THE TSARICHINA PIT

What is the world’s most mysterious location? Excluding my bedroom and Wormwood Laboratories itself, several places spring to mind: Area 51 in the Nevada Desert...the Bermuda Triangle...Skinwalker Ranch. Those are the obvious ones. The more discriminating student of the unknown will bring up several others, like Mount Shasta in California, the underwater Yomigumi Pyramid of Japan, the Bennington Triangle of New England.

I think the real winner is a cement-covered pit near a tiny town in the Bulgarian woods. This is a location known as “The Tsarichina Pit”, “The Tsarichina Hole” and other variations on this general theme. No place has spawned such wild speculation on multiple paranormal fronts. Was it the underground prison of an ancient extraterrestrial? The location of a demonic entity capable of driving people to suicide? Some kind of UFO base? The spot where a medieval monarch buried a fabulous treasure? Or the site of forbidden and mysterious government experiments? Or maybe all of the above?

We don’t really know all that much about the Tsarichina Pit or what was found there, but what we do know is enough to lead to a wild, and many would say absurd, explosion of rumors and tales. People in the West are mostly still in the dark about this bizarre place, but bit by bit, the word is getting out. And now it’s time for I, Dr. Abner Mality, to shine my flashlight on the mysteries of Tsarichina…

Tsarichina is indeed a real place in the rugged northwest corner of Bulgaria, a country known for many enigmatic happenings going back into prehistory. To call it a village is overstating matters...only 72 people are permanent residents of the tiny hamlet. It’s a place where the rhythms of life continue much as they have for centu

Although the isolated village has always been described as “haunted”, things really went out of whack in 1990. This is when the story of the Tsarichina Pit really blew up. But things actually got rolling almost 10 years before, in 1981. At that time, Bulgaria was still firmly ensconced in the Communist East Bloc and under the control of a strict dictatorship. One of the most powerful men in the country was Todor Zhivkov, who was the Minister of Culture...he would later become supreme ruler.

By all accounts, Zhivkov was a superstitious man with a deep interest in the occult. He often sought the advice of seers and psychics, including the world famous blind peasant woman Baba Vanga, who may have been the most well-known psychic of the last 50 years.

In 1981, Zhivkov’s daughter Lyudmilla heard that Baba Vanga had come into possession of a mysterious map that was given to her by an equally mysterious man. This map showed the location of a place said to be a stupendous storehouse of occult and trans-human knowledge. Lyudmilla managed to get a copy of the map from Baba Vanga...rumor had it that the blind psychic had expected her visit...and told her father about it. A secret expedition was sent to the location to dig for the hidden knowledge.

The actual site was a rugged granite outcropping called Golyamo Gradishte, which was near the tiny village of Tsarichina...and also NATO member Turkey. The expedition included military personnel as well as archaeologists and “esoteric experts”. Security was strictly enforced and the soldiers had orders to shoot any unauthorized intruders on sight.

The expedition was plagued with mishaps from the start, not the least of which was the sudden death of Lyudmilla Zhivkova herself. A high-ranking member of Bulgaria’s mineralogical department also died during the expedition. Despite the setbacks, which eventually led to an early cancellation of the project, there were some interesting archaeological discoveries made. But following the deaths, the expedition blew up the hole they had dug in the side of the mountain, leading to a spring overflowing and covering the hole.

That was where matters remained until the hallowed year of 1989, the year when the Communist government of Bulgaria fell during the Great Liberation. Press freedom, once tightly controlled, now popped like the cork of a champagne bottle and many secrets of the former regime saw the light of day. That included word of the 1981 expedition to Tsarichina and Golyamo Gradishte.  A man named Krastyu Muftachiev, a former close associate of Lyudmilla Zhivkova, had spent many years in prison after the failure of the first expedition, but when he was freed following Communism’s collapse, he wasted little time publishing a book about the mysteries of Tsarichina.

1990 was a year of chaos and uncertainty for Bulgaria. They were no longer tied to the Soviet Union but had not yet joined NATO or embraced Western society in full. During this year, Muftachiev’s book reached the attention of military authorities. In Bulgaria, seers and psychics were not denigrated or ignored like they were in the more rational Western Europe. The military consulted a number of psychics, likely including Baba Vanga, and were told that the tiny village of Tsarichina was the site of the tomb of the ancient Tsar Samuli, where his fabulous wealth was all stored. For an impoverished country, the lure of treasure was too much to resist.

On December 6, 1990, the Bulgarian army arrived in tiny Tsarichina and proceeded to put the village on lockdown. After this date, things would never be the same there. This new expedition was known as “Operation Lightbeam” (sometimes also called “Operation Sunray”) and was much more extensive in scope than the 1981 expedition. Psychics, archaeologists and scientists of several kinds joined the military there and were sworn to secrecy. Despite this “secrecy”, wild stories have emerged in the decades since about what Operation Lightbeam found in Tsarichina.

What started as basically a treasure hunt eventually wound up being more like an excursion into the world of the unknown. From the very beginning, the expedition was plagued with strange occurrences, including the inexplicable breakdown of all manner of equipment. They had brought massive excavation machinery to the site...but almost all of it failed to function. That left the soldiers to dig the old fashioned way...with shovel and pick. That certainly did their morale no favors.

Much more than broken machinery plagued the expedition. The soldiers were troubled by strange phenomena...shadowy figures seen on the perimeter of the exclusion zone but never captured, odd noises at all hours, strange orb-like lights appearing and disappearing. A general feeling of malaise surrounded the expedition, which was especially potent among the psychics. Right from the start, they were plagued by visions and all of them urged the digging to come to an end. Nevertheless, Colonel Kanev, in charge of Operation Lightbeam, pressed on.

After backbreaking days of labor, the diggers reached a layer of stone that shovel and axe could not penetrate. Was this the site of Tsar Samuli’s lost tomb? Explosives were finally used to blast through the stone barrier. And this is where the story of the Tsarichina Pit starts to get REALLY strange.

There is such a cloud of speculation, rumor and guesswork about what happened next that finding out the real truth may be impossible. But more than one report said a spiral staircase was found beneath the stone barrier, leading to a network of ancient tunnels which seemed half natural, half manmade. With the penetration of this subterranean zone, paranormal activity reached a new high above ground. Guards reported strange figures lurking about. Sometimes they were described as giants, other times as misshapen dwarves and often just as human-like shadows. Again, what is real and what is exaggeration or falsehood? It seems certain, though, that something uncanny surrounded the dig site.

That included sightings of UFOs. Many were orbs of light or luminous shapes, but some appeared to be actual physical craft. When a local peasant reported she had seen a bright object lift into the sky near her home, the military investigated and found a burned circular patch in the undergrowth. Both the peasant and the squad investigating the UFO found themselves overcome by a debilitating illness that confined them to their beds.

No radio equipment stationed at Operation Lightbeam could function properly. The radios could neither receive outside messages or transmit to outside the Tsarichina perimeter. The expedition and the entire village were effectively cut off from the outside world. Telephone landlines were able to work...after a fashion. Those using them said the lines were full of distorted voices and unusual sounds when they were used.

Starting in November 1991, local villagers seemed to be the victims of UFO abduction. We know the name of just one of these villagers, Grytcho Kolev. Kolev found himself surrounded in a blinding white light and next woke up in a completely different place, hours later. Amazingly, he awoke in the village of Meztitscha, located approximately 40 miles south of Tsarichina. He was not the only person to suffer from such a “transportation”. Kolev had no memory of what had happened in the hours between encountering the light and waking up in Mestitscha.

All during 1991 and into 1992, the military continued to probe the tunnels underground despite the strange occurrences, numerous malfunctions and the unease of the psychic members of the expedition.

And now we reach the point of the story where we enter into the realms of science fiction and trans-dimensional insanity. If all events unfolded the way that many descriptions had it, then Operation Lightbeam encountered alien strangeness that would throw all of human history into question.

The men exploring the tunnels found their path blocked by a concave wall of stone that seemed smooth and polished beyond what any ancient society could create. They set about tearing this barrier down. What they found on the other side is still being debated fiercely more than 30 years later.

They were in a circular chamber also composed of this smooth, polished rock. The architects of Tsar Samuli certainly did not have the knowledge to create such a surface. Reports that have surfaced said the body of some inhuman creature was embedded in one portion of the wall. When the soldiers approached this enigma, they were stopped in their tracks by some kind of force field that prevented further access. They began to panic in the face of such strangeness and Col. Kanev, who had accompanied the squad, ordered the men to retreat.

They made their way back to the surface and Kanev immediately ordered the entrance to the tunnels to be covered in concrete and cut off from any further access. Operation Lightbeam withdrew from Tsarichina and all public records regarding the expedition were hidden, if not destroyed. Only reports from those who attended the dig filtered out, as well as anecdotes from the villagers. All signs of the expedition were erased except for the concrete plug, which is still there. It looks innocuous and unimportant sitting amongst weeds and overgrowth.

The most important of the witnesses that spoke, surprisingly, was Colonel Kanev himself. Kanev told how the psychics guided them to the exact spot of the excavation. The search of the treasure of Tsar Samuli was only a cover story, as the psychics all indicated some tremendous source of paranormal power and wisdom was located beneath Tsarichina. They believed that this mysterious entity was an ancestor of the entire human race. Was this the creature fused inside the stone? There have been garbled reports of a “yellow monkey” and a “hermaphrodite alien” found in the Tsarichina Pit. 

One of the psychics was a woman named Irini Loganova, who made a lot of astounding claims about what was in the Pit. She said it had been trying for millenia to attract people to its hiding place using telepathic suggestions. Loganova said that the occultists in Hitler’s Germany tried in vain to secure the hidden entity but were pushed out by Russian forces. She also said she received “visions” from the entity, enough to fill four journals worth of observations. But these were confiscated by the Bulgarian Army and never returned. Many of Loganova’s claims have the sound of some of the UFO contactee cults...tales of spaceships powered by solar energy, magical visions of the future of mankind among the stars and such. 

Although many of the details about Operation Lightbeam are difficult to come by, it’s known that one of the psychics, Marina Naplatanov, committed suicide after returning from the expedition. Her father, a professor at the University of Sofia, is one of the major researchers of the Tsarichina phenomenon. Many of the survivors were said to be “changed” after their experience and several were also said to have killed themselves. Everything about the Operation is clouded with secrecy to this day.

Several years after the closure of the pit, a scientific team from the University of Sofia arrived in the Tsarichina area to conduct tests. They intended to see if there were any electromagnetic, radioactive or other anomalies associated with the site. Although the expedition never reopened the tunnels or ventured underground,They planned on spending 20 days conducting tests, but were forced to leave after the first week when a strange craft buzzed their campsite and ignited a fire. Several UFOs were seen during that week and the expedition suffered some of the same equipment malfunctions that Operation Lightbeam did. In the end, the expedition contributed nothing but more mystery to the huge cloud already surrounding the Tsarichina area.

Only speculation remains. Many feel that what Operation Lightbeam found was an ancient alien spacecraft of some kind. This theory led to Tsarichina being called the “Area 51” of Europe. Were the UFOs and strange creatures seen in the area there to rescue the crew of that ancient spacecraft? Or could they be there to prevent humanity accessing any of that alien technology?

Could it also be that this remote area of Bulgaria was what some call a “portal” area? A place where multiple dimensions of reality overlap, causing visitors from other realms to cross over? Some other notorious portal areas would include Mount Shasta in California, the Point Pleasant area of West Virginia, and Skinwalker Ranch in Utah. Those were places where everything weird and paranormal seemed to pop up with alarming frequency.

Or was the whole thing a kind of mass hysteria, where people already brimming over with rumors of paranormal happenings simply exaggerated strange but explainable events and blew them out of proportion? As mentioned before, the Bulgarian people are prone to mysticism, with even high government officials like Todor Zhivkov relying on the advice of psychics and seers. Baba Vanga is looked upon almost like a saint in the Balkan country. In a land dealing with massive changes, could the stories coming out of Tsarichina be a lot of inflated ballyhoo?

One thing makes me suspect there was more to this incident than superstition and hysteria and that is the undeniable fact that the Tsarichina Pit was completely filled in and bricked over. What was being concealed? The Bulgarian government totally suppressed...and still suppresses...all official information about the incident. Why? There is a coverup. In more ways than one. It is true that there is not a single photograph, video or audio recording from Operation Lightbeam to be seen...that we know of. But people did die in connection with the operation. What was so dangerous about what basically was an archaeological and fact-finding dig in the Bulgarian countryside?

In the decades since, there has been an endless amount of speculation. People are still drawn to this small village in Bulgaria. Most likely, they are disappointed with a modest locale and what looks like an overgrown plug of concrete. But nobody yet has had the nerve or the wherewithal to dig under that plug. Perhaps it is better for us that we do not know…

This is Dr. Abner Mality, turning out the lights.