Top 30 Creepiest Mysteries of the Century (So Far)

Top-30-Creepiest-Mysteries-of-the-Century-So-Far

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for thirty 21st-century mysteries so weird, so creepy that they may just keep you up at night. Viewer beware!

#30: The Mysterious Shrieks of Forest Grove
Forest Grove, Oregon is a sleepy thirty minutes west of Portland. This small northwestern town made a splash in 2016 when residents reported hearing a shrill, supernatural shriek. Nobody was able to pinpoint the source of the eerie, shrill noise. The shrieks seemed to permeate the air, coming from anywhere and everywhere all at once. Some said it sounded like a ghostly train, but there are no tracks near Forest Grove. The mechanical screeches ceased as abruptly as they began a few weeks later. To this day, no one has come up with a reasonable explanation.

#29: Kyron Horman’s Disappearance
The disappearance of young Kyron Horman from Skyline Elementary in 2010 sparked the largest investigation in Oregon’s history. Kyron’s stepmother Terri said she attended the school science fair with him, then left as he walked to his class. Something happened to Kyron, because he never made it to class. The case attracted national attention, and the FBI rolled into town to head the search. Thirteen hundred people hailing from all three west coast states searched for Kyron, but never found a trace of his whereabouts. When police questioned Terri, she failed two polygraphs and appeared to be wrapped up in a murder for hire plot against her husband. Despite that, she was never connected to the disappearance and the investigation remains open.

#28: Medieval Porpoise Grave
In 2017, British archaeologists were excavating a medieval site on Chapelle Dom Hue, a tiny channel island in the English channel off the French coast. Amid the 600 year-old ruins, the researchers discovered a small grave. When they dug up the grave, they were shocked to find the centuries-old remains of a porpoise. Theories about why these medieval islanders buried a porpoise abound. Were they preserving porpoise meat by burying it? Were they showing respect to an animal? Did they think it was a mermaid? Without a time machine, the purpose of this porpoise grave will forever remain a mystery.

#27: The Murder of Hae Min Lee
In 1999, Hae Min Lee was a high school student in Baltimore Maryland. She went missing in January, and her body was discovered a month later. The subsequent arrest, trial, and sentencing of her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, were the subject of the hit true-crime podcast, Serial. Syed’s petition for a new trial was ultimately denied by the Supreme Court in 2019. But, thanks to the podcast - which criticized the evidence and investigation - the case was reopened. The DA moved to vacate the conviction, acknowledging the violation of Syed’s civil rights. In 2023, the verdict was vacated, and then reinstated. To this day, Serial and true-crime fans believe that Hae Min Lee’s killer is still out there, free.

#26: Shark Brain-Eating Parasite
Spring of 2017 was a rough time for fish in the San Francisco Bay. Between February and July, hundreds of dead fish washed up onto the shore. One senior fish pathologist - which really is a thing - estimated that around 1000 leopard sharks and hundreds of bat rays died. Along with them were hundreds of other fish and sharks. It baffled scientists for months, until a researcher discovered brain lesions in a dead shark. Scientists delved further and discovered evidence of a fairly common fish-killing brain parasite. With that mystery solved, one remained: how did parasites native to the sea of Japan jump to species in San Francisco? While there are many theories, there are no answers.

#25: Who Hijacked the Signal?
During the late 2000s, Comcast was the victim of several hijacked cable signals. In 2007, an unknown signal thief hacked into the Disney Channel feed. Perhaps inspired by “Fight Club,” he spliced adult-oriented footage into a children’s show for some viewers in New Jersey. A similar incident occurred in Arizona two years later. During NBC’s broadcast of Super Bowl XLIII, 30 seconds of adult-oriented footage interrupted the Cardinals and the Steelers. In that instance, the FBI found the culprit, a disgruntled Cox Cable employee. The perpetrator of the Disney Channel incident, however, was never found.

#24: Twin Twisters
During this era of extreme weather induced by climate change, twin tornadoes aren’t especially remarkable. Some powerful systems can even generate three or four funnels at a time. Normally, the funnels are different in both size and strength. The two tornadoes that destroyed the town of Pilger, Nebraska in 2014, however, were unique. First, they were almost identical in size and strength: one measured at an EF3 and the other an EF4. Even more strange: both tornadoes rotated in the same direction, which almost never happens with multiple tornadoes. While similar events do happen, they are exceedingly rare.

#23: Raining Bird Corpses
In the middle of the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020, citizens of New Mexico could be forgiven for thinking that the world was about to end. In addition to the plague of the coronavirus, thousands of migrating birds began to fall from the sky, dead. Hundreds of Golden warblers, iridescent swallows, pale flycatchers and others were found dead all over the state. Many were emaciated and appeared to have died from starvation and hypothermia. Some scientists think that the smoke from California’s wildfires forced the birds to adjust their migration patterns. Others think that the changes were caused by droughts. Either way, it seems as if climate change was the culprit, a dark sign for the future of biodiversity on the planet.

#22: The Disappearance of Lars Mittank
The story of Lars Mittank, a German tourist in Bulgaria, is truly bizarre. On vacation in Varna, Mittank and friends were enjoying life at a beach resort. There, Mittank was involved in a bar fight with fellow German soccer fans. During the fight, he ruptured an eardrum and hurt his jaw. The injuries delayed his return home with his friends. The next day, he became paranoid. Mittank called his mom, claiming that men were out to rob or murder him. CCTV footage showed him agitated, pacing the hotel halls. At the airport the next day, Mittank was cleared to fly by a doctor but was visibly agitated. Claiming to fear for his life, the tourist abandoned his luggage, ran into the forest, and vanished forever.

#21: Void in the Pyramid of Khufu
The Pyramids of Giza were built over 4,000 years ago but are still making us ask all sorts of questions. The ScanPyramids project was launched in 2015 to hopefully answer some of these, aiming to investigate the pyramids’ internal structures using imaging techniques that won’t damage the monuments. But two years on, an enormous void said to be the size of an airplane was found within the largest Pyramid of Khufu. Theories about the void range from it being a way for the pyramid builders to keep the tunnels from collapsing to it containing an undiscovered, archaeological goldmine. At the moment, we have no way to go into the void and find out the truth.

#20: The Sony Hack
It’s hard to imagine Seth Rogen at the heart of an international incident, but that’s exactly what happened in the 2014 Sony hack. In December, Sony discovered that a hacker collective called the Guardians of Peace had infiltrated their systems, leaking tons of confidential data. In the wake of the hack, the collective threatened a terrorist attack at the New York premiere of the upcoming comedy, “The Interview.” It was well known at the time that North Korea was enraged by the film’s portrayal of Kim Jong-un. North Korean hacker Park Jin-hyok was eventually charged by the DOJ, and North Korea was sanctioned. Still, many people - including Rogen - doubt the rogue nation’s involvement. Some think it was an inside job by angry-ex employees.

#19: Siberian Sinkholes
In July 2014, helicopters flying over the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia discovered a vast crater in the wilderness, thought to be a recently formed sinkhole. Later the same month, reindeer herders found more of these enormous sinkholes, one also in the Yamal Peninsula, and another to the east. A huge sinkhole on the other side of the country, in the Chersky Range, has been dubbed the “doorway to the underworld” thanks to booms heard inside. It’s thought that the sinkholes form when permafrost melts due to rapid global warming. Some theories link this process to explosions of underground natural gas reserves. Whatever the cause of the strange sinkholes is, it’s definitely not good.

#18: What Did Brandon Swanson See?
In the early hours of May 14th, 2008, Brandon Swanson, a college student from Minnesota drove his car into a ditch on his way home from a party. The car wouldn’t start, so he did what anyone would and called his parents, who drove out to get him. Brandon stayed on the phone for over 45 minutes, but his parents were unable to find him. At 2:30 AM, Brandon swore, and the call cut off. The following day, his car was found, located 25 miles further away from where he thought he was. The most common theory is that Brandon fell into a nearby river and drowned, but his body has never been found.

#17: Severed Head in Pennsylvania
While walking home in 2014, a teenage boy in Economy, Pennsylvania stumbled across a grisly artifact in the woods in: a woman’s head. Bizarrely, the head was embalmed, meaning someone had gone to great lengths to look after it – so why they would dump it in the woods is anyone’s guess. Though sketches and a 3D model have been released to the public, nobody has been able to identify the head, and the body it belongs to has also never been found; no hospital or morgue had a headless cadaver that matched. Strangest of all was the fact the eyes were replaced with bouncy balls, which could suggest it was involved in the black-market organ trade.

#16: Whose Heart Was This?
Paramedics in Norwalk, Ohio were parked outside a convenience store on August 25, 2016, waiting for calls. Instead, they found a human heart. The heart was in a sealed Ziploc bag in a field near the parking lot. It was determined that the heart was human and had been freshly removed, dropped in the field very close to the time the EMTs discovered it. It’s thought that the heart was an organ being sold on the black market, but the owner or potential recipient, not to mention whoever left it there, has never been found.

#15: Octopuses on Land
One dark night in October 2017, a tour group in Ceredigion, Wales came across an unusual sight: dozens of curled octopuses crawling across New Quay beach. Octopuses can survive out of water for about half an hour, but it’s extremely unusual for dozens to flee the sea at the same time. By the following morning, many had died on the shores, failing to return to the ocean at all. This behavior continued for several nights. Explanations have varied, including them getting shaken up by recent storms in the area or confused by the bright lights of the harbor.

#14: Havana Syndrome
In 2016, American and Canadian embassy staff in Cuba began to report unusual health problems after hearing a loud noise, described by some to sound like marbles rolling across a floor. The sufferers became dizzy and nauseous, reporting headaches and “pressure” – injuries eventually determined to be “concussion[s] without [the] concussion.” The US authorities blamed the Cuban government for carrying out the alleged “attacks,” which Cuba denied. In 2018 US diplomats in China made similar reports. Theories have ranged from cricket noises and psychogenic illness to pesticides and microwave weapons; but so far, there’s no conclusive answer.

#13: Arkansas Bird Deaths
On New Year’s Day 2011, the small town of Beebe, Arkansas, was shaken by the ominous, mass deaths of up to 5,000 blackbirds. It was thought that the birds died after flying into buildings and obstacles when they were startled by fireworks, so the following year, fireworks were banned in Beebe. Except, even with these restrictions, an additional 200 birds died after flying into buildings on the same night. Some believe that the 2012 deaths were the result of someone setting off fireworks in a roost of birds maliciously, but if this is the case, the culprit was never caught.

#12: Who Was the Atlantic City Serial Killer?
Also known as the Eastbound Strangler, this killer murdered four women, all identified as sex workers, in October and November 2006. The bodies were left lined up in a row facing eastward in a ditch behind a motel, fully clothed except for their shoes and socks, all strangled to death. A few suspects have been questioned by police with no charges or convictions. At one point police investigated a possible connection to the Long Island Serial Killer, but to no avail – though the theory that the killers are the same person remains popular.

#11: The Watcher
Derek and Maria Broaddus were a happy couple, planning to move their three young kids into their New Jersey dream house. A few days after closing in the summer of 2014, they received a strange letter. It was signed by someone calling themselves The Watcher, who claimed to have been watching the house for years. They knew the house had been sold - and to whom - even though it was never listed. Two more letters followed, dark and threatening. The Watcher somehow knew the names of all the Broaddus children. No further letters followed, but the family was too scared to ever move in. They sold the house at a loss a few years later. The Watcher’s identity was never discovered.

#10: Elisa Lam
On January 31, Canadian tourist Elisa Lam, who’d been staying at the Cecil Hotel in LA, failed to check in with her parents. Nearly three weeks later, her body was found in the water tank on the roof. An autopsy showed that she’d drowned; it was never discovered how she managed to get to the roof and into the water tank, then close the door behind her. But strangest of all was highly disturbing security footage that was released before her body was found. The footage has no sound but shows Elisa visibly distressed. Though she was bipolar, many argue that this does not explain her extreme behavior, and point out that the hotel has a sordid history of suicides, murders, and serial killers.

#9: Disappearance of Madeleine McCann
On May 3rd, 2007, four-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared from her bedroom during a family vacation in Portugal, never to be seen again. It became one of the most heavily publicized events in British media, gaining international attention as the search for “Maddie” intensified. The most common theory is that somebody abducted her from the holiday apartment while her parents were at a nearby restaurant. However, British tabloids and Twitter users targeted her parents. Express Newspapers was later forced to pay damages and apologize. Ultimately, no one has ever been charged and a body has never been found.

#8: Henry McCabe's Last Voicemail
Before his death in September 2015, Henry McCabe spent Labor Day weekend drinking with a friend, William Kennedy. But McCabe never came home. Instead, police found his body in Rush Lake, Minnesota two months later. Before he died, however, he left a disturbing voice message on his wife’s phone, in which he said he’d been shot. A second voice and unusual growling can also be heard. Yet McCabe’s body didn’t have a gunshot wound; it was officially ruled that he’d drowned. To date, nobody knows whether his death was accidental or if he was murdered.

#7: Stockholm Submarines
In 2011, 2014, and again in 2018, mysterious submarines were sighted in the Stockholm archipelago by the Swedish military. This happened several times during the Cold War, with Russian submarines wandering into Swedish waters; but while the more recent submarine sightings have also been blamed on Russia, nobody is sure what they were doing there. In 2014 a search was launched, and a photograph of the alleged submarine distributed to the public, but the sub itself was never identified or claimed. Stranger still, however, it’s also been speculated that the subs sighted belong to NATO.

#6: The Salish Sea Feet
Since 2007, 21 human feet have been found on beaches in the Pacific Northwest and west coast of Canada, washed up from the Salish Sea. It’s actually not unheard of for a body part to end up on a beach like this, and the feet become disembodied due to ordinary decomposition; but so many detached feet washing up on the same stretch of coast is a statistical anomaly, to say the least. While some of the feet have been identified as belonging to people who committed suicide by jumping from bridges, many of them have not.

#5: Radio Bursts from Deep Space
Beginning in 2007, fast radio bursts – or FRBs – coming from deep space have reached Earth’s telescopes. It was eventually determined that the FRBs are likely coming from a dwarf galaxy 3 billion lightyears away, but as for what’s causing them in the first place, nobody is entirely sure. Some explanations for the true FRB source include an active black hole throwing out light-speed particles, or a collision of two enormous neutron stars. However, some have wondered whether the bursts are alien communications. Of course, even if this were true, the signals would have been sent at least 3 billion years ago, so the senders may not exist anymore.

#4: The West Mesa Tragedies
In 2009, a dog walker stumbled across a human bone on the West Mesa of Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the weeks that followed, police uncovered the bodies of 11 women, nearly all of them known sex workers, killed between 2001 and 2005 and buried in shallow graves. The bodies were so decomposed that a cause of death has never been determined. The killer has since been dubbed the West Mesa Bone Collector, and though at the time it was one of the most notorious crimes in the state’s history, police had very few leads. As a result, nobody has ever been charged with the murders, and the investigation continues.

#3: The Jamison Family
Bobby, Sherilyn, and their young daughter Madyson were a seemingly ordinary family living in Oklahoma, but in late 2008 they disappeared. Their car was found in a remote wood, abandoned and full of their most important possessions, including their wallets, phones, cash, and dog. A search of the surrounding area found nothing. Then, four years on, the bodies of all three Jamisons were discovered just three miles from where the truck had been dumped. A cause of death was never determined. While some think the family was murdered by Bobby’s father or drug dealers, others believe there was a more supernatural cause, as the Jamisons believed their house was haunted before they left.

#2: Japanese Ghost Boats
The arrival of North Korean ghost ships in Japan is actually a common occurrence. However, in 2019 one of these boats housed an especially gruesome discovery: five corpses and two heads that may or may not have belonged to any of the bodies. It’s generally thought that these boats come from North Korea, and belong to either fishermen or defectors, although the former is considered much more likely. In 2017, a ship with its crew still alive was also found on the coast of Japan, and they explained that their ship had broken down before returning to the DPRK.

#1: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
On the fateful day of March 8th, 2014, Flight 370 flying from Kuala Lumpur disappeared over the Indian Ocean. What ensued was the most exhaustive search effort in the history of aviation, and it was all to no avail; the plane’s wreckage or approximate position have never been found, and all 239 people on board are presumed dead. The only clue we have to the plane’s whereabouts are pieces of debris that washed up on shore in the following years. Theories on why the plane went down range from a tragic fire to a hijacking - with some even suggesting that the plane was pulled into a black hole.

Did an entry that should be on this list mysteriously go missing? Let us know in the comments below!