10. Ray Gricar
Imagine that a district attorney mysteriously goes missing under shady circumstances right after making a final phone call to his live-in girlfriend to specifically let her know of his whereabouts. The next day, his car and cell phone are found abandoned in the parking lot of an antiques mall in a nearby town.
A few months later, his laptop and hard drive are found in a river. The girlfriend discovers that his last activity on their home computer consisted of searches on how to destroy hard drives. No leads, no clues, the man is just gone. Does that sound like a movie you would watch?
On April 15, 2005, Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar suddenly vanished exactly as described. Fifteen years later, nobody seems to be able to explain what happened to him.
Some say he staged his disappearance to start a new life. Others say he committed suicide, a theory vigorously denied by Gricar's former live-in girlfriend. Gricar was declared legally dead in July 2011, but the case is still unsolved. We will probably never know what truly happened to Ray Gricar.
9. Lori Erica Ruff
Imagine that a 42-year-old woman named Lori Erica Ruff commits suicide by shooting herself in her in-laws' driveway on Christmas Eve 2010 after months of strange behavior that led her husband to leave her. After her funeral, her husband opens a lockbox in their old family home and is faced with a shocking revelation: Before she was Lori Erica Ruff, his wife was apparently named Becky Sue Turner.
Naturally, the police immediately begin to look into her past. They discover that Becky Turner (whose birth certificate was held by Lori) had died in a house fire at age two. So, who was this woman? And where did she come from?
Although the case of Lori Erica Ruff's true identity was eventually solved six years after her suicide, her past is still shrouded in mystery. To this day, most of her life before she assumed the identity of Becky Turner in 1988 is composed of giant question marks. We actually know very little about this mysterious woman.
8. The Westfield Watcher
Imagine that a married couple acquires their dream house in Westfield, New Jersey. The house needs a bit of work, but they plan on moving in with their three young children after the renovations. Seems perfect, right?
Well, things quickly take a dark turn. A few days before the move, the husband finds a strange letter in the mail. First, the letter welcomes the family to the neighborhood. Then it warns them that the house is being watched, that it has been surveilled for generations, and that the family has no idea what lies within the walls of their new home.
The letter is signed by "The Watcher," and it is only the beginning of an incredibly creepy story.
The Westfield Watcher terrorized the owners of the house starting in 2014. He sent a number of letters that threatened men, women, and mostly children, referring to them as "young blood." The Watcher also described the ominous fates which might befall anyone living in the house.
Chaos and dread plagued the neighborhood. Investigations, accusations, and even lawsuits flew around in a continuous effort to find The Watcher. The owners of the house never moved in and finally sold it at a loss in 2019.
To this day, The Watcher's identity has never been discovered. That said, this story is a detective flick begging to be made.
In 2016, the horror film The Watcher followed a similar story line. A mysterious person called "The Raven" also wrote letters to terrorize the fictional owners of a new house. Then, in late 2018, Netflix acquired film adaptation rights to a New York Magazine article about the real story.
