Dyatlov Pass Mystery

I find the Dyatlov Pass Incident a rather creepy and a very unexplained event.

WARNING GRAPHIC PHOTOS AHEAD.

"Dyatlov Pass Incident." - One of the freakiest events in the 20th century.

In January 1959, nine Soviet college students were killed under mysterious circumstances while hiking through the Ural Mountains in what's now known as the Dyatlov Pass incident.

The investigation concluded that an "unknown compelling force" had caused their deaths till this day. None of the hikers were ever seen alive again.

Igor Dyatlov was the leader of a group of nine hikers that went for a ski/hike in the Ural mountains of Russia in February 1959. The group was made up of experienced hikers and adventurers. This was a group that really knew what they were doing. They planned to return on or around the 12th of February but they never did. On the 20th of the month, Dyatlov's friends that were waiting to hear from him decided it was time to bring in a search and rescue crew.

About a week later, on February 26th, Dyatlov's group's camp was found. The tent was destroyed, cut up from the inside and covered by snow. Inside was most of the belongings of the groups -- their packs, most of their clothes, even most of their shoes.

Outside the tent, there were at least 9 sets of footprints, most with no shoes, some even with no socks. They started finding bodies a few hundred meters from the tent, in various states of dress, but all completely under-dressed for the below-freezing temperatures.

The first two bodies were found about 500 meters from the tent under a tree near the remnants of a fire. The bodies were of two men on the expedition and they were dressed only in their underwear and nothing else. 3 other bodies were at 300, 480 and 630 meters away from the tent. It appeared they had been running from the tent. All 5 were determined to have died of hypothermia.

The remaining four hikers were not found until the spring thaw in May. These bodies were slightly better dressed, but all four had massive, possibly fatal injuries.

One woman was missing her eyes, tongue, and lips.

Three of the ski hikers had fatal injuries, including Nicolai Thibeaux-Brignolles, 23, who had significant skull damage and Lyudmila Dubinina, 20, and Semyon Zolotaryov, 38, had major chest fractures that could only have been caused by an immense force, comparable to that of a car crash.

In the most gruesome part of the Dyatlov pass incident, Dubnina was missing her tongue, eyes, part of the lips, as well as facial tissue and a fragment of her skull bone.

There was evidence that the hikers used the clothes of the people who died first. Dubinina’s foot was found wrapped in a piece of Krivonishenko’s wool pants, and then, in turn, Zolotaryov was found in Dubinina’s faux fur coat and hat.

Also, when investigators found the bodies there was no evidence that an avalanche had occurred anytime recently in the region, and no avalanches have been recorded at that site before or since.

Reports of slight radiation on the bodies led to theories that the students had been killed by some secret, radioactive weapon. Though the radiation was largely discounted as the cause of death because a radioactive weapon would have elevated radiation to much much higher levels, it is possible that the ski hiking team was unfortunate enough to encounter a testing of some USSR concussive weapon.

This explanation would match with testimony from another hiking group, who were camped out 50 km from the Dyatlov encampment. This group spoke of strange orange orbs floating in the sky moving towards Kholat Syakhl. This testimony was also corroborated by reports from the weather service and army.

There are dozens of theories like this, but to this day, we just don't know what caused these experienced hikers to abandon their camp in freezing temperatures without so much as the shoes on their feet.