This is a weird and creepy world we all live in; and to pretend we understand the world around us is laughable. Sometimes things happen that only seem to make sense if Rod Serling was narrating events. From tales of alien abductions and urban legends with roots in truth, there are many things outside of our realm of understanding. Because of this we here at the House look at 5 Creepy Unexplained Mysteries.
5. The Death of Elisa Lam: Last year at Los Angeles’ historic Cecil Hotel, a place renowned for its dark and violent past, management had heard enough complaints from guests about the nature of their water. They sent a crew to check out the water tank on the hotel roof to discover the body of, Canadian student, Elisa Lam. The authorities ruled the death as an accidental drowning, but a closer look at the detail reveal a far more ominous series of events. Firstly, Lam never set off any alarms on her fateful trek to the roof two weeks prior. Even stranger, the tank she drowned in was designed to be impossible to close from the outside, which means someone had to have closed Lam inside the tank to seal her fate. This strange turn of events entered nightmare territory, when a surveillance tape was discovered showing the last time Elisa Lam was seen.
For those of you too lazy to watch the video, it shows Lam heading into the hotel elevator and pressing the buttons for every floor. When the doors fail to close, the young student pokes her head out and obviously sees something that has her terrified as she cowers in the corner. Still the doors of the elevator which passed inspection the week before stay open. Finally, for reasons we may never know she leaves what little safety she had in the elevator and begins carrying on a conversation with someone off camera. Whatever her conversation is about, it causes Lam to begin to move her arms in a manner which humans should not be able to move. Finally, Lam wanders down the hall out of the view of the camera, and after three bizarre minutes the elevator doors finally close.
4. Poveglia Island: There are many places in the world which are renowned for being haunted; many of them are old insane asylums where the inmates were treated harshly and inhumanely, or they were places with ties to devastating plagues. Then there is Poveglia Island, off the coast of Italy which fits both of these criteria. The island’s dark history began during the days of the Roman Empire, when plague victims were abandoned there; this practice was picked up again centuries later when the citizens of Europe sent those dead or dying of the Black Plague there. At the dawn of the twentieth century, the island became the home of an insane asylum, run by a sadistic doctor, who was none to discerning over who was committed. Many of the inmates who suffered and died on Poveglia during this era, claimed to be tormented by the spirits of the plague victims. Sadly the staff ignored these claims until, the doctor in charge of the asylum began to be tortured by these spirits as well, eventually this is what drove him mad and he leaped off the bell tower to his death. The asylum was closed down due to the doctor’s inhumane practices, but the dark past of the land continues to loom over it. Locals and fishermen steer clear of Poveglia, and many who have given in to their thirst for adventure, came back refusing to talk about what they encountered.
3. The Body in the Wych Elm: In England during the 1940’s the nation was in turmoil thanks to the devastating war they were embroiled in. On a regular basis bombs fell on the country and thousands were displaced. It was during this chaotic time, in Great Britain’s history that one of the most peculiar murder mysteries in history was discovered. Two young boys in the forests of Worcestershire, had sneaked onto private property to search for bird. While trying to recover a nest from a Wych Elm tree, one of the two children discovered a skull inside the hollowed out tree. Despite their best efforts to keep it secret, the boys eventually had to tell the authorities. The investigators dug out not only the skull that the boys had found, but also; an entire skeleton, shreds of clothes, and a golden ring. It was believed that these were the remains of a woman who was in her mid-30’s and had died of asphyxiation, due to the taffeta lodged in her mouth. Despite their best efforts, the authorities never discovered who the woman was. In the decades which followed, graffiti began appearing around the region begging the question “Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?”. Many theories have floated around since the discovery of the skeleton, from; an occult sacrafice, a hidden affair, or a Nazi spy who had been found out. While many have ideas as to the identity of the woman, nobody knows for sure.
2. Dr. Hopkins and the UFO Case: The Men in Black, have been a staple in America’s UFO mythology many years before, Will Smith proclaimed he made the suit look good. Over the past several decades many have claimed to have encountered these strange and intimidating black clad men. One of the most prominent tales comes from a doctor and hypnotist named, Herbert Hopkins. In 1976, Dr. Hopkins was lending his expertise as a consultant to a case of a strange UFO sighting, when he received a phone call from a man claiming to be with a UFO investigative group in New Jersey, who wanted to discuss the case with him. The doctor agreed and promptly walked to his back porch to turn on the lights so his home could be recognizable to his incoming visitor. As soon as he opened the back door he noticed the man who had just called him was already climbing the stairs. Hopkins, described the man as completely hairless, dressed in an immaculate black suit, with a black fedora hat. He had strangely pale skin and noticeably bright red lips, but according to Dr. Hopkins, during the conversation the mysterious visitor wiped away at his mouth and the red smeared like lip stick.
Even more peculiar about this visitation was that there was no car present that the man could have gotten there in, which means to get from a phone to the home he would have had to move at an inhumanly fast speed. During their conversation, the drab clothed man, brought up that the doctor had two coins in his pocket, which he did, and asked to see one. Once the coin was in the palm of his hand, Hopkins watched as the gradually faded away and vanished without a trace. Ominously the man remarked, “Neither you nor anyone else on this planet will ever see that coin again.” The two men discussed UFOs in great detail, until the mysterious visitor claimed that he was suffering from a lack of energy and slowly and clumsily made his way out the back door. The next thing Dr. Hopkins saw was a bright light from his drive way. Later, after much research it was discovered that the organization the man claimed to belong to, never existed. Realizing there was something over his head afoot, Hopkins withdrew himself from the case he was working for and erased all of the records from it.
1. UVB-76 Broadcast: Have you ever had that experience where you venture through the various stations broadcasting white noise on your radio. In this particular mystery, we look at a radio transmission, which has been broadcasting a mysterious signal from Russia since 1982. With few exceptions, the station known as, UVB-76 has been broadcasting the same obnoxious electronic sound since it debuted, but the creepy part is when the electronic noise stops. On Christmas Eve of 1997, it was the first of three interruptions, where a voice reads off a series of Russian names and numbers, with no pattern. Occasionally, conversations can be heard in the background, but nobody has been able to make out what they are saying. Even stranger, researchers have discovered, that the sound is not feedback or static, but rather something being held up to a microphone. The station most likely has some sort of intelligence or military merit, but in the years following the Cold War, the mysterious UVB-76 has only grown stronger.
