Aleshenka

Meet Aleshenka.

Discovered in the village of Kaolinovy, Russia in 1996 by a mentally ill elderly woman, Tamara Vasilievna Prosvirina, Aleshenka, also known as the Kyshtym Dwarf, is an anthropomorphic artifact alleged to be a small human fetus and/or, you know, an alien.  Two Japanese companies, Asahi TV and MTV Japan actually made documentaries about Aleshenka as its discovery and origins were so fascinating and slightly disturbing.  As if its discovery were not unusual enough, the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of its body and the death of Tamara add to the creepiness factor.

An online Russian newspaper gives a recounting of Aleshenka's discovery, which in my personal opinion reads like fan fiction, but how are we to know if it is actually true?  You see, Tamara suffered from "psychiatric disease" and often spent time gathering flowers from graves at local cemeteries and decorating the rooms of her house with these flowers.  One particular night, Tamara heard a strange voice inside her head that requested she visit the cemetery.  It was there that Tamara found Aleshenka's tiny body, unable to speak, but whistling quietly to attract Tamara's attention.  Tamara scooped Aleshenka up and took it home.

 

Aleshenka's appearance was unique and odd: gray-skinned, hairless, small holes for ears, no eyelids, long fingers with small sharp claws, lack of genitals, and no navel.  Tamara took care of Aleshenka for weeks, acting as though it were her own child.  Both Tamara's daughter-in-law and mother allegedly saw Aleshenka but did not report it to the police as they were happy Tamara had a pet/child to take care of and to occupy her time.  However, it was a neighbor who reported Tamara to psychiatrists and thus Tamara was admitted to a psychiatric hospital.  As there was no one in the house to take care of Aleshenka, it died of starvation and dehydration.  Tamara had a friend, Vladimir Nurdinov, who remembered Aleshenka and went to check on it.  Unfortunately, by this time it was too late and Aleshenka's little corpse was passed on to the local police. 

In 1999, Tamara was unfortunately killed an in automobile accident upon trying to escape the hospital.  Tamara was naked and walking along the highway, wearing only green socks.  Eye-witnesses say it looked as though Tamara was reacting to someone calling to her.  Before police were able to intervene, Tamara was hit by two vehicles, thrown over 40 feet in the air, and fell back onto the road, where she died.

Soon after Tamara's death, the remains of Aleshenka disappeared.  There are a plethora of theories of what might've happened.  Aleshenka's body was recovered by a UFO inhabited by members of Aleshenka's species.  Aleshenka's body was bought by a wealthy collector of oddities.  Aleshenka's body was stolen or simply disappeared into thin air.  It was also reported that the investigator assigned to the case handed over Aleshenka's body to a pair of "ufologists" to examine the body.  To this day, no one knows what happened to Aleshenka. 

On April 15th, 2004, genetic experts at the Moscow Vavilov Institute of General Genetics made an official statement that Aleshenka was a premature female human infant with severe deformities.  The Kyshthm Disaster of 1957 greatly polluted the area with radiation, thusly resulting in the potential deformities present in the human fetus.  Interestingly enough, Vadim Chernobrov, a coordinator with the public research center, Kosmopoisk, is quoted as saying, "A gene discovered in the DNA samples doesn't correspond with any genes pertaining to humans or anthropoid apes.  No gene samples available at the laboratory match the gene."

Let me go ahead and add to the creepiness of this case: Mark Milkhiker was an academic who looked into the case of the Kyshytm phenomenon on location and carefully examined the area in which Aleshenka was found.  Soon after, Milkhiker fell ill and died of a sudden heart attack.  Also, Chernobrov, as mentioned above, was diagnosed with a mysterious disease that paralyzed him from the waist down, a disease which doctors were unable to explain.  Coincidence?  Bad luck?  Curse?  Who knows?

SO, all this being said, what are our thoughts on Aleshenka?  Fetus/alien?  Real/fiction?  Are the details surrounding Aleshenka's existence so cloudy and unbelievable that this could all be one big urban legend?  Is it better to be a skeptic and think this is all hogwash or be optimistically curious and perhaps believe Aleshenka's story to be true?

I had originally intended to add Pedro the Mummy and the Atacama skeleton to this post via my sistar Joanna sending me links about them, BUT I realize this post alone is becoming tl;dr (too long, didn't read.)  Therefore, look for Tiny Alien Mummies PART TWO coming up in the next few weeks!

-Amanda

Reference Article #1

The Sodder Children - Unsolved Mystery

It is the most gut-wrenching fear of every parent - to lose your child.  On Christmas Eve 1945, George and Jennie Sodder had this fear come true not just once, but for five of their ten children.  A fire erupted in their Fayetteville, West Virginia home and their five children who slept upstairs, Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jennie, and Betty were not able to escape the fire.

But here's where the creepy part comes in - no body parts or bones linked to these five children were uncovered in the rubble.  And another thing, when George tried to drive his truck near the house to climb on top of it and reach the second floor, his engine wouldn't start.  And another thing - the phones lines to the house had been cut.  The head police chief, Chief Morris, claimed the fire must've been hot enough to cremate the bodies of the children.  The fire was officially chalked up to 'faulty wiring.'

Sadly, this story gets stranger and creepier.  Sometime before the fire broke out, the Sodder family was visited by two odd men posing as insurance salesmen on their doorstep.  Allegedly, one of the men told George (an Italian immigrant) that he would pay for the negative remarks about Mussolini that he had been making around town.  These strange men made very specific threats about their house burning down and their chidlren dying, and I quote, "Your goddamn house is going up in smoke and your children are going to be destroyed.  You are going to be paid for the dirty remarks you are making about Mussolini."  EVEN STRANGER - this exact same 'insurance salesman' served on the coronor's jury that demeed the fire an accident.

 

The more I read about this case, the more my mind is blown to tiny pieces.  There were several eyewitnesses that came forward saying they saw the insurance salesman around the Sodder house carrying a block and tackle, which could've been used to disable George's car.  They also found a strange plastic object in the Sodder yard, which George claimed could've been a Napalm bomb.  So is this truly a case of a mysterious disappearance, an intricately planned attack, an accident gone wrong?  In any case, what happened to the bodies of the five Sodder children?

After some time had passed since the fire, a waitress at a roadside diner and a woman in a hotel in Charleston claimed to have seen four of the five missing children sitting at a table surrounded by Italian-looking men and women who would not let them speak.  Jennie Sodder also received a mysterious photograph in the mail 20 years after the fire of a man alleged to be her son.  The letter was postmarked from Kentucky but had no return address.  On the back of the photograph was written, "Louis Sodder.  I love brother Frankie.  Ilil Boys.  A90132 or 35."  George and Jennie hired a private detective and sent him to Kentucky to investigate.  They never heard from him again.

George and Jennie erected a large billboard, seen below, that was amended over the years and remained standing for over 40 years.  George died in 1968, sending Jennie into a further spiral of depression.  She erected a fence around their property and began adding more and more rooms to their house, building layer and layer between her and the outside world.  Jennie wore black clothing exclusively since the fire and continued to do so until her own death in 1989.  Upon Jennie's death, the billboard came down.

Sylvia is the youngest and last surviving Sodder child.  At the age of 71, she still pores crime sleuthing websites and engages with those still interested in her family's mystery.  Sylvia doesn't believe her siblings perished in the fire of 1945.  Her first memories are of the fire at two years old and she has spent her life asking so many questions and getting very few answers.

-Amanda

The Disappearance of Brandon Swanson

In 2008, 19 year old Brandon Swanson was driving home when he crashed his car into a ditch at 2:00AM.  Slightly panicked, on a dark street at night, Brandon called his parents hoping for assistance.  His parents set out to look for him, but to no avail.  They continued a 45 minute phone call with Brandon trying desperately to find him on the wooded streets of Canby, Minnesota.  At one point, Swanson claimed he could see lights and started to head towards the nearby town.  Out of nowhere, his parents heard Brandon exclaim, "Oh shit!" and the call cut off.

This is the last Brandon's parents heard from him.  Now almost seven years later, Brandon still has not come home.  After an intense search with hundreds of volunteers and 34 dogs, Brandon's car was found 120 days after his disappearance, but nothing else was ever found.  Upon finding Brandon's car, there was no evidence of foul play and his family stated that he had no reason to dissapear.  It is widely believed that Brandon slipped and fell into a nearby river but for two days after his disappearance, his phone rang, meaning if Brandon fell into the river, his phone did not fall with him.  It is also odd that the phone records show he was incorrect about his location and was actually 20 minutes away from the town he claimed he could see the lights of.

The tragedy of Brandon's disappearance is felt every day in his parent's home.  They still leave the porch light on for him, though after such a period of time with over 75 tips given to the police department but no strong leads on his whereabouts, his parents were quoted on the 5th anniversary of his disappearance as saying  "It's not that we've forgotten Brandon or anything like that.  It's just that we've searched extensively for 3 to 4 years.  It hurts."

Granted, there is a plethora of missing persons cases filed on a regular basis, none any less sad than the other, but often surrounded by a whirlwind of attention at first and then quickly forgotten when replaced by the next big news story.  It is less often that people stop to think about the families involved in these cases and how when it seems as though everyone else has forgotten about their loved one, they are reminded of them every single day without fail.  What was it that caused Brandon to exclaim "Oh shit!" that night?  Was it as simple as falling into a river (though a body was never recovered from any nearby rivers)?  Was it a criminal taking advantage of the situation?  Was there a supernatural force at play?  Was a wildlife attack possible?  There are endless questions, the answer to which we may never know.

-Amanda

The Den - Movie Review

The Den
Released 2013
Directed by Zachary Donahue

=Spoilers Contained in Review=

The basic premise of the film The Den is a young woman named Elizabeth has received a grant to conduct a study on human behavior on the internet, pledging to be connected online 24/7 to a video chat service called The Den, in hopes of interacting with as many people as possible and recording each and every conversation.  Sure, this sounds relevant in today's technology-driven society, with Skype, ChatRoulette, FaceTime, and all the other social media platforms with which today's youth can get themselves in trouble with.  We are all warned from an early age of the dangers of interacting with strangers on the internet, never knowing for sure who we're talking to or what their true intentions are.  Elizabeth herself encountered her fair share of weirdos on The Den ranging from naked old weirdos pleasuring themselves on camera to the age-old favorite, the Nigerian prince needing your bank account routing number in order to transfer you a million dollars or some such nonsense.

One night, Elizabeth and her best friend Jenni are having a beer and on The Den when they come across a still photo of a teenage girl smiling at the camera rather than a video feed, with the screen name Pyagrl*16.  When Elizabeth leaves the room, Pyagrl*16 sends Jenny all sorts of crude messages and signs off.  Later that night, a hacker logs into Elizabeth's computer and we hear muffled screaming in the background.  We are led to believe something real sketchy is up with this Pyagirl*16 chick.  All along, Elizabeth has been neglecting her boyfriend, Dominic, in order to focus on her project, but he decides to come over one night and the hacker records them having some 'adult time' and sends it in an email to the president of the organization that gave Elizabeth the grant, resulting in her funding being suspended.  Things take a turn for the worst when Elizabeth witnesses the girl in the Pyagirl*16 photo having her throat slit on camera by a mysterious burlap-sack headed man.

Later on, we see this same man lurking in the back of Dominic's car and kidnapping him as well as luring her best friend, Jenni, over to Elizabeth's house and then smashing her head into a desk. Elizabeth later finds Jenni in her bathtub with her wrists slit.  Probably the worst act of Burlap-Sack Head is when he breaks into Elizabeth's pregnant sister's house, tapes her mouth shut and holds a knife to her very pregnant stomach.  Thankfully though he does not kill her.  The police are called to help Elizabeth investigate this crazy asshole but they prove to not be very helpful.  Eventually Elizabeth herself gets in a fight with Burlap-Sack Head, stabbing him and all, but she still gets caught and dragged to a mysterious dungeon where she awakens with a camera attached to her head.

She is forced to watch her friend Max be smothered to death and then her boyfriend Damien be attacked.  Turns out there is a group of these burlap-sack head guys all working together to pick off Elizabeth's friends one by one.  Elizabeth is forced again to fight off the men and almost escapes completely but there proves to be too many fighting against one and she is caught and dragged back into the dungeon.

We see Elizabeth bloodied and hung from the ceiling of the dungeon and then shot in the head.  Just lovely.  The riveting (I use this word sarcastically) conclusion of this film actually shows a creeper purchasing a video of Elizabeth's death online.  Then we realize there is an entire website dedicated to these snuff films, where you can pay high dollar to watch the elaborate back stories leading up to people's actual murders.  Isn't humanity great?

So overall, I have to say I feel rather 'meh' about this film, borderlining on disappointment.  There was nothing truly scary about it, save for a jump or two that were mostly just cheap scares that added nothing to the plot.  It reminded me of a young adult version of the film Megan is Missing which is about a teenage girl talking to crazy men on the internet who end up kidnapping her and doing terrible things to her and her best friend.  It seems as though films like this have a very very smothered message of warning people about the dangers of creeps on the internet, but rather than portraying this message in a truly instructional or thought-provoking way, they just fill the films with as much gore, violence against women, rape, and torture as possible.  Yes, I understand there is a certain market for this type of film, but I would like to see someone go against the grain and create a horror film around the internet/video chatting that is maybe less violent and more truly scary and/or creepy.  I think it's totally possible.

Many people out there are aware of what's called the "dark side of the internet."  This can range from things as innocuous as blogs like ours that highlight creepy content and discuss it (at least hopefully) intelligently and creatively.  [Hey, we try :)]  Sites like Reddit and others have their fair share of creepy content as well.  Then there is the even darker side, which I can't say I'm too familiar with myself, but where apparently you can partake in all sorts of illegal and disturbing activity.  The internet is an odd concept and though it can be truly rewarding and allow you to create connections and relationships or maintain them with loved ones and friends, it can also open a portal for sad and disturbed individuals to do truly traumatizing things to people.  So all I can say, dear reader, is tread lightly and if it gets too bad, spend a few hours cleansing your mind on http://cute-kittens.tumblr.com/.

Signing out,

-Amanda