This large freshwater lake in the Chelyabinsk region is called the younger brother of Lake Baikal for the purity of the water. The locals believe that bathing in it rejuvenates. But Lake Turgoyak is famous not only for its healing properties, but also for a number of features. The oldest stone monuments have been preserved here on the islands. Some giant animal supposedly lives in the water of the lake, and aliens can supposedly be found on the shore.
Ancient structures
The maximum depth of the reservoir is 34 meters. Depending on the water level on the lake, you can count 10-12 islands. The largest of them is called Vera Island. According to legend, here in the caves in the 19th century lived a hermit Vera, who did not want to obey the will of her parents and marry the unloved. She founded a monastic hermitage and treated pilgrims for many diseases.
Prior to this, the island was called Pinaevsky - in honor of Emelyan Pugachev's colleague by the name of Pinaev, who was hiding in these places. Later, the hermit Vera settled in his home.
But the caves of the island are much older than both the hermit and Pinaev. Archaeologists have established that they were created by ancient people several thousand years ago. The largest floor slab weighs 17 tons. How did people who did not know any mechanisms manage to lift and strengthen it in a cramped stone room? This riddle remains unanswered so far.
Scientists suggest that the megalithic (that is, consisting of huge stone blocks) structures on the island are the remains of an ancient temple and burial chambers. According to researchers, such buildings were simply beyond the power of small nomadic peoples. That is, once upon a time the current island of Vera was the center of a large state.
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The creators of the megaliths were literate people: all buildings on the island are strictly oriented to the cardinal points. In the view of the ancients, the west was associated with the setting of the sun and death, therefore, megaliths associated with burials are located on the western slope.
The east for our distant ancestors meant the sunrise and the flowering of life, and on the eastern side of the island there are vertical monoliths, symbolizing the masculine and feminine principles.
Each structure was erected taking into account the days of the equinox and solstice, on these days the sun's rays fall into specially made holes.
However, the ancient builders of megaliths were not the first inhabitants of the islands on Lake Turgoyak. Scientists have found that people lived here even earlier, from 60 to 100 thousand years ago. There are traces of their stay, indicating that this place was also sacred to them.
Drawing on the tent
Once again, Lake Turgoyak attracted attention in 2005. In late August, a resident of Zlatoust Dmitry N. came here to rest. The weather was excellent, and only on the last day of the man's stay in the lake area did it rain.
In the morning, at about four o'clock, Dmitry woke up. It was very light in the tent. The man looked out and saw that the light was coming from a spherical object hovering nearby. Dmitry decided that it was ball lightning, and froze, afraid to move, so as not to attract a luminous object.
A few minutes later, the light went out - sharply, as if someone had turned it off. The man waited for a while, then climbed back into the tent, but could not sleep. Then he decided to warm up breakfast and kindled a primus stove. The flames lit up the slope of the tent. It depicted a strange silhouette resembling a classic humanoid from books or movies: two large eye sockets, an elongated face, a nose resembling a small trunk.
The rain is over. By morning the tent was dry and the strange silhouette disappeared. His friend Sergei came for Dmitry to take his friend home. During the gathering, it began to rain again, and the men saw the same silhouette appear on the slope of the tent.
Dmitry told about what happened at night. Friends decided to check whether the mysterious drawing really appears after the tarpaulin comes into contact with water. The tent was carefully dried over a fire - and the silhouette disappeared. But as soon as the tarpaulin was wetted, the "face" of the humanoid appeared again.
The friends hurriedly drove away from the lake and took the tent with them.
Dmitry told about the incident to the Ural researchers of anomalous phenomena. They examined the tent and made sure that under the influence of water, a pattern appears on it that resembles the "face" of a humanoid.
Unfortunately, Dmitry refused to give the tent for further experiments for free, and the researchers failed to collect the amount he announced for the sale of the artifact. The mystery of the "Turgoyak newcomer" still remains unsolved.
Lightning tricks
Some experts on anomalous phenomena believe that in this case, there was something like a keranography. This is when, during a lightning strike, an image of the surrounding landscape or other people nearby appears on a person's skin.
Similar stories have been known since ancient times. The Arab geographer and traveler of the 10th century, Al-Masoudi, in one of his books, describes how a warrior, struck by lightning during a battle, had a drawing on his forehead: the face of an enemy distorted from pain, whom he at that moment pierced with a sword.
In Pennsylvania at the end of the 20th century, a picture of this corner of nature was reflected on the chest of a man killed by lightning who was trying to hide from a thunderstorm under a tree: an image of shrubs and fern leaves.
Maybe the luminous object that Dmitry saw was really ball lightning, and someone who was next to the tent was reflected on the tarpaulin? Tarpaulin is a thick linen or cotton fabric made of thick yarn that dissipates static electricity when wet. Is the mysterious drawing connected with these properties?
The essence of most of the hypotheses put forward boils down to the following: a strong electric discharge took place near the tent - from ball lightning or from geoelectricity accumulated in this place. As a result of the discharge, a phenomenon resembling keranography occurred - only the image was obtained not on a human body, but on tissue.
But what exactly shows up on the tent? Here the opinions of researchers differ. Someone suggests that this is an enlarged projection of a certain insect, others consider the drawing to be a bizarre intertwining of branches, and many are sure that this is an image of an extraterrestrial creature that was nearby at that moment.
Sensations from archaeologists
In 2015, an expedition of scuba divers and archaeologists worked on Lake Turgoyak. Research with the latest equipment has led to interesting and even sensational findings.
First, it turned out that a strip of stones of the correct geometric shape stretches from the coast to the island of Vera. Secondly, at a depth of two meters, they managed to find a dolmen - an unusual stone structure in the form of a cave, which was carved into the rocky ground about 5 thousand years ago. In addition, traces of an ancient stone workshop - hewn boulders and their chips - have been preserved under the water.
Also, at the bottom of the lake, a spring feeding it was discovered. In shape, it resembles a small volcano crater - a cone with a hole about 1 meter in diameter, from which a powerful cold jet bursts out.
Also at the bottom were found large stone bowls of clearly artificial origin. Scientists have suggested that they once made a fire and served as beacons. Moreover, at the bottom of the lake are the remains of ancient ships, whose wooden parts do not have metal brackets or nails - it is quite possible that these ships were built by people who did not know about metal smelting.
The head of the expedition, senior researcher of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Stanislav Grigoriev explained all these findings by the fact that once the water level in the lake was at least 3 meters lower, and there was an isthmus between the shore and Vera Island. Thus, the megalithic structures on the island could have been created by ancient people living on the shores of the lake.
Black serpent
In August 2016, news agencies spoke about another mystery of Lake Turgoyak. A resident of Miass, Mikhail Nenarokov, was sailing in a kayak on a reservoir past a place that is popularly called Krutiki (the official name is Steep Rock, it is located near a public beach). Suddenly, strange black rings appeared in front of him from the water, resembling a coiled giant snake.
Mikhail admits that he was very frightened. But despite this, the man filmed the huge animal with a video camera for 20 minutes. Filming was carried out from three sides, Nenarokov posted videos on the Internet.
Commenting on them, users of the World Wide Web expressed two main versions. Firstly, it could be the tricks of divers who, on their own initiative or at the request of the owners of coastal hotels, made a model of a giant animal and controlled it from under the water to lure tourists to the lake. And secondly, perhaps it really is some kind of living being.
Mikhail Nenarokov himself is convinced that he saw a real giant snake, and the video, which can be found on the Internet, shows more a kind of animal than a model. By analogy with the legendary monster of the Scottish Loch Ness, the black snake Turgoyaka has already been given the name Miassnessi.
Svetlana SAVICH. Magazine "Secrets of the XX century" №8
