Privolzhanin Mikhail Kosterin has been engaged in extreme tourism almost all his life and often during his trips he encounters … paranormal phenomena.
"Witch lights" were hovering near the abandoned house
In 2003, a man, together with his tourist squad, settled down for the night in an abandoned village in the Volga region. “Then we stopped at one of the houses. When it got dark outside, it seemed to us that something was burning in the neighboring area. We immediately went outside and saw a blue light over the barn, which was a hundred meters from our house. Out of curiosity, I decided to come closer to this place. However, as soon as I started to move, seven glowing blue balls swept past me - towards our lodging, where at that moment the children were sleeping, whom we took on a hike. The balls didn’t fly into the room, but simply flew into the distance,”says Mikhail.
An eyewitness associates this phenomenon with "witch fires". This is how the restless souls of beautiful girls who committed suicide are called in Slavic mythology. According to Kosterin, such fires can lead a traveler to a swamp or some other dangerous place.
Leshy
However, the teacher of natural sciences and astronomy at the Litos-KLIO school-museum, Sergei Belyakov, is trying to find a logical explanation for the supernatural. “There can be both ball lightning (the nature of which is not fully understood), and corona discharges similar to the fires of St. Elmo (a discharge in the form of luminous beams that occurs at the sharp ends of tall objects with a high intensity of the electric field in the atmosphere)”, - considers he.
Another incident with Mikhail also happened in one of the abandoned villages, but already in winter: “When everyone went to bed, the inexplicable happened. We heard two women approach the threshold of the house: snow creaks and their voices are heard. On a winter night in the abandoned village, there simply could not be other people! When we got to the threshold, there were no shoe marks on the snow. Four people can confirm this. When we raised the old documents, it turned out that a mother and daughter had previously lived in this house. Draw your own conclusions."
Promotional video:
Kosterin admits that there are cases that at first glance seem unusual, but in fact science easily explains them. So, Old Believers-Golbeshniki lived in Russia. It was customary for this group of believers to read prayers in the golbtsy (underground) and bury their relatives there. “Often, when you walk through the abandoned villages where the Golbeshniki lived, in the evening you can see green lights hovering in the air. Of course, this is not a manifestation of otherworldly forces, but simply phosphorus, which is released from buried bones,”explains the traveler.
Mikhail Nikolayevich encountered another paranormal at first glance phenomenon in the Lukh district:
“It happened in the town of Staraya Pochaika. There is a swamp a kilometer away. When we reached this point, two reconnaissance groups separated from our detachment. Then a dense fog hung over the swamp. When both groups went deeper into the forest, right above the fog, we saw the huge two-meter figures of our scouts. There was a feeling that we were watching a film and on the screen we see them making their way through the thicket. Obviously, the shadows from the travelers lay on the fog and this is the picture.
Here Sergey Belyakov completely agrees with Mikhail. “He correctly described the reason for the appearance of the silhouettes of comrades in the fog: the promising play of shadows in low light. Climbers and pilots know this phenomenon when suddenly a silhouette image of a person or an airplane appears on the clouds below. They are just shadows,”says the teacher.
Soap and water should be left for the bathhouse
Our traveler believes that one of the varieties of brownies always lives in the bathhouse - the bathhouse. Once Mikhail and his brother went to the bathhouse to take a steam bath. At this time, there was a dispute between them: the brother did not believe in either the banniks or other otherworldly forces.
“He told me then that this was all nonsense. And when we entered the bathhouse, washing at my brother's house did not work out right away: everything began to fall out of his hands, he fell off the bench several times … As a result, he simply ran away from the steam room. Bannik is the spirit of the bath, it must be treated with respect. After all, if you offend the bannik, he will harm you. When you enter the room, you need to greet him, and when you leave, you thank him and politely say goodbye. Then no trouble will happen to you,”Kosterin said.
In the old days, it was believed that the bannik loves warmth very much, therefore he prefers to hide by the stove, and when he is angry, he moves under the shelves. After the bath procedures, soap, water, steam were left for him. According to legend, a bannik enters the steam room only after people have left it.
For people, the bath time, as usual, was divided into three lines. People were afraid of the late fourth line like fire: it was believed that after three changes in the bath, goblin, devils and the banniki themselves wash themselves. And if someone dares to take a steam bath at this time, then he will not come out alive: the devils will kill him, and people will think that the person is worn out or crazy. This belief existed everywhere in Russia. Everyone tried to leave the bathhouse at this time, leaving there a tub of clean water and a new broom.
“Once we were in Mugreevo-Nikolskoye - a village that stands on the Lukh River. One evening we were walking along the shore and heard at first incomprehensible sounds. There was a feeling that a whole string of boats was sailing along the river and the creak of oarlocks was heard (an element of a rowing vessel in which an oar is movably fixed. - Ed.). Then the fishermen confirmed to us that they themselves often hear these sounds,”the man says about another unusual incident.
And here Sergei Belyakov finds a scientific explanation for what is happening. “Auditory hallucinations are studied by psychology. Man is a complex creature, often wishful thinking: for example, when random noises in the mind suddenly add up to familiar voices and timbres. The same happens with visual images. This is called pareidolia - seeing the familiar in a random set of data. An example of pareidolia is pictures in the clouds or on a colorful carpet,”Sergei suggests.
There was a "melon" in the sky, shimmering like a garland
Mikhail Nikolaevich's life did not manage without UFOs. Alien objects, he said, he saw three times. The first time was on the coast of the Black Sea, when three bright points swept across the sky, leaving no traces behind. The second time - in winter, on New Year's Eve:
“There was a melon-shaped object hanging in the sky, all sparkling like a garland. Three light beams emanated from him - like from a flashlight. In a second he disappeared. Kosterin's closest acquaintance with UFOs happened in 1992 on the banks of the Volga. According to the man, he saw a huge cigar-shaped object that slowly flew over the river.
“Now almost everyone has fancy phones, smartphones with supercams, cameras. And as soon as there is another evidence of UFOs or other anomalous phenomena, then there is no evidence. Eyewitnesses either do not have any filming, but have a confused story, or in the photo or video there is something muddy, indistinct, constantly falling out of sight. This is alarming,”says Belyakov.
However, the hero firmly believes in what he himself saw. He assures that he was not under the influence of alcohol and drugs. “I'm only telling you what I really saw. There are many unknowns in our world, and when you come into contact with nature, you travel a lot, you begin to see what is inaccessible to the human eye,”Mikhail Kosterin ends our conversation.
Tatiana KRASNOVA, newspaper "Ivanovskaya Gazeta"
