Russia’s Dyatlov Pass, also known as ‘Dead Mountain’ to the locals, has mysteriously claimed nine more victims. Or has it?
According to a nearby resident, who spoke with Russian news outlet E1.RU, nine tourists who set out to tour the Pass, where nine skiers were found gruesomely and mysteriously dead 60 years ago, were due back Wednesday morning but have yet to return. Just like last time, Russian authorities say the whole thing sounds fake, but okay, Newsweek reports:
“The Ministry of Emergency Situations in the Sverdlovsk Region told the outlet Izvestia that there are three registered groups at the pass, and they were in contact with all of them. ‘If the group is not registered, then there have been no reports of missing people either,’ the department said.”
As anyone who has ever used creepy internet research to justify to their boyfriend why they refused to sleep in a tent well knows, back in 1959 nine students, all the kind of people who love and are good at being outside, were found dead on the Pass. This would be a sad but very normal story about the dangers of going outside were it not for the fact that the ski party was found in various stages of undress, half a mile away from a tent that had been cut open from the inside. Furthermore, and quite horrifically, two of the hikers were missing their eyes, one was missing a tongue, and others had their skulls and/or chests cracked open. There were also traces of radioactivity on the bodies, some of whom had died of their injuries while others had succumbed to the below-freezing temperatures.
Over the years, figurative rubberneckers have speculated that everything from aliens to yetis to outraged locals killed the hikers. But perhaps the most bizarre theory of all is that of scientists, who say that maybe it was a baby avalanche that maimed the hikers in their tent yet somehow allowed them to wander half a mile with crushed skulls and chests and no eyes before perishing.
But really, no matter what happened to those poor kids, please, don’t go poking around trying to see for yourself. Outside is bad, and leaves one’s extremely fragile outer shell exposed to all manner of things that want to rip it open, and outside is even worse when one is purposely fucking around trying to make ghosts agitated. Hopefully, these new hikers have a safe journey back indoors, but please, everyone else, let this be a lesson to all of you—while it’s still possible to die mysteriously indoors, at least there’s a much smaller chance you will also be very cold, and it’s almost never because of yetis.