“It's better not to go to this forest. Forces will be abandoned, you can get sick … it is not for nothing that this place is called the witch's den,”say residents of the Ryazan region.
A strange forest is located in the Shilovsky district of the Ryazan region. Whatever they call it - witch, devilish, drunk, crooked … All the pines on its territory do not grow as expected - upwards, and almost at the very base they first strongly tilt to the north and only then rush to the sky. There are trees-arches, there are trunks twisted into a ram's horn.
“The abnormal area covers an area of about 1.5 km2, and behind it grows quite normal pine forests with trees with even trunks. The same "drunken" forest is absolutely dead: there are no young animals, berries and mushrooms cannot be found even in a harvest year, - said Dmitry Savva, an anomalous travel instructor of the Perekhod travel club, head of Murom-Kosmopoisk. - The forest stands between two villages - Tarnovo and Dubrovka.
According to the legend, which is popular among the residents, in ancient times two witches lived in these villages, who met here in a fight. Since then, the trees have begun to "writhe" … Local forester Alexander Gazeykin says that in a "drunken" forest people start to have headaches and often have dizziness.
Psychics who visited this anomalous place also said that it negatively affects people, so you can't stay here for a long time: "drunken" boron destroys the biofield and seems to draw out vital energy from a person. Personally, being in the forest, I did not feel anything special, but my equipment suffered - for inexplicable reasons the navigator and mobile phone broke down."
"Dancing" pines
Promotional video:
Ryazan "drunken" pine forest is not the only one in Russia. There is a section of twisted trees near the village of Yarenga in the Arkhangelsk region. An anomalous zone with twisted pine trees was discovered near the Miassky farm near Chelyabinsk. In the Kaliningrad region. the Curonian Spit has its own unique forest area. Here he is called not a witch or drunk, but dancing.
“The pines in our park seem to be dancing: they bend, bend into spirals, rings, loops. There is a fabulous legend about the Prussian princess Predin, before whom the trees began to dance and bow in obeisances. And when the music stopped, they froze in a whirlwind of dance … - says Anatoly Kalina, director of the Curonian Spit National Park. - The exact reason why the trees began to "dance" has not yet been established.
There are several versions: an anomalous geomagnetic zone, constantly blowing in one direction of the wind, soil features, a caterpillar of a shoot butterfly, which eats the apical buds of trees, as a result of which the shoot is bent. By the way, there is more than one "dancing" forest on the Curonian Spit, but others are closed to tourists.
Practice has shown that, despite warnings and obstacles, people climb on trunks, crawl into rings (supposedly, if you climb through, all wishes will come true), sit on crooked ledges, thereby peeling off the bark and killing trees. If this continues, the unique forest may remain only in photographs."
Crooked birch groves
The main part of the crooked forests is pine. But there are also "drunken" birch groves. In Laishevsky district of Tatarstan, birches first grow straight, and then make a lateral bend and again continue to grow upward. There is a "drunken" birch grove in the Khibiny on the Kola Peninsula and on the Medveditskaya ridge on the border of the Saratov and Volgograd regions.
“The Medveditskaya ridge is located on the site of a unique tectonic fault and is considered one of the most powerful anomalous zones in Russia. The birches here bend in a very bizarre way. Some have bent in the form of an arc, others have turned into spirals, and still others are spreading along the ground. We conducted 11 expeditions on the Medveditskaya ridge. Studied radiation, pests, environmental factors - nothing. But the trees there are uncomfortable and uncomfortable - otherwise they wouldn’t have gotten so bad,”says Alexander Petukhov, the deputy coordinator of Cosmopoisk. -
"Dancing" birches. Borovoye lake area
Where do "drunken" forests come from? To be honest, I've heard many scientific versions, but none of them convinced me. Tell me, how can a hurricane pass or a caterpillar can start and spoil only a small section of the forest? In this case, the neighboring trees for some reason stand perfectly flat.
And one more thing: why exactly in such places do people feel tired, exhausted? I think there are deeper reasons here that we have to unravel. It is not for nothing that the "drunken" forests give rise to so many legends among the people."
Expert opinion
Vladimir Lipatkin, Dean of the Faculty of Forestry, Moscow State University of Forestry:
- For scientists, drunken forests are a very common and very widespread phenomenon, described in forestry textbooks a hundred years ago. They are found in every region. Even in the near Moscow region, you can find sections of crooked trees. There is such a zone in the Alekseevskaya grove of Losiny Ostrov, there is a plot in the Prioksko-Terrace Reserve of the Serpukhov District. No need to look for mysticism in the "drunken" forests!
Yes, there is anomaly, but it consists in the fact that at a certain moment in the life of the tree, something happened to it. For example, a pest appeared (and there are a lot of them: pine wither, root sponge, etc.), which damaged the growth point and contributed to the curvature of the trunk. Or a strong hurricane swept, an icy rain fell. All these are types of adaptation of trees to harsh environmental conditions - nothing more.
