The mountains have fascinated and frightened people for a long time with their mystery and unknown. Many of them are surrounded by an aura of mystical legends, for example, about otherworldly creatures dwelling there.
Mountain master
According to legends, special spirits lived in the mountains, which were called so - mountain spirits. They guarded local places, did not allow strangers there, and sometimes helped those in trouble.
Extensive material on mountain spirits was collected in 1923-1925 by the researcher and folklorist Alexander Misyurev. Basically, it includes stories of former workers of the gold mines of Gornaya Shoria. They said that before the revolution, the Mountain Master was remembered in these parts even more often than God. So they just said: "You will call Gorny!"
So, in the faces it was impossible to whistle. If anyone dared, then for a long time a whistle was heard from everywhere. It was especially scary at night alone.
Once a worker named Ogarkov got drunk and started teasing:
-Hey, Gorny, come out to fight!
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Then, when he was walking with his comrades from the mines, he suddenly stopped and began waving his fists. It seems like he entered into a fight with someone invisible to the others … And then he began to tumble in the snow covered in blood, as if someone really beat him. Somehow, with prayers, we got to their barracks. Locked up and shook with fear all night. And Ogarkov was beaten all over, he lay for a day.
Another worker came home once, and the children say that a hefty man came and drove them from the middle of the hut into a corner. The worker asked to give his family another place to live. But even there it was "unclean." In the evenings, the door opened by itself. The dog barked violently. One day a man and his wife decided to go and see who he was barking at. They went out and encountered an uninvited guest "as tall as a forest." Didn't remember running home …
The head of the family decided that it was necessary to appease Gorny. I went to the clearing, put a bottle of alcohol and a tobacco pouch there, asked the Mountain Master not to be angry. After three days, everything disappeared, and since then no one has bothered the worker's family anymore.
An elderly woman went to visit one of her daughters and got lost. It started to get dark and it started to rain. The woman was sitting under a fir, shivering from the cold. Suddenly, according to her, "a man with two heads with two heads came out of the thicket." The following dialogue took place between them:
- Are you sitting?
- I'm sitting.
- Are you shaking?
- I'm shaking.
- Well, shake.
Then the man disappeared, and the woman was only able to return home in the morning, when it was light. For three days she was shaking, and since then she was afraid to visit her daughters.
On Andoba, one day, workers heard the caretaker calling for lunch. Yes, for some reason it roars very loudly. They went out - and there was no one there. They told the caretaker - and he realized that it was Gorny calling, ordered to splash him with vodka.
Mistress of Copper Mountain
Another mountain spirit widely known in folklore is the famous Mistress of the Copper Mountain (Malakhitnitsa) - a mythical image of the mistress of the Ural Mountains, keeper of precious rocks and stones. She sometimes appears to people in the form of a beautiful woman with a scythe and ribbons of fine tinkling copper, in a dress made of "silk malachite", and sometimes in the form of a lizard in a crown.
Mistress of the Copper Mountain on postage stamps. Russia, 2004
The image became popular after the publication by P. P. Bazhov of the collection of tales "The Malachite Box". In the tale "Stone Flower" with the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, the master Danila meets whom she helps to reveal her talent. "Hostess of the Copper Mountain" is one of the most famous tales of the Russian writer Pavel Bazhov (1879 - 1950). The tale was first published in 1936. Copper Mountain is the name of the Gumeshki copper mine in the Urals.
When writing tales, P. P. Bazhov was based on oral legends he heard in his childhood from miners in 1892-1895. The image of the Mistress of Copper Mountain or Malakhitnitsa in mining folklore has various options: Mountain Queen, Stone Wench, Golden Woman, Wench Azovka, Mountain Spirit, Mountain Elder, Mountain Master. All these folklore characters are the keepers of the wealth of the mineral resources.
Malakhitnitsa patronizes people who mine stone in the mountains, who see the beauty of the stone and do not regret working on the stone, teaches her secret art - as the most secret, hidden beauty from the stone "release". He punishes the greedy and cruel, turning a valuable stone into waste rock, or even a human body into stone.
In the mountains, the Mistress has such mansions that mortals may not have dreamed of. But a man of his own free will cannot get into her underground palace. Only if the Mistress opens the door for him. And she has doors in every cave, in every shaft, in every adit.
Many people would like to meet her and visit her, because the Hostess has such a pleasant habit: to give guests - some with new knowledge, some with new skills, and some with just a handful of precious stones. But it's better not to strive for this. Because the Mistress is the most unclean force, more evil than the Runner and the serpent at times, - cruel and heartless, but just ruler of the mountains, like any deity of the pre-Christian era.
And, by the way, for everything that the Mistress of the Copper Mountain gives, you always have to pay at exorbitant prices: in misfortune or early death, or some kind of illness - bodily or mental. But there is no easy life for those whom the Mistress noticed and welcomed. As they say in the Urals:
“Here she is, so what a Mistress of the Copper Mountain! It is grief for a thin person to meet her, and for a good person it is not enough joy.
She does not like it when someone else in her mountains commands, only she has the right to give and take away, punish and pardon. And the stone obeys her and under her hands it flows like water: it can subside into the depths of the earth, or it can splash to the surface, it can envelop a person like a shroud and freeze like that.
In Sibay, old-timers of an underground mine told the following story. One miner went to the face and while he was performing the order, an unfamiliar woman suddenly approached him and told him to go faster to his partner, he felt bad. The miner ran to the side where the woman pointed, and suddenly a landslide occurred in the place where he stood a few seconds ago.
Running up to his partner, the man saw that he was calmly doing his job. And then it dawned on him that there could be no woman in the mine. Then they said that it was the Mistress of the Copper Mountain.
Builders from the planet Phaethon
Teacher Natalya Kazimirskaya is from the village of Kondoma, Kemerovo Region. In her childhood, a stone statue six meters high with roughly carved facial features stood on two cubic pedestals near the road near the village. This stone giant was called the Mountain Man.
Suddenly, many years later, the Mountain Man began to dream of Natalya, to call to him … One evening, before going to bed, the woman heard a sound as if pebbles were falling, and behind him a voice:
- We are waiting for you, girl.
Oddly enough, Natalia was not even surprised at this: her grandfather was a fortuneteller and made amulets for soldiers leaving for the front, and her grandmother healed with prayers. Natalya herself was once told that she is the bearer of the shamanic gift.
Kazimirskaya was able to get to the place in the taiga where the Man-Mountain was. And I found a wall nearby, built of rectangular stone blocks. There was also a door with a face. It looks like there was some kind of construction going on here in ancient times.
The woman sat down on a stone and fell into an altered state of consciousness, in which she spoke in an unfamiliar hissing language with those ancient builders. They told her that they were called asuras and came to Earth from the planet Phaethon, fleeing from some dark ones.
On Earth, the aliens began to build defensive installations that reflect negative energy. The asuras told Natalya that they were giants and that they have descendants among earthlings. In the end, according to the asuras, the dark ones found them on our planet. The souls of those who spoke to the woman remained trapped in stone.
Closing her eyes, Kazimirskaya "saw" a luminous ball flying off her, into which lightning began to strike from the nearest rock.
Later Natalya read that the Asuras race once really lived on Earth. They built three cities, one of which was called Iron. Maybe Natalya just visited the ruins of this city?
Asura - in Hinduism, deities of low rank, sometimes called demons, titans, demigods, anti-gods, giants
By the way, in 2013, a similar structure was found near Mount Kulum at an altitude of more than a kilometer, which was recently visited by an expedition of the research association "Cosmopoisk". It is possible that all these are the remnants of one mega-settlement.
One of the members of the "Cosmopoisk" expedition saw a vision right in the tent - a girl in a light dress and a man silently leaving along the corridor. Probably, it was a time mirage - phantoms of people who once lived here.
Mountain Spirit Rübezal
Rübezal is the famous spirit of the Giant Mountains in Silesia and Bohemia (Sudetes), the underground king, the lord of the dwarves, one of the central figures in all Germanic mythology.
Rübezal was the personification of bad weather, the keeper of underground treasures. His possessions extended 780 km into the earth, and on the surface he owned a small forest area in mountainous Bohemia. Here he could sometimes be met in the form of an old man, physically he could take any image: from an old grandmother to a bat, or a toad, or he could become a giant.
Ryubetsal is considered good-natured, but hot-tempered. He helps good people, causes trouble to evil people, leading them astray and leading them into the abyss. First appears in German tales and legends in the 15th century. His 3.5-meter sculpture, carved from a single piece of stone, was carved by an unknown sculptor in the 15-16th century, in the forest on the top of the mountain, long before the eponymous castle of the same name was built near it Rübezahl.
As in previous pagan times, people come to the monument with flowers and, after performing a simple ritual, make a secret wish, which, as the centuries-old practice shows, will certainly be fulfilled if your heart and thoughts are pure.
Ryubetsal is the hero of many myths, fairy tales, books have been published about him, films have been made. Rübezal can heal your ailments, and the hotel is in the field of its good energy. Today the Rübezal monument is a historically protected object located in the hotel park.
Mirages of Ayyrtau
All kinds of mirages in the mountains are not uncommon. So, on the top of Mount Ayyrtau, in the east of Kazakhstan, some tourists have strange hallucinations. For example, Arseny Smirnov from Novosibirsk said that the land around the mountain range suddenly began to sway like sea waves.
Ayyrtau
Other travelers said that in the folds of the rocks they saw figures with glowing eyes. And some people heard a vague rumble and blows from the depths of the mountains.
According to one version, the Ayyrtau mountain range is the fragments of a comet that once crashed into the Earth. Indeed, the stones that make up these mountains have an unusually rich black color and do not fit well with the surrounding landscape.
Baby crying
There are even more terrible stories. In the late 60s of the last century, one autumn three climbers organized a hike to one of the Caucasian peaks. They were not embarrassed by the bad weather - wind and snow and rain … By evening, having reached the foot of the mountain, the tourists set up a tent, had supper and were going to spend the night.
Suddenly, all three heard a strange sound outside the tent. There was no doubt: it was a child crying. One of the travelers decided to leave the tent and check - what if there really is someone there?
In vain the remaining tourists waited for their friend - he did not return. Then the second climber went in search of the departed. All this time, the crying of children did not stop.
After the group did not get in touch for two days, a rescue expedition was organized. Rescuers found a tent covered with snow, in which there was only one person. Completely gray-haired, he did not in any way resemble the guy he was only a few days ago … Besides, it seems that his mind has gone out of hand.
- He cries, he cries all the time! - repeated the unfortunate.
The bodies of two of his comrades were found 100 meters from the tent. Both were frozen in the snow. And both faces were distorted with wild horror …
The survivor was sent to a psychiatric hospital with a diagnosis of mental disorder due to a severe nervous shock. And the local old-timers immediately remembered the legend that sometimes in the fierce bad weather in the mountains heartbreaking children's crying is heard, and woe to those who hear it!
Girl on the rock
They say that if a person died in the mountains, then his spirit is doomed to wander in places of death. In any case, ghosts in the highlands appear quite often.
Less than a year ago, on reddit.com, a user with the nickname SlicedUpBeef posted a picture taken by his cousin in the Dundas Peak area (Hamilton, Canada). The photo captured the fuzzy figure of a thin, tall girl with dark hair, dressed in black trousers and a white jacket, standing on a steep slope.
The fact is that this place is practically inaccessible to humans, and hardly anyone could stand there so calmly. By the way, the author of the picture was photographing her friend at that moment and did not notice any girl …
Most likely, according to SlicedUpBeef, the camera recorded the ghost of a girl who committed suicide here. Dundas has a reputation for being the peak of suicides - at least twice a year someone jumps down from here. And since the mountain is high enough, there is no chance of survival.
However, skeptics believe that many "supernatural" phenomena are the result of various electromagnetic, acoustic and other mountain natural anomalies that affect the human psyche. Although, can we explain everything in a rational way?
Irina SHLIONSKAYA, magazine "Secrets of the XX century", No. 10, 2017
