Mountain of the Dead (19 page)

Where the light had come from and how it had appeared in the No. 15 pit – and where it had gone – remained unclear. It left no trace of its presence. Everyone refused to believe me when I tried to tell them what had happened. ‘This is just your imagination. Things do happen sometimes …’ Should I have tried once again to prove that I was not seeing things? But what did I have in order to prove what I was saying? No tracks and no evidence. Eventually I stopped thinking about it.

After a few days, the story of the light that had reacted to a human glance was almost forgotten.

Then, after a week or two, late in September 2002, I got a copy of the newspaper
Za boksity
. I had been subscribing to the paper for several years. The paper came with a supplement entitled
Ecoved
, dated September 2002, No. 9/29, and it gave information about the Denezhkin Kamen nature reserve located in the territory of the Severouralsk district.

Under the heading ‘News from Forest Cordon’, I read this:

An unusual phenomenon has been reported by Reserve Forest Rangers V Yefimov and VS Rudkovsky when they were returning from their inspection round of the Yelovsky Ridge.

    At 9pm the rangers’ attention was attracted by a bright electrical light ‘as if from a projector’ directed from west to east. One of the eyewitnesses described the unusual phenomenon: ‘I looked harder and saw that it looked as if two people were moving in my direction holding torches. The weather was clear and it was quiet. I decided to get nearer and see who it might be. When I was about 5 or 10 metres from the fire the number of torches suddenly increased to seven. I hid behind a Cedar and cautiously looked out, but was immediately dazzled with the light coming as if from a projector. There was some ‘set’ in front of me which, for some reason or other, reacted to a glance only, and in no way to a glowing cigarette. At 1.30am I heard a loud bang. The light went off. I went to sleep and slept quietly until morning, nothing else happened. At 7.30 in the morning I walked around, but saw nothing suspicious.

I put the paper aside. Wow! It was almost the same as what I had seen two weeks before, on 11 September 2002, near the No. 15 pit! The main thing was the light that came from an unknown source and reacted to a human glance, and the swinging torches that advanced when a person looked at them. I felt I had to get in touch immediately with these rangers, talk to them and ask about details. At least find out the date when they met with this phenomenon. Was it on 11 September 2002, or some other days in September? Judging by the weather, this had been a different day. I estimated the distance on the map. Pit No. 15 is located in the 11th quarter of the Laks forestry area. It is about 40km north-east of the place where the rangers of the Denezhkin Kamen reserve saw this ‘light phenomenon’ from their night camp.

At the bottom of the
Ecoved
I found the address of the Denezhkin Kamen administration and the telephone numbers. I rang the management office. I explained to the people there that I had seen a phenomenon similar to what their forest rangers V. Yefimov and V. Rudkovsky saw. I wanted to meet them and talk it over with them. The answer was that the rangers were in the forest doing their rounds and no one knew when they would be back.

In October/November 2002 I called the office again three times, but received the same answer: they were still in the forest, and no one could say when they would be back. So, at that time, my attempt to meet and talk to them failed.

With time, my interest regarding the matter faded. Not that I had forgotten about what had happened, it was just because the everyday routine of work had moved it to the far corner of my mind. Also, I did not think of it as anything significant.

I never thought that I would, at some point, get back to the events of that night. Over three years passed. On 9 January 2006, close to midnight, I was at home watching TV. I pushed the buttons on the TV remote control searching for an interesting programme. My attention was drawn to a programme called
A Mystical Hike
on one of the local TV channels. I saw just the last ten minutes of it. However, I had time to understand that it was a story of the Dyatlov tourist group who perished in February 1959 in the north of the Sverdlovsk Oblast in mysterious circumstances: nine tourists in great haste had left their tent near Mount Kholat Syakhl, with almost no clothes, almost barefoot – and froze, all of them. It came to me that the place was close to where I had been working in the mine. What was it that made the tourists leave the tent in such a hurry?

Maybe they met with the same phenomenon that I saw near the No. 15 pit in the vicinity of Ivdel, and which the rangers in the Denezhkin Kamen reserve also saw in September 2002? Maybe this had been the cause of their death? I remembered that once I came across some publications in the press relating to details of the deaths of the nine members of Dyatlov’s group who were tourists from UPI. Also a long time ago I once came across a book in which the characters were copied from the dead Dyatlov students. The information about the incident was extremely scanty. All the information I came across regarding the deaths seemed to consist more of rumours than fact. Somewhere, someone had heard or read about it. I began to search in the libraries for as much information as possible about the tourist group in the north of the Sverdlovsk Oblast. I wanted to then try and compare what the nature reserve rangers and myself had seen in September 2002 with the tragic incident that befell Dyatlov’s group in February 1959. Could it be that we had met with the same phenomenon that killed the ski hikers? I decided I must meet the rangers V. Yefimov and V. Rudkovsky, as they would have more detailed and extensive information than what was described in a brief article in
Ecoved
.

I spent several days in libraries searching for materials or any publications on the Dyatlov group deaths, or anything related to the subject. In the technical library of the SevUralBauxiteRuda (SUBR) JSC they told me that they had heard and read about the Dyatlov tragedy in 1959, but no materials were available in the library. The library of V. Cheryomukhovo had nothing on the subject either.

At the Central City Library I searched the card index, but again, in vain. All the librarians had heard something about the incident, but material about the mysterious tragedy could not be found. I was advised to contact the City Library branch located in the House of Culture known as ‘Sovremennik’. There was a telephone number. It was my last hope to find any material on the subject in our district. If I failed there, I would have to contact the UPI tourist club, who I was sure would tell me where to find materials on the Dyatlov group deaths.

Irina Akinshina, a librarian at the ‘Sovremennik’, found a few newspapers and magazines with information about the tragedy. I am very thankful to her for that. I picked most of the information from the magazine
Ural
No. 12 for 2000 and No. 1 for 2001, from the story ‘The Dyatlov Pass’, by Anna Matveyeva. Here I learned all about the tragic event.

Simultaneously, while searching for materials about the Dyatlov group, I was trying to locate the rangers Yefimov and Rudkovsky. These were the two who were mentioned in the newspaper
Ecoved
in September 2002 and who had witnessed an unusual light phenomenon. I wanted to hear more details from them. Could it be that such a light phenomenon was the prime cause of the Dyatlov group deaths?

I was lucky to get the director of the nature reserve on the phone. I introduced myself and explained to her the situation and why I wanted to meet the rangers. She answered that Yefimov had quit the job quite a long time ago, and Rudkovsky was again in the forest in the reserve. She was unable to give me Rudkovsky’s home address and said, ‘You would be better to apply to UFOlogists on that issue. Yefimov is an expert in alien worlds and the newspaper note is most likely his story.’

I sensed that she was not very convinced about such matters as strange light phenomena. It was understandable. Why should she be bothered with any mystical and strange events?

I asked her where I could find Yefimov. Her response was, ‘He is from other parts. I don’t know where he lives and works at present.’

I learned from other workers at the nature reserve that Yefimov was probably for some time employed at the Nordwood logging company. I visited their office only to learn that no one knew V. Yefimov and that no such person had ever worked there. It was proving to be a hard job to find him. I thought about putting an ad in a newspaper, but he might have left the district altogether.

I still hoped to meet Rudkovsky. The world is not without the good people. And good people gave me his address in the third severny settlement. I went to the settlement, found the flat where he lived and knocked at the door. A lean but strong old man with a bushy beard opened the door. It was him, Valentin Rudkovsky. I introduced myself and in some confusion explained the aim of my visit, that I had seen a light phenomenon similar to the one he saw in September 2002. I wanted to hear his story in more detail, I said. This was not just curiosity, but rather an opportunity to understand and explain the death of the people in 1959. I also told him about my attempts to find him back in 2002 after the short publication in the
Ecoved
.

He met me with interest and was very kind. We had a long talk that night. He was over 60 then. For many years he had worked as a drilling foreman in a geological survey party and when the company closed, he was offered a position as a State Inspector (Forest Ranger) in the Denezhkin Kamen nature reserve. It was just the job for him: he liked the forest and felt that in the Taiga he was in his element.

He showed me the nature reserve maps. He even found his observations diary for August 2002. Rangers keep such diaries, where they enter their daily observations of weather, reserve patrolling routes, state of the forest, animal and bird life, and generally everything they see and note on their way. Valentin told me the story of the night spent in the No. 357 forest quarter in every detail. The quarter was located north-west of Mount Denezhkin Kamen (1,492m). It was then that I learned that he was alone on that night, without V. Yefimov. And the story he told me had happened not in September but in August 2002. I asked his permission to put down his story. Here is what I got in the end, looking more like a formal account of the event:

I, Rudkovsky, Valentin Stepanovich, a State Inspector of the Denezhkin Kamen Nature Reserve, have on 29 August 2002 become witness to an unusual phenomenon in the following circumstances: I was on my way back from the Yelovsky Ouval, where I made my records, to the Solva tract, and not far from the quarter pole in quarter 357 had to stop for the night in the woods. I was alone and I made a fire about 70m from the quarter pole 357–343. I made tea but had not yet eaten. Suddenly, at 2200hrs, I saw a beam of strong light. The impression was of a neon or halogen floodlight. It pierced the forest to a depth of about a kilometre. The source of light was at some height above the ground, which I could not define, and shone at a distance of 150–200m from me in the west–east direction.

    I started looking in the eastern direction, when suddenly, from that side, I saw two swinging spotlights appear, the impression was of people moving extremely fast in my direction as I stood looking at them. I thought someone was joking, or wanted to scare me and get near my fire. I dressed quickly and decided to scare them myself. I put on my boots, grabbed the gun and went to meet them. I walked about 20m, then lay behind a fallen tree trunk and looked in the direction of the spotlights. They rushed very fast in my direction exactly at the moment I looked at them.

    All was quiet. Not a single sound could be heard. I raised myself from behind the tree trunk. The spotlights were approximately 50–70m away from me, but they were no longer two, but seven or eight now. They dazzled me. Immediately I lay on the ground behind the tree trunk and turned away from the spotlights. Whenever I raised my head to look at them, they would again shine on me, and dazzle me while approaching. So I spent about one and a half hours lying on the ground behind the tree trunk. I did not look at the source of light. I realised at that time that I had met something unusual, and that those had not been people but something else that could not be explained. All was quiet as before, no strange sounds.

    I noted that the spotlights reacted to my eye only and decided to check whether it was true. I struck a match and lit a cigarette – no reaction. Then, in one and a half hours, I saw that the spotlights had moved and were now shining on me not from the east but from the north, still at a distance of 50–70m from me. The distance between the spotlights and the main source of light was approximately 100m. I went near my fire trying not to look, either at the source or at the spotlights. The fire was already down, I threw in more firewood, warmed my meal and ate. And then I saw that there was another beam of light from the source, now going not in the east–west but in the north–south direction as well, that is the one and the same source was now emitting beams of strong light, like that of floodlights, in two directions at approximately 90°. The light illuminated every blade of grass, the trees threw no shade. I was not looking at the source of light. I lit a cigarette and smoked, sitting with my back against a cedar tree. In all the time the light was there I made no sounds and did not shoot.

    At 2.30 a.m. I heard a snapping sound as if from an electric discharge and the light was gone. Then I felt a strong gust of wind which lasted some two to three minutes. Then all was quiet again. I spent the rest of the night near the fire. In the morning I went around the place where I saw the source of light and spotlights, but noted nothing unusual or suspicious.