Baikal Day is annually celebrated in Russia on September 9.
This is a natural pearl of our country, 31 thousand square kilometers of water surface, beauty, miracles and mysticism. In 1996, at the 20th session of the World Heritage Committee in Mexico, Baikal was recognized as a site of world heritage.
BAIKAL LOVED UFO
The attractive power of Lake Baikal is explained not only by its beauty, but also by the numerous mysterious phenomena inherent in the lake and which have not yet received scientific substantiation.
One of the visiting cards of Lake Baikal is the regular evidence of the appearance of unidentified flying objects. Above its surface, strange glowing balls, discs and other forms are often observed, which suddenly and abruptly plunge into the depths of the lake or, on the contrary, emerge from it. Inhabitants of some coastal settlements have long been not only not surprised by the guests from the unknown, but simply do not pay attention to them.
The first officially recorded case of a meeting with an unknown person refers to 1959, when a Tu-104 plane, before reaching the airport of Irkutsk, crashed into the depths of Lake Baikal. But before the fall, the air traffic controllers heard the words of the crew: “An unidentified object is moving towards us, round, glowing from it … Do you see it? Do you see them?"
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Then the plane disappears from the radar. But seconds later, the last one sounded: “I see the airport! I'm going to board! It was very strange, because the airport was still far away, and there was only Baikal below.
The KGB was engaged in the investigation of the disaster in an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy, but nevertheless it became known that the fishermen who hunted in the Baikal waters clearly saw the falling plane, which was chasing a certain luminous object that led the airliner literally to the water surface.
Ufologists are sure that the geopathogenic zone in which the lake is located is something very "to the liking" of the guests of our world and, quite possibly, in the inaccessible abyss of Lake Baikal there is something that we, earthlings, call a "transshipment base".
FUCKING FUNNEL
Another Baikal phenomenon has a self-explanatory name, the Devil's Funnel.
This is a powerful and yet inexplicable whirlpool that periodically appears in the same place, 30 kilometers from Olkhon Island in the deepest part of Lake Baikal. It appears once or twice a year on a section of the lake with an area of about 2 sq. kilometers and is able to pull a boat or even a large boat into the abyss, and this happens regardless of weather conditions.
Many locals firmly believe that the funnel is the passage through which the souls of sinners go straight to hell. It is naive, but pundits with academic education cannot refute this belief, since there is still no clear scientific explanation for this phenomenon. There is only a hypothesis about periodically arising local dips in the bottom of Lake Baikal, which leads to the formation of cavities quickly filled with water. This, in their opinion, is the reason for the appearance of the whirlpool.
According to another version, under certain conditions, it is in the place where the funnel is formed that two wandering counter currents collide. What these "certain conditions" are is not yet clear, but streams of water moving with great force strictly towards each other can provoke the emergence of a very powerful whirlpool.
TERRITORY OF MIRAGES
It has long been known that the appearance of mirages over Lake Baikal is not uncommon.
From local residents, and especially from fishermen, one can hear amazing stories about the ghostly outlines of unfamiliar cities, trains going above the water's surface, and crowds of people appearing over the lake. Old-timers claim that up to a dozen unusual visions can be observed in these parts annually, which, of course, is extremely intriguing and attracts numerous tourists.
In particular, the British press published the story of the Englishwoman Rebecca Morris, a resident of London, who watched the mirage of her childhood home village over Lake Baikal. She was even able to see her parents' house through binoculars. It is quite understandable that such mystical stories only add to the popularity of Baikal among tourists.
Similar phenomena have been observed before. So, an extremely amazing spectacle unfolded in front of the local residents in the spring of 1905: in the Baikal sky one could unusually clearly see a real naval battle, in which a Russian cruiser fought six enemy ships. The unequal battle ended in his death …
Interestingly, not long before, many kilometers from Lake Baikal, in a real battle with the Japanese squadron, the Russian cruiser Varyag fought its last heroic battle.
There is a very well-known story about how thousands of people from the Baikal region observed another mirage that arose over the lake for several years - a beautiful, like crystal city with majestic domes, delicate turrets and graceful columns. But over time, cracks appeared on the domes, the walls acquired a red hue, and the beautiful city turned into ruins.
ROUND LABELS ON THE ISLAND
On Olkhon, the largest island of Lake Baikal, there are many strange things, and one of the oddities is the so-called "witch circles".
Formations up to several meters in diameter appear by themselves in the fields and look like regular circles, framed at the edges by a border of taller, lighter and brighter grass. The intensive growth of plants in the rings has nothing to do with human activities or the characteristics of the soil.
According to local beliefs, perfectly even circles of grass are traces of witch dances, and avid ufologists are sure that the mysterious rings are the landing sites for alien aircraft. Locals assure that a 10-minute stay in such a circle brings a state of complete calm and peace of mind.
However, the secret of "witch circles" is quite simple and material: it is an ordinary mycelium, which consists of many intertwined threads. If all the threads receive equal nutrition, then the growth of the mycelium occurs evenly in the form of regular circles. The circles become especially contrasting in mid-August during the heavy rainy season. Be that as it may, the presence of myceliums and lichens suggests that Olkhon has an exceptionally favorable ecological situation.
LORD OF THE RINGS
When huge circles were found on the ice of Lake Baikal, a planet-scale noise arose.
In 2009, the international crew of the International Space Station noticed rings of unknown origin on the Baikal ice. An analysis of earlier satellite images showed that mysterious rings with a diameter of several kilometers were recorded in 2003, 2005, 2008. And every time in a new place. Most likely, they appeared earlier, but the size of these rings is so large that it is simply impossible to see them from the surface of the lake or even from the Baikal mountains.
There were more than enough hypotheses about the origin of the anomaly - from shamanic ritual signs to the direct intervention of an alien mind.
The opinion of scientists was more mundane: methane emissions from the sedimentary rocks of the lake under the influence of the seismic and thermal activity of the region are to blame for everything. Intense gas formation in summer can be seen from bubbles on the water surface, in winter - from thawed patches on the ice. And yet this version of the origin of the rings does not at all explain their titanic size.
But there is another theory: the reason for the appearance of megirings is water vortices under the ice cover of the lake, the movement of which is due to the peculiarities of the underwater relief and the outline of the shores. Perhaps this is so, but something suggests that the Baikal rings are another unsolved mystery of the mysterious lake.
Valery Malchev