- From a literal Danse Macabre to a village that simply vanished, no one knows what happened here.
Everybody loves a good mystery. And although we can explain what happens around us to a greater degree than ever, there are still plenty of mind-boggling mysteries left in the world.
People might acquire bizarre talents through freak accidents or find completely alien artifacts buried in the ground. That is, when the aliens aren’t (possibly) trying to contact us from the depths of space.
Here’s a collection of seven odd events, objects, and phenomena that remain unexplainable.
1. Derek Amato
There’s nothing unexplainable about Derek Amato; he’s an American pianist and composer born in 1966. What’s bizarre, though, is that he acquired his musical ability after a freak accident.
Although he had dabbled with guitar, Amato was far from a virtuoso. That changed in 2006 when he dove into a shallow swimming pool and severely hit his head on the bottom.
He received a major concussion and lost roughly 35% of his hearing. After the accident, though, he discovered that he could play and compose music for piano.
Doctors have not been able to explain why and how bonking his noggin turned Amato into a musical genius.
2. Phaistos Disc
In 1908, Italian archeologist Luigi Pernier pulled the Phaistos Disc out of the ruin of an ancient Minoan palace on the Greek island of Crete. It’s a round clay disc about six inches in diameter, covered on both sides with spiraling text.
And that’s about all anyone can say about the thing. The writing, rendered by pressing individual stamps into wet clay, is utterly undecipherable.
No such characters have been found anywhere else, and nobody can read them. Some researchers have suggested that the disc is a hoax, but it does date to the time of the Minoan civilization.
3. Hector the Storm Cloud
Annoyed by the unpredictability of your local weather? Then you’d love it on the Tiwi Islands in the Pacific, where a bizarre storm arrives every day like clockwork.
Each afternoon, a large thundercloud builds up near the islands, bringing a small storm with it. Why and how it happens is not understood, although modern research suggests it may have something to do with the topology of the seafloor in the area.
The cloud is such a regular visitor that it has been named Hector. During World War II, it served as a landmark for pilots who could always tell their location by the reliable storm.
4. Wow! Signal
In 1977, while reviewing what the Big Ear space radio telescope had heard in the void, astronomer Jerry R. Ehman couldn’t believe his eyes. The computer printout in front of him showed a sudden, extremely strong narrowband radio signal arriving from deep space.
It was so shocking to Ehman that he wrote the word “Wow!” next to the printout in big red letters.
But what was this weird signal? Your guess is as good as mine.
The Wow! Signal remains unexplainable to this day, and it has never repeated. Theories about its origin range from interference from hydrogen clouds to an intentional radio burst sent by alien beings.
5. Angikuni Lake Village
Angikuni Lake is located in the wilderness of northern Canada. Once, an Inuit village sat on its shores until it mysteriously disappeared.
According to a newspaper article from 1930, the small village welcomed fur trappers and would offer food and a place to rest. However, later that year, fur trapper Joe Labelle sent a horrifying report about the village.
The villagers had disappeared, leaving food over cold firepits and sewing needles still in unfinished shirts. Seven sleigh dogs, all starved to death, lay on the ground, and a single grave in the village had been dug up, clearly by human hands.
Labelle alerted the Canadian Mounties to the village. They contacted a search operation, but never found any of the village’s residents.
6. Dancing Plague
You may have heard of the infamous Dancing Plague that struck the city of Strasbourg (in modern France) in 1518. A large number of townsfolk suddenly burst into dance – and they wouldn’t stop until they dropped dead weeks later.
To this day, no doctor, physician, alchemist, priest, or any other person has been able to explain what happened to the people of Strasbourg. Documents from the time, from multiple sources, are clear that the people danced until they were dead, even though they had been previously “free of sin.”
Some modern theories about the Dancing Plague include a bout of mass hysteria or a possible fungal poisoning from spoiled food. However, the dancers likely took the secret of their affliction with them to the grave.
7. Oak Island Money Pit
In 1795, a group of teenagers on Canada’s Oak Island noticed a weird depression in the ground. Digging into it, they discovered layers of logs and wooden platforms that repeated at regular intervals.
This discovery gave birth to the legend of the Oak Island Money Pit. There’s supposedly a hidden treasure buried somewhere on the island, waiting for its lucky discoverer.
Something odd has certainly gone down on Oak Island. Multiple expeditions over the centuries have discovered mine shaft-like underground structures, pieces of age-old parchment, flood tunnels, and even toxic gas-filled underground caves or cavities.
But is there really a treasure? And if there is, who buried it and why? Despite all the excavations and weird stuff pulled out of the ground, the answer to whether there is gold and jewels on the island eludes us.