Mysterious stories, people and inexplicable phenomena have always fascinated people. Humans are drawn to enigmas, they are curious by nature, and one of their biggest goals is to somehow resolve them. Scientists and historians have dedicated their life to uncovering the greatest mysteries of the world and science. The world is full of mysterious men that have impacted history in one way or another. A few weeks back we talked about the inventor of kerosene, who also had some strange extra-curricular activities.

Today, we will present three others. Most of them were geniuses (in their own right) who lived secretive lifestyles, and left it with many unanswered questions about their motivation. The range of professions for these mysterious men includes, but is not limited to serial killers, scientists, assassins, leaders, psychics, secret spies and mafia members. Maybe it was their bizarre training, or unsubstantiated claims, but one thing is for certain, there are many conspiracy theories related to their entities. Let’s take a look at the lives of three mysterious people around the World.

3. Wolf Messing

Wolf Messing was born in Gora Kalwaria, a city situated southeast of Warsaw, Poland, around the year 1900. Since he was merely an adolescent, he claimed to have psychic powers, which manifested in altering people’s perceptions, predicting the future, mental telepathy and interpretation of body language. Obviously, he held performances to showcase his skills, and during them he would supposedly use the power of his mind to find hidden objects.

Even Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud were fascinated by him. In 1937 he predicted that Adolf Hitler would die if he would ever threaten Russia, or turn toward the East. Obviously, he angered the dictator and was exiled to Russia, where he continued to perform. A few years passed, until Stalin asked him to prove his psychic ability by convincing a bank teller to hand him over money while using only a piece of paper. The demonstration was successful, and Messing became a teacher of the KGB. He died in 1974, but not before completing his autobiography entitled About Myself, and even after explaining most of his life, he still remained among the most popular mysterious men in this world.

Motto: “My ability to see the future may seem to contradict the materialist understanding of the world. But there is not a particle of the unknowable or supernatural about precognition”

2. Karl Koecher

Number two on our list is Karl Koecher, a CIA spy for the USSR who was born in Czechoslovakia in 1934. At the age of 28 he was recruited by the Czech Intelligence Agency, and in 1960 he was moved to the USA where he received a doctorate in philosophy. He is so interesting to us, because he was the only person that managed to penetrate the CIA for the Soviet Union. Even more interesting is the fact that not many details about his life were ever uncovered, so it was partly unclear if Karl was actually a double agent or not.

Needless to say, he was arrested in 1984 under penalty of being a spy. USA secret agencies tried to turn him against the URSS but didn’t manage. In the end, he was absolved of accusations and set free. In the spring of 1986 he became a spy exchange that involved Anatoly Shcharansky, and he was also suggested to have been involved in The Velvet Revolution (he denied the claims). Although details of his life are not available, Karl was connected to many conspirecies, like the Mohammed Al-Fayed’s false documents, and the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed.

1. Sidney Gottlieb

Undoubtedly the most interesting person on this list, and an excellent example for our Mysterious men list, is Sidney Gottlieb, a New Yorker who was born under the name of Joseph Scheider. He received his PhD in Chemestry from Caltech, and specialized on lethal poisons. At some point in his career he joined the CIA, as a top secret biological warfare program expert. The project was entitled MKULTRA and during it he focused mainly on experiments and studies of the human mind. As you can probably expect, humans were used as guinea pigs, so from here the name of Dirty Trickster was given to him. At some point, he tried to contaminate General Abdul Karim’s handkerchief with botulinum.

Operation Midnight Climax, which you might have heard of, was aided by Gottlieb. To help the project, the CIA hired large groups of prostitutes, lured people to their house, drugged them and then had intercourse while the Dirty Trickster observed. Other projects that he was involved with include the Cuban Project, the Phoenix Program (where he performed mind control on test subjects) and it was also reported that he worked for Lockheed, DARPA, the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence and the Department of Defense.