A letter from a native of the village of Kony, Krasnoyarsk Territory, head of a department of a design bureau near Moscow, Mikhail Panov, which appeared in 1983 in the magazine "Tekhnika - Molodoi", shook the entire Soviet Union. The story of the deadly zone near the Siberian river Kova prompted dozens of expeditions to set off. Many did not return - perhaps those who were looking too well.
Collective farmer's story
Mikhail Panov said that he heard this story from an elderly collective farmer from the Kezhemsky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory in the summer of 1938. Due to weather conditions, they had to drive the herd to Bryansk through the forest, and not float it along the Angara. Collective farmers walked from the village of Kova along the river of the same name.
When the drivers were about to turn towards the Angara, two cows were missing in the herd. Searching for the loss, they saw a meadow, devoid of vegetation, about 200-250 meters in diameter. The dogs, running out onto the black ground, turned back with a squeal, tails between their legs. The bodies of the missing cows lay at a distance of 15-20 meters from the trees. The round glade was terrifying. Bones and carcasses of animals and birds were visible on the ground. The branches of the trees hanging over the meadow turned black.
An experienced hunter who knew the local taiga has already heard of such a place:
“It's probably the Devil's Cemetery. It is impossible to approach the bare ground - there is death.
The elder was in a hurry to leave. The collective farmers have not figured out why all living things perish in the clearing. The dogs, who had been in the clearing for less than a minute, stopped eating and soon died.
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“Solving the riddle would probably benefit science,” wrote Panov. “I dare to hope that my message will interest geologists and natural scientists.”
I don’t know about the naturalists, but adventure lovers are definitely interested in it. In terms of the number of those who rushed to search, Kova ranked third in the USSR after the Siama gorge and the M-triangle.
Other evidence
Viktor Zhuravlev, a member of the Meteorite Commission of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, from Novosibirsk, confirmed that Panov's story was not the only one. The doctor, who worked in the Angara in 1941, heard more than once from local residents about the "bad place". The hunters pulled out the animals that died in the clearing with hooks on ropes. Their unusually red meat was quite edible. The hunters offered to show the clearing, but the doctors who were overloaded were not up to the wonders of nature.
The enthusiasm increased when it turned out that the Kolkhoznik newspaper published in the village of Kezhma had raised the issue of studying the Devil's Cemetery even before the war. In the issue of April 24, 1940, the story of the agronomist Valentin Salyagin was printed. He not only made sure that this place exists, but also put on a little experience. Salyagin put pine branches and recently shot hazel grouses on the edge of the black glade. After a while, they were pulled out and examined carefully.
The green branches faded as if scorched by something. At the slightest touch, the pine needles fell off. The hazel grouses have not changed in appearance, but their giblets have acquired a strange reddish tint. During a short stay near that place, Salyagin and his guide experienced incomprehensible pain. The compass needle next to the clearing began to wobble violently, indicating the wrong direction.
Gas chamber or …
The gas trap hypothesis was first expressed by Viktor Zhuravlev. He drew attention to the fact that the Kova valley is located within the Tunguska coal basin, which means that an underground fire may occur under it. Under the conditions of insufficient oxygen supply, coal seams under the ground slowly smolder, emitting carbon monoxide - carbon monoxide that has neither color nor smell. The scientist suggested that the gas was able to break through to the surface in only one place.
Carbon monoxide is poisonous. It combines with blood hemoglobin, displacing oxygen and forming carboxyhemoglobin, which gives blood a bright scarlet color. Carbon monoxide easily combines with muscle protein - myoglobin, as a result of which muscle tissue also turns bright red (remember the stories about the unusually red color of the meat of dead animals)! With a high concentration of carboxyhemoglobin in the blood, a headache occurs, the muscles also begin to ache, and loss of consciousness is possible. Death occurs with blood saturation up to 80%. Even with mild poisoning, the mood becomes depressed, anxiety and fear arise.
Experts, studying the images of the Kova Valley made in the infrared range, found "hot" spots on them. These could well be traces of underground fires.
Alas, not everything is so simple. Salyagin put not living, but killed hazel grouses on the lifeless land. They didn't breathe, but the insides of the birds turned red anyway!
Alexander Simonov from Tashkent suggested that it is not gas that changes the color of fabrics, but a powerful alternating magnetic field. If it exceeds a certain value, the blood in the body clots. If the birds were fresh enough, the field should also act on dead hazel grouses. But why did Valentin Salyagin and his guide survive? Why did the compass correct itself? With the strength of a magnetic field capable of killing, it would remain incapacitated forever.
Looking for trouble
Immediately after the publication in the "Technics for Youth" magazine, dozens of enthusiasts gathered for the road. Many did not come back. According to Alexander Rempel from Vladivostok, 75 people died or went missing during the search for the anomalous zone. Other researchers consider this figure to be exaggerated, especially because it includes those who died during the rafting on the Cove, a dangerous river with rapids and rifts. But not everything can be explained by the severity of Siberian nature.
In 1987, an expedition from Tomsk went missing, joined by two guys from Novosibirsk. It was assumed that at the final point of the route, where they got off the train, two local enthusiasts would join her. The guys were experienced tourists, they walked through the Siberian taiga more than once, they had firearms. In Tomsk, they boarded a train and, according to the testimony of the train crew, all got off safely at the designated place. And then the oddities began. Local residents, who were supposed to join the expedition, were told that the train from Tomsk was three hours late, and they went home to wait out the time. But the driver cut the delay to two hours, and when the enthusiasts came to the station again, the train left. Nobody saw the guys who arrived from Tomsk. The station attendant said that some guys got off the train, but where they went is unknown. The telegram sent to Tomsk received an answer: the group left at the appointed time.
The police joined the search three days later, when eyewitnesses who could see the group had already left. No one else saw the missing. The impression was that the expedition disappeared immediately after leaving the train.
Forest devilry
For some groups, it was not a natural anomaly that prevented them from working, but someone or something else. During one of the expeditions of Alexander Simonov, a man entered the forest hut and took all the papers about the "cemetery". Nobody disturbed the stranger. The group members sat motionless, as if hypnotized.
Three stalkers from Bratsk, who visited Kovu in July 2003, encountered something incomprehensible in the same hut.
- Tired, worn out, we went to bed, - said Andrey Vlasov. - In the middle of the night I wake up with a knock on the door. I have never experienced such horror in my life. The soul went into the heels in the literal sense of the word. We didn't see anyone. We heard sounds as if someone was ripping the door off its hinges. There are no constipation in the winter quarters, one latch shakes loudly. I began to run and wake everyone up. The reaction of my friends was amazing. Alexey, for example, did not wake up at all: he seemed to have fallen into a stupor. Ivan reacted even more original, and it scared me even more: he opened his eyes, sat down across the couch in Turkish style, starting, like a dummy, swinging from side to side and looking ahead without saying a word. And the flashlight beam behaved in a strange way. This went on for about twenty minutes. There was no longer a question of any dream.
Many surprises awaited them outside the walls of the winter quarters:
- In two places where we suspected the location of the "cemetery", the dosimeter showed obviously incomprehensible things. As soon as we left the forest, the device worked for sure. There he also showed, so to speak, negative values. As if radiation is being absorbed by something with great force.
Another fact that generally borders on health risks. There is such a gas - ozone. They smell, sometimes nice, after a thunderstorm. In fact, it is an oxidizing agent and a gas harmful to the body. In one place where the location of the "cemetery" is possible, climbing the mountain, we felt such a crazy smell of ozone that we had to close our mouths and run out of there.
Hunters say that it is impossible to set traps in those places. All iron quickly becomes thinner and deteriorates. It does not rust, but as if slowly evaporating layer by layer.
Recently, people have returned to the Kova Valley again. They began to cut wood in it, cut through the taiga glades, timber roads. When the clearing areas come close to the anomalous zone, we will again hear about the "Devil's Cemetery".
Mikhail GERSHTEIN