Real Life Mysteries

30 Real Life Mysteries That Sound Like They Came Straight Out Of An X-Files Episode

15. Unexplained fires kept popping up

The spontaneous fires of Canneto di Caronia in Sicily. Basically, things just started catching fire in this town and nobody could figure out why. It seems to stop for a while, but then will start again. Seems to always be electrical appliances, but the city shut down power and they kept happening. Scientists are sure it’s because of static electricity, but nobody knows why it happens so frequently in one place. Pretty cool mystery

16. Students disappeared during a hike

The Dyatlov Pass Incident. 9 Soviet students disappeared while hiking in the Ural Mountains. That in itself isn’t particularly weird, apart from extremely unusual findings when the camp and bodies were finally located. Some of the bodies had signs of extreme trauma or were mutilated in ways that couldn’t be explained by the normal hazards associated with the terrain. Most of the students had died of hypothermia, despite being experienced in winter hiking and so presumably knowing better than to leave the tent.

There’s a bunch of conspiracy theories about what caused them to rip the tent open from the inside (there didn’t appear to have been an avalanche), flee in various states of undress and what could have caused the injuries. They range from the Soviet military using the area as a testing ground for weapons to the hikers having stumbled upon a yeti. The official investigation found that the hikers had been killed by an “unknown, compelling force.”

17. Soldiers had glowing wounds

Angel’s Glow. The Battle of Shiloh in the American Civil War was pretty bad, even by the standards of the rest of the war. What makes it unique is that a number of the casualties later presented with a strange glow coming from their wounds. Even more surprising was that those soldiers whose wounds glowed had a much better rate of survival than the others.

Thankfully this has apparently been explained. Long story short it was likely nematodes that express a bioluminescent bacteria that also has anti-bacterial properties.

Holly is the author of Severe(d): A Creepy Poetry Collection.

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