Summer was drawing to a close, but everything was still surrounded by greenery. Towards evening, my husband and I decided to go by car to the forest to look for milk mushrooms: in the village they said that this year there were a lot of them. We got to the place, stopped, went out to look at the mushrooms.
Indeed, there was a lump. We picked mushrooms and gradually descended down the slope of the ravine, at the edge of which we stopped. Then the husband said that several years ago he found a place where there are just a lot of mushrooms. But we need to drive a little more to the side.
We went back to the car. We set off, gradually moving down a gentle forest slope. I periodically got out to look, so as not to run into the dead wood in the low, but dense grass. They searched, looked for the place that my husband was talking about, but never found. What to do, we must return home - the day is drawing to a close.
The husband turned the car, but then something incredible happened. It turned out that there was no turning back! Young birches seemed to have just grown like a wall, blocking the passage. We got out of the car to look at the tracks from the wheels on the grass, but they are not. What kind of miracles? The grass is completely fresh, and there is no hint that we have just passed through it. I ask my husband:
- What the hell? Did we come here somehow?
He just shrugged.
I felt creepy. And the forest was somehow terribly blackened, silence, only one bird cried out. We got into the car and decided to go straight, looking only forward. Oddly enough, we drove to the road.
I breathed a sigh of relief when there was a clap. It turned out that the wheel was punctured. The husband looked: a sharp twig stuck into the tire from the side. What to do? There is no spare wheel with you. We went home on the sly on a punctured wheel.
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After a while, we told this incident to a married couple of our friends. The head of the family Slava asked in detail where it happened. We explained, and he said it all happened in the Devil's Swamp. It turns out that this is a very scary place where travelers always wander.
Slava - he is a shepherd - never once in many years rode on horseback through the Devil's swamp in the same way. He assures that deliberately the way back from the swamp cannot be found. But there is a way to get out - you need to mentally set the goal to return, look at one point only forward and not turn your head around. Otherwise, you will go around in circles.
It turns out that we found our way back only because we looked exclusively ahead. Although they obviously didn’t want to let us go - this is evidenced by the punctured wheel.
Slava also told about his grandmother, who loved the forest and went there all summer to pick mushrooms or pick berries. And somehow I got lost in this Devil's swamp. From morning to evening, although she knew these places like the back of her hand, she fornicated and, terribly tired, decided on the last resort.
Since the old people believed in devil, and in omens, and in all kinds of evil, she took off all her clothes, turned them inside out and put them on. This is exactly what people do to deceive the devil and break out of his power. And what do you think? I left the forest without hindrance and returned home!
Many more cases are told about this swamp, but we have never been there again. However, if we are carried there by some kind of wind, then we now know at least two ways to find the way back.
Ekaterina Mikhailovna RYABUS, s. Dresvyanka, Novosibirsk region