50 of the Strangest Unsolved Mysteries from Each State Part 2

Every state harbors unpleasant secrets—here are 50 of the strangest ones from around the country, and why we may never learn the real truth.

Montana: The Vortex and House of Mystery

Just 13 miles from Glacier National Park you can pass through a portal in which the laws of nature are set aside: A gravitational anomaly forces trees to grow sideways and makes people appear as much as six inches shorter. A shack in the Vortex—called the House of Mystery—is the home to bizarre phenomenon: A marble rolled on an incline will travel upward, and a rope hanging from the ceiling falls in a curve.

Nebraska: The Lucky 15 

{{I remember Filly had this in an open.}}

On March 1, 1950, the 15 members of the Beatrice’s West Side Baptist Church choir were supposed to meet for practice. All of the 15 were known for their timeliness, but on this day, they were all running late—every single one of them. The reasons varied, but not a single one was present when a natural gas leak caused the complete destruction of the church. Even Snopes can’t discount the mystery here: Why and how were every single one of the 15 spared a grisly death?

Nevada: Who murdered Tupac Shakur?

In 1996, hip-hop star Tupac Shakur was killed in Las Vegas during a drive-by shooting. “The story…begins with a failed attempt on his life two years earlier,” according to History, which Shakur blamed on producer Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs and rival rapper, Christopher Wallace (“Notorious B.I.G.”). Wallace was murdered six months later in Los Angeles; no arrest has ever been made in either case.

New Hampshire: The disappearance of Rachel Garden

In 1980, 15-year-old Rachel Garden bought a pack of cigarettes at a market in Newton and was never seen again. The friend whom Rachel told her family she was going to be spending the night with denied having plans with Rachel that night. A witness claimed to have seen Rachel talking to three young men outside the market, but none of the men were ever charged. In fact, no one has ever been charged, and there are no suspects. Nearly 40 years later, the case appears to be hopelessly cold.

New Jersey: The phantom sniper

In 1927, Camden was terrorized by what’s been described as phantom- or ghost-sniper. Bus and car windows were shattered and even a policeman was struck, but no bullets or casings were ever found and no one ever saw an actual sniper. One witness reported hearing a man’s laughter. But no one else saw or heard a thing. The attacks suddenly stopped in 1928. To this day, no one knows why they began or what they really were.

New Mexico: What was really going on in Roswell?

It all started in the summer of 1947 when a Roswell rancher found mysterious debris in his sheep pasture. The Air Force claimed the debris belonged to a crashed weather balloon, but the citizens of Roswell didn’t buy it. They believed it came from a UFO. Fifty years later, the military revealed that the debris came from a top-secret atomic project. So it probably wasn’t a UFO—but what was it? And why has the U.S. government come up with at least two different stories about it? 

New York: Who was the Leatherman?

During the second half of the 1800s, a leather-clad hermit wandered around Westchester and Putnam Counties, never speaking, and unlike other wanderers of that time period, not looking for work. He was, however, happy to accept a meal and returned once a year—on the same day—to the homes that were generous to him. He was known to sleep in caves; his body was discovered in 1889 in a cave on the Dell family farm in Briarcliff. To this day, no one’s sure who he was or why he wandered.

North Carolina: The shadow of the bear

Going bear-hunting has its own unique meaning in Cashiers: During the autumn months, when the sun is shining, the shadow of a bear is visible on Whiteside Mountain just before sunset. Romantic Asheville suggests you “shoot” this unexplained phenomenon with your camera.

North Dakota: Eugene Butler’s crawl space

Niagara, about 40 miles west of Grand Forks, was founded in 1882 and has never been a big town. In fact, today, it has less than 100 residents. But back in the early 1900s, there were at least six more people there than anyone knew about at the time. In 1915, the bodies of six people who’d been bludgeoned to death were discovered in the crawl space of a house that had once belonged to the reclusive Eugene Butler. He died in 1911, several years after being committed to a mental hospital. Their identities remain a mystery to this day.

Ohio: The Circleville letters

In 1976, residents of Circleville began receiving harassing letters, taunting and threatening them with tidbits about their personal lives. After the murder of one resident and the attempted murder of another, police arrested Paul Freshour, but while he was in prison, the letters continued. Six months after Freshour’s release, television’s Unsolved Mysteries aired a segment—only to receive its own short letter: “Forget Circleville, Ohio… if you come to Ohio, you el sickos will pay. The Circleville Writer.” The identity of the letter writer remains unknown.

Oklahoma: The Jamison Family

In 2014, Bobby and Sherilynn Jamison drove out to look at a property in Red Oak they were interested in purchasing. Their truck was discovered days later, along with their wallets, IDs, phones, $32,000 in cash, and their dog. Their remains, along with their young daughter’s, were discovered by hunters a month later. No cause of death could be determined, and no one knows what happened to them, although theories abound, including that the family faked their deaths and joined the witness protection program, and the family’s supposed involvement with cults and/or witchcraft.

Oregon: The mysterious shrieks of Forest Grove

The small town of Forest Grove is generally a quiet town, but in 2016, the quiet was shattered by reports of an otherworldly shrieking sound that seemed to emanate from nowhere and everywhere all at the same time. Some managed to record the screeching sound, which has been described as being like that of a train careening wildly on metal tracks—except there’s no train nearby. The shrieks ceased soon after, and no one has ever been able to figure out what caused them or where they might have been coming from.

Pennsylvania: Boy in the box

In 1957, the body of a young boy was discovered in a cardboard box in the woods outside Philadelphia. Authorities failed to identify him, and no one came forward looking for a boy that fit his description. The crime scene yielded no clues, but in 1960, a psychic led the police to a foster home where the boy might have lived. But a definitive connection between the boy and the foster home couldn’t be made, and the case remains cold all these years later.

Rhode Island: Where is Adam Emery?

In 1993, Adam Emery disappeared just hours after being convicted of murdering 20-year-old Jason Bass in a road rage incident. (Emery was out on bail pending formal sentencing.) Police found his car abandoned on Newport Bridge. Less than a year later, his wife’s remains were found in Narragansett Bay. Some believe Adam and his wife jumped to their deaths from that bridge, but the FBI still considers Emery one of America’s most wanted criminals.

South Carolina: The Lizard Man

Starting in the summer of 1988, Browntown residents began seeing what’s now referred to as the “Lizard Man,” a seven-foot-tall creature with red eyes and incredible, superhuman strength. The first sighting involved a car being “mauled” by the creature. “To this day, the mystery hasn’t been solved,” reports the Smithsonian, and there have been sightings as recently as 2015.

South Dakota: The strange fate of Tom Keuter

In 1994, Tina Marcotte called a friend to say she had a flat tire but that her coworker, Tom Kueter, was going to help her out. Tina was never seen or heard from again, and when Tom was questioned by police, he disputed that he’d been in touch with Tina on that day. The next day, Tom was found dead: He had been run over by his own forklift. Was it an accident? Suicide? Homicide? And what happened to Tina Marcotte?

Tennessee: The Craigmiles Mausoleum

In 1871, Nina Craigmiles was killed at the age of seven when the buggy she was riding in was hit by a train. Her family had a mausoleum built for her (and future deceased members of the Craigmiles family) of fine white Italian marble. Shortly after Nina was placed there, red streaks and splotches began to appear in the marble. Efforts to clean the marble failed, and each time a family member’s body was placed in the mausoleum, more red stains appeared. There’s no scientific explanation for the stains; some believe they are Nina’s tears.

Texas: The girl behind the Amber Alerts

Amber Hagerman was a nine-year-old Arlington Girl Scout when she was kidnapped while riding her bike on January 13, 1996. A witness quickly told the police he’d seen a girl being forced into a black van. Despite a massive search, Amber was never seen alive again. Her body was found five days later about four miles from where she had been taken. Her killer has never been found, but her abduction led to the invention of “Amber Alerts.”

Utah: Jean Baptiste’s great escape

Jean Baptiste was a notorious grave robber in Utah. When his grave-pillaging came to light in the late 1800s, Baptiste was banished to a remote island in the Great Salt Lake (the equivalent of solitary confinement). Three weeks later, he was gone. What little evidence authorities could find indicated that he might have built a raft in order to escape. But he was never seen or heard from again.

Vermont: The Bennington Triangle

The Bennington Triangle refers to an area of Vermont surrounding Glastenbury Mountain where several people have disappeared without a trace. These include a trail guide who vanished in 1945 while leading a hunting party, college student Paula Jean Weldon, who disappeared the following year from a hiking trail, and James Tedford, who seemingly vanished from a bus headed for Bennington. Since the disappearances were clustered in the 1940s, there’s speculation of a serial killer. But others believe paranormal forces are at work.

Virginia: The Old House Woods

In the quaint seaside town of Diggs, Virginia’s “Old House Woods” was once a popular hiding place for soldiers and pirates, so naturally, it’s become a hotspot for paranormal activity, including sightings of a ghostly woman and accounts of skeletons dressed in armor wandering the woods. People have reported finding themselves filled with dread while walking in the forest. Horses are known to become spooked for no apparent reason. Even paranormal investigators are creeped out, often unable to continue their investigations.

Washington: How Jason Padgett became a math genius

In 2002, Jason Padgett, a furniture salesman, jock, and self-described “partier” from Tacoma, was savagely attacked by two men outside a bar, leaving him with a severe concussion. When he recovered, he had acquired the ability to “visualize complex mathematical objects and physics concepts intuitively,” according to Live Science. Padgett is now one of 15 to 25 cases of so-called “acquired savant syndrome”—people who developed abilities after suffering a head injury.

West Virginia: The Octopus mystery

Danny Casolaro was a freelance writer who came to Martinsburg, West Virginia in 1991 to meet with a source about a story he code-named “the Octopus,” which involved high-ranking government officials and an international cabal. Casolaro was found dead in his hotel room. Authorities labeled it a suicide, but Casolaro’s family believe he was murdered.

Wisconsin: The demon bunkbed in the Tallman house

In 1987, the Tallman family brought a secondhand bunk bed to their home in Horicon. For the next nine months, the family was haunted by what appeared to be poltergeists—clock radios turning on by themselves, a paintbrush that dipped itself in paint—and worse, including the children becoming ill despite no previous health problems and an unexplained fire. The hauntings ceased only when the Tallman family destroyed the bunk bed.

Wyoming: Devil’s Tower

Various Native American tribes view the Devil’s Tower National Monument as a sacred site and have their own origination stories about the massive stone structure. And science fiction fans may recall that the mythology of the structure played an important role in the film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Geologically speaking, it’s made of volcanic material and is connected in some way to an existing or previously-existing volcano. But precisely how it came to exist continues to confound scientists.

SOURCE: READERS DIGEST

Lauren Cahn Updated: Feb. 02, 2023