Many incredible things can be found when traveling through the taiga or the mountains. However, sometimes there is no need to go so far to experience an unexpected and incomparable horror
It happened in the forests near Moscow, not far from the old Russian village of Sofrino. Here, according to information received from ufologists, there is a small but tricky anomalous zone. I was not going to investigate it, but simply decided to cross with two friends and compare my impressions with the official report received from the school of survival, led by the then famous traveler Vitaly Sundakov.
At some point, each of us received an almost literal blow to the head. Volodya - the most powerful of us, weighing under 90 kilograms, - suddenly began to break through the bushes, leaving behind a "clearing" of trampled hazel. Oleg gave a strange squeal and rushed after him, brushing aside something in the air as he walked. A sharp pain squeezed my head with ticks, and I wandered towards the disappeared companions, not realizing or understanding anything.
In about twenty minutes we came to our senses and shared our impressions. I could only describe the crimson-blue circles in front of my eyes. Volodya recalled that it seemed to him that in a few minutes the forest might burst into flames and that the only salvation was to run forward. Oleg was attacked by some strange bird. It seemed to him that a gray "rag" flew straight out of the bushes, which suddenly had shaggy wings. The "rag" rushed at him, and he, fighting off the unexpectedly appeared enemy, followed Volodya. What have we encountered?
Vologda region
Many years ago, Pavel Gusev, a student at the Moscow Geological Prospecting Institute, and now the editor-in-chief of the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, published a story about his journey along a forest river in the Vologda region. Climbing upstream, the students saw an abandoned farm on the high steep bank of the river. The huge residential building and the bathhouse standing near the water are well preserved. The location was convenient for parking. The tourists were divided: two of them decided to continue the journey, while Pavel and his friend Mikhail decided to relax, living in an abandoned farm.
Pavel and Mikhail later spoke of the days they spent at the farm with horror. They were haunted by the feeling that someone was constantly watching them. They spent two nights … on a birch tree. Both were convinced that this was the safest place. Paul wrote: “Up there, in the rustling leaves, we had a plan. To leave immediately tomorrow, we could no longer endure this torture of fear. He fettered us, turning our numb figures into some kind of mummies.
In the morning of the next day, having collected our things, grabbing some food, we literally rushed, with all our strength, from this place. There was a tent, sleeping bags, kettles, the main part of the food in the bathhouse … And a note in which we informed our friends that we had decided to leave."
Pavel Gusev's journey ended not very well. But, alas, in the taiga, in the so-called anomalous zones, much more sad cases often occur.
Ural. The
North Ural Bear Cave is a reserve of places in which one encounters absolutely incredible phenomena. One of them is in the upper reaches of the Pechora River, where the Ural Mountains pass into the foothills. The Bear Cave, known to many archaeologists, is located here. It begins with a large, south-facing grotto. It is always warmer in it than in a small gorge, at the bottom of which there is a cave, so the grotto has long been chosen as a permanent home by people. It was in it that the northernmost site of the Stone Age people was discovered.
But I was attracted to the cave not by archaeological finds, but by its amazing shape. Oval, literally licked tunnels in it intersected with narrow crevices and large halls. In order to understand the origin of this labyrinth, I decided to crawl along the paths of the cave with two geology students.
By this time I managed to visit, probably, a hundred caves of the Crimea, the Caucasus, Tien Shan, Kopetdag. And the study of, at first glance, a "simple" cave seemed like a break from geological routes. We entered the Bear Cave early in the morning, for lunch we decided not to go to the surface, but to have a snack below. After eating, we decided to take a break.
They turned off the lights … and in the absolute darkness I clearly saw my hands. Nearby one of the students screamed softly. It turned out that he also had the ability to see in pitch darkness. A little more time passed, and all three of us felt that we were not alone in the cave. The feeling was that someone was standing behind him, staring with a heavy look at the back of his head. The feeling of heaviness turned into a distinct fear. We decided to stop work and go to the exit.
I remembered the move plan well. We went out to the gallery of Archaeologists, walked for about ten minutes along the oval corridor and … ended up at the place of our dinner. Again, already slowly, we moved towards the exit - and again found ourselves in the same place! Our state was approaching panic, the light of the lanterns began to fade, the pressure on the psyche increased.
Only from the third approach did we manage to escape from the charmed gallery to the surface.
Mount of Death Otorten
Mount Otorten is the highest point in the Northern Urals. At the end of January 1959, a perfectly trained group of skiers of the Ural Polytechnic Institute perished here. It was led by an experienced tourist, an excellent skier, who repeatedly made long winter mountain hikes, Igor Dyatlov. The guys went to the mountains, the deadline passed, but the group did not reach the final destination of the route.
Rescuers, who went in search of tourists, found a tent with a cut back wall and the bodies of the hikers lying in deep snow. The faces of the dead were frozen in an expression of mortal horror. According to the forensic medical examination, some tourists died of hypothermia, others had a heart failure.
There are several versions of why the tourists died. At one time the most popular was the shamanic version. According to her, tourists were punished for stepping on sacred land. The shamans allegedly gouged out the tourists' eyes and left them to die in the snow.. The second, more fashionable hypothesis is nuclear radiation. Allegedly, the tourists were covered with a radioactive cloud brought after a nuclear test from Novaya Zemlya.
The third version was based on a flight over the Ural ridge at the time a tourist group of a powerful military missile was on it, which lost control.
Her flight was accompanied by a powerful pulse of infrasound, which first caused unaccountable horror in people, and then, with increasing intensity, internal hemorrhage and death. Its supporters said that 10 years later, at the site of the tragedy, they found strips of oppressed forest left after the influence of infrasound on the trees.
From 1969 to 1973, I worked in a geological team that compiled a detailed geological map of the upper reaches of the Pechora River. In the center of the study area was Mount Otorten. We did not find any strips of oppressed forest or traces of radioactive contamination of the area.
According to the Mansi hunters, who often came to our light, there were no attacks by shamans on tourists or geologists in the area of Mount Otorten.
"Flickering" zones
What happened? What could have caused the death of the Dyatlov group? Everyone has probably heard about geopathogenic zones. In them, people sometimes encounter inexplicable phenomena. They are seized by a feeling of fear, there is a temporary loss of memory, hallucinations occur. Let us recall the feelings of the participants in the campaign, Pavel Gusev in the Vologda region and the unexpected horror that gripped us in the Bear Cave.
Judging by the behavior of the compass, people in these areas are under the influence of intense, rapidly changing physical fields, primarily magnetic and electromagnetic fields. Geologists have known for a long time that there are structures in the earth's crust that have the property of changing physical fields. The famous doctor of geological and mineralogical sciences G. Vartanyan, who studied such zones, called them “shimmering structures”.
Unlike ordinary areas, "flickering structures" continue to "live" and affect the properties of liquids, and a person, as you know, is 90 percent water.
During work in the Northern Urals, with the help of aeromagnetic surveys, discontinuous structures were found, some, judging by their effect on surface watercourses, may well be “flickering”. We encountered such a structure in Bear's Cave, and Dyatlov's group - on Mount Otorten. Loss of orientation and an unconscious desire to run, especially if they occur at night, could lead the participants of the hike to fall down a steep slope and die.