In 1870, one of the officials of the Nizhne-Kodymsky Cossack detachment with horror reported to the local doctor that up to 70 people in their unit were sick with strange seizures. The disease manifests itself closer to the night, when people begin to sing in different, unknown languages …
ARCTIC HYSTERIA
Measuring is an interesting phenomenon that has always been associated with shamans and northern magic. It is a kind of psychopathological state in which a person, regardless of his own desire, copies the actions and words of others. Or obeys any orders from the outside, coming from another person or, as some northern peoples believe, the perfume of the North Star. The name of this mysterious disease comes from the Yakut manerik - "to do strange things."
The action is also called Arctic hysteria. There are cases when it took on a massive character. The event affects not only the aborigines of the Kola Peninsula, but also those who find themselves in these places during the outbreak of the disease. I must say that the crowd, engulfed in arctic hysteria, looks scary. People become like zombies, it is believed that at this moment they are completely insensitive to pain. In addition, after an attack, a person has amnesia: he does not remember at all what happened to him.
STRAIGHT TO THE NORTH
An attack of Arctic hysteria begins with the fact that a person is completely disconnected from the outside world, that is, enters a trance. The sick person makes rhythmic movements, makes incomprehensible sounds. But more often than not, as if falling under the influence of some force that indicates its direction, it rushes along the ice exactly to the north - to the Polar Star.
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When others try to detain him on this disastrous path, he shows an inhuman strength of resistance and falls into a rampage. Sick and weakened people are especially susceptible to measuring.
There is a beautiful legend that explains this terrible phenomenon in its own way: the soul of a deceased person flies to the heavenly palace, over which the North Star shines. Living people cannot see this palace, and only when its inhabitants open the windows, the light from them becomes visible (aurora borealis). Open windows mean that the gods call on the souls of still living people, and the one who hears this call goes on his last journey to the North Star.
Perhaps there is a small part of the truth in the legend. This is confirmed by various stories that happened to the sailors in those places.
In 1792, his son Alexei came down with scurvy on the fishing schooner of the merchant Rybin. But when the pulsating aurora appeared in the sky, he felt such a surge of energy that he was able to climb onto the deck, throw himself overboard and sail north. Unfortunately, it was not possible to save him.
In 1898, the Norwegian ship was left to winter off the coast of Antarctica. With the onset of the polar night and the appearance of aurora, one of the crew members left the ship and fled across the ice towards the pole. Another followed him, and when he tried to stop him, he almost hacked the navigator with an ax and managed to escape.
All these stories impressed subsequent polar explorers so much that they began to include straitjackets in expedition equipment in order to deter those who would answer the call of the North Star.
NATURE OR Witchcraft?
In the early 20s of the last century, Academician V. M. Bekhterev, who at that time headed the Institute of the Brain in Petrograd, became interested in this mysterious phenomenon. Assuming that the cause of the disease lies in some external factors, he organized an expedition to the Kola Peninsula, which was headed by the writer and researcher A. V. Barchenko.
Arriving in August 1921 in the village of Lovozerovo, Barchenko tried to negotiate with the shamans about visiting Rogovy Island, a ritual place, but was flatly refused. The son of a local priest volunteered to help the expedition and ferry people to the island in his sailboat. But attempts to violate the ban of shamans almost ended in failure - people almost died in the lake. It was decided to walk along the shore. After some time, the travelers saw a stone-paved road about one and a half kilometers, going through the swamps, built by someone unknown.
In addition, a huge yellowish stone column was discovered, near which people were seized by unaccountable horror, and the members of the expedition, one after the other, began to fall into a state of measuring: mirroring words and gestures, executing commands coming from outside. According to guides from the local population, the column was built by the Chud people who disappeared thousands of years ago, according to beliefs, who have gone into underground labyrinths.
Barchenko managed to find out only that the measuring is a directed mass psychosis of unknown origin, but he did not find an explanation for the phenomenon of the so-called invulnerability during the measuring.
Unfortunately, at that time it was not possible to unravel the mystery of the measurement. It was only after global experiments in 1957 that it was discovered that some forms of aurorae pulsate at frequencies close to the main rhythms of the human brain.
But before, in the mid-1930s, the German medical psychiatrist A. Schwarz managed to find out that it was flashes of red color of a certain frequency that stimulate the onset of epileptic seizures. He suggested that the Nazi leadership use this effect to identify people susceptible to mental illness.
SHAMAN HUNTING
There is another version concerning the effect that causes the measurement. It was she who was most interested in Hitler's Germany. On the eve of the war, under the guise of German geologists, specialists from the Ahnenerbe, an occult organization of the Third Reich, visited the Kola Peninsula.
The target was local shamans, who, according to the researchers, had the ability to bring a large number of people into a state of measurement simultaneously with a short cry-spell. The man turned into an obedient robot and was ready to carry out any order. With the help of northern shamans, the Nazis hoped to develop a powerful psychotropic weapon.
They knew that arctic psychosis could result from a harsh and frightening response. Shamans actively used this in practice, they had a whole science of fright technology, they knew what time of day to scare, and what spell should contain a frightening shout.
With the help of such zombies, shamans forced people to work, reconciled enemies and punished criminals, turning them into weak-willed robots for life. This practice was also used to educate fearless and aggressive warriors. Shamans claimed that they mastered this science of measuring thanks to humanoid beings who came from the underworld.
POISONOUS HERBS
The northerners know that during a bout of arctic hysteria, it is possible to alleviate the fate of a sick person by unbuttoning his collar and removing his belt. Also, try to prevent injury and other consequences. But the main method of dealing with an illness is to turn to a shaman. Moreover, the shaman must have great strength, and there are not many of them left. But the shaman can help only if the attack was provoked by the actions of another shaman, but he cannot cope with the call of the North Star.
One of the researchers of this phenomenon, Anuchin, managed to get a recipe for a remedy from a sorcerer-medicine man, which supposedly helps a person to avoid "being visited by a spirit / devil." The sorcerer advised to take a herbal decoction, consisting of three herbs: teleta, thistle and old oak. Each of the herbs is very interesting in itself. So, for example, teleta has poisonous leaves containing a neurotoxin, but it is believed that it helps against all (!) Diseases.
Thistle - the very name of what is worth: consists of two words "devil" and "polokh" (fear), that is, "frightening feature", which is quite consistent with the purpose. The plant is used in medicine for nervous and mental problems, with inhibition of the cerebral cortex. Starodubka - again a poisonous plant, is used in certain doses to reduce the frequency of seizures in epilepsy.
The reasons for the measurement are still unknown. Repeated attempts to study this phenomenon, including the OGPU in the 20s of the last century, according to official data, did not lead to anything, the results of the expeditions were classified, and the participants were repressed and destroyed. The classification of secrecy from the archives on this case has not been removed until now.
Galina ORLOVA