National Park After Dark - Our Weird and Wonderful World ft. Dylan Thuros

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Atlas Obscura began as a website and global community to catalog and celebrate the world's unusual and obscure places, stories and foods. Since 2009, it has expanded to include six books, group adventures around the world, a Youtube Series and a podcast! Today, we have the immense pleasure of speaking with Dylan Thuras, co-founder of Atlas Obscura to talk all things weird and wonderful.Atlas Obscura Podcast: Listen HereDanielle’s AO ProfileListen to Watch Her Cook on Apple and Spotify! Follow us on InstagramFor the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to the week’s partners!Naked Wines:  To get 6 bottles of wine for $39.99, head to NakedWines.com/NPAD and use code NPAD for both the code AND PASSWORD.Hello Fresh: Use our link to get up to 10 FREE meals and a free item for life.Trova Trip: Use promo code NPAD at checkout to save $50 on your next adventure. Host URL Traveler URL Rocket Money: Use our link to get started saving. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hi, everyone. Welcome back to National Park After Dark. I'm Cassie. And I'm Danielle. And today's episode is I'm losing my mind. Yes. Danielle is very, we're both very excited for this episode. But Danielle in particular is very exciting.

excited. There's some, there's some moments in life that just come full circle and this is definitely one of them. Yeah. And it's so funny because we just had, we just did our monthly live stream a couple days ago over on Patreon and Atlas Obscura got brought up for legitimately the first time in a live stream. And we were about to have an interview, this episode that is all about Atlas Obscira. and we're talking to Dylan, one of the co-founders of Atlas Obscura. And I wanted to say it's so bad. I wanted to be like, you don't even know. We did hint at it, though.

If you join our live streams, we like to drop some little sneak peeks to things pretty often, I would say. And we definitely hinted that this episode was coming out pretty soon. Yeah. I can't keep my mouth shut. So if you're a Patreon member, you know everything. Literally, quite literally. Yeah. Well, we're super excited because as you said,

said, we're talking to Dylan Thuris today. He is the co-founder and creative director of Atlas Obscura. And if you know anything about Atlas Obscura, it began as a website and global community to catalog and celebrate the world's unusual and obscure places, stories and foods, which it still does, but since its inception in 2009, it has significantly grown. The Atlas Obscura world has expanded to include six books, including titles like Atlas Obscura, Wildlife. the Explorers Library and Gastro Obscura. They host adventures around the world, have a YouTube series, and they have a podcast that we were recently on. Yeah, they have it all going on.

And it's kind of been Cassie and I's holy grail when it comes to travel, especially because, as you're all aware, we like weird things. We like kind of off the beaten path things. points of interest that aren't usually on a top 10 list of to seize and to do's when you're looking somewhere. But chances are if you type in your location or your destination or somewhere you want to go into Atlas Obscura, you're going to come up with a bunch of other things to add to your list that you may not have ever necessarily seen before or heard of before.

But going back to Dylan, he also hosts the Atlas Obscura podcast and host the Emmy Award winning show Small Town Big Story, which is a video series that reveals singular celebrations, local lore, and hidden histories around the country. He's a three-time New York Times bestseller and a season traveler. He's been to over 30 countries and hundreds of locations. Very cool. Together with Josh Four, Dylan built Atlas Obscura to change how travelers perceive and plan their travels. Since launching Atlas Obscura has become one of the most influential travel publications of the last two decades. Their site gets over 8 million visits a month.

Wow. I account for a few of those. People like weird things. And all of those people are eager and curious travelers looking for their next grand and strange adventure. So today, Dylan joins us to chat all things, Atlas Obscura, and to share a bit of a national park adjacent story that remains an enduring mystery to this very day. So with that, Dylan, welcome to national.

National Park After Dark. Thank you so much for being here. Hi, Danielle. Hi, Cassie. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to talk to you guys today. We are so, when I tell you, I like had a jaw on the floor moment when we first got connected because I'm like, Atlas Obscura, you've got to be kidding me. That's very nice. That's very nice. Have used Atlas Obscura since 2019 is when I first created my profile. Yes. But Cassie and I use Atlas Obscura all the time. So before. we get into that and we have a story for us today as well. Yes, I do. I do. Tell us a little bit about you. Like, who is Dylan? How did you create Atlas Obscura? Tell us everything. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. We all share in some way, I think, I think we all share a particular way of thinking

about and looking at the world, which is about a love of place. Like, there is something about experiencing the world through location and then the stories and the context that make that location really interesting that I think obviously is deep in in in all of our work and you know this I started out subskira many years. My co-founder Josh and I started back in 2009 and I think it was a similar origin story to to you two and National Park After Dark which is this is stuff that we were just we were just interested in these kind of weird out of the way places these unusual museums, these, you know, sometimes kind of morbid or macabre locations, you know, ossowaries and medical museums across Europe. And so we just, and we felt like this was totally

unrepresented in the kind of travel world. Like you couldn't, wasn't in your lonely planet guide. No one was telling you these stories. And then you would go to one of these places and you would be like, this is the coolest, most interesting thing I did on this entire trip. So it was born as a total passion project. We just thought, okay, let's, let's, you know, see if we can get this set up. We wrote the first few hundred entries and put it into the world. And like you two, I think we quickly found audience of people who said, oh, I also enjoy all of these things. I enjoy looking at the world in this way. And it's sort of just been, honestly, one thing after another from from there since the last, you know, 15 years, really. Well, it's definitely

something like Danielle said before that we've both used in our own personal travels and we totally get where you're coming from with that. And we are so appreciative that you created the space because me personally, Atlas Obscura, I first discovered it when I was doing, I moved down south and I was doing these cross like country trips back and forth. And I was driving these long stretches where I was like, I need, what is around here? Like, what can I do? I need to. And I actually started my journey with Atlas Obscura to go visit the world's largest. And so whenever I am somewhere, I look for the world's largest in the locations that I'm at. And Atlas Obscura introduced me to those. So I've been to like the world's largest fork, the world's largest pistachio.

Surprisingly large some of these things. You're like, that's very big. That's so nice to hear. I'm always just like happy when people use it and then have some. fun, interesting experience, whatever the nature of, you know, whether it's a big roadside attraction or some outsider our project, whatever it is, it's like, as long as people sort of get that little, that little adventure, I think it's like doing the thing it was meant to do. And it truly broke up my road trip to be like, okay, take a break, I could do something. You don't have a ton of time, but this is something that's interesting. So now I have a hilarious collection of photos in front of the world's largest. And you're going to have to, sometime you're going to have to go out to Kansas

where there's this woman, Erica Nelson, who created the world's largest collection of the world's smallest versions of the world's largest things. She has also visited all of these giant things. So she went to the giant fork and then made like a tiny version of the giant fork. Like it's a model of the model. Inception. She made like a thousand. My mind is blown right now.

Yes. It's hard to even get your head around. Kansas, here we come. Yes. Amazing. Are there national parks in Kansas? Yeah, maybe, yeah. There's National Park sites in Kansas.

Okay, okay, okay. I've totally made entire trips off of Atlas Obscura point interest, you know, just being like, I want to do something totally because I think with travel, you know, it's kind of just you say a location and you kind of, if you go into your circle or to Google top five things, it's always the same like four things repeated over and over. And while those are really cool and probably worth seeing, it's kind of like been there, done that. Everyone is doing it. And it's kind of like chopping the stream of like all of this tourism into just certain locations

when there's so much more to see. And it's just off the beaten path or just hidden or obscure. It's just so cool. It ends up being the best part of the trip, you know, and it creates conversation. Because if you say, oh, I went to New York City and I saw, I went to the Empire State, like, okay. Yeah. So have we?

And so it's, you know, millions of other people. But then when you say something random, you know, down some side street that it's just really cool. But anyway. That's very sweet. I really, really appreciate that. And I think in a way, we're both after the same thing, which is like convincing people that like taking the little extra journey. Like national parks are a perfect example, right? Like, it's not an amazing experience to go to a very crowded national park during high season and be stuck in bumper to bumper traffic.

and like trying to see the majesty of nature through your car window. But like if you're willing to go and like hike a little ways in and just put in a little more effort, you might have this really revelatory experience. And I think in a way, all of this is just encouraging people to like take that little risk and like and know that there's something good on the other side of it. Absolutely. We clearly talk a lot. We hang out way too much.

Yes. I see you spent some time together. Yeah. I was going to ask. ask you, how do you pick all of these locations that are on Atlas Obscura? From day one, it's a user-generated process. So people send us suggestions. And sometimes it's like a fully written up thing. Sometimes it is just a couple of sentences and a photograph. Like, we sometimes get stuff as like deeply mysterious and we're like, does this exist? Like,

where is, what is this? And those just kind of like sit as our own little mysteries in the back end. But yeah, so people suggest stuff for the most part. And we have editors and folks who work on fact checking and sometimes write up original places as well. But that's basically the process. It's very community oriented and driven. And I think what's nice about that is you get stuff that you never would have found on your own. You know, like some kid in rural Mexico is like, there's this crazy thing by my house. And it's like you wouldn't believe this, you know, abandoned freeway overpass that like never got

built to anywhere on either side. So it's like a bridge with no way to get on top of it, standing all by itself like in a field. And you're like, oh, that, that is interesting. Okay. Well, it's really funny that you say that because I was actually recently on Atlas Obscure and I was just looking at stuff in my area. And one thing came up that I've been to before. And I was like, how did they know that this is here? Because it is so far. Yeah, it's like, it's off of a trail in the middle of the woods and it's a place that I've hiked a few times and is actually one of the only, I solo hike a lot. And this one particular place is one of the only places I've been afraid to be out in. What was it? So it is, I didn't know this at the time. And Atlas Obscura actually helped

bring some reference to the location that I was in. Okay. I was out there and I just kept getting these really weird feelings. And it's this trail that it's called Little River State Park and it's in Vermont. And I was walking on it and I just kept getting these really eerie feeling like I'm being watched. Something is going on. And the first time I had it, I was like, I'm being paranoid, but I'm going to leave. And then I went back again and got the same exact feeling. Went back again. Got the same feeling again.

I'm like, what is going on here? And Atlas Obscura has this whole written out thing of the history there. I'm like, how do they know this is here? It's the middle of the woods. And there was an old town there. and there was 50 people, essentially a dam, there wasn't a dam here, and there was a huge flood and 50 people drowned in the same location that I was walking through. And it kind of connected the dots for me where I said, oh, I'm getting vibes of like this

horrible tragedy that happened here. And there are information signs, but they're like really, they don't say much. It's just like, here used to be a town, but a flood came through. They gloss over the like terrible tragedy. The massive amounts of death and disaster, right? Yes. Well, I'm glad we, you know, we had a real deep cut. Sorry that it was such a creepy.

No, it was great. In your zone, right? Like, that's good. Okay. It validated my feelings. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, maybe with that in mind, let me tell you another one of these stories about a place where you might get that sense of something very ominous or something terrible happened.

Like Krispy Chicken Sandwich from 7-Eleven, people always always call me loud. And I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm crispy. Did you expect me to whisper? If you want quiet, go eat some soup and reflect. Like, I know I'm a handful. I'm bold, I'm juicy. Throw some pickles and barbecue sauce on me and baby I'm a whole meal. And with seven rewards, I'm just $4. Quiet. No. Krispy, saucy, and $4? Very. Only at 7-Eleven. Valley through 62326 participating stores only while supplies lastly out for full terms. Okay, all right. I am super excited to tell you the story. I would say it's relatively well known, I guess in the world of kind of strange, mysterious, unsolved cases. But it's sometimes known as the case of the Isdal Woman. And the Isdahl Woman was discovered in 1970, in Bergen, Norway. Are you too familiar with this case at all? Not at all. No, not well familiar for me. Cool. Good. I'm glad. I'm glad. All right. So I'm going to start. Before we get into the case itself, I want to give you like a little background on sort of the where it is, where we are in the world and kind of what's going on like at this time period. So we'll start with the place. We'll start with the like the very beautiful natural location that we are in. So this area is just sort of outside of Bergen, Norway, which is one of the larger cities in Norway. I'm actually going to be there this.

summer. I'm really excited about it. Norway's like number one bucket list place for me. So I'm so pumped. I'm already into this story. Yes. Yes. So this takes place. This beautiful, you know, kind of fjordsland, these mountains. And, and there is this kind of infamous narrow ravine that that comes down the eastern shoulder of Mount Ulrican, probably saying that wrong. But it's, it's, you know, this mountain is the highest of the city's seven mountains. And even, you know, on a, on a spring afternoon, it's chilly. The birches sort of grow at strange angles. And the place has actually long had a kind of a reputation.

They call it in Norwegian. They call it Death Valley. And there's a number of ways for the... Istelen means Ice Valley, but it's got this nickname as Death Valley. And it's relatively famous for the sort of sudden fog that will come up. People have accidents there, relatively regularly. Fas and they say that in the Middle Ages, the Death Valley name comes from the notion that in the middle ages, people go here to commit suicide. So it's got this kind of dark aura just to begin with. So this is this is where we are. Beautiful Norway environment, you know, salt air being blown out of the fjords, it's kind of blue, black scree underneath your boots, this rock, you know, loose rock. And then this kind of like eerie, foggy death valley. So this is this is the kind of scene we're in. And this is this kind of. And this Case begins in the 1970s, in 1970. And this year is like a big year in the world. You know,

Apollo 13 has like just come back. A lot of crazy stuff going on in the news. You know, jetliners are being hijacked by by militants, Jordanian militants. We're still in the very much in the Cold War. The Soviet Union has just landed a little rover, an unmanned rover on the moon. And people are sort of freaking out about that. Beatles broke up. Anyway, this is all going on. And Norway itself is undergoing a very strange transition at this time in history. So 1970, you know, people forget because Norway feels very rich and fancy these days. But for most of its existence, it was burr broke. They were like kind of subsistence farmers.

Like they did not have a major big industry. Fishing, you know, fishing was the major big industry. But in 1970, relatively recently, they've found. they've found this field of oil, like an enormous pocket of crude, and that it was commercially viable. And so soon, not long after this case, they would start pumping this oil. And basically Norway would go from this kind of broke backwater to this big, you know, energy superpower, really rich country. And so there's a lot going on. And not just that. Norway is a founding member of NATO. And they share this almost 200 kilometer border with the Soviet Union.

And so the Cold War is very active. It was a Bergen crime novelist who wrote that this case, he wrote, this case happened during the Cold War. And there were definitely a lot of spies in Norway, including Russian spies. And so this is all the background into which we come to this case. And the case, well, maybe before I go on, I don't know, is like any questions, anything we should cover before we get into the discovery? The scene is set.

Okay. And I am sat and ready. All right. Okay. So, so it is Sunday, November 29th, 1970. I looked at some pictures of like Norwegians in 1970. Everybody's so stylish, you know. They like, it's very 70s, but like a little bit Scandinavian influenced.

But a dad. Well, yeah, they look good. You're just like, oh, you guys look great. Seventies but sweaters. Yeah, exactly. 70s, but like cozy sweaters, everything they're wearing back in style. So it's, you know, it's a normal Sunday afternoon and a dad is hiking with his two daughters. It's about one in the afternoon.

And as they're hiking up this relatively pretty remote kind of deep into the side pathways hike, the father smells something. He smells a very strange smell because among the kind of normal smell of like the wet rock and the damp moss, there is this smell of scorched flesh. And weirdly there's another scent, too. There's almost like this very odd garlicky scent. But the first thing he noticed is this, this scent of burning. Yeah. Not what you want to come across in the middle of the wellness. No, not what you want to come across at all.

And they turn this corner and they find this woman lying on her back on this slope of loose rock. And she's kind of turned, she's on her back, but her head is like pointed downhill. So it's like an odd way to even be lying. Her feet are pointing uphill. Our head is pointing downhill. And more than that, the main investigator noted he said it was, you know, she was out of the way. Like it was an unusual place to walk. And the first thing we noticed was the stench.

And this corpse, the stench is because the corpse has been, there's been some kind of fire. The corpse is burnt. The arms are rolled up and the finster are like clenched in like in a boxer's pose. And everything has kind of been locked. in this burned rigormorice. And very strangely, only the front of her body is burned. Her back, which is against the rock, is untouched, is like, as if the fire sort of only came from one side.

And not just that around her, someone had arranged all of her personal items. A watch, two silver earrings, a ring, melted plastic bottles that had once held booze, a broken umbrella, a fur hat that was partially singed, no passport, no wallet, all of these materials, carefully arranged around the body, and every clothing label, every tag on every little piece of makeup, anything that could have been identifying had been stripped away. It was as if it had been placed like some kind of elaborate set piece or scene. Another technician, a forensic technician, wrote that the placement of the objects

looked ritual. It was as if someone had carried out a ceremony. I was going to say it really sounds like it sounds very intentional. I don't know what the reason, all the reasons are behind all of it yet, but it feels very intentional and like there's some type of ritual that's happening here. And it's it's very off off putting. I mean, to stumble across that, I can't, I can't imagine. I have a bit of a question maybe that would clarify something for me in my mind. So you're describing the scene and just the front of her body being burnt and singed and it couple of the other items, did it appear that she was lit on fire at that location? Or was it she was burned elsewhere and her body was placed here in this ritual-like scenario?

This would become one of the fundamental questions because what they start to uncover is all of these other causes of death. Although you might sort of immediately assume that this is the cause of death, it starts to look like, in fact, there was another cause of death. And perhaps this burning or fire happened after the initial kind of, after the other things happened. Like an attempted cremation kind of thing? Yes. Or more of an attempt, yeah, an attempt to perhaps make sure unidentifiable, right? To render this person totally unidentifiable. And they also in this, They found this notebook there as well that had this kind of mysterious writing in it, almost like code-like writing. So they, you know, the dad and the dad gets in touch with the authorities and says, oh my God, you know, there's something horrible that happened.

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Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. So the autopsy results start to only add more layers of confusion to this, because they do the autopsy on this woman, and she's approximately 35 to 40-some years old. small, you know, five foot four, pretty athletic, but it becomes evident in the, in the drug toxicology they do, that she had taken between 50 and 70 phenomal tablets, which is a very powerful barbiturate. That said, they also, so, so enough to kill you, basically, like enough to, this is, this is a deadly dose of this, but it also appears based on her lungs that she's alive,

at least partially when this fire begins, because there was all this carbon monoxide saturation in her blood. And so the pathologist lists the official cause of death as carbon monoxide poisoning combined with ingestion of sleeping pills. But what the actual cause was, it remains this incredible. So some people tried to say that this was a suicide, that you take that many sleeping pills, that this is a thing that was done voluntarily. But the fire really complicates that story, right? You took a ton of barbiturates and then set yourself on fire? Like, that's a pretty extreme measure. And then why are you doing it out here in the middle of the wilderness?

So the police start canvassing Bergen with their best sketches that they can make of this woman, who, you know, it's pretty hard to get a good sketch. But eventually, they are able to pull fingerprints. And they thought, you know, okay, for a while, they're like, the case is closed. Like, what are we going to do? Like, no one recognizes these sketches. But the fingerprints, a few days later, show up on two battered suitcases found in an unclaimed locker in the Bergen Central train station.

And inside the suitcases is this very strange set of stuff. It is very high-end clothing, but with all the branding removed. It's wigs in brown, blonde, red. It's a notebook filled with—oh, that's right. Sorry, this is where they find the notebook. It's a notebook filled with cryptic letter number strings. It's a bunch of money, but like Deutsche marks, Belgian money, Swiss francs. It's a film roll, a pair of heavy blue rubber boots, and the same size and color as one of the melted souls they find at the crime scene.

And there was also a partial fingerprint on a pair of glasses that match this dead woman. So now they have this very strange case that looks like foul. play and these suitcases. Yeah, it feels like, yeah, the suitcase, it feels like someone on the run or someone in disguise, you know, just with all the different wigs that are to conceal like who you are. And then all the different money from different places is like they've been trapped, whoever this is has been traveling a lot. They don't want people to recognize them. Yes. It's very interesting. And the tie of all of that trying to conceal your true identity in life kind of is translating into this mysterious death.

So that's also an interesting link there. Yes. There's a picture being painted of someone with a pretty mysterious background. And I should note that no one has shown up at this point saying, oh, my friend is missing. Or, you know, my girlfriend, my wife, my sister, whatever, you know, no one is coming looking. This is all happening because the police are kind of like, who? Who is this person? And eventually one of the police officers is able to start to decode this little pad of notes by checking them against the Norwegian Railway and hotel ledgers.

And they're essentially able to crack this code. And they find that it's basically a code of places that they had gone. And they also, they're able to sort of look at at, okay, some locations. that were listed. And it has her going from Paris to October, or sorry, traveling through Paris in October, and then Oslo in November, and Stravinger, and then Bergen, also in November. So there's just a lot of moving around pretty quickly. And then by basically looking at these ferry tickets and these different, because now they

suddenly say, okay, we kind of know maybe where you were and when you were. So the police are able to start putting together a kind of, uh, calendar of her travels, and they're able to start finding her on this journey. But as they do this, it's sort of even stranger, because what they're finding is that everywhere she's going, she's checking into different hotels and then moving hotels, and she's checking in under like eight different names. And the names are really good. So she was Genevieve Lancier from Louvin, Claudia Thielt from Brussels, Claudia Nielsen, also from Brussels. Alexia Zarn-Murchase, also Brussels,

Vera Jarl from Antwerp, Fenella Lork from Brussels, and Elizabeth Lienhauer, also Brussels. And each of these characters, she's like recording addresses as she goes, because sometimes to check into a hotel, you've got to record, every address is made up.

It does not exist. It's not a real location. Okay. So the picture is now, they have this very mysterious death, this person who has been moved, around a tremendous amount under many different aliases and recording these travels in this kind of coded system.

And they're eventually able to track a few of specific incidences where this woman and what she was doing. So there was a waitress at a place called the Neptune Hotel in Bergen who they're eventually able to figure out, served this woman. And the waitress said of this woman, my first impression was one of elegance and self-assuredness. She even winked at me as if she knew I'd been staring and described her as speaking with kind of continental accent flipping between German and French when ordering at one of the hotels in Oslo, she changed room three times in one day complaining of drafts in the room. And the taxi driver who took the woman from the hotel to the Bergen railway station was never found. Much, much later in 91, so 21 years later, there was a taxi driver who said they wanted to remain anonymous that said they had picked up the woman at a woman. a hotel and that she was joined by another man for the ride to the train station. But this is,

this is with each thing they discover, it is as if there's sort of this infinite pull of mystery where it's just like, okay, we discovered her identity, except it's one of eight identities. And none of the identities actually point back to a real person. Yeah. She feels like some kind of spy or like someone on the run. I don't know. She has, she feels like she has a lot of charm and elegance and she feels almost trained in this. It just, it feels like a movie. It feels like an action movie with Angelina Jolie in it. And she's like hopping around all the different countries. And I don't know. She's very interesting. See, I don't get the feel of somebody on the run only because I feel like when you say, oh, somebody's on the run, you envision them trying to fly under the

radar. You know, yes, concealing their identity, but not, you know, asking to switch their room three times. Someone's going to remember that, that, oh, that lady was never satisfied because she was cold and she asked three. Like, I think you would suck it up and just be like, I don't want anyone to hear from me. I don't want to make a stir. Or dressing elegantly for people to notice, you know, people are noticing her and how she ordered her food. And like the eye contact she was making with people. Like, this doesn't translate to me, at least, from what you're describing as someone that's trying to just slip under the radar and not cause too much draw or attention. No. It is like someone trying to evade something, but not necessarily trying to just run away.

Because you just run away. You just like go far away and just hunker down. But she's sort of moving in this very intentional but very strange set of ways. And so, you know, eventually they basically give up. The police say it is ruled a suicide by ingestion of sleeping pills, which feels like, all right, guys, pretty, didn't really, that's

kind of a real... You just lap that on there and said, okay. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And she's buried, she's specifically buried in a zinc coffin to preserve her remains for future disinterment, because it's basically this cold case. They know that they don't know what

the hell is going on. And And what starts to emerge over the years is exactly the theory, at least. And there are now many, many theories. There's a big Facebook group dedicated to this. There is an amazing podcast series, actually, about this called I think Dead in the Mountains. Or death, no, sorry, death in Ice Valley. And the main theory that starts to emerge is that she is, in fact, a spy. You know, not long after this happened, this death, the lily hammer affair happens

where Mossad agents assassinate the wrong man in a Lillehammer street in Norway. And there's all kinds of kind of Norway becomes this land where sort of the USSR meets the West. And so there's all this stuff coming. And so people started to assume that she maybe was a spy trailing, you know, the western coast. And that perhaps it had to do with these anti-ship missiles called penguin missiles that were being tested off of Stravenger. and various other foreign people had been seen in town. And so, you know, this idea became really, like, popular. But there wasn't hard evidence of it.

The notebook, it had sort of her own travels in it, but it didn't have any evidence of, like, recording rocket trials. Her dental work was found to be common in southern Europe, not sort of Eastern Block, so not necessarily someone coming out of the Soviet Union. And no intelligence agency would admit, either side, USSR or Western, admitted to losing an agent. But this, you know, it remained kind of this unanswered question. And the other theory that started to emerge was that perhaps it was a kind of stage-managed death.

And one of the people said, you know, who commits suicide by taking barbiturates and choosing fire as the backup? Like to one of the one of the investigators said like to pour petrol over yourself and set it a light, you'd have to carry the can the matches yet no container with gas was found nearby that was big enough. So that's how did that disappear. And the position of her body suggested that she was lying down when the fire started. So it doesn't really, it, you know, suicide seems increasingly unlikely. And then this deliberate clipping of every clothing tag and it just made it seem there was. some kind of strange, like evading identification. And then, you know, some people thought maybe it was an assisted suicide.

And this also kind of resisted the idea, though, because no other footprints were found up there, just the rubber boots. So if someone came with her, they either stepped only on the bare rock or somehow, like, vanished into thin air. Could they have carried her? Could someone have carried her? Yeah. Oh, like in her rubber boots? Oh, I like this. That's totally. Yes. Absolutely.

Because if that was, you know, if they had teamed up for whatever plan this may be, for whatever reason, if it was an assisted suicide or something, you know, whatever. Or if she was killed and then brought to this location and set on fire. You know, I feel like someone could easily put on, like, I guess the question is, was she wearing the boots? They matched, yes. She was wearing boots that matched. Like the boots were burned, but then they matched to a different. pair of boots that was found among her stuff as far as I understand it. Okay, because to me, I think, okay, if there's another person involved, which it seems like, I don't see a world in which there is not somebody else involved. Yeah. If they had planned this beforehand, either together or she was the victim of a, of a murder, that they carried her wearing the rubber boots, they were wearing the rubber boots, carried her to this location. Because even just like the position she was

laying in with her head down. If she was to end her own life, why would you lay down in that way? Like with your head down a slope? Like, no one lays like that. That's not how you lay down. But yeah. And then, you know, yeah, and then they just switched boots or whatever. Yeah. And that would explain the one set of print. I don't. Yeah. It's just the theory. I don't know. I like it. I like it. In the years that have followed, there have been some interesting clues that have opened up. So they actually did exhume her and were able to do. an analysis on her. Oh, no, actually, for this, they didn't have to exhum her. They used, when they did the autopsy, they actually took her jaw because of the dental work was pretty

unique, and they thought that could be an identifying factor. So they were able to test her tooth enamel for certain isotope ratios. And it points her to having come from southern Germany or the French German border, maybe like the Black Forest area. And they were able to find sort of a DNA-specific group that that is relatively rare in Scandinavia but common in other parts of southern Europe. However, that is where it stopped. They were not able to get any further. They were able to release an updated sketch giving a much clearer idea of what she might have looked like with kind of pale skin and hazel eyes, but absolutely nobody stepped forward to say, I know who this is. I know what's going on. You know, the other strange thing about all of this is this happened in a very

remote, like hard to hike to place in Norway. And you know, when you take this trail, it's like you're going up this V-shaped glacial cut and like the rocks are slick underneath. It's it can get really cold really quickly. And everything about this

woman in her suitcase shows like, you know, patent leather ankle boots and like wool dresses and like calf light. She's like a, she's like a creature of the urban environment. So and the only concession to the nature was those galoshes.

And they fit Bergen's weather, but not really the valley's terrain. It was like someone dressed for bad weather, but not for this expedition that led into the wild. And so this is where things remain. Basically, every 10 years, the Bergen police run the fingerprints, which they have and the DNA, which they have in the databases, and nothing comes back. They have, as of 2020, there is no match. And, you know, people have been looking for maybe there's something in these old Cold War documents. They started to release these Cold War files, you know, declassify these Cold War files in Norway.

And, you know, things have been discovered. Yes, MI6 and CIA were running listening stations along the coast. They were disguised as meteorological posts. And the Soviets were sailing their fishing trawlers up and down, Bergen's Harbor, all these antennas picking up signals. You know, could she have been a spy? caught between these two nets, perhaps. But there is no concrete proof. And the only, the big kind of break in the case,

the latest thing to have happened that has gotten everyone all, Twitter, is somebody started looking into the case again and ended up sort of hiring like a fact checker to dig into more of this and just go deeper and deeper into the material. And it opened up this interesting potential connection with like a Swiss banker. And we still don't really know whether this is real or not. Like this is new enough and unclear enough that I think it's like really hard to say anything

definite. But there is some new breaks in the case that are giving people hope that we will actually uncover who this is, what what she was doing, and what happened to her. Because as of today, we just don't know. Well, that's certainly a mystery. I do have, I mean, everything about it is so interesting and mysterious. And I do have a question for the DNA testing. Are they testing for relatives of her?

Yes. And it's not, it's not. And also, the DNA is degraded. So they weren't able to get a good enough sample to really do what you would normally do, which is just like find someone who was, because there's got to be someone out there related to her. There has to be. A third cousin, whatever. But I think the DNA, at least,

they last tested it was not good enough to turn up these results. So that would be an interesting, perhaps in the, because I think that DNA test happened in 2017. And so almost 10 years later, or the isotope test happened then. I mean, you could imagine that maybe you could try it again. Yeah. Especially now with all of like ancestry.com and 23 and me, you know, more and more people are testing their DNA. So I feel like the probability of finding someone who might have a connection with her is kind of going up as these things become more popular. There was one other very interesting theory that an author put out. And it was actually that she was a very high-end sex worker and that she was traveling up and

down the coast and meeting with important, you know, rich, famous customers, clients, whatever, but, you know, wanted to remain anonymous, didn't want anyone to connect her back to her actual identity and, you know, that that was actually what she was doing. It still doesn't explain the murder. To me, it also doesn't explain how she got her hands on seemingly many different passports from many different countries. Like, there's certain she had a French passport because she, there was a, there was someone on a French flight that was an unidentified French national that was registered on the flight. I mean, it's also funny because I think it reminds me that in 1970, people could kind of just disappear in a way that I think is like harder to do now.

Like the fact that she could take flights and not have her name like on the flight register is like kind of a wild thing to think about. Well, now they can scan your face and they know you are. You can't fake you can't give fake passports. I think that that I kind of, it's an interesting theory, but I think that there are definitely some holes in that. And that why did she have all these disguises, all these different names? You know, if she's in other countries, no one's going to know. It seems like a long way to go to like do something that, you know, you don't need that level of obfuscation. You know what I mean?

You're just discreet, whatever. So it's. Yeah. Yeah. She seems very discreet. And not that sex workers cannot be intelligent or anything like that, but it feels like she has like training for whatever this disguise is, which I wouldn't imagine a sex worker would. She had medications. She had like an eczema cream where she had scraped off all the identification of it.

Yeah. That's just like a level of like hiding your identity. That's sort of really out of, you know. So we don't know. Espionage, organized crime, psychological escape, you know, was she running from somebody? Or accidental overdose and staged disposal. Did she die accidentally? Maybe she overdosed in some scenario.

Someone panicked, carried, you know, brought her up here. managed to do it without leaving footprints and then staged this grisly scene. I, we may never know. So that's my story for you today. The Isdal Woman, one of the great unsolved cold cases of all time. And a good reason to go to Norway and visit beautiful Bergen and Ice Valley. Just don't get mysteriously murdered while you're there. Well, and to put it like kind of bring it back, it is within a national park.

It is very close to a national park. But let's all of Norway is basically. a national park. It's right next to a national park. It's close enough that I, it's, you know, within the, striking distance. First fall, it's outside. It counts. Yes. Yes. But it's funny because our very first episode of National Park After Dark, we both covered an episode, a story in one episode, which we don't do anymore. But my story was same thing. It was legitimately like less than a mile outside of Acadia National Park. I'm like, eh, first episode. It's close. It's not close enough. So I get I'm just giving you shit.

Well, thank you so much for sharing that. I, for one, had never heard of that case. I know you said it's kind of infamous, but it totally flew over my head. I think it's maybe more famous in Europe, but there is a BBC series called Death and Ice Valley. If you are like, oh, this is cool and I want every detail. Like this is a very general over the top kind of big picture examination, but it goes, it's like a 10-part series that goes really, really. really, really deep. Some other books out there that you can check out or articles that are great about it.

The Swiss banker thing is NZZ.ch. That gives, it says in the 50-year-old unsolved death in Norway, an explosive new lead points to Nazi-aligned Swiss banker. So that's kind of the, that's the hot new area of investigation. So we'll see. It may, it may still be solved yet. Interesting. Well, we'll be keeping our ears and eyes out for any new information. that comes up on this one for sure because it definitely, it was a really interesting story and it left me with a lot of questions. Cool. Thanks for let me tell it. Yeah. Thank you for joining us. Of course. Yeah. And just before we let you go, I have to ask. Because, of course, your co-founder of Alos Obscura, your catalog is just, I mean, you've got thousands of places. You've expanded.

You have books. You have group trips. You do trips around the world. Like, you have a, obviously, you have a podcast that we guested on as well. You have a YouTube series and you're quite the traveler yourself. It's always a hard question and we get asked all the time. So I feel for you. But what is one of the most, I won't put you on the spot and say your favorite place or your favorite experience. But top five in the top five, what is one of the most memorable either places or experiences that you've had throughout your travels? Yeah. You, um, you. too, I'd like this too, because it's really in a beautiful environment. The one I always cite, the one I think of is a place in Peru called the Keshoa Chaka, sometimes called the last Incan bridge.

And it's about four hours from Machu Picchu. And what it is, it's this giant swaying rope bridge. But the thing that makes it special is that every single year, the villages around this bridge, the four villages that live there, come together, they cut down, they cut down the bridge. And then they weave a brand, new bridge and it's woven out of this kind of grass, this like hay that just grows on the, on the hills there. And they like sort of they get it wet, you rub it between your hands and then you weave it into this small twine and you weave the twine into rope. And eventually they weave this enormous like hundred, you know, foot long suspension bridge. And they've been doing this. The reason the bridge has this nickname, the last Incan bridge, is that they have literally been doing

this since the Incan Empire. This is a little piece of the Incan. The Incan Bridge, the Incan road system, and it would have been really an important part, actually, of connecting all these, you know, this is 1,500 kilometers of roads or whatever it was in the Incan Empire. And these bridges, you know, connected across these mountainous sort of ravines and gaps. And the bridgekeeper would have been this very important figure who oversaw the creation of this bridge. And so today there is still a bridgekeeper, and he is still, like, it is run through his family since the Incan Empire. So even though every year the bridge is, is a new bridge, In this other way, it is this like unbroken connection to this ancient empire.

And so I went and I crossed the bridge and I met the bridgekeeper and he showed me how to weave the rope and what to do. And it was just like, it's an incredible experience. I mean, I have, there are many, there are so many others that are very different from that and interesting in some other really different way. But that one always comes to mind when people ask me. That's really cool. And to have an experience that makes you so connected to such an ancient history and to

actually meet the people. who that is their ancestors is, it's a really special experience and it's so different than being like I saw Machu Picchu. You know, it's like I actually interacted with the communities in a ceremony that they have been doing for generations. I mean, that's a really, really cool experience. It was really, it was really special. It was really good. Well, thank you so much for joining us and taking the time to chat with us and share that story and just tell everyone, you know, what you're up to, where they can find you. Tell us all the things. Yeah, the big thing is, is, you know, the Atlas Obscira podcast. I think if you like National Park After Dark, you might really like

the Atlas Obscira podcast. It's not, you know, it's a wider array of stuff. Some of our stories are quite cheery and, you know, goofy and fun. But it's, it has the same kind of sense of deep storytelling, around locations. And it's just, they're short episodes. It's 15 minutes a day. We make four new episodes a week. And we just take you to the most interesting, unusual places all around the world. So come and give it a listen.

It's not a big time commitment to try it an episode and hopefully you like it. Yeah. We agree everyone listening. Go check out the podcast because it is, I think it's definitely up everyone's alley that's listening. Thanks, Cassie. Well, cool. All right. This was so, this is so fun.

Thank you both. Well, thank you so much, Dylan, for joining us. This was a really interesting and mysterious story to end on. If you're not done wanting to listen to us and Dylan, you're in luck because there is another episode on the Atlas Obscure podcast that aired on June 5th that you can go check out. And Danielle and I talk about a story that we've discussed before on this podcast, but we get all really deep into aliens and all that good stuff. Yeah, aliens never get old. So if you're wanting some of that alien content and want to know more about, you know, just head over to their

feed. They have so many awesome stories. They drop multiple episodes a week. Like, they're on their game. So head on over there. But we will see you here next week. In the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch you're back. Bye, everyone. Bye. Thank you for joining us again this week. If you love National Park After Dark and want to hear exclusive bonus stories, join us on Patreon or Apple subscriptions. Subscribers have access to our National Park After Dark Book Club, live streams, Discord, and much more. If you prefer to watch our episodes, video episodes are now available on YouTube.

If you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite listening platform. And to follow along with all our adventures, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and X at National Park After Dark. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you may not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressives save over $900 on average. Pop over to Progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount.

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