The open ocean can be a harsh and scary place - a vast and lawless expanse with nowhere to run or hide when danger arises.
In fact, it may be home to more rogue vessels and armed pirates than ever before, making it a most dangerous time to be at sea.
In 2015, a cell phone was discovered in a taxi in Fiji which contained a video of a mysterious and undocumented incident.
In the footage, four men are seen floating in the open water, clinging to pieces of debris, clearly in a state of panic.
It seems the wreckage in the water is likely the remains of their boat, though it is unclear what happened to cause the damage.
The men are surrounded by fishing vessels, though none of the boats seem to be initiating any kind of rescue protocol.
No one has been able to identify the floating men in the video, nor determine the context of the situation.
Instead, we are left to wonder who “shot” the strange incident from their phone, and what their role in the conflict was...
On September 6, 2015, 32-year old Henry McCabe went out to a nightclub in Spring Lake Park, Minnesota with two of his friends.
McCabe’s family was on vacation in California, and he stayed out late that night, until after 2 o’clock in the morning.
Upon leaving the nightclub, McCabe asked one of his friends, William Kennedy, to drop him off at a gas station...
...which was strangely more than two miles in the wrong direction from the nightclub in relation to McCabe’s home.
At 2:28 a.m., McCabe’s wife received a call from Henry’s cellphone, but due to the late hour, the call went to voicemail.
In the nearly two minute long message, Henry can be heard moaning and screaming as if in a terrifying situation.
In the background, beneath the high-pitched sounds of Henry’s voice, a low-pitched growling noise can also be heard.
The message ends with several seconds of eerie silence before a male voice can be heard saying the words “Stop it.”
This mysterious voicemail would end up being the last time that anyone would hear from Henry McCabe.
His cellphone signal was lost shortly after the call was made, and the case of his voicemail remains unsolved.
On June 25, 1986, a truck carrying 20,000 liters of sulfuric acid was descending from the Somosierra mountains in Spain...
...when the driver of the truck lost control of the brakes and began veering wildly across the steep mountain highway.
After narrowly missing three other cars, the runaway truck finally collided with another truck in the oncoming lane...
...sending sulfuric acid all over the road and the surrounding terrain while creating a toxic cloud that covered the area.
Rescuers arrived on the scene and began to rescue drivers and do their best to cover the acid with sand and lime before it spread.
In the wreckage of the original truck, they found children’s toys and boy’s clothing in the backseat area.
It seemed that a young boy, Juan Pedro, had been traveling with his father, Andrés Martínez, the driver of the truck.
The two had planned to visit Basque Country together once Andrés had made his delivery of the sulfuric acid...
...and yet rescuers and medics on the highway that day could find no trace of Juan Pedro in the immediate area.
Investigators found that the tachometer showed the truck making twelve very brief stops prior to the accident...
...an unusual occurrence that other truckers in the area say would have been unnecessary and cumbersome to the journey.
Even stranger, witnesses remember a man and woman getting out of a white van immediately after the crash and approach the truck.
The mysterious man and woman, both dressed in white doctor coats, were seen removing what looked like a package from the cabin.
What was this package, why had Andrés made the twelve stops, and did either have something to do with the whereabouts of Juan?
On March 31, 2006, Ohio State medical student Brian Shaffer went out with two friends to celebrate the start of spring break.
The group began their Friday night at a bar called the Ugly Tuna before working their way across town to the Arena District.
After midnight, all three friends drove back again to the Ugly Tuna, where they planned to have one last drink together.
While drinking at the crowded bar in the late hours, however, Shaffer’s friends lost track of him in the sea of patrons.
They both tried calling him, with no luck, and ended up waiting outside for him after the bar closed 2 a.m.
When Shaffer never re-appeared, the two friends assumed that he had already slipped out of the bar and gone home.
But, unfortunately, Brian Shaffer had not gone home, and he did not respond to calls from friends and family over the weekend.
The following Monday morning, he missed a flight to Miami that he had his girlfriend had been planning for months.
It was at that point that Shaffer was finally reported missing to the police, his last known location being the Ugly Tuna.
Security footage from the bar that night shows Shaffer talking to two woman outside, just before 2 a.m, then going back inside.
However, Shaffer is never seen leaving the bar, made all the more puzzling by the fact that the bar only has the one exit.
An extensive search and investigation did not yield any useful information, nor did police find any evidence of foul play.
What happened to Shaffer at the bar that night, and how could he have slipped out of the exit undetected by security cameras?
Among many theories, some believe that that he left the bar that night in disguise with the intention of disappearing...
Larry Hillblom was the billionaire founder of shipping giant DHL and a man often described as mysterious and eccentric.
In retirement, Hillblom lived a secluded life on the island of Saipan in the Western Pacific, where he collected vintage aircrafts.
One fateful day in May of 1995, Hillblom went out in his personal seaplane with another pilot and a business partner.
Though the cause is unknown, the plane ended up crashing into the waters between Saipan and nearby Pagan Island...
...and while some believe that Hillblom may have perished in the accident, no trace of his body was ever recovered.
Hillblom left behind a vast estate, and though his will stipulated that the entire sum be donated to medical research...
...something strange happened next when four people came forward claiming to be Hillblom’s illegitimate children.
Because investigators did not have access to Hillblom’s DNA due to his disappearance after the crash...
...it was extremely difficult to determine whether these new paternity claims were accurate or just an attempt to cash in.
Stranger still, it appeared to some that Hillblom had purposely bleached and sanitized his entire home to hide any DNA evidence.
It is speculated that Hillblom may have known about the children and tried to erase any links to them before staging his disappearance.
Even though the claims were eventually settled, the truth behind the mysterious events remains elusive today...