The preserved remains of the Gnome of Girona. (Image credit/source here.)

Sometime in September 1989, two couples named Añaños and Pujals went camping in a forest near the Spanish city of Girona. While the four friends were barbecuing and listening to music on a cassette player, a strange creature suddenly walked out of the bushes. The “Gnome of Girona”, as it was later called in Spanish media, was a small rabbit-like creature that had glowing red eyes and bluish skin. Apparently attracted by the music, the Gnome walked up to the cassette player and stood as the campers watched.

When one of the men turned the music up, the creature let out a loud laugh like an old man’s, and tried to run away. To prevent its escape, the campers threw a blanket over it and placed the Gnome in a birdcage. It smelled like sarsaparilla and had very soft skin. Aside from three pieces of hair found on the back of its neck, the Gnome was hairless. Its height was measured at 12 centimeters (4.7 inches). It made no protest about being captured, but refused to eat. After four days in captivity, the creature died.

Drawing of the Gnome of Girona. (Image credit/source here.)

The campers decided to save the creature’s remains in a coffee jar filled with formaldehyde, and it was later sold to Angel Gordon, a Spanish parapsychologist. Gordon paraded the remains around the media, appearing on the Spanish TV shows Otra Dimensión (“Another Dimension”) and En los Límites de la Realidad (“In the Twilight Zone”). Some speculated that the creature was an alien, but Gordon himself said that it was an elf, the same sort from German folklore which inspired The Smurfs.

Gordon’s bizarre story attracted growing skepticism after he gave conflicting accounts of how the Gnome was found. He couldn’t specify where in the forest the campers saw the Gnome, and nobody could locate the campers either. (He could assumedly neither explain why anybody would go camping with a birdcage.) In 1991, pictures taken of the Gnome were examined by Dr. John Altschuler, an American pathologist interested in UFOs and cattle mutilations. Altschuler was not convinced that the remains were of an extraterrestrial origin, dismissing it as an animal fetus, possibly a cow or pig.

Angel Gordon displaying pictures of the Gnome of Gerona remains. (Image credit/source here.)

In a move to defend the Gnome, Gordon appeared on a Spanish TV show along with Dr. Luis Linares de Mula, a medical doctor and fellow parapsychologist. Mula claimed that the Gnome of Girona was an abnormal animal unknown to science. The campers who caught the Gnome, the Añaños and Pujals, also appeared on the show and gave a first-person account of the story.

Biologists from the Barcelona Zoo later investigated the Gnome and came to the conclusion that there was nothing extraordinary about it. Its legs, they noted, were underdeveloped and couldn’t possibly have been able to walk. The “Gnome”, in fact, was very likely a deformed three-month-old calf fetus.

Pictures of the Gnome of Gerona. The remains have become yellowish over time. (Image credit/source here.)

Any hope that the Gnome of Girona really was a blue little elf was extinguished when a man named Manuel Tello came forward and told a different story about how the Gnome was found. According to Tello, one of his neighbors had found the Gnome dead while walking in the countryside. He thought it was a rabbit fetus, or possibly some rare animal. After Tello took some pictures of the thing, Angel showed up and bought it. Tello began to see Angel touring the media circuit with the camper story a few weeks later.

As another skeptic would later uncover, the Añaños and Pujals turned out to be actors hired to promote Gordon’s camper story. There are, of course, some believers who still insist that the Gnome of Girona is either an extraterrestrial/real-life Smurf/elf corpse or the fetus of an unidentified animal, but this story has been thoroughly debunked as a hoax.

Picture of the type of alien Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker claimed to see in Pascagoula, Mississippi. (Image credit/source here.)

On the night of October 11, 1973, co-workers Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker were fishing on the Pascagoula River in Mississippi when the two men suddenly heard a hissing sound coming behind them. When they turned around, they saw an oval-shaped craft hovering in the air and flashing blue lights. A door on the craft opened, and three robot-like creatures floated down toward Hickson’s and Parker’s boat. The creatures were about 5 feet tall, with gray wrinkled skin, clawed hands, and slits for eyes and a mouth.

The two men found themselves paralyzed and unable to resist being grabbed by the creatures. Parker fainted at this point, and they were then floated up into the spaceship with their abductors. According to Hickson, he was taken into a room full of light and examined by an oval-shaped probe that circled around his body. When the probe had finished its examination, the creatures floated out of the room and then floated Hickson back outside after 20 minutes. Hickson found Parker on the shore, crying and praying. The spaceship then left, and Hickson and Parker went into their car to calm down and try to make sense of what happened.

Charles Hickson (left) and Calvin Parker (right). (Image source/credit here.)

Although afraid that nobody would believe them, Hickson and Parker called the Kessler Air Force Base, which recommended that they report the incident to the local sheriff. At first, the sheriff and his deputies were skeptical and thought the men were drunk. When they left Hickson and Parker alone in a room with a secret tape recorder, however, they continued to talk as though the experience were real. At one point, Hickson told Parker, “It scared me to death too, son. You can’t get over it in a lifetime. Jesus Christ have mercy.”

The story appeared on local newspaper headlines the next day, and soon news reporters and UFO investigators were crawling all over Pascagoula and harassing Hickson and Parker at their workplace. Hundreds of UFO sightings in Mississippi were reported in the next couple of weeks, including an encounter by some Coast Guardsmen with a glowing object moving underwater in the Pascagoula River.

While Parker initially tried to keep his distance from the incident, Hickson gave media interviews and lectures about his experience, even visiting local schools. In 1983, he published “UFO Contact at Pascagoula” with investigator William Mendez, a full-fledged (and rare) book about the encounter and three incidents of psychic telecommunication he said that he received in 1974. Until he passed away in September 2011, Hickson continued to insist that the story was true and that the creatures he saw were peaceful aliens concerned about the earth.

Drawing of the Pascagoula aliens. (Image source/credit here.)

After participating in some hypnotic sessions, Parker recovered vague memories about what had happened that night. Unlike Hickson, he was wary of the attention he attracted, and eventually moved out of the state. Over the past two decades, he has become more open to interviews and has even participated in UFO conventions.

Drawing of a Pascagoula alien. (Image source/ credit here.)

So what have skeptics had to say about the Pascagoula incident? Hickson’s and Parker’s story made a big splash in national media back in 1973, and some of the biggest names in the UFO investigation community, like J. Allen Hynek and James Harder, believed that the men were telling the truth. While Hickson and Parker did pass lie-detectors, there were inconsistencies in the interviews Hickson gave to the media. Much of the story, in fact, had come from Hickson, since Parker said he passed out. Nobody else in the area, including drivers on a well-used highway, claimed to have seen the UFO.

In an interesting article for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, noted paranormal investigator and debunker Joe Nickell suggests that the whole abduction was a vivid hallucination by Hickson. Hickson had drunk some whiskey after the abduction to soothe his nerves, and Nickell suspects that he and Parker might have been drinking before the incident. They fell asleep afterward, but Hickson suffered an episode of hypnagogia, a state of consciousness in which a person is in between sleeping and waking up. Hypnagogic episodes often involve the experiences of paralysis, seeing lights, and feeling as though one is floating. While Parker might not have had a hypnagogic episode himself, he might have been influenced by Hickson and the hypnotic sessions he had undergone.

Picture of Chris Trickle.

Chris Trickle was a 25-year-old Las Vegas man who was one of the area’s most popular NASCAR drivers. He was a rising star in the world of stock-car racing, and had a particularly impressive run during the Southwest Series of 1996. On the night of February 9, 1997, Trickle was driving home from dinner with his girlfriend when he got a call from his friend Greg Hadges on his cellphone. Hadges wanted to play tennis, so Trickle dropped his girlfriend off and then changed into a new set of clothes before taking off again.

Not long after he left, Trickle’s car was found run off the road about 10 minutes away from his house. He had been shot between the eyes with a 9-millimeter bullet. Nobody had seen the attack and Trickle was unconscious. Doctors expected only a 10 percent chance that he would survive, but Trickle went in and out of a coma for more than a year. 13 months after he was shot, Trickle went into cardiac arrest and died on March 25, 1998.

Picture from Chris Trickle’s funeral. (Image source here.)

The search for Trickle’s killer was hard enough without any witnesses, but the investigation was burdened even further because of an old Nevada law that barred prosecutions for homicide victims who had died more than a year and day after being attacked.

Trickle’s parents fought to change the law, and Nevada eventually removed the prosecution time limit after governor Kenny Guinn signed “The Chris Trickle Bill” a year after Trickle’s death. Unfortunately, even if Trickle’s killer is caught, he still can’t be prosecuted.The new law is applicable to cases that happened after March 1999.

Picture of Trickle as a child with his mother. (Image source/credit here.)

Despite a reward of $35,000 for information that might lead to Trickle’s killer’s arrest, and two segments about his case on America’s Most Wanted, the case has long been cold. Trickle didn’t have any enemies, and nobody in the NASCAR scene bore any grudges against him. The suddenness of the attack suggests that Trickle might have been randomly targeted, perhaps the victim of a gang-killing or an incident of road-rage.

Although there’s always hope that a witness might someday come forward, Trickle’s parents doubt that their son’s killer will ever be caught. Four different people have confessed to the crime, but none of these men were deemed credible. The closest thing to a witness was a hitchhiker who had checked the scene out and then left on a bus before he could talk to authorities. He was later located in a Los Angeles jail, but apparently knew nothing. He had thought Trickle got into a car accident.

The House of the Tubes. (Image credit here.)

Located in Guadalupe, a city in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, the House of the Tubes is an abandoned building as infamous for its bizarre design as it is for its tragic past. Originally constructed in the early 1970s and never finished, the house is made up of grey cylindrical shapes and contains a series of ramps to connect the rooms. As if the house couldn’t get any weirder, it’s said to be haunted by the ghosts of a young boy and girl, the latter who is said to roam and moan through the place in a wheelchair.

Nobody knows the exact origins of the house but local legend says that it was built by a wealthy family for their paralyzed daughter. Although the building does contain staircases, it was fitted with ramps and tunnels so somebody with a wheelchair could easily move through it. On the day the girl was taken to see the house for the first time, two bricklayers working on one of the top towers accidentally fell off and dropped to their deaths.

One of the house’s hallways. (Image credit here.)

Following this incident, the other workers refused to finish the house, and the family had to hire a different set of men to get the rest of the building done. After going back to the house to check on its progress, the daughter got excited and was racing down one of the upper-story ramps when she lost control of her chair. Led into an unfinished room, the poor girl fell out one of the windows, meeting the same fate as the two bricklayers. Devastated, her family had no reason to finish it, and sold the property off. (Some variations of the story claim that the girl deliberately killed herself.)

A short while later, another wealthy family with a paralyzed boy considered buying the house and paid it a visit with their son. While he was off looking by himself, he fell out the same window where the girl had fallen. After this accident, the authorities expropriated the property and took it off the market.

(Image credit here.)

Due to its dangerous design, local police have carefully patrolled the area to keep curious visitors away from it. While it’s still possible to visit The House of the Tubes, you have to get permission first, and I don’t believe you’re allowed in it without being accompanied by the authorities.

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The Ghost Bus of Toluca. (Image source/credit here.)

Before the construction of a modern highway, the only route from the Mexican cities of Toluca to Ixtapan de la Sal was a long dangerous road that winded through a ravine. Traveling on the road in good weather during the day was bad enough, but it was even worse when it was night-time or raining.

Back in the old days, a late-night bus left Ixtapan de la Sal for Toluca in the middle of a storm. A lot of the passengers were sleeping, and the few that were awake stared out their windows and watched the rain fall. Everything was going fine until the bus got off a curve in the road. For no clear reason, the bus’ controls began to malfunction, and the driver’s brakes went out. Those who were awake screamed for the driver to slow down, but he couldn’t regain control of the vehicle.

“The brakes aren’t working!” he shrieked back, frantically slamming on the pedal to no avail.

As everybody was awake now and panicking, the bus entered the ravine and slammed into a rock-wall, killing all of the passengers instantly. Some policemen, responding to the call of a bus station that one of its buses was missing, discovered the scene of the wreckage early in the morning.

The city of Toluca at night. (Image source/credit here.)

A few years after the crash, an old bus began to be spotted driving on this same route whenever it was dark and raining out. The bus is a model that isn’t made anymore, and although it looks a bit rickety, runs fine. It typically picks up people who are waiting in the middle of highway stops. 

If you’re unlucky enough to get on board this thing, you’ll pay your fee and collect your ticket just like on any other bus. The driver, however, is silent, and none of the other passengers talk either. If you try to speak to them, they will ignore you and look straight ahead with very serious expressions on their faces.

Once the bus starts to get close to Toluca, the driver will turn his head back and yell for you by name to get off. No matter how much you resist, pointing out that there’s not even a stop to get off at, you’ll be eventually forced to get up and wait at the door. As you stand and wait, the driver will give you a warning: 

“Wait until the door opens. Look back and you will never get off this bus.”

So long as you follow the driver’s instructions, the door will open after a minute and you’ll find yourself in Toluca. Turn around though, and you’ll see that all of the other passengers have become corpses and skeletons, and the bus will look as wrecked as it did after it made its fatal crash. If you don’t die of fear on the spot, then the door will open regardless and you’ll step out into Toluca. Die on the bus, however, and you become one of its ghostly passengers, doomed to ride it for all of eternity. 

I’ve noticed that my posts about Japan receive a lot more traffic than I usually get, so I’ve decided I’m going to embark on a series of lists about unsolved Japanese murders. Most of the cases that will be featured here have never appeared in English media before. Some of them are quite obscure, but I’ve tried to find as much relevant information that I could. 

6. The Haga Futon Bag Murder

Police sketch of a man found inside a futon bag in Japan’s Tochigi Prefecture. (Image source/credit here.)

On April 21, 1996, while coming home from school, a group of junior high school students were looking through a bamboo grove in the Haga district of Tochigi Prefecture when they noticed a barely-closed futon bag. The kids had seen the bag laying there for almost a month, and curious about what might be inside, one of them poked it with a stick. A human hand then drooped out. The bag, it turned out, contained the body of a middle-aged man.

According to the autopsy, the man had been dead about a month when his body was discovered. He was bruised on his waist, and some of his front teeth were missing. He appeared to be between the ages of 40 and 50. The man was about 5 foot 11, and weighed 150 pounds. He had an O blood type. His clothes consisted of a dark blue jacket, a gray shirt with a green tie, and a gray pair of paints.

Investigators found the surname “Yamamoto” written on the bottom side of the tag of his pants, and the Japanese word for “next” on the other side. Despite these mysterious messages, the man has never been identified. In 2010, a sign was put up on the spot where the unidentified man’s body was found. Police hope that it might someday lead to his identification.

5. The Murder of Yoko Yoshida

Picture of Yoko Yoshida from when she was a high school student. (Image source/credit here.)

On September 29, 2000, around 1 PM, a census taker collecting information in a Tokyo apartment complained to management about a room that had a terrible smell coming from it. When management sent a janitor to check the room out, he found that the door was unlocked. Inside, he found the body of the woman who was living there, a 28-year-old manga artist named Yoko Yoshida.

Yoshida, who lived alone, was laying on her back on her bed, wearing only a t-shirt. As the autopsy determined, Yoshida had been strangled to death. She had been dead for at least 10 days by the time her body was discovered. Her room showed no signs of disarray and nothing appeared to have been taken. 3 million yen and a receipt from a convenience store dated September 18th were found in her purse and wallet.

Pictures of Yoko Yoshida and the apartment she was staying at. (Image source/credit here.)

Police suspect that Yoshida had known her killer, and since she was a manga artist, some suggest that she was killed by a crazed fan. Yoshida had been active in the dojinshi (self-publishing) community since she graduated high school. Her killer might very well have been somebody she knew, but police have never been able to find any shady acquaintances or witnesses.

4. The Murder of Kaori Hirohata

The site where Kaori Hirohata’s body was discovered. (Image source/ credit here.)

On June 24, 2013, a member of a parking cleaning staff found the body of a middle-aged woman lying in a bush outside an apartment complex in Narashino city in Chiba Prefecture. Her belongings were found scattered around her body. Her ID identified her as Kaori Hirohata, a resident of the complex who hadn’t been seen since the day before. Although Hirohata participated in a local community event that day, she never showed up to work that evening.  

According to the autopsy results, Hirohata had been choked to death. Her upper body also showed marks of being beaten. Since Hirohata’s purse was found to be empty, the motive appeared to have been robbery. Her body was very lazily hidden, with her feet visibly sticking out of a bush. It’s likely she was dragged to the location from somewhere else.

A model of what Kaori Hirohata was dressed like the day she died.

If Hirohata really was the victim of a robbery, one has to wonder why the killer used his bare hands? Interestingly, the spot where she was found was part of her commune to work. Hirohata’s killer might have known her schedule. For information that could lead to the killer’s arrest, police are currently offering a reward of 3 million yen.

3. The Murder of the Sunamis

A policeman handing out flyers about the murder of Haruhiko and Midori Sunami. (Image source/credit here.)

On the morning of April 28, 1995, around 2:30 AM, a house in Kurashiki Kojima had been set on fire. Authorities discovered two bodies on the first floor, the remains of 70-year-old Haruhiko Sunami and his 67-year-old wife Midori. Both had been decapitated. Haruhiko also had a knife lodged into his stomach, and later evaluation of Midori found that she had been stabbed in the chest and several other spots. They are believed to have died the previous night, sometime between 5 PM and 9 PM.

Because the fire destroyed much of the house and subsequently any evidence that might have been found there, authorities have had little clues to lead them to the Sunamis’ killer. Police thought their killing might have been the result of a dispute, but this was never established. The killer might have been familiar with the house, or at least had been in it before.

For whatever reason, the killer was in the Sunamis’ house for at least 5 hours after he killed them. Could he have been looking for something? And why did he think it necessary to cut off the Sunamis’ heads, neither of which have turned up in the 20 years since the murder occurred?

2. The Murder of Makiko Tsuchiyama

Picture of the city of Higashi-osaka. (Image source/credit here.)

On November 21, 1984, around 2:10 PM, a 2-year-old girl named Makiko Tsuchiyama was found fallen on her face in a drainage ditch in an alley behind her home in Higashi-osaka city.  Makiko was unconscious, and her neck seemed as though it had been strangled with a cord. Although she was rushed to the hospital, Makiko died 9 hours after being taken there.

The fact that Makiko had been playing outside by herself wasn’t unusual in the neighborhood, since other children and mothers were often outside too. Nobody, however, had seen Makiko’s murderer. Eerily, Makiko had been found unconscious on the same spot a month earlier. She had been strangled that time too, with the marks of a string around her neck. Unlike the second time, she had regained consciousness shortly after being taken to the hospital.

Immediately after this first incident, Makiko’s grandfather received a strange phone call from an unidentified woman. The woman was crying hard and speaking incomprehensibly. He tried talking to her for 2 minutes before she suddenly said “I’m sorry” and hung up. Makiko’s grandfather had not yet heard about Makiko’s incident, and thought the woman had gotten the wrong number. For the next few days, he received several more unexplained phone calls. Every time he answered, he heard only silence on the other end.

Police originally thought the first incident was an accident. They concluded that Makiko had gotten her neck hooked around a vinyl strap that had been attached to the door of her house. After Makiko died, however, they decided to launch a criminal investigation. It was strange that Makiko had been found in the alley, since she had refused to go anywhere near it since the first incident. Since there were no scratches on her face, it was suspected that somebody lured Makiko away and then strangled her in a different location. In the 30 years since Makiko’s death, neither her killer or the mysterious woman who called her grandfather have been identified.

1. The Murder of the Miyazawas

A picture of the Miyazawa family. (Image source/credit here.)

On the morning of December 31, 2000, a relative of the Miyazawa family in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward found father Mikio, his wife Yasuko, their daughter Niina, and their son Rei dead in their home. While Rei had been strangled in his bedroom, the other three members of the family had been stabbed to death in two different parts of the house.

The Setagaya police offering prayers at the Miyazawa home. (Image source/credit here.)

Authorities speculate that the killer had gotten into the home from a bathroom window on the second floor of the house around 11:30 PM. He went into Rei’s room and strangled him as he slept. Mikio was found on the first floor near the staircase, possibly coming up the stairs after he heard the intruder making noise. The female Miyazawas were killed next.

A publicity campaign by the Setagaya police to bring awareness about the Miyazawa murders. (Image source/credit here.)

The killer then ransacked the family’s house and stayed there for about 10 hours. He went into the kitchen and took some food from the fridge, and then used the family’s computer for a while. None of the money in the house was taken, but some New Year’s cards were missing. A knife the killer left behind was found, along with a shirt and bag. Additionally, blood was found at the scene that didn’t belong to any of the Miyazawas. After more than 15 years, police have had few clues to catch the Miyazawas’ killer. There is currently a reward of 20 million yen being offered to anybody who could give information that would lead to the killer’s identification.

The Aramberri House. (Image source/credit here.)

The Aramberri House, named after the street it sits on, was the site of one of Mexico’s most sensational crimes during the 1930s. Located in the northeastern city of Monterrey, the house had been the residence of the Montemayors, a well-off family that had moved to the city from the General Zuazua municipality. On the evening of April 5, 1933, after coming home from work, Delfino Montemayor discovered the nearly-decapitated bodies of his wife Florinda and their daughter Antonia. The room was covered in blood, and Antonia and Florinda had been attacked so savagely that their heads were barely attached to their necks.

Police noted oddly that the front door was unforced, meaning the women had let their killers inside. Two other strange details, both of which might be apocryphal, were also found: a trail of blood leading outside the house, and the frantic squawking of the family’s parrot. The trail led to a butcher shop near-by, owned by two brothers who were friends with one of Florinda’s nephews.

The parrot, which police believed must have seen the murder happen, repeatedly squawked “Don’t kill me, Gabriel! Don’t kill me!” As it happened, the Montemayors did know a man named Gabriel. He was the nephew who was friends with the butchers next door.

A picture of the Aramberri House at night. (Image source/credit here.)

Some items from the Montemayors’ home turned up in a search at the butchers’ shop, and the two men were arrested along with Gabriel. They confessed that they robbed the Montemayors and killed the women so they couldn’t be identified. The three murderers were sentenced to death and executed by “Law of Flight”, an old punishment in which criminals were released in a desert and then shot by the police in the back as they tried to run away.

As you’ve probably come to expect from any house showcased on this blog, the Montemayor home has since earned the reputation of being abandoned and haunted. Late night visitors claim you can hear the screams and cries of the Montemayor women. Florinda is said to shriek “Don’t kill me, Gabriel!” throughout the house, and a portrait of Antonia in her bedroom twists her face whenever a person looks at it.

Due to its designated haunted status, the house attracts all sorts of unsavory people, from witches who perform animal sacrifices to drunks who are looking for some night-time thrills. With all this annoying attention, and the rumor of a second murder occurring in the house, authorities contemplated tearing the building down in 2002. They ultimately decided to put up a wire fence and lock up the windows and doors. This failed to deter visitors, however, who simply broke holes through the walls and roof to get back in.

In late 1937, Japanese soldiers Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda challenged each other to see who could kill 100 Chinese people with a sword faster. (Image source/credit here.)

The Massacre of Nanking, an incident during the Second Sino-Japanese War in which the Japanese army killed tens of thousands of Chinese civilians, is still a very touchy subject in both countries. While most Japanese don’t dispute that the Massacre and other acts of wartime atrocity happened, a small fringe outright deny that these events ever took place. These people are only revisionists, but there is one infamous wartime incident that has been scrutinized even by mainstream historians.

During the winter of 1937-1938, the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun and Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun newspapers ran several articles about a disturbing contest between two Japanese officers in China, Tsuyoshi Noda and Toshiaki Mukai. The contest was a race to see which one of the soldiers could kill 100 people using only their sword before their battalion reached Nanjing. Mukai was reported as using a Seki no Magoroku katana, while Noda had said his sword was an old family heirloom.

Picture of Noda and Mukai. (Image source/credit here.)

On November 29, when the first article appeared, Mukai was reported as being in the lead, with 56 kills to Noda’s 25. After a battle to capture Nanjing’s Purple Mountains on December 10, Mukai and Noda met together to determine the winner. Noda said he had killed 105, while Mukai boasted that his count was 106. Since neither of them were sure who reached 100 first, the two men agreed to a draw. The next day, they would start a new contest, this time a fight to reach 150 kills.

When Noda returned home to Kagoshima in March 1938, he claimed that he had ultimately killed 374 people. Following the end of the war, while thousands of members of the Japanese military were being tried for war crimes, Noda and Mukai were arrested and sentenced to a trial in China in late 1947. They were convicted of participating in wartime atrocities, and were executed by firing squad on January 28, 1948.

Mukai and Noda during their trial in China. (Image source/credit here.)

The contest was practically forgotten until 1971, when Japanese journalist Katsuichi Honda covered it during a series of articles he wrote for the Asahi Shimbun about Japanese atrocities committed against the Chinese during World War II. Honda’s articles caused a public outcry, with some Japanese historians expressing skepticism about the original reporting of the contest. They pointed out that Mukai and Noda pleaded that they were innocent during their trial. The only witness, a journalist who had covered the contest, said it couldn’t possibly have been entirely true. According to this view, the original articles might very well have been an invention by the newspapers to stir up enthusiasm for the war effort at home.

Other historians have argued that the contest was greatly exaggerated, or that the victims were Chinese prisoners, not civilians. Regardless, the official stance is that the contest really did happen. In 2003, Mukai’s and Noda’s families took Katsuichi Honda and several other parties to court, disputing the truth of the contest and seeking about $330,000 in damages. The judge presiding over the suit dismissed it, saying that the newspapers might have added false elements to the story, but “it was difficult to say it was fiction.”

The town of Pentedattilo. (Image source/credit here.)

Located in the southern Italian region of Calabria, Pentedattilo is a ghost town with a very interesting history. Its name, which means “five fingers”, refers to a mountain located around the town. Before an earthquake disfigured it in 1783, the mountain had five rock towers that resembled a human hand with fingers. Local legend held that the mountain, nicknamed the Devil’s Hand, would one day collapse and fall on mankind. This curse was said to have been cast by Lorenzo Alberti, one of the victims of an infamous historical incident known as The Massacre of the Albertis.

In 1686, Baron Bernardino Abenavoli fell in love with Antoinette Alberti, the daughter of the family that had owned the fiefdom of Pentedattilo since the late 16th century. The Abenavolis, the former lords of Pentedattilo, had been in a rivalry with the Alberti family ever since. Due to this feud, Antoinette had little interest in Bernardino. When it was announced in April that Antoinette would be marrying Don Petrillo Cortez, the son of the Viceroy of Naples, Bernardino was struck with rage.

Picture of Pentedattilo. (Image source/credit here.)

On the night of April 21, Bernardino carried out a horrific plan for revenge. After bribing one of the Alberti family’s servants, Bernardino was let inside their castle with a group of his followers. Their first victim was Lorenzo, Antoinette’s brother and the head of the Albertis. As he was sleeping in his bedroom, Lorenzo was ambushed by Bernardino and then shot and stabbed to death. With the exception of Antoinette, the Alberti family and most of their guests were all massacred, including Antoinette’s 9-year-old brother Simone, who had his head bashed against a rock.

Don Petrillo Cortez and his family were spared as well, but they were taken by Bernardino as hostages. On April 19, Bernardino married Antoinette.  Word of the massacre spread quickly, however, and Cortez’s father sent a military expedition to capture Bernardino and his collaborators a few days later.  Although 7 of Bernardino’s men were captured and beheaded, including the servant who let them into the Alberti castle, Bernardino managed to escape to Malta. He later joined the Austrian army, and died on the battlefield in 1692. Antoinette, filled with grief that she was the cause of the massacre, spent the rest of her life as a nun.

Ruins of the Alberti castle. (Image source/ credit here.)

Now even though Lorenzo Alberti died in his castle, the town’s folklore says that he was killed near the rock walls of the mountain. As he laid dying, Lorenzo pushed his bloody hand against the walls, leaving a permanent imprint that glowed red when the sun went down. On some nights, his screams can be heard coming from the mountain. On the anniversary of the massacre, shadows of the victims are said to appear all over the town, running from other shadows that chase them with knives.

Another legend related to the massacre and the mountain’s disfigurement involves a secret treasure allegedly left behind by Bernardino Abenavoli. One night, a ghost told a knight who was passing by the mountain that the five fingers would collapse and reveal the Abenavoli treasure if somebody would run around the mountain five times. Many people tried running around the mountain, but it never collapsed. A knight from Sicily heard about the challenge and decided to give it a try. Right as he was about to finish his fifth lap, one of the fingers suddenly fell off the mountain and crushed him.

Following an earthquake in 1783, a lot of the townspeople left Pentedattilo for the town of Melito Porto Salvo. Pentedattilo was completely abandoned by the 1960s, although today it hosts the site of an annual international film festival.

The House of the Dogs, located in Guadalajara, Mexico. (Image source/credit here.)

The House of the Dogs, named after the two dog statues that stand on the top of the building’s roof terrace, was originally owned by a wealthy coffee merchant named Don Jesus Flores.  Although Flores had anything he could have wanted, he felt unbearably lonely. He was 70-years-old now, but lost his wife many years ago and had no children. As he grew sadder and sadder each day, Flores eventually decided that he would look for a new wife.

There was a widow he knew, but Flores was more interested in marrying a young woman. The widow, seeing an opportunity, offered her youngest daughter Ana to Flores. Ana was only in her 20s. Although she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of marrying a man fifty years older than her, Ana figured that Flores wouldn’t live long. After he died, she could take his fortune.

A close-up of one of the building’s dog statues. (Image source/credit here.)

So Ana and Flores got married, and Flores was so happy that he bought a new house just for her. Flores spared no expense to decorate the house in the most immaculate style possible, and he even installed a mausoleum where the couple could be buried. He wanted to do nothing else but to make his new wife happy. His coffee business was put in charge of an acquaintance named Jose Cuervo, a young and handsome man around the same age of Ana. The neighbors soon gossiped that Ana was having an affair with Jose, but Flores ignored the rumors and paid them no mind.

One day, Don Jesus Flores, a healthy man, suddenly became ill. Many suspected that he had been poisoned by his wife and business partner. On his deathbed, Flores asked that Ana bury him in the mausoleum and never remarry. She gave him her word, and the old man passed away.

An old picture of the House of the Dogs. (Image source/credit here.)

Only a few weeks after Flores’ death, Ana and Jose announced that they were getting married. In the weeks leading up to the wedding, however, they heard disembodied voices in the house and watched doors slam open and shut by themselves. Strange lights would also manifest, and some say even the ghost of Don Jesus Flores made an appearance. The phenomenon frightened Ana and Jose so badly that they left the house, leaving it vacant.

It was said that nobody could live in the house until Don Jesus’ spirit was put to rest. Many brave men, looking to win the house, went to the mausoleum and tried praying to him. Each and every one of them failed, too scared to finish their prayers because the ghostly voice of Don Jesus would interrupt them every time. After an exorcism performed by the local church, the phenomenon in the house slowly withered away, and today the building is used as a museum.

Typically, a good seppuku performance would consist of the samurai driving a tanto sword into his abdomen and disemboweling himself by slashing the part from left to right. A second man attending him, called the kaishakunin, would then swing a sword down the samurai’s neck and decapitate him. By Edo times (1600-1867), seppuku had become an elaborate ritual performed in front of spectators. Although certainly a painful and violent way to die, many people saw it as an honorable and even romantic act. Incidents of seppuku decreased as Japan modernized in the late 19th century, but as we shall soon see, there are even records of people committing it in the post-WWII era.

6. The Byakkotai

Poster for a recent drama series about the Byakkotai. (Image source/credit here.)

For decades, anime and action movies have been casually throwing their teenage protagonists into such dangerous occupations as assassins, ninjas, samurai, vampire hunters, and angst-ridden robot pilots. This idea is awesome on screen, but actually tends to be far more terrifying and confusing in real-life. Case in point: the Byakkotai, a military unit of 305 samurai entirely composed of teenagers.

The Byakkotai, whose name meant “White Tiger Force”, participated in a year-long (1868-1869) civil war in Japan known as the Boshin War. On February 7, 1869, during the Battle of Tonoguchihara, the Byakkotai hid themselves in bushes and shot at approaching government troops. The young samurai underestimated the number of enemy soldiers, and as they tried to withdraw, a squad of them led by 16-year-old Shinoda Gisaburo became separated from the main group. With little time to think, Shinoda and the 19 other separated Byakkotai members retreated from the battlefield and fled to Iimori Hill.

What little safety they might have felt quickly evaporated when they looked down and saw that smoke was coming from their town of Aizuwakamatsu. Panic-stricken, they believed that the town had been destroyed and set on fire, meaning that the castle that held their families and lords must have burned down too. Seeing no reason to live anymore, the 20 young samurai committed seppuku on the spot. Only one of them, Iinuma Sadakichi, would survive.

In a cruel Shyamalian twist of fate, the castle hadn’t actually burned down after all. Only the surrounding town, in fact, had been set on fire. The 19 young samurai perished for nothing.

5. Takijiro Onishi

Picture of Takijiro Onishi (Image source/credit here.)

How does one make amends for helping advocate a military strategy that led to the loss of thousands of young men who took on suicide missions to crash their planes into enemy soldiers? (Pay attention, Al Qaeda.) According to Takijiro Onishi, one of the Japanese military leaders who helped get the kamikaze program off the ground, you disembowel yourself.

Although Onishi originally opposed the kamikaze attacks, he eventually relented and gave the strategy his blessing. Japan sent out its first batch of kamikaze pilots on October 25, 1944 during the Battle of the Leyte Gulf. A few days before, Onishi addressed the pilots himself and gave a speech praising their bravery and sacrifice. “Regrettably,” admitted Onishi to what must have been a great shock for the volunteers, “we will not be able to tell you the results.”

Before Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, almost 4,000 kamikaze pilots would lose their lives. After hearing the news, Onishi wrote a suicide note and decided to commit seppuku the next day. In his note, he apologized to the dead kamikaze pilots and their families, offering his own death as atonement. Lastly, to further consolidate his posthumous reputation as a good guy, Onishi urged the young people of Japan not to avenge his death with a nuclear Third World War, but to instead promote peace and rebuild itself.

4. Chujiro Hayashi

Picture of Chujiro Hayashi (Image source/credit here.)

Chujiro Hayashi was a disciple of Mikao Usui, the founder of the spiritual therapy known as Reiki. Unlike Usui and most of the world of alternative medicine, Hayashi was a real doctor, and would sometimes perform Reiki on his patients. One of the biggest practitioners in his day, Hayashi is credited with developing modern Reiki and spreading it outside of Japan.

Hayashi started studying Reiki in 1925, a year before Usui’s death. With the hope that Hayashi could develop his quackery with real medical knowledge, Usui requested that his student establish a Reiki clinic. Hayashi obliged and went one step beyond, going on a tour in Hawaii with his daughter for a few months in 1937. Hayashi gave a series of Reiki lectures and demonstrations there, and he returned to Japan in February 1938.

In May 1940, the Japanese government demanded that Hayashi give them information about military targets in Honolulu, presumably because they weren’t planning anything evil. Although Hayashi was once a naval captain, he was now a pacifist, and so refused to talk. The authorities suspected that Hayashi was a spy. They accused him of treason, and afraid that the honor of his family was being threatened, Hayashi committed seppuku in the presence of his wife and students on the 11th.

3. Yukio Mishima

Picture of Yukio Mishima. (Image source/credit here.)

The genius behind such classics as The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and Confessions of a Mask, Yukio Mishima was arguably post-war Japan’s foremost midget novelist. He was a wildly talented and prolific man, writing 34 novels in two decades, in addition to outshining his contemporaries as an actor, bodybuilder, model, playwright, poet, and radical far-right fanatic.

Due to a misdiagnosis of tuberculosis, Mishima couldn’t serve in World War II. Although upset that Emperor Showa renounced his claim of divinity, Mishima saw the unholy meat-bag as the physical essence of the Japanese nation. In October 1968, Mishima founded the Tatenokai, a private militia of attractively muscular young men who swore to protect the emperor.

On November 25, 1970, Mishima and four of his Tatenokai boy-toys seized a military building and attempted to launch a coup to restore Emperor Showa to his former power. After tying the head of the building up to a chair in his office, Mishima went out to the balcony and gave a speech of the Tatenokai’s demands to a crowd of 1,000 soldiers. Being 25 years too late, however, the soldiers only laughed and ridiculed Mishima. He then returned inside, and in the spirit of his half-assed coup, sloppily commited seppuku. With several slapstick slashes of mild tragicomedy, Mishima’s first kaishakunin repeatedly failed to lop his head off. After a few moments of painful agony, the task was given to another henchman, and Mishima was at last decapitated.

2. Nogi Maresuke

Picture of Nogi Maresuke. (Image from Wikipedia.)

Nogi Maresuke was an army general who served in the Satsuma Rebellion and the Russo-Japanese War. The son of a samurai, Maresuke was seen by many as a model of traditional Japanese values like loyalty and self-sacrifice. Even 100 years after his suicide, people pay their respects to what they see as a great patriot.

In one notable incident, after suffering staggering losses in a battle during the Russo-Japanese War, Maresuke asked Emperor Meiji for permission to commit suicide. The emperor refused, telling Maresuke that he wasn’t allowed to die until the emperor himself did. While internet Freudians might easily interpret Maresuke’s devotion to Meiji as some repressed form of intense homo-eroticism, this sort of obedience was only to be expected by any good old-fashioned samurai.

Following the end of the war, Maresuke was granted the title of count and made the head of the prestigious Gakushuin, a school for the children of the Japanese nobility. He also embarked on several philanthropic projects, giving money to hospitals and memorials set up for both the Japanese and the Russians. When Emperor Meiji died in July 1912, Maresuke naturally thought the e̶r̶o̶t̶i̶c̶ honorable thing to do was to kill himself and his wife by seppuku. After the emperor’s funeral, Maresuke slashed his stomach three times and then tossed himself onto his sword for a grand finale. His wife followed him after, although not exactly into the same national veneration.

1. Oda Nobunaga

Painting of Oda Nobunaga. (Image source/credit here.)

Oda Nobunaga was indispensable in putting an end to Japan’s Sengoku period, a chaotic time from 1467 to 1603 in which Japan was plagued with social upheaval and military conflict. Although he wasn’t the one who ultimately united the country, he’s one of the most admired historical figures in Japan, and has even had the distinction of appearing in a critically-acclaimed strategy RPG with global superstar Pikachu.

Sadly, Nobunaga didn’t live to see Japan’s unification in 1603. Before his suicide, he succeeded only in capturing the eastern side of the country. It would be Tokugawa Ieyasu, his old ally, who would be the one to unite Japan and establish a government that would last more than 200 years.

Some two decades before that would happen, Nobunaga was staying at a temple in Kyoto when he was betrayed and ambushed by Akechi Mitsuhide, a general and vassal of his. Realizing that he was surrounded, and practically powerless without his partner Pikachu, Nobunaga committed seppuku. His last words, reported to his page Mori Ranmaru, were said to have been “Don’t let them in.” The page then loyally set the temple on fire. Interestingly, only Ranmaru’s body was recovered. Nobunaga’s body was never found, which suggests that he was either consumed by the flames or faked his death. (Most historians, chiefly the duller sort, say it was the former.)

A drawing of the UFO and alien seen in the Kofu Incident. 

On February 23, 1975, second-graders Masato Kawano and Katsuhiro Yamahata were rollerskating in Kofu, Japan when they spotted two UFOs glowing orange in the sky. One of the UFOs took off northward, but the other one landed in a near-by vineyard. When the boys went to investigate, they found a large circular craft resting on three legs in the middle of the vineyard.

After the boys observed the craft for about five minutes, a door on the left side of the UFO slid open and a ladder descended out of the opening.  A brown human-like creature emerged and walked down the steps, while a similar-looking creature stayed inside. The creature, which stood at about 4 feet in a silver suit, had rabbit-like ears and three fangs. Its face was heavily wrinkled, and it appeared to have no eyes, nose, or hair.

The alien approached the boys and patted Katsuhiro two times on the shoulder. It was said to have made sounds that sounded like a tape-recorder being played backwards, although some sources report that the alien asked “Are you Katsuhiro?” in Japanese. Katsuhiro was so shocked that he couldn’t speak. He lost his balance and fell down out of fright, and the alien then walked away. Masato, who had watched from a distance, carried Katsuhiro on his back and ran home.

Once they got home, the boys told their mothers about what happened and brought them back to the vineyard. The UFO was now hovering in the sky, glowing a bright orange light again. As it glowed brighter and brighter, it hovered in the air for about 2-3 minutes, until finally taking off in great speed.

Both Masato and Katsuhiro seemed very disturbed after the encounter. They refused to be outside alone, and Masato was so upset that he cried that night. The next day, the boys told their classmates and teacher about what happened.  During a lunch break, their teacher checked out the spot where the UFO landed, but found nothing out of the ordinary.

A later search of the landing site carried out with the help of a local newspaper found two broken concrete posts and several holes in the soil. Another teacher discovered that the soil was slightly contaminated with radiation.

Masato and Katsuhiro show the spot where they saw the UFO and alien. 

The Japanese authorities, of course, were skeptical. Other than Masato and Katsuhiro, their mothers, and Katsuhiro’s younger brother, a classmate of the boys reported that he saw the UFO about a half-hour before his friends did. Later witnesses, including a janitor and a woman driving in the area, also said they saw the UFO.

A toy of a villain in Ultraman that resembles the Kofu alien.

Critics believed that the sightings were a misidentified plane. They pointed out that only Masato and Katsuhiro had seen the alien itself. They thought it suspicious that the creature resembled an alien from the popular sci-fi show Ultraman. Finally, as the boys’ teacher had noted, there was nothing much out of the ordinary about the landing site. While there might have been some broken posts and a few holes in the ground, the vines in the field were completely fine. The radiation discovered, contrary to some reports, was low and probably natural.

Picture of Gregory Villemin.

For several years in the early 1980s, an unknown man repeatedly harassed and threatened Jean-Marie Villemin and his family in hundreds of letters and phone calls. The man, nicknamed Le Corbeau (“The Crow”) by the media, especially hated Jean-Marie. The Crow not only knew tiny details about Jean-Marie, like how he was a factory foreman, but also intimate family secrets. “Every single word we said at home,” remarked a relative to the media, “he knew.”

On the afternoon of October 16, 1984, Jean-Marie’s 4-year-old son Grégory went out to play in front of the family’s rural home in Vosges. A half-hour later, The Crow called up Grégory’s uncle and boasted of taking the little boy and putting him in the Vologne river. Police launched a massive search effort, finding Grégory’s body, his hands and feet tied up with rope, in the Vologne the same night.

Gregory’s parents, Jean-Marie and Christine.

The next day, an anonymous letter that had been sent the day before arrived for Jean-Marie. It read, “I hope you die of grief, boss. Your money can’t give you back your son. Here is my revenge, you stupid bastard.”

After taking handwriting samples from Jean-Marie’s family, police suspected that the murderer was one of his cousins, a 30-year-old man named Bernard Laroche. Laroche, it was suggested, had a grudge against Jean-Marie because Laroche was less financially successful and had a mentally-retarded son. Laroche was taken into police custody the next month, after his sister-in-law told police that she had seen Laroche driving with Grégory.

Bernard Laroche, a cousin of Jean-Marie, was the initial suspect in the case.

The case seemed like it was just about solved, but Laroche denied having anything to do with Grégory’s murder. In February 1985, his sister-in-law admitted that she had only accused her brother-in-law because she was pressured by the police. Laroche was deemed innocent and let go. Jean-Marie, however, was not convinced. He openly announced to the media that he would kill Laroche, and sure enough, fatally shot his cousin a month later.

Jean-Marie was sentenced to five years in prison for Laroche’s murder. He told the authorities that it was revenge for Laroche killing his son. Laroche swore on his death-bed that he was innocent, and a few months after his death, another letter from The Crow arrived at Jean-Marie’s parents’ house. The killer was still on the loose, and vowed to “do the Villemin family in.”

After the death of Bernard Laroche Christine Villemin was the next major suspect. She later wrote a book declaring her innocence.

Meanwhile, Grégory’s mother Christine had become the main focus of the investigation. Not only did her handwriting show some similarities to the letter sent the day Grégory was murdered, but she had been spotted at the post office that day too. Police also found cords like the ones used on Grégory in the Villemin’s basement. In July 1985, Christine was detained by the police, but later let go and freed of any charges.

In recent years, investigators have turned to DNA testing in an attempt to identify The Crow and Grégory’s killer. In a DNA test conducted in 2009 on the last Crow letter, investigators found the prints of a man on the letter itself, and another set of prints from a woman on the letter’s stamp. Neither set of DNA prints matched with Gregory’s parents, although some have dismissed the prints anyway, arguing that they could belong to anybody who touched the letter.

Some 30 years later, Grégory Villemin’s murder remains controversial and hotly debated. There are still people who believe that Bernard Laroche was the killer, while others insist that it was Christine Villemin.

Hanako-san, also known as “Hanako of the Third Toilet”, is the ghost of a young girl who’s said to haunt elementary and middle school bathrooms in Japan. Being an urban legend, the story is bound to differ in whatever school or region you hear it, but the basic gist is that Hanako is a former student who haunts the third stall of the third-floor girls’ bathroom. If a person goes to Hanako’s stall, knocking on the door three times and asking “Hanako-san, are you there?”, they will hear a ghostly voice answer back “Yes, I’m here.”

Now if the person doesn’t rush out of there but proceeds to open the door, they will find a little girl with a bobbed haircut dressed in a red suspender-skirt and a white t-shirt. Hanako usually pulls the person into the stall and kills them, but other versions of the story replace her with a bloody hand that pops out of the toilet and drags the victim down into hell.

In another variation from Iwate Prefecture, the hand is a pale white and emerges from the floor before the victim can open the stall door. A version in Yamagata Prefecture adds the bizarre twist that “Hanako” is actually a giant three-headed lizard that lures is meals by impersonating a little girl’s voice. 

Generally, anybody who opens the stall door is doomed, but a couple variations do offer tips that can help you escape from Hanako. In Kanagawa Prefecture, where Hanako is an equal opportunist who haunts the boys’ bathrooms too, a person can prevent Hanako from being summoned by running around the stall’s toilet three times in three seconds. (Hanako seems to be very fond of threes.)

Hanako-san as she appears in the video game Yo-Kai Watch.

So what exactly turned Hanako into a furious other-worldly killer who will strangle you for opening a door? According to one story, Hanako was an elementary school girl who had come to play at the playground during a holiday. As she played alone, a pedophile spotted her and chased her into the empty school. Hanako ran for her life up to the third-floor, and thinking she was safe in the girls’ bathroom, hid in the third stall there. The man, however, eventually found her and murdered her in the stall.

The other explanations also tend to display Hanako as a helpless victim. Some say that she was an unpopular and miserable girl who locked herself in the stall to get away from some bullies. Once her tormentors went back to class, Hanako either committed suicide or had died after the door got stuck and nobody came to look for her. Another widespread theory suggests that she was killed in a bombing during World War II. 

A poster of one of the Hanako-san movies.

Along with the Slit-Mouthed Woman, Hanako-san today is one of the most popular urban legends in Japan. While it first began to circulate on a national scale in the 1980s, with two movies and some anime appearances in the decade that followed, the story’s roots stretch back at least 40 years earlier. Already around 1948, students at an elementary school in Iwate Prefecture were claiming that a pale ghostly hand could be summoned in the third stall of one of the schools’ bathrooms by calling out “Hanako-san of the third”!

Reverend William Hoffman told his family in 1941 that he saw a crashed UFO and three dead alien bodies in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

The Roswell UFO Incident of 1947, whether you believe it anyway, is usually considered to have been the first UFO crash in the United States. In the vast and zany annals of American UFO lore, however, there is an earlier case in Cape Girardeau, Missouri that also involves alien bodies and a government cover-up. Unlike Roswell, the 1941 Cape Girardeau Incident has never been the subject of mass media interest, or even a stand-alone book.

The story didn’t surface, in fact, until five decades after it allegedly took place. It was first reported in 1991 by Leonard H. Stringfield,  a ufologist who included it in his book UFO Crash/Retrievals: The Inner Sanctum, the sixth addition of a seven-part series he wrote about UFO crashes. Stringfield’s source was Charlette Mann, a woman who claims that her grandfather William Hoffman was a witness at the crash site.

Hoffman, a pastor of the Red Star Baptist Church, was called up by local police one night in the spring of 1941. They told him that there had been a plane crash, and asked if he could come to minister the pilot’s last rites. After Hoffman said yes, he was picked up by a car, and then taken to an area about a dozen miles away from Cape Girardeau.

Scene from a documentary about the Cape Girardeau UFO Incident. I

When Hoffman got to the crash site, he found the place swarming with police officers, firefighters, and soldiers. The “plane” turned out to be a small metallic saucer. He saw three dead bodies, each about four feet tall, lying outside the craft. The figures were evidently non-human; they had large eyes, no hair, and only three fingers on each hand. The creatures’ ship had crashed and caught fire, but their bodies showed no sign of being burned.

Due to damage from the crash, the interior of the craft could be seen from the outside. When Hoffman got up closer, he saw that it contained a single metal chair and some gauges and dials. He also noticed a strange script, which he thought looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics.

After things calmed down a bit and Hoffman finished giving the creatures their last rites, two police officers picked one of the bodies up and held it between them for a photograph. Before he left, Hoffman was told to keep what he had seen a secret. He was warned that what he saw was a matter of national security, and that it couldn’t be told to anybody.

A reconstruction of the lost photo allegedly taken in the Cape Girardeau UFO Incident. This picture was drawn from memory by Charlette Mann.

Of course, Hoffman did just the opposite and told his entire family about what happened as soon as he came back home.  About 2 weeks after the alleged crash, Hoffman received the alien picture from the man who had taken it, possibly a local photographer (and friend of Harry Truman) named Garland F. Fronabarger. Hoffman was said to never have mentioned the crash again, although he did pass the picture off to his son Guy.

Guy showed the picture to his friends and children, including his daughter Charlette Mann. In the mid-1950s, Guy gave the picture to a skeptical photographer friend named Walter Wayne Fisk. This was apparently the last anybody had seen of it. Long before Fisk’s death in 2012, both Charlette Mann and ufologist Stanton T. Friedman tried contacting him with little success.

Aside from Charlette Mann and her sister, nobody else can confirm that the picture existed. Everything we know about the case comes from Mann, and she had gotten the details from her grandmother, who had told it to Mann on her death-bed in 1984. There’s a total lack of witnesses here, and the exact date and location of the crash have never been determined either. I’ve heard that Mann hopes more witnesses will eventually show up, but after so many years, who could possibly still be alive to vouch that it happened?

The Japanese city of Nagoya was the site of a brutal murder in 1988 known as the “Nagoya Pregnant Woman Ripper Murder”. (名古屋妊婦切り裂き殺人事件 in Japanese.)

On March 18, 1988, a 31-year-old man named in some media reports as “Mr. K” came home to his Nagoya apartment to find that his door was unlocked. Puzzled, he went in and found that all the lights were off. His 27-year-old pregnant wife, “Mrs. M”, appeared not to be inside. An hour before he arrived home, Mr. K tried calling his wife, but she hadn’t picked up the phone. 

Before Mr. K went off to look for his wife, he decided that he’d change out of his work clothes first. After he finished changing in his room, he suddenly heard a baby crying. In the back of the front room, Mr. K discovered a horrific sight: the mutilated body of his wife, and their newborn son laying at her feet.

Not only did Mrs. M have her hands tied up and an electrical cord wrapped around her neck, but her stomach had been cut open. The killer had performed a home delivery, even cutting the baby boy’s umbilical cord. The baby had some knife wounds as well, with several cuts on his thigh, knee, and groin. Mr. K frantically looked for their phone, but couldn’t find it. He ran out the door and told a neighbor what happened. The police were called, and the baby was rushed to the hospital. Miraculously, doctors were able to save Mr. K’s son, and the boy was discharged on April 2.

Meanwhile, investigators struggled to find or even identify Mrs. M’s murderer. There were no fingerprints anywhere in the apartment, and the only traces of blood they could find was in the kitchen sink. Mrs. M’s wallet and purse were missing. The family’s phone, amazingly, was found lodged inside her stomach, along with her car keys and a Mickey Mouse keychain. Her time of death was estimated to have occurred around 3 PM. It was believed that the killer strangled her first, then cut her stomach open and took the baby out. Some speculated that the killer had a medical background, while others thought the murder might have been carried out by more than one man.

Picture of Nakagawa, the ward in Nagoya where the murder occurred.

Initially, police suspected that Mr. K was the murderer. His decision to change his clothes as soon as he got home struck them as odd, and the fact that he didn’t immediately switch on the lights was also suspicious. Mr. K, however, had a solid alibi that could be vouched by his co-workers. He was at work at 3 PM, and didn’t leave until after 7.

With Mr. K cleared, the next theory was that the murder had to do with the business he and Mrs. M ran. They sold Amway products from their home, but the authorities found no reason that this had anything to do with Mrs. M’s murder. At 1:50 PM, a customer paid her a visit and brought some strawberries over. The woman talked with Mrs. M until 3 PM, and then left after buying some deodorant.

Around the same time, a neighbor reported seeing a suspicious 30-something man lounging around in the apartment vicinity. The man, who was dressed in a suit and stood about 5 feet, 6 inches (165 CM) , knocked on the woman’s door and asked if she knew anybody named Nakamura. The neighbor, somewhat frightened by the strange man, quickly told him no and then slammed the door shut. Several other residents also saw this man, but police were never able to locate him. Mr. K and his son, sick of the media attention, left Japan in 1999 and have since lived abroad.

5-year-old Yuki Onishi disappeared in Japan’s Goshikidai Forest on April 29, 2005.

Greenery Day, a national holiday in Japan meant to appreciate nature, is observed every May 4th. From its establishment in 1989 until 2007, however, it was celebrated every April 29th. In 2005, as part of a Greenery Day celebration, a bamboo shoot digging event was held in Kanagawa Prefecture’s Goshikidai Forest. (Yes, this is a thing. Many people in Asia like boiling and eating the shoots.)

Some 60 people showed up to participate, including five-year-old Yuki Onishi and her mother and eight-year-old sister. The event started at 1 PM, and Yuki jumped with joy when she found her first shoot about a half-hour later. She told her mother that she was going to find another one, and then walked away to continue her search.

A picture taken of Yuki the day she disappeared.

20 minutes after Yuki ran off, her mother looked at where all the other diggers were and suddenly realized that her daughter was missing. After a search by themselves turned up nothing, Yuki’s family called the police at 3 PM. When the police still couldn’t find a single trace of the girl, firefighters were brought in to assist the search at 5 PM. Although the authorities combed the area for the next six hours, they still weren’t able to find anything, not even a shoe or the hat Yuki was wearing.

Eventually, over 3,000 people assisted in the case, but not a single one of them was able to find any clues. The forest where Yuki disappeared and a near-by pond seemed to turn up nothing. When a police dog was brought in to follow Yuki’s scent, it suddenly stopped in its tracks in the middle of the forest.  Four other dogs were made to follow the scent the next day, but they led police to the same exact spot.

A picture of the forest where Yuki disappeared.

This is probably the most troubling part of the case. How could somebody seemingly just vanish into thin air? A few internet sleuths have suggested that Yuki was carried off by an eagle or some other large bird. I’m sure we’ve all heard stories about eagles swooping down on a baby or toddler and grabbing them, but those are really just tall tales. According to biologist Ron Clarke, the most an eagle can carry without any difficulty is four or five pounds. At 34 pounds, Yuki would have been way too heavy for an eagle’s carrying capacity.

The other, and I’d say more plausible, theory is that Yuki was lured away and snatched up by somebody who was just passing through the forest. While nobody particularly suspicious was noticed by the diggers, some of them did see a man walking through the area with a backpack large enough to hold a child of Yuki’s size. This man has never been identified, although he might have been a camper or hiker. 

At the time of her disappearance, Yuki Onishi weighed 34 pounds (15.5 kg) and stood at 3 feet, 5 inches (106 cm). She was wearing a pink hat, a long-sleeved shirt with a red and orange pattern, white gloves, long blue pants, and pink shoes. She was 5-years-old, and as of the time of this writing, would now be 15-16. A website set up for Yuki, which Japanese-speakers can access here, offers a printable flyer and contact information for anybody who might be able to help.

The Yamagami family, composed of 58-year-old Masahiro, 52-year-old Junko, 26-year-old Chie, and 79-year-old Saegusa, went missing from their home in Sera, Japan in June 2001.

On June 4, 2001, 52-year-old Junko Yamagami was scheduled to take a business trip to Dalian, China for the travel company she worked for. Before leaving, she was also supposed to attend a meeting. By noon, after Junko hadn’t shown up to her office or gotten on board her plane, her colleagues began to get worried. They checked her house, where she lived with her husband Masahiro and mother-in-law Saegusa, but nobody appeared to be home. The family dog and Masahiro’s car were gone too. 

The Yamagamis’ daughter, a 26-year-old elementary school teacher named Chie, was also missing. She lived alone in an apartment in near-by Takehara city, but came over to visit her parents the night before. Chie was the last member of the family anybody had seen. At 9:30 PM, she picked up some make-up from a colleague and then headed for her parents’ home in the small mountain town of Sera. The Yamagamis’ neighbors heard a car door close at 10:50 PM. Either this had come from Chie after coming home, or it was the sound of the Yamagamis leaving. None of the neighbors were sure. Whatever it was, the family’s newspaper deliveryman reported that the car was missing when he came around 4:00-5:00 AM.

Masahiro Yamagami’s car was also missing.

The Yamagamis’ front door was locked, but the back door was open. Nothing in the house appeared to be disturbed. The kitchen light was left on, all of the beds were made, and breakfast had been prepared. As ordinary as the scene appeared, however, there were a couple of strange details. The Yamagamis’ pajamas were missing, and while their shoes had been left behind, their sandals were gone.  Junko’s luggage and the 150,000 yen she needed for her trip were also inside the house, and so was Masahiro’s pager. It seemed that the Yamagamis suddenly dropped whatever they were doing, took the family dog, and quietly left the house in their pajamas and sandals.

A year into the investigation, the case seemed to be going nowhere. The Yamagamis had good reputations, and weren’t involved with any particularly shady or dangerous people. Masahiro did have some money problems, but it wasn’t serious enough to leave town. To some of their neighbors, the Yamagamis’ strange disappearance reminded them of an old story from Edo times. A female servant was said to have gone into the mountains one day and then disappeared. All the townpeople tried looking for her, but she was never found.

Chie Yamagami and the family dog, Leo.

On September 7, 2002, police recovered a car that was found submerged in a reservoir. The car contained the bodies of the four Yamagamis and their dog. No cause of death could be determined, but there were also no signs of anybody being attacked or bruised. Because Masahiro was in the driver’s seat, police believed that it was a murder-suicide or group suicide.

Now the suicide theory does seem credible; after all, why else would they have taken their dog? But the apparent suddenness of how the Yamagamis left strikes me as suspicious. If Masahiro really did kill everybody, how did he manage (or threaten) to convince the other family members to get in the car? Especially when they were getting ready to eat breakfast? Or did somebody force them to leave? Might they have been trying to get away from somebody, and Masahiro accidentally drove into the water?

This case just makes my head spin. It’s a shame that there isn’t much information online about it. According to a poster on this message board, citing a Chinese newspaper, the Yamagamis’ car was found in a neutral state. Masahiro’s window was down, and everybody was wearing their seat-belt. The Yamagamis’ clothes were so damaged that the authorities couldn’t determine whether they were wearing pajamas. Some glasses and an umbrella were also found. Other users brought up a local rumor that Junko was having an affair, arguing that it really was a suicide of some sort.

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In May 1998, Japan’s Akagi Shrine was the site of a strange missing person’s case known as “The Akagi Shrine Housewife Disappearance”. (赤城神社主婦失踪事件 in Japanese.)

On May 3, 1998, 48-year-old mother and housewife Noriko Shizuka of Japan’s Chiba Prefecture went with the rest of her family to the Akagi Shrine in near-by Gunma Prefecture. Since it was raining when the family got there, only Noriko’s husband and brother-in-law got out of the car to visit the shrine. The other five family members- Noriko, her daughter, her grandson, her sister-in-law, and her mother-in-law- were supposed to sit in the car in the parking lot and wait. (Note: The Japanese sources I consulted aren’t exactly clear on who all went on this family trip. This site here gives the other family members as  “husband, daughter, grandson, uncle, aunt, mother-in-law”. I’m assuming the uncle and aunt were from Noriko’s husband’s side of the family, but I could be wrong.)

After waiting for a while, Noriko told the others that she wanted to give an offering of saisen, money offered to the gods in Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. She took 101 yen, a small sum equivalent to less than $1, from her purse and then got out of the car. Noriko wore a black skirt and pink shirt, and took along a red umbrella. Her family watched her walk off, and that was the last time anybody ever saw her.

Another picture of the Akagi Shrine. You can look at more pictures of the site at this Japanese-language blog.

Despite a 10-day search of the area, with 100 people participating, neither Noriko’s body nor any of her personal belongings turned up. Noriko might not even have gone into the shrine; nobody there reported seeing her, and Noriko’s daughter actually saw her mother walk away from the direction of the shrine’s haiden, the public space where ceremonies and worshipping take place. Why Noriko was walking away from the shrine has never been explained. Was she leaving her family of her own accord, or did somebody lure her away?

7 months after Noriko disappeared, a TV station that had earlier covered her case on one of their programs got hold of a video tape that was taken in Akagi Shrine around the same time when Noriko went missing. At first, this seemed like an important development because the tape showed a woman who bore a resemblance to Noriko, but the Shizukas looked at it and said that it wasn’t her. However, another figure that could be seen in the lower right corner of the screen did look like Noriko, and had a red umbrella and a similar haircut.

An American psychic who was consulted about Noriko’s case.

Still looking for some resolve, the Shizukas next turned to an American psychic for help. The psychic, without a shred of evidence, claimed that Noriko was dead. According to her, Noriko encountered a young man on her way to the haiden. The man said that he needed help picking up somebody who had fallen. Noriko agreed to lend a hand, and that’s why her daughter saw her walk away from the shrine. The whole act was a trick though, and once the man got Noriko in an isolated spot, he and his friend grabbed her and dragged her to their car.

To prevent Noriko from escaping, the two men tied her arms up and blindfolded her. They then took her to their hide-out, where they tortured her for the pure fun of it. The men had no intention to kill Noriko, and after they had their fun, dropped her back off the night after they abducted her. Badly hurt by the beatings, Noriko was disoriented and wandered through the forest near the Akagi Shrine. Without realizing where she was going, Noriko fell off a cliff and died.

Now I’m not the kind of person to believe psychics and their well-paid clairvoyant powers, so I’d say it’s safe to throw this woman’s story out and wag a finger at her for exploiting Noriko’s family’s vulnerability. There is, of course, the possibility that Noriko was abducted and murdered, but as one internet commentator noted wryly, “In my spiritual vision, the housewife is still alive.” Some have suggested that Noriko really did walk off voluntarily, perhaps to start a new life with another man. Interestingly, the family received several silent phone calls after Noriko’s disappearance. The area codes in the phone numbers weren’t local ones, but from the cities of Osaka and Yonago. But other than this strange tidbit, there’s nothing to suggest that Noriko is alive either.