My childhood and youth were spent in a large village in the Ryazan region, among incomparably beautiful forests and fields, on the banks of the Oka. Now I am already a city dweller, but sometimes I visit my native places. As a rule, we go fishing with old friends, sometimes with an overnight stay. And somehow we remembered one already almost forgotten story that happened thirty years ago …
In our village, it was customary to rinse linen after washing on the river, in "rinsers", or even directly from the wooden walkways. For the winter, they cut down special ice-holes, sometimes round, sometimes square, as they liked.
Of course, the ice holes were not divided into ours and those of others, but they definitely put marks in case it was covered with snow. The labels were very different. I remember that at one hole there was an old ski frozen in the ice, at the other just a branch with strips of cloth. I don't know how it happened, but one day a tragedy happened.
It was after the snowfall that one of the women did not notice the ice hole and fell through the ice. I remember that they found her in the spring, and all winter in the village there was only talk about this case. And again, I don’t know why, the next winter, on the site of that hole, the snow was constantly melting, so that from afar a black spot could be seen on the white snow. They didn’t go to rinse their clothes, but some people said that they saw a woman standing in a “black hole”.
One of my friends went with his father to check these rumors. Hidden on the shore, they waited for a long time. It was almost completely dark, a dark spot on the snow could still be seen. At some point, indeed, out of nowhere, literally, the figure of a woman appeared. My friend cried out in fright, and she immediately disappeared. Then the fishermen saw her, again in winter, at dusk.
Someone even tried to put a cross on this place, but he disappeared. In general, this black hole has overgrown with real mysticism. And until now they try to bypass this place, although there is a sandy coast next to it. But hardly anyone wants to face the ghost of a drowned woman. So no one goes to this "black hole".
Igor Ponomarev, Moscow