Case file · Close encounter
Voronezh landing
Soviet news agency TASS reported a landing and tall beings in a city park.
1989 CE · 51.67, 39.18 · status: account
The account
FBIS notes that TASS reported the landing in a Voronezh park on 9 October 1989. On 1 November Literaturnaya Gazeta mocked the 'pilgrimage' of reporters and the controversial 'weighty evidence'.
The researched reading
A glasnost-era sensation built on children’s accounts. Imagination, rumour and eager journalism explain it better than visitors.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Perception, memory or mind | 40% | The witnesses were mostly children, and Soviet TV crews found no adult witnesses; children’s imaginations and shared retelling explain most of it. |
| Undetermined | 25% | The share the reading had given to fabrication on doubt rather than evidence: the record does not settle it either way. |
| Something known, misidentified | 12% | Lights in the evening sky could be aircraft or a bright planet, starting the children’s story. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 12% | Local scientists reported ground marks and radiation readings, but these were not independently confirmed. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 5% | Under glasnost, TASS printed sensational stories; Soviet scientists quickly doubted it, and the three-eyed giant and robot sound like playground invention. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 2% | Nothing natural fits. |
| A poorly understood natural phenomenon | 2% | Speculative only. |
| Secret human technology | 2% | Nothing fits. |
Official position: TASS reported the landing as fact; Soviet scientists and journalists quickly cast doubt on it.