Mystery story writing (homework for intermediate+)
Dear students of groups H1 and H2S, you are to write a mystery story for your homework. I have decided to make you work on one of the most mysterious events of the 20th century – the Dyatlov Pass Incident. Since it is to be a mystery story, please, put aside your common sense and let’s dive into the ocean of conspiracy theories. Yes, prepare to be investigative, creative and ready to meet many creatures lurking in the shadows (mwahahaha). Ready?
First of all I want to you look up on the Net some info regarding Dyatlov Pass incident. The links I recommend as those which use nice conspiracy theories, are as follow:
The Dyatlov Pass Incident, Scarier than Fiction by CloudedIntentions – 10 min video , but with a couple of drastic photos of the bodies found, if you don’t feel like watching – listening is OK
The St.Petersburg Times article 19th Feb, 2008
Naturally, feel free to use some other sources if you find these unsatisfactory, but try to use the English ones.
Now, here’s your task:
Imagine you are a person who saw what happened at the pass (an anonymous member of the ski-group/ member of the Mansi tribe etc.). You finally want to share your story. Write ca. 300 words
Deadline: 21/04/2013, stories are either to be handed in personally or published below this post, I don’t accept emails this time as they mysteriously disappear somewhere in the Net 🙂
To help you with this task, I will give you a couple of clues:
- Order the events (beginning, middle and end is usual, but if you want to experiment, go ahead ;P)
- Think about tenses (I recommend Past Simple & Continuous as well as both Past Perfects)
- Grammar structures (reported speech is unavoidable, you might also find relative clauses pretty useful)
- Vocabulary (remember: that is the story by a witness, some expressions concerning feelings are necessary, e.g. I felt a chill down my back/ My heart sank/ My body froze/ My stomach turned)
- Questions: you will have to answer some in your story –
- Who are you and how did you happen to be near the incident?
- What happened?
- What happened after the bodies were found? Why didn’t you share the story until now?
- How did the incident affect your life?
I hope you will find this task enjoyable and write amusing compositions. Have fun!
If you are reading this text, I am dead. My name is Iraklij Morozow. I was lieutenant in twenty air division in Russia’ army. It is the high time that world know true about The Dyatlov Pass Incident. I have been worked in army for 25 year. I was very fascinated my job. I have been convicted that I did something for all citizen. But this accident absolutely change my mind. It was in the east shoulder of the mountain Kholat Syakhl in the northern Ural mountains on the night of February 2, 1959. We organized there secret traverse. It is prohibited, but there we tested our guns. Pinions, cannon and bombs. It was wildness places without people. Anyone didn’t think that somebody could have been there. We made a mistake. 2 of February 1959 at night in mountains have been group of students. We didn’t know about it. As usual we have done attempt there. We sent a bomb from our airplane which damaged everything. It was a nightmare. We felt awful, we killed people. It was incredible, how we could have done it. We trained there very often, but there weren’t people. Neither I, nor my craft can’t believed. We are murderer – we said that. But what happened when entire world have knew the true. We must have prevented these. We covered up one’s tracks. The families’ victims haven’t been known what happened in mountains, no one have been knows. But now people know this mystery story, which damaged my life, which tired my conscience.
Nicely done, Milena – I’ll print it and correct the mistakes till Saturday. I loved the beginning 🙂
This is cool, Milena – especially love the first sentence 🙂 I’d be interested in knowing how and/or why this guy died, actually. Would add to the story. But it’s pretty cool already.
I come from Serbia. I’m a professional football player who currently play for Chelsea Football Club. Now, I’m going to say the truth to whole of you. My name is Branislav Ivanović and I want to tell something very important. I took part in Dyatlov Pass incident. I knew Igor Dyatlov very, very well. He was my best friend.
Well, I must return to my scariest memories. It was 1st of February 1959. Me, Igor and other eight people tried to set up camp. Everything was going nice, but suddenly we heard something which was very, very strange. No, really, some animal was growling and running. Animal? We didn’t know what or who was doing this sounds. We were scared and frightened.
We had to do something, so we decided to quit our tent. We couldn’t do it normally, we had to hide ourselves. We runed away, and we realized that THIS was following us. Igor said that, we couldn’t survive it and only I was able to save my life. After it, he stopped and screamed ,,Oh, who are you, beast?”. The creature responsed very quickly.
– I’m vampire for Uruguay. I love biting young men.
After it, I just wanted to leave those scary place. I knew that, those creature killed all my friends, but I promised that I would find it and kill it. I jumped into river and swam to Moscow.
I decided to be professional football player after it. I was a CSKA player. I showed few nice performances so Roman Abramovitch signed me to Chelsea. Well, that was really nice time. Everything was going fabulous, I had been so much happy. But in 2011 Liverpool signed striker from Uruguay.
21.04.2013 – Liverpool FC vs. Chelsea
I can’t believe it. I knew that finally I was going to meet the beast again. Luis Suarez bitten me… I’m frightened and so, so lucky to be alive. I have to make a revenge…
2/2
I will never, ever forget that composition. Never. Things like that make up for all those grammar lessons 🙂
Nice one, Wojtek – I appreciate that you decided to have a sparkling vampire and not a glittering one 😉 And I just loved this sentence: ‘And I jumped into a river and swam to Moscov.’ 😀
I assume for most people the connection with Liverpool vs. Chelsea is even funnier but, personally, I like this swimming part even more 🙂
18th March 1959
Dear Finder,
I can’t forget about that night. In my nightmares I think that it’s happening again. That day, 2 February 1959, I saw everything. Nobody expected that something like this would happened. It’s strange and impossible, but I believe in what I saw.
I went to this expedition with my friends. Nobody knew that I was going. When the weather got worse we pitched a tent. While we were sleeping something made quick noise, almost not hearable. I woke up Krivonischenko and we wanted to check out who made that noise. We couldn’t got out, because someone locked zip in our tent. I cut quickly our tent and all of us just ran to woods. We made fire, because it was very cold and dark outside. My toes and fingers were frozen far ago. After 1,5 h in extreme freezing weather some of us wanted to return to tent for rest of our clothes. We felt dizzy and most of us have had already light blue skin. I was terrified. Ludmila, Nicolai and two Alexanders had disappear just after our escape. I was the only one who had completed suite. My heart sank when I released that 5 people were frozen to death. I went looking for the rest of the group. What I saw there made me completely terrified. This orange creature was fighting with my friends. Ludmila was screaming. “This” yelled on her to shut up, but she didn’t listened so this orange something beat her until she lost consciousness. Next “it” pulled out her tongue. Rest of group got in fight with “this”. “It” scratched them and orange liquid got into their blood. Their bodies started to shaking. This orange thing started to spinning to hit my friends with extremely speed and they quickly died. I ran to scratches of our tent to checked out something. It wasn’t there… The gold compass disappeared (not ordinary compass). It was alien detector on which we were working for couple years in a secret.
Now I can tell you who I am. I am illegal immigrant from China. I was learning at university in secret and my friends help my in this. I’m writing this letter, because I want to let you know what exactly happened there. I feel guilty that I couldn’t helped my lovely friends and I apologize for that.
With that in mind forever, me
In 16th line I should change:
mit=with
Hi. My name is Maxim Mikhaylov. I am from Russia. Maybe it will be funny for you and you won’t believe me,but i am the only ONE witness of The Dyatlov Pass incident. Igor Dyatlov was my best friend. I knew that he wanted to become “The Greatest”. He went with his colleagues:
Zinaida Alekseievna Kolmogorova
Ludmila Alexandrovna Dubinina
Alexander Sergeievich Kolevatov
Rustem Vladimirovich Slobodin
Yuri Alexeievich Krivonischenko
Yuri Nikolaievich Doroshenko
Nicolai Vladimirovich Thibeaux-Brignolles
Alexander Alexandrovich Zolotariov
Yuri Yefimovich Yudin…
and Me.
First, I thought I won’t go with them because of my boss who wanted me to help him mit work.
Anyway, I had gone.
It was 2nd January. We were all happy and determinated but the WEATHER was worse and worse and worse… We were forced to go throw Kholat Syakhyl. Then the problems started! We set up a camp, we had no ideas what to do. Kholat Syakhyl in local language means “Mountain of the Dead “. Maybe we really shouldn’t go there!? After some time we heard so strange sounds. We didn’t know what could it be so we decided to go out.
We cut open the tent and … we saw an avalanche. We ran as fast as possible
but we’ve met another problem. It was such a POWERFUL light. It was coming closer. Some of us became blind. I didn’t have a clue what is this. It was so terrifying. Slowly, some unknown creatures were coming out from this unregistered object. They were ugly,big and yellow. I am sure that they were angry aliens. I don’t know why they didn’t see me. I was next to my friends but they walked near to me and did nothing! At this stage I jumped down and had so much luck that I hadn’t died. I don’t know what happened later. Sorry…
Maybe you will ask me why I hadn’t told you about that!? Because I was blackmamiled…
“What you see
what you hear
nothing is what it seems”
It was bloody red morning on the eastern front. Our company was going to the main war theatre or maybe we were in this same and the eastern front was going west ? Our troop was build on five great ugly big liars: D. Tusk, J. Tusk (D. grandfather ), Stefan Carryfish, K. Soughwood and me unknown from name, second name and surname somebody. Our frightening begun at fifth of November in scarying night. From highcommand came orders. D. Tusk took the radio and listened: “You must surprise enemy from the right shore of river”. D. Tusk protested: “but there is no river here”. HQ answered: “And this will be our surprise”.
J. Tusk asked: Carryfish what do you think about it ?
Carry: Those ordinary bastard may … ( and this part will be censored )
J.T: what about you sough ?
K. S.: I dont care. Dont interrupt me. Im writing.
JT: What are you writing?
KS: I am writing a scenario where Sean Bean survived to the end without wounds
JT: So what are you going to do D. ?
DT: somebody said “prime minister has to take faults on his chest”
JT: And what ?li
DT: I dont know but it seems quite nice. To the river my children.
We started our march on march at 19:30. Carryfish really liked reksio. Winds were blowing, rain was raning, rasputica wanted to catch Soughwood in the deepest darkness. Fortunetly she came to gymnasium and she knew how to get out of it. Same as her son. Ans perhaps our greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgrandsons/daughters wil knew it too. After long march at last we came to the valley. We decided to slow down. Trees were soughing. Soughing really scary. We prepared our guns. Suddenly we saw somebody lying on the sand road. His uniform suggest us that might our enemy. He was breathing slowly.
Who are you? – asked scary basta ….. asked Carryfish
My name is Jark of Żoliborz – said Jark of Żoliborz
DT said: He is destroy as pilgrilms sandals after pilgrimage to Częstochowa. Where is your camp ?
JofŻ: Dont go there.
DT: Why ?
JofŻ: Ant
DT: Ant ?
JofŻ: Antoni …
After those words Jark … started to snore.
We must follow our orders D. lets move – said soughwood
Tusks clock signed that the 20 p. m. has came:
dong,dong,dong,dong,dong,dong,dong,dong,dong,dong,dong,dong,dong,dong,dong,dong,dong,dong,dong,dong
Carry shouted: Shut up you …. afew epitets later … did you hear that its a camp.
Tusk ( i dont remember which of them ): Indeed great detective. Carry we started to suspect something after we came near workers unions which were burning rubbish bins.
Carry: Those nacionalist must be somewhere.
Tusk: In to those bush.
A few minutes later.
We were waiting. Sweat was everywhere. On my arms, legs, head, on soughwood, on bush, on George W. Bush too.
Jark of Żoliborz was right. Their commander was Antoine Haveyoutgotrewicz. He had many other supporters in his band of four. His brothers in arms were A. H of Man, M. Stoneman, and a few days earlier joined to them Dżarek Win and Go.
DT: Our enemy is much more bigger. Our enemy is much more stronger. But we will SING.
And the slaughter started DT started to sing: Stand up, damned of the Earth
Stand up, prisoners of starvation .
And though I have the gift of prophecy…
and understand all mysteries,
and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains,
and have not charity,
I am nothing
This was a massacre. Antoine decide to hug Donald. Józef kissed H of Man. Win and go soughwood were singing together. Carryfish was kind and nice for everyone.
And only I stood there.
Alone.
I felt a chill down my back.
My heart sank. ( You might not believe but Ive got it 😀 )
My body froze.
My stomach turned.
And then I decided to change our political system.
And nothing was this same …
to be continued …
For all poor readers nothing is random in this story 😉
You have no heart, stop joking 😀
The main problem is it has nothing to do with Dyatlov pass incident (oops ;p). But apart from that it was fun to read (Sean Bean surviving… without wounds ;p) and required extensive use of my imagination (Carry speaking without cursing and offending ppl, hnah). Was the topic the apocalypse – I would accept it happily. But it was supposed to be about something else, you know 🙂 Now, be a good student and make a new story and if it’s nice I’ll give you a nice writing task for your final exam, OK? 🙂 with place for politicians and history and zombies 🙂
Though the picture of kissing Hoffman blasts my brain -.-” don’t do it again 😉