The Dyatlov Pass Incident: Nine Hikers, One Tent Cut From Inside — Ural Mountains, 1959

About this episode

In February of 1959, nine experienced hikers set out on a skiing expedition through the northern Ural Mountains of the Soviet Union. They never came home. When a search party finally found their camp three and a half weeks later, the tent had been cut open from the inside, and the hikers had fled into subzero temperatures without proper clothing — some in socks, some barefoot — running down the mountainside away from their shelter and, as far as anyone can tell, away from nothing at all. Some of the bodies had died of hypothermia, tragic but comprehensible. Others were not comprehensible at all: two had crushed chests with no external bruising, injuries typically associated with a serious car accident. One was missing his tongue and his eyes. Some of the clothing tested positive for radiation. The Soviet investigation closed the case within months, attributing the deaths to what the official report called "a compelling natural force," without specifying what that force was. The files were sealed. Host Shawn Spainhour takes you into the full story: the group and their expedition, the specific and deeply strange condition of the camp and the bodies, the six decades of theories ran