Imagine: you set out for a hiking trip with eight of your friends from school and an instructor. But a couple days into the trip, you’re not feeling well. You try to stick it out and maybe take it easy for a little while, but you’re not feeling any better. So you head back, leaving nine people behind. You figure you’ll reunite with them soon and see how the rest of the trip went.
But after a few weeks, you’ve heard nothing from your friends, and no one else has heard from them either. It’s been nearly a month, and though the trip was snowy and arduous, everyone had expected to see them back by now. As friends and family’s worries grow nearly to a panic, a search party is formed. But they have no explanation for what they eventually find.
The nine other people on your hiking trip are all dead under mysterious circumstances. One night while they slept, something caused them to literally tear out of their tents from the inside and run, shoeless and not dressed appropriately, down the hill and away from their campsite, where they all died.
Five of the hikers are found fairly close to the campsite, but four of them were found even further away in a ravine. Although the official cause of death is listed as hypothermia for most of the hikers, they are all riddled with horrifying injuries and even mutilations, ranging from fractured skulls to broken ribs to lacerations to missing their eyeballs and tongues.
Yeah, you read that right. Missing eyeballs.
And no one is left alive to explain what happened.
This is the reality of the mystery of Dyatlov Pass.
In January of 1959, nine students from the Ural Polytechical Institute and their instructor set out across the Ural Mountains for their hike.
After a few days, Yuri Yudin was the one person who turned back. And that one decision, and the fact that he didn’t feel well, may have been the only thing that kept him alive.
So what happened to the other nine people on the trip? What the actual hell would make you tear your way out of your tent—not open it and walk out, but tear your way out in a panic—in the middle of the night and run across the snowy mountains barefoot? And what caused their gruesome and unexplainable injuries?
Part of the reason why this garnered so much attention was because it was so unexpectedly and weirdly tragic. But part of the reason of why it got people speculating was because Russian authorities were kiiiind of sketch about the whole thing. They didn’t look too deeply into it and wrapped the whole investigation up fairly quickly, and all they put for cause of death was “an unknown compelling force.”
I mean what the actual hell is that?
That’s almost as bad as last spooky Saturday when the doctor put that Zona Heaster Shue died of an “everlasting faint”. What are these investigators doing? What’s going on here?
Investigators didn’t think there was a third party, like someone trying to kill them, involved because they didn’t find any footprints that didn’t seem to belong to the hikers. They also didn’t seem to think that fire or smoke had caused them to flee the site. Some people believe that the hikers thought there was an avalanche incoming, and they were trying to get away before it buried their tents, but there was no evidence of an avalanche found at the site.
It’s been sixty years and this mystery remains unsolved—but that doesn’t mean there’s a lack of theories. And if it wasn’t spooky enough already as you sit there wondering just what exactly is going on here, it gets even spookier and stranger when you dive into the many theories floating around.
The first few theories about the Dyatlov Pass incident are fairly reasonable. But unfortunately, the fairly reasonable theories don’t explain the extensive injuries or the situation in its entirety.
First, we have to ask ourselves, what made these people cut their way out of their tents? You can only assume that if you can’t find the entrance to your tent and you have to cut a hole in it to get out, you are either in a complete panic, completely disoriented, or in immediate danger—or all three.
Some people theorize that the campers had hooked up some sort of a stove/heating apparatus in their tent with a vent heading out, but that somehow their ventilation system got backed up and the tent filled with smoke. Unable to see through the darkness and smoke where the tent’s door was, they just cut their way out.
Fair enough. That makes total sense. 100%. But then what the hell happened to them after they were out of the tent? Why did they all separate and run in different directions, and how did they all end up with such gruesome injuries? They didn’t just run out there and freeze to death. They ran out and ended up with multiple lacerations and wounds, broken bones, cracked skulls, and missing eyes. There was evidence that some of them were trying to climb up a tree and scraped the skin off their arms in the process.
Another common and reasonable theory is that of an animal attack, but the injuries the hikers had didn’t quite match those of an animal attack, and they found no evidence of animals or footprints from any animals entering the area and then leaving. It’s also reported that there’s not a lot of wildlife on these mountains due to the harsh conditions and lack of resources.
The animal attack theory and the stove in the tent theory also don’t explain two other inexplicable portions of the case: the fact that two of the hikers had evidence of radiation on their clothes, and the mysterious last photograph taken by one of them.
Apparently, before they fled the scene, one of the hikers actually took the time to set up a camera and take this photo:
Granted, it doesn’t look like much at first glance, but it’s definitely gotten people speculating and wondering what it could be and why the hikers thought it was important to get a photo of it. The speculation about this photo and how they ended up is largely what opens up the more supernatural theories about this case.
And there’s one big theory that explains the panic, the injuries, the radiation, and the mysterious photo.
Aliens.
No, I’m serious, though. Ancient Aliens/Giorgio jokes aside, this is one of the top theories about the Dyatlov Pass case: that the hikers were visited and attacked by aliens in the middle of the night, and made a desperate last attempt to get a photo of the beings before they fled in fear and were eventually killed and even had parts of their bodies removed. Could the photo be a fleeting image of a UFO or alien spacecraft in the sky above them?
Others speculate it may have been a yeti, which, for those of you who don’t know, is basically just a cold climate/Siberian version of Bigfoot.
But if you’ve seen Rudolph, you probably knew that already.
Again, there weren’t any footprints detected from another animal—even a Bigfoot type animal—but it is a popular theory.
Despite the Russian government saying that they didn’t think there was a third party involved, another popular theory is that it was some sort of serial killer who made his way up the mountains with the sole purpose of targeting the Dyatlov group. Of course, this doesn’t seem very likely, because this is a hell of a difficult hike up these mountains and definitely wasn’t suited for anyone inexperienced or unprepared. To the best of their knowledge, the members of the Dyatlov party were the only people on the mountain, and there was no evidence of an extra person being there. It’s also unlikely that one person could have taken out all nine of them without anyone being able to overpower them or team up to take that one person down. Plus, the cameras were left behind, including one hiker who was found with his camera still around his neck, looking as if he’d been clutching it when he died.
(There are post-mortem photos of the hikers online if it’s something you want to see, but I won’t post them here so that no one is caught off guard or triggered as you’re scrolling through. But if you want to see them…I’m just saying dyatlovpass.com is a really wonderful and expansive resource. Do with it what you will.)
Is it likely someone would have made their way up there to murder the hikers and then risked the chance of leaving behind photographic evidence by not taking the cameras when they left?
Another theory purports that it could have been the Russian government could have been running some sort of secretive tests in this area because it was so isolated and that these somehow harmed the hikers, caused some sort of panic, or that they were disposed of so that they wouldn’t share with others what they saw out in the Ural mountain range. This does seem to be supported by the way the investigators barely looked into the case before they summed it up with a simple “I dunno, guys, it was an unknown force, let’s go home for the day.”
And one final theory that I find really interesting is the Mansi theory. The Mansi are an indigenous people from the area who apparently had very bad feelings toward the mountain where the hikers were heading. Some say the Mansi referred to it as “Dead Mountain” or “Don’t Go There”, and I’ve even heard reports that the group was warned by some Mansi people not to hike there because it was cursed and too dangerous, because nine of their hunters disappeared there.
After the incident, investigators found the skeleton of a Mansi chum (or tent) northeast of where the Dyatlov group was discovered. Some theorized that the Mansi could have attacked the hikers, while others believe the chum could have belonged to a Mansi person who also disappeared on “Dead Mountain”. Is it possible the mountain really was cursed, and the Dyatlov hiking group were just a few in a long line of victims?
Guys. This case is weird. The further you delve into this case, the weirder it gets. I cannot emphasize this to you enough: what I’m sharing with you here today is a fraction of how weird this is. It is the tiniest tip of the proverbial iceberg. Truly. These are by no means all the theories about what happened, and by no means is this a comprehensive view of the evidence.
If you want to look into this further, I highly recommend it. Sure, there might be a reasonable explanation—but the whole thing is just so strange, and when you start seeing it really broken down, looking at the extensive lists of injuries that the hikers obtained, and digging more and more into the theories of what could have happened, it will mess with your mind more and more. This is a really tiny version of a much bigger case that the Russian government is just sweeping under the rug, and the more they try to do that, the more people wonder why. I highly encourage looking into it more for yourself, but I warn you—you will be going down a very deep rabbit hole, so clear your day.
What do you guys think? Had you heard of Dyatlov Pass before this? I always assume that everyone knows about this because in my household this is our bread and butter, but then I mention it to someone and they act like I’m crazy, and I remember not everyone is as weird as me. What’s your theory about what happened to the hikers? Do you think it was natural causes or something totally explainable, or are we working with something supernatural here?
One thing is for sure—even if it wasn’t a supernatural cause, the whole thing is just really disconcerting…and spooky.
Let me know what you think in the comments! As always, I’d love to hear from you. <3