Every major city is not only buildings, streets, bridges and parks. It is also the most complex system of underground communications: metro, sewerage and drainage, ancient and new defensive facilities, and many other structures.
They intertwine with each other, as well as with natural passages and caves, forming huge mysterious labyrinths. People who study urban dungeons are called diggers (from the English, digger - "digger"). In their stories about travel underground, there are many mysterious cases and unexplained facts.
"Pugs" and brainworms
In Russia, the most extensive is the system of underground structures in Moscow. The catacombs of the city appeared after the mining of building stone began. In the 16th century, during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, a whole network of underground passages was dug under and around the Kremlin.
But most of the objects hidden under the surface were built in the 20th century: the metro and metro-2 (the so-called underground transport tunnels that connect military structures), bunkers, ventilation shafts and much more.
The diggers were able to discover long secret lines running from the center of Moscow to suburban defensive structures, as well as dozens of huge underground complexes. Now these are strategic objects of civil defense or duplication infrastructure, they are mothballed and classified.
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However, like other underground objects, they cannot be called lifeless. According to the stories of the diggers, there are inhabitants there.
First of all, these are huge insects. Their mutation was caused by sewage filled with various chemicals.
Diggers claim that in the undergrounds of Moscow there are giant grasshoppers as long as a ballpoint pen. There are also huge white cockroaches, the length of which reaches 10 centimeters. There are also half-meter worms that attack small insects. The houses of such mutants are shaped like the hemispheres of the brain, so the worms were called brainworms. They live at great depths, in the lower tiers of the dungeons.
There are also amazing plants. In particular, the researchers came across mushrooms over a meter high. When people are near them, people start to get headaches - apparently, their spores have a detrimental effect on health.
Some biologists suggest that the spores of such fungi, when they enter the lungs of a person (and for this sometimes it is enough to take a breath next to them), begin to germinate, which ultimately leads to death.
A survey of the Moskva River, conducted by a group of researchers from the Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences under the leadership of V. Pegasov, revealed a huge number of freak fish: some specimens lacked fins, others did not have scales, and others did not have eyes.
Moscow fishermen call these fish "pugs". But chemical effluents enter the Moscow River from the underground sewage system - so all these mutants first appear there.
Giant rats
Many diggers mention the monstrous rats they saw underground. The first known meeting with them took place in the tunnels under the zoo. A small flock, numbering five or six, jumped out to meet the diggers. In the dark, the animals seemed gigantic.
Later, the diggers objectively estimated their size: the length is about 65 centimeters, excluding the tail, and the height is up to 30 centimeters. The proportions of the bodies were quite consistent with the rats, but the heads of the mutants looked narrower.
In 1990, several articles were published in Moscow newspapers about the incredibly large rats seen by the metro builders. Their descriptions completely coincided with the species of animals encountered by the diggers. After the publications, a former military man who once served in one of the now abandoned bunkers contacted the underground researchers.
He said that there was a radioactive sump near his place of work - and near the bunker, you could see whole flocks of incredibly huge rats, similar to those that were met by diggers and metro builders.
Biologists have two main versions of the appearance of such animals in the Moscow undergrounds. The first is that these are mutants generated by radiation (this hypothesis is supported by the fact that such monsters were met in the Chernobyl region after the accident at the nuclear power plant). The second point of view is that representatives of another species live underground, the so-called Indonesian rats, which are about five times larger than those that live in our country.
Several pairs of exotic animals could be brought to Moscow, and then thrown into the sewer (or they themselves ran away from the owners), where the rats found a huge amount of food waste and quickly multiplied. But whether this was actually so remains to be seen.
Mysterious signs in the tunnels
There are also more than enough mystical phenomena underground. Diggers say that they often see the light of a flashlight somewhere ahead. But if you get closer, the light goes out. What caused this, none of the researchers can explain.
Sometimes small glowing stars come from the darkness. They get close to people and even touch them. Moreover, according to the diggers, these touches seem to energize.
There are incomprehensible signs on the walls of the old tunnels - it is not known who drew them and why.
Most often, anomalous phenomena occur in those places above which there used to be cemeteries, as well as destroyed temples and churches. Some ephemeral creatures that look like ghosts often appear here. They stretch out their hands, and then seem to fall into the ground or go through the wall.
White nun
But let's leave Moscow for a while. Near Ryazan, there is the former Nikolo-Vyshsky monastery; under Soviet rule, a pioneer camp was set up on its territory. A local legend is connected with the existence of the monastery: its abbess in the 20s of the last century cursed the Bolsheviks and, together with several nuns, voluntarily immured herself in a secret cell.
For a long time, strange phenomena were observed here: at night the muffled ringing of a bell and women singing could be heard, and on the paths many met a ghost, who was nicknamed the White Nun - a transparent silhouette of more than two meters in height.
A group of diggers who arrived here explored the monastery dungeons and discovered a secret passage that led from the main building to that very remote cell. And this passage was laid just under the paths on which the ghost was met ',
By the way, when the passage was unfurled in order to penetrate the burial place, all the lights of the diggers went out by themselves and the video camera stopped working. And the bricks, which were hit with crowbars, did not fall inward, but, contrary to the laws of physics, jumped out of the wall.
Flowers for suicide
Several years ago, diggers surveyed underground structures in the area of the A. N. V. Sklifosovsky. Under the central building, they found abandoned incinerators, and near one of them lay a bunch of fresh carnations!
Suddenly, a woman's silhouette appeared and disappeared from the thickness of the concrete vault. Frightened researchers hastened to get out. On the way, one of them, hitting his head hard, tore off the skin on the crown of his head. He was taken to the admission department, which was located just above the place of these studies.
Before the arrival of the doctor on duty, the victim was laid on a couch. Nearby stood a gurney with a scab covered with a sheet. When the orderlies lifted the sheet, the injured digger was shocked: in front of him was the body of the very woman whose ghost had appeared underground.
From a conversation with the orderlies, it turned out that she died half an hour ago, that is, just at the time when the detachment was below. Later, the diggers found out: the woman committed suicide by throwing herself under the wheels of a car.
People are more dangerous than ghosts
In the 60s of the last century, at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet government was actively working on the idea of building an underground city under the center of Moscow. An experiment was even conducted: a group of volunteers was offered to live in the catacombs as long as possible.
As a result, the experiment lasted a little over two months and ended in failure: the majority of its participants were diagnosed with mental disorders of varying degrees.
But the diaries kept by the participants in the experiment told a lot about life among the tunnels and catacombs. Several entries in them are dedicated to strange underground people with pale skin and large eyes. They were seen only in passing - and even suggested that this is some kind of tribe that in ancient times decided to live here and gradually adapted to such a life.
One of the main rules of Russian diggers is never to walk alone. Precisely because strangers underground are much more dangerous than ghosts. You can hide in abandoned catacombs for years. It is believed that this is exactly what some cruel criminals do.
Diggers talk about one of them more specifically - several people saw it. According to them, this is a man who escaped from prison about 20 years ago. He is clearly ill with schizophrenia and is trying to kill those who meet on the way. The man wears a gas mask, because in the prison where he was sitting, a fire started and the maniac's face was burned. But the fire gave him the opportunity to escape and settle in the catacombs.
According to statistics, about 20 people disappear in Moscow dungeons a year. But because of rats, maniacs or their own negligence - no one can say.
Platon VIKTOROV