There are many places on the globe where natural conditions create mortal danger for humans. Moreover, there it is obvious: bottomless abysses, quicksand, rockfalls, whirlpools, unbearable heat or cold. But there are also mysterious places where people often die for no apparent reason …
Blue hole
Not far from the Egyptian resort of Dahab on the Sinai Peninsula in the Gulf of Aqaba, there is the Blue Hole coral reef - the Blue Hole. However, divers-divers who come here from all over the world call it the Devil's Well, which supposedly goes straight to the underworld. In any case, the coastal cliffs are full of multicolored flags in memory of the divers who never emerged from the cursed bottomless well.
In general, most of the divers are not superstitious people, but the famous Dahab legend is told with pleasure.
A long time ago, there lived a loving princess in these parts, who ordered her sex partners to be drowned in this giant coral well so that they would not talk too much. The princess's father, having learned about the cruelty of his daughter, ordered her to be thrown into Blue Hole herself. And she finally promised that she would still find victims. Since then, people have disappeared here.
Bottomless barrel
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If we talk about geology, then this place is very unusual. The coastline here turns into a sheer reef wall, which forms a well that goes to a depth of over a thousand meters. Behind its outer wall, there is a cliff that ends at 800 meters. At a depth of 54 meters, there is an arch opening from the well to the sea. However, the bodies of the missing divers were never found in it: they disappeared without a trace in the Devil's Well itself.
They try to explain this riddle by the fact that at great depths compressed air in a scuba diver's cylinder causes drug intoxication. Someone starts to feel dizzy so that he loses orientation in space and, instead of floating up, sinks deeper and deeper. Some fall into a coma - they fall asleep with their eyes open and sleep like this in the water column until the air in the cylinder runs out. It may happen that a person begins to think that he is a fish and tries to breathe water.
But then why don't the bodies of the dead divers float up? After all, sooner or later, their corpses begin to decompose. The resulting gases should inflate the divers' wetsuits and push them to the surface. In addition, international recreational diving regulations prohibit compressed air diving deeper than 40 meters. Professional deep-sea divers do not pump compressed air into the cylinders, but a special mixture that does not have a narcotic effect.
Nevertheless, strange things happen to them in the Devil's Well.
Gray children
Here is what a Russian diver named Nikolai tells about his dive, which almost became disastrous:
“Many people dive into Blue Hole, not all come up. And I almost ended up among them. And it happened like this. We entered the water, agreed who would follow whom. We swam to the entrance to the well and began to submerge. The fall is beautiful, we fell with an incredible speed, and now thirty, forty, fifty, sixty …
And suddenly we saw THIS. Suddenly, the colors disappeared, everything became silvery gray. Not a single fish was here, but THEY appeared. They were human-like creatures, I don't know how much deeper they went below us, but their movements were perfect. They were about the same height as us, and it even seemed to me that they had balloons on their backs.
At first I thought they were wearing silver wetsuits, but as I swam closer, I saw that this was the color of their skin, they were completely, everything, from head to toe, silver. Without hesitation, we dived deeper to get a better look at them.
The deeper we plunged, the more their images were transformed, they seemed to melt, and so we saw next to us … no, not people with silvery skin, but small children with empty eyes and gray skin. They were wearing some kind of gray rags. They swam next to us, looking into our eyes. Oh god, those eyes … It was then that I felt wild fear.
I looked down and saw that the bottom was very close. And suddenly he realized what kind of place it was, began to knock on the balloon to attract the attention of his friends, but it was too late. They did not feel the horror that I felt, they grabbed the children by the arms. Around one of us, the children formed a round dance, and he liked it, he smiled. I tried not to look them in the eye, I began to rise higher, faster and faster.
But then I heard music, it was definitely music … Although rather not, it was a choir, a thousand voices, they called me back. My movements began to slow down again, my voices died down, I again began to sink lower and lower. I tried to blow the vest, but my hands did not obey, the children began to drag me into the depths. To be honest, I already had a hard time understanding where was the top and where the bottom was … I began to thresh with all my might with flippers. At some depth I again heard voices, then I covered my ears with my hands and swam up.
The last time I looked down and saw a terrible picture: my friends, as if at the wave of the conductor's dad, looked at me at the same time, and I saw their faces, they had fear, inhuman horror, I will never forget their faces in that fateful moment: only then they realized what was happening. And the children pounced on them, all at once, there were hundreds of them, and in a few seconds I no longer saw either the children or my friends. The vest swelled and, with a crackle of valves, dragged me upward with great speed.
When I was thrown out of the underwater gloom, I saw blinding sunlight. After that, I don't remember anything. Probably, someone pulled me out of the water, I myself would not have swum. And my friends stayed in the Devil's Well forever."
Woman without scuba gear
The dive into Blue Hole and French divers Alain Marceau and Paul Tuman ended just as tragically:
“Paul and I have reached a depth of one hundred meters and decided to take a leisurely swim and watch. We sailed about fifteen meters from each other, - says Alain. - Suddenly I turn and see that Paul hovered in the water column, directing the beam of his powerful underwater flashlight at one point. I also looked at where Paul was looking. And I saw in the crevice between large stones a strange large whitish object. And he … suddenly began to stir!
I remember, I also thought: what kind of huge fish is this, isn't it dangerous? And then I shuddered with horror. I saw that it was a naked girl, leaning against a rock. How? Where from? Can not be! At a depth of 100 meters without scuba gear!
I remember everything that happened later as in a fog. The figure parted from the rock and darted towards Paul. In the beams of the lantern, I saw a scary face distorted with anger. Another moment, and the creature pounced on Paul, knocked the lantern out of his hands and began to pull after him, plunging deeper and deeper. I leaned against the stone, fell into a stupor for a while: I simply could not move my leg or arm. I was trembling, I was breathing with difficulty, and my heart seemed to be about to burst from a frantic rhythm. He glanced over to where two figures had melted into the bluish darkness. Nothing was already visible, and I began to emerge."
When Alain Marceau rose to the surface and, stuttering from the horror he had experienced, told about what had happened, they did not believe him. However, a few hours later, a rescue expedition that dived into the Devil's Well, at a depth of 150 meters, found Paul Tuman's wetsuit tattered to shreds. The body was not found. Later, an examination showed that the suit was not torn apart by the teeth of some fish, but rather by human nails, and this required an incredible force.
Both the Russian and French divers claim that everything they saw was not hallucinations. However, both of them do not even undertake to suggest what it is …