The Dark Oak

For ninety years, drivers on a dark stretch of Archer Avenue have been picking up the same girl. She is young, blonde, and dressed for a dance that ended decades ago. She is quiet. Her hands are cold. She asks to be taken home, and home is Resurrection Cemetery. At the gates she is gone—no door opened, no one in the road, sometimes only the feeling that the car just hit something that is no longer...

Kent Jacobs, a 41-year-old Lumbee man with an intellectual disability who functioned at about a nine-year-old level, disappeared on March 10, 2002, while taking his usual Sunday walk through his childhood neighborhood in Hope Mills, North Carolina, after a weekend at his mother Martha’s home; he was last seen around 5 p.m. wearing a distinctive Harley-Davidson hoodie and carrying about $200 in cas...

In June 1962, 20-year-old Marlys Gross gave birth to a daughter named Mary Agnes at Worthington Regional Hospital in Minnesota after a difficult, heavily sedated labor; she later recalled seeing the infant’s feet move and briefly viewing a baby who did not look dead—not cyanotic, with dark hair and forceps marks—before being told the child had lived only about an hour. She was too ill to attend th...

When 25-year-old graduate student failed to come home on a routine August day, his family immediately knew something was wrong. His family filed a missing persons report and Jelani's vehicle was found an hour away from where he was last seen, abandoned on a dead-end street. More than a week went by before a badly decomposed body was found in a nearby river, but it took nearly three weeks for the r...

On July 1, 1980, a woman calling herself "Sheila" approached Kevin's parents, Angelina and Kevin Verville Sr. at their off-base military apartment complex. Posing as a social worker from a military family assistance program, she gained their trust by offering free support for young families.  The woman offered to drive Angelina and baby Kevin to her office to enroll in the program. Under the guise...

In the dead of night, pale figures that look like children—yet somehow are not—appear at car windows and doorways, their eyes pure voids of black that swallow the light. They speak in flat, too-adult voices, asking only to be invited inside, for the ancient rule binds them: without permission they cannot cross the threshold. First whispered into the world by a Texas journalist’s chilling 1996 enco...

In the mid-to-late 1970s, the quiet Ohio town of Circleville was gripped by a wave of anonymous letters that transformed a close-knit community into one of fear and suspicion. Most postmarked from Columbus, the letters were handwritten in stark block capitals, unsigned, and filled with disturbingly precise details and accusations. The most prominent target was Mary Gillispie, a school bus driver a...

Lynette Hooker, a 55-year-old Michigan woman and avid sailor, disappeared on the night of April 4, 2026, while in the Bahamas with her husband of about 25 years, Brian Hooker. According to Brian’s account, the couple had dinner at the Abaco Inn in Hope Town and were returning to their anchored sailboat, the Soulmate, in an 8-foot dinghy near Elbow Cay when rough weather caused Lynette to fall over...

On March 3, 1876, chunks of raw animal meat fell from a clear sky over a farm near Olympia Springs in Bath County, Kentucky, for several minutes while Mrs. Crouch was making soap outside. The pieces, mostly two to four inches across, resembled fresh beef, were tasted by locals as mutton or venison, and carried a foul odor like a dead body, with no wind, clouds, or birds observed. Multiple witnesse...

On April 25, 1994, 15-year-old Laralee Spear was abducted and brutally murdered just one month shy of her 16th birthday. She was reported missing by her mother when she failed to arrive home after school at the expected time. After checking with neighbors, Laralee’s mother learned that she had last been seen getting off her school bus, which was only a ten-minute walk from the family’s home. A qui...

In August 1978, 15-year-old Barbara Nantais and her 17-year-old boyfriend Jim Alt were attacked while sleeping in zipped-together sleeping bags on Torrey Pines State Beach in San Diego, California, after a night out with friends who remained in a nearby car. An unknown assailant severely beat Alt on the head with a rock and log from a fire pit, leaving him with life-threatening traumatic brain inj...

Lauren Spierer, a 20-year-old sophomore studying textiles merchandising at Indiana University, disappeared in the early morning hours of June 3, 2011, in Bloomington, Indiana. The night before, she had been out drinking heavily with friends using a fake ID; after leaving Kilroy’s Sports Bar barefoot and without her phone or shoes around 2:27 a.m., she walked with Corey Rossman back to the Smallwoo...

In the summer of 1983, a stylish Venetian man named Silvano stepped onto a cruise ship and felt his shirt suddenly soak with sweat for no reason. That single moment marked the beginning of a nightmare that would steal his sleep forever. For over 250 years, one Italian family had been haunted by a mysterious curse: a disease that slowly, relentlessly destroys the brain’s ability to sleep. Victims l...

25 year old Michelle Von Emster’s mysterious death in 1994 remains one of San Diego's most notorious mysteries. It was officially ruled a Great White Shark Attack but marine experts disagree with that finding. Why would she have gone swimming in frigid weather? Was it possible that her death was a tragic accident resulting from a fall from nearby cliffs? The most frightening theory of all is that...

Seventeen-year-old German adventurer Mike Mansholt arrived in Malta in July 2016 for his first solo trip. After a week with his girlfriend, he stayed on alone, rented a mountain bike in Sliema on 18 July, sent a cheerful voice message home, and pedalled off to explore. He was never seen alive again. Days later searchers found his body lying peacefully in a small, sheltered rock hollow thirty metre...

Duncan McPherson was a Canadian professional ice hockey player. In 1989 he went on a trip to Austria and disappeared after a day of snowboarding. Searches proved fruitless until 2003 when his body was found in a melting glacier, the very same glacier on which he was last seen. Despite officials believing his death to have been an accident, the state of his body leaves behind many questions and his...

Duncan McPherson was a Canadian professional ice hockey player. In 1989 he went on a trip to Austria and disappeared after a day of snowboarding. Searches proved fruitless until 2003 when his body was found in a melting glacier, the very same glacier on which he was last seen. Despite officials believing his death to have been an accident, the state of his body leaves behind many questions and his...

The  Miyazawa  family lived in a quiet, two-story home near Soshigaya Park in Setayata, Japan. 44 year old Mikio worked for the British marketing firm Interbrand, while Yasuko was a homemaker. They had two children: 8 year old Niina, active in soccer and ballet, and 6 year old Rei. Who would have wanted this picture perfect family dead? That is the question that has haunted the world since Decembe...

On November 20, 1987, in Mission Viejo, California, Susan Zaharias abducted her two toddlers—three-and-a-half-year-old Christopher and fifteen-month-old Lisa—after a violent argument with her husband Louis, assaulting his mother and fleeing with almost nothing for the children. Battling severe alcohol, cocaine, and crystal methamphetamine addiction that had drained the family’s savings, Susan had...

Today we’re Unearthing Episode 83 from the Dark Oak vault: “Where is Paola Miranda Rosa?” This case is local to us—Paola vanished in a park near where Cynthia and Stefanie grew up. The original investigation was mishandled, but in January 2026 the new Osceola County Sheriff reopened it. Her family now has renewed hope after meeting with authorities, and Crimeline has raised the reward to $5,000. T...

When 25-year-old Yolanda Bindics, a mother of four, failed to return home after her closing shift at the Family Dollar Store in Jamestown, NY, the entire community went into overdrive. Law enforcement dove into the investigation with searches and witness interviews but there was no sign of Yolanda leading the investigation to focus on two persons of interest...the father of Yolanda's youngest chil...

Kanika Powell was a 28-year-old Army veteran and security contractor with top-secret clearance who lived alone in the Deerfield Run Apartments in Laurel, Maryland, and led a quiet, ordinary life of work, family, and close friends. In the week before her death, she endured three bizarre knocks at her door: a man claiming to be an FBI agent on August 23, a fake FedEx delivery driver on August 27, an...

On a Saturday night while he was out of town, Lee Antoni was on the phone with his 31 year old wife, Amanda, when he heard strange noises on the other end of the line before the call was abruptly disconnected. Unable to reach Amanda for the rest of the weekend, Lee returned home to find his basement covered in blood and Amanda dead at the bottom of the stairs. There were signs of a violent encount...

In December 1980, 19-year-old Jean Hilliard from Lengby, Minnesota, slid her car into a ditch on an icy rural road during a bitterly cold night with temperatures at -22°F. She decided to walk about two miles to a friend's house for help but collapsed unconscious in the snow just 15 feet from the door, where she lay exposed and frozen solid for six to seven hours. The next morning, rancher Wally Ne...

There are some cases that make absolutely zero sense- the death of Blair Adams, a 31-year-old Canadian construction foreman found murdered in a Knoxville, TN parking lot on July 11, 1996, is one of those cases. In the days leading up to his death, Blair began exhibiting extreme paranoia, emptying his savings, crossing the U.S. border, and traveling 2,600 miles while claiming someone was trying to...