From the most heartbreaking disappearances to the boldest heist in history, here are
ten of the most bizarre and unbelievable unsolved mysteries!
10: Maura Murray The case of Maura Murray is nothing short
of tragic.
She was only 21 years old after she mysteriously vanished off the face of the earth.
It happened in 2004 in New Hampshire.
On the evening of February 9, Maura crashed her car while driving along a country road.
The last person to see her alive was a school bus driver who stopped and offered Maura a
hand.
Instead, Maura waved him off and said she would be OK by herself.
She was calling AAA.
But being the kindly man that the bus driver was, he phoned the police anyway.
He knew there was no cell service and that Maura was probably worried because she was
alone.
By the time the police arrived at the scene, Maura was gone.
Her car was locked and turned around to face the opposite direction of where it had originally
stopped.
There was no trace of her, or of anybody else.
Over 17 years later and not a single clue has come to light regarding Maura’s case.
Nobody knows if someone snatched Maura off the side of the road, if the bus driver himself
kidnapped Maura, or if she simply wandered off through the snow and or was eaten by a
bear.
According to the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office, the case is still an open investigation
and they are still urging anyone with any information to come forward and contact the
New Hampshire State Police.
Some still hold out hope that Maura will return one day.
Others are sure she’s gone, buried, or otherwise lost to the world.
9: The Sleepy Sickness There was once a sleeping sickness epidemic
that transformed its victims into human statues, completely speechless and unable to move.
To this day, scientists can't understand or explain what caused the mysterious sickness.
It all began after World War One.
The sleeping disease, also known as lethargic encephalitis, affected millions of people
all over the globe.
There are various estimates, but it's agreed that roughly 1 million of those afflicted
with the sickness died and others spent the remaining years of their life stuck in a living
coma.
Believe what you will, but this is one of the biggest medical mysteries in history and
almost nobody even knows it happened.
The illness spread across the world at roughly the same time that the Spanish Flu was busy
killing over 50 million people.
This could be why the sleeping sickness went so unreported back in its day.
After all, until the coronavirus pandemic, almost nobody even talked about the Spanish
Flu recently.
The sleeping sickness began in 1915, with the first patients being soldiers displaying
lethargy and extreme confusion in Paris.
People of all ages were affected, the initial symptoms were similar to the flu, and by the
time the encephalitis had seized hold of their minds, it was too late.
The brains of the infected became so inflamed that they were turned into brainless zombies.
The lucky ones were those who died.
And to this day scientists can't figure out what caused the sleeping sickness or how it
was transmitted from person to person.
8: Walter Collins It was March 10, 1928 when Walter Collins
disappeared from his neighborhood in Los Angeles.
He was only nine years old at the time.
The local police searched for Walter for five months, even investigating a nearby lake where
some eyewitnesses claimed to have seen the boy.
They came up with nothing.
Then in August, Walter walked into a police station in Illinois, stated who he was, and
he was quickly brought back to Los Angeles.
Here's where the mystery really begins.
Christine Collins knew immediately that the boy was not her son.
Being the 1920s, the captain of the LAPD simply told Christine Collins that the boy was of
course her son and that he only looked different because he had matured a bit.
As a mother who was being told this boy was her son, Christine was obviously being hysterical.
The LAPD captain, one J.J. Jones, even told Christine to take the boy home and just “try
him out” for a couple of weeks.
Imagine hearing that today!
Things kept getting crazy.
Christine gathered her son's dental records along with a group of her friends who knew
the real Walter personally.
J.J. Jones wasn't having any of it.
Instead of listening to the evidence, he claimed Christine didn't want to take care of her
kid and was trying to get rid of him.
He even had her committed to the psychiatric ward at the Los Angeles County General Hospital.
While Christine was in the hospital, her story turned out to be true.
The impostor eventually admitted that his real name was Arthur Hutchins Jr., a boy from
Iowa who ran away and tried to take Walter Collins’ place because the two looked somewhat
similar.
Still, it wasn't until 10 days after Arthur's confession that Christine was finally released
from the psychiatric ward.
She later received $10,800 in court on the account of her being falsely imprisoned and
all.
To this day, nobody knows what happened to the real Walter Collins.
7: Paula Jean Welden The last words ever heard spoken by Paula
Jeana Welden were, “I'm going to hike on the Long Trail.”
Paula was 18 years old, just a sophomore at college up in Bennington, Vermont.
It was December of 1946 and at about 2:45 PM, she decided to go hiking on the Long Trail.
That was over 60 years ago and she still hasn't been found.
When Paula was last seen, she was wearing nothing but jeans, lightweight sneakers, and
a thin red coat.
Eyewitnesses remember that she didn't look dressed properly for the cold winter weather.
A man named Louis Knapp picked up a young girl hitchhiking along route 67A who matched
the description of Paula.
He dropped her off near Long Trail, where she was subsequently witnessed at least 45
minutes later in the area of Bickford Hollow, where residents saw her heading towards the
trail.
One man even recalled warning Paula that it was dangerous to head up into the mountains
dressed in such a way and at such a late hour.
But she went anyway, into the dimness of the woods, and never was seen again.
Nobody knows what happened to Paula.
Her body was never found, she was never spotted again, and her unusual behavior on the day
of her disappearance has yet to be solved.
She clearly knew that going into the mountains not prepared for the cold was a bad idea.
What was she thinking?
And more importantly, did she make herself disappear on purpose?
6: The Bridge of Horror In Scotland, there is a mysterious bridge
that has been luring animals to their deaths.
According to those who have lost their pets at this very bridge, something simply comes
over them when they get too close to it.
Hundreds of Scots have claimed that their dogs become possessed by an indescribable
energy at the bridge, then try their hardest to throw themselves off the stone, where many
of them have ended up dead in the valley below.
It has been going on since the 1950s, though the bridge itself, called the Overtoun Bridge,
was built at least a century prior.
The bridge is located in Dumbarton, and depending on who you ask, it's haunted by a malevolent
force straight out of the Twilight Zone.
Here's where the mystery gets really spooky.
The bridge is in a location described by the Pagan Celts as a “thin place.”
A thin place is supposedly where heaven and earth overlap, creating a kind of paranormal
zone.
This is what the superstitious residents of Dumbarton say is responsible for all the doggie
deaths.
According to the New York Times, anywhere between 50 and 600 dogs have died by flinging
themselves off this mysterious bridge, supposedly compelled by an unseen and possibly evil force.
5: The Georgia Guidestones It was June of 1979.
A man under the false name of R.C. Christian approached the Elberton Granite Finishing
Company about building him a monument.
He was to remain anonymous throughout the entire process, and so too was the group he
represented.
He had all kinds of money to fund the project, he was able to complete all the legal contracts
seamlessly, and all information about him and how the project was even accepted by local
government and put forward was withheld from the public.
A year later, the Georgia Guidestones were finished.
They were placed in a seemingly obscure part of Georgia with absolutely no significance,
erected on a hill for all to see.
The stones are engraved with ten guidelines, rules which seem to have been made up to be
implemented after an apocalypse.
They are written in English, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and others.
One of the most bizarre guidelines is that humanity is to remain under 500 million, meaning
the total population of humans on Earth should not surpass that number.
To this day, nobody knows who built the Georgia Guidestones or what their true purpose is.
They could have been constructed by Satanists, those working with the New World Order, or
an organization so secretive we don't even know about them yet.
Regardless, I kind of want to go see them myself.
Don’t you?
Why or why not?
Let me know in the comments below!
Then remember to subscribe to Talltanic if you haven’t already for more weird videos!
4: Kierra Coles The last time Kierra Coles was seen, it was
October 2, 2018.
At the time, she was three months pregnant and 26 years old.
She was also employed as a United States Postal worker.
She vanished on the south side of Chicago, her car out front of her apartment with a
packed lunch and her cell phone sitting on one of the seats.
Nobody had any clue where she went, why she would have left her phone in her car, or who
could have possibly taken her in broad daylight in front of her own home.
The most tragic part about this case is that police haven’t been a very big help.
Kierra’s own mother believes that her boyfriend may have had something to do with it, as Kierra
had been dating the father of her unborn baby for six years and after her disappearance,
he vanished.
Kierra’s mother suspects he could have something to do with the case, but the police won't
make any comments about it.
In 2020, the case was considered “inactive,” but by 2021, NBC Chicago reported the case
changed to being an ongoing investigation with foul play suspected.
3: The Big Grey Man In 1925, hiker, professor, and a member of
the Royal Geographical Society gave an account of a mysterious incident that occurred on
the summit of Ben Macdui, Scotland, several decades earlier in 1891.
He claimed that as he was returning from the summit, he heard something else walking behind
him.
He never physically saw anyone through the mist but did say that he would never go back
to Ben Macdui ever again.
There were other reports of similar things happening in the area around the same time,
with hikers claiming they heard slow footsteps as if being followed.
Nobody ever actually saw something until the 1940s.
It was during the 40s that hikers began to come forward, saying that they’d witnessed
a large figure in the mist with long dark hair.
The creature came to be known as the Big Gray Man.
Nobody knows if the Big Gray Man really exists.
Nonetheless, dozens of hikers, both locals and internationals, have heard footsteps while
climbing Ben Macdui and experienced a sense of being followed, along with a terrible foreboding.
But there has never been a plausible explanation put forward, nor has there been any evidence
of a creature living on the mountain.
To this day, nobody knows why people hear these noises or what it is they truly see
out in the fog.
2: Maria Elizalde Maria Elizalde vanished on the day before
Thanksgiving in 2015, in Dallas, Texas.
It had been a festive time, with Maria's mother preparing Thanksgiving dinner for the whole
family.
But Maria and her sisters began to get bored.
They wanted to go outside and play with the neighbors.
They left their house at about 7:30 PM, they were seen playing in the yard at about 9,
and when they were called to come back into the house, only two of them returned.
Maria vanished from the front yard without a trace.
As you can imagine, Maria's mother was panicked.
She called for her daughter, she checked with the neighbors, and even managed to get surveillance
footage from cameras on the street.
But nobody knew where Maria went.
Train stations were checked, police were called, an investigation ensued, and not a single
lead has come about since.
Even six years later, nobody has seen Maria.
The girl was only 15 years old.
Police were initially wondering if perhaps the child had run away.
But if she had, you'd think she would have at least given her mother a call sometime
during the last six years.
After all, kids usually only run away for a couple weeks at a time, maximum.
Her sisters never saw anyone suspicious – and to be quite frank, there really is no explanation.
One second she was standing in her front yard, the next she was a ghost.
1: Boston Heist Painting It was March 18, 1990 when 13 works of art
valued at around $500 million were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in
Boston.
It is one of the greatest art thefts in history and famous because nobody's ever been caught
for the crime.
In the morning, guards admitted two men pretending to be police officers responding to a 911
call.
They were actually thieves, who quickly tied up the guards and then looted the museum over
the next 60 minutes.
They stole paintings, a couple of artifacts, and The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, one of
the most famous and valuable Rembrandt paintings ever.
13 works of art in all were stolen and not a single person has been held responsible.
So far as the FBI is concerned, the robbery was likely planned by a criminal organization.
The only problem is that they don't know which organization was involved.
There was no physical evidence, interrogations turned up nothing, undercover informants were
given no information, and all sting operations failed.
To this day, nobody knows who robbed all these paintings or where the paintings are now.
Sound off on your theories about these unsolved mysteries in the comments!
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