Case file 038The Unexplained
The Leaping Terror of London
Tales of a leaping figure who breathed blue flames spread across Victorian London, and an aristocrat was blamed for the terror.
Open case fileThe Unredacted: extraordinary stories, unsolved mysteries and forgotten histories
Case file 038The Unexplained
The Leaping Terror of London
Tales of a leaping figure who breathed blue flames spread across Victorian London, and an aristocrat was blamed for the terror.
Read the case fileCase files
Case file 037The Unexplained
Mystery of the Enjuin Mermaid
A Japanese temple’s mermaid, said to have been caught in the eighteenth century, finally gave up its secrets to science.
Open case file
Case file 036Crime & Mystery
The Spy in the Bag
An intelligence officer’s death inside a padlocked holdall produced two official explanations, and neither the coroner nor the police could prove theirs.
Open case file
Case file 035Ancient Mysteries
The Devil’s Looking Glass
John Dee’s famous spirit mirror turns out to have been made in Mexico, but the evidence that it ever belonged to him is thinner than its reputation.
Open case file
Case file 034Space & Beyond
Lights Beyond the Gate
American airmen followed strange lights into Rendlesham Forest, and their deputy base commander went after them with a tape recorder.
Open case file
Case file 033Crime & Mystery
An Appointment with Nobody
Julia Wallace was killed in her Liverpool parlour while her husband searched for a man who did not exist, and his alibi became the case against him.
Open case file
Case file 032Ancient Mysteries
The Devil at the Door
A village priest’s sudden fortune inspired decades of treasure hunting, coded parchments and claims about a secret at the heart of Christianity.
Open case file
Case file 031Culture & Legends
Alternative 3 - Hoax or Reality?
A television drama about Britain’s scientists escaping to Mars was always fiction, but the hoax outlived every attempt to explain it.
Open case file
Case file 030Power & Secrets
Dead Scientists, Secret Wars
A run of strange deaths among scientists working on Britain’s defence projects raised fears of a Cold War killing campaign.
Open case file
Case file 029The Unexplained
Death Came for the Fortune Teller
A psychiatrist set out to test whether premonitions could prevent disasters, and found warnings of his own death among the predictions.
Open case file
Case file 028Crime & Mystery
Black Magic in Whitechapel
An occult writer claimed to have decoded the Whitechapel murders as black magic, and later writers named him as the Ripper himself.
Open case file
Case file 027Forgotten Histories
Scripture Cast in Lead
Metal books unearthed outside Granada promised an ancient revelation, drawing a threatened minority, an ambitious archbishop and Rome into a struggle over Spain’s past.
Open case file
Case file 026Power & Secrets
Cold War on Thin Ice
A Cold War intelligence mission sent two Americans to search an abandoned Soviet ice station for secrets about Moscow’s work beneath the Arctic.
Open case file
Case file 025The Unexplained
Sherlock Holmes and the Fairies
Two Yorkshire cousins cut fairies out of paper and convinced the creator of Sherlock Holmes, then could not agree on how the joke had worked.
Open case file
Case file 024Power & Secrets
Who Really Shot Bobby Kennedy?
Robert Kennedy was shot moments after winning the California primary, and a conviction has never ended the argument over what happened in the hotel pantry.
Open case file
Case file 023Power & Secrets
Guy Fawkes - The Fall Guy?
A plan to blow up King James and Parliament was foiled by an anonymous letter, but how much did the government know before it arrived?
Open case file
Case file 021Forgotten Histories
A Wonder from Godalming
Mary Toft’s supposed rabbit births drew the king’s surgeons into a notorious hoax, and left her own voice the hardest part of the story to recover.
Open case file
Case file 020The Unexplained
The Vampire with Iron Teeth
A child-eating vampire with iron teeth sent Glasgow’s children into a graveyard and its newspapers into an argument about American horror comics.
Open case file
Case file 019Strange Science
A Light That Wasn’t There
A French physicist’s new rays were soon being reported by other laboratories, until a sceptical American visitor put them to a quiet test.
Open case file
Case file 018Crime & Mystery
Mountain of the Dead
Why did nine experienced hikers cut their way out of their tent on a Ural mountainside and walk into the freezing dark?
Open case file
Case file 017Culture & Legends
Turn Me On Dead Man
A rumour that Paul McCartney had died and been replaced turned Beatles albums into puzzles, with fans scouring lyrics and sleeves for clues.
Open case file
Case file 016Forgotten Histories
Last Landing at Lakehurst
Filmed from the ground as it burned, Hindenburg left investigators arguing over sabotage, static and the fabric of its skin.
Open case file
Case file 015Power & Secrets
Captives of the Atomic Age
Britain secretly recorded Germany’s leading nuclear scientists at the end of the war, and what they said in private undermined the story they later told about Hitler’s bomb.
Open case file
Case file 014Forgotten Histories
Brotherhood of the Eye
Behind the Copiale cipher lay the Oculists, a secret society that staged eye operations on its recruits and set out to expose the Freemasons.
Open case file
Case file 013Crime & Mystery
Scandal at Dublin Castle
The theft of Ireland’s crown jewels on the eve of a royal visit ended one official’s career, but neither the jewels nor the thief were ever found.
Open case file
Case file 012Space & Beyond
Who Spoke for Ashtar?
Southern Television viewers heard an alien warning in the middle of the news, and nobody has ever proved who delivered it.
Open case file
Case file 011Forgotten Histories
The Stone That Wouldn’t Sink
Victorian engineers sealed an ancient obelisk inside an iron cylinder and towed it towards London, but was its disastrous voyage cursed or simply mismanaged?
Open case file
Case file 010Culture & Legends
The Play That Fooled London
Shakespeare’s supposed lost papers made a young law clerk the talk of literary London, until his newly discovered play faced an audience.
Open case file
Case file 009The Unexplained
The Ghost They Invented
Psychical researchers set out to manufacture a spirit from scratch, and ended up with a ghost that could not exist and would not stay quiet.
Open case file
Case file 008Power & Secrets
The Typewriter Was Listening
Soviet engineers hid bugs inside the American embassy’s typewriters, capturing documents as they were typed and before any cipher could protect them.
Open case file
Case file 007Space & Beyond
A Signal from Proxima
Astronomers hunting for alien technology found a signal that seemed to come from our nearest star, then spent months tracing it back to Earth.
Open case file
Case file 002Ancient Mysteries
Mystery of the Crystal Skulls
A crystal skull was said to have come from a Maya temple, but a dealer’s catalogue, a Sotheby’s sale and a microscope told a different story.
Open case file
Case file 001Crime & Mystery
Bella in the Wych Elm
Four boys found a woman’s skull inside a Worcestershire tree, beginning a mystery of anonymous messages, suspected spies and alleged witchcraft.
Open case fileNo published stories in this category yet.
On this day
8 November
On this day / Case file 023
Guy Fawkes - The Fall Guy?
Conspirators are killed or captured at Holbeach
Revisit the case
Dispatches
Curious stories and events from around the world
BBC Science & Environment
One of the year's most prolific meteor showers to light up the night sky this weekend
Smithsonian Magazine
Where Did Stonehenge's Mysterious, Six-Ton Altar Stone Really Come From? Geologists Rule Out the Scottish Hypothesis as the Search Deepens
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/12/d3/12d31303-a522-4eaf-b012-ba89ec6d2332/altar-stone-prof-nick-pearce-aberystwyth-university-reduced.jpg)