Now that it’s getting close to Halloween, here’s a list of five creepy, unsolved cases that will haunt you when you can’t sleep at night:
1. Cruise Ship Disappearance
23-year-old Amy Lynn Bradley was enjoying a family holiday aboard a Caribbean Cruise when she went missing. It all started one night when Amy was out partying with people she’d met on the cruise. According to one of the members of the ship’s band, they’d been dancing until around 1 a.m., when she decided to leave. Later that morning, at around 5:30 a.m., her father claimed to have seen her sleeping in the cabin’s balcony. Little did he know that this would be his last time seeing her – because at 6 a.m., when he went to wake her up, she was no longer there. After a while of searching and not finding her, her family knew something was up because she usually always told them when she was going somewhere. Once the ship docked in the island of Curaçao, there were extensive investigations – but unfortunately, with no luck. Although there have been reported sightings of Bradley in Curaçao throughout the years with speculations that she was sold into a sex slavery ring, she has yet to be found and her whereabouts remain unknown.
2. Elvis Fan Girls
On December 28, 1956, young sisters Barbara and Patricia Grimes decided to go catch a screening of Elvis Presley’s movie at the cinema for the 15th time. They left their house at around 7:30 p.m. and promised their mom that they would make it home before midnight, unaware of the tragic destiny that awaited them. They lived approximately one and a half miles away from the Brighton movie theater in Illinois, and it’s not known whether they caught the bus or walked there. However, they did arrive to the movie theater and attended the 9:30 p.m. screening of the movie; Patricia’s school friend later testified that she was seated in the booth behind them. The movie was set to end at 11:45 p.m., and when the girls weren’t home by midnight, their mom immediately knew something was up. She decided to send their older sister and brother to go look for them, and to their dismay, their younger sisters were nowhere to be found. They were then reported as missing to the Chicago Police Department at 2:15 a.m. the next day. It wasn’t until about one month later that Leonard Prescott, a construction worker, found their bodies as he was excavating the snow from the recent snowfall. Although the autopsy later revealed that the girls had died within a few hours of disappearing, to this day the identity of the murderer remains unknown – and it’s still one of the most devastating unsolved cases in the Chicago area.
3. Kidnapping of the Paperboy
Try to picture a Sunday morning in a small town in Iowa. Peaceful, right? Well, this wasn’t exactly the case on September 5th, 1982. Early every morning, 12-year-old Johnny Gosch would embark on his paper route and deliver the paper to everyone in the neighborhood; however, this time was different. According to a neighbor who saw Johnny that day, he was talking to “a man in a blue Ford Fairmount with a Nebraska plate.” As Johnny kept going with his route, the same neighbor claimed that the man started following him in his car. Another witness, John Rossi, claimed that he saw another man in a blue car talking to Johnny, and he could immediately sense something was off. This would be the last time anyone would see Johnny that day – he never returned home. The truly fascinating thing about this case is that several sightings of Johnny have occurred. The first one happened just two months after his disappearance. He was seen in Oklahoma being carried by two men, yelling for help. The second one occurred much later, in March 1997, when he managed to escape from his captors to visit his mother. This is when Johnny told her that he was a victim of a pedophile organization and he’d been tossed aside because he’d gotten old. This was the last time he was ever seen, and there’s no solid proof that these appearances really did happen. To this day, this case has yet to be solved and it’s unknown whether Johnny was murdered or if he fell victim to the horrors of child trafficking.
4. Disappearance of Actress Tammy Lynn Leppert
Glamourous, fun, luxurious: these are the three words that could be used to describe the life of Florida native Tammy Lynn Leppert, a successful model and actress, before she mysteriously disappeared in the summer of 1983. Prior to her disappearance, Tammy’s career was at its peak – she was being casted in big budget movies such as “Scarface” and “Spring Break.” Shortly after filming of the movie “Spring Break” had ended, Tammy went to a party where people close to her claimed she was acting very strange. According to her mom, Tammy was scared and claimed someone was trying to murder her. Her mom’s worry started when Tammy started smashing the windows in her house and attacking one of her good friends; this is when her mom decided it was best to send her to a psychiatric center. Unfortunately, Tammy acted as if nothing had happened and she was released after 72 hours. A few days later, Tammy was on her way to Cocoa Beach with the same friend she’d attacked five days prior, when she disappeared. It was reported that she and her friend had an argument, and she demanded to be dropped off at a parking lot – this is the last time Tammy was ever seen. Was he Tammy’s killer? Did she kill herself? Is she dead? The answers to these questions are unknown, as Tammy’s body hasn’t been found to this day.
5. Murder in Penn State Library
If you go to Penn State like I do, then this is probably the creepiest case out of the five. On a cold, November afternoon in 1969, Betsy Aardsma, a graduate student at Penn State, was in Pattee Library doing research for a paper she was writing. Between 4:45 p.m. and 4:55 p.m., as she was roaming through the Stacks located in the basement at Pattee, she was stabbed from behind. It’s speculated that a couple of minutes after the incident happened, two men found her and she was taken to University Health Services; unfortunately, it was too late. Almost 50 years later, the identity and motive of the murderer still remain unknown. To all my fellow Penn State students out there: beware! Legend says that during the dark hours, you can still see Betsy laying on the ground with a knife on her chest screaming for help. Good luck next time you have to pull an all-nighter at Pattee!