Half a million tourists annually come to Lake Pleshcheyevo near the ancient Pereslavl-Zalessky. The place of indescribable beauty lures inveterate fishermen, divers, ecotourists with the possibilities of magical rest, neo-pagan native-believers - with a chance to honor the memory of their ancestors, and scientists - with attempts to solve numerous riddles: about the "traveling" stone, and about glowing balls, and even about disappearing vacationers.
The first riddle - the stone traveler
One of the main attractions of the lake is the Xin-stone - a three-meter cobblestone weighing 12 tons, which mysteriously moves. Whatever they tried to do with him: they buried him, and drowned him at the bottom of the lake, and took him away, but he always inexplicably returned. However, for every beautiful legend, people of science have an explanation, and often more than one.
Life is everywhere
According to French biologists Richard Demon and Bertrand Escolier, stones are living "creatures" with breathing and beating hearts. Only their heart rate is extremely slow - one beat per day, and therefore it is impossible to hear or feel it without special equipment. In the course of many years of observations, the French managed to prove that the stones are able to move. One of the "experimental" for 2 weeks "left" by two and a half millimeters.
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Born of the earth
About unexpectedly "thawed" stones in the spring, the farmers repeatedly broke plows, and therefore plowing always began with a survey of the field and harvesting cobblestones, about which the people said that "the land gives birth to them." But geophysicists have a more prosaic explanation: under the influence of temperature changes, rocky rock expands and contracts, which leads to its slight displacement. Therefore, it is not surprising that over the decades the stone "leaves" a decent distance.
Return to place
There is one more explanation for the fact that the Xin-stone is returning to its "rightful" place, which, however, has not yet been recognized by official science. If we take it on faith that our ancestors placed the stone on one of the ley lines, the network of which twists around the entire planet and connects numerous natural landmarks, then its return to its place is the restoration of the disturbed balance.
The hypothesis of the existence of ley lines was first put forward by the Englishman Alfred Watkins, who united numerous ancient monuments, burial mounds, ridges, reservoirs and other natural landmarks into a single network created during the Neolithic for ease of movement. According to this version, Lake Pleshcheyevo fits well into the general "coordinate system", and the Xin-stone is a kind of mark on the map.
Ice to help
Glaciologists insist that it is quite simple to explain the return of the Xin Stone. Every year in early spring, a strong wind blows hummocks to the north-eastern shore of the lake - heaps of ice debris, the height of which reaches a two-story house. If the stone freezes into such ice, then it may well "travel" for impressive distances and "push" to the shore. This version, in particular, was put forward in the newspaper "Vladimirskie gubernskiye vedomosti" in a series of publications for 1850.
The opinion that ice is “dragging” the stone to the shore was first put forward by the priest and local historian Nikolai Memorsky, and in 1984 the calculations of geophysicist Nikolai Berdnikov confirmed Memorsky's assumption.
The second riddle - double bottom
Divers willingly pass on word of mouth legends about the double bottom of the lake, because of which scuba divers disappear without a trace. Scientists tend to explain mysticism by the peculiarities of the origin of the reservoir, but there is no consensus.
Some believe that the reservoir appeared 30 thousand years ago and is of glacial origin. Thousands of years ago, a huge ice lens was buried at the bottom, the gradual melting of which led to the formation of a double bottom.
Supporters of another hypothesis are convinced that Lake Pleshcheyevo is a karst salt lake. In this case, voids under water appeared as a result of salt leaching. The salt brews of the village of Kupanskoe (formerly Usolye) in the vicinity of the lake are considered to be a confirmation of this version. For the first time they, together with the monastic courtyards, were mentioned back in 1517 in the charter of Prince Vasily III Ivanovich, granted to the Trinity-Sergius Monastery.
Riddle three - herring in fresh water
The salt version of the origin of the double bottom is also supported by the presence of a rare fish in the freshwater lake - vendace, which is called "royal herring" for a reason. Ever since the time of Ivan the Terrible, they began to serve it to the royal and grand ducal tables. According to ichthyologists, there was once a sea in the place of Pleshcheyevo Lake, in which the relict fish felt very comfortable. Over time, the sea turned into a lake, but due to its salt origin, clear water and constant temperature, the European vendace decided to stay.
Riddle four - fog
Several years ago, Lake Pleshcheyevo became one of the five most "inexplicable places" on the planet, which is famous for its nebulae appearing from nowhere. A person who finds himself in a milky-slushy haze supposedly “falls out of reality”, but often finds a “path” and goes along it, led by “otherworldly forces”.
Whether we are talking about electrostatic levitation or teleportation is still unknown, but scientists do not exclude that it is possible to "fall into a black hole" of the anomalous zone.
Riddle five - balls of fire
An inexplicable glow was often observed over the lake. Eyewitnesses told about "balls of fire" that mysteriously appeared over the water surface and disappeared. But scientists do not see anything mysterious here: probably a special phosphine is released from the water - a poisonous gas that ignites on contact with air. The phenomenon is typical for swamps, where the effect of "wandering lights" is not considered to be something supernatural.
For ecologists, the mystical fire over the surface of the lake is not a coming prophecy of the end of the world, but a signal of the death of a unique natural masterpiece. In recent years, ecologists have repeatedly recorded an increased level of pollution, a critical decrease in water levels and an increased reproduction of fetid blue-green algae. They warn that if drastic measures are not taken to save Pleshcheyevo Lake, in a few decades it will turn into a swamp, and then "balls of fire" will appear over it almost every day.
The sixth riddle - in search of Kitezh-grad
According to one of the legends, vacationers have repeatedly observed a huge stone finger "growing" from the lake, with the appearance of which an inexplicable fear and temporary paralysis arose. This state could continue for several days.
Scientists do not yet have a scientific explanation, but according to one version, this phenomenon is associated with the formation of a powerful torsion field (the term was first used in 1922 by the mathematician Eli Cartan). And what creates a physical phenomenon is nothing else than the city of Kitezh in the depths. However, people of science argue about the "Russian Atlantis" no less than about the mysterious mysteries of Lake Pleshcheev.