advertisememt

Top 30 Most Mysterious People in History

Top 30 Most Mysterious People in History
Watch Video Play Trivia Watch on YouTube
VOICE OVER: Rebecca Brayton WRITTEN BY: Arianna Wechter
From enigmatic creators to vanishing figures, history's greatest mysteries await. Join us as we count down the most perplexing individuals whose lives remain shrouded in secrecy and intrigue! These enigmatic figures left behind tantalizing clues but few answers, challenging historians and capturing imaginations for generations. Our countdown includes the elusive Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, the revolutionary Nikola Tesla, the occultist Aleister Crowley, the vanishing Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt, the infamous Jack the Ripper, and many more puzzling personas whose true stories may never be fully revealed. Which mysterious historical figure fascinates you the most? Let us know in the comments below!

#30: Green Children of Woolpit

Tall tale or a weird moment in history? The truth may never be revealed. Back in the 12th century, citizens of Woolpit were shocked when two children with an unmistakably green hue stumbled upon their village, speaking a strange language and only eating green beans. When one learned English, she revealed that she and her brother came from a place where the sun never shone. In modern times, people have tried to figure out if they even existed. Some are adamant that it was merely a folk tale, while others insist that they were real and suffering from a nutrient deficient diet. With no historical records to verify the true events, its a Middle Ages conundrum that may never be solved.


#29: Satoshi Nakamoto

He created one of the first cryptocurrencies, yet we dont even know his real name. Bitcoin was released in the late 2000s under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. He was involved for the first few years, before going off the grid in 2011. Since then, people have attempted to find his identity. Even the supposed facts he's offered, such as his birth date, are instead seen as historical references. It seemed to resolve itself in 2014, when an engineer with the same birth name came forward, only to later contradict himself and claim hed never heard of Bitcoin. There are several other suspects, but all have denied being the creator of a revolutionary currency.


#28: George Psalmanazar

This could be historys first troll. After arriving in London from his worldly travels in the early 18th century, George Psalmanazar soon gained the publics attention. He told them he was a citizen of Formosa, which is now modern-day Taiwan. He then went on to describe the country, from the temperament of its people to a supposed statue where infants were sacrificed. Yet, it was all a lie. He had never lived there, and was just making things up, including an entire alphabet. Psalmanazar managed to fool the citizens for years before he finally confessed. Why he decided to tell such an elaborate lie for so long is truly puzzling. With his memoirs omitting some information, we may never know his true intentions.


#27: Mary Toft

In 1726, doctors were perplexed when they heard about a woman who seemingly gave birth to a rabbit. Mary Toft immediately became a medical marvel, with several professionals studying the flesh of her supposed offspring. It wasnt until the case was brought before King George I that things fell apart. The royal had sent experts out, and they were skeptical when she couldnt produce anything. It was then discovered that her husband was buying rabbits, supposedly for this purpose. When she was found out, Toft was incarcerated for fraud, and the medical profession took a huge hit to its credibility. Why she did this or if it was her own idea are still left unanswered today.


#26: Man of the Hole

Well never know his name, but well always remember the tragic legacy tied to him. The Man of the Hole was the last remaining member of an Indigeinous Amazonian tribe that had been the victims of an intentional genocide in the late 20th century. They were completely uncontacted beforehand, meaning their language and tribe name were all but wiped out. Following his discovery in 1996, the Tanaru man became legendary for building dozens of huts with his signature deep pit in the center. He passed away in 2022, taking with him the last remnants of his now-extinct culture. He serves as a permanent reminder of the horrors of colonialism, and how it can create mysteries that will never be solved.


#25: Somerton Man

Theres a chance his identity has been found, but that doesnt mean the mystery has ended. On December 1st, 1948, the body of a man was found on the shores of Somerton Park. He was found with no identification and several strange objects including a coded piece of paper that translated to it is over. Several theories began pouring in, with the most popular being that he was a spy on a mission gone wrong. In 2022, the body was exhumed. It was found that he was Carl Webb, an instrument maker. If that is his identity, then it will be a great stepping stone to learning his exact cause of death and the events leading up to it.


#24: Nicolas Flamel

You may recognize the name from the fictional Harry Potter series, but the real version was even more fascinating. In life, Nicolas Flamel was a draftsman who created several public documents. After his death in 1418, he was posthumously thrust into the spotlight as an alchemist whod discovered immortality. These claims started popping up in the 1600s, 200 years after his death. How he came to have this reputation is still unknown, as he seemingly lived a normal life for the time period. Several works published after his death date have been credited as his, muddying the waters even further. The assertions have circulated for so long that some have wondered if theres some truth to them but well never know for sure.


#23: Madame Blavatsky

Shes known by some as the Mother of Modern Spirituality but her tales are still scrutinized. When Madame Blavatsky moved to the United States to start the Theosophical Society, she was already an enigmatic figure. She claimed to have traveled the world, before going to Tibet to be trained by the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom. She was a believer in the occult, and the group she founded strove to prove that it could lead to harmony and equality. Her claims have been questioned by several writers, whove accused her of plagiarism and being in an altered mindset while writing. Despite the criticisms, shes still an influential figure within esotericism and the New Age movement.


#22: Socrates

It may seem impossible for one to both be incredibly well-known and enigmatic. Socrates was a well-known philosopher in Ancient Greece, whose lessons and philosophical methods are still revered today. Despite that, he never actually wrote any texts of his own. All of his teachings have been passed down by word-of-mouth, primarily through the form of dialogues written by his students. Whats more is that constructing a completely accurate biography for him is practically impossible, thanks to several sources containing conflicting information. This means that even the information we do have is shaky at best and that we may never know the complete, unbiased truth about him.


#21: Banksy

It may be hard to believe, but even those in the modern age can be mysterious. Banksys subversive, political graffiti may be well-known, but his true persona is kept under lock and key. His unique approach and disdain for the art industry only add to his perplexing persona. He conceals his identity with various methods, such as masks and altered voice recordings. There are many who are speculated to be him, including a local councillor who was forced to give up his position due to the rumors. There are some reports that claim to have revealed Banksys name. Even if theyre true, the person behind the alias is still completely unknown, and could be for the rest of his life.


#20: The Poe Toaster

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 Poes birthday, a man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and white scarf would visit Poes 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 havent 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: Comte 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

Theres something about a good spy story that captures our imaginations. Spy stories have been popular for decades, with James Bond being the genres 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 Russias 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 Chouchanis 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 didnt 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 dont know his real name, and we dont 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 youve 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

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 Europes oldest mummy. Following intensive study, it was determined that Ötzi was born in present-day Bolzano around 3275 BCE. Thats about all we know of the historic man, but were getting more answers as the years progress. In 2023, Ötzis 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. Kennedys. 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 well 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

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 Sesteros The Disaster Artist, but Sesteros 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

Despite being undoubtedly one of the most well-known and highly regarded literary figures in history, there are very few details of the mans 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 Kings 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

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 dont know, and we likely never will.


#7: Nikola Tesla

The Internets favorite inventor, Teslas 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, its not hard to understand why. Seemingly fearless about the potential dangers his creations mayve 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 didnt do is almost completely blurred.


#5: D.B. Cooper

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

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

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 its 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 Tsars 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 countrys ills. Just like his life, Rasputins 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 its a great example of the myths that landed Rasputin in the second position on this list.


#1: Jack the Ripper

Between August 31st and November 9th, 1888, five sex workers 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 couldve led to his capture in one case, even including whats believed to be part of one of his victims 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 its still anyones guess.


Which of these mysterious peoples secrets would you love to learn? Let us know in the comments!

mysterious people enigmatic figures historical mysteries Satoshi Nakamoto Nikola Tesla Jack the Ripper D.B. Cooper Tank Man Shakespeare authorship Aleister Crowley Zodiac Killer Rasputin Harold Holt Iron Mask Babushka Lady Ötzi Fulcanelli Banksy Socrates Blavatsky unsolved mysteries history's greatest enigmas Green Children Mary Toft Man of the Hole Somerton Man Poe Toaster
Comments
Watch Video Play Trivia Watch on YouTube