The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - The Mysterious Death of the Isdal Woman

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

10% off with the code TAPE at Manta Sleep - http://tinyurl.com/yw5xkd9b In 1970, the charred body of an unidentified woman was found in Norway’s Isdalen Valley, sparking one of the most puzzling mysteries in modern history. Who was the Isdal Woman, and why was she carrying multiple fake identities? This video delves into the strange circumstances surrounding her death, exploring theories of espionage, murder, and conspiracy. Join us as we unravel the secrets of this cold case. Support the channel with Patreon - www.patreon.com/thetapelibrary Do you have a supernatural story to share? Drop me an email at [e-mail] You can check out The Tape Library in video form at www.youtube.com/@thetapelibrary Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thetapelibrary Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Tape-Library/100094332411836/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thetapelibrary Archive of the Paranormal, the strange and the unexplained. The Tape Library brings you the creepiest stories, to keep you horror junkies up all night. True scary stories of ghosts, cryptids, UFOs and true crime. Additional footage and audio from Evanto, Singularity, Midjourney and Pexels. Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio and the youtube audio library.  All other footage used under fair use. CHAPTERS 00:00 The Isdal Mystery 03:03 Welcome To The Tape Library 03:32 Manta Sleep 04:34 The Body 09:09 The Investigations Begins 14:01 The Woman of Many Names 17:17 In The Company Of Men 22:56 A Cover Up? 29:03 Who Was The Isdal Woman? 34:30 Wrapping Up Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To some, it may feel like an unusual place for a walk. Isdahl, also known as the valley of ice, a desolate but beautiful valley to the east of Bergen in Norway. A large black lake fills the bottom of the valley. Pine forests lie on the sides of the hills, slowly turning into rocks and boulders the higher up you travel. It was November, a cold and wet time of year for Norway, with few hours of sunlight. But on the 29th of the month in 1970, A university professor was out for an early morning walk in the valley, with his two daughters, aged 10 and 12. It seems he knew the trek whirl and was confident enough to be hiking a what could be at times hazardous place with two young children. In fact, its potentially dangerous reputation is obvious from its other nickname, the Valley of Death.

A name given to it due to the accidents many have had here, along with a strange rumor that back in medieval times, this site was used by the name. some for a dark purpose. People would make the walk out to Isdal back in those days and kill themselves. What it was about this site that calls this is unknown. Isdahl was remote now and it would have been even more so back then. Regardless, I don't believe the professor nor his children could have had any idea what they were about to uncover. As they were walking through the valley, one of the children spotted something, sticking out from behind one of the boulders. the boulders. She pointed out to her father who looked up and instantly believed even from a distance, that it looked like a foot. He became concerned someone was hurt and marched towards the boulders that were hiding the rest of the person who was laying there. As they approached a small clearing,

they were suddenly hit with a sort of burnt smell that hung in the air, a repugnant and unsettling smell. As they cleared the last boulder, he quickly shielded the eyes of the children, There certainly was a person there, a woman in fact, but there would be no saving her. Instead, the trio marched out of the treacherous valley as quickly as they could, and headed in the direction of the city, to phone the police. A little over two months later, 16 men and two women gathered in a graveyard in Bergen, as a Catholic burial was carried out. The hymn Lee kindly light carried away on the cold Norwegian air, with the excessive. of the priest who was conducting the service. All the other mourners were members of the Bergen Police Force. They watched as a white coffin was lowered into the ground. No headstone present. No one

there knew the true identity of the woman who was currently being lowered into the grave. Her coffin lined with zinc so that it wouldn't disintegrate in case they needed to dig her back up. None of the people present are alive today. They went to their graves having never been able to know whose funeral they attended that day. Welcome to the tape library. Over the next eight weeks or so, we're going to go really heavy on the paranormal topics. So I thought I would do something a little different for this episode. This is an unsolved mystery that has baffled many for over 50 years now. This is a topic that you could spend months really delving into, with so many intertwining theories and accounts. Here, I've just tried to stick to the most definitive information associated with the case,

If you are interested, I strongly recommend spending some time going down this rabbit hole. But before we get into that, I just want to take a moment to thank my sponsor for this episode, Man to Sleep. Man to Sleep produces the best quality sleep masks I've ever used. As someone who suffered from insomnia for years, I know how important a good night's sleep is. And I found these really help me. The iPads are adjustable so you can position them to get total blackout. They're comfortable, so no irritating pressure on your head,

and come in a range of different styles from this silky. soft one to the super fancy edition that comes with razor-thin Bluetooth speakers built in, perfect for falling asleep to creepy tales. If you use my link below or the code tape at checkout, you will get 10% off anything you order on the site. So thank you once again to Man to Sleep for supporting the tape library. And now, let's get into tonight's story. Get yourself a warm drink, dim the lights and get comfortable. It's time to get into one of the most chilling unsolved mystery.

solve mysteries of all time. This is the case of the Isdal Woman. Chapter 1. The body. Sometime between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. on a quiet Sunday morning in Bergen, a call came into the police. A body had been found in Isdal Valley. A small team was quickly dispatched and sent to look for it. The first thing they noticed on the cold, crispy November morning air was the smell. Burning flesh wafted into their nostrils, the closer they got. This was when they first saw the person who would soon become known as the Isdal Woman. A woman lay on the ground, around 5 foot 3. She looked youngish, slim with broad hips, brownish black hair,

and a small round face with dark eyes. While this was the description that was given of her later, it likely wouldn't have been the immediate observation they made. The more notable element was that her entire front was horrifically burnt. Clothing and skin had been peeled off, but strangely her back wasn't burnt at all. Her body contorted into what is known as a boxer pose, a disturbing posture that bodies of those who have died in the fire often take.

Fists clench and elbows and knees flexed, caused by the shrinkage of muscle and tissue, by the dehydration caused by the heat. Yet there didn't appear to be any source of fire around her. Instead, placed next to the body were several of her belongings, a pair of rubber boots, one of which was burned. two plastic water bottles, again that seemed to show they have been partially melted in the fire,

a jumper, scarf, stocking, umbrella, purse, and a box of matches. There were also pieces of burnt paper and what appeared to be the remains of a passport holder, as well as jewellery and a watch that were stopped at the time tent to. This detail appears unusual at first, but as a standard time watches on the displays are set to, indicating that the watch was never actually used. Underneath her body was a fur hat. When tested it was revealed, this did in fact contain traces of petrol, but it was only a tiny amount.

No other source of the fire could be seen. There were two other strange elements of the scene. All the labels and the belongings had either been removed or rubbed off, and all the labels on her clothing had been cut off. This was obviously an unusual scene. The body was quickly sent to her local university hospital, for an autopsy. Although over the years there have been many suggestions of some sort of accident taking place. The most common of which being that she fell into a campfire, there was no evidence of a fire being

constructed anywhere around the area. Because of this, the police quickly began to treat this as a murder case, but they had zero leads. None of the possessions on the woman were identifiable, and her face was burnt almost beyond recognition. They immediately went to the press to get the word out, in the hope that someone may have reported this woman missing or recognized some element of her description. The autopsy also revealed something curious. The fire had certainly been an element of her death. She had soot in her respiratory tract. Her skin had a red coloration that was likely caused by carbon monoxide poisoning. But then the toxicology report came back. She had drugs in her system. A lot of drugs. It was estimated that some 50 to 7 barbiturate tablets.

were in her system. A handful were undigested, and according to one source, some were still in her mouth when she died. The pills were linked to a sleeping pill that was apparently the most popular choice amongst women of the time who wanted to commit suicide for overdose. Although some sources report another curious detail about this, the brand appeared to be one sold in England, not in Norway. The autopsy almost created more questions than it did answers. The sheer quantity of tablets in her system seemed to rule out an accident. But was this a murder? Or had the woman taken her own life?

The tablets certainly open up the possibility of this being self-inflicted. But what's about the fire? If it had in fact been started by petrol, then where were the petrol canisters? And why would you travel to such an unusual location? Take a bunch of sleeping pills and then light yourself on fire? But then, the people, the people were the people. police got a break. Three days later they received a phone call. At a train station in Bergen,

someone had dropped off a pair of suitcases one week prior on the 23rd November and had not returned to collect them. Chapter 2. The investigation begins. The suitcases were opened and the mystery of the Isdahl woman suddenly began life of its own. They quickly were able to confirm that these were her belongings due to a pair of glasses inside that had her fingerprint. on the lens. Strangely, the lenses in those glasses had no correction. They were just plain glass. Also in the suitcases were two wigs, fancy clothes, coats, a bathrobe, a train map with the stations between Oslo and Bergen, handwritten at top, a compass, a pair of slippers with the word Italy, barely visible inside, 500 German duchmucks, a sewing kit from a hotel in Geneva,

and a steel spoon with a heart engraved on the back, with the letters SCE. H.P. inside. A spoon that would be linked back to an Austrian manufacturer. A spoon that would be linked back to an Austrian manufacturer. There were cosmetics and exma cream, but just as with her belongings at the sight of her death, all the labels had even been rubbed off or totally removed. It was clear whoever this woman was, she was trying to keep her identity a secret. There was one item that did still have a label on it, though, a matchbook that was linked to a well-known erotic underwear postal service in Germany. They also found a notebook that had a series of lines of numbers and letters in it,

was there some sort of code. But the detail that would really kick off the investigation was a shopping bag with a receipt in it. It featured the name of a shoe shop in Stavanger. Down south from Bergen, this would be the police's first stop and attempting to uncover the mystery of the Isdal Woman. The shop worker to this day remembers serving the Isdal Woman on the 18th November, 1970. A common thing that many witnesses who were uncovered over the following week's note was just how notable she was. The shoe store worker said she seemed like a normal woman shopping for boots.

She spent a long time debating what paired to buy. He did refer to her as good looking and that she spoke English but with some sort of accent that he couldn't identify. Another worker in the store gave a description of her to the police, stating she was about 1 metre 70 tall. She had dark hair down to her shoulders, with a blue hair in the store. hairband, brown eyes wearing a dress with a fake fur jacket. The descriptions both workers gave of hers did not feel like someone of a traditionally Scandinavian background. Serious immigration only really started in Norway in the 1960s, so foreigners would have stood out a fair bit in the early 70s, especially a lone woman. He also mentioned that she

smelled unpleasant, which seemed at odds with her well-put-together appearance. He wasn't sure what the smell was, but he later described it as being like garlic. Something that also wouldn't have been common in the country at the time. The shopkeeper had to go to the basement to get her the correct size boot. And he mentioned as he walked off that she shouted out to him in a language that wasn't English. He believed it could have either been German or French, but he wasn't sure. But he was certain, based on her appearance, that she was from somewhere further south

in Europe. gave the police the impression she was not from the area. So their next stop was to begin contacting hotels in Stavanger. Sure enough, they got a lead at her hotel right by the shoe shop. They claimed that the woman had stayed there for a total of nine days, between the 9th and 18th November, before being taken in a taxi to the hydrofoil boat to Bergen, after a confused conversation with the driver who claimed her English was poor. She stayed in a single room, room 615. It didn't even have a bathroom.

The bellboy who worked at the hotel at the time says that he helped her take her bags to the room. In the lift, they had a brief conversation. He asked where she came from as he noticed her accent, and she said she was from Belgium. She wore lots of makeup with red lips, dark eyes and dark hair. The staff noted she rarely smiled, always looking serious.

She spoke quietly, but didn't seem shy. The woman stuck in their memory as it was so unusual to have a lone woman staying in the hotel. The fact that she stayed for so long was also unusual. November in Stavanger was not exactly bustling with tourists. The hotel worker who checked her in said she gave her the impression that she was there with an agenda. A purpose. Not for pleasure. But she had to fill in a hotel card when she checked in, which seemingly gave the police an identity. Her name was Fenella Lauren.

Anna Loric and she was apparently from Belgium. But when the police got into contact with the Belgian authorities, no woman by that name could be found, and her passport number was seemingly a fake. Chapter 3 The woman of many names. The police now has an idea of her steps prior to arriving in Bergen, but still no concrete answers, but they were now no longer alone in the investigation. The international interest in the case had seen the Norwegian secret police get involved, something that wouldn't have been common for a murder case in Bergen. The notebook with the code was sent to a codebreaker within the military to try and decode it. Meanwhile, the police now had a sample of her handwriting,

and at least two locations that she had visited in recent weeks, so began to widen their search to other hotels. It didn't take the code breaker long to realize that each line in the notebook wasn't some form of sophisticated code. It was simply a personal shorthand the woman was was using. Each line represented a place and a date, but the co-breaker was unfortunately unable to crack the final line of the page. It features 23N, the day she left the luggage at the station, the last time she was seen alive, but then also ML at the start and MM at the end. No one knows what these mean. Could these initials have represented a person rather than a place in this case, or a destination she was never able to reach.

Soon the police had a stack of hotel registration cards from hotels within Norway, but also other countries such as France. All with the same handwriting, but all with different names. The birthplaces were all different, but all from various places within Belgium, and the cards were mostly written in German. While German is one of the three official languages of Belgium, it is only used by a tiny percentage of people as a first name. language when compared to Dutch and French. Curiously, a number of these German words were

spelled incorrectly, or in some cases were essentially words that didn't have a direct translation in German, which seemed to indicate that while she was using German, it wasn't the language she was most comfortable with. The reason for her visits in each case were different as well, but often she would refer to a work purpose, such as trading goods or being an antiques dealer. Some cards required her to list her previous destination and next destination. With one saying London and another Oslo, each of these various identities had its own passport associated with it. And seemingly every single one was the fake.

While all the information she provided is obviously questionable in terms of how truthful it is, it does appear she was travelling widely in the months leading up to her death. Another strange detail emerged though. One of the hotel cards appeared to be written in a different style of handwriting. It was for a stay at the Hotel Hordenheimen, from the 19th November to the 23rd, which lines up perfectly with the Isdal Woman's movements. Handwriting experts were certain this belonged to the same person, however, and that this change in style appeared to be someone deliberately trying to disguise their handwriting,

which begs the question. In the very last hotel she stayed in before vanishing and turning up dead, was the Isdahl woman trying to hire from someone. Chapter 4 In the company of men. In late October into early November, she stayed in the Hotel Neptune in Bergen. It appears during the month of November she moved between Bergen and Stavanger on numerous occasions. This time remaining in Bergen for five days, one of the women who was serving food in hotel restaurant during this time, remember seeing the Isdale woman one evening where she was

sitting alone at a table. She noted that she looked sad. But the following evening when she saw her in the restaurant again, she wasn't alone. She was sitting at the table with an older man with grey hair. She mentioned that she believes he could have been Norwegian, which she made note of as she understood the Isdahl woman was not, and she would often speak German to the other hotel staff members. couple stood out to the hotel worker because neither one of them spoke the entire time. The man was reading what looked like a sheet of paper, while the woman just sat there with

a serious look on her face, not saying a word. The staff member notes that this did not feel in any way like a romantic date. It was some sort of meeting, although why would neither of them be speaking? The worker did relay all this to the police when interviewed, but strangely no mention of the grey-haired man ever made it into the police reports. There was another strange detail about her stay at the Neptune. The maid claims to have seen her a number of times during her stay and made note that she had two suitcases. But the unusual detail that the maid added to the story was that the Isdal woman had a small table under the window in her room. but for some reason she took it out of the room and placed it in the hall upside down just a couple of weeks later in bergen a peculiar looking couple wandered into a home furnishing shop

they apparently came in and spent a considerable amount of time looking for a wall-hanging mirror both spoke in a language that the shop workers were unable to 100% identify but they said based on their appearance and speech they believed they could either be german or eastern European. Neither appeared to be able to speak English. The description of the woman matched up pretty perfectly with the Isdal woman, but one detail was off. This woman had messy, curly hair, but this does appear to match the description of one of the wigs later found in her suitcase. It also begs the question, why was she shopping for a mirror while staying in hotels, and why did no one else report seeing her with this mirror? You may have been. You may have

have noticed earlier that I spoke about how the final hotel she checked into in Bergen was on the 19th of November, despite leaving Stavanger on the 18th by boat. This was because she checked into another hotel first, not too far away, the hotel Rosencratz. That night she stayed in room 426. It was common for maids at a time to make up beds in the evening rather than just the morning, and it was early evening when the maid approached the door. There was no do-not-dusturb sign on the door, and there was no do-not-dusturb sign on the door, the maid believed the room to be empty, so she quickly knocked and then entered. She was taken by surprise when she saw the woman laying in bed, and a young man with blonde hair in a grey suit, in a chair on the other side of the room. The maid apologised and asked if it was

okay to make the bed. The woman stood up from the bed, silently, and stood further away. The maid anxiously quickly did what she needed to do before apologising again and leaving. What made the whole situation so strange though was that neither the man nor the woman said a word to the maid. They just silently watched her until she left. Yet again the police apparently decided not to include this information about the man in their report report and when they went public with their information about the Isdal woman, none of these men came forward to claim they knew her. In the following morning, the Isdal woman checked out and moved to a hotel just a short distance away. The hotel, Hordenheimen, this was where she signed in but attempted to

disguise her handwriting. She took a room on the corner of the hotel, giving her a perfect view of both streets that ran up to the hotel from her window. The hotel staff here also made note of her smell, describing it as a very strong, almost spicy smelling perfume. During her stay there, the housekeeper was mostly not allowed to enter her room, the do-not-disturbed sign regularly hanging from the doorknob this time, although she would on occasion go into clean, as the Isdal woman had a particularly strange tell for when she wasn't in the room. When she was inside, she would move the armchair in her room out into the hallway, but would take it back inside. side whenever she was going out. The staff in general found her behaviour rather odd.

That combined with her appearance meant, as many have said, she really stood out from the crowd. On the 23rd, the Isdal woman checked out of the hotel, got into a taxi with her two suitcases, checked her luggage into the train station, and then wasn't seen again, until her body was discovered in that valley one week later, burnt to a crisp. Chapter 5. A cover-up? As I mentioned earlier, this case has long since passed just being an investigation by the Bergen Police, and instead Norway's secret police were now heavily involved. In 2018, Marit Higraf and Neil McCarthy created the podcast Death in Ice Valley,

and were able to get the Isdal Woman case reopened, attempting to use more modern methods to identify her. Unexpectedly as part of this investigation, they were given access to documents from the secret police on the case. When they opened it, they were disappointed to discover how finn it was. Most of the information was already widely available in the regular police report, but there was one other interesting detail. The Isdha Woman had visited another man. The report references a witness from a small fishing port, not far from Stavanger, in Tananagar, who claims to have seen her. this report was dated the 22nd of December, and it said someone would be going to interrogate him. However, that same day, the police held another press conference.

They said they would be closing the investigation after only three weeks, declaring it to be a tragic suicide. The police took questions from the press. One asked if it was possible that the Isdal woman could have been a spy. The spokesperson said that there was no evidence that this was the case. While she had been travelling extensively around Norway, they had no idea what she had been doing during this time. Reporters complained that their normal leads in the police force were keeping much more tight-lipped about this case than they normally would. One reporter even discusses how he was allowed to look at the case files in the station, and at one point found a sealed envelope that felt like it had a tape in it.

The outside read that it should only be opened by the chief of the secret police, and he decided against disobeyed. paying this, through fear he would lose his contacts in the force. But this envelope cannot be found in either police forces documents on this case today. In fact, a number of documents and items from the case appeared to be missing, lost over time. The Bergen police themselves were frustrated by the case. Seemingly, they couldn't understand either why it was being closed so suddenly. They were stopped from chasing any of the leads that may have taken them abroad to get a clearer picture. of the Isdal women's movements. Instead having to rely on the limited information other countries were willing to send them. They felt their hands were tied further by

the involvement of the secret police. They didn't believe it was a suicide or an accident, and the frustration had not been able to put this mystery to bed was all the more evident by the number of officers who attended the mystery woman's funeral. Through a combination of accounts and an interview of the son of the fishermen from Tananga, we can piece together what might be one of the most revealing parts of this whole story. The fisherman claims to have been working on his trawler when he saw an unusually nicely dressed woman walking along the docks. She stood out to him again because of the fact that she did not look dressed for the environment, nor did she appear to be Norwegian. She approached a naval vessel

that was docked there and proceeded to talk to one of the officers for a long period of the time. After the story came out in the press, he was convinced this was the Isdal woman and called the police. But if anyone actually came to speak to him before the case was officially closed, seems unclear. What apparently did happen though was very strange. The man was boarding a train in Stavanger just before Christmas. He and his family had plans to spend the Christmas break in London. When two men approached him on the platform, they identified themselves as police and asked if they could talk to him. He went away with the policeman for around 20 minutes before rejoining his family. He didn't say much to his family on his return, just that they wanted to ask some questions.

It was only after the holiday and returned to Norway that he revealed what had actually happened, but he hadn't wanted to worry his family during what should have been a pleasant time for them. The two policemen in question, if they really were police as they were not in uniform, nor did they show any ID, had handed the man a small handgun and a knife, telling him to keep them on him at all times while he was in London, in case he needed to protect himself. He states he didn't even know who he was supposed to be protecting himself from and was left paranoid for a long time that someone could be coming for him, based on what he had seen that day on the docks. But why was a naval ship in the Dox that day? The Navy were there as part of a test for the Penguin Missile System, a lightweight guided missile system that could be utilised on small ships. This was cutting-edge technology at the time, and was obviously immensely interesting to one of Norway's neighbours. Russia.

This was obviously the time of the Cold War and Norway was a founding member of NATO, the organisation linked Europe with the US. didn't make any huge secret as the fact that it was closely watching Norway's small but highly developed arms industry and Russian ships were often spotted not far from the test zones during the experiments with the penguin missiles. This was to be an important tool in the defense of the West and Russia were keen to know everything they could about it. Many Norwegians grew up talking about the rumors that the deep coastal fjords were filled with Russian submarines watching their country. What's more, the Isdal Woman's movements between Stavanger and Bergen seem to coincide with numerous tests of the missile system, and she was even reported as being spotted close to the test sites on more than one occasion, which points to one very obvious conclusion. Chapter 6. Who was the Isdal Wun?

So let's go with the most popular theory surrounding the Isdal Woman. She was a Soviet spy. Multiple false personalities, meetings with peculiar men, travelling around and being seen close to the sight of a cutting-edge missile test. It all seems to add up right. But if she were a spy, she was a pretty terrible one. The Isdha woman made an impression on everyone she met. As many said, she stood out from the crowd,

never looking like she belonged in any of the locations she was seen in. What's more, experts on Soviet spy methods and espionage as a whole, point out that a spy would likely have one or maybe two false identities. These would be concrete and dialed in. Trying to juggle eight different identities, if not more, would be unthinkable. Her clothes would either be from the location she was operating in, or from her supposed birthplace. The need to cut out the labels of her clothes and erase labels shouldn't have been needed if she was truly a spy working for Russia.

Despite this, it does seem almost certain that she was involved in involved in espionage in some way, maybe not for the Soviets, but some other country, or that she could have instead potentially been an information courier, moving from place to place to pass information between the operatives in the field. This could explain the meetings she had with multiple men and the Navy officer. Could there have been informants, or even fellow undercover agents? Some have pointed to a less sinister profession for her, by linking the men she was spotted with and the matchbook from the Erotic Underwear Company. Could she have been a higher-class sex worker? There's a couple of issues with this though. She would often stay in Christian

hotels that had strict rules about conduct, including no alcohol, so it would be a strange place for a sex worker to conduct her business. It may explain her well put together an attractive appearance and dress sense, but it doesn't really explain a lot of the other odd behaviour. Tests have since been done on her teeth, and even DNA results run on tissue samples, they have been kept by the hospital after all these years. Initially, these tests done on her teeth suggest that she was between 25 and 30 when she died, a fact that seems to fit with the rough ages she would include on her hotel cards. But a recent carbon 14 test done on her teeth as a part of the Deaf in Ice Valley investigation, potentially puts her age, closer to 45.

Could this be a reason for her to be lying about her age? There are also links to non-state organisations. Potentially terrorist groups and specifically pro-Palestinian movements have been mentioned. Could she have been gathering information for these organisations? This may explain some of the less professional behaviour if she wasn't a true spy and was instead working for smaller political groups. Although a lot of this seems to be based on her potentially being in the same city, at the same time as a Genevaan banker, who supported the Palestinian resistance,

but that's a whole other rabbit hole if you want to go down it. The DNA test and even isotope test done on the remains of the Ustdala woman in recent years, Dars suggests she at least grew up in Germany, before potentially moving to Belgium or close to it at a fairly early age. But none of this information about her origins really gets us any closer to understanding what's happened to her in that valley. After the death in Ice Valley podcast was released, a man who lived in the area got in touch and claimed

that he saw something unusual just one week before the Isdal Woman's body was found. He was hiking close to the Isdal Valley in Floydon. When he saw a woman who appeared to be a little inappropriately dressed for hiking along a mountainous hillside, he walked off and noticed two very serious-looking men walking not far behind her. He didn't give it much thought until later, when he became aware of the Isdal Woman case.

I mentioned much earlier that there was one line of code that no one was able to crack in the woman's notebook. ML23N.M. Based on everything else we know, it seems certain that 23N represents the 23rd of November. But could it have been ML and MM? that were walking along that mountain of her, that day. And what did they get up to after the witness saw them?

Unfortunately, this tale does not have a satisfactory conclusion. We still have no real idea what the Isdal woman was doing in Norway in 1970, and even less information about what happened to her, deep in the valley of death. Only one of the police officers involved in the case is still alive, and with each passing year the likelihood of anyone living, having directly known her, goes down. Her DNA information is stored in databases, so maybe one day we will be able to discover her true identity if a relative comes forward. But for now, the story of the Isdal woman remains a true mystery.

That's all for this entry into the tape library. I know I say this in every episode, but, God, I really want to hear your theories on this one. countless books, podcasts, investigations and articles on this subject. So I feel I've only scratched the surface here. This is a mystery that seems to infect people's brains and just stays there because it just doesn't seem to be any conclusive answer that satisfies every aspect of the story. As I said earlier, this was something a little different for me, so do let me know what you thought of this episode. Over the coming weeks, we're going to be headed on a full on paranormal binge to welcome in the darker mumps. So I hope you can join me on that dark trip into the other world. For now, if you've enjoyed this, then please do be sure to subscribe and like the video

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