Enigmatic Figures Through the Ages

We know a lot about royalty, presidents, and celebrities, but what about the people who came into the world and shook it up without leaving a true identity? It's crazy to know that there are people out there who are unknown, even with the use of DNA testing and extreme research. With that in mind, here are 20 of the most elusive people in history that researchers still haven’t figured out.

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1. The Man in the Iron Mask

He languished for years in several French jails throughout the reign of Louis XIV, always concealing his identity with a velvet or iron mask. While you may have heard speculation that he was the King's illegitimate twin brother or perhaps a banished nobleman, his true identity was never revealed.

Charles Green / Joseph Swain and workshop on Wikimedia

2. D.B. Cooper

A suit-clad gentleman hijacked a plane in 1971. He asked for a huge mound of cash, then parachuted out the back exit over the stormy Pacific Northwest. One would think that a man bouncing into the wild carrying bags of money would have some sort of trail, but he became one of the many lost to time.

Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wikimedia

3. The Babushka Lady

In photos of the JFK incident in Dallas, there is a woman wearing a large headscarf who was filming the whole thing while people were ducking for cover. She had the perfect vantage point to film one of America's darkest days. The FBI searched for her but she never revealed herself. Her identity still remains unknown.

Cecil Stoughton, White House on Wikimedia

4. Kaspar Hauser

In 1828, a teenage boy inexplicably showed up roaming the streets of Nuremberg with a strange letter. He said he grew up in a small dark room with only a wooden horse as a playmate. You can only imagine the excitement when people heard he could be some missing prince or the victim of an international conspiracy.

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5. The Somerton Man

The man wore nice clothes but had no identification on him. He had a small scrap of paper in his pocket that read “Tamam Shud,” which translates to “it is ended.” DNA testing has recently connected him to being an electrical engineer named Carl Webb. However, even though we know his name, the story of how he passed and the mysterious code found in his book reads like a thriller. 

Zanyar Ibrahim on Unsplash

6. Jack the Ripper

In 1888 London was gripped by the terror of a man stalking the foggy streets of Whitechapel and taunting police with letters. You could spend decades getting through the thousands of books and theories about who he was, from something as logical as a local butcher, to his being royalty.

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7. The Count of Saint Germain

Why was he such a great dinner guest in the 1700s? He told everyone he was centuries old and had discovered how to live forever. He knew everything about science, music, and alchemy. This mysterious man entertained kings all over Europe, dazzling them with his intelligence and conveniently large supply of money. Some say he was a complete fraud and others never caught him in a lie.

Nicolas Thomas on Wikimedia

8. Agent 355

The number of intelligence sources working for George Washington during the American Revolution was impressive, but none were as important to the Culper Ring as this woman. She will never be found in history books because her true identity is classified under a code number that was never decrypted.

The Cleveland Museum of Art on Unsplash

9. The Isdal Woman

A woman was found in a remote valley in Norway in 1970, surrounded by code books and suitcases with identifying labels removed. She had crossed Europe using several aliases and disguises, which hints that she was unquestionably a top secret spy.

Fabrizio Conti on Unsplash

10. Fulcanelli

At the turn of the 20th century, a mysterious French alchemist released works detailing instructions for creating gold and the elixir of life. He was rumored to have disappeared shortly after his works' publication, leading his pupils to question if he had truly mastered the arcane arts.

Jingming Pan on Unsplash

11. The Green Children of Woolpit

Legend says that two children with skin as green as lime showed up in an English village during the 12th century. They supposedly spoke an unknown language and said they were from a place without sunshine known as St. Martin's Land. They said they followed the sound of bells into our world.

Sebastian Unrau on Unsplash

12. Tank Man

We have all seen the photograph. A man confronting a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989. You'd expect him to be a household name. The guy who stood up to communism. But we don't know his name. We don't know what happened to him.

Jonas Jaeken on Unsplash

13. The Zodiac

He was a cipher obsessed stalker who ravaged Northern California during the late 1960's. He loved to send cryptic messages to the press using various ciphers and obscure phone calls. The man even taunted police and dared them to catch him.

Mads Schmidt Rasmussen on Unsplash

14. Poe’s Toaster

An unidentified person went to Edgar Allan Poe's grave every year on the writer's birthday and left three roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac. For seventy years someone did this annually, dressed in a wide-brimmed hat and scarf hiding his or her face.

W.S. Hartshorn on Wikimedia

15. The Servant Girl Annihilator

Long before Jack the Ripper ever emerged, America had it's own slumbering monster. In Austin, Texas around the mid-1880s someone was sneaking into women's bedrooms, and harming them while they slept. By the time anyone noticed them were long gone, usually before anyone could get a good look.

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16. Gil Pérez

The story goes that back in 1593 a Spanish soldier inexplicably materialized in Mexico City's central plaza. He was in a daze, dressed as a Philippine guard, and said he had been at his post in Manila just minutes earlier, with no knowledge of how he had instantly appeared at the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

Carlos Aguilar on Unsplash

17. The Falling Man

A photograph depicts a man falling from the North Tower. He appears almost serene, mimicking the shape of the tower itself. You may recognize him from the documentaries they aired attempting to figure out his identity. To this day, his family and others still debate over who he is.

uriel on Unsplash

18. Roland T. Owen

In 1935, a man registered under an alias at a hotel in Kansas City. He was found beaten in his locked room which had been secured from the outside. When questioned by police, he would not reveal his assailant. Stranger still, someone anonymously paid for his funeral expenses.

Colton Sturgeon on Unsplash

19. The Lady of the Dunes

The woman was discovered on a beach in Massachusetts in 1974. For almost 50 years she was known only by a nickname, and investigators were unable to identify her. In 2022, she was finally identified as Ruth Marie Terry through forensic genealogy.

Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

20. Satoshi Nakamoto

You interact with his work each time you speak about Bitcoin, but the author of the white paper is entirely anonymous. Many have accused different computer programmers and businessmen, but Satoshi has remained successfully anonymous throughout his digital currency's impact on the world economy.

Fekist on Wikimedia