The unexplained bizarre deaths of 9 Russian hikers in 1959
I just stumbled across the fascinating tale of the Dyatlov Pass Accident. The case is full of bizarre findings. Nine hikers set out into the wilderness and were never seen alive again. Theit bodies were found in groups a good distance from their camp, all in little more than underwear, as if they had to flee their tent in a hurry. Their tent was ripped open from the inside, like they didn’t even have time to use the tent’s door. Five of the hikers showed no signs of trauma and likely died from hypothermia — two of which were found around a temporary fire that they made while in their underwear. None of them seemed to dare to return to the tent. The other four hikers died of internal injuries but showed no external wounds, one from a fractured skull, and two from fractured chests, as if they had been crippled by extreme pressure.
Here are some more facts of the case (from the Wikipedia article):
» Six of the group members died of hypothermia and three of fatal injuries.
» There were no indications of other people nearby apart from the nine travellers on Kholat Syakhl, nor anyone in the surrounding areas.
» The tent had been ripped from within.
» The victims had died 6 to 8 hours after their last meal.
» Traces from the camp showed that all group members (including those who were found injured) left the camp of their own accord, by foot. This implies that those with injuries were injured after they left the camp.
» The fatal injuries of the three bodies could not have been caused by another human being.
» Forensic radiation tests had shown high doses of radioactive contamination on the clothes of a few victims. These test results were not taken into account for the final verdict.
The only footprints found in the snow were those of the hikers, so it couldn’t have been caused by any sort of land animal, human or otherwise. There were no traces of an avalanche. The most curious part of the case is the high level of radioactivity found in the bodies. The families who attended to the burial procedures reported that the corpses’ skin that had turned orange and hair that had turned gray. None of the Russian military helicopter pilots would transport the corpses, not even in body bags. Did they know more than they let on?
The case was never solved. So what in the hell caused this accident? The Wikipedia article vaguely mentions aliens, but come on, let’s be real. Some kind of military testing perhaps? The radioactivity had to come from somewhere. I just can’t think of many things that would cause nine people to run out of a perfectly warm tent nearly naked into the snow, and not return for some hours while they slowly froze to death. And how did the four that suffered internal injuries die? It’s eerie. I’m getting goosebumps just thinking of it.
Man, what I wouldn’t give for a Light of Other Days-style wormhole to be able to look back into the past and see what happened there. My curiosity has been peaked, yet there are no answers to be found.
Something like this would make a great episode of CSI, unsolved ending included. Just have the episode unfold with increasingly bizarre findings in the case being discovered, and then cut to credits at the end of the hour with nothing solved, only dozens of questions raised. It would be a different experience from their typical format in which everything is neatly wrapped up about five minutes before the end of the episode, but I would love it.
Top 10 Bizarre Disappearances
History is peppered with intriguing tales of people who, for all intents and purposes, inexplicably vanish from the face of the earth without a trace. These stories – some of the most fascinating in the annals of the unexplained – vary from being well-documented to having the flavor of mere legend and folklore. This is the top 10 bizarre disappearances.
10.
The disappearance of Oliver Larch
The story
of Oliver Larch (Sometime known as Lerch or Thomas) follows a similar
narrative to that of David Lang (item 3). According to his narrative, Larch
was on his way to collect water from a well one winter when he vanished;
leaving nothing behind but trail of footprints in
the snow which terminated abruptly, and a series of cries for help that
appeared to come from above. In some tellings, Larch’s story is set in late
nineteenth-century Indiana, in others, it is set in North Wales. One
particular recurring citation of this variant was as Oliver Thomas of Rhayader,
Radnorshire, mid-Wales and the date is given specifically as 1909.
9.
The Flannan Isles lighthouse keepers
In
December 1900, three lighthouse keepers vanished
from their duty stations, leaving behind equipment important to surviving the
hostile conditions at that location and time of year. Despite exhaustive
searches, the keepers were never found. The official explanation for the
disappearances is that the men were swept out to sea by a freak wave.
8.
The Bennington Triangle
Between 1920 and
1950, Bennington, Vermont was the site of several completely unexplained
disappearances:
On December 1, 1949, Mr.
Tetford vanished
from a crowded bus. Tetford was on his way home to Bennington from a trip to
St. Albans, Vermont. Tetford, an ex-soldier who lived in the Soldier’s
Home in Bennington, was sitting on the bus with 14 other passengers. They
all testified to seeing him there, sleeping in his seat. When the bus
reached its destination, however, Tetford was gone, although his belongings
were still on the luggage
rack and a bus timetable lay open on his empty seat. Tetford has
never returned or been found.
On December 1, 1946, an
18-year-old student named Paula Welden vanished
while taking a walk. Welden was walking along the Long Trail into
Glastenbury Mountain. She was seen by a middle-aged couple that was
strolling about 100 yards behind her. They lost sight of her when she
followed the trail around a rocky outcropping, but when they rounded the
outcropping themselves, she was nowhere to be seen. Welden has not been seen
nor heard from since.
In mid-October, 1950, 8-year
old Paul Jepson disappeared from a farm. Paul’s mother, who earned a
living as an animal caretaker, left her small son happily playing near a pig
sty while she tended to the animals. A short time later, she returned to
find him missing. An extensive search of the area proved fruitless.
7.
The Vanished
Cripple
Owen
Parfitt had been paralyzed by a massive stroke. In June, 1763 in Shepton
Mallet, England, Parfitt sat outside his sister’s home, as was often his
habit on warm evenings. Virtually unable to move, the 60-year-old man sat
quietly is his nightshirt upon his folded greatcoat. Across the road was a
farm where workers were finishing their workday by pooking the hay. At about 7
p.m., Parfitt’s sister, Susannah, went outside with a neighbor to help
Parfitt move back into the house, as a storm was approaching. But he was gone.
Only his folded greatcoat upon which he sat remained. Investigations
of this mysterious disappearance were carried out as late as 1933, but no
trace or clues to Parfitt’s fate were ever uncovered.
6.
The Disappearing Diplomat
British
diplomat Benjamin Bathurst vanished
into thin air in 1809. Bathurst was returning to Hamburg with a companion
after a mission to the Austrian court. Along the way, they had stopped for
dinner at an inn in the town of Perelberg. Upon finishing the meal, they
returned to their waiting horse-drawn coach. Bathurst’s companion watched as
the diplomat stepped over to the front of the coach to examine to horses –
and simply vanishedwithout a trace.
5.
Time Tunnel
In 1975, a
man named Jackson Wright was driving with his wife from
New Jersey to New
York City. This required them to travel through the Lincoln Tunnel.
According to Wright, who was driving, once through the tunnel he pulled the
car over to wipe the windshield of condensation. His wife Martha volunteered
to clean off the back window so they could more readily resume their trip.
When Wright turned around, his wife was gone. He neither heard nor saw
anything unusual take place, and a subsequent investigation could find no
evidence of foul play. Martha Wright had just disappeared.
4.
The Norfolk Regiment
Three soldiers
claimed to be witnesses to the bizarre disappearance of an entire battalion in
1915. They finally came forward with the strange story 50 years after the
infamous Gallipoli campaign of WWI. The three members of a New Zealand field
company said they watched from a clear vantage point as a battalion of the
Royal Norfolk Regiment marched up a hillside in Suvla Bay, Turkey. The hill
was shrouded in a low-lying cloud that the English soldiers marched straight
into without hesitation. They never came out. After the last of the battalion
had entered the cloud, it slowly lifted off the hillside to join other clouds
in the sky. When the war was over, figuring the battalion had been captured
and held prisoner, the British government demanded that Turkey return them.
The Turks insisted, however, that it had neither captured not made contact
with these English soldiers.
3.
The Legend of David Lang
This
famous case allegedly took place in September, 1880 on a farm near Gallatin,
Tennessee in full view of several witnesses. The two Lang children, George and
Sarah, were playing in the front yard of the family home. Their parents, David
and Emma, came out the front door, and David headed off across a pasture
toward his horses. At this time, a buggy carrying family friend Judge August
Peck was approaching. David turned to walk back to the house, saw the buggy
and waved to the judge as he strode across the field. A few seconds later,
David Lang – in clear view of his wife, his children and the judge –
disappeared in mid-step. Emma screamed and all of the witnesses rushed to the
spot where David once was, thinking perhaps he had fallen into a hole of some
kind. There was no hole. A thorough search by the family, friends and
neighbors turned up nothing. A few months after the unexplained disappearance,
the Lang children noticed that the grass on the spot where their father vanished
had turned yellow and wilted in a circle measuring about 15 feet in diameter.
2.
The Stonehenge Disappearance
The
mysterious standing stones of Stonehenge in England was the site of an amazing
disappearance in August, 1971. At this time Stonehenge was not yet protected
from the public, and on this particular night, a group of “hippies”
decided to pitch tents in the center of the circle and spend the night. They
built a campfire, lit several joints of pot and sat around smoking
and signing. Their campout was abruptly interrupted at about 2 a.m. by a
severe thunder storm that quickly blew in over Salisbury Plain. Bright bolts
of lightning crashed down on the area, striking area trees and even the
standing stones themselves. Two witnesses, a farmer and a policeman, said that
the stones of the
ancient monument lit up with an eerie blue light that was so intense
that they had to avert their eyes. They heard screams from the campers and the
two witnesses rushed to the scene expecting to find injured – or even dead
– campers. To their surprise, they found no one. All that remained within
the circle of stones were several smoldering tent
pegs and the drowned remains of a campfire. The hippies themselves were
gone without a
trace.
1.
The Village That Disappeared
An individual
that vanishes is one thing, but how about an entire village of 2,000 men,
women and children? In November, 1930, a fur trapper named Joe Labelle made
his way on snow shoes to an Eskimo village on the shores of Lake Anjikuni in
northern Canada. Labelle was familiar with the village, which he knew as a
thriving fishing community of about 2,000 residents. When he arrived, however,
the village was deserted. All of the huts and storehouses were vacant. He
found one smoldering fire on which there was a pot of blackened stew. Labelle
notified the authorities and an investigation was begun, and which turned up
some bizarre findings: no footprints of any of the residents were found, if
they had vacated the village; all of the Eskimos’ sled dogs were found
buried under a 12-foot-high snow drift – they had all starved to death; all
of the Eskimos’ food and provisions were found undisturbed in their huts.
And there was one last unnerving discovery: the Eskimos’ ancestral graves
had been emptied.
