Speaker 1: Hello, it's Richard mccleinsmith here with a quick update before
Speaker 1: we dive into today's episode. Unexplained is very excited to
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Speaker 1: see you on board. You're listening to the second and
Speaker 1: final part of Unexplained, Season eight, episode thirty three. After
Speaker 1: the Sun Comes Rain, No sooner had Denis's body gone still,
Speaker 1: Valentina knew only that she had to get away, though
Speaker 1: whatever had killed her friends was coming for her too.
Speaker 1: What followed was a blur of exhaustion and panic. First,
Speaker 1: in her confusion, she thinks she can't leave the bodies
Speaker 1: on the mountain. With Timor being the smallest, she raced
Speaker 1: over to him and did her best to pick him up,
Speaker 1: but he was far too heavy to carry. Still, with
Speaker 1: the heavy pack on her back, she stared down at
Speaker 1: the barely visible tree line a mile or so below
Speaker 1: and started to run, feeling the adrenaline surged through her body.
Speaker 1: She can barely feel the backpack as she moves. With
Speaker 1: every step, she expected to feel the metallic tang of
Speaker 1: blood in her throat, expected her legs to buckle underneath her,
Speaker 1: and for her body to be consumed by convolis. She
Speaker 1: felt unreal, like she was floating somewhere above herself, waiting
Speaker 1: for the end to come, but it never did. Instead,
Speaker 1: Valentina ran until her lungs were burning so much that
Speaker 1: she finally had to stop for air, and even then
Speaker 1: she kept moving, walking as fast as she could manage.
Speaker 1: She walked for hours, as if in a trance. Fueled
Speaker 1: by pure adrenaline. She had no way to process the
Speaker 1: horror that she just witnessed, but her gut was telling
Speaker 1: her to get as far away from that place as possible. Eventually,
Speaker 1: as night approached, exhaustion forced Valentina to stop. When she
Speaker 1: looked around, she saw that she was in a dense woodland.
Speaker 1: She walked over to the base of a huge ancient
Speaker 1: tree and slumped down against it, letting her pack slide
Speaker 1: off her shoulders and onto the ground. It was only
Speaker 1: then that she stopped moving that she realized just how
Speaker 1: exhausted she was. Tapping into the little energy she had left,
Speaker 1: she unpacked her bag and set up her tent. She
Speaker 1: was too tired to even think about trying to start
Speaker 1: a fire. She ate the scant supplying she had on her,
Speaker 1: a bag of nuts and two energy bars, and then
Speaker 1: crawled into her sleeping bag before the sun had even set.
Speaker 1: At first, she was afraid to close her eyes, afraid
Speaker 1: that the horrific images of the day would be waiting
Speaker 1: for her behind her eyelids, but in fact she fell
Speaker 1: fast asleep within seconds. Her last conscious thought was the
Speaker 1: desperate hope that she would wake up to discover this
Speaker 1: had all been a dream. Valentina awoke early the following
Speaker 1: morning with her heart pounding, heart, her chest tight, with
Speaker 1: a terror that she couldn't immediately understand. Then the reality
Speaker 1: of what had happened the day before hit her like
Speaker 1: a freight train. Hideous images of her friends flooded into
Speaker 1: her mind, The horror in their eyes as they'd collapsed
Speaker 1: on by one, and the terror of being certain that
Speaker 1: she was next. She forced herself to take deep breaths
Speaker 1: as an eagle screeched overhead. She was all on her
Speaker 1: own now, and she had to think rationally, one thing
Speaker 1: at a time. Eventually, dawn broke and some of Valentina's
Speaker 1: clarity returned with it. She dragged herself from her makeshift bed,
Speaker 1: knowing only that she had to get out of the
Speaker 1: mountains and find help. The Snezhnaya River was somewhere near.
Speaker 1: If she could locate it, she thought she could follow
Speaker 1: its fast flowing current towards civilization. Valentina un zipped her
Speaker 1: tent and walked out into the chilly dawn. Looking at
Speaker 1: her supplies laid out on the forest floor, she quickly
Speaker 1: realized that she had a problem in her panic. The
Speaker 1: day before, she'd brought only the supplies that she had
Speaker 1: on her back. The group had divided up the communal
Speaker 1: supplies among themselves, including the camping stove, spare clothes, and
Speaker 1: most importantly, the food. As it happened, Valentina had very
Speaker 1: little of the food and water in her own pack,
Speaker 1: not even enough to get her through the day. Getting
Speaker 1: back down to the base of the mountain would easily
Speaker 1: take several days. She also felt the need to take
Speaker 1: care of her friends in whatever way she could. She
Speaker 1: began to realize that there was only one solution. At first,
Speaker 1: it was unthinkable she couldn't do it, but the alternative
Speaker 1: was certain death alone in the wilderness, and so, with
Speaker 1: a pit in her stomach, Valentina set off back up
Speaker 1: the mountain, back towards the place she'd just run so
Speaker 1: desperately from. It's hard to imagine the fortitude that drives
Speaker 1: her back up the slope to the site of the disaster,
Speaker 1: tired and terrified, and aware that all that awaits her
Speaker 1: is horror. As she neared the clearing where she knew
Speaker 1: her friend's bodies lay, Valentina's chest began to tighten and
Speaker 1: her palms began to sweat. Eventually, she reached what she
Speaker 1: thought was the spot, but couldn't see anything. A small,
Speaker 1: hopeful part of her wondered if they would still be
Speaker 1: there at all. Perhaps whatever had happened to them was
Speaker 1: some kind of temporary state, and they'd all recovered later
Speaker 1: in the day. Maybe they were even looking for her
Speaker 1: right now. But deep down she knew she was lying
Speaker 1: to herself. Then she saw Denis to the rock he
Speaker 1: tried to hide under his blood smeared face, lying up
Speaker 1: in the snow. They were all exactly where she'd left them.
Speaker 1: None of them had moved, the blood now dried on
Speaker 1: their faces. Once again, she braced herself, fearing whatever had
Speaker 1: killed them might still be present. But as the minutes
Speaker 1: ticked by, nothing happened. She looked around and felt her
Speaker 1: panic begin to fade. Strangely, for the first time since
Speaker 1: this nightmare had started, she didn't feel afraid. She knew
Speaker 1: what she had to do. First. Valentina collected a map, compass,
Speaker 1: and some food from the various packs. Then she turned
Speaker 1: her attention to the dead. Moving from one corpse to
Speaker 1: the next, she palmed the lids down over their eyes.
Speaker 1: She fetched our paullins from the group supplies, and tenderly
Speaker 1: covered each of the bodies up. She didn't know how
Speaker 1: long it would take for her to find help, and
Speaker 1: she hated to think of her friends lying out there,
Speaker 1: exposed to the elements and predators. Their deaths had been
Speaker 1: anything but peaceful, but she felt some solace that at
Speaker 1: least they were at rest now. Finding lud Miller's map
Speaker 1: in the woman's pocket, Valentina poured over it, trying to
Speaker 1: figure out the fastest route back down the mountain. Her
Speaker 1: best chance was to try and make it to the
Speaker 1: next stop off point, where they'd been due to meet
Speaker 1: Ludmiller's daughter, Natalia the day before. Natalia and her group
Speaker 1: would probably still be waiting for them, but leud Miller's
Speaker 1: notes and drawings just seemed to swim in front of
Speaker 1: her eyes. Valentina looked up and scanned the desolate mountain
Speaker 1: slopes that stretched out for miles around. They hadn't seen
Speaker 1: another tourist in days, so wait here in the hope
Speaker 1: that somebody might find her was not an option. In truth,
Speaker 1: her only hope was to head back into the wilderness
Speaker 1: and try to make her way back to the bottom
Speaker 1: of the mountain. Valentina took one last look around at
Speaker 1: her fallen friends, then hoisted her stuffed backpack onto her
Speaker 1: back and began to walk. The first time Valentina fled
Speaker 1: down the mountain, she was operating in pure fight or
Speaker 1: flight mode, almost blind with panic in the newly calmed weather.
Speaker 1: Out of nowhere, Valentina spots a pair of power lines
Speaker 1: in the distance. Knowing they must lead to human habitation,
Speaker 1: she decides to follow them. It felt as though some
Speaker 1: kind of guiding hand had revealed them to her. After
Speaker 1: four days trekking under the power line, on August ninth,
Speaker 1: Valentina found herself standing at the banks of the Schneschnaia River.
Speaker 1: At first, this seemed like good news. The river was
Speaker 1: one of the few landmarks she recognized from Ludmiller's maps,
Speaker 1: and she knew that if she followed it, it would
Speaker 1: eventually lead her back to the Marino village from where
Speaker 1: they'd set out. But this wasn't an official hiking path,
Speaker 1: and soon after she set out along it, the river
Speaker 1: bank became too steep and treacherous to walk on. By then,
Speaker 1: Valentina had also developed a painful cough and the beginnings
Speaker 1: of a fever. She was weak and cold and dirty.
Speaker 1: Valentina turned around and retraced her steps back to a
Speaker 1: place where she could sit safely on the bank. She
Speaker 1: slumped onto the ground, defeated. She couldn't follow the river
Speaker 1: and it was too wide for her to get across.
Speaker 1: Completely stuck, she began to accept that she would die
Speaker 1: here alone, but she can't help thinking about her parents
Speaker 1: and how she will look when she's found. Summoning her nerve,
Speaker 1: she stripped off her clothes and entered the river, letting
Speaker 1: the freezing water sleek the dirt from her skin. Finally cleansed,
Speaker 1: she emerged from the river and got dressed. Reinvigorated by
Speaker 1: the icy cold water, she once again picked up her
Speaker 1: pack and continued along the river bank. Eventually, too tired
Speaker 1: to go on, she sat down and fell into a
Speaker 1: sleep of pure exhaustion. A few hours later, as she
Speaker 1: drifted in and out of consciousness, she heard something in
Speaker 1: the water. It sounded like laughter. At first, she thought
Speaker 1: she was imagining it. After everything that had happened, she
Speaker 1: was finally losing her mind out there in the wilderness alone.
Speaker 1: But then she heard it again. She sat up sharply
Speaker 1: and watched with amazement as a sequence of obscenely bright
Speaker 1: catamaran rafts appeared from around the next bend of the Schnezhnaya.
Speaker 1: At first, she tried to wave and shout, but no
Speaker 1: sound would come out, as though she'd been drained of
Speaker 1: all remaining energy. But as the faces of the rafters
Speaker 1: came into focus and they appeared to be passing her by. Finally,
Speaker 1: a great wail burst from her lips, and suddenly, without warning,
Speaker 1: she was saved. The rafters secured Valentina on board one
Speaker 1: of the catamarans, then pushed off from the shore as
Speaker 1: fast as they could. They made their way down river
Speaker 1: toward the town of Slutyanka, where they'd ultimately been heading. Valentina,
Speaker 1: trembling throughout, seemed unable to speak, so they gave her
Speaker 1: Valerian and courvalon herbal sedatives to help calm her nerves.
Speaker 1: She explained that she'd been part of a group trekking
Speaker 1: through the mountains, but all the others were dead. The
Speaker 1: rest of the journey continued in a haunting silence. After
Speaker 1: arriving in Sludyanka, Valentina was taken to the nearest police station.
Speaker 1: But where before she was suffering from shock and exhaustion,
Speaker 1: now the full force of everything that had happened came
Speaker 1: rushing back to her. The magnitude of it all was
Speaker 1: too much for her to process, rendering her semi catatonic
Speaker 1: and mute for several more days. When Valentina finally began
Speaker 1: to speak again, it said that she was barely coherent
Speaker 1: and unable to articulate what she'd experienced. Her recall of
Speaker 1: specific details was hazy, and she was unable to give
Speaker 1: clear directions for where her friends had died. In any case,
Speaker 1: the storm weather had continued to sweep across the region,
Speaker 1: preventing any efforts to mount a search and rescue mission
Speaker 1: to recover the bodies. Eleven days after Valentina was rescued,
Speaker 1: a helicopter crew on the lookout for another group of
Speaker 1: hikers who'd gone missing on the mountain spotted what looked
Speaker 1: like an abandoned camp with six bodies scattered around it.
Speaker 1: Another crew, led by much respected Russian search and rescuer
Speaker 1: Eure Golias, was immediately dispatched to the location. Seeing the
Speaker 1: bodies scattered beneath them as they came into land did
Speaker 1: nothing to prepare them for the reality of what they
Speaker 1: eventually found. The first to be examined was a semi
Speaker 1: clothed temor lying exactly where he'd fallen. The rescue team
Speaker 1: recoiled at the sight of him. Despite Valentina's best efforts,
Speaker 1: he'd been exposed to the elements, not to mention all
Speaker 1: manner of voracious insects and animals for nearly two weeks.
Speaker 1: The eyes had long since disappeared, Worms crawled in the sockets,
Speaker 1: Dried blood was still streaked across the gray, pallid skin,
Speaker 1: his mouth still open in a spine chilling, silent scream.
Speaker 1: It was the same for the other five. Each were
Speaker 1: carefully wrapped up in body bags and packed onto the helicopter.
Speaker 1: The bodies were flown back to nearby Siberian city ulan
Speaker 1: Oot for further examination. Golias described the smell in the
Speaker 1: chopper as unbearable. By now, Valentina had been able to
Speaker 1: relay her full story to the police. She recounted everything
Speaker 1: she'd witnessed in detail, how the group had all fallen
Speaker 1: one by one, exhibiting the same bizarre and violent symptoms.
Speaker 1: In ulan Ud, a pathologist carried out the autopsies despite
Speaker 1: everything that Valentina had said. In the end, their conclusion,
Speaker 1: perhaps somewhat surprisingly, was that all five students had simply
Speaker 1: died from hypothermia, or, as they put it, froze to
Speaker 1: death whilst hiking. Leud Miller is determined to have died
Speaker 1: from heart failure, despite her being the fittest and most
Speaker 1: hardy of the group, The only unusual finding, according to
Speaker 1: the autopsy, was that all six victims had bruising on
Speaker 1: their lungs and were suffering from protein deficiency or malnourishment,
Speaker 1: which was assumed to have exacerbated the effects of cold,
Speaker 1: and with that, there was nothing left to do but
Speaker 1: buried the dead. A mass funeral was held in the
Speaker 1: victim's hometown of Petra Pavel, where it said that almost
Speaker 1: the entire city's two hundred thousand population turned out to
Speaker 1: say their good byes. It wasn't long after news of
Speaker 1: the tragedy broke in the press that people began to
Speaker 1: question the official version of events. For one, the hike
Speaker 1: took place in the height of Siberian summer. The mean
Speaker 1: temperature in August is around fifteen degrees celsius at elevation.
Speaker 1: In the rain, it would have been much colder, but
Speaker 1: the group were well prepared and well dressed for the mountains.
Speaker 1: After all, Ludemiler's daughter, Natalia's group were also in the
Speaker 1: mountains at the same time and suffered no adverse effects.
Speaker 1: When her mother failed to arrive at their designated meeting point,
Speaker 1: Natalia didn't consider that the weather had played any part
Speaker 1: in the delay. Valentina also stated clearly that the group
Speaker 1: had plenty of food and had eaten break regularly through
Speaker 1: the trip. Her friends had died two hours after they'd
Speaker 1: eaten breakfast. The idea, as the autopsy claimed that they
Speaker 1: were all severely malnourished, didn't make any sense. Hypothermia could
Speaker 1: explain some of the bizarre behavior that the hikers showed
Speaker 1: before dying. It's known to cause some victims to strip
Speaker 1: off their clothes in what's called paradoxical undressing, and it
Speaker 1: can cause convulsions and seizures, but it doesn't cause bleeding
Speaker 1: from the eyes and ears, and it definitely doesn't make
Speaker 1: a person bash their own head in against a rock,
Speaker 1: as Valentina claimed to have seen Tatiana do. Pulmonary edema
Speaker 1: can cause those things, a condition caused by the build
Speaker 1: up of excess fluid in the lungs. It's a known
Speaker 1: risk at altitude. Ordinarily, however, it's mostly only considered a
Speaker 1: risk around thirteen thousand feet, not so and a half
Speaker 1: thousand where lud Miller and her team were hiking. They
Speaker 1: were seasoned hikers who had all climbed as high as
Speaker 1: the Retranslator Mountain on several previous occasions without any issues.
Speaker 1: One of the rescuer team, Valerie Tartanikov, was an expert
Speaker 1: tour instructor in the area. He built a career guiding
Speaker 1: tourists through the region. The death of the Corovinites, as
Speaker 1: they became known, is a big mystery, he wrote. The
Speaker 1: Tiger forest is not a desert, not polar ice. If
Speaker 1: you're experienced like Ludmiller Coravin, if you're in the forest
Speaker 1: in the summer, then it's impossible to die from the cold.
Speaker 1: Twenty minutes to make a fire and you're saved. A
Speaker 1: few days after the funeral, an article published in the
Speaker 1: daily Russian paper Komsomolskaya Pravada accused the group's leader, Ludmiller Coorvina,
Speaker 1: of being responsible for the deaths. Celebrated Russian rescuer euy
Speaker 1: Go Elias did the same. According to him, when they
Speaker 1: arrived at the group's dilapidated camp, they found only one
Speaker 1: can of stew that he surmised had been divided up
Speaker 1: between the seven hikers. There were no snacks or quick
Speaker 1: protein fixes that climbers usually took on such arduous journeys.
Speaker 1: Ludmiller was apparently well known for encouraging survivalist instincts among
Speaker 1: her students, meaning she preferred to keep rations to a
Speaker 1: minimum to force them to find their own food while outdoors.
Speaker 1: Valentina seemed to hint at this when she told investigators
Speaker 1: that they'd stopped frequently to harvest the nutrient rich gold
Speaker 1: root or rodeola rosea that grows abundant in the area. Ironically,
Speaker 1: it's particularly prized for its ability to help control stress.
Speaker 1: But even if that were all true, a small degree
Speaker 1: of protein deficiency does not result in anything like what
Speaker 1: Valentina apparently witnessed. She also continued to insist, with no
Speaker 1: genuine reason to say otherwise, that they had more than
Speaker 1: enough food to complete each day's hiking. When Galina Nikolayevna,
Speaker 1: Timor's mother was contacted many years later by the same
Speaker 1: Komsomolskaya Pravda who blamed Ludmiller for the deaths, she refused
Speaker 1: to speak to them, saying only that she had complete
Speaker 1: faith in Ludmiller to look after her son. In the
Speaker 1: decades since the Khmad Duban incident, many explanations have been
Speaker 1: put forward to explain the bizarre event. Because the Russian
Speaker 1: military had been known to use the Siberian Mountains to
Speaker 1: conduct testing. Some have speculated that the hikers stumbled onto
Speaker 1: something they weren't supposed to see and were killed for it.
Speaker 1: Others have pointed out that Leod Miller was an avid
Speaker 1: forager who taught the craft to her students. Perhaps one
Speaker 1: of the group gathered poisonous mushrooms by mistake then fed
Speaker 1: them to the others, leading to the mania displayed in
Speaker 1: their final moments. One rumor was that the group had
Speaker 1: unwittingly stumbled onto an old Soviet Union chemical weapons test site,
Speaker 1: and that Valentina had in fact been rescued by state
Speaker 1: security officers and forced to sign a non disclosure agreement.
Speaker 1: One possibility is that the group were poisoned by a
Speaker 1: nerve agent like novi choc, but was somehow trapped in
Speaker 1: the soil and vegetation, or carried unexpectedly through the air
Speaker 1: by the storm. Novichok was developed by the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies and has been used against Russian
Speaker 1: individuals in many high profile instances, perhaps most strikingly in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, when it was used to assassinate Russian enemies
Speaker 1: of Vladimir Putin in the United Kingdom. In March twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: former Russian spy Sergey Scripple and his daughter Julia were
Speaker 1: found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury, South England, after
Speaker 1: being exposed to novichok. The UK government accused Russian Military
Speaker 1: Intelligence GRU of carrying out the poisoning, identifying two suspects,
Speaker 1: Alexander Petrov and Russlin Boshirov, who were later revealed to
Speaker 1: be GRU officers. The attack triggered a major international crisis,
Speaker 1: leading to mass diplomatic expulsions and sanctions against Russia, but
Speaker 1: several others were also unintentionally affected, including police officer Nick Bailey,
Speaker 1: and months later, two civilians, Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgis,
Speaker 1: who had accidentally handled a discarded perfume bottle containing the novichoc.
Speaker 1: Dawn Sturgis died from the exposure. The incident marked the
Speaker 1: first known use of a chemical weapon on European soil
Speaker 1: since World War II, and raised a global alarm about
Speaker 1: state sponsored assassination attempts abroad. A potent nerve agent, novichoc
Speaker 1: could account for many of the symptoms that the hikers exhibited,
Speaker 1: including convulsions, foaming, at the mouth and cardiac arrest. They
Speaker 1: might also have been paralyzed by the novichoc and then
Speaker 1: later succumbed to hypothermia, which would explain the coroner's findings.
Speaker 1: Others have theorized that infracy might be to blame a
Speaker 1: super low frequency audio that can prompt terror and panic.
Speaker 1: It's a theory often applied to the Diatlov past mystery.
Speaker 1: Proponents of the idea in the Kama Daban case wonder
Speaker 1: if the power lines that Valentina followed to the river
Speaker 1: may have been omitting the requisite electronic frequency to cause chaos.
Speaker 1: The truth is, it's unlikely we will ever know what
Speaker 1: really happened on that horrifying morning high up in the
Speaker 1: wilderness of the Kahma D'aban Mountains. As for Valentina, the
Speaker 1: soul survivor, after her friends were brought down from the mountain,
Speaker 1: she returned to her hometown of Petro Pavel without speaking
Speaker 1: to the press. There, she remained silent even to her parents,
Speaker 1: before revealing only minor snippets. Years later, after completing college,
Speaker 1: she left Kazakhstan entirely looking for a fresh start where
Speaker 1: nothing could remind her of the nightmare In the mountains.
Speaker 1: She's only spoken to the press once since, back in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, when a reporter from Komsomolskaya Pravda tracked her down.
Speaker 1: He found her living in a dormitory for food industry workers.
Speaker 1: It's a somewhat depressing place, with thirty eight rooms to
Speaker 1: one bathroom that seems to encapsulate the haunted life that
Speaker 1: Valentina has lived. Angered at having her privacy so rudely
Speaker 1: invaded at first, she refused to speak to the reporter entirely.
Speaker 1: When pressed to give her conclusions on the whole event,
Speaker 1: she replied, simply, what's the point now? It's all useless.
Speaker 1: We can't bring them back. This episode was written by
Speaker 1: Emma Dibden, Neil McRobert and Richard McLean Smith. Thank you
Speaker 1: as ever for listening. Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions
Speaker 1: podcast created by Richard McClain smith. All other elements of
Speaker 1: the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me
Speaker 1: Richard McLain smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook is now
Speaker 1: available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes
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Speaker 1: rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel
Speaker 1: free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas
Speaker 1: regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you
Speaker 1: have an explanation or a story of your own you'd
Speaker 1: like to share. You can find out more at Unexplained
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