There’s a vague fascination with people who go hermit. “Does anyone ever actually see that old man? Well, I heard…..” The fascination kicks up a notch when the hermit is famous. And when the recluse lived on the edge of mystery already, let’s say writing literature open to interpretation, we really get curious. That’s the […]
As one of the wealthiest people of his time, Howard Hughes was born in 1905 to an American family who ran a successful oil tool business. At 18, he inherited it and became an instant millionaire. Young Howard went off to Hollywood, producing groundbreaking and often controversial films like Scarface and Hell’s Angels, the latter […]
North Korea ‘ghost ship’ packed with ‘defectors bodies’ washes up on the shore of Japan When a mysterious ship filled with dead North Koreans evokes the phrase “ghost ship” it’s fair to note: almost everything about the nation is shrouded in secrecy and mystery. We are truly dealing with a “ghost nation.” Churchill would have […]
Joe Bryan wasn’t killed in 1985, his wife Mickey was, found brutally murdered in their home on a night he was away at an educator’s conference. And yet his life, any semblance of the life he’d known, was over as well, as he soon became a suspect, eventually convicted and sent away for life. All […]
In the world of crowd sourcing wisdom, it’s natural that some of that crowd sourcing would focus on one of the greatest human hobbies, playing amateur detective. Literally thousands of ordinary citizens across the world are web sleuthing in one fashion or another these days, mostly in regard to missing persons and unidentified bodies. But […]
How often does the press on one side of the Atlantic take interest in residents of an “old folks home” on the other? But this was special. The article in the British media referred to the investigation and arrest of a 70-year-old woman in the U.S. for, well, concocting homemade poisons in her spare time, […]
Those looking for a bit of mystery to pursue can even look in the business world, at sheer consumer products from time to time. Cut through all the shameless hype for all the junk pretending to be things we need, and once in while the question will surface: how the heck did they do that, […]
Contrary to popular belief, no witches were burned at the stake during the Salem Witch Trials. There were, however, hangings aplenty. The infamous event was actually among the last witch executions, which had raged in Europe for over 300 years and took over 50,000 lives in the 16th and 17th centuries alone. In 1662, a […]
A paramedic called to treat a notorious criminal gunned down in his garden in Essex raised doubts about the cause of his fatal injuries, a report said. John “Goldfinger” Palmer was initially thought to have died from natural causes in 2015. It took a week to establish he had been shot six times. A case […]
Close to twenty percent of the people in these villages (there’s actually more than one) just keel over one day and sleep for a full day, a week, or more, and then awake feeling vaguely lousy, but certainly alive. (“No big deal,” say the doctors, and thankfully “no one’s died from this.” “How can it […]
In a way it’s magical enough, being a mountainous island halfway between Ireland and the British mainland. And of course there’s many a century of history that evokes the magical, “little people” with a large presence, fairies that have more to say to you than any Prime Minister. So comes along little houses, fairy-sized, placed […]
I just finished an amazing one-two punch, or should I say a punch and counterpunch, of reading (one thousand plus pages). Kind of like getting blown out to sea by strong winds, and then aggressively pushed back to shore by powerful waves. I’m talking about the Jeffrey MacDonald murders, now almost half a century old, […]
Robert Leroy Johnson is ranked as the fifth best guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone Magazine and is considered to be one of the fathers of rock and roll–but he didn’t start out that way, nor did he experience great fame in his lifetime. Little is known about the young African-American man who became […]
Now, five million and fifteen million are not both “about 80 per cent of the population of Mexico,” they are very different numbers. We’ve often wondered, how can historians be sure at all about numbers from yesteryear? Modern census surveys weren’t being done, no one was carefully loading and processing data by computer. Getting a […]