10 Mysterious People Who (Supposedly) Came Out of Nowhere

People disappear all the time. But rarely do they appear out of nowhere — unrecognizable, strange, and mysterious. From the Middle Ages to the last 20 years, here are 10 of the best…

10. Kaspar Hauser

Kaspar Hauser's famous performance in Nuremberg in 1828 remains an unsolved mystery to this day.

The confused boy claimed that he had spent his entire life in the basement, eating bread and water, and He was only accompanied by a toy horse Although he spoke no German, Hauser provided two letters to the Nurembergers who found him. One was from the man who fed him, a laborer, and the other was from his mother, giving his name and date of birth and explaining that his father had been killed in the cavalry. Still, questions about the boy remained.

Successively accepted by a teacher and the 4th Earl Stanhope, Hauser became a young man and got a job as an office clerk. And we might have heard nothing more about him if not for his untimely death: he was stabbed and murdered at the age of 21. It is unclear whether it was murder or suicide. . In any case, this left both his origins and his fate forever shrouded in mystery. Since then, many theories have emerged, including that he was the hereditary Prince of Baden, although this has been disproved by DNA.

9. Rudolf Fentz

According to legend , in June 1950 A 19th-century man was spotted in New York City. Dressed in old-fashioned buckled shoes and other period clothing, the 30-year-old appeared dazed and walked in circles until he was hit by a taxi. When police examined his body, they found he had banknotes dating back to before 1870, a letter dated 1876, a 5-cent saloon beer token, and a livery bill for the care of his horse. He also had a business card with his name and address. But that turned out to be a dead end. Fentz was also not listed in the phone book, and he had not even been reported missing. Eventually, an investigator came across a listing for a Rudolph Fentz Jr. in a 1939 directory. That led them to Fentz Jr.'s now elderly widow, who said Fentz Sr. had disappeared without a trace in 1876. He was 31 years old. The youngest was still a child.

This is a fascinating story that remained a mystery for decades . But now this seems false.According to Snopes , this is taken from Jack Finney's short story "I'm Scared," published in 1951.

8. "Jerome"

One day in 1863, locals in Sandy Cove noticed a man in his 20s, both legs amputated, struggling down the beach. He was heading for the Bay of Fundy tide; he wanted to die . And he was only five feet from the sea when help arrived. Taken in by locals, he gradually recovered.

The name he gave was Jerome (though it was not entirely clear that this was his name). As for where he came from, he simply told Columbo that could have been the name of a ship . He said nothing more as the days turned into weeks, months, years, even decades. The Nova Scotia government supported his hosts financially, but during that time nothing more was learned. Jerome chuckled far more than he spoke, and was unwilling—or unable—to write instead.

Meanwhile, his story spread around the world, and the man became a landmark. For some, he was a nobleman disfigured out of revenge , for others, a wounded and abandoned naval officer. Still others believed he was a runaway immigrant. One of the most plausible theories is that he was a lumberjack whose feet froze in the winter, seemed true for a while But we still don't know the whole story.

7. John Zegrus

In July 1954, a smartly dressed Caucasian stepped off a plane from somewhere in Europe in Tokyo. He was on a business trip, he told customs, and this was not his first visit to Japan. In addition to French and Spanish, he also spoke good Japanese. But something was wrong with his passport: his country did not exist.

There are now two versions of this tale. One by (Internet version ), his passport, with numerous stamps from Europe and Japan, had been issued in a place called Taured. When customs said there was no such nation, Zegrus insisted that there was; it lay between France and Spain, as it had for 1,000 years. But when they showed him a map, he understood what they meant. Where Taured should have been, there was a place called Andorra. Furthermore, the company Zegrus was supposed to be visiting had never heard of the man. Neither had his hotel. On paper, he did not exist. Suspicious officials had given him a room and kept him under guard all night. In the morning, he was gone, vanishing without a trace, along with his passport and belongings, which had been kept away from Zegrus.

As mentioned, this is an internet version, supplemented with some far-fetched conclusions, such as that he was a time traveler or from another dimension. However, although it is heavily embellished and significantly changed, this is not a complete fabrication In 1960, a man named John Zegrus presented a strange passport in Japan; his case was debated in the British Parliament. The place of issue for his passport was Tamanrosset, the capital of the Tuarid. And it was written in an unknown language. However, the real non-existent Tuarid, unlike the Taured of the Internet, was supposedly an African country south of the Sahara. Later in court, Zegrus described himself as "an intelligence agent of Colonel Nasser and a naturalized Ethiopian." He was sentenced to one year in prison.

6. BC Dow

One morning in Georgia in the summer of 2004, a sweaty, sunburned, naked man was found near the dumpsters behind a Burger King. Unconscious, he was presumed dead. His skin was inflamed and crawling with fire ants. But he was alive and, according to tests, physically healthy. His problem was psychological.

At the hospital, he kept his eyes tightly shut and thrashed when touched. He also couldn’t remember his name. The nurses simply called him B.C. Doe. In fact, he remembered little of his life. Although he thought he’d been living in the woods for 17 years, all he knew for sure was his birthday—August 29, 1948, two days before he was found.

A few months later, he chose a new name: Benjaman. It felt familiar, he said, and Kyle would be his last name until he figured out who he was. But it proved elusive. Nobody knew his identity. — not the police, not the FBI, not the US Marshals, not the Canadian authorities, not Interpol. Nor the media, missing persons groups, TV viewers or Internet users.

Only by DNA match more than 10 years later he was finally identified. His name was William Burgess Powell. Originally from Lafayette, Indiana, he simply never had many connections, either social or familial. It remains a mystery how he lost 20 years in a fugue state, but it is assumed that during this time he took the name Benjaman.

5. The Woman of Utsuro-bune

According to a Japanese text from the Meiji period "Hyouryuukishuu" (Stories of the Castaways), in 1803, an alien ship washed ashore near the village of Harashagahama in what is now Hitachi Province. Three meters high and five meters wide, it was hollow and had the shape of a flying saucer , but was mostly made of wood. Inside was a pale young lady no older than 20. In her hands she held a small wooden box, which she did not allow anyone to touch.

Judging by her red hair and strange language, she was not from Japan. After discussing the matter, the locals sent her back to sea. They assumed she must be an exile, and so this was her fate. Perhaps she had been unfaithful to her husband, they said, and instead, as a princess, had escaped death in exile.

In fact, this was not the first time that utsuro-bune (a hollow vessel) washed up on the beach. A similar encounter took place on a nearby beach, in which a woman was accompanied by a man's severed head. Perhaps this time he was inside a box.

4. Isdal Woman

Early in the morning of November 29, 1970, a family walking in Isdalen, Norway, came across corpse of a woman Badly burned, he was surrounded by objects: jewellery, a watch, a broken umbrella and bottles. They had been placed in a way that suggested “some kind of ceremony,” forensic experts later said. But what puzzled authorities most was the removal of identifying evidence. Her clothes had had their labels cut off and her name scraped off – not just at the scene but also on a pair of suitcases. They were found at the train station and their fingerprints matched the woman. She had apparently travelled widely in Europe. In fact, she was beginning to look like a spy. This was the Cold War, after all. And according to the Norwegian intelligence service, her movements were far from random; they were monitoring a development Norway's top-secret Penguin missile system .

However, the case was eventually closed. There was not enough evidence to solve it and her death was written off as suicide. It is only in the last few years that there has been hope of finding the Isdal woman. According to isotope analysis of her teeth , it appears that she was born in Germany, near the border with France, around 1930. This is the beginning…

3. Gil Perez

In October 1593, sentries marching back and forth in front of the Plaza Mayor palace in Mexico City noticed someone strange among them. Although he marched, turned, and saluted correctly, he was wearing an unfamiliar uniform. Not only that, he looked completely confused. As it turned out, his uniform was from Manila—14,000 kilometers to the west. When questioned by the captain of the guard, he confirmed that he was in the Philippines. But he I had no idea how I got to Mexico .

What's even stranger is that he got there in less than a day He was sure of this because he knew that the governor of the Philippines had been killed the day before. Suspected of being in league with the Devil, Gil Perez was locked up awaiting the Inquisition.

It was clear, however, that his teleportation across the Pacific was as much of a mystery to Perez as it was to anyone else. He certainly did not look like a sorcerer. Months passed, and finally word arrived on a ship from the Philippines that the governor had been killed, just when Perez had said he would. Not knowing what else to do, the inquisitors released the strange soldier and allowed him to return home.

2. The Green Children of Woolpit

Somewhere in the middle of the 12th century The English village of Woolpit welcomed two small children, a boy and a girl, into its fold. Alone and confused, they had apparently emerged from the wolf pits that gave the village its name. Their language was unrecognizable and their clothing was unusual, especially in color. But the strangest thing was the color of their skin: an otherworldly shade of green. Unsure of what to do, the villagers of Woolpit took the children to a knight, Sir Richard de Calne.

The children did not eat for days. In fact, they regarded food as foreign until one day they chanced upon some freshly cut bean plants and devoured them greedily. In time they were encouraged to eat other foods, and eventually they lost their green colouring. Although the boy fell ill and died, the girl thrived. Baptised and taught to speak English, she was finally able to explain where she came from: St Martin's Land, she said, a land of perpetual twilight, where everything is green and where a much brighter land can be seen across the river. What she did not know was how she came to be in Woolpit. Versions of the story differ as to the last thing she remembered, but it was either a loud noise as she and her brother herded her father's cattle, or following the cows through a cave and emerging (without them) into this world.

The girl continued to live with the knight and grew up to be a "very wanton and impudent" girl. She then married and moved 40 miles away from Woolpit. Centuries later, writers and thinkers returned to the story as evidence of the "multiplicity of worlds."

1. Jofar Vorin

In 1850, a man showed up in a village in Brandenburg, Germany. Unaccustomed to strangers, the authorities took him in for questioning. He said his name was Geofar Vorin and he was from a place called Laxaria, a country in "part of the world called Sacria." His German was poor, but it was the only European language he knew. His native tongue, he said, was Laxarian; but if it helped, he could write Abramian, the written language of the clergy of his homeland. His interrogators made do with German. As for why he had come to Europe (or “Eyplar,” as he knew it), he claimed to be looking for a long-lost brother.

Oddly enough, Vorin's story was believed. And there has been very little follow-up since. All we know is that he was taken to Berlin for further interrogation.

One theory suggests that he was from another timeline, which the Ottoman Empire never fell to . Vorin's Sakria, for example, may have been misspelled as Sakarya, a region in Turkey. He also said that his religion was similar to Christianity but was known as Hispatian, possibly related to Hamza Ispatskaya , who wrote about Alexander the Great's invasion of Iran, which bordered the Ottoman Empire.

It’s an interesting theory, but it leaves out some details. For example, Vorin said he was shipwrecked crossing the vast ocean between Sacria and Euplar, which, if Euplar is Europe, as his German suggests, clearly rules out Turkey as his homeland. Also, his names for the other “parts [or continents] of the world” match ours pretty closely; in addition to Euplar and Sacria, he listed Aflar, Aslar, and Auslar. The notable absence of America suggests that Sacria was North and South combined. But why Sacria and not “Amerilar”? Perhaps in this alternate timeline, the New World was discovered not by Amerigo Vespucci , and someone from Turkish Sakarya. We may never know.