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Great Unsolved Crimes or Events

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On the 30th of September, 1907, William Thomas Thurling Steenson died in Lismore, Northern NSW, Australia, after trying to stop a runaway train carriage in the line of duty at nearby Mullumbimby. Seventy years later his gravestone provoked worldwide interest after it was found to be inexplicably glowing. This is the true story of Lismore's Glowing Cross.

 

In early 1978 a strange happening occurred in the small Australian city of Lismore, as reports started to circulate about a mysterious 'glowing' or 'fiery' cross on the outskirts of town.

 

The North Lismore cemetery had long since ceased to take new burials, with the majority of those at rest coming from the town's pioneer cedar-getting and farming days, but the headstone in question belonged to the grave of Steenson, a railway worker killed in a "shunting accident" at Mullumbimby in 1907.

 

For months the local press ran front page stories, and people gathered in their 'hundreds' at night to witness with their own eyes the strange phenomenon. From near and far they came as the press whipped up a storm of controversy, with faith healers, physicists, religious 'pilgrims' and the just plain curious pouring into town.

 

It emerged that some locals had been aware of the existence of the glowing cross for over 60 years, and the Steenson family themselves expressed their displeasure at the publicity and vandalism it attracted to the resting place they believed should be left in peace..

 

Debate raged in the community about what made the granite cross glow. While some claimed it was reflected light, others thought it was the properties of the stone itself, or even the supernatural at work.

 

However no consensus emerged, and the cross eventually returned to the weed-covered obscurity it had come from before being 'rediscovered' in the mid-1980's.

 

These days the whole affair is actually a mystery within a mystery as in 1986, at the height of a period of renewed media interest, the Glowing Cross disappeared.

 

It has not been heard from since...

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I just found this thread so I'm going to comment on a lot of stuff. My apologies for the length, but I love these kind of unsolved mysteries too.

 

You asked about Amy Bradley - I think it looks a lot like her. It's not unheard of for stuff like that to happen. As a woman, I would be sure to be extra careful if I ever go on any of those cruises.

 

I've read two books about DB Cooper and I am utterly convinced that he died. None of the money was ever in circulation. The money in the Columbia River was some of the money he got from them. The real mystery is what happened to his body.

 

I still consider the West Memphis 3 case to be unsolved. I just don't believe they did it. The Bojangles thing still freaks me out. The staff saw a big guy with cuts on his arm come in covered in blood and mud, makes a huge mess in their bathroom (including shitting on himself). So they called the police, who took DNA samples from the walls and then lost them??? It's so backwoods. The Bojangles guy was supposed to be a black guy too, and they found "african american hair" on the sheets wrapped around one of the bodies.

 

I swear I once read that someone had come forward as the Max Headroom guy, but I must have been imagining it. I could have been thinking of the Captain Midnight thing.

 

I don't think Darlie Routier killed her children, but I think she could know who did. I've ALWAYS wondered why the husband was never implicated. Surely there's no way she beat/cut herself up like that. Couldn't he have done it? The "gravesite birthday" thing didn't shock me like it did most people. What did they expect her to do? Slit her wrists over her kids' graves on their birthday? I wouldn't begrudge someone to remember their recently murdered children in a happy way, as opposed to a sad way. And it wasn't just her...the whole family was joking around, having a good time. Did they ALL kill them? Anyways, later footage (not originally released by the police - suprise, suprise) showed her mourning before putting on a happy face.

 

I'm glad you had put Bible John in here as I had forgotten the name of the crime, but could remember the details. I thought it was in Ireland though, which is why I could never find it in google searches.

 

Henry Ziegland of Honey Grove, Texas, walked out on his girlfriend one day in 1893. Her brother did his "heroic" duty and shot Ziegland. Ziegland, however, was barely injured by the bullet, which only grazed his face before embedding itself in the trunk of a tree in front of which Ziegland was standing. The brother, thinking himself avenged, ended his own life with the same weapon.

 

Twenty years later, in 1913, Ziegland decided to remove the tree from his property. Unable to perform the task manually, he decided to use dynamite. In the explosion, the bullet, which had originally been intended for Ziegland, became dislodged with such a catapulting jolt that it was shot violently into Ziegland's head, killing him at last

Wow, my dad is from Honey Grove, Texas. I've never seen the town mentioned anywhere, ever. Only a few hundred people live there. I'll have to ask if he ever heard that story.

 

I love that show "Cold Case Files" and I once saw one about a case where a mother goes missing during the day. The husband arrived home to find the front door unlocked and his toddler strapped into a high chair screaming, with cheerios flung everywhere. The woman's purse and shoes were untouched so he called the cops. Her strangled and raped body was later found in the woods, surrounded by a case full of empty beer cans and a box of porn. It was the late 80s or early 90s and they didn't have the capability to test the cans, so they did recently but nothing came up. They were asking for information. It was the first time I had ever watched that show where the case hadn't been solved. I wish I could remember where it was to find more info about it.

 

I'm not big into the alien abduction stuff. Not because I don't believe that life COULD exist on other planets/galaxies etc. But because I don't see the point in them probing us in a malicious way. Of course they would be from another universe where their customs are different than ours. So how the fuck do they know we have assholes and why do they need to probe us THERE? Why not through the visible holes such as ears or mouth? It's just so hokey and antiquated. Like Damaramu said, if they've mastered the art of spacetraveling (and can breathe our air etc.) why can't they learn to communicate with us without hurting us?

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Also another great mystery: Richey Edwards, original guitarist of the band Manic Street Preachers.

 

 

Edwards disappeared on 1 February 1995, on the day that he and James Dean Bradfield were due to fly to the U.S. on a promotional tour. In the two weeks before his disappearance, Edwards withdrew £200 a day from his bank account, which totalled £2800 by February 1. He checked out of the Embassy Hotel in Bayswater Road, London at seven in the morning, and it has been proven that he then drove to his apartment in Cardiff, Wales. In the two weeks that followed he was apparently spotted in the Newport passport office, and the Newport bus station. On 7 February, Anthony Hatherhall, a taxi driver from Newport, supposedly picked up Edwards from the King's Hotel in Newport, and drove him around the valleys, including Blackwood (Edwards’ home as a child). The passenger got off at the Severn View service station and paid the £68 fare in cash.

 

On 14 February, Edwards' Vauxhall Cavalier received a parking ticket at the Severn View service station and on 17 February, the vehicle was reported as abandoned. Police discovered the battery to be flat, with evidence that the car had been lived in. Due to the service station's proximity to the Severn Bridge (which has been a renowned suicide location in the past) and Edwards' depressed state at the time, it was widely believed that he took his own life by jumping from the bridge. Many people who knew him, however, have said that he was never the type to contemplate suicide and he himself was quoted in 1994 as saying "In terms of the 'S' word, that does not enter my mind. And it never has done, in terms of an attempt. Because I am stronger than that. I might be a weak person, but I can take pain."

 

Since then he has purportedly been spotted in a hippie market in Goa, India and on the islands of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. There have been other alleged sightings of Edwards, especially in the years immediately following his disappearance. However, none of these have proved conclusive and none have been confirmed by investigators.

 

I like the fact that the band keeps his royalties (he wrote a lot of their early stuff) in a bank account for him in case he ever returns. I know they sell a lot of records in Europe. If he ever does decide to come out, he'll have a nice chunk of change waiting on him. It sounds like he was travelling/living in his car when it broke down. Who knows where he went from there though.

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Nathan Coker was born in 1814, a slave. His owner’s mistreatment prompted the discover of his unusual gift. One afternoon, when the cook was out of the kitchen, Nathan reached into a vat of boiling water, pulled out a cooking dumpling and popped it into his mouth. He then realised that he did not feel any pain, not on his hand or his mouth. He soon found that he could touch and eat any food, no matter how hot. He’d drink the fat off the top of boiling water and would even drink down scalding coffee. He claimed, in fact, that it was cold liquids and food that gave him the greatest discomfort. After he was free, Nathan went to work as a blacksmith where his unique ability came in quite handy. As Nathan told it, ‘I often take my iron out of the forge with my hand when red hot, but it doesn’t burn.’

 

As word of Nathan’s gift spread, he was invited to give a demonstration before prominent Easton, Maryland citizens including two newspaper editors and two physicians. The feat was even reported in the pages of the New York Herald in 1871. According to eye-witnesses, Coker placed an iron shovel, heated until it was white hot, on the soles of his bare feet. After the shovel was re-heated, he ran his tongue over it. lead pellets were also melted into liquid and poured into Coker’s hand and the blacksmith then poured the substance into his mouth. As the astonished audience watched, Nathan rolled the molten lead around his teeth and gums until it had solidified.

 

After each feat, the physicians examined Nathan, but found no indication that his flesh had been affected.

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At first, it might have seemed like an entertaining gift, but A.W. Underwood grew tired of his ability to set objects aflame by simply breathing on them. it was, after all, a talent he had to guard carefully. And despite months of test, and the eventual celebrity status he achieved, not a single expert could explain what caused the bizarre phenomenon.

 

According to L.C. Woodman, the first physician to examine the fire-starter, when Underwood held items such as a cotton handkerchief or dry leaves against his mouth, they would burst into flames in a matter of seconds. The doctor rinsed out the man’s mouth with various solutions, and made him wear rubber gloves. No matter how rigorous the examination, nobody could find any trace of trickery.

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It’s generally believed that when people lose the ability to see or hear, their other sense become somehow more accurate. But in several documented cases, the lost sense has actually been shown to relocate.

 

Three months after a 14-year-old became quite ill, she completely lost her sight. Even though her eyes were non-functional, however, the girl claimed she could see. Her mystified parents took her to see a doctor who conducted a series of tests to see if she was telling the truth.

 

The neurologist placed blindfolds over the girl’s eyes and then placed objects in front of her. Amazingly, she could in fact see them, identifying colours and even reading a letter. A bright light shone into her ear lobe, however, caused her to wince in pain. And when the doctor poked his finger at the tip of the girl’s nose, she angrily exclaimed, "Are you trying to blind me?"

 

Evidently, the girl’s sense of vision had relocated to the tip of her nose as well as her ear lobe. But more than her sight had been transposed. Apparently, she could also smell through her chin.

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Evelyn Hartley.........

 

Hartley was baby-sitting at the home of a La Crosse State College professor on the evening of October 24, 1953, when she disappeared. The residence was located in the 2400 block of Hoeschler Drive. She was supposed to call her parents during the evening but did not. Her father tried to call several times that day and never got an answer. He became worried and went to the house to check on his daughter.

Hartley's father found all the windows in the house locked except a basement window in the back. Bloodstains were found around that window and in the grass of the yard, and there was a bloody handprint on the side of the house next door. The furniture inside the living room was disarranged. One of Hartley's shoes and her eyeglasses, which were broken, were on the living room floor. Her other shoe was found in the basement. There was no other trace of Hartley inside the home. The twenty-month-old girl she had been baby-sitting was found unharmed, sleeping in her crib. Tracker dogs traced Hartley's scent only as far as the street, leading authorities to believe she had been taken away in a car. They believe she disappeared at approximately 7:15 p.m.

 

Several days after her disappearance, Hartley's underpants and brassiere were found near Highway 14 outside of La Crosse. They too were stained with blood. A bloodstained pair of men's pants was found along the same road four miles away; it is unknown if the pants are connected to Hartley's case. A pair of size 10 or 11 bloodstained tennis shoes was found in the Coon Valley area southeast of La Crosse. They were apparently dumped there only a short time before they were discovered. The soles of the shoes matched the footprints found near where Hartley was last seen and the blood was her type; investigators believe they were worn by her abductor. Inside one of them was a single human hair. They had a distinctive circular wear pattern on the soles, suggesting that their owner frequently operated a Whizzer motorbike.

 

Within 800 feet of the shoes was a well-worn, blue denim jacket with metallic BUTTons and bloodstains on the front, back and sleeves. Investigators are uncertain if the jacket was linked to Hartley's abduction. The blood on it was her type and blood smears found at the house she was taken from were apparently made by cloth with the characteristics of denim, but the jacket was too small to be worn by someone who could have also worn the tennis shoes. It was medium-sized, possibly size 36.

 

Some people suspect Edward Theodore Gein may have been involved in Hartley's case. A photograph of him is posted below this case summary. He was visiting relatives in La Crosse, just blocks from the home where she was babysitting, on the night of her disappearance. In 1957, police went to question Gein about the disappearance of a local barmaid and found human remains all over his house. He had killed two women and had dug up other women's bodies in the cemetery and mutilated them. Gein was declared insane and died in a mental institution in 1984. No trace of Hartley was found on his property and he denied any involvement in her case. He has still not been absolved of suspicion, however, and is also being considered in the 1947 disappearance of Georgia Weckler.

 

Hartley was an honors student student at Central High School at the time of her apparent abduction. She has a younger sister and an older brother; another brother died of polio a few years before her disappearance. Her case remains unsolved.

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Michael Anthony Hughes (March 21, 1988 - Missing since September 12, 1994) was abducted from Indian Meridian Elementary School in Choctaw, Oklahoma (near Oklahoma City) on September 12, 1994 by Franklin Delano Floyd, who has claimed to be the child's father. Michael has not been seen since the day he was snatched and his current whereabouts remain unknown.

 

Floyd entered Indian Meridian Elementary School in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on September 12, 1994 and went to the office of James Davis, the school principal, where Floyd claimed he was the father of the then six-year-old Michael, who was in First Grade. Floyd then told Davis he was armed and forced the principal to take him to Michael's classroom.

 

Once Michael was in his custody, Floyd forced both him and Davis into the principal's pick-up truck and ordered him to drive out into the country. In a wooded area, Floyd handcuffed Principal Davis to a tree and fled with the boy.

 

Five hours later, Principal Davis was rescued. For the next two months, there was no sign of either Franklin Floyd or Michael Hughes. Police swore out an arrest warrant on the charge of kidnapping. Finally, Floyd was arrested in Louisville, Kentucky, but the child was not with him and no trace was found of him.

 

Franklin Floyd is currently serving a fifty-two year prison sentence for abducting Michael. He has also been sentenced to death in the state of Florida for an unrelated homicide.

 

Evidence emerged that Franklin Floyd may not have been who he claimed he was and, in turn, cast doubt on his parental link to Michael. In 1975, Floyd used the name 'Trenton B. Davis' while living in Oklahoma City. He was accompanied by a little girl who he stated was his daughter Sharon Marshall. Over the subsequent decade, the pair moved around under different aliases until 1988 when Sharon, then aged seventeen, gave birth to her son Michael, whom Floyd claimed as his child. Following Michael's birth, he and Sharon married despite once attesting to the fact she was his daughter.

 

In 1990, Sharon was murdered in a hit-and-run accident and, although Floyd was the prime suspect for the crime, he was never formally charged. He disappeared soon after Sharon 's death, leaving a two-year-old Michael in the care of social services. After being placed with foster parents, it was found Michael was developmentally delayed and prone to emotional problems although he made progress over time.

 

Floyd was arrested on a parole violation six months after he left Michael and a DNA test proved he could not be the boy's biological father. Despite this, Floyd demanded custody of the child when he was released from prison although his appeals were denied. It was six months after he was refused custodial rights over Michael that he abducted the child from his elementary school classroom. Police DNA tests later revealed that Sharon was not Floyd's daughter either and it was feared that she too might have been abducted by him as a child.

 

Government authorities have received conflicting reports as to what has happened to Hughes. Some witness statements detail an alleged confessions by Floyd regarding Michael's death. According to these reports, Floyd reportedly told his sister that he drowned the child in a Georgia motel's bathtub in 1994. Other witnesses stated that Floyd told them he murdered Michael in the same manner, while another person claimed he saw Floyd bury Michael's body in a cemetery.[2]

 

Other sources report that Floyd has stated, and continues to maintain, that Hughes is still alive and safe; Floyd has refused to disclose Hughes' exact location (citing vague locations such as "outside the U.S." or "in Atlanta, Georgia") or who is presently caring for him.

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At sea for weeks, a British ship out of Liverpool, England was moving through the icy North Atlantic waters and headed towards Nova Scotia in 1828, when the first mate, Robert Bruce, encountered a stranger in the captain’s cabin. The man, who Bruce knew was not a crew member, was writing on the blackboard. He soon vanished, and a message appeared on the board, reading, ‘steer to the Northwest’

 

Calling all hands on deck, the captain had each one write the message, but nobody’s handwriting matched that of the stranger. Even so, the captain felt it might be wise fo follow the mysterious suggestion.

 

Not long after they steered north-west, the ship’s look-out spotted another ship that appeared to be wedged in the ice of the freezing ocean. When all its passengers were brought safely aboard the ship, Bruce spotted a man resembling the stranger in the captain’s cabin. His handwriting matched the one on the blackboard.

 

According to the ice-bound ship’s passenger, he had fallen asleep just after the vessel had become stuck in the ice. When he awoke, he had a strong feeling that they would be rescued. Evidently, the man had had an out-of-body experience, projecting onto the British ship to deliver an SOS call.

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The hollow Moon theory is a pseudoscientific theory that suggests that Earth's Moon is a large hollow sphere.

 

Two pieces of evidence are quoted in support of the pseudoscientific theory of a hollow Moon:[2]

 

Seismometer recordings from Apollo XII mission in November 1969. After seismometers were set up on the Moon's surface by the astronauts of Apollo XII, astronauts heading back to Earth discarded the ascent stage of the lunar module, dropping it on the Moon's surface. The craft smashed and the shock waves the seismometers picked up lasted for about an hour.

The relatively low average density of the Moon, which is only about 60% of the average density of the Earth.

However, mainstream scientific opinion[who?] on the internal structure of the Moon overwhelmingly supports a solid internal structure with a thin crust, an extensive mantle and a small denser core.[3] This is based on:

 

Seismic observations. Besides Earth, the Moon is the only planetary body with a seismic observation network in place as discussed above. Analysis of lunar seismic data have helped constrain the thickness of the crust (~45 km)[4] and mantle, as well as the core radius (~350 km).[5][6].

Moment of inertia parameters. For the Moon, moment of inertia parameters have demonstrated that the core is ~1.4% of the total mass.[7] One such parameter, the normalized polar moment of inertia, is 0.393+/-0.001.[7][8]. This is very close to the value for a solid object with radially constant density, which would be 0.4 (for comparison, Earth's value is 0.33).

 

The normalized polar moment of inertia for a hollow Moon would have a higher value, closer to 0.67. In other words, the moment of inertia parameters indicate that the core of the Moon is both dense and small, with the rest of the Moon consisting of material with nearly-constant density.

Fine-scale variation (e.g., variation along the orbit of the Lunar Prospector orbiter) of the lunar gravitational field, which is consistent with geologic processes involving a crust, mantle, and core. [7]

 

The large-scale gravitational field of the Moon, however, is unaffected by the internal distribution of mass if the internal density is assumed to vary only radially. For example, had the Moon been replaced with a point object of identical mass, the current gravitational field would continue to exist at distances greater than the ~1700 km[9] lunar radius. This can be derived directly for a spherically symmetric Moon by applying the integral form [10] of Gauss's law. Therefore, the large-scale gravitational field of the Moon does not convey any information about the internal radial distribution of mass.

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GHOST ALERT (?) I'm home alone, I went downstairs and grabbed a snack, locked the doors, etc....went back down stairs a little while later and the door leading to the basement was WIDE OPEN... WTF?

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