10 Unexplained Mysteries You've Never Heard Of

We're all aware of the big unexplained mysteries in the world: the Bermuda Triangle, Stonehenge, the secret to Adam Levine's popularity. But there are hundreds of interesting lesser-known mysteries that have yet to be understood. We've traveled the globe to bring you ten unexplained mysteries you've never heard of.


Residents of the small Sicilian town of Canneto di Caronia have been plagued with a mysterious phenomenon for over a decade, and scientists can't figure it out. Throughout the town, electrical appliances have been bursting into flame at the slightest provocation. Toasters, fridges, even cell phones have been observed heating up and igniting. Even some non-electrical items like mattresses have spontaneously combusted as well. The police department ruled out arson as a cause based on the frequency and spread of the fires. Government officials have blamed the fires on both aliens and supernatural entities, but the truth is still unknown.


The little town of Pascagoula has more than its share of unexplained phenomena, from the odd noise that emits from the Pascagoula River to a 1973 UFO abduction. But the tale that best characterizes this Mississippi hamlet is the still-unsolved mystery of the Phantom Barber. Starting in 1942, a mysterious person broke into the convent at Our Lady of Victories and cut the hair off of two sleeping girls. For the next few months, the Barber would strike on Monday and Friday nights, slitting window screens with a knife, using chloroform to render his victims unconscious and making off with their hair. While a man named William Dolan was arrested for the crimes, he passed a lie detector test and was released. The real identity of the Phantom Barber has never been revealed.


Mystery men crop up all the time in paranormal literature-travelers from some unknown place who cross over into our reality inexplicably. Most of them are swiftly debunked, but the case of the Man from Taured continues to baffle. In 1954, a flight landed at Tokyo's Haneda Airport. One of the passengers presented a passport from the country of Taured, located on the border between France and Spain. We don't need to say that no such country exists, right? But his passport was stamped from previous trips. Police, not knowing what to do with him, put him in a hotel for the night. The next morning, though, the man and all of his belongings had vanished without a trace. (Photo credit: Rodney Stitch)


The ocean is a prime spot for mystery-it's vast, violent and unknowable. One of the most curious tales of all time comes in the form of the Sarah Joe. In 1979, Scott Moorman and four friends took the Sarah Joe out from port in the town of Hana on Maui. The weather was clear and the fishing was good, but when a massive storm blew in the Sarah Joe was lost. No trace of the boat was found until almost ten years later, when a group of marine biologists found the boat on a small island in the Taongi Atoll. Also on the island was a grave marked by a wooden cross, and buried there was the remains of Scott Moorman. But what happened to the other four men? (Who put Moorman in the ground)? We may never know.


House hauntings are usually just the result of overactive imaginations, but the strange case of the Methuen water demon can't be waved away so easily. In October 1963, a man named Francis Martin noticed a spot of moisture on his den wall. He investigated it and a spray of ice-cold water emitted from the wall for about 20 seconds before stopping. Over the next few weeks, this phenomenon repeated itself all over the house, ruining their furniture. The family fled the domicile and temporarily moved in at Mr. Martin's mother-in-law's house, only to have the weird water phenomenon happen there as well. They returned home and the waterspouts gradually tapered off and stopped, with nobody able to offer an explanation. (Photo credit: Mike via Flickr CC)


There are tons of unusual discoveries that conspiracy theorists claim as evidence of all kinds of things. One that eludes any kind of explanation is the Aluminum Wedge of Aiud. Found in 1974 on the banks of the Mures River in Romania, this oddly-shaped form was resting in the same layer of soil as a pair of mastodon bones, implying that it is at least 11,000 years old. What makes it perplexing is that humanity didn't learn how to shape and cast aluminum until 1808 at the very earliest. Some theorize that the Wedge was the head of a primitive hammer or a hunting tool, but nobody knows its exact purpose or provenance.


This may seem like an absurd thing to be concerned about, but nobody's been able to come up with a satisfactory explanation behind why in 1955, all over the United States, garden hoses started burrowing nozzle-first into the ground. One of the first reported incidents came in Downey, California, at the home of George di Peso. Di Peso's daughter was watering the garden when she set the hose down. Bizarrely, it started sinking into the earth until nearly 20 feet of it was underground and George had to cut it off to stop its motion. Similar cases were reported in Florida, Kansas, New York and Michigan. Some scientists speculated that the water pressure created a vacuum that pulled the hoses into loose soil, but they couldn't duplicate the effect when asked. (Photo credit: Rfduck via Flickr CC)


One of the most curious objects on American soil has been captivating the curious since the 17th century. Dighton Rock, originally found in the Taunton River, is a 40-ton boulder that is ringed with a series of carved petroglyphs that can be mapped to no known Earthly language. Scientists have attributed the carvings to a wide array of creators-some think Viking explorers carved them, some believe they're Phoenician in origin, and a recent book even alleged they were left by a Chinese expedition. We're no closer today to figuring out their actual origin.


There are dozens of stories throughout antiquity of mysterious semi-human beings appearing from out of nowhere, but few are quite as bizarre as the Green Children of Woolpit. At some point in the 12th century, a pair of siblings, brother and sister, wandered into the Suffolk village of Woolpit. What made them instantly notable was their skin, which was an unhealthy green color. The pair could not speak English, wore strange clothing and rejected all food except for uncooked beans, which they ate voraciously. Over time, the children lost their unusual color and adapted to a more varied diet, but no explanation has ever been given for where they came from.


The Cold War saw all kinds of weird stuff happening on both sides of the Iron Curtain, but one of the most perplexing obscure mysteries happened off the coast of Florida. In June of 1967, a Coast Guard trawler picked up a floating crate in the ocean that was stamped "Property Of U.S.S.R." and addressed to the "Institute of Mineral Resources of Cuba." Inside the box? Seven yellow balloons, inflated with an unknown gas and closed with black rubber stoppers. Scientists examined the contents but they revealed nothing but ordinary air. In the decades since, no explanation has ever come forward about what the purpose of the shipment was.

 

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