7 More Strange Mysteries Involving Unidentified People

7The San Pedro Mountains Mummy

Cecil Mayne and Frank Carr were prospecting in Wyoming’s San Pedro Mountains in October 1932. Hoping to find gold, they blasted through some rocks. Instead, they found a small hidden room containing a mummy. In fact, it was one of the strangest mummies ever discovered.

Seated in a cross-legged position, it was only 18 centimeters (7 in) high, and it would have measured no more than 36 centimeters (14 in) in a standing position. The mummy only weighed one-third of a kilogram (0.75 lb) and had an oddly shaped head. It didn’t look much like a himan, but an X-ray eventually determined that the mummy had human bones and was likely a miniature human being.

There was much debate about how old this unidentified human could have been when he was mummified. Some experts believed that he was an infant who suffered from anencephaly and looked like an adult because of his facial deformities. However, because he appeared to have adult vertebrae and teeth, others believed the mummified individual might have been up to 65 years old when he died. This stirred speculation that the mummy originated from the Nimeragir. According to folklore, the Nimeragir were a race of “little people” who lived in Wyoming many centuries ago, but their existence has never been verified. The mummy passed through various hands over the years but seemed to disappear after its last owner died during the 1980s.

6The Babes In The Woods

Every year, the remains of numerous unidentified people are found, and when no one can determine who these victims are, they are classified as John or Jane Doe. These circumstances are particularly tragic when the unidentified victims are children.

On January 14, 1953, the skeletal remains of two children were discovered under some brush in Stanley Park near Vancouver, British Columbia. The remains were covered by a woman’s rain cape. Other items found at the scene included a woman’s shoe, a fur coat, a lunch box, and a hatchet, which was likely used as the murder weapon.

Investigators determined that the victims had been dead for approximately five or six years. The two children were believed to have been between 6 and 10 years old and initially thought to be a boy and a girl. They became known as “The Babes in the Woods,” and their remains eventually wound up in a display case at the Vancouver Police Museum. In 1998, the remains were removed from the museum for DNA testing before they were finally laid to rest. The DNA tests yielded a surprising result: The two victims were actually brothers.

Years before the remains were found, two witnesses reported seeing a man and a woman walking through Stanley Park with two boys, one of whom was carrying a hatchet. Later that day, the witnesses recalled seeing the same man and woman walking alone, but the woman was now wearing only one blood-covered shoe. Unfortunately, since police initially believed that one of the victims was a girl, this lead was not properly pursued at the time. After more than 60 years, the Babes in the Woods remain unidentified.

5Scott McKinley/Paul Fronczak

On July 2, 1965, a male toddler was found abandoned in a stroller outside a Newark, New Jersey store. An investigation to uncover the boy’s identity and find his parents proved unsuccessful, but after being placed with a foster family, he was given the name Scott McKinley. However, a connection was eventually made between “Scott” and an unsolved child abduction which took place in Chicago one year earlier. On April 26, 1964, Paul Fronczak was born at Michael Reese Hospital. The day after his birth, a hospital nurse took him to the nursery, and soon after, both disappeared. It was determined that the nurse was an impostor who abducted Paul from the hospital.

Investigators explored the possibility that Scott McKinley was the missing Paul Fronczak. A blood test was performed, but the results were inconclusive. Nevertheless, Paul’s parents believed that the boy was their son, so they legally adopted him and raised him as Paul Fronczak. However, as Paul entered adulthood, he became suspicious of the fact that he did not seem to resemble the rest of his family. Since DNA testing was not available when he was a child, Paul decided to find out the truth when he took a home DNA test in 2012. The results revealed that he had no biological connectionto the Fronczak family. The investigation of Paul’s abduction has since been reopened, while the man who was once known as Scott McKinley continues to seek his true identity.

4The Visalia Ransacker

During the mid-1970s, the city of Visalia, California was plagued by a bizarre series of crimes committed by an unidentified individual known as “The Visalia Ransacker.” In April 1974, the Ransacker started breaking into houses, often stealing items and vandalizing the place at the same time. However, he would usually leave valuables behind and only steal smaller, more personal items, such as family photographs.

Over the course of a year and a half, it is believed that the Ransacker invaded at least 85 Visalia homes. No one was actually harmed until September 11, 1975, when the Ransacker broke into the home of a man named Claude Snelling. After hearing noises, Snelling awoke to find a masked intruder attempting to kidnap his daughter. When Snelling tried to intervene, the intruder shot him dead before fleeing.

Police stakeouts were soon set up in neighborhoods the Ransacker was known to frequent. On December 10, a police officer spotted a masked suspect approaching a home, but the suspect opened fire and escaped. After this incident, the Ransacker’s crime spree came to an end, but this justhappened to coincide with the beginning of another unsolved crime spree.

Over the course of the next three years, an unidentified assailant known as “The East Area Rapist” broke into several homes in nearby Sacramento County, sexually assaulting at least 50 women. In 2002, DNA testing confirmed that the East Area Rapist was also an unidentified serial killer called “The Original Night Stalker,” who is believed to be responsible for over a dozen home invasion murders between 1979 and 1986. It’s entirely possible that the Visalia Ransacker gradually transitioned from burglary to rape to murder and that three of California’s most infamous unidentified criminals are all the exact same person.

3The Unknown Sailor On Christmas Island

In 1942, employees from the Christmas Island Phosphate Company were conducting a mining operation on the Australian island. On February 6, they were surprised to discover a Carley float drifting in the water near Flying Fish Cove containing the partially decomposed body of an unidentified man. His tattered clothing seemed to indicate that he was a sailor.

The man was buried in an unmarked grave with military honors, but because of the threat of an imminent invasion, there was no time to perform a proper inquest into his death. All employees would soon evacuate Christmas Island, which was captured by Japanese forces shortly thereafter. The unidentified body was left behind, and it would be several decades before anyone could conduct a proper investigation.

Finally, in September 2006, a naval team returned to Christmas Island and found the sailor’s unmarked grave. When his body was exhumed, tests on clothing fragments confirmed that he had served in the Royal Australian Navy. A metal fragment was also found embedded in his skull. The most likely theory behind the sailor’s death was that he had served on the HMASSydney, a naval cruiser which went down in the Indian Ocean in November 1941. After the Sydney was sunk by a German ship, all 645 crew members on board were lost.

If the unidentified sailor did serve on the Sydney, the circumstances under which he wound up in the Carley float remain unclear. DNA testing has been conducted on the remains of the sailor in order to determine his identity. To date, all but 50 of the Sydney’s crew members have been ruled out as a possible match.

2The Whitehall Victim

In 1888, the Whitechapel district of London was the site of a series of brutal murders committed by a serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, whose identity is perhaps the most famous unsolved mystery of all time. However, that same year, London was also the site of another brutal unsolved murder which likely wasn’t committed by the Ripper.

On the Victoria Embankment near Whitehall, construction was being performed on a police headquarters building which would eventually become known as New Scotland Yard. On October 2, one of the workers went inside the location’s freshly constructed basement vault and discovered a large parcel. When the parcel was opened, the partially decomposed remains of a female torso were found inside.

This would not be the only location where this particular victim’s body parts turned up. Weeks earlier, an unidentified right arm was found in the River Thames and eventually matched up with the torso. Two weeks after the torso’s discovery, a cadaver dog would find the same victim’s left leg buried near the construction site. The unidentified woman’s uterus had been removed from her torso. Her head, along with the rest of her body, was never found. The cause of her death could not be determined, but it seemed likely that she died approximately six weeks before the torso was found.

In spite of speculation that she was another one of Jack the Ripper’s victims, authorities could not find any connection between the crimes and concluded that someone else was responsible for her death. However, with so much attention devoted to the Ripper case, the investigation failed to turn up any suspects in the Whitehall murder, and the female victim was never identified.

1George Brody

On January 16, 1973, a five-year old girl named Anna Waters disappeared from the backyard of her rural home in San Mateo County, California. A search of the area turned up no trace of Anna, and she was never found. However, the most bizarre aspect of Anna’s story involves a mysterious figure named George Brody.

Around the time Anna was born, her father, George Waters, became close friends with a man calling himself by that name. This relationship causes serious strain on Waters’s marriage, as Brody was a manipulative, cult-like figure who seemed to have total control over Waters’s life. Things got even worse when Waters was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and he eventually divorced his wife. Anna remained with her mother while her father and Brody moved into a cheap San Francisco hotel together.

Shortly before Anna went missing, a witness saw two unidentified mendriving a white truck down the road near Anna’s home. This led to suspicion that Waters and Brody might have abducted Anna. While no evidence was ever found to implicate them, the story got even weirder when Brody died of cancer in 1981. Two weeks later, Waters ended his own life by taking cyanide, but before his suicide, he went to great lengths to destroy nearly all documentation related to Brody and himself. However, Waters did leave behind one potentially suspicious note tying him to his daughter’s disappearance, containing the words “Plan” and “Jan. 1973.”

No Social Security number or any sort of paper trail could be found for George Brody, which was likely not his real name. After more than 40 years, no one has ever determined Brody’s true identity or if he played a role in the disappearance of Anna Waters.

7 Creepy Stories Of Encounters With Men In Black

7A Postal Worker’s Terrifying Experience

An anonymous postal worker from Washington, DC was out delivering mail one day when he decided to stop and eat an apple. When he was finished, he looked around for a trash can and, finding none, decided to just toss it onto the ground. Before he could leave the area, a security guard approached and lectured him for his negligence, explaining that the entire building and surrounding grounds were under constant surveillance. The postal worker thought about this, along with the fact that he already had to be buzzed in to deliver the mail, and began thinking that there was more to this place than met the eye.

Awhile later, he was out on his usual delivery run when he came by the foreboding building again. This time, he saw three men walking toward the building, except they didn’t appear to be like men. They waddled when they walked instead of putting one foot in front of the other, and they wereabnormally thin—it was this thinness more than anything that frightened him.

Though shaken, he decided to soldier on and march his way up to the door to deliver the mail. When he entered, he found a group of men who began questioning him about what he had seen moments earlier. He was flabbergasted and unable to respond until one of the strange beings who he had seen earlier sidled up near him, at which point he felt even more terrified. After more grilling by the men in the room, and after repeating that he had seen nothing at all, he was allowed to leave. His mail route was changed shortly afterward.

6The Man In Black Who Liked To Hang Out

In most stories, the men in black are malevolent, intimidating entities who only appear briefly after someone sees something they weren’t supposed to. But that’s not always the case. In one account, a woman claims that when she was a child her engineer father was regularly visited by a man in black who went simply by the name Lev. This man was completely bald, which she noted was very odd during her time. When she went to shake his hand, the skin was impossibly smooth, as if he had no hair whatsoever on his body.

The man constantly wore his trademark dark suit, glasses, and hat, even on scorching summer days. He was known for hanging around several engineers in the area, and her father always visited him in a little house near the local supermarket. The woman who tells the story says that she is sure her father knew Lev was an alien, although she never figured out what they talked about during their meetings.

5A Visit To The State Department

An anonymous man related a tale of a strange experience he had while sightseeing in Washington, DC. Without realizing that there really wasn’t anything of interest for a civilian to see, he wandered into the State Department building. He meandered through the lobby for awhile until security became suspicious of him and headed over to usher him out of the building. However, before they could do so, he saw something that he would never forget.

The elevator opened and five men got out. Two of them were very businesslike and wore gray suits that were formal, but hardly remarkable beyond that. What drew his attention were the other three men in their escort. These men wore black hats pulled low over their eyes and long, black trench coats, even though it was the middle of the summer. The appearance seemed so strange that our observer could only describe it as “cartoonish.”

As they were walking by, one of the strange men lost his footing on the marble floor and fell to the ground, dropping his portfolio in the process. Upon helping him up, he noticed that the man’s legs seemed extraordinarily weak and it felt like there was a thick layer of wool underneath his suit. Even stranger, the man’s expression never appeared to change at all, despite falling onto the hard marble floor. Near the dropped portfolio, he found a small coin with words written in no language he could identify—one side depicted a man with features like a wolf and the other had navigational lines and two crescent moons.

4The Men In Gray

Normally, the sneaky men who appear after UFO sightings are dressed all in black, but in one tale from Essex, England, they chose gray suits. William Shearer claimed to have seen a UFO, and a few days later two men showed up at his house. One of the men stayed by the car and maintained an intimidating presence while the other grilled Shearer about his experience. On this first visit, however, the man seemed more concerned with gaining permission to enter Shearer’s home than the answers Shearer was giving him.

The men spoke in a strange voice that seemed flat and expressionless and had extremely pale skin. This, along with the oddly intimidating behavior, was enough to scare Shearer and he chose not to let them into his house. Unfortunately for him, his experience was not yet at an end. The men ominously proclaimed that they would visit him again and, not long after, they turned up at his work. They made it clear that they wanted to talk about UFOs and once again asked permission to enter. When Shearer turned them down again, the men vanished and never returned—although Shearer believes that since then his phone has been tapped.

3The Mystery Of The Loch

Loch Ness has always been a place of mystery and intrigue. Many people believe that the depths of the lake contain a primordial creature from the early days of the Earth and some have dedicated their lives to proving its existence. One man named Frederick Holiday was well known for being passionate about the study of cryptozoology and had spent years looking for evidence of creatures in the lake. Perhaps paranormal phenomena are more connected then we might have thought, because while out investigating the lake for the Loch Ness monster, Holiday had an experience that he would never forget.

Holiday looked up on a hill near the lake and spotted a strange man dressed in a black suit. While it wasn’t remarkable for people to sightsee along the lake, Holiday was struck by the fact that the man seemed to be looking directly at him. He was profoundly disturbed and reported feeling malevolence from the being that was staring him down. Before he could do anything, there was a bizarre noise and the man was gone as mysteriously as he had appeared. Just one year later, Holiday was back at the Loch for further studies when he had a heart attack—as he was being carried to the ambulance, he passed over the exact place where the strange man had been standing.

2The Angry MIB

A professor of folklore named Peter Rojcewicz told of an experience that occurred one night in the college library while he was reading a book on UFOs that had been recommended to him by a colleague. He was just relaxing in a chair and reading his book when he noticed what appeared to be a leg and a shoe out of the corner of his eye. Before he knew it, there was a man sitting in a chair in front of him. The man immediately asked Rojcewicz about the book he was reading and questioned him on whether he had seen UFOs or was at all interested in the phenomenon.

When the professor stated that he wasn’t really that interested in the subject to begin with and was only reading the book to satisfy the suggestion of a colleague, the man became enraged and angrily asked him how he could not be interested in “the most important facts of the century.” Seemingly satisfied that the professor was not going to dig into the world of UFOs, the man left, but not before telling the professor to “go well on his purpose.” However, while it seems like this would be the end of it, it’s here that the story takes a turn for the extra creepy.

After the encounter, Rojcewicz got up to walk around the library. However, none of the librarians were anywhere to be seen. The same went for the guards and all the patrons. In fact, as far as he could tell, the library was completely deserted except for him. The professor returned to his chair in an attempt to gather his wits. In about an hour, according to the professor, he decided to get up and look around again—and this time he found that everything was as it should be.

1The Stranded Photographer

Back in the 1960s, Jim Templeton took a photo of his daughter near Burgh Marsh, and before long it made big news. You might have heard of this photo as the Solway Firth Spaceman, which captures what looks like an unexplained figure in an astronaut outfit in the background. Stranger then the photo is the experience that Templeton had shortly after taking it. He was at work when a car arrived with two men who claimed to be working for the government. When asked, they refused to identify themselves beyond the codes #9 and #10. Even though their badges pointed to no specific government agency, Templeton agreed to get in the car with them and drive back to the Marsh to answer their questions.

The questions were pretty strange. Apart from the expected ones, like where it had happened and whether there were any other witnesses, they also wanted to know about the weather conditions and the behavior of the animals in the area. Templeton told the men that the domestic animals in the area had seemed scared on the day in question and had huddled together for protection.

It was after stating this that the men became much more hostile toward Templeton and started questioning the validity of his story. Of course, Templeton would not go to all this trouble simply to admit defeat, even if his story wasn’t entirely honest, and claimed that he was indeed telling the truth as far as he knew it. The men seemed to be unconvinced and headed back to their car. They drove off and simply left the baffled photographer in the dust to find his own way home.

7 Incredibly Insane UFO Religions

7Outer Dimensional Forces

A full eight years before the extremely bloody Waco Siege, an eerily parallel event happened when authorities raided the lumberyard belonging to Orville Gordon, the founder of Outer Dimensional Forces. Gordon created the group sometime in the 1960s, when he became convinced that extraterrestrials—known as the “Outer Dimensional Forces”—would start Armageddon after they saw how humans abused the Earth.

Renaming himself Nodrog (“Gordon” backward), he converted his property into an UFO landing base called the “Armageddon Time Ark Base.” He believed that he and his followers would be picked up by the extraterrestrials and whisked away to safety during doomsday. The group also gained notoriety when one of its members planted a pipe bomb in a former mayor’s car in 1980, after the latter pressed efforts to buy the lumberyard and convert it into a shopping mall. It is speculated that the 90-something Gordon later died and was buried somewhere on his property. The group has persisted to this day, and its members even maintain a website.

6One World Family Commune

Photo credit: Galactic Messenger

If there’s a religion that can best combine hippie, communist, and UFO lifestyles, then this is it. Also known as the Industrial Church of the New World Comforter, this religion came into existence in California, in 1973. Its founder, a painter named Allen Noonan, experienced a series of otherworldly encounters with extraterrestrials who charged him with becoming “the New World Comforter and channel of the prophesied Everlasting Gospel.”

After receiving those instructions, Noonan changed his name to Allen Michael and set about forming his group under the central doctrine of Uni-Communism. According to this belief, peace can be achieved when all countries disarm themselves and people form a hippie-like commune. Aside from that, members also believe in a group of aliens called the “Galactic Elohim of Galactica.” According to them, these aliens—also the original creators of the Earth—would someday return to our planet and help in its transformation into a society where energy is free and injustice does not exist.

5I AM Activity

Photo credit: A Modern Mystic

Arguably the forerunner to all UFO religions, the “I AM Activity” had its start in 1930, after its founder Guy Ballard claimed to have met the legendary St. Germain in Mt. Shasta, California. An Ascended Master, St. Germain instructed Ballard to spread the method wherein people could unlock their “I AM” potential, becoming enlightened enough to also turn into Ascended Masters.

After that encounter, Ballard formed his movement in 1932 and continuously wrote books under the telepathic guidance of St. Germain and other Ascended Masters, including Jesus. At its heyday, the movement reportedly had almost a million members. After Ballard died in 1939, his wife Edna became the channel for the divine messages, which she continued to receive until her death in 1971. Since then, the movement has been controlled by its Board of Directors based in Illinois. Although they claim to have 300 affiliate groups around the world, no new teachings have been received since the couple’s deaths, ostensibly because the Ascended Masters have not yet appointed their successors.

4Tempelhofgesellschaft

It’s not a surprise that neo-Nazis like to brag about their race; however, some of them go the extra mile and believe that their ancestors actually came from outer space. In a bizarre combination of false racial superiority and UFO fascination, members of Tempelhofgesellschaft (Temple Society)—a neo-Nazi group formed in Vienna in the 1990s—believe that the original Aryan race were actually ancient Sumerians from the planet Aldebaran, who came here eons ago and settled in Atlantis.

According to Tempelhofgesellschaft, these beings led a highly segregated life back in their solar system, with them naturally at the top. They also believe that the Aryans/Sumerians, being celestial in nature, are mandated to dominate the world someday and conquer the other races, especially the Jews. Lastly, the members continue to hope that the reinforcements from Aldebaran—whom the Nazis supposedly contacted for help in 1967—will soon arrive to help them win World War II once and for all.

3Seekers

Remember when we discussed how people would lie to maintain a harmonious balance within themselves? Apparently, that also applies to groups. In 1954, Leon Festinger, in another one of his groundbreaking studies, managed to infiltrate and observe a Chicago UFO doomsday cult known as “the Seekers.” Through the automatic handwriting of its founder Dorothy Martin, the Seekers believed they were receiving messages from beings called “Guardians,” who came from the planet Clarion. These beings eventually warned the group that the world would end on December 21, 1954 and instructed them to prepare for a rescue on that day.

When the appointed time came and passed, Martin received another message through automatic writing saying they saved the world because of their intense faith. However, media’s mockery and threats of involuntary commitment forced the group to eventually scatter. Martin went to Peru and lived there for a few years. In 1965, she returned to Arizona, where she established a new group called the Association of Sananda and Sanat Kumara. She continued receiving messages for the group—which still operates today—until she passed away in 1992.

2Urantia Foundation

This group is the caretaker and promoter of The Urantia Book, which the group believes came from some aliens called the “Orvonton Commission.” According to them, the Commission—through a sleeping human medium—contacted and dictated the book to Chicago doctor W.S. Sadler during the 1930s. Sadler then formed a group to check and review the book for any errors. Eventually, this group would transform itself into the Urantia Foundation, which currently has affiliate groups in almost two dozen countries and has printed almost half a million copies of the book.

The book is basically an alternate retelling of the history of the Earth, the Universe in general, and Christianity in particular. According to the book, Jesus’s real name was Michael and the Universe is made up of seven concentric rings, with God’s dwelling right in the middle. The Urantia Foundation also claims that the book supplants the Bible as the definitive authority of truth and has encouraged local study groups and other movements to read it.

1The Cosmic Circle Of Fellowship

This group was formed in the early 1950s in Chicago. Its founder, a postman named William Ferguson (who also happened to be a convicted fraudster), claimed to have made contact with beings from other planets. A practitioner of deep relaxation, Ferguson claimed that during one such session in 1938, he was suddenly transported to the “Seventh Dimension” where he received enlightenment. The week after the incident, he had another out-body-experience, this time landing in the “Sixth Dimension” where all creation took place.

He also became acquainted with a being named Khauga (who took Ferguson to Mars) and the leaders of the Venusians—in 1947 and 1954, respectively. One of the group’s doctrines is the veneration of Khauga as a divine being. Ferguson also claims that his deep relaxation techniques can help the members achieve a higher level of dimensional consciousness and allow them to travel out of their earthly bodies. After Ferguson died in 1967, the Chicago branch took control of the group and is still active today.