The fact that in Demyansky Bor, located in one of the picturesque tracts of the Novgorod province, something outrageous is happening, back in 1862, the manager of soap-making cooperatives Nikolai Prokhortsev told.
“These marvelous places in terms of the terrain are similar to a huge cauldron,” he wrote to his boss, Alexei Yurskov, “with natural, ideal for perfumery aromas, abundant in various plants and fruits. Only in places is a mystical business, unfit for human stay. The state of health develops disgusting, when someone seems to be in certain guises.
Morok, in a word. That is the glances, fixed at the back of the head and back, helping to knock down. That loss of orientation on the spot. You will go from the right place to the wrong one. If you don’t help, you won’t come back. You will disappear.
Before nights in bad weather, you will definitely see a fiery goblin here. A kind of foggy bundle grows out of the ground in front of you, and well, it shines until it clings to you with wet fiery cotton wool. Compasses are inactive here. A lonely person will surely take a dash in a bork. It happens that his bones will not always find him."
In the demyan forest
Photo: Konstantin Wutzen
Half a century has passed. In 1912, a native of the local area, St. Petersburg geologist Afanasy Zabrodov, using the most sophisticated instruments at that time, revealed anomalously high magnetization and electrical conductivity of soils along the perimeter of the Demyansk boiler in the forest, when “energy emissions were distributed by combs, moved, swinging like pendulums, stopping the movement at intervals of 5-10 seconds”.
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Anyone could check this by observing the compass needle indicating a false north direction. Using an accurate oil compass on its edge, one could observe the slow, non-stop rotation of the needle.
Once, doing such "tricks", Zabrodov filled a glass balloon with weightless silvery threads, the physical properties of which he wrote:
“This substance, although extremely light, although it looks like dandelion fluff, is cellular in itself and fell out with the snow. It is non-combustible, insoluble in acids and alkalis. When electric currents pass, it resonates, emitting a high-pitched squeak, deflecting the index needle of the galvanometer. The fallout of cotton wool was preceded by a strong glow of the lower edge of the clouds.
The question of the origin of "cotton wool", like cotton wool itself, is hanging in the air. In any case, in 1926, the red commander Nikolai Savelyev, who went to the forest for mushrooms, while on a visit to the town of Demyansk, told his brother Vasily:
“There were so many honey agarics on the rot that the cart box was not enough. The horse trembled and did not move. It didn't take long to guess what the matter was. The low clouds were filled with an ominous red light from within. Ice grains fell from them, mixed with shreds of prickly gray cotton wool. I stuffed a sack with this cotton wool.
It was getting dark like autumn quickly. The clouds burned like large lanterns, illuminating everything around. I was very surprised that the ephedra, bushes, rotten dumps, grass and mushrooms in the box shimmered with a trembling green light. Every slashing wave of the hand drew a green tracing line in the red air. When I, deciding not to pay attention to the devilry, lit a fire, a flame, a pot above it, a brew in the pot - everything glowed and pulsed, changing colors from red to green.
I went to get some brushwood and came across a ghost that exactly followed my movements. I realized that this ghost is my light double, my exact copy, walking at a distance. I felt uneasy. As soon as I approached the hot fire, the double recoiled from me and swam through the air into the thicket, where, having become a white ball, scattered in multi-colored sparks.
In the morning nothing reminded of the evening adventures. Only the bag in which I stuffed the celestial cotton wool was wet and very dirty. I think I was mistaken in taking tar for dirt. But where does the tar come from in a clean and dry bag? The best of clever people will not tell what is happening, who is the boss in Demyansky Bor."
Until the 1960s, the official science stubbornly refused to study the "crying oddities" of the Demyansk anomalous zone, referring the numerous evidences about them to fiction, superstition, and folklore.
During the war years, the Demyansk offensive operation of the troops of the North-Western Front of the Red Army took place in these places. In January-February 1942, Soviet troops went on the offensive and surrounded a large grouping of German troops (the so-called "Demyansk pot"). But in April 1942, the encirclement was broken through, German troops held Demyansk. In this operation, more than ten thousand people were killed on the Soviet side alone.
In 1962, a former front-line soldier, party worker Boris Levchenkov, having spent a vacation on the restless territory of the boiler and outraged that the remains of Soviet soldiers, who had been holding the defenses here until the last moment, had not been buried, sent a letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU in which he shared his painful thoughts that, in his opinion, should have been done for the arrangement of mass graves.
Finds of modern search engines "Memory Watch" in Demyansk forests
The letter was not left without attention. Sappers and scientists have visited places of not so long-standing bloody battles. The first did something to neutralize and eliminate mines and unexploded ordnance. The conclusions of the latter boiled down to the fact that the area really "has active deviations, which adversely affects the health of people, causing hallucinations, accompanied by unmotivated actions."
As for the burial of the remains of the Red Army soldiers, the public was engaged in this. We did a lot, but we could have done even more, if it were not for the devilish temper of the Demyansk cauldron, which seems to be the spirit of the newcomers who could not stand and block their good initiatives.
Levchenkov himself, undoubtedly, is a brave man, in his letter of confession he signed his powerlessness to understand the mysteries of this place.
“There are many unburied bones, bleached by rain and sun, and sometimes they glow in the dark. Over the crumbling trenches, destroyed by dugouts, the fogs, condensing, visibly display almost human figures. This could be called purely natural curiosities, if there were no night meetings with ghosts seen in the swampy lowlands, where there are well-preserved corpses, ours and German ones.
With the appearance of the ghost, I personally, with the participation of collective farmers V. I. Nikolaev, P. A. Trotsenko, L. A. Milovanov, observed spontaneous combustion of fresh vegetation, spontaneously stopping. On some days, the oppressive mood of causeless fear prevailed so much that it forced them to look for other places to sleep.
People say correctly: where there are human remains, everything is alien to life. The bones of the fallen soldiers must be given to the ground. Too much dead energy was accumulated in Demyansk Bor. The water in the river there is dead, it takes away strength. Outside the forest, she is different, alive, gives strength. Scientists need, forgetting about pride, to take upon themselves the solution to the mystery of the Demyansk cauldron."
However, scientists still proudly refuse to recognize such an unscientific "devilry", and the Demyansk cauldron is still regularly taking off the bloody harvest. Black pathfinders, who often come here for German decorations, soldier's and officer's tokens, quite serviceable weapons that can be profitably sold, are undermined by disturbing the corroded ammunition. Even experienced "black diggers" are confused by the anomalous zone.
According to local old-timers, “… young people came here, neither in God, nor in the devil … They were looking for all the awards and German weapons. So, at first, someone almost strangled their friend in the swamp, then at midnight someone got into the habit of coming to them from the pine forest, so they, out of fear, not only fired from a machine gun, but also threw grenades. And they soon ran away."
And here is what the designer and artist, collector and traveler Yuri Nikolaev, who for several years traveled to those places himself, with friends and relatives to bury the remains, erect homemade monuments, tells about the mysteries of Demyansky Bor:
“… Passing through the swamp, I noticed that in the same area someone's eyes were following me. If you look around - nobody, turn away - again someone bores your back, you feel your gaze for two hundred meters, then everything disappears.
Not wanting to look ridiculous, I did not tell anyone about this, although I tried to get around that section of the swamp. And in 1989, my nephew ran to the camp and said that someone was watching him in the swamp: “I didn't see anyone nearby, but our fearless husky got so messed up, clung to my feet and began to squeal pitifully.” Then the son experienced the same. In general, I forbade the guys to walk alone.
… After moving a few meters from the camp, we saw two bundles of short silvery threads in the grass. I took it in my hands, the threads were silky and completely weightless.
“Throw it out,” said Yuri, “that you are taking all sorts of rubbish!” But I kept looking at the threads and tried to figure out how they got here: the grass was uncrumpled.
Then we came to the swamp. I immediately saw a good rifle, and Yuri found a shell that he wanted to take to Moscow as a souvenir. We photographed each other with the finds, and I looked at the clock - 12:06. None of us remember what happened next.
We woke up in a thicket of reeds, taller than human height. It was already 4:10 pm. The head was buzzing with both of them like a hangover, although we drank only tea. But the strangest thing is that nowhere we can see our tracks, the reeds stood like a wall, and only the patch where we were was trampled.
We had neither a rifle nor a shell. True, the camera was hanging around my neck, and the bowler hat was tied to Yura's belt. We tried to remember how we got here and where our finds are, but to no avail. We felt as if someone had fooled us.
…. As soon as we went to the forest, some devilry began. You reach a certain point and you can't take a step further: your legs are full of weight, the body becomes numb, and, what is most disgusting, such horror seizes upon which the hair stands on end, sweat appears all over the body.
I looked at Yura, something was wrong with him too. Silently they turned back, went down to the river, immediately let go, only trembling in the knees.