Extraterrestrials have always been a controversial topic. However, as more evidence keeps showing up proving their existence, more people are beginning to accept the fact that we may not be alone in this universe.
Some evidence that suggests that aliens’ existence may be more than just a fantasy was found in declassified Russian files recorded from the days of the Soviet Union.
During the Soviet Era, it was taboo for anyone to speak of UFOs or alien existence. However, this did not stop the Soviet Military from collecting documents of unexplained incidents reported by submarines and military ships. When the Soviet Union was disintegrated, these files were passed into the hands of the Russian government, which finally declassified them in July 2009.
With the information present in them, it comes as no surprise as to why the Soviet government was determined to keep the reports a secret, as they were filled with UFO sightings and, strangely, with USO (Unidentified Submerged Objects) sightings, together with many other mysteries, including eyewitness accounts from a group of underwater divers, who saw otherworldly beings in the depths of the world’s deepest lake.
Lake Baikal – The Deepest Lake in the World
Deep in Siberian Russia, north of the Mongolian border, we can find the magnificent Lake Baikal.
Lake Baikal is not your ordinary lake. It’s considered the largest body of fresh water on the planet, containing 23% of the world’s fresh surface water. That’s more than all of the North American Great lakes combined. It is not only the largest but also the deepest lake in the world, with a depth of almost 6 000 ft. (2 km). Add to those statistics the age of the body of water, and you have a recipe for an intriguing mystery. Scientists estimate the lake’s at least 25 million years old, making it the world’s oldest lake.
Strangely, at the lowest depths, the lake has oxygenated water, which is also somehow heated, and no one can explain why or how. Globally, the Baikal lake ecosystem is one of the richest in freshwater life, and about 80% of its more than 3,700 species are not found anywhere else in the world. There are thousands of undiscovered life forms living in the depths of the lake.
Given the mountainous location and unforgiving climate, it’s easy to see why the lake’s depths have never been fully explored.
Mysteries of Lake Baikal
- Mongol Myths
The mysteries and strange stories surrounding the lake, however, are even more astonishing. Ever since the time of Genghis Khan, when the lake was at the heart of the mighty Mongol empire, there were many myths and legends surrounding it.
Although the Mongol religion believes in different spirits, saying the spirits are everywhere, they didn’t see spirits in lake Baikal. According to the Mongols, devils lived in the depths of the lake, not spirits.
- Buryat Rituals
The Buryats, a Mongolian people, living in the region even to this day, see the lake as a holy place and even continue to practice shamanic rituals at its shores. They believe that there are gods living in the lake.
According to the Buryats, if they constantly practice their rituals near the lake, the gods sometimes show themselves out of the lake.
- Mysterious Sightings
For many years, the lake has also been connected with hundreds of strange sightings. Locals constantly see mysterious glowing lights emerging from the lake together with other UFO sightings.
The most famous case happened on April 17, 1987, when a large flying saucer appeared in the sky. The following account of the story is from Valery Rudentsov, a resident of the nearby Shida village.
“There were 13 of us. At about 12:20 am, one of us went out into the yard; a few seconds later runs, and called all of us out. He was in the center of the yard and pointed at the sky.
150 meters above us – hung a large flying saucer. From the center of the vessel went a phosphorescent purple ray. And at the edges of the vessel were yellow portholes, almost like in our rural houses. The diameter of the vessel was 70 meters. We saw it so plainly, and for a long time, someone even suggested he throw rocks at it.
The weather was tranquil, no noise was heard from the hanging saucer, although behind us was the village of Kurma – there was the sounds of a dog barking, the lowing of cows. We were spellbound.
It was a full moon, and the visibility was so clear that no one of us could question the reality of what we saw. And then the vessel slid smoothly away, sailed along the shore of the bay, and further slipped into the hills of Olkhon.
But since then, it has been a sacrilege to me – not to believe in UFOs. My friend Alexandar, a hunter, and his colleagues who lived there for 20 years, often see UFOs – and all is fine; he is still alive. So if to speak about glowing balls or ‘cigars,’ we constantly see these on the shores of Lake Baikal. They exist.”
In 2015, the Siberian Times published an article called “Aliens and UFOs at world’s deepest lake‘” in which it showed this incredible photo of cigar-shaped objects in the sky flying over the lake.
Is it possible that deep in the lake, there is some sort of underwater alien base, fully operational and used to this day? From all the UFO sightings, we can assume that there’s a possibility that extraterrestrials constantly travel from and to Earth using the lake as a base.
But how is that possible, considering the fact that in the winter, the lake freezes and the thickness of the ice on the top reaches 7 ft. or 2 meters, completely sealing the lake from the world?
The Mysterious Ice Rings of Lake Baikal
This leads us to the next mystery, which was first spotted in 2009 when astronauts abroad at the International Space Station noticed two mysterious holes in Lake Baikal’s thick ice.
Apparently, every year when the lake freezes, mysterious circular holes or rings appear in different places in the ice, like something came out or went into the lake, breaking the 7 ft. thick ice. They last anywhere from days to months until the cold weather freezes the circles again. The circles were so large that they could only be seen from airplanes or satellites.
Scientists tried to solve this strange mystery, and an international team of researchers from France, Russia, and Mongolia set up to study the ice rings in 2010.
Their first theory was that the circles were caused by warmer water rising in the lake. The problem is that some of the rings were located in the deepest parts of the lake with the coldest water, so this theory was disproven.
Another theory stated that methane gas bubbles erupting from the lake’s deep bottom caused the circles. However, scientists noticed that some of these ice circles appeared in the shallower waters as well, areas with no possible gas emissions.
The question is, who or what created these odd shapes in the ice? To this day, there is no scientific explanation for this mystery.
But what if there is another explanation, one that scientists will never accept?
If you consider the many UFO sightings and reports of mysterious lights in the lake, you may come to the possibility that lake Baikal could be used for some sort of extraterrestrial activity here on Earth.
If there is an underwater alien base in the bottom of Lake Baikal, then surely the extraterrestrials would need to travel to and from their homeworld periodically, even in the winters where the lake is sealed from the world with a 7 ft. thick ice. Could this explain the strange ice holes in the lake?
Perhaps the only way to find out for sure is if someone dives into the lake and sees what lies below with their own eyes. This leads us to the next story, the most shocking of them all.
The Swimmers of Lake Baikal
The year was 1982, and the Cold War was at its peak. In their pursuit of scientific and military innovation, the Soviet Union constructed a naval research base near lake Baikal.
When a diving expedition to explore the lake’s deepest parts was launched, the divers that joined the mission were certainly not ready for what they encountered.
The records reveal the story of seven divers who went into the lake to explore it. When they reached a depth of 50 meters into the lake, they all had a strange sensation. Big shadows were moving in the water, and they all felt as if something was watching them. Then, all of a sudden, the divers were faced with the most spine-chilling thing they’d ever see in their lives. Before them were these large aquatic humanoid beings around 9 feet tall, almost 3 meters. The strangest part was that they were wearing some sort of equipment, as they had tight silvery suits and what seemed to be spherical helmets. 
Then the Soviet divers did the worst thing possible. They tried to capture the beings to study them, as was their mission. The divers tried to cast a net on one of the beings when suddenly, all of the divers were propelled to the water’s surface by a powerful, unknown force.
Since the divers were 50 meters deep in the lake, the rapid quick movement caused the divers to suffer from decompression sickness, which can be fatal. The only way to save these men was to put them in pressure chambers.
Now, while the naval base usually had many pressure chambers, there was only one pressure chamber in working condition on that fateful day. Furthermore, these pressure chambers could only take two at a time.
However, due to the dire situation, the commander forced four men into the pressure chamber. Unfortunately, the three men who were not able to get into the chamber died on the beach, while the other four men were left with severe injuries.
When the classified Soviet documents were released to the public, the incident in lake Baikal was reprinted on the pages of very serious Russian socio-political publications like the Federation newspaper, which is a government media. No official denials were received on the event, and the Ministry of Defense of the now Russian Federation left no comment.
Throughout the years, however, somehow the declassified documents telling of this incident disappeared, and the only thing left was a story – the story of the beings they called the Swimmers of lake Baikal.
Other Sightings of The Swimmers of Baikal
Though a few have tried to disapprove of what the divers claimed to have seen, the story was supported by Alexey Tivanenko, a well-known Doctor of Historical Sciences and author of more than 100 books and about 5 thousand articles on local history.
He interviewed all the locals near the lake and wrote an article called “Traces of real extraterrestrial life on Lake Baikal.” He explained that almost all fishermen at Baikal saw many strange occurrences in the lake throughout the years. In his works, he recounts a story told to him by one of the fishermen, Nikolai Kireev, who spotted the silver swimmers.
One night, Nikolai Kireev was fishing with a few of his friends at a spot near the Circum-Baikal railway on the south side of the lake. Lake Baikal in this place breaks off to a depth of almost 1400 meters immediately abruptly near the shore. If you fall overboard here, you will not escape death. Even in summer, the water temperature in such places is not higher than three degrees. If you don’t swim to the shore, your heart will stop.
According to Kireev, at around midnight, while he and his friends were silently fishing, huge silver humanoid creatures started jumping out of the frigid waters of the lake as if taking part in a game. Kireev and his friends, on seeing this, were terrified for what might happen to them. They were afraid that the creatures might turn their boats over, and they quickly threw their nets and headed back to their village.
Here’s what Alexey Tivanenko wrote about this in his article:
“When the fishermen arrived in the evening to the fishing spot near the Circum-Baikal Railway, they were greeted by several of these beings in metal-looking clothes. One can imagine the horror of people, when here and there from the depths in the evening darkness, one after the other, as if playing, “human dolphins” began to jump out and immediately go noisily into the water, raising fountains of spray. Throwing their nets, the Kultuchans fled home in a motorboat, long accompanied by their mysterious pursuers. They never swam to that terrible place with depths of up to 1400 meters. And Nikolai Kireev gave up night fishing altogether. “
Many other people saw strange things in the lake area. Captains of ships fishing at night have seen glow in the water, reminiscent of the lights of searchlights, accompanied by frightening “unearthly” sounds.
And people spending their summer nights at campfires on the coast of the lake have seen strange fireballs or disks wandering over the water area.
Here’s one story from the accounts of Tivanenko:
“Warm August evening. The sun has almost gone beyond the Baikal ridge of the “Irkutsk” coast. Looking out the window from my dacha at the Boyarsk railway station, I suddenly noticed a glowing ball almost in the middle of the lake. Through binoculars, it was seen that this was not a flame of a gas release (which are not uncommon on Lake Baikal), but a perfectly round physical body. It had nothing to do with the shape of a surface ship. On the waves raised by the wind, it held on tightly and confidently, did not drift anywhere. When it got dark, its lower base began to appear: like a second, but underwater ball. I attributed this vision to the reflection of a floating luminous apparatus.”
Now while several people would want to discredit these sightings as a simple trick of the eye, the fact is, all of these accounts show that there’s a possibility of advanced beings living or operating in our Earth’s lakes and oceans.
It’s very possible that these beings are extraterrestrial visitors who maybe have a base there. Still, there’s also the possibility that they are actually from Earth, and are just living in the lake’s depths for centuries, undisturbed. The swimmers’ features clearly distinguish them from anything you could find on Earth, however. Couple that with the unexplainable force they used to get the soviet divers away from them when they tried to capture them. The force was too powerful and, unfortunately, fatal for the divers. Thus, these Soviet files show that the possibility of alien life in the lake’s depths may actually be a reality.
Underwater Alien Bases
Furthermore, aliens taking cover in our oceans and lakes makes absolutely perfect sense. Former Russian navy officer and currently famous Russian UFO researcher Vladimir Azhaza stated:
“Fifty percent of UFO encounters are connected with oceans. Fifteen more – with lakes. So, UFOs tend to stick to the water.”
Think about it. We know more about the moon than we know about our oceans and lakes. If you were an extraterrestrial looking for a place where chances of being discovered were low, and you could go about your business, don’t you think the deep depths of unexplored waters of the Earth are the perfect place?
One interesting account recorded in the declassified files occurred in the South Pacific Ocean. During a routine operation, a Russian nuclear submarine almost collided with six disc-shaped objects underwater.
The fully weaponized submarine traveled 260 meters deep in the south Pacific waters when something was detected on its sonar radar. The radar picked up six unidentifiable submerged objects, moving in formation towards the submarine. Nonetheless, what shocked the crew members most was the speeds at which these USOs were moving. You see, the radar detected that the objects were moving at 230 knots. Now keep in mind that the fastest submarine then, the Soviet K-222, at its fastest, reached 44 knots.
This means that these unidentifiable objects were moving at speeds much faster than any other object on Earth can move in the water. Whatever technology the objects were using were not conventional technologies, meaning they were not earth-made.
Becoming alarmed at the speeds the objects were moving towards them and fearing they were under attack, the captain ordered for the submarine to be slowed down. However, the strange thing is, once the submarine slowed down, so did the objects. Fearing a collision, the captain ordered the emergency surfacing of the submarine, narrowly missing a crash.
The weirdest thing happened after the submarine surfaced. The crew observing from the submarine’s periscope saw the six disc-shaped objects, still moving in formation, coming out of the waters just as the submarine surfaced and taking off to the sky, disappearing at rapid speeds.
From the speeds these objects were moving and the way they disappeared, one could easily conclude they were using advanced technology that is not earth-made.
The Russian Navy files have an account of USO sightings in the infamous Bermuda triangle as well. Recorded by retired submariner Yuri Beketov, who cited unexplainable interference and instrument malfunction in a ship he managed whenever they were in the Bermuda triangle region.
Beketov also stated:
“We have repeatedly observed that devices record the movement of material objects at an unimaginable speed. We measured some speeds – it is about 230 knots (400 km per hour). Such speed is difficult to create on the surface, only in the air. But there is gigantic resistance in the water. As if the laws of physics do not apply to these objects. There is only one conclusion: the creatures who created such material objects significantly surpass us in development.”
Beketov believed that these strange occurrences he experienced in the Bermuda region could not be earth-caused and had something to do with extraterrestrials.
Research and evidence are mounting about unidentified submerged objects in our vast oceans and other large bodies of water. Yet, as much as scientists know about outer space, they know less about the oceans surrounding us. Is it possible that while we’ve been searching for alien life in the sky, they’ve been right beneath our feet this entire time?