The Dyatlov Pass Incident

[Stephen]

Has anyone read about the Dyatlov Pass incident in Russia in 1959? It's a lot more unpleasant and sad than anything Enid Blyton wrote about, but I couldn't help thinking about The Mountain of Adventure and Five Get Into A Fix. Especially with speculation over the years that these young people hiking on a remote mountain might have fallen victim to some kind of secret scientific accident.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Katharine]

Yes, I read an article about it on the BBC's website a while back.

I hadn't thought of any Enid Blyton connection - hopefully I won't have nightmares next time I read those books.

[Boatbuilder]

A most intriguing story, Stephen. I think I will keep an open-mind on the cause.

Is this what you are referring to, Katharine?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csz4py" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Katharine]

It wasn't a documentary I saw, just a very long written article, but I'm sure it was the same incident.

Intriguing and scary, and obviously very distressing for those who lost loved ones and still don't have definite answers.

[Stephen]

I think a friend might have mentioned it to me a couple of years ago, but I just got this suggested video link on my Facebook this morning and was studying the incident in quite a bit of depth. It's very sad but also very intriguing.

[Fiona1986]

Phew, no I had never heard of that before. What a strange and tragic story! And how awful that after so many years we still don't know with any accuracy what happened to those hikers.

[timv]

I saw a TV documentary on the incident a couple of years ago, but can't remember which channel it was on. They had someone interviewing local people from the indigenous pre-Russian 'tribal hunter' population in the region who had a legend that the pass had spooky lights and was haunted by strange large and ?supernatural beasts, presumably an equivalent of the Rocky Mountains stories about the 'Sasquatch'; they said their people did not dare to go up there. More down-to-earth scientists thought that some aerial or weather phenomenon was to blame and created odd noises , or that the intense cold and the noise of the wind had sent the hikers into a panic and caused them to have delusions and run off into the woods and freeze to death. Nobody seemed to have much of an idea what had happened, and there was the additional element of the region being near a USSR restricted zone where some secret experiments (nuclear?) had taken place .

Elements of the odd goings-on at Old Towers in Five Get Into A Fix and the underground tunnel digging up mysterious radioactive (?) metal in The Secret of Moon Castle? It would be interesting to know what stories about strange goings-on linked to scientists were going the rounds in the 1940s-50s and if Enid heard of some of them when visiting areas like N Wales or read it up. I've found newspaper stories about the Harry Grindell Matthews 'mad scientist experiments with secret rays in a remote farmhouse in Wales and causes cars' engines to stall' incidents near Swansea that may lie behind the Fix storyline. Clearly the Russians were up to secret work in remote mountains too.

[IceMaiden]

I've never heard of this! Quite creepy, especially how they all had different weird injuries.