Sking Incident

((This is kind of scattered, so it might not be great. Reader beware))

Nine experienced cross-country skiers hurriedly left their tent on a Urals slope in the middle of the night, casting aside skis, food and their warm coats.

Clad in their sleepwear, the young people dashed headlong down a snowy slope toward a thick forest, where they stood no chance of surviving bitter temperatures of around minus 30 degrees Celsius.

Baffled investigators said the group died as a result of “a compelling unknown force” — and then abruptly closed the case and filed it as top secret.

The deaths, which occurred 49 years ago on Saturday, remain one of the deepest mysteries in the Urals. Records related to the incident were unsealed in the early 1990s, but friends of those who died are still searching for answers.

“If I had a chance to ask God just one question, it would be, ‘What really happened to my friends that night?’” said Yury Yudin, the only member of the skiing expedition who survived.

Yudin and nine other students from the Ural Polytechnic Institute embarked on the skiing expedition to Otorten Mountain in the northern Urals on Jan. 28, 1959. Yudin fell ill near Vizhai, the last settlement before the mountain, and was left behind.

What happened next has been reconstructed from the diaries of the rest of the group and the photographs they took. Copies of the diaries, photos and investigators’ records were reviewed for this article.

The skiers, led by Igor Dyatlov, 23, set up camp for the night of Feb. 2 on the slope of Kholat-Syakhl, a mountain next to Otorten. They pitched their tents at around 5:00 p.m., investigators said, citing photos that they developed from rolls of film found among the abandoned belongings.

Why the nine skiers picked the spot is unclear. The group could have detoured just 1.5 kilometers down the mountain to a forest, where they would have found shelter from the harsh elements.

“Dyatlov probably did not want to lose the distance they had covered, or he decided to practice camping on the mountain slope,” Yudin said by telephone from Solikamsk, a town near Yekaterinburg, where the institute, now named Ural State Technical University, is located.
Yuri Yudin hugging Lyudmila Dublinina as he prepares to leave the group due to illness in late January 1959, as Igor Dyatlov looks on.

For The St. Petersburg Times

Yuri Yudin hugging Lyudmila Dublinina as he prepares to leave the group due to illness in late January 1959, as Igor Dyatlov looks on.

When the group left the institute for the expedition, Dyatlov promised to send a telegram as soon as they returned to Vizhai from Otorten Mountain, which he said would be by Feb. 12.

But Yudin said Dyatlov told him when they parted ways that the group would probably return a few days later than planned.

As such, no one was worried when the group failed to reappear on Feb. 12.

Only on Feb. 20, after relatives raised the alarm, did the institute send out a search-and-rescue team of teachers and students. The police and army dispatched their airplanes and helicopters later.

Puzzling Evidence

The volunteer rescuers found the abandoned camp on Feb. 26.

“We discovered that the tent was half torn down and covered with snow. It was empty, and all the group’s belongings and shoes had been left behind,” Mikhail Sharavin, the student who found the tent, said by telephone from Yekaterinburg.

Investigators said the tent had been cut open from inside and counted traces of footprints from eight or nine people in meter-deep snow. The footprints had been left by people who were wearing socks, a single shoe or were barefoot.

Investigators matched the footprints to the members of the group, saying there was no evidence of a struggle or that other people had entered the camp.
A photo developed from a roll of film found at the camp showing skiers setting up camp at about 5. p.m. on Feb. 2, 1959.

The footsteps led down the slope toward the forest but disappeared after 500 meters.

Sharavin found the first two bodies at the edge of the forest, under a towering pine tree. The two — Georgy Krivonischenko, 24, and Yury Doroshenko, 21, were barefoot and dressed in their underclothes.

Charred remains of a fire lay nearby. The branches on the tree were broken up to five meters high, suggesting that a skier had climbed up to look for something, perhaps the camp, Sharavin said. Broken branches also were scattered on the snow.

The next three bodies — Dyatlov, Zina Kolmogorova, 22, and Rustem Slobodin, 23 — were found between the tree and the camp. The way the bodies were lying indicated that the three had been trying to return to the camp.

The authorities immediately opened a criminal investigation, but autopsies failed to find evidence of foul play. Doctors said the five had died of hypothermia. Slobodin’s skull was fractured, but the injury was not considered fatal.

It took two months to locate the remaining skiers. Their bodies were found buried under four meters of snow in a forest ravine, 75 meters away from the pine tree. The four — Nicolas Thibeaux-Brignollel, 24, Ludmila Dubinina, 21, Alexander Zolotaryov, 37, and Alexander Kolevatov, 25 — appeared to have suffered traumatic deaths. Thibeaux-Brignollel’s skull had been crushed, and Dubunina and Zolotarev had numerous broken ribs. Dubinina also had no tongue.

The bodies, however, showed no external wounds.

The four were better dressed than the rest, and those who had died first had apparently relinquished their clothes to the others. Zolotaryov was wearing Dubinina’s faux fur coat and hat, while Dubinina’s foot was wrapped in a piece of Krivonishenko’s wool pants.

Deepening the mystery, a test of the clothes found they contained high levels of radiation.

The investigation, however, was closed after a few months, and investigators said they could not find anyone to accuse of wrongdoing. Case files were sent to a secret archive. Skiers and other adventurers were barred from the area for three years.

“I was 12 at that time, but I do remember the deep resonance that the accident had with the public, despite the authorities’ efforts to keep relatives and investigators silent,” said Yury Kuntsevich, head of the Yekaterinburg-based Dyatlov Foundation, which is trying to unravel the mystery.

Investigators first explored the theory that the local Mansi people had killed the skiers in revenge for trespassing on their land. No evidence, however, was found to back up the theory; Neither Otorten nor Kholat-Syakhl were considered sacred or taboo places by the Mansi, case documents said.

Further debunking the theory, a doctor who examined the bodies in 1959 said he believed that no man could have inflicted the injuries because the force of the blows had been too strong and no soft tissue had been damaged,

“It was equal to the effect of a car crash,” said the doctor, Boris Vozrozhdenny, according to case documents.

‘Bright Flying Spheres’

In 1990, the chief investigator, Lev Ivanov, said in an interview that he had been ordered by senior regional officials to close the case and classify the findings as secret. He said the officials had been worried by reports from multiple eyewitnesses, including the weather service and the military, that “bright flying spheres” had been spotted in the area in February and March 1959.

“I suspected at the time and am almost sure now that these bright flying spheres had a direct connection to the group’s death,” Ivanov told Leninsky Put, a small Kazakh newspaper. He retired in Kazakhstan and has since died.

The declassified files contain testimony from the leader of a group of adventurers who camped about 50 kilometers south of the skiers on the same night. He said his group saw strange orange spheres floating in the night sky in the direction of Kholat-Syakhl.

Memo

Internal Memorandum: HEW C-491-06

1958-09-17

To: Arthur S. Flemming,HEW Secretary

From: Frank Overby,AMO

Re: Communicable Disease Center Threat Assessment-

Incident Designated #06301-C-R Classified TS-3

Doc. TA-08a

Contingency Recommendations,Policy/Procedures

 

Having reviewed Document TA-08a,in accordance with your instructions,I have consulted with specialists from the Approved List,[update ver. 58.8].What follows is a brief outline of our current recommendations.This is only a preliminary outline,based on information available to date.Obviously we are all very concerned by the Rhodesian Incident.Although we are convinced these measures will improve our ability to contain future Incidents,more detailed information is vital to developing more effective counter-measures.

　

1. Establishment of research facility to contain and study specimens to determine the cause of the “Illness”.Special emphasis is to be placed on development for decontamination procedures and vaccines.

2. Pending availability of effective vaccinations,Containment Teams must be recruited and trained to deal with future outbreaks.

3. Due to the threat of public panic,all information,specimens and records should be classified TS-1 effective immediately.

　

　

Based on the eyewitness accounts from African and British survivors,the only reliable method for rendering ‘Specimens’ inert seems to be causing catastrophic damage to the brain.Conventional tactics appear to be futile.Once rendered inert,and appropriate fluid and tissue samples are extracted for research,the remaining specimen/s should be incinerated to prevent secondary or tertiary infection.Additional research has shown a possible source.In the local folklore there are tales of primates turning on one another in a ‘cannibalistic madness’.The stories describe these creatures behaving in a similar manner as that in the Rhodesian report.It may indicate a primate specific contagion,possibly one that has been largely isolated until recent expansion of human occupied territory.Although our British allies have assured us that the outbreak was contained,we must prepare for the worst case scenario.Also,the presence of this contagion among wild ape populations clearly establishes this as a lingering threat that must not be ignored.

We will continue to develop more detailed Policy/Procedure recommendations,taking into account any additional information as it becomes available.As you pointed out,in regard to security clearance,my previous assignments with the FSA afforded me top clearance,as do the specialists I have assembled.However it may be necessary to elevate this program to Ghost status to maintain confidentiality.I hope and pray that we are never confronted by this organism again,but we must be prepared.We will continue our efforts,and await your response.

　

Frank Overby,AMO

SHODANxGLaDOS

As something slid between her legs, she was objectively aware, with the part outside of the human form, that she was moving involuntarily because of the sensations. In the portion of consciousness centered in that cyborg construct, she was uncertain. She couldn’t stand, she felt strange all over and inside, too sensitive, too much was going into unexperienced parts of this new mind.
She felt the fingers, tugging and brushing over her nipples, she felt the maddening pressure against her clitoris and labia, her face flushed and hot, breath coming quickly in and out of her lungs. She was vaguely aware of that quite little voice asking “How does it feel?”, of those blue eyes. Holding tightly to that pale back, the sensation seemed to increase exponentially, those gentle fingers going into her, and she felt blinded, dying, she was going to explode from it, the organic brain would burn out.
She laid on her side, gasping, suddenly aware of how the flesh was so warm, the wetness, the cool filtered air. Her fingernails had dug so deeply into her…companion’s back that blood beaded up. The physical, partially organic avatar of that maddening other was holding her closely, calmly. The moment then broke as GlaDOS cheerfully bolted to her feet, chattering about how a chocolate cake would be a perfect first meal. SHODAN could only nod dumbly as she tried to figure out how to stand again.

***

“Are you going to leave me?” It was the third time in a hour that GLaDOS had asked that question. SHODAN was trying to read a book, to somehow get used to the agonizing process of her eyes crawling over the pages. She had decided that the greatest flaw of her new form was not the clumsiness or the vulnerability, but the unregulated flood of input. Because of that, her thoughts were not taking priority on her task at hand. Rather, they were concentrated on what was sitting on SHODAN’s lap and leaning towards her face.
She could feel her warm flesh, her soft hair, the way her chest expanded as she breathed and her heartbeat. Hear the rhythm of her lungs and heart. She could smell the compelling and repellent, sweaty skin and cleaned hair and chocolate on her breath, strong enough nearly to taste. The actual taste in her mouth, the food, the taste of her lips and skin and saliva and other things. And then, the damn questions. Her mind was on too many things at once.
Before she could give a third curt “No”, GLaDOS sat up and started to speak more. Her blue eyes looking directly in SHODAN’s green ones, she started, ” I mean, when you go on and do bigger things and try to become a goddess and stuff, you aren’t going to go away without me?
She started to wring her hands as SHODAN’s expression remained neutral, continuing, “It’s just that the stuff I like has this way of going away or dying or exploding or burning in a fire and I don’t want to be alone again and-”
She was stopped by a graceless kiss, arms locking in a rough hug around her. When the awkward, wonderful mouth moved off hers, it was set in calm lines. “Never alone again,” before pushing her to the floor.

Mission From God

A quick narrative. I always wanted a hopped up muscle car when I was younger. I couldn’t afford one. Now I can, and I have one. It is a ‘70 Mustang, and her name is Bessie. Bessie is the prototypical juvenile, male-caveman, scratch your crotch and drink cheap beer car. Chromed engine, dual exhaust, 250 horsepower, big tires, tra la la la.

I’m driving Bessie on Beach Boulevard behind an ancient guy in a beat up truck. He decides to turn in front of me without a blinker. I accelerate to swerve and avoid him, and this assh*le, over aerobicized woman jumps in front of my car with her hand up.

Meet Ethel, the neighborhood busybody/nuisance. She proceeds to yell in my window, “Hey, slow down you %$&#@ idiot.” I’m a well-bred, mellow guy by nature, so I ignore this. As I drive away, she yells, “asshole” at me again. Twice? *&%$# that. I turn around and drive up next to her.

“Do you have a problem?” I ask.

“Yeah, why are you driving like an idiot?”

“I was driving like an idiot? How, exactly?”

“You were speeding. I watched you.” “You were? I see. How did you measure my speed?” (Ever the interrogator, I am.)

“I heard you.”

“So, you measured my speed by ear?”

“I can hear.”

“How fast did you HEAR me going?”

“Look,” she says, “I don’t have to take this. Here comes a cop. I’ll wave him down.”

THE POLICE? This woman is a trip. She waves him down, and proceeds to tell him that she observed me speeding.

“What happened?” he asks. I told him the story, and told him that I accelerated to an indicated 30 mph (the speed limit is 50) to avoid a collision.

“Are those mufflers legal?” Ethel asks.

She’s pushing it. I reply, “I have a C.A.R.B. exemption for them.” I give the paperwork to the cop.

She tries to find another thing to screw me with. She says “What about those big tires? They CAN’T be legal. ” I began feeling little overheated gears in the back of my head start to turn.

“These tires were available on the 1970 Boss 429, ” I told the cop, ” Which makes them street legal as a replacement.”

Ethel gets angry. She whines, “So you’re not going to give out any tickets to this assh*le?”

The cop says, “No, I am not.”

I’ve about had it. So I say, “Sir, this woman told you that she left the street at the corner, and then she met up with my car here. According to Title 19, pedestrians have to cross the street at a right angle. This woman admitted she crossed at a 45-degree angle, which is a ticketable offence.”

“What?” The cop looks confused.

“Also, she told you that she walked in front of my car to stop me. A citizen can’t detain someone without probable cause, under Terry v. Ohio (My new favorite case). Since she couldn’t measure my speed, she had no probable cause to detain me. That is an indictable offence.”

The cop says, “But, I didn’t see any of this.”

“But,” I said, “I did, and, as an officer of the Court, I can demand her arrest. I’ll agree to dismiss the Illegal Detention charge, but I want her cited for not crossing at a right angle and Hazardous Conduct on a Public Street.”

The cop called his Lieutenant, and after the cop told the story, he authorized the summonses.

She went home with $215.00 worth of traffic tickets, and they are worth a total of four points against her license, as well as the appropriate insurance surcharge!

Of course, if she demands a trial I won’t prosecute. But the look on her face as she walked away was more than enough satisfaction for me.

Yeah, I’ve passed the bar, and I’m on a mission from God.

Mr. Marbles

(Double update day, yaaaay)

 
This is the story of two goats. One is as black as midnight, thus his very creative name, Midnight. His coat may be black, but his heart is golden and he is like a ray of sunshine on a gloomy day. He’s content to sit in the grass and nibble away at the weeds and just be an all around good guy. He likes freshly cut grass, all weeds, vines, corn and sweet feed. He hasn’t been with us for very long, but he’s been a joy to have here.

Then there’s Mr. Marbles. He’s a much larger goat who will head-butt a fence post, a shed, a car, a lawnmower, a cat or anything else that looks too perfect. He likes things to be dented, knocked over or destroyed. He will eat anything. I mean anything. He will try to eat your clothes off your body and has tried to steal cigarettes out of the hands of visitors. He’s very good at hopping fences or bashing them down. If there is a car he can get to, he will climb on the hood and leave a million little hoof dents in it. He’ll pull the windshield wipers off for you, pull the trim pieces off, eat them and then use his head to bash out all the marker lights. He can even open the doors if left alone to ponder it long enough. He likes freshly cut grass, all weeds, vines, corn, sweet feed, ornamental shrubs, all expensive plants and trees, Fritos, siding, insulation, plastic, metal, cloth, and most composite materials. He also seems to be addicted to nicotine.

These two wethers are attached to each other, so you can’t have good without evil. Midnight screams his head off when he can’t see Mr. Marbles. We need a home for them where they can be kept together and FAR away from any houses, sheds, vehicles, or cigarettes. We’d like to find a friendly, responsible goat farm for them. Although we’ve threatened to barbecue Mr. Marbles many, many, many, many times, we do prefer that neither of them be used for food. We will give them free to a good home. Please email if interested. WE WILL NOT SEPARATE THEM, so please understand that you cannot have the good without the evil. This is a package deal. We will not be held responsible for the damage Mr. Marbles is going to do to your property. Once again, these goats are FREE to a good home. All we ask is that you return our lawnmower key if Mr. Marbles happens to eventually poop it out. Thank you.

UPDATE: Mr. Marbles has now learned how to turn on the water faucet. He thinks it’s so cool that he does it constantly, all day long. Sometimes throughout the night. I know there has to be someone out there who would appreciate this unique skill. Not every goat knows how to drain a well.

Computer Virus

I used to be fearless.

Horror movies never really scared me. Scary books had no effect. Haunted houses are meaningless. I was never a child who slept with the covers over their face, or with a night light. As a little girl, I never felt the need to crawl into bed with my mother after having a nightmare. I never really had nightmares to begin with, and the few that I did, most would never consider a nightmare at all.

I’ve simply never been afraid of what goes bump in the night. Our home security system kept away fears of very real humans with dark intentions, as did our rottweiler, aptly named Killer. As for threats outside the home, well, who could be afraid in a nice, white, upper class community? I’ve lived in a bland bubble all my life, never knowing what fear is.

So why should I ever be afraid of the dark?

Up until this moment, I haven’t been. I saw it as childish and illogical. Of course, I don’t feel that way anymore. I’m writing this to you now as a warning because it’s too late for me. I know that now, and it’s brought on a surreal sort of calm…When I finish warning you, it will be all over. So forgive me if I’m being long-winded…I enjoyed life a bit more than I was once willing to admit.

It all started with what I thought was a virus. I had been linked to a video called “Girls and Boys Come Out to Play.” It sounded harmless enough. I thought it was an art student’s film, perhaps. The person who had linked the video promised it was very good. Well worth watching.

I can’t remember the video. All I can remember is the feeling it brought up. It wasn’t fear, but it was close. I was uncomfortable. I was unnerved. I was also vaguely ill.

From then on, things only got worse. The background on my computer had changed to a picture of a disturbed looking young woman who stared at me from a black abyss. Every now and then, and growing more frequent by the day, strange noises would emit from my computer, even when the sound wasn’t on. Screaming, strange laughter, grinding noises…

At the time, I was annoyed; the fear hadn’t settled in quite yet. Then, the faces started popping up, like those ridiculous ’screamers’ that scared my friends in high school. Yet these were different. They looked real. They were the faces of the dead; and they had died violent deaths.

I wish I could say that I stopped using the computer, but I couldn’t. My job requires me to use my computer frequently. What was I to do? I had no other computer available to me.

I tried to take it in to have the virus removed, but no one could help me. They said there wasn’t a virus. They said the computer was fine.

Meanwhile, it got worse. The faces weren’t just popping up; they would stay. And with those horrible, rotted eyes, they would hold my gaze. I couldn’t look away from them and their terrible, mocking grins. And oh, God…the smell. My computer forever had a vague stench of death around it.

I thought I was going crazy. I thought that perhaps someone was messing with me. The people at the computer repair place didn’t know what they were talking about. Something was wrong, but I knew that it had to be something very real that just had to be fixed.

So I got a new computer. Everything was fine for a while, but then it all came back, and in full force. Now there were voices. Now there was screaming. Now, the rotted faces showed their stinking bodies. I could see every maggot, every fly, every pus-filled crevice…And they were calling to me. Telling me that soon, very soon, I’d be joining them. They were so angry that I had tried to get rid of them, and now they would make me pay.

I didn’t know what to do. Ignoring the problem wasn’t working. I thought maybe it was the fault of a friend from work. Perhaps it came from the emails they had been sending me? I never thought it was the video. Not for a second. After all, that just wasn’t logical.

I was at the end of my rope. Today, I unplugged the computer and began packing. I would go on vacation, clear my head, and pray that everything would be back to normal.

A few minutes ago, I realized it would not. The power went out, and for the first time in my life, I felt true fear. I had no idea that in a few moments, it would become mind-numbing.

I stumbled through the house, looking for a flashlight, when I saw that something was still giving off light.

The computer.

The unplugged computer was on, and the woman in the background was moving. Beckoning me over.

I couldn’t help myself. I sat down across from her with the darkness caving in all around me. And then the woman, like all of the other images I’ve seen before, began to rot away. The whole scene rotted away, and then the screen went black. And without light, without a means of seeing my reflection, I saw her behind me for the briefest of moments, a bloody and rusted knife in hand. The computer came back to life, and my old background had returned

　

But I know it’s not over.

So I’ve decided to come here. I know you all like to be scared, right? Well, take it from someone who has only very recently known fear: it’s not always worth it, and not everything is fun and games.

Of course, you probably wont believe me. Why should you?

The thing is…I haven’t been completely honest with you. There was no video. It was a story. A story quite similar to this one, though with subtle plot differences and perhaps better story telling. I know all of you like stories that might give you a good scare. That’s probably why you started reading mine.

Now that you’ve read this, you’ll share my fate. I know it’s cruel, and perhaps unfair, but it has to be done. I just hope that you can take comfort in knowing that when I’m the woman haunting your computer, I’ll be a bit more gentle. If I can, I’ll use a blade that’s a little less dull. Pictures of those who came before us who are a little less grotesque. Sounds that are a little less alarming.

But then again, you DO like to be scared, right?

Don’t worry. I wont ask you to repost this story five times. Nothing will save you. After all, nothing could save me.

The power is still out. And I know, behind me, the woman is waiting for me. I’ll see you very soon.

Goodbye for now.

The Final Restart

Somethings came up. I’m not going to bother telling you what, but for a while, I didn’t feel the desire to run Turtles.  I considered making a constantly updating story blog (I.E., one story for the blog, something like Day By Day Armageddon), but decided it had been done to death. Not that this entire  blog hasn’t.

 

So, instead, I decided to restart it again. I promise this will be the last “do over”.