The Dyatlov Pass incident, perhaps the strangest unsolved mystery of the last century

OK there are no two ways about it there is some weird stuff that goes down in Russia. You might remember that a month or two ago a meteorite crashed in the Urals well that's nothing compared to this story I just came across. About 54 years ago the northern part of the Urals played host to one of the most fascinating unsolved mysteries in the modern age. The reason it’s remained unsolved is that there are no witnesses but the dead, and they’re not talking. In February 1959, nine hikers disappeared in the Dyatlov Pass through the Ural Mountains. The group never reached their destination, and three weeks after their disappearance, their bodies were found. When you first look at what's become known as the Dyatlov Pass incident it all seems fairly explicable: Of a party of ten skiiers, nine perished in the middle of a high-difficulty hike in conditions that reached -30 degrees Celsius. But the details, which are mostly based on diaries of those involved as well as records from Soviet investigators, are like something out of a horror movie and will keep you up at night.

On the night of February 2, 1959, members of the party apparently ripped their tent open from the inside, and wandered into the tundra wearing nothing but what they wore to bed. The nine hikers had left all of their belongings and shoes inside without any sign of a struggle, and no other footprints were found. How freaky is that?

Three weeks later, five bodies were found, some hundreds of meters down a slope from the original camp. It took two more months for investigators to find the other four bodies, which, curiously, were partially clothed in articles belonging to the earlier-discovered dead.

Tests of those clothes found high levels of radiation. Despite that, and heavy internal trauma, including fractured skulls and broken ribs,suffered by some members of the party, Russian investigators reported they could not find evidence of foul play, and shut the whole thing up.

The group was made up of students and graduates all of whom were experienced in backcountry expeditions. The trip was meant to explore the slopes Otorten mountain in the nothern part of the Ural range. Yury Yudin, the only member of the expedition to survive, got sick before the crew had gone to far and stayed behind at a village. The other nine trekked on, and according to photographs developed from rolls recovered by investigators,Dyatlov'screw set up camp in the early evening of February 2 on the slopes of a mountain next to Ortoten. Sounds more and more like the Blair Witch Project doesn't it?

When official investigators arrived, they noted that the tents appeared cut apart from within, and found footprints from eight or nine people leaving the tents and heading off down slope in the direction of the treeline. According to investigators, the group's shoes and gear were left behind, and the footprints suggested some people were barefoot or wearing nothing but socks. In other words, they all shredded their way out of their tent and ran off through waist-deep snow in a huge hurry,despite there being no evidence of other people or foul play within the group.

The first two bodies were found at the treeline, under a giant pine tree. Remember that the treeline was about a mile away; investigators wrote that footprints disappeared about a third of a way there, although that could have been due to weather in the three weeks it took for investigators to arrive. The two bodies found were both wearing only their underwear, and both were barefoot. Branches were broken high up the tree in question, which suggested someone had tried to climb it. The remains of a fire lay nearby.

Three more bodies, including Dyatlov's, were found at points in between the camp and the big tree, and apparently lay as if they were headed back to the camp. One of them, Rustem Slobodin, had a fractured skull,although doctors declared it non-fatal, and the criminal investigation was closed after doctors ruled the five had died of hypothermia.

Two months passed until the remaining four bodies were found buried under a dozen feet of snow in a gully a few hundred feet downslope from the big tree. The inexplicable behavior of the prior five members of the party aside, it was the discovery of this quartet that was most horrific. All four suffered traumatic deaths, despite there being no outward appearance of trauma. One,NicolasThibeaux-Brignollel, also had a fractured skull.Alexander Zolotariov was found with crushed ribs.Ludmila Dubininaalso had broken ribs, and was also missing her tongue. What the fuck! How scary is that?