These creepy mysteries had people on the edge of their seats all year round! Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re examining the most captivating mysteries of 2023.
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00:00 Oh my gosh, dude.
00:01 Wow, that's amazing!
00:03 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're examining the most captivating mysteries of 2023.
00:09 We will be including stories both solved and unsolved,
00:12 including those that predate 2023, so long as they received a significant surge of interest this past year.
00:18 Well, in Chicago, they pour green in the river purposely to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.
00:23 But it's not St. Patrick's Day!
00:24 It's not.
00:25 Moroccan earthquake lights.
00:28 It's a sight straight out of a science fiction movie.
00:31 Dazzling lights, varied in color and diameter, dance across the night sky.
00:36 This was a sight recorded in Morocco shortly before a devastating earthquake hit the country
00:41 on September 8th, 2023.
00:43 These lights are known, rather uncreatively, as "earthquake lights,"
00:47 and they tend to occur right before a large piece of seismic activity.
00:51 Earthquake lights have been reported for more than a thousand years,
00:54 with the earliest written account dating to a Japanese earthquake in 869 CE.
00:59 Scientists say they're real.
01:01 But they're not understood.
01:02 The phenomenon continues to baffle scientists,
01:05 and numerous explanations have been put forth regarding ionization and the Earth's magnetic field.
01:11 Underneath the Earth, there's huge pressures, and you grind things against one another.
01:16 However, no consensus has ever been reached.
01:18 The death of Abbie Choi.
01:20 A prominent influencer and model based out of Hong Kong,
01:24 Abbie Choi was a regular at Paris Fashion Week and appeared in magazines like Vogue.
01:28 Unfortunately, both her life and career were cut tragically short on February 21st, 2023,
01:35 when Choi was reported missing.
01:36 A search was conducted for three days, until her body was found in the Tai Po region of Hong Kong.
01:42 Choi had been the victim of a horrible crime.
01:44 Her death remains unsolved, but police and investigators are actively working on the case.
01:50 Choi's ex-husband and his father and brother have been charged with murder.
01:53 Her former mother-in-law has also been arrested.
01:57 As of May 2023, seven suspects had been arrested, including her ex-husband.
02:02 All of the arrested persons have been uncooperative up to this point,
02:05 making our investigation very difficult.
02:07 The Minion Sculptures.
02:10 Towing the line between creepy and charming,
02:12 a series of Minion sculptures have been popping up in the small village of Warwick, Australia.
02:17 "Question, what are these?"
02:19 The Minions are rather distinct, being made out of scrap metal and pipes,
02:24 and they all bear rather large and inhuman eyes.
02:27 "And since that period, they've been appearing a couple of weeks up until now,
02:30 and we're now up to 24 of them."
02:32 Even creepier, or more joyous, depending on your interpretation,
02:36 is that each Minion is related to the property on which it stands.
02:39 For example, one of the Minions also functions as a plant pot,
02:43 and it's been given to the president of a local gardening club.
02:46 "We suspect Bucky's because his wife said,
02:49 'Be careful what you wish for,' and sure enough, up pops the little one."
02:54 The only clue that locals have to go on is CCTV footage showing two people
02:59 installing one of the Minions.
03:00 However, they were both dressed in costumes, so identification was impossible.
03:05 "No, no, I'm not making a Minions, that's for sure."
03:08 "Right. Why do you think people suspect you?"
03:10 "I don't know."
03:13 The Green Canal of Venice.
03:15 "Have you ever seen the water in Venice that color?"
03:18 "No, never, never."
03:19 Venice's Grand Canal is one of the world's most picturesque locations,
03:23 attracting millions of tourists every year.
03:25 And in May 2023, the world-famous canal turned green.
03:29 Yep, a small spot of the Grand Canal under the Rialto Bridge turned a bright fluorescent green,
03:35 inviting lots of confusion and many a bewildered onlooker.
03:38 "What are you doing in my swamp?"
03:43 Some suspected that climate change activists were responsible,
03:46 leading police to investigate the matter.
03:48 Samples of the water were also taken, and experts identified the presence of fluorescein.
03:53 An organic dye used in various medical fields,
03:56 fluorescein is known to turn water green and is often used in underwater construction.
04:01 However, it is unclear exactly how fluorescein ended up in the canal.
04:05 "The investigations are looking everywhere. The head of Venice's prefecture told us
04:09 all hypotheses are open."
04:10 The Highland Abduction.
04:13 A brutal kidnapping story related to revenge occurred throughout four days of September 2023.
04:19 On the morning of September 18th, one car collided into another in the city of Highland,
04:24 California. The teenage driver of the hit car was swiftly grabbed and thrown into a
04:29 silver Jeep Grand Cherokee, which sped away from the scene.
04:32 The teen's mother then received horrifying ransom demands, claiming dire consequences
04:38 if $500,000 was not delivered to a specific address in Nogales, Mexico.
04:44 His whereabouts remained unknown for the next four days. However,
04:47 the Cherokee was later identified by investigators, and they used the vehicle to track the suspects.
04:53 All three were arrested during a raid on September 22nd, and the kidnapped teen was safely rescued.
04:59 The Haunted State of Texas?
05:02 Have you ever been to Texas? Well, apparently, Texas is the most haunted state in America.
05:07 "That we are doing this because of numerous reports of tattooed people being attacked by
05:11 unseen forces here, and me taking my shirt off and showing my tattoos is garnering us evidence."
05:18 In 2023, states were ranked online by different criteria, including paranormal activity,
05:24 ghost sightings, and number of cemeteries, to crown the most haunted state in the country.
05:29 Texas won by a landslide, with nearly 14,000 cemeteries and 7,500 ghost sightings per 100,000
05:36 people. "What are you going to do with me?"
05:37 It also hosts a number of notably haunted locations, including the Yorktown Memorial
05:45 Hospital, Austin's Driscoll Hotel, and of course, the famous Alamo in San Antonio.
05:50 So if you fancy yourself a budding paranormal investigator, Texas is apparently the place to be.
05:56 "Samantha is one of our more famous ghosts. She was a little girl. She was a senator's
06:00 daughter in the early 1900s." The fate of Yanfei Bao
06:04 July 19, 2023 seems to be just another day for real estate agent Yanfei Bao. Working in the
06:10 city of Christchurch, New Zealand, she was scheduled to show a house and phoned her friends
06:15 to inquire about the financials of a sale. But when it came time to pick her daughter up from school,
06:21 Bao was nowhere to be found. Both her car and cell phone were later recovered, but Bao herself
06:27 remained missing. A 52-year-old man was later arrested for kidnapping Bao and has been charged
06:32 with her murder. Unfortunately, not much else is known about the case. Bao remains missing,
06:38 and the trial is set to begin in October 2024. "We're now looking for where her car went after
06:45 12.30 p.m." A rise in UFO reports
06:48 Okay, seriously, what's going on with all the UFOs? While claiming UFOs are not terrestrial
06:55 in origin has always been popular in certain circles, it seems like the overall topic of UFOs
07:00 is now more front and center. In July 2022, the federal government established the All-Domain
07:06 Anomaly Resolution Office, which is tasked with investigating reports and sightings of UFOs.
07:12 And in 2023, director Sean Kirkpatrick claimed that his office had received
07:16 hundreds of reports, increasingly up from the previous year.
07:20 "We have to go through the rigor of taking each one, matching it against our known objects and
07:27 known catalogs, and then reviewing that, peer reviewing that, making sure that everybody's
07:32 in agreement." Kirkpatrick says that most of these sightings can be explained,
07:36 but 2 to 4 percent are exceptional and require further investigation.
07:41 "So we're looking down, and there's a disturbance in the water. Right next to it was this little
07:45 white object that looks like a tic-tac, and it's just above the surface of the water,
07:50 and it's moving around." The disappearance of Anna Walsh.
07:54 The country watched with horrified interest as the tragic story of Anna Walsh played out
07:58 through January 2023. The real estate executive was reported missing on January 4th, having last
08:04 been seen on New Year's Day. Walsh's husband, Brian, reported her missing, claiming that she
08:10 had booked an emergency flight to Washington. "She would not have left on New Year's Day for
08:14 a work emergency, so I think I pretty immediately knew in my gut that that was not the case."
08:20 But police were unable to confirm if she got on the plane, leaving the country mystified.
08:25 The story got even more unsettling when Brian Walsh was arrested.
08:29 Brian was ultimately charged with murder, as prosecutors believe that he killed Anna.
08:34 "The images showed him actually smiling or smirking, and that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way."
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08:56 The Hunt for Nessie
09:00 The Loch Ness Monster has been a worldwide sensation since it was popularised in the early
09:05 1930s. Curiosity remains high, and 2023 proved to be a busy year for the mythical monster.
09:11 "Eels are four to six foot in length. It's plausible that there might be one that,
09:16 that or two that grow to extreme size."
09:19 Back in August, the Loch Ness Centre and a research group known as Loch Ness Exploration
09:24 conducted the largest search of the loch in more than 50 years. This included the use of
09:29 infrared drones, a hydrophone and never before used surveying equipment.
09:34 "I don't believe in Loch Ness and the monsters myself, but I do know that there are some sonar
09:38 contacts here which intrigue me." And in addition, in October, the Loch Ness Centre
09:44 reported a new photograph which they claim is "the clearest evidence this year of Nessie's
09:49 existence." So, is it a monster? Algae? Seismic phenomena? The myth continues.
09:56 "And especially when you're dealing with water, you know, water plays a lot of tricks on you,
10:00 and you know, it's a very difficult environment."
10:03 What's the mystery that creeps you out the most? Let us know in the comments.
10:07 "These sightings are not rare or isolated. They are routine."
10:10 [Music]