According to popular beliefs, here, in the lower reaches of the Ugra River in the Kaluga Region, there are many “prodigal places”.
“In nature, different things happen,” said the driver of a passing car, who picked me up at the beginning of autumn during one of the local history expeditions. - I myself am a hunter (that's why I stopped when I saw an oily man), usually in the deepest forest I can orient myself perfectly. And then my friends and I got out into the forest under Leo Tolstoy. Well, yes - next to Kaluga. It would seem that the places are traveled far and wide, the sea walks to the people, country roads in all directions, and there I … got lost. I walked a little from the car and the company - I can't go back! I call them - so and so. They say: "Listen, we are shouting to you." Can not hear anything! I wandered, wandered, heard the noise of cars, went out onto the Kiev highway - almost ten kilometers away! And I still cannot understand how it happened: there is a well-rolled country road, I had to cross it. No, I didn't cross, but ended up behind him! Then we tried to figure it outhow I got lost, and could not understand anything. Locals say that people are constantly fornicating there. The place is …
There was no particular sensation in the story - it is enough to go around the heels of the villages, and in one of them they will certainly tell about the place where "it seems" or "whoredom lives". Sometimes descriptions of incidents (a lost person did not notice how he crossed a road or a river) suggest teleportation, long ago invented by science fiction writers and even theoretical physicists - an instant "out-of-space" movement from one point to another …
I was interested in another story. Back in the 1990s, when our amateur group was actively studying UFO sightings in the area, it was discovered that the number of reports about them from the vicinity of Tovarkov-Mstikhin is not inferior to the number of sightings of Kaluga residents. Although the population is much smaller there.
By putting the observation points on the map, it was even possible to identify the "standard UFO route": from Kondrov through Tovarkovo - and to Kurovskoye … Places of frequent observations of anomalous atmospheric phenomena were found in other places - Medynsky, Ferzikovsky, Zhizdrinsky districts. In them, during a survey of the population, it was possible to identify anomalous zones with a whole complex of phenomena: UFOs did not just fly there, but appeared and disappeared "out of nowhere", and most importantly, the old-timers named unusually many places for which the glory of "bad" has long been formed. In the vicinity of Tovarkov, despite inquiries, this was not the case. Maybe you missed a little?
At the beginning of November we went to check a new tip. As usual, we went to a selmag - the usual news center in the province. And the saleswoman tells us at once about two “prodigal” places in the vicinity - Omshary and Peresypya: “People often get lost there. Recently, a man on Peresypy lost four hours, and I won't tell you why, I myself have been working here not so long ago. It is necessary to ask the indigenous people”.
One of them, Vladimir Vasilyevich Katynkin, who has been fond of hunting since childhood, was skeptical about the issue:
- Well, we have it, we have a swampy place there, Omshara, overgrown with bushes. But I climbed it a lot, only once I fornicated. But this is my own fault, the fog was, this is a normal phenomenon. But that is inexplicable and for a long time … It is not very big - on the one hand the roosters are crowing, the dogs are barking, on the other there are noisy cars … There are no gobies there, when I hunted and climbed there at night, I never met anyone. Yes, and on Peresypyi, this is such a hollow, too.
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Elena Vasilievna Barkhatova from the village of Novoskakovskoye was even more categorical:
- There are no miracles, here are holy places. There were no anomalies, no one was missing. My great-grandmother lived here and my great-grandfather. It used to be that grandmother would say about our Vipreyka: drink from the river, in it Father Tikhon washed his legs. Omshary is a swamp, they went there for raspberries, currants. There were no cuttlefish or kikimor …
The question is closed? As if not so, many other interlocutors did not agree with the opinion of fellow villagers-skeptics. However, no one really told us about cuttlefish and kikimor, but there are just stories about “bad places”. They were especially remembered in the village of Staroskakovskoye. However, they explained the "emergency" in different ways. An elderly couple, sitting on the terrace of one of the houses, leaned towards the version of "the place you need to know":
- You will get lost if you do not know. Even if you know, you will still get lost. They found the dead there! If on Peresypyi until twelve at night did not pass, then it seems. You just need to, and you will turn right or left. There is a fork, and you can expect everything.
- What all ?
- Well, different miracles. Here our man was driving at night. “I,” he says, “got scared, I can't get out back!” Then time has passed - and he drove. On Peresypyi. He also drives on the Abrashina ditch … We have three bridges there. Alone here, you cross it, you go to that one, then you go there … We have a tractor driver walking home and sees that the light is burning in the distance. He did not understand that there was a turn here to the village, and went straight ahead. Oh, his wife was worried, cried how much … On the second day, in the evening came. “I,” he says, “thought I was going to Staroskakovo, but ended up in Kozhukhovo.” There he got to the farm, and there he spent the night. On the other side of the Ugra. The river is frozen, he did not notice it.
Supported by the interlocutors and a man passing by:
- There are several roads. One goes to Leo, and the other to the side. Their intersection was named Peresyp. I don't know about this place. But Omshara - yes, they were afraid of him. My grandmother told me more. Anything happened there. We had such a Malinych, he loved to give in. I rode a horse and fell asleep in this place. The women went to the river in the morning, and the horse was swimming along the river with Malinych. They began to question him, and he replies: "The devils have beguiled me."
Stories about "unclean places" are remembered and reported not only by elderly villagers. Evgeny Kotin, a young and, as they say, reasonable and intelligent person, also found himself "in the subject":
- This place between the monastery and the Vypreika River is really bad. Both father and grandfather told me. From an early age I hear: "Omshara, Omshara, let's go and get lost." We went there for mushrooms. It seems like the forest is such that you can easily get around, and people wandered there. Several people froze, frostbitten, one of his hands got frostbitten. The forest grows densely, maybe because of this … Grandma also said that there was an underground passage from the monastery to this Omshara. And on the other side of the Ugra, on the contrary, there is another hollow, nicknamed the Stone Moat. There is also a forest, on all sides of the road, it seems impossible to get lost. And people there also always wandered. My grandmother told me: "You go there - don't go into the moat." True, they went anyway, nothing like that happened to me there.
Nikolai Sirotin, a native Staroskakovite, has become a real treasure of information for us. Having confirmed the traditions already known to us, he recalled others:
- We have the Abrashina ditch from Staroskakov. It would seem that they were in the field, but for some reason they always wandered there. They will go to the river, then somewhere else … It would seem that there is a village here, and the place is open, but for some reason they must have for some reason. One of us even thought of leaving for Kozhukhovo … And my great-grandmother said that there was a hole in the Androsov forest - they were afraid to go there too. As Granny would begin, it used to be to tell … He says, Omshara - one day the sorcerers flock there for a gathering. And we are interested - you sit and listen. For example, we had a school here, now there is a dacha, a teacher lived there, she talked about the devil. At night, she says, they do not give her rest, they pull off the blanket. She invited the students to spend the night. One student, he says, jumped up - grabbed the devil. But the devil is strong, he broke free. And then the student died.
The story of the unclean robbers of the blanket is a long-standing affair, but the case of the tractor driver, who knows how he ended up in Kozhukhov, cannot be attributed to legends. We did not manage to meet the "hero" himself, but the reliability of his story is beyond doubt.
Meanwhile, look at the map - not only Ugra with rather steep banks separates it from Staroskakov village, but also a good asphalt road - I can't imagine how even in winter and at night such clear landmarks can be overlooked. In any case, four bad places near a small village, and even in a far from remote area - that's a lot. And at the end of our hike, already in the village of Leo Tolstoy, going to the bus, we also learned about the fifth:
- It's called Kirpisya. There they also grow such mushrooms - they are called Polish. Whites are not white, but delicious. You go after dinner and you will get lost. Although, in general, there is nowhere: here the road, here the road. And you walk in circles, especially if it's cloudy. There the forest is burnt - maybe that's why you fornicate …
Maybe in the summer we will conduct an expedition in this area and try to experience the properties of mysterious places. Legends about them constitute an interesting layer of culture and deserve to be immortalized, at least on the pages of the newspaper. The rural population is changing rapidly, ten to twenty years will pass - and there will be no one to tell local beliefs and stories …
Andrey PEREPELITSYN