(Real) Unsolved Mysteries

the american dyatlov pass

The following day the bodies of Madruga and Sterling were found lying around 8 miles away, with Madruga's corpse partially eaten by scavengers and oddly in a position of having his hand clasped on his watch, and Sterlings's body nothing more than a skeleton. Two days later the bones and skull of Huett would be found strewn about the wilderness around the trailer. It was thought by coroners that these men had likely died of hypothermia. The one body that could not be located despite an intensive combing of the area was that of Mathias, although his tennis shoes were found in the trailer.

What happened to these men? Why had they gone up into the mountains and then abandoned their perfectly good car? How had they made their way 19 miles on foot through a blizzard with inadequate clothing to get to that cabin and what had happened when they got there? It is unclear if all of them even made it to the cabin at all, except for Mathias, as his shoes were found there. Why was no heat used and what happened to Weiher? How could he waste away and starve to death with so much food just lying around? Who wrapped him in those sheets and why? Was he wrapped in that shroud before or after he died? Where did his shoes go? Why was he there for so long? Does any of this tie in any way to the sightings made of the men after their disappearance and if so, how? With all of these disparate, odd clues and questions it is hard to know exactly what happened or why, but boy have there been theories, ranging from the sensible to the more far-out.

The main idea as to why they ended up in that area to begin with is mostly written off as that they had simply been lost and taken a wrong turn, although this is a tad strange because they did have maps of the region and there is the fact that the road the car was found on is so far removed from the route they had been taking that they couldn't have even turned onto it by accident. Another idea is that they had been on their way to visit a friend in the area on the way home and then gotten lost, but why didn't they just backtrack? One more sinister idea as to why they had taken this detour is that they may have been lured there by another nefarious party for inscrutable reasons, perhaps someone they had met at the game, although there is no evidence at all of this mysterious theoretical individual, and a family member has rather cryptically said this:

There was some force that made em go up there. They wouldn't have fled off in the wood like a bunch of quail. we know good and well that somebody made them do it. We can't visualize someone getting the upper hand on those five men, but we know it must have been. They seen something at that game, at the parking lot. They might have seen it and didn't even realize they seen it.

What was "it?" Was it perhaps the people in the truck seen by Schon? Something else? Why would they lead these men out into the middle of nowhere? No one knows. Why they should get out of their car to go trudging out into the wilderness is also hard to explain, especially considering that they had passed a functioning ski lodge on the way in just down the road in the direction from which they'd come. Perhaps they panicked or thought that help was nearby? Maybe they had somehow lost the car keys in the snow and went to look for them, getting lost in the process? Who knows? In the end at least Mathias and Weiher were able to reach that trailer cabin, only what happened from there is a puzzle in and of itself.

It is thought that they had gathered here, or at least Mathias and Weiher had, and perhaps decided to try and tough it out until the Spring thaw. Weiher, who had been suffering from severe frostbite, especially on his feet, had possibly been tended to, hence the wrapping him in blankets, or had died and was wrapped out of respect. They may have then decided that they couldn't wait anymore and braved the wilderness once more. Mathias may have then used Weiher's more robust leather shoes to go out looking for help with the others while leaving his own behind, with each of the victims succumbing to the elements in the process. Weiher, alone and in pain, may have not been able to get to the food or been unable to open the cans, as the ones responsible for opening them was likely the two who had had Army training. With his friends gone and lacking the means to feed himself, he had then starved to death. This seems reasonable, but then why had they left him alone, and why had they not once ever tried to heat the cabin? What about the uneaten food? Was it perhaps the stress of the situation aggravating their mental disabilities and diminishing their ability to think rationally? Did Huett and Sterling die after leaving the cabin or on their way in? We'll probably never know.

One theory that is a bit more ominous revolves around the missing member, Mathias, who has never been found. The idea is that since he would have run out of medication he might have suffered a schizophrenic episode and done something to contribute to the deaths of the others, although how this would have played out is hard to figure out. He could have then decided to escape and gone off somewhere to start a new life. Conversely, he may have intentionally run off in order not to pose a danger to the rest of the group, likely dying somewhere out in the wilds and his remains swallowed by the forest to never be found. It is a rather intriguing and spooky take that puts a sinister spin on things, unfortunately there is very little evidence to show this is what happened, and like all of the other theories it fails to explain all of the extraordinarily odd details of this very unusual case.

In the end, although theories buzz about the case and it has been discussed and debated to this day, no one really knows what happened out in those woods that winter in 1978. The incident has never been satisfactorily solved or the pieces of the puzzle fully fit together, and Mathis has never been found. It has become such a bizarre and murky case infused with so many strange clues and perplexing details that it is often compared to the mysterious deaths of 9 ski hikers in the Ural Mountains of the Soviet Union in 1959, equally pervaded by baffling, unexplainable clues and often called the Dyatlov Pass incident. Indeed the case of the deaths of these 5 men in California are often referred to as "The American Dyatlov," and the case has become nearly legendary. What happened to these five men? What brought them out there and why did they do what they did? It seems the only one who would know the true answer were the men themselves, maybe the trees, and that the secret died out in that cold wilderness along with them.