I think for me it’s a toss-up between several things.
First up would be the green-skinned children of Woolpit. Supposedly around 1150 two green-skinned children appeared in the town of Woolpit. They spoke an unknown language and refused to eat anything but a few raw fava beans. Over time they learned English and lost the green tint and claimed to be from the land of “St. Martin”, but they had no idea how they’d appeared in Woolpit. The boy died not long after both children were baptized, but the girl lived in Woolpit for the rest of her days.
Another is the random clown sightings that were happening in 2016. To this day, six years later, there’s still no motive that’s been identified for why people in random locations dressed up as extremely creepy clowns who proceeded to harass or just stare creepily at passersby.
Then there’s the Bell Witch. I was fascinated by the story when I first read it back in school; a supernatural entity which supposedly targeted a family in Tennessee and allegedly was responsible for the death of the family patriarch.
And probably one of the most interesting to me is the Voynich manuscript. To this day no one has been able to figure out what language its written in or what the purpose of the manuscript is. Multiple theories have been advanced and discarded, and yet we still don’t know anything about it.
So how about you guys? What creepy unsolved mysteries keep you up at night when you take the time to think about them?
The Voynich manuscript is really cool, and just so completely bizarre. A ridiculous amout of work for a hoax, but too weird to be real. Gotta be Munchie.
The Tamum Shud case is super weird, but I imagine that boils down to some weird spy stuff we’ll never get an answer to.
The Woolpit Children is mostly legend, as it was nearly 1000 years ago. They were probably children of Flemish settlers from around the Fornham St Martin area who had Chlorosis, but I prefer the folkloric explanation, that it’s just a tall tale about the differences between Normans and Anglo Saxons, especially the Welsh, Irish, and Scots who had been forcibly anglicized.
Well, some people just have being creepy as a hobby I guess! I tend to think of this as more of a social contagion, sadly common these days, being weird for engagement on the internet.
The Bell Witch is a lovely bit of folklore, but people who knew Betsy (who was largely the focus of the ghost) suspected her of fraud, and I think this is really just a few hundred years of embellishment. The Enfield Poltergeist is the closest example I can compare it to, and that’s already been mythologized in The Conjuring movies.
The Language and Writing System of MS408 (Voynich) Explained" (Cheshire) is an interesting read on this one. I think it’s a sampler, something an early apprentice would put together, copying from their masters as best they could and it holds no other meaning, but I’m always open to new things!
As for mysteries that keep me awake:
The Zodiac Killer.
I live in England and in the 90’s when I read a book on the Zodiac killer I was convinced that these murders from the 60’s were going to start again at my house!
Zodiac killed at least 5 people (but claimed a LOT more) and slipped into history and myth.
The Murder Of JonBenét Ramsey.
A six-year old beauty queen is killed, and then after that things get deeply weird.
The Salish Sea human feet.
Since 2007 at least 20 detached human feet have washed up around the coasts of the Salish sea. Why just feet? I don’t know!
" Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?"
In the village of Hagley, Worcestershire, in the 1940’s some local kids were poaching in the local Lords estate, when they found a hollow tree trunk with a skull and bones it it. When the police checked they found a mostly complete skeleton, with jewelry and fragments of clothing, of a woman.
She had been in the tree at least 18 months, and seemingly died of asphyxiation, but her body must have been put in the tree while still “warm” as it wouldn’t have fit in once Rigor started.
This was during WW2, people going “missing” was pretty common, but the work was put in to find out who she was.
No-one ever did.
In 1944 mysterious graffiti appeared in Birmingham “Who put Bella down the Wych Elm - Hagley Wood”, and since at least the 70’s similar graffiti has appeared on an Obelisk near to where the body was found.
Who was Bella? Who put her in the Witch Elm? Why was her hand severed and hidden not too far away? Was she a spy? Was it witchcraft? Was it just a senseless murder committed by someone local enough to know the tree was hollow?
It’s an unsolvable mystery that’s forcing itself to become a myth, and it’s fascinating.
Well, the feet part’s easy to explain. Feet separate from the body quite easily during decomposition (or through nibbling), but stay together quite well. And of course, safely protected in a shoe they’re even more likely to stay “whole”, and shoes float quite well.
Yeah, that one’s good and creepy, too. The sort of thing you’d expect in Midsomer.
There’s an easy solution to that one, stay out of underwater caves. I mean, that’s pretty good advice in general.
The Yuba County Five is another weird mystery, mostly for the “what were they doing there?” aspect. And there’s the Hinterkaifeck murders, which I think were mentioned in the random facts thread, where you keep thinking “and no one thought that was odd?” as you read about it.
There’s the Dyatlov Pass Incident. Although the simplest explanation is simply a weather event, there are so many weird things with the way the bodies were found that even though the simplest explanation is plausible, it just doesn’t seem right for 9 experienced skiers to make the mistakes that they would have had to make.
Anybody else work their way through The Stone about a decade ago? That introduced me to a lot of creepy things, though I can’t remember any but Oak Island offhand.
I dunno if it’s technically “unsolved” but one that always creeps me out is the death and disappearance of Green Boots on Mount Everest.
He was a climber who died on the north side of Mt Everest during a terrible blizzard in 1996. His identity is reasonably sure, but there is a little debate still about which member of the climbing team he actually was — since 3 out of 4 of them died in the storm. Other people summited the mountain the day he died and had to have passed him, but claim they had no idea he was there/was in distress. For years his body was visible on the mountainside, right in the path of other climbers, and they’d actually use his neon green boots as a landmark. But a few years ago the body just disappeared. It’s most likely the Chinese gov’t moved it as part of a mountain cleanup effort, but they never informed the family or announced that they had moved the body or anything, and they don’t talk about it. And being that it’s Mount Everest, they probably didn’t bury him or take the body down the mountain, but more likely lowered the body into a crevasse or carried it somewhere more discreet and out of sight of other climbers. So he’s probably still somewhere on that mountain…still wearing those boots…
OK, everyone, keep Boo away from underwater caves and dangerous montain heights, and we’ll discuss other Death Zones when and if they come up. Don’t worry, we got ya covered!
It seriously creeps me out so much. But I have this morbid fascination with it too. I’ll go and ruin a perfectly good night by seeking out stories about the bodies left on Everest, even knowing full well that it will send me into a tailspin cuz it’s so horrible
“Welcome to The Death Zone Ms. Dooboo”
I’m not going in.
“Why?”
It’s called ‘The Death Zone’.
“Other people like it”
Are quite a lot of them dead?
“Yes”
I’M OUT!
