Several years ago, an amazing story about the so-called "groaning" gap flew around several Runet sites and for some reason was called a terrible mystical tale by the inhabitants of the former USSR, although the woman herself - the author of the text - claimed that this was not an invention. Probably, the whole point is that this story is quite creepy, and readers subconsciously refuse to believe that something like this can happen in reality, and ours, Russian.
Strange gap in the stone
Our heroine, let's call her Natalia, says that as a child she spent the summer with her brother in the village with her grandmother. There were many children there, and they constantly went for a walk in the forest, where there were several interesting "sights": an empty bear den, an oak split by lightning, and also a "groaning" crevice, as the village children called it.
The groaning crevice was a small crack in a granite boulder that looked like a huge egg half-buried in the ground. There was clearly a cavity inside the crack, because if you shout there, echoes returned from the darkness. However, the voice was distorted and became somehow unpleasant, as if lifeless. It was no longer a sonorous child's exclamation, but a stifled groan. Hence the name of the gap. Then it seemed funny to Natalia.
The light penetrated the hole poorly, and at a depth of a couple of tens of centimeters, no glare could be seen. However, the most interesting property of a crack in granite was that it invariably brought back everything that fell into it. Throw a bump or pebble - and they come back with a second delay. Natalya's brother thought that there was a slope inside, because of which everything rolled back. And if you blow well into the gap, the air also returned, but it smelled somehow unpleasant.
The city children had few stones with cones, so they threw other things into the crack. Natalya, for example, took the risk of throwing a valuable glass ball there. True, that evening he crumbled into crumbs. A boiled egg lingered in the “groaning” gap for 5 seconds, after which it rolled back rotten. These are the miracles …
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How the "groaning" gap "spoiled" living beings
One of the village boys once put his kitten in the hole. The animal rustled inside for a long time and did not want to crawl back out, but after a few minutes, as if nothing had happened, it again appeared outside. Unfortunately, after a couple of days, the kitten had to be drowned, because it pretty much tore the baby's face.
That summer, when the end of August approached, and it was time to return home, our heroin and her brother decided to take a final walk through the forest and somehow unnoticed by themselves found themselves near a mysterious boulder. Surprisingly, the gap has managed to become somewhat wider. Natalia's brother put his leg in there for fun, but could not pull it out. The children pulled her, cried, the girl already wanted to run to call for help, but then her leg suddenly easily came out of the crack. Nevertheless, it was excruciatingly painful for the boy to step on it. For a long time, city doctors tried to figure out what the problem was, but they did not find a fracture, dislocation, or infection. More than 25 years have passed, and the man still walks with a crutch.
Mystical incident with Nika
When the Russian woman grew up, got married and gave birth to a child, a village with an ominous stone nearby reappeared in her life. Grandmother died and bequeathed her house to Natalia's family. In the very first summer, the daughter of our heroine, Nika, quickly made friends with her village peers and spent all her free time with them, just like her mother once did.
One evening the girl was late for dinner, and Natalya went to look for her. At a certain moment, she saw that her daughter, along with her company, was returning from the forest. Nika was skipping and smiling, but the other guys were white as chalk. Our heroine began to ask them what had happened, and the children as one claimed that they were just walking. But it was clear from the eyes that they were lying. Only Nika behaved normally and didn’t let anyone know by her appearance that something had happened.
Only then did Natalya remember again about the “groaning” crack, which she had almost forgotten over the years. The woman rushed into the forest, found the unfortunate boulder and was dumbfounded - the crack became much wider, and if desired, a child could climb into it entirely. At the same time, several long red hairs - clearly Nikin's - were fluttering on the granite at the hole.
The girl, however, appeared to be completely unharmed. She looked at her mother with honest eyes and swore that she did not even know about any "groaning" crevice, since she was walking with friends in a completely different part of the forest.
Who came back: Natalia's daughter or double?
Nevertheless, the neighbors' children, whom Natalya went to, quickly "split up" and reported that their company had actually visited the boulder, and the guys even hoisted Nika when she wanted to get into the crack. The children were scared as hell when the girl disappeared inside for almost an hour. But then she climbed back and calmly headed home, so the friends decided that since everything worked out, then the adults could not talk about it.
The husband called Natalia hysterical. Say, their daughter is alive and well - why worry then? Only our heroine began to have doubts about whether it was really her child, or during the hour while Nika was inside the boulder, the crack "made" something similar. And every day these doubts grew stronger, since Natalya stopped recognizing her daughter.
Nika, she said, came back from the crack another - "spoiled." The family was forced to send their dog to a shelter after the girl allegedly accidentally stuck a burning match in the pet's eye, and then completely poured boiling water over it. And the "wrong" Nika constantly looked at her mother: during the day in the back, and at night she went to the bed and just stood there. To open her eyes and stop it, our heroine did not have the courage.
The girl began to tell her father something that made him consider his wife abnormal. And then Nika even said that she wants to live in the fresh air in the village, while she wants to show “something” to dad in the forest. And thus the daughter and her husband gradually moved away and further away from Natalia. They became strangers and … even scary for her …
In the end, Natalia came to the decision to leave the family. According to the author, she now lives far from her ex-husband and daughter. And alone she mourns her real Nika, who has vanished forever in the darkness of the groaning gap …
Whether the author of this story did the right thing, she herself does not know …
