At The Edges of the Dead Mountain

A couple of months ago, the Russian government declared the Dyatlov Pass mystery solved. According to findings of the official investigation launched back in 2019, the members Dyatlov troop died as a result of a weather cataclysm. The terrible weather resulted in the nine of them dying from hypothermia. While this might be true. The place is known as Holatchahl, or Dead Mountain in the Mansi tongue is home to something else. Something we’re not quite familiar with yet. A creature, unlike any other in this world it seems.

In the early two-thousands, 2002 or 2003, a traveling group of ten people made their way to the location of the famous trekking disaster. They ended up experiencing the same weather phenomenon that took the lives of the ill-fated expedition in 59’. Eight of them disappeared, presumably died. No remains were ever found. The locals didn’t find anything, search and rescue crews found nothing. It’s like the earth swallowed them. The two survivors were adamant that some creatures killed and devoured their friends. Brown bears were suspected. However, these are uncommon around the mountain. The two survivors also alleged these weren’t bears. They claimed that the creatures were tall, deathly lanky, and covered in long and gray hairs from head to toe. They also claimed that the creatures had no feet. Instead, the creatures supposedly sport a single claw on each of their four legs.

Their claims were, of course, dismissed. The consensus was that they saw bears scavenging the remains of their friends and mistook them for alien creatures because of the poor weather conditions. I was sure that was the case as well. However, I made the trip to Holatchahl because I was curious as to what the dead mountain was like. Was it really as odd as people claimed? Obviously, at the time I thought there was nothing out of the ordinary going on there. Now, I’m not so sure. The name of the mountain actually means "lack of game" for the Mansis, and they call a few other peaks in the region by the same name.

I made the trip to Holatchahl back in 2017. By that point, Vizhai wasn’t the closest settlement to the mountain anymore. Because of local forest fires, the town was abandoned back in 2010, and the buildings were destroyed. The only thing that remained of this town was the cemetery. The next closest town to the mountain is Ivdel. A small town with about fifteen thousand residents. I got there in the middle of the summer. While the weather isn’t exactly all hot and humid, it’s fairly sunny during the days. The mountain itself is located about two hours away from Ivdel. It's inaccessible by any sort of public transport, and you can’t find any roads to it on a map. The only way to get there is to follow the instructions of locals. I set out to travel around the mountain for the duration of a day.

When I told my guide to get me to the mountain, he thought I was joking. I told him I was being serious, and he rendered me out of my mind for climbing a mountain all on my own. I agreed with him, and we shared a laugh together. He agreed to take me to the mountain, thankfully, and I reassured him I'd be back from my trip by the evening.

Once we’ve left Ivdel, everything was green and somewhat serene. It wasn’t forested like back home, mostly a mountainous terrain covered in vegetation. It was definitely different from the outdoors I was used to. There weren’t any signs of human life after a while, a refreshing sight for someone who lives in Russia’s second-biggest city. The mood was light in the car, and we had a lot of fun during the first hour of the journey to Holatchahl, but after we've passed the remains of Vizhai, the mood suddenly soured. My tour guide went silent, and I followed suit. Something felt wrong, but it wasn’t very obvious what. It was as if a depressive episode befell us both. We just sat in the car in total silence for the rest of the trip.

I felt as if something died within me once we had passed the ghost town. Like a piece of me was taken away. I can’t even put that feeling to words. When we arrived at the mountain though, my mood turned from bad to worse. The whole area just seemed outright dead. No birds, no rodents, no ruminants – no nothing. The whole place seemed like it was frozen in time. I just stared at the semicircular mountain for a few moments before I realized I was completely alone. My guide had driven off and per our agreement would return around sunset. Until then, I was on my own.

I remember staring at the jagged rock on the slope on which the Dyatlov pass is located. The idea of me being in that place felt almost surreal. Usually, the place is rife with tourists, but not that day. It was usually empty for that time of the year. I climbed on the massive granite structure and looked all around me. The silence of the mountain was deafening. It was an unreal sensation that I had felt when I stood face to face with the enigmatic peak. Something about it felt very peculiar, and I needed to know what it was. The weather wasn’t perfect that day. Clouds were gathering above the mountain chain. It wasn’t supposed to be snowing that day.

Maybe it didn’t.

I came off that granite giant and started making my way up the mountain. A few yards in, I felt as if I had walked into a body of water. It’s a very specific feeling, like pushing through a very thin rubber membrane. It caught me off guard, and I stopped dead in my tracks. I looked around to try to find the source of this odd feeling, instead, I found myself in a frozen winter landscape. I cursed under my breath, perplexed and confused I looked around trying to figure out what the hell was going on all around me. It was snowing. Five seconds ago, it wasn’t snowing. The amount of snow on the ground couldn’t accumulate even if it was storming, which it wasn’t. The snowfall was slow and steady. My head switched to survival mode, and I grabbed at my rifle as I looked around, trying to make sense of my environment.

That’s when it hit me. I probably didn’t see the snow because of the granite monolith sticking out of the ground in front of it. Sometimes it's bound to rain or snow in a very specific area. Maybe that was the case. I just brushed the snow off and carried on with my exploration.

I suppose a snowstorm had begun while I was exploring. The snow seemed to fall all around me and didn’t show any signs of stopping any time soon. The one constant that accompanied me as I trekked was the silence and the solitude. It was absolutely not of this world. I had never experienced such silence before or since. It was borderline maddening. I swear, at points I considered screaming, but I stopped myself from doing so out of fear of causing an avalanche.

I just roamed around the mountain's slope aimlessly for a while, completely preoccupied with my thoughts. The lack of external stimuli gave me the long-needed opportunity to reflect on the less pleasant times in my life, which up to that point I buried deep down. Good thing I'm an experienced trekker, I could kind of make my way through rough terrain pretty much blindfolded. Unfortunately, I had gotten so caught up in my own thoughts I didn’t even notice myself stumbling into a thick bush of sorts.

I was caught off guard by the texture of the thing that suddenly enveloped a part of me that I panicked and bounced a few feet backward. My heartbeat skyrocketed for a moment and my eyes were darting in all directions trying to figure out what I had just touched. Before long, I realized there was something breathing at me. Something tall, gray, and incredibly hairy. The thing moved, brandishing a massive singular claw. I didn’t even notice whether it tried to swing it at me or not, but my instincts acted before I could register what was going on.

My gun was raised, the trigger was pulled, and a loud crack echoed through the mountain chain.

The creature stood there. The bullet hit it. In fact, it flew straight through it. It just kept standing, even though the bullet flew right through it. I fired at point-blank. I saw the hairs move, and I couldn’t miss. It was just impossible. The thing just stood there, breathing at me.

I took a few steps back, still pointing my rifle at it. The wind blew spreading the fur of this thing revealing it to be a very thin sort of creature. If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve believed it was an emaciated bear, but it was too thin and the hair color was too gray. The fact that it had blades at the ends of its legs also made it very clear that it wasn’t a bear. At first, I couldn’t see its head, as the fur concealed its visage.

After a few moments of us being locked in a stalemate, the creature cocked its head and let out a foul cry. It was so loud I as if I was being stabbed in both ears. The wail sounded like a combination between a hawk's cry, a whale's call, and something human-like screeching all in one in rising and dropping frequencies. The call was unbearably loud and long, making my head hurt – making me fall to my knees. Soon enough, I heard other similar cries in the distance. My heartbeat spiked again, I felt the blood being pumped through my body and a cold shiver ran across my skin. The cry got louder, it was so awful I thought my brain was going to blow up. The cries all over started getting louder, they were getting closer. There were more of these things. My mind started racing, that is until I felt myself losing my consciousness. Everything started turning black and the cries finally died down.

As noises finally dissipated, and the silence slowly returned, my vision started coming back. The ground was shaking beneath my feet, at least in my eyes. On top of that, my stomach twisted and turned in knots. I had gotten motion sickness by having my vestibular system scrambled. Through all of that, I could make out a shadow coming over me. It was huge and wavy, completely enveloping my surroundings. I forced my head up and saw that creature was standing over me. I could finally make out its head. That ugly elongated dolphin-like head it had.

More shadows appeared in the background, all around me, all massive and wavy. There were more of those things and they were headed straight for me, with not much time to think I did the only thing that seemed logical.

Just as the creature attempted to swipe its massive claw at me, I raised my rifle and shot at its head. A thunderclap shook the world all around me as the bullet flew out of my rifle. The creature's head fell off, landing right beside me. The rest of the thing crumpled up on top of me.

I immediately started struggling and coughing with the hair crawling all over me. It was surprisingly light. It's like there was nothing but the hair in that thing. It smelled like iron and spoiled fish, but I had to hold my breath because I heard something walking above me. Something was sniffing the hair on top of me. I heard hoarse cries and the movement of something hooved. The others, they were already there – holy shit, they were fast. The sounds wouldn’t die down. Fortunately, they didn’t seem to notice me under the remains of their fallen fellow specimen.

I don’t know how long I've spent there. Regardless, by the time I couldn’t hear any more noises beyond the hair corpse cloak, I was already feeling like my body was catching fire. It had gotten hard to breathe, and my whole body turned sore. I shoved the thing off of me when I was finally sure the others had left. It was literally nothing but hair, even the claws were gone. They were slowly breaking apart into a myriad of hair strands.

I barely stood upright before looking back at the ground. The head was still intact, I picked it up, that was going to be my proof that there’s some kind of an odd animal in there. No blood or anything was coming from within the head. It also had this weird boney texture to it. There were small human-like teeth and very small, purely green eyes. The sun seemed like it was going to set soon, so I put the head into my backpack and made way back to the bottom of the mountain. The silence was maddening once more. My body was hot and sore, my vision was almost doubled but for some reason, despite it all, I remember feeling compelled to climb up that granite giant once again. I barely did that without falling off.

Once I came back down from the monolith, I felt myself passing through a watery membrane once more. That being said, what are the odds of this rock being the gate to another reality or dimension?

Anyway, the snow was gone and my guide's car was waiting for me. I was so confused. I couldn’t even stand straight. My head was spinning so fast, and I felt like I was going to collapse. I saw everything triple. Fortunately, my condition was noticed, and my guide took me to the car. He said I was extremely feverish. I tried telling him about the snow and the beasts and everything that had happened. He just dismissed me as a sick man who overexerted himself to the point of fever delusions. I was feeling so terrible I couldn’t even remember about the head in my backpack.

So, yeah, I would’ve completely forgotten about this if I didn’t throw up gray hairs once we got back to Ivdel. I was sick for a few days, periodically throwing up chunks of gray hairs. Every time that happened, I felt like my throat was pricked from the inside by microscopic needles. I haven’t told anyone about the hairs or what happened on Holatchahl. Probably because people would’ve thought I just ingested some plant or got sick as a result of the hike and dismiss my claims as deluded nonsense. I hate to say that, but I didn’t have any physical proof either. When I looked at the head a few days after the hike, it was slowly decomposing into a mass of gray hairs.

I honestly don’t know if what I've experienced had anything to do with the Dyatlov Pass disasters. It seems plausible that it did have something to do with the one from the early two-thousands. The one nobody ever talks about, but regardless, there’s something otherworldly going on at the edges of the dead mountain.