When a group of young cross-country skiers went missing at the Autlov Pass in the former

Soviet Union in 1959, it launched one of history's great public mysteries. I say public mysteries

because all the mysterious elements were trumpeted in the public accounts. But as for the

actual fact of the case, there really wasn't too much there that search and rescue hadn't

seen a hundred times before. The mystery at the Autlov Pass is today unskeptoid.

Hey everyone, Brian here. A quick favor. We are conducting an audience survey. We'd be really

grateful if you can take just a few minutes and answer our survey. This is the kind of thing that's

sort of an engineering and marketing necessity to make the whole free podcast ecosystem flourish.

So please check it out. Also, surveys are fun. You get to talk about yourself.

Please visit survey.prx.org-skeptoid to take the survey today. That's survey.prx.org-skepioide. Thanks.

You're listening to Skeptoid. I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

Mystery at the Autlov Pass. February 1959, the Ural Mountains in Russia,

10 young cross-country skiers from the Ural Polytechnical Institute, eight guys and two girls

led by Igor Dyatlov set out for two weeks of adventure. One became ill and turned back

little did he know he would be the only one to return alive. Weeks later,

searchers found one of the most bizarre scenes in modern lore. The bodies of the nine

victims were scattered over a wide area of the frozen landscape. Some were wearing only their

underwear. Some were wearing each other's clothes. Two had head injuries. One had no tongue.

Two had severe internal chest injuries but none had any visible external signs of trauma.

Some of their clothes were found to be radioactive. Circumstances suggested that some of the

victims may have been blind. Various other witnesses in the region reported bizarre orange

fears in the night sky and strangest of all. The bodies had orange skin and gray hair.

...