There is something particularly insidious and terrifying about nuclear fallout, and radiation sickness. It is invisible, it is deadly, it renders the surrounding area uninhabitable, and it lasts for centuries. And there is no cure.
Nuclear accidents loom large in our consciousness. The severity and long-lasting impact of the Chornobyl* Nuclear Power Plant’s radioactive contamination, the worst nuclear accident in history, horrifies and fascinates us.
Knowing that such a disaster occurred during a safety check and was unexpected is terrifying. There were no signs of the impending catastrophe in Pripyat when the plant’s employees clocked into work on April 26, 1986.
It turns out there might have been a sign that something bad was going to happen, but supernatural signs aren’t given a lot of credit. Were the sightings of a creature known as the Blackbird of Chornobyl a warning of the impending disaster?
*Before learning more about the Blackbird of Chornobyl, we need to discuss the variation in spelling. When Ukraine became independent from the Soviet Union, the government re-established its own language and original spelling. The Russian name is Chernobyl, but the Ukrainian name is Chornobyl. Since the location of the power is in Pripyat, Ukraine, and in solidarity with the people of Ukraine, this article will use the correct Ukrainian spelling of Chornobyl.
Чорний дрізд Чорнобиля (The Blackbird of Chornobyl)
The Blackbird of Chornobyl, or the Chornobyl Mothman, was a cryptid that was seen prior to and following the 1986 Chornobyl disaster. In the months before the Chornobyl disaster, several of the employees at the nuclear plant said they saw a “large, black, headless creature with gigantic winds and fire red eyes.”

Workers in the control room of reactor #4 reported seeing a large black creature in the sky only days and hours before the disaster. Based on the description of the Blackbird of Chornobyl, it sounds a lot like another cryptid cult favorite, the Mothman from Point Pleasant, West Virginia.
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