Some of the scariest stories are the ones that don’t feature a ghost or monster, and they’re 100% real, too.
Three bodies and a missing child
Cabin 28 in Keddie, California, looked like a normal enough place on the morning of April 12, 1981, at least from the outside. It was a very different situation on the inside. Inside Cabin 28 were the bodies of Sue Sharp, her 15-year-old son John, and John’s 17-year-old friend Dana Wingate. Three younger boys had somehow slept through whatever happened.
Sue’s 12-year-old daughter Tina was gone, too, and her remains eventually turned up three years later, miles away. One of the surviving boys did give a description of two men he’d allegedly seen at the time, but nothing came of it. Nobody has ever been convicted of the murders, and nobody knows why they were killed.
A Navy ship simply vanished
You wouldn’t expect to lose a 540-foot U.S. Navy ship carrying 306 people. But that’s exactly what happened to the USS Cyclops, and it left Barbados on March 4, 1918, for Baltimore. It never arrived. No distress call, no verified wreckage, no bodies.
The fact it disappeared during World War I made people initially suspect enemy action, although there was never any evidence of that. The U.S. Navy still lists it as its largest noncombat loss of life. A whole ship disappeared, and we have no idea of why or how. How spooky.
The letter that terrified New Orleans
Jazz music was the only thing that saved people in New Orleans in 1919. An unknown attacker broke into homes and businesses for months, often targeting Italian immigrant families. They’d sometimes use an ax found at the scene to kill people. That was scary enough.
But then came the bizarre letter that the killer had published in the newspaper. The writer promised to spare any homes where they were audibly playing jazz on a particular night. Surprise surprise, music poured from houses across the city on that nights, and these houses were spared. The killer was never found.
Six hikers died within one trip
Seven hikers headed into Russia’s Khamar-Daban mountains in August 1993, as part of what was supposed to be a fun trip. Only one of them made it out alive. Experienced instructor Lyudmila Korovina led the trip, so the idea of them wandering into the mountains unprepared didn’t really fly.
The survivor, Valentina Utochenko, said that one hiker began bleeding from his eyes, and then others began collapsing too. Six people died in total. Some theories blame hypothermia, others claim it was a military experiment or poisonous mushrooms. The cause was never determined.
A job offer ended with four disappearances
Ronald Jack thought he’d found work when he met a man in Prince George, British Columbia, in August 1989. The man offered jobs to Ronald and his wife, Doreen, at a ranch or logging camp. He even offered the family a ride to the site because they didn’t own a car.
So, Ronald, Doreen, and their two sons, Russell and Ryan, left together. None of them were seen again. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has continued investigating the case and searching for the family, but none of them have ever been found.
Four bodies in one lonely field
The Texas Killing Fields has some disturbing stories that gave it its name. It began when the body of a woman named Heidi Fye was found there in 1984. Then, two years later, investigators discovered Laura Miller’s body and another woman later identified as Audrey Cook. They found Donna Prudhomme’s body in the same area in 1991.
Four women had died and been buried on the same stretch of ground over several years. The FBI officially refers to these as the Calder Road killings, and the murderers of all the women have never been found.
The red coat on the Long Trail
Paula Jean Welden wasn’t planning to go on a long trip on December 1, 1946. No, the 18-year-old Bennington College student left campus wearing jeans, sneakers, and a bright red parka. She hitchhiked her way toward Vermont’s Long Trail, and witnesses saw her there later that afternoon. But then she disappeared.
Search parties combed the area yet never found Welden or any evidence of what happened to her. The FBI suggested it could’ve been an accident or deliberate disappearance. Welden’s disappearance was one of several unexplained disappearances in the area at the time, which gave it the name the Bennington Triangle.
The ship was there, but everyone was gone
The Joyita set sail from Samoa to the Tokelau Islands in October 1955, with twenty-five people aboard. Another ship found the Joyita a little over a month later, drifting near Fiji, partly flooded and completely empty.
New Zealand authorities opened an official investigation, yet they were never able to determine what happened. They didn’t find any of the missing people either. A wreck sinking is one thing, a ship still floating around without anyone on it is something way creepier.
The powder that glowed blue
Two men were scavenging an abandoned clinic in Goiânia, Brazil, in 1987, when they found some interesting medical equipment. It was glowing. So, they decided to take it home and show it off to practically everyone they met.
But it turns out the reason for the glow was that the container had cesium-137, a kind of radioactive material, inside. About 250 people were contaminated by it, and four died within weeks. It became one of the worst nuclear disasters in history.
Healthy people were dying in their sleep
American doctors noticed a rather strange pattern among Southeast Asian refugees in the late 1970s and 1980s. Young, healthy men were dying suddenly during their sleep. It got to the point where the CDC launched an investigation and found at least 117 of these deaths by 1988. Relatives of the victims claimed they heard gasping and labored breathing beforehand.
A lot of the victims were Hmong or other Vietnam War refugees from Laos, and they died because of something called ‘sudden arrhythmic death syndrome.’ It’s essentially a kind of cardiac arrest. But to this day, scientists don’t know what caused these people to suddenly have cardiac arrests in their sleep, seemingly out of the blue.
Something hovered above a Montréal hotel
Something strange happened at Montréal’s Bonaventure Hotel on November 7, 1990. Around 40 people reportedly saw a large, bright object or pattern of lights hanging over the building, without any explanation for it. These witnesses included police officers and journalists.
They allegedly saw the lights near the rooftop pool area, and many accounts described seeing an oval-shaped formation overhead. The Canadian government wasn’t able to explain where the lights came from, or even what they were.
Afternoon suddenly looked like night
A volcanic eruption is scary enough on its own, but the eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980, was something else. The blast was enormous. So enormous, in fact, that people hundreds of miles away were plunged into complete darkness in the middle of the day.
A huge cloud of ash, carrying more than 540 million tons of material, covered places like Spokane, which was roughly 250 miles away. The ash cloud traveled more than 900 miles east and eventually circled the planet. It felt like the world was ending. You can’t get creepier than that.
One switch stopped a nuclear explosion
North Carolina was a dangerous place to be on January 24, 1961, as two hydrogen bombs fell out of a breaking B-52 over the state. The plane had come apart near Goldsboro. The parachute on one of the two Mark 39 bombs opened, and its battery switched on. The safety pins came out.
It really looked like it was going to explode. Except, an Arm/Safe switch stayed on ‘safe,’ meaning that the bomb never actually did explode. The bomb itself was around 260 times stronger than the one dropped on Hiroshima, and it would’ve destroyed the entire East Coast. It’s scary to think about how differently things could’ve gone.
Three Christmas shoppers never came home
Mary Rachel Trlica, 17, Lisa Renee Wilson, 14, and nine-year-old Julie Ann Moseley went Christmas shopping in Fort Worth on December 23, 1974. They visited Seminary South Shopping Center. They never came home. Police later found Rachel’s Oldsmobile right there in the parking lot, with their shopping still inside.
Investigators figured out which stores they went to, as well as the rough times they were there, but couldn’t trace the girls themselves. There have been no confirmed sightings or even any clues about where the girls went. They’re still missing to this day, more than 50 years later.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
12 historical mysteries researchers are still trying to solve
Despite centuries of research, these historical mysteries continue to puzzle experts and inspire endless debate.
12 historical mysteries researchers are still trying to solve
