15 Most Mysterious People That Ever Existed

• In the modern world, it feels like our entire lives are documented.
But is it possibly to escape this and live in the shadows?
And what about those people from history with an unknown story?
Here’s the 15 most mysterious people ever.
15 - , Karl Koecher • Czech national Karl Koecher was perhaps
the most successful Soviet spy during the Cold War.
Over twenty years he passed countless documents to the KGB, revealing CIA operations, agent
names and potential double-agent recruits.
• Koecher and his wife posed as wealthy New York socialites while he worked as an
analyst for the CIA.
He used social events and even sex parties to find blackmail candidates among his colleagues.
Koecher was eventually arrested but was traded over shortly after at the Berlin bridge of
spies.
14 - , Dan 'DB' Cooper • On November 24th, 1971, a Northwest flight
left Portland for Seattle.
After take-off, a man in a dark suit revealed the contents of his briefcase as a bomb and
made his demands known: $200,000 and four parachutes.
At Seattle airport, the passengers were released and the flight took off again.
• The man, whose ticket read Dan Cooper, jumped out of the plane into the night, never
to been seen again.
He left behind two parachutes and a black tie.
13 - , Jerome of Sandy Cove • While exploring a beach in Nova Scotia
in 1863, a young boy found something curious washed up on the shore: A man in his twenties
with freshly amputated legs who lay miserably in the sand.
Looked after by the community, the man did not appear to speak any known language, apart
from sounds that were taken to be his name.
• He lived out the remaining fifty years of his life with no one ever finding out his
past, nor what had happened to his legs.
12 - , Alexander Solonik • Despite being Russia's best-known contract
killer, not much is known about Alexander Solonik.
In the 1990s he pulled off hits on some of the biggest mafia bosses in all of Russia,
including one mobster who was surrounded by bodyguards in a nightclub.
• He shot his way out of a police station, and escaped from prison twice, fleeing to
Greece.
An unidentified body was found strangled to death near Athens, although it is unclear
whether it belonged to Solonik.
11 - , Robert Johnson • You'd think that more would be known about
one of the most influential figures in blues and rock music.
His recordings from the 1930s survive, but Delta blues musician Robert Johnson's life
remains largely a mystery.
• The gaps in our knowledge have given rise to the famous tale of a Faustian exchange,
where Johnson sold his soul to Satan at a crossroads, to gain his devilish guitar skills.
10 - , Homer • Sometime around 3000 years ago the epic
poems The Oddysey and The Illiad were composed.
They are credited to a man named Homer, but modern scholars are skeptical he even existed
at all.
• Many believe Homer was instead a collective of storytellers in the oral tradition of Greece,
while others paint him as a blind, travelling bard.
It's possible he may work in a Springfield powerplant.
9 - , Kaspar Hauser • Kaspar Hauser appeared out of nowhere
as a teenager wandering the streets of Nuremburg in 1828, giving only his name and the memory
of being locked in a cell by an unknown captor.
• Over the next five years, Kaspar suffered mysterious gunshot and knife wounds from a
supposed assailant.
He died in 1833 from a stabbing, believed by many to be self-inflicted.
8 - , Wolf Messing • Having run away from home at a young age,
Polish-born Wolf Messing quickly discovered a knack for manipulation and suggestion, staging
psychic performances to enraptured German audiences.
He is even reported to have wowed both Einstein and Freud in the latter's apartment in Vienna.
• Messing, who was a Jew, fled Hitler's forces and quickly became a favourite of Joseph
Stalin, who devised elaborate tests to determine the psychic ability of this cunning trickster.
7 - , Fulcanelli • In 1926, Frenchman Eugene Canseliet published
two books which, he claimed, were written by Fulcanelli, an enigmatic master of alchemy.
Evidence of Fulcanelli's existence comes only from the mouths of his students.
Some of the stories include a successful transmutation of lead into gold.
• Fulcanelli disappeared, but reportedly resurfaced to warn an Allied spy about the
dangers of atomic warfare.
He hinted that mankind had possessed this technology before.
6 - , Robin Hood • Although Robin Hood is a hugely famous
character across the world, thanks in part to some major movies, we’re still totally
in the dark about his historical existence.
• He could just be part of storytelling history as his name appears mainly in ballads.
However, there is a strong candidate for in the records.
A document from 1226 details how Robert Hod of York had all his 32 shillings and 6 pence
worth of assets taken and became an outlaw.
5 - , Laozi • While guarding the capital of the failing
Zhou dynasty, a guardsman met a travelling old man.
Recognising him as Laozi, The Old Master, the guard asked him to write down some of
his wisdom in exchange for entry.
This text became the foundation of Daoism, a philosophy which has shaped the whole of
China.
• But little is known of the old man Laozi or what happened to him.
Some say he was a teacher of both the Buddha and Confucius.
4 - , Rasputin • Wandering into St Petersburg at the beginning
of the twentieth century, Grigori Rasputin quickly became a popular and divisive figure
in society.
The mystic healer became a close acquaintance of Tzar Nicolas II, and formed a scandalously
close relationship with his wife, Alexandra.
• Rasputin was assassinated by a group of resentful nobles, although it took them a
cup of poison and several gunshots to finish the job.
With the royal family's reputation damaged, the Russian Revolution followed swiftly after.
3 - , The Man in the Iron Mask • Made popular in books by Voltaire and
Dumas, and portrayed on film by Leonardo Di Caprio, the man in the iron mask has captured
people's imaginations.
The tortured soul who sat in French jails his whole life has been explained by some
as the secret twin brother of king Louis the fourteenth.
• But historians today believe that the prisoner's name was Eustace Dauger, and that
his mask may have actually been made of fabric, which sounds more comfortable, but less dramatic.
2 - , Nikola Tesla • There is no doubt that the Serbian, Nikola
Tesla was a scientific genius and his work on electricity is still unveiling new secrets
to this day.
In fact, there may be dozens of patents he filed, that we’ve not yet discovered.
• Although he was said to be very charming company, he lived a fairly reclusive life.
He never slept more than 2 hours a day and often skipped it entirely.
1 - Aleister Crowley • A master of black magic, a spy, the wickedest
man in the world and one of the hundred greatest Britons of history, Aleister Crowley deserves
all of his titles.
• Crowley dedicated his life to unlocking the secrets of the occult through learning
and ritual.
But he wasn't just any old crazy.
The British press feared him and his advocacy of sexual freedom, drug experimentation and
hedonism.
• There is evidence that Crowley may also have worked as a British spy in America and
Russia, adding to his enigmatic aura.

15 Most Mysterious People That Ever Existed

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