For a long time, people who lived close to forests noticed the strange features of certain parts of the forest, where even those who knew the forest “like the back of their hand" managed to get lost. And not just to lose the road, but to walk in circles on the "damned" site, not being able to get out of there. Such places are called "prodigal", from the word "fornicate" ie. look for
The locals, wise by experience, in such cases said that it was a "goblin drives" and advised to put on clothes turned inside out to ward off evil spirits.
However, few people now refer to the intrigues of evil spirits, but people still have not ceased to get lost, even with such modern devices as a compass or a GPS navigator in stock.
Prodigal places can completely disorient a person in space, and sometimes time intervals are also affected.
For example, in the Kirov region (Sovetsky district), near the Nemda river, there is a small forest area, in which people are regularly lost. One of the eyewitnesses, familiar with these from childhood here and there, with his colleagues got into a similar situation. According to his stories, having visited a cave located in this forest, they came out on a familiar road, but after walking some distance the man realized that the road led to an unfamiliar place next to some field.
The second, third, fourth attempts led to the same results - people constantly returned to this field. In the end - in the end, the travelers somehow managed to get to the familiar area, however … 15 km further from the part of the forest where they entered it! Moreover, it seemed to the people wandering through the forest that two hours had passed, in fact, their forced walk lasted about four hours.
Six months later, in the same place, a mushroom picker was lost in a similar way, who also left at a distance of 20 km from the original point. After asking local residents, curious tourists learned that such incidents in this forest are not an accident, but rather a pattern. It is possible that the energy of the place itself plays a role here, because it is located next to the pagan sanctuary Chumbylat. And the inhabitants of the surrounding areas are sure that this is precisely the tricks of a pagan deity, the protection from the spell of which, again, lies in the old method: to turn clothes inside out.
One of the described prodigal places of the Moscow region is located between Dmitrov and Klin, in the area of the village of Rogachevo, and the mushroom picker who got there with great difficulty found his way to his car, although before that he often entered the desired coordinates on his GPS.
According to a participant in this story, at the next loop of the "damned place" he already felt uneasy, since the readings of the device were constantly getting lost, the battery was quickly running out, and he could not go beyond the vicious circle. With great difficulty, the man got out on the right road, but it remained a mystery to him, what was it? A little strange in his opinion was that when he first entered the forest, he found an old cemetery there, and it was the coordinates of the cemetery that were highlighted on his GPS as a set point of reference upon arrival home.
But it is not only in the wilds that people can get lost. In the Kuibyshev region (now Samara), between the villages of Vasilyevka and Aleksandrovka, there was a small rounded grove. However, the villagers gave it a strange name "drunken grove", due to the fact that several times frozen people were found here, who returned home from guests on sledges. All this looked rather strange, because the grove could be seen from the hill at a glance, and there were only fields and a small forest plantation nearby. The grove itself could be walked around in an hour.
There are a number of similar anomalous places in the Pskov region. So, near the Udokhi River there is a village called Dubrovno, with the preserved ruins of an ancient settlement. This is a very ancient settlement, mentioned in the annals for 1137. In the vicinity of this place, strange cases often happen, for example, in the 40s of the last century, two children got lost in the forest and went to pick mushrooms. There was also a dog with the children. Only on the second day the boys were able to get out of the forest. According to them, they fell asleep under one of the oak trees in the forest, and woke up in a deep pine forest, from where they had to find their way home.
The Plyussky district of Pskov is famous for another paranormal place with the corresponding name "Devil's ravine". Overgrown with ferns, with fallen trees, this ravine keeps many secrets. And not one person was lost in its depths. Even in the pre-revolutionary years, several peasants disappeared without a trace, and in 1928 seven lumberjacks disappeared, who were never found. In 1974, seven mushroom pickers disappeared in the ravine again. True, two were found a week later, but they were in a state of insanity, and could not tell anything about the fate of the other comrades.
The well-known TV presenter, who got lost here, walked in circles for ten days on the "devil's ravine", eating only collected mushrooms, and lost count of the days. Already half-dead, he was accidentally found in the bush by one of the local residents.
The mystery of prodigal places has not yet been solved, who believe that circular walking is associated with an unequal step length of the right and left legs, as a result of which a person constantly "takes" to the right or to the left. However, how to explain the fact that experienced mushroom pickers who have lived in these places for more than a dozen years are also lost?
At the moment, scientists have put forward the assumption that there are special structures in the human cerebral cortex that are capable of capturing a magnetic field. It is likely that small deposits of iron ores stored underground are capable of causing "demagnetization" of these structures, as a result of which the above-described walking in a circle begins.
By the way, studies of prodigal places have shown that in some of them clocks stop spontaneously and deteriorate devices, so people going into the forest should take care to take a map of the area with them, and just in case take a small supply of water, food and a box of matches.