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Tonight on Sightings. From the Russian Republic, our team of investigators captures startling videotape images and returns with eyewitness evidence of bizarre extraterrestrial contact.

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Welcome to Sightings. I'm Tim White. The defeat of communism in the former Soviet Union has had wide-ranging consequences.

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For our Sightings investigative team, it has meant unprecedented access to secret documents and exclusive interviews about one of the most controversial UFO sightings in history.

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In the first of a series of reports from inside Russia, our search for the truth about a mysterious place known as the M Triangle.

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The Republic of Russia is the heart of the new Commonwealth of Independent States that was once the Soviet Union.

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On a daily basis, new information is released to the people of this country about the previous government's clandestine activities.

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One of the most unlikely activities was a well-organized government effort to research UFO phenomena.

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And today, that activity is spoken about openly at the Russian Space Center, especially by those who have been close to the Russian space program, like former Colonel Marina Popovich.

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We are presently standing at the Cosmonaut Training Center of Russia. It is where all the cosmonauts are still trained, even today.

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Some of the training includes the proper protocol in cosmonauts dealing with UFOs.

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As a Colonel, I used to be a terrible skeptic, but when I see the government programs dealing with UFOs, I can't ignore this evidence.

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I've seen photos pilots have taken of saucers attacking planes. We're also now aware of recurring landing sites.

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I have absolutely no doubt that UFOs exist. It is impossible that in a universe this large that's expanding so quickly with new stars and planets being formed that we are a unique planet that sustains life.

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A team of sightings researchers set out to uncover new information about the Soviet government's UFO research efforts.

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Information that had been long suppressed was coming to light.

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Even as our investigation began, a guard involved in a routine examination of our credentials was eager to tell us about his own UFO experiences.

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One year and a half ago, I was standing guard here at Lenin's Tomb in Red Square when I got a message over the radio.

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There was a UFO flying over Spassky Tower. Come quickly.

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When I arrived, I looked, but it had gone away. But there was definitely an object hovering above the tower for several minutes, one militiaman said.

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In the old days, we would be frightened to talk of such things. But today there is an openness. In fact, there is even a TV show on now about such things.

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Once a week, Russians tune their televisions to UFO Unannounced Visit, one of the most popular programs in the country.

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It deals with UFO mysteries, and its host is Alexander Meechekov, a respected journalist and ufologist.

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It was from Alexander that we received our first information about the one UFO story that has captured the imagination of all Russia for the past three years.

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We have a very interesting and mysterious area around the city of Perm. The incidents that happened in that area are hard to believe.

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It's so unbelievable that it is hard to compare that area to any other area of anomaly. That area is called M-Triangle.

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The journalist Pavel Muhartov has been there, and I'll tell you, he had unbelievable experiences there and developed new, almost superhuman abilities after visiting the triangle.

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It's absolutely fantastic.

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We visited with Pavel Muhartov, the journalist who first broke this story of the M-Triangle.

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He's a man with no formal scientific training, but he believes he encountered mysterious forces in the M-Triangle zone that gave him new abilities and knowledge,

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the knowledge that would eventually lead him to the Russian space program.

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I grew up a slight man. My health was never good. I was even kicked out of the Russian military because I was too frail.

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This one here is proof that he was discharged from the army for health reasons.

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After I was discharged from the military, I worked for a newspaper as a reporter. I started reading letters about the M-Triangle zone.

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He found documents in archives that one of the KGB agents started to write reports to his superiors that strange phenomena started to appear.

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There were many UFO sightings, sudden insanity, and dangerous levels of radiation.

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My editor sent me there to cover the story. Wild feelings came over me, strange photos were taken, and many in the group fell ill.

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These are the photos taken at night. That's what they saw during the night, flying and hovering above them.

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For me, the M-Triangle story is good. I developed great knowledge about aerospace and about physics, and my health improved.

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I quit the newspaper and was immediately accepted into the Soviet space program. The M-Triangle changed my life. I am no longer slight. Now I am a cosmonaut.

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The M-Triangle is an area considered to be a hotbed of UFO activity. It is located in a remote area 600 miles east of Moscow and the Ural Mountains.

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Eyewitnesses have reported strange craft, mysterious light phenomena, and encounters of the third kind with translucent beings.

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There are even journals and books devoted to the ongoing sightings in the M-Triangle.

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When Muhartov first wrote about it, I was skeptical. It was too obvious that everyone who lived in the area saw all this extraterrestrial activity.

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Many suggest that the area is high in mercury deposits, and this is causing hallucinations. But could it be to the extent that people are seeing signs and letters in the sky? There must be something there.

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Before our own sightings investigation at the M-Triangle, we stopped at the Commonwealth Euphological Center, a government agency on the outskirts of Moscow dedicated to UFO research.

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Each day we process 15 to 20 UFO reports at our offices, including those from the M-Triangle. We know of the dangers of this zone, and that science has not been able to establish the truth about UFOs in the zone.

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But that doesn't rule out the health hazards. My advice to you is to get in and get out of that dangerous zone. It's just not safe.

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Working in Russia was made more difficult by the lack of provisions we found available. This is a typical grocery store in Russia during business hours, a grim reminder of the upheaval still going on in the New Republics.

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There may be a free market now, but red cabbage is still too expensive for most shoppers. The harsh conditions bear silent witness to the character of the Russian people who endure this hardship on a daily basis.

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After a two and a half hour jet flight into the Ural Mountains, the research team flew an additional 90 minutes by helicopter. We agreed to comply with the government's request that we remain in the M-Triangle for 24 hours only.

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The government warned us of dangers there. People who'd reportedly gone mad, lost their eyesight, or disappeared completely.

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We first landed in a small village just outside the M-Triangle to see if we could find eyewitnesses to the bizarre phenomena in the region. What we found was a village out of the 1890s with people who told stories right out of Star Wars.

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I was walking my grandmother home when we both saw a red flash coming from that zone. Lots of my friends have seen that too.

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Mysterious things that fly in the sky here are common. I don't even listen anymore to such old news.

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I've seen the saucers numerous times. Just say that they are nonsense is nonsense. We know what we see.

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We found no one who had been adversely affected by the reported paranormal activity. We then proceeded on the final leg of our journey into the M-Triangle, accompanied by Emil Bakurin, ufologist and author of the Russian bestseller UFOs, Explanation of the Unexplained.

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I've written a book about the zone because there have been so many strange experiences here by believers and skeptics alike. Near our tent, one group saw translucent fireballs that chased them into the woods and burned them seriously.

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Only 17 meters from here a glowing object stunned a research group, one of the men later committed suicide.

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We often see groups of UFOs fly past this field. Sometimes they disappear, sometimes they land and leave radiation.

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The UFOs cited here have yet to be fully explained. The strange light phenomena, however, are thought to be the result of geomagnetic anomalies evident in the area known to scientists as lightning balls.

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We've used very sensitive equipment that measures and reacts to electricity in a battery from as far as 100 meters, but the same piece of measuring equipment wouldn't react to those energetic balls that we've observed.

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Therefore, we conclude that the energy is not of an electromagnetic nature.

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The light phenomena are best seen at night. Our investigative team brought special night vision cameras, and after several hours they photographed what can only be described as startling.

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George, do we see a satellite? What do you think that was?

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No, a satellite cannot do this like this.

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What was it?

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I don't know. It cannot do the trajectories like this in the sky like this and like this.

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The strange streak of light never reappeared. A frame by frame analysis offers more detail, but gives little insight into its origin.

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It may have been a shooting star or a satellite. However, there is little debate among the Russian UFO community that something beyond rational explanation is occurring in this remote region.

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And there is no better proof than Pavel Mahartov, the man who claims he gained secret knowledge that transformed him from journalist to cosmonaut number 152 after visiting the M Triangle.

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Most of the people we talked with in Russia believe UFOs are operating in the M Triangle. However, off the record, a few scientists offered another possibility.

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They claim that the Soviet government has been secretly testing a new breed of weapons called psychotronic weapons that immobilize an enemy by creating realistic mass hallucinations.

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They suggest that eyewitnesses in the M Triangle may have actually seen something that wasn't really there because they were unwitting participants in a top secret military experiment.