In the small town of Aksay, Rostov Region, there is an attraction that causes superstitious horror among local residents. This is a unique system of underground passages
The first local catacombs, dug for cult purposes by the inhabitants of the ancient Kobyakov settlement at the beginning of our era, were diligently entangled by subsequent generations with a network of new labyrinths. As a result, a real underground city, filled with all kinds of anomalies, is spread under modern Aksai and its environs.
The correspondent of "Secret Power" had a chance to learn about the terrible riddles of Aksai from the keeper of the funds of the local museum-fortress "Customs Outpost of the XVIII century", historian and ethnographer Vyacheslav Zaporozhtsev. Vyacheslav Borisovich knows about the secrets of the dungeons firsthand.
Ghost woman
- Once I look, and light breaks through from the basement window of the fortress museum. I am completely at a loss. I remember: a few minutes ago I cut off the electricity in the basement with my own hand! I unlock the basement door, look down … - Vyacheslav Zaporozhtsev began his story.
The cat, following him, reared its fur and with a wild howl jumped out of the basement. But the museum worker did not pay much attention to the strange behavior of the animal. He was more interested in something else: despite the clicking of the switch, the light did not go out. Then the custodian of the funds cautiously descended into the gloomy dungeons of the Customs Outpost.
… The women who wandered around the bypass gallery simply could not be there - except for Vyacheslav Zaporozhtsev, no one stayed in the fortress for the night. Nevertheless, a strange person silently slipped past, almost hitting the stunned museum worker. Loose black hair hid the face of a stranger, but Vyacheslav Borisovich made out her clothes perfectly: a white dress with a wide hem and an elegant corset. It was not difficult for a professional historian to recognize the outfit worn by women of fashion in the middle of the 19th century. Zaporozhtsev slowly backed away, and the woman went into the wall and disappeared … When the custodian of the funds jumped out of the basement, the light went out by itself.
“This is not the first appearance of a ghost,” recalls Vyacheslav Borisovich. “The woman in white has been seen here before. I myself ran into her a few years ago in the same gallery. In addition, a mysterious knocking is often heard from under the walls in the museum. Not otherwise, someone's innocently murdered and restless soul settled in our dungeons.
Treasures keep a secret
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However, through the Aksai catacombs, the ghost could easily wander into the basements of the Customs Outpost from the other end of the city. There is a notorious manhole that leads directly to the Don. Many victims, according to legend, were sent on their last journey through this hole by the local murderer Efim Kolupaev, who in the 60s of the 19th century invited rich travelers to his bed.
He also kept the money of his victims somewhere under the local land.
According to another version, the ghost of the fortress is associated with an elusive mob that robbed passing merchants a couple of decades later. They say that the villains hid their thieves' common fund in the dungeons of Aksai, and the chieftain's daughter was entrusted to take care of the treasure. And she, perhaps, regularly fulfills her mission even after death.
Rostov historian Nikolai Karpov in his book "Don Treasure Hunters" says that an ancient old woman came to the Aksai District Party Committee in the 50s of the last century, who confessed that her grandfather was a cook in the famous gang and gave her the secret of the treasure. The old woman was ready to share it with the authorities on the condition that she was placed in a "Central Committee's home for the elderly." At first, the grandmother was considered crazy, and when they realized it, she was gone: age.
Another legend says: a wealthy owner of a local winery, leaving abroad, mentioned that he hid jewels in one of the wine barrels left in the underground, which, upon his return, will provide a comfortable existence for himself, his children and grandchildren. Moreover, this treasure is allegedly also guarded by a ghost woman.
The winemaker never returned to Russia, but his secret cellar was recently found. There are still four oak barrels kept there - almost as tall as a human being. Each is filled with wine from the 1900 harvest. However, the owner of the courtyard, on whose territory such a treasure was discovered, does not allow them to be opened.
War underground
The military was also closely interested in the labyrinths of Aksai, hidden from prying eyes. For example, in the area of Mukhina Balka, which is located not far from the Customs Outpost, a fortified command post and a bunker for party leaders, built in case of a nuclear war, were hidden underground. Until recently, secret tests of gunpowder simulators of nuclear explosions were carried out here. According to eyewitnesses, such experiments were accompanied by a deafening roar and a 200-meter column of flame. At the same time, in the nearest yards, whole sheds and houses went underground. Once an uncontrollable blast wave blew the hoods and roofs of the generals who had come for testing from the cars, and threw the cars themselves fifteen meters aside.
Sometimes they took out heavy armored vehicles from the range, burned through - from the frontal armor to the stern. But that was already the result of testing new shells. A tank or self-propelled gun was driven into a long underground passage, a heavy armored door was closed behind it and a cannon was shot. Often, a super-shell, striking a target, landed at the same time a massive door.
Even more incredible rumors are circulating about military equipment that never returned from the ground. They say that a top-secret laboratory located on the lower tiers conducted experiments on … teleportation of tanks from Aksai to the Moscow region. However, there is another explanation: armored vehicles were lost underground by themselves, without the participation of people.
In fact, initially, for their needs, the military planned to use not Mukhina's gully, but the ancient catacombs of the Kobyakov settlement. But a terrible tragedy forced him to abandon this idea. It all started with the disappearance of a soldier who was examining an unknown move. The search group sent after, also suffered losses: this time two soldiers disappeared.
Later, the search engines were found. Rather, what remains of them is the lower parts of the body. Both were cut at chest level with something unusually sharp. Cut cleanly, like a giant razor. The soldiers' radios were also hit by the mysterious knife. When they were taken apart, not a single crack or chipping was found in the microcircuits: the cut was so neat.
Further searches were stopped, information about the death of the soldiers was classified so as not to raise a panic, and the sappers, having blown up a hundred-meter section, tightly walled up the dangerous passage.
Soon, however, another mysterious death occurred in the dungeons. Local amateur explorer of the catacombs Oleg Burlakov was also found cut in half. This time, however, they found both the lower and the upper part. For some reason, only bones remained from the top.
Recently visiting diggers tried to "walk" along the Aksai catacombs with a dog. At one of the turns, the dog suddenly whined and rushed back in panic. The Diggers backed up after her. An incredible sight appeared to their eyes. The walls of the passage in the place where people had just been began to converge quickly. And then they went back. On another occasion, the diggers barely had time to jump off the collapsing floor. The "collapsed" move immediately assumed its original position.
All of this is suggestive of ancient traps. But who were they supposed to cut, shred and crush? It is possible that they were installed to prevent something or someone from getting out of the depths to the surface of the earth.
Miracles continue …
Legends about the creepy underground creatures of these places also have a long history. According to ancient sources, even the inhabitants of the Kobyakov settlement brought human sacrifices to a certain Dragon, who periodically crawled out of the earth's bowels. The image of the mysterious lizard god is often found among the monuments of culture and archeology of the European part of Russia. Academician B. A. Rybakov devoted a whole chapter to him in his book "Paganism of Ancient Rus", where, in particular, he cites a fragment of a manuscript in which it is reported about the attack of "crocodiles" on people: "In the summer of 7090 (1582) … beasts from the river and the way of the hermit; there are a lot of people. And the people were terrified and pray to God on all earth. And you will hide your packs, but you will beat others. " The scientist does not doubt the veracity of the chronicler, complaining that "modern zoology does not help us well in the search for the prototype of the lizard."
The beast unknown to science in Aksai was last seen not so long ago - nine years ago. During the collapse in the basement of the warehouse of the local cannery, an underground manhole was opened. The watchmen with the dogs looked there, but an angry roar and someone's huge body, moving quickly in the dark, made them run without looking back. The watchman risked returning only in the morning, and the frightened dogs did not come to the warehouse for another week. The passage was walled up away from sin.
It is possible that the mysterious Aksai "Nessie" crawls out not even from the ground, but from … water. As shown by geological exploration, at a depth of about 40 meters below Aksay there is an underground lake, and at a depth of 250 meters the sea is splashing. Another river also flows under the Don bed, on the banks of which the town is located. It is no coincidence that cars and trailers that fell several times from the old Aksai bridge disappeared without a trace. Instead of the missing transport, the divers found a bottomless funnel in the riverbed of the Don, where the water draws its prey with monstrous force. The submariners were saved from death only by a steel safety cable.
There is one more sacrament in Aksai. It is known that according to the version expressed by some ufologists, UFOs are in fact unidentified underground objects that soar into the sky for only a short time. Geophysicists agree with this. For example, Andrei Olkhovatov, a scientific expert of the Association "Ecology of the Unknown", believes that UFOs can represent ball lightning generated by tectonic processes.
The Aksai phenomenon confirms this theory. "Flying saucers" are common here. According to eyewitnesses, they suddenly appear, as if out of the ground, and return there.
Once, for example, something like a pontoon with a transparent dome, where humanoid figures swarmed, slowly floated over the city. Another object blinded the nighttime Aksai with an unusually bright stream of light. When the base of warships on the banks of the Don fell under this beam, a terrible panic arose there. They even opened fire on the "plate" from large-caliber machine guns. However, to no avail.
There was another case: at once three spherical UFOs were madly spinning around the old Aksai bridge. The illumination turned out to be such that traffic on the track stalled. The drivers, not wanting to go further, watched the free performance with their mouths open, and the desperate traffic cops were forced to call for help from the city.
Meanwhile, the hypothesis of tectonic activity put forward by Andrey Olkhovatov makes it possible to explain some other Aksai "creeps". First of all, these are, of course, the dancing walls of the catacombs, which may be the result of local underground earthquakes. And in this case, the roar of the underground "dragon" will turn out to be quite usual for tectonically active regions underground rumble of magma, striving to break free. And it is still unknown what is more terrible: the semi-mythical hidden life of ghosts or a real earthquake, or even a lava splash from a newborn Rostov volcano.
However, no modern scientific versions still explain the appearance of female ghosts in the Kobyakov catacombs and the mystical death of desperate explorers of underground galleries. One thing is clear: the ghostly mistresses of the Aksai labyrinths, be they ghosts or reflections of natural elements, will not tolerate human fuss in their domains.