Soviet Humanoids: Pt 1 - Giants in the Park

A Promenade about the Park

In October 1989, the official Soviet press agency TASS issued an extraordinary press release stating that giant aliens had landed in broad daylight at a park in Voronezh (a large city 300 miles south of Moscow).

"Scientists have confirmed that an unidentified flying object recently landed in the Russian city of Voronezh," TASS announced. "They have also located the landing site and found traces of aliens who made a short promenade about the park. The aliens were three or four metres tall, but with very small heads".

While most Ufologists doubted the tale, researcher Jacques Vallee flew straight to Russia to investigate in person. He discovered that there had actually been a whole series of landings at Voronezh, several with multiple witnesses.

Arrival of the Giants

The aliens paid their first visit to the park on September 21, when a group of young boys saw a spherical craft land and disgorge a pair of tall silver-suited humanoids and a short robot.

Two days later, a group of schoolgirls walking through the park watched a sphere ringed by bright lights extend four grey struts and land. Three giant humanoids in dark blue cloaks suddenly materialised in front of it.

One of the beings stayed by the sphere while the other two explored the area, walking in mid-air. The girls screamed and fled, but another witness - a boy named Alyesha Panin - remained at the site and saw the entities vanish into thin air.

The girls later returned to the landing site with a group of friends. The giants had obligingly reappeared. One of them even performed a conjuring trick in which he levitated a small shiny object then made it vanish. Unfortunately, the youngsters were so terrified by this demonstration that they burst into tears. The giants returned inside the sphere, which promptly dematerialised.

The Headless Robot

That evening, student Roma Torshin was walking home through the park when he saw a red globe hovering overhead. It extended four struts and landed. A hatchway opened and a bronze-coloured robot resembling "a large TV set with buttons" emerged.

The 5-ft-tall robot had arms and legs but no head. It was wearing a pair of black jackboots and its fingers were constantly in motion.

Next, a 7-ft-tall humanoid in a bronze jumpsuit stepped out of the sphere. It had an oval-shaped head with three eyes but no nose or mouth.

The entities made no attempt to interact with Torshin. They returned to their craft shortly afterwards and took off in a cloud of "sparkles".

Vanishing Trick

The landing reported by TASS took place on September 27. It was witnessed by a group of children playing soccer in the park and by adults queuing at a nearby bus stop.

First, a pink glow appeared in the sky. The glow resolved into a red egg-shaped craft which circled the park then departed. A few minutes later it returned and hovered overhead. A hatch opened and a massive figure with a small head peered out and looked around. The figure closed the hatch, then the craft extended four legs and landed.

Three 10-ft-tall humanoids stepped out accompanied by a small robot. The giants had tiny "doorknob-shaped" heads with three glowing eyes but no visible nose or mouth. They wore silvery jumpsuits with bronze-coloured boots and had shield-shaped objects on their chests that intermittently emitted beams of light.

Reports of what happened next are confused, to say the least. According to TASS:

"A boy screamed with fear, but when the alien gazed at him, with eyes shining, he fell silent, unable to move. Onlookers screamed, and the UFO and the creatures disappeared."

Five minutes later, the giants reappeared along with the sphere. One of them aimed a 2-ft-long tube at a teenage boy and fired a beam of light at him. The boy promptly disappeared.

The giants explored the park then returned to their craft and took off. After they left, the vanishing teenager reappeared right where he had been standing.

The Men with no Heads

Three days later, some children playing in the park heard a loud humming sound and saw a sphere ringed with bright lights land nearby.

Six humanoids of average height, but lacking heads, emerged from the craft. Some wore silver cloaks and some black. The beings began walking around the sphere but vanished into thin air when the children approached them. The sphere rose into the air trailing a shower of sparkles then dematerialised.

Reviving the Robot

On October 28, a group of youngsters saw a pink sphere that kept changing hue. It extended four legs and landed. A hatchway opened to reveal a blindingly bright interior. A ladder extended from the hatch and two giant silver-suited humanoids walked out carrying a robot.

The robot was 6 feet tall and had a large head with three eyes. The giants laid it on the ground and appeared to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on it. Then the robot stood up and walked towards one of the children, who scrambled up a tree in terror. The strange trio returned to their craft and flew away.

Analysing the Evidence

A swarm of Russian Ufologists descended on the park to search for evidence and interrogate the witnesses. They investigated the landing sites using a method of dowsing called 'biolocation', described as involving "the detection of the bioenergetic field and its application to the analysis of the terrain". The Ufologists deduced that where the craft had landed "the bioenergy of the men was equal to zero" - a rather abstract claim at best.

As well as trampling over the site with dowsing rods, the investigators also found the following physical evidence:

None of the evidence stood up to scrutiny. Locals claimed that the holes had been dug years ago and that the tree had been bent long before the giants landed. The University of Voronezh announced that there was no abnormal radiation at the site, while the rock "unknown on Earth" was merely a fragment of iron ore.

Suffer the Children

The majority of the witnesses to the landings were children or teenagers. Ufologist Alexandre Mosolov was so moved by this peculiarity that he announced: "I think that this flying saucer was nothing other than the appearance of Christ!"

Researcher Boris Shurinov, on the other hand, commented that "journalists who visited the spot found themselves faced with kids burning with the desire for being interviewed and very ready to declare themselves witnesses."

The Literatournaya Gazetta cast a sceptical eye on how the Ufologists conducted their interviews:

"The children are describing the arrival of the ball and the behaviour of the extraterrestrial. Another boy approaches and starts talking about what he saw with the others. Somebody is indignant: "You were not with us!" The impostor blinks an eye and corrects himself, explaining that he saw the aliens on another occasion. Good for him. And the Ufologists interrogate him so that he gives details of a landing unknown to the other witnesses."

The UMMO Factor

One of the youngsters, Roma Torshin, made a sketch of the craft he had seen which instantly revived a 20-year-old Ufological controversy. On the side of the craft, Torshin had drawn the Cyrillic character "zhe" (the equivalent of the letter "J" in the Russian alphabet).

To Ufologists, this character was instantly recognisable as the notorious "UMMO" symbol. It had first appeared in a set of unconvincing UFO photographs taken in Spain in 1967. Later, it featured in a series of letters purportedly written by friendly extraterrestrials from the planet UMMO.

Jacques Vallee - himself a recipient of several UMMO letters - suggests that the UMMO hoax was a "government sponsored sociological exercise" possibly "linked to an Eastern bloc intelligence agency". However, the fact that the majority of the Russian witnesses didn't see the UMMO symbol suggests that the link between UMMO and Voronezh is tenuous at best.

Conclusions

The discrepancies between the witnesses' statements together with the lack of corroborating physical evidence and the likelihood that at least some of the witness testimony was false makes it impossible to draw any firm conclusions about the Russian landings.

Judging from their reported actions, the entities seemed to have no obvious purpose in landing other than to terrify small groups of children. The encounters seem more like acts of theatre or guerilla art than sincere attempts to establish communication between species. Whether 'real' or not, they can hardly be taken at face value.

Sources

Jacques Vallee: Revelations, pp214-224.
Jenny Randles & Peter Hough: The Complete Book of UFOs, pp256-260.
Paul Stonehill: The Soviet UFO Files, pp98-99.
Albert Rosales' Humanoid Database (online).
Various websites including UFO Casebook, UFO Evidence & UFO Roundup.