The Archive

What Happened to the Princes in the Tower?
Two children in state custody stopped being seen in the summer of 1483. No inquest, no burial, no charge, no accusation from the throne. In a kingdom that wrote everything down, nobody wrote this down. Read more...
Who Was Kaspar Hauser?
A boy appears in a Nuremberg square, barely able to walk, saying he was raised in a dark cell. Five and a half years later he is dead of a stab wound nobody saw delivered. He existed. Almost nothing else is verifiable. Read more...
Was the Beast of Gévaudan Real?
At least sixty dead across three years, written down one line at a time by parish priests in ledgers that still exist. The killings are documented. The killer is not. Read more...
Who Was the Somerton Man? The Case Is Half Solved
A man with no name, no labels in his clothes and a scrap of Persian poetry sewn into a fob pocket. In 2022 genetic genealogy gave him a name. It did not give him a cause of death. Read more...
What Caused the Dancing Plague of 1518?
Four hundred people danced in a Strasbourg street for weeks. The strangest part is not the dancing. It is that the city council's considered response was to build them a stage. Read more...
What Was the Antikythera Mechanism For?
Thirty bronze gears in a Roman shipwreck, a thousand years before anything like them appears again. It is not a clock. It is a model of the sky, and it knew where the moon would be. Read more...
What Happened at Dyatlov Pass? The Evidence, and What It Still Does Not Explain
Nine hikers cut their way out of a tent from the inside and walked barefoot into the snow. Five froze. Three had crushing injuries with no matching external wounds. What the evidence supports, and what it still does not. Read more...