Bald Mountain on the southern outskirts of Kiev, near the Pechersk Hills, has long acquired a bad reputation. It is there, according to legend, every year, on the night of May 1, all evil spirits gather to arrange a traditional Sabbath. Sometimes Bald Mountain is called Kiev Brocken: after all, as you know, witches also dance on Brocken Mountain in Germany, celebrating Walpurgis Night.
Stalker zone
You can believe in the night gatherings of the evil one and his retinue, or in the strange, mystical incidents occurring in this area, you can not believe, but personally, after some events, I would not risk visiting Bald Mountain on this particular night.
However … Some young people professing cults contrary to Christianity love this place and go there - even at night! - either for "inspiration", or to perform rituals incompatible with faith in God.
Several times, driven by curiosity, I have been, however, during the daytime on Lysaya Gora, this very rugged terrain, overgrown with sparse forest, with glades and a strange atmosphere of the "stalker zone", and each time unpleasant stories happened to me. On the mountain, oddly enough, you can get lost in literally three pines, as they say. I experienced this myself, wandering a couple of times on a small patch of land, unable to orient myself and go out on the road to the city that I know very well. Inexplicably, it turned out that I walked in circles, returning to the same clearing … Whether I was alone or with friends - all the wanderings looked like a classic deja vu on the ground. Twice in those places I twisted my leg out of the blue, and my companions were forced to take me home.
My friends and I eventually realized that the place was unkind and stopped going there.
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Abomination of Desolation
But there is something to see on Lysaya Gora: it is not only a natural park, but, oddly enough, a monument of history and architecture. The Lysogorsky fort located there is known to historians and lovers of antiquity. Fortifications on the Pechersk Hills were erected at the beginning of the 19th century, during the reign of Emperor Nicholas I, from bulk land and traditional yellow Kiev bricks. In Soviet times, there was a mysterious military facility on Lysaya Gora, from which concrete and stone structures are now left … All these bastions, supports, buttresses, former powder magazines, bunkers and walls overgrown with bushes and mixed forest, represent for the uninitiated a real labyrinth, a confusion of natural heights, man-made ramparts and powerful, multi-layer brick and other fortifications.
Darkness, eerie wildness, the abomination of desolation seen by many with their own eyes, is given to these places by the fact that in the thirties of the last century, during the most gloomy Yezhovism, here, in the most remote places of the fort, innocent people were massively put against the wall.
Strange meeting
Knowing such historical and legendary facts, you don't really want to walk here just like that. However, there are people who easily arrange picnics on Bald Mountain …
I confess, and my friends and I, in our youth, arranged "May Day" in such unpleasant places, but it was youthful bravado, a lack of understanding of some deep and dangerous things …
It was during one of the picnics on Lysaya Gora that we spotted a man of about sixty with wavy gray rather long hair there. The expression on his face was very concerned. He seemed to be looking for something, not paying attention either to us or to the ancient walls of the fort and the picturesque hills and valleys around.
The man walked slowly past our company, looking around and as if noticing something. Perhaps he remembered the path he took? For some reason, I watched him for a long time, and he, sensing this, turned around and looked intently straight into my eyes. I hastily turned away, but the old man suddenly turned and walked resolutely towards us. For some reason I felt uneasy.
- Do not stagger in these places! - without any preface, the old man shouted loudly to us, although we already heard him perfectly. - The hills are perilous, dangerous!
- Yes, we kind of understand that … - began one of us.
- You do not understand anything! - the stranger got angry and without any transition suddenly asked: - Have you met a woman?
- What woman? - I did not understand.
“If you saw, you wouldn't ask…” the old man said with some hopelessness.
- The witch! A real witch!
There was something in his tone that made us take these half-crazy words seriously.
The old man wearily sat down on a log near our fire. We looked at him questioningly, expecting to continue. It seems that this person needed to exchange a word with someone, tell something, relieve his soul. And he really told us an amazing story related to Bald Mountain.
The old man spoke so passionately, so sincerely and convincingly that, against our will, we believed what had happened to him …
Looking for eternal life
Our stranger began his story with an incident at the Lukyanovka bazaar, known to the people of Kiev. A certain elderly man, according to him, once had a row there with a young greengrocer. The bazaar, eager for any quarrels, listened with pleasure to their squabble. The man demanded that the trader cancel his "eternal life". The greengrocer, turning pale, assured that he had confused her with someone. Gradually it became clear that this man, knowing about the old legend, somehow made his way to Bald Mountain on the night of May 1, found the witches' Sabbath there and managed to dance with one of them. And the legend says that the one who dances on Walpurgis night with a witch becomes immortal.
It was not easy to dance: some strange creatures did not allow him to approach the black-haired naked beauties. Finally, the adventurer managed to scatter the vile creatures, he grabbed the young witch by the hand and began to dance with her. And when dawn came and evil spirits began to scatter from the mountain, she promised immortality to the clever and courageous dancer …
- Yes, only unclean spirits cannot be carried out, - our interlocutor noted bitterly.
It turns out that the "eternal life" of that dancer was reduced to the existence of an immortal soul in an elderly, unhealthy body, constantly tormented by diseases. So he demanded from the tradeswoman, whom he recognized as a witch, his dance partner, to "cancel" his terrible immortality … He even grabbed her hand to lead … Where? He himself did not know - either to the police, or closer to some temple, where she would certainly have removed the spell from him. But the tradeswoman rushed into the crowd and slipped away, and the unfortunate man was left with nothing.
Listening to this story, we understood that the old man tells us what happened not to some other person, but to him. And although it all looked fantastic, for some reason we believed his words.
Photos from the scene
Suddenly the old man got up, waved his hand and, without saying another word, rushed somewhere deep into the thickets and man-made labyrinths of Bald Mountain.
Having come to our senses, we tried to joke about the strange tramp and his tales, but the jokes somehow did not work out …
The most striking thing for me was that some time later, in a completely different company, I heard a story about a meeting on Bald Mountain with an insane old man who was talking about his dance with a witch and the terrible gift of immortality, which now he cannot get rid of. At this point I had to shrug my hands. Believe? Do not believe? However, any citizen of Kiev can tell no less striking stories about a terrible grief …
Last winter, I decided to photograph those places on Bald Mountain, where, according to the old man's story, the Sabbath took place …
Petro Dvoretsky. Magazine "Secrets of the XX century" No. 9 2009