The creature was discovered in Kyshtym in 1996. Photo: Varnautre.
In the summer of 1996, the village of Kaolinovy near the city of Kyshtym in the Ural region, more than 1,700 kilometers east of Moscow, witnessed an odd scene: retired woman Tamara Prosvirina holding something wrapped in a blanket and playing games. talk to it.
“She told us it was her baby, Alyoshenka (Alexey’s short name) but didn’t let us see the baby,” a local resident said. Prosvirina actually has a son named Alexey but he is an adult. “So we assumed she was crazy, talking to a toy, thinking it was like her son.”
However, what was in the blanket was not a toy but a living creature Prosvirina found in the forest. Alyoshenka is described as a humanoid creature 20-25 cm tall. “The body is brown, has no hair, bulging eyes. It moves its tiny lips and makes a high-pitched squeak,” said Tamara Naumova, a friend of Prosvirina.
Prosvirnina’s daughter-in-law said that Prosvirina gave the “baby” cheese and condensed milk. “His mouth is round and red. It looks sad.”
Alyoshenka was nicknamed “the elves of Kyshtym”. Locals believe that Alyoshenka is an alien who mistakenly landed in Kyshtym. Another theory is that Alyoshenka is a genetic mutation caused by radiation.
In 1957, the Kyshtym region suffered the first nuclear disaster in the history of the Soviet Union. Plutonium exploded at the nearby Mayak secret nuclear power plant, blowing off the 160-ton concrete roof. This is the third most serious nuclear accident in history, after Fukushima in 2011 and Chernobyl in 1986. After the explosion, the area was severely radioactive.
“Sometimes fishermen catch fish without eyes or fins,” says journalist Andrey Loshak, who has made films about Alyoshenka.
Some people observe Alyoshenka’s body in 1996. Video: YT.
A few months after starting to raise Alyoshenka, Prosvirina was admitted to the hospital for treatment for schizophrenia. She firmly refused because she thought that the “baby” would die if not cared for, but no one believed her.
Alyoshenka eventually died from not being fed. Prosvirina’s friend Naumova explained that she had been away from the village for a while and when she returned the little creature had passed away.
A friend of Prosvirina took Alyoshenka’s body, washed it with brandy, then dried it to make it look like a “mummy” and gave it to police officer Vladimir Bendlin. Bendlin tries to figure out the story, but his superiors are not interested in the strange creature and ask him to drop the investigation of the “silly story”.
Bendlin decided to continue the investigation himself and kept Alyoshenka’s body in the refrigerator, but was unable to confirm or disprove the theory that Alyoshenka was an alien. A local pathologist said that Alyoshenka was “not human”, while a gynecologist suggested that Alyoshenka was just a severely deformed baby.
Bendlin then gave the creature’s body to UFO researchers, who did not return it. Alyoshenka’s body has not been found yet.
Prosvirina died in 1999 from being hit by a truck in the middle of the night. Locals say she danced on the highway. Most people who have directly seen this creature have passed away.
Experts are skeptical about the theory that Alyoshenka is an alien. In 2003, the body of a humanoid creature with a similar appearance was found in Atacama, Chile. In 2018, a geneticist at Stanford University said it was someone with a genetic mutation.
In Kyshtym, people still remember Alyoshenka’s gloomy fate. Very few people here named you Alexey. “Who would want their child to be ridiculed at school as the ‘little man of Kyshtym’?” wrote Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.