6 case files, newest first.
Nine experienced ski hikers died on a slope in the northern Urals after cutting their way out of their tent at night. Some had severe injuries. Theories ran from yetis to weapons tests. Russian prosecutors in 2020 and a 2021 physics study point to a small slab avalanche.
When the relief boat reached the new lighthouse on Eilean Mòr in the Outer Hebrides on 26 December 1900, the light had been out for days and all three keepers were missing. The board's own superintendent concluded that a storm wave had taken them.
A Nova Scotia-built brigantine was found drifting between the Azores and Portugal, seaworthy, with its cargo intact and its crew of ten gone. The Gibraltar inquiry found no foul play. A rushed abandonment in fear of the alcohol cargo exploding or the ship sinking is the leading theory.
In 1908 two prospectors, the McLeod brothers, were found dead along the South Nahanni River, their heads reportedly missing. More deaths followed and newspapers named it Headless Valley. Today it is a UNESCO-listed national park; the deaths look like the hazards of a brutal wilderness, embellished.
A 20-year-old pilot flying a Cessna over Bass Strait told Melbourne air traffic control that a large craft was flying above him. Then the radio went to a metallic noise and he was gone. The Department of Transport's file, now public, could not find a cause.
A 66-year-old Washington retiree walked into the Superstition Mountains in June 1931 to look for the Lost Dutchman mine and did not come out. Three wire services and a local weekly reported his death three different ways, and none of them recorded a verdict that we can find.
