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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Long overdue contribution,
By hanyi ishtouk (Budapest, Hungary) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Mysterious Sky: Soviet UFO Phenomenon (Paperback)
to filling some gaps in the global ufo puzzle by collating numerous cases from the vast regions of the former USSR. Paul Stonehill, who was born in Soviet Ukraine and emigrated to the US at the age of 13 or 14, and British researcher Philip Mantle have indeed sifted through voluminous material of hard-to-access Russian books, articles, news clippings from local sources, drafts of personal communications, etc. However, potential readers are hereby forewarned not to expect - in the authors' admonition (p. 415) - "forum [for] dubious contactees; spinners of tall tales; sociopaths who deny Westerners the right to write about Russian ufology and who denigrate esteemed Russian and Ukrainian researchers...; UFO cultists, and other similar types." Nor will you come across chilling details of 'alien' abduction. Instead, below is a fragmentary menu of topics discussed:
Possible explanations for the Tunguska event (Siberia) of 1908 (pp. 19-44) that include "airburst of an asteroid, comet that detonated in the atmosphere, spacecraft traveling faster than light and experiencing time dilation, explosion of natural gas," so forth (p. 34); or the view expressed by Yuri Lavbin, director of an expedition to the supposed area in 2004, to the effect "that a comet and a mysterious flying object collided 10 kms above the planet" (p. 43). Clandestine military projects in the murderous Stalin-era: A) Russian researcher V. Psalomschikov "learned that it was rumoured at the end of the 1930s that Stalin was engaged in a most secret space exploration project," heavily relying on the works of astronomer and modern rocket science pioneer, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935; on him see pp. 56-8). To this end, a military base was built at a site that later would become the Chernobyl Nuclear Station, but which had been dismantled in fear of the advancing Wehrmacht in 1941, and probably got relocated in the hinterlands (Ural Mountains?) (p. 68). B) According to articles published in the 1954 issues of the German magazine 'Frankfurter Illustrierte', "[A]n American intelligence operative was able to escape from the USSR, and brought with him the formula for a special alloy, developed by Horst Pinkel for use in constructing a craft that utilized powerful new rays discovered by German scientists. Th[e same] agent reported that in 1948 the Soviets had five flying saucers...['letayuschiye tarelki'; plural form]" (p. 260). It should be underlined here that Horst Pinkel, who never returned to his country, had traveled to work in the SU way back in 1928 as participant of a German-Soviet military exchange program. C) A CIA document, declassified in 1978, relates the account of a German engineer, George/Georg Klein, being received via a contact in Athens May 13, 1953. It says that towards the end of WWII the Red Army captured plans of state-of-the-art Nazi flying saucer technology and expert personnel at the Mi(e)t(h)e factories in Breslau/Wroclaw, Poland (pp. 298-9). Further implications of the story are explored and elaborated on in a wider context in Joseph P. Farrell's "The SS Brotherhood of the Bell" (2006, pp. 443-6), which also references Nick Redfern's "FBI Files" (1998, pp. 198-200). The highly complex and immensely spectacular Petrozavodsk phenomenon (Karelia in NW SU, 09/20/1977), featuring bright spheres, one of them "exiting from a dirigible-like UFO" and landing in a nearby forest; star-like apparation that "grew in size, and assumed [the] shape of a luminescent jellyfish, [emitting] light rays of reddish color" and leaving melted holes in windows and glass 'pancakes' on windowsills in its path. Official reports attribute the event to the launch of the carrier rocket of space satellite/probe Kosmos-955 coinciding with a "powerful solar flare [and the] complicated geophysical enviroment" it induced (pp. 76-7). Not mentioned in the book, yet daring speculations on the Internet (search 'battle of the harvest moon') propose the idea that the said incident may be related to the destruction of an American spy satellite and, ultimately, to the demise of a secret moon base manned by the Yankies. Well... Inexplicable aerial manifestations, strange crafts assuming monitoring posture in the vicinity of sensitive military-industrial locations, nuclear installations (Chernobyl disaster of 1986: a 'fiery sphere' reportedly interfered in a benign manner by lowering radiation level; p. 94), cosmodromes and weapon testing areas, have given considerable headache to top brass decision makers over the last 60 years or so. Soviet Air Force had its own fatal encounters when, for instance, two interceptor planes/jets melted into the great unknown after firing at some pesky UFO over river (?) Ishimba (Siberia, 08/07/1953; p. 182), or in another case while chasing an odd elliptical bogey close to the Iranian border in 1981 (p. 189). From national security standpoint the most alarming incident involved the uncalled-for arming of ICBMs at Byelokoroviche (Soviet Ukraine) on Oct. 4, 1982, during a 4-hour visit of a gigantic (900 ms. in diameter), disc-shaped UFO (pgs. 158, 207, 329). This is somewhat similar - with opposite antipode, though - to the missile shutdown at Malmstrom AFB (Montana, US) in March of 1967. A joint Ministry of Defence (SETKA-MO) and Academy of Sciences (SETKA-AN) study group (officially operational 1978-91) was set up to systematically collect data concerning anomalous atmospherical phenomena and attendant weirdness from far-flung corners of the Soviet Empire. Military geophysicist Col. Aleksandr Plaksin, a liaison between the two branches, made the following observations in 2002 (pp. 158-60): so-called 'aliens' are not responsible for super advanced American technology; he has "never obtained direct proof that there are alien civilizations active on our planet"; 20 percent of the objects are of enigmatic physical origin (and are powered by some exotic propulsion system technically feasible not just on the drawing boards of some above-top-secret, supranational type lab, we surmise); the rest comprises mainly of "plasma formations" that are created "under certain conditions [when] a stream of solar radiation penetrates the Earth protective magnetic field..., causing influence on measuring devices and people." Plenty of cases pertaining to underwater submersible objects (USO's) and strange occurences in the depth of certain lakes and high seas are covered in chapter 24. You can read about the uncanny, albeit non-confrontative, 'croakers' ('kvakeri' in Russian - morphologically linked w/ 'quakers') which had been haunting nuclear submarines -- at least as far as leaked reports from the 1960-80s suggest (pp. 229-32); the Dec. 1977 sighting of a doughnut-shaped object, 300-500 ms. in diameter, which rose "vertically from under the water" at St. George island (apprx. halfway b/w the Falklands and Antarctica; p. 236); the unexplained disappearance of one destroyer from a USS convoy being encircled by "sixteen flying crafts of bright amber color" in the Arctic, while a NATO squadron close by was warned not to approach (02/06/1993; pp. 242-3); and a maritime case of theft involving a UFO lifting 4 pigs out of an open-air cage on the deck (p. 234) -- only to be roasted at ufonauts' party, we guess. Dispersed throughout the book there are fascinating descriptions of anomalous zones/window areas, especially in the Urals and beyond, not infrequently with indication of what can be pigeonholed as 'ancient astronauts/paleocontact' theory based on the indigenous lore. A case in point is the 'Valley of Death' ('Ulyuyu Cherkechekh' in Tunguz/Evenk language?) in NW Yakutia, where local legends of metallic-looking "cauldrons protruding from the ground" were later validified by M. P. Koretsky from Vladivostok in the 1930s. He also made note of the abnormally lush vegetation in the area, and spent a night in one of those 6-9 meter-wide unearthly structures, as a result of which - together w/ a few his companions - suffered some irritating side effects (complete loss of hair; tiny but painful spots on the side of the head) 3 months later. Native stories even talk about "very skinny, black one-eyed people in iron clothing" found frozen inside a 'cauldron' (pp. 290-94). This title nonetheless fails to be a reader friendly reference book, in that it lacks table of contents, bibliography, index, map(s), and could use an editor to enliven the rather dry text and relegate some of the material to the notes, of which there is none in the present, 1st edition. Alleged targeted individual of psychotronic harassment/experiment, mind control researcher Kathy Kasten has a quite informative review available online.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Description of book,
This review is from: Mysterious Sky: Soviet UFO Phenomenon (Paperback)
"It is an in-depth history of UFO (and USO) sightings in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and post-communist Russia, Ukraine, CIS. They describe military, scientific, and intelligence (both Soviet and American) reports of UFO sightings, as well as offer a detailed analysis of the most famous UFO cases. We describe fascinating incidents in Ukraine, Russian Far East, the Tien-Shen Mountains, along the Sino-Soviet and Iranian borders, and the Soviet Arctic territories. The ever forbidden strategic Kola Peninsula, the faraway baffling Chukotka and its strange lakes, Karelia, the Urals, Kazakhstan, Yakutia...they present UFO reports from the formerly inaccessible Soviet territories and top secret sites. Their sources are top Russian and Ukrainian ufologists, military officers, scientists (including astronomers), GULAG prisoners, Soviet pilots, submarine commanders, and historians, among others. From the ancient Russian "signs in the sky" to unsolved mystery of the Tunguska Phenomenon through the sightings of modern Russian cosmonauts, they have covered all chapters of the fascinating history of UFO phenomenon in the former USSR. But they have also dedicated a large chapter to intriguing reports of Unidentified Submergible Objects (USO) observed by Russian and Soviet seamen throughout the world. Petrozavodsk to Dalnegorsk, Ladoga, Orenburg,Voronezh, Tallin, Vashka, Sasovo, Stavropol and many more; from the secret Soviet spaceports to secret research centers to the secret Ministry of Defense UFO research programs. The authors show dramatic developments and heretofore unknown twists of Russia's UFO research. The book contains information about Nazi "discs" and sightings of UFOs over the Soviet and East European battlefields...Reports of Soviet pilots firing on UFOs, sightings of strange objects over Chernobyl, sinister visits of Unidentified Flying Objects to nuclear testing sites and submarine bases; reports from American spies and former Nazi scientists, concentration camps prisoners, and Soviet field commanders; SDI program and Soviet tracking stations; mysterious "swimmers"," cauldrons", "Nyurgun Bootur", "goloan" "whispers" and "croakers"; Tibet expeditions of Soviet intelligence; UFO accounts from the files of Czarist secret police; Stalin and the paranormal research; deadly secrets of the Central Asian deserts, Pamir Mountains; explosions in the taiga and search for the Devil's Cemetery; peculiar demise of Soviet Phobos spacecraft; enigmatic "clouds"; Mountain of the Dead, the Valley of Death; and UFO visits to the Chechnya battlefields... those episodes, photographs, and much more is presented in Mysterious Sky." (description of the book from the International UFO Conference, Laughlin NV website)
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mysterious Sky,
By
This review is from: Mysterious Sky: Soviet UFO Phenomenon (Paperback)
Mysterious Sky is a very good overall book of the Russian experience with UFOs throughout history. The writers also present alternative explanations to UFOs, showing how misinterpretation can happen. A minor weakness is in the writing structure, which was reportedly not edited, in that many times proper words are missing in sentences.
Some of the more interesting cases presented are Fighter Pilot First Class Lev Vyatkin's encounter with a milky-white ray from a UFO, the loss of six Soviet aircraft and twelve pilots from an apparent UFO attack, the strange deaths of mountaineers on February 2, 1959 in which their dead bodies were orange-colored from an unknown energy source, and Soviet frogmen's dangerous experience with giant humanoid swimmers who wore only helmets and silvery suits. Mysterious Sky also describes many Russian UFO researchers' history and experiences while dealing with a government that many times actively discouraged such investigations. Mysterious Sky is an important book that bridges the societal and informational gap in showing extraordinary experiences and the dedicated people who wanted to understand them.
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