I never thought I’d write something like this, but what’s happening in Bulgaria this week genuinely scares me, and I can’t get it out of my head. I keep thinking about True Detective because that slow, wrong feeling, the sense that something is fundamentally off, is exactly what this feels like.
Earlier this week, emergency services were called to a remote mountain area near the former Petrohan Hut, close to a tiny village called Gintsi. There had been a fire.
When they arrived, part of the hut was burned. In the snow, right outside the entrance, they found three bodies. These weren’t people who died in a fire or some chaotic fight. Two of the men had been shot directly in the temple. The third was shot under the chin. Execution-style. Calm. Deliberate. Near the bodies were guns and ammunition, later confirmed by the Ministry of Interior of Bulgaria to be legally owned. From the very first moment, this didn’t look like an accident, a robbery, or a moment that got out of hand. It looked like someone came there knowing exactly what they were going to do.
For a few days, that was already disturbing enough. Then the story got darker. Near Vola Peak, close to the city of Vratsa, they found three more bodies. Same circle of people. Same group. And one of them was a 15 year old boy. A child. His father had spoken to the media only days earlier, calm and hopeful, saying he believed his son was alive. He wasn’t. Six people dead in the mountains, in two locations, in the same week, one of them a kid.
All six were connected to the same private environmental organization with an almost absurdly official name: the National Agency for Control of Protected Territories. It wasn’t a state body, but in the region people knew them as “the rangers.” They didn’t just work together they lived together. For long periods of time, several of them stayed at that hut. It wasn’t just a base for hikes or patrols, it was a shared, isolated living space in the mountains. Adults lived there, visitors came and went, and yes, children stayed there too. Camps, training, expeditions. Parents trusted these people enough to leave their kids with them in the middle of nowhere. Whether that trust was justified or not is a separate question, but it explains why this case hits such a raw nerve.
One of the leaders and found in the second batch of bodies, Ivaylo Kalushev, was a well-known speleologist and Buddhist. Years ago, he spoke on Bulgarian National Radio about teaching children discipline and responsibility through nature. In a 2019 interview, an 11-year-old boy spoke proudly about becoming the youngest certified cave diver during an expedition in Mexico led by Kalushev. His voice is still out there. Confident. Happy. That boy’s name was Nikolay Zlatkov. This week, Nikolay was found dead next to the man who trained him. I don’t know how to hear that and not feel sick.
And then there’s the part that makes this feel less like a crime story and more like the opening of something much worse. According to multiple reports and people from nearby villages, the first agency to arrive at the Petrohan site wasn’t the regular police. It was State Agency for National Security, basically our version of a national security service. For nearly three hours, access to the area was restricted, even for officers from the Ministry of Interior of Bulgaria. That detail alone has people whispering. DANS doesn’t deal with ordinary murders. It deals with threats to national security. Terrorism. Espionage. Things that are supposed to be rare and extreme. Why were they there first?
The acting Chief Prosecutor, Borislav Sarafov, said publicly that he had never seen a case like this before and compared it to Twin Peaks. Years earlier a complaint and had sent information to the prosecutor’s office. Sarafov said their activities were not in the interest of society or children, and when asked directly if he meant a sect with pedophilia, he said yes. That’s an explosive accusation, especially when six people are already dead. But when investigative journalists from Bulgarian Elves and BIRD.bg published what they could from the actual documents, the picture looked much narrower. The signal came from grandparents worried that their grandchild was staying with the group without a parent present. The signal was later withdrawn. The child’s mother said she saw no problem. Child Protection Services checked and found no violations. No charges followed. No confirmed victims. And yet now, after the killings, this old suspicion is being pushed as if it explains everything.
I didn’t think this story could get heavier, but new details keep surfacing and they make everything feel even more wrong.
A few days before the bodies were found, one of the victims told a close friend that they were being threatened. Not vaguely uncomfortable. Not “things are tense.” Threatened. The terrifying part is that they didn’t say by whom, or couldn’t, or wouldn’t. That detail keeps looping in my head, because it means at least one of them knew something bad was coming and still couldn’t name it.
Then there is the message from Ivaylo Kalushev’s mother. This isn’t speculation — this is her own words, sent shortly before contact with her son was completely lost. I’ll paraphrase the meaning, because reading it in context is chilling. She says that nothing of what people will hear is true, not even partially. She says they have no strength left to fight the filth being thrown at them. She says that whatever people are pointing to now is not the reason, only the last drop that overflowed the cup for all of them. She mentions they were trying, once again, to help a sick child, clarifying that it was a girl, not the boy people are speculating about. And then the message turns strangely calm, almost otherworldly. She talks about finding her through thought, about the world being a stable dream, about not turning it into a nightmare, about looking inward and smiling, about love, about freedom.
After that message, she lost all contact with her son.
Reading it now, knowing how this ended, it doesn’t feel like an ordinary message. It feels like someone speaking from a place of exhaustion, fear, and resignation — like someone who knows they are being crushed by something much bigger than them. And then… silence. Investigators kept searching. He was later found dead.
And then there’s another detail that shouldn’t matter, but somehow does.
Last night, at around 1 a.m., the Facebook profile of Nikolay Zlatkov,the boy who once spoke on national radio as a child, who grew up around these people, who was found dead today near Vola Peak was deactivated. No explanation. No memorial post. Just gone.
Nothing from the media about this feels complete or honest. A group living together in isolation. Children staying there long-term. Armed environmental patrols. Execution style killings. A national security agency showing up first. A child dead in the mountains. In a small country where we don’t have mass executions as background noise. Explanations that appear only after everyone involved is already dead. I’m honestly scared, not because I think I know what happened, but because I’m not sure we’ll ever be told.
I am leaving some links for further details:
https://bnrnews.bg/horizont/post/423180/izdirvat-i-nepalnoleten-po-sluchaya-petrohan
Posted by Turnip8742
1 Comment
Looks like a real conspiracy, appreciate your investigation OP! Definitely getting overlooked with all the Epstein content.
Hopefully we can find the missing teen and get more details on the serial killing. Wouldn’t be surprised if there were governmental connections.