September 1991 evening. About twenty people are waiting for public transport at a bus stop at the VAZ Palace of Culture and Technology. However, their attention is focused not so much on the buses and trolleybuses approaching (infrequent at that time), as on the southeastern section of the sky above the city forest. This is not surprising - against the background of a dark sky, fifteen large (much larger than morning Venus) bright red spherical objects are painted out against the background of a dark sky - they seem to chase each other, then they hang in place, then several pieces descend over the horizon, and then again appear from there.
Among the eyewitnesses were also representatives of our research group. All eyewitnesses were aware that the "something" they observed could not relate to any known objects of human technology. And what then did it refer to?
The year is 1991. Excerpts from the "data bank" on the observation of anomalous phenomena:
January 3rd. Airport of the city of Saransk. When approaching the landing of the An-24 aircraft, a strange "ball", brightly glowing with orange light, followed parallel to it. The complete absence of cloud cover made it possible to clearly see this strange object, which by its appearance and by the nature of its movement, the pilots could not attribute to any technical means known to them. Rather, it resembled ball lightning, but much larger. The crew contacted the dispatcher regarding this abnormal situation. At the location indicated by the crew, the dispatcher saw the "light" on the screen, the airport staff confirmed the presence of this object by visual observation from the ground. After the plane landed, the "ball" was seen from the ground for some time until it disappeared from sight.
From time immemorial, local residents have observed similar phenomena in the Samara region. Among the people - more precisely, among all local peoples - they have long been assigned names that correspond to the language spoken by the locals - flyer, avis, keremet, bust …
So what is this phenomenon of nature, what kind of an unprecedented beast? And this is almost the same as the Serpent Gorynych from Russian folk tales.
Artistic image of the Serpent Gorynych from Russian mythology
Promotional video:
And the fact that the images in life and in a fairy tale are not quite similar to each other is not surprising. In mythology, it often happens that several images, several plot lines intertwine over time, overlap each other, as a result of this mixing a new image appears, containing features simultaneously from all proto-sources.
The phenomenon of interest to us most often looks like a bright fireball up to one and a half meters in diameter, sometimes it has a "tail" in the form of a bunch of sparks. It flies when silently, and when it flies with a crackle. But it does not make fires (but the fabulous Serpent Gorynych burned the city).
In the villages of Samarskaya Luka, they often notice how at night such a sparkling ball, circling around the settlement, sat on the edge of the chimney in the house where not long before that there was a funeral, and dived into the chimney. And then, after some time, he would surface back and fly away. It happened that the relatives of the deceased later told that it was the deceased who himself came to visit them. They saw him exactly as alive, and even not always it dawned on their consciousness that a person was no longer in this world. More precisely, they realized it after some time, when the glamor disappeared.
Perhaps it was these properties of these objects that allowed the local peoples to consider them natural deities and worship them. And the property of such balls to hide in the hollows of old trees, apparently, led to the belief that a hollow tree is a kind of "house of a deity." Therefore, the name "Keremet" was also assigned to some old trees - objects of worship in folk cults, and even to entire territories.
The Gremyachy tract near Syzran continues to be called
What kind of mechanism is working here - whether it is hypnotic suggestion, the impact of some unknown energy fields, whether it is a hallucinogenic effect - it is still impossible to establish. However, the described scenario is repeated in many cases and in different historical times, from the deep past to the present day.
The year is 1992. Excerpts from the "data bank" on the observations of anomalous phenomena in Togliatti:
Summer evening, the village of Khryashchevka, the shore of the reservoir, a storm. Eyewitnesses noticed a bright red fireball and watched it for about one minute. This summer was generally "fruitful": almost every day such objects appeared within Khryashchevka. Most often they hovered over the pumping station and stayed there for fifteen minutes. If such objects appeared over the Volga waters, then the fishermen sometimes threw their nets and ran away in fright.
Interestingly, fireballs sometimes like to "flock". People saw them in groups of three or four balls, and when much more - up to twenty pieces at a time (just like then at the DKiT).
And in order to represent the variety of situations in which people meet these mysterious formations, you can cite a case told by a resident of one of the local villages. It was at night, during the suffering. Harvesting was already ending, and he was guarding the half-harvested grain fields. Suddenly - what is it! A huge brightly luminous ball smoothly descended from the sky, and sat down a few tens of meters from the watchman right on the dry stubble. Of course, the villager could have only one thought - now the field is on fire! But no, it didn’t catch fire. The ball "sat" right on the ground, smoked slightly (this is clearly visible in the figure), but the grass did not catch fire. Having lost patience, the watchman ran to the village for help, and when they returned - no ball, no fire …
The year is 1992. Excerpts from the "data bank" on the observations of anomalous phenomena in Togliatti:
June 9, 21-00, Avtozavodsky district, territory near Medgorodok. A young man was walking the dog and accidentally noticed a brightly glowing red ball above the forest. According to his impressions (the ball was close enough), this object was at least three meters in diameter. The "ball" emitted blue beams in the direction opposite to the direction of movement, and it moved with the speed of a good sports "car", but at the same time it was completely silent and in a straight line. The observation lasted at least five minutes, while the dog barked heart-rendingly at this ball.
It seems that these strange light-bearing formations have some kind of intelligence or quasi-intelligence. It will not be superfluous to recall an interesting case when, not far from a small group of residents of the Aleksandrovsky Field (about ten people), in the late evening of 1996, a bright red glowing ball rose from the ground, covering arms the size. The villagers immediately remembered the unfinished business and began to urgently go home. One of them, an elderly woman, considering this unclean thing for evil spirits, was going to hide in the house and began to hang a lock on the gate, and he took it and fell into the grass! The woman tried to grope for the fallen castle, but it was dark … And at that moment in time, a ray stretched out from the fireball and illuminated the lost castle.
Such spherical anomalous objects were observed by a variety of people - doctors, police officers (one of the cases mentioned above was told to us by the head of the then regional police department under the strict prohibition to name information about myself anywhere - which I do, despite the fact that the observer long since retired).
Village Pine Solonets on the map
It happened to journalists to observe such phenomena. For example, the famous Togliatti ethnographer Lidia Lyuboslavova brought the following observation into the “data bank”: “The luminous object was observed, for example, on the night of May 1 of this year, by two groups - from the Stone Bowl (tourists, students of VUiT) and from Lake Yelgushi. At about midnight (11:40 pm), he appeared at a high altitude and moved from south to north, towards Kurumoch airport, without sound. Due to darkness, it was not possible to determine the flight altitude and the size of the object, but visually it resembled a very large star. A plane was taking off from Kurumoch at that time. The object stopped (!) In the air and smoothly turned to the side, described a curve and disappeared, as if melted”.
Lydia Lyuboslavova quite rightly considered that "the observation process took quite a long time, about 10 minutes, so it is very doubtful that we were dealing with ball lightning."
Mid 1990s. Excerpts from the "data bank" on the observations of anomalous phenomena in Togliatti:
The message is dated August. The phenomenon itself was observed for a long time between the villages of Berezovy Solonets and Sosnovy Solonets. For several years, at any time of the year, a star-like object smaller than the Moon and larger than Venus was observed with some frequency, which took off to a height of about 1 kilometer (at the height of thunderclouds), flashed brightly and, descending to the ground, gradually faded away. On the "fall" line, which went vertically down, periods of hovering and smooth descent alternated. The break between "launches" is 2-3 minutes. According to local residents, they are afraid of this place, they consider it enchanted. It is characteristic that our informant, once seeing this phenomenon, very loudly discussed with a neighbor his intention to inform ufologists about it, and since that night the object has not been observed again.
The appearance of an object near a residential building. Eyewitness drawing
Most of the eyewitnesses have seen the "glowing balls" during their flight. All the more interesting are the descriptions that show that these energetic objects, apparently, can move underground. Here are some more messages from our data bank.
2013, city of Togliatti, Central District, residential building on Lesnaya Street. Before the eyes of a group of neighbors (adults and children), a patch of grass on the lawn began to glow brightly, and after a few moments a bubble, shining with red light, a little less than a meter in size, began to “blow out” in this place right from under the grass. Having fully appeared, he rose into the air and flew away.
Tellingly, the grass at the scene was not burnt or wilted. However, in another case, when a “ball” with a white glow gradually emerged from under the school lawn in front of the astonished audience, the grass immediately withered. And this only testifies to one thing - if any of you become an eyewitness of such an incident, then do not try to catch or touch such an object. The same thing can happen to your hand as to the grass.
The same "balloons" have been seen many times by residents of the upper floors of houses in the 8th quarter of the Avtozavodsky district floating up from under the Volga waters.
But these are all - eyewitness observations. And there is also a huge layer of information that comes to different people at different times and in a very unconventional way - in a dream.
Tatiana Makarova