In 1985, six crew-members on board the Soviet Salyut-7 space station witnessed something incredible:
A flash of bright light blinded all the cosmonauts on board for a short time. After a few seconds when they could see again, the cosmonauts saw silhouettes of seven figures outside the station.
The silhouettes looked like humans, but were huge, at least 90 feet. They also had large wings and luminous halos above their heads, the creatures looked like angels.
They were glowing, they reported…
“We were truly overwhelmed.”
“There was a great orange light, and through it we could see the figures of seven Angels.”
“The entire Space Station became filled with a feeling of peace and calm”
“These glorious beings were sent by God to watch over us during our long mission”
The Angels kept pace with the space station for some 10-minutes before vanishing.
Although the “official” chronicling of this event is fraught with chronological inconsistencies, but, by the best estimations, the first reported sighting of these so-called “celestial beings” — which would also come to be known as “space angels” — occurred on July 12, 1984.
Cosmonauts Leonid Kizim, Vladimir Solovyov and cardiologist Oleg Atkov were on their astonishing 155th day aboard the Salyut 7, conducting “medical experiments,” when the trio noticed what they described as an “brilliant orange cloud” surrounding the station.
The Salyut 7 had been plagued by a steady stream of system failures and the men aboard the craft were understandably concerned that the glow might represent a life threatening fire. Fearing the worst, the cosmonauts rushed to the portholes only to find themselves blinded by an eerily intense luminescence the poured in through the circular apertures.
After their vision adjusted to the light, the curious cosmonauts radioed ground control that the station was bathed in an anomalous, self illuminated mist. The men returned to the portholes, shielding their eyes from the radiance, and that’s when they spied something so incredible that it would forever alter their perception of reality.
According to reports published in newspapers across the globe — including, allegedly, the Washington Post — the three Russian explorers saw colossal, winged, humanoid entities hovering just outside the station in the vacuum of space.
The faces of these beings were said to resemble those of humans with “peaceful expressions” and the Soviet scientists even claimed that the creatures noticed them and offered distinctly beatific smiles.
This quote was published in the later newspaper reports, although it’s difficult to discern which cosmonaut it was credited to, though some have suggested it may have been Solovyov:
“What we saw were seven giant figures in the form of humans, but with wings and mist-like halos as in the classic depiction of angels.”
The cosmonauts went on to described these mist haloed beings as being nearly 80-feet in height with a wingspan comparable to that of a 747 jet; although, it should be noted, that there’s no indication in the public record of how these men of science came to these proportional estimations. The men observed the soaring seraphim for approximately 10-minutes before they vanished; leaving the isolated and surely perplexed comrades to ponder what it was that they had seen and try to gather the courage to report it to their superiors below.
By their own admission, the cosmonauts were themselves reluctant to accept the existence of the oddly angelic beings which they had seen, and concluded that they were more likely suffering from some form of mass delusion brought on by their extended space travel than an actual encounter with alien — or perhaps even divine — entities. Their self induced denial would be put to the test 11-days later when additional cosmonauts arrived at the station and the celestial beings returned.