Missing eyeballs, extensive abrasions, inadequately clothed bodies, a tent torn open from the inside, and the presence of radioactive material on corpses are just a few of the mysterious and creepy details that have led people for decades to ask, “What really happened to the Dyatlov hikers that fateful day in 1959?”

In January of that year, a group of nine experienced hikers set off on a three-week winter hiking and camping trip into the Ural Mountains of Russia. Originally, a tenth member accompanied them, but, due to medical reasons, he departed the group and returned home earlier in the expedition.

The nine remaining members were scheduled to arrive home by mid-February, but when they still had not arrived over a week after their due date, authorities were notified, and a search was initiated. The rescue team followed the missing group’s proposed route and found the hikers’ final campsite, which was located on the slopes of Kholat Syakhi (Dead Mountain).

Over the course of several weeks, the rescue team found five of the missing hikers in the vicinity of the campsite. The remaining four were found several months later, once the snow began to thaw. Clues as to the causes of their untimely deaths were inconclusive, and, to this day, theories abound, ranging from supernatural to environmental factors. The clues, scattered across the mountainside, have been enough to fill even the sanest imaginations with eerie visions of unnatural powers at play. 

In spite of the nine companions being experienced hikers, some mysterious, external factor, whether natural or unexplained, changed the outcome of the trip in what appears to be the blink of an eye.

For the Dyatlov hikers incident, no theory has ever been established as fully conclusive. Therefore, it is an indisputable possibility that the experienced hikers’ lives were cut short by some menacing force. If that were the case, it is also possible that the same menace still lurks in the Ural Mountains today.