A few days ago, we published a story about two cases when in winter, on the way to the village, residents met people who sometimes looked like their neighbors, and tried to accompany, and then suddenly disappeared and the traveler sometimes found himself in a completely different place.
It turns out that such cases are not at all rare among rural residents of Russia. They were even given their apt name "started and disappeared." At the beginning of the 2000s, a small selection of such cases was collected by the Russian researcher of anomalous phenomena Alexei Priima.
O. K. Kurlygina, in a letter sent to Priyma from the Arkhangelsk region, said:
“It happened in January 1998. At about noon, I walked along a forest road, returning from the village, where there was a grocery store, to my native village, where there was no store. I walked slowly, because I had a large backpack over my shoulders, stuffed with food.
Suddenly I see a tall man in a sheepskin coat and a fur hat coming out of the forest onto the road. I hear him shouting to me from a distance: “Come with me! Come with me! Immediately something like an eclipse came over me. Like the last idiot, I turned off the road into the forest and flooded through the deep snow after this man in a sheepskin coat.
She sweated almost instantly. The heavy backpack was sensitively pressing on the back, and the snow cover in the forest was almost knee-high … A man in a sheepskin coat walks slowly, without looking back, and from time to time shouts to me: “Come with me! Come with me!"
Well, I trudge after him as if on an invisible leash. I feel that my heart is about to burst in my chest with fatigue. Sweat floods my eyes. Can't go any further! I paused for a moment and with despair I say out loud: "Lord, what is this going on?" As soon as I uttered these words, the peasant who stomped in front of me burst out laughing and disappeared, as if he had melted into the air. Well, I was scared!
I dragged myself to my home only in the evening. And then she fell ill, all ill."
Promotional video:
Similar stories were recorded by the folklorist V. Zinoviev.
“We went to the mowing once, two neighbors, - this is how one of the memories begins. - Dined there, rested. Then I went to the forest … And this is what happened after that with my neighbor, who was left alone in the field.
Two people come up to him.
- Why did you come here? - they ask.
He says:
- Yes, we came to the mowing. But first we need to pick the bark in the forest and chop dry wood for the fire.
And they tell him:
- Go with us. We'll chop it up for you, everything will be ready.
Let's go. He walks in front, and they - behind him. So they walked, walked, walked. My neighbor thinks, “What is it? Where are they taking me? He took and read the prayer out loud with fright. And they clapped in their hands, laughed, and the smoke went in all directions from them. Gone! The neighbor rushed home with all his might. Runs over and shouts:
- Oops, what happened to me!"
Here's another story.
“My father-in-law went to town to sell pots, but he didn't sell everything. Goes home from there. And his godfather comes across to him and says:
- Call me.
He went. Have arrived. He unharnessed his horse. He took a bottle out of his pocket, shook it up and said:
- Lord, bless!
As soon as he said this, he looked - he was sitting in a hole, snow was all around, the wind was spinning, and all the pots were broken and scattered over the hole. Well, the "godfather" disappeared somewhere."
Another participant in a partly similar incident, a village resident, grandmother Pavlikha, met with evil spirits, who this time took the form of not a godfather, but her own son. This happened during her youth - during the Civil War in the Far East.
Pavlikha had two sons, and both of them, very young, teenagers, fought as part of a red partisan detachment against regular units of the white army. The partisan detachment lived in dugouts in the deep taiga. Pavlikha regularly carried food to the taiga for her sons.
She met first with one of them, then with another at a pre-agreed place. The sons took turns to visit her for food bags. One of them was named Zenka.
Once Pavlikha came to the appointed place, knowing in advance that Zenka should come to meet her on that day. She began to shout, beckoning to her son, hiding, as usual in such cases, somewhere among the trees.
Here is her further story.
“- Zenka! - I shout. - Zenka!
He answers:
- I'm here. Come here mom!
Well, I went to him. I walk, I walk, and he leads me further, further and further. And so for three days I followed my son through the taiga. Then she became exhausted, tore all her clothes on herself.
- What are you? - shout to Zenka. - How much more will you drive me ?!
And suddenly I see - I'm standing on a rock! There is a precipice, here is a precipice. I'm afraid to move! I was completely exhausted. And sat there. Then, on the fourth day, the partisans found me in the tracks of my rags, which remained in the taiga on the bushes.
Found and say:
- What are you doing here, mother? How did you get here?
I give my son a motherfucker in response: so and so, they say, he brought me here.
And the partisans are surprised:
- What are you, mother, crazy? Your son from our camp in recent days did not go anywhere at all …"
