The small river Bogunay in the Krasnoyarsk Territory is now very popular with tourists. On this tributary of the Yenisei, lovers of exotic taiga, spending the night in tents and wonderful fishing willingly spend their holidays.
However, not everyone knows that Bogunai is a mysterious place, where many legends were born, telling about the wonderful events taking place near this Siberian river.
Shaman's stone
From time immemorial, the Zyryans, the indigenous inhabitants of these lands, believed that good spirits live in the Bogunai River, which is why animals and fish are found in abundance here.
An ancient legend tells that a long time ago a mysterious black stone fell from the sky into the waters of Bohun and brought with it unknown forces. Since then, the Zyryan shamans began to call Bogunay the place where the earthly and heavenly worlds converge, and they came here to feed themselves with the energy of the black stone and receive a prophecy about the future of their tribe. On the days of the winter and summer solstices, the stone radiated a special power and began to glow with a mystical pink light.
On such days, the shamans prayed here to good spirits and offered them generous sacrifices. Over time, the heavenly alien began to be called the Shaman's Stone, since only the initiates revealed his power. A random person who happened to be near this stone could be struck by a fatal disease.
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Old-timers of these places say that the Shaman's Stone still stands in one of the shallow waters of the Bohunai, but it is very difficult to find it. It is believed that it is shown only to people in dire need of help. But those who seek him out of idle curiosity run the risk of incurring terrible misfortune.
Forest charmer
One of the "attractions" of the Bohunai forests is their mysterious inhabitant, nicknamed by the locals a charmer. In any nearby village you can hear many stories about a certain forest man of enormous growth, whose body is overgrown with thick hair, and his eyes burn with a bright red fire. In addition, this leshak has the power of suggestion and is able to transmit thoughts over a distance.
Thanks to this, he forces a person to perform certain actions, however, it has never been noticed that he used his superpowers for an evil deed. On the contrary, a forest man, despite his enormous physical strength, is quite harmless, although he sometimes loves to play a trick on people. So, with the help of his charms (as they used to say in the old days - looking away), he sneaks up on a mushroom picker or a hunter and, suddenly appearing in front of a crazed person, frightens him with a loud cry.
It is said that a few decades ago the Bohunai Leshaks were friends with hunters. Those, setting out on a hunt, took a special treat for the charmer - boiled potatoes and fresh bread, as in the villages everyone knew that a forest man did not eat meat.
The hunter met with a leshak in a special place, where he took the brought gifts, after which he disappeared into the forest thicket. The hunter knew that soon he would certainly get a worthwhile prey, which the leshak would drive onto his path with the help of his spell.
However, the enchanter severely punished poachers who beat game without counting and needlessly, as well as people who did not respect the taiga, forcing them to circle around the forest for several days, thereby bringing them to complete exhaustion.
In Soviet times, when factories and secret military facilities began to be built in Siberia, the leshakov were ruthlessly shot by specially trained and strictly instructed NKVD units.
After such "sweeps", local residents often found fresh mounds of earth in the forest, carelessly sprinkled with dry branches. Having excavated such a mound, the curious could find one, or even several, shot charmers under it.
But even in spite of such barbaric extermination, mysterious creatures are still found in the Bogunai forests, which no-no, and even scare a fisherman or tourist who does not expect such a meeting.
The ghosts of the old mine
One of the most eerie places on the banks of the Bohunai is the old mine where gold miners used to mine. It is known that Bogunay is a gold-bearing river; mining of the noble metal began here in the 19th century. However, the heyday of the "golden" era fell on the 1930-1940s. And in the early 1950s, the mine was unexpectedly closed.
The official version said that there was a curtailment of gold mining on Bogunai due to the depletion of local rocks, but if we take into account the inexhaustible local deposits, it looks extremely ridiculous.
There were rumors that the mine was closed due to the construction of a secret missile base nearby, but the facts confirming this have not been found.
Years passed. Both the mine itself and the village built next to it have turned into a real forest "ghost town", on the territory of which even the most desperate daredevil will hardly agree to spend the night.
The ubiquitous tourists who wandered here for the sake of curiosity told later that, wandering among the dilapidated buildings, they constantly felt someone's gaze, and this gave rise to a quiet horror in their souls.
In addition, there are rumors among the locals that the clatter of instruments and the voices of invisible workers can be heard from the abandoned adits on clear days.
They also say that if you stay at the mine for the night, then in the morning you can see a procession of ghosts there. Next to the crumbling barracks, a line of translucent loaded carts, harnessed by exhausted horses, accompanied by gloomy people, protrudes directly from the air.
The procession moves through the entire village, disappearing only behind the outskirts. I must say that this "caravan of ghosts" looks amazingly real, and it is accompanied by quite natural sounds of a loaded convoy: the creak of wheels, the rustle of footsteps, horse snorting and the clinking of harness.
The miracle of the holy skete
However, there is a place on Bohunai that the locals remember with awe. This is a monastic hermitage, the buildings of which have long been dilapidated and overgrown with tall grass and young trees.
I must say that the monastery was erected among the dense taiga relatively recently - in the early years of the Civil War, and it was erected by monks who fled to Siberia from the central regions of Russia from the horrors of the Bolshevik terror.
The skete consisted of several log cabins, next to which the brothers erected a slender wooden church. The hermits spent whole days in labors and prayers, and the fame of their piety soon spread throughout all the surrounding villages and villages. People from all over the area came here for good advice and blessings, brought the monks poor supplies, which were considered real wealth at that harsh time.
Old-timers remember that Admiral Kolchak himself came to the skete on Bogunai. Alexander Vasilyevich talked for a long time with the abbot of the monastery, then disbanded his army, reliably hid the gold entrusted to him, after which he voluntarily surrendered into the hands of the Bolsheviks.
Such an act will now seem strange to many, but in this way Kolchak was able to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. They say that it was the abbot of the Bohunaysky skete who showed him the place where to hide the gold of the empire, and "sealed" the treasure with holy prayer. This treasure will be revealed to worthy people when the time comes …
… Years passed. Gradually, collectivization also approached the distant Siberian land. The monks, “hammering the heads of the bankrupt peasants with priestly obscurantism,” found themselves under the threat of reprisals.
The fact is that the holy elders of the monastery performed the most real miracles, the fame of which spread throughout the region. It was said that they were able to heal the hopeless sick, and from the blow of the abbot's staff, ice melted on the river in the bitter frosts on the feast of Epiphany.
And so, in order to deal with this "counter-revolutionary nest", a special detachment of militia was sent to the Bohunaysky skete. But when the punishers arrived at the place, they found only empty cells there.
For some time, the policemen carefully combed the nearby taiga - they say, the old people could not go far - but these searches did not give any result.
Local children, who were grazing horses near the skete on the night before the arrival of the police, saw how the sky above the monastery suddenly lit up with bright light for several minutes. Knowledgeable people said that it was only the Lord himself who sheltered his servants from reprisals, taking them alive into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Be that as it may, the mystery of the disappearance of the monks has not been revealed to this day.
Elena LYAKIN