(Real) Unsolved Mysteries

the american dyatlov pass

As the authorities waited for the snow to die down and melt out there were in the meantime some strange leads that emerged. Police received a call from a man calling himself Joseph Schons, who claimed that at around the time of the disappearances he had been stuck in the snow while driving up to a ski cabin he owned in the area. He had tried to push the car out of the snowdrift but he had been alone, and making things worse was that he suddenly had felt the onset of a heart attack, forcing him to merely sit in his car in pain and wait for help. As he had sat there alone on this rugged wilderness road surrounded by a sea of trees and not much else, wondering whether he was dying or not, he said that two cars, one which looked like a pickup truck, had stopped behind him, after which a group of people had gotten out and walked around with flashlights, which they turned off when they heard his pleas for help, before getting into one car and driving off. Bizarrely, he claimed that one of the people appeared to be a woman holding a baby. When the man had finally gotten back to a nearby lodge and his car was towed, Schons claimed it was practically right next to where the Montego had been. It is totally unknown what connection, if any, Schons' sighting has or what it means, and just serves as another odd clue among many others.

Another intriguing lead came in from a store clerk at the small town of Brownsville, about 30 miles away from the abandoned car, who said that four of the men, who she recognized from police flyers, had stopped by her store in a red pickup truck two days after they had officially gone missing. She said that Huett and Sterling had then used a phone booth before the whole group drove off. The store owner also corroborated this account, saying that two of the men had come into the store and bought burritos and soft drinks, and that they hadn't thought much of it until they saw the missing persons posters being liberally distributed. This sighting was treated as highly credible, although it was unknown why the men would have been in a red pickup truck while their real car lay abandoned up on that mountain pass. There were various other sightings made of the men all over the area, but the police did not think they were very credible and they turned up no useful leads. there were no solid clues to propel the case, any possible evidence was out there buried in the snow, and all they could do at this point was to wait until the Spring thaw and hope for the best. however, the coming of the thaw would only bring more mysteries still.

By June the area's high altitude snow had mostly melted away, and it was on the 4th of that month that some motorcyclists were driving through the area when they came across a macabre discovery in an uninhabited ranger's trailer cabin located just about 19 miles though rough, snowy terrain from the abandoned car. There within the frigid unheated interior was found the body of Ted Weiher, which would prove to have a range of odd clues orbiting it. For one, the corpse was fully clothed except for missing the shoes, which were nowhere to be found, as well as a makeshift shroud of all things ensconcing it, composed of eight sheets which had been tucked around him in a way that he could not have done himself, although whether it had been done before or after he died is unclear. The body was partially frostbitten, which was odd considering there were found to be plenty of matches and flammable material in the cabin, as well as even a fireplace, yet no attempt had been made to start a fire for warmth. There was even a nearby propane tank which no one had made any attempt to use, even though it was directly attached to the cabin, designed for that purpose, and all they would have had to do was turn it on. On the table next to the body was a watch that no one in the family would recognize, and which was missing its crystal.

Interestingly, the dead man had 3 months' worth of beard growth, suggesting that he had been alive at that cabin for some time, but even more bizarre still was the official cause of death, which was found to be starvation. Indeed, Weiher was discovered to have lost around one hundred pounds before succumbing, despite the fact that he had been literally surrounded by food. Scattered all around the cabin were numerous cans of military C-rations that had been opened, some only half eaten, and there was a locker fully stocked with a full year's worth of untouched cans of food and freeze-dried rations, so how had he possibly managed to starve to death?