00:00Sometime after midnight, on a frozen slope in the Ural Mountains, nine experienced hikers cut their tent open from the
00:07inside and ran, down into 30 degrees of frost, some wearing nothing on their feet but socks.
00:14Whatever they were running from that night, none of them lived to name it.
00:19Weeks later, searchers found the tent still standing on the mountain the local Mansi people call the Mountain of the
00:25Dead.
00:26Inside it, boots, warm clothes, food, everything needed to survive such a night, all left behind.
00:36From the tent, a line of footprints led down the slope and vanished into the dark.
00:42The nine were students and graduates of the Ural Polytechnic Institute, led by Igor Dyatlov, a skilled and careful mountaineer.
00:50Their goal, a remote peak in the northern Urals in the deepest winter.
00:56On the 1st of February, 1959, a storm pushed them off course, and they camped on the open slope.
01:03First, searchers found two of the nine beneath a great cedar tree, beside the remains of a small fire.
01:09Others lay between the tree and the tent, as if they had been trying to climb back.
01:13The last were found months later, in a ravine, under meters of snow.
01:17Then came the details no one could explain.
01:21Some of the dead had severe internal injuries, yet almost no marks on their skin.
01:27Some items of clothing carried traces of radiation.
01:31And that same night, other hikers far away reported strange orange lights moving slowly across the sky above the mountains.
01:39The official verdict explained nothing.
01:44The nine, it said, were killed by a compelling natural force.
01:49The pass was closed for years.
01:51The theories never stopped.
01:53An avalanche in the dark?
01:55A rare low sound from the wind too deep to hear, that can drive the mind into panic.
02:01Secret weapons tested in the sky.
02:04Every theory answers one question, and leaves three behind.
02:08In 2019, Russia reopened the case, and again named an avalanche.
02:14But the injuries, the radiation, and the lights in the sky remain unexplained.
02:20So the question still waits on that frozen slope.
02:24What did the nine of them see that night, that made running barefoot into the killing cold seem safer than
02:31staying inside their own tent?
02:38No doubt.
02:38May I be personne?
