Mysterious deaths, missing people, unexplained phenomena - sometimes these aren't just tall
tales you tell around the campfire to scare your friends.
No, in some cases, they're all too real.
So forget ghost stories: here's a look at some real unsolved mysteries that will keep
you up all night.
Early in the morning of December 1, 1948, people strolling on Somerton beach in Australia
discovered a body lying in the sand - and that discovery launched one of the country's
most enduring mysteries.
Following an investigation, authorities revealed some of the weird details.
The body belonged to a man who coroners said was in, quote, "top physical condition."
There were no signs of trauma, and no sign of how or why the man died, though they believed
he had been poisoned.
There were also no clues to the man's identity, because strangely, not only was he missing
identification, all the tags in his clothing had been cut out.
Authorities did, however, find a cryptic note secretly sewn into his clothes - the Persian
phrase "Tamam Shud," which means "finished."
It had been torn out of an 11th-century book of poetry entitled The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
The book was later found, and inside was some kind of encoded message using a cypher that
still hasn't been broken.
There was also a phone number, which turned out to belong to a woman who lived nearby
- and who swore she didn't know the man at all.
Some speculate he may have been a Soviet spy who was covertly murdered, while others think
he was a scorned lover who took his own life.
Scientists are hoping DNA tests may soon solve the riddle, but until then, the identity of
"Somerton Man" - and the circumstances surrounding his death - remain a mystery.
In 1959, nine cross country trekkers disappeared into Russia's Ural mountains.
Weeks later, the remains of their camp were found on the slopes of a mountain named Kholat
Syakhl - which means "Dead Mountain."
What searchers found continues to baffle people to this day.
The hikers had apparently cut their way out of their tent, in the middle of a terrible
storm, and run into the freezing night, some not even wearing shoes or socks.
Two bodies were found wearing only underwear, while three more were found with massive internal
injuries similar to what you'd expect from a high speed car crash - but with no corresponding
external wounds.
And perhaps strangest of all, two of the corpses were found to be radioactive.
Theories range from an avalanche to secret Soviet military testing to an animal or even
Yeti attack.
Some even think they were murdered.
The truth, however, remains buried beneath the ice.
In the 1930's, the remote Galapagos islands suddenly gained new life when Ecuador decided
to open it to colonists.
Little Charles Island gained three families, one of which was eccentric indeed as it consisted
of an Austrian named Eloise de Wagner-Bosquet and her two lovers, Robert Philippson and
Rudolph Lorenz.
Nicknamed "The Baroness," or "The Empress of the Galapagos," Wagner-Bousquet and her
partners lived a bigger than life, free-love lifestyle, becoming such darlings of the media
that they even starred in a short movie filmed on the island.
But the bliss didn't last.
On March 27, 1934, the Baroness and Phillippson disappeared.
Lorenz told their neighbors that the pair had left the island for America after being
picked up by a yacht belonging to friends.
Not long after, Lorenz himself decided to leave the island and boarded a small boat
manned by a Norwegian fisherman.
None of them were ever seen alive again.
Lorenz and the fisherman's bodies were found months later; the two died of dehydration
after being marooned on an island with no fresh water - an island that mysteriously
was nowhere near the planned path of travel.
As for the Baroness and Philppson, no sign of them was ever found.
It's possible they safely arrived in America and lived out their lives in anonymity, but
most believe Lorenz murdered the pair and fled to escape justice.
Hannibal, Missouri is famous as the home of Mark Twain, who immortalized his childhood
explorations of the town's extensive cave system in books like Tom Sawyer.
But in May, 1967, the town's mythology took a tragic turn when three boys apparently entered
the caves - and were never seen again.
Construction on Route 79 had opened up new sections of an extensive cave complex, and
witnesses say they saw young brothers Billy and Joel Hoag enter those caves - even though
just the night before, the two had been explicitly warned by their parents not to go near the
caves.
They disobeyed, though, and vanished, along with friend Craig Dowell.
A massive search was mounted, with experienced spelunkers joining the FBI to map the entire
cave system.
But the boys were nowhere to be found.
One of the boys' sisters has said she believes the boys went into one of the construction
holes on the Route 79 dig and were accidentally buried alive by workers.
More than a half century later, though, the truth still remains elusive.
In 1860, an author named Robert Dale Owen published a book called Footfalls on the Boundary
of Another World.
In it, he recounts a story about a woman named Emilie Sagee.
She was a teacher in the 1840's who was reportedly haunted by a ghostly doppelganger who would
appear out of thin air - in full view of Sagee's students - and then vanish.
At times, this spectral twin would even appear independently of Sagee, showing up once in
a classroom of 42 shocked students while the real Sagee obliviously picked flowers right
outside the classroom window.
Which leaves two mysteries: how could this happen, and did it actually happen?
The account from Owen was repeated by so many authors that it is now widely assumed to be
true, but it seems he had just a single source - a 19th century mystic named Baroness Julie
von Guldenstubbe.
So was she just making it up?
And if she wasn't, what could possibly explain the phenomenon she described?
So far, nobody knows for sure.
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