Almost everyone, at least once in their life, has experienced a strange, disturbing, unreasonable feeling. It comes to everyone - one has only to be in the dark. And no matter how rational a modern person is, the atavistic fear of ancestors involuntarily begins to awaken in him, that they fought for a spark of fire and supported it with their entire encampment, just to drive away the darkness.
Accident at Arles
The provincial French Arles bathed sleepily in the rich July aromas. It was about noon when Madame Jeunet carefully squeezed the knocker of the front door of the Cotillion family home and stood in the doorway, waiting. Mireille Genet was 54. She enjoyed the well-deserved confidence of the townspeople, and her services - a qualified nurse and an experienced nurse - were often used by the people of Arles. For a couple of months now, Mireille has been taking care of baby Patrick, the firstborn of the Cotillions, with full responsibility.
On that day, July 16, everything went as usual. She fed and changed the baby to her wife, put him in a stroller and drove the usual route into a shady park for a walk. The playgrounds and gravel paths were unusually deserted: the too hot sun drove the Arles to the banks of the Rhone. Little Cotillon soon snuffled sweetly, and only Madame Genet decided to sit down to rest, when suddenly … the light went out. Not gradually, but somehow immediately. As if someone in the heavenly heights pressed an invisible switch.
Madame Jeunet was proud of her sobriety. And this time she was able to keep a clear mind. She was not at a loss: she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, counted to ten. Opened, but … the darkness has not gone anywhere. Then she groped the baby in the stroller, lifted him and held him tightly to her. And only after that Madame Jeunet realized that she was as if out of reality. The noise of tires and the sound of horns disappeared somewhere. There was no rustle of leaves, no chirping of birds. She remembered that a church bell had just struck in the distance and snapped halfway through, as if it had been cut off.
Later in the gendarmerie station, the nurse will say that, according to her feelings, this black emptiness lasted for about a quarter of an hour, and then just as suddenly disappeared. And Madame Zhenet seemed to have returned, but where ?! It was no longer a clear day - it was late evening. And the bench, on which she seemed to have sat down just a couple of minutes ago, literally froze over. Rare passers-by ran past in the thorny wind, wrapping themselves in warm coats and scarves.
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Madame Jeunet piled on the baby all the extra supplies of undershirts and diapers and rushed to the Cotillion house. Near the house, she saw police cars, a cordon tape and worried neighbors. She grabbed the child in an armful and rushed headlong inside.
The living room was full. On the sofa, disheveled and tear-stained, sat the Cotillions. Doctors bustled around. Nearby, people in formal suits were talking quietly.
The appearance of Mireille with a baby in her arms was a shock for everyone. It turned out that they had been gone for three days. Arles police officers, kidnapping agents hurriedly arriving from Paris, and numerous squads of volunteers tried unsuccessfully to find them.
Someone's strong hands snatched the child from her, and Mireille herself was quickly escorted to the gendarmerie. They interrogated for a long time, but she could not say anything in her defense, she kept repeating only about the sudden darkness. They also conducted psychological tests, but they did not clarify the picture.
Perhaps this strange case would have been attributed to the suddenly darkened consciousness of a childless middle-aged woman, if scientists had not remembered that stories of all-consuming darkness took place earlier.
Gloom in the London Underground
It was rush hour. On April 2, 1904, there was no overcrowding in the London Underground at a station in the Wimbledon area. And suddenly darkness covered everyone. How long this lasted is not known exactly. But everyone kept repeating one thing: it was as if buckets of black ink had been thrown over the station. People did not see anything around, did not feel the presence of others nearby, and even ceased to feel themselves, as if in the darkness they all disappeared along with breathing and sounds.
A few days later, scientists from the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Cambridge University decided to conduct an experiment at the site of the outlandish incident. Physicists tried to simulate the situation and artificially plunged the station site into darkness. They turned off the light and blocked all possible routes of its entry from the outside. But it was not possible to recreate complete darkness.
The participants in the experiment, when their eyes adapted to the dark, began to distinguish obscure silhouettes of people, ceiling supports and even a few briefcases and trunks on the floor. And even more so we saw the movement of trains. As for the sound vacuum, they could not achieve it either. People perfectly heard breathing, shuffling, coughing of each other, and even the sounds of vibration of floors from traffic moving along the avenue.
The mystery of the darkness in the London Underground has remained unsolved, although it has managed to acquire scientific theories and pseudoscientific speculations.
City in darkness
7 years passed, and the darkness again reminded of itself. This time, she literally "gobbled up" an entire 50-thousandth settlement. On March 7, 1911, the small American town of Louisville, Kentucky, lived its own unhurried everyday life. Until somewhere around 4 pm he plunged into impenetrable darkness. Those who were outside of it that day did not see the darkness and did not realize its horrors. For those who were in her trap, it felt like no more than an hour passed, but this hour changed their whole future life.
According to eyewitnesses, the darkness was somehow tangible. Thick as pudding. People literally froze in her. Most of them couldn't even move. The darkness was so overwhelming that even a lighted match, brought directly to the eyes, could not be distinguished.
Later, the inhabitants of Louisville will begin to have terrible dreams - of course, about that very hour X, when their town plunged into complete darkness.
Decades later, modern science will address the problem of this phenomenon. It will be assumed that there was some experiment with the use of psychotronic weapons, the purpose of which is the destruction and control of the mental processes of animals and humans. However, the hypothesis of mass hypnosis did not receive any intelligible confirmation. But the darkness did not subside. In 68 years, another similar case will be recorded.
Mountain eclipse
A group of climbers was preparing for the ascent in the foothills of the Gissar ridge. There were four of them. All of them are experienced athletes with conquered eight-thousanders behind them. It was a warm evening. The sky is clear. The sun has not even set to rest behind the stone ridge. Climbers used to stretch out the tent when it was as if they were covered with an impenetrable cap. No sound, no movement. Only blackness.
The climbers were able to grab hands. They started shouting, but no voices were heard. According to their assumptions, the strange eclipse lasted five minutes. But then the darkness subsided. The sun hit my eyes, unusually fierce for an evening in the mountains. And the clock, meanwhile, showed noon. The climbers quickly collected their gear and tent and arrived at the base a couple of hours later. The camp was in a fever: it turns out that the missing four had been searched for by helicopters for more than two days.
Explain and … whitewash
How many such anomalous eclipses happened in the entire history of mankind is not known for certain. The oldest reference is recorded in the Bible (Old Testament, Ex 10:22). It is about the so-called "Darkness of Egypt": a multi-day eclipse was sent down to the Egyptians as a punishment for Pharaoh's disobedience to the gods.
It is curious that the modern media, seemingly so greedy for sensations, either keep silent about the phenomena of anomalous darkness or mention them in passing. Official science still cannot provide a clear explanation of the nature of the sudden onset of darkness. Of course, I want to believe that someday a person will reveal this secret too. And then, perhaps, the pitch darkness will cease to frighten us and the primitive fear will finally be defeated.
Natalia Popova