What to do on a snowy evening after skiing on Elbrus or Cheget? Drink mulled wine, eat barbecue and listen to colorful stories by the fireplace. Check out our scary but cute Elbrus poltergeist guide to be prepared and not scream in fear in the middle of a chilling story that any mountain hut might tell you.
Elbrus maiden: stay, boy, with us
The Elbrus Maiden is a young ghost woman in a white veil, she has long black hair, and instead of fingers on her hands, she has sharp steel climbing hooks. This is the most famous horror story in the Elbrus region.
Meeting a girl-vision portends trouble. If you find yourself in a company with veteran climbers - those who climbed Elbrus back in the 80s, you will hear stories from the first person. The interlocutor can tell how the maiden called him through the blizzard behind him - by a miracle he did not succumb to the haze, and then saw that where she beckoned him, there was a crack or an icy precipice.
Once, according to legend, foreign climbers came to the Elbrus region - they were looking for a guide who would take them to the five-thousander. A young shepherd agreed to help them. Everyone tried to dissuade him from this venture: both the old people and his beautiful bride. But the young man still led the group to the top.
In the middle of the way, a blizzard began and the conquerors of the mountain wanted to return to the camp. The mountaineer got angry, called the strangers cowards, decided to keep his word and reach the top of the mountain, set off alone and disappeared. When the bad weather subsided, his bride went in search of her beloved.
The girl found the body in an ice crack, prayed to Allah not to separate her from her fiancé - and at the same moment turned into an ice maiden. Since then, she has been walking around the neighborhood and avenging the death of her lover.
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In the book by Yuri Vizbor "Breakfast with a view of Elbrus" there is a character named Joseph. To emphasize the highlander's tough character, the author explains that the following stories are told about him: “It was as if Joseph had met the Elbrus Virgin herself - a well-known ghost in a white dress, with loose black hair and ice hooks instead of fingers.
But he did not close his eyes in front of her in the Elbrus blizzard, did not crash into the snow on his knees, but proudly glared at her with an eagle's eyes. When the Virgin put her iron fingers, exuding an icy grave cold, on his shoulder and quietly said: “Stay here,” as if Joseph firmly shook his head - no, they say, I will not stay. And the Virgo disappeared …
According to another version, Joseph had a strict conversation with the Virgin, reproaching her - and quite rightly! - because she killed so many young climbers on her mountain”. Many residents of the Elbrus region have a couple of stories in the spirit of “seen from afar”. “My husband told me how he walked with a friend from the Azau glade to Terskol, and behind them a large white shadow moved,” says the local mountain guide Liza Pal.
She clarifies that the majority of young extreme and non-local people who have moved up the mountain for sports do not believe in the Elbrus maiden. But everyone knows this story.
Black climber: give bread
A ghost man wanders lonely along the Elbrus highlands. He is always in dark clothes, his face cannot be seen: it is covered with a dense black mask; he comes very close, face to face.
And also, they say, comes at night to tents on the glaciers and looks at the faces of sleeping people. It sounds scary, but most of the storytellers think the black climber is kind. “He punishes negative and arrogant characters, and saves positive and sympathetic characters from trouble,” explains Viktor Kotlyarov, writer, ethnographer and lover of mysticism.
In his book about the mystical in Kabardino-Balkaria, "In the role of hunters for secrets" Ahnenerbe ", Kotlyarov writes: him personally.
Moreover, a black climber may appear to be an ordinary person who unexpectedly met in the mountains. It can be distinguished primarily by its dark complexion. However, which of the mountain climbers has it bright? - the first thing at a height from ultraviolet rays burns - reddens, and then darkens - the skin of the face."
“He helps climbers,” agrees climber and paraglider Vladimir Khmury.
- If something happened to the equipment - it can give the right thing. I learned this legend even before moving to the Caucasus, in my native Rostov-on-Don, industrial mountaineering instructors who went to Elbrus talked about this phenomenon. There are several versions of the appearance of a ghost. And according to some of them, meeting him can be dangerous.
Two friends walked in one bundle to the top. One fell into a gorge and hung on a safety rope. The comrade who remained at the edge of the gorge was painfully trying to pull the poor fellow out. The one who broke down saw that his partner was already exhausted, and asked him to cut the rope. And the friend did not grit his teeth, but really did it.
According to another version, he did not try to pull out his partner, but immediately cut off the insurance, because earlier they had a fight over the girl. The body of the fallen was not found, and his ghost remained in the mountains. He, some say, is still looking for a traitorous friend - so he looks into the tents. If you lie down to sleep with your feet towards the exit, the black climber can pull out of the tent.
According to another version, this is a lost climber. He went downstairs to get bread for the group, got lost in the snow and froze. This ghost can come to the climbers and ask for bread: they say it is better to give, otherwise he will get angry and bring trouble.
The classic prank after this story by the fire is to put on a black glove, put your hand in the tent to the most impressionable beginners and ask for bread in a hoarse voice. Some believe that the black climber is only those extreme groups where discord has occurred.
In this case, the ghost will protect people, and if there is friendship and peace in the group, he simply will not come. The black climber, by the way, is not only an Elbrus phenomenon. Stories about him can be found in different regions.
Bigfoot: the elusive mountain dweller
Skiers and climbers find traces of huge feet in the snow in the highlands, and local residents talk about meetings with Almastas - this is how Kabardians, Balkars and Karachais call Bigfoot.
The testimonies, according to Viktor Kotlyarov, are not dozens, but hundreds. Most often, Almasts are described as a female creature, covered with wool, with an ugly face, long braids of loose hair and breasts sagging almost to the waist, Kotlyarov says.
The German traveler and linguist Julius Heinrich Klaproth (1783−1835), who visited the Caucasus in the early 19th century, left notes about his trip. And this is what Klaproth writes about the legend of Almasty: “A malevolent spirit in a female guise, with very long hair, lives, according to them, in a certain forest.
About twenty-five years ago, one of the villagers caught a brownie, brought it to his home and cut off his hair, which he carefully hid and thus turned the spirit into a submissive one. One day he ordered him to make some bose; then the brownie put the pot on the fire, boiled the peas, and while the soup was being prepared, the host and hostess left the house, leaving only two small children in it.
Soon they began to ask the spirit to give them something to eat. He promised to do this if they tell him where his hair is hidden. Before the children had time to point to the place where the hair lay, the demon grabbed it and thereby freed itself from obedience to its master. He then threw the two children into a cauldron of boiling bose and fled back into the forest, where he is said to still live."
From the 70s to the mid-2000s, a permanent expedition to find the Bigfoot operated in Kabardino-Balkaria. It was headed by Zhanna Kofman, a surgeon, a mountaineer - all this time she traveled around the republic using the funds from renting a Moscow apartment, collecting stories from local residents who claimed that they had met a Bigfoot, and checking their reports about Yeti tracks.
In 2005, she met her 86th birthday on the expedition, and soon, due to her age, she stopped coming, never meeting her almasty. Kofman now lives in Paris, where she was born almost 100 years ago. All the time she was helped by other enthusiastic people who believe in Bigfoot.
After Kofman stopped leading the expedition, there are fewer cryptozoologists in the Elbrus region, but they still exist: foreigners calling themselves Kofman's students and Moscow researchers from the Society of Bigfoot Friends come to search for the Yeti.
Well, stories about huge human footprints on a climbing trail or a snowman who threw gullible children into a boiling cauldron continue to dilute evening conversations in these mountains.
Anastasia Stepanova