Top 20 Most Mysterious People in History
#20: The Poe Toaster
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Mystery surrounds the death of Edgar Allan Poe. Beginning in the 1930s, his resting place was visited by a shadowy figure known only as The Poe Toaster. Every year on Poe’s birthday, a man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and white scarf would visit Poe’s grave and toast the dead writer with a bottle of cognac. After a brief visit, the man would leave behind both the unfinished bottle and three roses. On occasion the Toaster would also leave a note, one of which read, “Edgar, I haven’t forgotten you.” Despite visiting Poe every year for over 60 years, no one knows who this man was, or even if it was more than one person.
#19: Count of St. Germain
Any man who goes by multiple names is bound to be mysterious. The Count achieved popularity in the 18th century for supposedly making great achievements in various academic fields. Throughout his life, the Count went by various names and monikers, including Chevalier Schoening, Prinz Ragoczy, and the Marquis de Montferrat. He was also sardonically dubbed The Wonderman by French philosopher Voltaire owing to his many exaggerated claims. The Count never wanted to be known, and he told deliberately confusing and contradictory stories to keep his identity secret. To this day, no one knows much about his personal life - not even his real name.
#18: Sergei Tretyakov
There’s something about a good spy story that captures our imaginations. Spy stories have been popular for decades, with James Bond being the genre’s primary figurehead. But unlike many movie heroes, spies are actually real, and their life stories are endlessly fascinating. Take, for example, a Soviet officer named Sergei Tretyakov. Tretyakov worked for Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, but he also served as a double agent who fed the American government valuable information. Tretyakov eventually defected to the United States in October 2000, being given $2 million and a new identity. He lived in Florida for ten years before dying in 2010, with some suspecting that he was assassinated by Russian forces. In reality, he supposedly choked on a piece of meat.
#17: Monsieur Chouchani
The gravestone of Monsieur Chouchani reads, “The wise Rabbi Chouchani of blessed memory. His birth and his life are sealed in enigma.” That about sums it up. These beautiful words were written by Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and writer of the famous memoir “Night.” Wiesel was one of Chouchani’s many pupils. It was said that Monsieur Chouchani had a vast understanding of academic subjects, including an encyclopedic knowledge of the Talmud, the primary text of Rabbinic Judaism. Chouchani hoped that his teachings would speak for themselves, and they did - to this day, no one knows anything about his personal life, and his real name remains a complete mystery.
#16: Kaspar Hauser
This German man had a very short life, dying at just 21 in 1833. Yet he left behind a lasting legacy. Hauser claimed that he spent most of his early life locked in a dungeon. Hauser himself didn’t enter the public record until 1828, when the 16-year-old was found wandering the streets of Nuremberg. One popular rumor of the time posited that Hauser was of royal lineage and that he was hidden away for many years. Others, including expert psychiatrists, argued that Hauser was a swindler. The story gets even more mysterious, as Hauser was stabbed on December 14, 1833 and died three days later. Hauser told an elaborate story of his stabbing, but contemporary writers theorized that he had stabbed himself for publicity.
#15: Fulcanelli
Unsurprisingly, not much is known about Fulcanelli, a French alchemist. We certainly don’t know his real name, and we don’t know much about his upbringing or credentials. But what he is known for are two far-fetched incidents of transmutation. In 1922, Fulcanelli and his pupil Eugène Canseliet supposedly changed 100 grams of lead into gold. He purportedly performed this feat again at the Château de Léré in 1937, this time transforming lead into gold and silver into uranium. Unfortunately, Fulcanelli disappeared from recorded history after World War II, having vanished during the liberation of Paris in 1944. He was never heard from again, leaving his life and works a tantalizing mystery.
#14: Sidney Gottlieb
Surely you’ve heard of Project MKUltra. If not, it was a secret and highly illegal experiment conducted by the CIA on unsuspecting and unwitting citizens. The project hoped to uncover secret brainwashing and mind control techniques that could force suspected criminals to confess. It was a very controversial study and was halted in 1973 after twenty years of covert operation. This contentious project was headed by a man named Sidney Gottlieb, whose work during MKUltra was both highly dangerous and shrouded in mystery. For example, he often dosed unwitting subjects with LSD. In 1953, he personally dosed bacteriologist Frank Olson, who died under violent and mysterious circumstances just nine days later.
#13: Ötzi
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Of course, there are no great biographies of Ötzi… who is about 5,000 years old. But despite his age, we do know a few key details about his personal life. Back in 1991, two German tourists were walking in the Ötztal Alps when they stumbled across a mummified body frozen in the ice. This was Ötzi, who to this day is Europe’s oldest mummy. Following intensive study, it was determined that Ötzi was born in present-day Bolzano around 3275 BCE. That’s about all we know of the historic man, but we’re getting more answers as the years progress. In 2023, Ötzi’s entire genome was mapped, revealing darker skin, a penchant for baldness, and shared ancestry with Anatolian Neolithic Farmers.
#12: Babushka Lady
No presidential assassination has resulted in more conspiracy theories than John F. Kennedy’s. Of the people present on that fateful day, questions persist about two figures, the first being the supposed second gunman and the second being a little old lady wearing a scarf around her head. That piece of headwear resulted in the nickname we know her by today. The reason she's shrouded in speculation is that she can be seen filming footage of the events that afternoon but her identity and film have never been recovered. Could the information she captured confirm or put to rest the conspiracy theories surrounding the event? It seems likely at this point that we’ll never know.
#11: Harold Holt
The 17th Prime Minister of Australia, Holt went out for a swim in the water at Cheviot Beach near Victoria in 1967 and was never seen again. The thing that has mystified followers of the incident ever since was the fact that zero trace of him was ever recovered, despite the fact that one of the largest search operations in Australian history commenced shortly after his disappearance. Speculations that Holt may have either killed himself or faked his own death persist to this day, and – even more sensational – some theories suggest he ran away with his mistress or was actually a Chinese spy.
#10: Tommy Wiseau
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“The Room” is just as strange and elusive as the man who created it. The personal life of Tommy Wiseau is shrouded in mystery, despite his nearly mythical status as a cult movie legend. Much of what we know about Wiseau comes from Greg Sestero’s “The Disaster Artist,” but Sestero’s information comes directly from Wiseau himself, and many of his claims have not been independently verified. Furthermore, Wiseau has a penchant for misleading and exaggerating stories, having given many contradictory accounts about his upbringing. As it is, Wiseau enjoys his privacy, telling Entertainment Weekly, “I think private life should be private life, the professional life should be the professional life.”
#9: William Shakespeare
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Despite being undoubtedly one of the most well-known and highly regarded literary figures in history, there are very few details of the man’s life or work that are actually agreed upon. His birthday is celebrated as April 23rd, but likely only because some 18th-century academic wrote it down wrong. He was probably educated at King’s New School in Stratford but there are no surviving records to back that up either. The largest question of them all, of course, is whether he actually wrote the works that led him to become famous to begin with.
#8: Tank Man
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We may not know his name, but we sure know the images of this supremely brave man standing in front of and blocking a large column of tanks leaving Tiananmen Square. The day before, the Chinese government, in their Tiananmen Square massacre, slaughtered a large number of civilians and political protestors demanding reforms. Despite some extensive efforts, no one has been able to identify the Tank Man, and no one knows what happened to him. Some claim that he was arrested and executed, others claim that nothing happened and that he continues to live a quiet life on the Chinese mainland. We just don’t know, and we likely never will.
#7: Nikola Tesla
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The Internet’s favorite inventor, Tesla’s expansive list of discoveries and theories – which includes the Tesla coil and alternating current – has resulted in a reputation as a mad scientist. And, when you discover that he created both a death ray and a supposed earthquake machine, allegedly experimented with time travel, and believed he knew how to make a building crumble if he could just discover the correct pitch through trial and error, it’s not hard to understand why. Seemingly fearless about the potential dangers his creations may’ve posed to him and humanity as a whole, the image of him sitting alone working while electricity crackles around him has turned the man into an almost mythical figure – and the loss of many of his notes only increases that.
#6: Aleister Crowley
An English occultist, artist, ritual magician and religious leader who is a heroic figure of freedom for some, but was also labeled the wickedest man in the world during his lifetime, Crowley is a unique figure. Considered by some a Satanist who was rumored to be a cannibal and murderer of children, the extreme fashion in which he lived led many to demonize him. The founder of a religion known as Thelema, it seems like at one time or another every evil deed was attributed to Crowley, and as a result the line between what the man did and didn’t do is almost completely blurred.
#5: D.B. Cooper
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On November 24th, 1971 a man identifying himself as Dan Cooper bought a one-way plane ticket to Washington. After the flight took off, the man in question politely told a flight attendant that he had a bomb and he proceeded to hijack the flight. He demanded $200,000, four parachutes and that a refueling truck be waiting for them when they touched down. When his demands were met, they landed and the man allowed all other passengers and nonessential personnel to debark before they took off again. Once they were back in the air, all remaining people other than Cooper were placed in the cockpit, and the calm polite man presumably jumped from the plane with his ill-gotten gains, never to be heard from again.
#4: The Man in the Iron Mask
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The man identified as Eustache Dauger is possibly the most famous prisoner of all time. Purportedly spending 24-hours-a-day wearing a mask – sometimes described as velvet, often categorized as iron – this inmate spent over three decades imprisoned, with guards taking many special precautions with his care. Yet, despite his fate, he was never said to be angry or to complain to his jailers. There are several theories as to the true identity of the prisoner, but the most popular calls him out as a relative of the king at the time, Louis XIV, who would have threatened his claim to the throne. Whatever his true identity, his life will always be shrouded in mystery.
#3: The Zodiac Killer
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The person known as the Zodiac Killer is a serial killer that terrified California during the late-1960s and early-1970s, and then stopped his attacks as quickly as they started. Confirmed to have killed five people and to have injured another two, The Zodiac claimed another 37 deaths were attributable to him in letters he sent to newspapers and investigators. In those letters, he gloated about his superiority over those who were looking for him and even provided police with a cryptogram that he claimed would provide them with his identity if solved. When the code was eventually cracked, that was proven false; but it’s those types of theatrics that made it all the more surprising when the letters and killings stopped unexpectedly.
#2: Grigori Rasputin
The man known as the “Mad Monk” was the focus of mystery. Recognized by many as a central figure in the collapse of the Russian Monarchy and the Romanov Dynasty due to his weakening of the Tsar’s credibility, he was said to have mystical powers of healing and prophecy. The Russian people felt Rasputin wielded complete control over the entire royal family, which allowed the population to blame him for their country’s ills. Just like his life, Rasputin’s death is also the subject of conjecture, as some accounts claim he survived poisoning and being shot in the back and head, before he was finally drowned. Most historians reject this version of the story, but it’s a great example of the myths that landed Rasputin in the second position on this list.
#1: Jack the Ripper
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Between August 31st and November 9th, 1888, five prostitutes were murdered in the Whitechapel district of London in grisly fashion, sparking the legend of Jack the Ripper. Remarkably similar to the story of the Zodiac, The Ripper also sent letters to authorities taunting them and providing them with evidence that could’ve led to his capture – in one case, even including what’s believed to be part of one of his victim’s kidneys. Despite the combined brainpower of millions of amateur detectives in the years since his crimes, the closest anyone has come to identifying Jack the Ripper came in 2014, when one armchair detective claimed DNA evidence identified him as Polish hairdresser Aaron Kosminski. But the conclusiveness of that test was called into question, so it’s still anyone’s guess.
Do you know any fun facts about these mysterious figures ? Let us know in the comments!
