The Voronezh UFO incident was an alleged UFO and extra-terrestrial alien sighting reported by a group of children in Voronezh, Soviet Union, on September 27, 1989. The area has been popular with UFO-hunting tourists. TASS reports According to TASS, boys playing football in a city park "saw a pink glow in the sky, then saw a deep red ball about three metres in diameter. The ball circled, vanished, then reappeared minutes later and hovered". The children claimed to have seen "a three-eyed alien" wearing bronze coloured boots with a disk on the chest, and a robot, exiting the object. According to the children, the alien used a ray gun to make a 16-year-old boy disappear until the object departed. Though the children were the only ones claiming to have witnessed the aliens, Lieutenant Sergei A. Matveyev of the Voronezh district police station claimed to have seen "a body flying in the sky". The Interior Ministry said they would dispatch troops to the area should the object reappear. On October 9, 1989, TASS reported that a correspondent had spoken to "10 or 12 youths" who claimed to have seen a flying saucer. The original article quoted Dr. Silanov, of the Voronezh Geophysical Laboratory, as confirming the location of the landing using "biolocation". According to Paul Kurtz, "the method of "biolocation" they used was "a form of ESP dowsing" — whose effectiveness most Westerners question". The report was the most publicized of a series of UFO claims made by official government media, and were promoted as part of the government's new "openness". It was noted that, unlike in America, the reported beings were completely apolitical and did not even speak during their 'visit'. In the immediate aftermath of the alleged incident, hundreds of UFO reports began appearing, with a reporter from Komsomolskaya Pravda even claiming to have an exclusive interview with alien beings from Red Star. In addition to TASS, Sovietskaya Kultura, a Communist Party paper, publicized the children's claims, with the Communist newspaper defending its decision, saying: "[I]ts coverage was motivated by 'the golden rule of journalism: the reader must know everything." The newspaper was repeatedly asked whether the report was in jest and repeatedly assured it was not. Following the initial publicity, a private company was formed to sell tours of Voronezh, billed as "land of the aliens", for 59 rubles ($95) per person. The description of the incident was