film Vanished

  The world credits Thomas A. Edison as the inventor of motion film. In reality, Louis Le Prince was the first person to record motion images on film.

  Le Prince recorded a series of moving images from the Leeds Bridge in Leeds, England, in October 1888. He also held patents on a 16-lens and a single-lens device long before Edison or the Lumière brothers. On September 16, 1890, Le Prince boarded a train at the Dijon platform. He promised to rejoin his friends in Paris for a return journey to England. He never made it and was never heard from again.

  Extensive investigations by the French police and Scotland Yard yielded nothing. His body was never found.
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  (#3) The Lake Bodom Murders Remain Unsolved Half A Century Later

  The Lake Bodom murders, to date, remain Finland’s most notorious mystery. On June 4, 1960, 15-year-olds Maila Irmeli Björklund and Anja Tuulikki Mäki went camping at Lake Bodom. With them were their 18-year-old boyfriends, Nils Wilhelm Gustafsson and Seppo Antero Boisman. 

  The next morning, hikers discovered three of them, stabbed and bludgeoned to death. The sole survivor was Gustafsson, who had a concussion and several broken facial bones. 

  A nearby camping store owner was a suspect, as was an alleged ex-KGB spy. Shoddy investigating ensued, and there was no DNA to match. Neither suspect was ever arrested.

  In 2004, Gustafsson went on trial for the murders, but there was no evidence to prove his guilt. He was exonerated the next year. To date, no one knows who murdered the three young teens that fateful June day.
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  (#4) The Mystery Behind Étienne Bottineau And The Arrival Of Ships

  Today, it's easy enough to map a ship and learn its exact course and time of arrival. Not so much in the 18th century. Yet, in French-colonized Mauritius, a Frenchman named Étienne Bottineau could. He predicted the arrival of ships as far as 350-700 miles from the island.

  He called it the science of nauscopie, and won many a tavern bet. He could predict the arrival of fleets, down to the time and number of ships. He called nauscopie “the art of discovering ships and land at a great distance.”

  No one knows how he did it. By the time Bottineau tried to go to France and try his talent there, the French Revolution was underway. No government official lent him an ear. Later, he perished of unknown causes in Pondicherry, India. To date, no one knows how he did it and what nauscopie truly is.
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  (#5) The USS 'Cyclops' Has Been Missing For A Century

  The USS Cyclops was a 550-foot-long naval ship that debuted in 1910. It moved coal around the seas and provided aid to refugees. During WWI, the ship became a naval transporter.

  In 1918, the Cyclops held a crew of 306 people and 11,000 tons of manganese and sailed from Brazil. The ship made a stop in Barbados and then sailed on to Baltimore when it disappeared. There was not even an SOS made; it was as if the ocean had swallowed the ship up.

  The theory is that the Cyclops may have gone down in the Puerto Rico Trench. The waters there run very deep. But then again, there’s always the Bermuda Triangle to blame.

  What does the US Navy say? “The disappearance of this ship has been one of the most baffling mysteries in the annals of the Navy. All attempts to locate her have proved unsuccessful.”
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  (#6) A 10-Year-Old Teen Murder Remains Unsolved

  Seventeen-year-old Blake Chappell went to the East Coweta High School homecoming dance in Sharpsburg, GA, on October 15, 2011. He was supposed to spend the night at a friend’s house, but he left to visit his girlfriend. The Georgian teen was later seen walking back to his friend’s house, but he never made it.

  His mother recalls the last conversation they had. He said, “Mom, I had so much fun, it was the best day of my life, I got to hang out with my friends and dance.” When Blake went missing, his mother reported it to the authorities and, for two months, the search continued.

  During the months Chappell was missing, his mother Melissa received a strange phone call, in which she heard only the sound of a television set for several minutes. She stated that she called out her son's name several times, but received no reply.

  Finally, in December 2011, authorities discovered his body. Blake Chappell had been shot.

  Police investigated and ultimately cleared a suspect who had assaulted Chappell only months prior to his disappearance. The man in question was the stepfather of Chappell's former girlfriend, who had ran away from home to visit Chappell. This individual had reportedly also threatened to kill Chappell over his relationship with the girl, but authorities found no evidence tying him to the boy's disappearance and murder.

  The police haven't released any further details. The case remains open, if cold.
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  (#7) The Town Full Of Twins Is Still A Mystery To Science

  Linha São Pedro is a tiny German settlement near the city of Cândido Godói in Brazil. It's mostly known for basically bursting with twin births. The amount of twins born here exceeds the national average by more than 10 times, and no one knows why.

  There was talk of a Nazi experiment. Argentine historian Jorge Camarasa’s book Mengele: The Angel of Death in South America blames Josef Mengele. Camarasa says that Mengele made frequent trips to Linha São Pedro in the '60s. After that, the incidence of twin births mushroomed. 

  Scientists disregard this theory, stating that Mengele could not have affected the outcome of twin births.
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  (#8) The Sea Peoples Were Naval Raiders, But No One Knows Their Identity

  From approximately 1400 BCE to 1000 BCE, naval warriors raided Egypt. This was 2,000 years before the Vikings. They came on warships as skilled marauders, and Egypt lived in terror. To date, no one knows the identity of these oceanic raiders.

  An inscription written in the 13th century BCE was found in the Egyptian city of Tanis. It proclaims, “They came from the sea in their warships and none could stand against them.”

  Historians named them the Sea Peoples, and their identity has long been debated. Some suggest they could be Etruscan or Trojan. Others say Philistine, Mycenaen, Minoan, or even Italian. The raids of the Sea Peoples were one of the major causes of the collapse of the Bronze Age. However, historians can't quite figure out who they actually were.
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  (#9) The $500 Million Heist At The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Remains Unsolved

  On March 18, 1990, there was an art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The robbers stole a total of 13 paintings that day, some $500 million worth of art. The paintings included works by Degas, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Manet. The two thieves dressed as Boston police officers and entered easily, let in by the guard on duty.

  They grabbed the two guards and took them down to the basement. The thieves tied them up and duct-taped their mouths. And that’s it; they took the artwork and breezed out.

  Some say the authorities later learned the identity of the thieves, but did not prosecute. The artwork is still missing and remains a big mystery.
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  (#10) Tarrare

  • Person

  Tarrare was born in the French countryside near Lyon in 1772. From the start, he could eat until the sun went down and still be hungry. Legend has it, he could eat his own weight in cow meat within 24 hours. The family could not feed him anymore so, as a teen, they turned him out of his own home. Tarrare joined the circus and ate as part of a freak show act. He would chow down live animals, offal, and even inedible things like stones.

  He even tried to become a French spy but the Germans caught him and beat him up. Back in France, Tarrare was desperate to find a cure for his hunger. He stayed in the hospital for months but would eat cadavers, and go through trash piles and dung heaps. He was even accused of eating a toddler who went missing.

  Later, Tarrare died of tuberculosis. When doctors performed an autopsy, they discovered that his esophagus was so large, they could look directly into his stomach from his open mouth. Today, the medical world hypothesizes that Tarrare may have had a thyroid disorder, but that does not explain why he ate live animals, cadavers, or anything else he could lay his hands on.
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  (#11) Ray Gricar

  • Politician

  In 2005, Ray Gricar, the district attorney of Centre County, PA, vanished off the face of the Earth. He had been DA since 1985 and wanted to retire. He went on a day trip in his Mini Cooper, and that’s the last anyone ever saw or heard of him. 

  His car was later recovered, as was his laptop, which was found floating in the river with the hard drive removed. There are several theories relating to his disappearance. One conspiracy theory plays on his link to the Jerry Sandusky case. Back then, Gricar chose not to prosecute the longtime Penn State assistant football coach. Sandusky was later convicted on several counts of child abuse. Other theories posit that Gricar took his own life or wanted to start fresh. 

  Either way, it’s been more than 15 years, and no one knows what happened to Ray Gricar, who was deemed “dead in absentia” in 2011.
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  (#12) The Mystery Of The Phoenix Lights

  In 1997, hundreds of people in Arizona, Nevada, and the Mexican state of Sonora saw lights in the sky. The lights first appeared in a V-shape formation, and then as a cluster of stationary lights, spherical in shape.

  The US Air Force later claimed the lights were high-intensity flares, and the government has refused to acknowledge any other explanation. 

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