Kikimors, werewolves, mermaids, gnomes, devils, goblin … - all these are creatures from fairy tales and legends, which, however, have left a noticeable mark in the folklore of the Russian and other peoples of the Earth. As if people met them in reality, and often, in dark dense forests and dead swamps that surrounded rare settlements in the old days.
The details were sometimes conveyed in such a way that it is difficult to reproach eyewitnesses for writing. Without saying a word, people described the same thing, although the storytellers themselves were separated from each other for many centuries and thousands of kilometers. Among the beliefs, aquatic creatures were often mentioned - creatures that lived in lakes, rivers and swamps. One of them was met by a famous person in the Volzhsky.
Secrets of the Volga-Akhtuba floodplain
Talk to anyone, by chance or on business - any mention of the Volga-Akhtuba floodplain leaves no one indifferent from the Volga residents. Each of us loves and glorifies in his own way this wonderful land, which looks like a paradise oasis, as if in return given by the Creator to people for the desert spaces of the surrounding steppes of the Caspian lowland scorched by the sun.
It stretches for many hundreds of kilometers in the life-giving interfluve from the source of Akhtuba to the Caspian Sea, like a magical emerald valley full of life and joy. From the steep bank of the Akhtuba, a luscious green distance with a dark curl of floodplain forests, a motley mosaic of meadows and fields, light specks of countless eriks, ilmen and elders, opens wide, at ease. You will not admire!..
She is a miracle even from country roads, if you do not go quickly, having time to look at the surroundings, and when you delve into the copses or slowly walk along the bank of a quiet erik, you would go and go somewhere at random, discovering new wonderful corners of the local beauties.
In the floodplain, we, the townspeople, spend our best hours, and sometimes days of rest. There is something to do here - fishing, hunting, picking mushrooms and berries, just walking along reserved paths, taking photos, so that later you will please your friends with good pictures. There are hiking, cycling, kayaking tourist routes, and orienteering lovers organize exciting running competitions with a compass and a map almost all year round. Good in the floodplain! Eh, I would like to come here more often, to have a rest in body and soul, if not to suck in the restless city with its eternal vanity …
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While working on the book "Mysterious Volzhsky", which I wanted to publish for the 55th anniversary of the city, I, of course, could not ignore this blessed corner where my youth passed. Hiking trails, cross-country orienteering competitions, long gatherings around the fire with a guitar - all this, of course, is memorable and dear to everyone, and all this filled and diversified our life.
Abnormal incidents in our region, of course, could not do without the participation of the floodplain. Sometimes I heard information about UFO sightings over the valley, then someone dreamed of drowned people in deep pools of old women, then they frightened ghosts from the whirlwind of the night.
Or even completely some unknown forces circled people in seemingly familiar places, as if making fun of the losers. Maybe they were joking, or maybe they were punished for some kind of misconduct, for a disrespectful attitude towards nature and its inhabitants. One story especially impressed - and not only me.
Carp wedding
The person to whom it was necessary to turn to, learning the mysterious about the floodplain, is the Volga writer Semyon Nikolaevich Kolotilov: he is a fisherman from fishermen - he devoted several of his books to this human passion. We phoned: "Were there any unusual cases with you in the floodplain?" - I ask. “But how,” he replies, “there were… When the guardian angel saved, and when his own ingenuity helped out… But I didn’t find any explanation for one case, I still don’t know what it was.”
The incredible happened in the spring of 1970, on May 10-12. Semyon Nikolayevich, at that time a 30-year-old man, handsome and powerful, came by bicycle to Kurganikha, in the vicinity of Leninsk, where he lived then, to fish for pike perch. He fishes for himself and hears sounds in the overflowing water aside, like a herd of cows splashing. Look around - there is no one, no cows, no shepherd. And the noise goes on … At some point I could not resist, I went to see what was splashing there. And he was amazed at what he saw …
- Imagine, Gennady, the whole flooded meadow was teeming with carp. Huge! - the narrator recalled the picture he saw. - Either the receding water cut them off, or they were frolicking in the warm, but only their backs flashed, and the grass around was shaking. Well, I got excited. Was in the wanderings, came in - up to my knee. I try to catch with my hands - not in any way, they leave me. Then I shout to my partner Vaska: get on the bike and come to my house, bring two sandoles - that is, jails. In Leninsk they call them sandols. Vaska shemetted back and forth, brought jails, but did not climb into the water himself - he was without boots, and the water is spring …
In a word, Semyon Nikolayevich filled seven carp of five or six kilograms each, and so as not to fight, he cut their spines with a knife. They were alive, but they didn't pound like that. He took off his belt, adapted it instead of the kukan. And then the uttermost happened, Semyon then even frost on his skin. Here I will record everything in detail from the recorder.
- I turned to some noise and saw … A water shaft is coming right at me, but unusual. He is like a barrel! The length is about a meter, more than half a meter thick, and rushes so that there is a wave in front of him. What? This is the first time I've seen this!.. The water shaft rushing at me, something dark inside, I can't make out anything. I think feverishly: “It attacks, so it’s not afraid …” I managed to take a few steps and stood behind a tree in the water, hugged it, pressed myself … And this shaft - either a huge fish, or something else - makes one circle in the water near the tree, then another circle … Everything gurgles, the noise is. I pressed myself against a tree - I'm afraid! Naturally scared … And then this monster left, where it came from. I saw it alone, Vaska was out of sight. And this remained a secret for me for the rest of my life, I have not written about it anywhere in my stories and essays. Well, there was simply no explanation for what happened … Only it caused a strong fear, it is still scary to remember.
- Didn't the water scare you?.. - I suggested.
- Yes, God knows, maybe a water one … At least, I can not suggest anything else. In villages about water and forest kikimors gutar all … As if they are, the rumor is not in vain about that. I somehow angered the water man, so then?..
Semyon Nikolayevich needed to make three cycling trips to take all the carp caught home to Leninsk. A dozen years later, he received an apartment in Volzhsky from the Volga Pipe Plant, and since then - a Volzhan, he loves the city as much as his small homeland in the Urals. And recently I told the case with Kolotilov to a relative, Georgy Gritsenko - he is an avid fisherman. How to explain that horror?
- Eh-eh, he shouldn't have got in there … - Zhora sighed. - Carp arranged mating games in warm water in a shallow place. Spawned, therefore … And he got into this business. And he also cut the spine of the fish … The Water One got angry … The fish are already harassed, but here they don't even let them spawn … It was not necessary … - He sadly shook his head. Has anything like this happened to anyone else? It would be nice to know. Although the case was unique in its own way, it may not be an isolated one. There are still a lot of fishermen and hunters among the Volga residents …
Gennady BELIMOV, Russian ufologist and researcher of anomalous phenomena, writer and journalist. Head of the Volga group for the study of anomalous phenomena.