Night of the Grizzlies

Night of the Grizzlies (1969) is a book by Jack Olsen which details events surrounding the night of August 13, 1967, when two young women were separately attacked in Glacier National Park, Montana, by grizzly bears. Both women, Julie Helgeson, 19, of Albert Lea, Minnesota, and Michele Koons, 19, of San Diego, California, died of their injuries. Olsen's book examines the most plausible explanation of the unlikely dual attacks since no fatal grizzly attack had ever been recorded in the park's 57-year history prior to that night. One specialist at the time calculated the odds were greater than 1 in a million for a single attack but the odds of two separate attacks in a 4 hour time span were beyond measure. However future events would show grizzly attacks to become more common, as Olson explains, because of increased human presence in wilderness areas and decreased habitat for bears to live in, reaching a critical tipping point in the summer of 1967.

The text was originally published in 1969 as a three-part article for Sports Illustrated. A 37 page prologue was added for the book.