For decades the case of the Dyatlov Pass incident became the fodder of conspiracy theories, and even the official conclusion in 2020 by the Russian government of death by hypothermia in the wake of an avalanche failed to satisfy many.
When no word was received of nine students trekking Russia’s remote Ural Mountains in February 1959, alarm bells rang. A search party was sent into the snowy abyss to rescue them, but instead of grateful faces, the team stumbled across something much more bizarre and gruesome. Five bodies were found within a kilometre of their camp, undressed, burnt, and injured. Over the next few months, the corpses of the remaining four were found missing tongues, eyeballs or – most mysteriously of all – physically unharmed, but with catastrophic internal injuries. For decades the case of the Dyatlov Pass incident became the fodder of conspiracy theories, and even the official conclusion in 2020 by the Russian government of death by hypothermia in the wake of an avalanche failed to satisfy many.…
Mysterious deaths have always grabbed our attention. Even where there might be a logical reason behind a death, we want to believe that we are being lied to, or that there is another reason behind it. Such is human nature; unless we have evidence for something, we are naturally inclined to doubt what we are told, or even what we see. Over the centuries, there have been many mysterious deaths, and attendant conspiracy theories. Here are just a few of the cases that have made us stop and think, and that continue to capture public attention. “THEY WERE NOW EXPOSED TO THE ELEMENTS IN THE DEPTHS OF WINTER”…
They were nine experienced ‘ski hikers’ – using their skis to hike through snowy terrain – who set out one winter’s day in 1959 to trek to the summit of a mountain in the Russian wilderness. They never came home, their disappearance becoming an enduring mystery. The individuals were students and graduates from the Ural Polytechnic Institute, now known as the Ural State Technical University. The institute was based in Yekaterinburg in Russia, a city notorious for being where the Russian imperial family was massacred in 1918. Their base, therefore, already had a rather dark history, and Russia itself was seen to Western eyes as something of a dark and mysterious land. The Cold War had arguably started at the end of World War II, and there was a mutual…
Semyon Alekseevich Zolotaryov (sometimes spelled Zolotarev) was the oldest of the ski-hikers that fateful February. Born on 2 February 1921, he was 38 at the time, and so might be assumed to have had a more varied life than the others, some of whom were young enough to be his children. Yet his life might have been even more interesting than anyone could have ever imagined. Rumours abounded about who Semyon actually was, and reached a climax in 2014, when his remains were exhumed following several requests from journalists. His remains indicated first that his injuries were more consistent with a car crash than a natural event; and, even more shockingly, his DNA did not have any link to the DNA of known living relatives of Semyon Zolotaryov. His remains…
It was April 1943, and World War II was being fought, affecting the daily lives of millions. Yet in Hagley Wood, near Birmingham, children were continuing to play as normal, war being something of an abstract concept for the young. On one spring day that April, four boys were out searching for birds’ nests and their eggs. In their mid-teens, this might be the last year such innocent occupations would be their focus; it certainly would be after this fateful day. The boys spotted a fascinating tree, an old wych elm. It had a hollowed-out trunk, and was rather creepy looking. Fifteen-year-old Bob Farmer was despatched to climb the tree, but from higher up, he looked back down into the hollow trunk. A face – or what had once been…
Her face still looks out from the covers of several books today. She looks away to the side, smiling; a striking young woman with a mass of artfully curled black hair, a made-up face and a look of hopefulness. This is Elizabeth Short, an aspiring actress at 22 years old. Another image, though, also shows the same woman in a different light. This time, she stares straight at the camera, mouth open, her expression more aggressive, less innocent, posing for a mugshot after her arrest for underage drinking. Both images are of Elizabeth, and they reflect the different sides of her personality. Although she is forever now associated with Los Angeles, Elizabeth, who became known as the ‘Black Dahlia’, was actually born in Boston on 29 July 1924, the third…
