The history of the development of the Russian North goes back to ancient times. The pagans - the Ugro-Finnish tribes - Mordvinians, Vepsians (Chud), Karelians, Meshchera, Murom were the first to settle in the endless forest spaces.
Mastering the North, the Slavs faced the mysterious world of ancient tribes, whom they revered as keepers of secret knowledge of the past and endowed with the ability to serve as guides from the world of the living to the world of the dead, they were also credited with supernatural abilities to “change” forest spaces at will, “inhabit” the forest with unusual creatures …
In 1992, on the pages of the newspaper "Kirovskaya Pravda", the editorial board told several quite everyday stories. One of them was told by a resident of the city of Nolinsk R. Solovyova. She experienced genuine horror when she found herself at the mercy of the “owner” of the local forest: “The city of Nolinsk is surrounded by rivals covered with forests, each bearing its own name. The closest ones are Gorodskoy and Zonovsky, named after the breeder Zonov. Before the revolution, Zonov owned a tannery located at the edge of a forest cut by ravines. There was bad news about these places.
My husband and I had to remember these legends when one of the August days we went to the Zonovsky forest to pick mushrooms. There were no mushrooms, my mood was dropping, a strange anxiety seized me. We reached a ravine overgrown with dead wood. Down there was a barely noticeable path, along which we fearfully went down, trying not to slip on the old needles. Young white-trunk birches grew on the opposite bank. It was here that we were lucky - we were surrounded by strong birch trees and even porcini mushrooms. The baskets were quickly filled, and we, joyful, went upstairs. Before us stretched a small glade, bright with flowers, bordered on three sides by green Christmas trees.
We admired. The guttural cry of a bird brought us out of our reverie. She flew over us, flapping her strong wings, foreshadowing something … The clock showed two in the afternoon, it was time to return home. We followed the old tracks to the ravine, but we did not find the path. Having somehow descended to its bottom, they pulled each other in different directions, and a dark forest stood like a wall around us. Burdock and nettles are everywhere.
The bright glade seemed to have faded. It seemed like a gloomy evening fell to the ground. The most irritating and frightening thing was the cry of the bird, which continued to circle above us. I could not resist and began to reproach my husband that he, they say, was to blame, he offended the "owner" of the forest, now he leads us in a circle and does not let us out of his possessions. She knelt down, and although she did not really know a single prayer, she began to pray to God to help us get out of the forest, to show us the way home.
Believe it or not, it has become brighter in the ravine. After walking a hundred paces along the lowland, we came out onto a dry area, on which firewood was piled. A hunched-over old woman was walking towards us along the path from above, her apron tucked under the belt of her skirt, from under which her bare feet were visible. The old woman was dry, somehow light, leaning on a stick.
We didn't see her face. Twilight enveloped him. “Grandma, where are we? Show the way to the city, we can't get out,”we prayed. The old woman, without saying a word, pointed with a stick to the path along which she had just walked. When they looked back to say "thank you", she was gone. She seemed to dissolve into the dusk of the ravine. Climbing up the path, we plunged into the sea of daylight. The clock was about five …
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We often remembered this story and the old woman who showed the way home. Was there a game of our psyche, suppressed by a dark place, shrouded in painful legends? Or did we end up in that log, about which in ancient times there was a bad reputation, and the "owner" of the forest, in revenge for the insult, decided to play his old joke with us?"
Another curious "fairy tale" was told by the old-timer of the city of Vyatka N. Shadrin:
“Before the war, during school summer holidays, I worked as an assistant for an agronomist. He had a breech horse, and we went to collective farms, determined the purity of the varieties of grain crops sown. On one of the last days of August, we returned home late. It was dark. To the village where we lived, the road went through the river, then through a small forest. For some reason, the locals called it "swamp", although there was no swamp in it.
The sky was overcast with clouds. Lightning flashed. Thunder rumbled dully. We crossed the river and drove along the embankment left over from the former mill's dam. It was no more than two hundred meters from the river to the forest. And then lightning flashed, illuminating a small, seemingly quite ordinary lake. But there was a legend that a girl had drowned in it a long time ago. And now, they say, exactly at midnight a candle is burning on the lake, and a girl's groan is heard. At the sawmill (which was in the area nearby) a whistle sounded - it was 12 o'clock in the morning.
I involuntarily recalled the legend, and I looked at the lake. The water was black as polished board, but no candle burned on it. We drove into the forest. And suddenly … I cannot convey exactly what happened to us. I remember only some kind of fire before my eyes, and nothing else. When I “woke up”, I saw that I was sitting on the ground and holding my hands to the agronomist, and he to me.
We cannot understand what happened. We were in some kind of stupor, it was difficult to think. We hear our horse neighing somewhere ahead and beating with its hooves. We jumped up and ran to her. In the light of another lightning, they saw that it was rushing forward, and the tarantass was not moving. Let's push. Don `t move. What the hell is this!
It turns out that the front axle of the tarantass caught on a stump. The tarantass was freed. The horse, as soon as it found itself on the road, rushed forward and carried us at a gallop to the very village along the roots and bumps. It seemed like a miracle that we didn't fly out of it. Only in the village did they come to their senses, and fear washed over us in a wave.
In the morning we exchanged views on what happened. Then I walked this dear day, carefully looking around. I did not notice anything suspicious. "Goblin scared," said the old people. But now I think it was lightning that struck somewhere very close. How we stayed alive …"
Irina STREKALOVA