The small village of Serebryanye Prudy, located in the southeast of the Moscow Region on the picturesque banks of the Osetr River, just five kilometers from the Ryazan Region, is extremely rich in a variety of legends, some of which are great for school trips, while others move the hair on the head.
The most important legend, which is in most villages, villages and towns, is the story that explains the name of the settlement. There are several such legends in Silver Ponds. According to the first version, the village owes such a beautiful and sonorous name to Prince Serebryany-Obolensky, the protagonist of the famous novel by Alexei Tolstoy “Prince Serebryany. The Tale of the Times of Ivan the Terrible”. The prince, being a voivode, built here, in a strategic place by the ford on the Osetr River, one of the fortified posts that were erected at that time along the banks of the Oka, Uda and Don, and were called upon to prevent the raids of "flying detachments" of the Tatar cavalry.
The second version of the legend dates back to the time of Catherine the Great. Once, in the spring, the empress rode through the Serebryanoprud land with Prince Potemkin, looked around and was horrified at the sight of impenetrable forests and swamps, which were found here in abundance. However, the day was clear, and therefore the sun played on every blade of grass and leaves, turning any landscape into the most joyful and pleasant. At some point, the sun's rays refracted on the surface of the swamps, which were full of water during the spring flood, that the empress dreamed of many lakes and a silver water surface spreading around. Returning to Moscow, she ordered that the place be called Silver Ponds. Local residents are closer to this "swamp" version of the origin of the name, because spring floods, reminiscent of huge mirrors of various shapes and sizes, are familiar to everyone.
The next legend is associated with a find that was accidentally made by local men in the mid-70s of the last century. While sailing on a boat along the river, they saw a recently crumbling steep bank, and in a pile of earth at the very edge of the water, a large elongated object resembling a curved log. Having sailed closer, they loaded the "log" into the boat and returned home. After washing the find with water and rubbing it properly with brushes, there was no longer any doubt - it was a huge bone. Such a large bone obviously could not belong to any of the living animals on all continents, which means that its "owner" lived many millennia ago. The remains of the prehistoric beast were sent to the paleontological museum for examination, but for some reason the further fate of the find is unknown. Either she took her rightful place in the museum exposition,or the examination showed something so incredible that they decided to hide it from the general public.
Another local legend is very scary and usually not told to children, unless to those who misbehave in order to scare them properly. In the Serebryanoprud forest there was an old well, which in the second half of the 20th century acquired a bad reputation. The mushroom pickers in that part of the forest constantly wandered - several times even more than a day, and at night, remaining in the forest, they heard terrible screams - either the wounded animal was screaming like that, or a man. At first, they did not attach much importance to this, but when history began to repeat itself, they were worried. They asked grandparents, and they remembered the events that took place in 1924.
At that time the miller Shtarev lived with his family in the village of Kurebino, which is not far from the Silver Ponds. He was a hardworking man and things were going well for him, and therefore many envied him. The miller Korneev envied most of all, who, on the contrary, was not distinguished by his diligence and in every possible way wanted to sit up with a competitor. Once he was so angry that he hired dashing people, and they broke into Shtarev's house at night and killed the whole family. The bodies were taken by cart to the forest and drowned in a well. What then happened to Korneev - history is silent, but they say that things went even worse for him, and soon he himself died.
The old well, which was already abandoned at that time, was rarely visited. However, over time, local residents learned the details of this story and began to bypass it at all, like a cursed place. It was said that the ghosts of the innocently murdered miller and his family would drag anyone who disturbed them to the well.
Not everything in this story sounds convincing, but that's why it is a legend, so that someone would believe and someone would not. However, everyone knows about Shtarev well, and local boys still run to that place on summer nights to prove to each other that they are brave and brave.
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Now the well has completely crumbled and only a small funnel, overgrown with weeds, remains. Finding her is not easy.
Coordinates of the village of Serebryanye Prudy: 54 ° 28'15 "N 38 ° 43'43" E
Philip Teretz