Pod Insights Two Girls One Ghost Episode 349 - The Khamar-Daban Incident About this episode Six hikers went into the Siberian mountains. Only one came back.
In 1993, a group of young adventurers vanished in the Khamar-Daban range—and what rescuers found looked like a scene from a horror movie: bodies twisted and bloodied, faces frozen in panic, and a mystery that still defies science. Was it a Soviet experiment gone wrong? A toxic fog? Or did they awaken something ancient in the mountains?
We’re tracing the echoes of one of the world’s most chilling unsolved mysteries—the Khamar-Daban Incident.
Book mentioned:
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
One by One by Freida McFadden
Watch the video version here.
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New Episodes are released every Thursday and Sunday at 12am PST/3am EST (the witching hour, of course). Corinne and Sabrina hand select a couple of paranormal encounters from our inbox to read in each episode, from demons, to cryptids, to aliens, to creepy kids... the list goes on and on. If you have a story of your own that you'd like us to share on an upcoming episode, we invite you to email them to us!
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Edited by Jaimi Ryan and produced by Emma Leventer and Jaimi Ryan, original music by Arms Akimbo!
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Transcript 10,940 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Sabrina Deana-Roga? I'm so excited. I'm getting my whole body MRI scan from Prenuvo in a couple of weeks.
0:05 Corinne Vien? It's honestly so important. It's like one of those things where getting older and aging has provided me so many anxieties about like what's going on.
0:12 Sabrina Deana-Roga? I recently had some medical issues in my family and everyone in my family is like, let's just do everything we can to get ahead and take our own health into our own hands. Prenuvo's whole body scan is a radiation-free MRI designed to help provide a detailed, non-invasive look at your body in under an hour, and it helps evaluate across major organs and systems, including the brain, spine, abdomen, pelvis, and more. Prenuvo's whole body scan can help detect many cancers, aneurysms, and hundreds of other conditions. And they have memberships that bundle MRI scans, blood panels, and a personalized results review to track your health year after year.
0:47 Corinne Vien? To learn more about Prenuvo and get $300 off your whole body MRI, go to prenuvo.com/tgog and use code TGOG. That's P-R-E-N-U-V-O.com/tgog. Terms and conditions apply.
1:01 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Receive $300 off Prenuvo whole body scans and executive and comprehensive memberships through January 31st. For full details, visit Prenuvo's website to read their terms and conditions and privacy notice. Prenuvo gifted me a whole body scan. A Prenuvo scan is a screening service, not diagnostic. Diagnosis and treatment are determined by your healthcare provider.
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2:09 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Hello.
2:10 Corinne Vien? Three, two.
2:11 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Didn't we just do that?
2:12 Corinne Vien? Did we? I think we did do it.
2:13 Sabrina Deana-Roga? You know what we did do?
2:14 Corinne Vien? What?
2:15 Sabrina Deana-Roga? We haunted people.
2:16 Corinne Vien? Oh.
2:17 Sabrina Deana-Roga? I feel so bad.
2:19 Corinne Vien? I had a moment of panic where I thought you were gonna say the last episode we recorded, like that we didn't.
2:23 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Oh, no, no, no.
2:24 Corinne Vien? It's like, no!
2:25 Sabrina Deana-Roga? That would be horrible. No, but what we did was we haunted our listeners like no other. And this is why when we say, "Don't listen to an episode while driving," you probably like-
2:35 Corinne Vien? Actually, don't listen.
2:36 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Eric, one of our most-
2:37 Corinne Vien? Listen to us!
2:38 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Eric, who's on Patreon, got haunted by both episodes of The Hinsdale House.
2:42 Corinne Vien? Dang!
2:43 Sabrina Deana-Roga? We had, by the time we're recording this, only episode 344, part one, has come out public. We had seven, at least seven emails come in to our inbox within a day of that episode being released. All people saying that they had car issues. Our own producer, Emma, who listens to the episode and creates social media, listened in the car, had weird car things happen in her family. Didn't even just affect her, it affected the extended family. So, we are sorry, but also-
3:13 Corinne Vien? Yeah.
3:14 Sabrina Deana-Roga? We warned you.
3:15 Corinne Vien? Yeah, sometimes we have no idea what's gonna affect people, but this is one of the ones where we're like, we have a feeling that this one's gonna be a bad one.
3:21 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Well, that one also because there were so many car accidents within the family.
3:25 Corinne Vien? Mm-hmm.
3:26 Sabrina Deana-Roga? I know.
3:26 Corinne Vien? Ooh!
3:28 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Do we have a warning for this one?
3:29 Corinne Vien? No. Maybe don't be an adventurer?
3:33 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Don't go hiking?
3:34 Corinne Vien? Don't go in the woods?
3:35 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Protect our national parks?
3:38 Corinne Vien? Yeah, let's bring that back.
3:41 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah, where'd that go?
3:42 Corinne Vien? Hmm.
3:43 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Hmm.
3:44 Corinne Vien? Interesting. Okay, well, we're not in the US for this one. Instead, we're gonna be talking about six young hikers screaming. Blood streaming from their noses and mouths. One bangs her head against a rock to make it stop. Another runs, eyes wide, foam collecting at the corners of his lips.
4:04 Corinne Vien? And one by one, these hikers drop. And only one survives to tell the tale.
4:10 Sabrina Deana-Roga? But we have a survivor.
4:11 Corinne Vien? We do. This is similar to the Dyatlov Pass, but it's not that. This is Khamar de Ban, and it's somehow even more disturbing.
4:21 Sabrina Deana-Roga? It's wild that it's even more disturbing and I've never heard of it before. Whereas I feel like everyone has heard of.
4:26 Corinne Vien? Dyatlov, Dyatlov.
4:30 Corinne Vien? We'll butcher a lot of things throughout.
4:33 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Our lives.
4:36 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Forever and eternity.
4:37 Corinne Vien? Yeah, whatever.
4:38 Sabrina Deana-Roga? And beyond.
4:39 Corinne Vien? Yes, no, this one is like very bizarre. It's very brutal. There's unexplained tragedies that unfold here. It happens in the Siberian mountains and it happened in the summer of nineteen ninety-three.
4:51 Sabrina Deana-Roga? It's a summer.
4:52 Corinne Vien? Uh huh. And I've heard here. Oh, and it's still an unsolved mystery, even though there's a survivor. Whereas like the Dyatlov Pass, I feel like there was a lot of conversation around that because it seems like there was this like paranormal element to it. Although now there's like newer theories that there was a, a particular type of.
5:09 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Avalanche.
5:10 Corinne Vien? Avalanche.
5:11 Sabrina Deana-Roga? And then hypothermia. Yeah. Whereas this, there's no theories, like no plausible theories or there's.
5:16 Corinne Vien? There's some.
5:17 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Okay. But you think it's still a mystery?
5:20 Corinne Vien? Yeah.
5:20 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Okay.
5:22 Corinne Vien? I think I do.
5:24 Sabrina Deana-Roga? I think, I think I do. Hmm, let me think.
5:27 Corinne Vien? Hmm. August nineteen ninety-three.
5:30 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Oh, literally August nineteen ninety-three. Okay. So this is all about us now.
5:34 Corinne Vien? This is about us. And the witches were born.
5:38 Sabrina Deana-Roga? The witches were born.
5:39 Corinne Vien? In a cave in York, England. No.
5:42 Sabrina Deana-Roga? What episode was that? Last episode?
5:45 Corinne Vien? One or two ago.
5:45 Sabrina Deana-Roga? We don't know.
5:46 Corinne Vien? Okay, so August nineteen ninety-three, the Soviet Union had dissolved just two years earlier. So there was a lot of economic and social instability at the time still. And this was happening everywhere, but it didn't keep people from still having fun and adventuring and doing things that they wanted to do. And this is where we enter six hikers. They are from Kazakhstan and they were young, they were fit, and they decided to head into the wilderness with their trusted guide. And this is where the butchering of names begins. Lyudmila Kurovina.
6:18 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Okay.
6:19 Corinne Vien? And the group consisted of six students. There was Tatiana Filipenko, Alexander Christian, Dennis Schwachkin, Valentina Uterchenko, Victoria Salzova, and Timur Bapinov. Their leader, Lyudmila, was forty-one years old, and she was this super experienced survivalist. She was known for her rigorous training, and she almost had this militant leadership style. So if you're going to go into the woods with someone, if you're going to go mountaineering or exploring, she was a very disciplined and trusted person. She'd been hiking these mountains for years. And so she wasn't just a regular guide, bringing this group of students up. She was a master instructor in hiking and survival.
7:01 Sabrina Deana-Roga? So you know that she's no BS. You're not going to mess around around her. She's going to make sure you're following the rules.
7:07 Corinne Vien? Right, safety first. Yeah, don't be a fuckhead around her. And so she was this really highly respected person within the Soviet Tourism Federation. And her students were training under really harsh conditions. So she had them out in snow and rain.
7:24 Sabrina Deana-Roga? The elements.
7:25 Corinne Vien? Yeah, so they starved them, so they experienced the hunger.
7:29 Sabrina Deana-Roga? It's like a boot camp.
7:30 Corinne Vien? Truly, like, how to survive anything. And that is basically what she thought that they were preparing for or prepared for.
7:38 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Which is crazy, knowing that teaser you gave us.
7:41 Corinne Vien? Right, that not everyone lived, only one person did. So this group sets out on August 2nd. They're planning a route through Khamar Daban Range. This is in southern Siberia, and the group is planning to be right near Lake Baikal. The trip is going to last about a week, so a week in the woods.
7:59 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Which is also wild.
8:01 Corinne Vien? Mm-hmm, but at least it's like, it's August.
8:03 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
8:04 Corinne Vien? It's summer in the mountains. I'm sure it's still rough and cold, and I'm sure there's still
8:08 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Especially at night.
8:09 Corinne Vien? Snow-capped mountain tops in certain regions. But for this week-long hike, they carried some light gear with them. So they planned to forage some food. They expected to meet another group of hikers, also led by Lyudmila's own daughter on August 5th. So it was like, these two groups were doing their own thing. They're going to come together, have this group, woohoo, powwow.
8:30 Sabrina Deana-Roga? But you know that they're putting so much planning into this, that they know exactly how many miles they're going to hike each day,
8:36 Corinne Vien? Oh, yeah.
8:37 Sabrina Deana-Roga? so that they can reach the meeting point by August 5th.
8:40 Corinne Vien? Yes, and they're also like extreme survivalists. So it's not like they're worried about, like, oh, no, I didn't bring enough protein snacks or whatever. They can forage for food. Like this has been, they're not new. It's not like I'm me and I just signed up to hike Everest for the first time and I'm just trusting Sherpa to bring me. Like they have all been trained.
8:59 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
8:59 Corinne Vien? And they are with the master of this region too. So they're planning on meeting up on August 5th. The Kamartan Range is this super breathtaking mountain range, but it's also super remote and it's a pretty treacherous. It's really sharp. There's jagged peaks, thick forests, cold streams that trickle down through like very slippery mossy rock. And in August, while you'd be like, okay, well, it must be warm. And this is like, probably the best time to go. This mountain range is known for having some pretty extreme storms and like thunderstorms in the mountains. It does sound like the world is ending if you've ever experienced that.
9:36 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
9:37 Corinne Vien? So the first few days of the trek go perfectly. It's uneventful. The group is making good time. They even reached the, and this is another, I don't know why I wrote so many words I can't pronounce, but they reached the Retren Slid- Slider Peak.
9:52 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Okay.
9:53 Corinne Vien? Earlier than expected.
9:55 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Well, add some pictures to make the pronunciations less, less horrid.
9:59 Corinne Vien? Less horrid, yeah. But anyway, so like they're making good time. Everything's going to plan. They're in good spirits. They're taking photos. They're joking. They're setting up dinner. And then one day before they're supposed to meet the other group on August 4th, everything changes.
10:15 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Oh no.
10:16 Corinne Vien? A storm rolls in. There's torrential rain, cold wind, and they're forced to set up camp on an exposed slope. So this is really scary for most people.
10:27 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah, even just thinking about this.
10:29 Corinne Vien? Like sleeping on a slope in this like jagged, cold, slippery mountain known for like unpredictable storms. And I'm sure like mudslides and just flooding.
10:39 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Did I tell you I fell out of bed the other day?
10:41 Corinne Vien? What?
10:42 Sabrina Deana-Roga? I think I
10:42 Corinne Vien? Give me a bed, Russ.
10:44 Sabrina Deana-Roga? I might. I think I was just having a weird dream and I literally fell out of my bed. And I woke, I woke up falling out of my bed. So I don't trust myself. I'm an unpredictable sleeper. I'm usually a stagnant, don't move sleeper.
10:55 Corinne Vien? Right.
10:56 Sabrina Deana-Roga? I think I just had a weird dream.
10:56 Corinne Vien? You and I have slept in beds together many times.
10:58 Sabrina Deana-Roga? And I literally sleep like a dead body.
11:00 Corinne Vien? We're both, yeah, we wake up in the same position we fall asleep in.
11:03 Sabrina Deana-Roga? No, it was a very weird experience for me.
11:05 Corinne Vien? Oh, weird.
11:06 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah. Like, I felt embarrassed by it. Like, I think I would have felt less embarrassed had I wet the bed.
11:12 Corinne Vien? Okay, so yeah, like if we were
11:14 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
11:14 Corinne Vien? in this situation, it was very scary. For this group, I'm sure they were still scared, but they were like, okay, this is manageable for us with our skill set. Really harping on like what experts these people were.
11:24 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Right.
11:25 Corinne Vien? The morning of August 5th began like any other. They had breakfast, they packed up their camp, and they began descending the mountain. But not long into the hike, one of the group members, Alexander Christian, began to act strangely. He started screaming.
11:41 Sabrina Deana-Roga? This is the morning of August 5th?
11:43 Corinne Vien? Mm-hmm.
11:43 Sabrina Deana-Roga? So the day they're supposed to meet the group?
11:45 Corinne Vien? Yes, they're, they're hiking down to like go to their meeting point. He starts screaming, blood starts pouring out of his nose.
11:51 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Ah!
11:52 Corinne Vien? And then his mouth, and then he starts frothing at the mouth and convulsing.
11:57 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Do they not eat like poison berries? It sounds like a poisonous food.
12:01 Corinne Vien? It does sound like that, especially because it happened like right after breakfast.
12:04 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
12:05 Corinne Vien? So Lyrd Mila, she rushes to her side, but she too then starts experiencing some strange symptoms. There's blood, there's seizures. Valentina described it as happening in a matter of minutes. So now we know Valentina is their survivor.
12:20 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Well, so it's happening to everyone around the same time, meaning it does make me think it's something that they all consumed.
12:27 Corinne Vien? Yeah. Tatiana then collapses, her body stiffens and her muscles start spasming. And she starts to take her head and bash it into the rock over and over.
12:39 Sabrina Deana-Roga? No, I just read a book called, um, One by One, I think. It sounds so much, I mean, not the story itself, but the way that they're
12:49 Corinne Vien? Well, it's like, it basically, like, the way that it was described was Valentina was basically saying like, it was as if her head hurt so bad, she was trying to like, basically end it by smashing her brain.
12:59 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah, so the book One by One, it's by Freedom McFadden, I just checked. There's like someone who ate berries and they were poisonous. And granted, that's fiction. This is not which so.
13:10 Corinne Vien? So Victoria and Timor, they then began screaming and running, but they didn't get far. They collapse in the forest, blood around their mouths, bodies contorting. So everyone seizing contorting, blood is coming from particular orifices.
13:25 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Horrible death.
13:27 Corinne Vien? Yes. And this happens for mere minutes. And within a few minutes, maybe like 10 minutes, six of the seven hikers were dead because there were six students.
13:36 Sabrina Deana-Roga? And the leader.
13:37 Corinne Vien? And the leader. So only Valentina remained.
13:41 Sabrina Deana-Roga? So even the leader who had spent all this time, like they were so, like you really did harp on this, like they have studied, they have.
13:49 Corinne Vien? There was no better person to take you into this mountain range.
13:52 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Oh God, that's so devastating.
13:54 Corinne Vien? Sometimes the most prepared people still.
13:56 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah, we're human.
13:59 Corinne Vien? Valentina was only 17 years old and she's now alone in this really treacherous.
14:05 Sabrina Deana-Roga? And she just witnessed all of her friends die this horrific.
14:08 Corinne Vien? Oh my God, yes.
14:08 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Violent death.
14:10 Corinne Vien? Right? And now she's alone in the Siberian wilderness, just out there with like bodies surrounding her. Her friends, her mentors scattered around her bloody frothing at mouths, contorted, it's like in the ring, you know, like when. The people are like, and that's how I picture it.
14:25 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Also just thinking about like, one, your instinct is to survive on your own, but then it's also like, I wouldn't want to leave. My friends and loved ones, like their bodies out here because in the wilderness, animals are going to come get them and.
14:37 Corinne Vien? Yeah, but then you also don't want to stay.
14:39 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Well, I know. So obviously survival.
14:41 Corinne Vien? Enter the grizzly bears of the Siberian wilderness. Like that's horrifying.
14:45 Sabrina Deana-Roga? But then I just think about.
14:46 Corinne Vien? The wolves.
14:46 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Because this is still a mystery and I don't know where it's going, but like I'm thinking about, oh, are these bodies never recovered? So we can't get the full answer. But anyway, I'll let you continue. We'll get to that.
14:57 Corinne Vien? Well, poor Valentina, she's just standing there like amongst everyone and the silence is deafening.
15:03 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Of course.
15:04 Corinne Vien? Winds, the sharp air against her skin and just everyone she was just with for the past few days. Dead, scattered around her.
15:15 Corinne Vien? So she's like, I gotta go. I have no idea what caused this and I need to get out of here. So she took what she could. She grabbed what food they had, a tent, her personal gear, and she ran. She booked it out of there. But she didn't run for very long because her body was just so exhausted and her mind was just so
15:33 Sabrina Deana-Roga? The trauma.
15:34 Corinne Vien? Broken from what she just experienced. So when she stopped, she pitched her tent near a small group of trees and she stayed there for the night, waiting to be rescued and basically battling in her own mind. Like, did I just hallucinate? Did I, did I make all that up and I just ran away? And like, everyone's actually fine and something's wrong with me?
15:53 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Because you don't have anyone to talk to about this.
15:57 Corinne Vien? Right.
15:57 Sabrina Deana-Roga? So all, so yeah, like your mind is going through so many different iterations of things.
16:01 Corinne Vien? And it's like, just imagine everything being perfect. You've trained for this. And then just like in the span of a couple of minutes.
16:08 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Everyone dies.
16:08 Corinne Vien? You're completely the same and suddenly everyone around you is shrieking, blood like oozing out of all of the orifices, like bones almost like seeming like they're cracking because they're seizing so hard. It's awful.
16:21 Sabrina Deana-Roga? I mean, crossing this in any ways, I can't even imagine, but doing it alone in the wilderness.
16:26 Corinne Vien? Right. So there was another group that was supposed to meet them, right? And so she's, she pitched a tent and she was kind of hoping like, someone's gonna come searching. Someone's gonna come find us, especially because if we don't meet up with this group, like they know that we're not.
16:39 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Something's wrong.
16:40 Corinne Vien? Something's wrong. Like someone's gonna find me soon. But no one came.
16:43 Sabrina Deana-Roga? What?
16:44 Corinne Vien? So then she walked for four days through dense woods, along icy rivers. She was battling starvation, trauma, hypothermia. And she followed the electrical poles, knowing that they had to lead somewhere. So she's like, eventually this electrical pole is going to like
17:00 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Society.
17:01 Corinne Vien? Connect to a building or something. So finally, near the Snazhnyaya River, she saw Ukrainian kayakers. So she runs towards them barefoot, shaking.
17:13 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Four days later.
17:14 Corinne Vien? Able to speak. Yeah, four days later. And I'm sure she was probably like, kind of what you were saying with like the berries. She's also been trained in this sort of like survivalist mentality. So I'm sure after watching all of that, that might have come to her mind. And so I have no idea what she actually did to survive. I know she grabbed some food, but I wonder if she was like so hungry too, because she was too terrified to forage anything.
17:38 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah, I would be.
17:40 Corinne Vien? So these kayakers are like ultra concerned for her. Thank God, they're not like, oh, crazy person ran away from her. They grab her, they carry her to the nearest police station because she's so weak. She can barely like hold herself up. And the authorities have no clue what to make of this like outlandish story she's telling them about. Everyone frothing at the mouth.
18:00 Sabrina Deana-Roga? They think it's outlandish?
18:01 Corinne Vien? In the mountains. Yes. It wasn't until August 24th, 19 days later, that a proper search party is put together to go look for the bodies. Helicopters flew over the region and eventually located the corpses of.
18:16 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Oh, they did.
18:17 Corinne Vien? Hikers.
18:18 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yep. Were they not picked apart by animals? Sorry, that's gruesome of me to say, but.
18:22 Corinne Vien? I'm sure partially.
18:24 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Okay.
18:24 Corinne Vien? And what they saw was very gruesome. The bodies were partially undressed. Some were face down as if they'd collapsed mid-run. Others had blood pooled around them. Lyod Mila was found with signs of cardiac arrest. Her face was frozen in what witnesses later described as utter terror. Which just does sound a lot like Dead Love Pass. And it also kind of reminds me of that one ship where like everyone's faces were like frozen. In terror and it was like, what happened?
18:51 Sabrina Deana-Roga? You covered that one. That's, that's such a.
18:53 Corinne Vien? That was an earlier, then earlier year.
18:55 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
18:56 Corinne Vien? Podcast.
18:56 Sabrina Deana-Roga? I think about that one a lot.
18:58 Corinne Vien? I should revisit that one.
18:58 Sabrina Deana-Roga? You did such a good job. Actually, okay.
19:01 Corinne Vien? She had to stories from the vault.
19:02 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
19:03 Corinne Vien? Okay, so now that the bodies are recovered, autopsies can be conducted. So you would think, okay, we get the cause of death for everyone. Everyone had poison berries. Oh my gosh, that's what happened. But the official cause of death was hypothermia. What? For six of them.
19:18 Sabrina Deana-Roga? No, I don't buy it.
19:19 Corinne Vien? For, nope, Lyod Mila, it was a heart attack.
19:23 Sabrina Deana-Roga? I do not buy it, not one bit. What?
19:26 Corinne Vien? So yeah, some of the details are not fitting exactly what happened, especially because there is one survivor who can tell you what happened.
19:34 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Okay, here's my conspiracy. Ready for it?
19:36 Corinne Vien? Yeah.
19:37 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Okay, the government was growing. Some, they were doing like a test on like vegetables that they were trying to use for like military purposes to like kill their enemies. And it was in this region and they accidentally ate it. And so the government can't say that it's from a poisonous food because they don't want to reveal that they're doing these tests.
19:58 Corinne Vien? Well, the good old government is definitely always included in some conspiracies or theories. That's what happened.
20:05 Sabrina Deana-Roga? It also just sounds like no one's really believing.
20:07 Corinne Vien? Valentina.
20:08 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah, like no one's believing Valentina and so they aren't really taking her account of how they died seriously, even though they have the bodies. I feel like they're like, meh, case closed.
20:21 Corinne Vien? I know. And I'm sure, like, I don't know what her reaction was after. Like, I'm sure she was in such a state of shock that maybe it was hard for her to get all of these details out in the beginning. I don't know, but it does seem weird that it's like, they say hypothermia, it's like.
20:34 Sabrina Deana-Roga? It just doesn't.
20:35 Corinne Vien? Is that normal for response?
20:37 Sabrina Deana-Roga? And they all woke up fine, including Valentina. And then it was like an hour or like not long after eating breakfast. That they all start foaming from the mouths and bleeding out of their mouths.
20:48 Corinne Vien? Minutes for everyone. If it's hypothermia, you would think that it might be spaced out over a few days based on people's different like body and weight and.
20:55 Sabrina Deana-Roga? And then Valentina would have had some evidence of that.
20:57 Corinne Vien? Yeah, and she had absolutely nothing. I mean, by the end, she was hypothermic. She was at, she was alone for four days.
21:02 Sabrina Deana-Roga? And she didn't foam out of the mouth and bleed?
21:05 Corinne Vien? No.
21:05 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah, okay.
21:06 Corinne Vien? Okay, so yeah, hypothermia and then for Lyudmila, a heart attack. So clearly there was.
21:11 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Which happened at the exact time that everyone else died from hypothermia?
21:15 Corinne Vien? Details are not fitting the crime here, whatever this crime is. So several of the hikers had signs of pulmonary edema, so fluid in the lungs. Others had bruises consistent with internal bleeding. All of them were protein deficient, malnourished despite only having been gone a few days. So it does kind of seem like cult-ish in a way where it's like, were they being? Cause Lyudmila did kind of like encourage them to starve themselves sometimes to like survive the elements and like understand how to.
21:46 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Oh my thunder. That was amazing.
21:50 Corinne Vien? That was so scary.
21:51 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Holy shit.
21:52 Corinne Vien? Did you guys hear that?
21:53 Sabrina Deana-Roga? I hope.
21:54 Corinne Vien? The loudest crack of thunder. There was no thunder before.
21:57 Sabrina Deana-Roga? There's been zero thunder all day. It's been pouring.
21:59 Corinne Vien? That I love that so much.
22:03 Sabrina Deana-Roga? The gods are playing bowling.
22:07 Corinne Vien? Okay, so yeah, they had.
22:08 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Why do I say playing bowling?
22:09 Corinne Vien? Playing bowling.
22:10 Sabrina Deana-Roga? They're just bowling.
22:12 Corinne Vien? Or, so they had a lot of signs of like malnourishment despite only having been out in the wilderness for like a week long trip and not even making it a full week.
22:22 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Okay.
22:23 Corinne Vien? Otherwise, there were no signs of trauma, no bites, no infections, and basically no answers because what the autopsies were like declaring as the death didn't make sense with the events that occurred.
22:34 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Right. Well, because even with it, Dyatlov passed, like they did die of hypothermia and a lot of the ways that their bodies were found, like yes, there was a distortion, like the one person had bit their tongue off.
22:46 Corinne Vien? Yeah.
22:46 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Things like that.
22:47 Corinne Vien? Another person was like fully naked.
22:49 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Right, because.
22:50 Corinne Vien? Hypothermia makes you think you're overheating.
22:52 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah. So there's like similarities in terms of the presentation of how the bodies maybe were found, but that's the only connection I can find.
23:03 Corinne Vien? I don't know. I, what I do know is Valentina was in the hospital for a long time and she was suffering from some pretty intense PTSD from witnessing all of this. And she very rarely spoke of the incident, so I'm not sure how much information she was able to contribute to the actual.
23:17 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Investigation.
23:18 Corinne Vien? Investigation.
23:19 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
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23:26 Corinne Vien? It's honestly so important. It's like one of those things where getting older and aging has provided me so many anxieties about like what's going on.
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25:09 Corinne Vien? But now, we're entering Theoryland.
25:12 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Oh, I like Theoryland.
25:14 Corinne Vien? Theoryland.
25:14 Sabrina Deana-Roga? It's like fairyland, but Theoryland.
25:18 Corinne Vien? And this is where things get a little murky, because, of course, theories are theories. And a lot of theories are from Reddit. And like, people just, you know, theories are gossip, awesome.
25:27 Sabrina Deana-Roga? And according to the government, it's a case closed.
25:30 Corinne Vien? Right.
25:31 Sabrina Deana-Roga? They died of hypothermia.
25:32 Corinne Vien? So you can only go off of so much information.
25:34 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah. They didn't look into any other, other causes.
25:36 Corinne Vien? Yeah, there's a lot of speculation in a bunch of different communities. So hypothermia was the official cause of death. And yes, hypothermia can cause irrational behavior, like you were talking about, paradoxical undressing when you... I literally wrote like what I was referencing before. Like, if you've ever read the book Into Thin Air by John Krakauer, he writes about this, about like, when you have... It's the book about like, climbing Mount Everest, and it's based on a real story. But yeah, like, when people experience extreme hypothermia, their bodies trick them into thinking that they're overheating, and so they start taking off their protective gear and basically end up succumbing to the elements even quicker than they already were. If you're at that point, you're probably already dead or going to die, unfortunately. Mass seizures and bleeding from the nose and mouth is a little bit more questionable
26:20 Corinne Vien? when it comes to hypothermia. One theory was toxic mushroom poisoning. Kuravina was known to forage and certain mushrooms do cause hallucinations and seizures and death. But again, it would also be strange for one person to be completely unaffected and all the others to be killed unless Valentina didn't eat the mushrooms.
26:42 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Right, that would be like the one time where like, I don't like mushrooms saves your life.
26:46 Corinne Vien? Right, I'm full.
26:47 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
26:48 Corinne Vien? I already have my two berries.
26:49 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
26:50 Corinne Vien? Some believed that maybe the water could have been contaminated. Lake Baikal wasn't far away. And in Soviet times, there were rumors of illegal industrial dumping during the economic collapse following the fall of the USSR. So not mystery.
27:05 Sabrina Deana-Roga? But still a government.
27:06 Corinne Vien? But still like government doing something that they weren't supposed to.
27:08 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
27:09 Corinne Vien? Again, there are rumors that there's illegal activity, but basically the question was like, is there runoff from this old weapons lab maybe too that could have been contaminating the water source? Or is it simply industrial waste that it's polluted with? And maybe they drank tainted water and then maybe Valentina drank the same water, but for some reason was fine or had so little of it or didn't have any water at all from like one source because she already had.
27:35 Sabrina Deana-Roga? A canteen of some other water.
27:36 Corinne Vien? Right. And so these were the questions.
27:38 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Huh.
27:39 Corinne Vien? But again, it's like without all of the information being offered up by Valentina and the actual investigation happening, there's just a lot of theories and talk within the communities about what could have happened.
27:48 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Right.
27:49 Corinne Vien? But maybe.
27:50 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Valentina was seventeen when this happened.
27:51 Corinne Vien? She was seventeen.
27:52 Sabrina Deana-Roga? She was so young.
27:53 Corinne Vien? And she was hospitalized for a long time because she just was so.
27:55 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Of course.
27:56 Corinne Vien? I mean physically injured from being out there, but also mentally.
28:00 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
28:01 Corinne Vien? Really struggling. But maybe it wasn't human interference. Maybe the mountains hold some secrets.
28:06 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Well, we know the mountains hold some secrets.
28:08 Corinne Vien? The Boryat people, an indigenous native group of people in this region, have beliefs that are kind of like a mix of shamanism and Buddhism.
28:16 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Mm-hmm.
28:17 Corinne Vien? And they believe the mountains are alive and not metaphorically, but like literally alive and that there are spiritual entities living here, guardians of balance and harmony. Between the natural world and unseen world.
28:29 Sabrina Deana-Roga? I mean, we believe that too.
28:31 Corinne Vien? Yes, totally. And actually, so in this culture, they believed that not all spirits are so benevolent. And rumors started circulating about beasts and spirits in the mountains. Some of them murderous and looking for their next victim. Some shared stories about how they knew someone who knew someone whose brother went missing, whose eyes had bled when they entered the mountain. And just like all these rumors were going and going and going. And this was also like indigenous culture was like, oh yeah, don't go into those mountains. This is not a place to go. Like this is a dangerous space. And so now it's just like adding to the lore.
29:07 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Especially if, if one person's like, oh yeah, there was a story of so and so who went in there and their eyes started bleeding. And then this story happens.
29:16 Corinne Vien? Right.
29:16 Sabrina Deana-Roga? That spreads.
29:17 Corinne Vien? Yes. People started talking about encountering orbs and other strange anomalies. A lot of people said they had really bad feelings when entering the Kamartabon mountain range. And so people are sharing their suspicions, these anecdotes, their experiences. And many start to feel that it all comes down to something strange and odd happening in the mountains. Not necessarily something that this group of hikers did or accidentally did. But it's the mountains' fault. Something here killed them.
29:45 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Okay. So it's something. Which is interesting because I feel like often when you talk about like the power of nature, it's usually, and I feel like I'm referencing what we've talked about with Appalachia. But like, it's usually, don't wrong the land or these beings will punish you.
30:02 Corinne Vien? Yeah. And I feel like that belief kind of also comes into this mountain range even more so where it's like the mountain remembers. And it will know what happened and like replay what happened because people have also been talking about like screams coming from the mountain. And like whatever happened, basically like being replayed up here.
30:19 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Which is so sad.
30:20 Corinne Vien? Yeah.
30:21 Sabrina Deana-Roga? And scary if you're hiking out there and you hear that.
30:23 Corinne Vien? Right. People say that often happens at night, which is really scary because like, of course, this happened to these people during the day. And so it's like, is this a replaying of what happened or is there something else in the mountain?
30:33 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Or an animal that screams.
30:35 Corinne Vien? Yeah.
30:36 Sabrina Deana-Roga? People say like especially when they're alone at night, it'll happen.
30:39 Corinne Vien? Great. So people have wondered, could the Kamardan tragedy be more than a physical event? Could it be spiritual, some sort of reckoning or an ancient force deciding who lives and who dies up here? We don't really know, but it all comes down to treat the mountain with respect. And if the indigenous people say, don't go into the mountain, definitely be very careful about going into the mountain or don't go. And now we don our tinfoil hats.
31:04 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Conspiracies.
31:05 Corinne Vien? And we tell you about government coverups and Russian secrets of it. The Kamardan range is not just beautiful, it's also strategic. It's remote, it's wild, and during the Soviet era, it was dotted with closed cities, hidden research sites and places where maps simply stopped being accurate.
31:24 Sabrina Deana-Roga? It's like Area 51.
31:25 Corinne Vien? Mm hmm. After the fall of the Soviet Union, a number of classified defense programs were exposed to the public. One of them was codenamed Kimsashchichida, which means chemical defense.
31:38 Sabrina Deana-Roga? And that's actually known to be true, like this part is a real thing?
31:41 Corinne Vien? I think, I don't know. I was kind of, this is where I was in Google and it was a little bit hard.
31:45 Sabrina Deana-Roga? I'm just gonna go with it all of it. Okay.
31:48 Corinne Vien? I feel like sometimes when we research stuff that happens in other countries and it's like a part of like a deep lore within another country, it is really difficult to decipher. And I feel like sometimes there's a lot of websites that just are maybe about it, but in another language and it doesn't quite translate.
32:04 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Right.
32:04 Corinne Vien? Well.
32:05 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Or I feel like we are often served like in searching it, the Americanized retelling. And it is harder to find authentic sources from those places.
32:16 Corinne Vien? Yeah, like I just tried Googling it again and everything's coming up about just like Putin and Trump. So.
32:21 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah. Well, I also just do believe the governments are constantly operating and running places that we don't know about.
32:29 Corinne Vien? But it's also hard too, because it's like we're in America and there's a lot of like Russia versus US. And there's a lot of like propaganda and stuff. And so it's like.
32:37 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Existed for a long time.
32:38 Corinne Vien? Who knows if this actually did occur or if this was something fed to us or fed to people in the like.
32:44 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
32:45 Corinne Vien? Yeah.
32:45 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Either way, conspiracies.
32:47 Corinne Vien? It's a conspiracy. So take this all as a grain of salt. So basically it was saying that there are declassified documents and firsthand whistleblower reports suggesting that the Soviet military was testing chemical dispersal methods in these mountains because it was uninhabited. And basically, like, you know, we've heard it a bunch with like even like US military testing where it's like testing out nerve agents and just like what fumes can you put in the air to just like kill or paralyze an entire group of people as a war?
33:20 Sabrina Deana-Roga? This would work with my theory of like, were they planting something? But like, if they dropped some type of chemical, that it could have just on a off chance, the one piece that Valentina had wasn't tainted by that chemical.
33:33 Corinne Vien? Right.
33:34 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
33:34 Corinne Vien? Apparently the tests were not always accounted for. There wasn't really good reporting done. And there was basically like an off limits area of hundreds of miles across the mountain range, not because of the terrain, but because of possible contamination. And so people are wondering like, is this what happened here? Did they wander in this area unknowing? This was part of like some sort of secret government testing site that people would like later find out. Because again, there were like whistleblowers, which again with like the whistleblower, was that true? Was that someone up? Whatever. Some fringe theories suggest that there was electromagnetic anomalies causing mass hysteria and neurological effects.
34:15 Sabrina Deana-Roga? So basically saying- Which was very much the diatla of past.
34:17 Corinne Vien? Yes.
34:18 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
34:18 Corinne Vien? And like, was there a big sound wave that came through and caused this panic? And there's frequencies and it's scrambling some people's brains, but suddenly somehow Valentina doesn't get affected. That's the weird thing.
34:29 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Right.
34:30 Corinne Vien? Another one of the theories like goes back to the nerve agents, which are like have been used in the past. Like, this isn't really a conspiracy in terms of like what it is, it very much exists, but the conspiracy is for the testing it in the mountains.
34:41 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Sure.
34:42 Corinne Vien? So it's used in assassinations, but it does cause seizures, foaming at the mouth, and death. And so again, people are like, did they stumble into this test zone? And maybe they inhaled something. But then why was it only, how did Valentina survive?
34:58 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Right.
34:58 Corinne Vien? That is the question.
34:59 Sabrina Deana-Roga? If it is one of these, whether it's food or a chemical agent of some kind, I think you would have to then buy into the fact that Valentina, by miracle, survived or chose not to eat that thing.
35:13 Corinne Vien? Right. Well, and so that's when kind of some of the supernatural theories come back into place. Because people are like, well, did they disturb something in the mountains?
35:21 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Hmm.
35:22 Corinne Vien? Something so ancient. And maybe Valentina was the only one to not participate in a certain thing or step on a certain thing that was so sacred that basically resulted in them being killed.
35:34 Sabrina Deana-Roga? I have such a, like, my instinct, I have a mama bear instinct to protect the nature and the nature spirits.
35:41 Corinne Vien? Because like, why would, what was there?
35:43 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Right.
35:44 Corinne Vien? Why, what motive do they have? This is a group of people that are like, the leave no trace type of people.
35:48 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Right, they love the wilderness.
35:50 Corinne Vien? Right. Yeah, they have so much respect for it.
35:52 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
35:53 Corinne Vien? So, a quick background into a similar incident which we've been referring to. A bunch, Diatla Pass, we covered it in episode 116, Unsolved Mysteries. It was 1959, nine hikers, all found dead. One with a crushed skull, another had bit her tongue out and it was like, missing from her mouth.
36:12 Sabrina Deana-Roga? What did you cover in that episode? Was it the ship?
36:15 Corinne Vien? Oh, was it?
36:16 Sabrina Deana-Roga? I'm trying to think.
36:17 Corinne Vien? It's the Orang Madan ship. Two girls, one ghost. We're gonna Google this.
36:23 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Mm-hmm.
36:23 Corinne Vien? Like, we can't find anything that we've covered before.
36:26 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Because we did not properly label it in our episode notes.
36:31 Corinne Vien? I have no idea.
36:33 Sabrina Deana-Roga? We'll find it.
36:34 Corinne Vien? When we covered the ship. But that was the ship. And I remember covering it. Okay, but in the Diatla Pass, there were nine hikers, found dead. One crushed skull, one missing a tongue, radiation on some of their clothes. No footprints, no explanation. Sounds very familiar to what happened here. And the parallels of these two cases, people there are like, it's just so wild because it's a remote mountain range. Very experienced hikers, like they were researchers in the Diamov Pass.
37:01 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Right.
37:02 Corinne Vien? And then very sudden violent deaths and no clear cause, although now there's some theories.
37:07 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
37:07 Corinne Vien? Um, so recent investigations into the 1959 Diamov Pass incident suggests that there was a slab avalanche triggered by specific environmental conditions, which may have caused the hikers' mysterious deaths. So basically, like, I watched like a video of it happening where it's like, there's pressure where it like, the snow pushes down and then there's almost like a sheet of like, like a super like
37:29 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
37:30 Corinne Vien? quick and violent, almost like a missile of like icy snow that just like thrusts out and basically killed them. In 2021, there was a study that demonstrated a combination of factors such as a cut in the snow slope that the tent was set up on and an accumulation of wind-blown snow and the presence of katabatic winds. So basically, all these things that like, you're like, what? How do you even figure this out?
37:55 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah. And again, how does one person survive that?
37:59 Corinne Vien? Yeah, so that's for the Diamov Pass.
38:01 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Oh, we're talking, oh.
38:01 Corinne Vien? However, the Diamov Pass also had one survivor, Yuri Yudin. He left the group early due to an illness.
38:08 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Oh, oh, but that's different. That feels...
38:11 Corinne Vien? He wasn't there for it, thank God.
38:13 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah, I found, it's episode 23. That's when we covered it. So very early. It was ghost ships.
38:19 Corinne Vien? Ghost ships. Okay, so here's where things take a little bit of a wild turn because like, obviously, there wasn't an avalanche happening at Kamartivon. So kind of going back to like the paranormal side of things. People have pointed out that Kamartivon is not the only place in Siberia with stories like this. There have been many weird, weird things and people feeling things in the mountains. So in 2014, there were hikers in Altai Mountains reporting the feeling of being watched, a pressure on their chest, and this one guy said that he felt such a big pressure that he actually collapsed. And when he looked to his GPS to like, figure out where he was going, he was completely fried. So again, it's like, kind of back to like government testing or like electromagnetic anomaly.
39:02 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Or even just paranormal, like paranormal messes with electricity all the time and people's like phones stop working and GPS, whatever, glitches.
39:10 Corinne Vien? So then in 2001, there was a group near Lake Baikal. So right near where these hikers, most of them died. And they saw orbs of light moving silently over the trees.
39:21 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Ah.
39:22 Corinne Vien? And two of the campers were said to, and like, again, let me repeat that these are like stories from Reddit.
39:30 Sabrina Deana-Roga? But yeah.
39:31 Corinne Vien? But this is also a paranormal podcast.
39:33 Sabrina Deana-Roga? And also like, people share their weird experiences on Reddit all the time, the way that they email them to us.
39:39 Corinne Vien? Yeah. Two campers went missing for six hours and then returned barefoot, unable to explain where they had been.
39:46 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Aliens.
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40:20 Speaker 02 The award-winning American Airlines Advantage Program rewards more than travel. It takes your whole life to new heights. Earn miles when you fly, as well as with thousands of your favorite brands. And then redeem those miles for flights, upgrades, and experiences worldwide. Advantage members also enjoy earlier boarding and free high-speed Wi-Fi in flight. Join for free and start earning towards your next adventure at aa.com/spotify.
40:50 Corinne Vien? All to say, the mountain holds many secrets. And what happened in the Kamardeban tragedy incident is still a mystery. And so what does everyone think? Was it poison? Was it panic? Was it a hidden military operation? Or maybe something supernatural? The truth is, we probably will not know. I'm not sure that I fully believe the theory behind the Diamov Pass either.
41:14 Sabrina Deana-Roga? I buy that way more than I buy that these people had hypothermia.
41:19 Corinne Vien? Right. Hypothermia and a heart attack all within like a couple of minutes of each other.
41:22 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah, no, I don't buy that for one second.
41:24 Corinne Vien? The Kamara Devon incident remains one of the most baffling mysteries. There's horror, there's blood, and there's one lone survivor, which makes you wonder, what is hiding in these mountains? And will you ever be safe?
41:37 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Well, the answer is no, you're never going to be safe anywhere. Sorry to end with that, but I really don't think it was supernatural, especially even those other stories that you shared, which maybe it is aliens. None of them are dying, bleeding out of their orifices. Whereas this, and I'm no expert, and I didn't get my own hands on the autopsy of the bodies, but I really, really think it was something they consumed.
42:01 Corinne Vien? Yeah, it honestly does sound like that.
42:02 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Whether it was like a poisonous berry or a toxin on a item that they ate.
42:09 Corinne Vien? I just wish we had more information from Valentina. I know obviously like we don't want her to relive that trauma over and over again, but I feel like that is kind of like the, knowing what her day was like in comparison to the others, I think would
42:22 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Help?
42:22 Corinne Vien? Help, right, because either we'd have some answers or we'd
42:25 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Frickin autopsy, because you could look at the food that is in their stomach.
42:29 Corinne Vien? I know.
42:29 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Not anymore now, but like you could have done that examination and see the contents.
42:34 Corinne Vien? It's definitely not hypothermia. We know that.
42:36 Sabrina Deana-Roga? It's definitely not.
42:36 Corinne Vien? But it does make me so curious about like the whole nerve agent thing. Because also it's like, was everyone outside at breakfast and she was inside the tent getting dressed or something? And there was some sort of like
42:47 Sabrina Deana-Roga? She missed something.
42:48 Corinne Vien? The wind shifted and like took this like noxious agent to the group of people around like their fire or like whatever. And she missed it by like 60 seconds or something. Then they all go about having their breakfast for 20 minutes and then it just hits everyone. And that's why she couldn't identify what happened because maybe there was an amount of time. Anyway. I also don't think, I don't, I don't think it's really that supernatural. I am kind of with you.
43:13 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
43:13 Corinne Vien? We're like, there's some other third-party element.
43:17 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Involved. Oh, here's another mystery. What happened to Ludmilla's daughter and that other group that was supposed to meet them?
43:23 Corinne Vien? Find them or like alert that there was something wrong? Why did it take nineteen days to send out a proper search? Although I will say, like, it very much could have been a weather-related thing. Sure. Because the mountains, like, there's some bad storms. They might have just not found a window to go that deep.
43:39 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Well, it's very sad and I, I do feel really bad for Valentina. While that one may not be the most supernatural, this story from our listener might be.
43:49 Corinne Vien? Ooh.
43:50 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Okay, this is from anonymous and it's called Unexplainable Events in Yellowstone National Park. Hello, Corinne and Sabrina. I wouldn't say I'm brand new to your channel. I've played your videos here and there when I'm in the mood. But recently I've been keeping up with you guys regularly and I would now declare myself a very active fan of Two Girls, One Ghost.
44:09 Corinne Vien? Thank you.
44:10 Sabrina Deana-Roga? If you do read this, please keep me anonymous. Okay, here's my experience. So, quick background. My sister, my family and I have all had strange, unexplainable experiences throughout our lives. Things we couldn't explain. I've even messed around with a Ouija board before. And while some people say that can make you more susceptible to the paranormal, I don't know if that's true or not. Either way, my entire family has always believed in the supernatural. And since we were kids, we were obsessed with ghost reality shows, horror movies, basically anything spooky. My family used to watch them almost every other night. So weird experiences never really fell out of question. But I decided to tell this particular story because I think it's my favorite. And I can tell you guys like ones about camping and hiking.
44:53 Corinne Vien? Oh, yeah. Because we fear it.
44:55 Sabrina Deana-Roga? This story takes place while my sister and I were working in Yellowstone National Park for the summer. Some of our coworkers had planned a thirteen-mile hike. But unfortunately, my sister, who also happened to be my dorm mate, and I had shifts that day and could not go. If there's one thing everyone knows about hiking, it's that you always tell someone where you're going. You tell them when you'll be back and you never hike alone. My sister's close friend told her the group should be done by nine P M, ten P M at the absolute latest. He also told her exactly which trail they were hiking. There were at least eight people going, so we didn't really have any concerns about wild animals and all of the people in this group were experienced hikers. There was truly no reason to be worried.
45:39 Sabrina Deana-Roga? That's how every story starts.
45:41 Corinne Vien? I know. I feel like everyone needs to be like slightly paranoid at all times and then maybe fewer things would happen.
45:47 Sabrina Deana-Roga? They were so worried going into this hike, but they made it back okay. Okay, so that evening, I got off work around eight P M. I went back to the dorms, I showered, and then I hung out in the common room playing pool with my sister, my dorm mate and a few other coworkers who also did not go on the hike. Time slipped away and when we finally looked down at our phones, it was ten thirty P M. We all realized the hikers should have been back by now, or at least sent a text. It was late and dark. But honestly, it wasn't that weird for employees to do night hikes, sometimes with flashlights, sometimes honestly, just by moonlight. To be honest, it would have been more weird if you were an employee and had never done a night hike.
46:25 Corinne Vien? Hmm.
46:26 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Fair. Still, knowing this, we were worried about their tardiness. We all tried calling them, but every single call went straight to voicemail. We knew that there was no service on that trail, but still, it was worth a shot. We all had this nagging feeling that something was wrong. But even with that, we couldn't reach them, so we just kept playing pool. Maybe they were a little bit more delayed. We told ourselves they were probably just a little slower than expected. I mean, it's
46:51 Corinne Vien? This is what Ludmila's daughter, you would think would be thinking with her own group.
46:57 Sabrina Deana-Roga? But like, okay, they said by ten P M the latest, it's ten thirty. You're like, give them an hour wiggle room.
47:03 Corinne Vien? Yeah, even like ninety minutes.
47:04 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Sure.
47:05 Corinne Vien? I would be like, okay, well, a couple pee breaks, someone slowed down.
47:08 Sabrina Deana-Roga? But as time ticked on, we were getting more and more nervous and we started asking if we should do something. By midnight, with still no word, our nerves won. Our other coworkers had gone to bed, but my sister, my dorm mate and I decided to drive out to the trailhead to check. I don't even know what we thought we would do once we got there because none of us were exactly equipped to go searching. We were literally in our pajamas and Uggs. But we figured we had to try something. The drive out there was maybe fifteen minutes. Yellowstone at night is dark. Not like suburbs dark or country road dark, I mean pitch black wilderness dark.
47:43 Corinne Vien? Hmm.
47:44 Sabrina Deana-Roga? No streetlights, just two thin cones of headlights slicing through endless trees. We turned onto a narrow side road and into the trail parking lot. Lodgepole pines towered around us so dense that they felt like they were invading our personal space. For reference, once my sister and I parked here in this very same lot, thinking it was secluded, only to realize another car was only fifteen yards away, but we couldn't see it until we were leaving. That's how dark it is.
48:08 Corinne Vien? Oh.
48:09 Sabrina Deana-Roga? This time, we drove slowly around the entire lot, checking carefully. Our friends' cars were there, but they were not. My sister grabbed my dorm mate's bear spray, insisting she was the most responsible to carry it. We all had flashlights, though those beams looked pathetically small against the wall of trees. We stood at the trailhead, pointing our flashlights into the dense forest. The dirt trail stretched only a few feet before it was swallowed by the dark. The silence was loud, there was no wind, no bugs, no distant animal sounds. Just nothing. The only noise we heard was our feet on the gravel and our small talk.
48:46 Corinne Vien? Yeah, so there's a predator around you.
48:48 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
48:49 Corinne Vien? Spiritual, paranormal.
48:50 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
48:51 Corinne Vien? Or real life animal.
48:53 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Also, knowing that their friends' cars are there and they're not is even more of an indication something's wrong.
48:58 Corinne Vien? Something happened.
49:00 Sabrina Deana-Roga? So we hesitated, not knowing what else to do. My dorm mate suggested yelling their names, so we all started calling them out, one by one, the names of all the hikers. She even chatted her close friend's name over and over, yelling things like, hello, can you hear us? Much louder than I decided. Her voice echoed back through trees, but there was no answer, just silence. And the longer it went on, the heavier the air felt, like it was pressing down on us. After no response, we whispered to one another and decided to walk in just a little bit further, far enough to peek around a curve in the trail. A footstep sounded unnervingly loud on the dirt. We stopped, too scared to keep going, and we called her friend's name one more time. That's when it happened.
49:43 Sabrina Deana-Roga? From deep in the woods came a noise. At first, it sounded animal-like, but not. It was like a bird's caw mixed with strange chirps, then insect-like clicks, but none of it was right. I had been visiting Yellowstone since I was a kid, and I have seen multiple things that people would consider a once-in-a-lifetime event, like a bear defending its food from a pack of wolves, a wolf pack hunting an elk, three adult bears fighting over a carcass. My family and I have always been the adventurous type, hiking, camping, we were always in the woods. But still, I have never heard anything remotely like this. It was too loud, too off, and the sound lasted only a few seconds.
50:27 Sabrina Deana-Roga? And then it went completely still again. We froze, all three of us had heard it. And then a second sound cut through the silence. It was a laugh.
50:39 Corinne Vien? I'm so disturbed by this.
50:41 Sabrina Deana-Roga? A human laugh, except it wasn't human. This was ten times louder than any person could possibly laugh, and it sounded almost identical to a real laugh, but twisted, exaggerated, wrong, like something trying to imitate a human laugh, but not quite getting it right. The second it hit my ears, my whole body went cold. I didn't think, I just whispered, "Run." We started jogging back to the car, trying not to sprint in case it was an animal, because first rule in an animal encounter is to remain still. But every fiber of sense left our bodies as soon as we heard that noise. My sister headed for the driver's side door, my dorm mate for the passenger side, and I went for the back. But my dorm mate was running far too slow,
51:24 Sabrina Deana-Roga? and panic shot through me as I imagined all the possible things that noise could have been. I yelled for her to hurry the fuck up, which freaked my sister out because she was all the way in front and had no idea what was happening behind us, thought that meant something was chasing us. So she screamed, she bolted full speed, that set all of us off sprinting the last few yards, gravel flying under our shoes. We dove into the car, slammed the door shut, and peeled out of the lot.
51:48 Sabrina Deana-Roga? The drive back to the dorms was tense. My sister was gripping the wheel, going way too fast down the dark curving roads. And we started to think of what to do, since our friends were still on the trail, and we were too scared to go back by ourselves, just three teenage girls. We decided we needed to text the people we were playing pool with earlier to see if any of them were still up. We all had our phones out. We were obsessively refreshing, waiting and praying for just one bar of service. Whoever got it first would text. Finally, I got a single bar. Instantly, we texted the group, hoping someone would respond. One of them did, and we quickly called him to tell him to be ready when we pulled up to the dorms because we weren't gonna waste a second. My sister floored it. While driving back, we kind of kept quiet around the subject.
52:32 Sabrina Deana-Roga? None of us wanted to say out loud what we were really thinking because the only explanation that made sense in my brain terrified the living shit out of me. We made it back in less than fifteen minutes. We picked up this guy outside of his dorms. And we tried to explain, but all of the words sounded ridiculous as they were leaving our mouths. We couldn't even bring ourselves to describe the laugh.
52:51 Corinne Vien? Also, it's like, what the fuck could it be? It doesn't even seem like it could be human.
52:56 Sabrina Deana-Roga? And then, as we were about to turn back to the main road, we saw our friends' cars pulling in. We whipped our car back and followed them back to the dorms. When we were back there, we demanded answers. Their only explanation was that their hike simply took longer than expected. They reached the turnaround point at sunset, hung out for a while, then hiked the six and a half miles back in the dark. That was it.
53:19 Corinne Vien? Also, like, why do we need to do the hike in the dark?
53:23 Sabrina Deana-Roga? It was nearly 1:00 AM by then, but they weren't planning to. But they were like, we have to get back.
53:28 Corinne Vien? Yeah, kind of they planned on it being nighttime because it was the night hike. Everyone does the night hike.
53:33 Sabrina Deana-Roga? No, no, no, that's, that's different. They were saying that everyone has hiked at night. This wasn't a night hike. They started during the day. It just took a lot longer than they expected, which is weird because
53:42 Corinne Vien? Yeah.
53:43 Sabrina Deana-Roga? They're experienced hikers.
53:45 Corinne Vien? Also, like, that's not longer. That's four hours longer.
53:48 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Right. That's significantly longer. So it's nearly 1:00 AM by then. Everyone went to bed, but my sister slipped into our dorm room through the connecting bathroom. And normally, we would chat about random things before sleeping, but this time, we just kept circling back to what happened. Finally, I said what I had been thinking out loud. Whatever had made that noise certainly was not human. We called out into the woods like every folk tale tells you not to do, and something responded. This trail and most of Yellowstone land is old Native American land.
54:17 Sabrina Deana-Roga? But this particular trail was to a river that many tribes used as a water source. My sister immediately agreed with me. She had hiked that trail many times before, and she'd never heard anything like those sounds. So she even has hiked it, meaning that like, people who went on that hike have done that hike before, meaning that they should have known the amount of time.
54:35 Corinne Vien? Right.
54:36 Sabrina Deana-Roga? So something was fucking with them, warping their time.
54:39 Corinne Vien? Luring everyone in. I'm just thinking about the wildlife in this area too. I'd be terrified of wolves specifically.
54:46 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
54:46 Corinne Vien? Being hunted by the wolves.
54:48 Sabrina Deana-Roga? It's just also the way that this listener described the silence, which usually there's bugs, there's wind, there's animal sounds. There was nothing. And then there was this unearthly, inhuman sound. Anyway, that night, we all went to sleep, still replaying what had happened, trying to find an explanation, but coming up short every time.
55:07 Corinne Vien? Flesh pedestrian.
55:08 Sabrina Deana-Roga? And here's the thing, to this day, I've tried to describe what we heard, but I can't. It was unlike anything I've ever heard in my life, completely alien, indescribable, and it still chills me now to think about it. Most recently, I've become more confused by the fact that the group of hikers returned to the dorm less than 10 minutes after us. If they were that close from the trailhead, there should have been no reason for them to not hear us. If they were that close, they would have heard us.
55:33 Corinne Vien? Especially if it's so still, so quiet, you would think the sound of them would carry.
55:39 Sabrina Deana-Roga? But when we had asked them if they heard us calling to them, they told us they didn't hear a thing. I'd love to hear your opinion on this story. If you ever do use it, thanks.
55:48 Corinne Vien? Thank you.
55:49 Sabrina Deana-Roga? I hope these events are scary enough for a video. They are. Peace and love from Anonymous.
55:54 Corinne Vien? Um, Anonymous, I kind of think you encountered some sort of flesh pedestrian. And I like laugh, kind of sounding human, but also not, feels very on brand with a flesh pedestrian who's like trying to mimic and be human, but like not well enough.
56:10 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Right. But it's also preventing the sound of this listener and her sister and dorm mate from, like their sound of calling to the others. From reaching them. So it's almost like a barrier that it's putting between them. Which I'm glad it was that and not the voice mimicking one of the friends.
56:30 Corinne Vien? Right.
56:30 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Because that would have been terrifying.
56:32 Corinne Vien? Lord off the path to go find the friend. It's just weird that like the other group just was like, oh, it simply took us longer. Like four hours longer for a thirteen mile hike. That is a lot longer. That makes no sense. Like, why didn't they clock that?
56:47 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Well, that makes me mad at them a little bit too, because I know there's not.
56:51 Corinne Vien? People are waiting for you.
56:52 Sabrina Deana-Roga? And I know there's not a ton of service, but there had to be one moment where there was service where they're like, we should send a message and make sure that they don't worry about us.
56:59 Corinne Vien? Right. Or like hustle, like, sorry.
57:01 Sabrina Deana-Roga? It's something.
57:02 Corinne Vien? It's already nighttime. You shouldn't be there. Like, book it out of there.
57:06 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Oh, that's so scary. And given that our listener who sent the email worked at the national park and spent years and years and years exploring the nature, hiking, camping, all that. And this is the only time they've ever had an experience like that.
57:21 Corinne Vien? It's actually kind of a miracle that that's the only time that they've experienced.
57:25 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Or to that extent.
57:26 Corinne Vien? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
57:27 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Terrifying.
57:28 Corinne Vien? I mean, they had to have been so, so scared to just show up in their pajamas, right? It's like you're, you're on like a recovery.
57:34 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
57:35 Corinne Vien? Mission. Cause if you wait and you're like, oh, it's fine, but every second counts, right? So it's if you keep convincing yourself that they're gonna be okay.
57:42 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
57:43 Corinne Vien? If you had reacted when you first thought you should, they might have been. But because you waited so long, they might not. So I understand being like, no, we just need to get in the car.
57:51 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Just go. And they're hoping that it's not a big thing. They'll be there in a minute, you know?
57:55 Corinne Vien? Yeah.
57:56 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Or they'll find them at the trailhead.
57:58 Corinne Vien? But nothing. Just an evil, inhuman laugh.
58:04 Corinne Vien? At least everyone survived this one.
58:05 Sabrina Deana-Roga? That's true. Um, if you survived a strange encounter in the woods, please email us. If you've had any paranormal encounter, please email us to [email protected] .
58:15 Corinne Vien? You can rate and review wherever you listen to podcasts. You can join us on Patreon, where we have some really cool things. Including extra stories from encounters episodes.
58:23 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Yeah.
58:24 Corinne Vien? Full-length bonus episodes, witch class, book club.
58:29 Sabrina Deana-Roga? Campfire stories, lots of things. So join us over there. And thank you to our editor and producer, Jamie Ryan, and our producer, Emma Laventer. We love you all and we love you for listening. Thank you. We love you.
58:41 Corinne Vien? And we will.
58:42 Sabrina Deana-Roga? See you.
58:43 Corinne Vien? See you on the other side.
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Previous Encounters x308 - Wicked Little Spirits Next Haunted with Ladies & Tangents (Again!) Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated