Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Wednesday Weird: The Dyatlov Pass Incident

Woo hoo! Wednesday Weird! I luuuurve you!

Sometimes I worry that I'll run out of weird stuff to gab about. Then I'm all like "dumbass. The world is frickin crazy and you have a collection of books just on weird stuff, so you're fine"

Today we're talking about the Dyatlov Pass Incident. This is one of those weird things that probably does have a logical explanation but that we'll never know for sure. And also, there are just some weird things about it.

So, on February 2nd, 1959 Nine ski-hikers decided to tackle Kholat Syakhl ("Mountain of the Dead". And I'm dead serious about that translation. What an awesome coincidence!) in Russia. This trek was considered category III (the most difficult) but all were very experienced ski-hikers. This was an area where avalanches are rare.




On February 26th, the first of their bodies were found (dead bodies on the Mountain of the Dead? Get outta here!).

They also discovered their campground.

So, so far, not really weird. Let's look at the deets...

Their tent was shredded, from the inside out, and the rescuers followed the footprints in the snow to locate some of the bodies.



The skiers were scattered around the campground, either lightly dressed or wearing nothing but their underwear. (Remember. February. In Russia. On a mountain). 3 of the hikers had crushed ribs and fractured skulls but no visible signs of struggle or defense marks. The breaks were similar to a bad car accident and could have been fatal, but again, no visible marks or external wounds.

The bodies may have had some sort of strange, orange tan.

Also, one of the bodies was missing her tongue.

Supposedly trace levels of radiation were found on their bodies, too, but that can't be confirmed because this was cold war era USSR and tons of records were destroyed just for the hell of it.

The official story is that the hikers were killed by (and I quote) "Unknown compelling force." The pass was actually renamed Dyatlov after the leader of the group.





There are some other deets, such as possible strange lights seen by other hikers, and possible UFOs seen by some of the rescuers, but I didn't include any of that because much of it came about later, after some of the censorship controls were relaxed with the end of the USSR. It doesn't mean they're false or fabricated, I just tried to stick with the facts that were common knowledge at the time.

So, there you have it. A group of skiers killed in a mountain, not so unusual. The state of their bodies and their campground, definitely weird.

Thoughts?

(If you want more info, you can check out this link. It has a lot of detailed description of the events leading up to and after the bodies were found. Two warnings, it devolves into conspiracy theory, and, more importantly, there are photos of the bodies. So don't visit if you don't like creepy body photos)

14 comments:

Maria Zannini said...

Could be alien hiker-mutilation or Sasquatch.

Poor people. Whatever happened to them it was a terrible way to go.

Matthew MacNish said...

Wow. I would say White Walkers, but I'm not sure they're into crushing ribs with their minds. Maybe the Old Ones?

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Sounds like it would make for a great horror film, like the one I reviewed today.

TL Conway said...

Awesome. I love me some Wednesday Weird. I like the total ambiguity of "Unknown compelling force." For some reason, the word compelling makes me laugh.

Unknown said...

Wow. I feel like this would make a good X-file. I think UFOs

Southpaw said...

Weird and very sad.

Johanna Garth said...

My first thought was some kind of weird radiation poisoning or sickness.

Austin Gorton said...

Cray-cray. My first thought was "Siberian Werewolf Dealy", but that doesn't quite fit. Seems like there's a lot of stuff going on. Like werewolf Sasquatch's working in conjunction with aliens or something.

Reminds of the Simpsons episode where Homer and Grampa sell a love tonic so all the adults are busy having sex and the kids try to figure out why their parents are acting so strange:

"OK, here's what we've got: the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people -- under the supervision of the reverse vampires -- are forcing our parents to go to bed early in a fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner. We're through the looking glass, here, people..."

Anonymous said...

Seconded to what Alex said, since I just watched the movie he reviewed. Strange.

LD Masterson said...

You know, if someone tried to write that as fiction, the idea would be shot down as too unbelievable.

Michael Offutt, Phantom Reader said...

Since the outlandish is what we are looking for, I'm going to combine several theories into one.

A tribe of abominable snowmen from the future, upset at the tanning prevalent on episodes of Jersey Shore, hijacked a spaceship and went back into time to kill these people because they all reminded them of Mike Sorentino in some way. The tanned bodies is the only clue that they were indeed, not fans of Snooki.

Christine Rains said...

I've never heard of this one. I don't know about aliens, but maybe something like the Blair Witch!

Unknown said...

That is indeed very very weird.
If in doubt, blame the aliens :)

Jay Noel said...

Blame it on the Yeti. Definitely the Yeti.

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