By Steve Yarwood
Location: Lake Baikal, South Eastern Siberia
Surface Area: 12,000 square miles
Deepest Point: 5,387 feet (Deepest Freshwater Lake on Earth, contains 22% of the Earths fresh water)
For centuries, Lake Baikal and surrounding areas have been home to a plethora of unexplained phenomena which include the lake monster Lusud Khan, strange disappearances, that we will touch on later, and countless peculiar UFO encounters that seem to frequently occur within this remote region of Russia. There are some in UFOlogical circles that theorize that because of the amount of UFO and USO activity that there is a distinct possibility that an extraterrestrial base is lurking somewhere beneath the picturesque exterior.
Throughout the years Lake Baikal has had its fair share of mysterious UFO activities. In 1958 a TU-104 jet crashed into the lake after it was allegedly actively pursued by an unknown aerial metallic vehicle. A message from the frightened pilot was broadcast to air traffic controllers informing them of what was going on. According to whistle blowers at Air Traffic Control informants, all staff that were on duty at the time were forced by authorities to sign non-disclosure agreements.
Native Buryat fisherman of the region attested to viewing the frightening aerial attack. They described how a silver flying saucer shaped craft chased an aeroplane until it plummeted into the water and disappeared below the surface from their sight. Despite considerable testimonies, no conclusive evidence or official records of this event have ever surfaced. I have looked into this as best as I can. On 15th August 1958 scheduled passenger flight from Khabarovsk to Moscow which would have stopped over at Irkutsk (40 miles away from Lake Baikal) crashed in a forest 134 miles NorthWest of Khabarosvk, killing all 64 on board, which was some 1.114 miles away from Lake Baikal. The other documented contender was a 17th October 1958 flight Aeroflot TU 104 flight from Beijing to Moscow which carried high level soviet aligned diplomats. This crashed 400 miles East of Moscow killing all 80 people aboard. This would put the crash 2,350 miles away from Lake Baikal and certainly not crashing into it as the reports say. So we are left with either a hoax or a cover up.
In April of 2009 the enigmatic Lake Baikal made headlines yet again. Astronauts aboard the international space station photographed two, what are technically called circular convection breaks, thought in some circles to be produced by enormous aquatic alien craft. One of these circles was located near to the centre of the lake whilst the other was positioned towards Baikal’s southern end near Sludyanka. Both circles appeared to be created by something ascending from beneath the thick ice-laden outer layers of Lake Baikal. The pair of these disk-shaped cracks were perfectly symmetrical in shape and measure a huge three miles in diameter. These immense fractures were so precise that it has been said that it is practically impossible to manufacture or replicate them. In fact, certain researchers believe that the NASA-produced images are evidence of alien space craft spaceships emerging from the dark waters below.
In 2011 an alien body was supposedly discovered. There is video footage, that obviously went viral, showing one Irkutsk resident guiding a camera man towards a forested area. There, amongst the snowy ground, lay a small extraterrestrial. It possesses an enlarged cranium, opaque grayish body with dark eyes blankly staring ahead. It appears that something had ripped off the creature’s right leg. Weeks before this was filmed, dozens of local villagers witnessed unidentifiable lights hovering above their homes in the area. There are a section of ufologists that believe these lights were how the alien body had got there. Originally the UFO community were divided on the videos authenticity but it has since come to light that students Timir Hilall and Kirill Vlasove admitted to have faked the video using breadcrumb filled chicken skin.
So much has gone on in and around the lake that they have caught the eye of famed director Steven Spielberg. Back in 2015 it had been rumoured that Spielberg was to visit Lake Baikal with a view to film a documentary allegedly titled “Depth 211”. Seven years later there still seems to be no confirmation of this documentary anywhere.
In 1992, Russian paranormal phenomena magazine ANOMALIYA (issue #4) contained an article that had been written by Mark Shteynberg. Shteynberg, a Soviet veteran of the Afghan war is an author of several books and an expert on Russia’s military.
There are minor variations depending where you read or hear the information but this is roughly the tale of the Lake Baikal Aliens. The story apparently goes like this…
During the summer of 1982, Mark Shteynberg, along with Lt. Colonel Gennady Zverev, actively conducted periodic training of the reconnaissance divers (“Frogmen”) of the Turkistan and Central Asian military regions. The training exercises had been taking place at the Issik Kul Lake in the Northern Tian Shan mountains in Eastern Kyrgyzstan, some 1410 miles away from Lake Baikal. During one of the training exercises the unit was visited by Major General Demyanko who informed the team about an event that had recently happened at Lake Baikal.
Apparently during training dives in the lake, Soviet divers had had close encounters with some strange “swimmers”. Shocked and puzzled, they watched in bewilderment as several strange looking creatures approached them. The swimmers were apparently humanoid but very tall, possibly about ten feet tall in fact. They appeared to be wearing some form of silvery, tight fitting suits that didn’t appear suitable for swimming in the icy temperature of the lake. They were roughly at a depth of 164 feet and these creatures also didn’t have any form of SCUBA equipment, in fact no equipment of any kind except for a sphere shaped helmet that covered the swimmers heads. They didn’t have chance to observe too long as the creatures disappeared back into the cold dark depths of the lake.
The team that saw the swimmers reported the incident to one of the local Siberian military commanders who decided that it would be in the best interests for the Soviet Union to capture one of these mysterious swimmers.
A special group was put together to capture one of the mysterious swimmers. Under the command of an Officer, six scuba divers entered the freezing cold lake and began making their descent trough the murky depths. The deeper they went the colder it got and when they reached a similar depth as they had reached previously they found multiple entities emerging near them. It was at this point that one of the Soviet frogman decided that it would be a brilliant idea to throw a net over one of the creatures. Not really the best of ideas as once he attempted the capture all hell…as they say…broke loose. There are conflicting reports at this point….some report that the creatures used some form of sonic devices to wreak havoc on the divers, whilst others report simply that a powerful force came into play. I’ve also seen statements like hostile aliens and nonhuman brutes. So I’d just like you to remember just who made the first hostile move… Anyway, whatever force was projected knocked out all of the Soviet frogmen and propelled them, at speed, to the surface of the lake.
Normally when emerging from deep waters divers make decompression stops to prevent dissolved gases in the body coming out of solution and affecting almost any part of the body. Known as The Bends, decompression sickness or Caisson disease, is extremely painful and in severe conditions such as an Arterial Gas Embolism it can be lethal. To counteract the effects the persons affected would need to be put into decompression chambers. Here, again, things become a little sketchy due to conflicting reports but I’ve attempted to piece it together as best as I can. Apparently three members of the scuba team made it to the surface severely injured but had not succumbed to The Bends. The other four needed to be put in a decompression chamber. Unfortunately there was only one working chamber in the region and that could only fit 2 people into it. In a desperate attempt to save all four lives, all four men were simultaneously put into this one chamber. Unfortunately 3 of the men died, including the commanding officer. The four men who survived the encounter were left with debilitating disabilities.
Following this deadly encounter the Soviet Government made no further attempts to capture USOs (Unidentified Submerged Object) or their occupants.
A short time later, the staff headquarters of the Turkmenistan military region had received an order from the Land Force Commander-in-Chief. The order consisted of a detailed analysis of the Baikal Lake events and reprimands. It was also supplemented by an information bulletin from the headquarters of the Engineer Forces of the Ministry of Defense, USSR. This bulletin included a list of many deep-water lakes where there had been many logged sightings of anomalous phenomena: appearances of underwater creatures that were similar to the ones encountered in Lake Baikal, the descent and surfacing of giant discs and spheres, powerful luminescence emanating from the deep, just to name but a few.
All of these documents were highly classified and “for the eyes” of a very limited circle of military officers. The purpose of such documents was “to prevent unnecessary encounters….”
For many years the authorities hid these horrifying events. Vladimir Azhazha, former Soviet Naval officer and esteemed ufologist, said that Russian government executives recently released declassified files and within these documents, the Baikal aquanauts are described in great detail. It came as no surprise that Navy commanders had been extensively monitoring numerous underwater vehicles that they had tracked in the lake. The technological capabilities of these vehicles greatly intrigued them and if engineers could replicate the vessels’ inconceivable speeds then unprecedented militaristic advantages would be gained.
The story does on the face of it seem somewhat farfetched but there is some supporting statements that give the story a little more weight. Russian writer Mikhail Demidenko, after becoming familiar with Shteynberg’s account in 1992, remembered spending some time at Lake Baikal in the mid 1980’s whilst on an assignment from the USSR Union of Writers. It was whilst he was there that Irkutsk fishermen told him how they had seen Soviet divers being thrown out of the water and continuing their ascent to a height of 30-50 feet above the water surface. The fishermen didn’t know about the underwater humanoid episode and had been wondering why the Soviet military were subjecting their divers to such tests.
Over the tears the reports of strange lights and humanoid creatures in Lake Baikal’s depths have, not surprisingly, led to theories that there maybe underwater alien bases in the depths of the lake. Again… maybe a bit of a far out theory but there are other strange reports of weird stuff going on in the Lake that may actually support these claims. One case in particular happened in 1977, a deep water submersible called Paysis was involved in scientific research operating at a depth of 1,200 meters in the dark, frigid water. On board were two researchers named V Alexandrov and G Seliverstov. The researchers turned off their spotlights to explore the depth of penetration of sunlight into the water. Suddenly the scientists were bathed in light from an unusual ‘glow’.
Aleksandrov recalled: ‘It was so like if our device was lit from above and the side by two strong spotlights. Only a minute later, unknown floodlights went out, and we found ourselves in total darkness.’ It has never been satisfactorily explained what the source of the light was.
There is also an unexplained and powerful magnetic anomaly occurring within a deep part of the lake’s rift, where the tectonic plates pull apart. The anomaly has not been explained and has reportedly suddenly and inexplicably grown in size twice in the past 50 years.
Other cases of weird phenomena that seem to be coming from the depths are reported sudden surges or eruptions of water that inexplicably shoot upwards and strange, inexplicable mass deaths of fish. The common explaination is that there are trapped gasses that belch up from the bottom, but as ever the source remains unknown.
I alluded at the start of this piece about strange disappearances on the lake. There are many reports of various vessels mysteriously vanishing in the lakes waters. There are many anomalous zones on Lake Baikal that are particularly known for the disappearance of ships. The main place appears to be on the western shore, a place known as Cape Ryty. There are so many reported vanishings at Cape Ryty that the locals consider it to be cursed and to visit would bring sure death upon who ever goes there. Two other places are what locals consider no go areas. The island of Great Ushkan’i, near Cape Sun, as well as the huge island of Olkhon are classed as cursed zones that are known for swallowing vessels. The island of Olkhon is known for a place called “The Devil’s Crater/Funnel,” from where one of the most recent and well known disappearances of a vessel was recorded.
On June 16, 2011, the pleasure boat Yamaha, along with a crew of four experienced sailors, departed from a village in the Kabansk area of Buryatia to test a new motor. Shortly after departing a sudden fog rolled in and all contact with the Yamaha was lost. Eventually the fog lifted but there was no sign of the Yamaha. Although the boat was in range of local cellular services not one of the crews cell phones could be reached. Strangely enough , the lake was clear, placid and safe for boating apart from the sudden appearance of the fog bank. To this day nobody knows what happened to the Yamaha and its crew.
Many search and rescue operations were launched but nothing was ever found. No wreckage, no bodies. It was as if Lake Baikal just swallowed it up.
The local population believe that they know the answer… the area in question produces horrific sudden whirlpools that appear like a crater upon the surface, hence why the locals name it the “Devil’s Crater,” it sucks in anything that is unfortunate enough to be nearby. It is a local legend that says that these mysterious chasms in the water are gateways to hell and that the souls of sinners pass through. Perhaps these whirlpools hold the key to the many missing ships on the lake, but they would not explain the other, more bizarre accounts of ships disappearing for long periods of time only to reappear with crews that claim they have been only gone for a few hours.
Just as it is weird that there are disappearances of vessels on the lake is that of the sudden and inexplicable appearance of various objects upon Lake Baikal. Many of the locals have claimed to see ships and, even weirder, things that really have no business at all being on the water, objects such as trains and castles suddenly materializing on the lake and often blinking out of existence just as quickly.
Scientists believe that this may be the result of potent mirages similar to Fata Morgana that are formed by the unique properties of Lake Baikal. In the summer, warm air flows over the frigid water and in the winter there are extreme cold and clear conditions, all of which combine to create layers of air with differing densities that refract, distort, and reflect upon the lake’s calm, transparent surface to create highly vivid and realistic mirages.
Some think that such mirages could be partly to blame for missing ships such as the Yamaha. These mirages could possibly lead them astray or possibly cause them to crash into the rocky shoreline of the lake. There are even some reports that such mirages are sometimes accompanied by anomalous magnetic disturbances, which could theoretically confound a ship’s navigational equipment.
Are these mirages merely the result of a perfect storm of conspiring natural forces or do they represent some other, more supernatural occurrence? As with many of the lake’s other mysteries, no one really knows.
