Unexplained Events.

What this pillar covers

Unexplained Events covers four overlapping types of case: mysterious deaths (the Somerton Man, the Boy in the Box, the Yuba County Five), disappearances (Roanoke, Amelia Earhart, the Sodder children), unsolved crimes (the Zodiac Killer, the Black Dahlia, D.B. Cooper), and natural or sensory anomalies the record can document but science hasn't fully accounted for (the Wow! Signal, the Hessdalen Lights, the Tunguska event).

These cases are different from the ones in the declassified pillar in an important way: the evidence isn't hidden behind classification. It's in plain sight — police files, coroner reports, contemporary newspapers, witness statements taken at the time. The reason the case is still open is that the documented evidence simply doesn't reach a conclusion, no matter how thoroughly it's reviewed. Investigators have been looking at the Dyatlov Pass autopsies for sixty-six years. The autopsies haven't changed.

Featured cases

• File · Unexplained · Updated May 2026

  The Dyatlov Pass Incident (1959)

  Nine Soviet hikers killed in the northern Urals under circumstances the 2021 official Russian study still hasn't fully resolved. The slab-avalanche hypothesis explains some of the injuries; not all of them.

The catalogue

Cases planned for this pillar, organized by category. Files marked ✓ are published; the rest are in research or queued.

Mysterious deaths

• ✓ The Dyatlov Pass Incident (1959)
• The Boy in the Box (Philadelphia, 1957) — Identified December 2022 as Joseph Augustus Zarelli; murder still unsolved.
• The Death of Edgar Allan Poe (1849).
• The Death of Elisa Lam (2013) — Cecil Hotel rooftop water tank.
• The Death of Gloria Ramirez ("Toxic Lady," 1994).
• The Lead Masks Case (1966, Brazil).
• The Yuba County Five (1978).
• The Hinterkaifeck Murders (1922, Bavaria).
• The Lake Bodom Murders (1960, Finland).
• The Somerton Man / Tamam Shud (1948) — Identified 2022 as Carl Webb; cause unknown.
• The Death of Natalie Wood (1981).
• The Death of Marilyn Monroe (1962).
• The Death of Vince Foster (1993).
• The Death of Olof Palme (1986, Sweden).
• The Death of David Kelly (2003, UK).
• The Death of Frank Olson (1953) — See also MK-Ultra.

Disappearances

• The Roanoke Colony (1587) — In production.
• The Sodder Children (1945, West Virginia).
• The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann (2007, Portugal).
• The Disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa (1975).
• The Disappearance of Amelia Earhart (1937).
• The Disappearance of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1944).
• The Disappearance of Glenn Miller (1944).
• The Lake Anjikuni Disappearance (1930) — Now substantially debunked by RCMP records.
• The Eilean Mor Lighthouse Disappearance (1900).
• The Princes in the Tower (1483).
• The Mary Celeste (1872).
• The SS Ourang Medan (1947?) — Existence itself disputed.
• The Bennington Triangle (1945–1950).
• The Alaska Triangle.
• The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich (1978) — See also UFOs.
• The Bermuda Triangle: Flight 19 (1945).
• The Lost Colony of Greenland.
• The Disappearance of Theodosia Burr Alston (1813).

Unsolved crimes and serial cases

• The Zodiac Killer (1968–1969+) — Some ciphers solved 2020; identity not confirmed.
• The Black Dahlia (1947).
• The Cleveland Torso Murderer / Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run (1935–1938).
• D.B. Cooper Hijacking (1971).
• The Original Night Stalker / Golden State Killer — The investigation that led to the 2018 solve.
• The Doodler (1974–1975, SF).
• The Long Island Serial Killer / Gilgo Beach — Updated through the 2023 Heuermann arrest.
• The Atlas Vampire (Stockholm 1932).
• The Servant Girl Annihilator (Austin, 1884–1885).
• Jack the Ripper (1888).

Lights, signals, and natural anomalies

• The Wow! Signal (1977).
• The Hessdalen Lights (Norway).
• The Marfa Lights (Texas).
• The Min Min Light (Australia).
• The Naga Fireballs (Mekong).
• The Brown Mountain Lights (NC).
• The Tunguska Event (1908).
• The Vela Incident (1979).
• The 1859 Carrington Event.
• The Hum (Bristol, Taos, and others).

Bizarre and historical anomalies

• The Dancing Plague of 1518 (Strasbourg).
• The Sweating Sickness (England, 1485–1551).
• The Year Without a Summer (1816).
• The Voynich Manuscript.
• The Beale Ciphers (1819–1885).
• The Dorabella Cipher (1897).
• The Kryptos Sculpture (CIA HQ, 1990) — Three solved, fourth open.
• The Phaistos Disc.

Folklore-adjacent (covered as cultural case files)

• The Mothman of Point Pleasant (1966–1967).
• The Beast of Gévaudan (1764–1767).
• The Hopkinsville Goblins (1955).
• The Flatwoods Monster (1952).
• Spring-Heeled Jack (Victorian London).
• The Devil's Footprints (1855, Devon).
• The Cottingley Fairies (1917–1920) — Confessed hoax. The file is about credulity.
• The Patterson-Gimlin Film (1967).
• The Loch Ness "Surgeon's Photograph" (1934) — Confessed hoax 1994.

How we handle "unexplained"

The word "unexplained" gets used to mean two different things: cases where no plausible explanation has been offered, and cases where many explanations have been offered but none have closed the file. Almost everything on this pillar is the second kind. The job of a case file is to lay out the proposed explanations honestly, note which evidence each one accommodates and which it doesn't, and refuse to declare a winner where the evidence doesn't.

Cases where mainstream science or law enforcement has converged on an answer (Lake Anjikuni, the Cottingley fairies, the Loch Ness 1934 photograph) are still worth files — not as mysteries, but as case histories of how the public record arrived at the answer it has.