Since the dawn of the internet, it has evolved at an astonishing rate. We are so used to the world wide web of today that just picturing the early days after its birth is almost like a fantasy. One thing that remains constant, however, is that it was brimming with online mysteries, just like today!
When a netizen asked people to spill these unsolved online mysteries of that time, they didn’t hold back. If you are from that age, a few might be familiar to you, while others might be completely new. Some of these will leave you with an itch to solve them; that’s how compelling they are! Just scroll down to check them out.
More info: Reddit
#1
When The Simpsons did the Who Shot Mr. Burns cliffhanger, they had a contest to see if anyone could solve it. On the Simpsons usenet there was one commenter who solved it using the clues correctly (as opposed to just a lucky guess.)
The showrunners tried all that they could to find the person but never did…
Image source: das_goose, omid roshan
#2
Back in the day there was a site called bonsai kitten claiming to sell real kittens grown in glass jars. It was a hoax website but people actually believed it.
Image source: anon, Francesco Ungaro
#3
Back in the days of war dialing, there were so many weird phone numbers that were discovered that led to weird recordings or just did weird s**t. I’d love to hear about what some of those were about.
Image source: SuperSecretSociopath, Happysurd Photography
#4
The “Enigma” conspiracy theory about Pink Floyd’s album “The Division Bell” died with Usenet’s popularity before it ever led to either the treasure the band had allegedly hidden somewhere for fans to find or the identity of the person connected with the band who was contributing to the theories.
Image source: Zhirrzh, rateyourmmusic.com
#5
Last time this came up, I brought up www.hell.com which was this website where you kept clicking through weird cryptic pages that led you down a rabbit hole of more weirdness. But apparently people told me it was some experimental art project or something.
So… mystery solved.
Image source: PsychoAgent, alf516
#6
Who actually wrote the ‘My Immortal’ Harry Potter fanfic?? I know there are suspects, but no one wants to officially claim that masterpiece and give evidence? Why?? The world needs to know!
Image source: Nabzarella, Tuyen Vo
#7
Whether or not “the X-files” is based on *real* FBI files.
Image source: anon, Getty Images
#8
Grngecko.com/torment was crazy to me. I don’t remember how I found it but it started you out on this puzzle that wasn’t too difficult to solve, but it just kept giving more puzzles with increasing difficulty. I remember having a full notebook from writing stuff down trying to figure out how to solve them.
I eventually got stuck and went to some forums to find out there were people who put in some WORK trying to complete it but I don’t believe anyone ever reached the end. They eventually took it down and the creator put up a new series of puzzles that was solved within the first couple days.
I was always curious what was at the end of that grngecko puzzle. That website is what made me have a love for puzzles and riddles.
Image source: ThreePieces, sesionesperdidas
#9
I had a previous Reddit account made during the Digg exodus. This was at least a decade ago when Reddit was pretty new. I came across a post from a guy who swore that a particular website that looked like a generic local news site with the usual AP & Reuters news feeds was actually a government run intelligence program.
It functioned like a numbers station in plain site. Meaning that the exact wording used would match up with a one time use pad and provide intelligence info.
I can not remember the exact website, but it looked unimpressive and the domain was registered in Bahrain, despite appearing to cater to a midsize US city.
He then said he was being harrased in real time since he made that post. Then he said he got doxxed and strangers were calling him telling him to cut it out.
I tried to reply to his post a few minutes later, but then found that his Reddit account and every post he made were deleted.
What was that all about?!
#10
Anybody remember cutoffmyfeet.com? A guy had terrible foot pain and wanted to amputate, so the website said. He was taking donations for entry into a contest to be the person who, via the internet, would be able to push a keyboard key that activated a home made guillotine to remove his affected feet. The whole thing was planned out with a scheduled date and audience. Ambulance would be already called. Never heard what happened.
Image source: PutnamPete, The Overlooked Hotel
#11
I remember the mystery surrounding John Titor, the time traveller.
He even has his own wikipedia article. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor).
Image source: nathanosaurus84, Wikipedia
#12
The leprechaun sighting in Crichton.
I want to know if an entire neighborhood came together to fake it, if something was in the water, a real leprechaun was seen, but most importantly, I want to know where the gold at.
Image source: JudgementalChair, Tim Wilson
#13
How come every time I tried to download a new Backstreet Boys album it was just p**n. Every. Time.
Image source: deepfriedpotatos, rateyourmusic.com
#14
I can’t remember the name of the channel, but I remember the mistery being set around early Youtube days. There was this one girl doing vlogs in Youtube and she had quite a following. Then she started uploading stuff about being stalked and she was afraid someone was after her. After some time, she completely vanished and stopped uploading.
modern-era replied:
lonelygirl15. It was staged. I’ll admit, it had me for a minute.
There is still one mystery surrounding that, though. Two videos were posted on Youtube by cassieiswatching that used some of the same locations as LG15. No one has ever claimed responsibility
Image source: TheSovereign2181, lonelygirl15
#15
The identity of Bloodninja, the greatest internet troll of all time. Ahh, those were the days!
edit: [chat logs](http://www.megalomaniac.com/~andrew/funny/bloodcyber.html) for those of you unfamiliar with this legend.
Image source: valleyvictorian, Sam Ebanezer
#16
All of those posts from a bunch of different accounts from a bunch of different social media sites that were all about Captain Kutchie’s Key Lime Pie. Captain Kutchies was a local restaurant that closed a long time ago. I seriously wonder what all that was about.
Image source: Triviess, thealterry
#17
I’ve always wondered about Ted the caver. I think his original posts was on geocities but he had this whole blog about going caving in some more unknown areas and hearing/smelling weird noises and deathly flesh similar to a wendingo.
Image source: anon, MOHD HAFIZ YAHYA
#18
Not early internet, but early Facebook. The developers of Facebook used to look through everyone’s photos and make comments on them in a tooltip that with javascript would disappear after being read once. Very few people remember that b.s. now.
#19
There a was a site I found only once and have never been able to relocate.
The whole of it seemed to consist of cryptic text in various patterns, with links to other cryptic text in various patterns. The links would be on whole words or sometimes individual letters.
It’s hard to explain how, but going through the pages gave you the sense that you were going *somewhere*, that it wasn’t just endless randomness but some kind of puzzle to be solved.
I never solved it and neglected to bookmark it; now that (486) computer is a scrap heap.
Image source: quequotion, Timur Weber
#20
I was on Stumbleupon and I remember a story about a Russian (?) boy who had knowledge of ancient civilizations even though he was from a small town in Siberia. He claimed to be an alien who was sent down to earth and grew in his host (the mom). Can’t remember why he was sent to earth but I haven’t been able to find that story since.
Image source: okierika, Maciej Cisowski
#21
Who wrote SQL Slammer, an early internet worm. I work in cybersecurity; I remember at the time it was released it was crazy the damage it did: took down 90% of all infectable hosts within 10 minutes or so. Many believe it was an early cyberweapon test. If you get into the technical details of the thing it’s wild: so crazy efficient it’s entire source code sat in a single packet. More info: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_Slammer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_Slammer).
Image source: best_ghost
#22
C*****d had an article about this (I know, I know) but there was an old forum a girl had about Buffy the Vampire Slayer – I think? Where she had over 40k posts, all by herself. As in, she would make topics and reply to them as the series progressed, or she watched seasons and episodes. IIRC 4chan caught wind and started raiding, so she deleted the site all together. I really wish I had more context, because it seems so interesting.
Image source: Moots_point, 20th Century Studios
#23
I remember this random youtube video where a guy kidnaps a girl and after 10 years, he posted a video titled “happy anniversary” and laughed like hell with some mystery puzzle at the end.
cuppateafling replied:
That’s the disappearance of Maura Murray and the video was posted on the eighth year. Supposedly the video creator is not involved, just mentally ill and may enjoy the attention.
Image source: anon, mauramurray.com
#24
Just after the first Harry Potter film was made there was a creepy website with photos of Hermione’s face VERY BADLY photoshopped onto various “s**y” celebs bodies. There was no nudity but it was still creepy, especially as he had a countdown clock until Hermione was “legal”. The mystery, I suppose, is whether the person who made the site was a “for real” weirdo or if it was some weird sort of parody/satire. I never saw the site again so don’t know how it progressed in later years, and you’d never find it now without getting yourself on some sort of list.
Image source: Hitonatsu-no-Keiken, Entertainment Tonight
#25
Not from the early days- but the stories and conspiracies of Cicada 3301 sound amazing, shame they havent posted a puzzle in years though (or figured out the last one).
Image source: anon, washingtontimes.com
#26
Not sure if this counts but the Max Headroom/Dr. Who incident has been discussed on the internet for decades without those involved ever being identified.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_broadcast_signal_intrusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_broadcast_signal_intrusion)
It’s a cool story because it’s the cliche where hackers do something harmless just because they can except this really happened and nobody is even sure of how. I’ve read that they would’ve needed to overpower the signal that the station was broadcasting but to do that they would’ve needed to be close to the station and using very expensive and powerful gear.
Image source: Achack, wikipedia
#27
The “-Model” websites. There used to be dozens of these websites of underage “fashion” models that people would pay money to for picture sets of them in skimpy clothing. I remember they would offer a VIP photo shoot for a lot of money, which I imagine involved straight up p**n or p**********n which was super creepy. All these websites mentioned that their uncle was the photographer. It certainly seems like they all belonged to the same child predator network. They were around for years until Oprah ran a special on them, and soon after they all disappeared at the same time. Really weird stuff.
(Note: Don’t try to repeat their names; a lot of **current** websites have an auto-filter/auto-ban feature despite them not existing for a long time.).
Image source: UltimaCaitSith, Godisable Jacob
#28
A long time ago I was chatting with someone over IM and he somehow managed to open my CD tray over the internet. To this day, I have no idea how tf he managed to do that.
Image source: jcggames1, cottonbro studio
#29
How the f**k have we still never seen a picture of CJayC, the founder of GameFAQs?
Image source: ponzLL, cottonbro studio
#30
The Mayday mystery. There were a load of conspiracy theories like a cult, government recruiting, the illuminati, and etc. Basically, this guy found this weird crypric ad in his school paper, and turns out that they date back to the early 80s, possibly even further, and still continue to this day. The ads included the word Mayday, and a lot of ciphers and math. Apparently, the guy who discovered this was messaged by the mysterious group who made it, although im a little skeptical about that.
Image source: Iampenguin1234, Pixabay
#31
The identity of tubgirl.
Image source: Anonym44049, Molly Blackbird
#32
Back when Tripod and Angelfire were a real thing, we had a guy who hated the mayor of a local town and had his own little stalking / hate page.
In addition to stuff like *[mayor] is watching cartoons instead of having the potholes fixed* and that the police force was undermanned and overworked, he went absolutely nuts in the winter because the road that the mayor lived on was likely to be plowed first and kept well-plowed.
The absolute classic from that time was when the mayor did something that the hater didn’t care for and he said about that mayor: *…that took some real testicle fortitude.*
For YEARS after that I’d go for a hike, motorcycle ride or whatever with friends and for sure, someone would ask “do you have the testicle fortitude for this?”
**NOTE:** https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/05/bill-simmons-testicular-fortitude-the-etymology-of-a-phrase-and-the-sensibilities-of-espn.html.
Image source: anon
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