We have already recalled what happened in the sky over Perozavodsk from 4.00 to 4.10 am on September 20, 1977. Official Moscow called it the passage of a large meteorite, the West called it an unsuccessful launch of a space object, and Russian ufologists, at that time illegal immigrants, called the appearance of a UFO, an unidentified flying object. But after 8 years something even more mysterious happened …
Spaceport "Karelia"
I learned about all the details of the Petrozavodsk diva of the 77th five years later, when I met the executive secretary of the Union of Journalists of Karelia Gennady Sorokin. At that time he was the only freed worker of our SJ and concurrently - the chief ufologist of Karelia. When I got to the extraterrestrial archives of Gennady Sorokin, I read with interest the work of MAI associate professor Felix Siegel, dedicated to this phenomenon.
“For a number of reasons, this phenomenon cannot be attributed to the works of human technology,” writes Felix Yurievich, “The object had a solid core, apparently surrounded by a glowing plasma. Both during the flight and during the hovering period, the UFO threw out luminous (probably due to recombination processes) jets of gases resembling the tentacles of a jellyfish. When the object approached Petrozavodsk, these jets were directed in the direction opposite to the motion. When hovering, they resembled wide jets of a fountain, escaping from the object and descending in parabolas. The similarity with a jellyfish, umbrella, parachute was noted by many eyewitnesses at these moments.
The spectacle was unusually colorful. The central core looked reddish-orange, and the jets emanating from it appeared blue-white. The glow was very bright, like daylight, but local - only the city was illuminated, apparently, and the surroundings remained dark."
In addition, relying on the data of witnesses, Felix Siegel concludes that on September 20, 1977, not one unidentified aircraft was patrolling over Petrozavodsk, but a whole squadron of 10-15 "saucers". And the largest, in his opinion, UFO "… must be incredibly large", but its size can only be determined approximately. Depending on the angle of observation, this "something" could have a body from 150 meters to 4 kilometers in diameter! “Modern space technology does not know such objects,” the ufologist concludes, and scolds the official science for keeping silent about the obvious.
By the way, the "parade of flying saucers" did not end only on September 20. After Petrozavodsk, notes Felix Yuryevich, they were observed repeatedly in different regions of Karelia until November 9. Maybe it was, as the military is now often reported, "exercises to repel an attack by terrorist gangs"? Only cosmic.
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Talk about the "Petrozavodsk phenomenon" did not subside for several years, the central media even dubbed Petrozavodsk "the spaceport of aliens on Earth." And the number of witnesses to unidentified phenomena grew by leaps and bounds. More than once I had to be present in Sorokin's office and listen to the stories of "walkers" about how UFOs got into the habit of Zaonezhie, and there, in the depths of the lake, they made this "spaceport" for themselves. Eyewitnesses swore that they saw how the "plates" either silently plunged into Onego, then surfaced, lifting gigantic masses of water. And one man claimed that a UFO, "a mile long - not like your Petrozavodsk one," demolished the island on which he had built a hut. But when the grandmother told Gennady Vasilyevich that every evening she sees "stars burping back and forth over the Devil's Chair", he stopped recording such stories.
Soccer ball like a locomotive
Everything was quiet. But they started talking about Karelia as a "UFO spaceport" again in 1985. On February 17, freight train # 1702 followed the usual route from Petrozavodsk to Kostomuksha. It consisted of 70 empty cars and a two-section diesel locomotive. The train was driven by driver Sergei Orlov and his assistant Viktor Mironov. The train proceeded through the village of Essoila and continued to move to the station Novye Peski. At 20:35, the locomotive crew suddenly noticed that on the right, behind the trees, parallel to the train, a strange object was moving, which was a glowing translucent ball the size of a soccer ball.
A few minutes later, the incredible happened. The "ball" changed its direction of flight, quickly crossed the train and found itself 30-50 meters in front of the locomotive. The driver tried to stop the train, turned off the propulsion engines and activated the braking system, but the train continued to steadily move forward behind the ball - uphill!
The most popular Soviet publications wrote about this case.
The ball moved in front of the locomotive without sound, without touching the ground. He "dragged" the train along, but how it was impossible to understand. Sergei Orlov contacted the duty officer at Novye Peski station, she went out to meet the train. The woman saw an approaching diesel locomotive, in front of which was a luminous ball, and in front of it was a red vibrating object similar in shape to an inverted basin (the driver and his assistant did not see this object). At the entrance switch, the ball separated from the locomotive and bypassed the station, although it was always in the field of view of the driver and his assistant.
After passing the station, the drivers noticed that the balloon went across the train and again took its place in front of the locomotive. The train began to pick up speed again, and without any action on the part of the locomotive crew. It was possible to stop the train only at Zastava station, on the approach to which the balloon flew away from the train and disappeared behind the forest.
Sergey Orlov recalled:
- I went out to inspect the locomotive. I walked through with a flashlight … Suddenly it became bright as day. It illuminated me. I turned around, and this ball was shining like a "spotlight". I still looked at myself - it seemed like all white. In general, of course, out of fear he ran into the cockpit. More precisely, even "flew" into it …
This whole story lasted 1 hour and 20 minutes. The balloon dragged the train over 50 kilometers, which saved 300 kilograms of diesel fuel, and the participants in this event experienced a severe nervous shock. Although at that time there was no trace of such devices as modern video recorders, the reliability of what happened was confirmed by the diagrams of the recorders installed on the locomotive, and other official documents. And the author of these lines was present at the tape recording of the driver's story, made immediately after the events by Gennady Sorokin.
In a word, as the hero of the film "Striped Flight" said: "Believe it or not …"
Alexander Trubin