FOXSYLVANIA

The Discovery Channel recently presented a two hour investigation on the mysterious deaths of nine Russian students who perished horribly while hiking in the Ural Mountains in January of 1959…the Dyatlov Pass Incident. The deaths were horrendous, involving injuries so severe that Russian investigators later ruled that they could only have been inflicted by something more powerful than a human; there were skull fractures, ribs broken, and damages to internal organs.  Injuries were compared to those which might be suffered in automobile accidents. Bodily mutilations  were also seen; one victim had their eyes gouged out, and their tongue and lips missing. The show inferred that the students were viciously slaughtered by a Yeti, investigating the history and other reported sightings of the creature in that area, and speculating on the last days of the ill-fated hiking party.  It made for compelling if disturbing viewing…

Now reports of the Yeti are numerous in the Northern Ural Mountains of Siberia, with over 5,000 eyewitness testimonies on record.  Yeti/Bigfoot creatures go by many different names dependent on the area, with those in the area of the incident often calling the cryptid the Menk or more simply, the Russian Yeti.  The creature is described as being about 8-1/2 feet high, to have little in the way of a neck, to be hairy, and walk in a bipedal fashion with somewhat of a hunched posture.  They are also reported to make whistling-type sounds that carry and reverberate.  Yeti attacks while rare are alleged to have occurred in 1925, 1945, and 1953, possibly when the Yeti feel cornered or threatened.

Anyways, none of the students returned from what was supposed to have been a two-week hiking trip. Perceiving themselves to being followed several days into the journey, tensions and concerns heightened until on their final night alive, something so frightened the hikers that they abandoned their tent, fleeing only partly dressed into the frigid night to a point almost a mile away where they split into smaller groups, all the individuals in which met with violent ends; some may have been trying to climb a tree to escape, others were found lying face down as if fleeing a pursuit from behind, and still others were found in a group intertwined together as if in hiding.  Their frozen bodies were discovered some time later, and in their abandoned and ruined camp a short note was found bearing the haunting message, “Now we know the snowman exists.”  

Film was also recovered from the doomed expedition, one image of which showed a blurry image of a large, hulking creature (see picture) that was perhaps taken on the run.  The last photo showed distorted bright lights in the sky, which it was speculated may have been some kind of secret Soviet munitions test; this was a remote location in Siberia, after all.  Thinking that this may have scared the Yeti into an attack, the investigative duo and their camera team fired off flares seeking to provoke any Yeti in the area; only one armed hunter had accompanied the group for protection.  An eerie sound was heard from the forest, with the solitary armed man suggesting that they needed to leave at that point, and wisely they did.  The team left with no hard evidence of the Yeti, but a general belief that something unknown was out there, and may well have decimated the Russian hikers in 1959.

The Soviets had closed their investigation of the incident after only several weeks, officially maintaining that overwhelming natural forces such as an avalanche had killed the hikers or caused them to freeze to death.  A surviving member of the Russian investigative team was interviewed, however, saying that a military boot cover was found at the site of the abandoned camp, suggesting that the Soviet military had been there prior to their arrival and orchestrated a cover-up.  UFO theorists also offer the explanation that perhaps the hikers were offed by aliens, with the lights in the skies that fateful evening coming from extraterrestrial craft.  High levels of radioactivity were reported to have been detected in the area, with the skin of the victims reported by one who attended their funerals to have been deeply tanned, perhaps radiation burned.  

Whatever we may choose to believe, the Dyatlov Pass Incident continues to horrify and fascinate over half a century since the event, with many unanswered questions posed that may never find resolution…