Ten years ago, in the fall of 2006, we began preparations for the second scientific and cultural forum "Samarskaya Luka: Legends and Reality", the theme of which was modern legends. It was interesting for us, the organizers, to understand how the worldview of Togliatti residents - the inhabitants of a young, technically oriented city - reflects both the historical past of our places and the whole complex of anomalous features of our region. It turned out that even the youngest residents of Togliatti have already developed their own idea of this.
But this intuitively chosen topic brought us to an interesting line of research and allowed us to look at the properties of our world from a side that few people know about the existence. As is often the case in anomalism, some of the information on this topic was brought by eyewitnesses of anomalous phenomena, while the other part was extracted from legends and traditions. This is what I will try to tell you about.
Legends of the Middle Volga. They say in the local people that if you are lucky, then near the Samara Luka you can find yourself in the place of contact between our world and … some "not ours", and in the opened passage between these worlds you can see a lot of interesting things. Such visions in our places are called visions of the Peaceful City or "Zhiguli mirages". Why "mirages"? They think that they were seeing it because these are unusual visions - alien nature, alien vegetation, alien architecture. Despite the rarity of "Zhiguli mirages" (perhaps this is the rarest type of anomalies), there are reports of them in local pre-revolutionary chronicles, and modern eyewitnesses also tell about such observations. The Mirny city is especially beautiful when, in calm weather, its ghost rises over the Volga waters and is reflected in them. The architect of this city was not limited to any one style. Eyewitnesses say that white-stone cathedrals under golden domes, minarets soaring upward, and something else unimaginable made of sparkling glass and metal in an unknown style and in various combinations, stand next to each other.
An artistic image of a ghost town reflected in the water. This is how both the Mirny city and the city of Kitezh may look like
Most often, a "ghost town" appears near the Volga or directly above the reservoir. Why is that? I do not know. But often eyewitnesses claim that this city is empty and dead: “In the morning my friend and I went fishing. Fascinated by fishing, we did not immediately notice how the palace slowly rose into the sky from behind the river. It shimmered with different colors, and at first we thought that it was a rainbow over the river, but after looking closely, we realized that before us was not even one palace, but a whole city. And it seemed beautiful only at first glance: many of its turrets were dilapidated, palaces turned into ruins. We have heard before about the mirage that appears in these places, but we did not expect anything like this. The city disappeared as unexpectedly as it appeared …”(this message was brought by an eyewitness to our Samara colleagues Igor Pavlovich and Oleg Ratnik).
If we analyze the messages of local eyewitnesses, then we can identify a typical scenario, or a matrix of observed anomalies. Certain conditions arise in the environment that allow casual eyewitnesses to visually or completely penetrate into that space and time, which undoubtedly exists somewhere and has a material nature (remember the thesis of V. I. Ulyanov-Lenin “Matter is an objective reality, given to us in sensations?). When conditions change, the image disappears and the passage to this place is closed. I did not have time to go back - I remained in the other world for good.
The search for information about events (even legendary) taking place according to a similar scenario brought us to the legends of the Upper Volga.
The round shape of the lake may indicate that it appeared as a result of a karst failure or a meteorite impact.
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If you go to the Volga bank from the side of the city of Togliatti and face the river, then on the right hand upstream and several hundred kilometers north of our place is Nizhny Novgorod. Not far from it is one of the attractions of those places - Lake Svetloyar. Its shape is rather strange, almost round.
Locals and tourists say that sometimes a barely audible ringing of bells is heard from under its waters (a similar phenomenon happens in Zhiguli - for example, in the Popova Gora region), and in the depths you can see the ghostly walls of monasteries and domes of churches. And in special cases, the image of the city of Kitezh rises above the waters of Lake Svetloyar, such as it was before the invasion of Khan Batu in the 13th century. Actually, the rebellious Kitezh left his troops under the eyes of the invaders under the waters of Lake Svetloyar, in order to sometimes remind descendants of its existence in subsequent centuries.
With the passage of time, legends about the appearance of Kitezh-grad acquired noticeable features of Christian symbolism. However, the origins of this legend, apparently, should be sought in the earlier history of Russia. The city of Kitezh is mentioned in many legends of the pre-Christian period, for example, in the most ancient sacred source of the pagan faith - the Star Book of Kolyada. According to one of the legends, Kitovras was born in the area of Lake Svetloyar - a mysterious creature, which, by the way, was very popular in the ancient Russian tradition. We can easily recognize his image - half man, half horse. And that this image was very familiar and familiar in those days, this can be judged at least by the laconic descriptions of his extraordinary appearance: "the body is human, and the legs are cows." Just like that, simply and without any ooh-sighs …
His name is analogous to the Greek word "centaur", which penetrated into late Russian culture from the Byzantine apocrypha. True, Professor V. N. Dyomin, who studied the relationship between ancient Russian and ancient Greek cultures and the theme of our northern ancestral home of Hyperborea, considered Kitovras as a prototype, and Centaur as a character derived from him. And this may be so, because the Byzantine apocrypha were first translated into Old Russian at the end of the 15th century, and the images of Kitovras were widespread in Russia at least three hundred years earlier.
The image of a half-man-half-horse Kitovras from the so-called. Efrosinovsky collection, compiled in the 70-90s. XV century The sword depicted in the hands of Kitovras is an attribute of princely power, and legends characterize this creature as the brother of King Solomon
The mythology of the Samara region does not contain legends about the man-horse, but another parallel is interesting. You can get into the sacred city of Kitezh even now, although not everyone has an entrance - in fact, like our Peaceful City. If you believe the legends, only a person absolutely pure in spirit is able to enter there - how could it be otherwise? Only now it is interesting that this one-to-one belief is similar to the beliefs about a sacred Slavic place called Belovodye, which is just as hidden from the eyes of the uninitiated somewhere beyond the Russian Arctic Circle. And with the beliefs about the mystical Shambhala, which in its characteristics is the same as the Belovodye of the ancient Rus. Or maybe the point is not in faith or ethics, but in some laws of nature that our ancestors knew and used, who created such ghost places?
But we are interested not so much in legends as a product of folk literary creativity, albeit with a historical basis, as in the reports of modern eyewitnesses about unusual phenomena occurring in these places and in our time. And here, too, there were some intersections. Over the years, several reports of Togliatti residents and local villagers have appeared in our database about meetings with strange characters, seemingly out of date in their dress and manners. And in places near Lake Svetloyar, eyewitnesses watched as an old man with a long gray beard in old Slavic clothes entered an ordinary village store, asked to sell bread, and paid with old Russian coins. Moreover, the coins looked like new. And this happened more than once.
But it turned out that the line "Samarskaya Luka - Lake Svetloyar" can be continued down the Volga, at least to the Volgograd region, where our colleague, friend and well-known "anomaly" writer Gennady Belimov lives in the city of Volzhsky. One of his visits to Togliatti took place during the preparation of the scientific and cultural forum.
The facts, which for a long time did not find any reasonable explanation, prompted him to start researching strange phenomena associated either with chronomirages, or with the spontaneous movement of people into another reality - but already happening on the Lower Volga.
Our correspondence with Gennady Stepanovich reflects more than one case of the mysterious penetration of Volgograd residents and residents of the city of Volzhsky "somewhere in the wrong place" - just like in our places. I want to quote one of the stories he told almost word for word.
“For the first time, a resident of the city of Volzhsky, Volgograd Region, M. V., told me about the mysterious case of transportation to another space. Obolkin. An incomprehensible "devilry" happened to him in 1995.
- You see, I ended up in another Volzhsky! - he convinced me. - Not in ours, earthly and understandable, but in some other. There are differences from "our". For example, the tram tracks went straight along the entire Engels Street, without turning to Karbyshev, and the houses were slightly different …
Mikhail Vasilyevich's story was detailed, but I had never come across such a thing, and, not finding a sound interpretation, I just shrugged my shoulders: "Maybe you dreamed?.."
Then the story was forgotten for a long time.
However, not so long ago my old friend, an inveterate tourist and orienteer, candidate for master of sports in these types of competitions, Volodya Lebedev, recalled the mysterious phenomenon of chronomire. Now he is Vladimir Vyacheslavovich, head of a construction site for industrial mountaineering, director of a training center, and then, in the 70s, everyone knew him as an active athlete.
“One thousand nine hundred and seventy-six, late July, Friday,” he began his story. - I remember well about Friday, because on Saturday there were scheduled competitions in the Volga-Akhtubinskaya floodplain, and I wanted to go there that day. He jumped out of the entrance at the beginning of the ninth evening and immediately rushed into the arch of the house, which is on Stalingradskaya Street. It was still daylight, but lights were supposed to come on in the windows here and there. Must! But they didn’t burn … And the yard seemed strange: there were always grannies on the bench at the entrance, and here - no one … The kids were not buzzing, and nowhere was a single car. Usually in the evening it is crowded, but now … like a ball roll!
He slipped through the arch and went out onto Stalingradskaya Street. There was an almost completed Palace of Culture, Lenin Square opened to the eyes, but there were no people here either. At all! Empty … Well, this does not happen!.. Summer, July, it is getting dark - and no one!
Strange stories happen in seemingly calm Volzhsky
- I went diagonally to the podium … Fantastic! The silence is extraordinary, already ringing in the ears … It is windless, the sky is without clouds, and there are no cars either according to Lenin or Engels, - Vladimir recalled the details. - True, the sky is a little unusual - some kind of blue-violet. I look at a 1000-apartment building - there usually at this time the windows are already lighting up, but there is no light here. He bit his lip, but hard - I taste blood. I hit myself on the jaw - it hurts!.. But I need to go home, this is already the 10th microdistrict! I stomp on Engels, went up to the acacia, plucked a handful of leaves, chewed - bitterly … In a word, I feel everything, I feel, I understand, but I can not understand anything. Why is the city empty ?! Is the roof on my way?
The city seemed to be dead (T. M.'s note - eyewitnesses of the Peace City also testified to the desertion of the mysterious places they observed or visited). There was nothing for the eye to catch - no birds, no dogs or cats, not even summer midges. The houses were standing, the streets were in place, however, for some reason he did not remember the tram lines along Engels Street. Maybe there were … Suddenly something made him turn around. About a hundred meters behind I saw a figure in a light brown cloak. Just thinking, they say, summer, and the man in the raincoat, wanted to wait for him, as the word "thank you" sounded nearby, and the stranger was already a hundred meters ahead of him.
"I took a step, and he is already far away!" - Lebedev was surprised. - Looked around - nobody. Well, he could not overtake me! I was in a hurry to go home, walked quickly, but the man remained at a distance, and then turned to the right."
- I fly into my yard - there are usually full of people, a lot of children, men sit on the benches of the propaganda site, playing cards, dominoes, hubbub … And there is no one here, empty. And the twilight is already noticeable. I fly into the entrance, run to my floor, open the apartment with the key and hit the switch with a bang … A spark flashed - and immediately the noise of the courtyard burst into the apartment. I went to the window, to the balcony, and there was noise, the city was alive, lights in all windows … Here it is, dear, everything is in place … My God! And everything is available at home - mother, brother …
History, of course, is not the only one that happened in those places, otherwise there would be no point in telling about it. The typology of the events that took place is somewhat different than in the first two mentioned places. However, it becomes clear that in the Volgograd region too, eyewitnesses in an incomprehensible way for themselves get to a place and time, which should not exist with the standard understanding of the world order.
It turns out that throughout the entire Volga River there are places in which chronomirages are localized and periodically manifest themselves in front of observers - anomalies associated with changes in space or time that are still incomprehensible to us. A meeting with our other colleague, Nikolai Novgorodov from the city of Tomsk, showed that the thread from this conventionally drawn line leads to Siberia, towards Altai. By the way, in Siberia, on the Ob River, an old bronze plaque with the image of a winged centaur was also discovered.
Tatiana Makarova