As much as there is an allure of living in small towns, there seems to be just as much mystery.
There is a sense of security in knowing that someone has your back.
But on the same token, as is typically depicted in movies, small towns have their fair share of nefarious activity that those in the know are sweeping under the rug to maintain their town's good name.
Curious to hear about bizarre cases that don't always make mainstream news headlines, Redditor descended_from_apes asked:
"Small Town Redditors, what's the weirdest unsolved crime in your town, old or new?"
Not all mysteries involve unsolved murders but are just as baffling
A Crime In The Turd-Degree
"Nowhere near the scale of disappearing children or Nazi collaborators, but my hometown's biggest mystery is who keeps sh**ting in the holes at the golf course."
"Person has been doing it for more than 20 years. Every 2-3 months, there's a hole that's been pooped in."
Outstanding Debts
"I found out my grandma played cards with the mob in a liquor store basement. I was reading a news article on a cold case from the former owner disappearing for an English assignment and my grandma kinda just frowned, told me she used to play cards with him and never payed his debts."
House On Fire
"Not exactly 'small town', but small compared to the region. There was a house that burned down 3 times in the span of a decade. I remember hearing lots of rumors about divorces and revenge, gang activity, being cursed. Not sure if it was ever solved."
When Children Played No More
"In 2003 in my hometown, someone decided to burn down a playground. This was in a very small rural town. The nearest playground aside from that one was 15 miles away. This playground was decent sized too, and I believe it was made possible by a donation from someone in town. It was mostly wood with rubberized mesh, steel bars, and large plastic slides."
"Nobody ever figured out who did it."
Unsolved missing persons cases like the ones mentioned below must be pure torture for family members.
Death Chair
"Happened this year."
"A man rented a room at a guest house. When he left the host went to go clean/ prepare the room for the next occupant."
"The room was covered in blood. In the shower there was a chair with a pool of blood-it is assumed the person died in the chair."
"So the baffling part is that there is a camera trained in the room's door. The man entered and left alone without a speck of blood on him."
"The authorities assumed the blood belonged to a woman whose chopped-up body was found in a nearby damm. Blood tests came back and it doesn't."
Missing Classmate
"1973: My 4th grade buddy, Guy Heckle, disappeared during a boy scout camping trip. They found his coat, that was all. Not another clue after all these years."
The Bar Patron
"Man got kicked out of a bar 3 years ago this December and went missing. Nobody has come forward with tips at all. He went missing from a fairly busy part of town too."
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Child Abduction
"My cousin, TJ Davison was abducted from a car in 1985 and has still yet to be found. He was 4 years old at the time. (Decatur, IL)"
And sometimes, when the bodies turn up, their identities can remain forever a mystery.
In Deep Trouble
"Where I grew up they found a dude who was buried under the cement in a building, no history or information about him. It's clear that he got into some deep trouble with someone."
– KGhaleon
Remains In A Lake
"About 15 years ago. A town near where I grew up drained a man made lake that was used for recreational swimming. This particular year they decided to drain the whole thing to do a clean up. They discovered an intact skeleton that had been sitting at the bottom of the lake for something like 50 years based on the class ring that was still on the skeleton. From my understanding this person had never been reported missing or anything."
Double Mystery
"Two bodies were found on my island in SE Asia in the last 24 hours. One was found in the jungle after being there for a year in an apparent motorbike accident the other washed up on the beach."
– BKKJB57
What's In The Barrel
"There was an old story that during prohibition a big barrel showed up at the post office, addressed to someone no one knew. It was obviously filled with alcohol."
"When the time to pick up expired and it was still there, it was tapped to find whisky inside. It was enjoyed by many, but when it was gone, it was still quite heavy."
"So they opened it up to discover a dead body."
– Dudeinairport ·
Some of the saddest cases involve the deaths of a newborn.
Murderous Mother
"Back in 1903 a local woman poisoned many members of her family, including a baby over a few months. She served time and died but never really admit to a motive. One theory is that she really liked attending irish funerals."
The Infant
"About 30yrs ago a refuse worker found the badly burned body of an 18 month old boy amongst the bags and recycling. Forensics deduced that due to the condition of his liver he'd died less than a week before his body was found."
"Hospital and medical records were used to establish that nobody in the county was missing a child."
"He doesn't have a name on his gravestone."
"Edit: it was in Cumbria, England."
"The police likely didn't retain a DNA sample, or we might have heard something about familial DNA by now.The local police aren't very good - look up the case of Poppi Worthington as an example."
"Most local people assume he died of SIDS, then his parents panicked and tried to conceal his body. Whoever did it must have had an element of local knowledge in order to know where to put the corpse."
A Proper Burial
"There is a street in my city called Park Ave. It's a very small city, mostly blue collar."
"In 2005, a newborn baby boy was found dead near a factory on Park Ave. Doctors could tell he was born alive and likely lived for a few hours before he died. I don't know if he was abandoned (left to die) or killed in some way; that info was never released. Police made a statement saying please come forward, we want to help you bury this child properly."
"The mother sent an anonymous letter to the police station two weeks later, and said she would come to the station soon. The letter didn't explain the circumstances, but it did say she was afraid."
"She never came forward. The baby was named 'Baby Parker' and money was raised to give him a proper burial. People still leave gifts at his grave."
Thanks to horror movies, small towns get a bad rep.
Under the veneer of warm hospitality and kindness lies an unsettling sense of discomfort.
Are the denizens covering up a murder committed by one of their own? Or was there a grifter who dumped a body in their unassuming town and fled the scene?
In the game of life, no one gets out alive. But hopefully, your life's journey won't end in a small town.
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Companies are typically in business for profit, and very few have the goal of keeping the customer's interests in mind.
But some corporations go even further to get more out of their customer in exchange for their "quality services" and as a result, the line between general business and scam becomes blurred.
Redditor jwwin asked:
"What is a predatory business that shouldn't be legal, but is?"
Students paying an exorbitant amount in tuition in order to seek higher learning should be warned there are additional expenses to cover for.
A Textbook Example
"College textbooks, they will release an 'updated' edition every semester but the information doesn't change. And then after you spent a fortune on the books the places that buy textbooks will give you like 5% of what you paid for the book."
– teethalarm
A "Double Whammy"
"Former Prof here. I talked with a book rep about this once and learned a lot. It is a bit complicated but worth understanding. Book publishers rely on large quantity sales to make any money on a book because the cost of production is so high up front (author, editors, printing, etc.). So, for a book to be profitable, it has to sell a lot of copies to spread the cost of production across all the books. A paperback in the fiction section might sell 100,000 or more. A textbook might sell as few as 1,000. So, the publisher needs everyone to buy the book to break even."
"Now add colleges into the mix. Somewhere in the 1980s (give or take), colleges saw publishers selling books and making larger profits on them than the college bookstore was making per book. So they got the bright idea to start buying used texts and reselling them. Before that, a text would come out and 97% (making the number up but it was close to that) of the students would buy the book in year one, 85% in year two, 75% in year three, 60% in year four and 50% in year five. A $50 dollar book would cost $25 to make (again, making the numbers up), sell to the bookstore for $40 ($15 publisher profit), and be sold to the student for $50 ($10 bookstore profit). Across the five years, the producer would make a profit."
"Then, college bookstores began offering students $25 for a used book and selling it for $40 ($15 profit - $5 higher than that of a new book). Students would then prefer the $40 used book over the $50 new book. But that cut the publisher's sales from 97% to 50% in the first year. Because they could not sell as many books they had to do two things: (1) raise the initial price of the text to cover the production cost in 1-2 years rather than 4-5 years, and (2) cut the cycle down from 4-5 years to 1-2 years to ensure that they got sales of the book. That is a double whammy. Texts that used to cost $50 now cost $300 or more. And they have a new version out every 18 months or so. Students refuse to pay that price and that cuts the sales numbers even further forcing the price up again. And, with new editions out so frequently, it is harder to sell them back to the bookstore."
"That's why you see so many 'course packs' now - where a professor will pick a few pages from a book to give to the students. I went from having nearly every student purchasing a text in my early career to having zero students with a text late in my career. Your professor probably dislikes the state of affairs as much as you do. I cut down what books I would select because I could not justify students paying that much for what they were getting. I would also recommend students look for older editions on Amazon and the like which got me in trouble with my administration because I was not supporting the bookstore. But, it was difficult to teach from a text that no one had or had access to. The University's desire to generate revenue from texts truly was killing the chicken because it was not producing enough eggs."
"So look for an older edition on Chegg, Amazon, or the like and match it up with what your professor is teaching from the new edition. You are right, it probably has not changed. Be careful for the problems at the end of the chapter - that is often where the changes are."
– BewnieBound
These businesses parade as services but they are notorious for taking more than what you're willing to pay for.
For A Future Owner
"Rent to Own (furniture, appliances, TVs, video game systems, etc.) The mark up on the interest over time ends up costing 4 times the purchase - or more."
– PartyAlarmed3796
"Well the trick is to not pay (seems to be what a lot of people do)."
– Expensive_Ad2695
"Which is why those places are so expensive and why they're actually kinda necessary for some people."
"They're taking a pretty big risk on people with no credit, and if a person with shi*ty credit needs a refrigerator or other necessary appliance, there's usually nobody else willing to work with them. Also, most of them report to credit agencies so you can build your credit through them."
"I'm not a fan by any means and I hate that people are buying video game systems and couches through them, but I still think they're filling a need."
– Pitiful-Pension-6535
Money Sucker
"Payday loan companies – they're like financial vampires, sucking the life out of people with high-interest rates."
– neonliolia
"And yet most of them are owned by major banks... hmmmm."
"Bank of America, Wells Fargo, US Bank, JP Morgan/Chase collectively all own the largest payday lender companies."
– Bramtyre
"In Canada, there is an effort to turn Canada Post into a kind of bank that offers basic banking services to the most vulnerable. Not sure what happened to that, but it was an alternative to check cashing and payday loan rackets."
– hobbitlover
Greedy Event Vendor
"Ticket Master."
– LTVOLT
"Agreed. We went to a preseason hockey game the other week. Tickets were $5 each but there was around $8 of Ticketmaster fees for each one and you had to use their app to get in the door because the barcodes change like every 30 seconds or something. It's ridiculous."
– darfus1895
Where can citizens turn to receive genuine care without drying up their financial resources?
Big Pharma
"Health Insurance and over priced perscription drugs."
"Wife is type 1 diabetic. Her pump is over $1000 a month WITH 50% coverage. $177 for just the sensor pack. We have the best coverage we can afford."
– Dukeboys_
"US pays the middle man for health care coverage. The middle man and the health care provider come up with "health packages" you can buy into, just in case you get sick. It's just sick how they funnel money from the middle class into this."
– dcoolidge
"Healthcare insurance industry. They can straight up reject claims you should be covered for and make you jump through near endless hoops to get them to pay for the service that is part of your plan."
– ColdHardPocketChange
All Out To Get Ya
"Homeopathic 'medicine' sellers."
"Psychics"
"Domain search engine registration scams (fake emails or physical mail that shows up saying 'your domain search registration is about to expire' and look exactly like warnings that your domain name is about to expire)"
"Fake homeowner warranty/car warranty scams loaded with so many limitations and exclusions they’ll basically never pay out."
"Multilevel marketing systems like Amway."
– 4wqrewtety
Losing Sight Of Kids' Well-Being
"From my experience working in group homes for youth are awful. The owners only want money and the more kids in care the more money."
– OddReputation3765
Going Nowhere Fast
"Car insurance."
"You get penalized for using it. Even just once in some cases."
– Effective_Sundae_839
"1000% agree. I was rear ended by a hit and run driver while i was stopped at a stop sign. Literally came to a stop for 3 seconds max and got destroyed. Car insurance wanted to give me 4k and shut me up. It’s called the nuisance fee. I eventually lawyered up and got 25k out of it. But like wtf. B*tch that’s what we PAY FOR, following renewal of my policy it increased hundreds of dollars a month and that was even after i switched to a different company. 'A claim is a claim regardless who is at fault.'”
– HitBackZach
Businesses taking advantage of their customers should be a crime, yet here we are.
What companies can you think of that legally continue to look after their own profitable interests above providing a decent service?
