Jess: 0:00

Were they drinking Russia? Vodka, vodka, vodka, tallywhacker.

Hannah: 0:05

Tallywhacker. Have you never heard that you know what a tallywhacker. Is right, it's a penis. No, it's the little flap thing for the zipper.

Jess: 0:12

I don't like that.

Hannah: 0:13

That is what a tallywhacker is when were they? Did you know that fun fact?

Jess: 0:17

I did not.

Hannah: 0:18

No, I don't know anything about a tallywhacker. Go ahead, Jess. Okay. Hey, murder readers. I'm Danica. What's going on? This is John Olson and I and the host of Scalarius.

Speaker 3: 0:34

Scalarius is your new favorite paranormal and comedy podcasts.

Jess: 0:39

At Scalarius.

Speaker 3: 0:40

We talked to comedians about paranormal experiences they've had on, whether it was in a hotel they were staying in, a bar, club or theater they were performing in, or maybe it was just a story they were dying to tell. Either way, Scalarius is the podcast that you need to hear. You can find Scalarius anywhere there's podcasts, but specifically right here on Spotify.

Jess: 1:13

Hello Wanderers. I'm Jess and I'm Hannah, and welcome to Wicked Wanderings.

Hannah: 1:22

Hello Hannah, hello Jess Chituga.

Jess: 1:24

Chituga, cocaine and Jonathan. Hey, thank you for having me back again.

Hannah: 1:31

I'm not sure why you did, but I appreciate it. We love having you. We appreciate you, yes.

Jess: 1:37

So last week we started talking about the Diatlov pass incident, right yes, when nine hikers went missing and it had taken a long time for the university to do anything about it, despite the family's pleas. The search parties eventually went out at the end of the last episode and they found the hikers tent in a fire pit a mile away. Then they found out what looked like a human knee.

Speaker 3: 2:05

Uh-oh.

Jess: 2:07

Yes, so let's get going on this story.

Jess: 2:10

Go down, mm-hmm. So after they notified other search teams, the snow was excavated and they ended up finding two bodies, oh, lying side by side, both men, and they are not wearing jackets or pants. One has on a checkered shirt and a pair of swim trunks under long underwear. The left leg of the long underwear was torn away and his feet are bare with snow wedged between his toes. The other body is slightly more covered in an undershirt, checkered shirt, long underwear, briefs and socks. The clothes on both bodies are shredded, leaving much of their discolored flesh exposed. One lies face down in the snow, his arms folded under his head like a pillow, and there are broken cedar branches lying beneath him. The other on his back, face turned upward. His mouth looked like it had been gotten by an animal, like maybe a bird. There must have been a reason for it, right? There's some kind of.

Hannah: 3:15

Like a rabbit or a cardinal yes, a bird Morning, dove Morning. Or when you talk about, like ostrich Ostrich, don't think there's ostriches in Russia. Yeah, peacock.

Jess: 3:25

Peacock, peacock. So his mouth must have been gotten by an animal.

Speaker 3: 3:32

Okay, we'll just leave that back.

Jess: 3:35

The searchers are still able to identify them. However, the man lying face up is Georgie Kravonyshchenko, and the other man is Yuri Durovchenko. Good try. I'm having hard times with words in general, let alone Russian last names.

Hannah: 3:50

That's all right you tried. So Georgie and Yuri.

Jess: 3:53

Yeah, georgie and Yuri. There is also a search going on in a nearby ravine, stepan Kurakova, who was the man's elder, who was joined the searches. He also has a police dog and he was a well-respected elder of the man's village. This dog is getting anxious and the kind of anxious before they are about to find something. They're in a spot they searched a few days before with no luck, and there are a few hundred yards from where the two other bodies were found and the focus of the search had been shifted since the bodies were found and they were almost a mile away from the tent, a mile. The dog soon finds an area of saplings and there was no doubt that the dog was onto something. The searchers began to dig and they didn't have to dig very far because inches below the surface they hit something hard. They find a dark patch of cloth and more snow is cleared. They make out a joint covered in wool, an elbow. They continue to dig until a human emerges. The arms are held across the chest in what looks like to be a defensive position, but they are clutching the birch, pulling the tree downward, giving it an awkward angle.

Jess: 5:13

The hiker is dressed more warmly than the other two, but not by much. He had on a sweater over a checkered shirt, a fur vest and ski trousers. He is without a hat, gloves and shoes, and his watch had stopped at 531. His body seemed to be in a position of suspended struggle, as if the victim had been fighting the elements until his last breath. This was the group's leader, igor Dyatlov, and after the searchers found Dyatlov's body, they start to fan out from the birch tree where the land fans upward in the direction towards the hiker's tent. Another police dog, alma, starts to pace back and forth over a smooth patch of snow. The dog starts to dig and the searcher joins in the effort, and a figure soon appears beneath the snow. It is Zina.

Hannah: 6:13

I'm sorry, so one of their last names was Dyatlov. Yeah, the leader. Is that why they call it? Oh, okay, please continue.

Jess: 6:25

Thanks for your permission, I'm just kidding. She is lying on her right side, face down, with her arms twisted below her. Her face is dark and there's dried blood on it. Her right leg is bent as if she was mid-climbed before collapsing. She is the first one to be dressed somewhat sensibly for the climate. She was wearing a hat, a ski jacket and ski pants, but again no boots but had socks on her feet.

Jess: 6:56

The first four bodies were returned back to Sverlovsk and the shock of in reality of the situation sets in on the friends and families and they begin to look for someone to blame. Many hold the university to blame for allowing them to embark on such a dangerous hike. The Mansi are also mentioned as their hunter's footprints are not far from the hiker's route. A team of 30 men search an area of 30,000 square yards by poking eight foot poles through the snow. So they lined up shoulder to shoulder and just would poke the snow, move another foot, poke the snow to see if they could get into, find another body. They aren't having much luck. So they actually request miners with metal detectors to come out so they can cross some deeper reeds. And the miners actually showed up the next day with their metal detectors to see if they could get anything.

Hannah: 7:59

What were they hoping to find?

Jess: 8:00

that was metal, though if it was just bodies, I'm sure some of their gear may have been metal.

Hannah: 8:06

If they had gear on them.

Jess: 8:07

I don't know If they had a watch, but you do have a point, because they didn't find anything with their detectors. I knew it. So they join the search by probing the snow with the rest of them. On March 1st, the new lead investigator, lev Ivanov, shows up on the scene, and this is now a month after the hikers have died and five of them are still missing, headquartered, and they have lost all hope of finding the rest of them alive. And now the search has changed to a recovery mission. Ivanov focuses on the fire pit around the cedar tree and determines that the fire had not been, had not burned for more than two hours. And they noticed by the broken branches nearby that one of the men had actually climbed the tree to break branches to burn and had fallen in the process, which would have been consistent with the cuts on Doroshenko's body as well as the branches found beneath him.

Hannah: 9:08

So did he like realize, like, oh shit, it's cold, mm-hmm.

Jess: 9:13

Yeah, so this is what's so interesting about this whole case, because like no one knows Really what happened. Yeah they know, they left the tent in a hurry and and then two of them started a fire. Three of them started up back towards the tent and Then the other three will talk about in a minute.

Jess: 9:39

Yeah, that's why this case is so intriguing. So once the men started the fire, it would have been warm enough to warm them, but it wouldn't have lasted for long. So the the investigator believes that at least one other person was with them at the site at one point in time.

Hannah: 9:57

Wait, someone else besides who is in the party?

Jess: 10:00

Well, someone of the party. I mean, I guess they wouldn't really know, but they just assumed it was one of the other hikers. But also, none of the hikers had boots on Because, remember, they found the tent and all the boots were lined up. So you can kind of tell the difference in the footprints between a barefoot and Right absolutely yeah so the weather began to worsen that day and the searchers started to turn back.

Jess: 10:26

But another group actually found the hiker storage shelter nearby, near the river. There was nothing amiss in this shelter, aside from the meager amount of firewood and I have a small theory about this shelter, but I will get to it later and it was filled with necessary food and reserves that would have been necessary for their return trip the unnecessary things they wouldn't need to hike up the mountain. That would have just added extra weight to their packs. So on March 5th, two searchers, probing the previously unexplored area about a thousand yards from the hiker's tent, hit something not far beneath the surface A fifth body, rustic. His body is lying face down with his right leg bent beneath him and his right fist pulled towards his chest. He also has on a checker shirt must have been in at the time Sweater ski trousers and several pairs of socks and a single felt shoe. So the felt shoe was like the what they had on with the boots.

Hannah: 11:33

So it's like inside the boot. Yeah, okay.

Jess: 11:37

So like in a little extra layer. Yeah, he was also wearing a ski cap, which was still intact on his head, which is a strange theory, get strange, given the theory that the wind blew the hikers from their campsite, which is a Theory we'll get in later. So that's one of the theories, that there was just excessive winds that blew. Yeah, that's bull. Yeah, he was found midway through, midway between Dyatlov and Zina, where Dyatlov and Zina had been found. So rustic is found midway between where Dyatlov and Zina had been found their bodies in turn, lining up with the site of the tent. So he is oriented as is, as if he's been working his way up the slope at the time of his collapse. And, hannah, I'm sorry, I was going to prepared with a map of where the bodies were so you could see, but I'll post it on our Instagram. You know the visual learner. I Apologize, I failed you.

Jess: 12:40

The searchers noticed a small hollow of encrusted snow near his mouth, where his breath has melted the surrounding snow. So he had been alive some time after he fell. But was most startling is the front of his head is deeply disc, discolored, as if sustained a blunt force to his head. Oh, now four bodies remain and On March 4th the autopsies of Igor, zina, georgie and Oreschenko Were completed, and rustics was completed on March 11th. They would conclude that the five hikers had died from hypothermia, which isn't really surprising Considering the circumstances that they were found in, but how they died, yeah, it is still a mystery the whole wind thing I'm still thinking about yeah, don't worry, we'll get there.

Jess: 13:33

And I have a theory, one that makes sense, that I've never heard of until I read this book. Ten days after the first bodies were found, five the five hikers were buried in Sferdlosk. The parents had actually fought for their right to bury their children in their hometown. The local party officials keep in mind, communist Soviet Union were trying to control where they were buried. They wanted them buried in Evdel, buried, buried. They wanted them buried. They wanted them buried in Evdel, and their parents wanted them buried closer to home, which is completely understandable matter, though.

Jess: 14:14

Yeah, I don't know and see, this is what is shady, but the officials still controlled how the funerals would be observed. The services were ordered to be split over two days, and when the mourners asked that the procession of the first funeral be allowed to proceed past the UPI campus that was located just south of the cemetery, the police refused and instead had the caskets directed from the morgue to the cemetery via the shortest, least conspicuous route.

Hannah: 14:47

So was it all about money for that part of the community?

Jess: 14:52

I think, you know, I don't know, I think they just Cuz they good, yeah, and I think that they didn't want a lot of publicity, they didn't want big crowds, and that is our hiding something. See, that's what I was thinking so. So the message from the police and city officials was clear Large crowds of mourners and any resulting publicity weren't welcome, and so that was my question what are they trying to hide? So there were more than 1000 people flooding the neighborhood and the director of the Dyatlov Foundation, who the author of the book had interviewed and I talked to about this he was actually 12 years old at the time and he lived across the street from the cemetery and he went down and joined the mourners, and he states in the book that he could recognize the Soviet police when they saw. When he saw them, he remembers seeing several men in civilian clothing paying close attention to the funeral crowd, but not the service itself, and he thinks that they were KGB and that they were there to monitor the events of the day. But why?

Hannah: 16:13

Why would the KGB?

Speaker 3: 16:14

care.

Jess: 16:14

Yeah, why did this event require Soviet police, some missing hikers, come on? Yeah right, who would care in that retrospect? Yeah, so it seems suspicious. But I have to admit that I'm looking at this from a 2024 American lens and I can't pretend to understand what a 1959 communist lens would look like. So what was common for the time? What was it? What was common for the government to do or to restrict? So it may have been a common practice to restrict large crowds and the publicity around them. I'm not sure, but it still seems a little shady.

Hannah: 16:52

I feel like they had more to worry about in 1959 than possibly during the Cold War.

Jess: 16:59

Yeah, but like so yeah, that's what makes it seems suspicious.

Hannah: 17:06

I mean, that's why there's so much on this, you know, because, like, why would okay hikers go missing all the time? Why these people, why these yeah?

Jess: 17:18

So Georgie was buried the following day three miles from where his friends lay and only a fraction of the mourners were present. Juden, the hiker that had turned back early due to the pain that he was experiencing, wasn't even able to attend the funerals. He was currently in Ivdel helping investigators identify the property of the tent, and his account is heartbreaking, and in the words of Hannah here I quote from the book and I quote, and I quote Juden encountered all the familiar items, but there were surprises too.

Jess: 17:58

In Kolotov's backpack, along with a broken comb, a grindstone and an aluminum flask, juden found a bit of contraband a pack of flavored cigarettes. It looked like the cunning. Kolotov I wrote it two different ways had managed to feed his nicotine addiction after all, the no smoking pledge be damned. And in Igor's notebook Juden discovered a photograph of Zina tucked inside.

Hannah: 18:27

Had.

Jess: 18:27

Igor been using a picture of his friend as a bookmark. Oh, I personally doubt that. Or did this mean something more? Oh sweet, it was now, of course, impossible to know, and so it went until some time later there laid a diminished pile of clothing and miscellaneous tools to which Juden was unable to assign an owner, and he left the office emotionally spent. Can you imagine doing that? No, how hard would that be. Like sorting your dead friends things. No, thank you, no thanks.

Hannah: 19:09

Why did he have to do it though?

Jess: 19:11

He was the only one that would have known. So after the funerals, the friends and families of the hikers began to explore alternative explanations for their deaths, along with the officials. Weird behavior Some friends had met with Georgie's father and discussed the case. These friends were hikers and they were around the area the same time, and they told Georgie's father that the same night, february 1st, they witnessed a strange occurrence in the sky over the Ural Mountains.

Hannah: 19:46

Like what A worm or a yallus.

Jess: 19:51

They saw an extremely bright light of some rocket. It was so bright that the hikers who were trying to sleep went to look at it, got up out of the tent and went to look at it and for some time the sound of strong thunder came from afar. Another team, on February 17th which by this time the hikers were already deceased reported seeing orbs in the sky. The two men had gotten up to prepare breakfast and they saw what they initially thought could be the moon, but then a spark lit in the center of the spot. It burned for several seconds, steadily, grew in size and flew swiftly west. One of the men thought it was some celestial body that was falling toward the Earth and he thought that it was some planet that was going to come in contact with the Earth.

Jess: 20:45

And the Earth would perish. So that tells us that there were numerous reports in the area around the time not just the night of weird lights and objects in the sky. The investigators developed the film of the hikers' camera, and one last picture from Georgie's camera would continue to puzzle everyone. The image was a dark, as if shot at night or in enclosed space, but it was aimed towards an indistinct light source that dominated the left side of the frame. I will post a picture of this on our social media, but I personally since you know I'm such a camera and photography expert think it's probably just an accidental picture, but I'll post this to show you. One volunteer searcher and fellow hiker who became closely involved with the investigation stated that he did not need photographs to tell him that there was more to the case than some hikers running up against bad weather. The prosecutor had already been exploring the possibility that they did not die as a result of the elements.

Jess: 22:00

Speaking of which, something interesting that was mentioned in the book was that in the first days of the investigation, the head investigator Ivanov reiterated that the students hadn't died of natural causes and that had been murder. Well, in mid-March, ivanov was called away to Moscow for reasons that he would not disclose to others. Upon his return, the volunteers and searchers noticed a pronounced change in his demeanor. They could barely recognize him. He didn't mention the murders or spheres or orbs anymore and he advised everyone else to hold their tongues. But suspicious. In 1990, he wrote a letter to the newspaper and Ivanov revealed that the regional Communist Party had instructed him not to pursue the connection with the strange lights in the sky regarding the hiker's death. What? During the Cold War, such topics were prohibited in order to prevent the slightest possibility of disclosing data Exactly On a missile and nuclear techniques. Interesting, don't you think it's a little sus, but yeah, three months later, almost to the day the hikers had died, on May 3rd, a manzee searcher comes across unusual branches. They appear to have been cut by a knife.

Jess: 23:45

So they start probing the area and another volunteer who had been probing found clothing at the end of his probe. So they dug down deeper and ended up digging a deep hole that would eventually reach eight feet deep and an area of a hundred square feet. They hit something hard and their hopes were raised, but it was just a tree trunk. So they moved to another area not too far away, but later that day they found clothing while probing. What is odd is the clothing is abandoned in the snow and not attached to anybody, so it's just random clothing.

Jess: 24:28

Some of the clothing, however, looks as if it was shredded. There is a crumpled gray Chinese woolen vest, turned inside out, knitted trousers, a brown woolen sweater with lilac thread, a right trouser leg and a bandage one yard long. The more the men dug, the closer they got to the creek bed. And the second day they find more clothing black cotton sport trousers with the right leg missing and half the woman's sweater belonging to Lauda. So I'm sitting here thinking like what the fuck is going on. Why are all these strange things being found? What happened that night? And maybe that may be why so many people, like I said, are interested in this case?

Hannah: 25:13

Right, because there is no explanation. Yeah, logical explanation.

Jess: 25:18

So on the second evening, the men's shovel hits a body. It is clearly a man, but the decomposition from the water has made him unrecognizable. So this was like I said. Three months later the snow started to melt and so he was wearing a gray sweater and a strangely and strangely two wristwatches. The men continue to dig, soon uncovering three more bodies, lauda says the only one they are able to identify. She is dressed in a cap, a yellow undershirt, two sweaters, brown ski trousers and two socks on one foot, and her other foot is wrapped with a torn sweater. So maybe the half of the sweater that was found earlier that day was cut so she could wrap it around her feet, and I'm wondering if that is why those clothes were shredded. Maybe they shredded to wrap their exposed parts of their bodies so they wouldn't freeze.

Hannah: 26:21

See, I was thinking yeti, but yeah, yours is a little more logical, maybe.

Jess: 26:27

So her head is pointed upstream, while the other three men are oriented toward the center of the stream. Two of the men are found in a position of embrace in what appears to be an attempt to conserve heat. Does that break your heart? It does. It's sad. They remove the bodies from the creek and have them wrapped to slow for their decomposition. Ivanov notes that the body parts that weren't in the water are still mostly intact, but the flesh that was directly in the stream had started to decompose. And what's interesting is Layuta's tongue was missing, and I believe her eyeballs were gone. But those were also parts that were in the water, and so it would make sense. I'm not going to post the videos or the pictures of their bodies. You can look them up online if you want to.

Hannah: 27:26

Oh really.

Jess: 27:27

Yeah, they're all online and it's sad but I'm not going to post them.

Hannah: 27:31

Are they in the book or just online?

Jess: 27:35

They're mostly online and you can see how she came to rest and her face was in the stream.

Hannah: 29:14

Yeah, you don't necessarily see that.

Jess: 29:18

So Ivanov requested a helicopter to transport the bodies back to Sverlosk, but the Air Force pilot refused to transport them or let the bodies even close to the aircraft. He may have not been aware of the mission, or he just didn't want the bodies that were wrapped in thewrapped, and so he refused to carry out the task until they were placed in zinc lined coffins which were sealed to prevent toxic or biological leakage. I mean, I kind of understand where he was coming from, like bodies who start to decompose, are going to start to do crazy shit. Maybe he didn't want dead body juices in his helicopter.

Hannah: 30:02

You're nicer than I am, because I'm like, were you just superstitious about it Also true.

Jess: 30:09

Or maybe he knew something else, something that everyone else didn't Like. Top secret communistcommunist girlsquirrel shit. Say that five times a rise Like top secret communist squirrel shit and insider information. Either way, the zinc lined coffins arrived the following day and the bodies were brought back to Evdel where the autopsies were performed. The first examination was performed on 24 year old Alexander Kolovotov Alexander Alexander. He too was missing his footwear, his ankle had been bandaged due to a previous injury, and the coroner found that he also died of hypothermia.

Jess: 30:54

Thirty seven year old Sasha's examination seemed to be going as all the others had. He was wearing generous layers of clothing, no shoes. His skin and organs showed the same discoloration. However, on his midsection, on the right side of his chest, he had sustained a serious injury. He had five fractured ribs, resulting in severe hemorrhaging. They concluded that the fractures had been inflicted by a large force while the victim had still been alive. The 23-year-old Kolia had similar violent injuries, but his were to his head. It was concluded that he had died of impressed fracture of skull dome and base with abundant hemorrhaging. They concluded again that the fractures had been inflicted while he was alive by the effect of a large force.

Jess: 31:52

The examination of Lauda was the most alarming. The 22-year-old's body had a massive thoracic damage, with internal hemorrhaging, including that of her right ventricle, plus fractures on nine of her ribs. And what was most disturbing was that her tongue was missing and her death was classified as violent. But these autopsies failed to provide any satisfactory answers to what happened that night, to cause all the hikers to leave their tent. Four days before the funerals, ivanov ordered radiological tests performed on the hikers, but those results would not be back for a while and the funerals of the remaining hikers were scheduled for May 22. And in this time only the families of the victims were permitted to attend. Ivanov denied the family's request for open casket due to the advanced decomposition. He made an exception only for Lauda's father. He had opened the coffin to show her father that she was dressed properly, and her father was so horrified by the condition of her body that he fainted on the spot.

Jess: 33:14

On May 28, six days after the final four funerals, Ivanov bowed to the pressure from his regional superiors to terminate the criminal investigation Effective immediately. The case was closed with no particular case for the hikers' death, but before he closed the case, he cited their deaths as an unknown compelling force. So now Hannah, Jessica, Hannah, are you ready to explore those theories and conspiracy theories? Oh, I absolutely am. We will start with your favorite one Bigfoot Yay.

Hannah: 33:57

Or rather the Yeti.

Jess: 33:58

The Yeti In Russia. So some people believe that Bigfoot was involved, especially considering one of the pictures that was on one of the hikers' cameras. Oh, really Like, if you look at this picture, oh, I think I have it on my phone. Hold on, I think I prepped this one at least, and let's see I did. Oh, I'm so excited Air dropping to Rob. So that is one of the pictures.

Hannah: 34:25

Oh, get out, Get the fuck out. That's from the one. They're cameras, yep Right.

Speaker 3: 34:32

Isn't the Yeti white? I don't know, this is clearly black. It is. It's a dark figure that's very human-like. I definitely don't think it's a Yeti. It's clearly a person.

Jess: 34:43

So I will post this on our social media for the listeners and it definitely makes you pause. So maybe the Yeti was tracking them the whole time, lying and waiting until they were all nice and cozy in their tent before he attacked. I mean, it could definitely explain some of the injuries they received.

Hannah: 35:05

I have a vote for this one. That's awesome.

Jess: 35:08

Or maybe that picture is actually one of the hikers messing around.

Hannah: 35:15

No, that's what I would go with.

Jess: 35:17

This was actually debunked and Josh Gates mentioned it on his episode of Expedition Unknown, as there was another picture on the same role of the hiker after this one.

Hannah: 35:32

You guys are no fun. Sorry, Hannah, I still think Bigfoot is real and there are episodes to come.

Jess: 35:37

I'm not saying he is not real, I'm just saying not in this case. He did not. He is alive and well, I'm sure he is. Another theory is a manzi attack, and it continues to get mentioned, even though it was quickly discarded in 1959. So, remember, the manzi were the local indigenous people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and there were tracks of the manzi hunters in the area, but they weren't near the tent and the nearest manzi village was 60 miles away. The manzi also knew to stay away from that mountain and they were also historically peaceful people and they even participated in the search efforts for the hikers. So that's a no-go.

Jess: 36:27

Another theory and I briefly mentioned this before is that they were blown away by high winds.

Jess: 36:33

This one I hadn't really heard of until I read this book, but the hikers were actually warned about dangerous winds on the pass from that forester that they talked to, and there are actually stories of locals being swept away, and this is also an angle seriously considered by investigators at the time.

Jess: 36:55

And the idea was that one or two people were outside the tent the ones that were probably wearing the cloth bootliners and they had stepped outside to pee or whatever when an overpowering wind took them by surprise. Their cries roused the inside of the tent not only to jump outside to save them but also to cut through the canvas in their haste. But the theory suggests that all the hikers would have flung themselves into the wind to save their friends One by one, heedless of the dangers. I personally don't think this theory is likely and I can't believe that the wind or their friends missing would have been enough of a reason to get them all outside of the tent without their boots or cutting through the tent, and it would have had to have blown all the nine hikers off the face of the mountain but not blow the tent away or any of the hikers hats.

Jess: 37:56

So I personally don't think that this is.

Hannah: 38:00

Nope, plausible absolutely not.

Jess: 38:02

There's also a theory of group of armed men that came in the middle of this out of the way mountain with high winds in the middle of winter at night, to lead the hikers to their deaths but not steal anything from their tent.

Hannah: 38:17

So while I think that Bigfoot is more plausible in this situation, it is probably these cloaked men during the night.

Jess: 38:31

It was actually briefly considered by Ivanov and his investigators, especially after they discovered the knife slashes at the back of the tent, but that was mostly dismissed once they realized that the cuts to the tent came from the inside, not the outside. There was also only nine sets of footprints at the scene, and there is simply no evidence of any visitors at the tent that night, and this scenario could also definitely provide some answers to why three of the hikers had violent injuries, but there is actually a really good explanation for that, which I've never heard before as well. So the three hikers who sustained and died from injuries were also found at the bottom of a 24 foot ravine. They were in the dark, they were running from the tent and didn't know what was ahead of them. They could have very well fallen on some rocks from 24 feet. That caused those injuries. As for Layuta's missing tongue, it could be blamed on natural decomposition. It is likely that the microfona in the water that she had been laying in for several weeks had decomposed the fleshiest parts of her body.

Jess: 39:53

A popular theory is that the government was conducting some weapons testing. Like I mentioned earlier, there are multiple accounts of people seeing lights in the sky around that time. This is one theory that Ivanov had believed to be connected to the hikers' deaths. In a 1990 interview he said that he wasn't sure that the orbs were weapons testing, but he was certain that they were directly related to the death of the hikers. In the Expedition Unknown episode, the director of the Dyatlov Foundation had a large piece of metal that was found at the mountain and Josh Gates was able to cut off a piece of that metal and have it tested and discovered that a piece of the metal was in fact from a missile, but one that was made after the incident. But this is where the whole government cover-up thing comes into play. Why did Ivanov change his attitude towards the case after visiting Moscow? Why did he tell others to hold his tongue and why did they pressure him to close the case? So it's definitely interesting and would definitely be an interesting rabbit hole to go down. There is another theory about radiation-related tests, as some of the clothes were tested, and I don't personally believe this one holds any weight, because they found the highest radiation on the clothes of Alexander Kolovotov, alexander who was going to school to become a nuclear physicist and had mostly been likely exposed elsewhere. And Josh Gates had also taken a core sample from the local trees and had them tested for radiation and they didn't find anything higher than what is normal for the environment. There are two more theories I will discuss and I'm going to leave the most likely one, in my opinion, to have happened, for last. The other one is an avalanche that sent them running from their tent. Donnie Ikor, the author of Dead Mountain I think that's how you pronounce his name, but why not fuck up that one when I've been fucking up the other ones Actually did the hike to the Ural Mountains with the director or the founder of the Dyatlov Foundation.

Jess: 42:26

So he actually did the hike in the winter and he had snowmobiles and stuff that they didn't have in 1995. And he actually went to and paid $19.59. And he actually went and paid his respects to the spot of the tent After being there himself. He thinks that the avalanche is unlikely and they did measurements of the incline. So the measurements of the incline pointed that an avalanche in the area would be unlikely. There are no records of an avalanche occurring on that mountain, and certainly not in the years since that night. In 1959, the investigators had not even entertained the idea as an avalanche as a possibility. Nor had they found any evidence. The tent was mostly intact and the poles were securely in the ground, and I mentioned in the first episode that after the expedition unknown episode in 2019 that the Russian government agreed to open the case again and they released their findings in 2020, I believe, or 2021 that the avalanche was the cause Right right, oh shit.

Jess: 43:43

So the last one, like I said, I've never heard of before and, to be honest, it kind of makes the most sense to me. What baffles me with this case is why did these experienced hikers, with Dyatlov as their hiking star and leader, leave the tent, which would be considered a place of safety from the elements, with little clothing on and below zero temperatures? It doesn't make sense so to me, since the tent was cut from the inside, the threat was in the tent. They needed to get out of the tent fast and they needed to get out now. There was no time for coats, boots, clothing, nothing. They needed to get out as fast as they could to save their lives. But why so? None of these theories have an explanation for that, in my opinion, except another theory.

Jess: 44:40

Donnie Ikor explores this in his book and he was a surfer, so he was interested in weather and he figured that there had to be some natural weather event that happened that night. He had found an article in Physics Today issue from 2000 that was titled Atmospheric Infrasound, and here I quote from the book and I quote, and I quote the study examined the occurrence of sound waves that travel through the air at frequencies below those on the audible spectrum Frequencies are referred to as infrasound. Infrasound is the opposite of ultrasound. It occurs below the threshold of human hearing at 20 hertz. A pioneer in the biological effects of infrasound was the Russian-born French scientist, vladimir Gevro, who discovered its impact by accident. During the 1960s, gevro and his lab assistants started experiencing inexplicable nausea, pain in their eardrums and shaking lab equipment, all without no apparent cause. After all the chemical and airborne sources had been rolled out, he eventually concluded that inaudible low-frequency sound waves were being generated by a motor of a large fan and duct system in the building where the lab was located. These low-frequency waves can cause the eardrum to vibrate the hair cells of the inner ear, and the effect of this is that, although the sound may not be audible to the casual listener, but it can be extremely disruptive to the body.

Jess: 46:29

The study outlined ooh lost my spot Some of these occurrences in nature. In particular, when winds of a certain speed encounter an obstructive landscape and we already know that there were high winds at night this can actually be devastating to humans, causing nausea, severe illness, psychological disturbances and even suicide. Donnie was actually able to meet with one of these researchers of the study and they explored the area of the Dyatlov Pass to see if boot rock would be the cause, which is this large out-of-place like boulder that looks like a hiking boot and it was actually turned into somewhat of a memorial for the hikers, which is kind of cool. But the researchers looked at boot rock and found that that would have not caused this effect to happen but actually it would be the dome at the top of the mountain that would have. They explained that the symmetrical dome shape of the summit, combined with its proximity to the tent location, would have created the ideal conditions for what's called carbon vortex. It was a combination of that and infrasound that could have happened that night. They said that it would have been difficult to come up with a more ideal confluence of weather and landscape to create carbon vortex With fortices or whatever the plural word for that is, that would produce infrasound. They would have been screaming right outside the hiker's tent that night, so like kind of tornado whirling, creating an intense discomfort and fear that they couldn't begin to understand.

Jess: 48:26

The researcher states, and I quote I can imagine they are all in the tent. They start to hear the winds pick up. Then to the south, they start to feel a vibration in the ground. They hear a roar that seems to pass them from the west to east and then they start to feel more vibration in the floor. The fabric of the tent vibrates. Another roar of a freight train passes by, this time from north to south. Hearing sounds turn, horrifying. Their chest cavities begin to vibrate from the infrasound created by the stronger vortex. Now passing Effects of the infrasound are beginning to be felt by the hikers panic, fear, trouble breathing, as physiological frequencies are generated.

Jess: 49:19

And it is possible that this is what was enough to cause the hikers to escape that tent. Everything was making sense, they were panicking and they had to get out. Now I personally believe that they ran out of the tent. They may have been headed towards a previous campground or, like I mentioned my theory before, headed to their supplies that they had built a shelter for, you know, with the extra food, the firewood, and I believe that the three hikers were injured, were in front and fell down that ravine. In the meantime, the other two were building a fire. They had about eight hours before they would die of hypothermia. So what did they do in that time? Who died first? Why were their shredded clothes? And where were the other three headed back to the tent, were they trying to see if they could get clothes or supplies? And they just couldn't make it. All of this, we will never know, and that, my dear wanderers and friends, is the story of the Diablo Pass incident.

Hannah: 50:29

I still think it's Bigfoot, but you would. Well, that said, that last theory really makes a lot of sense it does, doesn't it?

Jess: 50:39

And when I read that it's Bigfoot Rob, I was like mind blown, because there has to be something, because these were experienced hikers They've been hiking on numerous. There wouldn't be a reason for them to leave the tent without their boots and clothes unless there was an immediate threat. Yeah, like Bigfoot.

Hannah: 51:00

Gosh guys.

Jess: 51:01

Yes, so that is my episode for the night.

Hannah: 51:07

That was really good, Jess, thank you. Thanks for a nice two-parter. Your voice was like lulling me to sleep because it was just so sultrious and lulling. You're welcome.

Jess: 51:17

I actually, as I was reading it, I was like, fuck, I was going to have them do this. I was going to have you guys close your eyes and imagine being in the tent and experiencing all those things. Yeah, I would have. You would have heard. But yeah, it's definitely interesting and I'm actually more sold on the infrasound than any other theory. I think no, Bigfoot, Bigfoot.

Hannah: 51:42

Bigfoot.

Jess: 51:42

Bigfoot Two to one.

Speaker 3: 51:44

I'm with you.

Hannah: 51:44

Jess, kenzie votes Bigfoot. Kenzie's passed out, she's passed out, all right. Goodnight wanderers, good night.

Jess: 51:50

Love you, bye. Thanks for listening today. The show wouldn't be possible without our amazing producer and editor, rob Fitzpatrick who works tirelessly behind the scenes to bring you the best content. And a special thanks to Tyga Soundprod for providing the captivating intro music. Cinematic intro 24.

Hannah: 52:12

And of course, we can't forget the hauntingly beautiful outro music, Rhino's Theme, composed by Kevin MacLeod.

Jess: 52:19

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Hannah: 52:30

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Jess: 52:38

Thank you so much for listening and being part of our Wicked Wandering's community. We appreciate each and every one of you.

Hannah: 52:46

Stay curious, keep exploring and always remember to keep on wandering.