Shadows and Dust

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Story 1.

The Blackbird of Chernobyl.

When researching the numerous major catastrophes that have occurred throughout human history, it is not uncommon to find testimony from observers who claim to have been pre-warned about the looming tragedy by some form of vision or ominous portent.

This week, we examine one such example of this, the Blackbird of Chernobyl.

A day after the disaster, the scenes witnessed by the helicopter pilots as they flew over the stricken facility were akin to something out of a horror movie.

Several hundred feet below, rubble still smoldered across the broken power plant, producing dense plumes of acrid smoke, which they were forced to skirt around as they were guided into the target area.

On the ground below, a combination of rescue workers and military personnel could be seen running to and fro, many of them well aware of the risks they were exposing themselves to, but carrying on regardless of the dangers, simply because there was a job that needed to be done.

For the sake of not just hundreds, but thousands, and perhaps even millions of people.

High above, the pilots themselves were no safer from the invisible cloud of radiation that had contaminated the area.

Without video cameras or any other form of specialist equipment, each aircraft was forced to fly in at high speed, their crews blindly dumping tons of boron, sand and clay in the hope that the fires inside the reactor itself would finally be extinguished.

Sergeant Valery Simonov stared down impassively at the hellish landscape and reflected on the fact that no matter how much water he gulped down, the sickening metallic taste in the back of his throat refused to go away.

Like Like the majority of his fellow airmen, he had little faith in the safety guidelines they were working to.

It was the fourth and final sortie of the day, and as the pilots signaled that they were once again on final approach, Simeonov prepared to manhandle yet more heavy sacks of sand and chemicals down onto the deadly ruins below.

As he reached across to open the aircraft's side door, his whole world instantly seemed to turn upside down.

Without warning, the chopper banked sharply and suddenly, sending the flight engineer crashing against a pallet of sacks, before rebounding and banging his head hard against the side of the cabin.

The sergeant cursed loudly, checking there was no blood coming from where he had smashed his head against the airframe, before making his way forward to vent his anger at the pilots.

Even amidst the loud thrumming of the helicopter's rotor blades, Simeonov could hear shouting as he stomped towards the cockpit.

Forcefully yanking the entry door to one side, he was momentarily stopped in his tracks by the terrified expressions on the faces of the two airmen.

All his angry questioning produced was a helpless look, and some animated pointing in the direction of the windscreen.

As Simyonov peered out into the smoke-filled skies ahead of them, there was a sudden movement.

A jet-black shape hurtled out of the blackness right across their flight path.

He caught a momentary glimpse of curved talons, shark-like teeth and luminous red eyes, before with a shriek and a wing flap, the monster disappeared back into the smoke.

Simeonov would not be the only rescue worker to see the creature that day, but he would be one of the last.

The awful vision he had witnessed in the skies was one he would take to his grave, which would be much sooner than he had anticipated due to the severe radiation poisoning he had unwittingly received.

Within hours of the disaster, the beast would already have been given a name, the Blackbird of Chernobyl.

The Ukrainian city of Chernobyl had already experienced more than its fair share of human suffering, even before the tragic accident occurred with which its name would forever be associated.

Huge numbers of the largely Jewish population were rounded up and massacred during the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, only for the survivors to fall victim to the brutal Nazi occupation that would take place during the following decade.

The end of the Second World War would find the city placed firmly back under communist rule, and it was eventually chosen as the administrative center for the first nuclear power station to be constructed on Ukrainian soil.

Between 1972 and 1983, four separate RBMK reactors were built at a site approximately 10 miles northwest of the town, with two more planned for construction in the near future.

For nearly 15 years, the facility quietly and efficiently went about the business of generating power for the people of the Ukraine.

That was until early in 1986, when the site managers started to receive strange reports from some of their employees.

Several staff members claimed to have seen a shadowy figure hanging around the perimeter fence during the small hours, apparently watching them leave when they had finished their shift.

The incidents were largely dismissed until one evening, when a terrified female worker came running into the security office screaming that she had seen a strange-looking creature near one of the car parks.

In floods of tears, she explained that she had been walking over to her vehicle when she had heard a rustling sound up in the branches of some nearby trees.

A pair of glowing ruby-red eyes had suddenly opened up in the darkness, then she had heard a hissing sound as a gigantic bird-like entity had emerged from the branches and flown off into the sky.

Within days of telling her story, others began to come forward to give similar accounts.

Two caretakers, who were arriving for an early morning shift, had witnessed a dark figure with enormous wings circling the power plant in the dawn skies above them.

before it had shrieked and flown away.

A worker driving home on another evening had nearly crashed his car as he swerved to avoid a huge creature that had come swooping out of the darkness, suddenly framed ahead of him in the light from his headlamps.

The facility officials were highly sceptical of such stories, as there was little in the way of actual evidence to support them.

But then the nightmares began.

A significant number of workers started to either turn up late for their shifts or go home early reporting that they felt ill.

It became clear that the majority of those involved were claiming to have had trouble sleeping, their dreams haunted by a dark figure with glowing red eyes and a 20-foot wingspan.

Staff members caught openly discussing the strange visitor were threatened with suspension and those who had called in sick began to receive phone calls at home ordering them to return to work and stop spreading rumours and disinformation.

Some of the callers identified themselves as KGB agents or members of other intelligence services.

Nevertheless, the reports steadily continued.

In the early hours of April 26th, all of the safety protocols for reactor number 4 were deliberately disregarded by the deputy chief engineer, Anatoly Dyatlov, during a pre-planned exercise, the purpose of which was to simulate a loss of power.

Because the reactor had been running at half power for 10 hours, it became choked by xenon, which in turn caused power output to drop to almost nothing, a state that was useless for the test.

In order to get the power levels back up, Diatlov ordered the engineers to remove nearly all boron control rods and stop pumping coolant into the core.

This caused reactivity inside the core to increase at a rate that was unsafe, and the engineers panicked and tried to shut the reactor down by reinserting the control rods.

Unfortunately, those control rods were tipped with graphite, a fatal design flaw which caused reactivity to skyrocket, resulting in a huge explosion.

It was the worst nuclear accident in human history, immediately contaminating the surrounding area with disastrous levels of nuclear fallout.

Chronically short of any specialist equipment with which to combat the disaster, the Soviet authorities could do little more than turn to the military in a somewhat short-sighted effort to try and contain the growing danger.

Brave but poorly equipped infantrymen were ordered to sprint into the ruined buildings to clear radioactive debris, limited to just 90 seconds of activity on site, in order to avoid fatal doses of radiation.

Military and civilian helicopters were drafted in from as far afield as Siberia.

and ordered to dowse the smouldering reactor with thousands of tons of absorbent materials.

With their aircraft lacking any form of effective shielding, shielding, many of the 600 pilots and airmen would die far earlier than expected from illnesses that had arisen from the radiation poisoning they had received.

Within days, it became clear that some of the personnel involved in these efforts had apparently also encountered the same creature that had previously been harassing the staff at the power plant.

Military commanders received a number of reports from soldiers and pilots that a large winged entity had been seen circling the area, weaving in and out of the plumes of toxic smoke, and swooping down low over the heads of those working on the ground.

As the fires were eventually extinguished, these reports steadily dwindled, and during the aftermath, no further sightings occurred at the location.

No images of the creature exist, but in the eight months it would take to successfully construct a concrete barrier around the damaged reactor, a shocking realisation gradually came to the fore.

All of the people who had reported having any contact with the so-called blackbird, whether military or civilian, had died as a result of radiation poisoning caused by the explosion.

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Given the absence of any definitive evidence which might support the existence of this mysterious cryptid, It is easy to dismiss the story out of hand as some form of urban legend.

But it is a tale that has stubbornly persisted, despite the deaths of those who were allegedly involved.

The high number of apparent witnesses would also seem to suggest that something unnerving must have happened in order to form the basis that the myth was constructed upon.

Another factor that strengthens this argument is its remarkable similarity to the Mothman sightings that occurred in West Virginia during the 1960s.

People living in and around the area of Point Pleasant reported eerie encounters with an insect-like nocturnal figure, very similar in appearance to the blackbird.

This frightening creature chased pedestrians and cars, even reportedly killing a pet dog during its 12-month reign of terror.

The last sightings of the Mothman took place immediately prior to the collapse of the nearby Silver Bridge, which spanned the Ohio River.

and tragically buckled under the weight of rush hour traffic on December 15th, 1967, killing 46 commuters.

There were no further appearances by the Mothman after this event, leading residents to theorise that the beast was somehow associated with the incident, and may have somehow been trying to warn people about the impending disaster.

Commentators have speculated that the creature encountered at both Chernobyl and Point Pleasant may have been one and the same, and could in fact be some form of portent or curse, inexorably linked to tragedy.

Sightings of the entity prior to the reactor failure have been interpreted as an attempt to warn workers of the coming danger.

On the other hand, appearances to those involved in the rescue efforts in the aftermath of the accident have been interpreted as a sign that they would not survive.

The Blackbird is far from the only supernatural story to have emerged from the chaos of the Chernobyl disaster.

Following the accident, A 30km exclusion zone was set up around the power plant, which has since expanded to cover an even wider area.

During that time, the few soldiers and scientists who were allowed access to the zone reported that they had seen mysterious figures moving around on their night vision and thermal cameras, which would simply vanish when challenged or approached.

In 1997, a team of physicists based at an American university were granted access to the exclusion zone in order to assist in assessing the effectiveness of the safeguarding measures that had been put in place there.

There were concerns that the structural integrity of the sarcophagus, the name of the containment structure built over the exposed core, was failing, which could lead to a further leak of radiation.

One of the academics, Andriy Hosukhov, reported that he had been alone, inspecting the exterior of the thick concrete structure, when he became aware of sounds coming from within.

He maintains that he could hear what sounded like human voices, screaming for help and shouting that there was a fire inside, but when he called the escorting soldiers over to listen, nothing more was heard.

Regarding the sightings, it is possible that there was already some leakage taking place at the plant prior to the reactor explosion, and that its effects caused members of staff to experience nightmarish visions and dreams.

In fact, there had been a partial meltdown of Reactor 1 in 1982, which was covered up by Soviet authorities.

It is thought that as soon as these haunting stories about a strange prowler came out into the open, they naturally began to influence the thinking of those around them, and suddenly, everyone was seeing the blackbird.

Similarly, the pilots and soldiers may have overheard these stories when they arrived, their mental states deteriorating under the pressures and dangers of their task.

The official explanation put forward by the Soviet government about the reports is that what the witnesses were actually seeing was a local bird, the black stork.

This is a large form of endangered species that can grow up to 3 feet tall, possessing a 6 foot wingspan.

When observed fleetingly in darkness or in the poor light of the smoke-filled skies, it may be that it was mistaken for something far more sinister, the human brain filling in the gaps and adding nightmarish details because it was strange to see such a thing in the first place.

Finally, the most likely possibility is that the creature is nothing more than an internet legend, created in the decades since the disaster, and associating itself with the Mothman sightings, not only to strengthen its credibility, but also enforce the original sightings back in Point Pleasant.

Despite the fact it is still notoriously difficult to receive any information from ex-Soviet archives, there really is very little to go on or to support the claims.

With no surviving witnesses to question about the creature and the alleged sightings of it, or any physical evidence, it's likely that the whole story is fictitious.

But then again,

who knows?

Perhaps there is something more to these tales, and whilst it is fun to speculate about the creature itself, we must remember that the Chernobyl disaster was a very real tragedy.

in which countless people lost their lives in horrifying ways, and the effects of which are still reverberating to this day.

It is a story of indescribable recklessness, followed by incredible courage, sacrifice, death, and ultimately, re-emergence.

It is both chilling and inherently disturbing on its own, without the need of throwing monsters or strange creatures into the mix.

To the brave souls who died helping to contain the incident, to those who died saving others, and to the many innocents who lost their lives in the decades since.

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Story 2:

The Shadow of the Aswang

Since time immemorial, in cultures all over the globe, there have been stories of malevolent creatures and spirits which emerge from the shadows long after the sun has set, stalking the streets and highways intending to bring harm to those who cross their path.

The idyllic islands of the Philippines are no exception, their inhabitants forever living in the shadow of the Aswang.

Bargo City was one of the earliest established settlements in the Philippines, lying at the heart of the western Negros province.

Its inhabitants are no strangers to the wanton destruction of rapacious invaders, having risen up and fought against both the Spanish and Japanese occupations.

And one balmy evening in March of 2013, they would once again find themselves taking up arms against an uninvited and aggressive attacker.

The night sky hung heavy and oppressive, making it feel as if the height of the dry season had come early, forcing the residents of Bargo to throw their windows wide open in the vain hope of gaining some small relief from the oppressive heat, which was suffocating the city.

In the bedroom of his tiny apartment, Andrei Pineda lay dejectedly on his bed, trying to think up some inventive means of overcoming the closeness that was smothering him, and find a way to get off to sleep.

His thoughts were disturbed temporarily by a sudden and loud clattering noise that had come from the kitchen.

He sullenly dismissed the sound, believing something must have been blown over by a gust of air coming through the window he had left open.

But then there was a further commotion.

Overwhelmed by a combination of his existing frustration at being kept awake and the growing hostility towards whatever was causing the disturbance, Andre rose and walked with purpose towards the sound.

As he marched into the kitchen, in the dim light coming from the street lamps outside, he could just about make out the shape of an upper body hauling itself into the darkened room through the open window.

Andre cried out in anger, reaching across for a knife from the work surface and lunging at the figure.

With frightening speed, the intruder heaved itself fully into the room, immediately dodging backwards away from the oncoming knife blade.

There was a sharp hissing sound, and Andre felt a sudden slicing pain to his outstretched right forearm, forcing him to drop the weapon.

As his eyes tried to focus and adjust to the room's shadowy confines, he thought he saw the light glistening off sharp claws, and a nightmarish mouth full of sharpened teeth.

But it was the creature's eyes that would forever haunt him, unblinking and soulless blood-red orbs, that filled him with fear and revulsion.

As he bent down to retrieve the knife, blood now pouring down his forearm from an open wound, the monster exited the room with incredible agility.

By the time Andre had made it across to the window, he could see it on the roof of the apartment block on the other side of the street, scrambling across the tiles until it was out of sight.

The knife still gripped firmly in his hand, Andre hurried out of his apartment and down into the streets below.

He had heard tales of the creature he had just encountered his entire life, not once placing any faith or belief in them.

But now, it seemed the stories had been true.

All of them.

And he had to warn his friends and neighbours.

The streets of Bargo City had become the hunting ground of a marauding Aswang.

On the same evening that Andre Pineda was attacked inside his apartment, another family in Bargo City also experienced a similarly supernatural encounter.

A young girl who had been fast asleep in bed found herself suddenly awake.

In the dim light in front of her, she could see the silhouette of a dark figure.

It was only then that she realised she was in fact moving.

being dragged towards her open bedroom window by a bony and taloned hand, grasping her ankle.

When her panic screams brought her father running into the room, the spindly extremity quickly withdrew, its owner clattering away out of the window and into the darkness.

The next morning, the girl awoke with a sharp pain in her lower abdomen that was so severe she struggled to eat or drink, and was soon experiencing difficulty in breathing properly.

Her family immediately sought out the nearest Albulayo, a Filipino witch doctor who confirmed there were suspicions.

The creature that had tried to abduct their daughter was indeed an Aswang, and its touch had caused irreparable damage to her soul.

Stories relating to the two attacks spread like wildfire throughout the community, and the following evening, bands of local residents took to the streets, armed with whatever weapons they could find.

There were several reports that evening and the following nights of a shadowy figure being sighted running across the rooftops in order to escape from the vigilante groups, until peace was finally restored to the city.

This bizarre set of circumstances are amazingly not isolated in their nature.

In October of 2014, the town of Tanawan was similarly plagued with reports of multiple Aswangs stalking the streets at night, to the extent that the military were called in to protect the terrified population.

And in Colombia, in April of 2015, it was reported that a pair of Aswangs had been injured and driven off by a vigilante patrol, in retaliation to a series of attacks on local children.

The word Aswang is generally associated with a vampiric shapeshifting entity, but it also serves as an umbrella definition for a whole host of other Filipino monsters.

Some of these creatures are zombie-like ghouls, that haunt the outskirts of rural villages, feasting on the flesh of the recently deceased.

Others are witches or malevolent female spirits who seek out babies and pregnant women using long pointed tongues to penetrate the skin in order to suck out blood and viscera.

The traditional Aswang is apparently able to pass itself off as a normal and fully functional human being during the daytime.

It is capable of holding down a job and interacting with other family members.

But during the hours of darkness, the Aswang morphs into a nightmarish creature, desperate to satisfy a primal craving for human blood.

It will identify properties that contain vulnerable residents, imitating the cries of animals or the voices of people the victim knows, to lure them away from the safety of their homes.

In addition to being able to change its body from that of a normal human into its true terrifying self, The Aswang is also said to have the ability to transform itself into a bird or domesticated animal in order to get close to its intended target, launching an attack when the victim least expects it.

Its appetite eventually sated, the monster then returns home before the break of dawn, changing once again to its deceptive human form.

Legend has it that a person is able to turn themselves into an Aswang by fastening or securing a fertilized chicken's egg to their stomach before they go to sleep.

During the course of the night, The chick travels from the shell of the egg into the belly of the recipient, who then wakes with a hunger that can only be satisfied by human flesh.

The Aswang is capable of conferring this curse onto another person if it so desires, opening its mouth and allowing the chick to enter the mouth of its victim.

In May of 2015, there were reports in the media of multiple Aswang attacks having occurred in the province of North Cotabato.

A young married couple, asleep in bed, were awoken by the unwelcome sound of somebody moving around the ground floor of their home address.

Arming himself with a short sword, which he kept concealed at the side of his bed for just such an eventuality, the husband immediately arose and ran downstairs to confront the intruder.

Upon turning on the main lights, the homeowner found an enormous black dog in the living room, which stared back at him through evil and wicked red eyes.

As he slashed and hacked away with the sword, The dog easily avoided his attacks, before sinking its teeth into his forearm and suddenly vanishing before his very eyes.

Three days later, a neighbouring house was attacked by what the occupants described as a big cat.

The creature was apparently able to morph into a humanoid form and escape through a nearby window, but not before it had wounded four members of the family that lived there.

Aswangs are believed to be sentient, retaining the memories of their actions after they have reverted back to their human form.

Any wound or injury sustained during their nighttime activities though, will take time to fully heal, meaning the creature is vulnerable to identification during that brief period.

There was much commotion in Lucerna City in September of 2014, when several children who had been walking home at night were attacked by a gigantic bird-like creature.

During one of these incidents, a local resident was able to injure the entity's foot.

And when an elderly woman suspected of being the Aswang was located, it was found she was now missing several toes on her right foot.

When the woman was detained, she at first claimed to be a victim of an Aswang attack herself, but the local authorities arrested her and took her to the nearest police station to be questioned.

At this point, she allegedly not only confessed the attacks, but warned the officers that if they did not free her, she would harm their own children when she escaped.

She was released shortly after this, disappearing off into the jungle, never to be seen again.

The physical appearance and alleged abilities of the Aswang are virtually identical to descriptions found in European vampire mythology, which originated in the continent's southeastern regions.

There are also similar creatures to be found in African history, such as the Impurlu, a bloodsucker that adopts the shape of a bird and persistently targets young women.

With so many different cultures possessing stories of malevolent beasts with such similar powers and motivations, there is a strong argument for some form of factual basis lying at the heart of these accounts.

In an age of constantly evolving surveillance and communications technology, few supernatural entities have managed to endure for as long as the Aswang, which continues to make appearances in both media bulletins and police incident reports.

Whilst other legends have now forever been consigned to the pages of history, this particular creature continues to leave a tragic and very bloody footprint on the Filipino landscape.

On the morning of the 2nd of June 2015, the parents of a 10-year-old girl living in the central province of Davao del Norte found her lying on the floor of her bedroom, having died as a result of vicious injuries that had been inflicted to her throat.

The wounds appeared to have been caused by an unknown animal, and yet the room was located on the top floor of their building, with no external access points other than an open window.

During the same month, and located on the far side of the country, Cotobato City was the site of a wave of Aswang sightings.

As social media was flooded with blurry photographs and accounts of bird-like monsters haunting the city streets, one of the city's priests took confession from a local fisherman, whose face was covered in fresh and bloodied lacerations.

When the minister asked how the hapless victim had sustained these injuries, He replied that he had awoken in the night to find a creature sitting on his chest, which had slashed his face with its claws before flying out of the window.

Despite the Philippines being one of the most god-fearing Christian societies in modern times, the legend of the Aswang remains firmly entrenched, with the fear and suspicion it produces often leading to fatal consequences.

In May 2015, a man living in Tanawon heard scratching and clattering noises up on his roof and fired a handgun into the ceiling at what he believed to be an Aswang.

Tragically, this resulted in the death of his 16-year-old daughter, who had been trying to sneak back into the premises, having crept out to a party earlier that evening.

The previous year in Bacolod City, two elderly residents were stoned to death and beheaded in separate incidents by angry mobs, when complaints were made to the police by their neighbours that they were secretly Aswangs.

The entire history of the Aswang is saturated with tragedy and bloodshed.

nowhere less than in the turbulent period during which it was created.

Modern scholars believe that whatever the historic basis behind the stories, the reason the creature appears to have such an endless array of supernatural abilities is that it was a calculated bastardisation of existing Filipino tribal stories circulated by the invading conquistadors during the 1680s.

The Spanish forces had a huge geographical area to occupy with poor existing transport links.

One of the methods they deployed in an attempt to keep order was to scare the indigenous inhabitants into remaining in their villages at night, with embellished stories of the demons that haunted the jungles around them.

The very deliberate addition of the concept of a shapeshifting ability immediately sowed seeds of suspicion in the minds of the population, causing them to turn on one another in times of fear and frustration.

The scholars also believe that the reason the Aswang is so often depicted as female again lies at the door of the Christian invaders.

With their husbands and brothers imprisoned, the core of Filipino resistance came came from female agitators, which the Spanish countered with accusations of sorcery and witchcraft.

The same tactic was also used against their holy men and tribal doctors, as the Christian invaders sought to push people away from their traditional support networks and into the cities towards more Christian medical practitioners.

One of the most astounding and disturbing stories to be found in the history of the Philippines is that the CIA sought to replicate the success that the Spanish had historically enjoyed in using the Aswang threat.

threat.

In order to assist the government in suppressing rebel groups that had formed in the aftermath of World War II, there are accusations that American agents secretly murdered civilians and horrifically mutilated the bodies, scaring enemy fighters into deeper hiding in the jungle and away from populated areas.

A further possible origin for the legend is to be found in the central Panay region, where the majority of Aswang sightings have been recorded.

Some residents of this area suffer from a genetic disorder known as X-link dystonia Parkinsonism, or XDP for short.

This is a form of Parkinson's disease, which activates predominantly in a patient's late 30s and is caused by a chromosomal imbalance.

The symptoms consist of a loss of motor functions, with the sufferer racked by repeated tremors and contractions, that cause their body to twist and contort into unnatural and painful positions.

Whilst they are fully aware of these movements, they can neither control nor explain them to those around them, which has often led to unfounded allegations that they are either Aswangs or the victims of demonic possession.

Other commentators point to the wide variety of animal life residing within the 7,641 different islands that make up the country, as a significant contributory factor to the persistent reports of Aswang sightings.

There are a number of rarely seen species, such as the giant flying fox, which resembles neither a bat nor a bird, and has been historically mistaken for an unknown monster.

Rural villages and settlements also attract wild varieties of both cats and dogs, which have been known to attack humans when cornered or sufficiently desperate for food.

The Aswang is only one of a panoply of horrifying monsters that feature in Filipino folklore.

These also include the Charnak, which pretends to be an innocent and abandoned baby, before devouring unsuspecting victims who come to its aid.

There is also the Tikbalang, an equine demon who dwells within the forest regions, leading travellers off the established paths and then crushing them beneath its hooves.

Whatever degree of truth there may be behind the origins of these creatures, they remain very much alive in the thoughts and consciousness of the people of the Philippines, continuing to cause deaths as indirectly as their own alleged attacks.

They have survived numerous societal and ideological invasions of their island homelands, and continue to endure even in a society that delights in disproving and debunking the traditional folklore of its past.

The arguments for the existence of the Aswang often seem as compelling as those against it.

Regardless, there is little doubt that there is something quite evil and manipulative continuing to exist at the fringes of Filipino society, quietly and consistently claiming numerous lives as it goes about its deadly affairs.

Maybe one day, we will finally find out the truth behind the legend.

But until then, the best we can do is ensure our bedroom windows are firmly closed and secured before we go to sleep at night.