Electrical – Continuity on hot/neutral at dead outlet

Here's how you can get a shock from a "neutral" wire: you had multiple white wires, only one was the neutral leading back to your circuit breaker/fuse panel. The rest are extending the neutral to other fixtures/outlets. Let's say that one is a light fixture and its switch is on. When you undid the white wire bundle, the white wire going to that light now becomes hot: voltage is coming through the closed switch and the light. You'd get a shock from that white wire, but only when you'd disconnected it from the true neutral.

Now, as for the volt meter, did you meter the individual white wires to ground, or only the complete bundle? As I noted above, you would only see voltage on that white wire when it was disconnected from the real neutral wire.

From the information that you gave so far it would seem pretty conclusive that the red wire has broken open between your test outlet box and the power panel.

Did the red wire circuit outlets ever work?

If they did work at one time can you think of any key events that may have occurred between them working and not working? Think about things like installation of any thing that required drilling, nailing or screwing into wall or ceilings anywhere. Were there any key plumbing problems that required repair where adjacent wiring may have been disturbed? Also do not discount any possibilities that work was done on an attic space or crawlspace where any romex type wiring may have been stressed or pulled on.

Any of the above could be clues as to what may have happened to open up the red wire circuit.

Beyond that there is always the possibility that there is another junction box between the breaker panel and the outlet box that you have been testing in. There could be a connection within such electrical box that has come open and disrupted the red wire circuit.