There have long been legends about spirits living in the depths of underground mines, mines and catacombs. According to some versions, these are creatures from a parallel reality, according to others - the souls of those who died in the dungeons. They treat people differently: sometimes they ignore, sometimes they save from misfortune, and sometimes they carry danger … Faith in them has not lost its relevance in our days.
In the Middle Ages, many legends appeared about spirits living in the depths of the mountains. For example, according to Western European folklore, mysterious "knockers" lived in the mines where metal ore was mined. They were sometimes called trolls or kobolds. By the way, the gnomes-Nibelungs, heroes of the famous Scandinavian epic, belonged to them … According to legends, in the depths of the mountains they forged metals and cut precious stones.
Hungarian mineralogist Dr. Kalozhdi has collected many stories about such creatures. For example, he talks about mysterious knocks that are heard from time to time in the coal mines of the Czech Republic and Bohemia. “The miners in those places are convinced that the kobolds in this way warn them of danger or that it is not worth going deeper in the chosen direction,” the researcher writes.
Stories about "mountain masters" still surface today.
According to a certain I. K., in 1943, as a student at a technical school, he did an internship at a Far Eastern mine. Once, when their brigade was given an outfit, the brigadier suddenly announced that he would not go to work at the appointed place, since he had seen a mining “owner” of the mine there the day before. He was an old man with a long gray beard in a canvas shirt and homemade shoes - as in the old days they dressed. The old man said that people had already taken enough ore from this face and that he, the mountain owner, forbade them to come here again. Frightened by this vision, the foreman rushed to run …
Of course, this explanation did not satisfy the authorities. The foreman was selected and removed from work as allegedly suffering from delirium tremens. The brigade was still sent to the "forbidden" slaughter. On the same day, a landslide occurred there, crushed people to death …
There are especially many such legends in the Urals. Let us recall at least the myth about the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, used for his tales by P. P. Bazhov … Her ghost allegedly appeared to the Ural miners on the eve of the collapses in the mines. In other places, the "masters" of the male sex ruled. However, they not only prophesied misfortunes - they rewarded others by revealing rich ore or untold treasures …
In the middle of the last century, archaeologist K. I. Neustruev discovered in the area of the Volga Zhiguli, on the so-called Samarskaya Luka, the ruins of an ancient fortified settlement of the XI-XII centuries. The most interesting thing is that the find confirmed the legends told earlier by local residents. They talked about defensive structures, under which a network of underground passages, mines and galleries lay. For example, in the village of Shiryaevo, tunnels and caves under the Monastyrskaya Mountain led to the wells-holes, and from there to the other bank of the Volga.
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They said, however, that not everyone can get into these caves, since they are guarded by the Mistress of the Mountains. Again, there is circumstantial evidence. So, until the 18th century, the Zhigulevsky mountains were called Devyi. And on the map of 1459, this area is called the Amazon … The myths of half a millennium ago tell that these mountains were owned by "heroic sisters", to whom "both good fellows and pedestrian kaliks" were to measure their strength. Later legends tell of witches sleeping soundly under the Molodetsky mound. However, their sleep is not eternal: sometimes at night they fly over Zhiguli on their stupas …
The phenomenon of underground ghosts was studied by the St. Petersburg geophysicist, candidate of technical sciences V. Bondarenko. He hypothesized that ghosts are generated by infrasonic signals, which, in turn, are the harbingers of landslides and collapses. Infrasound also affects the brains of people underground, so they have different visions.
Bondarenko himself observed mysterious phenomena in the Crimea and the Urals with his own eyes. These were moving vertical pillars of light and ropes, rapidly moving through underground tunnels … Once a researcher tried to photograph the phenomenon on specially processed ultrasensitive photographic film. But these two frames turned out to be overexposed. Maybe it's still not worth looking for miracles for an exclusively rational explanation?
TRINITY MARGARITA
