The few inhabitants of the hunting cordons in the north of the Nizhny Novgorod region are perplexed about the strange incidents that occur both in the outside world and with people.
Luminous objects dive into the forest from the sky, abandoned camps of Stalin's times suddenly “come to life” for no apparent reason, and visitors who have not voluntarily paid tribute to the taiga must lose their gadgets and devices here, and even wander in three pines. We heard about all this more than once - and in the end we decided to test the forest charms on ourselves, having gone to one of the most mysterious and remote places of the Semenovsky district.
In the footsteps of the lost
At the end of the 19th century, Melnikov-Pechersky testified that it was in the north of the Nizhny Novgorod Territory that mystical things were happening - here it is appropriate to recall that his mother had a small estate just in the Semenovsky district. The writer's notes about unexplained incidents were published in the newspapers Nizhegorodskie gubernskie vedomosti and Russian diary.
Their general idea is simple: after the colonization of the primordially pagan lands by the Russians, all sorts of local gods began to play the role of demons and catch gullible travelers in the forests. A little later, these regions turned out to be one of the centers of the split - of course, the intrigues of the evil one became even more sophisticated …
Decades later, such terrible things happen in these places that Melnikov-Pechersky never dreamed of. The Soviet power inhabited the Nizhny Novgorod north with quite real demons - the chiefs, guards and prisoners of Special Camp Points (OLC). The current legacy of the once huge Zonovo infrastructure is two colonies near the village of Sukhobezvodnoye (Semyonovsky District). Among those who have been imprisoned, one of them - the strict regime - is notorious: it is believed that prisoners who are accustomed to free order are "pressed" there most severely. So much for your "demonic machinations" …
One of the researchers "examines the surroundings"
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Strange things happen in places where Stalin's "olps" once functioned: those who get to them hear the voices of dead prisoners, the howling of saws and machine gun fire, and sometimes, no, no, and someone will flicker among the trees …
If we take the modern northern wilderness, then it also defies logical descriptions and explanations. Just what are the stories of local hunters that it was here, in the area of Sukhobezvodny, that a couple of years ago a huge luminous object swooped down from the sky, not inferior in size to the Chelyabinsk car. Even the field where he most likely fell is known …
But this happened in winter, when the place was surrounded by impassable snowdrifts, and in the spring no one found anything. And what is strange - no explosion was heard, which inevitably should be a result of the car's collision with the ground!
Eyewitnesses of this incident have several versions. Someone explains everything by a banal collision of an asteroid with the Earth (although it is completely incomprehensible why it did not explode in the atmosphere at that time according to the Chelyabinsk version), and someone believes that the fallen body was nothing more than an alien landing craft. The only question is, did this ship sit down or was it wrecked? Apparently, landing still took place, since contact with the ground was noiseless.
To be honest, this is one of the favorite phantasmagorias of Nizhny Novgorod residents. In the 1990s, when the country was flooded with aliens and psychics, UFO landings, judging by the publications in the press, took place near every village. Cosmodromes functioned especially intensively near airfields - the light lights of airplanes excited the imagination of ordinary people.
I must say that our imagination was also quite aroused, so for two days we hid in snowdrifts with cameras: we were shooting both the forest and the sky above it. About what unexpectedly appeared in the pictures - just below.
Photo: Yegor Vereshchagin Why the place was equipped with such signs is not clear
About entanglement and loss
Another, rather peculiar, anomaly observed here: even experienced hunters from time to time wander through familiar grounds. Moreover, due to some kind of influence, people are constantly losing something in these parts.
We have already talked about wandering in three pines in the north of the Nizhny Novgorod region. Something similar happened to the author of this article on the territory of the former OLP No. 1 (Varnavinsky district): I managed to get lost in a forest quarter with an area of only 100 square meters, and on the eve this place was walked up and down. And the hunters there told similar stories. And once the Old Believers explained this quite normal phenomenon: "the goblin leads."
Moreover, some visitors here, according to the stories of the hunters, often become “a little out of their minds” - and the amount of drink did not always play a decisive role. There were cases when people returned from the forest completely insane.
Talking about such cases, our guide shared the following consideration: a person, even knowing well his native place, is so saturated in the end with a "demonic civilization" that the forest ceases to accept it as his own. Urban filth here can mean anything from computers to alcohol.
Unafraid of the ominous stories, we got to a completely comfortable trailer in the wilderness of the forest. While we were settling in, it was snowing heavily, and we decided to take a walk around the surroundings, since the snow piled so far only up to our knees and we could more or less move around. All four members of our expedition are armed with photo and video equipment, and the snow-covered forest is more than a beautiful sight.
The night, alas, did not bring us any abnormal experiences - except that someone's footsteps were heard outside the door all the time. No traces were found the next morning.
The next day brought us a couple of interesting surprises. It all started with the fact that two of us lost, without saying a word, the covers from the cameras. The real revelation awaited later, when a passing hunter stopped at the trailer. Having read the English names of our cameras by syllables, the peasant was not at all surprised:
- What did you want? Don't you see - "Nikon" is written? And you with such things stuck into the forests where the Old Believers lived for centuries?
Indeed, the two lost covers were from gadgets, the names of which had crept into the renovation filth, but nothing was lost from Canon (that is, from a Canon brand camera).
Are you under the curse?
Laughter laughter, but here again it is appropriate to recall Melnikov-Pechersky. Since he was personally involved in the ruin of hermitages, he involuntarily became a hero of local folklore. It was rumored that the writer made a deal with the devil, sees through walls and moves through the forests on horseback. It is known that Melnikov-Pechersky spent the rest of his days in the village of Lyakhovo, which is known today as a psychiatric hospital.
There are several testimonies of how he lived there, including the following: "… he went out to Lyakhov's peasants in a canvas robe with two ribbons cross-on-a-cross, in shoes and a cocked hat with a plume. He had a huge bottle swinging in his hands. with vodka ". There was a version that this was the curse of the Old Believers for the ruined hermitages.
Alas, the modern inhabitants of these places can also be found with huge bottles in their hands.
- I remember when I went to the army, my friends and I arranged a "send-off" in the forest, - one local resident reluctantly recalled. - When later my grandfather found out where we were feasting, - cracked me so that I flew several meters. Then he said that a secret chapel-prayer house once stood on this clearing. The soldiers who ruined her stopped in the village after their deed and, naturally, got drunk. The next morning we got drunk and continued to "walk", forgetting about the service. Some of them died there, and some were sent to an insane asylum … I came from the army, got married, but I also began to drink. Thank God, I changed my mind, but my friends, with whom we were walking then, were all drunk …
We did not abuse alcohol, but when we returned, we felt, as they say, not in ourselves. And then they began to look at the photographs taken, one of them shocked us: with a strong increase in the usual forest landscape, the face of some creature appeared in one of the drops …
Konstantin Gusev "Moskovsky Komsomolets"