The Dyatlov Pass Incident

The Dyatlov Pass Incident is, in the my opinion, one of the most intriguing unsolved mysteries in history.

A group of ten skiers set out on an expedition through the Ural Mountains in Russia on January 25, 1959. After one of the party, Yuri Yudin, fell ill and turned back, the remaining skiers went off course and were forced to make camp on the side of the mountain Khloat Syakhl (Mountain of the Dead) on February 1. It was on the night of February 2 when things went horribly wrong. 

The expedition party's tent, February 26, 1959.

It was almost a month later when search parties discovered their tent. The tent had been torn down and evidently slashed open from the inside. Following the trail of footprints leading away from the tent, they soon found the bodies of five of the skiers scattered throughout the forest near the camp. They had all died of hypothermia. Some of them were partially clothed, suggesting that they left the tent in such a hurry that they could not get dressed. 

A strange, out-of-focus picture taken from the camera
of one of the victims. Were they trying to show us something?

Things got much stranger when the other four bodies were found in May. One died from the cold, but one was killed by trauma to the skull and two others by severe chest fractures typically associated with people involved in auto accidents. The tongue of one of the victims had also mysteriously vanished. There were no other footprints in the snow to suggest that they were attacked and, to add one more mystery to the disaster, testing showed that some of the clothing wore by the victims were highly irradiated. 

So many things about what happened that night remain unexplained. What drove these people out of their tents to freeze to death? Who or what could have inflicted the fatal wounds without leaving any evidence behind? What is the meaning behind the radiation and the missing tongue? Are there answers out there or is this truly unsolvable?

John Keel's Mothman Prophecies

I just finished reading The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel. If you're interested in Mothman or UFOs, this is a great book to read.

Let me start out by saying that the title of the book is a little misleading. Sightings of the Mothman are brought up but the entity itself is not focused on too much. The book is more about the various mysteries surrounding Point Pleasant as a whole.

Possible Mothman sighting

Throughout1967, the sleepy town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia was plagued by many unusual occurrences. Unidentified flying objects and unexplained lights appeared in the sky regularly, bizarre strangers in black suits began showing up in town, and a six-foot-tall, gray creature with glowing red eyes and wings was seen repeatedly over the course of the year. Some people were even contacted by aliens who claimed to know the future. These things continued to happen until the tragic collapse of The Silver Bridge on December 15, 1967.

The fact that the author of the book was actually investigating Point Pleasant at the time when all of this was happening lends a lot of authenticity to the book. The narrative is centered around facts, dates, actual events, and interviews with eyewitnesses, but Keel manages to make the story seem much more like a fictional thriller than a textbook. My only minor gripe about his writing style is that he seems digress from the main narrative a little too frequently (although these tangents are usually relevant and always interesting).

Keel spent several years researching and writing the book. In the book, he explains his theory that the aliens who contacted these people are actually entities that use hypnosis and forms of propaganda to perpetuate the myth of aliens for some unknown purpose. This theory is a little far fetched for me, but it suppose it can't be ruled out.

I came away from The Mothman Prophecies feeling inspired. Writing an investigative piece on a paranormal phenomena like this would be a dream come true to me. It's just too bad that nothing this strange ever happens in Michigan.