In 2016, Melissa and Grant Fischer went on a hike, but never returned.

7 years later, the Grenell Glacier in Yellowstone National Park revealed a gruesome discovery.

Two bodies handcuffed together, face to face, buried in the ice.

How is this possible? What happened on that fateful day? And why was a backpack belonging to a man who disappeared almost 20 years ago found near them? This story will send shivers down your spine.

Give it a thumbs up and write in the comments what you think might have happened to the hikers.

August 2016 was unusually warm in Montana.

Melissa Fischer, 32, and her fianceé, Grant, 38, were planning an unforgettable vacation in Glacier National Park.

They were experienced hikers who had been on many trips and always prepared carefully for each outing.

The route to the Grenell Glacier was considered one of the most picturesque and safe, and it was also popular among vacationers.

The couple registered at the Ranger Station as required, informing them of their plan to follow the route and return in 2 days.

They were last seen alive at a lookout point with a stunning view of the glacier and the surrounding mountains.

In that photo taken by one of their fellow travelers, Melissa and Grant were smiling, happy, and carefree.

Nothing foreshadowed trouble.

The weather that day was excellent with no storm warnings.

48 hours passed and Melissa and Grant did not return.

Their car remained in the parking lot.

Family and friends sounded the alarm.

A large-scale search and rescue operation began.

Park rangers, volunteers, dog handlers, and helicopters were involved.

They combed every inch of the route, searched the surrounding woods and slopes, but it was all in vain.

Not a single trace, not the slightest clue.

It was as if the couple had vanished into thin air.

All sorts of theories were put forward from an accident falling into a creasse, an avalanche, although there were none that day, to an attack by wild animals, or even foul play.

But none of them could be confirmed.

Days, weeks, and months passed.

Hope that Melissa and Grant would be found alive faded with each passing day.

Finally, after several months of fruitless searching, the case was suspended.

Melissa and Grant Fischer were officially declared missing.

Seven long years passed.

The summer of 2023 in Glacier National Park was unusually hot.

Glaciers were melting at an unprecedented rate, revealing what had been hidden beneath the ice for centuries.

One morning, a group of park rangers was conducting a routine patrol of the area around the Grenell Glacier.

Suddenly, one of the rangers noticed a strange metallic glint coming from the ice.

As they approached, they saw something incredible.

Two human figures frozen in the ice as if in a crystal prison.

They stood face to face, their wrists bound by handcuffs.

It was Melissa and Grant Fischer.

Shock and horror gripped everyone present at that moment.

How did their bodies end up inside the glacier? Why were they handcuffed? These were questions no one could answer.

The problematic and painstaking work of extracting the bodies from the ice began.

The ice had to be literally melted and extreme caution had to be exercised to avoid damaging the fragile remains.

When the bodies were finally recovered, it became clear that they had been well preserved thanks to the low temperature.

Melissa and Grant’s clothes were neatly folded next to them, which in itself looked extremely strange.

Upon initial examination, no visible injuries were found.

The bodies were taken to a forensic laboratory for a thorough examination.

The results shocked the investigators even more.

Forensic experts determined that Melissa and Grant had died about a week before their bodies were placed in the glacier.

This was evidenced by the initial stages of mummification.

But how could they have died and lain there for a whole week before ending up inside an ice block? and who put them there.

New mysteries awaited investigators as they continued to examine the site where the bodies were found.

Two backpacks were found near the remains.

One of them, judging by its contents, belonged to Grant Fiser, but the second one, the second backpack was clearly old and worn.

Inside were documents belonging to David Roach, a man who had gone missing in the same area of Glacier National Park in 1998.

His remains were never found.

How did his backpack end up next to the bodies of Melissa and Grant? And what happened to David Roach himself almost 20 years ago? Another strange detail was the handcuffs with which Melissa and Grant were bound.

An examination showed that they were armystyle handcuffs from the 1980s.

Where could an ordinary couple of tourists have gotten such handcuffs? And why were they handcuffed? Was it suicide, a staged crime, or part of a more complex and sinister chain of events? The investigation reached a dead end.

There were many theories, but none of them provided a comprehensive answer to all the questions that arose.

How did Melissa and Grant end up handcuffed inside a glacier a week after their deaths? What does David Roach and his disappearance 20 years ago have to do with all this? And why were there no signs of violent death on the bodies of the victims? This chilling story remains one of the most mysterious and unsolved in the history of Glacier National Park.

What lies beneath the thick layer of ice may remain a secret forever.

The investigation, which received this icy greeting from the past, immediately latched onto the only new lead, David Roach’s backpack.

They needed to understand who this man was and how his belongings ended up at the site of the Fischer’s deaths almost two decades after his own disappearance.

They dug up the archives.

David Roach, a 43-year-old amateur geologist from Oregon, visited Glacier National Park in September 1988.

He was single, had never been married, and had no children.

His passions were mountains and minerals.

He notified the rangers of his intention to spend about a week in a remote part of the park near the Grenell Glacier in search of rare geological formations.

No one ever saw him again.

The search organized at the time in the late 1990s also yielded nothing.

His case was one of many unsolved cases of people missing in national parks.

just another file on a dusty shelf.

Now, that file was back on the investigator’s desk.

The contents of Roach’s backpack appeared to have been packed just yesterday.

An old film camera, a geological hammer, several court samples, a compass, a well-worn map of the area with notes, and most importantly, a small leatherbound notebook, his field diary.

The entries in the diary were written in neat, tidy handwriting.

The first pages were devoted to geological observations.

Roach described the types of rock, the structure of the glacier, and his small finds.

Everything was routine and predictable.

But on about the fifth day of his stay in the park, the tone of the entries began to change.

He wrote about a strange feeling that he was being watched.

At first, he attributed it to fatigue and loneliness, to his imagination playing tricks on him in the wilderness.

However, the feeling did not subside.

Instead, it grew stronger.

The next day, September 6th, 1988, he wrote, “Found strange marks on the trees.

They don’t look like animal tracks.

Neat symmetrical notches forming some symbol.

I’ve never seen anything like it.

They lead away from the trail deep into the forest to a place where there is nothing but rocks on the maps.” Rouch, being a curious and adventurous man, decided to follow the marks.

His notes became increasingly disturbing.

He wrote that he had found a small cave, the entrance to which was partially camouflaged.

Inside, he saw signs of recent human habitation, the remains of a fire and a primitive sleeping place.

However, the strangest thing was that the same symbol carved into the trees was also carved into the cave wall.

It was a circle with three lines intersecting it at the center.

The last entry in David Roach’s diary was dated September 7th.

It was short and clearly written in a hurry.

The handwriting was uneven and disjointed.

He’s back.

I can hear him outside.

He knows I’m here.

He’s not a tourist.

He has military bearing and equipment.

I saw him from a distance yesterday.

He’s not just wandering around.

He’s patrolling the area.

It’s as if this is his land.

I’ll take my backpack and try to leave at dawn.

I don’t think he saw me, but I don’t want to take any chances.

That was the last entry.

What happened to David Roach after that remains unknown.

His body was never found, but now the investigators had his diary and a chilling symbol.

The experts who had worked on the fisher’s bodies re-examined their clothes, which had been neatly folded next to the icy grave.

And there they found another shock.

On the inside of Grant’s jacket collar, and on Melissa’s shirt cuff, they discovered tiny, barely visible embroidery made with coarse thread.

It was the same symbol from Roach’s diary, a circle with three intersecting lines.

The connection between the two cases, separated by 18 years, became clear and sinister.

Someone or something had been living in this park for decades, considering it their territory.

This is when someone first encountered David Roach and then almost two decades later, Melissa and Grant.

The theory of a lone maniac living in the woods became the main one.

The profile of this person became increasingly apparent.

It had to be someone extremely resilient with survival skills in the wild, possibly a former military man, judging by Roach’s mention of army handcuffs from the 1980s.

He was intelligent, cautious, and firm.

Placing two dead bodies inside a glacier is no easy task.

Glaciologists consulted on the case explained that it could only have been done by lowering the bodies into a deep creasse which then filled with meltwater and froze turning into a monolithic block of ice.

This required knowledge of the glacier and its characteristics.

This was not a random act of violence but a deliberate almost ritualistic process.

Folding the clothes, handcuffing them together, placing them face to face.

All this pointed to some kind of twisted motive, understandable only to the killer himself.

Investigators began combing through the database of all former military personnel with post-traumatic stress disorder.

All known survivalists and recluses who might be in the area.

They checked all park employees who had worked there in the last 20 years.

But it was like looking for a needle in a haystack the size of a national park.

The man they were looking for could have lived outside the system for decades without leaving any digital or paper traces.

He was a ghost.

A ghost who left behind only corpses and mysterious symbols.

The study of Roach’s diary and the emblem found on the fisher clothes continued.

Criminologists and historians tried to find analoges to this symbol in known cultures, sex, or gangs, but to no avail.

The emblem was unique.

It was the killer’s personal mark, his signature, which he left on his victims before burying them forever in the icy heart of the mountains.

The story grew with more and more gruesome details, but the answer was as far away as it had been at the beginning.

The ghost of the Grenell Glacier continued to keep its secrets.

The search for the ghost of the Grenell Glacier entered a new phase.

Now, the investigators had not just a territory thousands of square kilometers in size, but a specific target, the cave described by David Rouch.

Data analysts superimposed Rouch’s worn map onto modern satellite images of the park.

It was painstaking work.

The diary entries were the key.

Two days walk from the ridge down a stream that dries up by noon, a rock that looks like a bear’s claw.

Step by step, comparing the geologists subjective descriptions with precise topographical data, they were able to narrow the search area down to a small square measuring a few hectares.

It was a wild, impassible area where even the most desperate tourists rarely ventured.

A special search party consisting of experienced rangers and investigators was sent to the square.

They combed the area for several days.

There was little hope.

A quarter of a century had passed since Roach’s notes, and the landscape could have changed.

But on the third day, one of the rangers, literally fighting his way through the thick undergrowth, spotted what they were looking for.

The entrance to the cave was almost invisible, hidden behind a pile of boulders and an old fallen tree.

Without knowing exactly where to look, it would have been easy to walk past it without noticing.

At the entrance, they saw old, barely discernable marks on the stone, a circle with three intersecting lines.

There was no doubt that this was the place.

With extreme caution, the group entered.

The cave was small and dry.

Inside there was order, albeit spartan.

Against the wall stood a homemade bed made of fur branches covered with an old tarpollen.

Next to it was a small stone hearth with a pot on it.

In the corner, several sets of worn clothes were neatly folded, and an old army box stood upright.

The air was stale and heavy.

On the bed, covered with a faded blanket, lay a man, more precisely, his mummified remains.

He had been dead for a long time, possibly several years.

He was an older man with a long gray beard, dressed in simple traveling clothes.

The cause of death was unclear, but there were no signs of struggle or violence.

Most likely, he died in his sleep from old age or illness.

The ghost of the Grenel Glacier turned out to be just a mortal man.

An inspection of his modest dwelling provided answers to all questions.

His few belongings were stored in an army box.

Among them were a set of tools, old canned food, and a pair of army handcuffs from the 1980s, identical to those found on the fissurers.

At the bottom of the box lay a metal dog tag with military markings.

It was engraved with the name Elias Thorne.

A quick check of the databases showed that Corporal Elias Thorne, who had served in a special forces unit specializing in combat operations in Arctic conditions, had been declared a deserter in 1989.

He disappeared from a military base in Alaska and has been wanted ever since.

It seemed that he had been hiding here in the mountains of Montana all these years.

But the main find was another diary which lay on a small stone ledge near the bed.

It was Elias Thorne’s diary.

Dozens of notebooks filled over 30 years of hermit life.

The entries revealed a picture of complete and methodical madness.

Thorne considered himself not just a hermit, but the guardian of the park.

In his twisted mind, the mountains were a living sacred organism, and tourists were a contamination, a noise that defiled the purity and silence of nature.

He was not a serial killer in the usual sense.

He was a priest of his own cult.

His notes showed that he had been watching people from afar for years, patrolling his territory.

He ignored most of them, but some, in his opinion, went too far, violating boundaries that were invisible to him alone.

David Roach became his first victim.

The geologist accidentally stumbled upon his hideout and Thorne, believing him to be a spy, tracked him down and killed him.

He apparently dumped Roach’s body in one of the deep crevices where it was never found.

He kept the backpack as a trophy.

Melissa and Grant Fischer were his last victims.

Thorne saw in them a symbol of what he hated most, a happy couple who had brought their civilized noise into his sacred world.

He tracked them down and killed them without firing a shot or striking a blow, most likely using some strangulation technique.

Then, according to his ritual, he kept their bodies in a secluded place for a week until the mummification process began, purification, as he called it.

After that, he moved them to a glacier and buried them in the ice, handcuffing them together as a symbol of their eternal union with the mountain.

The emblem embroidered on their clothes was his mark, a sign that he had accepted them into his kingdom.

The last entries in Thorne’s diary were made about 3 years ago.

He wrote about his weakening body and that the mountains would soon take him too.

He died alone in his cave, never found during his lifetime.

The case was officially closed.

The ghost that had terrorized the Grenell Glacier for decades now had a name and a story.

The story turned out not to be a mystical thriller, but rather the tragedy of a broken man who turned a paradise of nature into his own personal hell, dragging innocent people down with him.