25 Strange Mysteries That Were Resolved After Years Of Speculation

As we near the night of ghouls and ghosts, conversations about the paranormal resurface. It’s practically unavoidable at this time of year, as folks seek out the mysterious and macabre. We’ve now come to realise that historically, anything that was even remotely difficult to make sense of was written off as witchcraft. Over time, however, it has come to light that many of these strange phenomena that once seemed inexplicable have perfectly reasonable explanations. Yet, there remains an aura of the supernatural over these puzzling occurrences.  If you love ruminating on the unexplainable, join the gang. With the grand culmination of the spooky season looming, one particular online question caught our eye. When someone asked, “What are some ‘mysteries’ that have actually been solved?”, Redditors flocked to share their lore. We combed through the submissions to create a Hall of Fame featuring the most intriguing stories, as shared below.

#1

Image source: rocketsnail1000, freepik The Mandela effect doesn’t exist, you just suck at remembering.

#2

Elisa Lam could have gotten both on the roof and into the watertank by herself and her family does not think any foul play was involved as Elisa had mental health problems and they were used to seeing her act strange when off her medication. Image source: Puncomfortable

#3

No one knew how the islanders of Easter Island moved their giant heads from one place to another. When asked how they did it, the islanders said they walked them. This sounded impossible and silly to Europeans so they ignored it. But a team of archeologists and native islanders a few years back made their own Easter Island head, tied 4 big ropes around it, then had a dozen guys on each rope pull the head side to side. It rocked corner to corner causing it to "walk" forward down the road. So definitely not aliens. Image source: Anarcho-Crab

#4

Image source: BrandyAid, Physics Girl The mysterious trails of rocks at Racetrack Playa" in Death Valley National Park, California. For many years, the cause of these mysterious rock movements was unknown. However, in recent years, scientists have discovered that the rocks move due to a combination of wind and ice. During periods of rain or melting snow, water freezes into thin sheets of ice on the surface of the lake bed. When the ice breaks apart, it can be moved by wind, and as the ice sheets move, they push the rocks along with them, leaving behind the distinctive trails.

#5

Image source: GTOdriver04, Francis Godolphin Osbourne Stuart Whether the Titanic sank in one piece or not. Many discounted those survivors who said they saw her split in two because they had a hard time believing such a mighty ship could rip apart like that. It wasn’t until Ballard and his crew found her that the truth was revealed.

#6

I still don’t know why everyone asks “why don’t we have flying cars yet?” Think about the average American driver, now give them a pilot’s license. Image source: spacetimeboogaloo

#7

Image source: Sk8thunder, Internet Archive Book Images The Roanoke colony wasn't destroyed by natives or kidnapped by aliens. They joined the local native tribe. We can tell because people in the tribe were born with blonde hair and blue eyes for decades after the colonials went "missing".

#8

Image source: KnownRate3096, pressfoto The "bloop" sound that was recorded in the Pacific Ocean that baffled scientists was finally found to be an icequake.

#9

How the pyramids were built. For some reason, people *still* keep saying we don’t know. Well, we do. It boils down to math + money + grunt work. The core workers and project leaders were professionals, and some slaves (likely not thousands and thousands, as previously assumed) were used for labor. It’s also known that low wage workers were used as well. That’s it. It’s not magic. And it’s insulting to ancient people to claim that they couldn’t have had any sort of mathematical accuracy or the ability to build with precise lines. Of course they could do that. They had ropes and pulleys and understood leverage and design. They knew what tools to use. They had artisans and engineers. Image source: that1LPdood

#10

Image source: El1teCokeSnorter, Svitlana Hulko Ships and planes never mysteriously vanished in the bemuda triangle, sinks sank because of rough weather, and planes dropped because they hit airborne pockets of methane and the engines stalled. Thanks to modern navigation, not a single ship or planes sank there in over 20 years.

#11

"Did we just find Noah's Ark?" No, they did not. Image source: PowermanFriendship

#12

It was old man Jasper all along! He pretended to be the ghost because he wanted to scare all the tourists away, that way he could search for the treasure all by himself! Image source: TorthOrc

#13

Image source: lungben81, freepik How to make gold from lead. Hundreds of years the alchemists tried it unsuccessfully. Today it is possible using a particle accelerator. However, it is far from cost efficient - mining gold is orders of magnitudes cheaper.

#14

Image source: TurbulentAir, DejaVu Designs The rediscoveries of lost cities such as: The rediscovery of the location of Pompei in 1748. The rediscovery of the location of Herculaneum in 1709. The discovery of the location of Macchu Picchu in 1911.

#15

Torosaurus was actually a mature triceratops. Nanotyrannus was a baby T Rex. Stigymoloch and Dracorex are younger Pachycephalosaurus skeletons. Anatotitan was a grown up Edmontosaurus and I think there was a few others just because baby dinosaurs looked drastically different than adults. Image source: hungrythalassocnus93, standret

#16

How cat(er)pillars become butterflies. When I was 12 I wanted to go university to be the first person to discover how they do it. (Once catapillars have a cocoon, they secrete an enzyme that turns them into a puddle of stem cell filled goop and then that becomes a butterfly). Image source: Kubrick_Fan

#17

The mystery of the Mary Toft: In 1726, a woman in England claimed to have given birth to rabbits. While it was believed to be a medical mystery at the time, it was later discovered that the rabbits had been inserted into her womb by a local surgeon. Image source: Emperor_Boya

#18

Aerodynamicicists understand perfectly well how insects, e.g. bees, fly. It's not the same as aircraft, but the clap-fling mechanism, the vortices they produce, and the resulting thrust and lift have been accurately modeled and match the measurements. Image source: allergic2Luxembourg

#19

Can you sail from Europe to Asia (and back to Europe) by going west? Yes, BECAUSE THE EARTH IS ROUND AND NOT FLAT. Image source: HiFiGuy197

#20

Image source: TurbulentAir, freepik The mystery of how the far side of the Moon actually looks: "Until the late 1950s, little was known about the far side of the Moon. Librations periodically allowed limited glimpses of features near the lunar limb on the far side, but only up to 59% of the total surface of the Moon.[14]" "Before space exploration began, astronomers did not expect that the far side would be different from the side visible to Earth. On 7 October 1959, the Soviet probe Luna 3 took the first photographs of the lunar far side, eighteen of them resolvable, covering one-third of the surface invisible from the Earth."

#21

The "Miraculous Staircase" in the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There was even a movie made about it starring Barbara Hershey. One of the myths is that it stands miraculously without a center support pole and no engineer can figure out how that's possible. The center stringer is tightly wrapped with only 8" diameter. It acts as the center pole. Nuns said a nine-day novena for a much-needed staircase, a woodworker miraculously showed up from nowhere and built the staircase. It must have been Saint Joseph! The staircase was ordered from France. The manufacturer sent a guy to put it together. It's made of wood found nowhere in the area, it's a miracle! Because the wood is from France, duh. And finally the guy who built it stayed in Santa Fe afterward. The local newspaper had his obituary (1896 or 1898) and even said he was the man who built the staircase. Image source: SchaefSex

#22

Image source: secretmindofcisco, kues1 Spontaneous generation. People used to think flies would spontaneously appear from rotten meat, as every time they had it, flies somehow would appear even though flies were no where close when the meat was okay. After observation and experiments, we understood flies landed in the meat, left their eggs, and then more flies would be born and then stay to eat the meat.

#23

The Solway Firth Spaceman became popular in ufology as it supposedly showed a mysterious figure in the background. For 50 years no one quite knew what it really was till someone analysed the photo and concluded it was actually the mother who accidentally walked into the photo. The reason she looked like a spaceman was because of overexposure. Image source: Handsprime

#24

Image source: happywhateverday, diana.grytsku Elisa Lam, the woman found dead in the water tank on top of a hotel in Los Angeles. It wasn't a crime or ghost, she was mentally ill having a bipolar episode.

#25

Image source: hiphiprenee, pvproductions Just last year the identity of the Somerton Man was discovered. “The Somerton Man was an unidentified man whose body was found on 1 December 1948 on the beach at Somerton Park, a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia. The case is also known after the Persian phrase tamám shud (Persian: تمام شد),[note 1] meaning "is over" or "is finished", which was printed on a scrap of paper found months later in the fob pocket of the man's trousers. The scrap had been torn from the final page of a copy of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám, authored by 12th-century poet Omar Khayyám.”