In the 50s of the last century, a little-known novel by N. A. Nekrasov and A. Ya. Panaeva "Dead Lake" was published. This is a tragic love story. The novel mentions legends about the lake, which is associated with mysterious events, the disappearance and death of people: "From time immemorial, there was a legend that the lake and the forest surrounding it are inhabited by evil spirits …"
Although this story is just fiction, there is some truth in the stories about the ominous lake. It is assumed that the authors had in mind either Lake Kuolemayarvi, located near Vyborg, or Kuolajärvi, in the Olonets province (now it is the territory of Karelia).
Both names in Finnish mean "Lake of Death", "Dead Lake". It is with Kuolajärvi that nightmarish riddles are associated that already belong to our time.
The locals usually do not swim in the lake as it is too deep. At the beginning of the century, there were still daredevils who entered stagnant water. But after several people drowned, they began to bypass the lake.
All living creatures are found here. But sometimes local grandmothers fearfully cross themselves at the sight of birds without feathers, with disproportionately large beaks and giant frogs croaking ominously on the shore. When they appeared here, even the great-grandfathers of the present old people did not remember. But birds and frogs do no harm to anyone, although it is believed that hearing their cry is not good. But the mosquitoes …
In addition to the usual bloodsuckers, there are also large, bee-sized, with long proboscis and two pairs of wings. Everyone is afraid of them. True, they rarely bite people, but if they bite … A person's entire body immediately swells, and an allergic person may even die from such a bite.
After two or three deaths among children, many parents stopped sending their offspring on vacation to their grandparents in a village near Kuolajärvi. And adults do not allow local children to approach the shore in those places where you can meet deadly insects.
But there are more terrible rumors among the population. So, they say that during the war, two teenagers decided to fish in the lake. The fact is that no fish was caught here. At the coast, she had long ceased to come across, and no one dared to swim in the middle. But you can't do anything out of hunger!
Promotional video:
Nowadays, fishing on Lake Kuolajärvi is quite successful.
Taking without asking an old boat that belonged to the father of one of the boys who had gone to the front, the guys set sail from the shore with all the gear. We stopped at a sufficient depth and got down to business.
They seemed to be lucky. Soon one of them felt it was biting. He grabbed the rod with both hands - something very heavy was clearly hanging at the end of the line. But the rod didn't give in. The guy pulled harder.
And then a head appeared from the water. And not fish at all, but it is not clear whose: one and a half times more than human, covered with dark brown skin, with bulging whitish eyes, noseless and with a hole instead of a mouth, in which the fish hook was stuck. At least, this is how the friend of the unlucky fisherman later described the lake monster.
It all ended badly. The teenager did not keep his balance, fell into the water, and immediately began to spin, as in a whirlpool. His friend rushed away with all his might - he realized that at such a depth there was nothing to help a drowning man, but he himself could be in serious danger. Later, the boy assured that, as he rowed to the shore, he heard muffled screams and some muttering in an incomprehensible language behind him. Maybe he just imagined it?
There were no more people who wanted to eat fish from the Dead Lake. But there are many stories about strange creatures living under water or hiding near the lake. Once, after the war, a local resident claimed that he had met … a mermaid on the shore. He described her as a woman whose whole body was covered with greenish-brown scales.
Eyes without pupils, lipless mouth - all this was very similar to the description of the monster that once dragged the fishing boy under the water. The creature, according to an eyewitness, basked in the sun. When the man approached the mermaid out of curiosity, she hissed something angrily and jumped into the water. He managed to notice her tail, large, like a catfish.
And one woman in the early 60s ran into a man of surprisingly ugly appearance in a forest near a lake: brown skin on a bald skull, strange eyes, no nose and a slit for a mouth. He had legs, and instead of arms - stumps. The body, as it seemed to the woman, was overgrown with wool. The stranger allegedly told her that he was at the front and as a result of a grenade explosion severely burned his face, went blind and lost both arms.
When he was discharged from the hospital, he did not dare to return home to his family in this form and, having hardly reached his native place, managed to somehow adapt to life in the forest. He refused to give his name. He asked the woman to bring him something to eat, but when she returned to her former place with several fellow villagers, the freak disappeared.
And then, until the 70s, at the lake we sometimes met creatures similar to people, but terribly ugly. Then someone had a crazy thought: what if these are the ones who have ever disappeared in the vicinity of the lake?
Such cases took place at different times: people disappeared without a trace in the district. Twice - before the war, during the war - the story of a teenager, after the war - three more incomprehensible incidents with newcomers. It was assumed that they drowned in the lake, although everyone knew about its notoriety and hardly anyone would dare to climb into the water. They did not even look for bodies and discouraged them from searching for the relatives of the missing.
But how could people turn into such monsters? Ufologist S. tried to answer this question, who came to those regions in the late 80s in search of UFO activity zones in Karelia. He suggested that the victims were exposed to the strongest radiation, which changed their appearance beyond recognition.
But how did they end up under water, how could they survive, and why did they spend so much time near the source of radiation? S. hypothesized that an alien ship once landed in the area of the Dead Lake. Perhaps he had an accident or stayed to explore the area. Where is he? Most likely at the bottom of the lake.
S. asked local residents: have any strange objects ever fallen into the lake? Others said that in the 18th century some boat sank in the lake, but no one remembered the details - whose boat, under what circumstances it happened. It was too long ago …
However, the stubborn S. organized a survey of the bottom of the reservoir with the help of infrared equipment and achieved his goal! The devices “saw” metal structures of unknown origin under the water of Kuolajärvi. In the photographs, they turned out indistinct, but these fragments did not resemble a boat. No rust was found on the pieces of iron. Apart from the ordinary lake inhabitants, there were no living creatures around. There were no traces of aliens or mutants.
However, S. was not embarrassed. Having found out that nothing remarkable had happened in these parts for ten years, he put forward a new version: space aliens (it is possible that these are not protein creatures, but cybernetic machines) have completed their cycle of existence. And along with them, the mutants died, over whom they carried out their experiments. Their remains lie, most likely, inside the ship. We need to get to him, that's when …
This idea did not generate any enthusiasm among the villagers. The superstitions associated with the lake were still in place. But S. would certainly have achieved his goal if everything had not turned out in the most unexpected way …
S. left for a while, intending to soon descend on the lake with a crowd of researchers and the latest equipment, but he never returned: he died of a heart attack in the city where he lived. His fellow ufologists believe that the Dead Lake is to blame for S.'s death. Since then, no one else has tried to study it.
People are still afraid to approach the lake. What is hidden at its bottom - a radioactive spaceship with dead aliens or out-of-order alien robots, the wreck of an old ship or creepy mutants waiting in the wings to go ashore, instilling fear in people?
Or maybe there is nothing in reality and all the phenomena mentioned are in no way connected with each other? The Dead Lake still keeps its secret …
