Everyone loves a good, solid mystery, from cruel murders by unidentified hands to "who built this big, ancient stone thing?" People are compelled by the unexplained, lured by the cryptic, and spellbound by the unknown. It is in our very nature to seek answers, and we, as a species, are notorious for it. Our intellectual curiosity is the reason why we are not living in mud huts by a river somewhere and instead have commonplace technologies, which would seem utterly alien and magical to people alive even a hundred years ago. However, for all the modern world’s answers and explanations, there will always be some things that remain unknown and possibly even unknowable. I’m gonna pretend I’m Robert Stack and take you all through a shortlist of good unsolved mysteries, avoiding a few notables like the Zodiac Killer, JonBenet Ramsay, the Mickey Mouse penis debacle...really anything that’s had an issue of Time Magazine devoted to it.
Beginning in the late 1980s, odd tile mosaics have occasionally shown up embedded in the pavement of streets in many major cities across the nation. Each of these tiles makes a cryptic reference to the works of historian Arnold Toynbee, the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a purported resurrection of the dead on Jupiter, or, if not that, a grand conspiracy between the mainstream media, the US government, and the USSR (despite many of the tiles appearing since the collapse of the USSR), which is tame compared to the dead being resurrected on Jupiter. As you might have guessed, nobody knows who is doing this, how the tiles are being placed or why, but naturally, there are many hypotheses, all of which are interesting.
In 1948, a corpse was discovered on a beach in Adelaide, Australia. It was the body of a man wearing a very sharp suit, well-polished shoes, and an outwardly snappy appearance. The man possessed neither wallet nor identifying documents. Additionally, even the labels on his clothes had all been carefully removed. His fingerprints were unknown, and the only clue which law enforcement had to go on was a piece of rolled-up paper hidden in a secret pocket in his slacks. The paper was torn out of a copy of the famous Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and contained only the words "Tamam Shud," which means "it has ended." While eventually, the cops were able to some-the-fuck-how track down the exact copy from which the paper had been torn (it had been left in a taxi), in which they found a phone number and a bizarre code. The number was to a woman who lived nearby, who claimed not to know the deceased, and that she had sold a Rubaiyat to a different man, who was not only alive but still had the book when asked. The code remains unsolved, and the body unidentified.
The year is 1966, and the place is Rio De Janeiro. A small boy finds two dead bodies, and so the police were called to investigate. The bodies were laying evenly next to one another, and each was also wearing a suit and tie. I guess if you’re gonna go out mysteriously, the tip these guys and Tamam Shud have for you is, "dress nicely." In addition to formal clothing, each was also wearing a waterproof coat, as well as an eye mask made of lead. The was no evidence of foul play or trauma on the bodies. A small notebook on one of the bodies was found, which revealed a short agenda, translated here from Portuguese: "16:30 arrive at the specified location. 18:30 ingest the capsules. After the effect, protect metals await signal mask." This does not make any more sense in Portuguese. Police reconstructed much of the men’s day leading up to their deaths, but no definitive cause was ever determined.
Deep in the then-Soviet Union’s Ural Mountains in 1959, a group of nine experienced hikers was found dead in the deep winter snow. Having camped on the eastern slope of the "Dead Mountain," they were found in various states of undress, some distance from their campsite, with many of the bodies having endured severe physical trauma. Two of them were missing their eyes, one was missing a tongue, and more curious still, one was missing their eyebrows, and several had severe burns. Even odder, their tent was found to have been ripped open from the inside, some of their clothing (which they were scarcely wearing) had been scorched by heat, and levels of radiation were found on others. Six were concluded to have died of hypothermia, and three others by physical trauma after meeting a "compelling natural force." The record of the events was then stashed away in a secret archive until 2009. Recent re-investigation has concluded more-or-less the same thing the Soviets did, with many of the mysterious circumstances still unaccounted for. Wilder theories include predation by some kind of Yeti-like creature, or a run-in with UFOs, while other more plain hypotheses state the events were merely the result of a freak avalanche.
Just kidding. We know the real killer was racism or some shit.
In July of 1518, in what is now modern-day Strasbourg, France, a young woman began frenetically dancing in the street, only to eventually collapse in a heap, unable to move any further. Soon, the Strasbourgers noticed that others also began dancing in a similar manner, and the numbers of people dancing were rising. The institutions of authority did what they could to try to help, mostly by putting some of the afflicted into asylums and/or special church services. None of this particularly seemed to help, as the dancers eventually rose to an estimated 400 people. Their reasoning back then was demonic possession, or "overheated blood." Modern guesses include ergot mold poisoning (which causes an LSD-like trip but no compulsion to dance) or simply mass hysteria, which seems like a cop-out to me.
Really, who steals a tuna salad sandwich? Who steals any food made by a random stranger and left sitting in a fridge? At least, unlike Subway*, however, I actually made mine with real tuna. Suspects around the Exotic office include the guy with poor hygiene from IT and possibly the lady who claims to only consume those diet shakes, with not much to show for it. Wilder theories suggest the involvement of Sasquatch, and more tame ones suggest that Dave from receiving (who always reeks of weed) may have been responsible.
So, there we go—a few brain-boggling mysteries, which may never have proper explanations.
Now, to try and solve them.
Good luck,
-WStM
*In a series of lab tests, Subway’s tuna sandwiches were found not to contain any tuna. It is unknown as of this writing what exactly is in them. If you think I’m pulling your mackerel, a quick search will reveal many articles about it.
Wombstretcha the Magnificent is a Scooby-Doo-esque amateur sleuth, sharp-dressed corpse, writer, and semi-retired rapper from Portland, OR. He can be found at Wombstretcha.com, on Twitter as @Wombstretcha503 and on Facebook (boo!) and MeWe (yay!) as "Wombstretcha The Magniflcent."
