They say truth can be stranger than fiction but these creepy REAL stories definitely seem strangest! They may sound as if they have come straight from the bizarre world of our imagination, but they are as real as they can get. What’s worse? All of them remain unsolved till now. With countless theories, explanations and non-conventional logic attached with them, let’s have a look at these 9 bizarre unsolved mysteries.
1. Dyatlov Pass Incident
In the frigid Ural Mountains lie a mystery that has perplexed Soviet investigators till today. In 1959, 9 Russian students, including 2 women, were camping and hiking on the isolated mountains—taking a much-needed short break from their graduate studies. When the group failed to return in the stipulated time, a search party was dispatched in an expectation to find the students—hopes that were soon dashed as all of them were found dead. Three of them had suffered major injuries, they had fractured skulls. One of the women had her tongue cut off. The rest died of hypothermia. All of them were found wearing light clothing. Their tent was found abandoned, cut open from inside. So, what exactly made these experienced skiers run away from their campsite, some of them barefoot, wearing only light clothing and leaving all their gears behind?
Possible Theories
1) They thought they were going to be killed by an approaching avalanche so they fled in frenzy.
2) They were killed by an enraged Russian Yeti.
3) Another theory is that the wind going around created a ‘Kármán vortex street’, which resulted in infrasounds that affected the mountaineers.
4) They were killed in an accident by a covert military operation which Soviet authorities, later, tried to cover up.
5) Killed by aliens
2. The Disappearance Of Fredrick Valentich
Fredrick Valentich was a 20-year-old pilot in Australia who mysteriously vanished on October 21, 1978. He was flying his single engine plane somewhere over the Bass Strait when he had to radio the air traffic controllers to report about a mysterious flying object he had seen around his aircraft. He first reported that the object was flying 1000 feet below him. He later reported that the object had switched its position and was hovering above him—as if trying to taunt him. He described it to be orbiting in his vicinity, having a metal surface and shiny green lights. His last words to the controller were ‘it’s hovering and it’s not an aircraft’. The controller then heard what appeared to be metallic scratching sounds and the contact was cut off abruptly. No amount of search was able to find either him or his aircraft.
Here’s a YouTube video which reenacts the conversation of Valentich with the controller.
Possible Theories
1) He staged an elaborate act and planned his own disappearance possibly to start a new life somewhere.
2) He was disoriented, possibly high on drugs and crashed into the water. His plane was then carried out to the sea. This reasoning seems to stem from the fact that Valentich was a UFO enthusiast and often feared attacks from them.
3) He actually saw a UFO and was abducted/killed by aliens.
3. Skyjacker D.B. Cooper
The only unsolved airline hijacking in the history of U.S. is that of D.B. Cooper’s. On November 24th, 1971 an impeccably dressed, well-suited man wearing a dark pair of sunglasses and known by the name of Dan Cooper, purchased a $20 one-way ticket to Seattle from Portland. Once on the plane, he ordered some Bourbon whiskey, lit up a cigarette (well yeah!) and coolly handed a note to the stewardess which read “I HAVE A BOMB IN MY BRIEFCASE. I WILL USE IT IF NECESSARY. I WANT YOU TO SIT NEXT TO ME. YOU ARE BEING HIJACKED.” And he did show the bomb to the stewardess as proof. What happened next is straight out of an imaginary Bond-esque film; only it happened for real.
He had two requests which he asked the stewardess to relay it to the captain. He wanted $200,000 and four parachutes in return for the lives of 36 passengers on the aircraft. When the plane landed in Seattle, FBI had already acted on his demands. He was paid the ransom money and given four parachutes and he did let go of all the passengers as promised. However, he wanted the plane to be sky-bound again en route to Mexico maintaining an altitude under 10,000 feet, with just the pilot, co-pilot, one stewardess and Cooper on board. Only that he had no intention of going to Mexico. Somewhere over the lower Cascade mountains, 25 miles north west of Portland, Cooper released the plane’s aft stairs and jumped into the stormy night with one of the parachutes strapped to his back only to be never found again.
Possible Theories
1) He was a thrill seeker who made the jump only to prove that ‘it could be done.’
2) He was an Air Force veteran whose financial situation was considered ‘desperate.’
3) He was just a shrewd planner and paratrooper who did his homework very, very meticulously.
4) He did not survive the jump. Or he did, went to some other country and was, thus, lost.
5) He was Richard McCoy Jr. Read about him here.
4. The Zodiac Killer
Regarded the most ‘elusive’ serial killer U.S. has ever seen—one who has inspired a David Fincher film and a couple of books, Zodiac Killer terrorized the residents of the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The killer committed five known murders and gravely injured two people between 1968 and 1969. He was mostly known to target young couples in secluded areas. Just inside the Bencia border, he committed his first two murders with a pistol by targeting a couple (possibly looking for some private time) inside a car. His second shooting was in Vallejo where he attempted to kill two people again, but one survived despite gunshots to the head and neck. After this, the police received an anonymous phone call from a man claiming to be their killer and also admitting to the murders of his previous two victims.
The Zodiac then proceeded to taunt the police and three local newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, by sending letters containing a cipher in which the writer identified himself as the Zodiac, one of the cipher code was decoded which although produced several leads but led to no arrests.
The cipher that was decrypted read:
“I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN IT IS MORE FUN THAN KILLING WILD GAME IN THE FORREST BECAUSE MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUE ANAMAL OF ALL TO KILL SOMETHING GIVES ME THE MOST THRILLING EXPERENCE IT IS EVEN BETTER THAN GETTING YOUR ROCKS OFF WITH A GIRL THE BEST PART OF IT IS THAE WHEN I DIE I WILL BE REBORN IN PARADICE AND THEI HAVE KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES I WILL NOT GIVE YOU MY NAME BECAUSE YOU WILL TRY TO SLOI DOWN OR ATOP MY COLLECTIOG OF SLAVES FOR MY AFTERLIFE EBEORIETEMETHHPITI”
The last eighteen letters were never decrypted.
Possible Suspects
1) Arthur Leigh Allen was the prime suspect of the Zodiac murders, but the handwriting experts could never match his writing to the cipher, thus ruling him out.
2) Ted Kaczynsci, a mathematical genius, was another suspect in the case, however, police eliminated his name using scientific fingerprint and writing comparisons.
5. The Tamam Shud Case or The Body on The Somerton Beach
This case revolves around the body of an unidentified man found dead in December 1948 on the Somerton beach in Adelaide, Australia. The strangest part about his body was that the labels on his clothes were purposefully removed. The mystery further deepened when a piece of paper with the words written ‘Tamam Shud’ was found in a pocket sewn to the man’s trouser. The phrase translates as ‘ended’ or ‘finished’ and the paper was found to be scrapped from the last page of a collection of poems called ‘The Rubaiyat’ of Omar Khayyam. The police were able to gain possession of the book that the scrap of paper had been torn from with the help of a man who said it had been mysteriously left in the back seat of his car. The copy contained a strange cipher in pencil on the back of the book. The code has never been deciphered and the identity of the body remains a mystery till date.
Possible Theories
1) He was a Soviet Union or Eastern European Spy who had been murdered using an undetectable poison by his enemies.
2) He was loner, planned his own elaborate suicide by leaving a meaningless code as a joke.
3) He was H.C. Reynolds. Read here
6. The Hinterkaifeck Murders
In 1922, the gruesome murders of a 6-membered family at the Hinterkaifeck farmstead shocked Germany to the core. What’s more bizarre is the way it was carried out that makes this an unresolved mystery even after 93 years of its occurrence. The victims were farm owner Andreas and Cäzilia Gruber, their widowed daughter Viktoria, her children Cäzilia and Joseph, and the maid, Maria Baumgartner. Days before the murder, Andreas had reportedly told the neighbors that he had found a strange set of footprints in the snow leading from the forest to their home, but not back. The family had also heard footsteps in the attic, found an unfamiliar newspaper in the home and had a set of house keys disappear shortly before. This was after their earlier maid had quit 6 months back citing that the house was haunted. Based on the crime scene found after a couple of days, investigators believed that the house members were led one after the other into the barn to be killed by a pickaxe. The murderer had chosen to kill the son Joseph and the maid in the house. What will chill you to the bone is the fact that whoever murdered the family had stayed at the house for several days after, feeding the cattle and eating meals in the kitchen.
Possible Theories
1) The suspects range from the neighbor Lorenz Schlittenbauer, who had been previously intimate with their daughter Viktoria, as well as an escaped mental patient who was at loose at that time.
2) It is believed that the perpetrator was squatting in the attic several days before and after the attack.
3) It was also rumored that Andreas and Viktoria had an incestuous relationship, and that Joseph was their son.
7. The Disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley
An all-American girl, Amy Lynn Bradley was travelling with her brother and parents on a Caribbean cruise ship ‘Rhapsody of the Seas’ in March 1998 when she went missing on the cruise. At 5:30am, Amy’s brother last saw his sister sitting on the outdoor balcony. She was also seen by other passengers with one of the members of the ship’s band, Blue Orchid. The ship was sailing to Curaçao, Antilles, at the time she was last seen. Extensive searches on the ship and at sea by FBI produced no signs of her whereabouts.
Possible Theories
1) A Naval officer on Curacao believed he encountered Amy in a brothel asking for help, possibly indicating that she was forced into sex slavery.
2) An image of a young woman possibly resembling Bradley was emailed to her parents also strengthens the above mentioned theory.
3) Two Canadian tourists also reported seeing a woman resembling Amy on a beach in Curaçao in 1998. The woman’s tattoos were identical to Bradley’s ‘Tasmanian Devil’ spinning a basketball tattoo on her shoulder, the sun on her lower back and a Chinese symbol on her right ankle.
8. The Black Dahlia
Raven-haired, 22-year-old actress Elizabeth Short was found dead, her body mutilated, in Leimert Park in Los Angeles on January 15, 1947. The passerby who discovered her remains thought it was a discarded mannequin at first because her body was neatly cut into two by waist and had been drained of blood with precision. She was found nude, her body placed in a way as if posing for a picture and the corners of her mouth slashed up to her ears creating a clown-esque smile. The investigation was carried out by police in tandem with the press as the murderer taunted them by sending letters, a packet of her belongings including her birth certificate, address book, and social security card, all of which had been soaked in gasoline to cleverly eliminate fingerprints.
The murder shocked the country not only due to the mysterious circumstances associated with it but because of the sheer brutality of the killing. Want to have a look at the crime scene photos of the case? (WARNING- EXTREMELY NSFW and NSFL) Click here.
Possible Theories
1) It is possible that she was a victim of a serial murderer ‘Cleveland Killer’ also known as the Butcher of Kingsbury who was never found.
2) There is also a theory that suggests her murder and Lipstick Killings were ‘likely related.’
3) Steve Hodel, a retired City of Los Angeles homicide detective, has argued in his 2003 book ‘Black Dahlia Avenger’ that he believed his father, Dr. George Hodel, a Los Angeles physician actually tortured, murdered and dissected Elizabeth in the Historic Sowden House.
9. The Creepy Overtoun Bridge
Scotland’s eerily intriguing Overtaun Bridge also known as the ‘The Dog Suicide Bridge’ is a famous arch bridge that has stood there since 1859. In the past 50 years, somewhere close to 600 dogs have reportedly jumped off the bridge from the same point into the same direction. What’s creepier is that the dogs who jumped and survived the first attempt returned to the same spot for another attempt. It has been reported that during a six-month period in 2006, five dogs jumped to their deaths. The dogs affected are mainly long nose breeds such as Labradors, Collies, and Golden Retrievers. The Scottish Society for the ‘Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ has been investigating from a long time, but are also stumped by this rather strange behavior.
Possible Theories
1) Dogs are attracted towards the scent of minks that are present under the bridge, however, local hunters who know the area inside out have ruled out this theory.
2) The dogs, sensing depression in their owners, knowingly committed suicide.
3) The bridge’s granite walls significantly impair the dogs’ sense of sight and hearing, so, when they go to investigate the smell, they fall.
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