The Dyatlov Pass Incident

At the end of January 1959, 9 hikers left their cabin for an expedition to the frozen mountains of the Urals. The experienced trekking group, who were all from the Ural Polytechnical Institute, had established a camp on the slopes of Kholat Syakhl (Ural, Soviet Union), in an area now named in honor of the group's leader, Igor Dyatlov. During the night of the 1st and 2nd of February, 1959, something caused them to tear their way out of their tents and flee the campsite, all while inadequately dressed for the heavy snowfall and sub-zero temperatures.

After the group's bodies were discovered, an investigation by Soviet Union authorities determined that six had died from hypothermia while the other three showed signs of physical trauma. One victim had a fractured skull; two others had major chest fractures. Additionally, the body of another team member was missing its tongue and eyes. The investigation concluded that an "unknown compelling force" had caused the deaths. Numerous theories have been put forward to account for the unexplained deaths, including animal attacks, hypothermia, avalanche, katabatic winds, infrasound-induced panic, military involvement, or some combination of these.

THE BLACK DAHLIA

Twenty-two-year-old Elizabeth Short was found brutally murdered on January 15, 1947. She was severed at the waist and left naked in a vacant lot in the Los Angeles area. The newspapers nicknamed her the “Black Dahlia” after a film noir murder mystery, The Blue Dahlia, which was released nine months prior to her murder. The Los Angeles Police Department proceeded with a deep and lengthy investigation into Elizabeth Short’s death.

After shifting through a list of hundreds of suspects, many false reports and witnesses, and several false murder confessions, the police struggled to make progress in the murder case. The Black Dahlia would quickly become one of Los Angeles’s most infamous cases, and the case still remains unsolved almost seventy years later.