An ordinary Russian hunter told about a seemingly unremarkable (in terms of some mystery) case that once happened to him and his comrades. Our compatriot then went with three friends to fish in the forest. The hunters wandered into a deep thicket in the evening and were left, as luck would have it, without matches. Mobile phones and satellite navigation did not exist at that time.
It was a cold late autumn, the weather had already deteriorated, and the lost poor fellows began to freeze with the onset of darkness. Suddenly, an abandoned gatehouse appeared in front of him - very poor, with only one door and no windows at all. Our heroes went inside and found there only a table with a bench in the middle. There were no food supplies in this hut. Nevertheless, the hunters were happy with such a find - at least it doesn't rain on your head and the wind doesn't blow to your bones.
However, it was not possible to take a nap in the lodge. Without fire, it was so cold inside that the comrades soon began to literally die here too. One could only move to somehow warm up, but the hut was pitch black. Then one of the companions came up with the idea of running around the dark room as a kind of relay race. Four hunters stood in the corners of the room and began to move rapidly along the walls in a clockwise direction, pushing (pushing out of the corner) each other.
You run to the next corner, push your friend, take his place and wait until they push you to run further. All night long they were running around like that, they were exhausted, however, as planned, they did not freeze to death. When dawn broke, they left their camp and began to look for a way out of the forest. In the end, they were saved. The narrator took great pride in the resourcefulness of his company, which had saved him and his companions' lives.
However, the attentive listener to whom this story was told was not so much impressed by it as puzzled. Lost in thought, he said:
Something about this story doesn't fit. There were four of you, and there were four corners in the gatehouse, right? You took turns running from one corner to another, pushing each other. That is, one of you was constantly running, and one corner was always empty. So that each of you could push the other every time, there had to be five of you - four are in the corners, and one is running!
The narrator, who perfectly remembered this "baton" in the dark and had not seen any logical contradictions in it before, frowned. After counting everything in his mind, he turned pale. Indeed: if the comrades took turns running around the hut and each time pushing each other in every corner, it means that among them, it turns out, there was someone in the fifth! So the hunters lived all these years, not even suspecting that then in the forest hut they came into contact with something frightening, potentially inexplicable and dangerous …