“Why Babysitter, What Did We Do Wrong?”: 30 Unresolved Mysteries People Doubt They'll Ever Solve

My sister and brother-in-law were having a really tough year, especially financially. On Christmas morning they woke up to extra presents for the ‘kids’ (teenagers), food in the fridge and a bag of coal for their living room fire.

It’s been about 10 years and they still don’t know where it came from, the kids are now adults and still believe it was Father Christmas.

(It’s not a mystery to me, I snook in and did it on Christmas Eve, but I love that’s it’s still not solved)

When I was a teenager I was lying in bed with headphones on listening to one of my playlists while drifting off to sleep. Next thing I remember I woke to someone very clearly whispering ‘wake up’ in my ear, I shot up looked around to an empty room and ran downstairs to tell my parents about my ghostly encounter. Spent years telling people about it when ghost stories would come up.

The mystery was finally solved when I was listening to that playlist again years later and it shuffled on to Sexual Healing by Marvin Gaye

Not so much an unsolved mystery, but extremely unusual for sure.

So it was 1997, I was in my second year of college, and coincidentally the college was near the seaside, so one lunch break me and a friend head down toward the seafront. Now, back then we didn't have mobile phones, and my friend needed to make a call, so we stopped at a phone box, which was situated by a pleasant green area with trees, shrubs etc. While he's making his call I decide now is a good time to chow down on that sandwich I'd purchased on route, one of those s****y prepackaged sandwiches you get in any supermarket meal deal.

As I open my sandwich I see an adorable little squirrel sitting on the low wall just opposite where I'm standing, so, as a lover of most things nature, I break a bit of sandwich off and toss it to the little guy, and he hurriedly accepts my gesture of goodwill, joining me in our lunchtime sandwich. All is good.

What comes next is quite simply an intrusion of personal space and daylight robbery. This cute little squirrel is actually a proper cheeky tosspot, who, at the speed of light, proceeded to jump off the wall, run at me, up my f*****g leg, around my torso and down my arm, then manages to bat the remainder of the sandwich out of my hand, before stopping for a second to look me dead in the eye like I was his b***h, before jumping off, and making away with the remainder of my lunch!

It all happened so fast, and I was so stunned I just kinda froze. My mate came out the phone box, oblivious to the recent heist and didn't believe a word of it when I told him (to be fair, I wouldn't have believed it either)

Growing up we always had a white doorbell with a black removable bezel. Very simple thing, nothing anyone would ever think about. It could have been 20 years old in the 70s.

I was 15 and coming back from school. Completely unremarkable, same routine as every school day.

The bezel was white.

I asked my parents if they'd changed it. They said it's always been white, what an I talking about.

And that's what freaked me out. And it freaked me out really badly. We had a black doorbell, not a white one. It was as much an incontrovertible constant as all of us having two hands, two thumbs, ten toes. Black doorbell.

Only "it's always been white".

I swear this isn't the universe I was born into. I slipped into a parallel universe that day where the only difference is the colour of my parents doorbell.

Found my birth father after learning he was also searching for me. I called the landline number I’d discovered. A man answered. Thinking it was him, I gave my name and confessed how thrilled I was after many decades. The man was a police offer. Guarding the home until the ME/funeral director arrived. I was beyond devastated. Gave my number to him hoping my fathers relatives would reverse charges and call. Thirty + years later, no-one has ever called. And without proof of accessible evidence, funeral home wouldn’t give me details. Plus we lived thousands of miles apart. Paid for his services and that was it. The smile on my face remains intact whenever I think of our limited memories together. Especially when the officer asked my hair color. He told me they’d discovered a very young childhood photo of me in his wallet with my name on the back and date. RIP Dad ❤️

I was in my final year of school, it felt like the summer would never end. Then I woke up and I’m almost 40. How?…

I once went swimming in open water and got really bad cramp in my leg, my friends were a fair bit away from me on paddleboards. I can literally remember starting to go under and not be able to get myself back up, I started to really panic. I then swear I felt someone grab me and help me swim over to my friends, when I looked who it was it was my childhood football coach and he kept saying “oh dear we need to get you out the water, come on you’ll be fine”.

When I get to my friends they help me on the board and they help me back to shore. I’m not sure why I didn’t turn to say thanks to my football coach but we’re nearly back to shore when I ask where’s the guy who helped me out, and they told me I just swam to them myself and there was nobody there.

I don’t believe in ghosts or guardian angels, I don’t believe in god or anything paranormal at all. But to this day I still remember being dragged out the water and him helping me across. I guess it was just my brain freaking out and putting an old authority figure there to help me get back ok. But man what the hell, I definitely saw and felt someone there, the brains a powerful thing I guess.

I accidentally dropped my teddy and he went tumbling down some stairs into the cellar. Mum or dad went down to retrieve him and an arm was missing. Nowhere to be seen. Searched the cellar and the rest of the house, never found the arm of my beloved teddy. Still perplexed to this day.

What the f**k was going on with *that* room in a 130-year-old house I once rented.

Back around '07/08 I lived with my then girlfriend in an 1890s terraced house in greater Manchester. Nice house, recently renovated, so it felt very modern even though it was over a hundred years old. But there was something off about the second bedroom at the back of the house.

It began as a vague sense of unease - when I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I just had a strong feeling that I shouldn't look in the direction of that room. So I'd go to and from the bathroom, taking care not to look over at the doorway. I thought it was just some silly quirk I was indulging. And then I told my girlfriend about it. I said, "Hey, so this is going to sound silly, but-' and she just put her hand up to stop me, and said, "It's the back room, isn't it?' Turned out she felt exactly the same way - a strange sense of not wanting to so much as glance at the back room in the middle of the night.

It got weirder.

My brother came to stay and we put him up in the back bedroom. We didn't mention anything to him about our unease about it. That first morning, I asked him how he'd slept, to which he replied that he'd had a horrible night, suffering from strange dreams before waking up in a cold sweat. "There's something weird about that room," he finished. One day, some time later, I walked past a bookshelf when a lever-arch folder - which had been lying on top of the bookcase for months - suddenly fell off and struck me on the shoulder.

But the strangest thing was still to come.

One night my girlfriend and I were just chilling in the living room watching TV when suddenly we heard this loud *crash* from the kitchen. It sounded like a load of plates and pots and pans and cutlery falling off the draining board onto the floor. I raced into the kitchen expecting to find a total mess. But there was nothing. Everything was exactly as it should be, exactly as we'd left it.

To this day I've never been able to figure out a rational explanation for that sound (which we both heard). There was a road to the front of the house, but the traffic on it was always pretty light and the noise definitely came from the kitchen, to the back of the house. The walls were really thick; in the two years we lived there we didn't once hear a peep from the neighbours on either side, so the sound can't have come through the walls. Nor could it have come from behind the house - I checked the back yard and it was empty, as were all the others on either side. There was no one there, nor any sign of anything that could have made such a loud noise.

Weird.

My mother-in-law told her son, my brother-in-law, something important on her deathbed. It seemed to have shocked him and he said he would tell us what it was later. That was over twelve years ago and he hasn't contacted us since nor even responded to Christmas cards. He used to visit her grave on her anniversaries until about five years ago but has never been back. My wife (his sister) and I still wonder what was said and what became of him.

Okay so I get home from a shift i left at 7 in the morning ,and the fish tank was fine I get back at like 4 ish open the door my partner is out just me in the house , I hear a rumbling like plastic being rattled I look round the house trying to find the noise look at the fish tank and there is like 2 inches of water in there fish are nearly dead ( don't worry they survived) im like what the actual f**k where has my fish tank water gone ? Note there are no tubes or anything like that coming out the tank it was completely empty no cracks in the plastic nothing phone my missus in a panic she has no idea I search the around the stand and the floor nothing nothing . This freaks me out I quickly pour a few cups of water in , I didn't want to shock my fish with freezing cold water just enough for them to swim and breathe . I searched for a hour trying to find where 8 litres of water have gone no trace no spill no damp no puddles . I spent the next hour saying if there some one in here I will hurt you and call the police to this day mr and my missus get freaked out thinking about it . Where did it go

Somebody at school did a S**t the size of an arm; it was so absurdly big that the person who ‘discovered it’ ran into multiple classrooms (mid lesson) to get everyone to come to the Boys toilets and look at it… the fact no teacher bollocked him shows how justified they think he was in his amazement. By lunchtime word had spread to the whole school and dozens of students were now queuing up to get a glimpse of the ‘object’…. it was like Comic-Con with Ezra Miller; everyone was waiting in line to have their photo taken with a massive piece of s**t.

Speculation was rife as to who did it - with mainly the larger students and teachers falling foul of the ‘Depth Charge Detectives’. Despite the biggest man hunt since the ‘Who Shot Phil Mitchell’ saga of 2002; no one ever came forward and it remained the school’s biggest mystery since the ‘hands on’ PE teacher abruptly got fired.

We moved house in May. On one of the first days in the property, I put my airpod charge case down on the dining room table, went into the living room to dust and vacuum, came back 20 minutes later and it was gone. The only thing in the dining room was the table itself and a set of (empty) shelves. I was alone in the house, my husband was out for several hours picking up various other bits of furniture and boxes. I have, to this day, still not found the case.

Then, in June, I bought a new water bottle on the way to the gym, used it at the gym, came home and put it on the kitchen counter to wash and refill for the next day after dinner. Half an hour later when I came to do the washing up, it was gone. My husband had been with me the whole time. We were both totally perplexed. We’ve searched the house top to bottom multiple times over and still cannot find either of these items.

As the younger sibling I used to occasionally liberate my brothers clothes. Once I borrowed his sweat band (one that goes around the head) for a football game. A few days later I was back at the football pitch and saw the headband on the pitch next to the goalposts. I panicked, picked it up and took it home, relieved I’d found it.

Fast forward a week or so and I overheard my brother asking my mum;

“Why do I have two of these?” Holding up the sweat bands.

I remained silent. I’d imagine it still bothers him to this day.

I am 40 years old, I have a very thin scar on the right hand side of abdomen below my stomach. Kind of where your appendix would be. But there is nothing on my medical records about any surgery, I have spoken to my parents who both insist I never had any surgery as a baby/infant. It’s been there as long as I can remember. I seem to have this memory of being in hospital when I was younger, I remember a bathroom and a corridor, but honestly couldn’t say if these are real memories or not, whenever I think of them they’ve always made me feel uneasy.

I want to know how a family member died. She was healthy one minute, the next minute dead as a doornail and her husband had her cremated extremely quickly.

When I was about 10 or 12 I was sitting at a desk in my room, and when I moved my elbow I accidentally knocked my favourite drawing diary off the desk. I bent down and pick it up, but it wasn’t there. Looked and looked but never saw it again.

Not nearly as intense or consequential, but I had a window cleaner for a few months. Decent guy, did the job, and I don’t think I ever really talked to him except when I needed to open the back gate so he could get to the windows there.

Anyway, must have been the fourth or fifth time he was washing the windows and suddenly he just upped and left with it halfway done. I was working from home at the time so I thought it was odd, but assumed it was an emergency or something so I gave him a few days to message me and explain.

Of course he didn’t, so I messaged him and commented on one of his Facebook Community Group posts asking him what happened, and he just blocked me. I checked for damage he might have caused but couldn’t see anything. It was so strange.

A good few years ago, while I was single, each time I met someone and went on a date, things went well and they'd then suddenly go cold on me (ghosted). Not too strange these days, however several of them later came back to say they received anonymous messages on social media about me. one forwarded me the message they received. The content of the messages means it must have been someone close to me who I was still friends with and hanging out with regularly (so it couldn't have been an ex). Things like taking what I had said, twisting it into a negative, and then sending it on anonymously to the person I was dating, trying to get them to stop seeing me. It still sometimes plays on my mind that I'll never know who it was who was sending these messages, or what their motivation was, other than stopping me meeting new people. The part that bothered me at the time was it stopped me progressing any kind of new relationships - it did stop eventually (afaik) and live worked itself out in the end as I'm now 10 years happily married :) Just a very strange situation and was pretty worrying at the time, feeling spied upon by someone close enough that I'd have probably considered them a friend. the message I did see was a FB messenger screenshot that had been created from various parts of other FB messenger messages. If you looked at it quickly, it looked legit, but on closer inspection it was clearly pieced together from one person's name, and different text in the body of the message. Whoever it was, went to some effort.

Nothing too crazy, but back in 2019, me, my girlfriend, her friend and sister were all having some fish and chips near the sea.
I love birds, so pigeons and seagulls, I love them, so naturally I threw a chip or two for some pigeons. We chatted for a bit whilst we ate, then we left, nothing out of the ordinary. BUT… my girlfriend, her friend and sister, all claim that I literally picked up a pigeon… with my own hands during this. I however don’t have any recollection of this ever happening, and since I love birds so much, I would definitely remember this. But I don’t at all. I remember everything else that happened on that day, but picking up a pigeon didn’t happen in my mind, but three people still to this day are adamant that I did pick up a pigeon.

It still goes through my head all the time and is regularly brought up by them but I still can’t remember ever doing so.