Every year people disappeared in one patch of forest near St. Petersburg. And before their death they fought in a crazy agony.
Vepsian bogs in the Tikhvin district of the Leningrad region have long enjoyed a bad reputation. Residents of nearby villages call them a lost place and compare with the Dyatlov pass. And if in the 59th year near Ivdel in the Urals nine people mysteriously died, then here the number of mysterious deaths has already exceeded two dozen.
There was a surge in the 90s and early 2000s. At that time, three or four people disappeared near the village of Shugozero every year. They were later found dead. The behavior of people before death baffled even experienced security officials. In the last hours of their lives, the victims fought in a mysterious agony. People threw off all their clothes. Someone threw things on dozens of subways around, someone neatly folded them in front of them. And some even for some unknown reason ate dirt. Journalists of "Komsomolskaya Pravda" in St. Petersburg "went to Shugozero to sort out the mass deaths.
Shugozero is located four hours drive from St. Petersburg. Photo: ARTEM KILKIN / kp.ru
ABANDONED CHURCH AND BORSCHEVIK
The dense impenetrable forests of the Tikhvin bogs are located four hours' drive from St. Petersburg. Once upon a time life was in full swing on these lands. Now most of the villages are empty, the only "living" place is the village of Shugozero. The population is about two thousand people.
On the way to the lost place on the highway, tourists are met by an abandoned temple with a small cemetery. The dilapidated church looks like an ominous warning to curious mushroom pickers. The villages around the swamps seem equally ominous. Local roads on the sides are covered with endless thickets of deadly hogweed. The residents themselves, even in the daytime, can hardly be found here. Only a lonely grandmother with buckets goes to the well. To her right is an empty house. On the bench in front of him is an old teddy bear thrown by the children.
Promotional video:
On the way to the swamps from St. Petersburg, tourists are met by an abandoned church. Photo: ARTEM KILKIN / kp.ru
Locals don't like questions about deadly swamps. And strangers who are interested in them are greeted with a suspicious squint.
“Of course, we have had cases,” says a specialist in the local administration reluctantly, who refused to give her name. - They said that they found people naked … Moreover, more often the young disappear. They go for berries to sell later, and do not return. One friend of mine died like that.
- What was his name? We asked.
- I will not say. Don't ask anyone else about this! - the official suddenly interrupts the conversation.
With the same "friendliness" we are greeted in a small branch of the bank. The smile of a local employee after questions about the deaths in the swamp dies down.
“I heard about it,” the woman suddenly barked.
Can I talk to you?
“No,” the lady snapped, slamming the door right in front of us.
"DARK" TIMES
After a few hours, the unusual local reaction begins to clear up. The peak of mysterious deaths in the swamps was from 1990 to 2005. For the past fifteen years, people have also disappeared, but there are almost no cases of death agony when a person throws off his clothes. Therefore, the locals are afraid of provoking trouble again.
“Well, our grandfather recently got lost, he was 83 years old, they were looking for him for three weeks, they found him dead,” says the headman of the village of Burmakino Galina Kameneva. - Last year they found a woman they had been looking for for five years. She was already over 80 years old. The name was Evdokia Smirnova. I knew her myself, I lived in this house. But she was wearing clothes. And people undress in the swamps a little further.
Shugozer's dark times are best remembered at the local police station. His boss was then one of the first to sound the alarm. The deaths were numbered in dozens, and the forensic expert just shrugged.
“Yes, people did disappear and were found naked,” local security officials share. - This is all true. There were a lot of cases in those days.
The most memorable incident happened with a local tractor driver. The young guy was resting with friends, and then he went home through the swamp, but he disappeared. They found him only a few days later.
- It was twenty years ago. A young guy, not some goner. He walked and stupidly scattered everything: his jacket was lying in one place, overalls in another. And he was lying in a ditch. It feels like he was bathing in the mud. When they opened the body, they saw a stomach full of dirt. No one could understand why he ate it, say the local police station.
DIDN'T MEAN ANYTHING
The relatives of the victims still recall the "black period" with shudder. For more than a decade, many have struggled to understand why young and healthy people were targeted.
Pavel Ivanov lived in the village of Makaryino eighteen years ago. Then his brother Vasily died in the swamps. A 40-year-old local stoker worker knew these forests like the back of his hand. But this did not save him from a mysterious death.
- He went on a horse for cranberries, - Pavel shared with "KP". - We searched for him for 23 days. And then they found it. He almost reached the river near the village. Three hundred meters left. Didn't make it … Can you imagine how he died? As if out of my mind! After all, the lights of the houses were visible from that place. But he was in such a state that he did not understand anything. When we were combing everything, first we found one boot, then a jacket, a little further a sweater. The bucket was on the other side. He apparently walked in circles. My brother's trousers were all torn off. It feels like he was crawling.
And there are dozens of such stories. Here's another one: about fifteen years ago a group of friends from St. Petersburg arrived in a village near Shugozero. Respectable people, fished, went hunting. Suddenly one of them did not return from the forest. Twenty people were looking for him, and they found only a week later. The body was found near the hut where the company lived. The clothes are neatly folded on a hemp. Nearby is the gun that he took with him on the hunt. No signs of fighting, choking, or beating.
Flying Serpent Scary
Many have tried to explain the mysterious deaths. The most popular and most incredible version among the locals is a certain flying kite, after the bite of which people lose their minds. We have heard stories about him from many locals.
- I conducted research on this topic, - says acting. Alla Titova, Chairperson of the Nagornoye Obonezhye Regional Information Center. - According to the locals, they really saw him. But the kite does not fly, it jumps. He has a red head. The locals have a belief that it is necessary to run away from him in zigzags. And they explain the thrown off clothes by the fact that the victims fought off the attack. They threw a sweater, jacket, shirt at the snake.
Naturally, experts do not believe in a mythological snake. And the siloviki have their own explanation of the mass loss of people.
- At that time there was a lot of fake vodka, funfiriki, diluted alcohol, - the security officials share. - Everyone drank, there was a freebie. They went to the forest for berries and died in the forests. Now they stopped disappearing like that. Of course, there are cases. But we no longer find naked. Most often, the heart cannot stand it.
EXPERTS FOUND THE ANSWER
The samopal version looks slim. But the villagers are skeptical about it. Indeed, among the dead was a primary school teacher from Shugozero Nina Maslova. About twenty years ago, she went on a tour of the houses where her students lived. The guys were from different villages, so the path lay through the ill-fated swamps.
The swamps of the Leningrad Region attract many tourists. Photo: ARTEM KILKIN / kp.ru
“She was married, had two daughters,” recalls Vera Verkhovetskaya, a resident of the village of Melegezhskaya Gorka. - I myself worked at the school and knew her very well, my daughter studied with her. A purely positive woman. She had an order to visit all the children at home every six months. And she went, disappeared. She was later found dead. She was forty then. She was completely naked. The linen is stacked neatly side by side. After all, everyone thought that in the swamps they disappeared due to drinking. They took tests from her, they did not find any alcohol! The cause of death was never identified.
The death of the teacher struck the locals the most. People are still wondering what could have killed her. But the police and criminologists are unanimous - there is no mysticism in the Leningrad swamps.
“When hypothermia occurs, people have a deceptive feeling that they are hot,” explains Pyotr Pestov, senior criminal investigator of the Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation in the Leningrad Region. - So they start to undress. Consciousness is confused, they want to sleep. As everyone knows, when a person falls asleep, he looks for a secluded place. People can bury themselves in foliage, in snow. In this case, it was this that could lead to the ingress of earth into the mouth. Hypothermia occurs much faster in a person under the influence of alcohol.
ROMAN LYALIN
