Woman Pulls Out Mysterious Metal Box Mid-Flight, Sparking Bomb Fears

A journalist has recalled the moment a woman pulled out a mysterious box on a flight to Kenya, sparking concern that it may be a bomb.

Will Brown, a correspondent for Britain's The Telegraph, tweeted that he and his partner had just boarded a flight bound for Nairobi when "something quite strange happened."

"A kind-looking French lady sat next to us and carefully took a metal box out of her wheelie case," Brown wrote on Twitter, along with a picture of the box in question.

"My first and somewhat silly thought was 'Christ, is that a bomb?' followed shortly by 'Shut up, Will. She couldn't have got a bomb through French airport security,'" he wrote.

Brown told Newsweek that neither he nor other passengers were too concerned by the box.

"My immediate thought was this does look a bit dodgy but then I just assumed it was some kind of strange medical device," he said.

In his thread on Twitter, Brown said he had noticed the woman was "staring intently at a video on her phone of someone talking against a blank white screen. It seems almost cultish."

Their flight had taken off by this point and they were without Internet, but he wrote that he had managed to send a message to a friend asking him to look into the "Russian-sounding" name—"Grigori Grabovoi"—that was on the box.

Brown said his friend "sent back a quick message saying the box had been invented by Grigori Grabovoi, a Kazakh-Russian scientist and 'respected clairvoyant, healer and specialist in informatics.' Basically, a Russian scientist who has gone off the rails and started a cult/sect."

In other tweets, Brown explained that the box is called "PRK-1U" and that its website claims it acts like "a torch that lights up the space: you see only the events that precisely make it possible to ensure eternal life."

The website describes the device as an "evolution accelerator" and a "quantum device with optical systems which considerably accelerates the expansion of consciousness through the concentration of thought."

Newsweek has contacted the company for comment.

Brown explained: "Essentially, Grabovoi claims you can cure all diseases—Covid-19, cancer and HIV—effectively living forever through raw concentration on numbers with this box as an aid," he wrote.

"Immortality isn't cheap, though. Reportedly you can buy one of these boxes for 9700 euros (including delivery) or activate a 'remote access option' (whatever that means) for 1212 euros."

He said it appears Grabavoi "now lives outside Russia, maybe in Serbia."

"It looks like he's been promoting his ideas on TikTok and Facebook. I wonder what algorithm this poor lady got stuck in to be exposed to this," he wrote.

Towards the end of the flight, an air hostess approached the woman and "kindly enquired what this thing was," Brown wrote.

"I didn't make out her reply. But I heard the air hostess say, 'If I were you, I wouldn't play with the border security of some [African] countries. They don't joke.'"

Brown added to Newsweek: "For me it's not so much a question of security. Airport staff would have picked up on whether or not it was a dangerous device.

"I think it's just quite sad that someone, who might actually be quite vulnerable, has been tricked into going along with this fraud."