History is a wonderful bowl of intrigue, fascination, and mystery. Whether it is the lack of witnesses, facts that don’t add up, or once common knowledge now lost forever, history always offers interesting puzzles that can confound you and leave you dazed.
Delve into these old and odd mysteries recorded in the history.
1. The Phantom Siberian Girl
The presence of the strange girl was not noticed until the Krasnoyarsk Regional Museum digitised its collection of rare and historic photographs dating back to 1900. The employees discovered a little girl that appeared in twenty images and four glass negatives.
All of these images were captured between 1906 and 1908. Always dressed in white, the strange girl maintains the same pose and expression in all the pictures. She is so small that it was only when the images were digitised that her presence was noticed. The Siberian researchers have frantically been searching for answers, but none have been found thus far.
2. The Moving Coffins in the Chase Family Mausoleum
Colonel Thomas, a landowner from Barbados, took his life in 1812. When the family burial vault was opened, the workers noticed something strange. The coffins of his two daughters had inexplicably been moved. A few say that the family vault was opened four times more and each time a new family member was buried, the previous coffins were found in disarray. One of the coffins was even found leaning against the entrance to the vault and another had been thrown so violently that it was chipped in places.
Interestingly, the origin of the story is quite obscure and could not be traced back to the original source which has led the people to question whether the coffins were moved at all. Something Lewis Carroll would have called “Curioser and Curiouser”!
Eventually, the Chase family was so afraid of what was happening that all the coffins were removed from the vault and buried in separate plots.
3. The Signing Colossi of Memnon
On the west bank of the river Nile stand huge statues, depicting a pair of seated figures. The statues guarded the memorial temple of Amenhotep III. Although the temple has long since been razed to the ground, the statue guards still stand in silent watch.
However, the Colossi of Memnon were not always so silent. The area where the statues stand was violent shook by an earthquake in 27 BC and the northmost statue cracked. The early hours of the day after the quake were filled with musical sounds described as whistling, striking brass and breaking of a lyre string.
The broken statue was repaired in 199AD after which the singing stopped. Some experts attribute the musical sounds to the rising temperatures and moisture evaporation, but we will never know for sure what made the Colossi of Memnon sing.
4. Joanna Southcott’s Box
Born in a small Devon village in in 1750, Joanna Southcott declared herself as one of the Women of the Apocalypse mentioned in the book of Revelation. She sold “Seals of the Lord” granting entrance to eternal life to more than 140,000 people during her London visit.
Not long after she announced her pregnancy, claiming she carried the biblical Shiloh, Southcott died leaving her 100,000 followers with a sealed wooden box containing a series of prophecies.
She instructed that her box was only to be opened during a time of national crisis. However, the fate of the box is shrouded in mystery. A man named Harry Price claimed that he held Southcott’s original box in 1927. He found some oddities like scraps of paper, a lottery ticket, and a pistol inside it. The followers of Southcott decreed that his box was fake. To this day, the contents of the box and the hidden prophecies remain a mystery to be explored.
5. The Construction of the Baalbek Temple
The ancient Baalbek Temple is located in the modern Lebanon. The temple was built to save Cain from the God’s anger and is called the Tower of Babel. Some claim it was built by the djinns, the supernatural beings in the Islamic or the Arabic mythologies.
Religion and legend aside, it is still unknown that how or why the huge megaliths were left abandoned. The construction on the project began 2000 years ago and required transportation and shifting of huge stone blocks, more than 40 times larger than the ones used in the Stonehenge. One of the blocks left abandoned in the region, reportedly weighs nearly three million pounds.
6. The Real ID of the Connecticut Leatherman
The Leatherman was named so because of his ragged appearance. He made his first appearance in a newspaper story in 1852 and was mentioned as a vagabond who roamed from Connecticut to NewYork, Vermont, travelling up to Canada. His route was so well-travelled that he often left stocks of food and wood in various caves along his way.
Despite his appearance, he was a cultured man and was multilingual. He completed the 366-mile circuit every 34 days till he passed away in 1889. His true identity remains shrouded in mystery. As Highway 9 was being expanded, it became necessary to exhume his grave and rebury the Leatherman. When the grave was dug up, there was nothing inside but a few rusty coffin nails.
7. The Atlas Vampire
The dead body of a 32-year-old prostitute was discovered in her Stockholm apartment. Lilly Lindstrom had experienced a horrific end as she was bludgeoned to death and her blood was then drained. A blood-stained ladle was discovered alongside her dead body.
The Police suggested that the spoon had been used to drink her blood. The incident was reported in the Atlas area of Stockholm, and her mysterious killer was thus christened “Atlas Vampire.”
Lilly’s body was not found until several days after her death, and all her blood was gone. The evidence of the crime is still displayed in the Stockholm’s Police Museum.
8. Ricky McCormick’s Death and Mystifying Coded Messages
When the body of Ricky McCormick was discovered in a Missouri field after he disappeared in June 1999, it had already begun to decompose. McCormick’s murder did not come as a surprise owing to his criminal record. However, the precise method used for the kill could not be determined due to the lack of evidence.
The mysterious thing was the discovery of some papers containing coded messages in his pockets. The codes were ultimately released on the internet but have not been cracked to this day.
9. The Identity of the Children of Woolpit
The appearance of the two orphaned children near Suffolk was recorded by Ralph of Coggeshall and William of Newburgh in the 12th century. The boy and the girl spoke a strange language, had green skin, and would only eat raw bones.
They were called Green Children due to the strange colour of their hide. The children were taken in by Sir Richard de Caine who groomed them till they lost their green colour and taught them English. The boy fell ill and died shortly afterwards. However, the girl went on to live and told the family that they came from an underground kingdom named St. Martin’s Land.
She said that it was always twilight in their realm and that the pair had lost their way while herding the family cattle. She went on to marry Agnes Brynn, a man at the King’s Lynn.
Some theories suggest that the children were the offspring of the Finnish immigrants, and the green colour of their skin is attributed to the iron-deficiency causing chlorosis. However, the appearance of the children has always fascinated the conspiracy buffs and alien enthusiasts.
10. The Secret of the Floating Angelo Faticoni
Born in 1859, Angelo Faticoni was also known as the Human Cork. He had the unique ability to stay afloat in the most extreme and dire situations.
The Harvard University put his claims to test by tying him to a weight of 20-pounds of lead and putting him inside a water-pool. Faticoni cheerfully bobbed for more than 15 hours. He became a freakshow performer and performed unique stunts like floating on the Hudson River as he sat in a chair weighed down by lead or being sewn into a sack of cannon balls.
Faticoni died in 1931, taking his secret to the grave. Harvard researchers later suggested an abnormal organ structure might be the reason for his unusual physical trait. But, his floating ability remains a mystery to this day.