Weird Tales Appear in Media Under Glasnost : Aliens Land UFO in Park, Tass Reports

It was a close encounter of the Communist kind.

Towering, tiny-headed humanoids from outer space landed in the Soviet city of Voronezh and emerged from their spacecraft for a promenade around the park, spreading fear among residents.

At least that’s what the official Tass news agency said Monday.

Tass, contributing to a string of weird tales that have crept into the formerly stuffy state-controlled media in recent months, said, “Scientists have confirmed that an unidentified flying object recently landed in a park in the Russian city of Voronezh. They have also identified the landing site and found traces of aliens who made a short promenade about the park.”

The Soviet media, unleashed by the Kremlin’s policy of glasnost , feel free now to hype incredible stories that seem more at home in the supermarket tabloids of the West. Recent examples have included other accounts of UFOs, sightings of Abominable Snowman-type creatures and a tale about a young mystic who goes into a trance and flies about the cosmos.

According to Monday’s Tass report, a large shining ball or disk was seen hovering over the park by residents of Voronezh, a city 300 miles southeast of Moscow. They saw the UFO land and up to three creatures similar to humans emerge, accompanied by a small robot, Tass said.

“The aliens were three or even four meters (9 to 12 feet) tall, but with very small heads,” the news agency quoted witnesses as saying. “They walked near the ball or disk and then disappeared inside.”

The report, which did not give the date of the purported landing in Voronezh, said onlookers were “overwhelmed with a fear that lasted for several days.”

Genrikh Silanov, head of the Voronezh Geophysical Laboratory, told Tass that scientists investigating the UFO report found a 20-yard depression with four deep dents, as well as two pieces of unidentified rocks.

“At first glance, they looked like sandstone of a deep-red color. However, mineralogical analysis has shown that the substance cannot be found on Earth,” Tass quoted Silanov as saying.

Silanov said the landing site and path taken by the aliens was confirmed using the “biolocation” method of tracking. The agency did not explain what that was.

A Tass duty officer, contacted Monday evening by telephone, refused to identify the reporter who sent the dispatch from Voronezh but stood by the story. “It is not April Fool’s today,” he said.

The report resembled a story last summer in the daily newspaper Socialist Industry, which carried an alleged “close encounter” between a milkmaid and an alien in Central Russia’s Perm region.

In that report, Lyubov Medvedev was quoted as saying she encountered an alien creature “resembling a man, but taller than average, with short legs.” The creature, she said, had “only a small knob instead of a head.”