Conspiracy Theories

Mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger ran Boston’s underworld with an iron fist for decades. As his empire grew, his enemies fell. He was seemingly untouchable. For a gangster of his stature, that kind of longevity was extraordinarily rare. So how on earth did he stay out of handcuffs for so long?

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It’s been over 175 years since the last few surviving members of the Donner Party reached civilization, and yet everyone still knows the story of how the desperate group resorted to cannibalism to survive. But did you know that one man was made into the villain of their story? For years, survivor Lewis Keseberg was haunted by suspicions that he murdered Tamsen Donner in order to eat her — so what is the case against him?

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In 1888, Jack the Ripper stalked the streets of Whitechapel, England. Officially, he killed five women, brutally mutilating some of them beyond recognition. But perhaps the most unsettling part of his tale is how, to this day, we still don’t know his true identity. They say it’s because the police failed to catch him. However, some believe his identity was kept secret by Scotland Yard, The Freemasons, and even the Royal Family.

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If you’ve heard of the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, you’ve surely heard the rumors about its famous owner, Sarah Winchester. Like the claims she was an eccentric hermit who never left her 24,000-square-foot mansion. Or that she demanded construction crews work on her home night and day, year after year, because she believed when the work stopped, she would die. Or maybe you’ve heard that she feared hoards of vengeful spirits, killed by Winchester rifles, were out to get her. It’s a compelling legend – built on little to no evidence. Is the Winchester legend a hoax, and if so, who was behind it?

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Beginning in 1632, a convent of young Ursuline nuns made startling claims – from seeing dead priests, to being possessed by a horde of Satan’s demons. A team of priests presided over daily exorcisms – some of them public – for months…until the blame was directed toward one man: Father Urbain Grandier, a controversial figure who’d made a number of foes. Despite his claims of innocence, Grandier was executed. Was he in league with the devil? Were the young women hallucinating? Or…were the nuns coerced into pulling off a bizarre case of sabotage?

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On Halloween Eve, 1938 Orson Welles' The War of the Worlds aired on CBS radio. It detailed an alien invasion so realistic that, according to legend, it caused widespread panic among listeners. People really believed aliens were invading Earth. The mass hysteria is an important part of media history. However, some believe that there was never actually any panic at all. So why do we think that there was? It could all be a conspiracy by the newspaper industry to take down their new rival: radio.

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On April 3, 1996, Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski – better known as the Unabomber – was arrested, ending a 17-year-long bombing spree that left 3 dead and 23 injured. He promised to end his campaign of terror only after outlets published his 35,000-word manifesto; in his view, technology is an uncontrollable and dangerous system that could only be stopped by revolutionary means. But where did his ideology come from? Some suggest he was pushed to the brink during a three-year human psych experiment he took part in while a young student at Harvard University, overseen by a popular, prominent – and sometimes controversial – father of personality testing, Henry A. Murray.

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No comedian surprised people like Andy Kaufman. He was always one step ahead of the audience. In fact, he was so good at pulling pranks that when he died in 1984, some of his friends thought it was a joke. But what if it really was? Today, some people still believe that Andy faked his own death. Maybe, just maybe, Andy hasn’t left the building.

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On July 4th, 1975, journalist and Sydney heiress Juanita Nielsen disappeared. Most assumed she was the victim of foul play. After all, for years she’d been fighting a land developer determined to turn her charming, low-income neighborhood into a bunch of high-rises. She was last seen inside a nightclub operated by the developer’s associate, and owned by Sydney crime boss Abe Saffron. The case should have been a slam dunk – so why was nobody ever charged with Juanita’s murder?

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The chupacabra is considered the third most widely known cryptid in the world, behind Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster – kind of mind-blowing, considering the fact that this mythical creature’s origins are relatively recent. Reports of el chupacabras began in Puerto Rico in 1995… where one theory holds that the creature is the result of a U.S. military experiment gone horribly wrong.

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