Devilish Settlement - Alternative View

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Devilish Settlement - Alternative View
Devilish Settlement - Alternative View

Video: Devilish Settlement - Alternative View

Video: Devilish Settlement - Alternative View
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The devil's settlement near Kozelsk, like a magnet, attracts ufologists, sorcerers, psychics and lovers of everything supernatural. The main attraction of this place is giant boulders. How, when and why they appeared here, no one knows for sure, but it was these boulders that gave rise to many versions and legends and glorified the settlement far beyond the Kaluga region.

DAMN IT

One of the most mysterious and unusual places in the Kaluga Region is located in a forest on the right bank of the Zhizdra River, a few kilometers from the village of Sosensky. There is a legend about why it is associated with evil spirits. One day the devil laid eyes on a beautiful girl and decided to marry her. But the parents did not like such a groom, and the girl's father thought about how to get rid of the unwanted gentleman. Daddy suggested that the devil build a palace of stone for his daughter in one night, and if the groom does not have time, he will turn to stone himself. The devil was glad that the beauty would soon become his wife, but when he looked around, he realized what a difficult task he had received: there was not a single stone around. The devil called on his fellows for help. All night long, they dragged huge boulders through the air from somewhere far away and got away so badly that they did not notice how the sun rose,and with the cries of the first roosters, they instantly turned into stones.

Scientists have their own ideas about where the name "Devil's Settlement" could have come from. In the distant past, the settlements of ancient people were often an outpost on the notch line or, in other words, on the border. From the word "devil" the name "devil" could arise.

HEROIC PAST

Huge boulders, their location and unusual shape have long raised many questions. In 1876, a book by hieromonk Leonid of Optina Hermitage, "The History of the Church within the Present Kaluga Province and the Kaluga Hierarchs", was published, in which he described 17 monasteries in the Kaluga Province. Among other things, you can find the following episode in it: “Not far from the ancient Rzhavets in the wilderness of the forest called Arzhavsky (it is part of the ancient Likhvinskaya Zaseka) there is a wonderful place - these are the ruins of some historical building, which consumed stones of enormous size, taken, - apparently, from afar, for there are no stone breaks near. The building was covered over a large area and lined up to half the windows; the same large stones lie around at a considerable distance, and some of them are scattered in one direction, on the way to the building from the field. The antiquity of this building is evidenced by the centuries-old trees growing inside it, and the walls overgrown with moss for a long time. The popular imagination inhabits this mysterious place with spirits, calling it the Devil's Settlement … On the right side of this wall, something like a porch appears. Under the house itself, or rather, the wall, there is a cave with two exits, one of which, according to legend, goes to the Good Monastery, which is near the town of Likhvin."

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Indeed, there are no such giant stones anywhere nearby. Their origin is not entirely clear to geologists, it is only assumed that a continental ice sheet could have reached here during the last ice age. The stones were brought with the glacier. Later, during the warming of the climate, the glacier split, and giant boulders formed at the site of the split. There is an assumption that in the III-V centuries. n. e. Finno-Ugric tribes formed a settlement here. Later, in the 6th century, the Finno-Ugrians left here to the west under the pressure of the warlike Vyatichi or the no less warlike Pechenegs. From about the 8th century, the ancient settlement ceased to exist for an unknown reason. Most likely, enemy tribes raided here and burned the city to the ground. Evidence of this is traces of burning and ash from burnt buildings,as well as the remains of arrowheads and sulitsa (a type of throwing weapon). Apparently, before leaving or perishing under the onslaught of the enemy, the locals courageously repulsed enemy attacks.

THEY ARE LIGHTING

What is the Devil's settlement? According to Wikipedia, this is a wooded "hill with outcrops of sandstone cliffs that are not typical for central Russia." On the rocks at a height of 27 meters above the level of the Chertovka River there is a platform on which stones of various sizes and shapes are picturesquely scattered. They are heavily overgrown with moss and lichens, however, traces of cultivation are visible on them. For example, in one stone called "Devil's Fingers", many holes have been made. In the other, the Devil's Well, there is a hollowed out container in which rainwater accumulates. Perhaps, for the ancient people, this container served as a kind of well. One way or another, no matter how much water is taken out of the container, it is collected there again, even during a drought. Now many people believe that the water from this well has medicinal properties, despite the "bad" name. On the western slope of the cliff there are grottoes that can easily accommodate several people. There is evidence that monks and Old Believers were hiding in them from persecution. They even talk about the existence of an underground passage leading almost to the modern city of Chekalin in the Tula region (until 1944 it was he who was called Likhvin). At the end of the XIX century. the anonymous correspondent of the Kaluga “Gubernskie vedomosti” wrote: “The road went at first as an ordinary dense forest, then a valley with a moat below opened before us, and after that a steep climb to a high mountain, along which quite large trees grow. On the way up the mountain we began to come across stones of extraordinary size. Climbing, or rather climbing higher up the mountain, on its cliff, we saw a large stone wall, overgrown with moss on the sides and trees above. At first glance you can seethat this building has existed since time immemorial, and now only the semblance of a house remains. The wall is made of huge stones."

The second mystery of the Devil's Settlement is unique relict plants, the main habitat of which is located thousands of kilometers from here. We are talking about the centipede fern and the feathery schistostagus - the so-called "glowing moss". Their main habitat is many thousands of kilometers from here. The fern grows mainly in the Northern Hemisphere: in the taiga and in the tundra. Schistostega is found in the Tomsk region, Altai, Sayan and the Far East. Not close either! Both plants are very ancient, preserved on Earth from the Mesozoic era. "Glowing moss" really glows in the half-darkness of caves and crevices of rocks, giving the impression that there are myriads of tiny bulbs lit there, emitting a mysterious emerald glow. Botanists are surprised by the growth of these relict plants on the territory of the Devil's settlement, which simply cannot be here. However, they feel quite good here!

THERE WONDERS

There has long been a bad rumor about the Devil's Settlement. Here is what the local lore writer V. V. Matsnev reports: “Divye, a blazenny place … The prince's hunters, bee keepers, everyone who has a forest like home, gave a big hook. The old people said that from ancient times there was everything here, from time immemorial inhabited by goblin, during the day they were buried in hollows of trees, but under stones in caves, and at midnight they organized violent games on the hills. Witches and other deaf vermin flocked to them from everywhere. It is not without reason that Kaluga Stonehenge is considered an anomalous zone: strange phenomena constantly occur here. In this area, the most diverse atmospheric phenomena in the sky and obscure incidents on earth have been noted more than once. Many visitors talk about gaps in time, the mysterious glow of plants at night, some kind of gas that is released from crevices and caves,note cases of unexplained disorientation.

Sometimes, moving away from the camp for some hundred meters and getting lost, a person began to scream, but no one heard his screams, despite the short distance. And vice versa: the lost person did not hear the cries of his fellow travelers. According to eyewitnesses, sometimes tourists, having gone to the stream for water and walking away from the tent quite a bit, find themselves lost. It seems that the tent should be visible, and the fellow travelers should be heard, but no, everything disappears without a trace. Having wandered in three pines, the disappeared unexpectedly comes out to the camp, where it turns out that he was absent for several hours! But he was sure that he wandered about nothing at all. Teleportation, and nothing more.

It is not advised to stay here until dark, it is better to visit the castle mound, accompanied by an experienced guide who knows the beaten paths. Despite the fact that a trip to the Devil's settlement is a difficult test for an unprepared tourist, there are enough curious ones. Everyone wants to see these stones with their own eyes: they say that touching them gives a person special abilities.

Natalia KOSYAKINA