Stranger than fiction

[debgeisler]

The Moscow Times offers a fascinating story about a 1959 case of 9 skiers who died under weird and mysterious circumstances...and whose deaths were classified as "secret" by the Soviet Union.

Nine experienced cross-country skiers hurriedly left their tent on a Urals slope in the middle of the night, casting aside skis, food and their warm coats.

Clad in their sleepwear, the young people dashed headlong down a snowy slope toward a thick forest, where they stood no chance of surviving bitter temperatures of around minus 30 degrees Celsius.

Baffled investigators said the group died as a result of "a compelling unknown force" -- and then abruptly closed the case and filed it as top secret.

The deaths, which occurred 49 years ago on Saturday, remain one of the deepest mysteries in the Urals. Records related to the incident were unsealed in the early 1990s, but friends of those who died are still searching for answers.

I found the story via Neat-O-Rama's pointer to a Wikipedia entry about the case. While six of the skiers died of hypothermia (not surprising, since they were in their pajamas and underwear), three died of injuries sustained with no external wounds, and their clothing had high levels of radiation.

I'm going to go off and play the Twilight Zone theme song, now.