On the 2nd February 1959, something super fuckin' freaky happened in Russia. The events of these super fuckin' freaky goings-on would become known as the Dyatlov Pass Incident.
A week prior to the incident, a 23-year old radio engineering student named Ignor Dyatlov assembled a group of nine other hikers to accompany him on a skiing expedition the northern Urals of the Soviet Union. All members of the group were experienced hikers, holding grade II qualifications, and would receive grade III, the highest in the Soviet Union at the time, upon completion of the trek.
Their journey began on January 27th in the village of Vizhai, and from there the group headed towards their destination, Otorten. Weather conditions worsened however, and as they entered the pass on the 1st February they were knocked off course due to limited visibility, and headed west, towards the top of Kholat Syakhl. Upon realising their mistake however, the group opted to set up camp on the mountain rather than travel the 1.5km back down to the forest area that would have provided better shelter, as they would have lost some of the progress they'd made. This information was pieced together from diaries and photographs found at their campsite on the 26th February, but what happened between the 1st and 26th seems to be something straight out of The Twilight Zone.
Before leaving for the trip Dyatlov had agreed to telegram people at his sports club upon returning to Vizhai, which he expected would take until the 12th. The 12th came and went, and by the 20th families and friends of the group began pressuring for a search and rescue team to be deployed, which consisted of just volunteers before the military became involved.
On the 26th, the rescue teams eventually found the remains of the groups' campsite on Kholat Syakhl, but something was very much amiss here. Rescue workers noted that the tent had been torn in half from the inside and still contained all of the hikers' belongings, including their shoes and clothes. Tracks of eight or nine people were also found leading away from the campsite, down towards the forested area that the group had originally considered as a campsite. Here workers found remains of a fire, and the first two bodies of the group, both barefoot and dressed only in their underwear. Within up to a 630 metre vicinity of the fire, the bodies of three more members were found, some of which seemed to have been attempting to return to the campsite.
It took two months to find the final four bodies, which were located about 75 metres further into the forest in a ravine, under 4 metres of snow. These members were better dressed than the other five, and there seemed to be evidence that those who died first had their clothes taken by the surviving members.
An investigation was launched to decipher just what the hell happened to the hiking group, with initial reports stating they all died of hypothermia, however with the discovery of the final four, things were knocked up a notch on the spooky scale. Though there were no injuries on the initial five corpses, except for burnt hands that were attributed to the fire, the final four showed signs of major skull damage and chest fractures, damage of which would have required a force akin to that of a car crash, yet there was no external damage. Other members were reported to have tongues, eyes, and noses missing, however these were reported to have transpired post-mortem. Then, things managed to get even weirder.
High levels of radiation were found to be present on the clothes of one of the victims, and when assessing the severity of the more serious injuries, it was deducted that no human being nor animal could have inflicted that level of force. There were also reports of the hikers' skin being deeply tanned despite none of the hikers ever being in an environment to obtain such a thing, and hikers 31 miles from the group during their expedition claimed to have seen orange spheres in the sky on the night of the 1st.
The investigation closed in saying most of the hikers died due to a compelling natural force, while others simply from hypothermia, and the report was sent away to a secret archive in 1959. Further investigation into the case has taken place however, with journalists exhuming the bodies in 2018, discovering the DNA of one of the men buried did not match the DNA of his supposed family, and in 2019 Russian authorities planned to open the investigation again, though were still adamant that the most likely causes were an avalanche, a hurricane, or a "snow slab".
Things get eerie when debunking the most popular theory of an avalanche however, not only because there was no evidence of an avalanche in the area, nor has there ever been in the decades since, but the experienced hikers would never have camped near such a danger. Oh, then there's also the issue of the footprints. The prints, which rightfully would have been buried by an avalanche to begin with, showed no signs of erratic movement you would expect from nine people fleeing in terror, but rather, it seemed as though the group had calmly walked to the trees.
So what are the other theories? Well first there's the theory of an incredible sound created by something called a Kármán Vortex Street, which would have been created by the winds of the hurricane and can cause panic attacks in humans. Then there's also the theory the group had a run in with a military exercise, as there was in fact one planned around the area of the hike, and finally, some people just say it was a yeti. Or aliens. Or an alien yeti.
So what happened? Who knows, but its a cool story.
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