slow bobcat
Beginning in early April of 1986, the people in and around the little-known Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant began to experience a series of strange events revolving around sightings of a mysterious creature described as a large, dark, and headless man with gigantic wings and piercing red eyes. People affected by this phenomenon experienced horrific nightmares, threatening phone calls and firsthand encounters with the winged beast which became known as the Blackbird of Chernobyl.
Reports of these strange happenings continued to increase until the morning of April 26, 1986, when at 1:23 am, Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant suffered a catastrophic steam explosion. The power plant, located near Pripyat, Ukraine, Soviet Union, spewed a plume of radioactive fallout which drifted over parts of the Western Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe, Scandinavia, the UK, Ireland and eastern North America. Large areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people. The Chernobyl disaster, as the incident was dubbed, is considered the worst accident ever in the history of nuclear power.
Shortly after the explosion, firefighters who responded were unaware of the nature of the fire, assuming that it was simply an electrical fire, and received massive overdoses of radiation leading to many of their deaths, including Lieutenant Vladimir Pravik, who died on May 9, 1986.
The workers who survived the initial blast and fire, but would later die of radiation poisoning, claimed to have witnessed what has been described as a large black, bird-like creature, with a 20-foot wingspan, gliding through the swirling plumes of irradiated smoke pouring from the reactor. No further sightings of the Blackbird of Chernobyl were reported after the disaster, leaving researchers to speculate just what haunted the workers of the plant during the days leading up to the disaster.
