I will tell you about one habitat of snowmen, located not far from St. Petersburg. In the Malovishersky district of the Novgorod region there is such a legend. A long time ago, a woman lived in the village of Selishi, her name was Avdotya. Nobody took her in marriage. She was strange
There were many shortcomings. She often argued with the people. Well, people didn't like her either. It got to the point that she could not continue to live with people and went into the forest. She began to live in badger holes. She lived for a year, two, and then disappeared altogether. Some of the hunters saw her already with a hairy wild man. Probably, our ancestors called wild people Avdoshkas or children of Avdotya. They say they went to Avdotya with their faces.
Legends are legends, but wild people in these places were met in the very recent past. This is how the Malovisher journalist Oleg Ivanov describes the meeting that took place in 1960:
“I saw four redheads - two large and two small. The male was enormous - about 2 m 30 cm. The shoulders together with the neck were about a meter wide. Deep-set gray eyes. The mouth is wide, the lips are plump and brown. The ears were not conspicuous. The chin is wide, gradually merging into a thick neck. The face is smooth, with sparse hair. The nose was not the nose of an animal or a monkey - it was a nose of a man: wide, snub-nosed, with large nostrils. A face that looks like a human. The color of the coat on the body is brown or brown. Under the armpits, on the stomach - lighter. And on the ridge the hair was gray. The female is slightly smaller. She had huge pumpkin breasts with brown nipples. The eldest of the children was a male half a meter smaller than his parents. The youngest was a female."
Photo: Credit unknown / paranormal-news.ru
Testimonies of this kind came later from the Malovisherskaya land, and not only from Oleg Ivanov. Particularly interesting information relates to the first years after the Great Patriotic War (when, as a result of the devastation of that time, forests attacked settlements), as well as the relatively recent 70-80s. After 1995, there was practically no information. The same can be said about the entire Northwest. For the last 4 years, there is little or no reliable information about these mysterious inhabitants of our forests. I attribute this to increased deforestation, which forced many animals, including the snowman, to move to places with a lower anthropogenic load.
For many years, the journalist and writer Oleg Mikhailovich Ivanov, with whom I maintain fruitful contacts, has been collecting information about the Malovishera "Avdoshkas". And in June 2000 I received a new message from Ivanov. He writes: “We saw the tracks of Avdoshka. He came from the Lyubytinsky district. But he is not at all what I was talking about. I went to the Lyu-Bytinsky district. According to the descriptions of eyewitnesses, this is a deep old man (according to my assumptions, old age in Bigfoot begins by the age of 30 - BC). He is smaller than ordinary Avdoshkas. He has a smaller foot. He has a limp on his right leg: obviously she is sick. All came from there, from the same places, from the Lyubytinsky and Khvoinensky districts, which border on Tikhvinsky. According to my observations and the observations of witnesses, it turns out that our places are visited at different times by three wild people. This one is very old and cannot go far from our place. And his habitats: Lyuby-Tinsky, Khvoinensky and Malovishersky, that is, ours! Perhaps he also enters the Tikhvin region …"
Ivanov himself did not see this hypothetical old man. Information obtained from second and third parties.
And here I am, accompanied by another Ivanov - Vladimir, an experienced field researcher from St. Petersburg (I mentioned him in the previous chapters), leaving on the signal received.
Talk about Avdoshki circulates in the territory of both Novgorod and neighboring regions. An interesting message came from Valdai. There, it seems, the security guard of Yeltsin's residence saw the Bigfoot when they once again combed the forests in the 15-kilometer restricted area around the dacha. This message could not be verified. It is difficult to contact witnesses of this kind.
And so I, accompanied by two Ivanovs, walk into the forest, northeast of Malaya Vishera, to the places where they saw footprints. Here, over the past decades, the anthropogenic load has dropped significantly. In the 40-50s, active deforestation was carried out. At the same time, a narrow-gauge railway was built for the export of wood, extending for many kilometers into the depths of the forest. In some places the track is destroyed, however, the tracks of the wheels are clearly visible on the whole rails. What's the matter? It turns out that local craftsmen have learned how to make miniature railcars, on which people go to pick mushrooms and berries. The railcars are so light that two people can easily lift them, carry them to the beginning of the route, drag them across the area with the destroyed track. How inventive the Russian people are!
Another fruit of folk art is associated with this narrow-gauge railway - not material, but folklore. People say that sometimes on white nights a ghost train slowly passes along it. Easily overcoming the destroyed areas, he walks, clanking buffers, through the forest. The locomotive and the carriages show through, and through them you can see the trees that grow behind the line. A skeleton sits in the driver's cab, covered with the remains of decayed clothing. A dead driver confidently leads a train that never goes off the rails. Suddenly a train appears from behind a green wall of trees, disappears without a trace around the next turn.
This legend is a symbol, a recognition that any product of human hands has an immortal soul.
man and beast
Not without difficulty we reached the middle of the dried up swamp, where we most often met Avdoshek. The setting resembles a green hell. Heat over 30, impenetrable thickets of reeds and sedges, wild numbers of horseflies and mosquitoes. We carefully examine the places where you can fix the tracks. Apart from the prints of ordinary forest inhabitants, there is nothing. We are building an observation post, where there are already people from Russia and neighboring countries who are on duty. We climb up a tree with two Ivanovs, from which swamp paths are clearly visible. At the risk of breaking down, we put together a site like the one built by bear hunters. We begin duty immediately. So far, except for wading birds, no one is visible. Exactly at midnight, the noise of a locomotive and the clanking of buffers are heard not far away. The sound, obviously, is not from the Oktyabrskaya road, but from where the narrow-gauge railway passes. What a pity,that she is not visible from the observation post! The invisible composition easily passes over the place where, I remember exactly, the canvas is dismantled, moves on. The noise dies down in the thicket of the forest. What is this - a sound mirage? An acoustic channel in the forest? There must be some explanation: there are no miracles in the world. It still gets a little creepy.
The next day, under the leadership of Oleg Ivanov, we go around the neighborhood, where traces similar to the "Avdoshkins" were recorded. Most of what we meet has nothing to do with Bigfoot. But one is interesting. He is intermediate between the trail of a reasonable person and Avdoshka. Fits foot in size 46. Such people are found, although rarely. The trail is oriented across the road, like the animal and the Avdoshka walk, wanting to overcome the open space along the shortest route. The shape of the foot is not quite human and not quite "avdoshkin". The fingers are of the same length (as in Avdoshka), the thumb is not far from the rest (as in a person). What is this - an atypical person? Atypical Avdoshka? Semi-qualified counterfeit? No answer.