Occasionally some of the conspiracy theorists claim that UFO scared the group away and thus caused Dyatlov Pass Incident. Although seemingly incredible this claim might have some base to it. Pulsating orbs were seen repeatedly in January, February and March by students, geologists, natives and even local military at the Dyatlov Pass and its vicinity. Mansi hunters that camped out near Kholat Syakhl and Dyatlov Pass claimed to have seen flying orbs near the mountain on the night Dyatlov group saw its gruesome end. Their testimonies were later stricken from the record by Moscow officials (according to Ivanov). Additionally several geologists and tourist from the Blinov group (they traveled with the Dyatlov group part of the way as it was mentioned in the diary) located 70 km from the mountains saw some glowing and pulsating orbits flying in the direction of the Kholat Syakhl/ Dyatlov Pass on a day of tragedy (evening of February 1st). These testimonies were also ignored.
In early April Tempalov gathered several testimonies of local soldiers who claimed to have seen UFO over Dyatlov Pass on 17 February around 6:40am. They all described slow moving orbs that were moving from South to North in a strange cloud of dust or a fog. The event was witnessed for 5-15 minutes by different soldiers at a considerable distance from each other. In fact locals even reported their sightings to the local newspaper "Tagil Worker" (Тагильский Рабочий) that published an article about strange events in the region
Rescue party that was send to discover bodies of the Dyatlov group also witnessed these pulsating lights several times. Valentin Yakimenko who volunteered to join the group describe these events that happened on March 31.
"It happened early in the morning while it was still dark. Viktor Mescheryakov who stood guard that night left the tent and saw a large glowing sphere in the sky. He woke up everyone. We watched this orb (or a disk) for about 20 minutes until it didn't disappear behind the mountain. We saw it in the South- East direction from our tent. It was moving in the Northern direction. This event freaked everyone. We were sure that this event was somehow involved in the death of the Dyatlov group".
One of the explanations for these bizarre events over Dyatlov Pass might be launches by the Soviet military of space program. About the same time Soviet armed forces did launch several space rockets from Baykanur base, chief base for Soviet Space program that is still in use today. However military claimed the rockets landed in the north Ural mountains far from the site of the Dyatlov Pass. Another possible explanation might be establishment of R- 12 rockets around Sverdlovsk. These rockets were officially delivered in March of 1959, but American intelligence claimed their bases were established as early as November of 1958. Additionally the region contained several S- 75 rocket bases. These rockets shot down U- 2 piloted Francis Gary Powers just south of Sverdlovsk in 1960. So there were a lot of things that could explain these strange orbs. As part of technological theory there have been suggestions that an infrasound might have been responsible for sudden unpleasant feelings among the tourists. It forced them to panic and leave the site of the tent in a hurry. However this explanation has its own draw backs. Orbs didn't fly in a single trajectory. They often changed path of their flight. Sometimes they just hovered over mountain peaks. It is somewhat strange behavior for a flying rocket.
Lev Ivanov, a man who was in charge of the investigation at the Dyatlov Pass Incident, lived a long life. In the early 1990's in an interview to a local journalist he made a statement that during his investigation he and E.P. Maslenikov both noticed that the pines in the forest were burned at the top. He also claims that A.P. Kirilenko, member of the Soviet Congress, along with his advisor A.F. Ashtokin forced Ivanov to take out all references to the unknown flying objects or other strange phenomena. This included pictures of flying spheres drawn by the Mansi hunters and other testimonies. It is true that Soviet Union experienced a boom of interest on everything unknown in the late 80's. Skeptic might also add that Ivanov gave this interview to make some money. However we have to mention that Kirilenko became obsessed with UFO theme after the Dyatlov Pass Incident. Starting in the early 60's he filed several requests to gain access to the KGB archives. We don't know what was found in the documents, but it is undeniably strange that a political figure in USSR paid such keen interest in this subject. UFO was not investigated by the official science so it deemed as a pseudo- religious phenomena. Atheist Soviet Union obviously prohibited any interest in the subject, especially among members of the highest legislative body in the country.
Sharavin, one of the members of the search party in his interview (in 2013) claimed that he discovered a wide circular area where snow was distinctly more shallow than the area around. He noticed this strange fact and compared to similar circular spots left by the helicopters. While the pattern and appearance seemed similar, these initial circle much larger in diameter and could be made by any Soviet helicopter available at the time. Unfortunately all drawings of Sharavin were taken away by the officials and Sharavin merely remembers general appearance. There is no documents or personal notes to support this. Nothing taken from him was found in the Criminal investigation.