People want to believe in magic and miracles, so we often enjoy unsolved mysteries more than any other kind of story. For that reason, the stories of the mysteries persist—even long after we discover the actual explanations behind them.
Atlantis started capturing our imaginations during the time of the Greek philosophers, when Plato first mentioned it in his letters to Socrates. In Plato’s story, an entire continent of advanced beings with an unstoppable naval force were defeated by the ancient Athenians. After the defeat, the ocean swallowed the continent of Atlantis, leaving no trace of its existence.
The story was an allegory. It served as a warning against any nation thinking itself invincible, and no one in ancient times took Plato’s claim literally.
Furthermore, modern science proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Atlantis did not exist. Simply put, a continent could not have sunk into the ocean as recently as 3,000 years ago without leaving clear traces of its existence. A study of plate tectonics provides all the proof needed that no such continent existed.
Some supporters of Atlantis believe the scope of the myth can be adjusted to fit islands, though none that matches has been found. Many islands in the Mediterranean seem to come within a stone’s throw of fitting, but upon closer inspection, none quite match up.
Pope Benedict called the Shroud of Turin the authentic burial robe of Jesus. This simple linen cloth, say believers, bears the imprint of Jesus’s face. Many speculate that when Jesus resurrected, a flash of energy burned his image into the cloth, kind of like an ancient Polaroid.
The shroud was the focal point of discussions for centuries. Believers claimed it was genuine, and retractors claimed it was a forgery. Finally, in 1988, the Holy See allowed the shroud to be tested. Carbon dating done by labs in Zurich, Oxford, and Arizona all date the shroud to the 13th or 14th century, a period considerably after the time of Jesus. This did little to convince believers the shroud was anything less than the cloth in which He was buried.
Only one burial shroud from Jesus’s time has been found. A comparison with it suggests that the Shroud of Turin is indeed a hoax. This second cloth is much older than the Shroud of Turin and has a simpler weave. It also appears to have belonged to a rich man, and since there is little debate as to Jesus’s status as a poor man, it is highly unlikely that He would have had a finer cloth than someone far wealthier.
Auras are a focal point of New Age beliefs. We all have been to a fair or a carnival where, for a couple dollars, someone will take a photo of our aura. The photographer uses a method known as Kirlian photography to produce a picture that shows a misty color that surrounds the subject. The color of this aura reveals everything about us, from our creativity levels to our health. These auras are said to be visible to psychics without the use of cameras.
In an effort to take all the fun out of life, scientists proved that auras aren’t actually auras at all. They are sweat. The photographs capture the electrically charged water vapor that surrounds us. The more we sweat, the bigger and brighter the aura appears. As a result, when scientists take multiple photos of the same subject under different conditions, moments apart, different “auras” appear.
If someone does genuinely see an aura around others without special equipment, they’re detecting something different, but that doesn’t they’re psychic. They may be suffering from migraines—or may be epileptic.
Roanoke, Virginia is home to the oldest cold case in the United States.
The settlement consisted of Governor John White and between 90 and 115 men, women, and children. In 1587, this intrepid group of settlers landed and set up shop. A few weeks afterward, White’s daughter gave birth to the first English child born on American soil, Virginia Dare.
The people of the colony soon ran short of tools, food, and weapons, so White went back to England to retrieve them. It took three years for Governor White to return to Roanoke, where he found the entire colony had wandered off. Or died. Or maybe aliens abducted them. No one really knew what happened to them. White could not search for the lost colony, due to being alone in hostile territory. The only clue left behind by the settlers were the words “Croatoan” and “Cro” carved into the fort walls and a tree.
For the next four centuries, general consensus said the settlers had moved south to an island inhabited by the Croatoan tribe, though no evidence backs this up. That theory satisfied most historians until 2012, when someone at the British Museum noticed that John White’s map had been patched. Using modern imaging techniques, the museum found markings that indicated another settlement about 80 kilometers (50 mi) inland from the small island.
The First Colony Foundation, armed with this new knowledge, examined the area indicated under the map’s patch. Wooden structures lay under the ground there. This suggests that the Roanoke settlers moved inland to escape hostile natives and adverse weather.
When the Bolsheviks revolted in Russia, they claimed to have killed the entire family of Tsar Nikolas II. Anastasia, the youngest of Nikolas’s children, wasn’t buried with the family. Friends of the Romanovs kept the location of the mass graves secret, and rumors of her escape from the Reds persisted for nearly a century.
Dozens of people have claimed to be the missing princess. Most of these people were mentally ill, but that made little difference to those who believed she’d managed to escape.
The mystery captured the world’s attentions and led to multiple films with the princess as the title character. But in reality, though, Anastasia’s body was found in 1991.
DNA evidence proves that the body belongs to a child of Tsar Nikolas, and all his other children have been accounted for. The body also belonged to a female of the right age and matches Anastasia’s size.
Steeped in myth and with more than a few movies and an opera written about it, The Flying Dutchman is the most well-known ghost ship. Said to be cursed to forever sail the seas without the ability to go to port, the ship serves to warn sailors of disaster. Sightings of the ship have happened as late as the 19th and early 20th centuries.
It is thought the ship sunk during a storm off the Cape of Good Hope in the late 1600s. The mystery started afterward. It is said the ship flies over the water and predicts great misery to sailors and ships who don’t heed her warning.
A natural explanation exists for this ghost ship. A Fata Morgana is a type of mirage. Like all mirages, a Fata Morgana bends light as it travels through air of differing density, creating an image where no object exists—in this case, the image of a real ship broadcast into the air across a great distance.
Fata Morgana most often form in cold water areas. Such conditions also often precede storms, making it seem like one’s appearance really does warn of danger.
The second ghost ship on our list, and arguably the scarier tale, is the Mary Celeste. In 1872, the Mary Celeste left Canada bound for Italy and weeks later was found devoid of crew. All the supplies and cargo sat undisturbed after the crew disappeared. Did pirates take the crew? Space aliens? Did Cthulhu climb from the depths and swallow them whole? Maybe, according to the History channel.
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a short story about the ship, and Bela Lugosi got in on the act too. Doyle thought an escaped slave took revenge on the crew, while the Lugosi film blamed a murderous crew member. Both explanations have been dismissed as highly unlikely.
Working backward from what is known about the ship, the most likely culprit was the cargo. The ship carried some 1,700 barrels of industrial alcohol, and nine empty casks leaked into the hold. Investigators believe that the vapors from the spilled alcohol would have expanded in the hold due to the heat. Such pressure would have blown open a hatch, which would have scared the crew into abandoning the ship, reasonably fearing an explosion was imminent.
The men in black—suited government agents traveling in pairs or trios to cover up alien incidents—are integral to UFO lore such as Roswell and Area 51 stories. Made famous by the Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith blockbuster, the myth of these men goes back to the 1940s. Firsthand accounts of these men bullying people into staying quiet about their encounters stretch all the way back to nearly the first recorded sighting of UFOs.
And yet these tales are the creation of one man, Gray Barker. He reported the first sightings of the men in black, along with equally false claims of seeing the “Mothman.” Barker was a theater manager who spent his free time as a “journalist” and an avid reader of science-fiction. He presented his findings as fact to cash in on the frenzy surrounding UFO sightings.
Mr. Gray loved to play jokes on people. He collaborated with other ufologists to prank the general public and to increase the interest in UFO sightings.
The pyramids of Egypt and Stonehenge leave many of us have wondering how ancient humans managed to move such stones around without the use of modern tools. Did they use magic?
Yet this is mystery that gets less and less puzzling as time goes by. Not only have various archaeologists proposed reasonable explanations behind the construction—random individuals have managed to duplicate it single-handedly.
A retired construction worker named Wally Wallington built a replica of Stonehenge in his backyard with nothing but science and a little creativity. Using tools that were available to Stone Age man, he moved 1,000-kilogram (22,000 lb) rocks, all on his own. It seems that we may have been underestimating the power of human ingenuity for all these years.
These same principles let a Latvian immigrant to build his own castle in South Florida. Over the course of 31 years, starting in 1920, Edward Leedskalnin cut, moved, and positioned over 900 metric tons (1,000 tons) of coral rock. He used the coral to make a castle and furniture. all without the use of modern tools. Why? Because his 16-year-old lover left him on his wedding day.
Amazing? Absolutely. Magical? Not so much.
Amelia Earhart flew off into history and right off the map in 1937. She planned to fly around the world, making her the first woman to accomplish the feat. After she vanished, theories emerged to explain what may have happened to her. Some say she was a spy for Theodore Roosevelt, others say she was executed by the Japanese, while still others say she lived her life out on an island with a fisherman.
A massive operation combed the seas for any evidence that she still survived. A Naval aviator that helped during the initial search found signs of people on an island in the South Pacific. It seems that people didn’t find his discovery to be important, as the island was left unexamined, even though it was right under her supposed flight path.
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) have since searched the island for definitive evidence that Earhart was there. In 1940, they discovered a skeleton, a shoe, an empty bottle, and a sextant box.
The skeleton was only a partial, due to snow crabs hauling off a bunch of bones, and the rest has since been lost; apparently, no one found it important that a skeleton just happened to be on an island within striking distance of where Amelia Earhart was heading. Yet, looking back, the evidence for the remains being hers was strong. These were the remains of a white woman who matched Amelia Earhart in stature. And near her were a woman’s shoe, a broken jar of makeup, and glass from an airplane windshield.
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