October 1, 2021

Berht Hrabn: How did you first become, like we all are, obsessive over the events of the Dyatlov group in 1959…?

Teodora Hadjiyska: On 14th July 2012 I had a near-fatal accident that left me with a flail chest much like Lyudmila Dubinina (distal-humerus.com) although I didn't know who she was at the time. While recovering after my third or fourth operation (I’ve had five so far) I came across the movie Devil's Pass, yet another horror flick that I would have forgotten the moment it ended if my husband hadn't said, “You do know that there is a real event behind it.” I started reading and it was like ‘love at first sight.’ I was drawn almost as if a lost soul had been entrusted to me. I am not into mystics, but I am describing the irrational call I felt and still feel towards this case. When I saw the movie, I already had the chest trauma that Lyuda had suffered (Chest Xray). I knew what it is to be injured like that. When the medical team first got me on the operation table at a very ill-equipped hospital in Indonesia the doctors told me, “to make peace with God.” All my life I have triggering weird and traumatic events - volcano eruption (Semeru erupting), rock fall (Schladminger Tauern), runaway truck (Sulawesi accident), strangled and mugged in Georgia, an avalanche and even once, as I was sat in my living room, a 10 m² ceiling fell on top of me (ceiling incident). Things around me break, fall and crash. My friends, when they see me, are really happy to have one more chance... because the way my life goes, each new encounter is a miracle that I am still alive.

The problem is, maybe because I’m never in one place for more than a month - two maximum. One time on a flight I was sitting next to a gentleman who confided that he was occupying seat 14A in the US Airways Flight 1549 that ended in Hudson river on January 15, 2009. I started squeezing his arm saying how grateful I was that he was sitting next to me because statistically, as he’s already been in an air crash… it was less probable that he was going to be in another one soon. I told him about my own mishap’s… and he became very agitated saying, “my statistics were stronger than his and he's not sure he wants to sit next to me.” The flight attendant brought beer to cheer the conversation up. We were flying US Airways.

How and when did you and Igor first start working with each other…?

TH: My biggest breakthrough came when some Russians wrote to me to tell me that they were impressed by the amount of work I have done compiling and translating all the documents, trying to put it all in order and make it available - they wanted to help. Progress on the case, I owe to my Russian sources. I explained this to Josh Gates during Expedition Unknown and he called me "the conduit between the Russians and the western world".
Before the DYATLOVPASS.COM site the only place to search for information were the bottomless Russian forums, where besides being in Russian (a language I know) the facts and documents were cited in the context of someone's post about something specific. There was no centralized vault with information on the case. That said, I would never had considered making yet another site about a topic that has been exploited for so many years if I didn't have such difficulty understanding the details of the incident - who was who, found where, injuries, radioactive clothing, knives, cameras, etc. Content, formatting, language, availability; books, movies and resources on the web were incomplete and driven by an agenda - putting weight on details that will reinforce ‘their’ theory and citing out of context. Even now sites and articles are poorly formatted (hard to read), full of advertising banners and unrelated information using the keywords only to generate traffic.

Then, three years ago a Russian researcher wrote to me that a group of avid Dyatlov case obsessives were following my site and wanted to contribute. Among them, was my biggest fan, Igor Pavlov. At the time no one knew his name or any personal details. He was known only as s777.

Can you remember ‘your’ eureka moment for the theory…?

TH: We (Igor and I) worked together for three years. Since I had heard it all I didn't consider that anyone within their right mind would say that they believe to have an explanation for everything in this case. I wasn't restless yet because the case worked miracles for me. I wanted so badly to go on the Pass but I couldn't fathom a way. I didn't have the means. When Discovery Channel called me, I started believing in miracles - Joshua Gates is my Santa. My desire to work on the case became even stronger after Expedition Unknown in 2019. I don’t think I was expecting an ‘eureka’ moment but Hegel's law of the transformation of quantity into quality started to take effect. When I saw that everyone else was publishing books on the case I asked Igor if we should maybe consider it as well; since we knew more than any author of a book on the case that I know of.

It is not about money. As you know I am giving books away. But to guide people into reading it as it happened, stripped of any “me, me, me.” Half of any other book on the case seems to be “this is what I did, what I thought… here is my expedition to the pass.” How is this relevant to the case? Why is your photo in the book the same size as Dyatlov's? When I started putting the book together, I sent an overview for Igor to look at. In this overview I mentioned that there was nothing around the last group of bodies to account for the lethal injuries - I said crevice, boulder or a tree? Igor responded with a propaganda poster of Lenin raising his hand and the caption "This the way". My reaction was utmost disbelief... because a fallen tree could best explain the injuries but then, what? I started asking questions and Igor was answering them and the hair on my back stood up. This is when I was humbled before his genius. He said it took him ten years to figure it out – “hats off to this man.” You can read more about him and say a word here RIP Igor Pavlov.

DYATLOVPASS.COM is a phenomenal resource, what sort of effort is required to maintain it…?

TH: Constant. A full-time job without pay. Even with COVID - I’m glued to the computer!

What were the highs and lows of your experiences for getting 1079 into print…?

TH: I remember very clearly that I decided to publish a book on September 25, 2019, and that the book in Russian is more important than the book in English. The book had to be published on the anniversary February 1, 2020, when the whole world suddenly remembers about the case. I locked myself behind doors in Vienna whilst Igor was writing chapter after chapter in St. Petersburg. I was drawing the maps, working on the cover, title, translation, editing, formatting, platforms and channels etc. My choice was ‘Kindle Direct Publishing’ so the book gets straight onto Amazon however two months into the editing, when I tried to publish the Russian version of the book, I got the following error:
Important: Kindle Enterprise Publishing and Kindle Direct Publishing don't support Russian or Swahili.
I still have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder!
Working with Igor was the best thing that ever happened to me. Knowing him, no matter how brief and distant has brought me to the highest and lowest moments in my life.

You mention Expedition Unknown earlier, what other experiences of TV and radio exposure have you had…?

TH: It brings me together with giants like Josh Gates and fine journalists like Douglas Preston and Lucy Ash, and that is thrilling. It also fattens the ego. We start feeling we are important, and we see ourselves like the apostles of the case. But clinging tenuously on the mountain hugging the monument of the Dyatlov group for support and balance – a place where we do not belong. I am making friends and enemies, and for what? We don't matter. The only certain thing in this case are the nine lost souls!

What was it like to actually visit the Pass…?

TH: I stood in the middle of the night in that exact spot where the Dyatlov group allegedly pitched the tent on the slope. I felt the mighty mountain and the doom of life. I felt like a small spec, out of control, and the conviction that nothing I do or plan is... hopeless is not the right word. More like useless, because there is a much bigger picture that we are part of. And even our free will is not enough to save us. I felt like there is something very big out there, and we are one with it.

Do you plan to visit the pass again, and if so, is there anything specific you would be aiming to clarify…?

TH: I will visit the pass again, and I will be looking for where the tent could have been for real. I am studying incidents with fallen trees. I have attended several autopsies of victims of similar accidents. I am making friends with coroners. That's my life now!

What are your hopes (regarding the book, website and case developments) for the future…?

TH: That the Prosecutor's Office won't be shying away from the case. That if, they have lead’s, they might consider reopening it.

Finally, if you could ask just one question to anyone involved in 1959, what would it be and to whom would you ask?

TH: I don't have preferences because I think although they were affected differently, they were all taken by surprise. If I could address anyone from the group, I would literally scream my head off, "Was it a tree that killed you?"

Teodora Hadjiyska, thank-you!

"1079: The overwhelming force of Dyatlov Pass" by Igor Pavlov and Teodora Hadjiyska can be found on Amazon.