In any country there are places that for centuries have been reputed by the people as bad, damned. They are bypassed, not daring to go there even during the day. Something strange happens to those who happen to be there by chance: either the memory of a person is knocked off, then something appears to him, then some force leads people in a circle until exhaustion
In Russia, in the old days, it was believed that the goblin, mermaids and swamp kikimors were in charge here, and it was they who put a haze on people. Modern scientists who have examined some of these places (they call them geopathogenic zones) believe that the electromagnetic field of the Earth influences human well-being in them. But the strange phenomena occurring in one of the tracts of the Novgorod region, in the so-called Demyansk cauldron, science cannot yet explain.
The designer and artist, collector and traveler Yuri Ivanovich Nikolaev told our author about them. The author immediately warns: Yuri Ivanovich does not suffer from a mental disorder, is not fond of mysticism, and is very skeptical about otherworldly forces …
“I first learned about the Demyansk cauldron in 1970, when friends who had returned from an agitation campaign gave me a tape recording of the story of a local resident. She talked about the fierce battles, burned villages, about the unburied remains of our soldiers and cried.
I went to those places next summer. From Demyansk, along a disgusting road, I reached a village, from which only one house remained. The old people living in it showed the way to the place where the defense line passed in 1941-1942. After walking four kilometers, I came out into a large swamp. Rusty helmets, rifles, shells, machine-gun belts lay around, wherever you looked. Those who fought here were lying nearby. There were an incredible number of them. In the swamp, by the boulders, by the river, in the forest that surrounded the swamp, I came across human bones and skulls. What I saw shocked me extremely.
So many years have passed after the war, so many monuments have been erected, every May 9 we declare that no one is forgotten, and here our soldiers lie, whitening with bones, and no one cares about this. I began to collect materials about the military actions of the 2nd Shock Army, which fought in these places, being surrounded. I tracked down the veterans. I learned from them that more than ten thousand of our soldiers alone were killed on this patch. And they died not only from bullets and shells, from mines and bombs: someone froze, someone died of a terrible hunger, someone was eaten by cannibals, who, in turn, were torn apart by the soldiers. In a word, grief, hatred, pain, despair, fear was overflowing in the Demyansk cauldron. I began to come there every year: alone and with friends, then my sons and nephews grew up.
They buried them what they could, erected three homemade monuments. The collected weapons, helmets, medallions were transferred to museums in Moscow and Leningrad. I myself cannot explain why, only I was drawn to the Demyansk boiler. Although every year something happened to me and to other people that should have scared us off. I will tell you just a few cases. It all started on my first visit. It was then, passing through the swamp, that I noticed that in the same area someone's eyes were following me. Look around - nobody, turn away - again someone bores your back. You feel your gaze for two hundred meters, then everything disappears. Not wanting to look ridiculous, I did not tell anyone about this, although I tried to get around that section of the swamp. And in 1989, my nephew ran to the camp and said that someone was watching him in the swamp: “I didn't see anyone nearby,but our fearless husky got so scared, clung to my feet and began to whine plaintively."
Promotional video:
Then, out of harm's way, I forbade the children to walk alone.
In September 1976, I was going to go to the Demyansk boiler with my friend Yura, an avid tourist. Since I was supposed to stay in Moscow, we agreed that he would leave a day earlier, find a camp site and wait for me there. On September 18, I reached camp at eleven o'clock in the morning. Yuri, who got out of the tent, was clearly frightened by something, he quickly began to talk about the events of the last night, while his lips trembled. Yuri got to the village I indicated, asked the local residents how to get to the camp, and set off.
While it was daylight, he walked slowly through the forest. Every now and then he came across dugouts and trenches, which he examined, and there was enough "iron" under his feet. When it began to get dark, Yuri realized that he was lost. He circled for a long time until he came across an old tank track that led him into a pine forest. The distance from the pine forest to the camp is short, but since it was completely dark, Yuri decided to spend the night in the forest, and in the morning go to the camp. He set up a small tent, made a fire, and began to settle for the night.
After some time, I felt an inexplicable anxiety. Then the fear crept up Yuri, a man of an awkward ten, tried to convince himself that he, a strong guy armed with an ax, who had spent the night alone in the forest more than once, had nothing to fear, but the fear grew stronger. Grabbing an armful of things, Yuri rushed to run. When I approached the camp, it became easier, but he fell asleep only at dawn.
After drinking tea and laughing at Yuri's night fears, we decided to go to a distant river, where I had been going for a long time.
After moving a few meters from the camp, we saw two bundles of short silvery threads on the grass. I took them in my hands, the threads were silky and completely weightless. “Come on,” said Yuri, “that you are taking all sorts of rubbish!” But I continued to look, trying to understand how the threads got here: the grass around was uncrumpled. Then we came to the swamp. I immediately saw a good rifle, and Yuri found a shell that he wanted to take to Moscow as a souvenir. We photographed each other with the finds, and I looked at the clock - 12.08. None of us remember what happened next.
We woke up in a thicket of reeds taller than human height. It was already 4:15 pm. Heads were buzzing in both, as with a hangover, although we drank only tea. Breaking the reeds, we went to a huge boulder. When I climbed onto it and looked around, I could not believe my eyes … The reed was trampled only in the place where we came to, but on the way to the boulder, and around it was a wall. It turned out that we were carried into the thickets of reeds by some unknown force … It is not clear where the rifle and the shell had gone. We tried to remember how we got here and where our finds are, but to no avail. We felt as if someone had fooled us.
There was still time before darkness, we decided to walk to the desired river. Making their way through the reeds, we came out to the river. This place was familiar to me, we came here for water. A hillock rises a hundred meters from the river, and on it is the same forest from which Yuri fled. As soon as we went to the forest, some devilry began.
You reach a certain point and you can't take a step further: your legs get drunk with weight, the body becomes numb and, what is most disgusting, such horror seizes upon which the hair stands on end, perspiration appears throughout the body. I looked at Yura, something was wrong with him too. Silently they turned back, went down to the river, immediately let go, only trembling in the knees.
They began to think that it could have scared us, healthy men who had been in different alterations. The only conclusion we have come to is that a bear is guarding us. They started knocking on the bowler hat, yelling in bad voices, in response - not a sound.
Trying to climb the hillock again, the same picture. After the third attempt, they gave up and went to the camp. Until we reached the tent, we calmed down. We crossed the river near the camp and found a dugout, which I noticed the last time, it was a hundred meters from the river. And when they got out of the dugout, they realized that they had lost their orientation. I reached into my pocket for the compass, and it’s empty. And Yura lost his compass. Well, this has never happened to him or to me for ten years. Okay, Yura was engaged in orienteering. He found the way to the camp by some signs he knew, but we strayed for more than an hour. And as they approached the swamp, again someone's gaze rested on the back.
We had dinner. When it got completely dark, they noticed: a peat layer was burning in a swamp that stretched between the camp and the nearby river. It was windy during the day, and we did not feel the burning, but by nightfall the wind died down, and we saw our fire go out. The layer of carbon monoxide rose higher and higher and began to fill the hollow where the tent stood. We realized that if we go to bed, we will not wake up. To go off-road at night to the village was completely insane. We climbed onto a huge pine tree and tied ourselves to the branches. It was about twelve o'clock in the morning. The moon is big - you can see everything well. Ten minutes passed, a sound reminiscent of the barking of dogs was heard, and a flock of wild boars walked towards the river, bypassing our tent. Then a hefty moose walked slowly by. A fabulous night, fabulous guests, only the owners are sitting in a tree.
Suddenly there was a crackling: it was the exploding of cartridges in a burning swamp, and then suddenly a dry bush that grew near the river broke out, but the fire quickly extinguished, and the bush began to smoke. I don't know why, but this bush riveted my attention. I peered into the puffs of smoke and was amazed. And Yura, he almost fell from the tree. Imagine such a fantastic picture.
The smoke, rising from the bush upwards, then descended to the river, turning before our eyes into a ghostly human figure, which, smoothly moving its hands, moved above the water surface and disappeared in the very pine forest where we did not manage to get during the day. Then the bush “exhaled” another portion of the smoke, and everything was repeated. Of course, with fantasy, you can see anything in the puffs of smoke, but I can swear by anything, they were human figures. Yura and I watched their appearance and procession for almost an hour, during which time a hundred ghosts went into the pine forest.
By four in the morning the breeze dispersed the carbon monoxide, we went downstairs and fell asleep. Later, when we sat down to dinner, a peasant came to us, whom Yura met in the village and from whom he learned the way to the camp. He explained his appearance by concern for Yura, they say, a new person went to the swamp, and it is better not to go there without a weapon, the place here is bad. We didn’t tell him about our adventures, but asked what he meant by “bad” place.
The peasant chuckled in embarrassment: “Young people came here before you, neither in God nor in the devil … All the awards and German weapons were looking for. So at first someone almost strangled their friend in the swamp, then at midnight someone got in the habit of coming to them from the pine forest, so they not only fired from a machine gun, but also threw grenades out of fear. And soon they fled."
We did not ask him any more, although later we regretted it. The old-timers knew a lot about what was happening in the swamp and in the forest, and now there is no one to ask.
Often in those places something unusual happened, warning of danger. I remember how in 1984 I came there with my children and nephews. On June 22, we erected another monument to our soldiers. Then the nephews fled to the swamp, and I stayed in the camp with my seven-year-old son Sasha. Suddenly a flock of large butterflies flew up to the tent. I was surprised at their appearance - such butterflies can only be found in the south, but here I have never come across them. The butterflies, circling, suddenly stuck to me and my son. We, without touching them, photographed each other. And for some reason the thought occurred to me that this was not good. Then the butterflies, as if on command, rose and flew towards that very pine forest.
Half an hour later, the nephews returned. One of them found cartridges and a grenade with a rusty fuse. I don’t drive such toys in my car. He took three cartridges and a fuse from the guys, put them in a tin can and put them on the fire. When there were four explosions, we went to the fire. And then suddenly another explosion sounded. I felt pain on my face and heard my son scream. Looking at him, he saw that blood was streaming through his T-shirt.
That day we took out 38 smallest fragments from Sasha's body. Another, which got into the eye, was removed by doctors during an operation. And some of the fragments are still visible on the hands of his son. I got it too. One splinter pierced the right cheek and broke a tooth, the other hit the right eyelid and is still there. After some time, when the photographs with the butterflies were printed, we noticed that the butterflies on me and Sasha were sitting in those places where the fragments later fell."