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
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
Image credits: lkodl
#4
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
#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
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
#7
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-
#8
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
#9
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
#10
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
#11
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.
#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
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
#14
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
#15
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
#16
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
#17
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
#18
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…
#19
Even though we all know she’s 100000% dead, I go nuts wondering where Susan Powell is. That case haunts me.
#20
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
#21
Sherill Levitt, Suzy Streeter and Stacy McCall. The 3 missing women from Springfield MO from 1992.
#22
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
#23
Kyron Horman. A young child who disappeared from his elementary school in 2010. The case is still unsolved today.
#24
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
#25
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
#26
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.
#27
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.
#28
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.
#29
Michael Dunahee.
At 4 years old he went missing in 1991 from a playground in Victoria BC only a few yards from where his mother was playing football.
Victoria was.still a pretty small and sleepy town back then so it was quite the shock to the community.
When my own son was around that age I couldn’t help but think about that case .
#30
Jennifer Kesse.
Disappeared after seemingly leaving for work, but never arrived. There is footage of someone parking her car but the time lapses in the camera matched up perfectly to when this person is walking behind a fence so they are never seen.
#31
The Beaumont children, 3 siblings went missing without a trace.
#32
The Skelton brothers. Their dad has been in jail for like 13 years and still refuses to say where they are.
#33
Don Hutchings was a good friend of my mom and step-dad. He (as well as other hikers) were abducted while trekking through Kashmir in 1995. Don and the three other hostages were last seen in December of 1995. The body of one of the British hostages (Paul Wells) was found in 1997 (but not identified until 2000). There hasn’t been a trace of Don or the other two ever found. We know they are all dead (Don was officially declared dead in 2001), but some closure as to the specifics of when/where/how would be a relief. (We suspect they were executed late 1995, early 1996 after their captors had a gun battle with the Indian military.) It’s always really weighed on me and my family.
#34
Elijah Vue, case just happened this year in Wisconsin, but his disappearance pulls at my heartstrings. His mom left him with an abuser who says he fell asleep and when he woke up he just “disappeared” I know they know what happened to that little boy. I just want them to find his remains and give him peace. I have little boys at that age and I cried for days thinking about him being so alone and scared.
#35
Skye Budnick. Was 21 years old, booked a one way ticket to Japan in 2008 without telling anyone. Took out little money from her bank and abandoned her car at the airport. There really isn’t much else known.. Her sister has a big following on tiktok and also has a Podcast called Surviving Skye. Idk why but this is so weird to me.
#36
This woman, Cindy Song, disappeared from the town I was living in Halloween night, 2001.
I was in high school at the time. I still have family in the area, so I’m back there frequently enough.
I just wonder what could have happened, where her body is etc.
Maybe I’ve even been at the same restaurant as her k*ller at some point and never knew. Maybe I’ve driven past her body on occasion.
I just hope her family gets their overdue closure someday.
#37
Allan Bryant.
A local lad who went missing in 2013, never seen or heard from ever since. There’s rumours as to what could have happened but no solid leads. His Dad still drives around in a car plastered with his face.
#38
Kemberly Ramer
She disappeared in August of 1997 in Opp, Alabama a very small town and she had just left a girls softball game and went home when she went missing and she hasn’t been seen since. You can Google her case if you want to or you can watch a YouTube video I made on it as I make true crime documentaries if you just Google “ kemberly ramer Bama mike “ it will come up. Anyway some time after the disappearance kemberly’s mom publicly accused a guy who was a nearby sheriff’s son, who was also dating kemberly’s sister at the time, she was and is certain he did it, but to date there have been no arrest, no charges, and no kemberly. A few months ago a tip was called in on the case and police and search parties went out searching again after all of these years, supposedly they found some new evidence, they haven’t said what it was, but unfortunately there was still no kemberly. It’s a sad story, and it happened in a small town where you would least expect it. I mean most of us don’t even lock our doors at night because it’s just a bunch of good old country people living in the town, so it’s shocking and it will stick with me until someone finds her or knows what happened.
#39
My brother. 1969. Camping trip. He went off with his fishing pole and never returned.
#40
Maura Murray. No tips, no leads she just disappeared after a car accident and never returned. I think about her case often.
#41
Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon. Disappeared under strange circumstances while hiking in a remote part of Panama. Partial remains were discovered, along with a backpack, clothes, cell phones and a camera. Numerous call attempts were made from the phones during their hike, and the camera had some very odd pictures. Has never made any sense at all.
#42
Jodi Huisentruit from Mason City,Iowa. She disappeared and the case was never solved. She was a popular reporter in the area at the time.
#43
My current neighbor’s story from her hometown back in Ukraine. It was before the conflict had begun, or just a little bit after. Rumors began to spread about some freak attacking women that were alone out during dark hours. They lived on the outskirts of a town and my neighbor’s path to work lay through unused railroad surrounded by nothing but trees and bushes. As with any rumors, no one really took it seriously, but she did, since every morning before dawn she had to go to work, so she asked her friends to walk her, paid someone to drive her, etc.
One day her colleague told that her 16 y.o. daughter hadn’t returned from her dance class. Went out and simply disappeared, no one saw her going out or coming back. She was found a few days after under the bridge by the railroad, dismembered.
There’s nothing in this story that separates it from the rest like that, but the fact that it happened to someone my neighbor knew is terrifying. It could’ve been her. It could’ve been her own daughter. It could’ve been anyone. really. Reminds me just how vulnerable we are and where being careless can get you.
#44
Searched the comments and didn’t see Alissa Turney so I’ll mention that one. It’s quite likely her stepfather was involved but for her sisters sake I would love to know what tf actually happened.
#45
A friend from high school vanished in college.
He got in a car accident, took an Uber to a seemingly random town, and was never seen again. Dogs lost his scent on a side road with almost nothing nearby. There’s a theory he walked out on life but the events leading up to his disappearance just don’t feel right.
If he set it up, why the car accident? How does that help him vanish? If he had someone waiting to pick him up, why risk injury with an accident?
#46
In high school, I was in band with a friend of mine and her older brother. They were Mormon so when he turned 18 he was sent for a two-year mission to Saudi Arabia. Basically the moment they landed, they were stripped of all of their documents and jailed.
From what we know, he was later placed with a family that would essentially have him under house arrest for at least a year while they converted him to Islam and assimilated him into the culture. (Or just k*lled him.)
We didn’t hear anything for a couple years, long past the time the mission would’ve ended, and he would’ve come back. Supposedly he was left unattended near a telephone and was able to reach someone who is able to get him to the US Embassy. From there, he was able to reach out to his family, but he was not allowed to come home.
That was in 1997. He hasn’t been heard from since 2001 and is presumed dead, but we don’t know.
#47
Dail Dinwiddie, who went missing from a U2 concert in Columbia, SC in 1992. It sticks for me because I was at that show and because she was a friend-of-a-friend.
#48
Harold Holt.
The prime minister of Australia went for a swim and disappeared off the face of the planet.
#49
Josh Guimond. A college student in his 20s. He just went missing in the middle of the night from a quiet, wooded university campus. A massive search was conducted. For weeks. Nothing. No body, no note, no indication of leaving. Just gone.
#50
Because I went to college in St. Joseph, MN, the Jacob Wetterling case always got to me. I can even remember seeing his missing poster in a local pizza shop in the twin cities when I was in elementary school. They did find his body, but I am still struck by how mismanaged his case was. Joshua Guimond was also never found. The Sterns county police have a lot to answer for.
#51
Connie Converse. She went missing on her own terms though, left letters for her loved ones and everything letting them know she just wanted to get away and start over. Prior to that she had a decently successful music career. Many of her songs were recorded live at parties and have been published on platforms like Spotify. The podcast Criminal has a really good episode on her, she seemed like a really unique soul. I believe her brother is still alive. But she disappeared without a trace, and I would love to learn about how she reinvented herself after she vanished.
#52
Local man was a truck driver in the early 80s. He was making deliveries on his normal route. Police found his truck parked, nothing appeared to have been taken. No sign of the driver.
After however many years required by the law, the family had him declared deceased.
#53
The Tara Calico case and that Van photo allegedly of her and a boy.
#54
Amy Wroe Bechtel. Disappeared while running in Wyoming in 1997. No sign of her was ever found.
#55
Lauren Spierer, the Indiana student who went missing after a night of partying. We were similar in age and I can’t imagine, and it’s wild how none of the friends know what happened to her (or won’t speak about it).
#56
Those five special needs guys coming home from a basketball game.
#57
Natalie Holloway, who went missing in Aruba, her younger sister was in my grade when it occurred, her parents came and spoke to my parents about it pretty much as soon as it happened, they essentially found the guy that did it but he got away Free because his father was a judge on the island, he was Dutch never found her body never know if she was human trafficked or m*rdered.
#58
Kenny Veach. The Youtuber who went looking for a mysterious cave near area 51. The M cave they called it.
#59
Trevor Deely, disappeared in Dublin without a trace. Think about that dude a lot as I’m often in the area he was last seen.
#60
I still wanna know what the hell happened to Kyron Horman after a decade.