The world can be a very strange place with unexplained and mysterious events occurring
on a daily basis around the globe.
Some cases are solved or debunked within a relatively short time frame, but there are
certain mysteries that have left us baffled for a long time and they may remain unsolved
forever.
5.
Brayman Road Attacker
On the 22nd of August, 1988, a woman whose name has only been given as Carol, was driving
to work along a relatively quiet 2-lane highway near Putnam, Connecticut.
She was running half an hour late as she rushed to the local hospital where she was a social
worker who counseled patients with mental illness and depression.
As she drove, she came up behind a black truck that was being driven very slowly, so she
reduced her speed and settled right behind it.
She wondered why the truck was travelling at such low speed and suddenly the truck started
to behave strangely.
It would speed up and immediately slow down again while swerving erratically.
Carol immediately knew something was wrong and in a moment, the truck came to an abrupt
halt.
She would later tell police that the driver quickly got out of his vehicle and started
walking towards her and that’s when she noticed that he had a gun in his hand.
He walked up to the window of her car, leveled the gun at her head and pulled the trigger,
hitting her from point blank range.
Carol heard a rushing in her ears and she thought that she was going to die, but when
she heard her car radio playing, she knew that she wouldn’t die, but feared that she
might be paralyzed.
She lay slumped across the two front seats, out of the view of passing motorists who didn’t
seem to notice that anything was wrong.
A few minutes later, a utility serviceman drove by and from his elevated cab, saw Carol
lying motionless in her car.
He immediately called for help and when emergency personnel arrived, they found that she had
already lost about 2 pints of blood and was barely alive.
The bullet had hit her just under her left eye, severed a carotid artery and paralyzed
her vocal chords.
Troopers and detectives scoured Brayman Hollow road and its intersections for the assailant,
but to no avail.
Two drivers would inform police that they had seen a black truck pulling off and onto
the highway earlier while taunting other drivers on the road.
Carol managed to recover from the attack, but the bullet is still lodged in the back
of her neck and the scar on her face serves as a constant reminder of the morning when
she was at the wrong place at the wrong time.
4.
The Somerton Man
At around 6:30am on the 1st of December, 1948, police were called to Somerton Park beach,
about 7 miles from Adelaide, Australia.
They had received a report that a man’s body had been found on the beach across from
a crippled children’s home on the corner of The Esplanade and Bickford Terrace.
Upon the police’s arrival, they found that the man was on his back with his head resting
against the seawall, his legs stretched out in front of him and with his feet crossed,
giving the impression that he had passed away in his sleep.
On the right collar of his coat lay an unlit cigarette and after searching his pockets,
police found an unused second-class train ticket from Adelaide to Henley Beach, a bus
ticket that seemed to be unused, a narrow aluminum comb manufactured in the US, half
a packet of Juicy Fruit chewing gum, an Army Cub cigarette packet which contained 7 cigarettes,
but of a different brand and a box of Bryant & May matches.
A coroner would find that he had died no earlier than 2am and that the cause of death was likely
heart failure, possibly from poisoning.
He also noted that the man had unusually large and high-set calves, as if he was in the habit
of wearing high heels or possibly did ballet.
Four months later, John Cleland discovered a small pocket sewn into the man’s trousers.
Inside was a tightly rolled up scrap of paper with the words “Tamam Shud” which means
“It is ended”, printed in an elaborate font.
It was found to come from a book, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, written in the 12th century.
On the 23rd of December the following year, a man visited the Detective Office in Adelaide
and told them that he and his brother-in-law had been out for a drive just after the man
had been found.
He kept the car parked a few hundred yards from the beach and while on the drive, his
brother-in-law found a copy of the book behind the back seats.
Both men thought the book belonged to the other and left it in the glove compartment
since.
When they read about the unknown man, they retrieved it and found that the final page
was missing, along with the phrase in question.
Upon looking at the book more closely, a telephone number was found belonging to a woman who
is only named as Jestyn.
She told police that she had given a copy of the book to Alfred Boxall, but he was still
alive and still owned his copy of the book.
The book was scrutinized under ultraviolet light and it revealed a code that, to this
day, has not been broken and the Somerton man remains unidentified.
3.
Ricky McCormick
On the 30th of June, 1999, 41-year-old Ricky McCormick’s body was found in a cornfield
by a woman driving near route 367 in West Alton, Missouri.
Ricky was a high-school dropout who lived with his mother at times, but had several
addresses in St. Louis.
He also suffered from chronic heart and lung issues and had spent some time in jail before.
He was unmarried, but was a father of 4.
Police found the location of his body strange, as he didn’t own a car and that area wasn’t
on any public transportation route.
They also found that he had no enemies and he had not been reported missing.
He was last seen alive 5 days earlier at the Forest Park Hospital, St. Louis, where he
went for a check-up.
When police checked his pockets, they found two notes that contained an unknown code which
the FBI believe would help in finding his killer, as they may reveal his whereabouts
shortly before he died.
Attempts were made by the FBI’s Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit as well as the
American Cryptogram Association to decipher the code, but with no success.
Upon finding out about the notes, 12 years later, Ricky’s family told police that he
had never used codes as a boy and none of his family members knew how to decipher codes
of any kind.
His parents stated that he could only spell his name and certainly lacked the mental capacity
to write in code.
Police decided to ask the public for help and they were inundated with calls and theories,
prompting them to create a web page where the public could comment on the case.
No solution to the codes was ever found and the cause of Ricky’s death remains undetermined.
2.
Brianna Maitland
On Friday March 19, 2004, Brianna Maitland from Montgomery, Vermont wrote an exam to
complete her GED and went to lunch with her mother, Kellie afterwards to celebrate the
occasion.
At lunch, her mother says she was in a good mood and they spoke about her plans to attend
college.
When they finished their lunch, they decided to do some shopping and while they were in
a checkout line in a store, Brianna noticed something outside.
She told her mother that she would be right back and left the store.
Kellie met her outside after paying and noticed that she seemed unnerved, shaken and agitated.
Her mother didn’t want to pry and so, didn’t ask what was wrong.
She dropped Brianna off between 3:30 and 4:00pm at Jillian Stout’s home, with whom she was
staying.
Before leaving for her shift at The Black Lantern Inn, she left a note to Jillian saying
that she would see her at home after work.
She then set off in her 1985 Oldsmobile.
When her shift ended, fellow staff members invited her to have dinner with them, but
she declined, saying that she needed to rest before her shift at her second job in the
morning.
They would tell police that she left in her car alone.
The following afternoon, about a mile from The Black Lantern Inn, Brianna’s car was
found backed into the side of an abandoned house known as “The Old Dutchburn House”.
The car had travelled partly through the wall and police found two of her paychecks on the
front seat.
Next to the car, they found loose change, an unsmoked cigarette and a water bottle.
They assumed the car had been left there by a drunk driver and had it towed away.
Brianna’s mother didn’t find out about the abandoned car until 5 days later as Jillian
had been away for the weekend and so, only read her note on Monday.
She phoned Kellie the following day who then started searching for her daughter.
She phoned Brianna’s friends and workplaces, but no one had seen her.
When her parents reported her missing, police showed them a photo of the crashed car and
they recognized it as Brianna’s.
At first, police assumed that Brianna had simply left town of her own accord, but would
later state that they suspected foul play to be involved and that the accident scene
may have been staged.
Her family offered a reward of $20,000 for information on her whereabouts but despite
suspicions that two drug dealers, Ramon Ryans and Nathaniel Jackson were involved, she was
never found.
1.
The Flannan Isles Lighthouse Keepers
The Flannan Isles Lighthouse is located on Eilean Mor Island, part of the Flannan Isles
in the Outer Hebrides off the mainland of Scotland.
On the 15th of December, 1900, a transatlantic steamer called Archtor, passed by the island
and noticed that the lighthouse’s light wasn’t burning.
Three days later, as the Archtor docked in Leith, they reported it to the Northern Lighthouse
Board who dispatched the lighthouse relief tender ship, Hesperus, to investigate.
The ship arrived on Boxing Day with the ship’s captain, Jim Harvie, sounding the ship’s
horn and sending up a flare.
He hoped that this would get the attention of the three lighthouse keepers, James Ducat,
Thomas Marshall, and William MacArthur, but they got no response.
Relief lighthouse keeper, Joseph Moore, was sent up the 160 steps to the lighthouse and
upon entering, he noticed that the clock on the wall had stopped, the table was set for
an uneaten meal and one of the chairs was overturned.
He reported back to Harvie, who then sent two sailors ashore to look for the three men.
A thorough search was conducted, but they found only a set of oilskins, indicating that
one of the men had gone out in just his shirtsleeves, which was strange as the keepers had noted
in their log that they had experienced awful weather.
They focused their search on the landing platform on the west side of the island and found that
a supply box had been smashed open and its contents were strewn about.
Iron railings had been bent aside, part of a railway track had been uprooted from its
concrete moorings and a rock weighing over a ton had moved.
Some of the turf from the top of the cliffs had been ripped up, despite being 200ft above
sea level.
Many theories have been presented as to what happened to the three men, from murder to
being swept out to sea, but no definitive explanation has ever been found.