Here are a few strange mysteries solved by Internet detectives!
Wait until you find out the super simple answer to how to get the nail through the wood!
7 - The Post-It Notes It all began when a Reddit user posted a question
in the reddit forum LegalAdvice, a sub-forum where real attorneys give advice.So this one
girl kept finding yellow post-it notes around her apartment.
The notes were reminding her of errands she has to do.
You figure out the problem yet?
She wasn’t the one posting any of these notes!
The handwriting on the notes wasn’t hers and she hadn’t told anyone about ANY of
these errands she was supposed to run.
She first thought she probably wrote the post-it notes in her sleep.
But a few days later, she found ANOTHER note with the same handwriting.
Of course, at this point, she was just freaked her out.
There were no signs of breaking and entering and the note just told her to save her documents.
Something we don’t think a burglar would leave.
So she set up a camera and turned it towards her desk.
A week or so after, she found another note, and this is when she started freaking out
big time.
The note read: “Our landlord isn’t letting me talk to you, but it’s important we do.”
She checked the webcam recordings but believe it or not, the files were deleted!
She kept finding post-it notes everywhere soon afterward.
Some were even plain blank and stuck on the outside of her door!
Some Redditors agreed she was probably just sleepwalking but a sleep doctor ditched that
theory.
Apparently, it’s impossible to write fully-formed sentences in your sleep, you can only write
scribbles!
Others said she may have an underlying mental illness that she doesn’t know about.
But in the end, it was an engineer who solved the mystery.
Even he theorized a possible mental illness.
But after looking through all of the messages the user had posted, he concluded that wasn’t
not the case.
Every other post on Reddit from the very same girl was eloquent and well written.
However, he DID find a post written by the very same girl asking how they can fit a bed
and a desk into a tiny apartment WITHOUT any windows!
Now, THAT got his attention – what needs to happen so a person who lives in an apartment
without ANY windows to forget their actions?
To make a long story short, it turns out the girl had almost inadvertently killed herself
by carbon monoxide poisoning!
It was the carbon monoxide that was causing all of the hallucinations.
She was writing notes to herself but didn’t remember them!
She came back a few weeks later to confirm the Carbon Monoxide poisoning and thank Reddit
for saving her life!
6 - Webdriver Torso At one point in Internet history, a series
of 11-second videos drove the internet crazy.
Wait, you don’t remember this?!
There were over 80 THOUSAND of these weird videos.
All they showed were blue and red rectangles moving around on screen in random directions.
The soundtracks were equally weird.
They were composed of a series of varying sine wave tones.
The mysterious videos, posted by YouTube user Webdriver Torso, became an infuriating web
phenomenon.
Were they encoded spy messages?
Contact from aliens?
Or, just completely random videos?
A lot of internet man-hours went into figuring out who or even WHAT was behind the videos!
Webdriver Torso account was uploading videos to YouTube at a pretty staggering rate -- as
often as every two minutes at its peak.
Every single one of them were 11 seconds long.
Almost all of them are the same format – nothing but shapes and tones.
However, one random Eiffel Tower video stuck out like a sore thumb!
The Webdriver Torso mystery was finally solved when it was revealed that the channel was
how Google kept tabs on upload quality.
Clips were sent to YouTube's servers and then compared against the original file to ensure
that the quality remained the same.
The account going viral was just an accident thanks to Reddit.
But once it happened, Google was more than happy to play into the fun!
5 - The cryptic note Here was a mystery that had people swarming
around New York City in order to solve!
It all began when Reddit user delverofsecrets posted photos of a note with a message that
a homeless guy gave to him on the 1 train.
Along with 50 bucks!
Why would a homeless guy have 50 bucks is the first question we’d ask, but hey, that’s
just us.
Within three hours, Redditors identified that some of the characters were written in Russian,
Basque and Hebrew.
The "key" is something called a Bifid Cipher — a turn-of-the-century algorithm that would
decode the secret message.
Redditors used the cipher to crack the text: There's plenty more money to make.
Figure this out and prepare to meet July 19th, 56th & 6th.
There's a hot dog stand outside Rue57 cafe.
Ask for Mr. Input.
Apparently, whoever wrote the original code found out.
He sent the original poster a private message who claimed to be Mr. Input himself!
It contained personally identifying information of the original poster and a new code to crack!
The message read: You may not believe me, but I will remind
you of your personalized backpack [PERSONAL INFORMATION REDACTED].
You have recruited the help of friends, the offer is now on the table for them too.
I cannot have strangers inquire about me, rather we will use a proxy.
Of course, he asked Redditors for help again, and they cracked the SECOND code.
Then this message appeared: YOU HAVE MANAGED TO FIND THE MESSAGE WITH
THE HELP OF FRIENDS.
YOU CHANGED THE RULES NOW SO WILL I. JULY TWELVE FOUR PM.
FIND THE BLUE JAY AT SIX AND A HALF AND FIFTY SIXTH AND TELL HIM YOU ARE THE LAST
Redditors connected the numerical username of Mr. Input to an IP address located at Fort
Huachuca in Arizona, a military base used for intelligence training!
What does it all mean!
Delverofsecrets, the original poster, arrived for the potential meeting.
Redditors and other Internet watchers waited with him to get the full scoop but nothing
happened.
Maybe it was some sort of weird job interview.
Maybe it was a government spy game.
Maybe it was just a strange man playing tricks on unsuspecting subway riders.
In the end, no one knew the exact answer!
4 - Land of Ta What’s a Geedis?
Or maybe it’s Who's a Geedis This is the question that thousands of people tried to
answer for more than two years!This strange little mystery started a little over three
years ago, on June 21, 2017, when comedian Nate Fernald posted a picture on twitter of
a pin that was a weird-looking whatever it is.
Geedis is a four-legged creature, with its front legs longer than the back legs.
He's kind of in a sitting position and has a very big smile.
Kinda a little bear-like.
And just weird!
So Nate was wondering what IS this thing.
He typed it into Google and nothing came up.
So "geedis" doesn't have any results on Google.
Maybe this was just a one time thing someone made.
Somebody made an enamel pin with a nonsense word on it.
Maybe it was an elaborate in-joke between friends, right?
Then, Nate found and posted FOUR MORE GEEDISES on twitter.
Okay so four more copies exist.
That doesn't really mean anything, right?
Oh wait.
He found a box full of Geedises!
So Nate started a collection of Geedis pins.
They were available to be bought, but no sellers seemed to know where they came from.
Who made these….and why?!
About a month after Nate’s first tweet about Geedis, there was a break in the case.
Someone replied to his tweet with a picture of a whole sheet of stickers.
Lo and behold, there was Geedis, a part of some weird 80s sci-fi sticker collection called
Land of Ta.
It looks like Geedis isn't the only inhabitant of the "Land of Ta."
There's also an assortment of weird characters.
Before long, more sticker sheets featuring Land of Ta branding were discovered for sale
online.
It seems there's merchandise out there for a franchise that never existed.
But with the internet being the internet, there are plenty of people who SWORE they
remember Geedis.
Have you heard of Geedis before 2017?
People started citing this as an example of the Mandela Effect, which is essentially false
memories of things that didn’t happen.
Some people theorize that it’s people slipping between different timelines in parallel dimensions
or realities.
Geedis enthusiasts finally managed to dig up something and actually found the name of
the late artist who did the drawings, Sam Petrucci.
His two daughters put out the ORIGINAL drawings and sketches of Geedis and the Land of Ta.
Turns out he was a graphic designer who did mostly branding work.
For example, he did the TJ Maxx logo!
He also did the World Wildlife Fund’s iconic panda and the logo for Ocean Spray.
Sam’s most famous work is arguably the original G.I.
Joe illustrations!
Okay, he’s done a LOT of classics.
Apparently, Petrucci had a soft spot for sci-fi drawings and was creating a dolls for boys
kind of thing, which is where the whole Land of Ta came up.
But he didn’t really go too far with it.
3 - The Bath The story goes like this.
Someone was checking out random images on Google Earth.
Because…...why not.
And they found a very interesting photo and posted it to Reddit.
It immediately sparked speculation that something weird took place!
The photo was of the Dutch city of Almere, one of Holland’s newer cities and home to
more than 193,000 people.
I mean, take a look at this.
What does this look like to you?
This is a waterside jetty jutting into a lake in BeatrixPark, a park in the heart of the
city.
At the end of the trail, it appears as though two people are standing over SOMETHING, preparing
to throw it into the water.
A Reddit user named ncav, posted the picture.
Obviously, he thought some sort of crime had happened because he and his friend had notified
the police about the picture.
But investigations carried out by Redditors revealed that the 'crime scene' was, in fact,
nothing what it looks like!
Reddit experts used all the techniques they knew to zoom right into the image.
And it was revealed that the image was just a wet dog!
The trail of what people thought was blood was actually just a trail of WATER left by
the dog after it went for a swim!
On the satellite image, you can see the movement of the dog and how it walked back to his owner
on a separate lighter colored path on the bottom.
Another Redditor pointed out that there were other people walking right past the supposed
crime scene.
The dog's owner came forward to tell of her surprise when she realized she went viral
when it was just her and a friend playing catch with her dog, Rama!
2 - Nailed in the Wood A while back, someone posted a picture on
Reddit that showed a nail through a solid wood block.
Just how did someone do this?!
The person that found the block claimed that there weren’t any quote unquote “cheats”
involved.
Nothing was glued or put together.
It was just ONE piece of wood altogether.
The Redditor also said that he didn’t construct it himself - he found the block during a hiking
trip.
After the image went viral people all around the world tried to figure out how the block
was made but no one could guess right!
The mystery was finally unfolded by a carpenter on Reddit – the guy even made a video of
how to make something like this yourself!
Basically, all you had to do is manipulate the shape of the wood with boiling water.
The key is to put one side of the wooden block, one of the pillars, in hot boiling water.
You would just boil the wood until the pillar gets soft enough so you’re able to clamp
it and squish it.
Apparently, the wood almost turns to modelling clay at this point!
You clamp it like that and let the block dry for a few days.
Once the block is dried up, you can put the nail through all of the other pillars and
boil the first pillar once again.
The pillar gets soft and mushy AGAIN and can easily be reshaped back into its original
form!
1 - The RBI The idea for the Reddit Bureau of Investigation
subreddit came in 2012 after 17-year-old Amarillo High School senior Haley Wilson went missing.
Her father, Ray, posted notices all over social media to try to figure out where she was.
A notice was also posted to Reddit by a user with the handle everhood13.
One week later, police in California pulled over Haley’s car and shortly after that,
Ray Wilson was reunited with his daughter.
A happy ending!
That gave Redditors an idea: Why not turn the site into the world’s largest detective
squad?
So they launched the RBI, with the aim “to use the power of Reddit to solve crimes/mysteries
and catch criminals.”
The subreddit has thousands of subscribers and thousands of unique threads on everything
from missing laptops to homicide.
One time, a user called “Meatheaded” posted a photo of a piece of a headlight he had found
at the scene of a hit-and-run.
Some 435 comments later, users eventually pinpointed the headlight as a piece off of
a gray 1991 Cadillac Brougham, and Meatheaded did the rest.
He sent a link of the thread to the Auto Theft unit.
During the original hit and run, the suspect supposedly yelled out the window that the
car was stolen.
The suspect was arrested, but the police couldn’t find the car because no one knew what it was.
But thanks to Reddit, the guy went down not only for a hit and run but for auto theft
as well!
Here’s what’s next!