Top 10 Internet Mysteries That Were Finally Solved

You can never predict what the internet will obsess over. In the summer of 2017, comedian Nate Fernald noticed an enamel pin of a strange creature named Geedis on eBay, and wondered what the heck it was on Twitter. Online sleuths came to his aid, even setting up a dedicated subreddit. Podcasts co-hosts Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson eventually cracked the case, discovering that Geedis was the creation of artist Sam Petrucci for a series of fantasy stickers titled “The Land of Ta” in the early 1980s. Although Petrucci had passed away before getting to see his work create such a stir, Sivertson and Johnson reached out to his surviving family members, and got to see a bunch of his original artwork.

She walked so that today’s influencers could run. In the early days of YouTube, Bree Avery– also known as Lonelygirl15– amassed a following with her relatable content. It wasn't long after her first video in the summer of 2006 that her channel became the most subscribed on the platform. The videos became more bizarre, with a mysterious religion and occult language introduced. After a few videos, suspicions that her channel was a hoax appeared in the comments. In late 2006, members of the forum at Lonelygirl15.com managed to track down her IP address. Soon after, her real identity was exposed, and the channel’s creators confirmed that it was all part of a scripted series. Funnily enough, this only made her channel more popular.

After it was uploaded in 2009, the unsettling video “I Feel Fantastic” eventually went viral, and for good reason. In the puzzling clip, an animatronic robot sings inside a nondescript room. Some viewers suspected something dark was going on behind the scenes, and from there somehow reached the conclusion that Tara was a serial killer or the creation of one. The truth, it turns out, is that Tara was created by one John Bergeron, a musician and android enthusiast, who actually built a few different versions. Little did he know he’d make such an impact on internet culture in the future.

The concept behind 2006’s Find Satoshi was simple. As part of an alternate reality game called Perplex City, players were given the name and photo of a mysterious man and tasked with locating him somewhere in the world. At first, the trail ran cold. It wasn’t until 2020 that he was found, after a man in Germany, Tom-Lucas Säger, did a reverse image search of the original photo. AI facial recognition delivered him photos of a man who resembled Satoshi, who was located and contacted, confirming his identity. It was a victorious end to such a long mystery, closing a chapter of Internet history.

Plenty of odd websites have cropped up on the internet. Some have been fun, some have been unsettling, and others have been downright weird. Hell.com managed to be all three at once. With mysterious messages, difficult navigation, and dark aesthetics, it quickly became a staple of the web in the late 90s. Many who stumbled across it did their best to understand the deeper meaning behind it, and came up short. It was eventually revealed that the site was created by artist Kenneth Aronson, apparently as an experiment project in collaboration with other artists. Sadly, he sold the domain in 2009, and the site no longer exists.

What would you do if you started finding odd messages around your home? For one man, the answer was simple– ask Reddit. Redditor RBradbury1920 reported finding disturbing notes scrawled on Post-its around his apartment. Even setting up a web-cam hadn’t given him answers. The comments exploded with different theories for what had happened. However, one answer from Redditor Kakkerlak stood out amongst the rest, suggesting that the poster himself had been leaving the messages in a daze. They were right. The OP had been breathing in carbon monoxide, causing him to write the notes. Luckily, the advice was taken seriously, and they were able to get help before it was too late.

This years-long conundrum began in 2020 when Finnish Redditor TontsaH posted a photo of a collage on some curtains, asking for help identifying the faces there. Seven of the eight were identified, but one - dubbed Celebrity Number Six - proved elusive. This led to the establishment of a dedicated subreddit, r/CelebrityNumberSix. Several different methods were utilized to find her, including going through a decade’s worth of Getty photos. It was all in vain, until in 2024, Redditor StefanMorse colored in the image and ran it through factual recognition tool PimEyes. It turned out to be Spanish model Leticia Sardá, who used the momentum to reinvigorate her modelling career.

When a YouTube account called Webdriver Torso began posting a dizzying number of nonsensical videos in 2013, it naturally drew in quite a crowd. The clips varied in length, and usually featured random colors, shapes, and noises. However, three videos seemed to contain humorous references, such as a Rickroll. The channel posted for years, with fans speculating desperately on what the cryptic uploads might mean. In mid-2014, website Engadget figured out the truth, and YouTube confessed: the channel was used to run internal testing for the website.

Having a song stuck in your head is frustrating enough! Not knowing what song it is only amplifies that. In the 2000s, German teen Darius and his sister Lydia uploaded a song recorded from the radio in the 1980s, hoping to identify it. It took years, but eventually, more and more people began taking an interest, analyzing the accent of the singer and the instruments involved. The mystery captivated the internet, until finally, in November 2024, Redditor marijn1412 produced the truth. The song was “Subways of Your Mind” by German band Fex. The band corroborated the answer. After a two-decade search, the search for the most mysterious song on the Internet was complete.
Fake Out:

Scholars and historians have been scratching their heads for years– ages, even– to crack this case. Did I include a special character? Is it one of my five previous passwords? Did I accidentally let my laptop generate one of those keysmash passwords that I’ll never write down, let alone remember?


Just kidding, here’s your real #1:

The popularity of ciphers in online mysteries has led people to look for messages in the strangest places. When an odd video depicting someone in a plague doctor costume first hit the web in 2015, the automatic assumption was that there were secrets to be decoded. Viewers immediately took to the task, uncovering various messages and horrific imagery. Things quickly spiraled out of control, with the creator even being accused of planning a bioterrorist attack. A few months after the clip was posted, an American resident of Poland named Parker Warner Wright came forward and admitted it was his creation. Apparently, it had all been for an art project. Well, it certainly turned heads.

Which online mystery do you hope gets solved next? Let us know in the comments below!