Aleshenka
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Alyoshenka (, diminutive of the Russian male first name
Alexey Alexey ( ; ), is a Russian and Bulgarian male given name derived from the Greek ''Aléxios'' (), meaning "Defender", and thus of the same origin as the Latin Alexius. Similar Ukrainian and Belarusian names are romanized as Oleksii (Олек ...
) or the Kyshtym Dwarf is believed by many to be a prematurely born female baby with many deformities found in the village of Kaolinovy, near
Kyshtym Kyshtym () is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, town in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, located on the eastern slopes of the Southern Ural Mountains northwest of Chelyabinsk, near the town of Ozyorsk, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Ozyorsk. Population ...
,
Chelyabinsk Oblast Chelyabinsk Oblast; , is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject (an oblast) of Russia in the Ural Mountains region, on the border of Europe and Asia. Its administrative center is the types of inhabited localities in Russia, city of Chel ...
, Russia in May 1996. Subsequently, the remains were lost and only photos and videos survive. Various supernatural explanations arose.


Discovery

A small human fetus, given the name "Alyoshenka", was found in the woods near the house of an elderly woman, Tamara Vasilyevna Prosvirina, on her way to the well to collect water. Prosvirina then took Alyoshenka in as her "baby". The fetus did not have
ears In vertebrates, an ear is the organ that enables hearing and (in mammals) body balance using the vestibular system. In humans, the ear is described as having three parts: the outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear. The outer ear co ...
, an
umbilical cord In Placentalia, placental mammals, the umbilical cord (also called the navel string, birth cord or ''funiculus umbilicalis'') is a conduit between the developing embryo or fetus and the placenta. During prenatal development, the umbilical cord i ...
or genital organs. The skull lacked a lower jaw, and had an unusual appearance, giving rise to rumours of its extraterrestrial origin. The local population readily supported this rumour, collecting fees from reporters for interviews – at least two Japanese companies ( Asahi TV and
MTV Japan MTV Japan (Music Television Japan) is the Japanese version of the cable television network based in Tokyo, Japan. It is a subsidiary of Paramount Global, Paramount Global Japan K.K., and was launched on November 15, 1993. It can be viewed on cable ...
) made documentaries about the remains.


Physical appearance

Alyoshenka was a greyish-green fetus about 25 centimetres (9.8 in) in length. Its hairless head had a number of dark spots. The eyes were large, occupying most of the face. The skull was smooth with strange ridges that all met in a central ridge, similar to the appearance of an unopened water lily bud. The skull in particular did not resemble the skull of a healthy human.


Death

In 1996, Prosvirina banged on the doors of her neighbors, asking for medicine for Alyoshenka. Everybody thought she was going insane and contacted authorities. Later that day, Prosvirina was taken to a
psychiatric clinic A psychiatric hospital, also known as a mental health hospital, a behavioral health hospital, or an asylum is a specialized medical facility that focuses on the treatment of severe mental disorders. These institutions cater to patients with ...
for evaluation. Prosvirina repeatedly told the clinic staff that she had to take care of her "baby". Due to her age of 74 and psychiatric conditions, the clinic staff thought that she was going insane and did not believe her, leading Alyoshenka to soon die of
starvation Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy intake, below the level needed to maintain an organism's life. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, de ...
.


Later incidents

Somewhere between a few days to a month after the discovery, Prosvirina was admitted to a hospital or psychiatric hospital (details vary on this) for treatment; in some accounts, the remains were passed to the local ''
militsiya ''Militsiya'' ( rus, милиция, 3=mʲɪˈlʲitsɨjə, 5=, ) were the police forces in the Soviet Union until 1991, in several Eastern Bloc countries (1945–1992), and in the Non-Aligned Movement, non-aligned Socialist Federal Republic ...
'' (police) by a neighbour. In most accounts, once the body was given to authorities in order to get DNA testing, it "disappeared" and Prosvirina's family was unable to retrieve it from authorities. In 1999, Prosvirina was killed in a car accident in an attempt to escape from the hospital.


Speculation

Little is known about what happened to the remains, and accounts of Alyoshenka's death and appearance vary greatly. A local
ufologist Ufology, sometimes written UFOlogy ( or ), is the investigation of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by people who believe that they may be of extraordinary claims, extraordinary origins (most frequently of extraterrestrial hypothesis, extrate ...
claimed that the corpse was taken away by a
UFO An unidentified flying object (UFO) is an object or phenomenon seen in the sky but not yet identified or explained. The term was coined when United States Air Force (USAF) investigations into flying saucers found too broad a range of shapes ...
inhabited by members of Alyoshenka's species. Some skeptics hold that it was bought by a wealthy collector of curiosities. A doctor from the local hospital who had allegedly seen the corpse reported that it corresponded to a normal 20- to 25-week human fetus, born prematurely. It could have lived for several hours, but not several weeks, contrary to Prosvirina's claims.


Testing

Bendlin decided initially that this was the mummified remains of a child and took it to Dr. Irina Yermolaeva for analysis. She stated that it was not a hoax in that it was a genuine mummified body that was once living tissue. Her conclusions were that it was a miscarried or aborted fetus, and the deformities could be attributed to the far-reaching
nuclear fallout Nuclear fallout is residual radioactive material that is created by the reactions producing a nuclear explosion. It is initially present in the mushroom cloud, radioactive cloud created by the explosion, and "falls out" of the cloud as it is ...
of the 1957 Kyshtym Disaster. On 15 April 2004, scientists made an official statement that the "Kyshtym creature" was a premature female human infant, with severe deformities. However, other experts and eyewitnesses said it could not have been a human as there were too many differences (up to 20 were counted) in the skeleton that varied from a human being, especially in regard to the skull. Bendlin's clinical assistant, Lyubov Romanowa, who herself had seen many deformities in children, stated that "they had never seen anything like this" and that she believed that it was "not of human origin". She said the differences were just too many, not least of which was the number of bones on the head, four in total, that had sharp edges which were "completely different to a human being". A March 2018 study on the similar Atacama skeleton found an extremely high number of mutations for bone and muscle formation, suggesting that such major mutations, although extremely rare, are possible.


See also

*
Human–animal hybrid A human–animal hybrid and animal–human hybrid is an organism that incorporates elements from both humans and non-human animals. Technically, in a ''human–animal Hybrid (biology), hybrid'', each cell has both human and non-human genetic mate ...
* Kosmopoisk


References

{{reflist 1996 in Russia Alleged extraterrestrial beings Children and death Children in folklore Cryptids Russian legends Urban legends