The Amazing Story of the Salyut-6 Close Encounter
“On June 18, 1981, Gosplan called for an extraordinary conference, with the presence of UFO experts, cosmonauts and Soviet authorities, including military officers. Its moderator was the chief of the Soviet Space Program, General Georgi Timofeevict Beregovoy. Beside him was Vladimir Kovalyonok [Kovalenok], the cosmonaut who, along with Viktor Savinikh [Savinykh], stayed 77 days in space, aboard the Salyut-6 station. … The revelation they made was to shock the world. It’s quite simply the story of a close encounter of the second kind – which didn’t go the third kind because mission control ordered: NYET. Salyut-6 made contact with an alien spaceship for fou4 days (with interruptions) and together they orbited Earth. The event involved five astronauts: Kovalyonok, Savinikh and three aliens aboard an unknown vehicle that had the shape of a sphere.” [Brazilian Manchete magazine, September 24, 1984]
It’s an Amazing Story. The tale describe how the cosmonauts managed to contact the extraterrestrial intelligences, first by a failed attempt flashing a light in Morse code, but eventually succeeding with an alleged mathematical message. There is also the physical description of the aliens, essentially human beings, or “similar to human beings”:
“They used light helmets, such as tight hoods. … They had thick and long eyebrows and straight noses, like those of Greek statues. What most impressed the cosmonauts were the eyes – large and blue, twice as large as ours – fixed on them, without a trace of emotion. Their traces were handsome, very dark. They reminded of solemn Hindu men. But no muscle moved on their faces. They looked like robots.”
It’s even more amazing because, according to the story, the contact was fully recorded in many photographs and a long film footage, which was shown in the Gosplan conference and even today must be kept highly secret in some Russian vault.
The bad news is that this amazing story is almost as fictional as those found on early pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories. It’s literally pulp fiction.
Russian researcher Boris Shurinov is especially critical of the promotion of this legend in the west. Quoting none other then Georgi Beregovoy – who was never chief of the Soviet Space Program – the source states quite clearly:
“Once I tried to investigate the subject myself. I read in a small Ukrainian paper about my contacts with representatives of extraterrestrial civilizations and a film I allegedly showed members of the Politburo. I wanted to know where all that had come from, and found out it was a reproduction of an article published on Central Asia which in turn used an article from abroad. This is the degree of authenticity of this information.”
I also asked researcher Mikhail Gershtein, who kindly informed that another primary source in the story denies it all:
“In the documentary "V poiskah prisheltzev" ("In search of the extraterrestrials", 1988, in Russian) the producer showed this news clipping from the ‘National Enquirer’ to the astronaut Viktor Savinyh and translated some parts from it. Savinyh stated that it is pure lie: "They make us, the readers, fools as they want…"
Pure lies. But then, absence of confirmation, and even presence of denial can be taken by some as evidence of something to hide. The interesting thing is that the final source in the story confirms part of the story.
“I saw this object and then something happened I could not explain”, repeatedly claimed Kovalenok.
“The object was the size of a finger. I was surprised to see it was an orbiting object … "It was hard to determine the size and the speed of an object in space. That is why I can not say exactly, which size it actually was. Savinykh prepared to take a picture of it, but the UFO suddenly exploded. Only clouds of smoke were left. The object split into two interconnected pieces. It was reminiscent of a dumb-bell. I reported about it to the Mission Control immediately.”
Kovalenok even made a drawing of the object.
“The Soviet press headlined the event widely. Soviet newspapers and magazines published a lot of articles and messages about it, but they were mostly critical articles. Journalists excluded the existence of the extraterrestrial reason. It was probably a UFO, but it was definitely not mysticism – two people watched it at the same time.”
Now, this is confirmation of a UFO, but there’s no mention of the Gosplan conference, nor of Hindu aliens, and not even a single picture. Where did those details came from?
“Yes, it was invented on the West by some ‘yellow press’ writer – maybe Henry Gris”, Gershtein answered me. “In Russia this wild story was known only from the ‘National Enquirer’ article”. Indeed, the single source for all those amazing details is an article by Henry Gris on that pulp tabloid, the National Enquirer.
At the time the Enquirer was deeply involved with the UFOria, and wild tales “from behind the Iron Curtain”, where the stories could not be checked, were a carte blanche to embellish things. If the Amazing Story of Salyut-6 sounded extraordinary, what about the “Space Alien Baby Found Alive”?
The MUFON bulletin reprinted in 1983 a critical article by Anders Liljegren which exposed items from the Enquirer such as “Soviet Ships Buzzed by UFOs from Under the Sea” and “Space Alien Blasts Forest Rangers With a Bizarre Ray”, which Liljegren noted was copied almost verbatim from the details of a Finnish case that happened ten years before. “UFO researchers should put their NE issues into the depths of their waste-paper baskets where they rightly belong”, he recommended.
But even the purple space alien baby kept alive for a couple of months was taken seriously by some believers, and has been quoted as a real story that was covered up. The Salyut-6 legend is very prominent in Latin America, and the Brazilian UFO magazine promoted it as a real event in no less than two cover articles, one published in 1985 – when the story was fresh, and from where these wonderful illustrations came from – and the other in 2002, where they actually quoted Kovalenok latest statements, but still had not figured the legend out. This is the magazine that announced Jesus would come in a flying saucer. In April 2007.
In this review of the legend, I trusted the work of Shurinov and Gershtein, and could not find a fac-simile of Gris original item – the best I worked on was a full Italian translation. If you didn’t throw your Enquirer issue on the waste bin, I would really like to see the source for this tale I first heard when I was a kid!
To sum it up: a UFO was sighted by Kovalenok and Savinikh aboard the Salyut-6 on May 5, 1981. But they couldn’t determine its distance and size, nor record it as the whole event lasted for only a few moments. The not exactly extraordinary sighting transpired in the Russian press, where intrepid Enquirer journalists such as Henry Gris picked it up and embellished it with the Hindu aliens. One has to concede it’s an interesting, if kitsch, tale. From the Enquirer the story circulated to the world, and made full circle back and past the Iron Curtain.
But what did the cosmonauts saw? In early 1978 there was another UFO sighting aboard the Salyut-6 space station, and this is yet another long story. But like the Amazing Enquirer Story, no record was captured and James Oberg suggests they could have seen a jettisoned trash bag.
If it had some Enquirer UFO issues inside it, as Liljegren recommended, it would make for a funny story.
Posted in Aliens,UFOs | 2 commentsMedium of the Century? The Eternal Will to Believe
Last year I wrote a column for CSI about a branch of Spiritualism most popular in Brazil, Spiritism, and its major leader, the late Francisco “Chico” Xavier. Now Guy Lyon Playfair publishes a short book, “Chico Xavier, Medium of the Century” mainly reusing some older material. In last month’s Fortean Times, Tom Ruffles graded the book a 7, as a “useful, if somewhat uncritical, introduction for English speakers”. This is probably an understatement, and here’s an interesting story about it.
Vitor Moura Visoni is a Brazilian Spiritist who, very atypically, doesn’t believe that Chico Xavier had any mediumship at all. He believes that figures like Lenora Piper and Gladys Osborne Leonard probably had extraordinary powers, and he once believed in Xavier’s too. When I met him, several years ago, he was a supporter of the “medium of the century”’s powers. Now he is one of the very few people actually doing research on what Chico Xavier’s feats may actually have been. In his blog Obras Psicografadas, in Portuguese, one can find several examples Visoni has been collecting of instances where what was published as a supernatural messages from the afterlife by Xavier was actually copied sometimes verbatim from very terrestrial sources. Obviously without correct attribution, because few would find very inspiring the act of publishing excerpts from different books from other authors with the correct attribution.
Now, last year another review of Playfair’s book was published on Michael Tymn’s blog, and Visoni promptly made his comments there. “Chico Xavier was a fraud and I have all the proof of it. I accuse him of borrowing from other books in his automatic writing”, he wrote. Pretty heavy accusations. Milo replied quoting Playfair’s own book, where Xavier published a story which was originally published in English:
“This story appears in Joan Grant’s The Scarlet Fish & Other Stories, published in 1942 & as far as I have been able to discover, never translated into Portuguese. Chico’s version is from the Introduction, by his chief guide Emmanuel, to Libertaç?o (Deliverance) published in 1949” [“Chico Xavier, Medium of the Century”, p. 78]
As Milo argues, “it does seem rather obvious that Chico himself didn’t use the book, since he seems not to have known English”. This is an unfortunate comment, since Xavier did learn English, as Playfair himself wrote later on: “Chico did speak some English – when we met he greeted me in quite respectable English”. Chico Xavier had English classes in 1965, when the visited the USA. It is said that he mastered in a month what to some people took years. But then, he published his version of Grant’s story of the Scarlet Fish in 1949.
“It is most unlikely that he ever read Joan Grant’s story, or indeed much else”, argued Playfair.
This is an unfortunate comment, because amazingly we do know for sure whether or not Xavier read the story, because he himself wrote to the effect thanking Wanda Amorim Joviano for translating the story for him:
“Dear friends, all the peace: We thank the cooperation with which you helped us to publicize the new work [Libertação], acknowledging, just as well, the story of the ‘Little Scarlet Fish’ that so well fitted our purposes of presentation. … We thank sister Wanda for the timely and faithful translation”. [“Deus Conosco”, Wanda Amorim Joviano]
So there’s no doubt Xavier did come to know Grant’s story through the translation of Wanda Joviano, and this is yet another example of a source allegedly inaccessible to Xavier being found. It’s also another example of omitted attribution, as in his introduction the closest he comes to giving correct credit is:
“Before the open access doors of Christian work and to the timely knowledge that André Luiz is revealing, we fondly remember the old Egyptian legend of the little scarlet fish”.
As noted, it would probably not be very inspiring to fully mention that he came to know of this story from Joan Grant’s book through the translation of a friend, as he acknowledged in a private letter. It’s much more convenient for Xavier instead to claim he “remembered the old Egyptian legend”.
Still defending Xavier’s powers, Playfair asks:
“When would he have had the time after his day job and after-hours writing sessions (many of them in public) to do all the research needed for his historical novels? Lew Wallace took several years to research and write Ben-Hur. Chico dashed off his huge books about the same period in a matter of months or even weeks. Not bad going for a ‘fraud’”.
It seems he bought the myth and have not actually discovered the fact Xavier, even in his young and very modest age, read profusely whatever he could put his hands on and even had several scrap books where he collected poems. Very convenient for a man who would then claim to channel these dead poets. Even so, his literary production was relatively small – one or two short books of simple poems a year – in his beginnings. He only started to write more profusely, and over factual and historic subjects, when he had access to bigger libraries. Even then, Xavier’s “historical” books are full of inaccuracies, and have excerpts which can be traced back to 19th century books, copied almost verbatim.
As with many believers, one can understand that Playfair may buy the religious myth of Chico Xavier as a semi-literate man who wrote hundreds of extraordinary books, something which can only be understood by supernatural or paranormal means. The reality, accessible to anyone who does their homework, is quite different, and one can only pity the fact the myth is now sold in English too.
UFO Best Evidence: The El Yeso Reflection?
It’s been called the world’s best UFO photo. Of course, some national pride may have been involved since the claim was made by Chilean Ufologists about this Chilean UFO photo, captured on February 14, 2010 near the El Yeso reservoir, high in the Andes Mountains. Besides an interesting image, complete with a “possible shape of the UFO” reconstruction you see below, from a local UFO group, the case is interesting because it was also investigated by the official Chilean group CEFAA, which forwarded it for analysis abroad.
As a cooperation between CEFAA and the American NARCAP, Dr. Richard Haines evaluated the series of images and issued a report, translated by CEFAA to Spanish, and also reproduced by Leslie Kean in English.
The image was part of a series of photos captured by a family in holiday interested in registering the colorful iridescent clouds that can be seen. It was only afterwards that they noticed the apparent UFO in the sky. That is, point one, they didn’t actually see the UFO. And, as Haines himself notes, “the UAP was not visible in any of the other photographs taken of the same location in the sky”. It only showed up in one image. Point two.
Here’s one additional. extremely relevant point. As local UFO group CIFAE comments on, quoting the direct statement by one of the witnesses, Doris Hermosilla, some of the photos in the series were taken from inside an utility vehicle. Hermosilla states that the image with the UFO was taken outisde the car, but the UFO group comments that both the previous and the photo in question actually have fuzzy reflections suggesting otherwise.
Indeed, in the upper left corner of area number 12, following the reference areas marked in the full photo by Haines, one can clearly see an out of focus light blob.
Now, that could be either a flare, or an internal reflection on a car window or windshield. It could also be another UFO, but then, and here is the point, so could the UFO be… a flare or internal reflection.
A flare is not a very good candidate since the image does appear in focus with definite features, but a reflection looks like a very good hypothesis. It would not be the first of its kind.
The three points we remarked are all compatible with a reflection on a window or windshield, not noticed by the witnesses, recorded only in one photograph where the angles were just right, and taken from inside a vehicle. Something very much like this mysterious yellow UFO in the sky:
Which is just a GPS antenna reflected on a windshield. Notice in this other photo how reflections of objects at different distances from the glass may appear in and out of focus, just as on the El Yeso photo we have a more sharply defined “UFO” and an out of focus blob.
Additional elements supporting the idea of a reflection can actually be found in Dr. Haines considerations. He notices how the geometry of the illumination does not match if the assumed UFO was reflecting sunlight. Indeed, it’s backwards. Haines then suggests that “the UAP’s surface was not reflecting sunlight but (perhaps) emitting its own reddish luminance”. Perhaps, but then perhaps it was reflecting sunlight, and then being reflected once again through a windshield.
“The ‘UFO’ is a reflection in a window”, promptly explained to me Chilean researcher Andrés Duarte. “Obviously, an image like that is very easy to recreate. The reflected object seems to show a woven pattern and stitching”. Amazingly, Haines also noticed that “the UAP looks remarkably like a woven, canvas shoe with threaded thong stitching around the sole”.
So, if the “UFO” was a reflection, what it actually was? Probably not a shoe. CIFAE published an image from one of the seats of the vehicle in question, noting some similarities, but also some differences:
So, especially if the photo was taken through the side window, part of one of the seats illuminated by the Sun could be what many are interpreting as an UFO.
From my part, if the photo was taken instead through the windshield, then as with the previous GPS UFO example, the object may appear much larger than it actually is. It could even be, instead of a disc or part of a larger object, in fact a hole in the dashboard, similar to the best “UFO” photo ever.
If it was a hole, then this case would be fascinating, among many other reasons, for combining the illusion of a convex object where it was actually concave, with the appearance of a large hovering object in the sky where it was in fact a small reflection.
An examination of the vehicle and further interviews with the witnesses could possibly identify the object and make this yet another one of the “best” UFO photos for their interesting story and unexpected identification rather than a great unexplained mystery.
Posted in UFO photos | 7 comments
Double or split Sun in China?
“Weeks after a story shot across the Web claiming that the imminent explosion of a nearby star would result in the appearance of a second sun in the sky — a story that was later debunked — two suns were caught on camera yesterday in China. The suns — one fuzzy and orange, the other a crisp yellow orb — appeared side-by-side, one slightly higher than the other. What’s going on?”
- ‘Two suns’ spotted in China defy explanation
A tentative explanation by Jim Kaler was quoted on Life’s Little Mysteries, summarized as “an effect of optical refraction”. But as they themselves quoted other experts, this does not seem like anything seen before. That is, “sun dogs, sunset mirages, sun pillars and sun halos are all relatively common and well understood. But not this effect”.
Basically they are symmetric and appear some degrees apart from the Sun. They may be partially obstructed, and thus not appear very symmetric, but not like the Chinese double-sun.
As Grant Perry is also quoted, this could be a reflection. A double-window can produce similar results:
Above, the Sun at left is just a reflection from the double-window.
But then, as Perry also notes, such reflections would move in relation to the Sun when the camera moved. They would move much less if they were reflections on a double window rather than internal camera lens reflections, but they would move.
Then again, in the very short clips we have seen we can’t be sure if there’s no relative movement at all. So this is still a possibility.
But I’m inclined to think perhaps the double-sun is actually a single, split Sun:
The orange circle is a suggestion of the size of the actual Sun, which may have been obstructed, split in half, by something – thick fog? – giving the illusion of two smaller circles. Lack of focus and compression artfifacts would contribute to form each half into a more round circle, but even on casual inspection it’s clear they are not perfectly round.
It wouldn’t be very hard to test this suggestion: one would just have to check the angular size of the Sun in the video. Our actual Sun measures around half a degree, so if we have two quarter-degree suns, then this is a split sun. If we have two half a degree ones, then this is something else, indeed a “double-sun”.
Unfortunately, I didn’t find more details on the video so we can’t calibrate and make estimates, but I do suspect this could be a split Sun. The tone of the two halves is different, but this could be simply an artifact from the video camera or the atmosphere between the Sun and the camera.
Posted in Fortean | 5 comments
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