Although turning people into stone was Medusa's modus operandi according to Greek mythology, apparently, aliens are a fan of this stunt too.
That's according to this CIA document from the Cold War era which was declassified, anyway.
It might be short and sweet as it only consists of one page, but it's still brimming with bizarre information about an alleged UFO attack on Soviet soldiers.
The report consists of excerpts from articles written by Canadian Weekly World News and the Ukrainian publication Holos Ukrayiny, which detail the strange - and sinister - encounter.
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The outlets talk about an alleged 250-page KGB file on the 'alien attack' - including images, drawings and witness testimony.
The document claims that after the Iron Curtain fell in 1991 and President Mikhail Gorbachev was no longer in power, 'a lot of material from the [KGB] found their way abroad, in particular to the CIA'.
The newspaper articles, dating back to March 1993, describe a tense encounter which saw 23 Soviet troops 'turned into stone poles' in 1989 or 1990.
One American eyewitness is alleged to have described the scene as 'a horrific picture of revenge on the part of extraterrestrial creatures, a picture that makes one’s blood freeze'.
They claim that these men were taking part in a training exercise at a military base in Siberia when a 'low-flying spaceship', which was shaped like a saucer, suddenly appeared in the sky.
"For unknown reasons, somebody unexpectedly launched a surface-to-air missile and hit the UFO," it states, citing 'the KGB materials' as the source of the information.
"It fell to Earth not far away and five short humanoids with large heads and large black eyes emerged from it."
It goes on to reference the 'testimonies of two soldiers who remained alive', who allegedly observed something chilling after they 'freed themselves from the debris' of the UFO wreckage.
The CIA report explains: "The aliens came close together and then merged into a single object that acquired a spherical shape. That object began to buzz and hiss sharply, and then became brilliant white.
"In a few seconds, the spheres grew much bigger and exploded by flaring up with an extremely bright light.
"At that very instant, 23 soldiers who had watched the phenomenon turned into stone poles. Only two soldiers who stood in the shade and were less exposed to the luminous explosion survived."
Describing the supposed victims as 'petrified soldiers', the publications claimed that the KGB report said the 23 men who were turned to stone were taken to a 'secret scientific research institution' near Moscow.
The remains of the UFO were also supposedly sent to the same place, although it is not clear what became of the two survivors.
Researchers enlisted by the Red Army are said to have then determined that the molecular structure of the men was transformed into a 'substance no different from that of limestone'.
The source of energy which is claimed to have turned the troops into stone was 'still unknown to Earthlings', according to the report.
It also claims that a CIA representative stated at the time: "If the KGB file corresponds to reality, this is an extremely menacing case.The aliens possess such weapons and technology that go beyond all our assumptions."
Former CIA agent Mike Baker has cast doubt on the report, telling Fox News he didn't exactly believe the account of the alleged alien attack.
He said: "If there was an incident, regardless of the nature of the incident, I suspect that the actual report doesn't look much like what has now come out from five or six or seven iterations of what originally was [written].
"I'm sure there's something out there. I just don't think that they landed decades ago, turned Soviet soldiers into limestone and we're just now hearing about it. I don't think that's the case."
Former CIA agent Tracy Walder also stressed to NewsNation that the details of the alleged alien encounter didn't originate from the CIA itself, and the report appears to have come from the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, an open source service which scrapes foreign newspaper articles that the CIA might find interesting.
She said: "This is not a document that the CIA originated."
Olivia Burke