CHEREPOVETSKIE BOLOTA - a possible anomalous zone, an area in the Vologda region, where numerous strange phenomena are observed. According to the stories of local residents, a large number of strange suicides are noted in the nearby settlements
The riddle of the doctor Gryaznov, 1879
The beast appeared long ago. It is unclear whether the swamps gave rise to the "languid spirit" or the spirit itself gave rise to these swamps. Nobody can know this anymore. …
In the forgotten century, merchants began to disappear along the southern road from Beloozero. One, two, or even whole carts They left the northern city and did not return back. They sinned against the dashing people, against the swamp or forest beast. Only sinned in vain. Once, with weapons, they combed the surroundings and found an abandoned cart on the shore of a large swamp.
Neither horses nor a rider were nearby, and that cart was left with undiluted goods, simply abandoned. The traces of the living went into the swamp. That's the end of the matter, but the profit made the northern merchants sometimes go on a frenzy, and there are many terrible tales about the Big Dragon folded in Beloozero … And two centuries later, one returned.
For ten years he did not make himself felt, but when he came, he told so many tales that for a long time he would have been known as an eccentric of eccentrics. But he led the unbelievers to the edge of a huge swamp, where the remains of carts and wagons were scattered all over the shore. Terror seized his fellow travelers, and in panic they fled from there. The swamp is, according to my calculations, forty kilometers north of Cherepovets.
I tried to take samples of peat from this strange place - I had a headache for two days, I didn't want to live. I sent samples of the local peat to St. Petersburg, so I alarmed my own people in the capital. In addition to plant remains, the samples contained traces of a more highly developed life. They wrote that a rare swamp is mine, there are no such more. And the neighbors - my local owners - instruct me not to go on that forgotten road, not to seek my own destruction. A strange people, a dark people. For two years I have been living in this backwater, my dissertation has advanced only one third, and they are sick strangely.
Diagrams you can't draw. Such a number of madmen, probably, cannot be found anywhere else. Suicide is just a city nightmare. Last year, four hanged themselves, and three completely left, disappeared. The best guys are gone. And so from time immemorial. Everything clean dies or disappears. One local teacher did some experiments twenty or thirty years ago, so the police buried his notes. Yes, and a police official had already warned me twice not to come to the swamps, those are heresy …
The version of a crazy teacher, 1850s
It howls, this spirit. It is worth getting there one day so that it will stay with you forever. It sucks in the brain. It thinks and makes it silent. My father went insane before I was born, but admitted this only before he died. He confessed that for twenty years he had lived in kinship with this swamp, which took away his strength, his thoughts, forced him to do something improbable. Father drove me out of the city … I got my education and returned. From now on it is no longer possible to leave. These swamps will be found everywhere. How can you deal with such a colossus of stinking peat? And how wonderful this swamp is when you find it for the first time! And there are almost no berries, and few birds. This is not a swamp at all. And how you can hear him in the city! I already knew three people who hear him. For thousands of years. And in this city there will always be people who will serve him. You can't refuse, it's too late to refuse …
Pavel Gryaznov's dissertation, 1880
From the letter of the Belozersk prince Mikhail Andreevich: “There was no way for a sleigh, not for a footman, but ordered
You all have to go the old way by the vulgar way past their settlement to the forest of Cherepovsi … ". The desert swamp lies between Sheksnaya and Yagorboy, on both sides of the Konoma river, begins near the city of Cherepovets and stretches for 30 versts to the north. Its area is 80 square versts. Among the swamp there are several lakes, of which the main ones are Ivachevskoe and Pustynnoe. The surface of the swamp itself consists of an elastic layer that has a wavy appearance, in places broken by the pressure of a more liquid layer, which is why the so-called melts or windows are formed. The depth of the swamp reaches only two and a half fathoms (just over five meters), its bottom is dense, clayey … The "Singing" swamps to the north of the city are not only a legend, but also the result of many years of observation by many people …
The origin of very deep places in relatively shallow bogs with a hard clay bottom is surprising. I happened to find plots without a bottom … ("The experience of a comparative study of the hygienic conditions of peasant life and medical topography of the Cherepovets district." Doctor's dissertation of the physician Pavel Gryaznov, St. Petersburg, 1880).
Diary of a Provincial, 1905
In Moscow, they did not believe me. For twenty years I asked the district about this phenomenon, but no one was able to confirm the version of the St. Petersburg doctor. All the best people really leave Cherepovets or die here. And the percentage of suicides is no higher than the national one, but there are much more crazy people. This is not a mental illness - some other illness. A person stops waiting for the best, becomes silent and, if he does not drink vodka, begins to tell incredible stories. As if hears in the morning how somewhere in the north the Lake sighs. And that water lives a strange life.. She subjugates people who fulfill her will. The lake cannot live alone, in the city there are two or three people who obey it. They are connected with it by some kind of ties. If they are crazy, it is already useless to ask them. But what do those who have just got acquainted with Water look like? How to recognize them?..(Perfiliev, tradesman, Istochnitskaya street, 9).
Local ufologist's commentary, 1990
The three stories above bring everything down to one thing: the bad air of the Cherepovets swamps had such a huge impact on people that they inspired the swamp itself. All three researchers found that the smartest were in a hurry to leave their hometown or strange things happened to their brains. They heard from in the mornings twangs from the North. In many ways, they are right: only one famous person left Cherepovets - the artist Vereshchagin, who, as we know, left his hometown as a very young man and was in no hurry to return to it. Batyushkov visited his Cherepovets estate when he was already sick, moreover, mentally. An extraordinary boy, the future poet Igor Severyanin, lived in Cherepovets for five years, and a sensitive soul sensed something was wrong here. Later he cursed our gloomy city …
Diary of a Provincial, 1907
I’m sick. My mother told me about my uncle’s illness, he was also sick… In the morning, the head is noisy. The horror is that the noise is not in the head itself, but outside it - the noise comes from the North. I saw this swamp. It is not much different from others, but I immediately recognized it. Since then I have never left the city. Even the thought of moving causes animal fear, I am not afraid to die, only this is not death - it is the loss of myself. At first everything was fine, then fatigue came over me. I didn't want to write, read, think. And now, it seems to me, OHO interferes with writing these lines. OHO alive, because I am already dead …