The world is a funny place where funny things happen. And some of these things are rather crazy and, to put it bluntly, so incredibly improbable that you begin to doubt whether they did, in fact, happen. Take, for instance, the following 15 unbelievable incidents: granted, most of them are not so much funny as scary, but they will all make you sit up and take notice.

1 Musician Jim Sullivan recorded his debut album – “U.F.O.” – in the year 1969. The song’s cryptic lyrics about desert highways and strange lights had several people intrigued and wondering. Six years later, Sullivan disappeared without a trace, his car abandoned on a desert road.

Sullivan never made it very big in the music industry, despite his album “U.F.O” being critically acclaimed. His steady stream of gigs did not help either; he was always teetering on the edge of success rather precariously. In a bid to turn the tables, he headed to Nashville, leaving his wife and son behind in Los Angeles. However, somewhere in New Mexico, he disappeared, never to be seen nor heard from again, and his car the only thing left behind.(source)

2 In 2013, while on holiday in the town of Grasse in the south of France with his owner, a cat named Cookie went missing. 18 months later, Cookie returned home – “dirty and emaciated” – after having travelled for more than 700 miles.

Cookie’s owner – Dan Bouchery – was devastated after the cat went missing, trying everything in her power to track her pet down: she posted fliers across the town and put out an ad in a local newspaper – all to no avail. She eventually gave up, returning home to Calvados in the north of France, only to have a veterinarian call a year and a half later and inform that a woman had brought her cat in. Cookie, although dirty, emaciated and exhausted from his incredibly long journey, was delighted to be reunited with Dan.(source)

3 In 1982, a 15-year-old runaway boy lived in the elevator shaft  of an apartment complex for 2 months without anyone realising it, rewiring the elevator to work according to his needs. He was caught after residents smelled the aroma of hot dogs wafting up through the shaft. 

His “home” also had a bed, lights, a propane stove, a fire extinguisher, a stereo, and several other essentials. He entered and left this makeshift home by picking dead-bolt locks to the apartment garage, and very efficiently got around alarms by activating and deactivating them.(source)

4 On April Fool’s Day of 1976, BBC Radio convinced listeners that a special alignment of the planets would lead to a temporary decrease of gravity on Earth; phone lines were flooded with callers claiming that they felt the effects.

BBC Radio, along with English astronomer Patrick Moore pulled a prank of astronomical proportions – quite literally – on listeners on April Fool’s Day of 1976: they announced that a rather peculiar celestial event was due at 9:47 a.m. that day. Moore explained that the phenomenon, which would be the result of a conjunction of Jupiter and Pluto, would lead to a powerful combination in the gravity of the two planets as Pluto passed behind Jupiter, leading to a decrease in the Earth’s gravitational forces.

Soon enough, the radio station was flooded with calls from people who believed that they had felt the effects of this phenomenon – which was named the Jovian-Plutonian gravitational effect to make it seem more convincing.(source)

5 The volcanic eruption on the island of Krakatoa in August of 1883 killed thousands of people and sent atmospheric shock waves across the Earth 7 times before subsiding. The sound of the explosions could be heard 4,800 miles away; those within a 160 km radius suffered permanent hearing loss. 

The biggest of the explosions were heard 4,800 miles away from Krakatoa, on Rodriguez Island off the eastern coast of Africa, taking 4 hours to reach the island.

Experts compared the effects of the explosion as being similar to standing on the launching pad of a rocket without protecting one’s ears.

People reported broken windows, trembling houses and a loss of hearing in the aftermath of the tragedy.(source)