The Molebka anomalous zone

An area near the village of Molyobka in Perm Krai, Russia, built up by the tabloid press in 1989 and 1990. Ufologists say paranormal events happen there and visitors can make contact with aliens.

Russian Wikipedia places the zone on the border of Sverdlovsk Oblast and Perm Krai, on the left bank of the Sylva, between Molyobka and the village of Kamenka, 37 km from Shumkovo railway station. It is also called the M-triangle or the Perm triangle. Its area is put at about 70 square kilometres, and the whole area where UFOs and anomalous events are logged exceeds 1,000. Russian Wikipedia calls the name a largely pseudoscientific term that the tabloid press built up in 1989 and 1990, for a place where Russian ufologists say paranormal events occur.

The Perm regional encyclopedia says the village has lately become widely known for anomalous events, and English Wikipedia says it became famous among UFO seekers in the 1990s. Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported in 2010 that tourists from all over Russia and abroad had been coming since the early 1990s, and that a road sign showing a UFO had gone up in Perm Krai. The paper said ufologists hold that visitors can see paranormal events there and even make contact with alien civilisations, and that what it calls the Russian Bermuda Triangle was hosting an international congress on geoanomalous phenomena for the second year. Villagers and Perm travel firms, it added, had long been making money from Russians' interest in aliens.

Moskovsky Komsomolets was dismissive in a 2013 report. Its reporter wrote that he would trust the findings of Bachurin, a Perm geologist, more if Bachurin had not been studying UFOs since 1957. He credited the zone's fame to a Riga journalist, Mukhortov, whose 1989 series on alien contact in the newspaper Sovetskaya Molodezh set the story going, and he called the whole thing an invention.