Lots of things can be scary: ghosts, zombies, vampires, and all kinds of monsters. But as creepy as they might seem, there’s no real evidence they exist—and that’s a comforting thought.
What’s far more chilling, though, are the real-life mysteries that leave us questioning everything we thought we understood about the world around us.
Take missing persons cases, for instance. Recently, Redditors shared the ones they just can’t stop thinking about. We’ve gathered some of the most haunting ones below—read on, but be warned, these stories may stay with you long after you’re done.
#1
Madeleine McCann.
I live 8 miles from her parents. I have a child the same age. We probably went to the same baby groups as her mother.
We were on holiday at exactly the same date Madelaine was.
The difference is, I am working class, and we were in Skegness ... And we would have gone to F*****G PRISON for leaving a toddler alone and going out to dinner.
Image credits: AgingLolita
#2
Terrance Williams.
Guy disappeared after being taken into custody by a sheriff's deputy in Naples, FL, in 2004 for a traffic offense. The same deputy was later found to have been the last person to see Felipe Santos alive, before Santos also disappeared while in custody for a traffic offense.
Image credits: AlanMercer
#3
Shelly Miscavige
Wife of Scientology leader David Miscavige. Not seen since 2007. All missing persons cases brought to LAPD are simply “closed”.
Image credits: Petdander
#4
My husband's aunt disappeared. I don't remember when, but my husband has no memory of her. No one in the family has heard from her in 20+ years.
I have a compulsive need to know things, so I started researching her to see what I could find. I checked obituaries to see if I could find one for her using both her real name and some aliases I found. I also used a picture one of my husband's relatives posted of her when she was a kid, and I compared it to as many Jane Doe's as I could. I found three or so that could MAYBE be her, but it was hard to tell. The fact I was looking was my little secret because my husband's family is very religious, and when my husband's grandpa/aunt's dad was dying, he said he could see her, so they were all convinced that she was dead.
About two years ago, I paid $30 or whatever for one of those reports that show people's known addresses, and I found records of her getting arrested about three years after her dad died. All of the addresses were five or more years old. I didn't tell anyone because I didn't want to burst their bubble about their dad being wrong, and I thought everyone would think it's weird that I would put in so much effort to find my husband's aunt that he can't even remember. A couple weeks ago, something reminded me of the report I pulled, and I decided to tell my husband. He recommended I call his mom, and when I did she said that she had just talked with the relative who posted the photo I was using the other day about the disappearance. She said she would call that relative and they would decide how to proceed. I haven't heard anything else since then.
If your name is Jodi, you were born in LA, you lived near Seattle in the mid-2010's, and you haven't spoken with your family in decades, your family never forgot about you and want to see you again.
Image credits: Scary-Baby15
#5
Bobby Dunbar. Disappeared in 1912 during a family vacation to Swayze Lake, LA, at the age of 4. Dunbar was allegedly found in the company of William Cantwell Walters, an itinerant worker, 8 months later. Walters was arrested and the boy was returned to the family.
After his death in 1966, DNA evidence revealed the boy returned to the family was NOT Bobby Dunbar. No one knows what happened to the real kid.
Image credits: tamelycliches
#6
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
Image credits: lkodl
#7
This case happened in the early 80's in Western New York. I don't know the girl's name. She went to middle school (Casey or Sweet Home?) with a friend of mine.
To put it briefly, a friend of mine had a classmate who just stopped coming to school all of a sudden. Other kids were concerned, so one girl's mom called the missing girl's mother to see what was wrong. She said her daughter had disappeared, but not to worry about it, because the police had been notified. There was nothing on the news about it and no information about how the case was going, so a few weeks later the classmate's mom called the police directly to ask about it, and found out the girl had never been reported missing. At that point, the classmate's mother made a missing person report. The girl was never found.
As for what happened, the missing girl's mom, who had been divorced, had recently gotten married to a new guy. The new guy REALLY didn't like the daughter. There was definitely something going on at home, like violence or abuse, but the girl wouldn't tell her friends any details. My friend thought the stepdad k*lled the girl and the mother colluded with him to cover it up. In the best case scenario, the girl ran away from home to get away from her stepdad, but that's still really bleak.
The creepiness of the mom lying and claiming she made a missing person report when she hadn't makes this story stick in my mind.
Image credits: SuLiaodai
#8
Timmothy Pitzen. Mom picked him up early from school and took him on a trip to the zoo and things like that. Then she was found dead from s***ide with a note that said her son was safe but would never be found.
Image credits: baldpatch29
#9
A local case here is Daniel Robinson. He was 24 when he went missing in 2021.
This case baffles me and I hope to see it resolved someday sooner rather than later. Essentially, he was a geologist who left a job site and traveled towards a semi rural area in buckeye Arizona. He was last seen driving his red jeep renegade and was traveling alone. The jeep was later found crashed in a ravine with his personal items still inside of it (cell phone, wallet, keys).
I suspect he sustained a head injury from the accident and then unfortunately wandered further into the desert and died from dehydration or his injuries. His body had never been found.
Image credits: ireallylovegoats
#10
My sister-in-law and mother-in-law were missing for 25 years before my wife‘s efforts led them to be found. The MIL had gone into hiding to protect the younger daughter from sexual abuse. Her dad turned out to be an (alleged, while the case goes through) p***phile, and my wife’s work on the case on with the true crime podcast Vanished caused the Bureau of Indian Affairs to run a social media scrape that turned her up through being in a photo someone else posted to Facebook.
Anyway, we helped pay for the lawyer, and the first thing her mother heard after being taken into custody was a lawyer saying, „[your daughter] sent me.“
Long story short, we got to meet her and they have a wonderful relationship now.
#11
Rhianna Barreau. Disappeared from her home in Morphett Vale, South Australia in October 1992.
Tragic case of wrong time, wrong place as she was supposed to be meeting her mother for lunch at a nearby shopping centre, but an impromptu bus strike that day meant she couldn't get there.
She instead walked to her local shops to buy a Christmas card. It was confirmed by the shop that she had purchased the card, witnesses confirm seeing her walking home along a main road around 12:30pm, and the card was on the table when her mother arrived home shortly after 4pm. However Rhianna was gone and never seen again.
While some, including the lead detective on the case, believe a local is responsible and she is buried nearby; info I have from PIs indicates that it's more likely she was spotted walking along the main road and the perpetrator followed her home, knocked on the door under false pretence and took her. Sadly, all the info that has been given to police hasn't been acted upon despite strong evidence for a POI, and her case remains unsolved.
Image credits: -Midnight_Marauder-
#12
A friend went missing. Other friends and I went looking based off a clue from FB. The clue was some random person leaving a public message on the “missing person” post on a family member’s page. This person claimed to have seen them and tagged someone else. The family member asked where they were seen and we found the first location. Later in the evening of the same day, the tagged person replied publicly that yes, in fact that was the person they saw.
The conversation went private to gather more details, which included a description that was accurate enough of the missing person’s vehicle. We left the next morning to verify. It was a group of us friends. We asked the parents to stay home as the father was recovering from a heart attack & surgery. By this time the police had been called & informed about the messages and our intentions to follow up.
5 hour drive passed and surer than s**t there is the missing persons vehicle, off the highway headed deeper into the desert. When we stopped at the nearest gas station to regroup, we had the parents reach out again on FB to see if the posters of the information would be willing to meet. We wanted to try and retrace steps if possible and safely( I haven’t mentioned safety yet because it was incredibly stupid to do what we did and we knew the risks. We accepted potential outcomes and hoped for the best). We ended up near a group of housing that seemed similar to the description of where he was last seen by these people.
The parents got back to us a few hours later and said that the people who tipped us off vanished. Like full up deleted everything from FB. We could not proceed because this was not a nice area and with the freaky ghosting it was clear something weird was up. We met with police after our return and gave them everything we had. They didn’t even go out to check on the abandoned vehicle. Nothing. A few weeks later we paid for a tow truck(yes weeks on the side of the road and it was still there) to bring it back into town.
Every few weeks and there would be some whisper or rumor. Months passed. After about a year of nothing but rumors we got together and sort of laid out everything we reasonably believed to have happened based on us knowing them as a person. We eventually settled with owing the wrong people money or pissing those people off…maybe on purpose too.
It’s been 8 or so years now. I still have those times where whoever I’m with, if they knew this person we go silent and just sort of…morbidly reminisce. Someone going missing is a different kind of grief than someone passing away. That’s all.
Image credits: _where_is_my_mind
#13
Brian Shaffer. I think about this one from time to time because it's so crazy.
Went out to a bar with friends, they were outside. He was spotted on camera going inside the bar again, but he never came back out. City cameras have never seen him roaming the streets or anything to indicate a body was being disposed of.
There was one exit that wasn't on camera, but it was under construction and the police said a sober person would have had a hard time using it, let alone a drunk person.
He's never been found since. It's just crazy to me that this dude could walk into a building on camera, and that same camera never sees him come out.
Image credits: SweetCosmicPope
#14
Rachel Cooke . The 19-yr old went for a morning jog in January 2002. A neighbor last saw her coming back a couple hundred yards from her house. She never made it home.
I worked in news as a cameraman and had just started a job in this area about 7 months after this happened. We frequently checked in with the family at each anniversary of her disappearance and anytime police found new evidence or possible locations of a body. The mother and father were such nice people and it just broke my heart each time we talked to them as they just kept holding on to the tiniest bit of hope. Her father died in 2014, never having got any kind of closure. To this day, they have no suspects or a body.
Image credits: lipp79
#15
Andrew Gosden.
Andrew Gosden was just 14 when he was last seen on the 14th of September 2007 in Doncaster, Yorkshire. His parents went to the grocery store to pick up some goods, as the believed he had already gone to school.
While they were out, Andrew returned home and collected his belongings. He took his video game console, but not a charger. He then paid a £200 ticket and travelled to London.
It took several weeks for CCTV to reveal that he had travelled to London. During this time, the police and media alike had thrown Andrew's father Kevin through the mud.
Kevin was extensively questioned, with police even using the "good cop, bad cop" approach on him.
By the time that it was finally proven that Andrew had left Doncaster, little could be done about it.
Several theories have come to light in the 17 years since Andrew disappeared.
One theory is that Andrew voluntarily disappeared. It has been theorized by some, including Andrew's parents, that he may be gay or transgender and afraid to come out.
Another theory suggests he was travelling to London to meet somebody such as a groomer posing as a girl or a younger male. However, Kevin has stated on several occasions that Andrew did not have internet access.
Other theories include that he was travelling to a concert or was picked up by an opportunistic predator. Some people have even suggested that serial k*ller Stephen Port was behind his m*rder
Andrew's parents have never given up hope of seeing their son alive again, although his dad has conceded that he knows Andrew did not leave voluntarily, after he did not turn up to the wedding of his sister Charlotte.
Image credits: Material_Poet_9706
#16
Lars Mittank is still a creepy case. He was on vacation with his friends, hot ill and wanted to leave a few days later, as he was not able to go on a plane. The night before he wanted to fly back home he called his mother and sent texts to her in a very "confused" way. He even made it to the airport and saw a doctor there but while taking he jumped up and ran away. He was last seen on the airport camera, running away from the airport. Never seen again.
Image credits: hannaeus
#17
My cousin...
Got out of the military after a long stint doing some kind of spooky s**t in the middle east that he would never talk about. Never really adjusted to normal life and one day 'went camping' in montana and it was like he stepped off the face of the planet. His truck was found near a trailhead but no gear no body, he just disappeared...
#18
Morgan Nick. Disappeared when she was 6, and her mother created The Morgan Nick Foundation to help find missing kids. I first learned about her from an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. They were building a new house for the family, and made a bedroom for Morgan if she ever came home. That aired in 2005, and sadly, she hasn't been found as of today.
Image credits: PurpleDreamer28
#19
Hannah Upp, a twice victim of fugue states. She had disappeared twice, and each time was found near water. Well, she decides to move to a tropical island to teach, and whaddya know, she disappears. I think she drowned.
Image credits: Neat_Classroom_2209
#20
Kyron Horman. A young child who disappeared from his elementary school in 2010. The case is still unsolved today.
#21
Even though we all know she's 100000% dead, I go nuts wondering where Susan Powell is. That case haunts me.
#22
My aunt. I never met her so this story was just told to me by my dad (her brother). They always said my aunt was some kind of a rebel during her teenage years, but she sort of carried that personality and attitude into adulthood. She had 2 kids, my cousins, with her husband who was a construction contractor. But one day, she just disappeared. No warning, no nothing. She left behind her family and they've never really gotten any closure from it. This was in the mid 90s since all of this happened before I was born. She would have been 70 today.
When social media became a thing, one of the first things we did was look up her name on Facebook in hopes of seeing her account, but everyone who had the same name was a different person. For the longest time we just assumed that she is no longer with us.
Now in the Philippines, November 1st is celebrated as All Saints Day, where the tradition is that families have a reunion in the cemetery with the departed. We share some food, catching up with extended family members, and each family will light some candles for the dead relative. In 2015, during the morning (around 5:30 am) of All Saints' Day, we noticed a candle already lit on the gravestone of my grandpa (which would be her dad) when no one in our family or extended family had visited the grave yet. We know this because we live quite literally near the cemetery, so we are always the first side of the family to get there during All Saints' Day. My dad thinks the candle was from my aunt paying her respects but trying not to be seen so she went there at around 3am or 4am or so.
We tried going around the same time the following year but we didn't see anyone. Until now, I personally have no idea what happened to her.
Image credits: ediwowcubao
#23
Summer Wells. She went missing in 2021 at the age of 4. Mom says she was outside helping plant flowers and went inside to play. Sadly she was never seen again. The family was investigated but nothing came to light. It’s a very sad story and I think of that poor little girl often. I truly wonder what happened to her.
Image credits: maksauce47
#24
Sherill Levitt, Suzy Streeter and Stacy McCall. The 3 missing women from Springfield MO from 1992.
#25
Frederick Valentich. Private pilot who disappeared along with his plane in 1978 after reporting a UFO following him. The ATC tapes are still available. There's a sudden strange mechanical whirring sound and then nothing. Never found a trace of him.
#26
My brother, he disappeared when I was probably around 4? He was 22 I think, never found a body, dogs couldn't track him in the forest he went missing in, I remember when I was a teen and they finally declared him dead.....I still wonder what happened, my sister (now 57, and his twin) thinks he wandered off drunk and got eaten by a mountain lion.
#27
The Skelton brothers. Their dad has been in jail for like 13 years and still refuses to say where they are.
#28
Mekayla Bali. 16 year old girl went missing in 2016 from Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Canada. She was last on camera at a restaurant in the local bus stop. Never seen or heard from again. There is a theory that she was meeting someone that she met online, but nobody knows.
#29
April Beth Pitzer
I worked this case, it's not a particularly noteworthy case and I've worked a fair few missing persons cases since, but just the fact so much time has been put into it and knowing she'll never be found.
The rumour was that she was an informant against a dealer, as a result she was m*rdered and thrown down a mine shafts. She was bipolar which is a factor too, less than stellar choices. Quite a few little bits to the story that were odd, suggestions that her mother was constructing false evidence to keep the case alive. Certainly people know what happened to her but aren't talking. Just years of false leads.
Image credits: Kasha2000UK
#30
My brother. 1969. Camping trip. He went off with his fishing pole and never returned.
