The third reason he was writing more was to document his growing concerns—not about the impending nuclear accident, of which he knew nothing from his perspective in time, but the strange attacks that had started near Pripyat recently. I could feel his fear and worry as I read his words. Four people had been killed and Alexi believed the government was somehow involved.

On January 21, 1985, Alexi writes a long entry describing a story he heard from a co-worker and something he saw with his own eyes. Rather than try to paraphrase it, I have reproduced my best translation of this excerpt below.

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I have never known Luka to be a liar. A cheat at cards, yes, but not dishonest in things that matter. And when he told me about the Bowl of Pripyat, I know he wasn’t lying. He was too afraid for it to be anything other than the truth.

He said, as we all know, that there are certain work tunnels and other areas underneath portions of Pripyat. Some say it is for a bomb shelter, others say it is for certain important people to travel between the town and the plant. Luka says it is for secret government things, the chief of which is the Bowl of Pripyat.

According to Luka, he had an older brother who worked on the plans for where to place the reactor and the “nuclear city” of Pripyat. The location was chosen because of something that was found there years earlier in a cavern deep below. They called it the “Bowl of Pripyat”.

It was a gigantic metallic bowl that stood as high as a tall man and as wide as two Wartburg 353s were long. It appeared to be empty at first, but over time it was discovered that the bottom would sometimes fill with a strange liquid. You could stir and shift the liquid, but attempting to remove any of it was somehow impossible, and anyone who touched the liquid seemed to go immediately and permanently insane. You would think this would cause people to stay away from the Bowl, but as my father used to say, “Appetite comes with eating.” The mystery and danger of the artifact caused it to become a highly prized commodity among those with power.

The building of the plant and the city were the perfect cover, as no one would pay attention to a few extra trucks or men coming in or out of the area in the dead of night. Luka says that his brother never saw the bowl, but two of his workers had. They had come back and told Luka’s brother strange tales of what was happening in that dark cavern deep in the earth, and it was clear that they were terrified. The next day, his brother received notice that the two men had been transferred elsewhere, and he never heard from them again.