When the military sealed off secrets of 'Tsarichina Hole'

The story of Golyamo Gradishte and the Cave of Bastet in the first part of this investigation finished on ancient Egyptian mythology about a foxy feline goddess and the possible whereabouts of her tomb in Bulgaria’s Strandzha Mountains but the second part moves on to far stranger territory a decade later and an even bigger mystery in a vast tunnel complex to the north under the country’s Balkan range, where a two-year excavation came to a rather abrupt end in November 1992 having found nothing... but at the cost of an arm and a leg.

Having spent a whopping 16 million Lev (about £7 million) the Bulgarian military just sealed up the hole, covering the entrance with gravel and concrete, with nothing to show for two years of graft. The spiralling cost was allegedly the reason for aborting the excavation but it is said to have come at precisely the moment the Bulgarian military’s “search party” uncovered a vault it was never meant to reach.

Renowned clairvoyant Vangeliya Pandeva Gushterova, better known as Baba Vanga, had warned them about a doorway and what lay behind but, having come so far, the excavation’s military leaders weren’t about to stop before reaching the place she’d told them protected technology humanity was simply not ready to discover. And what was it? Well, many believe it hid a cosmic library of incredible alien knowledge and a laboratory containing a huge capsule cocooning a giant androgynous protohuman. The rewards were simply too great to pass up on!

Soon after the project got underway the workers reached a solid stone barrier about 10 metres down which they had to blast through, revealing an incredible underground labyrinth they allegedly almost flooded having disturbed a nearby underground lake. According to leaked information from Colonel Tsvetko Kanev, who led the defence ministry taskforce, the group then dug out a strange 160-metre-long and 70-metre-deep spiral passageway that led to a mysterious rectangular slab made of an unidentified material.

Vanga was one of two prominent mystics involved in the project, the other – Elisaveta Loginova – was believed to be the catalyst for the entire excavation and the person responsible for introducing, the then 80-year-old, Vanga to the quest.

Strange phenomena were reported at the site in Tsarichina almost immediately after the excavation began on 6 December 1990. According to multiple witness accounts strange flashes of light, electromagnetic anomalies and bizarre sounds started to plague the area and it didn’t take long for the project to gain a reputation for being more than just a treasure hunt for Tsar Samuil’s hidden horde.

Soldiers, scientists and engineers taking part in the dig began reporting hallucinations and strange dreams that caused them huge stress, with some accounts claiming guards were prone to fire off rounds of bullets at mysterious apparitions they had no effect on. Others claimed there were powerful energies repelling workers from certain areas in the tunnel complex... some heard unexplained whispers and footsteps.

Intense electromagnetic interference also caused radios to fail and compasses to spin wildly, with constant problems with malfunctioning excavation equipment forcing workers to resort to hand tools to carry out much of the work. There were UFO sightings reported in the sky above Tsarichina too, including the appearance of shadowy figures and glowing orbs around the site at night.

According to testimony the deeper down the tunnelling went the stranger the findings became. The walls, which were smooth and appeared to be artificially constructed from a material unlike natural rock, displayed strange hieroglyphic markings that none of the scientists could decipher, with the passage leading to a large flat slab that seemed to seal off a deeper chamber.

Psychics, including Vanga and Loginova, claimed an entity referred to as “Amonia” had warned them repeatedly against breaching the barrier, saying it protected something humanity was not ready for.

Loginova – whose psychic interaction, with entities she claimed were beyond human comprehension, had sparked the dig – believed the site was a portal to other dimensions, concealing links to humanity’s genetic origins and deep spiritual truths.

In a book she wrote about her experiences entitled “Tsarichina: Fateful Contact” she stated her interaction with Amonia had led her to the site and provided her with guidance throughout the two-year excavation. Loginova told the military the strange stone slab was a “bio-shielding” device covered in dangerous bacteria and should not be touched, also claiming there was a body beyond it that was neither male nor female... something which Vanga had also picked up on.

Other psychics were also involved in the excavation work, but most couldn’t stomach the weirdness and quit the project. One, Marina Naplatanova, allegedly found the whole experience so disturbing she committed suicide soon after the excavation came to a conclusion... which was not long after they reached the slab and things began to get even more sinister, some reports claiming the pristine surface had a translucent crystalline quality that convinced workers a figure was locked inside a tube at the far end of a vault it sealed off.

Colonel Kanev, who was accompanying the team at this point, commanded one of the soldiers to try to move the slab to access the vault but he found it protected by an invisible force field that flung him violently away, the man cracked his head on the rocks and was left motionless on the ground.

At this point a haze engulfed the vault shielding the figure within and the petrified soldiers allegedly opened fire towards the chamber but their bullets fell to the ground before reaching the slab and, one by one, the men came under attack from an invisible force.

The colonel ordered a retreat but as his troops backtracked he sensed a strange vibration in the stone... like a force moving towards them. As the noise grew louder, the earth began to shake and a green mist followed them down the passageway... psychic Naplatanova cursing them for failing to heed the warnings. Colonel Kanev ordered a few soldiers to stay back as rear guards while the main party fled to the surface, shots going off further down the passage that soon fell silent.

Once the main body had vacated the entrance the colonel ordered engineers to close the tunnel but they found the excavators didn’t work, having to resort to explosives instead and then seal up the site with gravel and concrete with their dead colleagues still inside.

But that’s not the official line... that says the project was stopped because of the immense cost adding up, with some observers alleging the entire operation was nothing more than a cover story for a vast post-Communist money-laundering ruse that authorities needed to pull the plug on.

There’s only one aspect of the story that’s unassailable... a two-year military operation did take place in Tsarichina, it was carried out under intense security at a huge cost and produced no official findings and no paper trail relating to it.

Loginova had allegedly kept a meticulous journal of the excavation, detailing her contact with Amonia and the reams of annotation she’d scribbled down. She filled notebooks with diagrams, strange hieroglyphics and elements of many languages with experts, who examined them, concluding the 843 distinct symbols weren’t a match for any known language. The volume of information was enormous and contained formulas for space flight, medicine and much more... it was like a cosmic encyclopedia which the Bulgarian military is said to have sent to one of the world’s leading centres on ancient languages in Tel Aviv, Israel, for further assessment.

After the site was sealed down the notebooks mysteriously vanished, Loginova claiming they were whisked away by major world powers after being smuggled out of the country.

It’s a classic textbook mystery containing all the elements you’d expect from any of the sci-fi franchises that blossomed towards the end of the century and afterwards... films such as Cat People, Stargate and Prometheus, with TV series such as Dark Angel also riddled with elements from the Golyamo Gradishte and Tsarichina scripts.

The strange thing is, with the exception of Paul Schrader’s 1982 movie Cat People – which was a remake of the 1942 film of the same name, directed by Jacques Tourneur and also produced by RKO Radio Pictures – each of the other productions followed the events in Bulgaria they seem to draw elements from.

So it’s back to the analogy of chickens, eggs and plausible deniability again. After all, we know these alien “tall tales” are simply the product of creative imaginations inspired by what we’ve seen on TV, don't we... so why do they always seem to follow after the fact?