THE SEARCH
The plan had been for the party to return to Vizhai by 12 February, from where Dyatlov would send a telegram to the Institutes sports club saying that they had arrived safely. No one appeared concerned when the telegram failed to arrive as arranged after all, these were experienced skiers. It was only on 20 February when worried relatives of the students raised the alarm that the Institute sent out a search-and-rescue team of teachers and students, followed by the police and army, who dispatched aeroplanes and helicopters.
The volunteer rescuers found the abandoned camp on 26 February. We discovered that the tent was half torn down and covered with snow. It was empty, and all the groups belongings and shoes had been left behind, said Mikhail Sharavin, the student volunteer who found the tent. It had been cut open from the inside, with slashes big enough for a person to get through. Footprints were discovered in the metre-deep snow, left by people wearing socks, valenki (soft felt boots) or a single shoe, or who were completely barefoot. The footprints were matched to the members of the group, although there was some doubt as to whether they corresponded to eight or nine people; there was no evidence of a struggle, or of other people beside the skiers, and no sign of the students themselves.
The prints led down the slope toward the forest but disappeared after 500m (550 yards). One and a half kilometres from the tent, the first two bodies were discovered. Georgy Krivonischenko and Yury Doroshenko, barefoot and dressed in their underclothes, were found at the edge of the forest, under a towering pine tree. Their hands were burned, and the charred remains of a fire lay nearby. The branches on the tree were broken up to 5m (16ft) high, suggesting that a skier had climbed up to look for something, and other broken branches were scattered on the snow.
A further 300m (1,000ft) onwards, lay the body of Dyatlov, on his back with his face looking in the direction of the camp and with one hand clutching a branch. A further 180m toward the tent, the searchers found Rustem Slobodin, and 150m on from him lay Zina Kolmogorova; both looked as if they had been trying to crawl to the tent with their last remaining strength.
Doctors said all five had died of hypothermia. Only Slobodin bore any injuries other than burnt hands: his skull was fract*ured, although this was not considered to be the cause of his death.
It took two months to locate the remaining four skiers. Their bodies were found buried under 4m (13ft) of snow in a forest ravine, 75m (250ft) away from the pine tree. Nicolas Thibeaux-Brignollel, Ludmila Dubinina, Alexander Kolevatov and Alexander Zolotaryov appeared to have suffered traumatic deaths. Thibeaux-Brignollels skull had been crushed, and Dubunina and Zolotarev had numerous broken ribs. Dubinina also had no tongue. The bodies, however, showed no external wounds.
According to writer Igor Sobolyov, who has investigated the deaths, it was also apparent that some of them had taken clothes from the bodies of those who had died first in an attempt to keep warm; some of the garments had cuts in them as if they had been forcibly removed. Zolotaryov was wearing Dubininas faux fur coat and hat, while Dubininas foot was wrapped in a piece of Krivonishenkos woollen trousers. Thibeaux-Brignolle had two watches on his wrist one showed 8.14am, the other 8.39am.
Despite the many unans*wered questions, the investigat*ion was closed by the end of the month and the case files sent to a secret archive. Even more mysteriously, skiers and other adventurers were barred from the area for the next three years.
It really makes me sick. The paralysis is bad enough, but I'll get all those twisted hallucinations and experiences with it. I only get extreme nightmares with sleep paralysis, and dreams and reality will progressively start blending in together. Dreams will then feel more like reality, and reality will become more like a dream...if that makes sense. I've had dreams where I was convinced it was reality, in real time. 
