Dyatlov Pass Incident.
So I was just surfing the internet when I came across this article. I searched and don't believe this has been posted before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident
If you don't feel like sifting through the article - Nine skiers were on the mountain Kholat Syakhl (translated in English as Mountain of the Dead), and had pitched their tents for the night. For some reason during the night, they fled their tents, apparently ripping them from the inside. They only had partial clothing, and some had ripped clothing.
They ran off, and the footprints showed no signs of struggle. They were found dead, some with fatal blunt trauma. Three of the nine skiers had extreme blunt force trauma, which one investigator likened to that of a high speed car crash. None of the skiers had external wounds. One of the doctors remarked that the fatal injuries of the three bodies could not have been caused by another human being, "because the force of the blows had been too strong and no soft tissue had been damaged".
The bodies were found to have high levels of radiation, and one woman was missing her tongue.
At the funeral, all victims had a strange orange-brown tan, and gray hair.
Access to the area was barred for 3 years after the incident, and the case remains unsolved to this day.
And for some wikipedia copypasta:
Another group of hikers (about 50 kilometers south of the incident) reported that they saw strange orange spheres in the night sky to the north (likely in the direction of Kholat Syakhl) on the night of the incident. Similar "spheres" were observed in Ivdel and adjacent areas continually during the period of February to March 1959, by various independent witnesses (including the meteorology service and the military).
The final verdict was that the group members all died because of an "unknown compelling force". The inquest ceased officially in May 1959 due to the "absence of a guilty party". The files were sent to a secret archive, and the photocopies of the case became available only in the 1990s, with some parts missing.
So, thoughts and reactions? I personally think it's pretty creepy. Some are skeptical of the complete validity of this incident. Either way, it's a cool (and tragic) story.
