The CIA File That Claims Aliens Turned Soviet Soldiers Into Stone

The CIA once filed a report claiming aliens turned 23 Soviet soldiers into stone. Yes, stone. Like garden ornaments with AK-47s.

According to the declassified document, the story came from Ukraine in the late ’80s: Soviet troops allegedly shot down a UFO. Survivors crawled from the wreckage, and with a blinding flash of light, the soldiers were instantly petrified. Their bodies, witnesses claimed, looked like limestone statues. Pompeii, but with laser-eyed aliens instead of a volcano.

The craft, the “remains,” and the statues were supposedly rushed off to a secret facility near Moscow. And that’s where the trail ends, in a locked filing cabinet stamped CIA.

Why the CIA Filed It Anyway

The agency admitted the account came from a local newspaper, translated into Russian, then into English. It could be folklore, bad reporting, or deliberate Soviet disinformation. But someone in Langley still thought it worth archiving. Which means at some point, a CIA analyst had to sit at a desk, read about alien petrification beams, and type: “File under UFO.”

Stone Soldiers or Stone Cold Psy-Op?

There are three ways to read this:

• Folklore: Cold War urban legend, no more real than Bigfoot.

• Psy-Op: A planted story designed to spook enemies with the idea of alien super-weapons.

• Cover-Up: A leaked scrap from something stranger, locked away in a lab that doesn’t officially exist.

Whichever it was, the fact it sits in the CIA’s own archives is enough to keep conspiracy forums buzzing decades later.

The Part That Actually Haunts

If this was disinformation, it shows just how far governments go to weaponise fear. And if it wasn’t? Then aliens don’t just exist, they can turn you into home décor.

Either way, the Cold War may be over, but its ghost stories are still alive. And in this one, the soldiers aren’t.