12 Craziest Unsolved Mysteries

8. Beaumont Children Disappearance

When Australian director Peter Weir's film Picnic At Hanging Rock, adapted from Joan Lindsay's novel, was released in 1975, one distributor reportedly threw his cup of coffee at the screen. Two hours of building up the mystery of the disappearance of a group of schoolgirls and their teacher, and it didn't even explain it at the end! That curiously incomplete story was nothing new for the audience of the director's homeland, however. They remembered that, just ten years ago, something very similar had happened in real life, and it remained one of Australia's most infamous cold cases. It still does, as a matter of fact. The disappearance of the Beaumont children is a mystery that remains unsolved and, like the mystery of Picnic At Hanging Rock, looks as though it will forever stay that way. Jane (aged 9), Arnna (aged 7) and Grant (aged 4) all disappeared from an Adelaide beach on the 26th of January 1966. At 10am that morning the children had taken the five minute bus journey from their house, as they often did, unsupervised by their parents. A postman who knew the family saw them walking home at 3pm, cheerfully saying hello to the children. That was the last anybody saw of them. Since then, more witnesses have come forward, claiming to have seen three children playing with a tall blonde man on the beach; others claimed to have seen a man taking three kids into a house near the beach. Sightings of the missing Beaumont children were reported for months after, all unconfirmed. Letter purportedly sent by Jane, confirming that they had been kidnapped by a man, were later found to be a hoax. There have been multiple suspects over the years as to who could have abducted the three children, but police aren't even sure that they were abducted. Nobody knows. The Beaumont children left no real trail, not 100% certain reason for their disappearance. They vanished without a trace, and the case remains open, nearly fifty years later.