Your favourite unsolved mystery?

dubstarr

https://youtu.be/ObxbeM2eAjU

This is interesting.

Mountainsandh

I was just reading about an interesting mystery : the dancing epidemic of 1518, in Strasbourg, France.

It started in mid-July with a single woman who got down on the street and started to dance, in a trance. She was soon joined by other compulsive dancers. These people danced for hours and couldn't stop, some got heart attacks, some suffered strokes, or dropped from exhaustion.
Hundreds of people ended up dancing on the streets, and the authorities, guided by medics of the time, built wooden stages and provided music for them, thinking that the only way to cure this was to let them dance until they collapsed from exhaustion (and presumably, would then recover).

But it didn't really work, so eventually they brought them to a shrine to be "healed".

Some think it was poisoning by ergot (mould on wheat), others, like the author of the article below, think it was more likely to be collective hysteria.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7608000/7608874.stm

fxotoole

Sounds like the whole town dropped some E's :pac:

Plopsu

Mountainsandh wrote: »

I was just reading about an interesting mystery : the dancing epidemic of 1518, in Strasbourg, France.

It started in mid-July with a single woman who got down on the street and started to dance, in a trance. She was soon joined by other compulsive dancers. These people danced for hours and couldn't stop, some got heart attacks, some suffered strokes, or dropped from exhaustion.
Hundreds of people ended up dancing on the streets, and the authorities, guided by medics of the time, built wooden stages and provided music for them, thinking that the only way to cure this was to let them dance until they collapsed from exhaustion (and presumably, would then recover).

But it didn't really work, so eventually they brought them to a shrine to be "healed".

Some think it was poisoning by ergot (mould on wheat), others, like the author of the article below, think it was more likely to be collective hysteria.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7608000/7608874.stm

Just finished reading a book on that. It would seem to be a stretch to suggest ergot poisoning which comes with a range of other symptoms which were absent and doesn't even really explain the dancing.
When they set up the stages in public spaces, the condition spread even more, like it was putting ideas in people's heads.

Mountainsandh

Plopsu wrote: »

Just finished reading a book on that. It would seem to be a stretch to suggest ergot poisoning which comes with a range of other symptoms which were absent and doesn't even really explain the dancing.
When they set up the stages in public spaces, the condition spread even more, like it was putting ideas in people's heads.

Weird.
I would tend to think of another variation of mold/fungus maybe, that would cause these particular symptoms, after all we know it happened elsewhere, and hygiene was not really adequate at the time, but I'm open to the mass hysteria idea too, it's just hard to understand how people may be so taken with the delusion that they would dance to death.

FxOToole, you never know, they might have hit on something natural with the same effects !
Didn't seem deliberate, or if it was they quickly changed their minds as people were calling for help and obviously suffering according to descriptions.

New Home

Hypnosis?

Mountainsandh

New Home wrote: »

Hypnosis?

But there'd be a culprit or culprits likely to be identified ?

New Home

Not if they were also told to forget who did it while hypnotised.

Are Am Eye

New Home wrote: »

Not if they were also told to forget who did it while hypnotised.

I spot one flaw in your cunning plan.

People vary in their level of suggestibility along a scale from easily hypnotised at one end and completely immune at the other.
Those who resisted or are immune to hypnosis (as a percentage of people are) would give the game away.

Irish Kings

The Mary Celeste

New Home

Are Am Eye wrote: »

I spot one flaw in your cunning plan.

People vary in their level of suggestibility along a scale from easily hypnotised at one end and completely immune at the other.
Those who resisted or are immune to hypnosis (as a percentage of people are) would give the game away.

The hypnotist could have pre-filtered his victims by trying to hypnotise everyone and getting them to do something innocuous, thereby seeing who wasn't affected by his/her charms, and convincing the rest to come back to him/her for the big number at another time/elsewhere.


Or, like, aliens.

NOVA MCMXCIV

The Favourite of The Unsolved Mystery. Nothing compares to it. I don't think it'll ever be solved...

afkasurfjunkie

I’ve just read the entire Deirdre Jacob 20 years missing thread and it’s creeped me out entirely. Mostly because it illustrates how small a country Ireland actually is. So many posters have either worked with Larry Murphy or know somebody that worked with another person connected with another missing person yet they remain unsolved. freaky stuff. One small detail that somebody thinks is irrelevant could be the key to cracking a case.

Mountainsandh

Are Am Eye wrote: »

I spot one flaw in your cunning plan.

People vary in their level of suggestibility along a scale from easily hypnotised at one end and completely immune at the other.
Those who resisted or are immune to hypnosis (as a percentage of people are) would give the game away.

Was hypnosis even a thing in France at the time ? fanatical prayer and delusions that go with that, yeah, but hypnosis ? sounds more like a modern thing.

New Home

Maybe they called it something else, but I'd wager hypnosis has always been around, in one shape or another.

Or, like I said, it was aliens.

Incidentally, were "Red Shoes" and the "Twelve Dancing Princesses" written before or after that event?

Mountainsandh

New Home wrote: »

Maybe they called it something else, but I'd wager hypnosis has always been around, in one shape or another.

Or, like I said, it was aliens.

Incidentally, were "Red Shoes" and the "Twelve Dancing Princesses" written before or after that event?

I like aliens !

Trigger

New Home wrote: »

Maybe they called it something else, but I'd wager hypnosis has always been around, in one shape or another.

Or, like I said, it was aliens.

Incidentally, were "Red Shoes" and the "Twelve Dancing Princesses" written before or after that event?

Both of those originated in the 19th century.. a good 300 years after the event

New Home

astradave wrote: »

Both of those originated in the 19th century.. a good 300 years after the event

Thanks.

Lady Spangles

The Texarkana Moonlight Murders.

Ever since they caught the Golden State Killer (well over 40 years after his crimes began), I have renewed hope for these long cold cases finally being solved. This is another, although the culprit is undoubtedly long dead by now.

Similar to Zodiac, a lone hooded gunman was targeting young couples who were parked in Lover's Lanes around Texarkana (on the border between Texas and Arkansas). He also entered a couple's home and shot the husband dead (the wife survived). Unlike the Zodiac, this seems all but forgotten.

The Crowman

Lady Spangles wrote: »

The Texarkana Moonlight Murders.

Ever since they caught the Golden State Killer (well over 40 years after his crimes began), I have renewed hope for these long cold cases finally being solved. This is another, although the culprit is undoubtedly long dead by now.

Similar to Zodiac, a lone hooded gunman was targeting young couples who were parked in Lover's Lanes around Texarkana (on the border between Texas and Arkansas). He also entered a couple's home and shot the husband dead (the wife survived). Unlike the Zodiac, this seems all but forgotten.

My money would be this Youell Swinney character.

Day Lewin

The Crowman wrote: »

My money would be this Youell Swinney character.

Yeah, mine too. Definitely very suspicious.

Hurrache

Lily Munster wrote: »

I recently watched a YouTube theory vid that the Dyatlov Pass team's stove caught fire and the smoke and fumes were so severe that they exited the tent the opposite side due to this. A melted stove was found at the site. Seems the most plausible to me.

Their footsteps to the forest were not in the pattern of running. Then someone was likely keeping a lookout from the tree to see whether the smoke had subsided but too much time passed and the first to succumb to hypothermia were left at the forest, their teammates took their clothes to try and avoid the same fate, but to no avail.

The punch mark on the guy's face could just have been due to a fight with another team member (pretty tense and stressful situation) and the injuries found on those with clothes are consistent with packed snow piling on them over days and days.

Wild animals could have bitten off the tongues, and two of the guys worked at a radiation plant - only their clothing had radioactive elements on them.

The investigation into this has been reopened, but not in an X-Files fashion

However the new inquiries will only investigate three theories considered the "most likely ones."

"All of them are somehow connected with natural phenomena," said Alexander Kurennoi, the official representative of Russia's Prosecutor General.

Crime is out of the question," he said, adding: "There is not a single proof, even an indirect one, to favor this (criminal) version. It was either an avalanche, a snow slab or a hurricane."

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/04/europe/dyatlov-pass-incident-scli-intl/index.html

best ever.. I recall reading this in my schoolbook in English as a kid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_Footprints

Suckit

The death of Sam Cooke
The 'Motel' he was killed in, turned out to be mostly used as a brothel. The manager, Bertha Franklin was a pimp and sued for $200,000 after she shot and killed him.
The woman he was with, Elisa Boyer was arrested a few months later for prostitution and again in 1979 for the murder of her husband.

Many suspect that Cooke's former manager Allen Klein may have had some involvement in the situation. Klein had Cooke sign an agreement for a company he created called Tracey, LTD, named after Cooke’s daughter that would allow Cooke to be spared of IRS scrutiny but that greatly benefited Klein as the owner of Sam’s work if he died. Sam’s wife Barbara ended up selling the remainder of Sam’s work to Klein who set up ABKCO Records.

Singer Etta James went to view Cooke’s corpse and immediately knew the whole story was not being told. She stated Sam was so badly beaten he was almost decapitated and both of his hands were bruised and completely crushed as if he had been in the fight for his life. In addition, she said his nose was mangled.
https://rhythmic.fm/sam-cookes-1964-murder-case-needs-further-exploration/
http://www.keepmywords.com/2010/11/16/intermission-the-death-of-sam-cooke/
Some of it seems a bit far fetched, but a lot of it doesn't.
There is a documentary about it called Lady You Shot Me: Life and Death of Sam Cooke
Worth reading a lot about Allen Klein too, and how he operated.

ILoveYourVibes

Who was Jack The Ripper?

prinzeugen

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

Who was Jack The Ripper?

They had a dna link in the Daily Mail or Daily Star the other day. It still looks like the guy that headed to the US or Canada.

ILoveYourVibes

prinzeugen wrote: »

They had a dna link in the Daily Mail or Daily Star the other day. It still looks like the guy that headed to the US or Canada.

Doesn't sit right with me......i smell a cover up by the British establishment and upper class exploitation!

Ipso

prinzeugen wrote: »

They had a dna link in the Daily Mail or Daily Star the other day. It still looks like the guy that headed to the US or Canada.

I thought that test pointed to an Eastern European suspect and Komiinski is the one being put forward. But that kind if test is very broad.
I would say the best suspect is George Chapman, but the problem seems to be for each suspect every pro has a corresponding con.
Even the number of victims is up in the air, could be as low as four and up to T least eight.
The Philip Sugden book is a great resource on the case.

ILoveYourVibes

Ipso wrote: »

I thought that test pointed to an Eastern European suspect and Komiinski is the one being put forward. But that kind if test is very broad.
I would say the best suspect is George Chapman, but the problem seems to be for each suspect every pro has a corresponding con.
Even the number of victims is up in the air, could be as low as four and up to T least eight.
The Philip Sugden book is a great resource on the case.

I saw that actually it was very interesting!

Gimme A Pound

Theory on Hinterkaifeck:

https://youtu.be/zMdqxKRQ37M