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March 1978, Petrozavodsk, Karelia, Russia, I. Rumyantseva:

Brief summary of the event and follow-up:

Sensationalist Russian ufologist Valdimir Azazha reportedly told that in Petrozavodsk, Karelia, Russia, on March 1978, at night, 30-year old I. Rumyantseva, an engineer at the local Central Construction Bureau, was on vacation and was sleeping in a wooden shack in a forested area together with her companions.

Suddenly, she awoke and saw two figures in the room, wearing tight fitting suits similar to divers suits, smooth and polished.

The figures carried sources of light, similar to flashlights, in their hands, that they pointed at the sleeping people.

No one else woke up. Mrs. Rumyantseva pretended to be asleep while she watched the figures. They stood motionless and manipulated their "flashlights". Suddenly she felt paralyzed and at the same moment she heard voices in her head. They wondered why she pretended to be asleep.

Soon after that the humanoids began to examine the paralyzed victim. They were especially concerned with her spine. She was unable to move. Soon the paralysis subsided and when she opened her eyes the two figures were gone.

The next morning the occupants of the shack all felt sick, some had headaches and others vomited.

Basic information table:

Narratives:

[Ref. ar1:] ALBERT ROSALES:

Albert Rosales indicates in his catalogue that in Petrozavodsk, Karelia, Russia, on March 1978, at night, 30-year old I Rumyantseva an engineer at the local Central Construction Bureau was on vacation and was sleeping in a wooden shack in a forested area together with her companions. Suddenly she awoke to see two figures amid the room. The figures wore tight fitting suits, similar to divers, smooth and polished. The strange pair carried sources of light in their hands (similar to flashlights), which they pointed at the sleeping people. No one else woke up. Mrs. Rumyantseva pretended to be asleep while she watched the figures. The figures stood motionless and manipulated their "flashlights". Suddenly she felt paralyzed and at the same moment she heard voices in her head. They wondered why she pretended to be asleep. Soon after that the humanoids began to examine the paralyzed victim. They were especially concerned with her spine. She was unable to move. Soon the paralysis subsided and when she opened her eyes the two figures were gone. The next morning the occupants of the shack all felt sick, some had headaches and others vomited.

Albert Rosales indicates that the source is "Vladimir G Azazha, PhD, Anton Anfalov."

Points to consider:

Vladimir Azazha's credibility is strongly disputed by Russian ufologist Boris Shurinov - see his book "OVNIS en Russie - Les deux faces de l'ufologie russe", Guy Tredaniel publisher, France, 1995. (Anton Anfalov compiled such cases later without claiming any credibility of the stories).

That said, admitting the veracity of the report, it is obvious that all this could have been a simple hypnagogic hallucination episode with the typically associated sleep paralysis.

The "figures" are of no great strangeness, they could have been companions of the witness who would have entered the shack with flashlights simply to make sure that everything is ok there. The light of the lamps is a typical trigger for hypnagogic episodes, puttin the witness out of deep sleep, the body remaining asleep, "paralysed".

It is even possible that the "bad dream" is also due to some food poisoning, the clue being that the occupants of the shack "all felt sick, some had headaches and others vomited".

Although hypnagogic experiences are now quite understood in the medical literature on non-pathological sleep disorders and sleep phenomena, although there are knowledgeable ufologists who understand this phenomenon, many other ufologists are still unable to identify such causes when they apply and still believe such experiences are alien encounters or alien abductions.

I provide a few references among dozens about the topic of hypnagogic hallucination and sleep paralysis:

• "The Old Hag phenomenon as sleep paralysis: a biocultural interpretation", paper by R.C. Ness, in Cultural and Medical Psychiatry, vol. 2 #1, pp 15-39, March 1978.
• "Lucid Dreaming: The Paradox of Consciousness During Sleep", book by Celia Green and Charles McCreery, Routledge publisher, U-K., 1994.
• "Wrestling With Ghosts: A Personal And Scientific Account Of Sleep Paralysis", book by Jorge Conesa Sevilla, Xlibris Corporation publishers, U-K., 2004.
• "Hallucinations and pathological visual perceptions in Maupassant's fantastical short stories - a neurological approach", by L.C. Alvaro, in Journal of the History of Neuroscience, vol 14, #2, pp 100-115, June 2005.
• "Effects of hypnagogic imagery on the event-related potential to external tone stimuli", paper by N. Michida, M. Hayashi, T. Hori, in Sleep, Vol. 28 #7, pp 813-818, July 2005.
• "Sleep and Society: Ventures into the (Un)Known", book by Simon A. Williams, Routledge publisher, 2005.
• "Mental representation of space: Insights from an oblique distribution of hallucinations", paper by T.A Girard, D.L. Martius, J.A. Cheyne in Neuropsychologia, vol. 45 #6, pp 1257-1269, 2007.
• "Parasomnias", paper by D.T. Plante, J.W. Winkelman, in The Psychiatric Clinics of North America, Vol. 29 #4, pp 969-987, December 2006.
• "Paranoid delusions and threatening hallucinations: A prospective study of sleep paralysis experiences", paper preview by J.A. Cheyne, T.A. Girard, scheduled in Consciousness and Cognition for April 2007.

List of issues:

Evaluation:

Possible hypnagogic hallucinationwith sleep paralysis, or ufologist's invention.

Sources references:

* = Source I checked.
? = Source I am told about but could not check yet. Help appreciated.

• [va1] ? Vladimir Azazha, Russia.
• [aa1] ? Anton Anfalov.
• [ar1] * "1978 Humanoid Reports", compiled by Albert Rosales, circa 2007, at www.ufoinfo.com/humanoid/humanoid1978.shtml

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This page was last updated on November 27, 2011.