In order to plunge into the world of secrets and adventures, it is not at all necessary to sink to the bottom of the ocean or penetrate secret and abandoned missile silos. Miracles and secrets are sometimes under our noses - for example, in the Ulyanovsk region …
This story is told about one of the caves there. One summer several students of a technical university (not experienced tourists at all, but so-called "dummies") traveled along the edge of Ulyanovsk on foot. Their path ran from Ulyanovsk to Sengiley.
It was evening. Four guys and three girls got tired of the afternoon crossing and, having risen from the plain to a small hill covered with forest, stopped for a halt. The entire hill was literally dotted with numerous pits and dips.
The ground beneath our feet was here and there bursting with boulders rising from the ground. But the location was convenient. The guys decided to spend the night here. We set up tents and made a fire. One of the guys decided to explore the area. The result was completely unexpected. He returned with an excited cry: "There is a cave!"
In the depths of a huge "multi-tiered" stone pit, a squat (about half a meter in height) manhole was found. The guys did not have flashlights, so it was decided to use the burning newspapers as a lighting means. And so three guys and two girls decided to conquer the "unidentified object".
The narrow manhole, into which the guys thrust themselves, ten meters later narrowed so much that it was only possible to crawl through it. But ten meters later, perseverance was rewarded - the guys went into a large grotto, the floor of which was covered with large pieces of rock. Then the course bifurcated. The guys also dispersed.
Two guys and a girl, after passing through several grottoes and narrow manholes, soon came to the surface from another exit of the cave. The remaining two (newlyweds) did not appear either after ten minutes or an hour. The remaining ones thought that the disappeared had simply decided to retire in a cave, but … When the air temperature on the surface was 25 ° C, the temperature in the cave did not exceed 5-10 ° C. There is no time for love.
When they rushed to look for them, it was already dark on the surface. The search was limited to shouts at "both doors" of the cave and short trips into the depths - the guys ran out of newspapers and matches.
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About an hour later, the missing were found - they left the cave terribly frozen and frightened. According to their stories, it turned out that after separation from the main group, the guys almost immediately extinguished their improvised torches. They tried to move back, shouted, but no one responded. They got lost.
You probably find it difficult to imagine what it means to get lost in pitch darkness in strange labyrinths, in most of which you can only move like bellies. When, in addition to darkness, cold and sharp fragments of stones under your knees, you are also pressed by the lack of space for movement and the fear that, having hardly squeezed into any hole, you will find out that it ends in a dead end.
And without turning around (there is no room for that!), You need to move several tens of meters in the opposite direction! Plus, the guys did not know the cave at all and had no idea where they could move at all!
Photo: komanda-k.ru
One way or another, bumping into obstacles and sometimes circling in place, the guys continued to move. At some point, the girl, stretching her hand along one of the walls in search of a turn, came across an oblong object.
Actually, at first she hurt her hand. The guys realized that there was a wooden box in front of them on closer examination. The box was lying on its side, its lid was ajar, and several dozen, either metal or stone objects resembling nuts, rolled out from under it. Realizing that there was nothing else in the box, the guys moved on.
After another hour of wandering, luck finally smiled at them. In total, they spent more than two hours in stone captivity.
But the point is not even the shock they experienced. The bottom line is that the girl either automatically or accidentally put one of the found "nuts" on her finger. It was only by the fire that she realized that this was by no means a “nut”. A golden ring shone on her hand …
The further history of the failed researchers is not so interesting. The guys finished their journey and soon returned to the city. The ring was of no great historical value. It was appreciated as an ordinary piece of jewelry of the beginning of the century, however, made of gold of the highest standard. At the moment, it has already been sold, and the proceeds have been divided.
Snake slide
The cave, which the travelers visited, is by no means mythical, but quite real. It is called Zmeinaya (Zmeinaya Gorka) and is located in the vicinity of the village of Krasny Gulyai, which is thirty kilometers south of the regional center.
Cave entrance. Photo: misanec.ru
When an expedition to research paranormal phenomena arrived in Krasny Gulyai, the locals were somewhat surprised at their interest in the cave. “Well, there is and there is …” More than half of the inhabitants of the village have never been to it in their entire life.
Neither historians, nor the inhabitants of Krasnyi Gulai still know whether the cave is "man-made" or formed naturally. Researchers have heard a version that quartz was mined here at the beginning of the century, and the cave is the remains of some underground quarry. This version is supported by the fact that the vaults of the cave keep clearly man-made traces: in one place people saw something resembling traces from a shaft strut.
Against the man-made version is the fact that it is … quite absurd: what was the point of punching narrow passages in the rocks, if quartz could be obtained here, so to speak, in a quarry way.
The researchers stayed in the cave for about forty minutes. We climbed over fragments of stones and wet sand covering the floor. Let's be honest, they felt uncomfortable. Believe me, when all their light sources were extinguished at the same time, they experienced something "unusual." Are you scared? Wrong word - creepy!
The rings were not found, although they were looking for. True, we were not able to penetrate everywhere - several dangerous and blocked by stones manholes remained by us not passed. I was especially impressed by the huge stone that was about to fall on the ceiling of one of the halls.
Overall impression: the cave is much larger than it appears. The accompanying boys - 9th grade students of the local school - said that they never managed to explore it to the end.
Near the cave. Photo: misanec.ru
Some of the villagers assured that during the war deserters hid in the cave, and recently it sometimes serves as a refuge for homeless people. As you can imagine, both of these versions also speak of branched underground galleries, in which, if necessary, you can hide. At the same time, medical college students who visited here about three years ago said that with good lighting they walked around the entire cave in fifteen minutes.
You can, of course, not believe in any passages to parallel dimensions, but remember the story with the students of the technical university? From fear in pitch darkness, you can walk in circles for more than two hours. But even if the cave has very poor audibility, if its dimensions are small, why did the lost students not hear the screams of their comrades? And where, after all, is that box of gold rings?
The snake cave is a very interesting and mysterious object. Not only is this the only cave in the Ulyanovsk region (the entire hill in which it is located is literally dotted with numerous stone gaps of unknown origin), there is also just large underground rooms with narrow manholes.
Photo: komanda-k.ru
By the way, another strange story is connected with the Devil's Bridge. About ten years ago, a tourist broke away from it and died. It is said that before that he had been making fun of stories about underground spirits living in caves for a long time, and then, in order to show his fearlessness, he went into the cave "in a big way." It happened a few minutes before his death …
And one more "unusual". In one place on the vault of the cave, the researchers found a strange sign - a perfectly regular circle, as if symbolizing in this pitch darkness … the sun. Not carved or embossed in rock, but as if growing out of it! Not far from this place, on the vault, a date was drawn in coal - one thousand six hundred some year.
So … Whether mystical things are happening in the Snake or the usual material ones - it is not known, but there is a hope that someday the Snake will still reveal all its secrets.
From the book "Secrets of the Invisible World"