Is there credible corroboration for Semyon Pogorelov avoiding a naval mine?

Filed 2026-08-13. This review examines Paul Stonehill's 2022 video account and searches for an independent source behind its central claim.

Short answer

No believable independent corroboration was found. The incident may have happened, but the available public evidence is one unsourced narration and a later page embedding that same narration. The alleged discovery and disposal of the mine is part of Stonehill's story, not independent confirmation of it.

Estimated credibility:

• A Soviet submariner named Semyon Pogorelov had this experience: approximately 5/100.
• A submarine actually avoided and later confirmed the mine as described: approximately 5/100.
• Unexplained voices supplied information that saved the submarine: approximately 1/100.

What Stonehill says

Stonehill says that in 1981 Soviet submariner Semyon Pogorelov heard female voices telling him to change the submarine's course. Officers initially ignored him. When the voices became screams, Pogorelov collapsed and screamed, after which the commander ordered a small course change. Stonehill says the submarine missed an unexploded naval mine by a few centimeters, the mine was later found and defused, and Pogorelov was subsequently diagnosed with schizophrenia and confined to a mental hospital for two years.

Stonehill provides no submarine designation, class, fleet, patrol area, precise date, commander's name, Pogorelov's rank or patronymic, medical facility, archival reference, interview, publication, or named Russian source. He introduces it only as a case he had "learned about not that long ago." Later, when mentioning alleged parallels, he says he is speaking about unspecified "Russian sources."

Source search

Searches were run for the exact name and the distinctive elements of the story in English and Russian, including combinations of Semyon or Semen Pogorelov, submariner, female voices, naval mine, 1981, schizophrenia, and a two-year hospitalization.

The only direct reuse located was an October 28, 2022 post on Angel-Wings.nl. It embeds Stonehill's October 22 video and adds no witness, document, or reporting. It is dependent repetition, not corroboration.

The video's description contains no source link. Its small comment section contains no participant, relative, document citation, or source identification. Exact-name searches returned unrelated people with the same surname but no traceable Soviet submariner matching the story.

Does Stonehill's book contain the incident?

No. Stonehill and Philip Mantle's 2016 book Russia's USO Secrets is directly relevant because Chapter 4 is titled "Russian Submarines and USOs." A searchable copy contains the complete table of contents, chapter text, index, and 130 endnotes. Searches of that copy found no Pogorelov, telepathy, schizophrenia, female voices, or matching naval-mine account.

The book does show how Stonehill normally presents this material. Chapter 4 attributes stories to named researchers, former officers, private correspondence, Russian newspapers, magazines, television documentaries, and private archives. Evidentiary quality varies greatly, but the endnotes usually provide at least a provenance lead. The Pogorelov video supplies none of those details.

Published discussion of the book confirms that it is primarily a broad catalogue rather than a close investigation of each case:

• The Fortean Times review describes its Russian naval, sonar, Lake Baikal, and other underwater stories while openly questioning whether some dramatic tales should be read literally.
• Goodreads lists seven reader reviews. Admirers praise the quantity of cases and endnotes, while one reviewer specifically criticizes the reports as numerous but superficial, often only a few paragraphs each.
• The Italian edition's publisher description identifies the principal subjects as the Soviet Navy's "kvakeri," Lake Baikal swimmers, Issyk Kul, and Arctic cases. It does not mention Pogorelov.

This does not disprove the 1981 incident. It does establish that the book is not its source and provides no earlier provenance chain for it. Stonehill's statement in the 2022 video that he learned the case "not that long ago" is consistent with acquiring the story after the 2016 book.

Public histories do document major Soviet submarine events from 1981 with boat numbers, commanders, locations, and aftermath. Examples include the S-178 collision and sinking and the S-363 grounding in Sweden. Neither is this incident. Their absence of the Pogorelov story does not disprove a classified near miss, but it highlights how little identifying information Stonehill supplies.

Why the mine detail is not corroboration

Stonehill says the mine "was indeed found and defused," but he does not identify who found it, where it was found, how it was linked to the submarine's track, or which report records its disposal. A claim cannot corroborate itself merely by including a later verification scene.

The "few centimeters" detail is also suspiciously precise. Without the submarine's track, speed, depth, mine position, sensor data, and navigation error, no source could credibly establish centimeter-scale clearance. A last-moment course order would alter a submarine's path gradually, so this precision especially needs technical documentation. None is offered.

A mundane core is physically possible. A submarine could encounter a moored or seabed mine, detect an object acoustically, and maneuver away. If a sensor operator or commander detected the danger at the same time Pogorelov was distressed, later retelling could make the voices seem predictive. That is only a possible reconstruction, not evidence that this occurred.

What would materially change the assessment

• A full name, rank, boat number, fleet, date, and patrol area that can be checked against personnel and vessel histories.
• A signed account from Pogorelov, the commander, sonar operators, or other crew members.
• A patrol log, incident report, medical-board record, or mine-disposal record with a verifiable archival citation.
• An account published before Stonehill's 2022 video that identifies its own source.
• Technical details explaining how the mine and claimed clearance were detected and measured.

Net

There is no believable corroboration currently in view. The core mine encounter is possible, but possibility is the most the evidence supports. Stonehill's narration is too anonymous in its sourcing and too precise in its dramatic details to carry much weight by itself. The telepathic interpretation has still less support because the underlying incident has not first been established.