4 Unsolved Mysteries That Are Stranger Than Fiction

[Music] in the late 1800s a remote area of sweden was on the brink of fairy tale fame little benons to them for being the home of the real-life sleeping beauty on a little island called oaknow off the coast of the eastern part of sweden fourteen-year-old carolina olson lived with her family carolina had a large family consisting of her mother father and five brothers her family was a farming and fishing family like many others on the island tucked away from the rest of the world carolina olsen would never have become a household name if it weren't for one very very odd occurrence that happened when she was a young girl on a day unremarkable from the rest carolina would fall into a 32-year slumber her appearance unchanging and awake to a completely different world than she fell asleep to here is the real story of the sleeping beauty of okno the story begins on the 18th of february 1876 when carolina was returning home to her village crossing the ice of a frozen river when she fell some say she fell through the ice nearly drowning but being pulled to safety at the last moment although other sources claim she tripped and hit her head knocking a tooth loose and resulting in a toothache whatever the truth she did make it home safely to the modest cottage she lived in with her family but with a sore face and a toothache her father looked her over when she came over and despite bruising and scrapes she appeared perfectly fine then carolina's toothache got worse and she suffered from excruciating headaches out of the ordinary for her her father a local fisherman and her mother thought it was down to witchcraft it was 1876 superstition was high and the village of ochnel was quite isolated knowing there was nothing they could do that evening given their remote location and financial strain carolina was told to go to bed and see what took place the following day however when she fell asleep she did not wake up in fact she would not awake for decades she went to sleep at 14 and not to return to the waking world until age 32. her parents were desperate to wake her up but couldn't afford a doctor at the time they tried a number of methods to bring her back to consciousness including a hot flame across her skin and even pricking her with needles first on her body and eventually under her fingernails it was no use carolina was still fast asleep when their daughter did not wake up after a few days and they were unable to rouse her they sent for medical help in the meantime as the days passed they took to force feeding their daughter two glasses of milk and sugar a day and when they finally had a doctor come look at her he would tell them that she was in some sort of coma although why was she in a coma was anyone's guess the doctor kept up to date on the case and as the months stretched into a year and the girl continued her slumber he implored the medical community to try and figure out what was going on other doctors made their way out to the secluded island to see carolina for themselves and it was noted that her hair and fingernails seemed to have not grown during the entire episode and that she had not really lost any weight despite subsisting on only a mere two glasses of milk a day in fact she was in surprisingly good shape her muscles seemed to have not really atrophied at all it was as if carolina was in some sort of state of suspended animation in july of 1882 a full six years after she had gone into her mysterious sleep carolina was still sleeping away and her concerned burdened parents had her hospitalized in the city of ascoresham where doctors tried to revive her with electroshock therapy to no avail frustrated doctors would throw up their hands and diagnose her with a severe neuropsychiatric disorder called dementia paralytica also known as general paralysis of the insane or paralytic dementia but no one could be sure and it is unlikely that she actually suffered from this the family was told there was not much to be done except wait and hope for the best and so they waited and waited some more years passed seasons changed the world evolved around them family members passed away and carolina slept occasionally moaning or tossing and turning and even sleepwalking or mumbling in her sleep on occasion but never fully waking up the only time she ever showed any sort of true reaction to the outside world was when she was seen to cry when her brother passed away in 1907 yet she did this even as she remained in her strange comatose state carolina's mother would also die during this ordeal and a full-time caregiver was hired to tend to her this maid was baffled that carolina's hair always seemed to be clean and that it never grew nor did her nails she also noticed that sometimes when she left and came back pieces of candy she had brought with her would be missing leading her to be suspicious of the whole thing yet carolina would never rouse from her sleep no matter what anyone did after years of this it was also rather odd that the woman did not seem to be aging normally looking much younger than she should have as if her whole metabolism had been slowed down this would continue for 32 years until one day she just suddenly woke up on april 3rd 1908 carolina suddenly and without warning sat up in bed and began crying the maid entered the room expecting this to be just another sleepwalking episode but was astonished to see that carolina was alert awake and looking about the room in confusion the family was immediately called to her bedside but the young woman seemed to not recognize her now grown brothers and was not in a state of shock and panic over the next few days she did not say much and showed an almost painful reaction to sunlight but with some difficulty she began speaking again under questioning it was found that she had no memory of anything since falling into her long sleep except for half-remembered dreams and nightmares and when doctors examined her they were puzzled that she seemed to have no negative side effects from being bedridden for decades although she was technically now in her late 40s she looked more like she was in her early 20s she was subjected to mental tests by psychiatrist and was found to have full possession of all her cognitive abilities and intelligence although she was having difficulty adjusting to the world that had changed so much around her the news got out about what the media was calling the sovereign scan pa or the sleeper of aknow and carolina was soon a minor celebrity of course there were skeptics after all how could a woman remain asleep in bed for over three decades with no ill effects to show for it and having only subsisted on two glasses of sweetened milk per day the idea was that her family had been in on it and the whole perpetual sleep thing had been a ruse to keep her hidden away from the world another idea posited by the swedish psychiatrist harold fraterstrom was that she had suffered some sort of deep psychosis state rather than a full hibernation but that still didn't explain why she looked so incredibly young carolina would end up leading a content and normal life right up into her death in 1950 at the age of 88 always insisting that it was all true and taking any secrets she had to the grave with her we are left to wonder what happened to carolina olsen interestingly there have been other similar cases to hers although not nearly as dramatic in 2012 a 15-year-old british teen by the name of stacy commerford fell into a deep sleep that she would not wake for from two months the cause was speculated to be a condition known as klein levin syndrome or sleeping beauty syndrome but it is still poorly understood was olsen perhaps suffering from a particularly spectacular case of this how do we explain her ability to come out of it without any significant mental or physical health effects or her lack of aging during the ordeal we will probably never know and the case of the swedish sleeping beauty remains an unexplained historical oddity and possible medical marvel that we may never understand or have the answers for [Music] on a spring morning in 1856 samuel cox set out to do some hunting from his family's small house in an area known as spruce hollow when he returned later he and his wife discovered that their two sons joseph age five and george age seven were missing mrs cox thought maybe the boys followed their dad hunting without him knowing and may have gotten lost in the woods george and joseph were never to be seen alive again the search for the boys lasted two weeks and culminated in a gruesome discovery beneath a large tree on the shady banks of gypsy creek and had it not been for a prophetic dream the whereabouts of george and joseph cox might still remain a mystery this story is fact not fiction it isn't a tall tale nor urban legend the story of the disappearance of george and joseph cox is horrendous alarming and draws much skepticism given how it played out [Music] the strange tale of the lost children of the alleghenies began on the morning of april 24th 1856 when the boys followed their father into the woods samuel cox who had just finished breakfast inside the family's primitive log cabin in spruce hollow grabbed his rifle after he heard his dog barking the dog had managed to treat some small animal and samuel desperate to put meat on the table for a family dinner bolted from the cabin he was so eager to shoot the trapped animal that he failed to notice that george and joseph had followed him outside this area of pennsylvania was densely wooded even to this day the woods in that part of the mountains are heavily forested and deep you can easily be lost in them the boy's mother susanna thought the boys had just gone out after their father and that they would return home shortly when samuel turned up at home alone no boys in sight that worry and fear started to set in the parents realized their two boys really were gone somewhere in the woods scoured the area around his house but could not locate them he asked neighbors in the surrounding area for help but after a long search no trace of them could be found hunters trappers neighbors and everyone from far and near joined in the search as time went on over a hundred people were involved in the search for the missing boys large fires were built on ridge tops in hopes that the children would see one of the fires and make their way to safety the searchers came up with one theory as to the boys location they set their sights on a nearby stream called bob's creek the stream was gushing with melted snow from the change of seasons they figured it was near impossible for the boys to have crossed the other side without drowning unfortunately the search didn't bear any fruit they were unable to find the boys not even a trace of them on april 26th suspicion fell on samuel and susannah cox it was thought that they might have their children in hope of gathering donations from a sympathetic population however the family's cabin and garden were searched but no bodies were found the local lore is thick with speculation on the boys demise a witch from somerset county and the douser were even consulted in searching for the remains but the douser found nothing and the witch despite claiming to know the children's location led a search team through the woods for hours without finding anything [Music] according to the legend the night after the disappearance a local farmer jacob debert heard about the missing children and remarked to his wife that he wished to be able to dream of their location on may 2 1856 he had a dream in which he walked a path through the woods past a dead deer a child's shoe and a fallen birch tree and eventually to a corpse of birch trees in a small ravine here he found the bodies of the cox boys the dream reoccurred on two following nights the farmer told no one but his wife about the dream however he felt that the dream was prophetic and on may 7th he told his brother-in-law harrison wysong who recognized elements from de bert's dream thus the two men decided to make a search culminating in the discovery of the bodies just as the dream had described under birch trees in a small ravine reached along a track with a dead deer a child's shoe and a fallen birch jacob debert and his brother-in-law harris and wysong were remembered as heroes and the day the boys bodies were found the church bells rang through many communities throughout the allegheny mountains once the boys bodies were returned to the cox home church and school bell started ringing from pavia to bedford to altoona announcing the sad news of the boys being found joseph and george cox the lost children of the alleghenies were buried in mount union cemetery in 1906 to mark the mysterious tragedy's 50th anniversary the community raised money to create a monument to the lost boys in 1910 they had finally raised enough funds and a monument was erected on the site where the brothers's bodies were found over 50 years earlier in recent years visitors have started leaving kids toys at the monument the boys probably wouldn't have had much use for toy cars and stuffed animals in 1856 but it probably serves to accentuate the tragedy and break your heart if you visit the monument [Music] the city of hamlin germany has a long-standing summer tradition every sunday during the vernal equinox locals gather in the old town center to retell a lasting tale that takes place in the very city deep within the children's section of the local library is an old dusty copy of classic fairy tales behind the faded cover live stories of heroism nobility and true love stories that eagerly filled the minds of young dreamers everywhere however dwelling amongst the once upon a times and happily ever afters is a far more sinister tale of rat infestation broken promises and the disappearance of an entire city's children among those darker tales is the story of the pied piper also known as the piper of hamlin it's a classic fairy tale that only few have bothered to study the origins of in fact most that do know the story consider simply a figment of the imagination amusing tale meant to stir and leave the audience with an important lesson never knowing that there is a truth to the pied piper some basis in reality the most well-known version of the children's story which was written in 1857 talks about the hamlin townspeople of 1284. this town was facing a rat infestation and a piper dressed in a coat of many colored bright cloth appeared this piper promised to get rid of the rats in return for a payment to which the townspeople agreed although the piper got rid of the rats by leading them away with his music the people of hamlin reneged on their promise the furious piper left vowing revenge on july 26th of that same year the piper returned and led the children away never to be seen again just as he did the rats however the original version of the story written 45 years earlier did not come with the same happy ending the town's children were lured away to a cave where they were closed until the end of times the only child that survived in the earlier version of the story was a child who was handicapped therefore the child was unable to keep up with the musically entranced children thus that one child's life was spared there are many people who picked up this story writing their own version of the events right from the very time it happened the most well-known of all the stories about what took place in hamlin on the 26th of june 1284. are those by the grimm brothers they stray far away from simple fantasy on the interior wall of a hamlin city house there reads an inscription dating back to the 1600s it reads in the year of 1284 on the day of saints john and paul on june 26th by a piper clothed in many kinds of colors 130 children born in hamlin were seduced and lost at a place of execution nearby copenh the loss of 130 children is without question a near fatal blow to a town to the population to a chance at survival it is remarkable that hamlin is still standing after that the harrowing tale of over 100 children's lives on in this plaque all because of a supposed piper that led children to their in the calvary of copen the legend is more than just a tall tale but something that causes local townsfolk to shudder at the thought of it the inscription is now more than 300 years old and it still spooks those native to the area enough so that the inscription's home within a church has now destroyed stained glass window the church can be found in the market square and it is one of the first documented records of the story of the pied piper even given the centuries-old age of this story the town maintains that there is allegedly an eyewitness account from the time in the windows of the historic building there's the scene of the legendary piper that pushes children inside of a mountain it explains the episode in an unambiguous way a piper first freed the city from the rats carrying them to the river wesser and then with gaudy clothes takes the children on a mountain adjacent to the city where he pushes them in a cave from which they will never return and what of this 800 year old tale is really true and what happened to the children of hamlin numerous hypotheses have been made to explain the episode someone says that the rats never existed and were added to the story only from the 16th century someone believed that the black death was the true cause of the children's death a theory largely discarded though because the plague didn't hit europe until the mid 1347 so it is very unlikely that an entire city was already afflicted over 60 years earlier several other theories have been put forth in an attempt to know what happened in the story the children were taken today in the mountains to avoid the contagion of the whole population with the disease of korea siddenham also called the dance of saint vito about this there are references in the chronicles of erfurt of 1237 and in the chronicle of maastricht of 1278 or the children were forced to leave the city for a new children's crusade or for a military campaign the crusade of children has been the subject of extensive debate and seems to be the result of a misinterpretation of the latin word puer which is confused with the word pauper which means poor the military campaign on the other hand was very common at the time and often involved even the youngest it's also possible that the children were part of a migration eastward probably till transylvania and maybe the colorful man with the flute was just a really convincing real estate salesman another hypothesis very interesting came from gernot hussain a local historian the barons spiegelbergs convinced catholics were determined to eliminate resistance to religious conversion in the area and hired a hunter with bright clothes had 130 children of the city of hamline sacrificed over a calvary like that of christ sacrificed to save the men near the city the ordeal could be mount elf only 15 kilometers away from the town of hamlet where is located the kitchen of the devil a perfect place to make sacrifices of this kind and traditionally linked to pagan rites in fact the hill oberberg is described by the oral tradition of the city as a theater of rituals and demonic parties which were accompanied by the sound of a piper who played during the ceremonies inviting young people to dance today on the bongo lawson strass the street where the pied piper house is located where the children were supposedly last seen music is banned as a sign of respect but in the rest of the city there are everywhere rat iconography a clock tower tells the story three times a day there's a pied piper statue and some bars that serve typical rat's blood cocktails twice a day the bells played also the pied piper melody whatever the cause of the eerie disappearance of 1284 the children of hamlin are certainly not forgotten a mystery probably bound to remain so before the invention of the written word societies of the past needed a way to document their lives to record successes and failures much in the way we still do now the main way these ancient communities did this was through rock carvings drawings and paintings it was through these primitive illustrations many of which have been uncovered that we in the present learned about the lives of those who came long before us yet on rare occasions these primordial rock pictures have shown us something else entirely they have given us more than a peak into another time or place but shown us a story or an image that is truly mysterious tucked away in an isolated valley about two hours from milan is a place known for its famously mysterious rock art called valkamonica the valley in which falco monica is located sits within the craggy mountainous terrain of the central alps it is the largest valley in the area situated in the eastern lombardi region inside the italian province of bresia it's a sweeping and expansive 56 miles wide running through fields forests and quiet medieval villages these villages in the quiet parts of europe are the ones we see in the storybooks as children those seemingly untouched by time and the modern world falcom monica's villages themselves have been voted some of the most beautiful in italy many times over the valley is blooming with plant and flower life that makes it a special place to see a lot of greenery found in this area is native and unique to it meaning that it can't be found anywhere else in 2018 unesco named it a world heritage site and added it to their list of the world biosphere reserves in addition to this the valley is rich in history possessing numerous old castles and roman ruins and it has several unesco world heritage sites but velcro monica is perhaps the best known for having the largest most extensive and complete collection of prehistoric rock drawings called petroglyphs in the world despite the outward fascination of the art found on the rocks in welcome monica the italian locals initially thought nothing of them most of those local to the region paid no attention to them thinking them piety or scribbles until 1914. at this time guaterrero lien an alpinist and geographer came across them it was his discovery of the carvings that went previously unnoticed that thrust them into the international spotlight drawing interest from scientists and anthropologists across the globe there are over 140 000 formerly unesco recognized symbols and figures carved into the rock all over the valley but there could possibly be between an estimated 200 000 and 300 000 of them in total encompassing over 8 000 years of history dating from at least the 6th to the 8th centuries bc in the mesolithic age 15000 to 5000 bc up through the medieval times 476 to 1453 a.d they are a unique peak into this time before written history with many of these carvings capturing in time images depicting the daily life and spirituality of these ancient humans including animals plants and humans engaged in various scenes of everyday life hunting magic religion war and navigation all of them in exceptionally good condition and virtually undamaged by the years and elements thus making them and the history they depict invaluable to the fields of pre-history sociology and ethnology the expansive carvings have drawn in much curiosity and fascination since their presence became widely known notably they were used as nazi propaganda during world war ii when germans franz altheim and erica troutman began associating the petroglyphs with nazi ideologies quickly spreading the idea that they depicted a mysterious ancestral aryan race and providing their proof of their superiority the carvings were also used for italian fascist propaganda and it wasn't until after the war and in the 1950s that proper scientific research would start on them again in 1979 the petroglyphs of valcamonica were recognized as a unesco world heritage site becoming italy's first such designated site and the carvings have instilled wonder and speculation right up into the modern day yet with such a mysterious place stuck in time it is perhaps no surprise that there have been also many unsolved mysteries associated with it it has not gone unnoticed that they're among all the images of humans animals plants and various geometric shapes are those that stand out as rather different from the rest and not a little out of place in particular there are a few petroglyphs that show figures that are drawn in such a way as to make their heads seem too small in proportion with the rest of their bodies and making it odder is that they seem to be wearing what can only be described as some sort of protective spacesuit these suited figures also have atop their heads what looks very much like helmets that an astronaut would wear complete with lines radiating outward as if to convey shining bright light to make it all even more bizarre the figures are depicted holding what looks like some sort of mysterious tools or weapons like nothing seen in any of the other drawings and in fact at no other place in the history of these carvings is anything else like it's seen the impression one gets is that these are figures in astronaut suits wielding advanced tools or weapons but of course there is the conundrum that they are thousands of years old long before any sort of outfit or electric lighting would be available so what do we make of this why would this one set of carvings hold such enormous looking figures so long ago considering their strange appearance and out-of-place nature it is perhaps no surprise that the strange petroglyphs have been proposed as being evidence that ancient aliens once visited the area and were then depicted by the awe struck ancient people living here however others have proposed that the petroglyphs are merely stylistic artistic representations of some religious idea or even a battle between two men wearing some sort of armor the images are so old and the people who etched them into that rock are long gone so it is impossible to say for sure but the images are certainly odd when compared to the other more mundane figures and scenes portrayed at falco monica what are these images and what do they represent are they merely the whims of some long-ago artist a mundane scene that has simply been misrepresented or something more there have been many such mysterious petroglyphs discovered around the world and whatever the answer is the ones at falco monica remained intriguing at the very least

Channel: Unsolved Mysteries

Views: 927,743

Rating: 4.7491355 out of 5

Keywords: unsolved mysteries, unsolved, mysteries, Sleeping Beauty, Pied Piper of Hamelin, Pied Piper, Valcamonica, Karolina Olsson, ancient aliens

Id: 6lpXmSA8o4w

Length: 35min 56sec (2156 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 05 2020