Unexplained Mysteries That Have Still Never Been Solved

Some of the scariest and unsettling stories are those without a concrete ending. Not knowing why or how something happened makes it all the more bone-chilling and terrifying.

From unsolved murders to supernatural signals, these spooky stories will make your imagination run wild and keep you up at night!

Disappearing Twice

Rico Harris. He was a massive 6′ 9″ former Harlem Globetrotter basketball player who had drug issues earlier in his life, but had made a full recovery and was getting his life back on track.

He was driving along California’s Interstate I-5, from his home in Southern California to Seattle, to live with his girlfriend.

He was somewhere just north of Sacramento, exhausted, and told his girlfriend over the phone that he wanted to check out the mountains. All calls stopped since then. His car was found a couple days later by a patrolman near a rest stop in the mountains. A massive search was launched.

No signs of him.

The strangest part? A driver later reported seeing a massive 6′ 9″ individual wandering down the highway, just a mile from where the car was found a week later.

A search was re-launched, massive size-17 footprints were found in the ground that were not there before, they were getting very close, and then… nothing. No trace, no body, nothing.

Where did Rico go the first time he disappeared? Where was he for an entire week? And where did he disappear to again? The fact that someone could disappear twice is what makes this so mystifying to me.

Story Credit: Reddit/WhyYouYelling

Playing Hooky

I have a personal experience, sort of. My father had a coworker who was a great guy. Good at his work, fun to talk to, nobody had any complaints about him. He lived in an apartment right next to work so the night watchman at the workplace would see him whenever he went out.

So one night, he went out in his pajamas, talking on his cell phone, nodded at the watchman. The watchman didn’t think much of it, after all, it’s not all that weird to take a walk even though it was quite late. He didn’t think much of it.

The watchman didn’t see him come back, but he figured he missed him when he went on his bathroom break. But the guy didn’t show up at work the next day. Someone from work went to check up and he wasn’t there. Nothing was disturbed, he was just gone.

Everyone thought he had dropped dead, killed by thugs or an accident or some medical condition. The workplace filed a police report. Here’s when it gets weird. It turns out, the guy had created a fake identity. Any credentials he had given were fake.

The references he had given had never heard of him.

The family address he’d given didn’t exist. The police didn’t find anything illegal in the apartment, but they didn’t find anything that would give a clue as to who he was, either.

We moved away a few years ago, but I don’t think the case was ever solved. It’s definitely the best unexplained mystery that I’ve personally come across.

Story Credit: Reddit/vault-of-secrets

Con Artist

The disappearance of Nicolas Barclay/Frederic Bourdin. In 1994, San Antonio, Texas, 13-year-old Nicolas Barclay disappeared from his home. Three years later, Barclay was found huddled next to a phone booth halfway across the world in Linares, Spain.

Authorities picked him up and reunited him with his family.

However, certain things didn’t add up. Barclay had very little memory of what happened to him, and couldn’t give police a real answer as to how he ended up in Spain. Plus, his English was terrible, and when he did speak English it was with a heavy accent.

This doesn’t make sense for someone who spent the first 13 years of his life in the United States, but these discrepancies were explained away by the fact that Barclay was probably just coping with the emotional trauma of being kidnapped to a foreign country and kept away from his family for three years.

One thing no one could explain though was that when Nicolas returned to the United States, his eyes were a different color than when he originally disappeared.

Barclay tried to resume a normal life, enrolling back into his old school, moving back in with his family, etc.

About four months after reuniting with his family, a private investigator discovered that Nicolas Barclay actually wasn’t Barclay, but a con artist named Frederic Bourdin. Bourdin was wanted by Interpol because he had a habit of stealing the identity of missing youths.

Bourdin was arrested, but this brought about even more disturbing questions about Nicolas’s disappearance. Apparently, Nicolas was a very unruly and problematic child.

He was always getting into trouble at school, and there were several police reports from his family’s house about domestic disturbances and arguments that worsened in the months before he went missing.

Nicolas’s mom moved her brother into their house (Nicolas’s uncle) shortly before he disappeared to help give Nicolas some structure. It is rumored that he couldn’t handle Nicolas and instead killed him.

This would explain why the family was so willing to accept someone who wasn’t their son as their lost boy. If it was believed that Nicolas was alive, any murder investigation would come to a halt.

Even more interesting? After Bourdin was arrested and police began re-opening and investigating the case, Nicolas’s uncle promptly killed himself.

Story Credit: Reddit/KissedByFire2194

Frightening Face

Since it’s local. The “face” that appeared at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. It appeared on one of the stone panels on the outside of the building.

UT maintenance power blasted the panel, and the face reappeared in another location on the facade. They literally cannot get rid of it. I’ve seen it and it’s kinda unnerving.

Story Credit: Reddit/Flynn_lives