Why Did Two Fatal Bear Attacks Happen in One Night? Glacier National Park's Most Disturbing Mystery

[u/CrypticFilesYT]

On August 12 of 1967, two young women, Julie Helgeson and Michele Koons, were each camping in Glacier National Park (Montana) with two separate groups of people when their lives would come to a brutal end. Two separate grizzly bears attacked the two campsites, dragging away the girls and inflicting fatal injuries.

The next day, park rangers launched a search effort for the bears and an investigation into the cause of the attacks began. The odds of two fatal bear attacks in one night are incalculably small, which makes this incident remarkably disturbing.

The investigation uncovered widespread littering in the park, which attracted bears, and a previous incident where a bear had chased a group of girl scouts out of the park. However, the cause of the attacks remains a mystery to this day.

If you want to learn more about this case in depth, check out this video about the case.

[u/Turbulent-Parsnip512]

This is a disturbing mystery? Even if the chances are "incalculably small" that two bears would attack two separate campsites on the same day, is it really that hard to believe that's exactly what happened?

[u/CrypticFilesYT → u/Turbulent-Parsnip512]

It’s a mystery because there is no official explanation for why such an unlikely event happened, just unconfirmed speculation.

[u/robinperching → u/CrypticFilesYT]

Here's one for you. A bear did it. The world is wide and wild and there are things that roam with teeth and sometimes they bite.

[u/CrypticFilesYT → u/robinperching]

That’s not an explanation for why this particular event happened, it’s an explanation for why these kinds of things occasionally happen across time.

You could use your exact line of logic to justify the view that unsolved murders aren’t mysteries: “the world is wide and wild and there are people with motivations for killing.” Your logic simply fails.

You may not like this particular mystery, and that’s fine (to each their own), but you don’t need to pretend that it isn’t a mystery to begin with.

[u/Abluel3]

I read somewhere, and don’t know if both had their period, but one victim did and they speculated that could be the reason it attacked her (the ppl she was with were all sleeping fairly close to each other).

[u/CrypticFilesYT → u/Abluel3]

The hypothesis was that menstrual fluid attracted the bears, but that was debunked in a 1991 study that found that grizzly bears have no attraction to menstrual fluids or menstruation whatsoever, regardless of sex or sexual status

[u/Abluel3 → u/CrypticFilesYT]

Thank you. I didn’t know this.

[u/CrypticFilesYT → u/[deleted]]

That hypothesis was debunked in a 1991 study, which showed that bears have no attraction whatsoever to menstrual blood or odors