Unexplained Mysteries of The World

#1 Crop Circles
The original crop circles were exactly that - circular patterns of flattened crops, often
created in mysterious circumstances overnight. During the last 20 years, though, crop
circles have evolved into complex geometric shapes, like the DNA double helix or the
nautilus shell.

In 1966, an Australian sugar cane farmer

said he saw a saucer-shaped spaceship rise
up from a swamp before flying away. When
he looked at the landing site, he found the
reeds intricately woven in a clockwise
direction on top of the water. There are many
other anecdotal accounts of crop circles
appearing in alien UFO literature, where
sometimes the crops were burnt, otherwise
flattened.

But in 1991, two men from Southampton,

England, admitted they conceived the whole
idea as a prank some 15 years earlier. They made their masterpiece using planks, rope,
hats and wire - and could create a 40-foot circle in 15 minutes. The only reason they
came clean was because one of the men, Bower, was running up considerable mileage on
his car and had to convince his wife he wasn't having an affair. He continues to
demonstrate the art of crop circles today.

Many people still claim that while some crop circles are almost certainly fakes, others are
genuinely created by alien intelligence. They point out that the arrangements are too
complex to be created by hand in such a short time...

Unexplained Mysteries of The World

#2 The Pyramids of Egypt
When it comes to unexplained mysteries of the world, the pyramids of Giza in Egypt
really take the biscuit. The largest pyramid of all, also known as the Great Pyramid of
Cheops (or Khufu), was built around
5,000 years ago - but how?

The Pyramid of Cheops is the size of a

40-storey building and covers an area
big enough to fit 10 football fields in it.
More than 2 million stone blocks were used to make the pyramid, each weighing 2-5 tons
and cut from a distant limestone quarry on the other side of the Nile. Experts reckon it
took a whopping 400,000 men some 20 years.

Engineering feats aside, there is also some weird paranormal phenomena going on at the
Pyramid of Cheops. In the 1940s, a French hardware dealer spotted some mummified
animals exactly one-third up the height of the pyramid. The remarkable thing was they
showed no signs of decomposition. He deducted that the pyramid shape was responsible
for preserving these creatures. Attempts to mummify dead organic matter under small
cardboard pyramids have produced the same result - as if there is some kind of energy
within the pyramid shape.

Later, a Czech radio engineer conducted a series of experiments in which he placed a

brand new razor blade inside a 1:1,000 scale model of Cheops. He aligned his pyramid on
a north-south axis exactly like the real thing. After getting 50 shaves from the razor, he
was forced to conclude that it was only getting sharper, just from being inside the
pyramid. It took him 10 years to obtain a patent for this remarkable device, which still
has no scientific explanation today.

Unexplained Mysteries of The World

#3 Bigfoot (aka Sasquatch)
He's big, he's hairy, and he's starred in his own TV show! Bigfoot is world-famous for
spooking the bejesus out of hikers and hunters in North America. Scientists consider
Sasquatch to be the result of folklore, misidentification and a whole lot of hoaxes.
However, some people believe many of these humanoid creatures exist around the world,
just like the Yeti of the Himalayas.

Bigfoot has been described as an ape-like creature,

some 6-10 feet tall, weighing more than 500 pounds,
and covered in dark brown or reddish hair. Witnesses
give him large eyes, a heavy brow ridge and a
crested head, much like a male gorilla. Footprints
allegedly belonging to Bigfoot are 24 inches long.

Is Sasquatch really one of the great unexplained

mysteries of the world? Somewhat disappointingly,
the most famous footage of Bigfoot at Bluff Creek,
California, was shot down by a man called Bob
Heironimus. Years after the event, he claimed he
wore an ape costume for the filming.
Scientists also point out there is slim chance that a prehistoric, bipedal, apelike creature
could exist, simply because the breeding population of such an animal would have to be
so large that many more sightings would be reported.

Nevertheless, Bigfoot's cousin - the Yeti (aka the Abominable Snowman) - has a strong
alleged presence in the Himalayan regions of Nepal and Tibet. Teams of scientists
continue to seek out photo evidence, and many locals accept the reality of a breeding Yeti
population as read.

Unexplained Mysteries of The World

#4 UFOs/ Area 51
Unidentified Flying Objects can usually be explained away as airplanes, helicopters,
weather balloons, comets, meteors and even the five planets which can be seen with the
naked eye. In photographs they are usually deemed as dust on the camera lens or simply
all-out hoaxes. But sometimes they fall into the category of true unexplained phenomena,
as is the case with alien UFOs.

The first reported UFO sighting

happened in Texas in 1878, when a
local farmer reported seeing a large,
dark, circular flying object flying "at
wonderful speed". Another famous
early sighting occurred in the UK in
1916, when a pilot reported seeing a
row of lights that rose and disappeared
into the sky.

After UFOs were popularized by science fiction in the 1950s, the number of sightings
went through the roof. Theories to explain the paranormal phenomena range from the
good old Extraterrestrial Hypothesis, where aliens are visiting us from another planet; to
the Interdimensional Hypothesis, where alien UFOs are crossing the fabric of space-time
from a parallel universe.

Meanwhile, UFO conspiracy theories center around Area 51 in Nevada, about 90 miles
north of Las Vegas. The site houses a large air base that was selected in the 1950s for
testing of a U-2 spy plane. It has since become America's testing ground for secret "black
budget" aircraft before they go public.
The UFO stories began when, in 1989, Bob Lazar claimed on Las Vegas TV that he had
worked on alien spacecraft just south of Area 51. The combination of government
secrecy and unexplained phenomena happening in the sky above the desert has sparked
UFO conspiracy theories ever since.

Unexplained Mysteries of The World

#5 The Belmez Faces
The famous Belmez faces have been described by parapsychologists as "without doubt
the most important paranormal phenomena in the 20th century."

In 1971, in the small Spanish village of Belmez, Maria

Pereira claimed a human face spontaneously appeared on
her cement kitchen floor. It wasn't long before she
destroyed the floor and replaced it - and a new face
promptly appeared.

More and more faces continued to appear on the floor of

Maria Pereira's kitchen, attracting thousands of visitors
every day. Some were male, some female, some large, and
some small. In time, she discovered that the house, built
around 1830, stood above a graveyard used by the
Romans, Spanish Muslims and then Medieval Christians.

Did Maria Pereira paint the faces herself? If so, she never
benefited financially from all the attention. She lived a
simple life in that same house and eventually died in 2004, after which the house was put
on the market. Besides ghostly apparitions, paranormal experts suggest a second theory -
that the faces were manifested on the floor by telekinesis. Apparently, the expressions on
their faces used to change with the mood of Maria Pereira...

However, skeptics point out that it is possible to analyze the molecular changes in the
whitewash and prove that some level of fakery was involved. Many believe that the
'paintings' were actually created by Maria's son, Diego Pereira.

Unexplained Mysteries of The World

#6 The Out of Body Experience
Unlike lucid dreaming, the out of body experience (OBE) has yet to be proven under
laboratory conditions. And yet the two phenomena are strangely linked.
An out of body experience happens
when your awareness is transferred
beyond your physical body. When it
happens during severe bodily trauma,
it's often called a near death experience
(NDE). And when it's induced at will
and used to travel to other planes or
dimensions, it's called astral projection
(AP).

Many people write to me asking if their experience was astral projection or a very vivid
dream. I'm hardly qualified to answer this being a pure lucid dreamer, but I know a lady
who is. Erin Pavlina - a lucid dreamer, astral projector and intuitive counselor - explains
the three conditions surrounding this phenomena:

1. It's a normal dream. You can tell if you are only dreaming that you are in an astral
state because you won't experience the separation process.

2. It's a lucid dream. You can consciously induce an out of body experience from within
a lucid dream, but it's still only a dream inside your mind.

3. It's a real OBE. You know that you are awake in your real bedroom when the
separation process begins. There are no dream characters or constructs. There's a strange,
unearthly quiet about it and you feel a bit like a ghost.

Dr Robert Monroe famously documented his out of body experiences in his

groundbreaking book, Journeys Out of the Body. He was at first incredulous when he
began having OBEs against his will but soon traveled to places far removed from the
material and spiritual realities of life on earth.

The concept compels us to rethink our ideas about life and death - and maybe even
induce an out of body experience for ourselves.

Unexplained Mysteries of The World

#7 The Mayan Prophecy
According to an increasingly large number of people, the Mayan Prophecy states that
the world as we know it will change on December 12, 2012. This is not a new
phenomena; as landmark dates draw near, end of the world theories creep out of the
woodwork with astonishing popularity.

However, this particular theory has been around for more than 5000 years. It began when
the ancient Mayans plotted our position in the Milky Way and launched the Mayan
calendar.

The Mayans believed that in the year AD 1999, mankind would have 13 years to
recognize our own patterns of self destruction. Then, starting December 12, 2012, our
entire lives would be tested and only those most in touch with their spiritual sides would
survive (as some interpretations have it). Many people take this as a sign that a natural or
manmade disaster will occur, tearing apart the civilized world and taking us back to
hunter-gatherer days.

There are other interpretations too:

from sun storms to the eruption of a
super volcano; from a magnetic field
reversal to a meteor impact. Some
people even point to the Large Hadron
Collider in Switzerland as the bringer
of doom.

While the world may come to an abrupt

end any time, any day, without warning
- one thing is for sure: our modern
society, like all civilizations before us,
is geared to postulate over end-of-the-
world mysteries with gusto.

Unexplained Mysteries of The World

#8 Stonehenge
Stonehenge is one of the greatest unexplained mysteries of the world. It's certainly no
hoax (estimated to be more than 5,000 years old) and
is probably the most important prehistoric monument
in the whole of Britain.

When you visit Stonehenge, you'll find yourself

driving for miles through rolling hills and countryside
until, suddenly, you catch sight of this bizarre
structure. There's an eerie feel to the area around
Stonehenge, and for thousands of years it has soon silently, giving away few clues as to
the meaning of its existence.

Excavations have revealed that Stonehenge was built in three parts. First, a series of holes
were dug around 3100 BC as part of a religious ceremony. Then, more than 1,000 years
later, the most dramatic stage of building took place. Huge bluestones from mountains in
Wales were lugged more than 240 miles to the Stonehenge site. Why would anyone do
this in the age before the wheel? It wouldn't have been hard to find rocks closer nearby.
The stones were set up to form an incomplete double circle, aligned perfectly with the
midsummer sunrise.

The third stage in 2000 BC saw the arrival of the more stones, transported by land from
the Marlborough Downs some 25 miles away. Then, after a further 500 years had passed,
someone felt the need to rearrange the massive Welsh bluestones into the familiar
horseshoe and circle we see today.

One of the great unexplained phenomena, the meaning of Stonehenge is still not clear
today. Was it a temple, a burial ground, an observatory, or an ancient calendar? Without a
time machine to go back and ask, we may never know.

Unexplained Mysteries of The World

#9 Loch Ness Monster
The Loch Ness Monster is a prehistoric creature thought to inhabit the Loch Ness in the
Scottish Highlands. As lake monsters go, Scotland has tales of a fair few, with Nessie
gaining the most popularity of all on the back of anecdotal evidence.

Nessie hit the headlines in 1933 when a story was published in the Inverness Courier. The
report quoted a Londoner who had visited a few weeks earlier as seeing: "a most
extraordinary form of animal... the nearest approach to a dragon or pre-historic animal
that I have ever seen in my life."

After that, more sightings were reported and this

unexplained phenomena hit international
headlines. That same year, one motorcyclist
claimed to nearly hit Nessie late one night as it
lumbered across the road and slid back into the
loch. Soon, apparent photos of the Loch Ness
Monster were being published...

In 1960, an aeronautical engineer filmed a hump

crossing the water in Loch Ness in a powerful
wake unlike that of a boat. Years later, digital
enhancement of the footage revealed what seemed to be the rear body, flippers, and two
more humps of a plesiosaur-like body. The technician said: "Before I saw the film, I
thought the Loch Ness Monster was a load of rubbish. Having done the enhancement, I'm
not so sure."

There's no doubt that the story of Nessie has drawn huge tourist interest to the famed
Loch Ness. And while some suggest it's a living plesiosaur, New Scientist points out that
such a creature could never lift its head up out of the water like the photos and anecdotes
suggest. What's more, the loch is only 10,000 years old and was frozen solid for about
20,000 years before that.

Unexplained Mysteries of The World

#10 Bermuda Triangle
The Bermuda Triangle is one of the great unexplained phenomena of the 20th century. It
is held responsible for the disappearance of countless airplanes and boats in the ocean
between Florida, San Juan, and Bermuda. This area is one of the most heavily sailed
shipping lanes in the world, with vessels crossing through daily for ports in the Americas,
Europe and the Caribbean Islands.

So why do people think there's weird stuff

going on in the Bermuda Triangle? Because
there are a huge number of disappearances that
happened in very mysterious circumstances,
falling beyond the possibilities of human error,
equipment failure or natural disasters. Many
theories attribute a paranormal explanation, like
a suspension of the laws of physics.

The first unexplained phenomena occurred in

the 1950s when the story of Flight 19 came to
light, detailing a group of five US Navy
bombers on a training mission. The flight leader
was reported to have said: "We are entering
white water, nothing seems right. We don't
know where we are, the water is green, no white." It was also claimed that Navy officials
said the planes "flew off to Mars", linking the Devil's Triangle with the supernatural.

Skeptics say that such incidents have been embellished, and the Bermuda Triangle is
responsible for no more disappearances than any other area of ocean. However, fans of
paranormal phenomena say many incidents remain unexplained to this day, despite
considerable investigation.