What is it that makes unsolved mysteries throughout history so haunting? Some cold cases are so relatable that we fear they could have happened to us or our loved ones; others are so otherworldly that we wonder how they could have happened at all. These unforgettable disappearances, crimes, and scientific phenomena are all unique, yet they're all similarly unexplained, and will stay with you long after you finish reading.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370
While all flight accidents are tragic, few are as tragically mysterious as Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. On March 8, 2014, the plane literally disappeared into thin air while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China. The search for the missing plane became the most expensive in history, costing over $100 million. Some items from the plane were later found in Reunion Island (over 3,500 miles southwest of the plane’s last point of contact), but there’s still no clear understanding of what exactly happened to the plane or its 239 passengers and crew members.
A number of theories have been proposed to explain the plane’s disappearance, including a fire caused by lithium-ion batteries in the plane’s cargo; a terror attack by any of three suspicious passengers; or the intentional rerouting of the plane by its captain.
Lights Over Phoenix
Thousands of people across the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada, as well as the Mexican state of Sonora, reported seeing strange light formations in the night sky on March 13, 1997. Some witnesses described triangular or V-shapes with five symmetrical lights. Others observed nine lights that hovered over Phoenix. The U.S. Air Force attributed the latter image to light flares dropped during a training exercise at a nearby base; no explanation was provided for the triangular shapes.
One of the more noteworthy witnesses of the triangular-shaped light series was Arizona’s governor at the time, John Fife Symington III. Symington, himself a former Air Force pilot, stated that the image in the sky did not resemble any man-made object he had ever seen, and that he was unable to receive a satisfactory explanation from the military despite his high-profile political status.
Area 51
Widely known as a highly classified United States Air Force facility, Area 51’s true purpose has never been clearly revealed to the public. Obtained by the Air Force in 1955 and located in the Nevada portion of the Mojave Desert, the top-secret spot is officially known as a training ground for the Air Force, but is generally believed to be a base designated for the development and testing of new weapons and aircraft.
The more you keep something a secret, the more people will talk about it. And Area 51 is no stranger to a wide range of conspiracy theories, including the belief that it houses remains of alien aircraft.
Vanished in the Fire
On Christmas Eve, 1945, the West Virginia home of Italian immigrants George and Jennie Sodder went up in flames. Four of the nine children in the house that night escaped with George and Jennie, and the family initially assumed that the five children sleeping in the attic died in the fire. But they later claimed that their bones had never been found, and that circumstantial evidence indicated the fire had not been caused by faulty electrical wiring as local police claimed.
One prominent theory is that the fire was caused intentionally by supporters of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, whom George Sodder had frequently criticized, and that the children had been abducted.
The Zodiac Killer
Over the course of less than one year in the late 1960s, at least five people were murdered in the San Francisco Bay Area by the same unidentified killer. The killer publicized his own crimes by sending letters to regional newspapers, demanding that the letters be published lest he engage in further murders. He identified himself in the letters as The Zodiac, but his real identity has never been definitively established.
Convicted sex offender Arthur Leigh Allen is the only suspect to have ever been publicly identified by police, but Allen’s handwriting was considerably different than the handwriting of the letters The Zodiac sent to newspapers, and an analysis of his DNA did not match the saliva from the letters’ stamps.
Swallowed by the Forest
28-year-old German national Lars Mittank was vacationing with friends in the Black Sea resort city of Varna, Bulgaria, in July 2014. He reported having been beaten up following an argument with rival German football fans, and then began exhibiting strange and paranoid behavior. He called his mother to tell her that people were trying to kill him, and he fled the Varna airport just before his flight was scheduled to depart. Surveillance footage captured him running away before disappearing into local woods. He hasn’t been seen since.
Mittank had no history of mental health issues, and many speculate that he had a bad reaction to the antibiotics he was prescribed to treat his injuries. Numerous sightings of Mittank have been reported since his disappearance, but none confirmed.
Plane Hijacking
In November 1971, a man using the alias Dan Cooper boarded a Boeing 727 flying from Portland to Seattle. Minutes after takeoff he handed a note to a flight attendant demanding that after landing in Seattle he be given $200,000 in cash (worth over $1.4 million today), parachutes, and that the flight crew escort him toward Reno, Nevada. He showed the flight attendant dynamite in his briefcase, and the flight crew and FBI complied with his demands. After the flight took off for Nevada he jumped with the parachute while flying over southwestern Washington.
The FBI theorizes that Cooper did not survive his jump, though his body and the majority of the ransom money were never located. The case was suspended in 2016, 45 years after the hijacking took place. It’s still the only unsolved case of air piracy in the history of commercial aviation.
Tamám Shud Case
A man was found dead on Somerton Park beach in Australia in 1948; he remains unidentified to this day. Pathologists believed he died of poisoning, but they could not determine if he had committed suicide or had been poisoned by others. His pants pocket held a scrap of paper torn from a book of Persian poetry, with the printed words Tamám Shud, meaning ‘ended’ or ‘finished.’ The book the page was torn from also contained an encrypted message (which remains undeciphered) and a phone number belonging to a local nurse.
The nurse denied knowing the man, but her newborn son grew up to share rare anatomical features in common with him, and her daughter later stated that she believed both her mother and the dead man were spies who had worked together.
Woman With a Camera
‘The Babushka Lady’—so named because she wore a headscarf similar to those worn by elderly Russian women—was shown on film apparently photographing President John F. Kennedy immediately after he was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Most other witnesses had dropped to the ground or fled the scene following the shooting, but the Babushka Lady stood calmly amidst the chaos. Babushka Lady’s identify has never been conclusively proven, and the film she shot that day has never been recovered.
A number of women have since claimed to have been the Babushka Lady, but none of the claims are widely considered credible. Conspiracy theorists insist she was a Russian spy or a U.S. government agent.
No Closure for Susan Powell
Utah resident Susan Powell’s disappearance in December 2009 had all the signs of a murder. Her marriage with her husband Joshua had been a tense one; his behavior was regarded as controlling by Susan’s friends, and he filed for bankruptcy in 2007. The marriage was so strained that Susan wrote a telling will, stating “If I die, it may not be an accident, even if it looks like one." Police suspected Susan’s murder immediately, and following her disappearance one of Susan and Joshua’s sons drew a picture of their family in a van, saying “Mommy was in the trunk.”
Joshua murdered his two sons and commited suicide less than three years after Susan’s disappearance. Susan is still officially declared a missing person, as her body was never found.
Haunted House/Haunted Bridge?
Overtoun House is a beautiful country home located in Scotland. But the arched bridge leading up to the house has become famous for all the wrong reasons. Since the 1950s, over 600 dogs have reportedly jumped from the bridge, with over 50 dying from the drop. The bridge has since become known as “The Bridge of Death” and the “Dog Suicide Bridge.” Not exactly good news for Overtoun House’s prospects as an Airbnb.
The frightening phenomenon has attracted interest from both the scientific and paranormal communities. Some propose that dogs are lured by the scent of local wild animals’ urine, including mink and pine marten, and that the scent motivates the dogs to behave erratically. Others believe the area is simply haunted.
LA's Most Infamous Murder
Elizabeth Short was found dead in Los Angeles in January 1947, her nude body cut in half at the waist, and her face knifed from the corners of her mouth to her ears. Short was given her nickname, Black Dahlia, by journalists, as she regularly put dahlia flowers in her hair, and her dark beauty was admired by her acquaintances. The apparent killer mailed Short’s birth certificate to Los Angeles newspapers, and the package had been cleaned with gasoline in a similar manner to the way the killer had cleaned Short’s body.
Short’s murder inspired nationwide fascination, and a list of over 150 suspects was created by police, but none were conclusively linked to the crime.
River Monsters
The Sharda River, which flows through India and Nepal, was the site of three fatal attacks on humans, some children and some fully grown, between 1997 and 2008. Witnesses described a mud-colored ‘water pig’ suddenly dragging the victims underwater, but their corpses were never found. Though scientists were initially skeptical of the claims, they ruled out the possibility that the victims had drowned by whirlpool or been killed by crocodile species, which were either not capable of the attacks described or not suited to that river’s habitat.
Research revealed that the river is home to human-sized goonch (‘giant devil catfish’) which may weigh up to 200 pounds and reach up to 6.6 feet in length. Scientists currently believe the catfish predated on the human victims, though they don’t have conclusive proof.
Tylenol Murders
In the autumn of 1982, seven people in the Chicago area died after swallowing the over-the-counter pain medication Tylenol, which had been laced with potassium cyanide, a highly toxic chemical compound. Police theorized that a criminal had opened the tylenol bottles within a pharmacy, placed cyanide in the pill capsules, and then returned the bottles to the store shelf. The crime led to numerous copycat cases, in which more people died from poisoned pain medication, leading to a national panic.
While the murderer was never caught, the frightening incident did have at least one positive outcome: The pharmaceutical industry developed more tamper-resistant packaging following the incident in an attempt to prevent similar problems in the future.
Los Lunas Decalogue Stone
The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone is a stone inscription made in a form of Paleo-Hebrew script, which is odd, given the inscription’s location in New Mexico. Some geologists and archaeologists have estimated the inscription could be between 500–1500 years old, which significantly predates the immigration of Semitic peoples to the American Southwest. Those who believe the inscription is authentic point to it as evidence of extensive pre-Columbian contact between Semitic people and the Americas.
Others are convinced that the inscription is a fake, albeit a sophisticated fake. Doubters point to the writing’s grammatical errors, and the complete absence of other archaeological clues indicating ancient Semitic people lived in that area.
The French Impostor
13-year-old Nicholas Barclay went missing in San Antonio, Texas, in 1994. A few years later, a French boy convinced the Barclay family that he was their missing son and lived with the family for five months, despite the fact that he had a French accent when speaking English and did not have the same eye color as Nicholas. Having noticed that the new boy’s ears did not match Barclay’s, a private investigator grew suspicious and tipped off the FBI, who discovered that the boy claiming to be Barclay was actually a French man named Frédéric Bourdin, who was some seven years older than Nicholas.
After being released from prison, Bourdin repeatedly impersonated other missing children in Europe, and continued to do so well into his 30s. Barclay was never found.
Hitler’s First Murder?
Geli Raubal, Adolf Hitler’s half-niece, had been living with her uncle in his Munich apartment when she was found dead in 1931. She officially died from a gunshot wound to her lung, and the police categorized the death as a suicide. But Hitler was known for having an oddly close and controlling relationship with his niece. A local newspaper reported that she had a fractured nose when she died, and rumors immediately began to circulate that Hitler had killed her during an argument, or that he had hired someone else to murder her.
Much speculation has since been made as to the true nature of Hitler’s relationship with his niece—his nephew reportedly stated that Hitler and Raubal were sexually intimate, and that she was pregnant when she died.
Unknown Language, Code, or Nonsense?
The 240-page Voynich manuscript is written on animal skins dating to the early 1400s and is thought to have been composed in Italy. But it’s not written in Italian, or any other known language. Some believe it’s written in a legitimate language that simply has no other known record; others believe it is some kind of code; and others think it’s simply gibberish. The manuscript does include drawings of what appear to be plants, people, and astrological symbols, leading some to speculate that it was intended as a medicinal guide.
Wilfrid Voynich, the Polish book collector who purchased the manuscript in 1912, is thought by some to have forged the mysterious document. Others discount this theory, stating that the radiocarbon dating of the animal skin the manuscript is written on makes a forgery unlikely.
The Pizza Bomber Case
Pizza delivery driver Brian Wells entered PNC Bank in Erie, Pennsylvania on August 28, 2003, and robbed the bank of $8,702. Police arrested him outside the bank, and left him sitting in the parking lot. Wells claimed that three people had placed a bomb around his neck and told him they would detonate it unless he committed the robbery. The bomb exploded before the bomb squad arrived at the scene, killing Wells instantly.
Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong and Kenneth Barnes were sentenced to life in prison and 45 years in prison respectively for their roles in planning the robbery and constructing the weapons used. The extent of Brian Wells’ involvement in the robbery plot is still debated to this day—investigators believed he was a willing participant and conspirator in the robbery; his family maintains he was forced into it as he claimed.
The Detached Feet
Since 2007 at least 20 detached human feet have washed ashore of the Salish Sea at various locations in British Columbia and Washington state. Locals initially feared foul play, and the bizarre occurrences eventually made international news headlines after they began recurring. Canadian coroners have stated that foul play is not suspected, and that all the feet are believed to belong to those who went missing or committed suicide. But the odd, highly rare coincidence has continued to fuel speculation that the feet were intentionally severed.
The ankle is actually a comparatively weak area of the body, so decomposition caused by the elements of the ocean may naturally lead to feet separating from a corpse.
Northern California Mystery
Five men between the ages of 24–32, all of whom were from Yuba City, California and had either intellectual disabilities or psychiatric conditions, drove to see a basketball game together on February 24, 1978. They did not return home to their families, and the bodies of four of them were found in a remote area of Plumas National Forest, which was snowcovered at that time of year. The missing man, Gary Mathias, was a diagnosed schizophrenic, and his body was never recovered.
Investigators have never been able to create a clear picture of what happened to the five men that night. Several of the men appeared to have made it to the shelter of a nearby cabin, but they did not make use of the cabin’s amble dry food, winter clothing, and kindling, and died of either starvation or hyopthermia.
Toxic Hospital Patient
31-year-old Gloria Ramirez was suffering from late-stage cervical cancer when she checked into the emergency room of a hospital in Riverside, California. A number of the hospital staff fainted while treating her, and others developed shortness of breath and muscle spasms. Five of the workers needed to be hospitalized after exposure to Ramirez, with one being placed in intensive care. Investigators believed that Ramirez had been self-medicating with the compound dimethyl sulfoxide, which transformed into a poisonous substance after electric shock was administered to Ramirez in the hospital.
While this chemical reaction theory has been peer reviewed and published in scientific literature, others theorize that hospital workers may have been involved in smuggling chemicals out of the hospital to be used in the production of methamphetamine, and that Ramirez and her nurses may have been accidentally exposed to these chemicals.
Central American Hike Nightmare
Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon, two young Dutch women, went missing while hiking in a Panamanian forest in 2014. They embarked on the trek in order to catch a breathtaking glimpse of the Continental Divide that splits Panama. Their skeletal remains and remnants of their belongings were found months after they went missing, and Dutch authorities have proposed that the hikers were stranded after dark and fell off a cliff.
Others speculate that the two died at the hands of other people. The hikers reportedly had lunch with two young Dutch men prior to embarking on their final hike, but the Dutch men have never been identified and it’s unknown if they were involved in the hikers’ deaths.
Flannan Isles Lighthouse
The Flannan Isles Lighthouse is located in northwest Scotland, and is best known for the unexplained disappearance of its three-person crew in December 1900. The crew’s raincoats had been left behind in the lighthouse, and no sign of the crew members could be found on the island where the lighthouse was situated. The investigator concluded that the men had been swept away by the sea during a particularly violent storm, but their bodies were never found.
The disappearance has led to ongoing speculation since, including that the men were abducted by foreign spies; that a ship full of ghosts harmed them; or that one of the men murdered the other two and then committed suicide.
A Strange Scientific Phenomenon
A scientist’s life’s work is to explain phenomena that might confuse everyday people. But some climate mysteries remained unexplained to this day, even after being reported for hundreds of years. Ball lightning is a glowing, spherical object that travels through the air and then explodes, leaving behind the smell of sulfur. This occurrence is observed by an estimated 1 in 20 people in their lifetime, and scientists have tried to recreate the beautiful and frightening spectacle, without success.
A number of hypotheses have been proposed to explain ball lightning, and recently Chinese researchers have advanced a theory that ball lightning occurs when microwaves are stuck inside a bubble of plasma.
Priest Murders
Two Catholic priests were murdered in 1982 and 1984 in New Mexico and Montana respectively. First, Father Reynaldo John Rivera received a phone call asking him to administer last rites to a dying man in a remote location in Santa Fe County; his body was discovered a few days later, and his autopsy indicated he had possibly been strangled by a coathanger. Reverend Father John Patrick Kerrigan then disappeared in Montana a year and a half later, and a bloody coathanger was found near the site of his abduction.
Some police officers believed the crimes were perpetrated by the same murderer, possibly a revenge crime committed by someone who hated the Catholic Church; others insisted the crimes had no connection. Over 30 years after his death, Kerrigan’s name was included on a list of priests who had been accused of sexually assaulting minors.
Wow! Are Those Aliens?
The Ohio State University Radio Observatory was a radio telescope dedicated to SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In 1977 astronomer Jerry R. Ehman was volunteering with the project when he noticed an intense radio signal sequence coming from the direction of the star constellation Sagittarius. While reviewing the data Ehman famously wrote ‘Wow!’ next to the printed signal reading. Wow indeed: The signal remains the most probable case of alien radio transmission ever detected, though its origin is unclear.
The sequence noticed by Ehman has not been observed again since its original detection. Some astronomers believe the signal was originally sent from earth and was simply reflected by space debris, while others believe that to be unlikely.
Out-Of-Place Artifacts
Out-of-Place artifacts (or OOPArts) are found objects which appear to challenge the standard, widely-accepted consensus of human history and development. One example is the wedge of Aiud, an aluminum object found in 1974 near a city called Aiud in the Transylvanian region of Romania. The discoloration and tarnish of the object suggest it is quite ancient; but the use of aluminum tools is relatively modern. Romanian UFO enthusiasts claim that it is not of earthly origin.
The concept of OOPArts is controversial, and often dismissed by archaeologists and historians as a symptom of amateur archaeologists and fringe science enthusiasts misinterpreting the objects they find. But don’t tell that to OOPArts' many advocates.
Cursed Ship
Mary Celeste was a ship that left New York City for Genoa on November 7, 1872; it was then found abandoned off the remote Azores Islands on December 4. Those who discovered the vessel noticed a number of strange things for a deserted ship: It was still fully capable of sailing; it had plenty of food and provisions to have continued its journey; and the crew’s belongings were undisturbed. No crew members were ever seen or heard from again, leading to years of speculation about what really happened.
Some suspect that the crew had abandoned the ship in an insurance fraud plot, while others believe the crew fled the ship after part of its cargo exploded.
Slum Serial Killer
A serial killer who came to be known as ‘Jack the Ripper’ murdered an unknown number of female sex workers in impoverished, crime-ridden East London in 1888. The killer cut his victims’ throats, mutilated their bodies, and in some cases removed their internal organs, which led police to believe he may have had surgical training. The timing of the murders (occurring mostly on weekends and holidays) led some investigators to think the killer was regularly employed and locally-based; others thought he was an upper-class man who came to the East End for the sole purpose of committing the murders.
Around 300 potential suspects were investigated, but none were concluded to be the killer. Surviving DNA evidence is minimal and much of the investigation’s police files were destroyed during World War II, so it’s unlikely the crimes will ever be solved.
Really Weird in Rio
Electronic technicians Miguel José Viana and Manoel Pereira da Cruz were found dead in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro state in 1966. The deceased men wore formal suits, waterproof coats, and unusual eye masks made of lead. Investigators found no sign of violence that lead to their deaths, but they did find a diary with instructions for the two men to be at that location and ‘ingest capsules’ at a specific time.
A friend of the men indicated that the two may have been trying to contact aliens while under the influence of psychedelic drugs, and that they wore the lead masks because they believed their encounter with aliens would take the form of blinding light. Though they may have died of a drug overdose, the coroner did not test for toxic substances.
The Hum
People the world over have reported hearing low-frequency humming sounds not heard by everyone else in their vicinity. But some specific locations are particularly well known for a widely-reported hums, including Taos, New Mexico, where approximately 2% of people hear a low-frequency hum. Perception of the hum weakens or disappears depending on the distance of the hearer, with one person reporting that they could no longer hear it at a distance of 30 miles from the city.
Otoacoustic emission, in which human ears generate their own sound, is one theorized cause of audible humming. But this doesn’t explain the high number of people who hear hums in a specific place, like Taos.
Italian-Hating Axe Murderer
The Axeman of New Orleans was an unidentified serial killer active in 1918 and 1919, who killed at least six people. The murderer did not steal items from his victims’ homes, and investigators believed his attacks may have been racially motivated, as most of his victims were of Italian origin. Toward the end of his killing spree he allegedly sent a letter to newspapers indicating that he wouldn’t kill the inhabitants of any place that featured a jazz band.
Because of the murderer’s unusual request regarding jazz music, some believe that he may have been a disgruntled, unemployed jazz musician who used the murders to promote jazz.
The Dead Defector
Alexander Litvinenko was a former officer of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) who accused the FSB and president Vladimir Putin of staging acts of terror, as well as ordering assassinations of government critics and journalists. Litvinenko fled Russia with his family and was granted asylum in the United Kingdom. In November 2006 Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium and died 22 days after he was hospitalized. Russia refused to extradite murder suspects identified by the United Kingdom, and stated that the murder may have been a plot to embarrass Vladimir Putin.
Other Russian dissidents and critics of Putin have since been poisoned, including government opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and double UK/Russian agent Sergei Skripal.
Amsterdam Airport Robbery
The largest robbery ever in the Netherlands occurred in February 2005 at Amsterdam’s Schipol airport when armed men dressed as KLM airlines employees hijacked an armored car and stole $72 million worth of uncut diamonds en route to Antwerp, Belgium. The crime went unresolved for 12 years until seven men were arrested in Spain in 2017. The arrest was made after a police officer previously uninvolved in the investigation heard the robbers reflecting on the heist in an intercepted phone call.
While some of the stolen diamonds were recovered by police from a getaway car, the bulk of the stolen, $43 million worth of gems remains unaccounted for.
UFOs in Utah
Terry and Gwen Sherman owned 480-acre Skinwalker Ranch in Utah from 1994–1996. During that time they reported a wide range of unsettling and unexplained events that occurred on the ranch, including UFO sightings; disappearing cattle; and run-ins with large, unidentified animal species with red eyes. Their sightings convinced millionaire businessman Robert Bigelow to purchase the ranch from them for $200,000 in an effort to investigate the claims of paranormal activity.
While the ranch has developed a widespread reputation as a hotbed of supernatural occurrences, skeptics believe that the Shermans simply invented their phenomenal stories in order to increase the sale price of the ranch.
Malaysian Ghost Ship
Various news publications reported the strange occurrences aboard a ship called the SS Ourang Medan, which supposedly became a shipwreck in the Straits of Malacca, located between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Two American ships picked up Morse code messages from the Ourang Medan indicating that the ship’s entire crew was either dead or dying. As the American ships prepared to arrange a tow of the Ourang Medan for further investigation, the Ourang Medan was engulfed in flames.
Though accounts of this incident persist today, no official record of the ship exists, and many believe that the story is an urban legend. Others believe the story is plausible, and that the Ourang Medan may have been carrying toxic chemicals leftover in the region from World War II. Contact between these chemicals and seawater may have released toxins into the ship, causing the crew to die and then the ship to explode.
Gef the Mongoose
A family in the Isle of Man claimed in the 1930s that their farm was home to a talking mongoose, who had introduced himself as Gef and stated that he came from New Delhi, India. The family insisted that the mongoose guarded their farm and warned them whenever strange visitors or dogs approached, and that he kept the farm free of mice. The tabloid press covered the story extensively, and many visitors to the farm claimed to have heard Gef’s voice, but there was no physical evidence to prove the mongoose’s existence.
While paranormal enthusiasts believed the story, critics claimed that one of the family’s children used ventriloquism to create the mongoose’s voice, and that the acoustical qualities of the old house created an impression that sound traveled from unexpected places.
Nova Scotia Hoax?
In 1878, 18-year-old Esther Cox of Amherst, Nova Scotia, reported that a male friend attempted to sexually assault her at gunpoint. Esther then began to experience seizures, her family started hearing strange noises at night, and objects in the house began levitating. The family doctor reported that during his visit to the house the words "Esther Cox, you are mine to kill" appeared on the wall. Public interest in the case grew as the strange occurrences continued and became more violent in nature, prompting Esther to go on a speaking tour in which people would pay to hear her story.
The events were turned into a bestselling book by a man who claimed to witness the strange disturbances, but science journalists were quick to point out that the author had a clear financial interest in sensationalizing the events, and that his claims were uncorroborated by others.
Nessie of the Scottish Highlands
Loch Ness is a stunningly beautiful lake in Scottland. But its picturesque beauty is overshadowed by the persistent rumors that it is inhabited by a long-necked, dinosaur-like sea monster. The earliest reported sightings of the Loch Ness Monster seem to date as far back as the sixth century CE. A photo in 1934 appeared to show the monster’s neck and head above water, but this is now widely believed to have been an elaborate hoax, with the ‘monster’ constructed from a toy submarine and a synthetic substance called wood putty.
Though public fascination with the Loch Ness Monster appears to be endless, and sightings continue to be reported to this day, its existence is not supported by scientific evidence.