In August 1966, geologist Nikolai Zavyalov and collector Boris Gribovsky descended in the evening along a rather steep slope in the foothills of the Pamirs, hurrying to reach the bottom of a dry valley before nightfall, where they could spend the night. All they had to do was overcome a small area of active talus.
They had to go, as the geologist joked, "anti-submarine zigzag", dodging stones regularly rolling down.
About 200 meters remained to the valley, when the ground underfoot slightly shuddered (weak earthquakes are quite frequent here). And immediately stones fell down the slope. The geologists rushed under the shelter of the stone cornice and pressed their backs to the rock, watching with apprehension as huge boulders flew past with a crash. Until the rockfall calmed down, it was impossible to go down further, and they dropped their heavy backpacks to the ground, making themselves comfortable.
At this time, a stronger push followed, and on the opposite, steeper slope from the main massif, a piece of rock broke away and fell down with increasing speed.
A cloud of dust and rubble rose, as if from an explosion, and the impact was such that the ground was shaken thoroughly. And no sooner had the cloud dissipated than large balls of fire began to fly out of it, like a slowed-down fireworks display. When they first appeared, they were the size of a soccer ball. Departing at a large angle from the place where the stone block fell, the balls first rose vertically upward, then their trajectory bent in the opposite direction, and they, in a chain, without changing the distance between themselves, began to move along the valley at an altitude of about 50 meters in the direction of the blowing there strong wind.
Geologists counted about two dozen balls, which floated in the air, like a flock of fiery birds, somewhere about half a kilometer and disappeared behind a rock ledge. And it seemed to them that as they rose from the bottom of the valley, the size of the balls increased by about 2-3 times.
The young collector observed a similar phenomenon for the first time in his life, but later, at a halt, his more experienced friend said that the same fireballs appeared from the ground during the earthquake in Germany in 1910, as well as during the catastrophic Tokyo earthquake in 1924 …
Such phenomena are well known to specialists in the field of solid state physics. Under laboratory conditions, during mechanical compression and destruction of samples of various rocks in the crack zone, ultrahigh electric fields are formed with an intensity of more than a hundred million volts per meter.
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As a result, in the external environment, in addition to a light flash, at the time of the break, bursts of electromagnetic emission in the radio range are recorded, as well as the emission of fast electrons with energies up to 100 keV (beta rays). When they are decelerated in the rock, secondary X-ray radiation with a photon energy from ten to one hundred keV also appears. In some cases, even gamma and neutron radiation occurs.
Naturally, under natural conditions, in terms of energy, the scale of such phenomena increases immeasurably, as a result of which real linear and ball lightning are formed in the zone of cracking of rocks. And if the former do not, except in exceptional cases, go beyond the fault, long-lived ball lightning can "seep" through sedimentary rocks to the surface.
E. Vostokova, the author of the collection "Damned Places" ("Phoenix", 2006) writes: "There are places on our planet where it is supposedly enough to stamp hard several times for" fiery monsters "to emerge from the ground. This, of course, is an exaggeration, but really, in the zone of active faults, where significant electrical charges are accumulated during compression and shear of rock strata, a small shaking of the soil is enough to cause a triggering effect. " In the late 1980s, this was demonstrated by geophysicists from Tomsk. Using devices for shock excitation of seismic waves (something like a construction "woman"), as well as powerful vibrators installed in the active fault zone, they photographed the glowing balls emerging from the ground.
One of these places is located in a densely populated area of the European part of Russia, not far from Pskov. There, according to local residents, there is the so-called Devil's Glade, where these "monsters" in the form of black creatures with a fiery mouth regularly crawl out of the ground. And now, with the filing of the aforementioned Vostokova, “in such stories, as a rule, Cerberus appears - a satanic dog, which, according to legends, guards the entrance to the underworld. From time to time he goes out for a walk on the surface of the earth. And woe to anyone who gets in his way - only charred remains of a person remain.
Moscow electrical engineer S. Martyanov decided to test this legend with a group of enthusiasts. And on his very first visit to the Devil's Glade, he met with a "fire monster": "It was there that a mysterious black ball rolled out of the bushes at me, on the surface of which flashes of fire ran. There was a huge puddle nearby. The dark object sparkled and hissed across the puddle. A thick cloud of steam rose into the air and a loud bang was heard. After that, the ball instantly disappeared, as if it had fallen through the ground. There was only withered grass on the ground”.
By the way, some experts, such as M. Dmitriev, Doctor of Chemistry, argue that ball lightning can be black. There are different explanations for this phenomenon, but remember that most hypotheses about the nature of ball lightning postulate its plasma nature. And, as is known from the physics of plasma, at certain concentrations, it completely absorbs the electromagnetic radiation incident on it, that is, light, and such an object will indeed appear black. At the same time, the intrinsic light emission of ball lightning is small - it is usually compared to the glow of an electric bulb with a power of 20 to 100 watts. During the day, especially in the sun, such an intrinsic glow, distributed over a significant surface of the ball, will be practically invisible.
During the next trip to the “damn place”, the theoretical physicist A. Anokhin joined Martyanov's group. The researchers took with them electric field sensors, which they placed around the clearing, and established a constant watch. The triggering of a video camera mounted on a tripod was also connected to the sensors.
A few days later, the devices worked. As witnesses say, a crimson flame flared up in the middle of the clearing, which soon went out. But then "something dark gray" emerged from the ground. And then continuous miracles began. The object behaved like a sentient being - it walked around the entire clearing in a circle, alternately burning the sensors there. Both the video camera and the tripod melted, and “something” returned to the center of the clearing and was “absorbed” by the earth.
However, the theoretical physicist quickly came to his senses, and also connected the phenomenon he saw with underground thunderstorms, the theory of which was developed by the same Tomsk researchers headed by Professor A. A. Vorobyov. According to Anokhin, it is during such thunderstorms that underground ball lightning can seep to the surface. And, as we know from eyewitness accounts, fireballs "love" to destroy electrical and electronic equipment - from telephones and telegraphs in past centuries to modern televisions and computers today.