Unproven: Claims the Evidence Does Not Settle
Unproven The cited sources do not establish the claim. Some cases have no evidence for the claim; others are unsolved mysteries. Unproven does not mean proven false.
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- Area 51
Area 51 is a real, long-secret U.S. government test site at Groom Lake in the Nevada desert. A CIA history declassified in 2013 says it was set up in 1955 to test the U-2 spy plane, and that U-2 and later OXCART flights accounted for 'more than one-half of all UFO reports during the late 1950s and most of the 1960s.' The belief that it holds alien craft or bodies has no support in the official record.
- Bigfoot and the Patterson–Gimlin Film
A short 1967 film shot at Bluff Creek, California, appears to show a large, hairy, upright creature. Believers consider it the best evidence for Bigfoot. Skeptics say it shows a person in a costume. It has never been proven either way.
- Bohemian Grove: The Elite Summer Camp in the California Redwoods
Each summer, members of San Francisco's private, all-male Bohemian Club, including well-known business and political figures, gather at a redwood retreat near Monte Rio, California. Theories say secret decisions or occult rituals happen there. Reporting describes an exclusive retreat with theatrical traditions, but has not substantiated those claims.
- D.B. Cooper: The Hijacker Who Parachuted Into Legend
On 24 November 1971, a man who called himself Dan Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient flight, collected $200,000 in ransom in Seattle and parachuted out over the Pacific Northwest at night. He was never found. The FBI suspended its active investigation in 2016.
- Did Roosevelt Know About Pearl Harbor in Advance?
A persistent theory says President Franklin Roosevelt knew Japan would attack Pearl Harbor and let it happen to bring the U.S. into World War II. U.S. codebreakers were reading Japan's diplomatic messages, but the National Security Agency says those decrypts did not reveal what the Japanese military was planning. Eight inquiries assigned blame for unpreparedness. None of the findings the NSA summarizes says the attack was knowingly allowed.
- Did Shakespeare Really Write Shakespeare?
The theory that someone else, such as Francis Bacon or Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays credited to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. Mainstream scholars hold that the evidence points to Shakespeare.
- Havana Syndrome: Secret Weapon or Something Else?
Since U.S. diplomats in Havana first reported strange sounds, head pressure and dizziness, hundreds of American officials worldwide have described similar episodes. Some believe a foreign power is attacking them with a directed-energy weapon. U.S. intelligence says that is very unlikely overall, NIH scans found no brain injury, but two agencies say it cannot be ruled out.
- JFK Assassination
The theory that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone when President John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas on 22 November 1963.
- MH370: The Airliner That Vanished
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared on 8 March 2014 with 239 people aboard. Satellite data and debris suggest it ended in the southern Indian Ocean, but the main wreckage has never been found. Theories range from deliberate diversion to hijacking to cover-ups. Investigators say they cannot determine what happened.
- New Coke: Marketing Blunder or Master Plan?
In 1985, Coca-Cola replaced its flagship drink with a sweeter formula, then brought the original back 79 days later after a public outcry. Sales rose afterward, and some suspected the whole thing was a deliberate stunt. Company president Donald Keough denied it: 'The truth is we're not that dumb and we're not that smart.'
- Project Blue Beam: The Fake Alien Invasion
In 1994, Canadian journalist Serge Monast claimed that NASA would use holograms and other technology to stage a fake religious event and alien invasion, so that a world government could take control. No evidence has ever been produced, and the dates he gave came and went.
- Project Blue Book & UFO Cover-ups
The belief that the U.S. government has proof of alien visitors and hides it. The Air Force really did collect UFO reports for decades, logging 12,618 sightings from 1947 to 1969, 701 of them left 'Unidentified.' But no official investigation, then or since, has found evidence of extraterrestrial technology.
- Rendlesham Forest: Britain's Roswell and the Halt Memo
In December 1980, U.S. Air Force personnel at RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk, England, reported unusual lights in nearby Rendlesham Forest on two nights. The deputy base commander wrote an official memo titled 'Unexplained Lights.' Some see it as a UFO landing. Skeptic Ian Ridpath argues the lights were a bright meteor, a lighthouse and stars.
- Skull and Bones: Yale's Secret Society and Its Legends
Skull and Bones is a secret senior society at Yale University whose members have included a U.S. president. Rumors link it to the Illuminati, the CIA and the theft of Apache leader Geronimo's skull. Its membership is real and well connected. The grander claims are unproven.
- The 'Tic Tac' and the Navy UAP Videos
In April 2020 the Defense Department officially released three Navy videos, one recorded in November 2004 and two in January 2015, saying the objects in them 'remain characterized as "unidentified."' The 2004 video is tied to what became known as the 'Tic Tac' encounter off California. Government reviews since then have said most such reports lack good data, and that they found no evidence of alien technology.
- The Bilderberg Meetings: Off-the-Record Talks Among the Powerful
The Bilderberg Meeting is an annual, invitation-only conference of political, business and academic figures from Europe and North America. Its closed-door format has made it a magnet for theories that it secretly runs the world. No evidence shows it makes binding decisions.
- The Dead Internet Theory
The belief that most of the internet's content and activity is now produced by bots and AI rather than people, and that this was done deliberately. Automated content is real and growing, but the claim of a coordinated takeover is unsupported.
- The Death of Dag Hammarskjöld: Accident or Attack?
UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld died when his plane crashed near Ndola in what is now Zambia in 1961, on a peace mission to the Congo. An early inquiry pointed to pilot error, but questions never went away. In 2024 a UN-appointed investigator said it remains plausible that an external attack or threat caused the crash.
- The Death of Marilyn Monroe: Suicide, Accident, or Murder?
Marilyn Monroe died of a drug overdose in Los Angeles in 1962. The coroner ruled it a probable suicide. Later allegations of murder and a cover-up tied to the Kennedys led to a 1982 review by the district attorney, which found no evidence of murder.
- The Dyatlov Pass Incident
In February 1959, nine experienced hikers died in the northern Ural Mountains after cutting their way out of their tent at night. The Soviet investigation blamed 'a compelling natural force.' Russian authorities and a 2021 scientific study have since pointed to an avalanche, but relatives, members of the public and researchers still dispute it.
- The Georgia Guidestones: Granite Commandments from a Mystery Patron
A granite monument in rural Georgia, commissioned by a man using a pseudonym, carried ten guidelines for humanity, including keeping the population under 500 million. Theories about who was behind it ran for decades until the monument was bombed and torn down in 2022.
- The Hindenburg Disaster: Sabotage or Accident?
On May 6, 1937, the German airship Hindenburg burned while landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Thirty-five of the 97 people aboard died, along with one member of the ground crew. Later books argued that a crew member planted a bomb. The U.S. Commerce Department's investigation found 'no evidence to indicate that sabotage produced the grim result' and judged ignition of leaking hydrogen by an electrical 'brush discharge' the most probable cause.
- The Hum: A Sound Only Some Can Hear
In towns around the world, some residents report a persistent low-frequency hum that most people cannot hear and that instruments often cannot detect. Some cases have been traced to industrial sources, while others remain unexplained.
- The Illuminati: From Bavarian Club to Global Myth
The Bavarian Illuminati was a real secret society, founded in 1776 and banned by the Bavarian state within a decade. There is no evidence for the claims that it survived and secretly runs the world.
- The Knights Templar Treasure: The Order's Lost Riches
The Knights Templar, a wealthy medieval military order, were arrested in France on Friday, 13 October 1307, and dissolved by the pope in 1312. Legends say their treasure, or relics like the Holy Grail, were hidden before the arrests. No such hoard has ever been found.
- The Lost Colony of Roanoke: 'CROATOAN' and the Missing Settlers
In 1587 more than 100 English men, women and children were left on Roanoke Island, in today's North Carolina. When their governor, John White, finally returned in 1590 they were gone, with 'CROATOAN' carved into a palisade. The National Park Service says 'no one has definitively proven what happened to the Lost Colony.'
- The Lost Cosmonauts
Rumors have long claimed that the Soviet Union secretly lost cosmonauts in space before and after Yuri Gagarin's 1961 flight. Some real deaths were hidden, but the famous recordings said to capture dying cosmonauts have never been confirmed.
- The Mandela Effect: False Memories or Shifting Realities?
Large numbers of people share the same specific false memories, such as the spelling of 'The Berenstain Bears.' Some suggest this is proof of parallel universes. Psychologists study it as shared false memory, and a 2022 study confirmed the effect for certain images.
- The Mary Celeste: The Ghost Ship Found Adrift
In December 1872, the ship Mary Celeste was found sailing on its own in the Atlantic, with its cargo nearly intact and no one aboard. Theories have included mutiny, piracy, sea monsters and killer waterspouts. The crew's fate has never been established.
- The Max Headroom Signal Hijacking
On 22 November 1987, someone in a Max Headroom mask hijacked the signals of two Chicago TV stations, WGN and WTTW. The FCC investigated, but the culprits were never identified. People have floated many theories about who was behind it. None has been confirmed.
- The Montauk Project: Time Travel at Camp Hero?
Since a 1992 book, people have claimed that a former military base at Montauk, on the tip of Long Island, hid secret experiments in mind control and time travel. No evidence supports the claim.
- The Simulation Hypothesis: Are We Living in a Computer Program?
The idea that our reality might be a computer simulation run by a more advanced civilization. It was set out formally by philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2003. It is a philosophical argument, not an established scientific finding.
- The Voynich Manuscript: The Book Nobody Can Read
The Voynich Manuscript, Yale's Beinecke MS 408, is an illustrated book 'Written in an unidentified script by an unknown author.' No proposed decipherment has been accepted. Radiocarbon tests in 2009 dated its parchment to the early 15th century, which counts against the idea that it is a modern forgery.
- The Wow! Signal: A Message from the Stars?
On 15 August 1977 Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope recorded a strong, narrowband radio signal near the hydrogen line. It was never detected again. Its discoverer called its origin 'still an open question,' and a 2024 preprint proposed a natural explanation that has yet to be confirmed.
- The Zodiac Killer: An Unsolved Case and Its Many Suspects (Plus One Joke)
The Zodiac Killer is believed to have murdered five people in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1968 and 1969, and taunted police and newspapers with letters and ciphers. The case is officially unsolved. Many people have been named as suspects by amateur sleuths. No one has ever been charged.
- Was the Lusitania Set Up to Be Sunk?
A long-running theory says British leaders, Winston Churchill in particular, deliberately left the liner Lusitania exposed to a U-boat to draw the United States into World War I. The ship did carry war materiel, and British officials played that down. But historians cited here say no evidence of a deliberate plan has been produced.
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