On Sunday, May 13, 1990, a Muscovite Tamara Orlova and her husband were traveling by train late at night. They returned to the city from their own dacha, where for two days off they non-stop shoveling the earth - planting potatoes. Both felt terminally tired.
Suddenly, Tamara's husband began to fall on his side: he lost consciousness. This was reported by the intercom to the train driver. And he, in turn, reported on the radio about the incident to the radio operator on duty at the nearest railway station.
When the train approached her platform, two orderlies with stretchers were already waiting for him. The unconscious man was quickly transferred to an ambulance car - of course, accompanied by his own wife, who was extremely worried about what was happening.
They did not manage to take Tamara's husband to the hospital. He died on the way. Distraught with grief, the woman spent the night and part of the next day - Monday - near the body of the deceased within the walls of that hospital.
Her own sister, also a Muscovite, knew nothing, of course, about what had happened. On Monday morning, she got out of bed, as always on weekdays, very early. And she left the house, going to work, at the beginning of six in the morning.
At the bus stop, the woman did not have to wait long. Soon the bus of the route she needed arrived. Tamara Orlova's sister, entering his open front door, sat down on an empty chair by the window in the left row of seats. This seat was located just behind the driver's cab.
The bus started to move. Its wheels went to wind kilometers along the deserted streets of morning Moscow, which at that very early hour barely woke up. Tamara's sister looked out of the window with an absent gaze, behind which floated house after house, block after block … The bus drove up to the next intersection - to the intersection of the street along which he was moving, with a wide avenue. The driver did not slow down, because a green light was on at the traffic light.
Tamara's sister herself will tell about what happened next:
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- When the bus started to go to the intersection, I saw a small car rushing across the avenue from left to right. An ordinary pickup van. Ordinary and … unusual. He was all bright red, and on the side was a white circle with a red cross in it. In a word, an ambulance.
But here's what is absolutely amazing: its windshield was completely matte. As if it was thickly smeared with gray-white paint from the inside! Never in my life have I seen a car with such windshields. A collision between a pickup truck and our bus seemed inevitable. The few passengers who were with me in the cabin screamed in fright.
Tamara's sister also screamed out loud in horror.
The bus driver slammed on the brake.
“The same thing,” Tamara’s sister continues her story, “apparently did the driver of the red pickup truck, invisible behind the frosted windshield. The speed of the pickup slowed sharply, but nevertheless it continued to approach quickly. With absolute irrevocability, I realized: he is now going to stick into the bus on the left - exactly where the driver was sitting at the wheel, and behind him - me.
With a drooping jaw, I stared with unblinking eyes at the approaching pickup, aiming its headlights directly at me! But a miracle happened. In some incomprehensible way, the pickup slipped right in front of, so to speak, the nose of our bus without hitting it. We, the passengers, again shouted in unison - this time with joy. And then they fell silent, perplexedly turning their heads in all directions.
A red pickup truck that flew up to the bus on the left and dashed across the bus right in front of its front bumper did not appear, however, to the right of the bus. And he did not continue on his way. In the literal sense of these words, he melted into thin air like a ghost.
Tamara's sister continues:
- All of us, including the bus driver, were shocked. We didn't understand how this could happen. My fellow travelers were vigorously discussing the mysterious incident and at the same time focused on the strange appearance of the ambulance. Its windshield was, I repeat, matte, but the side windows were transparent for some reason. All of us, as it turned out from the discussion, clearly saw this. In the meantime, for a regular ambulance, everything should be the other way around! The side windows are matte and the front glass is transparent.
However, Tamara's sister was personally much more puzzled by something else.
When the pickup truck flew up to the bus and almost seemed to collide with it, the woman's gaze - unblinking, frozen - was directed to its side transparent glass. And the woman, according to her categorical assertion, clearly saw through that glass the following picture: a man in a faded khaki jacket is lying on a stretcher in a pickup truck, his eyes are closed, his arms are stretched out along his body.
- And no one else is in the cabin for transporting patients in that ambulance! - says Tamara's sister. - Let my observation lasted no more than two seconds … even if not more than a second, but I clearly saw the features of the man's face. It was my sister's husband. I couldn't be wrong. I didn’t dream. Yes, it was him!
Questions swirled through my head. What about him? Are you seriously ill? And so hard that you had to call an ambulance? And what an amazing coincidence - I’m on the bus to work in the early morning, and an ambulance with Tamara’s husband lying in it crosses my path. How can this be?
But what about the appearance of the car? What a strange carriage with a frosted windshield! Some abnormal carriage, impossible. Finally, by what miracle did she manage to avoid the seemingly inevitable collision with the bus? And where did it go then, melting without a trace in the air at the intersection?
From the testimony of Tamara Orlova:
- When my husband and I were returning by train from the dacha, he was dressed in a faded khaki jacket. The ambulance that took him and me from the train station to the nearest hospital was a pickup truck. But the pickup is white, not red. The windshield of the car was, of course, transparent, and the side ones were matte. For the next day, the body of the deceased was immobile in the hospital. Nobody took him out of there.
From a certificate given by A. N. Stepanov, a garage worker at one of the metropolitan ambulance stations:
- We use two types of cars in our daily work - pickups and Volga vans. According to a long-standing tradition, all ambulances in Moscow are white. Red pickups are not used by our units. I speak about this with full responsibility. Red pickups are fire brigade vehicles. This is the first time I hear about the presence of opaque windshields on vehicles and I consider the statement about their existence to be complete nonsense.