The internet is full of strange mysteries, unexplained events, hidden websites, mysterious videos, and disturbing stories that continue to puzzle people to this day. 🌐🕵️
In this video, we explore obscure corners of the internet, uncover bizarre online discoveries, and dive into digital mysteries that leave more questions than answers. From unexplained internet phenomena to strange online rabbit holes, some secrets are far more mysterious than they appear.
Are these mysteries simply coincidences, elaborate hoaxes, or something we still don't fully understand? Watch until the end and decide for yourself!
👍 Like, share, and follow for more internet mysteries, strange discoveries, and unexplained stories.
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#ObscureInternetMysteries #InternetMysteries #UnsolvedMysteries #DarkWebMysteries #WeirdInternet #Unexplained #MysteryVideos #InternetRabbitHole #CreepyInternet #StrangeDiscoveries #DigitalMysteries #OnlineMysteries #Dailymotion
In this video, we explore obscure corners of the internet, uncover bizarre online discoveries, and dive into digital mysteries that leave more questions than answers. From unexplained internet phenomena to strange online rabbit holes, some secrets are far more mysterious than they appear.
Are these mysteries simply coincidences, elaborate hoaxes, or something we still don't fully understand? Watch until the end and decide for yourself!
👍 Like, share, and follow for more internet mysteries, strange discoveries, and unexplained stories.
Hashtags:
#ObscureInternetMysteries #InternetMysteries #UnsolvedMysteries #DarkWebMysteries #WeirdInternet #Unexplained #MysteryVideos #InternetRabbitHole #CreepyInternet #StrangeDiscoveries #DigitalMysteries #OnlineMysteries #Dailymotion
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TravelTranscript
00:00On August 1st, 2021, a strange post appeared on the subreddit r slash morbid reality.
00:05Attached were several photographs of what looked like ordinary cans of sardines sold under the
00:10name Sardine Janzour. By it, a few of the photographs showed something disturbing.
00:14One of the cans had been opened, and beneath the sardines was a small dark strip of cardboard with
00:19a handwritten message in Arabic. The message roughly translated to,
00:23We are Sudanese workers enslaved in the company. Within days, people would start connecting this
00:28can of sardines to one of the biggest human rights issues in Libya. For a lot of people,
00:33that Reddit post was where they first learned about the disturbing message. But the photographs
00:37themselves had already been circulating online for several days before they ever reached Reddit.
00:41And soon, the story would gain enough traction that several media outlets would start covering it.
00:45One of the earliest reports came from an Egyptian media outlet which reported that a customer in
00:49Libya had bought one of the sardine cans and taken it home. Upon opening it, they found the disturbing
00:54handwritten message inside, and later shared the story online. The claim was disturbing enough,
00:58that Libyan human rights activists called for an immediate investigation. And a day later,
01:03a Sudanese media outlet also picked up the story, describing the handwritten note as a possible cry
01:08for help from Sudanese workers in Libya. That same pattern continued as the photograph spread across
01:13Facebook. More and more outlets picked up the story. But by this point, some had started questioning
01:18whether the photograph was real or fabricated, which left a far more important question. Was the note
01:24actually a plea for help from enslaved Sudanese workers, or had someone staged the entire thing
01:28to look like one? The story had now spread far enough that many began looking far beyond the
01:32reposts. And this led to the tracing of the sardines themselves. Sardine Janzor was a real product
01:38made in Libya by the Janzor Fish Packing Factory, which was owned by a company called Al-Tanara.
01:43But while looking through the company's website, investigators found something that made the
01:47story harder to dismiss. Photographs from inside the factory appeared to show that part of the
01:51canning process was still done by hand. So, at least in theory, if the note was genuine,
01:56a desperate worker inside the factory could have slipped it into the can before it was sealed.
02:01But if the message was real, who had written it? Before anyone could figure out an answer,
02:05a new detail surfaced that cast doubt on the entire story. According to a Libyan fact-checking
02:10initiative, the Sudanese embassy contacted the factory while checking the claims.
02:14And the answer they received didn't line up with the message. The embassy said the factory only had
02:19one Sudanese employee. More importantly, he had been working there for more than 30 years and was
02:23now the deputy manager. If that was true, it became much harder to explain how a group of Sudanese
02:28workers could have been secretly held hostage there and forced to work. But the concerns surrounding
02:33the story didn't rise out of a vacuum. Less than three weeks earlier, Amnesty International,
02:37a global human rights organization, had published a report on the mistreatment of refugees and
02:42migrants across Libya. The report described forced labor and multiple forms of mistreatment across
02:47several facilities. None of this had any confirmed connection to Sardine Janzor or the Altanara factory.
02:53But it did show that the kind of mistreatment described in the note was already being reported
02:56elsewhere in Libya. So, it wasn't unusual to see so many people taking the photograph seriously.
03:02But looking at it more broadly, what was happening in other parts of Libya wasn't evidence that the
03:06same was happening inside the Janzor factory. And unfortunately, that is where the story ends.
03:11It's possible the pictures were staged from the beginning, either to farm attention or stir
03:15distrust around an already sensitive issue. Or, the message may have been genuine,
03:20written by someone who saw hiding it inside a sealed can as their only chance to be heard.
03:28On May 31st, 2016, an anonymous user posted an iceberg chart on 4chan's export containing disturbing and
03:35obscure internet topics. This was a common thing at the time, and that same year, multiple similar
03:40iceberg charts would be posted from different users, sometimes containing overlapping entries.
03:45And one that would find its way onto many of these charts, typically near the bottom,
03:49was an entry called Forward 7. The entry itself was just the name. But the following year,
03:55another anonymous user was desperately trying to figure out what it meant. They wrote,
03:59I'm desperate to find answers. I've asked everywhere to find out what Forward 7 is,
04:03to the point where I've come here. Please help. In the replies, one user gave a strange description
04:08of what it's supposedly referred to, an old email scam that was somehow connected to a dead body.
04:13So far, no other chan has given me an answer beyond,
04:15it's an email scam connected to a dead body. And strangely, that vague description is about as far
04:21as the trail goes. There's no explanation of where the email came from, what was inside it,
04:26or how a dead body was supposedly involved. But the name itself gives us some idea of what it might
04:31have been. FWD is an abbreviation commonly added to the subject line of a forwarded email.
04:36So, Forward 7 might have been an email that required you to forward a message to your contacts.
04:41As for what the number 7 stands for, that explanation is much harder to find.
04:45But there are a couple of theories speculating what this number might mean.
04:49One theory is that it simply referred to the number of people receiving the message.
04:53According to this explanation, the email said something along the lines of,
04:56Forward this to 7 people or else this will be you, with an image of a dead body attached.
05:01If this explanation is correct, Forward 7 would fit into something that was extremely
05:05common during the late 1990s and early 2000s, which was the era of chain emails.
05:10During the early internet days, these messages would usually come from someone you knew and
05:14tell you to forward them to a certain number of people. Some promised good luck if you kept
05:19the chain going. Others claimed you would have years of bad luck if you stopped. And some being
05:23particularly disturbing, threatening that you'd be killed if you didn't keep the chain going.
05:28But most of these messages were harmless hoaxes designed to scare people into keeping the
05:32chain alive. Now, it's possible that Forward 7 could have simply been a darker version of the
05:36same thing, with the image of a dead body added to make the threat more convincing. But since
05:41there's no surviving copy or screenshot of this email, there's no way to know for sure.
05:45And this uncertainty has led to a much darker interpretation of the email.
05:49According to another theory, the 7 in the Forward 7's name had nothing to do with the number of
05:53people receiving the email at all. Instead, it was a reference to the 7-7 London bombings that
05:58happened on the 7th of July, 2005. At first, there appears to be no connection between the
06:03two events beyond a shared number. But in 2023, a much more detailed version of the story appeared
06:08online. According to this theory, Forward 7 first surfaced in a now-deleted 4chan thread after someone
06:14intercepted an email from a US defense contractor. The email contained seven JPEG attachments,
06:20six of which were completely ordinary images, showing things like office plants and empty hallways.
06:24By it, the 7th image supposedly showed a young woman lying face down on a concrete floor with
06:30her wrist bound and a large seven painted on her back. The same theory also claimed that the last
06:34image contained hidden coordinates that pointed to the locations associated with the 7-7 bombings in
06:39London. If this theory is correct, it would explain both parts of the mystery, the dead body mentioned
06:44in the earliest description, and the supposed connection to 7-7. However, there's a major problem.
06:49There is almost no evidence behind this story. There is no copy of the email,
06:53no archive link to the original 4chan thread, and no evidence that the images or coordinates ever
06:58existed. So, despite being one of the most detailed versions of Forward 7 online, there's no way to
07:03verify any of it. Which leaves a much simpler possibility, that Forward 7 might not have existed
07:09at all. It could have started as nothing more than a meaningless entry in an iceberg chart,
07:13with later users gradually filling in the missing details as people search for an explanation.
07:17Of course, there's still the possibility that Forward 7 was real and simply disappeared with time.
07:22Chain emails containing disturbing or shocking images were common enough during the early
07:26internet that a message like Forward 7 might not have been special or stood out enough for people
07:30to remember. One Reddit user who remembered that period described just how common this kind of
07:35content was.
07:35I received my fair share of chain mail from fellow 4chan edgelords in the early 2000s, but nothing
07:41stands out in my mind. Honestly, people would send shock content featuring photos of dead or badly
07:46injured people all the time. It was very, very common among teenagers and young adults. We were always
07:52searching for a reaction from people. It might be difficult to track down this particular one if it
07:56wasn't widespread.
07:57So, if Forward 7 only circulated among a small group of people, that could explain why no copy
08:03of it appears to have survived. And the supposed picture of a dead body would then be labeled as
08:08lost media, with no way of knowing who that person was. But without the original email, there's no way
08:13to know which explanation is true. Forward 7 could be a lost piece of early internet history, or a mystery
08:19that grew around something that never existed in the first place. But, at least for now, there isn't
08:24enough evidence to know for sure.
08:29By late May 2011, a Facebook profile started drawing attention from a small handful of users
08:35on the internet. The profile belonged to a woman named Karen Catherine Waldegrave. At first glance,
08:40there seemed to be nothing strange about it. Her profile listed Toronto as her home and was filled
08:45with photographs of her family, pets, and everyday life. It also listed her educational background,
08:50with Karen now working toward a PhD at the University of Toronto. By it, it wants people
08:54started reading what she was posting, it became clear something wasn't right. Karen would publish
08:59enormous blocks of unstructured text that moved between her family history, aristocratic bloodlines,
09:04and claims that her relatives were tied to British, Austrian, and Estonian political history.
09:09From there, her posts would spiral into intelligence agencies, government conspiracies,
09:13and accusations involving people around her, sometimes connecting her own family to figures like
09:18Winston Churchill or British intelligence. Some of her posts were easy enough to follow at first.
09:23By it, others jumped so abruptly between names and ideas that the connections between them would
09:28dissolve into complete derangement. In one example, Karen wrote that the United States had told her
09:33that a woman named Jeanette Heyer was related to a British politician named William Arthur
09:37Waldegrave. She believed Jeanette and William were somehow impersonating her family name to steal
09:41assets that belonged to her family. In the very same post, she then accused Jeanette of being
09:46fraudulently employed at the University of Toronto. As more people discovered her profile,
09:50they were left with a fairly obvious question. Who was Karen and what exactly were these posts
09:54supposed to mean? The simplest explanation was that there was no hidden meaning at all.
09:59Many people following the account believed Karen was a real woman going through some kind of
10:02psychiatric crisis. And what made that theory seem plausible wasn't just how strangely the posts
10:07were written. It was the way completely ordinary details in Karen's life could suddenly become
10:12part of some much larger conspiracy. In one post, Karen wrote about her own mother,
10:16whom she called Julius Mummy, and talked about how she received a small state pension despite owning
10:20her home, being married to a doctor, and vacationing abroad. At first, Karen seemed to be questioning how
10:26her mother could afford that lifestyle on such a small pension. But then she ties her pension to
10:31Cold War political change, and from there to political mismanagement in Canada, before somehow
10:36ending with the idea that her mother was a peak communist. With ordinary details spiraling into
10:41bizarre conclusions like this, some people started wondering if Karen was suffering from
10:44schizophrenia, a disorder that could involve disorganized thinking and delusions. By it,
10:49Facebook posts alone couldn't tell anyone whether Karen had a mental condition.
10:53She, or someone pretending to be her, could simply have been trolling.
10:56What made that theory hard to believe though, was the sheer amount of effort going into the account.
11:01One of the strangest parts of her profile was how she would keep going underneath her long
11:05statuses and reply to herself again and again. Sometimes turning a single post into a huge thread
11:11made up almost entirely of her own comments. At times, she was having entire conversations with
11:17herself. In fact, there were times where Karen would post 4,000 comments under her own posts in
11:22a single week. Some of these surviving comments were posted at the same time, which raised another
11:27bizarre question. How was one person producing this much text so quickly? According to some people,
11:34she may not have been writing every sentence herself. This was a time before the AI revolution,
11:38so using AI chatbots to help generate long, meaningful blocks of text wasn't really an
11:43option. By it, crude text generators did exist, and some people thought Karen might have been using
11:47one of them. One theory was that her posts had been produced using a Markov chain text generator,
11:52which was a program that knows roughly which words should go together and produces sentences that
11:56somewhat resemble human thought. That explanation seemed to explain both the strange language and
12:01how Karen was putting out so much text in such a short time. By it, not everyone following the
12:05account was convinced. Some readers argued that once you actually followed Karen's posts for long
12:10enough, there actually was some structure and underlying message to them, something a Markov
12:15generator wasn't capable of producing. There was, however, another possibility. What if Karen's
12:20Facebook page was being used for foreign-backed espionage? Some people wondered if there were hidden
12:25messages buried inside all of that incomprehensible text, with only the person they were meant for
12:30knowing how to read them. If that was true, those conversations Karen seemed to be having with
12:34herself may have been messages between different people using the same account. But this theory
12:39is pretty far-fetched, and there was never anything concrete to back it up. No hidden messages were
12:44ever decoded, and no second person was ever identified as using the account. Before anyone
12:49could get closer to a real answer, however, Karen suddenly stopped posting, and eventually her
12:53original Facebook profile disappeared from the internet. For years, that seemed to be where the
12:57story ended. But by 2019, people had found another active Facebook account under the name Karen Britt
13:04Keithley Lepic. And buried in one of her Facebook posts from her original account was a letter that
13:09identified her by that same name. So it's possible they're the same person. Even the photographs appear
13:15to show the same woman, only several years older. And unlike the original profile, this one never went
13:21quiet. Karen is still posting multiple times a day, often writing the same kinds of long,
13:26tangled messages that first drew attention to her account back in 2011. But it still doesn't explain
13:31what people have been witnessing all these years. Whether Karen is a highly educated woman whose posts
13:36reflect some kind of long-running, untreated psychiatric crisis, or whether the names, agencies,
13:42and strange connections she keeps writing about have a deeper meaning, the mystery is still unfolding in real
13:47time. At around 6 p.m. on September 28th, 2016, viewers watching WKTV in Utica, New York suddenly
13:59saw their programs cut to an emergency alert. The message claimed that civil authorities had issued a
14:03hazardous materials warning for the entire United States. But instead of identifying the hazardous
14:08material or telling people how to protect themselves, the message ended with a strange sentence.
14:13Would you, could you, on a train, wait for further instructions?
14:42Although the first part sounded like a serious nationwide warning,
14:46the line about the train did not, and many noted that it seemed to be directly quoting a line
14:50from the Dr. Seuss children's book, Green Eggs and Ham, making it unclear whether the message was
14:55real, some kind of broadcast error, or a broadcast signal hijacking. WKTV quickly tried to clear up
15:01the confusion through its Twitter account and assured the viewers that there is no hazardous
15:05materials emergency, stating, If you were watching our 6pm newscast, you saw a hazardous materials
15:10warning message. There is no such warning. It was a technical error. By it, just 14 hours later,
15:17that strange train reference would take on a much darker meaning. At 8.38 the next morning,
15:22New Jersey Transit Train 1614 entered Hoboken Terminal and failed to stop. It overran the
15:28end of the track and slammed right into the station wall. The impact was powerful enough
15:32to bring down the terminal canopy with its support beams crashing right down onto the
15:36train and passengers below. A woman waiting on the platform was struck and immediately killed,
15:40while another 110 people were injured. Once the news about the train crash began spreading,
15:45people looked back at the strange alert from the previous evening and started asking the same
15:49disturbing question. Had a New York TV station just predicted this train crash? Because, while WKTV's
15:56apology confirmed that the warning itself was false, it didn't explain who was responsible for the
16:01bizarre alert appearing in the system, or why it had been there at all. Until those questions were
16:05answered, there was no way to know whether the message had been an extraordinary coincidence
16:09or a deliberate warning of some kind. And, as recordings and screenshots of the broadcast spread
16:14across the internet, the connection between the two incidents only became stranger. People soon
16:18began offering much darker explanations for what the message could have meant. One theory suggested
16:23that someone with advanced knowledge of the crash had deliberately slipped a warning into the
16:26alert, either by someone within the studio or through a signal broadcast hijacking. Because the
16:31phrase, would you, could you on a train, was vague enough to reveal almost nothing beforehand while
16:36still leaving behind something that could be recognized after the crash. By it, the final words
16:41of the alert, wait for further instructions, led Sun to a much darker conclusion. According to this
16:46theory, the message was never meant for the general public. Instead, it was intended for a sleeper
16:51agent living within the community waiting for a signal to carry out their mission. In this version,
16:55the bizarre wording of the alert acted as a pre-ranged code that only one person was meant to
16:59understand, while the closing instruction told them to remain on standby for orders. It was a
17:04much darker way to read the message, and while it was much more of a stretch, it couldn't be
17:08completely ruled out. Though, as tempting as this explanation sounds, it still depends on the same
17:13assumption as the original theory. Someone had deliberately inserted the message into WKTV's
17:18broadcast. But when WKTV and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, traced the alert back to its
17:25source, they found no evidence that anyone had planted it deliberately. The message reportedly
17:29came from the FEMA testing environment, which WKTV later cleared up, stating,
17:34This message was an automated test which was not intended for public display.
17:38FEMA had seemingly been using lines from children's books as meaningless placeholder text
17:43while testing the emergency alert system. And since WKTV's equipment had been incorrectly
17:47connected to the testing environment, their claim is that one of those practice messages had
17:51accidentally appeared during the station's live broadcast. So, the official story is the strange
17:56message was simply test material that viewers were never supposed to see. But by that point,
18:01the speculation had become so widespread that FEMA later had to publicly deny having any advanced
18:05knowledge of the crash. But if the broadcast had nothing to do with the crash, what actually
18:09caused train 1614 to crash into Hoboken Terminal the next morning? The National Transportation Safety
18:15Board discovered that the engineer driving the train had severe obstructive sleep apnea that had never
18:20been diagnosed. The condition repeatedly interrupted his breathing during sleep, leaving him extremely
18:25fatigued, even though he believed he had rested normally. So, when train 1614 entered Hoboken Terminal
18:31that morning, it was traveling at around 21 miles per hour, more than twice the 10 mile per hour speed
18:35limit. The engineer failed to stop, ultimately crashing the train into the wall of the Hoboken Terminal.
18:40In the end, these were likely just two completely unrelated events whose timing oddly happened to match.
18:46By it, some still believe that out of all of the meaningless placeholder lines being
18:50used in FEMA's testing system, the one that accidentally made it onto television being
18:54about a train just 14 hours before one would crash into Hoboken Terminal was just too big of a
18:59coincidence. And that it was either a TV hijacker warning of the event, or someone within the studio.
19:08On the night of February 19th, 1994, 31-year-old Gloria Ramirez was rushed to the emergency room at
19:14Riverside General Hospital in California. Gloria had advanced cervical cancer. She arrived semi-conscious
19:21with a dangerously rapid heartbeat and severe difficulty breathing. By it, as doctors and
19:25nurses worked to save her, something strange started happening. One by one, members of the medical staff
19:30began feeling sick. Some became dizzy or nauseous, while others struggled to breathe, began choking,
19:36or suffered muscle spasms. Less than an hour after Gloria arrived, she was dead. And by then,
19:4123 of the 37 people working in the emergency room had reported the same disturbing symptoms.
19:47The bizarre incident quickly made national news, and Gloria became known as the Toxic Lady after
19:52reports suggested that some kind of fumes coming from her body may have poisoned the people treating
19:56her. Over the years, her story found its way onto internet forums, mystery sites, and internet
20:01discussions, with people coming back with the same question. What could make 23 hospital workers
20:06suddenly fall ill around the same patient? Strangely, the cause of Gloria's own medical
20:11emergency wasn't mysterious at all. Her cervical cancer was already extremely advanced, and
20:16it caused her kidneys to fail. By the time she reached the hospital, she had gone into cardiac
20:20arrest. By it, as doctors tried to stabilize her, they began noticing several strange things.
20:25Her skin appeared to have an oily appearance, and a fruity, garlic-like smell seemed to be coming
20:29from her mouth. Then, while drawing blood from her arm, a nurse noticed a strong ammonia-like
20:34smell coming from the sample. One of the medical staff also noticed unusual yellowish particles
20:39floating in her blood. By it, before anyone could figure out what any of this meant, the staff
20:43handling Gloria began collapsing. The nurse who had drawn the blood complained that her face was
20:47burning before passing out. Shortly after, others became sick and lost consciousness. As more staff
20:53members began reporting symptoms, the hospital evacuated the entire emergency room. Patients were
20:58moved into the parking lot and treated outside while hazardous materials crew investigated the ER for
21:02dangerous gases. Only a small medical team remained behind with Gloria. Even after her death, Gloria's body
21:08was treated as a possible hazard. It was sealed inside an airtight coffin and kept isolated while
21:13investigators tried to work out what had happened. But, despite the smells reported by the hospital
21:17staff, investigators couldn't find any dangerous gas in the emergency room. Extensive toxicology
21:22testing didn't prove an obvious answer either. There were no external toxic substances that could
21:26have contributed to Gloria's death. So, how could a dying woman radiate enough toxin to poison so many
21:32people yet leave no pathological trace? That contradiction led state investigators to consider a very
21:38explanation. Maybe the staff hadn't been poisoned at all. They suggested that the incident could have
21:42been a case of mass hysteria. The idea was that the strange odor around Gloria may have acted as an
21:48initial trigger. Once the first staff member became sick, fear and stress could have created a domino
21:53effect, causing similar symptoms to spread throughout the room. Initially, the theory seemed plausible for a
21:58number of reasons. All the medics who experienced the symptoms showed normal blood tests after the
22:03exposure. The severe symptoms mostly appeared in the female staff members, and statistically, mass
22:08hysteria affects women at a higher rate than men. But, more importantly, the paramedics who drove
22:12Gloria to the hospital and spent significant time in the ambulance with her showed absolutely no
22:17symptoms. Taken together, it made the psychological explanation seem plausible. But, some of the
22:22people who had actually been inside the ER strongly rejected it. Several staff members found that
22:27explanation insulting and felt that it dismissed their illness as panic. Now, their reaction could have
22:31been dismissed as denial and simply an unwillingness to accept that stress had caused the entire
22:35incident. But, one hospital worker's case made that much harder to believe. She had been right
22:40beside Gloria and smelled the syringe herself. After the incident, she became seriously ill, spending two
22:46weeks in intensive care. She later developed hepatitis and suffered bone damage in her knees that required
22:51three surgeries. So, while the theory could explain some of the initial symptoms, it couldn't explain the
22:56more serious physical damage that followed. And, as investigators kept looking for another
23:00explanation, a very different theory began to emerge. Scientists had found dimethyl sulfone in
23:05Gloria's blood, a chemical that can form when the body breaks down DMSO. DMSO is an industrial solvent
23:11that's been used as a home remedy for pain. When absorbed through the skin, it can leave an oily
23:16residue and cause a distinctive garlic-like smell on the breath. So, if Gloria had been using DMSO to
23:21manage her pain, two of the strangest details from the ER suddenly had a possible explanation. It could even
23:26explain the particles seen in her blood, because the oxygen Gloria received at the hospital could
23:30have converted DMSO into dimethyl sulfone. And, as her blood cooled inside the syringe, that compound
23:36could form crystals, similar to what the medical staff saw. But, as promising as this explanation
23:41sounds, it has a massive problem. Dimethyl sulfone is a harmless compound, and while it could explain
23:47some of the strange things doctors noticed around Gloria, it still didn't explain why the people
23:51treating her became so sick. So, to explain the toxic fumes, scientists proposed another reaction.
23:56They suggested that the electrical shocks used to treat Gloria may have transformed some of the
24:00dimethyl sulfone into dimethyl sulfate, which is a highly toxic chemical. If that happened, harmful
24:06fumes could have escaped from her blood sample and made the nearby staff sick. For the first time,
24:11the theory seemed to connect almost every strange detail from that night. But, despite how much of
24:15the mystery this explanation seemed to solve, the most important part was still unproven. First,
24:20turning dimethyl sulfone into dimethyl sulfate requires rearranging chemical bonds, and researchers
24:25hadn't demonstrated that brief electrical shocks could trigger that change. More importantly,
24:30Gloria's family denied that she had used DMSO for pain. More than three decades later,
24:35neither that explanation nor the mass hysteria speculation has fully settled what happened
24:39inside that emergency room. And, despite Gloria becoming known as the Toxic Lady, it was never
24:44proven whether she had actually exposed the staff to something poisonous.
24:51By the early 1990s, soda vending machines had become such an ordinary sight across America that
24:56most people barely paid any attention to them. By it, sometime during that decade,
25:01a particularly unusual one appeared in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.
25:04From the outside, it looked like a regular old Coca-Cola machine. By it, instead of selling drinks from
25:09one company, its buttons offered a strange mix of brands, including Coke, Pepsi, and Mountain Dew.
25:14Among those regular selections was a button simply labeled Mystery. Pressing it could give you almost
25:20anything. Sometimes, it dispensed drinks that had been discontinued years earlier, including Crystal
25:24Pepsi and Mountain Dew Whiteout. Other times, people reportedly received flavors that weren't normally
25:29available in the United States, like Black Cherry Fresca and Sunkist Cherry Limeade. Over time,
25:35whoever maintained the machine started removing regular drink labels until all six of them became
25:39mystery buttons. By then, the machine had become something of a local attraction. People would visit,
25:44just to see what obscure drink came out. By it, the dispensed drinks weren't the only strange
25:49thing about the machine. Nobody seemed to know who actually owned it. The machine was always fully
25:54stocked with exotic sodas, but nobody had ever seen anyone filling or maintaining it. Because it sat
25:59directly outside a locksmith company and even drew electricity from the building, people naturally
26:03assumed it belonged to the shop. By it, over the years, the owners and employees were asked about it
26:07multiple times, and they repeatedly denied owning the machine or knowing who the owner was.
26:11That made the way it was being maintained even stranger. The manager eventually suggested that
26:16whoever was maintaining it might have been coming late at night or on weekends, when nobody was
26:20around to notice. Then, in 2014, someone finally photographed a man and woman refilling the machine.
26:26By it, the picture still didn't reveal who they were or if they were even the real owners.
26:30However, there was still one way to find out. Since it had been operating in the same public location
26:34for years, it seemed likely that the owner would have registered it with the city. If they did,
26:39the permit could reveal their name or the company behind it. But when the Seattle Times contacted
26:44the city in 2015, a spokeswoman said there was no permits for it on file. And before anyone could
26:49make sense of who was behind it, the mystery soda machine suddenly disappeared. In June 2018,
26:55after nearly two decades outside the locksmith, the machine had been removed. Now, there are a couple of
26:59theories about why this happened. One possibility is that it had simply become too damaged to keep
27:04operating. By April 2018, visitors were reporting that it was out of order and covered in graffiti.
27:10Employees at the nearby locksmith company later said the machine was already in bad shape the last
27:13time they saw it. Its compressor had been busted out and loose change was scattered all over.
27:18This led many to believe someone had vandalized the machine shortly before it disappeared.
27:22By it, there was also a different, more practical explanation for its disappearance.
27:26Around the same time, the Seattle Department of Transportation had begun to work on a nearby bus stop and
27:30sidewalk. So, the machine may have been moved because of the construction, but when that work
27:35was finished in December 2018, it was never brought back. So, while either damage or construction could
27:41explain why the machine was initially removed, neither explains why its owner never brought it back.
27:45And the bigger mystery of who actually owned it is still unresolved. Just as suddenly as it appeared
27:50in the 1990s without anyone knowing who was behind it, it disappeared the same way decades later.
27:55Looking back, anonymity may have been the whole point. By then, not knowing who was behind the
27:59machine had become a part of its appeal. Whoever owned it may have preferred to keep it that way,
28:04while leaving just enough behind to keep the mystery alive.