Hello. My name is Viktor, I'm calling from Irkutsk. I was part of a Soviet Navy dive team in 1982, and what happened to us at Lake Baikal, it changed everything. Three of my friends died because of what we encountered down there. I need to tell someone who might understand. I was 24 years old back then, assigned to a special training unit. We were doing routine exercises at Lake Baikal, the deepest freshwater lake in the world. Over a mile deep in some places, you know what I mean? We'd train there because if you could dive Baikal, you could dive anywhere. The cold, the pressure, the darkness, it prepared you for anything. That summer we were stationed near the lake running regular dive exercises. Standard stuff. We'd been doing it for weeks. The water that time of year was still cold, maybe 10 degrees Celsius near the surface, colder as you went down. But we had our equipment, heavy diving suits, metal helmets, yellow oxygen tubes running back to the surface. Soviet standard issue.
It was a Tuesday morning when it happened. Seven of us went down that day. Me, Dmitri, Pavel, Yuri, three others. We were working at about 50 meters depth, maybe 165 feet. At that depth, the sunlight barely reaches you. Everything gets dim, kind of greenish-blue. We stayed close together, used a special rope to keep everyone connected. Can't afford to lose someone in the dark. We'd been down there maybe 20 minutes, doing our checks, practicing our procedures. And that's when Pavel signaled to me. He gestured, you know, like something was watching us. I thought he was being paranoid. Lake Baikal has strange fish, things with transparent bodies, big eyes. Seals too, the nerpa seals. I figured he'd seen one of those. But then I saw them myself. Shapes in the water, moving through the darkness beyond our headlamps. At first I thought, okay, it's a school of fish. But these shapes were big. And they were moving toward us, purposefully.
When they got close enough for our lights to hit them properly, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. They were humanoid, shaped like people but wrong. Too tall, maybe 3 meters, about 9 or 10 feet. Their bodies were silvery, metallic-looking, and they were wearing these suits. Tight-fitting, like a second skin. Some of them had these transparent spheres on their heads, like helmets or bubbles. Others, the spheres looked almost like umbrellas, you know? Open and hovering above them. Here's the thing though. They weren't wearing any breathing equipment. No tanks, no tubes, nothing. They were just swimming at 50 meters depth like it was nothing. breathing equipment at 50 meters depth is remarkable - Gavin' And they were fast. They moved through the water faster than anything I'd ever seen. We all saw them. All seven of us. Dmitri grabbed my arm through the water, pointing. Yuri's headlamp was shaking, I could see his fear even through the helmet. These weren't fish. These weren't seals. These were something else entirely.
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