The story about this anomalous old oak tree has been circulating on the Internet in different variations for more than one year and is based on legends and bikes. The exact location of this tree is not indicated anywhere, and there are no photographs of it. Someone is sure that this is due to the fact that the names indicated in the text are simply distorted, others say that almost everything is just fiction.
Oak in a cursed place
In the Mordovian forests on the Alatyr River there is an ancient tract Knyazhiy Log - the locals know it. And supposedly there has been a huge oak tree, which has long been called Satanic, has been standing there since the XIV century. It was not for nothing that they called it that: he has a long, terrible and incomprehensible story. Let's tell about him what is known from chronicles, legends, historical works.
Let's not go into the history of princely internecine strife in Russia in the distant XIV century, let's say the main thing. In a bitter struggle, the grand-ducal label for the Moscow throne was given to the young Dmitry, who later received the nickname Donskoy, and in the neighborhood of the Nizhny Novgorod-Suzdal principality, princes from the Konstantinovich family ruled. There were three of them, but in our story only the middle of the brothers appears - Dmitry.
In the autumn of 1374, the squad of Prince Ivan Dmitrievich came to the Alatyr River, pursuing the Mordovian army. The Nizhny Novgorod army had never gone so far before. The Mordovians were partly beaten, partly dispersed, and in memory of the victory the prince planted an oak tree in the very place, which was later called the Prince's Log. From this time begins the long and eventful history of the Satanic Oak.
Either the Mordovian sorcerers made a death plot in revenge for the defeat, or that was the fate of Ivan Dmitrievich, but he became the first victim of the Satanic oak. It was like this: in 1377, a horde of Tatar prince Arapsha moved to Nizhny Novgorod from the shores of Yaik and the Aral Sea.
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Prince Dmitry sent a strong army to meet him, led by his son Ivan. The Russian squad stood on the Pyana River and carelessly passed the time: the voivode received news that Arapsha was even farther away - somewhere in the Donets area.
It was July heat - the armor was piled on carts or completely packed in packs, the weapons were also not prepared for battle. The prince, the governor and the boyars indulged in hunting fun. True, alarming reports soon began to arrive, but they were not paid attention to. "Who can stand against us?" - said the Russians and began to ride in a simple dress. In addition, general drunkenness began in the army.
And the Mordovian princes, who knew all the secret paths in their lands, secretly led the Tatars to the encampment of the Russian squad. On August 2, a sudden and crushing blow was dealt. The Russians were completely unprepared for resistance and fled in horror through Piana. During the crossing, the prince Ivan with many boyars and ordinary warriors drowned, others were mercilessly killed by the Tatars and allied Mordovians.
And again, for the umpteenth time, the horsemen of the Mamaev Horde burst into the Nizhny Novgorod land. They knew that there was no prince Dmitry Konstantinovich in Nizhny, and without him no one would provide a proper rebuff. The townspeople on boats, plows - on everything that was tethered at the docks - rushed to the other bank of the Volga and from there watched the ant flailing of robbery, the brutal destruction and fire. The smoke finally cleared. Ordyntsev, too, was blown away by the wind.
The battle on the river Pian and the escape of the vanquished.
Hoping that after such a defeat, the Nizhny Novgorod principality was left without protection, and the Mordovians wanted to try their luck - they sailed and began to plunder everything that was left after the Tatars, then went home.
But the Russian squad overtook her at Pyana and crushed her cruelly. And so that it was discouraging, by the winter the princes gathered a strong army, which entered the Mordovian land and "made it empty," in the words of the chronicler.
Oak, as you know, is a good tree by its nature - people go to it to gain strength-energy. However, with the sapling of Prince Ivan, obviously, from the very beginning something went wrong. As a young tree, he absorbed the energy of dying fear and pain of the beaten Mordovians, the cruel joy of the victors. Perhaps this changed his energy to negative.
How the tree lived in the 15th century is unknown, but it is well known what happened under its shade in the 16th. Researcher Andrei Nizovsky, who is interested in his history, writes:
“The Prince's Log Oak was popular in the middle of the 16th century. Having appreciated its spreading and strong branches, the oak was used as a finished gallows. This practice was entrenched in the era of the Kazan capture (the conquest of the Kazan Khanate in 1552), when, according to legend, two captive Tatar "wizards" were hanged on the oak of the Prince's Log, both in oprichnina times, and during the Time of Troubles, when suddenly on the branches of an oak the bodies of fifteen robbers swayed at once … The bodies of the gallows were buried right there, in the pits - according to custom, the hanged had no right to be buried on the consecrated ground.
And in the 17th century oak was used for "robbery". They did not forget about him during the uprising of Stepan Razin (1670-1671): at first the rebels harassed the nobles, and then the nobility "adorned" him with full of nakedness.
We can say that the oak from the Prince's Log was not lucky: apart from death, he has not seen anything in its history. Under the roots of it rotted the remains of different tribal gallows, stinking "Christmas tree decorations" swayed on the branches.
And soon the time came for that story, thanks to which the tree received its gloomy nickname - the Satanic Oak. It is associated with the execution of the witch Agafia.
Curse of the Witch
“The peasants of boyar Nikita Ivanovich Odoevsky,” writes Nizovsky, “filed a petition, in which they brought many of their complaints about the 21-year-old witch, the girl Agafya Kozhevnikov, who had entered into a relationship with Satan and countless host of other demons. Engaging in witchcraft, Agafya sent damage, "put keels," that is, hernias, and did many other evil deeds.
To communicate with the spirits, Agafya made special magic potions, which allowed her to fly on a broomstick, turn into a cat and do much more. It is clear that for this alone she could not deserve the death penalty."
Agafya was captured and brought before the commission of inquiry. During interrogations, the girl, as was customary, was brutally tortured, demanding to tell in detail about her relationship with the hellish forces. They tried, apparently, to glory, because Agafya admitted her guilt and named the people on whom she damaged or who she conspired to die. During the torture, the young woman fell into a trance more than once, which was seen as clear evidence of the accused's obsession.
For a long time and in detail, the steward Gregory led the case. As a result, the peasant woman Agafya Savina Kozhevnikova was recognized as witchcraft and corrupting people. The following royal sentence was pronounced upon her: “And you, having given your spiritual father to your wife Agafyitsa, ordered to receive the Holy Mysteries of God, you would have ordered her to be taken out to the square and, having told her guilt and the godless deed, would have ordered her on the square in a pipe, covered with straw, burn."
The execution was scheduled for September 17, 1679. Rains that hot summer were rare, and there was unprecedented dryness around, so no problems with the burning of the witch were foreseen. However, as they took Agashka to the square, a fresh wind came from somewhere, clouds began to cover the sky. When they put the witch on the fire, the wind became even stronger, blowing out the shreds of tow, with which the executioners tried to kindle the straw.
But the flame nevertheless started, and then suddenly a downpour gushed out, instantly extinguishing the fire. The royal servants, priests and ordinary people were frightened by the unexpected riot of the elements, taking it as a sign that the satanic forces intended to protect their servant. They decided to postpone the execution to the next day. But the next day everything was the same as the day before. And on the third day too.
"You will never be able to burn my body!" - shouted Agafya, spewing out godless blasphemy and curses on those who condemned her to death.
Then someone remembered the oak of the Prince's Log. A thicker branch was chosen, the executioner threw a noose around the witch's neck, and … the branch broke. They found the fattest branch, threw the rope, the executioner knocked out the bench from under the feet of the tenacious sorceress … and again failure - this time the rope broke, only on the third attempt was it possible to hang the witch.
Nizovsky writes: “As the documents testify, all the participants in the court who sentenced Agafya to death, and the executors of the execution, died either by violent death or as a result of unexplained incidents. The witch also cursed their first-born sons - none of them died of old age in their own bed. Most of them died at a young age and usually under the most dire circumstances."
The witch Agashka was the last one who was hanged on an oak tree - no other execution was successful: branches broke, ropes broke or other strange things happened.
For almost a hundred years the oak was in oblivion, when suddenly at the beginning of the last century it again recalled itself. It suddenly turned out that under it were gatherings of a secret satanic sect, terrible rituals were performed. The county authorities decided: to cut down the tree, and uproot the roots, so that even the memory of the Satanic oak would not remain.
However, they did not succeed. As soon as they started to work, a fat branch broke off and crushed two people to death. Immediately everyone remembered Agafya, how they tried to execute her six times (!), And the strange deaths of the judges and their descendants. Then the authorities decided to go for a trick - to invite workers from another district, where this story had not been heard. But again bad luck: the horses carried it out for no reason, the cart with the sawers overturned on a steep slope and the driver broke his neck.
Since then, the Satanic Oak has been left alone. What black sects prayed beside him, what demonic forces were walking - no one knows. Only in the early 90s of the XX century, psychics "unearthed" the history of the Satanic oak.
It is not known how much this corresponds to the truth, but in circles studying anomalous phenomena, they say that in 1992 one famous Moscow psychic visited the Prince's Log and, allegedly falling into a trance, communicated with the sinful soul of Agafya Kozhevnikova, who told him that after execution her soul is enclosed in this ancient oak. And it will dwell in it until the tree dries up.