The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is located outside the city of Pripyat in Ukraine, 11 miles from Chernobyl city, with construction of the first reactor beginning in the 1970s. In the following years, three more reactors were added. At the time of the disaster, two more reactors were under construction – this was an indelible tragedy that left humanity with fear and eternal sorrow, as well as many unsolved mysteries.
The Explosion in 1986
At 1:23 AM on April 26, 1986, the No. 4 reactor at Chernobyl was shut down for maintenance. During the shutdown, a test was being conducted to verify the safety emergency core cooling function. It is still unclear what exactly caused the explosion, but a lapse in oversight seems to be one of the reasons.
The first explosion was a steam explosion. Steam from a damaged channel entered the internal space of the reactor, causing the destruction of the reactor’s shell, tearing and lifting the upper plate with a force of 2000 tons. This further caused the fuel channels to rupture, completely draining the reactor core of water, leading to more nuclear or thermal explosions in the reactor.
The second explosion occurred a few seconds after the first. Some believe the second explosion was caused by hydrogen, which was produced by overheated steam reacting with zirconium or by incandescent graphite reacting with steam. Others think it was more like a nuclear accident or a thermal explosion of the reactor, caused by the complete loss of water in the reactor core, leading to the uncontrolled escape of fast neutrons. Regardless, this is considered the most severe nuclear power plant disaster in history. The radioactive dust released was more than four times that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb explosion.
Inside the cooling tower of Chernobyl’s No. 5 reactor
The explosion triggered a chain reaction. The fire at Reactor No. 4 burned until May 10, 1986, when it was finally extinguished by helicopters dropping sand and lead into it and injecting liquid nitrogen. 
A Disaster
The explosion at Chernobyl released radioactive particles into the air. Smoke and wind carried it to nearby towns and crossed international borders. Most of the radioactive fallout settled in Belarus, with light nuclear rain falling even in Ireland.
The accident led to the evacuation of over 336,000 people, with 600,000 exposed to radiation. Initially, the steam explosion caused the death of 2 people, but 56 people, including 47 workers and 9 children with thyroid cancer, died directly from the disaster, with up to 4,000 dying from radiation-induced cancer. Nearby pine forests turned ginger-colored and died, earning the name “Red Forest”. Horses left behind during the evacuation died from thyroid damage, and some cows also perished. Those cows that survived suffered from developmental issues due to thyroid damage. Wildlife in the most affected areas either died or ceased breeding.
This accident turned Pripyat into a wildlife sanctuary, with most of the evacuated people never returning. Reports indicate that children born near Chernobyl still suffer from severe birth defects and rare types of cancer. However, even more bizarre are some chilling supernatural claims associated with Chernobyl.
“Black Bird” Legend
In April 2005, an article titled “The Black Birds of Chernobyl” appeared online. It described nightmares experienced by Chernobyl staff weeks before the meltdown in 1986, and strange, threatening phone calls warning of the impending disaster. Some even reported seeing “a giant, headless black figure with huge wings and fiery red eyes”. The article also described some emergency personnel at the disaster site reporting sightings of a “20-foot-tall bird” flying in and out of the smoke plumes, though these claims lacked evidence.
In 2019, this event was again in the news. Australian archaeologist Robert Maxwell, who had surveyed Chernobyl in 2010 and 2012, told the media that he heard the “black bird” legend from locals while in the exclusion zone.
Mothman Legend
This “black bird” bears a striking resemblance to the legendary “Mothman”. In 1967, a mysterious winged humanoid warned the citizens of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, of their impending doom. In a 2002 Hollywood movie, a character hinted at similar phenomena occurring at Chernobyl. However, according to cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, who was involved in the film, this plot was entirely fictional.
Another source claims that intelligent extraterrestrial life forms were interested in the Chernobyl disaster. Dr. George King, founder of the Aetherius Society, claimed he contacted aliens aboard a Martian spacecraft named “Satellite No. 3” 4 hours and 53 minutes before the Chernobyl accident, receiving a warning of the impending disaster. Dr. King was instructed to immediately activate Earth’s “spiritual energy radiation”. This story also became evidence for the Aetherius Society: “The Cosmic Masters… have always regarded nuclear experiments as the greatest threat to humanity and have explicitly stated that they would intervene where karma allowed.”
Frequent UFO Sightings
In the years following the Chernobyl disaster, many locals and newspapers shared stories of UFOs appearing over Chernobyl and Kyiv.
Mikhail Varitsky, a senior dosimetrist in the Dose Control Department, claimed that on the night of the Chernobyl disaster, he and many others saw a UFO above Reactor No. 4. In 1992, his statement was included in the book “UFOs – Guests from the Future”: “We saw a fireball slowly flying in the sky. I think the ball’s diameter was 6 or 8 meters. Then we saw two red beams extending towards the fourth unit, the object was about 300 meters from the reactor, and the entire event lasted about 3 minutes. After that, the object extinguished and flew off to the northwest.”
UFO over Chernobyl
According to Varitsky’s dosimeter readings, during that time, the radiation level of the reactor dropped from 3000 milliroentgens per hour to 800 milliroentgens. Russian news media “Pravda” reported this finding in 2002, concluding: “UFOs reduced the radiation level by almost four times, which might have prevented a nuclear explosion.”
In the following years, “Chernobyl UFOs” became a hot topic in Ukraine. Doctor Eva Nomofna Gospina claimed she photographed an object hovering in the sky during a subsequent malfunction in September 1989. In August 1990, “Chernobyl Bulletin” (Issue No. 64) reported another sighting:
Between 5:00 AM and 7:35 AM on August 7, another encounter with an unknown phenomenon occurred. At this time, workers living in Zeleny Mys observed a shiny cylindrical object, like an empty spool, at an altitude of 5-8 kilometers over the Ivankov town area. This object periodically changed its structure, with the discs at its ends separating, their number changing from 2 to 3. A red dot rotated around the cylinder. At 7:35 AM, a military aircraft appeared on the horizon, and the UFO disappeared.
UFOs in Photographs
In October 1990, nuclear scientist Alexander Klimov reported seeing another such craft over the Chernobyl zone. On the evening of October 11, 1991, a fire broke out at Chernobyl’s Reactor No. 2 (this incident led to the reactor’s eventual shutdown). Five days later, local photographer Vladimir Savran, from the Chernobyl Echo newspaper, reported another sighting. He was documenting the half-collapsed roof of the generator hall at the time, not noticing anything unusual with the naked eye, “the sky was autumnal grey, but perfectly clear.”
However, when he developed the film, the photos seemed to show an object similar to the one Eva Gospina had photographed two years earlier, though this one was viewed from below.
Cover of “UFO – Guests from the Future” and Savran’s 1991 UFO photo
In November 1991, “Chernobyl Echo” published this photo, adding an editorial comment: “The characteristic of UFOs is that they are invisible to the human eye but appear on photographs and film, a trait reported more than once in the media… At the request of the publisher, experts carefully examined the negatives and found no signs of forgery.”
Increasing UFO Phenomena
Prior to the Chernobyl disaster, reports of UFO sightings in the Kyiv region were quite rare. In the past 30 years, there were only four reports in total. However, in the years following 1986, many citizens, photographers, and military personnel in the area reported seeing strange luminous objects in the sky.
Between 1986 and 1990, pilot Peter Vladimirovich Vozhechovsky claimed to have witnessed over ten individual objects and groups of UFOs; in September 1988, Kyiv resident Vadim Vasilyevich Shevchuk reported seeing two luminous objects hovering over the Kyiv Nuclear Research Institute at the city’s exhibition area, his description closely resembling what Mikhail Varitsky claimed to have seen on the night of the Chernobyl disaster.
On November 12, 1989, at 7:46 PM, Colonel Shavanov, on duty at an air defense radar station in the area, received a report from Kyiv residents about a luminous object over the exhibition area. Shavanov called home, and his daughter confirmed she had just seen from her ninth-floor balcony: “A white cross, a rectangle, with a glowing spiral inside – it seemed to be pulsating, illuminated.” A fighter interceptor was dispatched to the location, also very close to the Kyiv Nuclear Research Institute, but found nothing.
On December 20, 1989, between 6:00 PM and 7:00 PM, local resident Ivan Kutcher spotted another anomaly over Irpin, reporting a luminous object moving toward Kyiv. Later that evening at 8:00 PM, photojournalist Lyubov Karentskaya reported a similar luminous UFO over Kyiv’s central stadium.
Sighting Reports from Kyiv Residents
Another sighting occurred on March 13, 1990, near the Kyiv TV Tower area. At 10:13 PM, local residents Denis Khnatyk, Yuri Goncharenko, and Dmitry Pinchuk said they saw a “mushroom-shaped” object hovering in the sky, flashing with light. Another witness, Sergei Brizgunov, made a similar report, stating he saw the same sight from the Gold Ear Hotel, lasting over half an hour. Another witness on March 13 was Alexei Kurgankov, who described seeing the same object from the Borshchagivka area in Ukraine.
UFO over Kyiv TV Tower
On May 16, 1990, engineer Sergei Ogarkov, a member of the All-Union Geodetic Society, claimed that just after 9:00 PM, he observed an unidentified flying object moving through the western sky with his telescope. Later that evening, residents of Kyiv’s Troeshchyna residential area claimed they saw two objects resembling “inverted plates” hanging in the sky above them.
On October 17, 1990, many Kyiv residents reportedly saw another unidentified flying object hovering over Khreshchatyk and Independence Square. This report might have first appeared in the “Kyiv Evening News” on April 2, 1991. A month later, on November 7, Kyiv resident Yuri Novikov and his daughter, while walking in the Kharkiv district, saw what he later described as “a huge object, a grey metallic cylinder, enveloped in a flickering halo, hanging below the low clouds.”
Conspiracy Theory or Real Events?
It should be noted that most of these reports were not public until the 1990s. In the initial years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the newly liberated Ukrainian media published numerous extraordinary stories and baffling conspiracy theories. While many of the sightings mentioned above were photographed by photojournalists, few authentic photos support them.
UFO Sightings Around Nuclear Facilities Worldwide
In 2011, a website claiming to be the Russian News Agency published an article listing several sightings not connected to other sources, and the author provided his own interpretation of the link between Chernobyl and UFOs:
From these facts, one can conclude that on the evening of April 26, 1986, it was not only the brave people who faced a hellish death that were concerned about the impending disaster. According to these testimonies, it’s clear that these elusive extraterrestrials were also very concerned about the fate of humanity and the third planet from the sun.
UFOs Around Nuclear Facilities Worldwide
The idea that extraterrestrials have taken measures to protect humans from nuclear technology is not new. Historically, locations with significant nuclear importance have reported frequent UFO sightings, and this correlation seems to persist to this day.
In March 1993, an object was spotted over Hartlepool Nuclear Power Station in Northeast England. A local newspaper quoted UFOlogist Richard D. Hall as saying, “UFOs have always been interested in nuclear energy, so seeing a UFO at Hartlepool is not surprising.”
In 2014, nuclear power plants in France and Belgium went into high alert after unidentified flying objects were seen overhead. It was reported that between early October and early November, there were 18 instances of UFOs flying over French airspace. Notably, some of these were simultaneous, suggesting coordinated collective action by UFOs.
Drones or UFOs?
The straightforward explanation is that these were drones, although the identity or motive of the drone pilots has remained unclear. However, a manager at a French plant dismissed the drone explanation, insisting that the objects seen overhead were UFOs.
French law prohibits drones from flying within 5 kilometers of nuclear power plants. Such laws are typically enforced by using signal jammers and hardcoding “no-fly zones” into drone software. The UK has also researched a range of new anti-drone technologies applied near airports, power plants, and nuclear facilities. These measures evidently did not prevent UFO sightings.
Trawsfynydd Nuclear Power Plant
Trawsfynydd Nuclear Power Plant, shut down in 1991 and started its decommissioning process, had anti-drone devices installed around it out of caution. In March 2002, Officer Brian Roberts claimed that he and his wife saw a craft hovering near the nuclear power plant for about 10 minutes one night. He described it as saucer-shaped, “with bright halos moving in a circular pattern along the vertical centerline.”
Investigation from the US
In 2017, The New York Times reported that $22 million of the Pentagon’s $600 billion annual budget was allocated to the “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.” This military intelligence project investigated UFO reports, headed by Luis Elizondo in an office on the fifth floor of the Pentagon. The project collected unidentified aviation debris and compiled video and audio records of UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) dating back to World War II. According to Elizondo, many such sightings were associated with nuclear facilities and test sites.
One of the most famous UFO incidents of the 1940s was linked to a location less than 100 miles from the first atomic bomb test site. In July 1945, a 7-mile-high mushroom cloud rose over the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, visible from Roswell. Two years later, in July 1947, a foreman on a local ranch found unidentified debris in his fields after a thunderstorm. The Roswell incident was later officially explained as debris from a Cold War experimental surveillance device, part of a project called Mogul. However, numerous unexplained aerial phenomena have been observed at the site since, which are harder to explain.
Investigative journalist and UAP researcher George Knapp interviewed over a dozen workers from the New Mexico nuclear test site, where such sightings were reportedly so common that security personnel were specifically assigned to monitor these phenomena. Knapp said, “At our facilities where we first designed and built nuclear weapons, where we handle fuel, where we test weapons, where we deploy these weapons at bases, on ships, on nuclear submarines – all these places, all the people working there have seen these things.”
Statements from Astronauts
Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man on the moon, grew up in New Mexico. In 2015, he told The Guardian, “Extraterrestrials are most likely interested in the fact that we have a weapons testing facility at White Sands, and they’re also interested in what we or the US military are doing.” They observed our activities at White Sands and monitored our development.”
Mitchell was also quoted regarding recent incidents where UFOs were believed to have interfered with – or even prevented – nuclear missile tests. He said, “I have spoken with many Air Force officers who worked in these silos during the Cold War. They told me UFOs would often appear above their heads, and frequently disable their missiles. Other officers from a Pacific Coast base told me their (test) missiles were often shot down by alien spacecraft. There was a lot of activity back then.”
Are UFOs Monitoring Human Nuclear Activities?
Regardless of the accuracy of these claims, it is a fact that reports of UFO sightings have become increasingly frequent at locations related to nuclear technology. Perhaps this is because some extraterrestrial species are guiding our scientific development or there’s a more humane explanation for this correlation.
Centuries ago, our wars turned cities into ruins, and subsequent industrial disasters destroyed forests or polluted rivers. Since the Atomic Age began, we’ve lived with a sense of existential dread, knowing our mistakes and conflicts now can cause not just local destruction but global devastation.
If we are not alone in the universe, there’s reason to believe that there are supervisory forces from space watching over us. From the first atomic test, extraterrestrial spacecraft have shown interest in our nuclear activities. And their ultimate purpose might be to protect us from ourselves. This view has become prevalent in the Western world.
While UFO sightings over Western nuclear facilities might not seem directly connected to Chernobyl, there is one incident among all Western sightings with an unexpected link to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone: an event in 1967 near Falcon Lake in Manitoba, Canada, dubbed by the media as “Canada’s Roswell.”
Falcon Lake Incident
On May 20, 1967, Stefan Michalak, a Polish mechanic and amateur geologist, ventured into the woods 150 miles east of Winnipeg, Manitoba, searching for silver and quartz in the rocks around Falcon Lake. While stopping for lunch, Michalak noticed something in the sky. He later described it as “two cigar-shaped objects with protrusions,” which “seemed to be descending, emitting a strong reddish light.”
One object hovered about 7.6 meters above the ground and then left. The other landed on a flat rock by the water’s edge. After sketching the shape of the craft, Michalak approached it. At first, he thought it might be some experimental American aircraft – despite seeing no markings or insignia on the hull.
Michalak believed the craft had landed there for repairs. It emitted a strong smell of sulfur. He heard noises from inside and shouted to offer help. There was no response.
According to Michalak, he was close enough to touch the hull, and in doing so, his gloves were burned. Then, a side of the craft opened, and he peered inside, seeing flashing lights.
But the hatch suddenly closed and turned to exhaust, sending a heat wave that blew him back, igniting his shirt. The craft then took off directly into the sky.
Michalak’s Injuries
After the encounter, Stefan Michalak felt seriously ill. He experienced nausea, vomiting, and some visual impairment, with first-degree burns on his chest. He was immediately taken to the hospital. Dr. Horace Dudley, a radiologist from the University of Southern Mississippi, described Michalak’s symptoms as “typical of whole-body severe exposure to X-ray or gamma-ray radiation,” which might mean, “Mr. Michalak received about 100-200 roentgens of radiation.”
However, by May 22, when Michalak was brought to the Canadian Atomic Energy Laboratories in Pinawa, examiners found no evidence of radiation sickness. His burns were confirmed as thermal and chemical burns, not radiation burns. In the following days, Michalak suffered from persistent headaches, his appetite completely dropped, leading to significant weight loss.
Investigators collected soil samples from the “landing site” described by Michalak. Analysis showed the soil’s radiation levels were above average, at 0.3 microcuries. Meanwhile, the burn site on Michalak’s chest swelled into a grid-like rash. These rashes would slowly disappear and then reappear, until his death in 1999.
UFO Droppings
The media began referring to the Falcon Lake incident as “Canada’s Roswell.” Unlike most UFO reports, it left behind substantial physical evidence – Michalak’s unique scars, his melted gloves, his scorched hat and shirt, and samples of radioactive dust – all of which were repeatedly studied by experts, but no one could explain them.
When investigators sent their lab reports to the Department of Health and Welfare in Ottawa, it sparked panic over the potential risk of radioactive contamination. Discussions about sealing off the area and establishing a quarantine zone were held, but due to the low radiation levels, such extreme measures were not taken.
In 1968, Stefan Michalak returned to Falcon Lake. He had a theory that the radiation might come from something beneath the rocks. When he chiseled open a crack with a rock hammer, he found metal: smooth silver zigzags about 4 to 5 inches long, fitting into the rock’s crevices as if molten metal had been poured into them. According to Michalak’s son, these metal artifacts were proven to have unusual radioactivity, and Michalak jokingly said, “This is alien garbage. Maybe the ship landed to unload some waste, and what they saw was basically UFO droppings.”
Roadside Picnic
Years after the media reported on Michalak’s sighting at Falcon Lake in Canada, two Soviet writers penned a science fiction novel about alien visitation. In this book, titled “Roadside Picnic,” alien spacecraft are mentioned landing on Earth for routine maintenance before continuing to their ultimate destinations.
In the places where these ships landed, aliens left behind strange artifacts, dangerous substances, and persistent radiation pollution, necessitating the establishment of quarantine zones around the landing sites. The authors, Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, did not set the story within the former Soviet Union but hinted in the preface that the “Roadside Picnic” event occurred in Canada.
“Roadside Picnic” had an extraordinary influence on shaping contemporary culture around Chernobyl. The book, along with Andrei Tarkovsky’s later film adaptation “Stalker,” provided a cultural blueprint for the Chernobyl area a decade before the disaster.
“Roadside Picnic” provided a default template for the mystification of the Chernobyl event, and its story continues to influence the tourist experience at Chernobyl to this day. Today, illegal visitors to Chernobyl call themselves “stalkers,” a term from the novel for illegal scavengers seeking alien artifacts around UFO landing sites; many places in the Chernobyl area today also reference this novel, such as the “Roadside Picnic Barbecue Bar.”
