89 Of The Creepiest Unsolved Mysteries Of All Time

There was a group of five guys who went out in their small whaling boat in Hawaii to fish in 1979. There was a storm, and they never came back. Ten years later, their boat was found on the shore of a small island in the Marshall Islands with a shallow grave that someone made.

By Chrissy Stockton

Updated 11 months ago, January 24, 2024

Reddit users discussed the creepiest unsolved mysteries that haunt them to this day. I asked some users if I could share their comments with Creepy Catalog readers — thanks to all who participated!

The Hinterkaifeck Murders

I love reading about unsolved mysteries, especially weird/creepy ones, and the Hinterkaifeck murders is one of most fascinating to me.

A farmer in Germany back in the 1920s had noticed mysterious footprints in the snow around his house. There was also strange stuff happening around the farm. Footsteps in the attic, a newspaper that no one in the family had bought, and eventually the house keys disappeared. What makes it stranger is that the housekeeper had left a few months prior, swearing up and down that the farm was haunted.

The family suddenly went unseen for a couple of days. Their neighbors went to check on them, only to find the entire family as well as their newly hired housekeeper had been murdered. Most of the family had been lead into the barn one by one and slaughtered with what’s believed to have been a pickaxe. The maid and their youngest son were killed in their beds. The worst part is that the youngest daughter lived for a few hours after the attack. She spent the last few hours of her life lying next to her dead family in the hay of the barn, and had torn chunks of her own hair out in that time.

101 True Scary Stories to Read in Bed Tonight

Despite the best efforts of the police, they never found out who murdered the family. Whoever it was stayed in the house after the murders. The neighbors saw smoke coming from the chimney, and some of the food had been eaten. Still, 90-something years after the murders, no one really knows who did it.

Here’s a picture of the farm, and for those morbidly curious, a picture of the crime scene in the barn was taken.

The Sodder Children Mystery

https://instagram.com/p/0EhAE3DWF4/
1 A.M. – Parents wake up, house is on fire. Parents help get 5 out of their 10 kids out of the house. Dad tries to reach the other children (upstairs) with a ladder that was outside, ladder is missing. Dad tries to pull his two big trucks up to the window to climb the trucks and get kids out, both trucks will not start up. Dad tries to get water from rain barrel – rain barrel is frozen solid. He tries to call the fire department, and there is no response. He tells a neighbor to call, also no response. Finally someone in town sees the fire and goes to the fire department – the fire trucks don’t arrive until 8 A.M., 7 hours after the start of the fire. Fire department investigates the house and finds no bones for the 5 kids, say that the bones were burnt to ashes. They say it was a wiring problem, but light bulbs were still working. People think that it was a cover up by law enforcement.

The District Attorney who disappeared

There was a District Attorney who had the opportunity to charge Sandusky’s ass long before he got arrested. They later found his car abandoned and laptop in the Susquehanna river.

And to just make things more confusing he had his (personal or work laptop? I read conflicting things) with him and that was found without its hard drive (later obtained and completely destroyed) in the Susquehanna River. When investigators searched his home they were able to obtain some information regarding his internet searches, basically indicating that he wanted to learn how to destroy a hard drive.

Wikipedia article.

The creepiest mysteries are the ones that happen in real life

We drove up to my friend’s grandmother’s house in the mountains of New Mexico for a skiing trip. On one of the first nights we were all just hanging around the house and my friends went upstairs to play a drinking game; I stayed downstairs to watch tv in the living room. It was probably 11pm and I was just about to doze off when I heard a BANG — the back door swung in and slammed into the wall. I yelled “What the fuck?!” And my friends ran to the stairs asking what happened. We turned on the outside lights and didn’t see anybody but… There was a trail of heavy footprints that went from the trees to the big window – whoever was out there had been staring at me on the couch because there were no blinds or curtains – and then the trail went to the door, and then disappeared around the corner of the house.

Needless to say, I didn’t sleep that night.

Was my cousin murdered?

My cousin got poisoned with thalum (sp?) sulfate when he was visiting his girlfriend’s mother in Italy about 17 years ago. they did a tox screen and found it in his system along with it in the beer he drank. The Italian government cremated his body before my uncle and my aunt could investigate further.

Who was the Colonial Parkway Killer?

Virginia’s Colonial Parkway killers from 1986 to 1989. 4 couples killed in their cars while parked in Williamsburg/Newport News area. Never solved.

Wikipedia page here.

What happened to the crew of the Sara Jo?

I saw this one on the TV show Unsolved Mysteries. There was a group of five guys who went out in their small whaling boat in Hawaii to fish in 1979. There was a storm, and they never came back. Ten years later, their boat was found on the shore of a small island in the Marshall Islands with a shallow grave that someone made. The grave had some bones from one of the fishermen. However, scientists estimate it would have only taken 3 months for the boat to drift all that way, and a government survey of the small island was conducted six years prior and the boat and grave was not there. Nobody knows what happened to the rest of the men and nobody knows who laid the grave, no one knows how the boat was in the four years prior to the island’s survey.

The attempted murderer that looks like Colin Farrell

The post about how Colin Farrell was a suspect in a attempted murder case, which is still unsolved till this day. Farrell himself said the writers sketch looked exactly liked him. The only thing that got him off the hook was his friends journal which stated that he and his friend where doing ecstasy on the other side of town.. The murder remains unsolved till this day.

The Villisca Axe Murders

Read about Creepy Catalog's investigation into the Villisca Axe Murder House here. — Read about Creepy Catalog’s investigation into the Villisca Axe Murder House here.

My favourite: The Villisca Axe Murders. For those who don’t know the story, here it is.

8 people were murdered in their house in Villisca, Iowa, a small town where everybody probably knew everybody. It was June 10, 1912 and while everyone was sleeping in the tiny house, someone came in and killed them all with an axe. There was no sign of break in and just before everyone went to bed to be killed, the family had been at church. It is thought the killer had climbed into the attic and waited for them to come home and go to bed. 6 of those killed were children aged 5-11 and only 4 were from the family, 2 killed were friends sleeping over. What is especially weird is how nobody woke up after the person next to them was smashed in the face by the axe. At least everyone in the house was sharing a bed. But even stranger than that, all the mirrors in the house were covered by sheets. Over the past 100 years, nobody has solved the murder although one suspect is Reverend George Kelly who admitted to the murders but there was a lack of evidence to this.

Wikipedia article here.

The disappeared lighthouse keepers

There was once an isolated island off the cost of Scotland where 3 lighthouse keepers lived and were responsible for keeping the building intact. One day, when their monthly supply ship dropped by, the island was silent. No response from the lighthouse keepers. Eventually the captain and some crew members went to investigate and found a disturbingly empty lighthouse. 2 of the 3 waterproof coats were missing from their hangers and the kitchen was left in a state as if people had left in a hurry. The lighthouse log only added more mystery to the situation. The log described how one of the keepers wouldn’t talk, and the other continuously cried for hours. All of this pain and fear seemed to be coming from a “powerful storm, looming in the distance”. However this begs the question, why where they so scared of a simple storm? They should have been safe in the brand new lighthouse right? The log goes on to talk about how they all stat close together and prayed for the storm to be over. The final log states: “The storm has passed, the skies are calm, god is over all”.

Their bodies were never found and the cause of their death is still a mystery to this day. The most accepted theory is that they somehow got swept out to sea during the storm, never to be seen again. But one final detail remains, one that scared the captain and his crew to the bone. The powerful storm described in the log didn’t exist, there were no storms reported in the area. In fact the skies were calm all day.

Who took the photos?

The death of Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers.

Both girls went on a study abroad trip to Panama where they went missing on a hike. After several weeks, some of their remains were found miles up the river from where they began their hike, along with a backpack that contained their belongings.

The creepy part of it was that a camera in their backpack started out with pictures they took of each other hiking and then suddenly goes into 100-something pictures of what appeared to be nighttime shots of rocks near a river bed, the back of someone’s head, and just pure blackness. The dark pictures appeared to be taken many days after they had been missing.

There are a lot of theories as to why they went missing, what finally ended their lives, and why they were taking pictures, but it gives me chills thinking about the possibilities. Apparently, according to their cell phone use records, they (or one of them) had been alive in the forest for days after they got lost, trying to get a signal from their phones to call emergency help.

Bardstown

There is a small town in Kentucky called Bardstown. Last year a police officer (Officer Jason Ellis) was driving back home after his shift ended and noticed a bunch of sticks blocking the ramp. He got out of his car to pick up the sticks and was shot and killed ambush style. No leads and nobody knows who did it. Probably 6 months later a mother and her 13 year old daughter were bludgeoned and shot to death. Same with that. No evidence or suspects.

Ghost ship

Ghost ships have always fascinated me. They’re not necessarily that unsettling if you consider people might just have left the ships. Taken hostage by pirates or something.

But this is the story of the DutchSS Ourang Medan

Ships of the coast of Malaysia received some S.O.S messages from SS Ourang Medan.

“All officers including captain are dead lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead.”

Before anyone could get to the ship, another S.O.S message was sent from the ship:

“I die”

The american merchant ship Silver Star was first on scene, quickly boarding the now drifting ship. They found the whole crew dead, eye’s wide open with terrified expression on their faces and arms stretching out in front of them as to shield themselves from something. The radio operator was found dead siting by the Morse sending key, eye’s wide open as well. No one on the ship looked physically hurt.

As the Silver Star tried to tow the ship back to port, the SS Ourang Medan caught started smoldering and sunk short thereafter.

What makes this scary to me is the actual S.O.S message. It sounds like somebody just woke up and noticed everyone’s dead. The S.O.S messages have lots of Morse mistakes. Dots and dashes that didn’t mean anything which could indicate that he wasn’t used to sending Morse messages.

Stumbling upon a ghost ship with dead crew would be a bit scary. But waking up finding your friends that you’ve spent the whole cruise with dead, frozen solid in what looks like the moment somebody stabs them, to the realize YOU are next?

Nope!

Nope!

Kendrick Johnson

The death of Kendrick Johnson is pretty creepy. He was found rolled up in wrestling mats in his high school and his death was ruled an accident. The official story is that he was reaching into the rolled up wresting mats to get his shoe and got stuck and died. An independent autopsy has shown that he died from blunt force trauma and there is blood in many of the crime scene photos. It seems like a conspiracy between the school and police is keeping a lot of information from the family. Video footage from the gym during the time of his death is missing. Not sure if that qualifies as spooky, but it’s definitely creepy.

Wikipedia article here.

Sky Trumpets

Sky Trumpets – This weird phenomena has been reported all around the world and no-one has been able to fully explain it, only theories. It sounds like a brass trumpet being played extremely loudly in the sky and can last for a couple of minutes with no apparent origin of sound. Theories include tectonic plates grinding, atmospheric pressure and even the biblical event “Seven Trumpets of Heaven”. (Video/sound examples in link)

The severed foot I found in the woods

I already posted a pretty good one but I have something more chilling and relevant to my actual life. At my cousins house in…I think it was 2009 Dagsbouro Delaware sometime mid summer. We like to hunt bullfrogs to eat so we were scoping out some good water holes during they day, well my cousin she found a severed foot. Still bloody and pretty fresh looking. I even inspected it because i didn’t believe it was real OH IT WAS REAL! Even had a bit of toe cheese. Where did the footless man go? Was it self inflicted? Assault? Was he murdered? If so who did it? Why did we hear nothing we had been outside all day and this was only about 200 meters into the woods. Could the rest of the mans body be somewhere in that woods? When the cops arrived they just put tape around where we found it and put the foot in an orange biohazard bag thing and left.

The woodlands and swamps of Sussex county DE are no place to stroll through without atleast a revolver or if you’re decent with a bow. The swamps are known for body dumping and meth cooking and the woods are full of wild dog packs. The rural areas around here are basically un-policed so it’s kind of just you know… Learn how to hide and shoot at some point. We still fried up frog legs that night.

The M Cave Hiker

The M Cave Hiker. Do a quick google search. This well experienced hiker in Nevada found a cave he described as the ‘M Cave’ as it was opened in the shape of an M. he claimed he heard very unusual noises from the cave and found it suspicious as it was located around 6 miles south of a top secret air base. He later went back to where he found the cave and has not been seen since. I’m sure he dissapeared last year but the found his phone in a very odd place (an abandoned mine entrance) in January but found no body or evidence that he had gone down into the mine (which was sealed anyway).

he posted this video about the cave the day he went missing

Maura Murray

The disappearance of Maura Murray is a pretty interesting case. Perhaps the strangest part about this is the events leading up to her going missing.

The Keddie Murders

Police sketch of intruders. Wikimedia Commons

The Cabin 28 Keddie Murders. Contains a lack of known motive, and full of loose-ends, conspiracy, and questions.

“On the night of April 11-12, 1981, Glenna Sue Sharp and her kids, Tina and John, and John’s friend, Dana Wingate, were brutally murdered inside Cabin 28 in Keddie, California. Surrounded by drug traffickers and sexual predators, dozens peripherally involved in the case had motive, if not opportunity. Law enforcement immediately zeroed in on prime suspects. Yet, this hot case was intentionally made to quickly grow cold.”

http://keddie28.com/

Bible John

Bible John was a serial killer in Glasgow in the late 1960s. His name comes from witnesses saying he quoted the bible frequently. To this day no one knows who he was. Around Glasgow there are many old men who are locally thought to be him.