On August 14, 2014, a reader from Ivanovo, Lyudmila ALIDINA, phoned the editorial office of the city newspaper "Chronometer". In an agitated voice, she said that for 18 days she had been under the strongest impression: on July 26, she saw a UFO!
The "pulsing" ball pursued the woman in the center of Ivanovo, then soared high into the sky and disappeared. The question of what it was and why the woman is still haunted by irrational fear haunts our reader. I (journalist Elena KASTORINA) agreed with an eyewitness to meet on August 15 on Pushkin Square, at the place where the woman observed a strange phenomenon, and together we tried to reconstruct the events of that evening.
THE BALL LIGHTED, REMINDING AN ILLUMINATION
Lyudmila ALIDINA was very worried at the meeting.
- You have to believe me. I am sane, I drink alcohol. In a few words about myself: 51 years old, recently worked as a prosecutor, I have two higher educations. That evening, on Saturday, July 26, a bus was supposed to leave from Kokuy Boulevard at 23.30 on a tourist trip to Sergiev Posad, where I bought a ticket. I arrived at Pushkin Square in advance, - Lyudmila began to tell me in great detail. - My son accompanied me. We said goodbye, he left, and I sat down on a bench opposite the fountain. I still had enough time before the trip. It was light. From the side of the Vernissage cafe, young people were throwing holiday balloons into the sky, young people were walking around the fountain. I photographed the landscape with the bench in the background. And at about 22.40 I slowly walked towards Krutitskaya Street, parallel to the building under construction opposite the Palace of Arts.
The woman, she said, walked and looked around. Suddenly, in the basement of the new building, on a wall decorated with shiny light brown tiles, I noticed a large glowing bright red ball. It clearly looked voluminous and was huge: a radius of two meters. He either clung to the wall or walked straight out of it.
- The ball glowed, resembling illumination. It was just too big for illumination, - recalls Lyudmila. - I looked in the direction opposite the building - loud music was coming from the bar of the Palace of Arts. I thought: probably something from there is reflected on the wall, perhaps color music. And she went on to herself. A minute later I looked away again - the ball moved parallel to me along the wall further. But I thought about the illumination from the bar again. Therefore, she calmly continued on her way. If I knew! Then I would at least trace the path of this ball. I realized this later - he was moving parallel to my route, chasing me … There was a couple on the steps up the hill to Krutitskaya Street. I was in no hurry, so I decided to go to the crossing across the road to Kokuy to the right, up the street - bypass the lovers so as not to interfere with them.
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I RUNNED TO RUN TO THE SIDE OF THE PEOPLE
Lyudmila's excitement, as I noticed, reached its climax. She stood at the very place on the asphalt where she was attacked by a UFO.
- Here I raised my head and suddenly saw the very ball directly above me, only it was no longer red, but light, like a fluorescent lamp. Something throbbed inside him, a red dot like a timer, in the rhythm of a beating heart. I was seized by an indescribable terror! At first I was speechless. Then she screamed and rushed to run towards the living people - to the very couple on the steps. They also looked in the direction where the ball was hanging. I ran up to them, the guy hugged me without words, calming me down.
And we saw how the ball soared upward, visually becoming two times smaller. It still pulsed with a red dot. Soaring even higher, the balloon became the size of an inflatable balloon and flew over the rooftops somewhere in the direction of Revolution Square. Of course, there was no question of filming this whole extravaganza with a mobile camera: my hands were shaking. As a result, the guys and I never said a word to each other. I was completely speechless at that moment. We parted. In a state of horror, all in tears, I went to the bus to Kokuy.
I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHAT I SAW AND WHY?
Of course, Lyudmila immediately told the woman-guide and everyone who was going on the trip about what she had seen. Everyone expressed different versions - but none of them seemed plausible to Lyudmila Alidina. The guide said that it was "the plane was blinking." Someone said that these restless souls make themselves felt so much - after all, there was an ancient cemetery here near the Intercession Cathedral, which until the 30s of the twentieth century stood on Pushkin Square instead of the Palace of Arts. Others talked about UFOs, unknown man-made objects, surveillance cameras, ball lightning. Someone advised to pray.
- In the church at St. Sergius of Radonezh, I completely calmed down, I forgot about what happened. But when I returned home, I experienced fear again. I’m even at home at home now it’s terrible to be. I would like to know what I saw and why? - Lyudmila is lost in conjectures.
Few hypersensitive people are said to see unusual phenomena. But Lyudmila made the impression on me of a calm, reasonable person. She recalled that after a serious operation with severe anesthesia, she woke up in the hospital and saw an evil lady above her, who wished her death, but suddenly angels appeared on the left and right, the color of baked milk. Do not forget this picture - she recovered.
EXPERT OPINION
At the request of Chronometer, Sergey DMITRIEVSKY, head of the Ivanovo regional branch of the Cosmopoisk organization, commented on the situation by telephone on August 21:
- There are three versions explaining the nature of this phenomenon.
On this day, a lot of Chinese lanterns were launched, perhaps one of them was seen by a woman. They come in different shapes, even 2 meters. Fire flickers inside them. Ball lightning was also observed these days in the area of pl. Pushkin, several witnesses.
Finally, it could be a UFO: in 2004, at the same place in winter, several eyewitnesses observed a similar object. Currently, there is one more witness who observed the balloon on the street on July 26. Baturin. He flew towards the CHP.
Also, at the request of "Chronometer", the situation was commented by an amateur ufologist Innokenty PETROV by phone on August 21:
- Objects in the form of "pulsating" fireballs are not uncommon. The last such fact was recorded in May 2014 in Poland, in the village of Rozhnovo. Such "balls" are interesting in that they can maneuver in any direction, even take off with great speed vertically, rapidly change their trajectory, not paying attention to gravity. The behavior of an object seen by a resident of Ivanov, in this case, fits into the same pattern.
Some researchers believe that such balls are energy bunches that form in the atmosphere due to the influence of the solar wind. Others, that this ball lightning is a poorly studied phenomenon and therefore, it is possible, that it is capable of behaving very unusual. Ufologist Dmitry Prytkov claims that such an anomaly is associated with the activities of extraterrestrial civilizations. Recently, data have even appeared that a large fireball was also observed in the sky during the explosion at Chernobyl.
It is also interesting to describe the psychological state of the eyewitness. It is known that people who have been in contact with UFOs, in most cases, experience some kind of irrational fear that cannot be explained. Fear usually disappears when, following the appearance of the object, people see some creatures disembarking from it (which in this case did not happen). Perhaps the creatures temporarily disable the "fear field" generated by the object in order to "communicate" with people.
After the disappearance of the object, the eyewitness often experiences a significant increase in the feeling of fear, which disappears only after a fairly long time. All this took place in the case of the inhabitant of Ivanov and, in our opinion, indicates the extraterrestrial origin of the object.
PSYCHOLOGIST COMMENTARY
At the request of the "Chronometer", the story of Lyudmila ALIDINA was commented by scientist and psychologist Anton SVETLOV by phone on August 21:
- Obviously, any of the voiced explanations of the phenomenon that this woman witnessed can take place. But in this case, it is important that the person experiences fear. This feeling for each individual is due to the system of his education, self-education. It is obvious to me that this natural feeling may indicate that a woman's psyche is in order, that what she has seen is not the fruit of her fantasy. Also, an indirect confirmation that the woman did not come up with this story two weeks later, can serve as her behavior at the moment of meeting with tourists from the bus, the genuine excitement in which she was when she told them about what she saw.