Creepy Unsolved (preferably paranormal) Mysteries.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the Mary Celeste or any similar derelict ships.

Oh, wait, Lord Gacek did mention it, but here is the link. The presence of the Captain's wife and two year old daughter is especially poignant. It's also interesting that the captain who discovered the MC had dinner with it's captain just before setting sail from NY, just about a month earlier.

If we're going to talk about disappearances in The Bermuda Triangle (the mystery of which is sadly exaggerated- the rate of disappearances isn't any higher than any other frequently traveled part of the ocean), we have to bring up the Trope Codifier- Flight 19.

...and two that followed, both from British South American Airways — Avro Tudor Mk.IV Star Tiger in 1948, and Avro Tudor IVB Star Ariel in 1949.

And not forgetting BSAA's other claim to fame — the accident that involved Lancastrian Star Dust, and the mysterious, final STENDEC message. Even now, nobody quite knows what it means, if anything...

edited 18th Nov '11 3:30:15 PM by Greenmantle

Because they're rape jokes.

Not that it bothers me or anything like that.

edited 18th Nov '11 3:47:56 PM by RL_Nice

had somebody mention Ball Lightning yet ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning

it is very interesting, especially the one on Widecombe-in-the-Moor

Ball Lightning is one of the few legitimate scientific mysteries that gets brought up. Also, if you ever see it, don't go near it. It can apparently light you on fire.

I have several of them.

Spontaneous human combustion. Bonus points for being a phenomenon that can actually kill you.

edited 21st Nov '11 10:19:21 AM by RL_Nice

I thought that a fairly respectable number of the cases have been explained without extraordinary or unnatural conditions?

Besides, I don't remember hearing about any recent case, let alone one that couldn't be explained rather trivially.

the natural explanation actually more creepy for me. people turned to human candle by wick effect and burned until only ashes.

There was something going around during Medieval times called Dancing mania where people would start dancing and keep going until they dropped from exhaustion. Some people even danced until they died. It wasnt just a few people aparently whole towns would come down with it. Lots of theories as to why it was happening but since it was so long ago no way to prove them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania

There was a great semi-ghost story from the Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark series about a feral child from 1800s frontier America. Creepy shit, that...

edited 21st Nov '11 5:27:10 AM by USAF721

Taman Shud case. It's about a man who was found dead on an Australian beach in 1948, and whose identity and cause of death remain unknown to this day. There are also some other really weird details surrounding the case, like strange handwritten messages.

edited 21st Nov '11 5:33:34 AM by Exploder

Already discussed in this thread.

Actually, there was a case in Britain only a few weeks ago where a man's death was ruled to be the result of spontaneous human combustion. He'd fallen asleep next to a fireplace, but they determined it was impossible for the fireplace to have set him on fire without touching certain other objects in the room which were't scorched.

I've read about a college student who burst into flames while walking with her friends in public.

You know, what do we have in here? The Tunguska Event, Roswell Incident, any other weird events that got their own entries?

We seem to have an entry on the Locked Room Mystery, but the Real Life section doesn't have anything creepy in it. Here's a few creepy Locked Room Mysteries from The Other Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked_room_mystery#True_crimes

Not exactly events, but the Stock Ness Monster and Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti have their own pages.

Speaking of the latter, I'm really on the fence regarding Bigfoot. On one hand, there's no way a viable breeding population of apes that big could escape discovery by now. On the other hand, that infamous Patterson-Gimlin Film is very convincing and has never been successfully reproduced.

And it pisses me off when people outright declare it a fake without actually explaining what the evidence proving it to be a fake is- I kind of view it as Arbitrary Skepticism.

edited 22nd Nov '11 1:49:17 PM by RL_Nice

The most intriguing mysteries so far were the dancing mania and the Taman Shud case... Really interesting stuff.

The dancing mania might have something to do with tainted grain. Could also be a culture-bound syndrome in response to numerous stresses of the time, or a combination of the proposed explainations like ergot poisoning and mass hysteria, with one kicking off the other.

Still, it IS fascinating.

edited 22nd Nov '11 2:50:02 PM by Katrika

There could be human beings out there we've not heard of or seen before. So a population of big apes isn't that impossible to my mind. I doubt bigfoot or the yeti is out there, but the world's a big place.

There could be human beings out there we've not heard of or seen before. So a population of big apes isn't that impossible to my mind. I doubt bigfoot or the yeti is out there, but the world's a big place.

But they live out in rainforests that have remained untouched by civilization. Bigfoot and other large apes have been sighted in inhabited areas. And uncontacted peoples do get discovered when people go searching for them. So far, no one who has gone searching for Bigfoot has discovered any.

It's just that the evidence against Bigfoot (sizable breeding population, issue of suitable food source, lack of evidence in general, etc) doesn't correlate with the evidence for Bigfoot (hair samples have been discovered to be from unidentified primates, the Patterson-Gimlin film, detailed footprint casts, etc). In the end, I can't figure out whether I want to believe in Bigfoot or not. I guess finding a verifiable (non-hoax) Bigfoot corpse is the only thing that can shift my opinion on this.

I thought it actually had been successfully reproduced. Besides, if Bigfoot is real, why hasn't anyone produced better evidence than a blurry and jittery film since 1967?

One possibility: perhaps Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) existed bad then, but are now extinct? This also conveniently explains the demographic issues.

There's the Great Attractor, as mentioned in Men In Black. My theory? Tyranids.