The most mysterious of the legends of the Donbass city of Mariupol is associated with the underground caves located under the city, which the locals call "adit" or "nursery". According to rumors, in the Soviet era, the KGB equipped its secret laboratories in the local undergrounds, where they allegedly studied the effects of radiation on people and animals …
Local old-timers willingly share the legends about the catacombs with journalists and researchers. One of them, named Roman, recalls the stories of his grandfather that in the 50s and 60s of the last century, a secret object was located in artificial caves stretching for many kilometers. Although the area was fenced in with barbed wire, some rumors were leaking out. The most popular myth was about mutants who were "taken out" in secret KGB laboratories.
The mutants allegedly visited the nearby villages - Chermalyk and Granitnoe from time to time. “Hooligans got into the habit of throwing stones on the roof of one woman, they beat the slate,” says Vladimir from Chermalyk. - She complained to her son. Gathered, it means that the older guys are sitting at home, waiting to teach the hooligans a lesson, and it's already night in the yard. They hear the gate creak, then a knock on the roof, well, they rushed after the unknown, and he in the reeds - and began to run away across the field, in the direction of the adit. In general, they drove the bastard into the clearing, they shine with a flashlight: there is a shadow, but there is no man!"
The same Vladimir claims that he saw with his own eyes giant snakes near the adit. He recalls: “One evening my father and I were driving a car, and then father, swearing, hit the brakes sharply. We thought that some clever guy put a thick hose across the road, with a diameter of somewhere like a fire hose, the car already jumped when it was run over. We stopped to remove this “hose”. We get out of the car, look, and he winds like a loach along the road, hisses - and in the direction of the "Nursery" … We jumped into the car - and on the gas …"
It was as if they observed near the object strange rodents, similar to rats, but not rats, and giant insects, which from time to time crawled into local gardens, frightening the owners with their size.
And here is what Igor Krinichny from Granitnoye said: “Several years ago, to argue with my comrades, I climbed into the right cave. The condition was to be photographed against the far wall. I made my way into the depths with a lighter, there was no visibility, respectively, I barely saw where to put my foot. Two hundred meters later, a rustle was heard. I stopped to look closely, raised the lighter higher, and it hit me like an electric shock - a few meters away, two huge eyes were looking at me, like those of an insect. I tore as much urine as possible, and this creature hissed - and behind me, you could hear her moving stones with her body."
However, according to another version, there were no laboratories near Mariupol, but there was a uranium mine. Although one does not interfere with the other. If there is uranium, then it is clear where the radiation and mutants came from! According to one former party official, mining equipment was tested here. After the collapse of the USSR, there was no longer any question of secrecy, the catacombs were abandoned, and local bandits set up a shooting range there.
Today from the catacombs there is only a small section at the very entrance, 400 meters long. The rest of the tunnels are concreted. Mariupol stalkers often visit there. According to them, they have come across curious finds in caves more than once - for example, the remains of unknown equipment. And one day they stumbled upon a wedding dress cut from the 70s and 80s. How it got into this eerie place is a mystery. Has anyone decided to play a wedding here? By the way, in the same place, in the catacombs, someone's summer shoe without a pair was found - apparently, from the same period as the dress.
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Of course, not without mysticism. Stalker Zakhar Berkut assures that he and his comrades managed to photograph a ghost in one of the caves. “We left the camera here for a long exposure, and in the picture at the end of the tunnel, we can clearly see the silhouette of a man, although we know that there was no one there,” he recalls. The most interesting thing is that later the sensational picture mysteriously disappeared from the photo archive.
Local schoolchildren have a tradition of organizing celebrations near the catacombs on their graduation day. It was there that the next "ghostly" episode happened. “At the graduation party, my brother and his classmates came here, walked in the meadow and in the undergrowth,” says Vladimir from Chermalyk. - Someone suggested taking a collective photo. Everyone became a crowd, what a surprise it was when in one of the pictures behind the group a pale face of a stranger was revealed.
Maybe these are the ghosts of the prisoners who built the catacombs? Or the same mutants? Who knows, suddenly radiation is capable of turning people into phantoms? One way or another, unlike young people, older residents, just in case, bypass the former secret object …
Shlion Irina