[Update: The Terror has officially been renewed for Season 2 with a story set during WWII in the Japanese-American internment camps, but the following real-life events could still serve as viable story options for future seasons of the series.]

Hopefully you're all caught up on The Terror, AMC's masterfully shot and expertly paced mystery thriller that followed the doomed Franklin Expedition of 1845. As an adaptation of Dan Simmons' novel by the same name, the story veered into the supernatural and took some liberties with fact and fiction, myth and legend. For as fantastic as this season was, and as successful as it's been for AMC, the network has yet to renew the series for a second season. Complicating matters is the anthology format of The Terror and the fact that co-showrunners David Kajganich and Soo Hugh won't be returning to the helm. While that means we won't be spending any more time with Tuunbaq, it does open up the cast and crew to some new blood, and frees up the story to encompass just about anything from history's mysteries.

The thing that made The Terror so, well ... terrifying wasn't the supernatural monster hunting them but rather the mystery surrounding the crew, the primitive needs and evils of their fellow men, and the hostile and isolated environment they found themselves in. Those are elements that need to be replicated in Season 2 of The Terror, but anything else goes. So with that in mind, we've put together some of history's greatest unsolved mysteries that incorporate all of these things and, with the right writing team and production quality, could equal or even ::gasp:: surpass the brilliance of Season 1. (Big thanks to Stuff You Missed in History Class for doing the heavy lifting!)

For starters, Simmons has more historical fiction than just The Terror, so that's probably a safe place to start. Beyond that, there are plenty of mysterious disappearances, cases of mass hysteria, and supernaturally-tinged examples of mankind's savagery. It should come as no surprise that human beings have been terrible to each other throughout history and are just as ready to blame it on mystic explanations as they are each other. Here are a few of the best The Terror can draw from in Season 2:

The Abominable

Starting with the most likely candidate, we have to give some love to Simmons' follow-up historical novel, "The Abominable." The setting is moved forward in time somewhat from the Franklin Expedition and it also moves up in elevation ... 28,000 feet up. The Abominable has everything The Terror had, but if AMC wants to go with something completely different for Season 2, this probably isn't the story for them.

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Image via Little, Brown and Company

Here's the official book synopsis (via Amazon):

It's 1924 and the race to summit the world's highest mountain has been brought to a terrified pause by the shocking disappearance of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine high on the shoulder of Mt. Everest. By the following year, three climbers -- a British poet and veteran of the Great War, a young French Chamonix guide, and an idealistic young American -- find a way to take their shot at the top. They arrange funding from the grieving Lady Bromley, whose son also disappeared on Mt. Everest in 1924. Young Bromley must be dead, but his mother refuses to believe it and pays the trio to bring him home.

Deep in Tibet and high on Everest, the three climbers -- joined by the missing boy's female cousin -- find themselves being pursued through the night by someone . . . or something.

 

This nightmare becomes a matter of life and death at 28,000 feet - but what is pursuing them? And what is the truth behind the 1924 disappearances on Everest? As they fight their way to the top of the world, the friends uncover a secret far more abominable than any mythical creature could ever be. A pulse-pounding story of adventure and suspense, The Abominable is Dan Simmons at his spine-chilling best.

Incident at Dyatlov Pass

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Soviet investigators - "Mysterious Deaths of 9 Skiers Still Unresolved"

If AMC wants to go with the "lost hikers" story of The Abominable but wants to add some Cold War-era flavor to the tale, there's always the mystery of the Dyatlov Pass incident. In February of 1959, nine experienced ski hikers lost their lives under mysterious circumstances in the northern Ural Mountains. Sometime on the night of February 1st, something happened that caused the trekkers to tear their way out of their tents in terror, leaving them in heavy snowfalls and sub-zero temperatures while wearing inadequate clothing for such conditions. An investigation by Soviet Union authorities found that six had succumbed to hypothermia while three others experienced strange physical trauma like a fractured skull, major chest fractures, and a team member missing her eyes and tongue. The official cause was an "unknown compelling force" caused their deaths, leading to speculation ranging from animal attack, to avalanche, to military activity, and more.

There's a lot here that sounds familiar to the story in The Terror, including suspicion of native people being responsible (a suspicion that was dismissed). But Cold War-era tensions in a late-50s setting and the open-ended way in which the hikers ultimately passed away would give The Terror showrunners plenty of latitude to really play on a variety of fears.

The Mysterious Disappearance of Theodosia Burr Alston

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If AMC wants to stick with the mysterious disappearance route while out to see in 19th century vessels, but do away with the whole Arctic expedition angle, there's always the mysterious case of Theodosia Burr Alston's vanishing. Daughter of Aaron Burr and wife to the governor of South Carolina during the War of 1812, Burr Alston was presumed lost with the schooner "Patriot" off the coast of the Carolinas in the winter of 1812-13. (Yes, Aaron Burr may have lived in infamy after mortally wounding Alexander Hamilton in 1800, but he would also outlive his only legitimate child by 24 years.)

What makes this tale interesting where The Terror is concerned is the exploration of Burr Alston's life in early post-Revolutionary War America. She was raised in New York City and, going by "Theo", earned a Classical education that included more than the usual curriculum for young women of the time. Theo lost her mother at a young age and developed a close bond with her father but also mingled with high-society types and Native American military leaders. She even acted on her father's behalf after his trial and expatriation in 1807. But all of this would act as background/flashbacks for Alston Burr's greatest trial aboard the "Patriot."

After departing Georgetown, South Carolina on New Year's Eve of 1812 and bound for New York, laden down with booty from Captain William Overstocks' privateering raids, the "Patriot" and all those aboard were never heard from again. Rumors of the ship's capture by pirates known as wreckers or bankers soon spread, embellished over the years to include the possibility of a Native American chief rescuing Theo after finding her left chained to the wrecked ship by pirates, to the idea that Theo herself is the Female Stranger. While it's likely the ship was simply wrecked and all souls aboard were lost, a female-focused Season 2 of The Terror in post-colonial America could prove for an interesting departure colored by high-seas drama.

Curse of the Mary Celeste

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Mary Celeste: The Greatest Mystery of the Sea. Longmans Education Ltd, Harlow (UK) 2007. Plate 2 - Scanned from Slate magazine, December 6 2011

Need a little more excitement in your cursed ship stories? Well, look no further than the "Mary Celeste." If AMC still has some of its 19th century ship sets laying around (unless they were all destroyed in the Tuunbaq attack), they could repurpose them to bring this infamous American merchant brigantine to life. Though it sailed the seven seas without major incident for over a decade, in December of 1872 the "Mary Celeste" was found seaworthy but adrift in the Azores off the coast of Portugal. The ship, missing its lifeboat, was still well-provisioned, its cargo of denatured alcohol still intact, and the personal belongings of captain and crew still on board, but none who sailed this ship were ever seen or heard from again.

Its "ghost ship" status came into question at auction and speculation of foul play by mutiny, piracy by the discovering vessel or another ship, or insurance and salvage fraud torpedoed its worth; fraud would indeed be carried out by the ship's new owner a few years later when he purposefully wrecked it off the coast of Haiti. But since the hearing's findings were inconclusive, more imaginative speculation arose, like the thought that either the crew had become affected by alcohol fumes, or that seaquakes or a giant squid attack subdued the ship, or that more paranormal explanations existed. Mystery is attached to the "Mary Celeste" like a barnacle to a hull still today, so with the right treatment, The Terror could double down on this nautical nightmare.

The Devil's Footprints

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English Papers 1855

Let's get away from sea-based mysteries and move slightly inland to Devon, England. In February of 1855 (these stories always seem to happen in Winter, don't they...), heavy snow fell upon the landscape from Exe Estuary to South Devon. The next morning, folks found horseshoe-like hoof-prints in the snow covering an area of up to 100 miles. Not so unusual in and of itself, but the fact that the hoof-prints traveled straight across rivers, haystacks, and houses and other structures, including their roofs, seemingly entering narrow drainpipes and exiting out the other side. These bizarre, single-file tracks led many to suspect that Satan himself walked the land on cloven hooves.

Unsurprisingly, there's little hard evidence for this event, but theories abound. They range from ordinary animals making the tracks, to hoaxes carried out by bored yet well-organized townsfolk, to slightly sillier suggestions like hopping mice, an escaped experimental balloon, kangaroos (a story which was fabricated to distract local parishioners concerned that the devil was on the loose), and a badger or two. While it might be a stretch to pull this story apart for a full season, as an explanation of mass hysteria and an exploration of what 19th century English folk might due when they believe the devil walks among them, it's an interesting option for sure.

Disappearance of the Sodder Children

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Billboard put up by Sodder family to seek information on children believed to be missing

We'll keep the wintry theme for this one but move the setting to 1945 in West Virginia. On Christmas Eve, a fire destroyed the house of George Sodder while he, his wife Jennie, and nine of their 10 children were inside. The adults escaped along with four of their children, but the bodies of the missing five children were never found. The story in and of itself would be more tragedy than mystery, but the fact that five children were unaccounted for and that the Sodders found themselves in peculiar circumstances just before the fire makes this one worth exploring.

Fayetteville, West Virgina is home to some absolutely gorge-ous scenery and, in 1945, probably boasted about 1,500 people. That's a drastically different setting to explore for The Terror, but the sense of isolation is still there. Add to this the fact that George Sodder was an outspoken critic of Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime in his native Italy and that the Sodders suspected both arson and kidnapping on the part of the Sicilian Mafia, and this story quickly takes a surprising turn. It might seem like paranoia but for the strangers visiting the house--one a supposed insurance salesman and another seeking employment as a handyman--and making veiled threats about their house burning and their children dying, or that the local fire department wrote the incident off as an electrical fire, despite the fact that Sodder had recently rewired the house's electrical work and had it inspected, or that strangers were seen parked along the town's main highway, watching the Sodder children coming home from school.

The mystery continues to this day despite decades of investigations and search efforts on the part of the surviving Sodder family members. There are detailed accounts of the Christmas Eve night leading up to the fire that are disturbing and bizarre enough on their own without even factoring in the weirdness that surrounded the family before then. The Terror could easily turn this tragedy into a harrowing story of isolation, paranoia under real threat of violence from Fascists, and one family's struggle to root out the truth.

The Hagley Woods Murder

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Image via David Buttery, graffiti on the Wychbury Obelisk, Worcestershire, England

"Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?"

If that doesn't scream "viral marketing" right there, I don't know what does. It relates to the 1943 discovery of a woman's skeletal remains found in a tree by four children poaching on an estate in Worcestershire, England. While hunting birds' nests, one of the boys climbed a tree and found the skull inside the hollow trunk of a wych elm, but since they were on the land illegally, the placed it back and fled home. The youngest of the four revealed the discovery to his parents that night.

The resulting investigation by local police turned up a nearly complete skeleton along with a shoe, a gold wedding band, and clothing fragments; remains of a hand were recovered a distance from the tree. A bit of taffeta was found in the victim's mouth, a gruesome bit of evidence discovered by forensic examination. They also recovered tufts of hair still attached to the skull and noted the unique dental pattern, both of which lent themselves to forensics. But other than determining death by suffocation roughly 18 months before the skeleton's discovery and the fact that the body had been placed in the tree relatively soon after her death, no identity has been assigned to the remains. The above quote, found scrawled as graffiti in 1944, soon led investigators to track down any missing persons bearing the name "Bella" and its derivatives.

Theories ranged from the identity belonging to a local Hagley road prostitute, to a Dutchwoman who passed out drunk and was placed in a tree by two men as a prank (one man in question was reportedly hospitalized due to recurring nightmares of a woman staring out at him from a tree...), to the lover and partner of a German spy who parachuted his way into England and broke his ankle before being arrested by the local guard (the presumption being that said cabaret singer and actress would be trained as a spy and sent to retrieve him, somehow, despite her death in 1942). More sensational theories, like the death of Bella at the hand of gypsies practicing witchcraft and performing the Hand of Glory ritual, still exist. There's plenty of creepy imagery and mystery to explore here, tailor-made for The Terror.

The Green Children of Woolpit

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Image via Rod Bacon, The "green children" of Woolpit on the village sign - geograph.org.uk

If it's a tale of creepy kids in ye olde England you want for The Terror Season 2 instead, look no further than the Green Children of Woolpit. Half fairytale, half historical event whose accuracies have been lost to time, this folktale takes viewers back to the reign of King Stephen, sometime between 1135 to 1154. At harvest time, villagers in Woolpit discovered two children, a brother and sister, near the animal-trapping pits (or "wolf pits") that gave the village its name. No ordinary children, their skin was reportedly green, they spoke an unknown language, and their clothing was unrecognizable by the locals. Taken in by a local man, the children refused all food for days until they were presented with raw beans, though they gradually acclimated to normal food and even lost their green coloring. After the two were baptized, the boy grew sick and died.

Accounts vary as to whether only the girl or both of the children learned English, but either way, they told of a place called Saint Martin's Land, a subterranean world inhabited by green people where the sun never shone and all light was like twilight. When herding their father's cattle, they had been drawn by a loud noise and found themselves lost, arriving at the wolf pit near the village. The girl, taking the name of Agnes, was described as "very wanton and impudent" (which is delightful) and went on to marry a royal officer.

Explanations abound for this tale centuries later. Some see the story as derived from folklore and fairytales while others regard it as an alien encounter, and still more see it as a fuzzy account of a historical event and an example of the racial differences between the English and the indigenous Britons. Their skin coloration could have been accounted for by the dietary deficiency known as "green sickness." It's a creepy tale, to be sure, but would need some tweaking for it to be worthy of The Terror.

The Villisca Ax Murders

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Image via Library of Congress

And here's my choice for the creepiest true-life tale that could be coming to The Horror. In June of 1912 (note: not winter, for once) in the southwestern Iowa town of Villisca, six members of the Moore family and two house guests were found bludgeoned to death in the family home. Six children, ranging from 5 to 12 years old, and the Moore parents all suffered severe head wounds by an ax, and despite an investigation yielding several suspects, no one was every found guilty and the crime was never solved.

The gruesome discovery was made by the Moore's neighbors who quickly called the local peace officer in to search the house, discovering all eight bodies and the murder weapon itself, which had been left in the guest room. The killer, it seems, had patiently waited in the attic and smoked a pair of cigarettes while waiting for the Moore family and their guests to fall asleep. Sometime after midnight, the killer went to work on patriarch Josiah first, using the blade of the ax to damage his face so badly that his eyes were missing. The rest of the victims were murdered with the blunt edge of the ax, resulting in ax blade marks from the blows on the ceiling above the victims. Only 12-year-old house guest Lena Stillinger was thought to be awake during her murder due to defensive wounds on her arms and the fact that she was found lying across the bed; evidence of sexual assault was also found.

That's some real terror, for sure. As you might have guessed, every transient and stranger in Villisca were rounded up as suspects, but even an English-born traveling minister /  purported peeping tom, a town resident and Iowa State Senator who held business and personal grudges against Josiah, and a pair of ax-wielding serial killers. This cast of characters is equal parts ghoulish and heartbreakingly innocent. With a little over 2,000 people in the town, it's not quite as isolated as other burghs on this list, but an event as troubling and shocking as the murder of the Moore family surely rocked the community to its core. Anyone and everyone became a suspect, if not in the eyes of the law than surely in the eyes of common, ordinary townspeople.

What The Terror did best in Season 1 was to make human nature and the savagery of nature itself the real horror, with the supernatural Tuunbaq merely serving as the sensationalized aspect of the tale. Season 2 will hopefully do more of the same, so whether it's inspired by one of these lesser-known harrowing tales or some other misadventure, it promises to be a wild ride. Now all AMC has to do is renew it.

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Image via AMC