Marina Popovich, a former Soviet test pilot and retired Air Force colonel, is speaking widely about UFO sightings in Russia and the former Soviet republics. (See also Share International January/February 1992.) What follows is a portion of a talk she gave recently in California on the UFO phenomenon.

The intelligent behaviour of UFOs brought me to the study of the phenomenon after more than 30 years testing aircraft. My first experience in studying UFOs was an expedition in 1980 to the mountains of Pamir.

The expedition of 30 people was designed to do research on the yeti (the abominable snowman). We did not
see the yeti, but the expedition did find footprints. The whole expedition did see a big round object which was flying in a zig zag motion right above our camp in the mountains. Then it stopped and hung in the air, and let a light out.

It was a directed light that had an end to it. The object did this twice. It stopped in such a way, and had such sharp movements, that it couldn’t have been a helicopter or aircraft. Afterwards, it went straight up at a speed which no aircraft could have done. The whole expedition was in shock. That night I experienced a strong feeling of fear.

I was in the tent with my daughter who woke up and started to cry. After that, she developed a fever and had to be evacuated down the mountain. Newspapers later criticized me for taking my daughter along with me.

Before I could resume my job as a test pilot I had to undergo special tests to check my physical and psychological state. The tests turned out fine, and I was was able to return to my profession. When I was being tested, however, I saw six other pilots who were being tested in this same rehabilitation programme.

I asked them why they were there, and they told me this story:

While they were piloting an aircraft at night, suddenly all their equipment went down. Because they had very little fuel left, they had to land very quickly at the landing site with almost no light. When they were making this forced landing at night, suddenly they saw a beam of light behind them.

Because of this beam of light, they were able to land safely. But afterwards, when they told of what they had seen, they were immediately taken to this rehabilitation centre because they were supposed to have been
hurt psychologically and physically from this incident. That was the beginning of my interest in UFOs.

At that time I was elected president of SACUFON, an association of scientists conducting research on UFO, paranormal and other anomalous phenomena. After I became the head of this organization, I began to receive all kinds of information from pilots and flight crews. During 25 years of UFO research, Professional Ziegal and many others have gathered information on 14,000 UFO sightings.

Although Professor Ziegal was persecuted continually in the Soviet Union, he continued to gather information, writing 13 books on the subject. Three of these books are now being published in Russia.

Professor Barlomoff and others began to study the circles left on the ground where UFOs had landed. There was a lot of research done on these UFO landing sites, such as chemical and other analyses of the ground.

One researcher conducted an experiment where she took grain and planted it at the UFO site. She compared the growth of this grain to regular grain located outside the site, and found that the grain on the site grew 20 per cent faster than the normal plants. Her conclusion was that the energy left by the UFO must have had a positive effect on plant growth.

Researchers also did analyses with human blood. They would take the blood and place it at the site. To their amazement, they found that certain components of the blood would decrease and others would increase. Hemoglobin, for example, would decrease.

Other elements such as magnesium would increase. These discoveries led to the thought that the UFO sites could have medical applications.

One other interesting fact we have noted over the years is that in areas where mining of metals and gas takes place, we find a higher percentage of UFO occurrences. Now I would like to talk about the research being done at present in the Soviet Union on UFOs.

In the past, this subject was forbidden, to the point where people who tried to do research on UFOs and other anomalous phenomena would be taken to mental institutions. But the situation has changed. The government is now giving some financial support to institutes, such as the Anomalous Phenomena Division of the Academy of Sciences, who are studying these phenomena.

In 1977 a very special kind of UFO appeared in the city of Petrosbirsk. It looked like a big medusae (jellyfish). People saw it hanging above the city at approximately eight o’clock in the morning. Residents heard their glass windows trembling. Some of the windows were burnt through and specimens were sent to the Academy of Sciences for research on these burnt holes. That day was hailed as the first official day of UFO study in Russia.

A second case occurred near Petrosbirsk. There was a large train travelling from Petrosbirsk to another location. Suddenly, a big round object, approximately 15 metres in diameter, appeared nearby. The train suddenly increased in speed on its own. The driver tried to stop the train because it was accelerating so fast.

The crew was terrified, and in fact one of the crew members wanted to jump out. But this high speed continued for an hour and a half. The round object eventually moved toward the front of the train, and finally the crew was able to use the brakes to stop the locomotive.

A person who was standing nearby saw the approaching train, and the round object in front of it, and was able to take a photo of the train and the object. This picture became the second official photo of a UFO, and was published in all the newspapers.

There were three pieces of solid evidence in this case. One was the photo. The second was the fact that the train used 300 kilograms of gasoline less than would have normally been consumed during this one and one-half hour trip. The third piece of evidence was a tape recording made of the train crew unsuccessfully trying to stop the train with all types of emergency and regular brakes.

These two incidents took place in 1977, and marked the beginning of official UFO research in my country. More recent examples occurred in 1989, in the city of Perm, where many UFOs were observed by children.

UFOs were seen to actually land in an area near a children’s scout camp. The children took many pictures but the photos did not come out. Many other people saw unusual phenomena occurring in this area as well. In fact, this zone of the city was called the Perm Triangle because there were so many UFO occurrences there.

Numerous expeditions went to this district to study these phenomena. Some people who went there to research UFO sightings found luminescent patterns on the walls of their tents which resembled the crop circle formations in England. The patterns would appear and later disappear. People tried to take photos of these patterns but they never came out. Instead, drawings were made of these patterns.

In the (former) Soviet Union there is now a special commission organized to study different phenomena that occur in space and air. One direction of the commission’s study is research on UFOs.

As you know, our country is undergoing considerable economic and other difficulties. Nevertheless, there was money given to the research of UFOs.

Thank goodness Mr Gorbachev instituted glasnost so that we are now able to do research in this area. I understand now that my 30 years as a test pilot was not the most important work of my life.

© Share International

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