Five of the Creepiest Unsolved Mysteries Ever

Death is just an inevitable part of being human, but sometimes the circumstances of one’s passing are more than a little suspicious. These five stories of creepy unsolved mysteries are sure to keep you up tonight.

The Death of Elisa Lam

Elisa Lam was a 21-year-old Canadian university student who died under incredibly bizarre circumstances. Her body was discovered in a water tank on the roof of the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles on February 19, 2013. But it gets even weirder than that: Lam was reported missing at the beginning of the month, and five days prior to the discovery of her body, the Los Angeles Police Department released disturbing video footage in which she was seen repeatedly entering and exiting an elevator, seemingly hiding from someone and talking to thin air. To this day, no one knows whether she died by suicide, murder, or perhaps even by interference of the paranormal.

The Plane Hijacking of D.B. Cooper

The case of D.B. Cooper is one of the most famous instances of a plane hijacking in American history. On the afternoon of November 24, 1971, a man who went by the alias “Dan Cooper” boarded a plane heading to Seattle, Washington from Portland, Oregon. (He became known to the public as “D.B.” Cooper due to a miscommunication in the news.) During the flight he extorted today’s equivalent of $1.2 million in ransom, and then parachuted out of the plane, never to be seen again. To this day, no one knows D.B. Cooper’s true identity or whether he survived the jump.

The Mystery of the Somerton Man

On the morning of December 1, 1948, the body of an unidentified man was found on the Somerton Park beach near Adelaide, Australia. Several witnesses stated that they had seen the man lying in the same position in the same spot the evening before, but they had assumed he was either drunk or asleep, and so didn’t think much of it. The man was not carrying any form of identification at the time of his death, and investigators were unable to match his dental records with anyone. Initially, police believed his death to be a suicide, but the autopsy did not show any real signs that this was definitively the case. “I am quite convinced the death could not have been natural,” said pathologist Dr. Dwyer. “The poison I suggested was a barbiturate or a soluble hypnotic.” The autopsy did not show any signs that the man had been poisoned.  

The Dyatlov Pass Incident

Sometime between February 1 and 2 in 1959, nine people died under mysterious circumstances in the Ural Mountains in Russia. The group was made up of experienced hikers from the Ural Polytechnic Institute, led by Igor Dyatlov. But here’s where it gets really creepy: During the night, something prompted the hikers to cut their way out of their tents and escape the campsite, not even fully dressed for the freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall. The autopsy report showed that the victims had sustained significant injuries, including chest trauma, skull damage, and one person was even missing a tongue. The official conclusion to the case stated that the group had perished due to a “compelling natural force,” but numerous theories have been put forward, including animal attacks, an avalanche, or even government involvement.   

The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann

The disappearance of Madeleine McCann was labeled the “most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history” by the Daily Telegraph. On the night of May 3, 2007, three-year-old Madeleine was on vacation in Portugal with her family and a group of family friends. Her parents had put her and her two siblings to bed in a ground-floor apartment room while they had dinner nearby. At one point during the evening, they got up to check on the children and noted that Madeleine had disappeared from her bed. Initially, the Portuguese police believed that Madeleine had died in an accident in the apartment which was covered up by her parents, but this theory was thrown out due to insufficient evidence. The case remains open, and her whereabouts are still unknown to this day.