Twenty files that show the method.
There are 370 case files here and no obvious front door, so this is one. Rather than sort by popularity, these are grouped by how each case actually ended — which is the distinction the archive is built around, and the one most sites in this subject never make.
Claims inside a file are tagged for confidence: Verified for primary documentary support, Claimed for an assertion by a named party, Disputed where credible sources contradict each other, and Unverified for what could not be substantiated. The full standard is here.
Once denied, now documented. 71 files carry this status
The strongest thing this archive can show you: cases where the official denial is a matter of record, and so is the document that overturned it. Start here if you want to know why the rest is worth reading.
MK-Ultra: The CIA's Twenty-Year Mind-Control Program
What the surviving documents prove, what was destroyed before disclosure, and what's still classified about the agency's experiments on civilians, soldiers, and prisoners from 1953 to 1973.
COINTELPRO: Fifteen Years of Disrupting American Political Organizations
The FBI's covert program of surveillance, infiltration, and disruption of US political organizations from 1956 to 1971. Five sub-programs, the King 'suicide letter,' the Hampton killing.
Operation Northwoods (1962)
The Joint Chiefs' formal proposal for false-flag attacks on US targets to manufacture justification for a Cuba invasion. Signed by Lemnitzer, rejected by Kennedy, declassified forty-seven years later.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study
The US Public Health Service's forty-year experiment on 600 Black men in Macon County, Alabama. Penicillin became standard care in 1947 and was deliberately withheld.
The Pentagon Papers (1971)
Daniel Ellsberg's leak of the McNamara-commissioned 7,000-page Vietnam War history. NYT v. United States (1971).
The Snowden Disclosures (2013)
The NSA contractor's June 2013 disclosures via Greenwald, Poitras, and Gellman. PRISM, STELLAR WIND, MUSCULAR, XKeyscore, Section 215 metadata.
Resolved as fabrication. 42 files carry this status
The same standard, pointed the other way. A site that only ever confirms is not applying a standard — these are the files where the evidence went against the story.
The Cottingley Fairies (1917-1920)
Five photographs by cousins Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths near Cottingley Beck. Promoted by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his 1920 Strand Magazine article.
The MJ-12 Documents
The alleged 1947 Truman-established Majestic 12 committee for Roswell UAP issues. Documents surfaced 1984 via anonymous 35mm film.
The Philadelphia Experiment (1943)
The alleged Navy invisibility experiment on the USS Eldridge. Origin: 1955 letters from 'Carlos Allende' to Morris Jessup. Allen's 1980 admission to Moore.
The Loch Ness Surgeon's Photograph (1934)
The April 1934 Daily Mail publication that became the iconic Nessie image. The 1975/1994 Spurling-Wetherell confession revealing the hoax.
The Vinland Map
The map once-dated to c. 1440 showing Vinland alongside Europe and Asia. The September 2021 Yale Beinecke formal conclusion: a 20th-century forgery.
Actually closed. 21 files carry this status
Closure that really happened, usually decades late and usually by a method that did not exist when the case opened.
The Somerton Man (1948): The Tamám Shud Case
An unidentified man found dead on an Adelaide beach in 1948. Identified July 2022 via DNA genealogy as Carl 'Charles' Webb. Cause of death still unknown.
The Golden State Killer
The East Area Rapist and Original Night Stalker responsible for at least 13 murders and dozens of rapes across California from 1974 to 1986, and the 2018 investigative genetic genealogy breakthrough that identified former police officer Joseph James DeAngelo.
The Boy in the Box (Philadelphia, 1957)
The body of an unidentified malnourished boy found in a cardboard JC Penney box in Fox Chase, Philadelphia. Identified December 8, 2022 via DNA genealogy as Joseph Augustus Zarelli.
The Death of Elisa Lam (2013)
Found drowned in the rooftop water tank of the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles after weeks of internet attention to the strange elevator surveillance video.
Still open. 200 files carry this status
The hard ones. No claim of a solution appears on these pages, because there isn't one — only what is known, what is claimed, and what is missing.
The Dyatlov Pass Incident (1959)
Nine Soviet hikers killed in the northern Urals. The 2020 official Russian study attributed the deaths to a slab avalanche; the 2021 Gaume-Puzrin paper proposed a mechanism for the injuries. Several questions remain.
The Roswell Incident (July 1947)
The crash near Corona, NM. Mogul balloon explanation (1994 USAF report) vs. continued speculation about the recovery.
The Zodiac Killer
Five confirmed Northern California murders 1968-1969 by an unidentified killer who sent taunting letters and ciphers. Z408 solved 1969; Z340 solved December 2020.
The Voynich Manuscript
A 15th-century manuscript at Yale, written in an alphabet that matches no known writing system. Carbon-dated to 1404-1438.
Göbekli Tepe
In southern Turkey, hunter-gatherers carved limestone pillars up to 5 meters tall and arranged them in stone-walled enclosures around 9600 BCE.
Then what
Collections group files by theme across the pillars — cryptids, unsolved murders, government human experiments, official UFO programs, lost treasures, WWII anomalies.
Browse filters the whole archive by pillar, era, topic and status.
Dispatches record what changed when a file had to be updated.
RSS carries new files as they publish.