In Yakutia, there is one mysterious lake that has been attracting the attention of researchers since the 1950s.
Many articles have been written about him. Several expeditions were sent to this mysterious place. But research has not yielded overwhelming results. This mystical place is located in the basin of the Indigirka River in the Oymyakon district at an altitude of 1,020 meters above sea level. The lake is of glacial origin, length 14.3 km, width from 2.5 to 3.7 km, maximum depth 52 meters. There are sharp changes in depth. In the middle of the lake there are three picturesque rocky islands.
The mysterious lake is called Labynkyr. The name of the lake is translated from Even "sea" or "sea".
There is a legend among the people that from time to time a huge monster rises from the depths of Lake Labynkyr, of such dimensions that the distance between its eyes is wider than a bundle of 10 logs. He has an elongated, spindle-shaped body with a protruding ridge on the back and a long neck, in winter it breathes through the mysterious black seething polynyas on the lake.
Many chilling stories are told by the locals about the monster that lives on the Labynkyr Lake. The monster drags dogs, deer, even people to the bottom.
Many suggest that a prehistoric animal is still swimming in the cold waters of Labynkyr. Some even believe that a guest from parallel worlds comes to us through magical portals located in a mysterious lake …
But early legends did not tell about a giant monster, similar to Loch Ness. These were just stories about a huge pike.
As old-timers say, in pre-revolutionary times there was a huge long-lived pike in the lake, the distance between its eyes was more than the bottom of the largest Yakut boat, which consists of three wide boards. As a predator, the pike could also profit from the fawns that came to the watering hole.
Promotional video:
Once a hunter injured a wild deer, he rushed into the lake and immediately disappeared, something big dragged him to the bottom. At the same time, the hunter noticed how the tail of a giant pike flashed from under the water.
Another legend says that once the locals decided to catch this predator-pike, which was also considered a cannibal. They came up with a special way. After all, you cannot catch it with a simple hair net, it will gnaw and float away, you just spoil the good. We decided to make a fire bag. They took a wet deer skin that had just been peeled off, poured there dry combustible grass and dust from old trees, burned it all, but it did not burn much, but only smoldered, wrapped the skin and threw it into the water. The fire bag floated for a long time, closer to night the bag disappeared. Three days later, a dead giant pike surfaced, swallowed the profit and burned the stomach.
As the old-timers say, the mouth of a huge pike was so big that a teenager riding a deer could pass through the open bones of the jaw.
This was the original legend about a monster that lived on the mysterious Labynkyr lake. Tradition has acquired new mystical features over time.
Varvara KORYAKINA
Reference:
Labynkyr is a lake in the Oymyakonsky region in the east of Yakutia, located at an altitude of 1,020 meters above sea level. The average depth reaches 52.6 meters. At the bottom of the reservoir there is an anomalous crack, which increases the depth to 75-80 meters. The water temperature never exceeds 9 degrees, the bottom temperature is from 1.3 to 2 degrees.
Lake Labynkyr has gained special fame thanks to the legends about a creature supposedly living in its waters. Locals believe that some huge animal lives in the lake. "Labynkyr devil" is something of a dark gray color with a huge mouth. The distance between the eyes of the "devil" is equal to the width of a raft of ten logs. The monster is dangerous to people and animals and is capable of going ashore.
Cryptozoologists put forward various hypotheses regarding the nature of the "devil": a giant pike, a relict reptile or an amphibian.
For the first time, the conversation about "monsters" was raised by the newspaper "Youth of Yakutia" on December 14, 1958. “Residents of the nearby village of Tomtor claim that mysterious and very aggressive“devils”live in the depths of this reservoir. Stories are passed from mouth to mouth, how one day an unknown creature got to the shore and chased a Yakut fisherman until he died of fear. Another time, the "devil" stuck his head out of the water and in front of the inhabitants of the village swallowed a swimming dog in one fell swoop …"
“Descriptions of the monster from different eyewitnesses coincide. They paint him as something "huge, dark gray, with such a large head that the distance between his eyes is no less than the traditional local 10-log rafts." Data on these monstrous sizes can be considered partially confirmed: the local collective farmer Pyotr Vinokurov on the northern coast picked up the jaw of an animal with teeth. The bone was so huge that "if you put it upright, then a rider would freely pass under it."
A little over two years after the article in "Youth of Yakutia", in 1961, the diaries of the head of the geological party of the East Siberian branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences Viktor Tverdokhlebov were published. A geologist observed a large moving object in the lake.
Tverdokhlebov's statements aroused both the interest of supporters of the version of the existence of the "devil" and criticism of skeptics. A. Tolstov, a researcher at the Permafrost Institute, suggested that, in fact, eyewitnesses observed a catfish about 5 meters in size and weighing up to 300 kg. This version turned out to be unviable - it turned out that there are no soms at all in Labynkyr. However, there is no real evidence of the existence of a mysterious animal in the lake either.
One of the most famous was the 1999 expedition to the lake by the journalists of Komsomolskaya Pravda, “armed” with the most modern echo sounder. Through echolocation, they received indirect confirmation of the Labynkyr monster's presence, finding voids in which this mysterious animal could hide. Fish is not fixed near these voids, although it is full around it.
The museum of Ust-Nera (the regional center of the Oymyakon region) contains a lot of materials concerning the monster of Lake Labynkyr. A number of neighboring lakes (Vorota, Khayyr and others) were formed as a result of the filling of giant cracks in the ground with groundwater. Because of these cracks, terrestrial plants sank down, forming a whole underground world with rich vegetation and, as a result, rich fauna. All fish here are larger than the usual sizes for Europeans.
There is a version that very large pikes, in large numbers living in the lake, are taken for a monster (the Yakuts are very reluctant to catch and eat pikes). The story has preserved the story of a bulldozer operator of one of the prospecting artels of Oymyakonya, who shot a four-meter pike. According to him, she was "all mossy, green-brown, flabby." This description is very similar to "the Labynkyr lake monster".
It is obvious that Labynkyr can claim the glory of Loch Ness with its unidentified monster. Moreover, the interest in the Scottish "plesiosaur" in the world has fallen, since Loch Ness is located in a densely populated part of Europe and has been explored far and wide, and guests to Labynkyr are still quite rare.
Several expeditions to the legendary lake were made by the famous director, author and presenter of the "Seeker" program on ORT Andrey I. He watched the winter lake in order to find out what mysterious processes are taking place in the depths of water under the cover of snow and ice.
The members of the expedition got to the mysterious burial, discovered near the Typkyrchan stream. During one of the descents to a depth of 6 meters, Andrey I collided with a "standing" burbot, which he … caught with his hands and dragged into the boat.
“Being on Labynkyr, you understand that everything here is filled with mystery, everything is mysterious and unusual, you can feel the presence of the spirit, the author's principle of nature,” Andrey I told at one of the press conferences.
In 2012, Labynkyr Lake, along with a number of other attractions of Yakutia, claimed the title of "Miracle of Russia".