10 Conspiracy Theories That Inspired Horror Movies
2. Devil's Pass
In Devil's Pass, a bunch of American students trek through a mountain range to investigate a group of hikers who died there under suspicious circumstances. The film takes this mystery to the extreme by incorporating as many bizarre theories as possible including The Philadelphia Experiment, mutants, time-travel, wormholes, and teleportation.
As crazy as that sounds, the story is based on a real event known as The Dyatlov Pass Incident. In 1959, nine mountaineers mysteriously died while climbing the Ural Mountains in Russia. When the bodies were found, it was clear six of them died from hypothermia.
However, three of them were killed by physical force. Two of them were missing their eyes and one of them had his entire tongue removed. For 60 years, nearly a dozen separate investigations tried to get to the bottom of this tragedy. As The Dyatlov Pass garnered media attention, it wasn't long before theories circulated that the group were killed by an untested military weapon, a yeti, or an alien.
In January 2021, nature scientist, Johan Gaume, completed a study, confirming the hikers were likely killed by a freak avalanche. (Gaume devised this hypothesis by observing how the snow moved in the Disney film, Frozen!)