That's what was so great about the story. There was just enough to get you intrigued, but so many gaps in the information that you could fill in your own details. But this is the sort of story you see all the time on News of the Weird that turns out to have a simple explanation -- Ray would end up being a meth head from Florida visiting his sister or something.

And while police have since suggested that Ray's story doesn't quite add up, the holes they've shot in it only deepen the mystery. For instance, linguistics experts determined that English was probably his second language -- not because he had a thick Serbian accent or anything, but because he spoke it too perfectly. Nobody who was from England would speak it without any trace of a regional accent. Then there was his adamant refusal to let them publish his photograph. Authorities pointed out that this would be the best way to find any relatives who might be looking for him. No dice. Is Ray secretly a vampire? Is there someone out there looking for him? If so, why go to the authorities with an elaborate back story? Does the person who's looking for you only check pictures in the newspaper?

Getty
Artist's approximation of "Ray."

Their forensics team also concluded from looking at the tent he carried with him and the clothes he had on his back that Ray hadn't lived in the woods very long, and police were unable to find records of any car crashes that killed a woman named Doreen.

Some speculate that Ray was a really desperate immigrant hoping to get in on some of the EU's sweet, sweet social services. But how is his English so impeccable if he's just some kid looking for a free handout? Why such a convoluted and high-publicity plot with unnecessary dramatic flourishes like his mother's car accident? Why say his amnesia started five years ago when he could have said he just got amnesia and saved himself from having to make up five extra years of story?

Calling it now: He's a Hitler clone.

Perhaps the most curious detail is how the story ends. Despite the fact that they're paying 7,000 euros a month to keep the kid in custody, authorities in Berlin have told the media, "We have nothing more to say on this subject ... There will be no more information forthcoming on this case." The tone suggests that the authorities are also frustrated by the confusing movie premise nobody can quite untangle, or maybe it's just another sign that there's some strange coverup going on, and that's just how severe German bureaucrats say, "Move along, people. Nothing to see here."

But those 34 trees would be remembered, and life would go on for the other Mexican fan palms. And as one year, then two passed, it seemed like tragedy was far behind them. And then somebody started torching trees again.

They still don't know who it is.

Whoever was behind this had done a very sophisticated job of tapping into the city's electricity system so that the police could not make heads or tails of it and had to bring in experts from the utility company to trace it. By the time they returned with the experts, the wiring had been disconnected and everything was gone, except a note saying "Ne cherchez pas," or "Do not search."

It would have remained a mystery if the group involved hadn't spoken up, which they presumably did because they realized that the truth was much stranger than any of the explanations a non-crazy person could have constructed for himself. They call themselves UX, and they not only build secret cinemas for film festivals in the least convenient places possible, but also liked to secretly restore historical landmarks behind the authorities' backs.

Getty
Speaking of which, maybe someone should get around to this sometime.

For instance, the UX decided the historic clock at the heavily guarded Paris Pantheon had been broken for too long, and so they undertook a ridiculously complex Ocean's Eleven style scheme to steal it ... wait, sorry, that was logic taking over. They designed an elaborate scheme to repair the clock over the course of a year, which involved constantly breaking into the museum undetected and setting up an entire secret workshop and lounge with chairs, worktables, an electrical system secretly wired to the city grid and a computer with an Internet connection.

Via UX
Most people don't have living rooms this nice.

Organizations from Boy Scout troops to historical societies are always putting in volunteer time to restore cultural stuff, but for some reason, UX (specifically, UX's restoration branch, Untergunther) has no interest in it unless it involves sneaking around.

And they might have a point, because once UX proudly let the authorities know the clock was fixed, officials fired the Pantheon's administrator for not catching them and broke the clock again, taking away a vital component and locking it up in the office so no one could ever fix the clock again.

Via UX
One of these parts ... somewhere in there.

One big question is why a sophisticated band with enough expertise to rob a bank or steal state secrets has decided to focus their efforts on doing clock restorations and film festivals behind people's backs, but maybe the bigger question is whether someone could really be so cartoonishly villainous as to rebreak a beautifully restored historical landmark out of spite.

And for good reason. DNA tests later showed that Madeleine 1 was the "real" Madeleine Mores. The most obvious explanation would be identity theft for the pension money. They even found a photo of the two women together, giving them a plausible time and place where Madeleine 2 could have swiped Madeleine 1's identity.

But the more the authorities looked into the seemingly straightforward case, the less it looked like identity theft. Why didn't Madeleine 2 flee when the real person showed up, or at least when it came time for the DNA test? Madeleine 2 showed every sign of really believing she was the real Madeleine Mores, and stood her ground just as stubbornly as Madeleine 1. And what about that sweet, sweet pension? First of all, Madeleine 2 had ample documentation of her work history in her adult years, which proved that she would have been eligible for a similar pension on her own merits, without having to steal someone else's.

Getty
"I'm not leaving until I get my jam/bolt money!"

Perhaps strangest of all is the photo of the two women together in their 40s, when Madeleine 2 was supposed to be stealing Madeleine 1's identity. Neither woman remembers the photo being taken, and both swear they had never met the other woman.

The authorities are now digging up orphanage records to see if there was some kind of administrative mix-up, on the off chance that they're able to find accurate paperwork from pre-WWII. Even if it does turn out that the two ladies were given one identity as children, they'll still have to explain how those same two women ended up in the same photograph and managed to completely forget about that time they met someone with the same first and last names and identical background. But seriously, good luck with that, guys!

It'd be easier to just blame the Nazis and write two checks.

We've all had discussions about which superpowers we'd pick, but we're pretty sure nobody's list has ever contained the ability to convince high school athletes to give you a piggyback ride. However, that would appear to be Sherwin Shayegan's power.

Shayegan is a 28-year-old man who has repeatedly shown up to high school sports games in multiple U.S. states for the sole purpose of getting piggyback rides from players.

AP Photo Via ESPN
He's in the Cats uniform, blending in like a champ.

He isn't mentally disabled, although he sometimes pretends to be to get people's guards down. But that's just one of the tools in his bizarrely effective tool kit. He consistently manages to con his way into locker rooms and other restricted areas, and has actually talked a number of players -- these are high school jocks here -- into voluntarily hoisting his 240-pound frame onto their backs and letting him ride them around like donkeys.

The athletic director of a league he's hit warns that, "He's very smart. He knows how to play the system. He just knows what to say and how to say it." That quote implies that there's a system in place to prevent unearned piggyback rides at high school athletic events, which there isn't, because, and we can't stress this enough, people don't give each other piggyback rides after high school athletic events. It's just not a thing that happens. And yet, where we see a bunch of sweaty kids lining up to shake hands or getting post-game pep talks from their coaches, he sees a bunch of people who should be carrying him around like a baby chimp.

Getty
"Yeah, I was just walking back to the locker room at halftime, when ..."

He's passed himself off as a visiting team manager, a student interviewing athletes for a term paper and countless other fake identities that get him into the locker room, but don't make it any less strange that he's asking to ride people. And that's what's so strange about Shayegan, and why all the stories about him are so goddamn surreal. It's like he's tapped into a weird alternate version of logic where the universal rules of cause and effect have crossed wires, and being a visiting team manager at a high school basketball game causes the players on the home team to let you be physically intimate with them. There's no way for a journalist to write a news story about his universe without being completely sucked into a world where all of this makes sense.

The Standard-Examiner
It's safe to assume he is not making this face when he manages to convince people.

Since he's a giant man, and occasionally just goes ahead and jumps right onto the athletes' backs, he's been banned from attending sporting events in five states and even arrested on assault charges, although he always manages to make bail. He's allegedly been doing this since he was in high school himself, so it looks like he's pretty set on making newspapers write baffling piggyback stories until the laws of reason flip upside down and devour themselves.

Nobody's sure why they were choosing specifically the four-cylinder Mazda6 of those specific years, especially since the six-cylinder version offers considerably more power. An entomologist suggested that an infested factory somewhere up the production line was probably to blame. Of course, Mazda would have presumably looked into such a straightforward explanation, since it would be pretty easy to fix and far less of a PR nightmare than simply implying that, "Yeah, our $13,000 car has spiders." Which is basically what they're saying. According to Mazda spokesman Jeremy Barnes, "We really don't know how they're getting in. This is a really strange case, right up there with the more unusual ones, this one takes the cake." So either Mazda has a PR department that doesn't know what those letters stand for, or spiders just have idiosyncratic taste in cars. In contrast, the much more badass wolf spider drives an STI.

RoadAndTrack/Photoshop

The discovery raised a host of questions, like how someone that badly injured got in and out of the locked school, which was surrounded by a 6-foot fence, without leaving a blood trail or any other traces.

Probably the biggest question was exactly whose blood it was. DNA tests so far only tell us that it belonged to a human male and the DNA doesn't match any criminals in the database. The investigative team, known as Strike Force Laundry for some reason, also thinks it was a child because, you know, it's a pretty tiny house.

Original picture from The Daily Telegraph
Only the vast majority of adults could fit in a building that size.

Since losing 1.5 liters of blood would put an adult male in shock, prospects looked even more horrifying if it was a child's blood.

That said, children don't usually get murdered without anyone noticing. If this was a murder, the victim has been gone since about January 13, and to this point, not one person has come forward and said, "You know, come to think of it, I haven't seen Tommy for a while."

"Jim's been wearing the same bag and overalls for months now. Should we call CPS?"

Considering how the public spazzes out every time the phrase "child murder" hits the news, it's puzzling why they would go straight to tossing that phrase around with no evidence other than the playhouse being small. But who are we to question Strike Force Laundry?

What would happen if you were in a perfectly sound-absorbent room? This sounds like a thought exercise that amateur philosophers or potheads would spend way too many words speculating about. Fortunately, you can tell them to shut up, because we can find out, because such a room exists ... and what happens is it drives people crazy.

Steven Orfield, via Daily Mail
And in 2 percent of cases, it steals their limbs and turns their flesh to plastic.

Orfield Laboratories built this room for some very practical reasons, like doing acoustical product testing on engines and hearing aids, but nobody cares about that. The important thing is how long a person can stay in there, like on a dare or something, and nobody's been able to last more than 45 minutes.

StarTribune.com
Expected it to have more tentacles, didn't you?

Some people freak out, some people even hallucinate. According to lab founder Steven Orfield, even walking becomes impossible after a while, and you have to sit down, because you rely on echoes and sounds to orient you when you walk.

In describing the phenomenon, people who have been in the room talk about hearing the sounds of their own heart, lungs, digestion and even blood running through their blood vessels. While that all does sound pretty freaky, it doesn't seem like it would be hallucination-inducing or run-out-of-the-room freaky.

Getty
"OH GOD I CAN HEAR MY OWN LUNGS!"

What is it about losing echoes that weirds humans out so much? Obviously, both people born deaf and recently deafened people don't freak out and run into walls, so it's not total silence itself that does the trick. It's when you take away just the echoes and surrounding sounds and leave a person alone with nothing but their own sound. Maybe it's like putting your subconscious into solitary. Or hey, maybe there are evil spirits in the room attacking people. Who knows.

The trio -- two men and a woman -- went about their task very deliberately, stacking the stops neatly, and didn't seem to be pulling some weird alcohol or drug-fueled stunt on a whim. Even weirder, the business the parking lot belonged to was a cabinet design company with a showroom full of expensive cabinets and fixtures the thieves could easily have gotten a lot of money for.

Maybe they just needed the exercise.