BULGARIAN X FILES

From Roswell to Project Blue Book in the United States and Project Condign in the UK, the military have always been interested in finding possible extraterrestrials on planet Earth. The Bulgarian Army is no exception. But its efforts to make contact with possible aliens have nothing to do with the image of gloomy researchers sifting through grainy photographs of UFOs and interviewing frightened locals who claim to have been abducted by little green men. When the Bulgarian military started looking for alien contact in 1990-1992, it was all about following the conflicting instructions of two psychics and digging a hole in some faraway place, looking for... what? Nobody knows for sure.

Thirty-five years after the events, Triumph, a new Bulgarian feature film starring Bulgaria-born Maria Bakalova, of Borat 2 fame, has revived the memory of what became known as the Tsarichina Hole.

Here is what really happened – although the story is full of holes (pun intended), thanks to the fact that the military destroyed most of the documentation after their efforts folded. What remains are a few contradictory eyewitness accounts and some media reports.

Triumph, a 2025 low-cost Bulgarian production, advertises itself as a "comedy"

It all began in the autumn of 1990, a year after the collapse of Communism in Bulgaria and the start of a complex and problematic transition to a democratic society, economy and institutions. The Bulgarian army was badly affected. Under Communism it was large and heavily indoctrinated. Now, only a year later, it was depoliticised and freewheeling, with no clear direction where it was going, while lavish funding was being cut.

At this particular moment in history, the Bulgarian Ministry of Defence decided it would be wise to have its own man on the board of a newly formed association called Fenomeni, or Phenomena, dedicated to research into paranormal activities. Soon a man contacted the association. He came from Tsarichina, a small village in the Stara Planina mountains, and claimed to know the whereabouts of a hidden treasure of gold. The people of Fenomeni decided that his "information" was credible. The Ministry of Defence was informed and got interested. A joint research party was set up, including not one but two psychics. With the blessing of the General Staff, they went to inspect the site in Tsarichina in December 1990.

Operation Sunbeam began.

The excavation that started soon was a hectic and erratic effort, following the "instructions" of two aliens, Roro and Kiki, relayed by the two psychics. As the digging progressed, the aliens' ideas and instructions became more and more eccentric. "This is the place of excavation and discovery," Roro said through one of the seers. "There is the salvation of Bulgaria from destruction, doom and disintegration, from its crystalline fragility. It will become strong as steel, as powerful as it was 1,350 years ago".

Roro and Kiki, the two extraterrestrial Tsarichina "guides," miraculously turned up in... southern California, in the mid-1990s, and set up a flying saucer retrieval and service centre

Despite the grand promises of finding gold, hidden wisdom and so on, the harder the group dug at Tsarichina, the more elusive the results were. They changed places. They fought. The aliens fought too. Eventually Kiki left, along with the psychic who was its mouthpiece.

Then the group found a perfectly shaped stone. What was behind it? Lifting the stone was dangerous, Roro warned, because it was guarded by highly contagious bacteria. When the army finally removed it, they found... more stone.

At that point, Roro was sacked and another alien, Sorel, took over. Following its advice, the expedition changed the search site again. After digging for more than 160 metres, they found... water.

It was already May 1991 and the General Staff was anxious for results – any results, from the digging. What the diggers did then seems strange now (as if the story so far had not been strange enough), but at the time it seemed quite logical. They consulted Vanga, the blind clairvoyant who lived in Petrich and who had gained a reputation among both ordinary Bulgarians and the Communist elite for her accurate predictions and regular conversations with some cosmic entity. Vanga seemed unimpressed by the efforts of the excavators at Tsarichina, but eventually told them that they would find a "mummified hairy yellow ape" that was also a hermaphrodite.

Encouraged, they kept digging. And once again they found nothing.

In Tsarichina, about 50 km out of Sofia, nothing remains of the top secret military operation except for a bar appropriately called The Hole

By this time, the young, free Bulgarian media had heard about the Tsarichina Hole and were eager to report on it. The General Staff became increasingly uncomfortable with the whole affair and called off the expedition in November 1992. After two years of digging, all that remained was a 70-metre-deep shaft and a 160-metre-long underground tunnel. The hole was sealed and the documentation associated with the dig was destroyed.

In the midst of the chaos in the Bulgaria of the 1990s, Tsarichina was forgotten. Today, only a single sign, near an old power substation, marks the site of the hole.

How is it that so many top brass, presumably serious, sensible men, believed that some psychics were communicating with some funny-named extraterrestrials? Why did they waste so much money and manpower digging a hole in the belief that they were saving Bulgaria?

There are several factors that explain the Tsarichina shenanigans.

First, it was the spirit of the times. In the autumn of 1990, Bulgaria was in turmoil and interest in mysteries of all kinds was widespread. Belief in the supernatural was an easy outlet for thousands of people from all walks of life who felt vulnerable and unprepared for the winds of change – and the military, which suffered some of the worst blows, were not immune.

The Bulgarians' proverbial love of hidden treasures also helped. Treasure hunting has a long tradition and lore in society, fed by real discoveries of exquisite golden objects in Thracian tombs and legends of gold hidden by brigands under the Ottomans. Surprisingly, in 1981 there was already a secret expedition that was very similar to the one in Tsarichina. The excavations took place in the Strandzha, on the advice of Vanga, and were organised by some of the country's highest-ranking party members, including Luydmila Zhivkova, daughter of Communist dictator Todor Zhivkov. Again they were supposed to be searching for some hidden esoteric knowledge, and again nothing was found and the research site was destroyed.

Bulgaria was not the only former Communist country fascinated by extraterrestrials. Pictured here is a sculpture of a flying saucer in a housing estate in Bratislava, Slovakia

The third factor behind the events at Tsarichina – and Strandzha – was nationalism. The excavations took place at a time when the nation was being shaken to its core by the seismic changes in its political and economic situation. Generations of Bulgarians were fed stories of their nation's medieval grandeur – and bitterly disappointed by its troubled present. With such a mindset, it is easy to fall prey to people who claim that if you dig somewhere, you will find a treasure or hidden knowledge that will restore Bulgaria's deserved prestige – your deserved prestige – in the world.

This sentiment is still alive. The difference is that today, 35 years after the Tsarichina events, disappointed Bulgarians are not digging for mythical treasures. They are voting for Vazrazhdane.