One of the rather uncharacteristic, but still encountered in Belarus, plots is a meeting with some mysterious anthropomorphic stranger descending from the sky or flying through the air.
If the researchers of Belarusian folklore were a little reluctant to include such single notes in their articles, then the anomalies did it confidently and for a long time. Meanwhile, sooner or later, everyone will have to pay a little more attention to such cases: after all, they are available not only in modern records, but also in archives.
To date, several such observations have accumulated in Ufokom.
This story took place in the Stolin district, in the parish of the Merlinskie khutor. We managed to find in the Zonal State Archives of the city of Pinsk (ZGAP) archival documents concerning the investigation of this case by the authorities.
In the second half of May 1949, a resident of the town of Luchitsk (Luchitsa?) Anastasia Masyukovich and her nine-year-old shepherd son began to talk about an alleged meeting with a mysterious "alien". Commissioner of the Council for the ROC under the Council of Ministers of the USSR in the Pinsk region. Ilyuk reported on his investigation of this case. The check found:
… A commission that left by order of Bishop Daniel of Pinsky and Polessky to two archpriests: Bylinsky Leonid from Davyd-Gorodok and Zaderkovsky Semyon from the village. Reshel of the D-Gorodok district, [it was found out] that this shepherd noticed in the air something white in the form of a pillar falling to the ground, and when he approached the landed person, he saw a man with a bag over his shoulders.
He asked a stranger - "who are you and where are you from?" This man said that "I am a god-christ and flew from heaven to earth, tell me boy, do you have a father and mother?" The shepherd replied that “my father is dead, I have a mother and a grandfather,” in further conversations he says that the man called himself Christ and said “tell your mother and grandfather to put a cross on this place and let the priest put it up and then tell the people to go to this place to pray and make a sacrifice. You collect the sacrifice and take it for yourself. This man from his words was in military clothes with medals and boots.
The boy told his relatives about his meeting, and soon the news spread throughout the district. The boy's mother and grandfather put a cross in that place. Soon hegumen Neophyte (Grischuk) consecrated him in the presence of believers.
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Pilgrims began to come to the place, carried money and canvas, and "the shepherdess's mother took everything for herself." There was an assumption that the whole story was invented for the purpose of enrichment, or "that there landed a parachutist saboteur or a person who had a connection with the bandits."
Comrade himself. Ilyuk added on his own behalf: “As for my opinion and conclusion, I believe that on the Merlin farmsteads located in the wilderness, 45 kilometers from the regional center D-Gorodok, located on cuts within a radius of 35 km, political mass work is rarely carried out, despite the fact that that they first learned [about this case - the note was made by hand] in the city of Pinsk through the office of the archbishop, and the civil authorities learned later and did not carry out the appropriate political mass work with the population in these farms."
After investigating the circumstances of the incident, the commission caught Masyukovich of deception. The Pinsk archpastor ordered to transfer Hegumen Neophyte (Grischuk) to a parish in the Gantsevichi region. In the same year, he was deregistered by the commissioner for incriminating materials found in his personal file. It is worth emphasizing that just in May 1949 miracles related to the renewal of icons and crosses spread massively in the Pinsk region.
Something similar was reported back in the early 1930s. In the town of Kholmichi b. Bobruisk district of Belarus appeared "a member of the heavenly office." It was hung with many crosses, medals, and even, as he said, he also had a "heavenly radio".
“This rogue, deceiving the believers, tried to convince the poor and middle peasants not to go to the collective farm. In heaven, he said, there will be their own collective farms. And terrestrial collective farms hinder the creation of heavenly collective farms”.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to say what exactly was meant in this feuilleton, perhaps we are talking about a certain home-grown prophet who could appear at that time in different parts of the country. But this prophet is too similar to the "war veteran" who landed in 1949.
Another sensational story happened in June 1937 with Lyudmila Fedosovna Chepik (born 1930). This time the flying man also had the attribute of a warrior: a helmet-shishak. And everything happened in the town of Chashniki, near the railway line, next to the river Knot.
- I grazed a cow in the meadow and picked flowers. Suddenly I saw that a "man" was descending noiselessly without a parachute from above. He sank 1.5-2 meters away from me. His height was less than the height of a short or not very tall person. He was about 1-2 heads taller than me.
His height was approximately 110–130 cm. He was of an athletic build, with his shoulders sharply widening upward, with a disproportionately large head. He had a narrow waist. On the legs were something like dark boots, which expanded like a trousers, starting from the knees.
His face was reddish. He was dressed in tight-fitting dark colored clothing. On his head he wore a helmet resembling the helmet of a Russian warrior - an elongated cone-shaped shishak. His face was open, and in front of his eyes there was something like glasses or a transparent visor. He stayed next to me for about 1 minute.
Having gone down, he opened the transparent visor, smiled a long smile, looked around, stroked the grass, then again looked at me for a while. He had an oval object in his hands. Then he waved at me with both hands, not letting go of the object.
When he went down, I crossed myself. After the cook he waved to me, he soared into the sky with great speed, completely silent. Having risen to a height of about 50–100 m, it seemed to curl up into a ball and, as it were, disappeared into the air.
On the same day I told my mother about it. In response to which she told me that you are happy, because you saw God. Until now, I have never told anyone about this.
Drawing from the book of A. S. Kuzovkin (1982), where this story was first described
In the course of a survey of the population of the Belarusian-Lithuanian borderland, Yu. I. Vnukovich, Cand. ist. Sci., employee of the department of folklore and culture of the Slavic peoples of the Center for the Study of Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. It was published in the yearbook "Belarusian Falklore" for 2016.
In the village of Barvanishki, Vilenskiy district (the territory of Lithuania), a local resident Leonida Udyrysh told him that people often watch a person who is called "lapyr, lapyr" move through the air. Even the horses wheezed at his appearance:
- Neshta neikae is eating. Nothing. Yak horse pastsila. There is a lot of hay here. First step. Well, getts in … Kazha nekhta: such lapyr, lapyr! The yak at the povetshy lyats, kazal. Chalavek! And so scary, already snoring horses! Already horses, ka ', snoring. So terrible. And who is there lyatsіts? In this way. I azenya geta dluga, God knows what and what … Fear byre, mom: “Hadzi you palyadzi! Would you please me ўjo zdaetstsa? " Mom kazha: "Geta INTO PA months hoja, musi!"
- And hto?
- In yak, from the hut vydze. Yak is a new month of pasvetsya for chalavek, the people of Shkodzon are now nadto. Mozhash for months to fly. Povetshi, kazal, lyats. Well, yes, earth, kazali, ni tulatza. Tady ўzho tata ni bayaўsya. Well i gety. Pryshoўshy raskazuee, ale kazha, in INTO robotic. We have nashay vyostse nekhta for months … have pauveski vylyatseў yon. Well, what? Ale not righteous, ale vidzeli yak lyaceў chalavek [ULF].
It is interesting that the expression “lapyr, lapyr” among the inhabitants of Udmurtia “expresses a sound (with a visual tinge) image of a flight with noise (birds) or a visual image of a multitude of flat objects (leaves, etc.); karyna's lapyr “flap noisily with wings”: lapyrtyns “make noise with wings”.
The organization "Ufokom" has also been approached several times by eyewitnesses telling about this. On July 28, 2011, at dawn, two VOKhR shooters observed in the Vitebsk region near the Borovka military unit (Lepel district, Borovka village) a creature flying over the edge of the forest, similar to a man with shortened limbs in a pink overalls, about two meters tall.
He flew slowly over the forest along the line of the cut off the restricted area at the approaches to the post, and then made a sharp turn with increasing speed when approaching about 70 meters.
But, perhaps, the most complete test from our side was another story that took place on October 27, 2011 in the vicinity of the village of Ovsyaniki, Vileika district, Minsk region. It was already evening when Verina Lyudmila Trifonova, her daughter Angela, as well as Natalya Avdeeva and her husband noticed that some creature was descending from the sky in the distance.
It was decided that it could be "some kind of angel or devil", so at first they watched from afar, and then took refuge in the house. The next morning there were no traces of the hovering miracle. Later we managed, albeit approximately, but still to reconstruct its appearance: again we could talk about a certain helmet or an almost square head, and the creation itself most of all resembled a certain "robot" with a luminous "headlight" in the center.
It is interesting that, according to the informants, 4–5 years earlier, similar rumors had already circulated in the vicinity of the village.
Drawing of a creature from the village of Ovsyaniki. V. Chernobrov, 2012
Of course, if you wish, you can find rational explanations for all these messages. For example, in Soviet times, spies were often planted on the territory of the BSSR. If you equip such a scout with medals and skillfully play on the religious feelings of the population, then the landing can be disguised as the descent of a certain saint.
Also, at dusk, eyewitnesses could see the flight of a large bird, a meteorological probe or a balloon filled with helium. Yet not all of the details of such landings fit into these versions.
Attention is drawn to the profession of most of the eyewitnesses - a shepherd, who is considered a mythologized person in Belarusian folklore. Most often, it is these people who are the first to meet the Mother of God or Jesus Christ.
In any case, even if these stories are not mysterious in nature, some of them have already become part of local legends, and at least one was marked by the setting of a cross and for some time gathered pilgrims around them. Perhaps their nature is not so important, because in any case they have already become part of our legendary heritage …
Author: Ilya Butov, UFOKOM