Hey YouTube, Jim here!
Welcome to Top10 Archive!
Reddit is one of the best sites on the internet as far as information goes, after YouTube
of course.
Here, you’ll find people sharing cute dog videos, engaging in pointless debates, and
every now and again solving mysteries.
Yes, that’s right, Redditors are the digital version of the Scooby Doo gang and when they
club together, it seems like there’s nothing they can’t solve - which is what brings
us to look at 10 Mysteries Solved By Reddit!
Before we uncover some mysteries, why not hit the subscribe button and click the notification
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you would love to solve in the comment section below!
10.
Grateful Doe The first mystery on our list involves identifying
a man that died in a brutal car crash over 20 years ago.
In 1995, a 19-year-old hitchhiker got into a van in Virginia belonging to a 21-year-old
student on his way to see his mother.
After that night, neither men would be seen alive again.
At some point during their journey, the car veered off the road and smashed into a tree,
killing both men instantly.
The driver was identified by his family but the hitchhiker’s injuries were so severe
that he was unrecognizable.
The only clues to his identity were two scalped ticket stubs to a Grateful Dead concert and
a note which read: “Jason, Sorry we had to go, see ya around, call me.
Caroline T. + Caroline O.”
The police were stumped and eventually, the case was forgotten about until a Reddit user
and Grateful Dead fan stumbled acrossed it and started sharing digitally reconstructed
images of Jason on Reddit.
After some time, someone recognized the man as Jason Callahan, who was following the Grateful
Dead on tour at the time of his tragic death.
9.
Nail Through Wood When a photo of a block of wood with a nail
through it was posted on Reddit, people lost their minds.
Now, a nail and a piece of wood probably don’t sound that exciting, but take a look at this!
How the heck did it get there?
Many questions were asked: Is it a fake nail?
No.
Is the wood really one solid piece?
Yes.
So, if the wood and the nail are as they seem to be, how did they end up like that?
Well thankfully, there was a carpenter online ready to solve the mystery, and he kindly
made a video showing exactly how it was done.
Steve Ramsey, our hero in this mystery, took a block of pine wood and cut it to create
the three hollows we see here.
Then, and here’s where the magic happened, he dunked one end in boiling water and let
it sit for ten minutes.
This softens the wood so it can then be placed in a vice to push one of the blocks down.
Then, after two days, he drilled a hole and inserted the nail before dunking it in boiling
water again to allow the wood to reform.
Then, with a little sanding, presto, the trick is complete!
8.
Webdriver Torso In 2014, right here on YouTube, users started
noticing a channel displaying very strange behavior.
The channel, called Webdriver Torso, was posting videos as frequently as one per minute and
they all followed a strange pattern.
Most of them were 11 seconds long and featured a series of strange tones with changing images
of blue and red shapes, and nobody could work out what the videos were or why they were
being posted.
When internet sleuths caught on to this weird YouTuber, Reddit went wild with speculations
as to what the channel could mean.
Of course, conspiracy theories were up there with the most popular reasons for the short
videos, and wannabe detectives blamed the government, spies, and even extra-terrestrials
for the strange events.
Eventually, someone figured out that the account could be linked back to Google, and Google
confirmed that the account had simply been created to test audio and visual quality within
video uploads.
Am I the only one who wishes it had actually been aliens or spies?
7.
The Bugged Extension Chord Ok, so this one is super creepy.
When Redditor shadybusiness15 blew a fuse in his extension cord, he took it apart to
see the damage, but found a lot more than he expected to.
Confused by what seemed to be something that didn’t belong inside an extension cable,
shadybusiness15 posted pictures online asking for help determining what the mysterious items
were.
It wasn’t long until the unsettling answer was offered up by another Redditor: it was
a microphone connected to a SIM card.
Yep, that’s right, somebody had been bugging him.
Yikes!
Shadybusiness15 called the number he found on the SIM card but all he heard was a recorded
message from the operator: "The service is now closed.
If you have voicemail you can turn it on."
He contacted the bug’s manufacturer to see whether they could offer up an explanation
for his disturbing findings, but he was told he’d need a warrant if he wanted to find
out what had been recorded.
6.
Cicada 3301 In 2012, a bizarre puzzle, Cicada 3301, mysteriously
appeared online.
It was accompanied by a note which read: "Hello.
We are looking for highly intelligent individuals.
To find them, we have devised a test.
There is a message hidden in the image.
Find it, and it will lead you on the road to finding us.
We look forward to meeting the few who will make it all the way through.
Good luck."
Many people tried and failed to crack the code, but few succeeded.
One of the guys who can claim victory over the code was a Swedish cybersecurity researcher
who just so happened to have the steganography software and knowledge of the Mayan language
required to solve it.
Joel Erikson solved one piece of the puzzle at a time and several parts took him offline
and out into the real world to discover a voicemail left on a Texan phone number and
flyers taped to telephone poles in 14 cities around the world.
The individual or group responsible for Cicada 3301 still remains a mystery to this day.
5.
Box of Mystery In 2013, a Redditor found a mysterious box
in the trash and started to document his investigation into the contents of said box.
Inside the tattered wooden case he found dozens of items, including beautiful illustrations,
hand-drawn maps, and personal items.
What was perhaps most bizarre though was the discovery of a handwritten note, which seems
to be talking about either an extraterrestrial invasion or a government cover-up.
It seems as though the owner of the box saw something in 1977 in Tampa, Florida that changed
them forever, and the many drawings combining extraterrestrial and religious imagery seems
to give us some clue of what it is that he saw.
Pretty spooky, huh?
4.
Stonehenge Code In 2011, several Redditors noticed that someone
was dumping a crazy amount of code into a now-private thread with this catchy title.
Nobody in the thread could seem to make sense of the code and for a while, it was a complete
mystery until one user finally decoded one of the posts and discovered an ASCII drawing
of Stonehenge.
It’s impossible to be sure whether the posts were linked together to achieve a single purpose,
or whether it was simply a fellow Redditor getting their kicks from confusing people,
but as of 2016, some people were still trying to figure it all out.
3.
Post-it Notes In this incredible mystery, one Reddit user
actually ended up saving a life when he solved the puzzle of why post-it notes were appearing
all over his apartment.
Reddit user RBradbury1920 was confused when he found a post-it note in his apartment reminding
him of some errands he had to do.
Not so weird, right?
Well, the odd thing is that he had no memory of writing it and it looked as though the
note wasn’t in his handwriting.
When he found several more over the following weeks he started to freak out.
Then, when he set up a camera to catch the note-maker and it showed that nobody entered
his apartment, that was when he took his concerns to Reddit.
I mean, where else?
RBradbury1920 posted his conundrum, stating that he thought his landlord was to blame
for the post-it mystery, but Kakkerlak had a different theory.
This Reddit super-sleuth suggested that RBradbury1920 was leaving the notes himself and that he
wasn’t remembering for one of two reasons: either mental health issues or something physical
like a carbon monoxide leak.
RBradbury1920 decided to check out the gas leak theory and, wouldn’t you know it, there
was an actual leak Kakkerlak’s smart detective work saved his fellow Redditor’s life, proving
just how brilliant the Reddit community really is.
2.
Hit and Run From saving lives to fighting crime, this
next tale proves that the Reddit hive-mind is a powerful thing.
Following a violent hit and run, a Reddit user named Meatheaded, who lived near the
scene of the crime, posted a picture of a broken taillight.
He asked if anybody was able to identify the vehicle that it came from and, as always,
Redditors had a lot to say on the matter.
There were over 400 comments with theories and suggestions of the light’s origins,
and the fragment was determined to have come from a gray 1991 Cadillac Brougham.
Meatheaded took that information to his local police auto theft unit to see whether there
was a match, and, of course, there was!
The hit-and-run suspect was caught, thanks to Meatheaded and his band of fellow nerds..
err, detectives.
1.
Strongsville Jane Doe In 1975, three unfortunate boys stumbled upon
a skeleton close to a river in Ohio.
All police could determine is that the bones belonged to a woman who was between the ages
of 18 and 25 years old, who had been shot in the head.
It was determined that the crime had occurred at least five months prior to her body being
discovered, leaving the poor young woman unidentified and the case cold.
That is until 2015, when Reddit got on the case.
One user who goes by Call Me Ice was interested in the mysterious case and decided to do a
little digging.
Somehow, she got a hold of the original autopsy reports, including a photo of the woman’s
damaged skull.
A forensic scientist then helped her create a facial reconstruction, which was then compared
to a photo of a 17-year-old woman, Linda Pagano, who went missing in late 1974 following a
heated argument with her stepfather.
Tests were run on the skeleton and it was determined that it did, in fact, belong to
Linda, and she was finally laid to rest by her sister.