10 Paranormal And Unexplained Mysteries That Will Leave You Guessing

1. Overtoun Bridge

The Overtoun Bridge is an arch bridge located near Milton, Dumbarton, Scotland, which was built in 1859. It has become famous for the number of unexplained instances in which dogs have, apparently, committed suicide by leaping off it. The incidents were first recorded around the 1950′s or 1960′s, when it was noticed that dogs – usually the long-nosed variety, like Collies – would suddenly and unexpectedly leap off the bridge and fall fifty feet, to their deaths.  In some cases, however, the dogs would survive, recuperate, and then leap off the bridge again.  What makes this tragic mystery even more mysterious is that many of the dogs that jump from Overton Bridge jump from the same side and from almost the same spot: between the final two parapets on the right-hand side of the bridge.

Some believe that the bridge is haunted.  In 1994, a man threw his baby son off the bridge, claiming that it was the anti-Christ.  Later, the man attempted suicide there as well.  Was Overtoun Bridge responsible for this tragic event? Some believe that Overtoun Bridge is a “thin place”, where the barrier between the world of the living and the world of the dead meet, and sometimes cross over.

2. Raining Blobs

The townspeople of Oakville, Washington, were in for a surprise on August 7, 1994. Instead of their usual downpour of rain, the inhabitants of the small town witnessed countless gelatinous blobs falling from the sky. Once the globs fell, almost everyone in Oakville started to develop severe, flu-like symptoms that lasted anywhere from 7 weeks to 3 months. Finally, after exposure to the goo caused his mother to fall ill, one resident sent a sample of the blobs for testing.      What the technicians discovered was shocking – the globs contained human white blood cells. The substance was then brought to the State Department of Health of Washington for further analysis. With another startling reveal, they discovered that the gelatinous blobs had two types of bacteria, one of which is found in the human digestive system. However, no one could successfully identify the blob, and how they were connected to the mysterious sickness that plagued the town.

3. Devil’s Footprints

The Devil’s Footprints was the name given to a peculiar phenomenon that occurred in Devon, England on 8 February 1855. After a light snowfall, during the night, a series of hoof-like marks appeared in the snow. These footprints, measuring 1.5 to 2.5 inches wide and eight inches apart, continued throughout the countryside for a total of over 100 miles, and, although veering at various points, for the greater part of their course followed straight lines. Houses, rivers, haystacks and other obstacles were travelled straight over, and footprints appeared on the tops of snow-covered roofs and high walls which lay in the footprints’ path, as well as leading up to and exiting various drain pipes of as small as a four inch diameter. Reports of similar anomalous, obstacle-unheeded footprints exist from other parts of the world, although none is of such a scale as that of the case of the Devil’s Footprints.

4. Vaninish People

Worldwide there are literally hundreds  of thousands of missing persons and many more disappear every day.  One only has to search Google Images for “Missing  People” to appreciate the scale of the problem. Many of these missing people  are found but a significant proportion disappears forever.  Where they went or what happened to them is a  mystery in its own right but still not as strange as Vanishing People.  These are individuals that for no apparent reason  simply vanish in front of witnesses who are at a complete loss to explain what  happened.  It is worth noting, as with  many other mysteries, that some of these cases have turned out to be hoaxes.  In general, there are a couple consistencies  in the most well known cases that are worth mentioning.

All the people involved were (or appeared to  be) content with their lives. All of them were engaged in a normal activity  such as running a race or walking through a field when they simply vanished. There  are hundreds of well documented cases of people disappearing in mysterious  circumstances but actually very few where they simply vanished in full view of  other people. We’ve listed this as a phenomenon because of its pervasive theme  in stories, films and cultural beliefs. As an example, the films Picnic at  Hanging Rock, The Illusionist and the X-files all refer to this occurrence. The  belief in the possibility of this as a phenomena has been reinforced by the  acts of stage magicians that really do appear to be able to make others disappear.

5. Belmez Faces

Is it just me or doest that stain on the wall look like a person staring at you? Yup, its one of the many faces of Belmez that the Pereira family home is used to having. For over twenty years, the faces that appear can resemble males or females. They also arrive with different expressions every time. Strangely, the faces only stop at the house for a quick visit before disappearing. Investigations have been preformed upon the house to discover what was causing the faces to spontaneously pop up. One investigation exhumed and removed a human body from under the house, but that still didn’t stop the faces from making round trips. Several hypotheses have been formed to help explain this strange reoccurring phenomenon, but overall, no conclusions have been come to.

6. Donnie Decker

Dubbed the Rain Boy in 1983, Donnie Decker was visiting his friend’s house when he abruptly went into a trance-like state. Immediately after, the ceiling began to drip water and a mist filled the room. His friends immediately called on the landlord who was alarmed by what he was seeing. Some time later, Donnie was at a restaurant with other companions when rain started pouring down their heads. The restaurant owner immediately forced him out. Years later, due to a petty crime, Donnie was put into jail where he caused chaos when rain started to pour down in his cell. After angry inmates complained, Donnie explained that he could make it rain when he wanted to, and proved his point by dumping rain on the jailor on duty. Eventually, he was released from jail and found a job as a cook at a local restaurant. His present whereabouts is unknown – as is the cause of the mysterious rain.

7. Hyper Perceptions

Most people will experience Hyper  Perception at least once or twice in their lifetime.  This phenomenon usually occurs when a person visits  a place they’ve never been before and yet experiences a very strong sense of familiarity.  This should not be confused with déjà vu which  is often fleeting and is really just a brief feeling of having seen or done  something before.  Hyper Perception is  extended when the same person may perceive things about the place that they  couldn’t possibly know.  Unlike time  slips or déjà vu, the feeling grows stronger the longer they stay and in some  cases people have reported suddenly being aware of very clear memories of the  place from other times often decades or even centuries in the past.

Tour guides in stately homes or other historic  sites have become quite used to people coming up to them and say things like “wasn’t  there a statue by that tree” or “didn’t this floor used to wood?” In many cases  the guides will admit that this used to be the case many years ago but they were  moved or renovated. The guides then usually ask how the visitor knew this to  which the answer is almost always: “I don’t know I just seem to remember it  being that way”.  In certain cases people  who have experienced very strong hyper perceptions find the experience quite  disturbing. The picture to the right and above is of Warwick Castle in England.  Some years ago a member of the team visited  it to take photographs and was so overwhelmed with a sense of having actually  lived there before that he later spent months researching both the history of  the Castle and his own family tree to see if there was any connection.  He didn’t find one but still keeps  looking.  To test his own perceptions he  visited the Castle again several years later and felt the identical sensation  which he states he has never experienced anywhere else.  Strangely, very little has been written about  hyper perception as it is usually and unfairly bundled together with claims of clairvoyance,  ESP and fortune telling.

8. Time Slips

According to great scientists  such as Albert Einstein, time is not as stable as most of us think.  As humans we’re adjusted to time  and our evolution has established tricks to allow our conscious minds to deal  with it but in reality it’s a slippery concept.   Time slips occur when a current time (now) interlaces with a previous  time (then) and can be experienced by the person from the more recent time.  However, the event is usually unnoticed by  the people from the earlier time. What is the evidence for this  phenomenon?

Well … plenty if you know  where to look.  In fact it is so common  that we’ve even built it into the English language.  We’ll explain.  When a time slip occurs people in both  realities are able to experience the alternative reality.

Still,  according to most  accounts, this usually lasts for only a few seconds and the human brain does  its best to filter out these anomalies.   This has given rise to expressions such as “I could have sworn that I’ve  just seen” or “my eyes must be playing tricks on me” or even “you won’t believe  what I just saw”.  Over the years people  have claimed that they’ve seen old airplanes parked in fields that were once airports  or roman soldiers marching down their road.   In almost all cases the person experiencing the time slip blinks, looks  again and is startled to find that whatever they saw has now vanished.  However, photography has captured these  anomalies from the time that the camera was first invented.  In fact, the longer exposure times of early  cameras have revealed more than the modern “instant” versions do but there are  still oddities such as the image captured on Google Earth that clearly shows a  World War Two bomber flying over Britain.   Is this a time slip or just the folks at Google having a laugh?  Perhaps it’s a reconstruction from an air  show? Not all time slips are brief and there have been occasions when people  have entered a room and been startled to find that they are in a completely  different time.  One case was recorded by  Mr Archie “Racer” Carmichael who was driving from Birmingham to London in 1953  when he stopped for a drink in a Cotswold village near Borton-on-the-Water.  He parked his Austin-Healy 100/4 outside the  local pub and entered for a drink.  He  was shocked when the he found the people inside the bar looked as if they were  from an earlier century.  His attempts to  communicate were ignored and after a few minutes the scene dissolved and Archie  found himself being asked if he was alright by a worried looking barman. It  seems that he thought he had seen ghosts but was probably experiencing a time  slip.

9. Flimmern Geists

The words “Flimmern” and “Geist”  are Germanic in origin and translate as Flicker-Spirits or Flicker-Guides.  This unexplained phenomenon was first described by the  alchemist Jakob Bohme in the 16th Century as the ability to see  shadowy figures out of the corner of your eye.   Generally, these beings flicker in-and-out of a person’s peripheral vision  and appear to be humanoid, dark and agile.   The truth is that almost every person alive has at some time seen a fast  moving shadow just at the edge of their vision and turned to look but seen  nothing more.  These observations are most often accompanied by shivers, chills and a sensation that something odd has  happened. Scientists are quick to suggest that this phenomenon is just a “trick  of the eyes” but fail to explain both how and why.

It is possible that these unexplained apparitions  are just the hallucinations of the brain as it tries to decipher the edge of visual  perception but others believe that it is in this marginal zone that the eye and  the mind is able to perceive another more paranormal dimension.  These Flickering Spirits are often described  as being cloaked but those that have trained themselves to observe this  phenomenon simply describe a blurred outline that can easily be mistaken for dark  clothing.  In late 16th  century culture and superstition these Flimmern-Geists were largely associated  with death and may well have given rise to the popular image of the “Grim  Reaper” the personification of Death – a dark hooded figure that flickered in-and-out  of a person’s vision shortly before they died. There is a current school of  occult thought that proposes that these “Flicker-Ghosts” are somehow the guides  that lead a person’s soul to the afterlife.   The reality is that nobody really knows why or how individuals see these  things but there is no doubt that many millions do.  In fact, so many humans see them that they treat  them as just-one-of those-things that, you know, just happen.

10. Ice Woman

Nature performs many astonishing feats, yet it is a different matter altogether when we human beings push past the boundaries of normal. It was a viciously cold morning in Lengby, Minnesota, when a man discovered his 19-year old neighbor, Jean Hilliard, lying in the snow. Her whole body was frozen solid from the night before, when temperatures dropped twenty-five degrees below zero. Apparently, Jean was trying desperately to reach her neighbor for help when her car skidded off the road. When her body was discovered she was immediately sent to the local hospital, where her condition stunned the doctors. One of the nurses said that Jean was “so cold, it was like reaching into a freezer” and that “her face was absolutely white, just this ashen, death look.” Jean was also seriously frostbitten, and none of her limbs would bend or move.

The hospital staff did everything possible, yet the situation was dire. Even if Jean were to regain consciousness, she would more than likely have severe brain damage, and she was frostbitten to the degree that both her legs would have to be amputated. Her family gathered in prayer, hoping for a miracle. 2 hours later, Jean went into violent convulsions, and regained consciousness. She was perfectly fine, mentally and physically, although a bit confused. Even the frostbite was slowly disappearing from her legs to the doctors’ amazement. She was released 49 days later without losing a single finger, and sporting only minor scars.

Sources: aquiziam.com, listverse.com