The Alien Races Book

TL;DR

This is the document that spread across UFO forums as “The Alien Races Book,” also known as the 82 alien species book. It presents itself as a translated Soviet or KGB manual that once briefed intelligence agents on the extraterrestrial races visiting Earth. The English version is attributed to a man calling himself Dante Santori, who reportedly said he translated it from a Russian edition passed to him by a contact named Petro. There is no independent record of the original, no archive trail, and no institutional source that confirms any of it. Treat this as folklore that dressed itself up as a declassified file, not as evidence of anything.

What it claims

The text claims the original was a Soviet document, variously dated to 1946 or 1951, compiled to inform agents about alien species that had contacted or visited Earth. Different circulating versions list different counts, commonly 58 or 82 species, each with a name, a home system, and a short description. Santori reportedly said Petro was the son of a former Soviet diplomat and that the two found the material while clearing out boxes of documents. Petro is said to have died in a car accident, after which the copy he was carrying reportedly vanished. Santori has also said the illustrations were not from the original and were assembled from images found online to give readers a rough idea of each species.

Why it matters

It matters mainly as a case study in how a document goes viral. The list format, the calm bureaucratic tone, and the KGB framing gave it a veneer of leaked authenticity that flashier UFO material lacks. It seeded countless YouTube videos, blog posts, and reposts, and its species names still circulate as if they were settled taxonomy. For a rigor-first reader it is a useful example of the difference between something that sounds like a file and something that actually is one.

Does it hold up?

No. The claimed Soviet origin has never been corroborated by any archive, declassified record, or named institution outside the document’s own story. Investigators have pointed to a misspelling in the supposed KGB emblem, with “государственной” rendered as “государстенной,” which is exactly the kind of error you would not expect from genuine Soviet material. The author’s own admission that the images were pasted in from the internet removes any claim to primary documentation. The whole provenance rests on a single unverifiable chain: an unnamed diplomat, a contact who reportedly died, and a copy that reportedly disappeared. That is a story, not a source. On our scale it earns a rigor of 0 and a holds-up of 0.

Read this if

Read it only to understand how a modern fabrication can pass for a leaked government file, and keep it well away from anything you intend to treat as evidence.