This story happened to the poet and writer Yevgeny Dmitrievich Lebkov (1928-2005).
In 1975, after a divorce from his wife, Lebkov went to the island of Kunashir, one of the islands of the Kuril ridge, in order, in his own words, "to recover from an exciting family life." Yevgeny Dmitrievich settled in an empty hut of a forester not far from Tyatya volcano.
Lost for two weeks
On the morning of August 14, 1975, the writer went fishing to the river, which flowed near the volcano. Approaching the fishing spot, Lebkov drew attention to a cloud of smoke smoking over Tyatya. The day before, Lebkov recalled, he had heard on the local radio the forecast of volcanologists: a sharp increase in the activity of Tyati volcano is expected in about two weeks, that is, at the end of August.
Evgeny Dmitrievich settled down on the bank of the river and … The last thing he remembered was how he cast his fishing rods. Further - a blackout.
When the writer woke up, he found himself lying on a trestle bed in a rickety hut, which Lebkov, approaching the river, noticed on its opposite bank. His clothes were all torn. My body ached, nausea rolled up to my throat, and my head was splitting from hellish pain.
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Lebkov glanced out the window and was amazed. First, the evening twilight was deepening outside the window - and he, as we all remember, lost consciousness in the morning. Secondly, a huge black cloud stood over the Tyatya volcano and the roar was clearly heard from its top. The volcano is awake!
In the hut there were three men who were having dinner at the table. As it turned out later, these were hunters-poachers. Noticing that Evgeny Dmitrievich came to his senses, they were delighted and invited him to the table. The poachers told the writer that a couple of hours ago he himself entered the hut, swaying from side to side, like a drunk, and collapsed unconscious on the floor.
Lebkov was greatly surprised by their story. Meanwhile, the eruption of Tyatya volcano continued. Evgeny Dmitrievich, looking out the window of the hut at the revived volcano, uttered thoughtfully:
- Look what is being done! Volcanologists predicted that the eruption would begin in late August. And it started today.
The poachers looked at each other, and one of them patted Lebkov condescendingly on the shoulder. Then he said:
- You, friend, need a good rest. You look all sick, yes, as I can see, and your brains have completely moved to one side. Today is the end of August.
- And what is the date? - asked Lebkov, perplexed.
“August 29,” the hunters told him.
Lebkov lost consciousness on the bank of the river on the morning of 14 August. Where has the writer been for two weeks? He remembered nothing of what happened to him between August 14 and 29! Or rather, almost nothing - except for some kind of auditory, as he later decided, hallucinations.
Memories of these hallucinations tormented the writer for a long time. Some strange sounds remained in my memory, similar, according to Evgeny Dmitrievich, to the waxing of lizards. But Lebkov for some reason - he himself finds it difficult to explain why - was sure that this whistling was meaningful speech.
It is curious that the writer, who spent two weeks in an unknown place, did not lose a single kilogram of his own weight. And on the cheeks did not appear, oddly enough, two weeks of stubble.
Lebkov decided not to tell anyone about what had happened to him. He understood - if he started fluttering his tongue, at best he would be ridiculed, no one would believe him, and at worst, the case could end with a meeting with a psychiatrist.
But in 1981, he came on a voucher to a writer's rest house - to the so-called House of Creativity of the USSR Writers' Union, which is located in the village of Peredelkino near Moscow. One evening in the dining room of the House of Creativity, a warm friendly company gathered at a table - prose writers, poets.
Out of boredom, they began to tell each other different scary stories. Well, about murders, fires, rape, and even about meetings with evil spirits. Lebkov, having listened to others, decided to "secretly" share with his friends his own memories of the incident in the vicinity of Tyatya volcano.
MEN IN BLACK
And here the second part of this story begins. The company, having had enough of it, dispersed to their rooms around midnight. And the next morning - exactly at seven o'clock in the morning - Lebkov was awakened by a knock on the door.
Two gallant young men entered the room and immediately showed the certificates of officers of the USSR State Security Committee.
- Evgeny Dmitrievich, - said one of them in a sincere voice, - how true is the story that you just told in the dining room?
Lebkov was taken aback. And it was from what. From the moment when he parted with his friends at midnight, no more than seven hours had passed.
Prompted by uninvited visitors, he laid out to them in all details everything that he remembered about a strange incident in the vicinity of Tyat. The KGB officers listened to his testimony without writing anything down. When the writer finished his story, one of the officers said:
- According to scattered data, the KGB of the USSR is inclined to assume that somewhere in the Kuril Islands there is a large base of extraterrestrial "flying saucers". We are sure - you were abducted by extraterrestrials! And we kindly ask you to agree to participate in a hypnosis session. The KGB employs, for your information, experienced hypnotists. We certainly cannot force you, but if you wish, we are ready to hypnotize you.
- What for?! - asked Lebkov.
- It should be so, - was the answer.
- Come on with your hypnosis you know where! cried Evgeny Dmitrievich, fierce. “I'm a writer, not your guinea pig. Clear?
The KGB officers did not insist on their proposal. They only asked Lebkov not to tell anyone about this early visit. The request was formulated in a rather sharp form. It sounded more like an order than a request. In particular, it was said: “We advise you to keep quiet about our meeting with you. If you use your tongue, you will get into big trouble."
Having said goodbye to the writer, the visitors left the room.
And here begins the third part of this story - the most entertaining.
Lebkov is an amazing thing! - did not remember what the young people looked like when they thrust their IDs under his nose. No matter how hard he later tried to restore in his memory the appearance of the visitors, alas, the faces were not recalled. As if they were erased from memory by an unknown force.
He did not like the decisive demand of the KGB officers to keep quiet about their visit to Peredelkino.
“I don’t work in their spy establishment,” Lebkov mused. “So how dare they give me orders?
Out of a sense of contradiction, Lebkov began on the same day and in the following days to tell about their visit to everyone in a row with whom he had not met only in the House of Creativity. Very quickly, information about his stories reached the researchers of anomalous phenomena.
Later, in Peredelkino, they managed to find a woman among the staff of the House of Creativity, who, apparently, was an unwitting witness to the visit to Lebkov. She turned out to be one of the maids.
On the day when the visit to Lebkov was made, this woman was walking early in the morning to work along the driveway to the House of Creativity. And suddenly he sees - a car is standing on the side of the road. And two young men leave the House of Creativity. Quickly, almost at a run, they go to the car, get into it, and the car swiftly takes off.
The next day, the maid heard, in a free presentation of her colleagues, Lebkov's story about his meeting at seven in the morning with KGB officers. Naturally, she immediately connected him with those two young people whom she had never met on the territory of the House of Creativity either until that moment or later.
- The car was black and foreign. And those young people who left the House of Creativity were also in black. I couldn't see the details of their costumes. And it looks like the Chinese! The eyes are as narrow as slits. And the faces are dark. I remember when I later heard the story about the KGB attack on Lebkov, I was very surprised. I didn’t think that the Chinese are working in our state security. And they go on assignments in national pairs …
It is generally believed that the Men in Black phenomenon is only prevalent in the West. In the United States, they pose as Air Force officers or FBI agents. "Men in Black" also present the corresponding service certificates, indistinguishable from real ones.
In the USSR, they therefore pretended to be KGB officers. And with the collapse of the USSR, they may now appear to be employees of the FSB or some other service.
