The People Who Believe They're DEAD : The Walking Corpse Syndrome

Imagine getting sick and then slipping into a sleep you can’t wake up from, not for days, not for months, sometimes not for years. In the early 1900s, a mysterious “sleeping sickness” known as encephalitis lethargica swept across the world, leaving people frozen between life and death: eyes closed, bodies still, but often aware of everything happening around them. Doctors watched as some patients never woke up, while others opened their eyes decades later with strange, permanent damage to their brains, turning one baffling illness into one of medicine’s most haunting unsolved stories.

In July 2014, 28‑year‑old German tourist Lars Mittank vanished after a series of strange, paranoid behaviours at a Bulgarian airport, caught on CCTV running into the woods, never to be seen again. He’d left his luggage behind, seemed terrified of people who weren’t there, and was acting like someone who desperately believed he was in danger. Years later, his disappearance has become one of the internet’s most unsettling mysteries, raising the same chilling question over and over: what was Lars so afraid of, and where did he go?

Imagine waking up convinced you’re dead. Walking Corpse Syndrome, or Cotard’s Syndrome, is a rare condition where people genuinely believe they have no organs, no blood, or no life left inside them. They might insist they’re a walking corpse, deny the need to eat or sleep, and move through the world like a ghost in their own story, physically alive, but utterly certain they no longer exist.

On the morning of January 25, 2019, 29-year-old Liz Barraza was shot and killed in front of her own home while setting up a garage sale. The suspect waited for her husband to leave for work, then opened fire with a revolver before fleeing in a dark-colored Nissan Frontier. Nothing was stolen. No clear motive has ever been established. The murder was captured on home security cameras, and the suspect's vehicle was recorded in the neighborhood hours before the shooting, suggesting a premeditated attack. Police were initially certain they would catch the killer within hours. Over six years later, the case remains unsolved.

On a June afternoon in 1980, coal miner Zigmund Adamski vanished after popping out for a quick trip to the shops and was found days later on top of a coal heap, miles from home, with no clear explanation of how he got there. His clothes were oddly neat, there were strange marks on his body, and parts of the timeline simply refused to make sense. Between talk of botched foul play, mysterious medical treatment, and even whispers of UFOs, the Adamski case has become one of Britain’s most unsettling unsolved mysteries.

On a July morning in 1992, 23‑year‑old Rachel Nickell took her young son and their dog for a walk on Wimbledon Common and never came home. She was brutally attacked in broad daylight, a crime so shocking it gripped the UK and terrified women across London. What followed was a deeply flawed investigation that fixated on the wrong man, a media frenzy that turned grief into spectacle, and years of legal and forensic battles before the truth finally emerged.

Two schoolgirls, one quiet English village, and a killer who thought he’d gotten away with murder, until science caught up with him. In the 1980s, the brutal killings of Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth left Narborough living in fear and police desperate for a lead. What followed would change criminal investigations forever: the world’s first use of DNA profiling to crack a murder case, expose a false confession, and unmask the real predator hiding in plain sight.

On a summer weekend in 2015, 21‑year‑old Lauren Agee headed to a cliff‑side campsite at Center Hill Lake for a party, by Sunday morning, her body was found in the water below. Friends claimed it was a tragic accident, but strange injuries, shifting stories, and missing pieces quickly turned a simple drowning into a storm of rumours and suspicion. To this day, the case sits in a tense space between “accident” and “something more,” leaving Lauren’s family and true crime followers asking the same question: what really happened on that cliff in the dark?

For centuries, Britain watched its king slowly unravel. George III, once seen as a dutiful, steady ruler, began to speak in torrents, pace through the night, and drift in and out of terrifying, incoherent episodes that baffled his doctors and horrified his court. Whispers of “madness” crept through the palaces and into Parliament, as ministers juggled a crumbling royal mind with the need to keep an empire running. Behind the polite portraits and powdered wigs lies a far darker story: a monarch trapped inside his own head, a family torn between love and power, and a kingdom forced to ask what happens when the person wearing the crown is no longer truly in control.

32 years ago, much-loved mum Vera Anderson received a phone call that resulted in her leaving her home at 10pm on a Saturday night and driving to a quiet, deserted area. Hours later, she would be found murdered in her car, in what appeared to be a hit. Despite extensive investigation, authorities have never found any motive, any reason as to why someone might want Vera dead.