THINK ABOUTIT CLOSE ENCOUNTER REPORT

1700: Reps in Urals, Ekaterinburg region, Russia

In the Ural Mountains near Ekaterinburg, Russia around 1700, a miner named Stepan Petrovich was resting in a meadow above a copper mine when he was awakened by a push on his side and found a strange woman sitting before him near a large stone. She was small and extraordinarily beautiful — black plaited hair decorated with red and green beads, a dress that appeared to be made not of cloth but of malachite stone itself, and a way of moving that Stepan could only describe as like mercury, changing position with inhuman speed. She was speaking to someone invisible in a language he did not know and laughing about him. Around her were hundreds of lizards in every color — green, blue, brown with gold spots — which she called her army. She knew his name without being told it. She gave him a message to deliver to his boss at the mine, ordering the copper extraction to stop. Stepan delivered the message and was beaten, chained, and imprisoned underground for his trouble. The Mistress of the Copper Mountain came for him in his underground cell, freed him, and took him into her subterranean realm — chambers of crystalline malachite, rooms of pure gold and precious stones stretching further than the eye could see. Then she returned him to the surface and was gone. Stepan spent the rest of his life as a successful and eventually wealthy miner. He never spoke publicly of what he had seen underground. But when he died, his eyes were full of green — as if the malachite rooms were the last thing he saw.

Date: c. 1700 CE

Sighting Time: Daytime

Day/Night: Day

Location: Ural Mountains, Ekaterinburg region, Russia — copper and malachite mine

Urban or Rural: Rural — mining area in the Urals

No. of Entity(s): 1 primary entity — the Mistress of the Copper Mountain; hundreds of secondary entities — the army of lizards

Entity Type: Reptilian — shapeshifting female humanoid with reptilian physical characteristics; lizard entities under her command

Entity Description: Appeared initially as a very attractive young woman of small stature with black plaited hair decorated with red and green beads. Dress appeared to be composed of malachite stone rather than fabric. Moved with inhuman speed described by witness as like mercury — changing position numerous times instantly. Spoke an unknown language. Knew the witness’s name without being told. Commanded hundreds of lizards of varying colors as her army. Upon departure revealed her true form — green paws, a tail with a black crest running down her back, while her head retained human appearance. Climbed the mountain and disappeared behind a large rock. In the underground realm presented again as a beautiful woman in shifting malachite garments.

Hynek Classification: CE-III — Close Encounter of the Third Kind; direct verbal communication between a non-human shapeshifting entity and a human witness; physical interaction including liberation from chains; guided tour of a subterranean environment

Duration: First encounter — sufficient for extended conversation and instruction delivery. Second encounter — from underground liberation through the full tour of the subterranean realm; hours implied by the account’s detail

No. of Object(s): None — no aerial craft; the encounter is subterranean

Description of Object(s): N/A — the malachite underground realm is the associated physical environment

Color of Object(s): Green — malachite; multi-colored lizards; gold — underground chambers

Distance to Object(s): Direct proximity — entity sat near Stepan, touched him, and led him through underground passages

Height & Speed: Ground level and underground; entity moved at inhuman speed described as mercury-like

Number of Witnesses: 1 — Stepan Petrovich; his sleeping companion was not awoken

Special Features / Characteristics: Shapeshifting — from beautiful human woman to visible reptilian form with green paws, tail, and black dorsal crest; knowledge of witness name without introduction; command of hundreds of lizards described explicitly as her army; unknown language spoken to invisible companions; message delivery that resulted in severe punishment of the witness; underground liberation by hundreds of lizards removing chains; guided tour of subterranean crystalline malachite rooms and gold chambers; marriage proposal from the entity; lifelong prosperity for Stepan after the encounter; green eyes at death suggesting the underground environment’s lasting influence on the witness; the Mistress of the Copper Mountain is the central figure in the Ural mining folklore tradition — specifically associated with the malachite and copper deposits of the Ekaterinburg region; the entity tradition connects directly to the Reptilian entity type documented across global records and specifically to the Ural Mountains as a documented anomalous zone for non-human entity activity

Case Status: Unexplained

Source: Philip Mantle and Paul Stonehill, UFO-USSR; Ural regional oral tradition; Pavel Bazhov, The Malachite Casket (1939), which drew on this tradition

Summary/Description: Around 1700, Ural miner Stepan Petrovich was awoken in a meadow near Ekaterinburg by a shapeshifting female entity known as the Mistress of the Copper Mountain — appearing as a beautiful woman in a malachite dress who moved at inhuman speed, commanded hundreds of lizards, and knew his name. She gave him a message to deliver to his mine boss ordering a halt to copper extraction. Stepan delivered the message, was beaten and chained underground, and was liberated by the entity who then took him on a tour of her crystalline subterranean realm of malachite rooms and gold chambers. He was returned to the surface and spent the rest of his life as a successful miner, his eyes turning green at death. Documented by Philip Mantle and Paul Stonehill and preserved in the Ural regional oral tradition codified by Pavel Bazhov.

DETAILED REPORT:

The Ural Mountains in 1700 are at the beginning of Peter the Great’s industrial transformation of Russia. The Ekaterinburg region — which Peter would formally found as a city in 1723 — was already a center of copper and malachite extraction, its underground geology extraordinarily rich in the green stone that would become synonymous with Russian imperial decoration. The men who worked those mines were tough, practical frontier workers who understood underground environments better than almost anyone in 18th century Russia.

Stepan Petrovich was one of them.

He and a companion had come up from the mine for a rest in the meadow above the copper pit. His companion went to sleep. Stepan did too — until something pushed him in the side and woke him.

She was sitting near a large stone, a few feet away.

Stepan’s first impression was of extraordinary beauty. A young woman, not tall, with black hair in plaits decorated with red and green beads. The hair beads were the first indicator that something was different — not the decorations of a Russian mining woman of 1700. Her dress was the second indicator. It appeared to be made of silk — the visual impression was silk — but when Stepan looked more carefully it appeared to be composed of malachite itself, the green stone that came out of the very mountain above which they were sitting. Not made from it. Made of it — as the 1635 Saalfeld Moss Woman was made of the forest and the 1662 Saalfeld earth-woman was made of the soil.

She moved like mercury.

This is Stepan’s own description — preserved through the oral tradition and documented in Mantle and Stonehill’s research. Not fast, not agile — like mercury. The specific quality of movement that mercury has when it moves across a surface: smooth, non-mechanical, changing direction without the momentum-governed physics that governs solid objects. She was here, then there, then here again, and Stepan could not catch the transitions.

She was speaking to someone invisible in a language Stepan did not recognize. Laughing. Apparently discussing him.

Then she turned and addressed him by name.

Stepan Petrovich. She knew it. He had not introduced himself. His companion was asleep. She knew his name and used it with the familiar form — Stepan Petrovich — as if they had met before, as if she had always known who he was and had been waiting for this meeting.

Then he noticed the lizards.

Hundreds of them. Every color — green, blue-green, brown with gold spots. Surrounding her, around her feet, extending across the meadow grass. She saw him see them and explained immediately: “They are my army.” She clapped her hands and they disappeared. She clapped again and they reappeared, this time gathering directly at Stepan’s feet so he could not move without stepping on them.

The message she gave him was specific, direct, and — to Stepan — terrifying in its implications. He was to go to his boss at the mine and deliver these words from the Mistress of the Copper Mountain: leave the Red Mountain pit. Stop destroying my iron cap. If you continue, I will drop the entire copper deep into the bowels of the earth and it will never be found.

She made him repeat it. Told him not to be afraid. Sent him away. As he left and she jumped to climb the mountain, he saw the transition — the human form shifting, the green paws appearing, the tail with the black dorsal crest becoming visible. Her head remained human. She called back to him: if you follow my instructions, I will marry you.

Stepan delivered the message.

His boss’s response was precisely what a rational 18th century Russian mine supervisor would produce when a miner reports that a supernatural female entity wants him to stop extracting copper: he had Stepan beaten, chained, and imprisoned deep underground in the mine.

Alone in the underground dark, chained to the rock, Stepan began striking the rock with his fists. The malachite crumbled. The underground around him changed — became dry, then lit. The Mistress of the Copper Mountain stood before him again.

She freed him — her army of lizards removed the chains — and she took him into her realm.

What Stepan saw underground in the Mistress’s domain is described in the oral tradition with a specificity that argues for genuine experienced memory rather than invented narrative. Room after room of crystalline malachite — green walls that generated their own light, passages of pure translucent stone that no natural cave formation produces. Chambers of gold. Rooms of precious stones. The scale of the realm was beyond anything Stepan could estimate — it extended further into the earth than he could follow with his eyes. The Mistress moved through it freely, her malachite dress shifting and changing as the surrounding stone changed, as if she was of one substance with the mountain itself.

He was returned to the surface.

Stepan spent the rest of his life as a miner in the Urals. He found rich deposits others could not find. He became prosperous. He married a human woman and had children. He never publicly told the story of what he had seen underground. But when he died, his eyes were full of green — as if the last thing in his field of vision, the thing that his dying brain was producing as his final perception, was the crystalline malachite rooms of the Mistress of the Copper Mountain’s underground realm.

The Mistress of the Copper Mountain is the central figure in the folklore tradition of the Ural mining communities — a tradition that Pavel Bazhov codified in his 1939 collection The Malachite Casket, drawing on the oral accounts that had circulated in the Ekaterinburg region for two centuries. Bazhov presented them as folklore. The research tradition represented by Philip Mantle and Paul Stonehill in UFO-USSR treats them as what the witnesses described: encounters with non-human entities in the Ural Mountains.

RESEARCHER’S NOTES:

The Mistress of the Copper Mountain — Shapeshifting, Subterranean Command, and the Green Eyes at Death

Shapeshifting as Entity Classification Feature: The Mistress’s transition from beautiful human woman to visible reptilian form — green paws, black-crested tail, human head — is one of the most explicitly documented shapeshifting sequences in the pre-modern Reptilian entity record. Unlike entity accounts where the non-human nature is implied by behavior or appearance, the Stepan Petrovich account documents the actual physical transition in progress — the entity between states, partly human and partly reptilian, observed by the witness at the moment of change. This transitional observation is analytically significant.
The Army of Lizards as Entity Organization: The hundreds of lizards under the Mistress’s command — responding to hand claps, moving in coordinated formations to trap or release the human witness — is one of the most detailed accounts of entity hierarchical organization in the pre-modern record. The lizards function as extensions of the Mistress’s will and as tools of physical control over the human witness. Whether they are biological creatures, manifestations of her energy, or some other category entirely, their organized responsive behavior argues for a genuine intelligence directing them.
The Message and Its Consequences: The Mistress’s use of Stepan as a messenger — delivering a specific operational command about mining activity to human authorities — and the severe punishment Stepan received for complying, followed by the entity’s liberation of the punished witness, follows the exact structure of the CE-III commission pattern documented across the archive. The entity approached a specific human, delivered a specific message, the human complied, the human was punished by human institutions, and the entity intervened to protect the compliant witness. The pattern is identical to the 1655 Jasna Góra Częstochowa encounter and the 1531 Tepeyac commission — entity, message, human institutional resistance, entity intervention.
Green Eyes at Death as Lasting Physical Evidence: Stepan’s eyes turning green at death — described in the oral tradition as a physical characteristic observed by those present at his deathbed — is one of the most unusual post-contact physical evidence descriptions in the pre-modern entity record. Whether this represents a genuine physiological change produced by the underground environment’s light or radiation, a metaphorical tradition encoding the intensity of the underground experience, or a genuine biological marker from contact with the Mistress, it is preserved as physical observation rather than spiritual symbolism.

Stepan Petrovich was pushed awake by a woman made of malachite in the Ural Mountains around 1700 and his life was never the same afterward. She knew his name. She commanded lizards. She showed him underground rooms of crystalline green stone and gold that extended further than he could see. She proposed marriage and he refused and she laughed and that was the end of their explicit interaction. He delivered her message, was beaten and chained for it, and she freed him. He spent the rest of his life finding rich ore deposits others could not locate. When he died his eyes were green. Philip Mantle and Paul Stonehill documented the tradition. Pavel Bazhov codified it in 1939 as folklore. The archive holds it as CE-III — a shapeshifting reptilian entity with a subterranean domain, an army of lizards, and an operational message that cost a miner a beating to deliver. The Mistress of the Copper Mountain did not explain herself to Stepan Petrovich. She showed him what she wanted him to see and sent him back to the surface. Whatever she was, she was in the Ural Mountains before Peter the Great built Ekaterinburg. She was probably there before Russia was Russia.