In December of 2015 we come to the curious case of a body that was stumbled across by a cyclist on Saddleworth Moor, a part of the Peak District National Park, not far from the Dovestone reservoir, near Greenfield, England. The corpse was laid out right in the open, wearing clothing that was wholly inappropriate for the terrain and the weather at that time of year.
An autopsy would find that he had died from ingesting strychnine, most likely a suicide, and that there was an empty bottle of thyroxine sodium, a thyroid gland medication, lying nearby, which was thought to have actually held the poison used to kill him. Oddly, there was writing on the side in Urdu, and the bottle was traced as having come all the way from Pakistan, although this is a lead that has not gotten very far.
The man had carried no form of identification whatsoever, and the only things he had in his pockets were some train tickets and £130 in cash. A search was made of missing persons reports in the area but turned up not a thing. It was found that the last person the mystery man had spoken to was the owner of a pub in Greenfield, a Melvin Robinson, who said that the strange old gentleman had come to establishment to ask for directions to the “top of the mountain,” and would say of the weird meeting:
He just asked for directions to the top of the mountain. Just the top of the mountain. I told him there’s not enough daylight for him to get there and back today. He just thanked me and asked me again for the directions, which I repeated to him. And he just set off.
