Top 20 Creepiest Historical Mysteries That Have Been SOLVED

20 Creepiest Historical Mysteries That Have Been SOLVED

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most unsettling enigmas throughout history that we’ve finally gotten some answers to.

#20: Pearl Harbor Ghost Plane

Just a year after the infamous 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, an unidentified plane was supposedly making its way towards the base. Thinking it was another strike, two aircraft investigated, reportedly seeing a bullet-riddled American P-40 Warhawk flown by an injured pilot. After a final wave, he intentionally crashed and then disappeared. The mystery gained traction when it was featured in “Damned to Glory,” a book written by Colonel Robert Scott Jr. Many assumed he was retelling a historical event, and took it as fact. Years later, Scott confirmed that it was fiction, and that he would’ve never done it had he known what the outcome would be. Now, it serves as a lesson for one not to believe everything they read.

#19: The Bloop

In 1997, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration detected an odd, loud noise coming from the depths of the Pacific Ocean. It was nicknamed Bloop. From that moment on, it caused debate within the scientific community. Some experts were adamant that it’d been made by an animal— but the only way that would’ve been possible was if the creature responsible was even larger than a whale. Some were convinced that we’d accidentally stumbled across a gargantuan, never-before-seen sea monster. In 2005, however, the truth came out. The Bloop hadn’t been made by a living being, but rather an iceberg splitting apart and causing an ice quake. While not as exciting as an unknown creature, it brought an answer to a nearly decade-old mystery.

#18: Well-Man

When skeletal remains were found in a Norse well in 1938, no one realized just how much history they’d stumbled upon. The site was properly searched in the mid-2010s, when a full skeleton was found. For another decade, there was seemingly endless speculation about Well-Man’s odd burial ground. The answer ended up being in an 800-year-old text known as the Sverris Saga. According to the document, Well-Man was a corpse that had been thrown into the waterway in 1197 by King Sverre Sigurdsson in an attempt to poison the citizens there. DNA testing corroborated the timeline, bringing new legitimacy to the saga. Though his final resting place is explained, not much else about him is known— but hopefully, further research will reveal even more.

#17: Windsor Hum

In 2011, citizens in Ontario, Canada suddenly began to report a constant droning noise. According to them, it was seemingly never-ending and sometimes so loud that it was impossible to ignore. The phenomenon was dubbed the Windsor Hum, and researchers began locating its source. Some speculated it was originating from the nearby Zug Island, but were barred access by the United States. Both the mystery and the sound continued relentlessly until the onset of the pandemic in 2020. A U.S. steel plant in Zug Island had been shut down due to it, and with it went the hum. It was then revealed that blast furnaces had been operated at an extremely high capacity, creating the noise that had haunted thousands for years.

#16: Fate of the Franklin Expedition

In 1845, Sir John Franklin embarked on a journey to explore the remainder of the Northwest Passage near northern Canada. Two ships– HMS Erebus and HMS Terror– left, but neither would return. They were trapped for over a year, resulting in two dozen dying and the ships being left as survivors attempted to finish on foot before disappearing. Since then, small discoveries have helped solve these mysteries. For example, the men primarily perished due to natural causes, from food infected with botulism to starvation. Erebus and Terror were found in 2014 and 2016, with the latter being found in such good condition that it debunked a theory that they’d been crushed by ice. As more remains are identified, the more we uncover the full story.

#15: The Wow! Signal

When news of this odd signal detection was announced in the late 1970s, it seemed as though there was finally concrete proof of life beyond our planet. The rightfully named Wow! signal was short yet intense, lasting just over a minute and resonating with believers and detractors alike. Several theories were posited, ranging from alien communication to an accidental transmission from the United States military. A report in 2024 finally brought about answers, and while it isn’t extraterrestrial life, it’s just as remarkable. Experts claimed that the frequency had most likely come about when a hydrogen cloud crossed paths with a powerful star, creating a large reaction and loud noise that had been picked up that fateful night in 1977.

#14: Vittrup Man

The discovery of corpses in bogs has allowed historians to get a glimpse into the lives of those who lived before us. One known as the Vittrup Man was uncovered in a Danish village of the same name in 1915. His 5,200-year-old remains were found next to a club, making it clear that he’d been bludgeoned to death. In 2024, a bombshell was dropped: he wasn’t from Denmark at all. He’d grown up in the Scandinavian Peninsula and traveled there in adulthood. Some believe he was brought over as a slave and used as an unwilling participant in a human sacrifice, explaining his abnormally violent fate. With this in mind, further research will help us learn about him and ancient human migration as well.

#13: Lady in the Dunes

Since the discovery of her corpse in 1974, her identity and killer remained a burning question in the minds of officials and her loved ones. The then-dubbed Lady in the Dunes had been found with cranial trauma and no hands, implying that her killer had taken them. Her body was exhumed three times during the investigation, but nothing concrete was found. Hope was reignited in 2022 when her skeletal remains were matched with a relative of hers, allowing her to finally be identified as Ruth Terry. That same year, they had their first true suspect: Guy Muldavin, Terry’s ex-husband. Though he had passed two decades prior, he was officially named her murderer in 2023, finally bringing her family the answers they had waited decades for.

#12: Kaspar Hauser

In 1828, he stumbled into now-modern-day Nuremberg and history as a whole. Kaspar Hauser immediately sparked several questions with his arrival. He claimed to have been imprisoned his entire upbringing, and that he’d never interacted with another human before his sudden release. Soon, rumors about his origins popped up. The most prominent was one asserting he was born to the royal Baden lineage and accidentally swapped out at birth. This theory was circulated until DNA tests were carried out in the 20th and 21st centuries, when it was found he had no connection to the bloodline. Though he remains an enigma to this day, this deduction remains one of the biggest strides in finding out the truth about him.

#11: Anastasia’s Fate

The killing of the Romanov family in 1918 was a historical turning point. Yet, one question lingered— the whereabouts of Grand Duchess Anastasia. It was unclear whether she’d died during the initial attack or if she’d escaped, causing decades of debate. The mystery was bolstered by people pretending to be her, the bodies being left unattended for a period of time post-murder, and only nine of the eleven bodies being found following the excavation of their mass grave. In 2007, two more were found nearby, and DNA testing matched them to the two remaining members of the family. While scientists aren’t sure whether Anastasia’s remains were in the larger or smaller group, they do know for sure that she perished along with her relatives.

#10: The Wiltshire Crop Circles

As far back as the 1600s, strange crop circles are said to have baffled farmers. Usually appearing with no entry point into the field itself, it can seem like whatever causes them must have come in from above. And the leading theory has long been aliens. Beginning in the 1970s, a particular series of crop circles was discovered in Wiltshire, England, igniting a decades-long fever of curiosity and panic about extraterrestrials. However, in 1991, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley admitted that they were responsible for more than 200 incidents in the area. With reporters watching on, they showed how they made the patterns using a plank of wood, some rope, and a baseball cap with wire.

#9: Crystal Skulls

For years, multiple, international museums have contained an unusual crystal skull. The origins of these seeming relics was long unknown, although some believed they dated to pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. According to one legend, were you to combine 13 skulls, in particular, it would serve to stop the infamous Mayan Doomsday event (that came and went) on December 21st, 2012. Alongside all the myth and intrigue, however, there’s also been doubt. And, in 2008, amidst the hype for the related Indiana Jones movie released at the time, a number of leading institutions conducted research - including the Musée du Quai Branly in France, the Smithsonian in the US, and the British Museum in the UK. They discovered that the skulls likely aren’t ancient at all, and are more likely to have been made in the twentieth century, perhaps even post World War Two, and in Europe.

#8: Tutankhamun’s Death

When the tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings, it marked a monumental day for egyptologists. Yet what actually led King Tut to his tomb as a teenager was a mystery. How did the iconic pharaoh die? There were several theories, including that he may have fallen off a chariot, or that he was murdered… but nothing with hard evidence. In 2005, however, Tutankhamun’s mummified remains were CT scanned, and it was found that, on top of several hereditary issues, he had suffered a compound fracture to his leg shortly before passing. Genetic testing found that he was also infected with malaria. As such, researchers now believe that he was killed by a combination of disease and the severity of the open (and major) wound to his leg.

#7: The Sailing Stones

Since the early 1900s, there’s been confusion over some seemingly wandering rocks, most famously along the Racetrack Playa, in California’s Death Valley National Park. Large stones have been shown to move and leave large track marks, without evidence of interference by humans or animals. They apparently just travel when they want to. So, are (and were) they perhaps possessed by ghosts? We now know that that’s not the case. Between December 2013 and January 2014, several of the stones were fitted with GPS, and time-lapse photography was used to track them. They were again found to move great distances, but it was discovered that they were actually propelled by thin ice sheets that continually form and break beneath them. It’s a bizarre process but it is enough to push the rocks and solve the mystery.

#6: The Somerton Man

In 1948, the body of a man was found on Somerton Park beach in Australia. Lacking identification and dressed in American attire, he was found to have been in otherwise good health before his passing. A greater strangeness to the case started to settle in, though, when a scrap of paper was found in his pocket, torn from a work by the medieval poet Omar Khayyám. Investigations led the police to the book from which the scrap was taken, inside which a coded message was discovered. It all meshed together to spark long-running speculation that the unknown man may have been a spy. In 2022, after analysis of a hair sample, we at last got more details. It was revealed that he was really Carl “Charles” Webb, an electrical engineer from Melbourne, born in 1905.

#5: The Disappearance of Cheryl Miller & Pamella Jackson

In 1971, teenagers Cheryl Miller and Pamella Jackson were on their way to an end-of-school party in South Dakota. However, they never arrived, and for decades it was unknown what had happened to them. Speculation that something criminal had occurred and that we may never learn the truth was a common theory. However, in 2013, a severe drought lowered the water level enough in a nearby creek so that the underside of a car could clearly be seen buried in the mud. Shockingly, inside the vehicle were human remains. The following year, DNA analysis concluded that the bodies were those of Miller and Jackson. The investigation also mentioned that there was no evidence of foul play, likely indicating that it was a tragic accident.

#4: The Lost City of Helike

Built in the early Bronze Age, the city of Helike was a major hub in Ancient Greek history. However, in 373 BCE, it vanished from the map. There were vague accounts that some kind of disaster had unfolded, but the specifics were never really confirmed. Centuries later, the Greek geographer, Strabo, claimed that Poseidon, the god of the sea, was directly angered by Helike hoarding a statue of him, and so he set off an earthquake, creating a tsunami that sank and destroyed everything. Naturally, this gave rise to speculation that Helike could’ve been the real-life Atlantis. But, for millennia, no one knew even where its remains were. Until, in the early 2000s, archaeologists found evidence of it submerged by an ancient lagoon. Atlantis or not, we do at least now know where Helike was.

#3: The Connecticut Vampire

In the mid-1800s, the town of Griswold, Connecticut, was experiencing an epidemic. Whole families were falling ill and coughing up blood before dying. At the time, it was believed that a vampire curse was running rife. Fast forward to the 1990s, and a grave is discovered nearby with a skeleton laid to rest… unusually. Its arms are arranged in an X-shape, and the severed skull is laid on its chest. This macabre burial relates to a superstition typically done by fearful people to stop vampires from coming back to life to feed on the living. At the time of the Griswold deaths, then, the panic must have been extreme. But, in 2019, the true nature of events was realized. Following analysis of other skeletons in the area, it was discovered that the mysterious spate of deaths was really caused by tuberculosis, rather than vampirism.

#2: The Tunguska Event

In 1908, a massive explosion took place near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia, Russia. More than 800 square miles of forest was flattened by it, without any clear sign of a cause. The bang had been detected by seismic stations as far away as Washington, DC. And, according to some witnesses, three people may have lost their lives. It’s believed the force of the event was as much as 50 megatons - which is about as much as the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful weapon ever tested. At the time, and in the years immediately after, thousands of scientists tried to explain what happened. But it wasn’t until 1930 that a comet was first suggested. From there, further evidence mounted up, and it’s now firmly believed that the Tunguska Event was an asteroid that had entered the Earth’s atmosphere. It generated a huge air burst, vaporizing itself, and the shockwave alone was what obliterated the forest.

#1: The Fate of Tsukumo No. 24

In 1867, construction workers at a site in Kasaoka, Japan, uncovered ancient human bones. At a location now known as the Tsukumo Shell Mound, archaeologists got to work. They discovered evidence of a settlement that dated back to the mid-Jōmon period, around 4000 to 2500 BCE. It was a grisly find, though, with some 170 skeletons contained in small graves. One, in particular, had a massive 790 wounds all over their bones and was missing a hand and leg. In 2021, researchers reconstructed what happened to this person, and what caused his demise. We now know that his is the oldest known shark attack death in history. Fishing equipment and shell jewelry were also found nearby, as it emerged that Tsukumo No. 24 had unfortunately lost a battle with a shark while hunting.

What creepy mystery do you hope gets solved next? Let us know in the comments below!