Ranking the Completely Explainable Cases in Netflix's Files of the Unexplained

"False advertising" doesn't even begin to cover Files of the Unexplained, Netflix's latest docuseries about extraordinary crimes, conspiracies, and phenomena that have captured the public's attention over the past 50 years. Each episode explores a different "unexplained" event, from alien abductions to the gelatinous blobs that rained down over a Washington town in 1994, but while its subjects offer plausible theories, the show purposely casts doubt on them, instead preferring to maintain an air of mystery around these cases. It's as if producers have set out to mislead the viewer, which is particularly odd considering those behind the scenes — including Vox Media Studios, the production company responsible for Netflix's Explained franchise, and executive producer Skye Borgman — have a history of responsible, evidence-based work.

The result is a docuseries composed of eight solvable mysteries, though the degree to which each can be untangled varies. Hold on to your tinfoil hats; we're ranking every case in Netflix's Files of the Unexplained, from least to most explainable.

8. "Mysteries of Mt. Shasta"

Of the eight cases presented in Files of the Unexplained, "Mysteries of Mt. Shasta" stands as the best example of balanced, respectful journalism. While scientists and scholars efficiently debunk the many "legends" that have emerged about the Northern California region — including the belief that people from the lost continent of Lemuria or Telos built a civilization underneath the mountain — they acknowledge the mountain's importance to the Indigenous community, which has passed down its own lore about the "spirit people" living among them. Their tales are far more believable than the New Age-jargon spouted by others who come to Mt. Shasta seeking a spiritual awakening or confirmation of their existing worldviews, including manipulators like Amy Carlson, leader of the Love Has Won cult. As Karuk Tribal leader Leaf Hillman says, "We don't know everything about what goes on all around us... Some of those things aren't meant for us to understand."

7. "Government's UFO Conspiracy"

Could the government be hiding the truth about UFOs from the public? Recent Congressional hearings regarding UAPs, or "unidentified anomalous phenomena," certainly give credence to that idea. The mysterious "artifact" that appeared in Terry Lovelace's leg after his alleged encounter with aliens is enough to drive conspiracy theorists wild on its own — what is it? How did it get there? How and why did it suddenly disappear? — but producers' deep dive into the world of bureaucracy and military malfeasance provides far more compelling evidence that something is amiss. There's a reason the federal government has gone to such great lengths to silence whistleblowers like John Burroughs, a former Air Force officer who claims he saw a UAP near his base in 1980; the only question is why.

6. "Pascagoula Alien Abduction"

Files of the Unexplained's first alien-centric episode is less persuasive than "Government UFO Conspiracy," but only slightly so. In 1973, Charlie Hickson and Calvin Parker were fishing when they were beamed up into a spacecraft and experimented on by extraterrestrials (or so they claimed). While the episode does offer a counterpoint to their story, positing that Hickson could have made up the encounter for money and fame (he appeared on countless TV programs in the months and years after), it's apparent that Parker still remains shaken by the experience. In a show filled with unreliable narrators, Parker seems to be among the most trustworthy, lending a bit more credibility to their extraordinary account.

5. "Missing Yuba County Five"

It's unlikely that we'll ever know what happened to the "Yuba County Five," a group of men with intellectual disabilities who went missing in the Plumas National Forest in February 1978. Four men — Bill Sterling, Jackie Huett, Ted Weiher, and Jack Madruga — were later found dead, while the fifth, Gary Mathias, has never been found, though he's believed to have also died of exposure and starvation. The victims' families suggest ableism hindered the search, as authorities either believed the men weren't capable of reaching the trailer where Weiher's body was found, or deemed the case unworthy of their time.

Sadly, it's entirely possible that discrimination also played a role in their decision to drive into Plumas that night despite the treacherous conditions: Huett's brother Tom heard rumors that bullies "beat the sh*t out of Gary Mathias and threw him over the Oroville Bridge" before chasing the other men into the forest. If that theory proves true (the case remains open), it will be a devastating conclusion to what may very well have been a preventable tragedy.

4. "Bizarre Blobs of Washington"

"Bizarre Blobs of Washington" is where this list starts to go off the rails. As promised, the details of this case are weird enough to justify a 30-minute examination (hell, Unsolved Mysteries did it in 1997): In 1994, balls of gelatinous material fell from the sky in Oakville, Washington, causing some residents and animals to fall ill. Scientists discovered that the blobs contained living cells, but they struggled to identify their exact composition or how they got into the atmosphere. Soon, conspiracy-minded people jumped in, filling the information vacuum with theories about aircrafts dropping human waste and the government testing biomedical weapons on civilians, but those with no skin in the game have come forward with alternate, far more likely explanations. It's not as exciting to imagine that the blobs were bits of jellyfish or animal feces sucked into the air by a powerful storm ("That's just nature," declares one expert), but this gross possibility is looking more and more like the truth.

3. "Floating Feet of Salish Sea"

There are two mysteries introduced in Files of the Unexplained's final episode. The first focuses on the 20 severed feet that have washed ashore on the coast of the Salish Sea, which divides Canada from Washington state in the Pacific Northwest; the second centers on the suspicious disappearance of Antonio Neill, whose boot surfaced two years after he went missing in December 2016. "Floating Feet of Salish Sea" quickly addresses the former, discrediting myths about a vicious sea monster or a serial killer by revealing that the feet separated naturally during the course of body decomposition. (Many of the feet have been identified, with examiners ruling the deaths accidental or the result of suicide.) The episode would be 35 minutes of complete nonsense if not for the lingering questions surrounding Neill's disappearance and possible murder, which remains unsolved — though true-crime docuseries have led to breakthroughs in the past, so perhaps that will be the case here.

2. "Ghosts of Myrtles Plantation"

"Ghosts of Myrtles Plantation" so desperately wants to have it both ways. The owner himself is clear that many of the tales about the Louisiana plantation are "folklore," and researchers explain how the story of the most well-known ghost on the property, an enslaved person named Chloe, emerged out of thin air and evolved like a game of telephone until it reached its current form. On the flip side, the episode gives guests and paranormal investigators — who are, by nature, predisposed to believe in haunted houses and the occult — incredible leeway to recount the supernatural phenomena they witnessed there. (Like other plantations, the property has been turned into a bed-and-breakfast, a trend the docuseries tries to reckon with, only to deem it a "complicated" issue and return to the matter of ghosts.)

The episode toggles between these competing ideas as investigators provide "evidence" of the paranormal, and independent authors and historians methodically poke holes in their case. It's the skeptics who win out: At one point, Dr. Karen Stollznow explains that many of the spirits that appear in photographs of the Myrtles actually come from popular "ghost apps" that allow users to "insert a picture of a creepy little girl" into a window or doorway. Ultimately, stories about marbles rolling across the floor or "claw marks" on a mirror are no match for objective details like these.

1. "Haunting of Lake Lanier"

All it takes is one man in a life jacket to disprove the flimsy claim that supernatural forces lurk beneath the surface of Lake Lanier, a man-made lake outside Atlanta, Georgia. While "Haunting of Lake Lanier" features a woman who claims she was yanked under the water while swimming, it wastes no time debunking similar tales about the "lady in a blue dress" or the aggrieved spirits of those forced to leave the area throughout history. As recovery divers and a man passionate about boat safety argue, many lake visitors are drunk or have minimal boating knowledge (and sometimes both), leading to a higher number of accidental drownings. "That's not being haunted," says local resident Dr. David Anderson, who has rescued "grown men that were out of shape, or they're drunk" out on the water. "That's poor decision-making." Case closed.

Claire Spellberg Lustig is the Senior Editor at Primetimer and a scholar of The View. Follow her on Twitter at @c_spellberg.