“There was no way for the sledge, not for the hedgehog, but you told everyone to go the old way, past their settlement to the forest of Cherepovsi …” - says an old letter of the Belozersk prince Mikhail Andreevich.
The road went through the swamp, and in the suburb, apparently, all kinds of evil spirits were found … Otherwise, where are so many stories about the terrible Cherepovets swamp? Discarding primeval fears, let's try to figure out where the truth is and where the fiction is.
A desert swamp lies between Sheksna and Yagorboy, on both sides of the Konoma river, begins near the city of Cherepovets and stretches 30 versts to the north. Its area is 80 square versts. Among the swamp there are several lakes, of which the main ones are Ivachevskoe and Pustynnoe. The surface of the bog itself consists of an elastic layer that has a wavy appearance, in places broken by the pressure of a more liquid layer, which is why the so-called floats, or windows, are formed. The depth of the swamp reaches only two and a half fathoms (just over 5 m), its bottom is dense, clayey.
"Singing" swamps to the north of the city is not only a legend, but also the result of many years of observation by many people … "- this is how the doctor Pavel Gryaznov wrote in his doctoral dissertation" Experience in the Comparative Study of the Hygienic Conditions of Peasant Life and Medical Topography of the Cherepovets District ", which he defended in St. Petersburg in 1880. True, there are very deep places in that swamp …
The Cherepovets bogs are a poorly explored area in the Vologda region. Nowadays, it is customary to talk about it as an anomalous zone, because there have long been observed mysterious disappearances of people from the roads, frequent suicides, an inexplicably large number of mad people in nearby villages and strange behavior of seemingly quite healthy people.
From a scientific point of view, a swamp is a complex ecosystem with its own special flora and fauna. For the formation of a swamp, the proximity of groundwater, a certain humidity of the climate, relief and soil are necessary. It only seems that the water in the swamp is stagnant. In fact, it is updated here every five years. Even lake water takes more than three times as long to do this.
In dry times, large swamps can also stop forest fires. Almost half of the Baikal water volume is kept in the depths of the bogs. Swamps regulate the flow and supply water to small and large rivers. Dnieper and Volga, for example, originate from swamps. The Khanty and Mansi peoples believed that the whole world was born from a “liquid earth,” that is, from a swamp. It turns out that this is not such a bad place.
Experts have calculated that every year one hectare of swamps absorbs from the atmosphere on average more than a ton of carbon dioxide and emits about half a ton of oxygen. This is an order of magnitude more than one hectare of forest or meadow is capable of processing. In addition, bogs attract and absorb dust particles, which in calm weather moves towards lower temperatures (and the temperature above the surface of the bogs is always lower than around). One hectare of swamps can "swallow" up to three tons of dust per year!
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STRANGE SWAMP
Russia can be considered the birthplace of swamps - nowhere are they in such quantity and volume as we have. And people who lived in estates and villages surrounded by swamps also have certain character traits. In the notes of rural healers of the 19th century, there are very often references to the typical Russian blues, which may well be clinical signs of the bad influence of swamps.
According to the statistics of the 19th century, in the area of the Cherepovets bog, the number of suicides was 3-4 times higher than the all-Russian figures, and the crime rate was 9 times higher. In these parts, suicides usually injured their heads. And there is nothing surprising in the fact that the ancient swamp in the vicinity of Cherepovets has overgrown with its own myths and legends.
“In ancient times, people began to disappear on one of the Belozersk roads - mostly merchants from other cities. Merchant people left the same city - but did not get to the goal of their destination, - says Pavel Gryaznov's notes. - At first, people thought that a band of robbers had appeared in the vicinity. But gradually this version was discarded … Once people from the city combed the surroundings with weapons and found an abandoned cart on the bank of a large swamp. There were no horses, no merchant, no guards at the cart. And the goods were untouched … And in all cases the traces of people who were traveling on carts went into the swamp - without traces of struggle or any concern … People disappeared alone and in large groups.
Nobody returned from the swamp. Except for one person …"
It happened in the 16th century - the merchant disappeared for ten whole years. Of course, not all this time he wandered through the swamps, but the horror he experienced was so great that he could return back only after many years. The merchant said that on the way he changed the route and went to places unknown to him. “Having approached the edge of the swamp, he almost drowned himself - such a fear attacked him. Horror and desire to kill yourself soon.
Retaining a small amount of consciousness, the merchant ran away from this place, not even remembering the product and not thinking to return for it. The local merchant did not believe, but he volunteered to show those who wish that place. The merchant's words were fully confirmed: on the banks of the swamp stood abandoned carts with merchant goods, which had already fallen apart many years ago.
SHELTER OF THE SPIRIT
Most researchers of the anomalous phenomena that took place in the Cherepovets bog define these places as "possessed by a dark spirit." What is the nature of this spirit - no one knows. The spirit is a hero of local legends, a kind of elemental dark force that brings evil and suffering without any motives.
The ancient Celts called the swamps "gates of spirits" - where the seemingly solid soil instantly leaves from under their feet, the gates open to the world of mysterious spirits of nature and deities.
Therefore, the Celts revered the swamps and came there with sacrificial gifts. In Slavic mythology, a kikimora lives in a swamp - an evil swamp spirit. It rarely appears to people, prefers to be invisible and only shouts from the swamp in a loud voice. Likes to dress up in "furs" made of mosses, weaves forest and marsh plants into her hair.
Kikimora marsh drags gape travelers into the bog, where it can torture to death. Therefore, they did not go to the swamp far and one by one. It was believed that only sorcerers and witches could walk fearlessly through the swamps.
“The spirit appeared in the swamps a long time ago,” wrote the healer Gryaznov in 1879. swamps convenient for his life and denseness”. And here is a record from another Cherepovets source, made even earlier, in the middle of the 19th century: “He howls, this spirit. Once you get there, he will stay with you forever. It sucks the brain. He thinks and makes you silent …"
“He can be scared away,” we read in a letter from a certain Perfiliev, a native of these places, who was being treated for his “swamp blues” by Dr. Gryaznov. - Do not talk about him, do not show him the way, he lives in the very center, where forest growth surrounds a small red dough that looks like an elongated circle. Our forester calls him a witch. He is afraid himself, he is afraid, and he invites others to listen. He began to walk into the forest without a gun. Everyone knows that his predecessor shot himself at home. He rose to the rank of senior and shot himself, but did not leave the city. I did not have time. Or could not … And even better - to be silent. Go and be silent. And it cannot steal a voice."
“My father drove me out of the city,” testifies an eyewitness and victim of the Cherepovets bog in the middle of the 19th century. - I got my education and came back. From now on it is no longer possible to leave. These swamps are found everywhere. How can you deal with such a colossal smelly peat? And how wonderful this swamp is when you find it for the first time! And there are almost no berries, and few birds. This is not a swamp at all. And how you can hear him in the city! I already knew three people who hear him …"
This is also confirmed by Perfiliev in a letter written in 1905: “All the best people really leave Cherepovets or die here … This is not a mental one - some other illness. A person ceases to wait for the best … and as if hears in the morning how somewhere in the north the Lake sighs. And that water lives someone else's life. She subjugates people who fulfill her will. Two years later, Perfiliev was already suffering from this strange disease …
PLANT SOUL
For a long time it was believed that plants have no feelings and the “plant soul” is primitive. Modern biologists are gradually coming to the conclusion that plants are not so different from humans and animals. They can see, feel touch, smell, they have hearing and even taste. Instead of eyes, plants have proteins that subtly react to any radiation of energy. Flavoring enzymes have been found on the roots, which help to find “delicacies” such as mushroom spores underground. Plants communicate with each other using smells.
Plants can experience emotional stress and make contact with humans. It is likely that plants have all these properties due to the water in them, which is able to "memorize" information and change its structure under the influence of sound and electromagnetic waves.
Experiments were carried out with individual plants, but it never came to the study of a large plant organism immersed in water, that is, having access to a kind of water "information library". For example, such as a swamp. And completely in vain. After all, if every plant is so “animate”, how alive and feeling a sustainable ecological system can be!
It is noteworthy that the species of predatory plants comes across only in swamps. This is understandable, because in nature everything is reasonable: in the water of swamps there are few substances necessary for plants - they are washed away and carried away by water. Here, for example, a sundew takes them from the organisms of insects that it feeds on.
THE FATE OF THE CHEREPOVETSKY "MONSTER"
“I took samples of peat from this strange place,” the same doctor Gryaznov assures in his notes. - He sent samples to St. Petersburg and led all the scientists he knew to bewilderment: in addition to plant residues in the peat, there were traces of a more highly organized life, which (traces) had never been met and observed anywhere else. Colleagues wrote to me that the swamp is rare and unusual."
We do not know other details and "material evidence" that shed any light on the story of the Cherepovets bog. It is believed that the swamp, in the form in which it terrified the entire district, died somewhere at the turn of the 1920s-1940s. Rather, it did not die - it just stopped showing itself, at least openly. Otherwise, how would it have allowed such a rapid construction of the city and the development of industry? And the swamp could not withstand the active tide of fresh people in Cherepovets. Surrendered … Or lurking?
In any case, now in the city and surrounding villages, people lead a calm and measured life, there is no more madness and crime here than in other places. Only occasionally visiting adventure lovers, who have decided on their own, without the help of locals, to master the swamp jungle, are faced with something supposedly inexplicable. In fact, everything mysterious is associated with emissions of swamp gas or with the usual manifestations of life in the swamp.
When examining the Cherepovets bog in 1992, a curious phenomenon of “loss of voice” was indeed discovered. As eyewitnesses describe, the sound floated, it was difficult to talk. At a distance of thirty paces one could scream at the top of his lungs, but it was barely audible, but a couple of steps to the side - and the audibility became perfect. However, such acoustic phenomena sometimes occur in other, not so "terrible" swamps. In all likelihood, due to the special undulating terrain, effects are observed here, similar to the propagation of sound in anechoic chambers, where porous and fibrous materials are used as absorbers. In a swamp, this role can be played by sphagnum moss and other loose bog vegetation and its remains.
LET'S GO WITHOUT DRAWS
In the works of the most famous writers at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, more than 300 rather sharp subjects are associated with swamps. M. M. Prishvin in the story "The Pantry of the Sun" told the story of Bludov's swamp (Bludovo, because you can get lost there). The writer talks about the trees growing in the swamp as living people, about how close the plant and animal worlds are to each other, he calls the swamp "the treasure of the sun".
Borina (a sandy hill in the middle of a swamp, covered with a high forest) is like a living creature: it “was filled with bird songs, howling, groaning and crying of animals. Not all of them were here, on Borin, but from the swamp, damp, deaf, all the sounds gathered here. Borina with a pine forest and sonorous on dry land, responded to everything. And now the weather is changing: “… a gray gloom has moved tightly and covered the whole sun with its life-giving rays.
The evil wind rushed very sharply. Trees intertwined with roots, piercing each other with twigs, growled, howled, groaned at the entire Bludovo swamp. Isn't this suggestive of the presence of all kinds of "spirits"?
And the writer answers this question: "… Many people still only know about these great treasuries of the sun, that they seem to have devils: all this is nonsense, and there are no devils in the swamp."
Author: Anatoly Vladimirov